[Sharon Hays]: Hi, Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road.

[Sharon Hays]: I would like to speak about the new amendment to remove the mayor from the school committee.

[Sharon Hays]: As a resident, as a parent of two students in the Medford Public Schools, and as a former school committee member,

[Sharon Hays]: I am opposed to the idea of taking the mayor off of the school committee.

[Sharon Hays]: I spoke at a previous meeting where I agreed or supported the idea of removing her as the chair of the school committee.

[Sharon Hays]: And I spoke to some reasons about that at that time.

[Sharon Hays]: But having her on the school committee, or I should say having the mayor, whoever it is, on the school committee as the head of the city and as the school being the largest department

[Sharon Hays]: Budget wise and arguably to a lot of people, one of the if not the most important part of the city educating our students.

[Sharon Hays]: I think having the head of our city not be a part of that or when the mayor has been on the school committee all this time to now decide to take her off, to take that position off of the school committee.

[Sharon Hays]: I have to say I missed the earlier part of the meeting, I had to leave.

[Sharon Hays]: So I didn't hear the reasons that were given for that.

[Sharon Hays]: But I find it really difficult to believe that anyone would think that's a positive move.

[Sharon Hays]: The mayor needs to be there to hear what's going on with the schools, to understand what's going on with the schools, especially when it comes to the budget season.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I'm really, really shocked when I, when I came back on and found that that was being put forward, especially given that, as I said at a previous meeting, I spoke to the idea of taking her, taking the mayor off of, of being the chair.

[Sharon Hays]: And then that was what was put forward to the mayor in the revision that was sent to her.

[Sharon Hays]: And now when it comes back after her agreeing to it, you're now deciding to take the mayor off of the school committee.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that's really, really surprising, and I am really opposed to that.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, Ripley Road in Medford.

[Sharon Hays]: I'll just add my voice to those in support of these.

[Sharon Hays]: I'll just add my voice in support of these ordinances and in thanks for all of you for doing this and making sure that everyone in Medford knows that our local government supports them and they will do everything they can to protect and keep them safe.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road.

[Sharon Hays]: Before I start talking and I get my three minutes, I would like to mention that I think it's somewhat disrespectful to the Charter Review Committee members who are here.

[Sharon Hays]: They are not here as community members.

[Sharon Hays]: They are here representing the Charter Review Committee.

[Sharon Hays]: And to the extent that you're making comments about the Charter Review itself, that they wrote the proposal, and about what they did themselves,

[Sharon Hays]: allowing them only three minutes is incredibly disrespectful and disrespects the reason that they are here.

[Sharon Hays]: You guys get to speak forever, and that's just part of you being on city council, but not allowing them the time to respond is disrespectful and unfair, and it interferes with the process, too, because you're not giving them a chance to actually respond to what you're saying about the work that they did.

[Sharon Hays]: I will read my whole I sent an email to the mayor and I will say that I thought about sending it to the city council, but in the end I decided not to, because I don't feel like I didn't feel like it would be heard.

[Sharon Hays]: I didn't feel like it would be really considered.

[Sharon Hays]: I would like to say Councilors are I really appreciate that earlier in the meeting you did talk about, you know, you're still making up your mind on this and you're listening to feedback and that's changing your opinion sometimes so I appreciate that.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I'm not going to say a whole lot I will say that as a.

[Sharon Hays]: As a progressive, as a person who was a member of the progressive group that's represented by a lot of people here, I know that myself, every conversation that I had about charter review and representation, we talked about ward representation.

[Sharon Hays]: Those are the conversations I had with those who are currently here who were on that progressive group at that time.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, people can change their mind, I understand that, but to suggest that that wasn't the conversations that were being had is not, in my experience, true.

[Sharon Hays]: I will also say that

[Sharon Hays]: That was the driving force, I understood behind that while there are other issues to that desire from the community for word based representation to feel like each word have their own Councilor that people had better connection with their Councilors that they had more of an opportunity maybe to vote.

[Sharon Hays]: a single person in, you know, that was a driving force behind this in my recollection of all the conversations I was a part of.

[Sharon Hays]: And some of the earlier comments about well we've accepted 90% like we're in agreement, it's just one little piece.

[Sharon Hays]: This is democracy.

[Sharon Hays]: Representation on this on the city council is arguably the largest and most important piece of our city charter, because it's how we as a community as we as residents are represented.

[Sharon Hays]: And, you know, at this moment, I don't feel very represented.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, we can disagree.

[Sharon Hays]: This isn't a minor disagreement.

[Sharon Hays]: This is a major disagreement because this is the major piece of this charter.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, I hear my timer's going.

[Sharon Hays]: I'll stop now because that's the most important thing to say.

[Sharon Hays]: Is it on?

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm a former school committee member.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to add what I said in my interview with the charter committee.

[Sharon Hays]: I do advocate for not having the mayor be the chair of the school committee.

[Sharon Hays]: However, I do believe she should be on the school committee.

[Sharon Hays]: I think it's critical to have her there, to have her hearing everything that we're talking about.

[Sharon Hays]: The school budget is the single largest piece of the city budget.

[Sharon Hays]: So to not have our chief executive there to hear what is going on in the school, to hear what the school committee is thinking about, I think would be a huge gap.

[Sharon Hays]: I think having her on as a voting member, her again as member Bramley,

[Sharon Hays]: I'm saying her because our current chief executive is a female.

[Sharon Hays]: I think it's important to have the vote there from the mayor.

[Sharon Hays]: I think, however, as the chair of the school committee, the chair does guide the discussions.

[Sharon Hays]: I do think that having a chair whose

[Sharon Hays]: whose focus isn't divided, whose focus is solely on the needs of the school and not necessarily having to contend with all of the other needs of the city is truly important.

[Sharon Hays]: So again, I personally advocated with the charter committee for having the mayor not be the chair to have the school committee elect a separate chair, but for the chair being a voting member of the school committee.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road, former school committee member.

[Sharon Hays]: I just want to support everything that the chair of the Charter Committee just said, Milva said.

[Sharon Hays]: I find it somewhat

[Sharon Hays]: nonsensical and in some ways almost demeaning to the members of this community to suggest that they wouldn't understand different compositions of our two very different bodies, the school committee and the city council.

[Sharon Hays]: I just don't even understand how that could come up as a reason.

[Sharon Hays]: They are two very different, they have two very different scopes of authority, of responsibility.

[Sharon Hays]: So I,

[Sharon Hays]: I don't even understand how that comes up as a question.

[Sharon Hays]: I'd like to make the point, too, that where divisions exist and distrust in our government exists, you can almost always trace it back to either a lack of representation or disproportionate representation.

[Sharon Hays]: And so what we are looking at is ways to increase representation.

[Sharon Hays]: What the Charter Committee has recommended across the board are ways that will increase representation among the people of this city.

[Sharon Hays]: But what I'm continually hearing in the meetings that I've seen is a move backwards from this committee, this council, to look for ways to decrease that.

[Sharon Hays]: And I truly don't understand that.

[Sharon Hays]: I am totally in support of the way that the Charter Committee structured this.

[Sharon Hays]: I think obviously, as they've said countless times, they spent two years on this.

[Sharon Hays]: They spent two years researching this.

[Sharon Hays]: They spent two years getting community feedback that said across the board that the community wanted more input.

[Sharon Hays]: wanted more representation, wanted more to feel more connected.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I truly don't understand why we would suggest otherwise at this point.

[Sharon Hays]: If we go back to all at large, then nothing has changed.

[Sharon Hays]: And so the voice of the community, to my opinion, has been ignored.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I apologize, I probably missed something.

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to make the comment that in terms of the recommendation of the superintendent, that is found in both recommendations and guidelines from DESE and from MASC.

[Sharon Hays]: So the language used by the Charter Committee is pulled exactly from what Jesse recommends, because they do recommend that while state law is very clear about the fact that the school committee can select and terminate the superintendent, the other positions are not so clear.

[Sharon Hays]: And so both, I'm trying to find the wording if you'd like to hear it.

[Sharon Hays]: The school committee hires a superintendent and assistant superintendents and should rely on the superintendent to hire the other personnel from serving the school district.

[Sharon Hays]: Future legislation may clarify the statutes, I'm sorry I'm trying to find the exact, but both Jesse and here's the MAS version of it, they say

[Sharon Hays]: The school committee shall appoint the superintendent, shall appoint the assistant associate superintendent, school business administrator, administrator of special education, school physicians and registered nurses, legal counsel and supervisors of attendance upon recommendation of the superintendent.

[Sharon Hays]: Consent to hiring based on the superintendent's recommendation should not be unreasonably withheld.

[Sharon Hays]: So it really does say that it should be, it's not the sole,

[Sharon Hays]: authority of the school committee, that it's the school committee appoints based on the recommendation of the superintendent.

[Sharon Hays]: So I just wanted to clarify that that language is taken directly from both DESE and from MASC.

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road.

[Sharon Hays]: I'd like to start by saying I am opposed to the amendment.

[Sharon Hays]: I totally support the ward-based representation as written in the proposed charter by the Charter Review Committee.

[Sharon Hays]: So many things I wanted to say, but after waiting three and a half hours as a community member, it's hard now to put my thoughts together.

[Sharon Hays]: One thing I wanted to start by saying is someone who's been pretty engaged and involved in Medford politics for a number of years now.

[Sharon Hays]: There has been a lot of talk about ward representation going on again for a number of years.

[Sharon Hays]: And that was the only model I ever heard of from anyone in the community or any of the other elected officials that I worked with or had any other engagement with.

[Sharon Hays]: There was constant talk of ward representation, of the value of ward representation, of the fact that we have a lot of people in this community

[Sharon Hays]: who are not engaged, who are, don't feel connected to our elected officials or our government in general, policymaking, things that affect them.

[Sharon Hays]: So I see that as one of the values or one of the major value of potentially of ward representation.

[Sharon Hays]: if you know that there's someone that you, a face you recognize.

[Sharon Hays]: Everyone said this, so I don't need to keep reiterating it.

[Sharon Hays]: But again, that sense of connection seems to be a big thing that's being talked about everywhere right now across the country.

[Sharon Hays]: And anything we can do to build up that sense of connection so that we can get more people involved in what's going on, we have a serious lack of civic engagement everywhere.

[Sharon Hays]: So why we wouldn't be looking for better ways to try

[Sharon Hays]: to get people more involved, I'm really not understanding.

[Sharon Hays]: You know, I've lost my train of thought.

[Sharon Hays]: One of the things that concerns me about the presentation of this amendment,

[Sharon Hays]: is the potential for a conflict of interest when City Council is getting involved in such a way of what feels to me personally like almost dismissive of the work that we as a community charged this group with doing.

[Sharon Hays]: I read a blog post from Councilor Leming and also saw him speak at one of the Charter Review Committee meetings where he commented on that and said, you know,

[Sharon Hays]: If there were to be a conflict between what something that the Charter Committee recommended and a major conflict with what the City Council felt was appropriate, that really there should be deference given to what the Charter Committee, the conclusions they came to.

[Sharon Hays]: Because if they were charged with doing this, they've been doing this for two years.

[Sharon Hays]: They have become our local experts on this.

[Sharon Hays]: they've consulted, they've got data, I was gonna use a perm, they've got tons of data on their website for anyone who wants to look and see why they reached these conclusions and what information they used to come to these conclusions.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm concerned and troubled by the fact that I'm seeing a city council who now, you know, is suggesting

[Sharon Hays]: that perhaps their experience should count for more than what the charter committee came to the conclusion after their many months of this.

[Sharon Hays]: So I really hope you guys will truly consider the fact that this does seem to be what the community wanted.

[Sharon Hays]: And yes, there could be many other models that could be looked at.

[Sharon Hays]: Again, it was thoroughly and clearly explained why they didn't choose to look at those other models.

[Sharon Hays]: So, you know, I really hope that we will go toward representation because I think that's what has been talked about.

[Sharon Hays]: That's what people wanted.

[Sharon Hays]: People wanted to have the ability to have more connection.

[Sharon Hays]: I can personally speak as someone who ran to say that running a citywide election definitely is an expense in resources, time, money that would be different if we had some people running for those who would be able to run a ward based, which one would expect.

[Sharon Hays]: would bring more people willing to run.

[Sharon Hays]: So, you know, I think we don't know.

[Sharon Hays]: We don't know how ward-based will work in our community.

[Sharon Hays]: We do know that up to this point, a model that's not ward-based has led to some real disparities both in

[Sharon Hays]: the number in disparities between wards and people who will run, people who end up in office.

[Sharon Hays]: We also know that we see fairly low voter turnout by wards.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think that's the gist of what I wanted to say.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: What's that?

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes 69 Ripley Road think I'm more nervous on this side.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm not here to advocate for any particular position or program, because as a parent I realized that every single one of these cuts will affect my children.

[Sharon Hays]: directly or indirectly, immediately or in the future as a long-term impact.

[Sharon Hays]: And that's true for all of our students.

[Sharon Hays]: As a parent of an elementary school student who's at the largest school with the currently largest class size, I can echo the worries that the Missittook has about what larger class size, what the impact is on students.

[Sharon Hays]: We similarly, at the Roberts, in our class sizes of 20 or more, there are a bunch of classes that have some significant emotional behavioral needs, ones that don't qualify for special education supports, but who need supports.

[Sharon Hays]: And as a school district, we have been lean for a very long time, and so,

[Sharon Hays]: We also don't have those extra supports that a lot of other schools, other school districts might have.

[Sharon Hays]: We don't have a lot of reading specialists.

[Sharon Hays]: We don't have math specialists.

[Sharon Hays]: We don't have probably as many adjustment Councilors as we need, given the needs of our students.

[Sharon Hays]: So when you then increase class sizes, and even if it's only by one, two, three students,

[Sharon Hays]: The impact on the students, the impact on the teachers is huge.

[Sharon Hays]: And we know that across the country and certainly in our district, teachers are burned out.

[Sharon Hays]: And if you then add to that by increasing the class sizes, you know.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm also the parent of a marching band student, orchestra student, a regular band student.

[Sharon Hays]: I know the impact that that will have if we cut anywhere in the performing arts, any position that's going to necessarily have a ripple effect.

[Sharon Hays]: Again, I could go through any of these.

[Sharon Hays]: One more, just I took some notes.

[Sharon Hays]: When I think of the nursing staff,

[Sharon Hays]: I can say from personal experience where my kids were very little.

[Sharon Hays]: Both of them had some real school anxiety.

[Sharon Hays]: And when they needed a break from the classroom where they had somatic responses to their anxiety, where did the teacher send them to the nurse's office, not because they were sick, but because that was a place they could have a break.

[Sharon Hays]: Maybe they could lie down on one of the little beds.

[Sharon Hays]: They got a little TLC from the nurses who were absolutely amazing, who would call me and say, you know, your child's here, but he's fine.

[Sharon Hays]: Just want you to know that he's here.

[Sharon Hays]: So it kind of, as I was sitting back there, you know, my stomach started to twist just hearing people come up and, you know, everybody's fighting for the pennies and the nickels and the dimes.

[Sharon Hays]: I think we as a community and I know I think member Graham said this earlier, and I think every school can remember said this at some point, we need to come together and decide how much do we value our educational system, how much do we value our public schools, and what are we willing to do to fund them to a level that meets that value that we get from them.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I hope people will take away from this not just

[Sharon Hays]: You know my, my program may be cut that my child's in or, you know, something in particular my child needs is being cut, but as a whole, our school system is being decimated, which might be a little strong but we're being cut after cut year after year there are positions that the school committee, I can say having been on the school

[Sharon Hays]: wanted, not just wanted, but felt were really necessary to really have a high quality education for our students.

[Sharon Hays]: And they would get cut, those positions like literacy specialists would get cut very early in the budget season.

[Sharon Hays]: So the people who walk away from this just thinking about what do we do to make sure we have more money in the future?

[Sharon Hays]: I hope people will walk away with that because

[Sharon Hays]: This isn't gonna get solved by one program being reinstated or one teacher being reinstated.

[Sharon Hays]: This is going to, I think, as member Rousseau asked and as Gerry McCue answered, this is gonna happen again next year if we don't do something about it.

[Sharon Hays]: We're gonna be back in these meetings talking about what positions are we gonna cut now and what impact is that gonna have on our kids and our teachers.

[Sharon Hays]: So I hope people think a lot about that and think about what we need

[Sharon Hays]: Good evening.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I just had a quick question.

[Sharon Hays]: So when we're looking at those scores, what's a significant difference?

[Sharon Hays]: So we've got, just looking at second grade, we've got 172.35 for the national and we're at 175.8.

[Sharon Hays]: Is that significant?

[Sharon Hays]: a significant difference?

[Sharon Hays]: I found myself wondering that as I was looking through the scores.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't really have a good handle on that.

[Sharon Hays]: So I guess part of what I'm wondering is I know in terms of the ELA scores, we're looking to see, partly we're hoping to see that both with our new reading program, which of course we wouldn't see that influence yet, but with the ECRI that's been in place for a few years now,

[Sharon Hays]: How is that impacting our scores?

[Sharon Hays]: Are the kids doing better than they were previously?

[Sharon Hays]: So how do you make that judgment if you don't know what a significant difference is, I guess is what I'm wondering.

[Sharon Hays]: Do we have a way of looking at that?

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm looking at slide 21 or at least the numbers 21's class breakdown by instructional area.

[Sharon Hays]: I would assume or hope that teachers would be looking at this that really gives you each student by you know it's not going to break it down maybe as far as you were suggesting member Rousseau but it does break it down by the areas.

[Sharon Hays]: And it seems like that gives the teacher some good information about where.

[Sharon Hays]: Now, what I don't understand on this and I wanted to ask was, is there a score that the teachers are looking for as the kind of, we'd like to see most of the kids falling in this score range.

[Sharon Hays]: And so kids who are below that, we wanna look at whether they're struggling.

[Sharon Hays]: You know?

[Sharon Hays]: well, that's problematic though, isn't it?

[Sharon Hays]: We've got to have some standard that we're trying to get the kids all to.

[Sharon Hays]: And if it's going to vary by class, when I know, so I guess where I'm struggling again is with, I think members so hit this a minute ago, we keep talking about the real value of this is that the individual student level, or maybe even the class level.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think that's wonderful.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I remember before I was on school committee, when you were first talking about this assessment,

[Sharon Hays]: I was like, this is great because MCAS is no longer usable in that way and hasn't been for a very long time.

[Sharon Hays]: So it was a real gap in having an assessment that we could use in that way.

[Sharon Hays]: But I'm confused.

[Sharon Hays]: I find myself, I feel like we are kind of toggling back and forth between the top of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel when we start looking at, you know, when we say something like, well, it's going to be different for each class, but we need something.

[Sharon Hays]: And then I guess I'm hoping also to get a better understanding of why why are we even being

[Sharon Hays]: Well, let me rephrase that, that's not a nice way of putting it.

[Sharon Hays]: The highlights were all really about scores at a higher level.

[Sharon Hays]: Do you use those?

[Sharon Hays]: Do you use, when you see that there's a difference between the subgroups, how does MAP help you use that knowledge, or does it?

[Sharon Hays]: And if it doesn't, then, I don't know, is it worth even spending time talking about it?

[Sharon Hays]: something else that helps us then at that level.

[Sharon Hays]: So I guess that was a lot of questions rolled up into one, but I do feel like this conversation, this discussion is kind of going back and forth, you know, between the higher, the top of the funnel and the narrower end of the funnel.

[Sharon Hays]: And it's hard for those of us who aren't using this consistently or, you know, understand it as well as you do to kind of tease out those differences and understand how this test is really being used.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: I'll be brief.

[Sharon Hays]: I 100% agree with everything Member Graham just said.

[Sharon Hays]: In terms of presentation of data in general, I would say the same thing.

[Sharon Hays]: I would apply everything she said to MCAS presentations, to any, you know, any presentations you do of data.

[Sharon Hays]: We need to hear

[Sharon Hays]: Where things are going well, yes, but we need to hear, as Member Graham said, the areas where things aren't going well and what you're doing about it, because that's where we're gonna make growth.

[Sharon Hays]: 1% ahead of the national norm doesn't tell us anything if we don't understand where we're not meeting the norm or where we're not meeting our personal goals and what we're doing to try to get there, because that's where we wanna know what the growth is gonna be.

[Sharon Hays]: I would also like to add that in terms of the piece of how classroom teachers use it,

[Sharon Hays]: I'd like to hear from a classroom teacher or several classroom teachers at different levels.

[Sharon Hays]: I'd like to hear them explain how they use it.

[Sharon Hays]: They're the ones who are using it.

[Sharon Hays]: It would be really helpful to have them walk through, whether they come to a meeting or whether they create videos, however you want to do it.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that would be really helpful for us to understand.

[Sharon Hays]: Since again, that was the initial reason for purchasing this assessment and using it district wide was to give teachers a tool that they could use

[Sharon Hays]: to help in their classroom.

[Sharon Hays]: So as much as it's wonderful to hear all of you try to explain it, I think hearing it from the source, hearing it from the people who are using it would be really helpful.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you, I have a couple of, just a couple of edit issues too, or questions.

[Sharon Hays]: In the transition section, where it says the school shall hold a meeting, would like to change that to the school will offer to hold a meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays, did you have another item?

[Sharon Hays]: Just one more.

[Sharon Hays]: Under gender markers on student records, I think there was, so on that the sentence upon request by the student or in the case of student under the age of 14, it's a little confusing.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that a couple of things got

[Sharon Hays]: either when I wrote it, it came out wrong, or something was changed.

[Sharon Hays]: But it just feels like it's a little confusing.

[Sharon Hays]: It says, upon request by the student, or in the case of a student under the age of 14, or has not yet entered ninth grade, then comma, young student not able to advocate for themselves.

[Sharon Hays]: I think it needs to be, I'm curious if others, if everyone could look at that and see if that feels like it needs to be a little reworded.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm wondering, my motion was to take out to, let's see, to change it like this.

[Sharon Hays]: Upon request by the student, or in the case of a student who was under the age of 14 or has not yet entered ninth grade, and then take out young students not yet able to advocate for themselves.

[Sharon Hays]: Just take that out.

[Sharon Hays]: Has not yet entered the ninth grade by the caregivers.

[Sharon Hays]: The school should change the gender marker on the record for transgender students.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't think we need young students not yet able to advocate for themselves since we've spelled out that by law, there's that 14 year old.

[Sharon Hays]: You can't change.

[Sharon Hays]: By law, the student record can only be changed by the parent if the student is under the age of 14 or has not yet reached ninth grade.

[Sharon Hays]: So I believe the original wording, this is something that got changed after our committee of the whole.

[Sharon Hays]: The original language was directly from DESE and did not specify that 14 year age, but then we did find that the law does, for the student records, the law specifies the age.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think that young students not yet able to advocate for themselves was part of the original DESE language.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: Can I make a motion to suspend the rules and waive the second reading?

[Sharon Hays]: Motion to approve the policy.

[Sharon Hays]: Second.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm just wondering since, you know, since it's difficult to, as a committee will be difficult to not to actually cut off new policies, is there a way we could create a process for if there are additional policies after the deadline for the student handbooks?

[Sharon Hays]: I know like the bullying policy, which I think for many reasons was put directly on the webpage, but could there be a tab somewhere or a

[Sharon Hays]: link somewhere that says here the policies that were passed after the deadline for that the handbook so that we have the deadline but we also have the possibility if needed to add additional policies past that deadline.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I can start.

[Sharon Hays]: So in looking through both the bullying policy and looking just through our webpage, what I realized in looking at everything related to bullying is we do have a lot of descriptions of some of the, I guess, more of the prevention.

[Sharon Hays]: We have responsive classroom, which gets a lot at building community, social emotional skills, emotional regulation.

[Sharon Hays]: We have the Nexus classroom, we have, I'm trying to think, there's a number of things that we have.

[Sharon Hays]: I couldn't find anywhere, sorry?

[Sharon Hays]: Just say hello.

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, just say hello and Sandy Hook, yes, the Sandy Hook, which more gets at when you're looking at someone who's really in an emotional crisis and what do you do about that?

[Sharon Hays]: But I didn't see anywhere that explained clearly for parents in the community and us,

[Sharon Hays]: where we have in our curriculum explicit, like it says in here, explicit instruction for students, sorry, about how to identify bullying.

[Sharon Hays]: And it's gonna be developmentally different at every age, of course, but really, I think we need to clearly understand what are we teaching kids so that they know what bullying looks like, what it looks like, what it sounds like,

[Sharon Hays]: And again, that idea of, you know, we did have a parent who wrote to us a while back about their student, their child in school, talking about how kids were, how language was evolving at the middle school level.

[Sharon Hays]: And there were words being used that sounded benign, but were being used very much in a hate speech manner.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think that

[Sharon Hays]: there's a lot of kids who don't understand that and might hear it and might not identify that as bullying or then identify it as hate speech.

[Sharon Hays]: So kind of all of this explicit teaching of what bullying is so that kids know what to identify when we're saying, you know, call us or tell us or find your trusted adult.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm not sure that we have anything that tells us how we're teaching kids what they are bringing to the adult.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: We do currently now have a tab on our MPS website that does have this past year's superintendent evaluation.

[Sharon Hays]: So this motion, this resolution really is just to continue that.

[Sharon Hays]: I did put in 21-22, which would be the previous year's evaluation, which I opened up to the committee to decide whether they want to include that in this.

[Sharon Hays]: I just put that in because that was my first year on the committee.

[Sharon Hays]: But I think it's important that we make these evaluation reports

[Sharon Hays]: more easily accessible than they have been in the past.

[Sharon Hays]: Again, as it says in the motion, these reports are not only about the performance of the superintendent, but because the superintendent is the chief executive of the school system, they're also an indication, one indication of how the school system as a whole is doing and how our goals are tied to our strategic plan.

[Sharon Hays]: It's a measure of how

[Sharon Hays]: we're meeting the goals in our strategic plan.

[Sharon Hays]: So this is just a motion to make an already public document more easily accessible to the public.

[Sharon Hays]: Here.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, I'm Sharon Hayes.

[Sharon Hays]: Unfortunately, this is the only chance I will get to meet with you because I won't be on school committee the next time you meet.

[Sharon Hays]: But I'm really, really excited that so many of you wanted to do this, and I'm really glad we're getting this going.

[Sharon Hays]: My reason for really trying to make sure this got started and, you know, I know it had support from

[Sharon Hays]: administration and all the school committee members, really.

[Sharon Hays]: But we talk so much about how everything we do is for the students, and we mean that.

[Sharon Hays]: But what I think we've all realized along the way is that what we really need to hear is what you think you need, because we are older.

[Sharon Hays]: We've been in high school, but times are different.

[Sharon Hays]: So we do need to hear from you what's going on,

[Sharon Hays]: what's going well, what's not going so well, what ideas you have for change.

[Sharon Hays]: It's just so important to get your voices in.

[Sharon Hays]: So thank you so much for doing this.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to say, you know, I think

[Sharon Hays]: This issue with backpacks, I don't know if any of you have actually attended any school committee meetings, but this is a big topic that has come up a couple of times.

[Sharon Hays]: And in fact, when we last year had a culture and climate review done by an outside consultant, that came up as an issue that he saw to both the physical needs of the students being able to carry around your stuff, being able to get from point A to point B in time,

[Sharon Hays]: get to lunch, all of that, but also the inconsistencies among teachers and how they handle the backpack.

[Sharon Hays]: So all the things you've brought up, he brought up too.

[Sharon Hays]: So I just wanted to say, you know, you guys really are on topic with things that also the consultant saw as being issues.

[Sharon Hays]: And, you know, I think we do need to look at a school, as a school committee, as whether there are any ways that we can support

[Sharon Hays]: Changes to this policy.

[Sharon Hays]: I know that it's, you know, there is a lot that the site council does.

[Sharon Hays]: And I'll be honest, I've only been on for two years.

[Sharon Hays]: So my understanding of kind of the What becomes school committee policy versus what becomes a site council issue.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm still not 100% clear on myself, but I again in terms of this, this group of people of students coming together.

[Sharon Hays]: I think it's incredibly helpful for us to hear directly from you what the issues are with the backpack policy, how it affects you in your being able to navigate around the school, being able to get places on time, the differences in how teachers handle both the backpack issue and the issue of if you're a little bit late because of that.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think this is really valuable to hear.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think, you know, again, maybe it's a site council issue.

[Sharon Hays]: Maybe we as school committee also need to talk about is there

[Sharon Hays]: Is there some space for us to also support policy-wise in terms of student wellness, student mental health, whatever, to be able to alleviate that stress?

[Sharon Hays]: Because that sounds like it's a pretty significant stress around a lot of kids.

[Sharon Hays]: So yeah, I think in really trying to get this going, we did look carefully at the law and at the policy, which is really the policy is directly from the law.

[Sharon Hays]: The law is pretty specific in saying five.

[Sharon Hays]: They don't really say why.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think one of the

[Sharon Hays]: at least my personal thought behind that was whenever you get a huge group of people, it can be harder to have a clear voice come through.

[Sharon Hays]: It can make it more difficult actually to run a meeting if you have 20 people trying to all kind of get their thoughts through.

[Sharon Hays]: So my sense was that this was an attempt to make sure that we really

[Sharon Hays]: hear student voices, that by having a smaller number, there really is more time for direct back and forth for the members who are the five members involved.

[Sharon Hays]: And also similar just to every level of our government, you're representing.

[Sharon Hays]: It's true that the more people, maybe you feel it could be more representative, and I guess we could say that for probably any, we could say that for school committee, city council, at some point,

[Sharon Hays]: you know, and we can talk about this and adjust it if people feel really strongly about it.

[Sharon Hays]: But at some point, that is the point, you guys are the representatives.

[Sharon Hays]: And then the question becomes, how do you get out and get the voices of the other students so that you can gather all that information and the five of you bring it back to us?

[Sharon Hays]: Because I think that no matter, you know, we could have 20 members

[Sharon Hays]: And some people still might not feel represented.

[Sharon Hays]: So, so it still would come back to how do we either.

[Sharon Hays]: How do we support you in doing it.

[Sharon Hays]: How do the advisors who are working with you support you in figuring out how to get a larger representation through your outreach or through your availability to talk to other students, whether you can do surveys, just

[Sharon Hays]: what other ways can you make sure that you're hearing from more students than just obviously yourselves or your friends?

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm not closed off to adding more.

[Sharon Hays]: Five was the way the law is written.

[Sharon Hays]: And again, like I said, I think we need to think about where do we fall, where it gets to just be too many people in a room and not enough ability to really

[Sharon Hays]: to talk directly.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: quickly to give a little background too.

[Sharon Hays]: So you guys have had a student advisory council.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't, I'd have to look, I don't personally know how that's designated in the handbook.

[Sharon Hays]: This piece of it, meeting with school committee is brand new.

[Sharon Hays]: You guys are the first, this is the first time this has ever happened.

[Sharon Hays]: This was a law that was, I don't,

[Sharon Hays]: quite no, maybe three or four years ago put into place.

[Sharon Hays]: And from my research that I've done, we may be one of only a handful of districts who's really trying to figure out a good way to do this, to make sure that we have these every other month meetings at a minimum, that's how the law's written, that it has to be at least every other month.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think part of your role as being the first group too, is to help us understand

[Sharon Hays]: figure out how to do this.

[Sharon Hays]: The law doesn't give us any details of how to make this happen.

[Sharon Hays]: It just says do this.

[Sharon Hays]: It says you know you need to have a student advisory committee.

[Sharon Hays]: You need to meet every other month.

[Sharon Hays]: They need to meet directly with the school committee so they have direct access to the decision makers, so to speak, and are part of the decision making process.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think part of what you can.

[Sharon Hays]: You can really be have an active role in this year is helping the

[Sharon Hays]: figure out how to make this work.

[Sharon Hays]: And if there needs to be more students, you can help figure out how to make that happen, how it gets written into the student handbook, how the two pieces of the student advisory council, which may end up being larger than the smaller group of the student advisory committee, which then you get into some semantics there, and it can get a little confusing.

[Sharon Hays]: But I think you guys can really be crucial in helping shape this for future

[Sharon Hays]: Years too.

[Sharon Hays]: So again, thank you for for doing this and think about that as when we go away from today is start thinking about what you think would work really well and how how to help shape this whole idea of student involvement and decision making.

[Sharon Hays]: I can speak to that too if unless the superintendent wants to go first.

[Sharon Hays]: Sure.

[Sharon Hays]: So I did actually make a few edits to this, which I am trying to print up now so I can read them.

[Sharon Hays]: But so I did realize that because I did have some questions about that from some members of the community.

[Sharon Hays]: When it comes to student records, there are some specific regulations regarding age.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I realized it wasn't just enough to put C, Massachusetts student records regulations.

[Sharon Hays]: To be more specific, I am trying to, I could try to share this, but student records by regulation are, if a student is under 14, the parent is the only one who can make changes to a record.

[Sharon Hays]: Between the ages of 14 and 17, from 14 up to, well, 14 up to 18, because once they're 18, they're an adult, and they can take total control.

[Sharon Hays]: But between the ages of 14 and 17, a student or a parent can make changes to the record.

[Sharon Hays]: And then once the student is 18, if they make it clear in writing that they want control of their, they want total control of their record and don't want parents to have control over it,

[Sharon Hays]: which they have to do in writing, they can't just, it's not just automatic, they have to make it clear, then they would have the right to make any of those changes like gender markers or names.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm not clear, I'd have to see which part you're talking about.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't think there was anywhere in here that meant to suggest or should have suggested that there would be a classroom meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: I think in general, Dessie really talks a lot about meetings with the student to talk about how, and the parent if the parent's involved too, about how they want this change to happen or how to make it clear to other

[Sharon Hays]: adults in the school, other students in the school about this change.

[Sharon Hays]: Jesse's really trying, I think, leaves things a little open-ended in a lot of places just to really drive home the fact that the point of this is to be supportive of the student.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, the title of their webpage for this is Guidance for Massachusetts Public Schools, Creating a Safe and Supportive School Environment.

[Sharon Hays]: So they're really talking a lot about

[Sharon Hays]: this being student-driven in the sense that really if a student comes out at school and reveals to an adult at the school that they are transitioning or need to use a different name or that then there would be a process, which that would then be the school end kind of coming up with what their process would be, of meeting with the student talking about how they want this to look in school

[Sharon Hays]: and how they are comfortable with this being revealed to other people.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, we can also do it for the second reading.

[Sharon Hays]: I think, so what I, what I was going to do anywhere where it's student records, so under privacy, confidentiality, and student records, under gender markers and student records, just to add that notation that, and I think, I think what I did in the first, under privacy, confidentiality, and student records is I actually just cut and paste the law itself that explains the age ranges.

[Sharon Hays]: And then for gender markers and student, on student records, just added a notation that said per regulation, student records regulation 603 CMR 23-01.

[Sharon Hays]: So that, that would be there for each one of those.

[Sharon Hays]: So that the, the understanding is that any time a record's going to be changed, there are some more specific, there are specific age ranges when, when the parents are the only ones who can change the record.

[Sharon Hays]: if it's just a student asking to be called something different, you know, then that's, as long as it's not being a student record change, a student can be allowed to request that if, again, there's, that's under the names and pronouns, that if they're consistently being asked to be called that, if there's consistent identification as a different gender than what they've previously been identified as, that they can,

[Sharon Hays]: asked to be used, called by a different name, different pronouns, without having to prove anything.

[Sharon Hays]: Can I just quickly clarify?

[Sharon Hays]: I didn't make changes.

[Sharon Hays]: I did put some edits in based on what people said to me, but with the total understanding that as we discuss it at this meeting, those edits may or may not be part of the final process.

[Sharon Hays]: I just put in some changes just because people had, you know, things that people had mentioned that I assumed would come up.

[Sharon Hays]: These are general questions that often come up with this type of a policy, but certainly did not mean to imply that I made changes that were final.

[Sharon Hays]: So Member Hays, do you have a- I understand, but we still can't see it.

[Sharon Hays]: I apologize.

[Sharon Hays]: I can try to share the one where I've made some additions or, you know, based on some of the things that are, what's been said here, but other people said to me.

[Sharon Hays]: Let me see if I can.

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, I'm not able to share it.

[Sharon Hays]: Let's see.

[Sharon Hays]: OK.

[Sharon Hays]: For which part?

[Sharon Hays]: The note that I was talking about in terms of delineating the age, referring to the records, that could go either under names and pronouns, really, or the Privacy, Confidentiality, and Student Records is probably the most fitting place for it, since that's where the age ranges really apply.

[Sharon Hays]: So the age requirements only refer to specific changes in the student record.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, that's where that that's part of the student records regulations.

[Sharon Hays]: There's no age range defined by law or by desi in terms of when parents need to be notified if a student just comes to an adult at the school and starts talking about Wanting to change their name or pronouns in usage at school.

[Sharon Hays]: That's actually, I'm sorry to interrupt.

[Sharon Hays]: That's actually not in the regulations.

[Sharon Hays]: There is no regulation about, the regulation specifically refers to student records that the student cannot request.

[Sharon Hays]: Under the age of 14, a student cannot request a change to their record.

[Sharon Hays]: That can only be done by a parent before ninth grade or 14, whichever comes first.

[Sharon Hays]: But in terms of speaking to the parents,

[Sharon Hays]: Desi actually pretty clearly talks about the fact that some students won't be comfortable, will express that they are not comfortable talking to their parents or actually afraid and leaves it open to the discretion of the professionals at the school to kind of make that call and talk about, work with the student to figure out how to tell the parents.

[Sharon Hays]: In which actually I did, if I could, I did want to add

[Sharon Hays]: because I know this is a major concern.

[Sharon Hays]: We all know this is a major concern for a lot of people that I did want to add in there.

[Sharon Hays]: If I can, you had asked, I'm sorry, Mr. Tucci, did you want to speak first?

[Sharon Hays]: I did have something I'd like to add in there, but I won't let you talk first.

[Sharon Hays]: If I can just, because I've done so much reading about this, just to come in and say, in all cases, Desi keeps coming back when they talk about this to saying, work with the student to determine what they feel is best for them.

[Sharon Hays]: So I would honestly hesitate to put something in writing in a policy that says either way what staff has to do.

[Sharon Hays]: because I think really DESE is trying really hard to leave it up to the professionals at the school who clearly, they probably know this student very well.

[Sharon Hays]: If this is a student coming to them, it feels comfortable enough to talk to them about it, that looking at a process for working with the student to determine how do you want this to look at school for you?

[Sharon Hays]: all of your teachers to know?

[Sharon Hays]: Do you want all of your classmates to know?

[Sharon Hays]: How can we bring your family into this so your family knows if they don't already know?

[Sharon Hays]: Of course, if the family's the one coming in or if the student's coming with their family, the team of people working on this would be including the family or the caregivers.

[Sharon Hays]: But there's a lot of open-endedness to DESE's guidelines and really they keep coming back to in their

[Sharon Hays]: discussion throughout their webpage or their website for this, that it's kind of a student, it needs to be student-driven, that we need to honor what the student feels comfortable with.

[Sharon Hays]: And so there really needs to be, whether it's a defined process or just a generally known process of how there's a team of people that gets together with the student, maybe including a guidance Councilor, an adjustment Councilor, nurses, or whoever the student feels comfortable with.

[Sharon Hays]: to talk with a student about what they need to feel, again, that safe and supportive environment.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I agree with with member Graham.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that, you know, some of that does come down to that, the implementation and the determination by the superintendent and her team.

[Sharon Hays]: what some of these processes will look like, what will it look like to create a team that supports the student, what will it look like in terms of who we notify, who gets notified and what the student wants.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess I would also, I was also wanted to add, I mean, at this moment, we have no policy in place.

[Sharon Hays]: So really teachers have no idea what to do in a situation.

[Sharon Hays]: So at least hopefully with the policy,

[Sharon Hays]: it puts something in place that we can work with.

[Sharon Hays]: And if it's not working, of course, as we've often said, policies are not written in stone.

[Sharon Hays]: They are there to be tweaked and changed if things aren't working.

[Sharon Hays]: But again, I keep coming back to that.

[Sharon Hays]: This is taken 90% from DESE with some of the wording taken from other policies from other districts.

[Sharon Hays]: So, you know,

[Sharon Hays]: some of this open-ended, what feels open-ended or feels kind of nebulous, is by intent.

[Sharon Hays]: By intent to give the school system the flexibility because these are not, these are not situations where we're going to be able to make black and white rules.

[Sharon Hays]: Because each student is going to be different in terms of what their needs are, what they want, what they feel comfortable with, and it gives the flexibility

[Sharon Hays]: for the school district and that the staff involved to be able to work with the student and make determinations on an individual basis, as opposed to having to follow some really strict rigid rules.

[Sharon Hays]: Sure, I can respond.

[Sharon Hays]: So, I know you mentioned that at the last meeting, that was one of the things you were questioning.

[Sharon Hays]: Certainly, if we take out the definitions, then the steps are what's under each of these sections.

[Sharon Hays]: The things we will do in regards to names and pronouns, the things we'll do in terms of transitions,

[Sharon Hays]: restrooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities.

[Sharon Hays]: So these are the steps that we will take to create a safe and supportive environment for our students.

[Sharon Hays]: But I'm not married to that language.

[Sharon Hays]: It doesn't really change the gist of the whole thing.

[Sharon Hays]: So it's fine with me to change it.

[Sharon Hays]: I would suggest just changing the first one there in privacy, confidentiality, and student records, change it to birth gender.

[Sharon Hays]: I think the rest of them say gender.

[Sharon Hays]: So that's exactly how it's worded on the DESE page under the, again, that safe and supportive environment.

[Sharon Hays]: That actually is lifted directly from that page.

[Sharon Hays]: It's to the, it's the DESE website, webpage for their guidance for Massachusetts public schools, creating a safe and supportive school environment.

[Sharon Hays]: May I?

[Sharon Hays]: Actually, that's a different link, I think.

[Sharon Hays]: There's a couple of different pages.

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, no, I'm sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: No, I'm wrong.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you, Mr. Tucci.

[Sharon Hays]: That is the right link.

[Sharon Hays]: Got it.

[Sharon Hays]: OK.

[Sharon Hays]: Can I go back to names and pronouns?

[Sharon Hays]: Because there was something I was going to add or talk about adding in there, or it could be added to the student records.

[Sharon Hays]: But I had talked earlier about adding, actually adding the full text of the regulation, student records regulation 603 CMR 23.01.

[Sharon Hays]: So that could be added into probably any one of these sections, but it just specifies the fact that if there's a, for a records request change, records change request, sorry, that that's when those age ranges are defined by regulation.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think names and pronouns is where the first time there's a place that talks about changing student records.

[Sharon Hays]: So I can either read it out loud for someone to try to type, or if you just want to put in that I will put the full text of 603 CMR 23.01.

[Sharon Hays]: It's very long, and I don't type that fast.

[Sharon Hays]: It's very long.

[Sharon Hays]: It's four or five, six lines.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: Uh, so I had put it after the sentence, nothing more formal than usage is required.

[Sharon Hays]: Uh, so I,

[Sharon Hays]: So I said, with regard to changes to the student record, student records regulations 603 CMR 23.01 states that, quote, these rights shall be the rights of the student upon reaching 14 years of age or upon entering the ninth grade, whichever comes first.

[Sharon Hays]: You're better than me.

[Sharon Hays]: I never picked it up.

[Sharon Hays]: These rights shall be the rights of the student upon reaching 14 years of age or upon reaching the ninth grade, whichever comes first.

[Sharon Hays]: If a student is under the age of 14 and has not yet entered the 9th grade, these rights shall belong to the student's parent.

[Sharon Hays]: If a student is from 14 through 17 years of age or has entered the 9th grade,

[Sharon Hays]: both the student and his or her parent, or either one acting alone, shall exercise these rights.

[Sharon Hays]: 6, well, I can look it up to 603 CMR 23.01.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: So after these rights, if a student is 18 years of age or older,

[Sharon Hays]: He, she alone shall exercise these rights subject to the following.

[Sharon Hays]: The parent may continue to exercise the rights until expressly limited by the student, end quote.

[Sharon Hays]: Is that where the quote goes?

[Sharon Hays]: That's where I put it in.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm certainly open to if there seems to be a better place for it.

[Sharon Hays]: I would ask my colleagues, if it makes sense there, is it clear that this applies just to requests to change the name and gender markers on the student record?

[Sharon Hays]: I was considering that.

[Sharon Hays]: And then I was looking at, since this is the first place where it comes up the idea of changing a name and student record.

[Sharon Hays]: But I think whichever one people think is clearer.

[Sharon Hays]: May I ask a question about this before we make changes?

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays?

[Sharon Hays]: I just want to be clear again, because we did have this conversation earlier, that the 14 years of age only applies to if they're requesting a student records change.

[Sharon Hays]: Some of these that we're changing now are not referring to a record change.

[Sharon Hays]: They're just referring to a student asking for informal changes at school.

[Sharon Hays]: And that's a different, that doesn't fall under the records request where the 14-year-old age range comes into play.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: So again, as we talked about earlier, that is not defined by DESE anywhere.

[Sharon Hays]: And again, I think they make it clear that the reasoning for that is that every case is individual.

[Sharon Hays]: And in the case where again, a student is either

[Sharon Hays]: uncomfortable or truly afraid of talking to their parents about this.

[Sharon Hays]: At that point, it gives the school and the staff involved the flexibility of taking the student's safety and mental health concerns into account before making the determination to talk to the parents and gives the student the right to actually say, I don't want you to tell my parents at this point.

[Sharon Hays]: So there is no age range given anywhere for that.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think that goes back just again to member Graham saying earlier, some of this falls under the implementation piece of how are we, and I think Mr. Tucci also talked about them, how they do this already at the McGlynn in terms of creating a team, whoever that team may be that would work with the student to talk about

[Sharon Hays]: why they don't want to tell their family if that's the case.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think we also need to add that that is likely to be a rare case.

[Sharon Hays]: I think in most cases, especially for younger students, the family is probably aware and involved.

[Sharon Hays]: But in those cases where we actually have a student who

[Sharon Hays]: who expresses concern about telling their family, we do need to give that leeway and talk about that implementation piece again, to go back, of how do you create that team of people to work with a student?

[Sharon Hays]: Because ideally, you do want the family involved.

[Sharon Hays]: All the research shows that the best outcomes for LGBTQ students are when their families are involved and supportive and affirming.

[Sharon Hays]: So the

[Sharon Hays]: emphasis of the school would be to try to figure out how to bring the family in.

[Sharon Hays]: But in that moment that a student is expressing fear or concern about doing that, to have that leeway to make that determination that at this point in time, we're not going to go right to the family.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I think, well, first of all, to respond to the question of what we're already doing, we don't have a policy in place about this yet.

[Sharon Hays]: So in terms of what's being done at the schools, it's not necessarily based on a policy.

[Sharon Hays]: It's based on what's been common practice at this point.

[Sharon Hays]: And in terms of DESE's guidance, it is true that it's phrased as guidance.

[Sharon Hays]: Certainly it's the school system's responsibility to take a law and take the guidance from DESE and form it into a policy.

[Sharon Hays]: In fact, DESE talks about that in part of that webpage, talking about schools creating policies.

[Sharon Hays]: At the minimum, they talk about making sure that our policies, our non-discrimination policies list gender identity, but they talk about that as being at the minimum.

[Sharon Hays]: We do currently, I think, as people may know, there is a court case going on right now in Ludlow, Massachusetts about this very question.

[Sharon Hays]: And at this point, it's on appeal, but I did find both that our,

[Sharon Hays]: Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents wrote an amicus brief in support of schools being able to have this flexibility to make a determination of what's in the best interest of the child at that point.

[Sharon Hays]: I think really the way they phrased it was in terms of creating a safe and supportive environment for students in which they can learn, because we know that precursors to being able to be available to learn, you have to feel safe and you have to feel supportive.

[Sharon Hays]: giving this ability for schools to make a decision, make a determination at that time, if a student is requesting and letting the school know that they're not comfortable with their parents being brought into the conversation at this point, that the Massachusetts School Association school superintendents came out in support of that and said that we need to be

[Sharon Hays]: to be able to do that in order to have a learning environment that is conducive for students feeling safe and being able to learn.

[Sharon Hays]: I also found that our, we also have our Massachusetts Attorney General who came out in support of the idea of allowing schools this flexibility also.

[Sharon Hays]: I know it's a major, it is a major point of contention at this point, a concern for parents.

[Sharon Hays]: I did wanna, I was going to talk about an addition I wanted to make also to the, to hopefully allay some of those fears or concerns to add into the section.

[Sharon Hays]: Let's see if I can find it.

[Sharon Hays]: Under transitions, to add a paragraph in there or a couple of sentences that does talk about, that says this.

[Sharon Hays]: Research shows that the best outcomes for LGBTQ students occur when the parents, primary caregivers, or whatever term we choose to use at this point, are involved in affirming.

[Sharon Hays]: Therefore, the primary goal of MPS staff, or Medford Public Schools,

[Sharon Hays]: will be to facilitate the relationship between the student and their parents whenever possible, primary caregivers whenever possible.

[Sharon Hays]: Because I think that is our primary goal.

[Sharon Hays]: Our primary goal is what's best for the student.

[Sharon Hays]: And we know that what's best for the student in any case is having the family involved, the family supportive, the family affirming.

[Sharon Hays]: But in a case where a student is concerned that that won't be the case, and there certainly is a lot of statistics out there about families that aren't supportive, students who do have difficulties at home if they let their parents know that they are transitioning or have a different gender identity than what their parents expect, that there are cases where students

[Sharon Hays]: have great difficulty at home if parents are involved.

[Sharon Hays]: Sure.

[Sharon Hays]: Research shows that the best outcomes for LGBTQ students occur when the caregivers are involved in affirming.

[Sharon Hays]: Therefore, the primary goal of Medford Public Schools

[Sharon Hays]: will be to facilitate the relationship between the student and their primary caregivers wherever possible.

[Sharon Hays]: And again, I'm open to any wordsmithing to that.

[Sharon Hays]: I just thought it was important to put that in there because it is true that is the best outcome and that should be our primary goal is to get the parents and the student together.

[Sharon Hays]: Research shows that the best outcomes for LGBTQ students occur when the primary caregivers are involved and affirming.

[Sharon Hays]: Therefore, the primary goal of Medford Public Schools will be to facilitate the relationship between the student and their primary caregiver wherever possible.

[Sharon Hays]: Somewhere else.

[Sharon Hays]: Let's see.

[Sharon Hays]: Right before where it says some transgender and gender nonconforming students are not openly so at home.

[Sharon Hays]: So I was gonna, I had it before that.

[Sharon Hays]: and then added at the beginning of that next sentence, the some transgender and gender nonconforming students added the word however.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: I just want to say for two, we'd have to put in under the age of 14.

[Sharon Hays]: It's because there's that clause to it, or has not yet entered ninth grade.

[Sharon Hays]: May I ask a question first?

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays, yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: Just a question, is there a reason why we can't have it in both so that it's part of the policy if people are looking specifically for policies related to gender identity?

[Sharon Hays]: I guess the only thing I would say is that this piece of the policy gets specifically at how transgender students can participate in interscholastic sports.

[Sharon Hays]: It's not really a hygiene question.

[Sharon Hays]: It really is talking about the fact that

[Sharon Hays]: they can participate in the team that matches their gender identity.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think that's different, not necessarily specific to a wellness policy, but it is definitely specific to a policy about what we will do to apply laws of non-discrimination to students who are transgender.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Thanks, Member McLaughlin.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I just wanted to respond to that last, well, a couple of things, but in terms of that last sentence, that again comes directly from the MIA handbook on their rules regarding gender identity and participation in sports.

[Sharon Hays]: And then just to add, I guess, if I don't agree or disagree really about whether we can have it in two places,

[Sharon Hays]: I think that given, again, that this is written to really specifically talk about gender identity and participation in sports, that I think it needs to be here.

[Sharon Hays]: Same with the dress code.

[Sharon Hays]: I would have to look back.

[Sharon Hays]: Maybe someone can tell me if we already have something that talks about gender identity and gender expression in our dress code.

[Sharon Hays]: If it's already in there, then that's true.

[Sharon Hays]: It doesn't need to be repeated again necessarily.

[Sharon Hays]: But if it's not there, then I think

[Sharon Hays]: as a part of this policy, which is all about how we're going to apply non-discrimination by gender identity in terms of our different aspects of the school day, then I think it does belong here.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, this is from the interscholastic.

[Sharon Hays]: This is from MIAA.

[Sharon Hays]: So I assume that it didn't specify grade levels.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm assuming it covers all grades.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess one thing I'd like some clarity on if I could is, so would there, would the wellness policy include a statement like this about, um,

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: Because I guess I'm also not clear why if we know that if we already know this policy exists, why can't it.

[Sharon Hays]: Why wouldn't it say the same thing in a newer policy.

[Sharon Hays]: Why wouldn't the, why wouldn't the committee just use the same wording, but, you know, so I'm a little confused by why there's some suggestion that it would conflict.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess that would be another concern of mine then though, if the wellness policy changes.

[Sharon Hays]: and this doesn't exist somewhere else and somehow this gets left out, then we have it nowhere anymore.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess I would likewise say we could trust that we could figure out how to make policies match.

[Sharon Hays]: But we have no evidence that that's true.

[Sharon Hays]: We have no evidence of either of the things that either of us are saying, quite frankly.

[Sharon Hays]: So again, I mean, we're already in the middle of a vote, but I feel strongly that this is a policy about gender identity and how the laws and the guidance from DESE, how we're going to apply that in our schools.

[Sharon Hays]: And these two sections specify that.

[Sharon Hays]: And for students who are specifically looking for that, they will look for this policy to see what their rights are.

[Sharon Hays]: and if these things are not in this policy, they may or may not think to look in another place.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: It's really exciting to see so many students want to be involved in this.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think that's that's wonderful both for for us to get input from the students, but you know, for them to get the experience of being involved

[Sharon Hays]: more directly with democracy.

[Sharon Hays]: So my question really, I have is, you know, there really is a very specific policy and law.

[Sharon Hays]: And I'm wondering how this is going to be hopefully shaped a little bit to more closely fit that.

[Sharon Hays]: The 13 students is, again, it's wonderful.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if you're thinking of having a combination of, you know, the policy calls for five students, and I think

[Sharon Hays]: My assumption is that's an attempt to make it less unwieldy if you have a lot of students trying to meet with school committee, so that they can have a more direct involvement.

[Sharon Hays]: And I'm wondering if there's a way, or if you're considering a way of trying to, for those meetings, maybe have a subset of students attend?

[Sharon Hays]: So I guess I would just say, I mean, we had, I think we had a similar discussion about this already, because I know you have these preexisting student advisory councils, and actually it's pretty specific in saying five students in terms of the law and the policy.

[Sharon Hays]: And it's not that I'm stuck on the five students, but I do think that there's a reason for that.

[Sharon Hays]: And I believe that most likely the reason

[Sharon Hays]: Again, it's to give students a more direct, if you've got 13 students trying to meet with us, the opportunities for each student to really be involved are going to be less than if you have a smaller number of students directly involved in those meetings.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I'd love to see if there's a way you can maybe try to give each student obviously a chance to do that, but maybe have a smaller meetings that there is more opportunity for them to really be directly involved

[Sharon Hays]: in having a conversation with school committee, whoever's able, I think we'll need to look at, again, coordinating those meetings to figure out if there's gonna be a subset of us who can make it to those meetings or whether it's a whole committee, which would be obviously the ideal.

[Sharon Hays]: But I'm glad to see this is getting started and I really appreciate the work you've put into this.

[Sharon Hays]: And again, it's exciting to see that there's so many students who really wanna be involved.

[Sharon Hays]: Absolutely.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think that was the reason why the state put this in place for us to make sure that school districts are doing that and really getting the voice of the students involved.

[Sharon Hays]: So look forward to getting this going.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: So I, hopefully you received it, Superintendent.

[Sharon Hays]: I sent you an email a little over a week ago, just with a couple of my comments and feedback.

[Sharon Hays]: And so one question I had from you is looking at the communication goals

[Sharon Hays]: I had requested that you look to add a goal that is more focused, again, we've talked about this, I think, in the past, on two-way communication, that again, the current goals are really focused on the district giving information to families, caregivers, students,

[Sharon Hays]: in looking again for a goal that may or an outcome, I guess, that would be more specifically focused on that two way communication and in my email to you, I talked about, you know, if you could commit to a number of events, such as monthly coffee hours or attendance at PTO meetings, that two way communication being that you put

[Sharon Hays]: you're having an event or in a way for parents to actually talk back to you and talk to you about their concerns.

[Sharon Hays]: It could be that you focus it on a specific topic, or it could just be kind of an open, again, like a coffee hour.

[Sharon Hays]: Some of that, I think, like last year, you did have a wonderful budget meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: It wasn't, unfortunately, it wasn't as well attended as I'd hoped, but it was really well designed in terms of having the interpretation for families.

[Sharon Hays]: So things like that, if you could commit to maybe putting that in one of your goals is a more specific way of getting at that two-way communication.

[Sharon Hays]: So I guess I'm hoping what I'd like to see really is a really specific commitment to a minimum number of events that you would attend or create

[Sharon Hays]: just so we really have something very concrete for when it comes time for the evaluation.

[Sharon Hays]: I was looking more at the outcomes.

[Sharon Hays]: It doesn't really have to change the goal itself, but one of the outcomes for communication would be, we'll attend a minimum of five events

[Sharon Hays]: or have a minimum of five coffee hours.

[Sharon Hays]: I kind of let that open for you, what you feel most comfortable doing, whether you wanted to have it be more directed as in terms of being like a focus group that you want to focus on a topic or whether you want to leave it towards a more open ended kind of event where you have coffee hours and you can just chat with parents and they can bring whatever concerns they want to you.

[Sharon Hays]: And I did have one other piece, but I know others have their hands raised, so I can come back.

[Sharon Hays]: The other thing that I had asked of you was looking at the accountability, accountability under the literacy law.

[Sharon Hays]: So I was a little unclear for the NWEA map when you say 65% students, grades two to 10.

[Sharon Hays]: Is that an aggregate of all of them?

[Sharon Hays]: Because I would love to see that more specific that, you know, we know that we have differences among schools in terms of how they perform.

[Sharon Hays]: So an aggregate really doesn't give us a complete picture.

[Sharon Hays]: across the schools, because we do have some that perform much higher and some that perform much lower.

[Sharon Hays]: So when you get the aggregate, either end gets a little bit, the information just isn't as clear.

[Sharon Hays]: So I was, my request has been for both of those two, the DIBELS and the NWEA map that you just had in the phrase at each school.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm just not sure if... That doesn't give us the ability to see whether individual schools are making progress, because it is true that sometimes one school outperforms another, and I think that's information that we need to have as a school committee

[Sharon Hays]: when we're making decisions and budgeting.

[Sharon Hays]: And it also is information that the community needs to be able to clearly see because that should drive some of our decisions if there's differences in the scores among the schools.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that's important information to have.

[Sharon Hays]: I also think that now that we also have our new executive director of data, hopefully that position, the person in that position could help to explain.

[Sharon Hays]: Certainly there's always should be explanation of the reasons behind the differences

[Sharon Hays]: in the scores, but I think that's information that we really need to have because an aggregate score doesn't always completely give us the full picture of whether the students are making progress.

[Sharon Hays]: I just would like to briefly respond since it was my particular goal area that was commented on.

[Sharon Hays]: I do think that it's important for the superintendent herself to have two-way communication with the community.

[Sharon Hays]: I have also had conversations with her in the past about understanding that this may mean a trade-off with other beyond school activities that she has done in the past, attending football games, attending other sporting events.

[Sharon Hays]: I absolutely do agree that when we add something

[Sharon Hays]: she needs to take something else away.

[Sharon Hays]: And I also deliberately left, especially when I emailed her, left that kind of open-ended in terms of how she wanted to, how you, Dr. Edouard-Vincent, would like to define that two-way communication so that you can make that fit into your schedule.

[Sharon Hays]: And again, with the understanding that you may need to alter other things or change other,

[Sharon Hays]: school events that you would normally attend in order to make those two-way communication events happen.

[Sharon Hays]: So, just wanted to clarify that.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I had a few questions.

[Sharon Hays]: First of all, I am wondering about what the plan is for when the next survey will happen.

[Sharon Hays]: And along those lines too, I think that we had talked about

[Sharon Hays]: at some point, whether to use this exact same survey again, or to go with the, I guess my understanding was in terms of using Panorama, where we had originally planned to use their survey as designed, as many of the systems around us do, I'm curious whether that it will be, what we'll be using in the future.

[Sharon Hays]: So do we know what the timing of the next survey will be?

[Sharon Hays]: And do we know what form it will be?

[Sharon Hays]: OK.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess I'd like to, obviously, I will no longer be a part of the committee at that point.

[Sharon Hays]: I would personally, at this point, like to advocate for using, and I think it had been said at one of our last meeting, one of our meetings at the end of the year when this was first presented, that we were going to be using the panoramic survey.

[Sharon Hays]: Just to quickly say again that I, you know, in looking at their survey, how it was designed, why it was designed the way it was, all the vetting that went into it, the reliability, validity, it did all of that.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that it's a really well-designed, thoughtful survey.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm not as convinced, honestly, the way these questions, part of it is the design of the questions and the design of the way students answer on this particular survey that

[Sharon Hays]: According to the research done by panorama is actually not an effective way of getting a full picture of how students are really feeling.

[Sharon Hays]: So I guess, I also had a couple of questions, so I was thinking in terms of we keep talking about this is just being a snapshot and absolutely.

[Sharon Hays]: any survey is just a snapshot of that moment in time.

[Sharon Hays]: And I know we talk a lot when we look at curriculum and assessments about triangulating data and using different assessments and pulling them together.

[Sharon Hays]: And I'm wondering and hoping that maybe our data director, who's been referenced a lot, we do have a climate report that we had from Mr. Welch, Michael Welch,

[Sharon Hays]: that looked at some of these kinds of issues.

[Sharon Hays]: Obviously it was done in a different way.

[Sharon Hays]: We also have obviously data about referrals and incidents in terms of when we look at students saying that they still feel like there's a lot of fighting and violence.

[Sharon Hays]: We have now that comprehensive report that was done by DESE that has some, again, it's not all exact information, but I think that

[Sharon Hays]: There is a way, hopefully, or at least our data director can look and see if there is a way to pull some of that information together and see, get maybe a clearer picture so we're not just going with one survey, which is true, that's just one snapshot.

[Sharon Hays]: But we do have other information to use that I think would be helpful in getting a clearer and wider picture of what's really going on for our students at the high school.

[Sharon Hays]: One thing that I noticed in terms of, and this is myself creating my own category, but there were a lot of questions in the various areas that really look at students' self-regulation and emotional regulation.

[Sharon Hays]: Some of these questions about conflict, fighting, it's a lot of, a lot of that gets at that self-regulation, and that's clearly an issue that's been identified over and over again in research as being a problematic area post-pandemic.

[Sharon Hays]: that students are really having issues across the board at all ages with those self-regulation skills.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I would think it would be good to hear at some point, what are we doing to work on some of that?

[Sharon Hays]: Because that's really important when you look at questions about students at this school stop and think before doing anything when they get angry.

[Sharon Hays]: And only 20% felt that that was true.

[Sharon Hays]: Students try to work out their disagreements with other students by talking to them.

[Sharon Hays]: Only 27% felt that was true.

[Sharon Hays]: Those are really getting at that self-regulation.

[Sharon Hays]: Do students stop themselves before they move to physical, before they move to fighting?

[Sharon Hays]: So I thought a lot of that information really was very interesting to see in terms of, again, that's an area that's been identified across the board as an area of difficulty post-pandemic for kids.

[Sharon Hays]: last question was just in reference to that the racial equity task force, can you tell us last year, how was that group working, how many times did they meet and did they what kinds of issues were they focusing on.

[Sharon Hays]: a comment, I guess, than a specific question about the data, well, about specific data.

[Sharon Hays]: I just, so year after year, I feel like we, we look at the, when I pull out the data, again, by school, I feel like the overall scores that were presented, and I know this was a much more abbreviated version than we've had in the past even, you know, the scores when it's just across the district by grade level,

[Sharon Hays]: really obscure some significant differences across the schools.

[Sharon Hays]: And I feel like that does a disservice to the community and to parents in terms of their understanding of what's really happening in the district and their ability to really question us and question you about what's being done about some of these scores that are remarkably low in comparison across schools.

[Sharon Hays]: You know, again,

[Sharon Hays]: The Brooks is consistently higher, almost always across the board.

[Sharon Hays]: There have been some variations in that, but then, you know, I'm more concerned, I mean, that concerned me because there's always the question I've asked before, what are we doing about that?

[Sharon Hays]: But more importantly, when I look at scores, like, you know, 25% of the fourth graders in McGlynn were meeting or exceeding mathematics.

[Sharon Hays]: 25% is alarmingly low.

[Sharon Hays]: 30% of Mississippi fourth graders were meeting or exceeding ELA.

[Sharon Hays]: And that was a decrease of 49% in 2022, a decrease.

[Sharon Hays]: So we're talking, you know, we present data and say, look, the state says we're meeting expectations.

[Sharon Hays]: okay, but we, you know, we really deserve both the school committee and the community deserves a deeper dive, an explanation of these differences in scores.

[Sharon Hays]: Because I think some of them are, I personally, I think some of them are truly, as I said, alarming, especially when you look at, we're telling, we're saying that the state is saying we're making

[Sharon Hays]: growth, and I know that as you've presented, there's a lot of data that goes into that, and that's important to understand.

[Sharon Hays]: And that student growth potential, I think, is a huge and really complicated statistic to pull into it.

[Sharon Hays]: But I do think that some kind of a deeper dive and a narrative in some of these explaining the differences between the schools is necessary, and it's not in here.

[Sharon Hays]: So again, that's more a comment, I guess, than a question because I see some real issues in our numbers here and the presentation as was doesn't reflect that.

[Sharon Hays]: And participation rates were lower.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess I hope as a, you know, now as our new data director, looking at ways to, again, bring the community in on some of this, certainly parent support at home, if parents don't

[Sharon Hays]: fully grasp kind of what the big picture is.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, you know, I think it's important for our parents to understand some of this data more so that they can be more involved and understand and not just, you know.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, that's kind of what it feels like.

[Sharon Hays]: And there's often this, well, we're 1% better than the state average.

[Sharon Hays]: I hope that's not our goal, honestly, because the state average includes a lot of places that are really low.

[Sharon Hays]: So, you know, obviously that is our minimum, we do want, you know, but looking at hopefully loftier goals than that, as I think member Graham was saying, looking at, you know, when we were talking about superintendents evaluation,

[Sharon Hays]: What are our goals?

[Sharon Hays]: Is that really our ultimate goal is to be within 1% of the state average.

[Sharon Hays]: So presenting data in a way that makes that clearer for people.

[Sharon Hays]: I just don't feel like the presentations are necessarily a vehicle for full understanding for parents and the community in general.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I understand the desire to be positive and there is positive.

[Sharon Hays]: And there is that comparison that, yes, we always keep in mind COVID, but I just have often felt that there's a little bit of obscuring of some of the negatives.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think people need to hear that and they need to understand it.

[Sharon Hays]: And it's only fair to them to really... Go ahead, Ms.

[Sharon Hays]: Galussi.

[Sharon Hays]: Your mouth opened.

[Sharon Hays]: And we did hear from the comprehensive review that one of the concerns of teachers, that they were not feeling that they had, or not, wasn't all of them necessarily, but a lot of them were not feeling they had the time or the emphasis or ability to use the data the way that.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, you know, this body works as a team.

[Sharon Hays]: And if there are questions about it, and we're feeling that it would be too rushed to do it now, I think it feels like there's a number of members who feel that way.

[Sharon Hays]: So as much as I obviously had hoped to get this done tonight, it's unfortunate that it was the last thing on the agenda on a very busy night where there were really two, a meeting and a half squished together.

[Sharon Hays]: So it's fine with me if we want to look for a committee of the whole toward it.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you, Commissioner Laughlin.

[Sharon Hays]: So I feel like this is kind of a gift to us.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Because it was free and it's incredibly comprehensive.

[Sharon Hays]: And one of the things I took the time, not that I took the time because I know it was hard to read, I didn't mean it that way.

[Sharon Hays]: But I did read through the whole thing and actually probably read it a couple of times.

[Sharon Hays]: And there's so much more to it, obviously, than you were able to put in a slide deck.

[Sharon Hays]: And as I first started reading it, what came to mind immediately was when we had the report from Mike Welch.

[Sharon Hays]: And what started ringing in my head actually was member Graham's voice.

[Sharon Hays]: saying our issue is issue of implementation.

[Sharon Hays]: There were many places throughout this report where it was noted that we have the right priorities, we have the capacity to do this and that, but it's not happening, or it's not happening across all buildings, or it's not happening consistently.

[Sharon Hays]: So as much as I appreciate the, and I believe in your intentions, again, intentions, I think we have the right intentions, but I feel like I've been in this place before where we've heard a presentation about, we've got all this information and now we're gonna do all this stuff.

[Sharon Hays]: And then we come back to another report that's still saying, but you're not really doing all this stuff.

[Sharon Hays]: And I, you know, I, I'm uncomfortable being in this position of being, of sounding so critical, but I'm worried.

[Sharon Hays]: And I've used that word before.

[Sharon Hays]: I remember using that word as a parent when I stood up in front of school committee once to talk about, I think, reading.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm worried because I do feel like we keep coming back to the same point.

[Sharon Hays]: We now have, in my short time here, less than two years now, we've had three reviews.

[Sharon Hays]: We've, we had Cindy Weeks Bradley.

[Sharon Hays]: do a pretty significant review of certain aspects of the district.

[Sharon Hays]: We had Mike Welch do a pretty thorough review of the high school.

[Sharon Hays]: And now we have this review that's comprehensive of the whole school system.

[Sharon Hays]: And I feel like we need to sit down and take some more time to pull all three of those together and say, where are the major issues that we see?

[Sharon Hays]: And how are we going to?

[Sharon Hays]: I think we need to set real priorities and I think the school committee needs to be a part of setting those priorities, because I think what I've come to realize in my time on school committee is we can't do it all and too often I think we're trying to do it all and it's not all getting done.

[Sharon Hays]: it's all getting done and we're trying to do too much and there's so many in your report your list of things that everyone's going to try to do that's a lot of stuff.

[Sharon Hays]: And, and I am concerned that if we don't as a group really administration and school committees sit down, as I said, go through these three reports thoroughly look where the commonalities because there's a lot of commonalities and what these three different groups of people are three different reviewers saw.

[Sharon Hays]: And where are we really going to target our time and energy and we need to be on the same page about that because you know.

[Sharon Hays]: This was concerning to me.

[Sharon Hays]: There were a lot of concerns in here.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, just to pull out the data, the issue of data and how it's being used by teachers.

[Sharon Hays]: And I know that was something I specifically asked about a couple of times with the map.

[Sharon Hays]: And there are quotes in here from teachers saying, we don't really have time to sit down and look at the data and think about how to use it in the classroom.

[Sharon Hays]: So that's just one example.

[Sharon Hays]: I really appreciated that this report

[Sharon Hays]: did give us a lot of information from teachers, which is something I feel like we've been lacking as a group, really hearing from what the teachers are saying about what they're able to do, that the student support teams, that they don't have a lot of time for those, that they feel, whether accurate or not, that our multi-tiered systems of support aren't really doing much, that there isn't enough.

[Sharon Hays]: So I guess I'd like to make a motion, maybe, I guess.

[Sharon Hays]: And then Dr. Edwards, Ms.

[Sharon Hays]: Glucy, then Dr. Edwards.

[Sharon Hays]: Let me let you ask your question.

[Sharon Hays]: Are you sure?

[Sharon Hays]: I guess my response to that in part would be, if we're always dependent on which people we have on board, then the next time around, if someone leaves and we need to replace them, they might not be the same person of the same level of skills or investment that we have.

[Sharon Hays]: And so what we, from my point of view, and what I'm hoping we can do is really dig deeper into this huge,

[Sharon Hays]: dense report, and I do think there were commonalities between the three that I, in my opinion, in my reading of all three of them, not, you're right, they did start with different goals in mind that we asked those people to look at, but there are definitely some common themes.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I think if we

[Sharon Hays]: I guess you're right that the strategic goals, the strategic plan is where we would need to do all this.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess my concern, again, is that we had a strategic plan, and yet by my reading of this, there were a lot of pieces of that plan that never came to fruition.

[Sharon Hays]: So the plan is only as good as the buy-in from everyone, is only as good as the understanding from all of us of what resources are needed.

[Sharon Hays]: And so if we don't sit down all together, and whether this happens with this team of people, this group of school committee, or whether, you know, in January with the new school committee, I, you know, that would maybe be up to those who are still running.

[Sharon Hays]: But I think school committee needs to be a part of this.

[Sharon Hays]: We get a report sent to us, as Member Ruseau said, you know, with very little time to read it.

[Sharon Hays]: And we have responsibility for some of this too.

[Sharon Hays]: We have responsibility for policies that would directly affect what can be done, budget decisions.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: So to the extent that this is just one part of one meeting, as opposed to like a real in-depth look together at this.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, so I guess I was going to make a motion that we have.

[Sharon Hays]: Sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: No, that's okay.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know what it would be, whether it's a committee of the whole, whether it's a special meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: I just think there needs to be some meetings where we sit down and look at all of this together.

[Sharon Hays]: Because this is the future of our school system and it's, you know, there are some real issues that we need to look at that have been brought up again by all three reports.

[Sharon Hays]: certainly by this report, because this was the most comprehensive, to really get on the same page about what the priorities are.

[Sharon Hays]: So.

[Sharon Hays]: Second.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I didn't, I certainly don't want to leave with the impression either that

[Sharon Hays]: everything was negative or that the school system, as you said, it's falling apart.

[Sharon Hays]: That's not at all how I read the report either.

[Sharon Hays]: There definitely were a lot of positives and things to build on.

[Sharon Hays]: I think then the motion would be

[Sharon Hays]: I think with what Member Graham, if she wants to restate what she said, but with the idea that Member McLaughlin brought in of all of us coming in with kind of having really looked through the three reports, thinking about what the major areas of commonality were, major themes, and talking all together about the strategic plan.

[Sharon Hays]: But you always have a nice wording for motions, so if you want to word yours.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you, I still had the same I brought up a question last time, and I know we ended up tabling.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if maybe member McLaughlin was the one who requested the table, if she wants to talk about what her.

[Sharon Hays]: reason for tabling or what she's found since then, but I do still have the same question that I had asked last time that I'm not sure we ever really fully discussed.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: It's really just a question.

[Sharon Hays]: The question that I had last time was about the definitions used for bullying.

[Sharon Hays]: And when you look at both the Massachusetts state law and the DESE, their model plan, they have the definition as basically as stated on the first page of the current proposed Medford policy.

[Sharon Hays]: which is defined as the repeated use by one or more students or a member of the school staff of a written verbal or electronic expression or physical act or gesture or any combination thereof directed at a target that and then list those five categories.

[Sharon Hays]: And it does say in the

[Sharon Hays]: Department of Education model plan, it does state that for the definitions, including the bullying definition itself, districts may add specific language to these definitions to clarify them, but may not alter their meaning or scope.

[Sharon Hays]: So then my question really is when we look at the

[Sharon Hays]: The second page, or at least I have it printed up, the second page of the proposed policy for Medford.

[Sharon Hays]: Excuse me, point of information.

[Sharon Hays]: That's the one I'm looking at.

[Sharon Hays]: It's probably easier to refer to the exact lines.

[Sharon Hays]: So lines 50, starting at line 55.

[Sharon Hays]: The bullying definition here, which is the one that's used, it says bullying investigations may be concluded with a finding of, and on line 55 it says it may be

[Sharon Hays]: Concluded with the finding of bullying, a finding of bullying occurs when the incident is determined to be between two students who are not considered to be equal in power within the core of the problem.

[Sharon Hays]: Bullying is abuse and occurs when a socially powerful, example given, popular or feared student mentally or physically abuses a weaker, e.g., example given, fearful student for the purpose of making them afraid or hurt.

[Sharon Hays]: Bullying is the act of causing hurt, harm, or humiliation.

[Sharon Hays]: That piece feels to me like it's changing the definition, the original definition in the, both in state law and the model, and adding that piece about a power differential.

[Sharon Hays]: So that was my question, is to me that seems like a different definition than both on our first page of our model, our proposed, the definition that's given in lines 17 through 24 of this plan.

[Sharon Hays]: which is a verbatim definition taken from the state law, which does not include that idea of a power differential is necessary for defining bullying.

[Sharon Hays]: But the second definition in our plan, that one I just read at 55 through 61, adds that piece of a power differential that doesn't appear

[Sharon Hays]: in the state definition or the model plan from DESE.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, that is the definition of bullying.

[Sharon Hays]: Right.

[Sharon Hays]: So if you look at line 62 and 63, there it talks about the pattern of behavior or repeated.

[Sharon Hays]: So that more closely aligns with the state definition, the state law.

[Sharon Hays]: But that piece about the power of a differential does not appear in the state law as part of what defines bullying.

[Sharon Hays]: So yes, I'm talking about, I'm requesting or suggesting that that piece needs to be taken out in terms of defining bullying, how we define bullying if an incident occurs.

[Sharon Hays]: And just to be clear, I also did look at several districts in our area.

[Sharon Hays]: I looked at the bullying and intervention plans for Arlington, Somerville, Cambridge, Malden, Winchester, Woburn, Waltham,

[Sharon Hays]: Lexington and Everett, and I didn't see in any of theirs any, as part of the definition of bullying, anything to do with the power differential.

[Sharon Hays]: That only comes up, and it comes up also in the model plan from DESE.

[Sharon Hays]: It comes up as a potential professional development topic for educators.

[Sharon Hays]: No, that was my main point, just because that's so essential to the whole thing, is understanding what our definition of bullying is in order to determine when an incident will be classified as bullying.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: So just going back again to the definition, so two things I guess I would like to just make clear.

[Sharon Hays]: I have looked through the state law several times.

[Sharon Hays]: There is no mention of the power differential except as a topic for professional development.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I'd be happy if someone wants to tell me where they're seeing it, but I did look back again, because I know that was also said at the last meeting, that it appears several times, and it only appears

[Sharon Hays]: again, is a topic for professional development, not anywhere in terms of how you determine whether a particular incident is bullying.

[Sharon Hays]: And in terms of how it's written in this policy, I think that's one of the important things after a committee has gone through as much time as this committee went through, then to present it to people with a fresh eye who look at this and say, but that doesn't make sense to me.

[Sharon Hays]: And I'm looking at that with a fresh eye and saying, that particular piece doesn't make sense to me.

[Sharon Hays]: because it does seem to be saying the way that it's worded is that a finding of bullying occurs when the incident is determined to be between two students who are not considered to be equal in power within the core rule of problem.

[Sharon Hays]: And to me as reading that, it says to me as a parent or as a school committee member, I'm looking at that thinking that's telling me that the only time an incident is going to be or one time when an incident is going to be considered bullying

[Sharon Hays]: is when someone determines that there's a power differential.

[Sharon Hays]: And I don't see that anywhere in the state law.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't see that anywhere in the DESE model.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think that, to me, that seems to suggest a change in the meaning or a change in the scope of the definition of how we're gonna determine bullying, which the state says we shouldn't do that, that we should not change the meaning or the scope.

[Sharon Hays]: If we were to go down this road, again, I wouldn't vote in favor of this in it because I think that it changes the meaning, but we'd have to define how someone would determine a power differential.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that's an incredibly nuanced and difficult thing to determine in any situation, but certainly among students, how they define power, how the power structures are among students, I think would get us into some really tricky and gray areas.

[Sharon Hays]: But more importantly than that, as I said, it's not part of the state definition.

[Sharon Hays]: So I don't think it should be part of our definition.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to make sure I know when I was speaking about the definition, I'm not sure that I clearly made a motion to

[Sharon Hays]: to remove the part about the power differential.

[Sharon Hays]: I have a question.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, I'd like to make a motion if I can.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: So the issue I'm bringing up is

[Sharon Hays]: is that the power differential does not occur in our state law definition.

[Sharon Hays]: I do understand and I have looked at the federal government's website, stopbullying.gov, and they do talk about a power differential.

[Sharon Hays]: However, our state definition is very clearly does not include that.

[Sharon Hays]: And so my concern and my belief is that we are waiting into a change of the definition if we start to include that as part of the definition of the way that we

[Sharon Hays]: of the way that we determine when a bullying incident has occurred, which is what this page says, that it will be determined to have occurred when the incident is determined to be between two students who are not considered to be equal in power.

[Sharon Hays]: And I do understand, and I think that we see that also in the state, the DESE's model plan, they do talk about the power differential as part of something that

[Sharon Hays]: that educators need to have professional development about.

[Sharon Hays]: They're not saying that doesn't exist, but they do not include that as part of the definition for determining when bullying has occurred.

[Sharon Hays]: So my motion is to remove that power differential as it's worded anyway, it appears to be part of the definition and part of what we will use to determine when an incident is classified as bullying.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think it doesn't match the state law.

[Sharon Hays]: I can state it.

[Sharon Hays]: It's to remove lines 55 through 63 and reinsert or insert in their place line 17 through 24.

[Sharon Hays]: Second.

[Sharon Hays]: If I may, just point of clarification maybe, or you know.

[Sharon Hays]: Point of order or point of information with a question, point of order with a statement.

[Sharon Hays]: With a statement, point of order.

[Sharon Hays]: So I appreciate that you talked with the principals, I think that's important, but I also think that

[Sharon Hays]: I think that the state law trumps what we believe to be true about, I mean, if there's a state definition and that straight definition does have criteria for what determines an incident to be actual bullying, and they don't include a power differential, again, I think that we're changing the scope of that definition by adding the power differential to it.

[Sharon Hays]: There are actual criteria for why a conflict in the state law, how it becomes determined to be bullying it places the victim and reasonable fear of harm to himself or damage to their property.

[Sharon Hays]: It's very well.

[Sharon Hays]: The very clearest part of it is that has to be three or more incidents.

[Sharon Hays]: That is repeated use three or more incidents and there's a series of five criteria.

[Sharon Hays]: that lead to the finding of bullying.

[Sharon Hays]: But those five criteria do not include a power differential in the state law and the state definition.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm sorry, can you read that one more time.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm sorry, I'm confused as what's going to come after that.

[Sharon Hays]: There was something about pursuant to, and I don't.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, I wanted to echo what everyone has said.

[Sharon Hays]: This was a huge amount of work.

[Sharon Hays]: I watched a couple of the meetings, so I know the back and forth and how long those meetings went.

[Sharon Hays]: So this is wonderful that we have this plan in place now, and it's updated with all the new information.

[Sharon Hays]: I did want to mention, I had my hand up a minute ago, in terms of the definition of target, I mean, it's a pretty short definition, but they do have definitions for those newer terms.

[Sharon Hays]: on the DESI website in their model bullying prevention and intervention plan.

[Sharon Hays]: So those definitions could just be taken from there if the team decided to do that.

[Sharon Hays]: So my question, I had a couple of questions, but my main question really had to do with the definition of bullying.

[Sharon Hays]: There's a definition on the first page, which is page three when you print it up,

[Sharon Hays]: Lines 17 through 24 has a definition of bullying that I know it was taken pretty much verbatim.

[Sharon Hays]: In fact, I think it was definitely verbatim from the law, the Massachusetts law.

[Sharon Hays]: And I looked at a couple of their district websites.

[Sharon Hays]: It seems like everyone really just pulls that and uses it verbatim.

[Sharon Hays]: But then on page, the next page, page four lines 55 through,

[Sharon Hays]: 61, when it's talking about the investigation and how the conclusions of the findings may come out, there's a different definition of bullying.

[Sharon Hays]: It adds in that bullying can only be found to have occurred.

[Sharon Hays]: It says, a finding of bullying occurs when the incident is determined to be between two students who are not considered to be equal in power within the quarrel or the problem.

[Sharon Hays]: Bullying is abuse and occurs when a socially powerful student

[Sharon Hays]: abuses, sorry, it goes on mentally or physically abuses the weaker.

[Sharon Hays]: So it's a different definition, really.

[Sharon Hays]: It's adding in that idea of it has to be an unequal power.

[Sharon Hays]: And I don't see that anywhere in the law.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't see that anywhere in the DESE website plans.

[Sharon Hays]: And to be honest, I looked through a few other local, several other

[Sharon Hays]: neighboring districts, and I don't see that anywhere in their plans either.

[Sharon Hays]: So it seems like a pretty significant change of the definition.

[Sharon Hays]: So I was wondering about that.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess, so my question is that actually under the law, that doesn't require the finding that there was a differential in power.

[Sharon Hays]: And so we're actually changing the definition compared to what the law says.

[Sharon Hays]: It doesn't say that in the law.

[Sharon Hays]: The law doesn't say everything that's in our policy.

[Sharon Hays]: But the law clearly defines bullying.

[Sharon Hays]: And I'm trying to find the passage now where it actually says that you should not change the scope of the definition.

[Sharon Hays]: You can clarify the definition, but you can't change

[Sharon Hays]: the meaning or the scope, and I would, I'm concerned.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, but I think it, it adds something that's not in the law.

[Sharon Hays]: It adds something that requires a judgment call on the, whoever's doing the investigation that the law doesn't require.

[Sharon Hays]: And I didn't find that in any other local school district adding in this definition of

[Sharon Hays]: you know, abuse of power or a power differential between the aggressor and the target.

[Sharon Hays]: So I, I think that's a change to the law.

[Sharon Hays]: And I would, I would, I as a parent, if I had a child who was being bullied or thought was, I thought was being bullied, if they met every other criteria based on the law, and then you said, well, they didn't, it wasn't bullying because we require it to be a difference in power.

[Sharon Hays]: I, I would probably look to

[Sharon Hays]: getting some legal advice on whether that's legally allowed for school to add that into the law.

[Sharon Hays]: Point of information, I think, if that's the right term.

[Sharon Hays]: I have the law in front of me, and I actually don't see that unless there's an updated version and I found the wrong one.

[Sharon Hays]: But I don't see the definition of bullying in this law that I have in front of me, the chapter

[Sharon Hays]: 71 section 370.

[Sharon Hays]: That definition of bullying is exactly what is on the first page of this plan, but I see nowhere else any discussion of there needing to be a power differential between the victim or the target and the aggressor.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, if anything, adding that power differential makes it harder to define something as bullying because that requires

[Sharon Hays]: the investigation to decide whether there was a power differential between the two people.

[Sharon Hays]: And I don't think the law requires that based on my reading of the definition.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm going to just ask I had to check my calendar.

[Sharon Hays]: We're still with July 19th.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, well, I was just going to mention that.

[Sharon Hays]: I wasn't sure that part of the reason also we had to come back to this was there were two changes to numbers and then there was also member Rousseau's full comment.

[Sharon Hays]: We added a page to put the full comment as formatted so that it's exactly how he sent it to me.

[Sharon Hays]: So those were the there were two numbers that needed to be updated.

[Sharon Hays]: and I updated those, and like I said, added a page to put in the full comments of Member Ruseau.

[Sharon Hays]: Excuse me, can I, this will be my first time making motion.

[Sharon Hays]: Can I make a motion about the superintendent's evaluation?

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if I'm out of order doing that.

[Sharon Hays]: I just want to make a motion that we post that to the school committee page on the school district website.

[Sharon Hays]: Second.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, thank you for this.

[Sharon Hays]: Can you give us an idea of what the timeline is for the sexual health education that you're?

[Sharon Hays]: I just want to make sure I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing for choosing the new sex education program.

[Sharon Hays]: So as someone who was really looking forward to the survey, because I think that it was really crucial to get more specific data from the students, especially after, again, the two incidents that happened and the concern that we had after all of the student listening sessions, that there was a lot of

[Sharon Hays]: apparently a lot of expression from students of, I don't know, for lack of a better word, dissatisfaction with school or concerns about school or not feeling safe in school.

[Sharon Hays]: So my understanding from when we first heard that you were gonna do a student survey was that really the purpose was to get at those kinds of questions.

[Sharon Hays]: And in looking at the questions that we ended up with six months later,

[Sharon Hays]: In comparison, I did look at the actual panorama survey as created and our questions are really quite different, both in terms of structure and in some ways in terms of kind of the gist of the questions.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, the panorama doesn't really get into questions of alcohol use and drug use, it's really broader.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I'm a little, I'm a little concerned about the end result of how we ended up here.

[Sharon Hays]: You know, I looked again, I looked through the Panorama website and they specifically talk about the fact that their survey, the structure of the questions is actually questions as opposed to statements that students agree or disagree with, that it's questions.

[Sharon Hays]: And this was kind of what they said about it.

[Sharon Hays]: They said numerous surveys used by educators

[Sharon Hays]: unfortunately fail to adhere to these well-established survey design practices.

[Sharon Hays]: For example, designing survey items as statements, particularly ones that require respondents to agree or disagree, are likely to inject additional measurement error in responses.

[Sharon Hays]: Asking questions with response options that are linked to the underlying concept is the preferred practice.

[Sharon Hays]: And also they talked about using too few response options, not giving a wide array

[Sharon Hays]: And so I'm looking at the way that we designed this in the end, and I am concerned that why we chose to go so off of what panorama, since we specifically chose panorama, and it's widely used around here, from what I can tell.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm hoping in the future, and I think you said this to me earlier, that we're going to stick more with the panorama format and structure for the questions, because I feel like

[Sharon Hays]: you know, this doesn't necessarily fit what I understood, what we talked about, or what was said to us in the beginning about the why for this survey, what the purpose of this survey was.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm not, you know, I guess I'd like a little clarity of why that change happened.

[Sharon Hays]: Why did we end up kind of gearing it more towards the survey questions that I, if I'm understanding right from the earlier presentation, that whole survey is going to be given again in the fall.

[Sharon Hays]: So we're going to have that.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm not really clear on why we needed to do that this time and why we didn't just stick with Panorama's original survey the way it's written, which they of course have vetted and have tested out to make sure it's valid, to make sure it's reliable, and that our questions ended up kind of violating what they say really are best practices for this kind of a survey.

[Sharon Hays]: So the,

[Sharon Hays]: The new members will also need to take the training from mask.

[Sharon Hays]: I know that I, it's, I don't know how often it's offered now I know I took it in December so that you know that

[Sharon Hays]: That will be something that the new school community members might also already be doing in December.

[Sharon Hays]: I really like the idea, though, of the retreat.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that's a nice way to introduce.

[Sharon Hays]: I did feel thrown in at the beginning.

[Sharon Hays]: So I appreciate that idea, and I think it's a great idea.

[Sharon Hays]: But I just wanted to add in there that the election is November, and that at some point, hopefully, the person will do that training sometime between then and their first time in January.

[Sharon Hays]: they'll already be doing that too.

[Sharon Hays]: I did call, I did contact a couple of school committees about it, and I didn't bring those notes with me, but I believe it was Arlington.

[Sharon Hays]: There was one that said that they did 730 meetings with their student advisory council.

[Sharon Hays]: So yeah, there were creative ways to do it.

[Sharon Hays]: Excuse me?

[Sharon Hays]: Arlington does school committee meetings all over the place.

[Sharon Hays]: They do 10 AM meetings on Saturday mornings.

[Sharon Hays]: So there are creative ways to figure this out.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm happy to take the lead on this and try to work.

[Sharon Hays]: I can work with you to try to figure it out.

[Sharon Hays]: The worst can happen is it doesn't work, but I think it's worth trying because we have been looking for ways to get more student involvement.

[Sharon Hays]: And since this is already law and policy, we can try.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays?

[Sharon Hays]: The one thing I think we missed, I think the school committee needs to take a vote on the superintendent's evaluation, don't we?

[Sharon Hays]: Here.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Kreatz.

[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Mastone.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Ruseau, present.

[Sharon Hays]: Mayor Lungo-Koehn.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Sure.

[Sharon Hays]: So we first met with Mr. Welch on May 1st to go over the results of his time with us, his time with us looking at the high school.

[Sharon Hays]: We had requested his consultation around, actually the superintendent,

[Sharon Hays]: I contacted him through, I think, ma SS Massachusetts Association of school superintendents around the climate and culture of the high school.

[Sharon Hays]: I think this was something that had actually been requested by the school committee prior to my time on the school committee, but given the events that we've had this year there were two violent incidents.

[Sharon Hays]: One in particular, or the one the final one that kind of led to this was the stabbing at the high school.

[Sharon Hays]: And so, Mr. Welch came in for several weeks and met with, and he can maybe go through that kind of again if he wants to do it when he first comes up, met with a lot of people, students, us, teachers, administrators, and came back with quite a lengthy report for us.

[Sharon Hays]: And at the time of our May 1st reading, we had only had the report in hand for a few days.

[Sharon Hays]: And while that I rewatched the meeting this morning in preparation for tonight, and we did have quite a lengthy discussion, but I know I still felt like given the gravity of this situation and given that this is something that has been

[Sharon Hays]: in everyone's minds for at least a few years that you know issues with the high school.

[Sharon Hays]: That it felt like it warranted more than just one item on a regular school committee agenda, so we did request that Mr. welch come back.

[Sharon Hays]: Hopefully, in the intervening six weeks, which feels like forever right now.

[Sharon Hays]: we've all had a chance maybe to look through the report again, think more about kind of what questions we have further to get further information.

[Sharon Hays]: I know again in watching the re-watching the May 1st meeting, what struck me and I think which was what caused me to personally wanna ask for more time was something that member Graham said, she said,

[Sharon Hays]: A lot of these failures, for lack of a better word, are failures of implementation.

[Sharon Hays]: And what struck me about that is that here we are again with a report from a consultant, and we also had a consultant last year who came and spoke with us, not about the exact same issues, but about some issues with the schools.

[Sharon Hays]: It was more focused on racial equity, and then even more finely focused on

[Sharon Hays]: I think the human resources department at the high school, but that we had a consultant come in already and I'm not sure that many of the recommendations were implemented.

[Sharon Hays]: So I want to at least make a stronger effort this time to really delve deeply into what your findings were, what your recommendations are and how we can try to ensure that we

[Sharon Hays]: implement your recommendations, or if there are other things that we can put in place, because some of the recommendations may require resources that we don't have right now, but what we can do to move forward with this and not just have it be another report that we need about for an hour, say, yes, we need to do something about this, but then don't really follow through on.

[Sharon Hays]: So that was the reason for the request.

[Sharon Hays]: So that's the background, and if you wanna come up and we can hopefully have a deeper conversation about what you saw and what your recommendations are.

[Sharon Hays]: So I guess in my mind, there were kind of two tracks that your recommendations went down in a way.

[Sharon Hays]: One track was kind of logistical, operational, maybe positions we would need to hire for, which we should talk more about.

[Sharon Hays]: But there was also the track that had to do more with

[Sharon Hays]: the shared vision, the consensus around change.

[Sharon Hays]: And I'm grappling with how that piece happens, because I guess I feel like, I guess we could say this about either one of those tracks, that you can put one in place, but without the other, it's not going to happen, change isn't going to happen.

[Sharon Hays]: So we can put new people in positions and, you know,

[Sharon Hays]: the positions that you recommended were clearly to support, especially the assistant principals, which as you may now know, we now are down to one.

[Sharon Hays]: We're back to just having Mr. Plowk as the remaining assistant principal and we're gonna need to hire two new people.

[Sharon Hays]: And so certainly they need the support and that's something we need to talk about, but we could have that in place, but if we still don't have this idea of consensus, I do feel like that's a major issue.

[Sharon Hays]: for us.

[Sharon Hays]: And so, can you go into more depth about how, how do we do that?

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, really, practically speaking, how do we go about building consensus in a large community, a large school community, a large general community?

[Sharon Hays]: How, what are some steps we take to do that?

[Sharon Hays]: I guess I'm wondering, have you

[Sharon Hays]: Have you seen this in other districts and how do they manage that?

[Sharon Hays]: Where does the mentoring piece come from for the principal?

[Sharon Hays]: Who does the mentoring and how do they find the time to have, as you said, the building still has to run.

[Sharon Hays]: So where does that time come from?

[Sharon Hays]: I'm really thinking the nitty gritty and I don't know if maybe the superintendent is already working on this.

[Sharon Hays]: And so maybe I'm asking questions that are already being, so feel free to jump in, but

[Sharon Hays]: How have you seen this happen and how, how can we make this happen.

[Sharon Hays]: So that's within the district or is that similar to where Dr. Edouard-Vincent found you through mass, is there some.

[Sharon Hays]: group out there that that provides this mentoring or how I'm really trying to figure out how this happens.

[Sharon Hays]: And again, I don't know if this is already something that's being considered or, but, you know, I'm really trying to figure out how we're going to, how we can implement this, we do have new people, and it's going to be crucial to get them up and running as quickly as possible, and have them feel as supported as possible.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm, I don't know any of this how this all works.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm curious

[Sharon Hays]: How does the district do this is there, is there a group that we go to to find and I guess it wouldn't be school committee but the administration goes to and says we need a mentor, how does this work.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess this kind of segues into a question I had about, so I asked for a couple of additional data points looking at the referrals.

[Sharon Hays]: And this is all new to me because I don't have a high schooler.

[Sharon Hays]: But I know we've talked about this, I think we talked about it at the meeting on May 1st.

[Sharon Hays]: The excessive number of possibilities that, or designations that a teacher can provide for a referral, it's really way too much.

[Sharon Hays]: I can imagine how overwhelming it must be as a teacher

[Sharon Hays]: I know, again, having just watched it this morning that Member Graham kind of alluded to that and said, we have 200 different ways to talk about cutting class, which is not true.

[Sharon Hays]: But in looking at the three different dates, sets of dates that I have, there are at least a dozen ways to classify cutting class.

[Sharon Hays]: And different ones appear on different sets of data that I have.

[Sharon Hays]: So I guess the question too I have is thinking about once we get those kind of collective norms, and then again, you say that the only time you would need to have a consequence is when you violate those norms.

[Sharon Hays]: How do... Is there a better way of doing this?

[Sharon Hays]: Is there, I guess, again, is there some kind of software out there that does this better?

[Sharon Hays]: Or do school systems generally just after creating these collective norms

[Sharon Hays]: their referral codes come out of that, because this is just unwieldy.

[Sharon Hays]: There's just really no way when I think for a teacher to take this much time to figure out, well, which way do I classify this?

[Sharon Hays]: And then for the assistant principals or whoever is in charge of following up on this to figure out, well, which ones do I really need to prioritize and what do the consequences need to be?

[Sharon Hays]: Because there are, you know, on each one of these there's 45 different, you know, classifications of referrals and these are all the referrals that were actually used during that set that those dates, there may be many more that just weren't used at that time so.

[Sharon Hays]: if you could speak to that a little bit.

[Sharon Hays]: That leads me to another question.

[Sharon Hays]: Because I think I have an idea of what the answer to this is, but I want to ask you to describe it more at the May 1 meeting you talked about the role of curriculum directors in supporting teachers.

[Sharon Hays]: And the fact that at the moment, teachers don't seem to see them as a support when it comes to behavior management and classroom management.

[Sharon Hays]: And I know there was some discussion of well, you know, what does that mean when at this point, we seem to mostly view our curriculum directors.

[Sharon Hays]: as tied to curriculum and that's their only role.

[Sharon Hays]: I think I have an idea of where you were going with that, but I'd like you to talk a little bit more about that because, of course, that would be another layer of support if there's a role for them in helping with the classroom management piece that would take some of that load off of the assistant principals that we've talked about.

[Sharon Hays]: I'll keep going.

[Sharon Hays]: I think obviously that the major recommendations that we'd probably struggle with the most are those organizational, the hiring of additional staff.

[Sharon Hays]: And I'm not sure, I don't believe we have that in our current budget, if I'm correct.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I'm wondering, do you have suggestions

[Sharon Hays]: If we can't hire those additional, what other avenues can we do to alleviate some of the stress on assistant principals or to share the responsibility?

[Sharon Hays]: What do we do about that?

[Sharon Hays]: Because we may not be able to hire both the associate principal position that you mentioned, but those 0.5 deans.

[Sharon Hays]: So do you have some other suggestions

[Sharon Hays]: Can I ask a question of the superintendent that I know you've talked about this at some of our meetings already referred to.

[Sharon Hays]: looking for some of the positions from within.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if you're prepared to give any more details about where you're at in that process, whether you've actually been able to find people that might fulfill some of those positions or not.

[Sharon Hays]: And I don't want to put you on the spot if you're not prepared to talk yet, but if you are, that would be great.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to ask so the, the literacy, the two literacy coaches are being funded by Esther, or is it two additional that we can have the two literacy coaches there are two literacy coaches that we are recommending.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, I know that I'm kind of a broken record on this, but I wanna say again, that I feel very strongly that we need one at each building

[Sharon Hays]: And I was hoping at today's meeting, maybe we'd be coming forward with some suggestions of ways to find the money for that.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that, you know, as I've emailed a couple of times, we've had coaches or interventionists as a priority in the budget for at least the last two years prior to this year.

[Sharon Hays]: And each time they've been cut out.

[Sharon Hays]: And this year with the new implementation of the new program,

[Sharon Hays]: I, you know, again, I just want to keep reiterating I think one each building is really necessary to get this program up and running the first time we've had a new program now and at least 10 years.

[Sharon Hays]: So I was really hoping we'd be talking about whether there was a way to find some money just for this first year really to get the implementation going.

[Sharon Hays]: Just one question, how many adjustment Councilors are currently funded by Esther.

[Sharon Hays]: Mayor?

[Sharon Hays]: Can I make one comment about this section that I noticed earlier?

[Sharon Hays]: Under district improvement goal number two, there are only six ratings listed.

[Sharon Hays]: I think an early version, one person had not sent me their rating for that.

[Sharon Hays]: So I will correct that in the final draft.

[Sharon Hays]: This is just the first draft.

[Sharon Hays]: three significant progress and one met under, I mean, and four met, three significant progress, four met under district improvement goal number two.

[Sharon Hays]: Aye.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays?

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I just wanted to comment.

[Sharon Hays]: I wanted to thank Member Ruseau for kind of giving me a heads up about this.

[Sharon Hays]: And I'm working on getting a second page.

[Sharon Hays]: What happens, or at least, it worked differently apparently in different browsers.

[Sharon Hays]: The font size got too small with yours.

[Sharon Hays]: It fit, but it was too small to be legible.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm working on making a second page to have your comments on.

[Sharon Hays]: So thank you for that.

[Sharon Hays]: Today, May 22, 2023, from 5 p.m.

[Sharon Hays]: to 6 p.m., there will be an evaluation subcommittee meeting to be held through remote participation via Zoom.

[Sharon Hays]: The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Comcast Channel 15 and Verizon Channel 45 at 5 p.m.

[Sharon Hays]: Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log in or call in by using the following link or call-in number.

[Sharon Hays]: There's the Zoom link with the meeting ID 991-0113-0546.

[Sharon Hays]: You can dial in using the number 1305-224-1968 with the same meeting ID number.

[Sharon Hays]: Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: by emailing shays at medford.k12.ma.us.

[Sharon Hays]: Those submitting must include the following information, your name and last name, your Medford Street address, your question or comment.

[Sharon Hays]: As approved by the committee on February 1 2023 the evaluation subcommittee will meet to review and develop the process for the 2022 23 superintendent evaluation, and in particular tonight's agenda is as approved by the evaluation subcommittee on Thursday, February 16 2023 the subcommittee will meet to create the composite evaluation.

[Sharon Hays]: So,

[Sharon Hays]: I just literally a couple of minutes ago sent the other subcommittee members, shared with them the folder I've created with all of the member evaluations.

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, I apologize.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: That's OK.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you for reminding me.

[Sharon Hays]: I will call the roll.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Graham?

[Sharon Hays]: And member Hays is present.

[Sharon Hays]: All members are present so we can begin.

[Sharon Hays]: So I just like I said, I was beginning to say I shared

[Sharon Hays]: moments before the meeting started or probably maybe even a moment as it started.

[Sharon Hays]: So I began creating the composite just in terms of putting the ratings, which I will share with you guys.

[Sharon Hays]: I have not had a chance to compile all of the comments because I don't think

[Sharon Hays]: I gave myself enough time, I think we probably should have planned a couple of days between the due date and the meeting, because all of the, all of them came in, except membercrats, all of them came in yesterday.

[Sharon Hays]: So let me see if I can bring up the, nope, that's not the right, hold on.

[Sharon Hays]: It's in the shared folder if you're able to open the Google Drive.

[Sharon Hays]: OK.

[Sharon Hays]: It should have been shared with you.

[Sharon Hays]: Hold on.

[Sharon Hays]: There should be one that's labeled composite, or there is one that's labeled composite.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm getting help right now with that one.

[Sharon Hays]: OK, so what I was able to do so far is compile the ratings and fill them in.

[Sharon Hays]: We created a composite form where we could put, instead of the checkboxes, we could put in the numbers of each rating so we could see how they kind of fell out in terms of understanding what the final composite rating

[Sharon Hays]: rating scores, for lack of a better word, would be.

[Sharon Hays]: So as we can see, this first page, the goals, the professional practice goals, there was one significant, five said met and one said exceeded.

[Sharon Hays]: Student learning was one, some progress, one significant, four met, one exceeded.

[Sharon Hays]: District improvement goals,

[Sharon Hays]: three significant progress, three met, and one exceeded.

[Sharon Hays]: So anyone can jump in at some point if they want to add anything.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I think we can see they pretty much fall out in terms of what the combined scores would be.

[Sharon Hays]: They're pretty much all in that met when you look at the preponderance of scores.

[Sharon Hays]: Of course, the five is certainly the professional practice goal.

[Sharon Hays]: the student learning goal, the four and the 18.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I'm going to put them together in a document.

[Sharon Hays]: That was my plan was to have that ready for today, but they were just, it was, I didn't have enough time.

[Sharon Hays]: Pretty much across the board.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: When you look at that and we can scroll down through the rest of them, too.

[Sharon Hays]: But well, these are the these are the three the three main areas.

[Sharon Hays]: Right.

[Sharon Hays]: These are the three where we all had to take all of our scores and and

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: Correct.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you, that was a good way to summarize it.

[Sharon Hays]: Uh, in terms of the comments from members, yes, we can either I mean, we can either work on that.

[Sharon Hays]: here or here if we can get them to all together into a document or we can we do have another subcommittee meeting scheduled where we could look at that and I think what we had said as part of the process was that the subcommittee would would put selected comments in to kind of represent the ratings that we would select comments from the various members evaluations and

[Sharon Hays]: create the composite, including the comments to bring to the whole committee.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: That's a really good suggestion, because as I said,

[Sharon Hays]: I'd envisioned having it ready for this meeting and we could actually just do it together at this meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: But given that that, you know, the time frame didn't allow for that, maybe that's the best way to move forward is to create the finish creating that Google Doc, which I've already started, but just haven't been able to finish.

[Sharon Hays]: And like you said, I can share that with you and member Graham.

[Sharon Hays]: And when we meet on April 1st, I believe it is, we could probably have a pretty

[Sharon Hays]: efficient meeting in terms of choosing out the comments.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm sorry, I keep saying April today for some reason.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, June 1st.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: That's fine.

[Sharon Hays]: Great.

[Sharon Hays]: Do we want to scroll down and you can see some of the other, we can view some of the other scores just so people have an idea of

[Sharon Hays]: where some of these fell out.

[Sharon Hays]: These are the specific, the superintendent's specific goals, early literacy, her professional practice goal, and her three district improvement goals.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, this is really just, I just pulled the data straight out from everyone's

[Sharon Hays]: individual evaluations.

[Sharon Hays]: And you can see it really all does fall kind of in that middle, the met range.

[Sharon Hays]: And then these are the individual standards and the indicators of how people vote rated on the indicators.

[Sharon Hays]: So I guess from here do we need to make a motion that will that that would be the next step would be that I'll send um create the combined uh the document of combined comments and uh

[Sharon Hays]: We'll meet next time and go through those to fill in the comment sections of the composite.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Graham?

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, she just texted me that she can't be unmuted.

[Sharon Hays]: She can't unmute.

[Sharon Hays]: Let me, let me see what I can do.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: So do we, I don't know, do we need to vote on that or is that more formal than we need to?

[Sharon Hays]: OK.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, does anyone have anything else to add about this?

[Sharon Hays]: I guess at this point, the data is in.

[Sharon Hays]: It really is just that question of adding in the comments.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, I will be getting that to you.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I'll be getting the finishing, completing the Google Doc that's already in the, it's in the shared folder I already sent you.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know that, I think that actually the next meeting is for us to together create the, decide upon the comments to go in the comment section.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm not really sure there's any, I don't think there's anything you need to send to me.

[Sharon Hays]: Is Jess able to unmute, or is she?

[Sharon Hays]: This is a school committee process.

[Sharon Hays]: The school committee is responsible for evaluating the superintendent.

[Sharon Hays]: You're welcome.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if anyone had anything to add to that, if there was anything I missed about community input.

[Sharon Hays]: In terms of actual writing of the,

[Sharon Hays]: the superintendent evaluation, that is our responsibility in terms of community input, that would probably be more through any evidence that the superintendent provides for us of community input on any of the areas that she's being evaluated on.

[Sharon Hays]: Is that correct to say, yes?

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, I think we're always looking for ways to improve the process and improve our ways of

[Sharon Hays]: getting information to evaluate.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think that as member Graham said, looking for a way to include the community in the process would certainly be a next step, a next goal for next year.

[Sharon Hays]: That being said, if there are any, not any other questions from either the committee or from any members of the public?

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, thank you, I didn't see that.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, Mr. Garrity, go ahead.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, that's someone else.

[Sharon Hays]: Superintendent, are you able to unmute him?

[Sharon Hays]: Sure, good question.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, we use the self-evaluation from the superintendent, where she gives us an update on, it's all based on the goals that the superintendent and the school committee discussed at the beginning of the year, the agreed upon goals and indicators.

[Sharon Hays]: And so the superintendent presented her self-evaluation two weeks ago, and that's the information that we use to

[Sharon Hays]: complete our evaluations.

[Sharon Hays]: Does any other member have something more to add to that?

[Sharon Hays]: I'm not, can you further explain what the question is?

[Sharon Hays]: And I would just add, I think that at our meeting, when we present this to the entire committee for them to vote on the final composite,

[Sharon Hays]: I think at that point, we will talk as a committee about how exactly we want to share this, what's the best way to share this so that everyone has access to it.

[Sharon Hays]: We've talked about a couple of different ways of possibly putting it on the website and making sure that everyone has access to both the composite, but also our individual evaluations.

[Sharon Hays]: Because as both member Graham and member McLaughlin have said, it's all public information.

[Sharon Hays]: Desi doesn't specify how we share it or how we make it public.

[Sharon Hays]: So that's really up to us to make that decision.

[Sharon Hays]: And I've looked around at other districts and it's remarkably difficult actually to find in many districts to find the superintendent evaluation.

[Sharon Hays]: So it's really kind of up to us to create that process and decide how we wanna share it and create that access for the community.

[Sharon Hays]: I think it's also important, which is also publicly available.

[Sharon Hays]: Again, the superintendent's goals for the year that are posted, and they're also goals that are shared goals.

[Sharon Hays]: We work on them together, the superintendent and the school committee at the beginning of the year.

[Sharon Hays]: So that's really where the, I don't know if the metrics so much, but the decisions about what are the particular focus areas.

[Sharon Hays]: that is done, again, in open meeting, and it's also a document that's on the website that everyone can look at.

[Sharon Hays]: Good.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin, your hand's up.

[Sharon Hays]: Did you have something else to add?

[Sharon Hays]: I did.

[Sharon Hays]: That would be great because I am, oh sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: Go ahead.

[Sharon Hays]: Just wanted to say, I'm still, as I said, I'm still working on some of the other pieces so it would be helpful if.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: someone maybe could pick up that piece of it, that creation of the slide.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I'd be happy to do that.

[Sharon Hays]: Second, I'll take a roll call vote then.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Graham?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Three in the affirmative, zero in the negative.

[Sharon Hays]: So this meeting is then, do we have to also adjourn?

[Sharon Hays]: Continued.

[Sharon Hays]: Nope, we're continued.

[Sharon Hays]: Continued, sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you for the presentation.

[Sharon Hays]: So I wanted to

[Sharon Hays]: clarify or to understand more the under future considerations, what does future considerations mean does that looking at other funding sources for this coming year or future as in future years.

[Sharon Hays]: Can I continue?

[Sharon Hays]: So can you then let me know, at this moment, how many reading coaches or literacy coaches to help implement the new program?

[Sharon Hays]: How many are actually in this budget currently?

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, I would just like to reiterate I've said this before, I am very concerned that implementing a brand new huge literacy program the first one in more than 10 years I believe that not having coaches at each of the schools to help implement the new program.

[Sharon Hays]: I think is a huge concern.

[Sharon Hays]: It's a, it's a big program.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, we don't know which one yet.

[Sharon Hays]: I have been on the team.

[Sharon Hays]: I've looked at all three programs as is true of every box literacy program out there.

[Sharon Hays]: There are so many components involved and there's going to have to be some significant decisions made about how things get implemented and possibly which things don't get implemented because they, they require more time than we have in our literacy blocks.

[Sharon Hays]: and to not have a coach at each school there to support the teachers, answer their questions, I think is a major concern when we're implementing a brand new program when literacy is one of our main focuses.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Can everyone hear me.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I'm sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: I couldn't find the raise hand on my thing.

[Sharon Hays]: Sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: I didn't mean to interrupt, but.

[Sharon Hays]: So, the original resolution that I wrote that led to this meeting, which I think was, I think I wrote it back in February, but there were.

[Sharon Hays]: a series of unfortunate events that kind of put this meeting off really wasn't so much about the student handbook.

[Sharon Hays]: It was really a more open-ended.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm sorry, Mr. DeLeva, that was a great explanation that I just want to kind of clear up.

[Sharon Hays]: So the original resolution was fairly open-ended and it was really came about after the new safety procedures were put in place.

[Sharon Hays]: I had at some point

[Sharon Hays]: pretty soon after the new procedures sent an email to administration with some questions.

[Sharon Hays]: And then I thought, well, this seems like something more that the whole DEI subcommittee maybe should together just talk about in terms of with the new safety procedures in place, thinking about how that impacts the student experience at school.

[Sharon Hays]: And really even more specifically, when we think about some of our specific subgroups,

[Sharon Hays]: how some of like having another resource officer having an increased number of hallway and bathroom monitors, certainly that can have an impact on some of our students of color, thinking about the bath, having some of the bathrooms closed and some of the bathroom restrictions, just how that might impact students with disabilities,

[Sharon Hays]: students with any anxieties about using the bathrooms, some of our LGBTQ students who might need a gender neutral bathroom.

[Sharon Hays]: So it was more looking a somewhat open-ended kind of brainstorming session about what could be the impact on students.

[Sharon Hays]: And from that,

[Sharon Hays]: Are there things that the school committee might want to either get more information about from administration?

[Sharon Hays]: Might there be data that we'd like to request, you know, put in, send up to the school committee as a whole to say, do we want to

[Sharon Hays]: ask for a report about this, things like that.

[Sharon Hays]: Or even, I lost my train of thought.

[Sharon Hays]: There was a third thing I was thinking.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, oh, policies.

[Sharon Hays]: Are there any policies we might wanna think about that would be related to when there's a change like this for students and how we address the possible unintended consequences

[Sharon Hays]: procedures and policies like, or it's not really policies, these are new procedures, procedures like this and how they impact students.

[Sharon Hays]: So that was kind of the broad question.

[Sharon Hays]: It was a very, I know it was a very broad resolution, but really was a chance for kind of, I guess, all of us together with administration to just think about these new procedures from the student perspective and in particular, some of our

[Sharon Hays]: some of our more marginalized students and how might it impact their experience?

[Sharon Hays]: Thanks.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I was going to basically ask the same question about data in terms of

[Sharon Hays]: just the things that Mr. DeLevo just spoke about with the bathroom.

[Sharon Hays]: And I'm just curious, again, as you said, Ms.

[Sharon Hays]: McLaughlin, are there any data being kept?

[Sharon Hays]: Is there a way to keep data?

[Sharon Hays]: Maybe we can brainstorm about that in terms of, you know, how much class are kids missing?

[Sharon Hays]: Do we have any way of

[Sharon Hays]: finding out from students kind of what they're, how they're feeling about missing class.

[Sharon Hays]: I know at one point, I think at a meeting, I thought a student spoke up, one of our student reps said something about having a hard time getting to an open bathroom and I don't know about students who might be anxious about missing class and how that's working out.

[Sharon Hays]: Again, just kind of that whole idea of how can we, as a group, can we brainstorm ways to kind of figure out one,

[Sharon Hays]: Is this a problem at all?

[Sharon Hays]: And if it is, what can we do to alleviate some of those problems?

[Sharon Hays]: Because these are all new procedures and works in progress.

[Sharon Hays]: Can I jump in for a 2nd, please.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess, so I guess maybe a good place to back up that is to ask is administration collecting data on any of the maybe that's the first step and say, are you collecting data on kind of impact both intended and unintended of the new procedures.

[Sharon Hays]: both on students in general, but also, again, as we talk about some of these subgroups.

[Sharon Hays]: And, you know, I think originally one of my main concerns when I wrote the resolution was thinking about with the increased adult monitoring and with, well, really just that, the increased adults who are really kind of monitoring where students are going and what they're doing.

[Sharon Hays]: Certainly with students of color, that could have an impact both in terms of are there differences in who's being spoken to more often or getting referrals?

[Sharon Hays]: And even beyond that, just how, has there been discussion with these students or any attempt to kind of figure out, is it affecting them from a mental health perspective?

[Sharon Hays]: Like, are they feeling uncomfortable with this?

[Sharon Hays]: Since we know that, you know,

[Sharon Hays]: there's data everywhere to show that that can certainly be an issue.

[Sharon Hays]: So I just wanna be clear that this resolution was not questioning the need and the critical need at that moment for something to change because there were some pretty major issues at the high school.

[Sharon Hays]: So the question is not necessarily about the intended consequences and certainly the intended consequences were to have students in class and really to help students feel safer at school.

[Sharon Hays]: And I don't think that

[Sharon Hays]: That's not the question of this particular subcommittee meeting or the resolution I put forward.

[Sharon Hays]: It really is, again, looking at some of the possibly unintended consequences and how do we assess and evaluate now that we're several months out, what's the impact on students and are there any unintended impacts?

[Sharon Hays]: Because certainly, as I said at the beginning, although I don't know, maybe you weren't here yet,

[Sharon Hays]: superintendent but you know some of the some of the questions I brought up were questions of you know unintended some of those unintended consequences are certain students being spoken to more often in the hallways now that there's more monitors are some students feeling less comfortable actually feeling less comfortable in the building if there's more adults

[Sharon Hays]: kind of overseeing them.

[Sharon Hays]: Are there students who might find it difficult to access bathrooms now that they're closed and that might make them anxious or uncomfortable just, you know, thinking about students with disabilities?

[Sharon Hays]: students with anxieties about finding a bathroom.

[Sharon Hays]: I think Mr. Lave already spoke to the LGBTQ population, but certainly, you know, depending on where they are in the building, getting to the main office in that one bathroom could be pretty difficult.

[Sharon Hays]: And so just trying to think through some of those

[Sharon Hays]: And how are we giving students a voice to let us know about that and how are we looking at any data that we have or do we need to talk about how we could get more data to better understand now that we're, again, we're past the emergency phase, how do we now move on and start looking at the other impacts or potential impacts of these new procedures and moving forward

[Sharon Hays]: Are they going to be, you know, if we, if they're going to be continued next year, maybe we need to have a better sense of how they're actually.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, well, actually I'm hoping that that's something we can all brainstorm together.

[Sharon Hays]: I know that we have the, and I'm sorry, I hope it's okay, Member McLaughlin, that I jumped in.

[Sharon Hays]: We have now given the student survey, and certainly that will hopefully provide some data.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm not sure exactly what the,

[Sharon Hays]: questions were and whether they'll be conducive to getting this kind of information.

[Sharon Hays]: But, you know, I guess, looking at, are there more informal surveys we can do?

[Sharon Hays]: Are there, I don't know, I'm hoping there's others that have other ideas of how we could

[Sharon Hays]: get more information from the students, allow them more of an opportunity to speak.

[Sharon Hays]: I, you know, I think that, as you said, Mr. DeLiva, that those listening sessions really are wonderful.

[Sharon Hays]: I think they've been a great new addition.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm hoping that maybe they'll

[Sharon Hays]: They'll get, sorry about that, they'll get more formalized.

[Sharon Hays]: Sorry, now I totally lost my train of thought.

[Sharon Hays]: But oh, but I agree with you that I think there are students, even if it's a, I don't know what those listening sessions exactly look like, even a small listening session, there are certainly students who might feel comfortable speaking up.

[Sharon Hays]: And so how do we make sure we get all of those students

[Sharon Hays]: make sure they all have an opportunity to let us know what the impact is on them.

[Sharon Hays]: clear, you mean we convene to consider what kinds of data we would like to have, or?

[Sharon Hays]: Again, I guess I was hoping that was part of the brainstorming session with all of us is to talk about different experiences we've all had, you know, in our different jobs or parts of our lives with different types of ways to gather data, whether it's surveys,

[Sharon Hays]: whether it's focus groups, I'm just trying to figure out how we can get, we now have the student survey that will be coming through, which is wonderful.

[Sharon Hays]: How can we do that on a more, you know, a more regular basis, whatever regular timeframe we would want it to be, but also getting teachers and, you know, families, I just think, again, getting all of those voices in there, the ones who are, you know, who are experiencing the impacts of these new,

[Sharon Hays]: safety procedures, and so understanding from their perspectives what it looks like during the course of the day for them, and both the positives and the negatives.

[Sharon Hays]: And, you know, that would allow us better to understand which ones are working well, if there are any that aren't working well, or whether some need to be tweaked or changed.

[Sharon Hays]: But again, you know,

[Sharon Hays]: There's no question that we needed some new safety procedures, but I think the reflection piece, we haven't really had a lot of the reflection piece yet on those procedures and what the experience is for those who are actually living with them.

[Sharon Hays]: So again, this was originally written back in February, and we're a bit away from it now, but I think it's still an open question on how we continue to get

[Sharon Hays]: That kind of information, so we know how these these are working.

[Sharon Hays]: Thanks, yes, I mean, I think that's I agree with you.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that.

[Sharon Hays]: The listening sessions are a valuable tool and the face to face.

[Sharon Hays]: I would ask maybe that we also if there is a way to have a. I think for some people, the face to face can actually be more difficult, and so I think that having both types having a face to face, but also having maybe a written or more.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know, anonymous or at least less confrontational, which is not quite the right word, but a way for people who might feel more comfortable doing it in a different way, just to get as much information as we can as we move forward.

[Sharon Hays]: So I guess, can we make a motion to, well, I don't want to make a motion before talking about what that motion would be.

[Sharon Hays]: We have the student survey.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know how long it takes to get the data and to really work with the interpretation of that.

[Sharon Hays]: And then, you know, if we did if If you were able to do something with the teachers listening sessions and or something else.

[Sharon Hays]: Is there

[Sharon Hays]: Would we want to come back to this committee?

[Sharon Hays]: Again, I'm throwing out this question to everyone.

[Sharon Hays]: Would we want to come back to this committee with some of that information and talk about it before, I don't know, going to the full committee with it?

[Sharon Hays]: Or do we want to just make a motion to have all that information brought to either the last school committee this year or, I don't know, that's coming up sooner than I imagine.

[Sharon Hays]: next year, the beginning of next year.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I think that would be great for start.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess I'm also, and maybe this would be for another meeting to talk more about it, but kind of talking about ongoing data collection.

[Sharon Hays]: If these restrictions or these safety procedures continue, I think

[Sharon Hays]: gathering ongoing data about the impact on teachers and students.

[Sharon Hays]: And, you know, I think it's really important whenever something that really is a significant change in the way the school is run, especially for the experience of the students themselves, that we continue to look at data of how it's impacting them and whether it's having the intended consequences.

[Sharon Hays]: Again, I keep coming back to this, but the intended consequences and the unintended consequences.

[Sharon Hays]: to ensure that we keep looking for that because I think that is our responsibility to do that.

[Sharon Hays]: Just a quick question.

[Sharon Hays]: So we talked at one point, I remember Rousseau was talking about writing the formal request for a report.

[Sharon Hays]: Are we talking about doing that, or are we leaving it kind of more open-ended in a sense, but just know that it will go on?

[Sharon Hays]: Who will be responsible for making sure it goes on the agenda?

[Sharon Hays]: I guess my question was a little more basic than that, like, out of this meeting, do we have a motion that says it will be, you know, in the month of September, we will have a meeting about that or.

[Sharon Hays]: how do we leave it from here to present to the rest of the committee?

[Sharon Hays]: Because again, I am a little concerned things get lost over the summer.

[Sharon Hays]: So I just want to, you know, I don't want, I want to have enough of a

[Sharon Hays]: a final outcome of this.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: Great job.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: We also have, we actually have two meeting dates set aside for the composite if we need them.

[Sharon Hays]: So one was the 22nd and I believe, I didn't actually bring the timeline with me right here, but I believe the other one was June 1st.

[Sharon Hays]: So just in case we needed additional time to work on the composite.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, I saw that.

[Sharon Hays]: I put that on my calendar.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I did have a I guess a question for longer term members about a policy I came across as I was looking at some of the

[Sharon Hays]: the updated policies on mask.

[Sharon Hays]: There's a policy, JIB, Student Involvement and Decision Making, about having us meet with a student advisory council once every other month or some such thing.

[Sharon Hays]: And I didn't know if that ever existed or whether it's something we need to look into how we create this process.

[Sharon Hays]: I was hoping someone might know.

[Sharon Hays]: Repeat what it is one more time, student.

[Sharon Hays]: It's called Student Involvement in Decision Making, and it says, as required by state law, the committee will meet at least once every other month while school is in session with its student advisory committee.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess I'm not clear on whether that well satisfies.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, I'm not sure when it says that it's required by law that the committee meets with them.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess I don't know historically, is that something that the committee decided sometime in the past that it would be the responsibility of the school administration to do that?

[Sharon Hays]: And if so, that's fine.

[Sharon Hays]: I just, I didn't know anything about this.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I was just curious if anyone had the history on it.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I was just looking through some of the updated this wasn't an updated policy but in looking through.

[Sharon Hays]: the updated policies, trying to match the letters.

[Sharon Hays]: And I just, I happened to stumble upon this one, so I thought I'd bring it forward.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, we met on April 27th.

[Sharon Hays]: We went through.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, so we had to, well, we just wanted to finish up both the form, the template that members will use to evaluate the superintendent and also to

[Sharon Hays]: make sure that the instructions that we have that we will be sending along with the template were clear and included everything that was necessary.

[Sharon Hays]: This has been passed out to the members before the meeting attached to the minutes that was passed out is the form itself or a copy of the form and a copy of the instructions and I think that it

[Sharon Hays]: At this point, we needed members to approve.

[Sharon Hays]: Is that correct?

[Sharon Hays]: We meet again on, well, we meet on the eighth for the superintendent's self-evaluation at that point.

[Sharon Hays]: Originally, we had planned to present the template to members then, but so we're presenting it now.

[Sharon Hays]: So I suppose that would mean at the next meeting, members will have a chance to look at it and bring any questions or concerns they have so we can talk about it then.

[Sharon Hays]: Differences from last year?

[Sharon Hays]: On the form itself, there were no major changes.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, we are using the DESE forms.

[Sharon Hays]: There really isn't room for huge changes to it.

[Sharon Hays]: We did fill in the superintendent's goals and we checked off and highlighted the specific focus indicators that we're using to evaluate the superintendent.

[Sharon Hays]: And then member grants.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: One of the things I really appreciated about your report and member so kind of already spoke to some of this was the history you gave because I certainly did not.

[Sharon Hays]: I have new bits and pieces of the history and, but having it all put together.

[Sharon Hays]: really helped a lot to provide some context to some of the issues that we're having, because they're not just based on what's happening right now or even in the past two years.

[Sharon Hays]: There's a lot of history behind all of that that leads us to where we are today.

[Sharon Hays]: And one of the things that struck me a lot was the turnover, the amazing turnover in the various administrative positions, because it's very hard to implement or to get

[Sharon Hays]: anything to stick if you don't have some consistency in those positions.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I'm wondering, did you have a sense, well, two questions I'm wondering, and one of them may not be exactly for you.

[Sharon Hays]: One, do we do exit interviews when people leave so we can have a sense of, is there some pattern, something we can understand to why we seem to have so much turnover?

[Sharon Hays]: Did you get a sense from any of the people you talked to who maybe knew some of these people

[Sharon Hays]: was there any sense of why we seem to have so much turnover?

[Sharon Hays]: And I guess in your experience, is that amount of turnover typical?

[Sharon Hays]: I know there's a lot of administrative turnover at all levels of K to 12 education, but that just feels like so much.

[Sharon Hays]: And when you think of the things that we haven't been able to get done, so much of that, when you've got people who are new to the system, and then also some, I think you mentioned some of these people maybe were just even new to that particular position.

[Sharon Hays]: anywhere.

[Sharon Hays]: So it's hard to get much traction for things if people are new and just trying to get their bearings and then a couple years later they're gone and somebody new is trying to get their bearings and did you have any sense of what that why that turnover was happening if there was any pattern to that.

[Sharon Hays]: So I've already requested this information from administration, but I'm curious whether you looked at it too.

[Sharon Hays]: The discipline data or the referral, the chart that you have from the period that you were here from January 3rd to February 17th, I think was the stretch of time.

[Sharon Hays]: That, of course, period of time is right after the new procedures were put in place.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm curious, did you look at all

[Sharon Hays]: back before those procedures were put in place to see how the data, was it comparable, did anything shift with the new procedures that you noticed?

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if you did that or not.

[Sharon Hays]: Dial in number is 1-301-715-8592.

[Sharon Hays]: Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing shays, that's s-h-a-y-s, at medford.k12.ma.us.

[Sharon Hays]: Those submitting questions or comments must include the following information.

[Sharon Hays]: Your first and last name.

[Sharon Hays]: your Medford Street address, and your question or comment.

[Sharon Hays]: As approved by the committee on February 1st, 2023, the evaluation subcommittee will meet to review and develop the process for the 2022-23 superintendent evaluation.

[Sharon Hays]: Today's agenda, as approved by the evaluation subcommittee on Thursday, February 16th, 2023, the evaluation subcommittee will meet to finalize the template design and instructions.

[Sharon Hays]: So at our last meeting, we determined that we would, this year anyway, try using the evaluation tool that DESE provides.

[Sharon Hays]: And we looked through it.

[Sharon Hays]: And one of the concerns was that on some of the pages, the information is kind of wordy and knowing for the members to know specifically on the standards which

[Sharon Hays]: indicators we've chosen as the focus indicators, and I will share my screen in a minute to show everyone.

[Sharon Hays]: But there was a question of whether that might be difficult to see, so that we wanted to look at highlighting those, the focus indicators that we've selected this year, so that it was just really clear which ones people should be rating.

[Sharon Hays]: So I did that, and I will attempt to share my screen.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, so it's further down.

[Sharon Hays]: I did fill in also, just so we could see what it would look like when we actually send it to the members.

[Sharon Hays]: I filled in the superintendent's goals on this page here.

[Sharon Hays]: and the focus indicators that went, that we selected to go with each of those goals.

[Sharon Hays]: And then the, there's the highlighting.

[Sharon Hays]: So I highlighted on these pages the selected indicators.

[Sharon Hays]: So there's the ones for instructional leadership.

[Sharon Hays]: And then the one for management and operations.

[Sharon Hays]: And family and community engagement, there were three.

[Sharon Hays]: And professional culture, three more.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that's it.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, that's enough.

[Sharon Hays]: That's it.

[Sharon Hays]: So I had just emailed these to everyone last, just last night, I think.

[Sharon Hays]: So I don't know if anyone has any thoughts, comments.

[Sharon Hays]: Does that seem to work better?

[Sharon Hays]: to have them highlighted.

[Sharon Hays]: Melanie, member McLaughlin, sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: Do you know what, it automatically makes it smaller to fit in the box.

[Sharon Hays]: It's not too, too bad.

[Sharon Hays]: I do have it in front of me.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I think there's only so many ways we can really kind of hammer it home.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, this is.

[Sharon Hays]: So, cause you know- I can't change the form itself.

[Sharon Hays]: So I can't put in a line that says Medford Public Schools.

[Sharon Hays]: There's no way to add to the form.

[Sharon Hays]: There's no way to add that kind of stuff to the basic form.

[Sharon Hays]: There's something I'm thinking about that, but let me let the superintendent speak.

[Sharon Hays]: She has her hand raised.

[Sharon Hays]: We can.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, absolutely, we can.

[Sharon Hays]: There's no reason not to.

[Sharon Hays]: This isn't going to go.

[Sharon Hays]: I think the thing is this is going to be live on our website.

[Sharon Hays]: and go to the DESI from us.

[Sharon Hays]: So I don't know if there's anywhere else it's going to be that people wouldn't know what it's for.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm not sure it's letting me go any further.

[Sharon Hays]: It's not letting me go any further.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: No, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I can look and see if there's something.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm not a tech wizard with this, but it doesn't look like you can add that much to it.

[Sharon Hays]: But I mean, the next step for us, of course,

[Sharon Hays]: I guess, to identify, after all of this is said and done, how it lives on our website, on the Medford Public Schools website, so that the community has access to it.

[Sharon Hays]: I think it's both you and the superintendent.

[Sharon Hays]: I had sent that piece with this too last night when I sent

[Sharon Hays]: I did make some instructions which I can show, I can share that screen too, or I don't know if anyone else has any comments on the actual form, the highlighting, or anything else.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Graham?

[Sharon Hays]: Thumbs up.

[Sharon Hays]: OK, so let me share that then.

[Sharon Hays]: And we can take a look at that if there's no other.

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, did it come right, is it already up?

[Sharon Hays]: Did that work?

[Sharon Hays]: OK.

[Sharon Hays]: So I can scroll down after you read.

[Sharon Hays]: And I remember Graham said she already got a chance to look at them.

[Sharon Hays]: So I don't know if she already has some thoughts.

[Sharon Hays]: Tried to be as specific as I could, but it's hard to always anticipate.

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, OK.

[Sharon Hays]: And there were some places just so where I mentioned the materials they would need.

[Sharon Hays]: And I have those all in a folder, so I figured I could send them so everybody has everything they need in hand.

[Sharon Hays]: We don't have, of course, the self-evaluation yet, but I can take that and make sure that gets attached to the email too, just so people aren't trying to look around for the things they need to be able to fill out the evaluation.

[Sharon Hays]: When we do the, you mean when we create the compiled?

[Sharon Hays]: So my one thought would be in terms of the one piece you said about talking about how to word, not using the I statements.

[Sharon Hays]: While I agree with that, I think at some point, I guess personally I feel like if we start getting too directive about how you should word your comments, there's a part of me that feels like we're, you know, being a little, not trusting the professionalism of our colleagues in a way.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't recall there being specific I statements or I don't.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess that's just my feeling is I feel like at some point we start to get a little too.

[Sharon Hays]: intervening too much, maybe, in how a particular member chooses to word their comments?

[Sharon Hays]: So in looking at other cities and towns, I've seen it done any number of ways.

[Sharon Hays]: I have seen ones where they just dumped members' comments in, obviously not all of them, but they dumped some comments in.

[Sharon Hays]: Other ones where they created, and it was whoever, whether it was the chairperson of the committee who was the one doing the final composite, or whether it was a subcommittee like us that we're doing,

[Sharon Hays]: I've seen ones where they did create just a narrative based on the comments.

[Sharon Hays]: So really we could go either way.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think the intention is that the subcommittee is going to do that, that we're going to be the ones to create the composite.

[Sharon Hays]: But of course, then we take it back to the full committee and they have their opportunity to comment on and change any, if they feel like we've miscommunicated something or if we use their comments and they felt like, well, that wasn't a comment that

[Sharon Hays]: I wanted to put in, I don't know, I was trying to think at one point whether we could put in the instructions somewhere in here that if there's a particular comment that someone feels is, one of their comments that they feel is most important, that they'd like to have included, that we could put in there that they should highlight that for us somehow.

[Sharon Hays]: But I don't know how do others feel about that.

[Sharon Hays]: Are you saying a narrative plus the comments, so we would do the narrative?

[Sharon Hays]: No, just the comments?

[Sharon Hays]: Is my audio better?

[Sharon Hays]: All right.

[Sharon Hays]: So then we're looking at just including, saying we'll include representative comments.

[Sharon Hays]: Sounds like a good plan superintendent.

[Sharon Hays]: You had your hand raised at 1 point.

[Sharon Hays]: Are you.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm thinking maybe put it in here.

[Sharon Hays]: The subcommittee.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: So the members are, the deadline for them to return to us, which, oh, I'll have to put that in there too.

[Sharon Hays]: I have it in my calendar, it's good.

[Sharon Hays]: I think we had it that we would give it to them and talk about it on the 8th as part of that meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: OK.

[Sharon Hays]: Evaluations.

[Sharon Hays]: I'll fix the spelling are due to the subcommittee

[Sharon Hays]: Well, there we go.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think that's what we have on the agenda.

[Sharon Hays]: Is there anything else, any other comments on either the form or the instructions?

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, we'll see.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, you're right.

[Sharon Hays]: Are they approving the template too?

[Sharon Hays]: So template, instructions, and process.

[Sharon Hays]: Instructions and process, yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: All right, I should take a roll call vote just to make it official.

[Sharon Hays]: Can you say again what you're, just so we have it out there, Jenny?

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, so roll call vote.

[Sharon Hays]: Oh thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Graham.

[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays, yes.

[Sharon Hays]: All right, motion approved.

[Sharon Hays]: Excellent, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Motion to adjourn.

[Sharon Hays]: Motion to adjourn, roll call vote.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Graham.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays, yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin.

[Sharon Hays]: All right, thank

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm also wondering about the new literacy curriculum.

[Sharon Hays]: Same question that Member Ruseau just had about the health curriculum.

[Sharon Hays]: We are absolutely going to need literacy coaches or some other kind of professional development to go with the new curriculum or, you know, it's

[Sharon Hays]: We're going to be spending a lot of money on a curriculum that is not going to get fully implemented if teachers don't have the support they need.

[Sharon Hays]: So is that also built into this budget or is that another thing that we're going to be trying to figure out how to make happen.

[Sharon Hays]: Do they provide coaching, would they provide coaching specifically around the new curriculum or they still providing coaching around equity because I've started looking at these curriculums they're massive as they all are.

[Sharon Hays]: There are so many components and so many.

[Sharon Hays]: places where teachers are gonna need some support and understanding, what do I implement?

[Sharon Hays]: What do I need to kind of ignore?

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, without the coaching, I'm just really concerned.

[Sharon Hays]: We're gonna be spending a lot of money on a very necessary curriculum that is not going to be implemented correctly.

[Sharon Hays]: The kind of coaching they provide, is it somebody that's actually housed in the building?

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, when you think of, obviously, when you think of a coach that we would hire as a school system, they would be, hopefully, in theory, we'd have one at each building to help

[Sharon Hays]: across the grade levels, their home would be the building.

[Sharon Hays]: Twice a month.

[Sharon Hays]: Twice a month.

[Sharon Hays]: That's not going to do it for a new, a brand new literacy curriculum.

[Sharon Hays]: And I know you're working hard.

[Sharon Hays]: So please, this is not coming at you, but I'm just going to say to the powers that be, that's not going to cut it for a brand new literacy curriculum.

[Sharon Hays]: It's just not, especially when we're talking about implementing the science of reading.

[Sharon Hays]: I know teachers are already learning that through ECRI, but

[Sharon Hays]: you know, it's a whole new mass of materials.

[Sharon Hays]: It's also a whole new style of teaching or pedagogical shift twice a month.

[Sharon Hays]: And that would be for each school.

[Sharon Hays]: I did.

[Sharon Hays]: I just want to clarify.

[Sharon Hays]: I did have one other question, but I just want to clarify, too, that there's the professional development.

[Sharon Hays]: I know that you're asking about the funding for that.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess what I'm specifically asking about, though, is coaching, which is different than the professional development.

[Sharon Hays]: The ongoing coaching that teachers need to have somebody in the building when they need to troubleshoot and

[Sharon Hays]: It's really not just a frivolous extra expenditure.

[Sharon Hays]: It's really needed when you're implementing a brand new program like this.

[Sharon Hays]: They haven't implemented stuff like this in 10 plus years.

[Sharon Hays]: I have information from the chair.

[Sharon Hays]: Personally, I would say at least a couple of years.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, at least three years.

[Sharon Hays]: It's a big program.

[Sharon Hays]: And as I said, we're also looking at not, it's not just a continuation of what they've been doing before.

[Sharon Hays]: because when you get into that K to two piece, that's the science of readings.

[Sharon Hays]: And even beyond that, I mean, it is really, at least the one I started looking at now, it continues that piece of morphology.

[Sharon Hays]: And maybe they're doing all of that already, but I think it's much more comprehensive than what we've had.

[Sharon Hays]: And you just can't undervalue that having the coaches there to really make sure they continue to implement it.

[Sharon Hays]: Because if the teachers don't have the support,

[Sharon Hays]: You know, that's when things start to fall apart.

[Sharon Hays]: They just don't have the support to do it.

[Sharon Hays]: The other question I had just in looking at slide 19, when we're talking about potential reduction in positions, which is a really huge and ambiguous statement, can you give us a little more clarity on what kinds of positions you're talking about?

[Sharon Hays]: Are we talking about teaching positions?

[Sharon Hays]: Are we talking about

[Sharon Hays]: possibly administrative positions or director positions, what kinds of things are you looking at?

[Sharon Hays]: I appreciate that.

[Sharon Hays]: I know that this is tough.

[Sharon Hays]: This is going to be some tough choices to be made.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm wondering at what point, though, do we begin to actually get down to the nuts and bolts of what you're looking at?

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, we are at the end of April already.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm assuming you hopefully have already started looking at what kinds of positions you might consider.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm a little concerned when I hear about class size.

[Sharon Hays]: And I mean, obviously, if there's some that are very small, but I'm hoping we can

[Sharon Hays]: start by looking at positions that don't directly affect students.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: I just want to be, I think we need to be really crystal clear with people using the word deferred is a really nice way of saying we're not able to fund it.

[Sharon Hays]: And many, if not all of the positions we deferred last year are not going to be funded this year.

[Sharon Hays]: And if I understand correctly, you know, we were told in the past that

[Sharon Hays]: Next year might even be a more difficult fiscal year.

[Sharon Hays]: So we're not really just deferring these were saying these, you know, and some of these were literacy interventionists at the high school career Councilor at the high school math coaches, we had a lot of really.

[Sharon Hays]: These weren't, again, extraneous or extra things.

[Sharon Hays]: These were things that we really felt kids critically needed.

[Sharon Hays]: So people, the community needs to understand that we need to be clear that calling them deferred until a subsequent fiscal year means we can't fund them and we're not likely to fund them in the next, at least the next year or two.

[Sharon Hays]: So I just want to make sure that's spelled out clearly to people.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Um, yeah, I think we know that, especially recently, there have been a number of attacks on the rights and protections for LGBTQ people in general and also especially our LGBT youth to youth in schools, and especially our transgender and non binary students.

[Sharon Hays]: I wanted to look at some of the policies and some of the guidelines that have been put out by some of the groups that were mentioned in this resolution and look at what we can adopt in our schools to help support and show our LGBTQ youth that we support them and that we will provide protections in the schools.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, we met on the 27th and we were looking at, our two goals were to choose a evaluation template and to start looking at some instructions to go with the template.

[Sharon Hays]: We first looked at the DESI's version of a template

[Sharon Hays]: And then we also talked about whether to create our own template.

[Sharon Hays]: Ultimately, we did decide to go with the DESI version this year.

[Sharon Hays]: There was some discussion about some pages being overwhelming or there being a lot of information and maybe needing to highlight certain pieces of information.

[Sharon Hays]: So we are going to go back and add that into the DESI template, highlighting the specific indicators that we are using this year.

[Sharon Hays]: and we will be meeting again on April 21st, 24th, sorry, to finish that up and to finish up the instructions for members.

[Sharon Hays]: I was just wondering, I'm looking at the FY23 ESSER estimated budget.

[Sharon Hays]: Did we hire, I thought we had hired additional adjustment Councilors using ESSER, but I don't see them on here.

[Sharon Hays]: So maybe I'm thinking of the behavioral specialists.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: So it's up to the committee.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm just wondering two things.

[Sharon Hays]: Will the student survey that we're going to do, will that be asking some questions about their current experience with the new rules in place?

[Sharon Hays]: And do we have an updated timeline for that or when that's going to happen?

[Sharon Hays]: Do you mind to hold?

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted some further clarification too about the town hall meetings.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm not, I'm unclear whether you're talking about specific topics or you're talking about, I'm not sure what you're talking about with town hall meetings.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays?

[Sharon Hays]: Well, we had talked last time, it's kind of an easy goal to put in because we're already doing it, but we had talked about the updating of the superintendent evaluation process as being one of the, possibly being one of the school committee goals, given that we're already in process of doing that.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'll throw that out as an idea.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, we're still working on it.

[Sharon Hays]: So, I mean, just a thought, it's already, it's already happening.

[Sharon Hays]: So yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: to add so that the community knows?

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Thanks.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, we did talk about sending it to the Rules and Policy Committee three months ago.

[Sharon Hays]: It hasn't come up yet, so I thought maybe this would be a different route to try to get it formally moved forward.

[Sharon Hays]: So this was my attempt to do that.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know what to say.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that I've made that attempt to do that in a formal way.

[Sharon Hays]: We did all vote on it, and it was passed through a motion to send it to a committee that it has not yet been brought up to.

[Sharon Hays]: So... I don't remember a motion to send it to the... Yes, December 5th, it was motioned to be sent to the Rules and Policy Subcommittee.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, that might be a good way to go about it.

[Sharon Hays]: I just want to be clear that this was not an attempt to criticize in any way.

[Sharon Hays]: It was an attempt to move something forward where I knew that there were other things that were of more pressing importance in the subcommittee that it originally was set to.

[Sharon Hays]: So I apologize if it came across as a criticism.

[Sharon Hays]: I was really specifically trying not to make it that way.

[Sharon Hays]: I was just trying to present it in a different way to hopefully move it forward.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, I'd like you to go.

[Sharon Hays]: I think I would like you to go, since this is something that we brought up during school committee, I would like you to go to the subcommittee and we can discuss it there.

[Sharon Hays]: Um, so the only thought I have about that is I think the difference we're doing the process very differently.

[Sharon Hays]: So in fact, if we're creating it as subcommittee meeting, I don't know, I mean,

[Sharon Hays]: you superintendent attended our last subcommittee meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: If we're creating it at a subcommittee meeting you're attending.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, we can still provide it.

[Sharon Hays]: I think the thing to realize member press maybes we're not last year, the way it was done was that one member took all of ours and created a composite.

[Sharon Hays]: on their own.

[Sharon Hays]: This time we're doing this as a group, we're doing it at a subcommittee meeting, which will be a regular subcommittee meeting that's open for people to attend.

[Sharon Hays]: So it is a very different process altogether.

[Sharon Hays]: We can still present what we end up writing, but I think you'll be a part of the superintendent along the way too.

[Sharon Hays]: .

[Sharon Hays]: Point of information?

[Sharon Hays]: What I'm saying is according to the process we have established, the subcommittee is going to work on a composite evaluation.

[Sharon Hays]: We obviously can't approve it in the subcommittee meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: We would be taking it to the committee of the whole, which is where the whole committee would

[Sharon Hays]: Aye.

[Sharon Hays]: Congratulations.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, I had a question about the survey also.

[Sharon Hays]: Is this still the same, the panorama survey that we were?

[Sharon Hays]: So my understanding, I had talked to some, I talked last week about the survey prior to vacation was that there was a survey ready to go.

[Sharon Hays]: Is this now a different survey than was ready to go?

[Sharon Hays]: There was talk of doing it the week before vacation and then it got pushed out a little bit.

[Sharon Hays]: I thought it was gonna be done this week.

[Sharon Hays]: Is this still the same survey or are we talking about a different survey now?

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: I would just like to put my concern out there that in late December,

[Sharon Hays]: there was an email sent out to families that this survey would happen in the first two weeks of January.

[Sharon Hays]: And then it kept getting pushed and pushed and pushed.

[Sharon Hays]: And I am concerned now that we're missing critical information that we need from the students.

[Sharon Hays]: You know, this was that we're now talking about mid March before it goes out and then it has to be analyzed.

[Sharon Hays]: And so we're getting pretty late in the year.

[Sharon Hays]: So I just would like to put out there that I'm really concerned about how long it's taken to get the survey out there and getting the critical information that we need from the students.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, because we have a new business that's going to take a while.

[Sharon Hays]: All right, well, it's 5.02, and maybe in the interest of time, I will just go ahead and start.

[Sharon Hays]: Then we'll start.

[Sharon Hays]: I will go ahead and read the meeting notice, and we can continue to let people in if people show up.

[Sharon Hays]: Please be advised that on Thursday, February 16th, 2023, from 5 p.m.

[Sharon Hays]: to 6 p.m., there will be an evaluation subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via Zoom.

[Sharon Hays]: The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Comcast Channel 15 and Verizon Channel 45 at 5 p.m.

[Sharon Hays]: Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log in or call in by using the following link or call-in number.

[Sharon Hays]: And the number, one of the numbers anyway you can use is 309-309-205

[Sharon Hays]: and enter the meeting ID number 954-1274-6142.

[Sharon Hays]: Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing shays at medford.k12.ma.us.

[Sharon Hays]: Those submitting must include the following information.

[Sharon Hays]: your first and last name, your Medford street address, and your question or comment.

[Sharon Hays]: As approved by the committee on February 1st, 2023, the evaluation subcommittee will meet to review and develop the process for the 2022-23 superintendent evaluation.

[Sharon Hays]: The agenda is as follows.

[Sharon Hays]: One,

[Sharon Hays]: Develop a timeline for the 2022-23 superintendent evaluation process, including due dates for all parties involved and a tentative schedule of subcommittee meetings.

[Sharon Hays]: Two, develop a process for the 2022-23 superintendent evaluation, including the timeline, templates, and instructions for school committee members.

[Sharon Hays]: And three,

[Sharon Hays]: Discuss the types of evidence the superintendent will provide to document progress on the year's goals and selected indicators.

[Sharon Hays]: And, oh, I just realized, are we missing a member?

[Sharon Hays]: I don't see Melanie McLaughlin on yet.

[Sharon Hays]: Two out of three of us, we can do the meeting?

[Sharon Hays]: OK.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, so I will call the roll then.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Graham?

[Sharon Hays]: Here.

[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin?

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, there she is.

[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin, hi.

[Sharon Hays]: Calling the roll.

[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, so.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Glaufen is present, just connecting.

[Sharon Hays]: And Member Hays, present.

[Sharon Hays]: Present, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I couldn't get to the unmute button.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: No problem.

[Sharon Hays]: So let's see.

[Sharon Hays]: So just to give a brief introduction as to why we're here for anyone who watches this who might not have seen our last meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: We, the school committee had a retreat with Dorothy Presser from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, who has also worked extensively with Jesse on the superintendent evaluation process.

[Sharon Hays]: And through that retreat, she gave us a training, just an update on the superintendent evaluation process.

[Sharon Hays]: And through that meeting, we realized there were a few updates we could make to our process to align it more closely with

[Sharon Hays]: Desi's guidelines.

[Sharon Hays]: So we had a committee of the whole meeting on February 1st, where we discussed some of the updates we wanted to make.

[Sharon Hays]: And then at the regular school committee meeting on February 6th, the school committee approved some of those changes that we or

[Sharon Hays]: or approved some of the updates.

[Sharon Hays]: And one part of that was also approval for a new subcommittee to be called the Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee.

[Sharon Hays]: And this is our first meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: So I don't know how far to go in the background.

[Sharon Hays]: Some of the things that have already been approved that were approved on February 6th,

[Sharon Hays]: included this year, rather than using a number rating system, we would use the word-based rating system that is in the DESE guidelines.

[Sharon Hays]: We'd be using, really following that very closely, using their wording for rating the superintendent, those words like exemplary, proficient, needs improvement, and unsatisfactory.

[Sharon Hays]: that we would, the subcommittee would be responsible for compiling, creating the process for the evaluation this year and also compiling all of the individual evaluations and creating the composite evaluations that we would then submit to the school, the full school committee for approval.

[Sharon Hays]: We agreed that the superintendent's evaluation would include the raw data from all the members in addition to the composite evaluation of the subcommittee.

[Sharon Hays]: And we also approved nine indicators that we would use from the superintendent evaluation rubric.

[Sharon Hays]: This year, we chose nine indicators that would most closely align with the superintendent's goals.

[Sharon Hays]: So for this first meeting,

[Sharon Hays]: I thought, and obviously members can chime in and let me know what they think, maybe we should start with the actual timeline, kind of work backward from the date where we want to have the final meeting of where we approve the composite evaluation, and then kind of work backward from there, and that would determine then also we could look at what meetings the subcommittee needs to have based on that timeline.

[Sharon Hays]: So I don't actually have anything to share, but I can talk about that.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I did make myself a

[Sharon Hays]: a personal agenda for this meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: So I can say, you know, what I have down is that we would need to start really with the final date, right?

[Sharon Hays]: That final composite evaluation date, sometime probably late in June.

[Sharon Hays]: And then working backward from there would be the dates, let's see, the dates by which the members would need to return their individual evaluations.

[Sharon Hays]: And then before that would be the date by which we would provide those, the templates for those evaluations to the members.

[Sharon Hays]: And prior to that would be the date of the, I think last year it was a committee of the whole meeting, um, where the superintendent prevent, uh, presented herself evaluation to us.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, I don't know if we need to, well, I think that's a separate issue of what template.

[Sharon Hays]: There are some templates we could just, there is a DESI template, but that was later on the agenda.

[Sharon Hays]: But I think that we need to know when the final, I think we need to start with when we know the final is gonna be and work backwards, because we could choose a date on, if we'd start with choosing a date when we're going to hand out the template,

[Sharon Hays]: then we move forward and find that doesn't work because we don't have enough time to complete the whole thing before we have a meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: I feel like we need to, I think working backwards seems to make more sense.

[Sharon Hays]: If we know when we're gonna have that final meeting, then we start talking backwards about how long we need to, because we are gonna need some time to create that composite.

[Sharon Hays]: And then that would work backwards from there.

[Sharon Hays]: So if we get a sense of when the final meeting would be,

[Sharon Hays]: Do we have, is there any reason why we can't have another, I know we have two regularly scheduled meetings already set.

[Sharon Hays]: Is there, I don't know if there's a rule that says we can't have another meeting, if we, because if we start pushing it back to May, then we're, I don't know, it feels like we're cutting off a couple of months, but maybe that's, I've only done one before, so maybe that's the way it's always kind of worked.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, Jenny had them up a minute ago.

[Sharon Hays]: She had typed them out.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think that was pretty much, I think the creation of the template, I mean, we could go and start with that if you want.

[Sharon Hays]: There is a template that Desi provides that, I mean, I don't know that we need to recreate the wheel, but we can look at it and see if we feel like that would work.

[Sharon Hays]: So whatever, eight weeks.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, do we want to put in and say then?

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I think this kind of general eight weeks,

[Sharon Hays]: we need to work with how much, because we're gonna need a couple of weeks to compile, I would say.

[Sharon Hays]: And then two weeks for, I don't know, I don't remember last year if we had a week or two weeks for members to fill out the template.

[Sharon Hays]: It was like 10 days, I think, maybe two weeks.

[Sharon Hays]: All right, well, why don't we do that?

[Sharon Hays]: So if we say that, so if we're going to have the 6-12 meeting, the date at which we approve it at the full committee.

[Sharon Hays]: Vote on it.

[Sharon Hays]: then go back.

[Sharon Hays]: I think, Jenny, you actually kind of have it there.

[Sharon Hays]: Let's see.

[Sharon Hays]: We have some of it.

[Sharon Hays]: Sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: So 5A would be like a committee of the whole where the superintendent would present her self-evaluation?

[Sharon Hays]: So we want to schedule a meeting in April to look at a template together?

[Sharon Hays]: I can, I was going to share, I can share that today.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, it could even be that we do a template today.

[Sharon Hays]: It's pretty straightforward, but we can come to that.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if we want to feel like we're jumping around if we, but we can take a look at that.

[Sharon Hays]: So we can, we can look at that tonight.

[Sharon Hays]: And if we want to work on it more than we could schedule a meeting just to go over the template and create the template or alter it in any way we see necessary.

[Sharon Hays]: I would back that up a little bit just to have the time if we needed, if we were going to do that, kind of the technical how to make it work.

[Sharon Hays]: I know the previous one we were using, I think took a lot of work from member Rousseau to make it work for everyone.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think if we're gonna create a new one, we'd wanna have some time to really work on it.

[Sharon Hays]: Would you like to see the DESI one?

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, it's really pretty simple.

[Sharon Hays]: Can I, I don't know if I'm, am I sharing right now?

[Sharon Hays]: Cause I've never shared before.

[Sharon Hays]: So this is the DESI one.

[Sharon Hays]: Right, which is, yes, that was my thought.

[Sharon Hays]: I think my software husband said he could probably could figure that out.

[Sharon Hays]: So, I mean, it's pretty straightforward and I think it's pretty easy to use.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, and so I take a vote.

[Sharon Hays]: Is that correct?

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: Roll call vote on having a committee of the whole on Monday, May 8th, that would include the superintendent self-evaluation and the presentation of the template for individual members to use for their individual member evaluation of the superintendent.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Graham?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Uh, motion passes.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: So what I have written down then is the 12th, at the meeting on June 12th, we would have that final vote by the whole committee.

[Sharon Hays]: It's a regular school committee meeting to approve the evaluation, the composite evaluation.

[Sharon Hays]: And then on the 5th, the week before, we would have a committee of the whole before the regular meeting to review.

[Sharon Hays]: Let's see, what do I have written down here?

[Sharon Hays]: Sorry, does anyone have the rest of that?

[Sharon Hays]: On the fifth it was, so before we vote to approve, we would have the committee of the whole to review the composite evaluation.

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, that's right, we'd have to have a committee of the whole to review that.

[Sharon Hays]: And then we would vote on it on the 12th.

[Sharon Hays]: Then prior to that, we have the eighth for the,

[Sharon Hays]: superintendent self evaluation and present the template.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: So if we want to give them two weeks from the eighth, I think we, Oh, I hear, I have that written down.

[Sharon Hays]: We said something like Sunday, the 21st.

[Sharon Hays]: So that would give them almost two weeks.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: So we'll be looking at, so 522 to have a subcommittee meeting, okay.

[Sharon Hays]: The 22nd.

[Sharon Hays]: On Monday, the 22nd.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, the 22nd.

[Sharon Hays]: So item one.

[Sharon Hays]: We certainly can look for one, sure.

[Sharon Hays]: So looking back at April.

[Sharon Hays]: All right.

[Sharon Hays]: So in addition to that, let's see.

[Sharon Hays]: So timeline templates and instructions.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think what we're looking at, although we talked about developing them today, it looks more like we've developed the timeline for developing those.

[Sharon Hays]: Do we want to meet even earlier than 4-24 to work on the template, just in case we need more than one meeting?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, I can take a shot at that, too, so it's not falling all on you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, I do think, as I said, I think my husband said there was a way, there was a way he could do it, he just didn't have time to do it before this meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: So I will work on that and bring that.

[Sharon Hays]: Obviously I can send you guys, send you all some work in progress as we're working on it if we wanna take a look at it while it's,

[Sharon Hays]: while he's working on it, so you can see if there's anything we want to change or add to it.

[Sharon Hays]: And then we can talk about it more at that meeting on 4-24.

[Sharon Hays]: I am not an expert on open meeting laws.

[Sharon Hays]: So I don't know.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, we could also, I can work on it.

[Sharon Hays]: I can get to work on it now.

[Sharon Hays]: And if it seems like it's not going to be doable easily, then we can look at

[Sharon Hays]: maybe scheduling another meeting to look at making our own if we want to.

[Sharon Hays]: It seems like it should be, I would think that Desi should have a version of it.

[Sharon Hays]: My other thought was simply to get in touch with Desi and ask.

[Sharon Hays]: There's gotta be a version of it somewhere that school committees can use because that seems to be their recommended template.

[Sharon Hays]: So.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, I can work on it and see, I can work.

[Sharon Hays]: I can work with my husband on it and we can see if we can get it translated.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, it seems like a pretty user-friendly version of it and easily, to me anyway, it looked pretty easily translatable into a composite in terms of having the information clearly laid out and with the check boxes are pretty easy for members to just have to check off their ratings.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Do we want to just maybe meet in late March even to look at it?

[Sharon Hays]: So we have lots of leeway in case there are changes that need to be made and we could look at that last week of March even.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: So do that instead of the April 24th, but then we would have time if we felt like we needed to schedule another one sometime in April, we could.

[Sharon Hays]: All right, so in terms of our agenda for tonight, developing the actual templates and instructions

[Sharon Hays]: it's more, we're gonna do that during subsequent subcommittee meetings, but we have the timeline, which was one of our major goals.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think that's really it for the superintendent evaluation process in terms of what we had for kind of the organization of it.

[Sharon Hays]: The third, well, unless anyone has something I missed, because there is a third agenda item,

[Sharon Hays]: is somewhat separate.

[Sharon Hays]: That's a discussion of the type of evidence for the superintendent that had been on our last meeting, but we never, we didn't end up with time to talk about that.

[Sharon Hays]: I wanted to leave some time to do that, just especially if the superintendent felt like she wanted some information from us about that.

[Sharon Hays]: I did, I can also share the,

[Sharon Hays]: There's examples on the DESE website of types of evidence for each of the indicators.

[Sharon Hays]: Just examples, we can always change or alter or add our own ideas to it.

[Sharon Hays]: But let me, I can bring that up and people can see.

[Sharon Hays]: Still getting used to screen sharing.

[Sharon Hays]: Let's see, where would that be?

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: We could look through these.

[Sharon Hays]: I have the indicators that we chose, so we could look through the types of evidence.

[Sharon Hays]: Could you possibly make it a little larger?

[Sharon Hays]: Does anyone know how to tell me to do that?

[Sharon Hays]: Let's see.

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, how's that?

[Sharon Hays]: Now, oh, there we go.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to make sure I knew how to scroll it.

[Sharon Hays]: So the indicators that we chose, or that we, with the superintendent's input chose, so under standard one, instructional leadership, we had 1B and 1E, which is on the next page.

[Sharon Hays]: So 1B, instructional,

[Sharon Hays]: Instructional instruction indicator.

[Sharon Hays]: There's examples are aggregated classroom walkthrough observation data and aggregated student feedback.

[Sharon Hays]: Does anyone have any thoughts about that?

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I think the I know.

[Sharon Hays]: Go ahead, sorry, go ahead.

[Sharon Hays]: I didn't mean to interrupt you.

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, well, I was just going to say I know that the superintendent I think is doing.

[Sharon Hays]: classroom walkthroughs I think you have a different name for it, but so having that information.

[Sharon Hays]: I think you might already have that so that would be a good thing to.

[Sharon Hays]: Maybe to to choose as one of the pieces of evidence.

[Sharon Hays]: That's a good question.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: So one question I would have at this point in the year, since we're already headed into March, I like the idea of student feedback.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that's necessary at some point.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess my question for the superintendent would be, is that something you can get within the next two and a half to three months?

[Sharon Hays]: Because I don't know what form that would take.

[Sharon Hays]: And I'm just wondering if that's something you might need more planning for instructional student feedback.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay I see two members have their hands raised.

[Sharon Hays]: I wasn't looking up to see who it was first.

[Sharon Hays]: I can wait.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay to member Graham.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: So it says, let's see, 1B, instruction ensures that practices in all settings reflect high expectations regarding content and quality of effort and work, engage all students,

[Sharon Hays]: and are personalized to accommodate diverse learning styles, needs, interests, and levels of readiness.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin, did you want to talk?

[Sharon Hays]: Superintendent.

[Sharon Hays]: If I can just before I call on Member McLaughlin, so I just want to clarify too that my hope in doing this was more not to be prescriptive of what the superintendent should have to present to us, but I guess I'm always aiming for a clearer shared understanding of the expectations.

[Sharon Hays]: So maybe this is more of an aspirational, maybe next year when the

[Sharon Hays]: when the process, or hopefully next year, the process from the beginning, we choose these indicators, then maybe as part of that conversation, we talk about shared understanding of what the evidence, what the actual artifacts we'd like to see are, and what, again, a conversation.

[Sharon Hays]: So it'd also be, of course, what you, superintendent, think you can provide and what makes sense to provide.

[Sharon Hays]: But again, just the goal always being kind of more of a shared understanding of the expectations so we all know what's coming at the end.

[Sharon Hays]: I just want to say personally from the person who was doing it the first time this past year, I guess one of the things I was hoping or wanted to talk a little bit about was just when we get your evidence, having perhaps more in some of those, more of an explanation from you about what the evidence you're providing means as opposed to just

[Sharon Hays]: Sometimes you gave us links to things or told us, gave a list of professional development, perhaps for some of those giving more of an explanation of what came out of that professional development.

[Sharon Hays]: Have you seen teachers using some of the information they got or your own professional development?

[Sharon Hays]: What did you take away from that?

[Sharon Hays]: And how did you see that affecting anything that you did later as the superintendent of our district?

[Sharon Hays]: Just a little more of your,

[Sharon Hays]: A little more understanding of how you see the evidence and tying it all together and, and how it's really making changes for our district, I guess, just more narrative, maybe.

[Sharon Hays]: Right, okay, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: And member McLaughlin, did you still wanna speak?

[Sharon Hays]: All right.

[Sharon Hays]: I think we've hit all of our agenda items.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if other members can help me.

[Sharon Hays]: Do I need to make any motions or is there anything I need to do to?

[Sharon Hays]: No, we're all set.

[Sharon Hays]: You just need a second and a roll call.

[Sharon Hays]: All right.

[Sharon Hays]: So motion to adjourn, second from?

[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin, roll call.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Graham?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you all for joining us.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays and Member McLaughlin.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to come back to the K to five level.

[Sharon Hays]: I wholeheartedly agree with you that both developmentally and philosophically, we don't want to get into some level with a K to five, the same level that we want to get in the six to eight or nine to 12.

[Sharon Hays]: I do think there's a little bit of

[Sharon Hays]: that it feels so open ended that parents don't know what to expect.

[Sharon Hays]: And correct me if I'm wrong, maybe it's written down somewhere and I'm the parent who hasn't found, hasn't looked at it.

[Sharon Hays]: I think even being at the same school as the mayor's children, I've had different

[Sharon Hays]: experiences with different teachers.

[Sharon Hays]: I had a teacher who sent home little notes if there were misbehaviors that weren't, I don't think were put in a folder anywhere, but it was more the communication to me just to let me know your child is, you know, doing somersaults during circle time.

[Sharon Hays]: And now I have a teacher who's very good at letting me know verbally, either calling me, sending an email, catching me after school.

[Sharon Hays]: I think the concern though, I think that the genesis of this original question about parent notification, at least at the K to five level was, you know, I don't know how often this happens, but there were situations that we've been aware of where parents had been brought in after a number of incidents at school.

[Sharon Hays]: And again, they're, you know, they're, they're small children.

[Sharon Hays]: They're not huge incidents, some of these, but you know,

[Sharon Hays]: And in the process of saying, we need to talk about your child, they say, well, all these things happened.

[Sharon Hays]: You know, these things have been happening.

[Sharon Hays]: And the parent is like, well, I had no idea.

[Sharon Hays]: So where in between can we have somewhat of a standardization or some kind of a process that parents will know and the teachers will know that across all schools, it's expected that at this point you contact a parent or you call the parent every time.

[Sharon Hays]: any, whatever the process would be, but I think it feels, the way we talked about it tonight, it feels very open-ended to an extent where as a parent, I don't really know what I should expect if my child is misbehaving or having any kind of an issue.

[Sharon Hays]: Is that, so I guess the question then, is that something you are working on at this point?

[Sharon Hays]: I feel like we're all getting very tired, but if I could just a couple of quick questions, and thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I met with you for quite a while to go over some of this, and I really appreciate that.

[Sharon Hays]: And just a couple of quick clarification.

[Sharon Hays]: I think these were things we already talked about privately, but good to talk about them here.

[Sharon Hays]: So that question number five about how is progress monitored of at-risk students who are not receiving intervention.

[Sharon Hays]: So the gist of that question was an assumption on my part that I think is true in every district that every district has limited resources.

[Sharon Hays]: And so to the extent that I guess the question being when students have that red or in that red zone or whatever they want to call it, red flagged,

[Sharon Hays]: Are we able to service, do we automatically service every child who's in that red zone?

[Sharon Hays]: I think a lot of this, too, kind of harkens back to something we were talking about earlier, that idea of what can parents hold onto to understand that if my child, if it gets to report home, I don't know if the report shows

[Sharon Hays]: red, you know, for, I don't remember what the dibbles, I did it a while ago, but I don't remember anymore.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think it's changed.

[Sharon Hays]: Does a parent report go home that show where parents would see, oh, my child's in the red zone for this, this and this.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I guess that question being, and there was a flow chart that you, you linked to, and I know we talked a little bit about, is there a way to maybe,

[Sharon Hays]: flesh that out a little bit for parents to the extent that you can with the understanding that teachers use their professional judgment in terms of looking at multiple pieces of information.

[Sharon Hays]: But again, something that parents can hold on to if they see, they feel their child is struggling and also see that they're getting this report that says, yeah, your child did struggle on this assessment in this area.

[Sharon Hays]: How are we communicating to parents that

[Sharon Hays]: you should expect or you can expect that we will be intervening or that we will be contacting you to talk about whether we need to intervene and what we're doing.

[Sharon Hays]: The other question I had, and again, we've talked about this, for parents whose

[Sharon Hays]: who have a child who is either receiving the tier two level support or receiving special education support in reading.

[Sharon Hays]: Is it fair to say that at this point, if they, if their child is being sent home with, or that they are somehow getting information that their child is using leveled readers or is being told to use queuing strategies, such as use the picture to help you.

[Sharon Hays]: use the context, what would make sense, those three cueing strategies, that it is very appropriate for that parent to question why that's being used, whether they first, they should, obviously I think we talked about first go to the teacher and talk about it, but that, it is fair for a parent at that point to question, given that my child has already been identified as having areas of weakness that would make,

[Sharon Hays]: those queuing strategies actually be detrimental to their progress?

[Sharon Hays]: They should question that.

[Sharon Hays]: I would just want to clarify.

[Sharon Hays]: So my question pertained to kids who have already been identified as having weaknesses through the screener or otherwise in phonics.

[Sharon Hays]: So I would suggest they should be taking home decodable readers at that point, that if they're taking home level readers, or maybe that's a conversation, but you know, there certainly are in any classroom, a percentage of kids who don't need decodables, but we're talking about kids who've already been flagged by a screener.

[Sharon Hays]: And those students should be taking home practice books that.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I don't think, I mean, it's pretty self-explanatory.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that anytime we start looking at increased adult presence or increased supervision, just that look at it from that particular subcommittee is important to have looking at.

[Sharon Hays]: And again, looking at the data that I know is already being collected to look at how students are responding to this intervention, or this intervention, these changes in procedures and additional staffing.

[Sharon Hays]: While we know that some students have already expressed that they're really feeling much safer and feeling more comfortable at school, we also know that there can be populations of students who may not be responding the same way.

[Sharon Hays]: And we want to look at some of those issues just to make sure that everyone feels they have a voice in this, and that sense of belonging is there for all students.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I had a couple of things, too.

[Sharon Hays]: Thinking about the budget process, as member Graham was saying, I think another thing that would be great for us to do within that earlier budget process is how can we bring the community in more on helping us develop the budget and hopefully also as an educational process for the community to understand how we make the budget and, you know,

[Sharon Hays]: decisions that have to be made, I think that's important for the community to be a part of.

[Sharon Hays]: And then as a, that is a part of maybe a larger goal is our role in educating the community about some of these processes and what we do, what it means to set policy.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm trying to think of some other ones.

[Sharon Hays]: We've talked about these kind of along the way among ourselves, maybe, maybe at meetings, we've talked about how there are certain things where we could hold maybe

[Sharon Hays]: town hall meetings that we could educate the public, or maybe we create videos that could go on our school committee webpage that people could refer back to any time when they want to understand some of the things that we do.

[Sharon Hays]: So again, that kind of view of us as a body that also communicates with and educates the community.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays?

[Sharon Hays]: I guess it would depend on what we're considering to be that goal timeline or the term, because how many we choose.

[Sharon Hays]: If we're only going to the end of this year, then we want to choose accordingly.

[Sharon Hays]: But if we're going to

[Sharon Hays]: start now and go until next January, we might want to choose more goals.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to, you know, member Ruseau had

[Sharon Hays]: asked if I had any thoughts about it.

[Sharon Hays]: I do think it would be a lot for a new member to step in and try to help set goals for something they've never been a part of.

[Sharon Hays]: So as for that piece of information, I mean, I do think that would be hard and depending on how many new members we have, that could make it a really difficult process.

[Sharon Hays]: The other thing I'm wondering is, you know, when I looked through all these documents, it seemed the idea of all the goal setting is from the top down, right?

[Sharon Hays]: That our goals should

[Sharon Hays]: the superintendent's goals coincide with the goals all the way down.

[Sharon Hays]: So if everyone else is working on basically a september to june, maybe it doesn't make a difference, but I just wanted to throw that out there that if we're working on a different timeline, but all of our goals are supposed to work together, you know, does that make a difference?

[Sharon Hays]: If I can jump in.

[Sharon Hays]: So the training that we had with Dorothy Presser about the superintendent evaluation, there were a few things that came up that we just needed to, I guess, update our process in terms of to match the,

[Sharon Hays]: I think this is, does it say 2019?

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if it's a change or not since I wasn't doing it before this, but there's some guidelines in terms of the indicators under each standard.

[Sharon Hays]: So there's what, five standards?

[Sharon Hays]: And based on that training, what we were told is that, maybe there's just four standards, that overall there should be six to eight, we should choose six to eight indicators to focus the evaluation on, that there has to be one from each standard.

[Sharon Hays]: So we have to choose at least one focus indicator from each standard.

[Sharon Hays]: But beyond that, you know,

[Sharon Hays]: And it should match, we should choose the ones that seem to most closely align with the superintendent's goals.

[Sharon Hays]: That's why, yeah, so I obviously, the one I have was out of date.

[Sharon Hays]: I looked it up, I Googled it just because I found the same thing that Jenny said.

[Sharon Hays]: I couldn't, there were missing pieces, like it just, you couldn't actually really read all of it.

[Sharon Hays]: So I was trying to find a cleaner copy, but I guess I got a wrong, a not completely updated one.

[Sharon Hays]: If you go down one more page, if you go down one more page, it actually gives the description of each of those rather than just the titles.

[Sharon Hays]: So it gives, yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: Sorry, Jenny, I interrupted you.

[Sharon Hays]: If I can, I, I have the same.

[Sharon Hays]: Also, just to be clear, it's six to eight.

[Sharon Hays]: So we can, it could be, we have to have one from each, and then we could have two in some, we could have three in some, depending on what seems to be most aligned to Dr. Edouard-Vincent's goals and to kind of what we think is

[Sharon Hays]: most important focus I think for the year two together with the superintendent.

[Sharon Hays]: I had actually the exact same thing, instruction and data informed decision making based on looking at the early literacy student learning goal that did focus both on looking at our literacy instruction but also using the MAP scores really to focus on

[Sharon Hays]: that data-informed instruction.

[Sharon Hays]: I had the same.

[Sharon Hays]: Did we want to, I'm sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: Did, did we want to talk to the, did the superintendent want to weigh in on it too, or is this something I don't really, I'm not really sure.

[Sharon Hays]: Is this something that we just.

[Sharon Hays]: So two votes for E, one for B, four for A. The only thing I would say is I don't see that reflected in her goals.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know how tightly we have to stick to that understanding of having it, the focus indicators match to her goals.

[Sharon Hays]: But if we do, which it says aligned to the superintendent goals, I don't

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know, unless someone has a different way of looking at it that does make that match some of the goals.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't really see anything necessarily about budget unless we're talking about buying.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, we do talk about buying a new literacy program.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Sure.

[Sharon Hays]: Um, I just based on what member Graham said just a few minutes ago, I felt the same way about this, I think are both long term, we've been talking about family and community engagement and communication.

[Sharon Hays]: And now with things that have happened in the past couple of months, I think that's come into a sharper focus of an area of

[Sharon Hays]: of growth.

[Sharon Hays]: So I agree with her.

[Sharon Hays]: I felt, I mean, when I felt like I had to narrow it down and went with B and C, but I could certainly see all four of those even being a focus.

[Sharon Hays]: I agree with the committee idea, at least, I mean, maybe at least for this first year as we're since we're looking at some changes, possibly to how we do it.

[Sharon Hays]: Just to take it off of having one person feeling responsible for it really is a pretty big task that idea of kind of combining everyone's ideas into one.

[Sharon Hays]: I think it really is a big thing.

[Sharon Hays]: big thing to do and it's one of our most important roles as a school committee so I would I would agree with the idea of doing it in a smaller subcommittee.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to clarify.

[Sharon Hays]: So one of the things we did find in that retreat training was that the numbers are not necessarily what we're supposed to be using.

[Sharon Hays]: And I don't know if that's exactly what you meant, Member Graham, when you were saying that.

[Sharon Hays]: But in terms of

[Sharon Hays]: finding that proficient or needs improvement.

[Sharon Hays]: Again, I forget exemplary, but that based on the training, it was using those words that each member should be reading.

[Sharon Hays]: So just want to, again, clarify for people that we have been doing the numbers, I think for years.

[Sharon Hays]: I know we just did them that way last year, but that moving forward, we were going to use the category names or instead of using the actual one, two, three, four numbers and averaging them.

[Sharon Hays]: I just didn't remember what the names were.

[Sharon Hays]: It seems to cover everything.

[Sharon Hays]: And it honestly feels like the process that we went through, I wasn't on the committee, the process that was went through with the naming of a school already.

[Sharon Hays]: So it seems to follow that pretty closely, I think.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I agree.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I think it needs to be in there.

[Sharon Hays]: I think ultimately, as you both have stated, it is a responsibility of the school committee.

[Sharon Hays]: So ultimately, we do have to be the ones responsible to make sure that the name, in the rare occurrence, if the number one chosen name by the advisory committee or whatever just wasn't appropriate, or we had some reason to understand that it isn't a name that would be appropriate to use

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if we wanna put something in there.

[Sharon Hays]: And this would, I guess, really just be in an effort for people who read it to understand that we would emphasize or choose a better word, the name or names suggested by the advisory committee that that would be, our preference would be to choose one of those names, but in the event that the name is more inappropriate or I don't know,

[Sharon Hays]: You guys might have better wording for it, but if we want to put something in there, at least to let the public know that yes, if you're on this advisory committee, it's not just that you're there and we still might just choose an alternate name just because, but that we do take it seriously and we do take the names recommended seriously.

[Sharon Hays]: Just a thought to put, maybe we could put something in there to that effect.

[Sharon Hays]: Not that I want it to get too wordy, but.

[Sharon Hays]: Sorry about that.

[Sharon Hays]: When we, in the event that we did have that wonderful $100 million donor who wants to fund our school and have their name on it, and maybe this doesn't belong in here, but we certainly have had incidents recently, not locally, but Tufts had an incident where they had a big building, had a building named after someone and changed the name.

[Sharon Hays]: Does that, would that need to go into this kind of a document or is that just totally out of the realm of this kind of, this kind of document in terms of that, that idea, if it turns out, if it turns out that big donor, for some reason we decide isn't any longer an appropriate name to have in our school, what would happen with that?

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, so I think going back to a member Rousseau's question, I guess then the point of it is to raise money.

[Sharon Hays]: Cause if we're looking at different donation levels, getting different recognition than it is.

[Sharon Hays]: And I guess part of what I was, what occurred to me as we were talking about this, and I can't remember whether this was already in the plans for the playground and another space,

[Sharon Hays]: when we start looking at families being able to donate a brick or for $50, whatever, there are a lot of people who couldn't afford that.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm wondering if we want to, and maybe this is separate from what we're talking about now, I don't know, but make sure we have a space that's maybe just anyone in the community wants to, I don't know, paint a brick, paint a, I don't know,

[Sharon Hays]: because I do think we get to a point where it's the people who have the money who can afford to do it.

[Sharon Hays]: And if we want to look at, again, if we're going back to this is a community playground, it belongs to the school, it belongs to the community, the kids, kind of making sure we're not excluding people through some of these.

[Sharon Hays]: But I like the idea in terms of the big donors, which you were talking about just a minute ago, I think that idea of maybe having a separate space where we have a plaque that recognizes whatever we determined to be those,

[Sharon Hays]: those big level sponsors and those who contributed time and energy into it.

[Sharon Hays]: I like that as opposed to having it, like you said, I think if we had every piece of equipment named or, you know, people could buy the swing set or then you do, it does feel like it gets into a pretty more of a commercialized almost playground, doesn't feel as much belonging to the community.

[Sharon Hays]: I like that idea.

[Sharon Hays]: I would agree with that.

[Sharon Hays]: OK.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I just had a few, few questions, some of them might be very quick, hopefully.

[Sharon Hays]: And then have we put any thought into, and maybe this goes towards resources and what the school committee can do for you, giving this survey on a yearly basis, even twice a year.

[Sharon Hays]: I looked it up and there's some school systems in the area who seem to be giving this kind of a survey.

[Sharon Hays]: In fact, I think it was the Panorama company or platform.

[Sharon Hays]: Just something to think about in the future, just to keep getting this information from students and families.

[Sharon Hays]: The world is ever-changing.

[Sharon Hays]: our needs are going to change and it would be nice to have this information on a, maybe an annual, maybe even by, I don't know.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know what the costs of it are and what the feasibility would be, but just something to think about because I think, you know, we know that getting the student information was huge for us with this.

[Sharon Hays]: This was really, um, eyeopening to a lot of people, um, what we needed and what, what was going on.

[Sharon Hays]: Um, so the more often you can get that kind of information, I think, you know,

[Sharon Hays]: the better, which also leads to my next question.

[Sharon Hays]: I was wondering about the listening sessions and kind of how is data being collected from those listening sessions?

[Sharon Hays]: Because it would be good to know, obviously, to figure out are there certain groups of students who are feeling

[Sharon Hays]: more uncomfortable than others or certain concerns that crop up for, you know, males versus females, maybe our LGBTQ population, maybe our students of color, are we actually collecting the information in a way that we could look at it in that depth?

[Sharon Hays]: I just was wondering, as you're doing those listening sessions, someone writing down.

[Sharon Hays]: And one last request I had, or maybe you're already doing this, for the counseling services and making sure that, or the support services, those phone numbers you gave us, are those being posted on the school website so people have a central place they could go to find those?

[Sharon Hays]: rather than, you know, trying to remember from the meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: And those numbers in the community I was thinking of specifically because those are newer.

[Sharon Hays]: And the care solace, just if there's a- Oh, those phone numbers.

[Sharon Hays]: I had a question, not so much about what's been put in place for the safety procedures, but just thinking about the incident, the stabbing incident, and the response to it that day.

[Sharon Hays]: Just wondering if you as a team have met to talk about the response itself, looking at what went well, maybe what didn't go so well, kind of that debriefing.

[Sharon Hays]: Have you had a meeting like that yet?

[Sharon Hays]: Are you planning to do a meeting?

[Sharon Hays]: And did you see on separate walks or a lot, but, um, it was a pretty, it was a brief walkthrough, but yet there.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, first of all, the hallways were very quiet.

[Sharon Hays]: And there were, you know, a student who came out was going somewhere and

[Sharon Hays]: you know, the superintendent asked them where they were going and they were prepared with their response.

[Sharon Hays]: They knew they were going to have to respond.

[Sharon Hays]: Um, we did get to talk to some staff, um, who were on, I think they're on their lunch break actually.

[Sharon Hays]: Um, and they seemed very enthusiastic about the rules, the new procedures in place and said, you know, that they did have a few students who kind of grumbled about it.

[Sharon Hays]: And they said to them, you know, this is the way it is at most high schools.

[Sharon Hays]: So that we're not different.

[Sharon Hays]: This is important.

[Sharon Hays]: And he said, for the most part, this one staff person said, the students were responding well to it.

[Sharon Hays]: Great.

[Sharon Hays]: Good.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah.

[Sharon Hays]: So far, so good.

[Sharon Hays]: OK.

[Sharon Hays]: Good.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you, guys.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm just wondering what the consultant thinks.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I think I would assume you had conversations about the scope of work and what you felt was a reasonable time.

[Sharon Hays]: Do you have any input that you want to give it to this conversation or if I may, madam chair?

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess I'd want to add to that, I think another piece that you mentioned, and I don't think you deliberately mentioned it quickly, but

[Sharon Hays]: the having instructional support coaches as much as the professional development is important, that ongoing support to teachers where they can troubleshoot when they're trying it out.

[Sharon Hays]: You know, you can't do that in a one day professional or even a five day professional development because things happen as you're teaching something and you need to understand how to tweak it or change it.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think balancing out, if we're talking about how we're going to spend money, you know, instructional support coaches versus

[Sharon Hays]: professional development or do we have the money for it all?

[Sharon Hays]: But I just don't want to, I don't want to go over that lightly because you did mention that.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think that that is incredibly important and something not to be overlooked.

[Sharon Hays]: I agree.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you, I just had two very quick things.

[Sharon Hays]: One, well, first I'd like to mention that it's great we've already got the microphone for our student representative.

[Sharon Hays]: I did want to check on the follow through with the idea of putting student participation on the agenda and just, I brought it up, but I don't think we talked about how that would, we'd follow through on that, whether that needs to go to maybe the rules subcommittee to talk about.

[Sharon Hays]: Aye.

[Sharon Hays]: One other quick thing, so we had a training meeting back in October, was it, about the superintendent evaluation, and I know we've talked a little bit about, there were some things that came up that we need to either update or refine.

[Sharon Hays]: If we could put, I think we were talking about maybe doing a committee of the whole for that, I just wanted to make sure, again, there's a lot going on that got followed through with.

[Sharon Hays]: I'll make this brief.

[Sharon Hays]: You know, we are talking a lot about reading this year.

[Sharon Hays]: We already have another report requested about looking into our, how we're following the science of reading and the new,

[Sharon Hays]: Well, I guess it's not too new, but the research that's out there about how to the right way to teach reading and this just kind of falls in line with that.

[Sharon Hays]: I know that we, the state within the last few years has mandated the dyslexia screening and they are now looking towards also, um,

[Sharon Hays]: requiring interventions to be put in place.

[Sharon Hays]: And so this particular motion or request for report is just looking at what are we doing now?

[Sharon Hays]: We do have a dyslexia screener.

[Sharon Hays]: What do we have in place for students who are shown at risk by the screener?

[Sharon Hays]: What kind of data do we have and what interventions do we have in place?

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I also had something for the good of the order.

[Sharon Hays]: I wanted to, as we've talked a lot about trying to get more student engagement and student involvement, I wanted to discuss the possibility or at least bring up the possibility of having an agenda item that's actually dedicated to the student representatives, so that if they had something they wanted to talk about, if there was an issue, a question, a concern,

[Sharon Hays]: or if they wanted to highlight the student achievement, anything, just to put it on the agenda so it's not as if they have to approach us to ask if they can talk.

[Sharon Hays]: Just a thought, just a way to try to give them more space and support their voice in our meetings.

[Sharon Hays]: Probably the school side.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: I just had a quick question about the investigation program at the elementary level.

[Sharon Hays]: I recall the early versions of investigations that some of the criticisms were that they lacked some of that procedural like a real emphasis on that in the early math facts and things has that been.

[Sharon Hays]: remediated or are we adding extra in to make up for what it might be lacking since it's very problem solving based and sometimes does, or at least in the past, it didn't have.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, I have a question about looking at the anchor strand analysis, which I know you don't talk about at this point, but we had it in our binder.

[Sharon Hays]: And one thing that stood out to me is that our lowest scores pretty much by far are in any question that involves writing, whether it was an actual essay or constructed response, they call it, or, you know, and to be fair, it matched the state really that that's true for the state too.

[Sharon Hays]: But I'm wondering for our district, what are we doing to really focus?

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, we should focus on all of reading obviously, but clearly that's a,

[Sharon Hays]: difficulty for our kids.

[Sharon Hays]: And actually, if you could also explain to me, what does production and distribution of writing refer to?

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: That makes a huge difference in what kids can do.

[Sharon Hays]: It's a completely different task than writing a, used to just be the essay.

[Sharon Hays]: That's what I was used to seeing.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: One more question.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Has it been implemented across the board now?

[Sharon Hays]: I know that you mentioned that as one of the action items.

[Sharon Hays]: Is it in every classroom now?

[Sharon Hays]: Amber Hayes.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, thanks.

[Sharon Hays]: I just had a general question, and this is why I waited until the end.

[Sharon Hays]: Looking at the data, when you do disaggregate by school, and I've only gotten so far at this point of doing elementary ELA, but there is a trend when you look back through the years of certain schools having higher scores than others, and it seems to mirror

[Sharon Hays]: needs of the population in those schools.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm curious about how that figures into your, you know, your data dives and what you're talking about and how you determine then equitable distribution of resources.

[Sharon Hays]: You know how you level the playing field for those who are starting maybe with less.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah I guess I would hesitate to um a classroom teacher can only do so much if they've got a lot of needs in their classroom and they can be a wonderful great teacher who

[Sharon Hays]: does all the things that a teacher needs to do to meet the needs of their students.

[Sharon Hays]: But if you've got more of those needs in your classroom, it's just going to be harder.

[Sharon Hays]: And so that's what I mean, I guess, in terms of looking how we spread out our supports.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm just hoping that's a part of that.

[Sharon Hays]: We've got limited resources, but it's just a question of, are we using them?

[Sharon Hays]: When I look at the data and I see that we're really not leveling very much, at least as far as I can see from the data.

[Sharon Hays]: between the schools and, you know, how we try to do that when we're, you know, our focus is on equity and are we looking at how to, how we use our resources equitably?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon, you're mic'd.

[Sharon Hays]: Sorry, I just asked if you are able to actually shift the supports depending on, as you just said, if one school needs more than the other, but the next year it's a different school, you're able to shift the supports around like that?

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: That's what I'm looking at.

[Sharon Hays]: We didn't get that.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I just wanted to point out, and maybe you still want like hard and fast COVID counts, but on page three under coverages, it does talk about medically imposed restrictions being covered.

[Sharon Hays]: So I would assume that would be a medically imposed restriction.

[Sharon Hays]: It's number two under coverage.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Ms.

[Sharon Hays]: Hayes?

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays?

[Sharon Hays]: Thanks, I had a question about the the memo that went out about bus transportation and that buses are crowded and I had several parents express some worries about that, especially I think there were a couple who had to were in the school for the first time and who aren't completely clear about.

[Sharon Hays]: the cutoff of the one mile and they're concerned that they might actually be told that they can no longer take the bus.

[Sharon Hays]: So will there be a clarification of that sooner?

[Sharon Hays]: How will that be communicated to parents if they are no longer going to access the bus?

[Sharon Hays]: So I know, for example, in my case, I was given a choice of three different bus stops that were really close, all were close to my house.

[Sharon Hays]: So when you say a bus stop is eliminated, those families are no longer eligible for the bus or they need to go to, I just think that could be confusing.

[Sharon Hays]: Just curious about that when you present again at the November meeting, will we at that point get information about class sizes?

[Sharon Hays]: Mayor.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, no, I just wanted to say the same as some of my other school committee members have said.

[Sharon Hays]: I likewise don't feel like I made any errors.

[Sharon Hays]: There's nothing I want to change.

[Sharon Hays]: I do hope and plan to meet with the superintendent over the summer just to go over some of my comments and some areas that I didn't get to make any comments because of other things going on in my life.

[Sharon Hays]: But I think that the major thing that I'm finding from this being my first time and just the general kind of confusion that I'm hearing is that we really do need to meet to talk about the process.

[Sharon Hays]: I think, you know,

[Sharon Hays]: it would be great if we had someone from outside to come in and talk with us about the process because it seems like we ourselves are not clear on it.

[Sharon Hays]: So I don't know that just an internal discussion is going to yield satisfying results for everyone.

[Sharon Hays]: So, you know, it's, I think it's, I think it's good.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm just gonna say, I think it's good that we're all taking this so seriously that we are having some major discussions and finding it confusing.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that means that we're all taking it very seriously and trying to figure out the best way

[Sharon Hays]: to make this work both for the school system, but also for the superintendent, because she's ultimately the one who's being evaluated.

[Sharon Hays]: And if we're lacking clarity in it, then it's, you know, it's a tough, tough to be the one who's being evaluated if the people doing the evaluation are expressing confusion.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm all set with my evaluation though, personally.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, thanks.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to say, too, given this is my first time going through the evaluation,

[Sharon Hays]: It was difficult, I have to say, because there are, even though I understand from Member Ruseau that it's been actually streamlined by DESE, there still were 20 indicators that we needed to give an evaluation on or give some kind of feedback on.

[Sharon Hays]: And looking back at some of the information from DESE, I think as we move forward, I know Member Graham has kind of started us on the path

[Sharon Hays]: updating this process to more closely match what DESE has.

[Sharon Hays]: According to DESE, we should be choosing like six to eight of focus indicators that we would really be doing our evaluation on, which I think makes a lot more sense in terms of helping us as a school committee and also helping

[Sharon Hays]: the superintendent kind of focus on what our main goals are, even though, of course, she's always and we're always looking at the whole picture.

[Sharon Hays]: You know, I think, I think as as member McLaughlin said, I think that when the new superintendent came in, I think there was hope for or expectation and possibly unrealistic, definitely unrealistic expectation of

[Sharon Hays]: instant change and we're excited, we're going to make all these changes and kind of update a lot of policies, update a lot of curriculum, just everything.

[Sharon Hays]: And not only I think was it probably the timeline that people were hoping for, unrealistic anyway, but then you throw in the pandemic and you know, the focus shifted and it had to shift and we're really still coming out of that.

[Sharon Hays]: So,

[Sharon Hays]: I wanted to make that point.

[Sharon Hays]: And also just to make the point that I think anytime you do an evaluation of anyone, unfortunately, I think often you go towards the, I don't want to say negative, but you go to where there could be improvement.

[Sharon Hays]: And it's also, you know, there's a lot of, I went through and made a list for myself of just all the things that have happened just this year, all the things that Superintendent has done.

[Sharon Hays]: And there's a lot.

[Sharon Hays]: a lot.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I want to make sure that at least I want to make clear from my point of view, when I talk about areas where I see improvement, that we can make improvement or make growth, I don't see that as deficiencies so much as we're always going to have areas of growth.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, hopefully we're always striving for more.

[Sharon Hays]: So I, you know, when we start talking about where we see areas that we could improve, it's, you know, a district improvement, it's certainly

[Sharon Hays]: Also because the superintendent represents the district.

[Sharon Hays]: It's improvements that we see are asking her to implement, but I just wanna, again, like I said, that idea of areas of growth and improvement versus deficiencies.

[Sharon Hays]: So that's where my head is at in terms of the evaluation and the comments I made, and just wanted to say that.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Thanks, I just I wanted to add to that in terms of I think that's, that's part of what we can improve on with the evaluation process.

[Sharon Hays]: Also, I looked at some other cities and towns just to see how it's done in other places.

[Sharon Hays]: And

[Sharon Hays]: And I think they also said this in my orientation, that part of the process when we create the goals is to really talk about what evidence we would need to see to be able to evaluate you clearly and accurately and fully.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think that as we move forward and start to really try to update this process and make it mirror more, I think what Desi intends, that's a piece that we really should be doing is really being clear about what evidence we want to see so that you know what to expect from us because

[Sharon Hays]: You know, if it's open-ended and you don't know, you may feel like you're providing us what we need and we're looking at it and going, but I don't know if that quite meets what I was thinking.

[Sharon Hays]: So I think if we can all be on the same page about what evidence would give us, you know, would help us to be able to evaluate you, I think that it will go a long way to making this process easier also and fairer.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, yes, thank you for this.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, it's a lot of information.

[Sharon Hays]: And we appreciate you putting them all together.

[Sharon Hays]: I have a few questions.

[Sharon Hays]: Just I know, obviously, the questions we're getting these days from families and have been getting is based on what we're learning in the moment about what happened in Uvalde and some of the issues that are coming up that they found

[Sharon Hays]: were problematic, the reasons why the shooter was able to get in, why maybe no one knew that this person was clearly in trouble and needed help.

[Sharon Hays]: So a couple of questions I have when I look at, you said that 1 to 250 ratio that we're getting close to that.

[Sharon Hays]: I seem to recall an earlier meeting this year where I thought we were told that we were at that, and I don't know if we're talking about different numbers and different

[Sharon Hays]: because I know there's adjustment Councilors, there's guidance Councilors, there's all different forms, but I know at some point there was that one to 250 ratio and I thought we were told that we were at that and maybe even a little better than that.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm curious if that's a different number or why I'm hearing a difference now that I feel like I'm hearing a difference.

[Sharon Hays]: okay and then I'm wondering too so um another thing that they've definitely talked about is um and this would also get to the staffing ratios or how we I honestly don't know how we go about doing this but you know that that a key a key thing to have is to try to make sure that every student has one adult who they are

[Sharon Hays]: in contact with or who is kind of there watching them in a way or has a relationship with them, that schools try to build that into their structure.

[Sharon Hays]: Whether it's the teacher, whether it's a Councilor, whether it's a club advisor, are we in any way looking at how we could try to systematically build that in?

[Sharon Hays]: I know we've got large numbers of kids, but

[Sharon Hays]: And I know that that's something that seems to come up with every one of these school shootings saying that this was a person who was kind of on the fringes and wasn't being watched or was didn't have an adult that was.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think, in this case, obviously, we've all did it was already out of school, so if that wouldn't change the school setting but.

[Sharon Hays]: In some cases, for kids who've been in school, it does.

[Sharon Hays]: I have some other basic questions, but I think other people.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I was just wondering if at some point we could also just go over, I think, you know, again, parent letters that we've gotten have also been questioning kind of at a more basic level, you know, things like the intercom systems at the doors.

[Sharon Hays]: They're not necessarily consistently used at every school to let someone in.

[Sharon Hays]: I know that some schools have a, such as the one I'm at, the Roberts, you know, there is a person sitting at a front desk.

[Sharon Hays]: I understand that the security cameras, but you know, the question we've gotten is, but by the time you let someone in, you know, that's, that, that doesn't help, you know?

[Sharon Hays]: So, so if you, if you're not questioning who's coming in and why, you know, that seems like a pretty basic safety thing that could be in place.

[Sharon Hays]: Questions about, you know, are, do we have a way of ensuring that,

[Sharon Hays]: Doors that go to the outside once the kids are in in the morning, are they locked?

[Sharon Hays]: I did notice somebody the other day at the Roberts again, going around and checking doors just to make sure they were locked.

[Sharon Hays]: Just are there actual protocols in place for ensuring that these things happen?

[Sharon Hays]: I think some of those for the community, some of those kind of basic things would be as much a sense of security as some of these higher level things that are important too, but just that idea of

[Sharon Hays]: What are some of the basic things at each school that are in place each day that ensure the kids are safe in their school, you know?

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, so my question has to do more with the original resolution that we passed asking for information about the NWA map really didn't talk about the scores.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I think that's interesting.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think parents do want to know that information.

[Sharon Hays]: And I know that we also have a newer resolution that next year to have regular meetings after each administration to go over the scores.

[Sharon Hays]: Our resolution that we passed had more to do with the implementation questions of it.

[Sharon Hays]: We had asked, especially since it was, I have the questions right in front of me that were part of the original resolution, that the idea of this assessment, or a large part of the assessment, was to give teachers information, as you said, to inform their instruction.

[Sharon Hays]: And so one of our questions, or several of our questions were looking at

[Sharon Hays]: getting some more information about how they were using the information specifically, how they were using the data that they got with some really specific examples at different grade levels so we could understand how teachers were using this.

[Sharon Hays]: Also wondering, I think one of the questions I hear was asking for the teachers' perceptions of the test, and did it seem to match their perceptions of their students' levels?

[Sharon Hays]: We really wanted to understand, or the idea was to understand the assessment itself, and how teachers were perceiving it, how families were perceiving it.

[Sharon Hays]: One question was, are special education teachers able to use the math results to inform their IEP goals and objectives?

[Sharon Hays]: are English language learners, are those teachers finding they can use the math results to inform their instruction?

[Sharon Hays]: And then we did ask, as Mr. Rousseau had just asked, the last question was, how long is it taking for students to complete the assessment at each grade level, and how are the students responding?

[Sharon Hays]: Because of course, we know the first go-round of this

[Sharon Hays]: We did get a lot of reports.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know, maybe a lot is too strong, but we were getting reports that some students were very upset by the test.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I'm feeling like this report, while it's got a lot of information, isn't necessarily matching the resolution questions that we had passed.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess if I can say, I think big picture, the purpose of this resolution was really to understand better

[Sharon Hays]: Is the investment in time and really, I guess, time for the students, time for the teachers, is it giving us the bang for the buck that we want?

[Sharon Hays]: Since the goal was to give teachers a better tool, a better assessment for informing their instruction, because MCAS has long been obsolete for that purpose.

[Sharon Hays]: We wanted to know, is the amount of money and time that's being spent on this, is it worth it?

[Sharon Hays]: I'm not feeling like the information I got in this particular presentation gives me enough detail to know that for sure.

[Sharon Hays]: And it's not that I don't trust you, but I really, we tried very hard in this resolution to be very specific about the questions you were asking so you would know what information we were looking for.

[Sharon Hays]: And I don't, I don't feel like we got it in this presentation is, you know, as well put together as this presentation was.

[Sharon Hays]: We did get the scores, but really the gist of this resolution wasn't about the scores and what are the scores showing us.

[Sharon Hays]: It was, how is the assessment working for the teachers?

[Sharon Hays]: Is it, you know, again, is there a lot of time being spent in this that's not necessarily translating to, you know, enough information for teachers to really make a difference in their teaching?

[Sharon Hays]: I didn't say that.

[Sharon Hays]: I just want to be clear that I'm not arguing against this assessment or arguing that the data doesn't show growth.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm simply saying that those were not the questions that I asked in this resolution, that we asked in this resolution.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I'm still feeling like the questions that I have, I still have them.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm still trying to understand how it's being used by teachers.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't want to keep belaboring this, but I do want to be clear that I'm not against assessments if they are truly useful and if we find that the value-added

[Sharon Hays]: evens out with the amount of time spent on it.

[Sharon Hays]: And so maybe we need to talk about this more another time in terms of what information would help the school committee understand that better.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to add that it's also at the elementary schools.

[Sharon Hays]: I had a question about, so what we got in our pack this week was the slides from the first two meetings, I found, especially tonight the slide that actually kept

[Sharon Hays]: put the priorities out by categories, because I think, I don't know, I might have some questions about some of the categories.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, I'm just curious, so obviously this is my first time going through the budget.

[Sharon Hays]: In terms of the timing and the process, as Member Graham was talking about,

[Sharon Hays]: when would be the opportunity to ask questions about some of those, some of the detailed priorities, things that might be in category C or D or, you know.

[Sharon Hays]: So, okay.

[Sharon Hays]: I do have, I mean, if we have a moment or if we want to, I don't remember Graham had something else.

[Sharon Hays]: If we could go back to look at some of the category D, I think it was category D and E. Can I ask a question while we're doing that?

[Sharon Hays]: So the question I had, and I've already asked this privately of a couple of administrators, and I don't know if it's on this slide, but I did have a question about the math interventionists.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm just trying, I guess.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: So it's in category D. Right.

[Sharon Hays]: So that might be different than what I remembered before.

[Sharon Hays]: I think it was, might've been a lower case.

[Sharon Hays]: So I did want to just bring that up as, you know.

[Sharon Hays]: It is.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess I just wanted to make that or to suggest from my point of view, or from thinking about the math interventionists, I'm concerned if we wait, you know, I think we have, we have at least two cohorts of kids who were not physically present in school at a time when the hands-on math foundations are built.

[Sharon Hays]: So those kids will now be going into third and fourth grade, second, third, fourth grade.

[Sharon Hays]: If we wait another couple of years and those foundations are still shaky, it doesn't matter what the math program is because the foundation is shaky.

[Sharon Hays]: Now, I don't know, we haven't talked a lot about what the math assessments may have shown.

[Sharon Hays]: Maybe I'm wrong in that assumption that kids don't have that foundation because they weren't in school at that time physically full time.

[Sharon Hays]: But that's, I just wanted to put that out there.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm just wondering about that turnaround time from the 10th.

[Sharon Hays]: No, I'm sorry, what are the dates?

[Sharon Hays]: Well, from the 10th that we give the evaluation and then the 17th for the new goals, I'm just curious.

[Sharon Hays]: It's a little tight.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Melanie, are you going to National Honor Society?

[Sharon Hays]: The teacher's just asking.

[Sharon Hays]: I think I am.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm trying to put information together here from, so we got sent a spreadsheet that had requests from principals and things like that, and I'm wondering how

[Sharon Hays]: how some of that information fits into these presentations.

[Sharon Hays]: There were some pretty specific things about math specialists and I forget what else, but just some of those things.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if I missed some things because I was having some computer issues or how do those pieces come in and do we talk about those?

[Sharon Hays]: So I didn't hear anything unless I missed it.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: I didn't hear anything about any of those supports.

[Sharon Hays]: So does that mean those have not been included in this budget?

[Sharon Hays]: There were, again, math coaches, math specialists.

[Sharon Hays]: I think there might've been some reading specialists.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, I apologize I actually had a question on the previous, I was just trying to I was trying to keep up with the school adjustment Councilors.

[Sharon Hays]: Did we talk about Andrews?

[Sharon Hays]: I know you talked about the Brooks and I didn't actually get what the increase from what to what that was when you went through the other schools.

[Sharon Hays]: I was wondering if you could go through that.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, and then the Brooks, can you just go back again?

[Sharon Hays]: I know you said you were adding one.

[Sharon Hays]: So what will that bring them from what to what?

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: So even compared... I mean, I know the McGlynn is actually the largest school in the district, correct, elementary-wise, so even comparatively...

[Sharon Hays]: Are they ending up with, I'm sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: Are they ending up with, so everyone's going to be bumped up basically to 2.0, it looks like.

[Sharon Hays]: The elementary.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you very much.

[Sharon Hays]: I just, I thought I, my understanding was that it was currently in the budget, the state budget to fund lunches through next year.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if anyone else has more information on that.

[Sharon Hays]: I thought, I thought that was kind of a done deal already, but it just, the budget isn't a done deal.

[Sharon Hays]: I just had a question about process since this is my first time.

[Sharon Hays]: As we digest all of this information, because there's a lot of detail, is there a chance to,

[Sharon Hays]: Not to prolong the process, but is there a chance to ask questions about some of the things tonight?

[Sharon Hays]: If we have more questions to ask later or to ask, I don't know, somebody outside of the meeting to ask.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I had one question on the, sorry, the bills.

[Sharon Hays]: I just, there was one- Mayor, sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: Just a quick question about them.

[Sharon Hays]: There's one that's missing, the vendor number and vendor name.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, I believe that was.

[Sharon Hays]: The amount is the $58,897.

[Sharon Hays]: It just didn't have a vendor name and a vendor number.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, this is a great list of, there's a lot of things to do this summer, it's wonderful.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm wondering if it's possible to go through and let us know, besides the one, the really cool sounding Starbase that you said was free, can you talk about which kind of the general, not specific cost, but which of these might be either free, it would be lovely, or low cost, versus ones like the Fells Camp is wonderful, but it actually is quite expensive.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm wondering which of these might be lower cost, if you know.

[Sharon Hays]: I just want to thank you for this.

[Sharon Hays]: I think it's helpful, especially the timing of this rate, given that we're coming up on budget season, and it's good to get this feedback of what teachers are letting you know they feel like they need, because that's important.

[Sharon Hays]: Obviously, it's critical for us to know that as we look at the budget.

[Sharon Hays]: That one quote that really stood out to you and stands out to me too, and I'm curious if you have any more details about what this teacher or support staff, I don't know who it was coming from, you said, we need more support, training, and grace.

[Sharon Hays]: Did they talk about areas where they felt they needed more support and training in specific, or was it more just a general?

[Sharon Hays]: Can you, if I can ask one more question, in terms of the ECRI professional development, what was it specifically about the format or the way that that professional development was done that

[Sharon Hays]: I think there was an earlier meeting, a little while back, where I think it was actually Dr. Cushing who commented that the people who came in to do that professional development at one point said, I think the way it was put, please correct me if I'm wrong, but that they were reluctant to come back again unless they could do the professional development the way they wanted to do it.

[Sharon Hays]: There was some statement about that and I'm curious what it was, what was.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, again, if you could give some details about what was so popular.

[Sharon Hays]: I actually have a few questions.

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, sorry.

[Sharon Hays]: I have a few questions.

[Sharon Hays]: So, the original intent of this resolution really was to try to tease out, especially given the pandemic, obviously,

[Sharon Hays]: kind of what we have in the schools to meet the needs of kids who come up during the time, you know, not kids who are already identified for it may have it on their IEP, some kind of counseling service.

[Sharon Hays]: But really, what do we have beyond that for kids who come up at any point?

[Sharon Hays]: Because we know, I'm sure that's already happened this year.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think, you know, based on what you read from the

[Sharon Hays]: experts out there, it's going to be a continuing, in fact, possibly a snowballing effect as this keeps going on, and as other things happen in the world.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm still trying to understand I think some of the, like, so the additional staff when we look at some of the additional staff that you went over.

[Sharon Hays]: Unless I'm misunderstanding, a lot of that staff is more focused on kids who have services on their IEPs.

[Sharon Hays]: Is that correct?

[Sharon Hays]: Like a behavior specialist.

[Sharon Hays]: Are they just available for any?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, they are.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: So I understand, I guess, that they would be available.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess the question I was trying to, again, one of the questions I was trying to tease out

[Sharon Hays]: how much of their time is available for that.

[Sharon Hays]: When you look at someone like a school psychologist, they're generally pretty tied up with testing in most places.

[Sharon Hays]: And the behavior specialist, I'm just not clear.

[Sharon Hays]: I guess I was trying to get some really specific details and maybe, I know it's constantly changing.

[Sharon Hays]: I do understand that.

[Sharon Hays]: But it's hard to know from a, you know, when we start looking at the budget, what more might we need?

[Sharon Hays]: Do you have some of the specific information, the more school-based information about

[Sharon Hays]: Again, we know that our, especially at our elementary level, we have different, very different demographics at different schools.

[Sharon Hays]: That's correct.

[Sharon Hays]: And it kind of looks like we have similar supports at each school.

[Sharon Hays]: And is that, you know, how is that working out?

[Sharon Hays]: Are there certain schools that might need more?

[Sharon Hays]: I was hoping to get a little more specific school as opposed to an average.

[Sharon Hays]: And I guess I'm also curious about at the elementary level, what does

[Sharon Hays]: average caseload referred to is that the adjustment Councilors average load is that average load across the schools of.

[Sharon Hays]: I wasn't quite sure what the average caseload referred to, given that there's a school there's social workers and their school psychologists.

[Sharon Hays]: I know this is all like second nature to you, but all these different positions.

[Sharon Hays]: Do you have a sense, or can you give us a general idea of the behavior specialists?

[Sharon Hays]: Because I saw in terms of new positions that were added at the elementary level that I think that really was it this year, was the new, and not that that's not a lot, but I mean, the behavior specialists were it.

[Sharon Hays]: There weren't new adjustment Councilors or social workers, that it really was just the behavior specialists.

[Sharon Hays]: And again, I don't mean just.

[Sharon Hays]: but how are they really providing a lot of direct counseling?

[Sharon Hays]: It wasn't clear to me.

[Sharon Hays]: So in terms of the in school kind of if they needed more than that, that would be the school social workers that would provide an ongoing that's right, and they might have in conjunction they may have more than one provider working with them based on their needs.

[Sharon Hays]: And how are they referred for those services?

[Sharon Hays]: Sorry, if other people are going on and on, but how are they- In a variety of ways.

[Sharon Hays]: I had a motion to replace the text for rule number 88.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know how to go about this.

[Sharon Hays]: This was a joint effort with member McLaughlin and member Rousseau on rule number 88 about creating a tracking system.

[Sharon Hays]: And they do have copies of the new, the proposed new text.

[Sharon Hays]: I have a proposal for a new text to replace the text that's already in the current rules.

[Sharon Hays]: I can read it, and I can provide a copy for everyone.

[Sharon Hays]: So the proposed new rule number 88, the original rule really focused on items that were sent to subcommittee.

[Sharon Hays]: So this broadens that a little bit to any or a lot to any action item that we propose.

[Sharon Hays]: It says the superintendent will maintain a tracking system to be made available to the public on the school committee page of the NPS website and containing the following information.

[Sharon Hays]: A, item number, B, date of meeting, C, date completed, D, when applicable, the respondent, superintendent or subcommittee, E, text of item, F, when applicable, date, if specified, response to be returned to the school committee, G, type of response requested,

[Sharon Hays]: for example, a verbal update, written report, or a presentation.

[Sharon Hays]: H, when applicable, subcommittee name.

[Sharon Hays]: I, when applicable, meeting date or dates of subcommittee where the item has been on the agenda.

[Sharon Hays]: J, one or more status information containing the following information.

[Sharon Hays]: One, date of status entry.

[Sharon Hays]: Two, status indicator.

[Sharon Hays]: Underneath that is one, pending action.

[Sharon Hays]: two in progress or three completed.

[Sharon Hays]: Also the beginning text

[Sharon Hays]: The current one, not the replacement text that we're looking at, says the superintendent will maintain a tracking system identifying the items sent to subcommittee containing the following information.

[Sharon Hays]: So the current one, again, broadens that, or takes out that specific, that it's only things sent to subcommittee.

[Sharon Hays]: It's any action item that we would present.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, there are some items that we request or actions we request that don't necessarily get sent to subcommittee.

[Sharon Hays]: So for example, I actually had a parent ask me today about an item from early in the year, actually more like September before I was even on committee, about getting left-handed desks for the classrooms.

[Sharon Hays]: That didn't get sent to subcommittee,

[Sharon Hays]: but it was an action item in the sense that we were expecting an action to happen, the left-handed desks.

[Sharon Hays]: So following up on that, this would allow for, this would create a way for that to be able to be followed up and also for the community to be able to see how things get followed up on.

[Sharon Hays]: It does, yes, with the intent of making it more transparent for the community to be able to see how we follow up on things and what the resolution has been.

[Sharon Hays]: Because there is a sense in the community that there are things requested that they don't ever hear the resolution to.

[Sharon Hays]: I think, so there was also the original this is this is not extremely different from the original rule that we already, I think, discussed.

[Sharon Hays]: I think part of the question is having a having a tracker that's more user friendly for people to be able to see you know what

[Sharon Hays]: what we've asked for, how we get, again, I feel like I'm being redundant, but I think it's an accountability measure too.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that's the one you're talking about is probably, like you said, it's not necessarily what this is referring to in the sense that yours is more of a, was meant to be more of an internal tracking.

[Sharon Hays]: And we're trying to look for a way, I believe, to make things clearer for everyone and to hold us all accountable, not just

[Sharon Hays]: the administration, but I think, you know, we share the school committee members share some responsibility in this and making sure that we're clear when we're asking for something, something to be done or resolution for a new process, whatever it is that we're clear about what response we're expecting when we're hoping to get that response.

[Sharon Hays]: And then we follow up on it at a meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: So everyone knows that it has been

[Sharon Hays]: followed through on.

[Sharon Hays]: I apologize, yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays?

[Sharon Hays]: So I think in terms of the aggregated data, I think what we've been hearing from the administration is that this first year of implementation, especially immediately post-COVID, that that data may not be

[Sharon Hays]: fully accurate or useful at this point in some ways.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm sure the teachers, I guess my understanding when it was presented to, and this predated me too, but that the hope for the NWEA map was to really provide data that teachers could use to inform their instruction rather than just broad data like the MCAS might give us.

[Sharon Hays]: Now there is some broad data that I'm sure over time would be used too.

[Sharon Hays]: But I guess my thought was more looking at, at this moment, is it really serving to inform instruction, especially because we are getting questions about the time that it takes versus its usefulness.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think that it can be hard to, on the one hand, explain to parents

[Sharon Hays]: that this one test doesn't decide your child's whole future, but it does provide information that teachers can use.

[Sharon Hays]: And I wanted to get, as the phrase goes, drill down into that a little bit, because I thought that was the main purpose really of the map.

[Sharon Hays]: In terms of the part that I wasn't really clear what you were suggesting in terms of the part for the parents, I definitely think it would be good to have

[Sharon Hays]: something, as you said, that parents can look back to.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes, my question about that would be if we don't do it as part of a school committee meeting, would we have the opportunity to ask questions if we need clarification or want to have a better understanding of how it's being utilized?

[Sharon Hays]: I think that's a fine idea.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know that there's any questions in here that I don't think that would also be appropriate for us to have the opportunity to hear as part of a school committee meeting, though I'm not quite sure which questions member Graham is referring to that would be part of the video as opposed to the school committee meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm not sure, I'm confused, are we still going?

[Sharon Hays]: It's fine, it's fine, I'm fine, just vote.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I certainly don't want to make anyone's days longer.

[Sharon Hays]: My only concern is that, and I don't remember historically, even though I attended most of the meetings,

[Sharon Hays]: how if most of the meetings do go very long, but at some point, if we keep backloading meetings with the previous week's unfinished agenda items, we're not going to make it through all of our agenda items.

[Sharon Hays]: And I don't, again, I think I've said this a lot, but I don't know where the balance is, but I'm a little concerned that if we cut it off too early,

[Sharon Hays]: that on those days where we have a lot of agenda items, they're just gonna keep getting pushed.

[Sharon Hays]: I thought the purpose of this particular rule was really just to say, that's the outside time we will go to.

[Sharon Hays]: Not that generally we expect our hope meetings to go that long, but that this would just be the very latest we would ever go.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'd be curious to hear what other people have to say.

[Sharon Hays]: I am concerned about pushing items off too much.

[Sharon Hays]: So I just feel like we had a pretty lengthy discussion about the six versus 630 start time last time.

[Sharon Hays]: And if we're going to keep revisiting these, it's going to make this meeting really lengthy, but

[Sharon Hays]: We did have a discussion about how the six o'clock time is much harder for community members who want to watch, because that's a time when either they're just getting home from work, a lot of people, or busy getting dinner ready, whatever.

[Sharon Hays]: And so we had a long discussion about keeping it at 6.30 because of that very reason.

[Sharon Hays]: So I would vote to stay with that, but I guess we'll take a vote on the motion.

[Sharon Hays]: So I don't know how to do that.

[Sharon Hays]: You suggested severing the motions.

[Sharon Hays]: I'd like to sever.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, I was just curious, because when I read the, when we got this packet and I read about it, it sounded like it was brand new, but yet it sounds like maybe it's been around for a while and there are a lot of districts doing it.

[Sharon Hays]: Can you give just a quick, I don't want to take too much time, but just how long has this integrated pathway existed in Massachusetts anyway?

[Sharon Hays]: like you said, apparently is around the world.

[Sharon Hays]: And what districts, or not what, but how many districts are doing it?

[Sharon Hays]: Like, can we get some support from other districts in understanding how to implement it?

[Sharon Hays]: That's right.

[Sharon Hays]: You might have already answered it just in the course of it was just a general sense of how long has this

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Just one quick comment and one quick question.

[Sharon Hays]: One, I think all of the programs sounded wonderful.

[Sharon Hays]: I love, especially that we're finding a way to get kids to understand and know about the voc tech, like that's wonderful to have them going into some of those programs.

[Sharon Hays]: I can remember doing that as a kid myself, and it was fun to be able to do that, and it's a good way to just make that more known in the community.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm also wondering about

[Sharon Hays]: summer, if you're thinking about doing this for the summer.

[Sharon Hays]: And I know, I'm sure as parents yourself, you know, like summer camps are filling up now, parents are needing to commit now.

[Sharon Hays]: So if there's any way to give people a heads up of whether you think you're going to be doing it, when you think it might be, I mean, I know that's difficult.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm not trying to put any pressure, but as you know, people are committing now and it makes it hard to hold out if we don't know for sure.

[Sharon Hays]: Excuse me.

[Sharon Hays]: Just to make sure that people understand, because there's a lot of terminology, diagnostic testing, can we go over exactly what will be in place after the pool testing is done this week so people fully understand the different

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I know I've had several questions from people in the community about for families that may have someone living with them who is high risk for any number of reasons, immunocompromised or older or too young to have the vaccine.

[Sharon Hays]: And I think I already asked this personally of Avery Hines.

[Sharon Hays]: I just want to make sure that everyone gets to hear it.

[Sharon Hays]: Is there a way or how can families

[Sharon Hays]: Since we're not doing contact tracing if they need to know if they if they really have a reason to need to know if there's someone in the classes test positive because they they want to have that information in terms of the person at home that's at risk, how can they or can they is there a way for them to go about.

[Sharon Hays]: talking.

[Sharon Hays]: I think what nurse Hines had said was to have them talk to the school nurse.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to make sure that kind of got out in a public forum.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to clarify, because I thought your question had more to do with, if there's more than 16 kids identified that need the support,

[Sharon Hays]: will you only go with the lowest, you know, 16, or is there an opportunity to expand to two groups at a grade level?

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: A couple of

[Sharon Hays]: hopefully quick questions.

[Sharon Hays]: One is, I feel like I remember this being discussed at a meeting, but I think it predated me, talk about a sliding scale to increase the revenue from those who maybe could afford a little bit more while still keeping it affordable for others.

[Sharon Hays]: I feel like that's been discussed.

[Sharon Hays]: Maybe there was a reason why it was dismissed.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know.

[Sharon Hays]: And then I'll ask my other question into the boat,

[Sharon Hays]: Given that we were just talking about how limited it is really difficult to find after school care.

[Sharon Hays]: Before school, I'm sure I know from experience after school care is very difficult to find, and given that especially it's hard to find anything affordable.

[Sharon Hays]: Can we talk about or has there been talk about making sure that there are seats, some seats available?

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know at this point.

[Sharon Hays]: I think you spoke earlier, but I'm not sure we talked about numbers of how many actual

[Sharon Hays]: students that are from low income or economically disadvantaged families, and how are we making sure that not only it's affordable for them, but there are seats available for them, because it's going to be that much harder for them to find accessible, affordable child care than for some of the members of the community.

[Sharon Hays]: Is there some way we can get more detailed information about what you're looking at?

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if that's even appropriate.

[Sharon Hays]: has there been consideration from the other end, looking at the data of how many people could afford more so that maybe this modest, very modest increase could be more of an increase to people who could afford more?

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, yes, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I was curious about some of the classroom programs for social-emotional learning and wondering what kind of ongoing support there is for teachers as they try to implement some of these after the initial professional development.

[Sharon Hays]: Is that built in, or does the teacher have to come and ask for that if they want it?

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't have much to add.

[Sharon Hays]: I do appreciate that member McLaughlin brought this and asked me to

[Sharon Hays]: sponsor it with her.

[Sharon Hays]: I think it's, as a new member, this would be great to have, certainly when you're first starting, because information is coming at me from different places.

[Sharon Hays]: It would be nice to have it all coming at the same time from the same place.

[Sharon Hays]: Also, I think it's just kind of a nice way to start the year off as a group, as a team, if we're all starting off with the same orientations at the same time and

[Sharon Hays]: kind of have an opportunity to discuss them together and go over them together.

[Sharon Hays]: I think it'd be a nice way to start the year.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm just wondering why we wouldn't want to post it in as many places as possible, unless it's just really too difficult to get it to the library, now that we've got a wonderful new community library that everyone, a lot of people are going to, why wouldn't we take the advantage of having a place where other people might see it who might not necessarily access it online?

[Sharon Hays]: Just briefly, I had the same question about that.

[Sharon Hays]: I was concerned about, as someone who came to a lot of meetings,

[Sharon Hays]: There were times where I didn't know ahead of time that there might be something I want to talk about and then it would come up at the meeting and I'd want to ask a question or offer a comment.

[Sharon Hays]: And I do understand the intent behind it of trying to streamline and make the meetings more effective.

[Sharon Hays]: And I don't personally know where the balance is at this point between making them more effective and streamlined and also allowing for public access, but that did concern me.

[Sharon Hays]: I think that could be difficult also in terms of for the superintendent, if she was getting a bunch of

[Sharon Hays]: requests from people, and what would the timeline be on that?

[Sharon Hays]: I think there's a lot of details that could be difficult to follow through on.

[Sharon Hays]: So that was my thought.

[Sharon Hays]: Possibly.

[Sharon Hays]: I apologize, I lost track.

[Sharon Hays]: Can you tell me the motion again?

[Sharon Hays]: Motion is to take table number 67,

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, no.

[Sharon Hays]: Miss, um, member Hays.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi.

[Sharon Hays]: Um, I have a question.

[Sharon Hays]: If you could go back, I don't know if you can go back to the chart.

[Sharon Hays]: So on the week of 2-7 where it says PCR pool testing and contact tracing for high need students.

[Sharon Hays]: Is the PCR testing only for high need students?

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: Can I have a couple other questions unless someone else

[Sharon Hays]: I wanted to ask about the infographic that went out, which I thought it was great that it went out so quickly that that information just in a really clear simplified.

[Sharon Hays]: That was wonderful and helpful.

[Sharon Hays]: I did want to ask about one possible clarification on that, if there's possibility of tweaking it.

[Sharon Hays]: I didn't think it was particularly clear when day one since the since really day zero is supposed to be the day when you first find you have symptoms or test positive.

[Sharon Hays]: And then from there you start counting one.

[Sharon Hays]: With that in mind, I wanted to ask again about the communication going home in the backpack that we've talked about a few times.

[Sharon Hays]: if we can get again because there's so many changes that are happening that to get that home because not everyone always accesses the information that comes either through email or on the school website and we talked about that and I was hoping that maybe that's going to happen soon especially because then we can get make sure it all gets out translated and

[Sharon Hays]: everyone gets it.

[Sharon Hays]: Going back to the original reason we were looking to start the budget process earlier, looking to be able to hire or have a wider pool of candidates to hire from.

[Sharon Hays]: As a teacher, I know when I would look for jobs, I would start looking probably even in early March.

[Sharon Hays]: And there were lots of towns that were listing 2030 anticipated openings.

[Sharon Hays]: Is there any reason we couldn't do that, that we at least start

[Sharon Hays]: getting a pool of candidates we know are interested?

[Sharon Hays]: Maybe I'm unaware, has that been done before?

[Sharon Hays]: Have I just not been aware of it?

[Sharon Hays]: Oh, it wasn't, okay.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: So

[Sharon Hays]: You know, as the resolution states, we know from many of the experts in the field of pediatric mental health and pediatric psychiatry that there is a significant mental health crisis.

[Sharon Hays]: And we've talked about this at meetings before.

[Sharon Hays]: And so this was really an effort as we move into the budget season.

[Sharon Hays]: to make sure that we're kind of all starting on the same page as to what the supports are that we already have at Bedford public schools.

[Sharon Hays]: Some of the titles I think are, you know, we started to talk about it at one meeting I think prior to before I joined.

[Sharon Hays]: and understanding what the titles are and where the direct services to students come from, and how they're accessing those services, how many of them are accessing them, just so that we can begin to have, or have a more in-depth conversation about what our needs are.

[Sharon Hays]: So that was the purpose of this resolution.

[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, so the reason behind that was I know that as a former special ed teacher myself, I know that students who have it on their service grid are going to get it no matter what.

[Sharon Hays]: So this question was, do we have enough really supports to cover students who don't necessarily have that legal obligation of having it on their IEP grid?

[Sharon Hays]: Here.

[Sharon Hays]: Here.

[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays?

[Sharon Hays]: Hi.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: I want to reiterate what everyone else has said, and thank you all for the work you're doing.

[Sharon Hays]: This is a really tough time.

[Sharon Hays]: And I've seen Avery Hines on updating the tracker late at night when I've been checking the tracker.

[Sharon Hays]: So I know the hours you're putting in, and they're incredible.

[Sharon Hays]: And the school nurses have been wonderful.

[Sharon Hays]: My question is about communication.

[Sharon Hays]: I know the last meeting there was discussion again of written communication going home rather than just the website and the email.

[Sharon Hays]: You know, I think we're at a point given the incredible surge we're in and that we're changing a lot of our procedures that putting some written communication home in backpacks, in folders, I think now is a time to do that.

[Sharon Hays]: I know we've been holding off on that with the belief that we could be over

[Sharon Hays]: over inundating people with information and they might overlook it or ignore it or just feel overwhelmed.

[Sharon Hays]: But at this point, I think as much communication as we can get to people as possible, even this, I know it would have to be updated because it's already out of date, but the written for tonight that you put together Ms.

[Sharon Hays]: Hines, something like that with the updated procedures and

[Sharon Hays]: especially because we really do want to get people vaccinated.

[Sharon Hays]: As Mr. Murphy said, that's the key now.

[Sharon Hays]: So making sure people know about the vaccination clinics, know how to register, I think every way possible that we can get the communication out as necessary.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: One last question, just can you give an update on the possibility of, it was discussed last time, the in-school, school day vaccinations for those who might not be able to access the high school, afterschool?

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon hey 69 Ripley road.

[Sharon Hays]: I had a question about the protocols earlier that discussed about for students who are symptomatic, and are either kept home by their parents or sent home.

[Sharon Hays]: I had a case.

[Sharon Hays]: week before last where I kept my second grader home because he had the sniffles and runny nose and cough, typical cold symptoms.

[Sharon Hays]: But it wasn't clear to me what I needed to do at that point.

[Sharon Hays]: I did end up calling the school nurse and we did go and get a COVID test, went to the pediatrician and talked to the pediatrician, had the COVID test and it was negative.

[Sharon Hays]: But if I'm understanding correctly, what was said tonight was that you need to talk to the pediatrician, have the COVID test,

[Sharon Hays]: and be symptom free for at least 24 hours.

[Sharon Hays]: which that was not communicated to me, but I also, I think in terms of talking about that, or if you guys talk about, I mean, K through two or even three, you're going to have kids with runny nose and cough that lasts for lots more than 24 hours.

[Sharon Hays]: So, you know, that's going to be a lot of disruption for kids if that's going to be the standard.

[Sharon Hays]: And I understand it, but I think it's also something that should maybe be discussed more because that's going to be, could be difficult.

[Sharon Hays]: But also the protocol like I said for letting parents know I I sent I ended up emailing the results into my school nurse but that wasn't necessarily communicated to me that I needed to do I just figured they probably would want to know so.

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road, and thank you, you did read my email earlier, so I won't talk a lot, I just,

[Sharon Hays]: would just like to express and I don't know for how many I can't know how many other parents I speak for but as a person who chose a family who chose full remote out of a lot of concerns for the health of our children no no specific medical needs but and we continue to feel that way so we will stay full remote.

[Sharon Hays]: I am

[Sharon Hays]: My kids are struggling and I will be clear and honest about that.

[Sharon Hays]: They are really, really, really struggling.

[Sharon Hays]: And when we talk about equity, know that not everyone you look at may look like they're struggling.

[Sharon Hays]: But there are lots of people who are struggling.

[Sharon Hays]: And when you talk about, well, the numbers may play out that we need to pull a teacher, we can't guarantee that.

[Sharon Hays]: I totally understand the competing needs that you have to deal with.

[Sharon Hays]: But the number of things that have changed over the course of the year for my kids in their classroom,

[Sharon Hays]: I'm at a point where I've really lost trust and faith in the leaders of the school and whether they really apply their equity lens to everybody.

[Sharon Hays]: Because to change their teachers potentially, change their classrooms, I understand you're saying it would only be in a crisis situation or an emergency or whatever.

[Sharon Hays]: I feel like we've had a number of those where that's been said and oops, that's what happened.

[Sharon Hays]: Two months out of the school year, I don't know what we'll do at that point.

[Sharon Hays]: And my, you know, again, my faith and trust right now is not very strong in how you guys are making the decisions for our kids.

[Sharon Hays]: So I get it.

[Sharon Hays]: I get there's multiple things you're doing and it's a hard, I can't even imagine trying to do it, but we're struggling and this just makes it harder.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi.

[Sharon Hays]: I was wondering, could you explain what the ECRI is as an elementary school parent?

[Sharon Hays]: I'm getting to see, of course, all the different materials and things that my first grader and third grader are using, and I'm not sure I know or would be able to recognize what kinds of materials might be related to that.

[Sharon Hays]: Could you describe that just a little bit?

[Sharon Hays]: Thanks.

[Sharon Hays]: So, um, maybe you're going to get into this later so feel free to say that if that's the case.

[Sharon Hays]: One of the things that that particularly strikes me as I look at both of both of my sons learning to read and they are both, you know, fine readers they certainly don't have any issues.

[Sharon Hays]: But I look at the, the sequence that journeys and I believe that I've been a part of some of these meetings before I brought this up the sequence in which the phonics is taught, and you know that the various.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, all different part, syllables, I don't really get into the syllable types.

[Sharon Hays]: It doesn't really get much into syllable division.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, all of these things that even my first grader could be using right now.

[Sharon Hays]: And my third grader really isn't even being taught those.

[Sharon Hays]: And that's a huge, huge gap in our reading.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I'm wondering what's kind of what the plan is for that.

[Sharon Hays]: I know at some point there had been discussion of some of the teachers were going to go do an Orton Gillingham

[Sharon Hays]: course, I think it was a free course.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know what happened with that or if I'm remembering that wrong.

[Sharon Hays]: But even I was thinking to myself, even if they got that, it does not match at all with what's being taught through the journeys.

[Sharon Hays]: The journeys program really is not at all good.

[Sharon Hays]: with that piece.

[Sharon Hays]: And I know we were trying to, it feels like we're building in all these other little chunks here and there, but it doesn't feel like a cohesive whole to me.

[Sharon Hays]: And I'm wondering how that's going to be addressed.

[Sharon Hays]: I mean, the Lexia is great, but the kids go on it and play.

[Sharon Hays]: And I have yet to see that kind of brought back into the classroom in terms of being followed through with in the classroom.

[Sharon Hays]: So that's, that is.

[Sharon Hays]: But that's my main concern.

[Sharon Hays]: I see a real lack of word attack skills on my kids' part when they come to any kind of a multi-syllable word in a book.

[Sharon Hays]: Unless I've taught them myself with my own Wilson materials at home, they don't know.

[Sharon Hays]: Nope, nope, go ahead.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay.

[Sharon Hays]: But just, can I just quickly say, I understand of delving deeper.

[Sharon Hays]: The problem though, is that the journeys isn't getting to that.

[Sharon Hays]: So the teachers can't delve in deeper into something that's not being taught in journeys.

[Sharon Hays]: If the point of the ECRI is to delve deeper into what they're already teaching,

[Sharon Hays]: I looked through the scope and sequence of the journeys program, and they don't even begin to touch on syllables and things until third grade.

[Sharon Hays]: And I mean, I know this is an off year, so I'll third grade until they do it.

[Sharon Hays]: But they haven't touched on it with my son yet in third grade either.

[Sharon Hays]: So teachers can't delve into something that's deeper and something that's not being taught at all.

[Sharon Hays]: Okay, and is there going to be material, I guess, so I'm sorry, I won't keep going because you may be getting into this, but I mean, I look at the journeys program, how can they use the journeys program and delve deeper into things that aren't even touched in the journeys program, they would need additional materials, additional books, a lot of additional stuff to supplement if they're going to be teaching things that the journeys program doesn't even touch on.

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon, can you unmute?

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, yes.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm curious, and I'll try to be quicker this time.

[Sharon Hays]: So, I mean, I know that Telfer Literacy and Crafting Minds are both fantastic, fantastic resources.

[Sharon Hays]: I also know they're very strong in systematic, explicit phonics instruction in terms of their belief in that and promotion of that.

[Sharon Hays]: I'm curious as we talk about looking for new programs, are we talking once again about a program similar to journeys in terms of a full box set, supposedly having everything included, or are we looking at a more, you know,

[Sharon Hays]: an additional, something like a foundation, some kind of additional explicit phonics?

[Sharon Hays]: And are we getting recommendations from KILL and Crafting Minds, since they would definitely be good resources in that direction?

[Sharon Hays]: Yes.

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road.

[Sharon Hays]: I had a question about one specific thing that was mentioned.

[Sharon Hays]: The replacement for the response to intervention, that was really a huge rollout, I remember.

[Sharon Hays]: At least, was it last year or the year before?

[Sharon Hays]: And I know I was specifically very interested in it because as an educator myself, I've been involved in response and intervention

[Sharon Hays]: in other cities and towns and it's a really good process for identifying students who need extra support and then making sure you follow up in a set amount of time to see if they need to go further, if they need more support, if they need to be tested for special education.

[Sharon Hays]: So I'm a little concerned to hear that that's being dropped or being morphed into something else.

[Sharon Hays]: Well, I guess I'm wondering, is there going to be a description of what that is?

[Sharon Hays]: Because I've never heard of this new one.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if it's specific to Medford or not.

[Sharon Hays]: But like I said, I know the response to intervention.

[Sharon Hays]: I know it works well.

[Sharon Hays]: So personally, I'm a little concerned to hear it's being changed.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: Sharon, you can come on up.

[Sharon Hays]: And this is probably more, maybe it's going to be discussed at another meeting in more depth.

[Sharon Hays]: I just know that there were a lot of questions and issues with how to even implement the RTI piece of it, in terms of having staffing to do all of the pieces of it, in terms of going into the classrooms, doing observations, and then providing whatever supports were needed.

[Sharon Hays]: Again, I'm just curious now that it's going to be even a broader process or include more types of interventions or more types of needs, how that's going to be implemented, given that my understanding was RTI has not even been completely implemented yet, the academic piece of it.

[Sharon Hays]: So that's...

[Sharon Hays]: Kind of what I'm wondering.

[Sharon Hays]: I don't know if there's going to be another meeting to talk about it in more depth.

[Sharon Hays]: We did.

[Sharon Hays]: Good evening.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi.

[Sharon Hays]: Hi, my name is Sharon Hayes.

[Sharon Hays]: I am a parent of one, soon to be two, students at the Roberts School, and I am here tonight to re-ask some questions that I've had about our performance on the 2018 MCAS, especially the third, fourth, and fifth grade English Language Arts Assessment.

[Sharon Hays]: In October, I attended the Committee of the Whole meeting during which the 2018 MCAS results were presented.

[Sharon Hays]: At that time, I spoke of my concern that although the scores and progress were presented in a very positive light, my interpretation as a parent and an educator was that the scores on the ELA test were disappointing.

[Sharon Hays]: It was indicated that a more in-depth analysis of the MCAS results would be presented at a future school committee meeting.

[Sharon Hays]: And in January, I sent an email to describe my concerns in further detail.

[Sharon Hays]: The follow-up meeting was then held on March 18th.

[Sharon Hays]: At that meeting, however, I was disappointed to find that many of my questions were still not addressed.

[Sharon Hays]: And so I followed up with another, more detailed email on April 2nd.

[Sharon Hays]: I will briefly summarize some of my concerns and questions from the email, focusing on the elementary ELA MCAS results.

[Sharon Hays]: First, the March 18th meeting was described as a more in-depth analysis of the test scores.

[Sharon Hays]: And a great deal of information was presented, but the analysis continued to be focused mainly on the average score of the district at each grade level, which obscures the fact that there are significant differences between the elementary schools and among some of the subgroups.

[Sharon Hays]: Second, there was little to no discussion of the significant demographic differences between the student populations of the four elementary schools, differences that research has shown to have considerable impacts on academic performance.

[Sharon Hays]: The Brooks School's demographics are significantly different from the other three schools across four subgroup categories.

[Sharon Hays]: Brooks has significantly lower percentage of economically disadvantaged students, of high-needs students, of students who are English language learners, and of students for whom English is not their first language.

[Sharon Hays]: So one of my questions is, how are these differences being addressed?

[Sharon Hays]: Third, across all three grade levels and all three test years shown on the Department of Ed website, despite changes in test design and administration,

[Sharon Hays]: Brooks outperforms the three other elementary schools, often by a large margin.

[Sharon Hays]: Overall, students at the Brooks also make more progress from one grade level to the next.

[Sharon Hays]: So another question I have is, have any staffing, resources, materials, or programmatic changes been considered based on this data?

[Sharon Hays]: Fourth, the data suggests that there are grade levels at individual schools in which fewer than half

[Sharon Hays]: and in some cases even fewer than a third of the students are reading at grade level expectations.

[Sharon Hays]: This is very concerning not only for the students who are struggling to read, but also for the other students in those classrooms because the teachers will have to alter the pace and delivery of what they teach in order to meet the needs of the class.

[Sharon Hays]: How is this being addressed?

[Sharon Hays]: Finally, the ELA MCAS anchors standard analysis data that was provided at the March 18th meeting

[Sharon Hays]: clearly suggested that the writing standard is the area of greatest need in K-8.

[Sharon Hays]: How is this being addressed?

[Sharon Hays]: Has Medford adopted a specific writing program for K-8 or even K-5?

[Sharon Hays]: These are some of the most urgent questions that I felt I asked in my email and I hope to receive a response or to hear about just kind of what your thoughts are about some of these issues and whether there are other assessments we have in the system that might refute some of these results.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.

[Sharon Hays]: So I just want to make clear, I was not in any way suggesting that it had to do with teaching, the quality of teaching at any school.

[Sharon Hays]: In fact, one statistic that you stated is more my concern, that we know that research says that economics, the economically disadvantaged are the ones who struggle the most in school, that has the greatest impact.

[Sharon Hays]: We also know that that number of students in this district is not

[Sharon Hays]: disproportionately at certain schools.

[Sharon Hays]: And so those schools are going to have a more difficult time and may not do as well in the MCAS.

[Sharon Hays]: So that was my question, was more looking at the demographics, not in any way suggesting that the teaching quality was different at different schools.

[Sharon Hays]: And it's not my intention to pit schools against each other.

[Sharon Hays]: But the demographics are what they are.

[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.