April 8, 2026 – School Committee – Video & Transcript
April 8, 2026 - School Committee
Welcome to the Whalen School Committee meeting, April 8, 2026.
It is 6.07 p.m.
We have all of our school committee members and our administrative team here in person.
And we are being recorded by WICAN.
We have a special matter on the agenda first tonight. All right, bear with me. I'm just getting my phone a little bit.
David, are you or Kirstine presenting on a fiscal year 27 for the budget hearing?
I'm sorry, if there's nobody here, do you want to do it anyway? We have to. A little bit about our budget. This was a budget where our goal was to maintain services. And just a broader context is that it's getting challenging out there. You know, as we read about some of our peer districts and what's going on in terms of... And the challenge for everybody right now is how do you maintain your level of services? And we are able to do that next year, which we're really fortunate to do. And, you know, we've been talking... During the budget, we talked about the fact that it is kind of one more year. This is our last year, given that Wayland's getting so close to the tax levy, that next year we will need additional revenue in order to maintain our services. So, that's where we are. And the big idea really is about maintaining our services. We have all the information we need in terms of health insurance. Of course, the state budget is not finalized. They're working on that right now. But we're hopeful we may even get a little more revenue. That's possible. I don't think we will get less. The state is in a really challenging spot right now because of the Medicaid situation, which is really challenging. For state governments, the number one expenditure is always health insurance. And number two is education. But with the federal changes in Medicaid, it's really, really hard right now. But we are going to be okay for next year in terms of achieving our goals and our staffing. We've had minor shifting in enrollment. But overall, our enrollment is pretty stable, as we shared during the budget presentation. So, that's really where we are. Anything to add, Kirsten, in terms of context for our budget? I think you covered all the continued pressures of the facilities, maintaining buildings, out of district tuition that we're really trying to keep a close eye on. And I would say health insurance, you know, when you read about where are the areas that districts are really facing the pressure, health insurance is one. And our health insurance number was pretty much on budget. Brian, obviously, Kevin, does our health insurance budget. It was pretty much close to where we ended up. We didn't get a huge savings because we have some more plans being used. But it was roughly kind of where we are in terms of the, it was 12, he budgeted well. Percent. Percent. Yeah. So, we're about on target of where we should be. And obviously, you know, Kirsten gave the budget update last week in terms of where we are. You know, maintenance continues to be a pressure point because of just our buildings are older. But we are going to end up okay this year in terms of being balanced. It's looking good with not a lot left over. You'll recall last year was $4,000? Mm-hmm. I'm an optimist, so it will be more than that. But it's still, you know, we budget tightly because we want to get all our programs and everything in.
Anybody have anything? So far, and the percentage increase, you know, was 4.5 and that, if that got lowered actually at the end, it was about 4.48. It was initially 4.98 and lower as we reduced a little bit later in the budget process, just with some changing and additional retirement and some other staffing issues. Right, so that dropped our overall personnel number, right? Yes. And, just trying to remember from the, the vocational ed was reduced.
Vocational, well, you're talking about the town side. The town budget is going to be going up for vocational education. Because it said that we reduced it overall by over $22,000, and then that the school budget came down about $145,000, right? That was the personnel piece, yes. Mm-hmm. Is that the only thing that factored into that? Yes.
And that was? That was a reduction from the initial budget proposal. But it's just one personnel change? Yes. Right? Yeah. Okay. Based on enrollment, we ended up reducing a position, based on just our kindergarten projections.
And just to put that in perspective, so one employee is an overall reduction in approximately $145,000. It was a piece of another employee, but overall, I think it was overall one with salary and benefits was pretty close. So is that, that was going to be my question, is that straight up salary, or does that include the benefits for that individual as well? Well, on our side, it's just the salary. That's what I thought. Yes. Because the benefits is all covered on the, and this is part of like that reserve hold that, you know, was the variance that we had that's part of the second Warren article of the town meeting. So that, that number just came down. So it's all in the personnel line item that that reduction is recognized. Anybody have anything they want to discuss? Mention? Et cetera? Et cetera. Our thanks to all involved in the budget process.
Okay. Agreed. Yeah. I mean, I think it was not easy, but given where some of our peer districts are, I think for next year, we're, we're fortunate. It's tough out there. If nobody has anything else, I'm going to close the budget hearing. Yay. We will close the budget hearing. 6.16 p.m.
Okay. Is anyone here for public comment? No.
Okay. With that, we can roll right on to superintendent's update. First on the list is Children's Way transition update.
We have a couple of. Okay. Oh, thanks. So, um, just a little bit of context. At our, um, as you, you all have been a part of our facilities planning presentations, and one thing we've talked about in our facilities planning presentations is the idea of having pre-K in elementary schools, and, um, it's something, um, Kate, you were at our visioning session where we heard from the TCW teachers that they would love to be part of an elementary school. That came up at our, our visioning session, and this is something that, um, we thought we were doing in the future, but given the enrollment reduction at Happy Hollow, it's something we're doing earlier than, than projected. It's certainly something we've thought about and certainly talked to the team there about. Um, just a little background. Many, many districts, larger districts sometimes have their own preschool, and some districts have preschool and elementary school. There are some districts also that spread the preschool classrooms around, so they have multiple classrooms in a district. Um, the advantage, there are certainly advantages of having a preschool all in one location in terms of collaboration, support, related services, um, all of the above. So, that's where we are right now, and then, um, we have a couple of slides that Ronnie and I will go through, um, as I said earlier, um, we have some space and, um, it allows TCW to be part of a larger school community, um, and all the benefits of being part of a larger school community in terms of programming, um, collaboration, um, on the staff side with special education teachers. We can actually go through some of the, um, advantages and benefits, um, mental health support, psychologists and social worker, um, the potential for art, music, and PE, uh, obviously math coach, literacy team, as we think about ELA and math, um, the special education team at the school, participating in professional development with them, um, just vertical alignment as we think about curriculum and instruction, make, we're really a pre-K to 12 district, um, it also retains FTEs at Happy Hollow. As we think about schools getting smaller, oftentimes staff members become not full-time, and, and to maintain full-time folks at Happy Hollow, and lastly, um, base hours, right? You talked to, uh, Yeah, base right now on Wednesday, then, to 45, it's going to extend to be 445, um, for the children's, right? And that's because they'll be able to leverage the same folks that are there for Happy Hollow, or, uh, K through five kids. Well, because Wednesdays, it's a, it's always been shorter on Wednesdays because they end at 11, um, so it's just a long base time, but now that they're there, um, Curtis and I are going to extend their hours, which will be helpful. So the kids won't go to school any later, but they can attend base longer. Yeah, for, you know, parents who need it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And do you want to take next steps? Sure. Um, Um, so we've already spoken with, um, the Happy Hollow, Nicolette, um, the principal spoke with the Happy Hollow staff. David and I spoke with the preschool staff. They've already had visits and meetings and well on our way of, um, planning next steps. Um, you know, we are scheduling a meeting, um, like a meet and greet in May for the preschool families to meet Nicolette, um, the principal of Happy Hollow, um, and, um, eventually, like, and then set up a time for tours to see the spaces. Um, some teachers are moving at Happy Hollow, but they're, you can see where the spaces are. We've already started talking about logistics and drop-off and pickup and parking. Very much aware that those are logistics that we are, um, very much aware of, and Nicolette is well on top of these things and, um, advocating. And then the playground, that's our big, that's a, you know, we know we need a fenced-in playground accessible to, um, our preschoolers, and that's our big, you know, um, kind of, like, top of our, our list. Um, but, um, we've, I think we've, we've, we haven't solved everything, but we've thought of everything, and we're in the process of planning everything and really good problem-solving with the preschool staff and the Happy Hollow staff. This is a silly question, but is this starting next year? Which is why the planning, and there's a planning meeting today, there's a lot of planning. There's a lot, yeah. Involved whenever you do something like this. And everybody thinks of something different, so, like, so it's good to have everyone's heads kind of, you know, the preschool staff thinks of things that I didn't think of, and I didn't think of, what I thought of. But, um, has there been response from parent, community? We haven't really, very little. Um, we sent out an email to all existing and future, so, um, we have our, you know, roster of people who have signed up, and we've sent an email out as well. We haven't. There's a large cohort, Erin, that we're moving to kindergarten this year, a very large, so the numbers next year are not as large, so as new families come in, this will just be the norm, um, going to Happy Hollow, but there will be some transition, uh, certainly for the students who are there now. It's nice, it's, you know, it's one of the nice things is, um, preschools, they have to walk up the stairs, you know, um, it's a little bit more accessible, which is nice, um.
Are, um, the, like, time in the morning, the drop-off time going to be the same, or will they have, like, a separate entrance? I just remember, like, going to the children's way, that was, like, an endeavor to get. I had, like, the double stroller, right? Like, preschooler, right? Like, and lots of other people do, too. Like, it's just, it's a lot different than elementary school. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, um, they will have their own, they will have a separate entrance, um, and coming in after the Happy Hollow drop-off a little bit, but we're also hoping maybe to do, like, a lot, because parking is going to be, like, to do, most preschools do, like, a live drop-off, where you just get out, so you don't have to worry about the doubles. That's so nice. So that's what we'll be doing, um, so you don't have to get out. That's great, yes, people with, you know, infants in car seats will appreciate that. Any of you who have seen the back here, when there's the drop-off in cars coming in, it is not ideal. This will be, in terms of safety, uh, this is an improvement. And they get out at 2, so they'll be gone before the buses, or rolling buses will be gone before they start coming. I wonder if it might encourage enrollment, maybe not next year, but in the following year. Because if I am a happy, hollow family, and I have a happy, hollow toddler, why wouldn't I want my child to go there, knowing that this is a place that they're going to grow? It seems like a good opportunity, um, across the board. Yeah. I agree. I mean, I like that it aligns with our long-range building plan. I think I had some questions from parents. You guys really adequately addressed them. I think people were maybe concerned that we, were we, um, do we have enough space to accommodate? And because of the declining enrollment, you really do feel that there is a space to accommodate those students. So, I agree, Kate. I think it's, we have to start to make moves towards our future, and this does that.
Did you get any feedback from, um, the TCW teachers? That they're looking forward to it, given this is what they had asked for? Yeah, I think so. Um, they seem, you know, they have questions, obviously. But I think so. They've already been over to Happy Hollow to look at the spaces, and they seem excited about it. Um, you know, I think it was all pretty positive when we told them. Um, so, yeah, I think overall, I think it'll be positive. It'll be much faster, as you know, we talked about it, this, this visioning session, we were planning, like, ten years in advance. The plan all along. It was the plan, which we talked about, and now it's, um, I will say one of the pluses is that we have a principal at Happy Hollow that is very excited about it, and that's really helpful. So, it's not, you know, sometimes when you talk to a principal about a change, it, Nicolette loves young children, and she's embracing this, and is really excited, um, to have additional students, because sometimes, you know, in a school there's declining enrollment, that's not a good thing. So, in terms of the burst of energy, and population, and welcoming new families, that's something that she's very excited about and embracing. And I think her, um, going over and, you know, meeting with all the teachers, she's reached out, she's emailed, she's met with them all, and inviting them, I think that's helped, you know, already ease the transition. And Debbie Dixon will be at Happy Hollow in terms of, on the IEP and special ed side, as we transition, and she has a lot of expertise in this area, so when families have questions, your staff should be very helpful. Seems like there are a lot of synergies here. Thank you for thinking creatively and not in a box. Yeah, we're, you know, at some point you just have to, like, we were talking, and I was like, all right, we've got to just do it. We're trying to make a decision. We had, we had also a date, I said, this is our deadline. Um, and we did take a look, you know, as we look at our kindergarten enrollment, and where it's been, we now have a trend in terms of the numbers that we're seeing, because we're now three, four years in a row of the same number, and so that's something. The other thing, um, because we have, you know, Happy Hollow and Volker in terms of kindergarten, they're relatively close. So as we think about managing, this is where, you know, we could come to you with maybe increasing a buffer zone slightly, because, um, that's, that's what we would have to do, but that's also plus, um, because we do have that flexibility as we think about managing kindergarten numbers.
Great. Thank you. Okay. Um, Jen. April 1st? Wait. We did. That was our deadline. We beat the April 1st deadline. It was just self-imposed, just so you all know.
Fabulous. Okay. I am inviting Jen up for, next on our list, technology update.
All right, Jen is not going to, last time Jen was here, I was here to our administrator team. She did a Gemini training, and shortly thereafter, I used Gemini at this very meeting and referred to, so I will, I, that's how. Wonders never cease. Yes. There you go. So, we, we were all in on that, so one piece of a broader district goal. Great. I love hearing that. Yeah, we got some good feedback from that. So, nice to see all of you. I'm trying to think when I was here last, but, um, it doesn't take long these days for things to feel like they've changed really a lot in a short amount of time, right? So, um, it's nice to have the opportunity to share with you some of the progress that we've made, um, when we think about our role in the district. Because, um, you know, as you'll see, we, we've, um, if you go ahead and Betsy, um, if you want to just put all that up there, that first slide. So, what you'll see as I go through this is we've got, um, you know, where's the support department effectively different from some of the other departments here in the school district, but I, I really think a lot about how, you know, our job is to make everyone else's job a little bit easier, right? So, when we look at goals, and you guys have asked for an update towards goals, our goals are, are sort of, you know, embedded with other people's goals. So, what I had done was gone through the goals for the district to, um, align kind of where we have had the most impact, I would say, and where, where we have been so more clearly, um, identified as supporting these goals. So, that's kind of how I've, um, divvied this up today. And so, we'll go through, uh, goal area one, five, and six, these, um, areas of achievement, community, and operations. And I have for each sort of like a slide of like what we've accomplished so far this year and where we're hoping to, you know, next steps for us. So, thanks, Betsy. Um, so, in thinking about that first goal area, this is, um, academic achievements. And this is about supporting responsible AI use. This is at least for, like, in terms of like the area of academic achievement, the focus area for us is around thinking about what does responsible use look like, um, for generative AI, but also just more, more broadly, especially from our, for our younger learners, that concept of digital literacy, which involves, you know, things like screen time and like, um, understanding, like, uh, differentiating sort of like fact from fiction, which is becoming increasingly challenging, and, um, uh, you know, healthy habits, like those types of things, uh, are more targeted with our, with our younger learners. And then when we look at our, at our older students, where they are academically, and, and, uh, then that's where more this generative AI piece is, is front of mind for us, thinking about how we can support that. So, in terms of our progress so far, I'm going to start with the, um, high school. So, the high school, um, has really been in a, a very thoughtful process that's been led by Mark Lefeb, who is our, um, instructional technology specialist on our team that, um, services the high school. And he has been working with the tech committee to evaluate what does, what does responsible student use look like? Um, you know, as you can imagine, AI is causing us to have a lot of really, you know, serious conversations about what, what does it, what, you know, what is, what does this look like for us as teachers? What does this look like as humans? Like, how do we navigate this challenging moment, right? And I think we vacillate between being really excited and kind of scared at the same time. And, and that's all super normal. And so, we've just really tried to remove the pressure that, that I think the world has created for us and, like, you've got to hurry up and do this to kind of say, well, let's just make sure that every move that we make is really thoughtful because we have a lot of responsibility here with kids. And so, we want to really think about that responsibility as we move forward. So, so to do this in partnership with the teaching staff is really the way to do it. And so, um, what we hope is that at the end of this year-long exploration that we'll be able to, and I think that might be, oh, well, that's, that's coming. I'll talk to you about that in a minute. But, but we're, uh, that's where we're at is, and so, um, in the middle school, this is a little bit different. So, in the middle school, um, and, and Mark and Bethann, the counterpart at the middle school, have been working closely together and, and thinking about what this looks like. Um, if we were talking with students about what gender-to-day, um, is and, and a little bit about it, if we're doing some preliminary lessons, we've been able to do so, um, deliver some preliminary, like a, a mini lesson to students, uh, at the middle school that's linked there if you're curious about what that looks like and what it contained. Um, and that was really great because we had great support from the middle school administration and staff because they're taking valuable time to be able to do this. But I think we all agreed it was important, um, to, to deliver some, just baseline, um, understanding or, you know, communicate some baseline information to students and staff. Um, so that happened just last month. So that was really, a, a, a really important accomplishment and pleased to say that we've been able to do that. And then, um, earlier in the year and in time for sort of the start of the school year, we had developed AI use guidelines and a quick reference which were really targeted for our staff. Um, we're not ready yet to, to deliver this information to students. That's, that's really what this year-long, um, process has been about what does that look like. So, but we needed to start the year off with having this information for staff, right? If we, if we're silent on it, then we kind of leave it open and people are wondering and asking questions. So we've, we've put that together and that, um, has been distributed to staff. And, um, but we, we plan to do more of like a little bit of roadshow kind of thing with that and, and I'd like to be able to be at staff meetings to maybe speak to that because at the beginning of the year there's lots of things that staff get to look at and we'd like to take some more time with this. Um, and then, um, I'm really pleased to report that the elementary team who, um, have been joined this year with a new member because we had a, a retirement last year, um, has been working really well, um, together to update their curriculum particularly, um, around this idea of, um, you know, like I said, sort of digital well-being, right? And, um, addressing with our youngest students with really high quality resources. I've linked some there if you're curious more about them. Um, but, but using some of these really high quality resources to update our curriculum, which we're constantly doing, so that we're, um, you know, targeting these skills in a developmentally appropriate way. So no, no work with generative AI or even using that terminology with our youngest learners. Really focused instead on healthy digital skills and online safety, that type of stuff. Okay. So then in terms of next steps, so, there's always more to do. We're, we're working on developing that framework for responsible use. As I mentioned to you, that's really the work that the high school's been focused on. And our hope and expectation is that we'll be able to, um, have that articulated in time for the fall. Um, and so we have been really focused on building staff capacity through professional development. I actually spent the day today in med field with, um, multiple members of the team here. Both the technology team and members of the technology committees at all levels were, um, invited. And so we had a number of people there. And it was great because the focus of the day was on AI and K-12 schools. And so we were there with other educators. Most of the sessions were teacher led, which was really powerful for people to hear from other professionals. Um, and so it was, uh, it was a great day. And we've had a lot of those kinds of, you know, wow, that was a lot of information. That's a lot to discuss. Um, but I think it's an important part of where we are in our process and in our own learning is, is to really, um, focus a lot on professional learning for our own team to, to grow that capacity. Um, and we're gonna continue that AI literacy work, um, over the summer and into next year. We're, we're talking as a team about what, what kinds of supports can we, um, put in place this summer and during the school year and next year to continue to support staff, you know, in a, in a professional development capacity. What does that look like? So, um, we're also, um, reviewing Google workspace settings right now. Um, you may have, you may recall that I mentioned to you I, I was able to get a grant for about 20 years only $22,000 or so from the state around cybersecurity readiness, um, through, uh, Mass Cyber Center. And what was good about that is one of the pieces of that included, uh, an audit of our Google workspace domain, which, like many things, you know, you set it up in the beginning and then so many different things change over time that it's really worth taking a close look at all of those levers to understand do we have it configured for best practice. And so, we're working on that, um, right now. Actually, we just got our 300-page report back. Uh, that's gonna take some time to process. But it, what's really great about it is it gives us a very clear roadmap and it sort of, you know, shines a light in all the dark corners. And, you know, I, I knew we needed to do some adjusting on some things to just really try to make sure that if and when, you know, you know, we determined that in the fall we're, we're ready to enable some, some generative AI use with students with specific tools that we've identified. Those, that tool, those tools would most likely be, um, tools like Gemini, Notebook LM that are associated with our Google workspace instance. And that is for security reasons. It's for all the reasons that you would want it to be, which is we have control over that space. And so, it's a really great platform for that, um, very much in, you know, in competition with tools that are available like ChatGPT in a, in a paid version. We have essentially a tool like that, but, but Gemini is not used to train models when it's used within the workspace domain. So, we want to drive the, if and when kids are using these tools, we want to drive those tools through safe venues as opposed to free things they may be finding online. So, we know there's some level of urgency importance to making sure that our workspace is configured correctly for when we do enable for students that, that all of those safety pieces are in place. Everything that we have the ability to set. So, looking at that now. And, um, community engagement, this has kind of been a fun area this year. Too much, sorry. Do you mind if I ask you a quick question on AI before? Yeah, absolutely. I should take the pause. I'm just curious because in, certainly in like the private sector, I feel that we are getting sort of pushed AI to in a number of our workplace tools. And so, you brought up Gemini. I had written down a question. I was curious. Is Gemini active at all in the district right now? And, or are teachers sort of having AI assisted like curriculum technology tools that because, like, third party tools are updating all the time. And so, it's, you know, I'm like a passive, you know, adopter or integrator of it just by virtue of the tool that you might be subscribing to or have a license to. So, just, you just give us a little sense of how much like AI assisted tools are at our faculty's fingertips, um, as of this year. Yeah. So, we, um, in terms of what is available to staff, we don't technically turn anything off. I mean, I would sort of generally say that for staff, we generally leave things open for, for adults who are professionals to make determinations. However, we do advise staff on a regular basis the importance of, of verifying that any tool that they're using, particularly if it involves any kind of student information, that, that they are checking to make sure that that tool is on our, uh, data privacy, we have a data privacy agreement in place for, for that tool. Because that, that affords us some additional coverage. You mentioned sort of like things change all the time. That includes terms of service. So, I don't want to worry that when I read, because I'm one of those crazy people that read that stuff. And so, if I read it, it might be, I might be okay with it today. But you know how you log back into a service and it's like just by virtue of you using it, you're agreeing to that. So, the beauty of the, the tech data privacy agreements that we have, for which Wayland was one of the, I mean, gosh, was, was sort of the originating district of this concept, which is now, uh, they just picked up New York Public Schools, guys. Like, I don't know if you realize what a big deal it is, the thing that you started here in Wayland. But this data privacy consortium that serves, uh, serves Massachusetts also serves New Hampshire and, uh, Connecticut and Rhode Island and, and, and now New York. So, the power and beauty of that is, one, we don't, we're not, we're not beholden to just the terms of service because this, this sits on top of that. Um, but also, it, it provides for us some additional, um, benefits around, you know, forcing, compelling data destruction and other things that they wouldn't, that would, they have to agree to for us. So, that's the big deal. So, we, we always point back to that. And then, um, we, uh, so there are tools, so, so Gemini would fall within that, as would Notebook Allen, which is sort of like a subset within Gemini and some tools in classroom. All kind of Gemini is sort of the, the engine behind that, if you will, the element behind that. And then, um, teachers have also explored, um, not just this year, but even prior to, to my arrival, um, some tools like Brisk, uh, Magic School. So, some other tools, um, School AI is another one. Um, and, and I'm, I'm comfortable with all of these, like the, you know, the ones that I've heard and seen, I'm comfortable with. What I've tried to do, and we've tried to communicate, um, at every opportunity when talking about AI is, and when I say AI, I should, I should clarify, I'm talking about generative AI and all of this context, right? So, um, that, you know, when you're, when you're using things that involve student information, first of all, only approved tools, and even then there are some, some caution. But when you're not paying for a tool, you are paying for it with your data. And, and that is, I think, I think the whole world needs to know that to be true, because these pieces of software don't make themselves. It costs money to develop them, and, and that's how you're feeding the machine, right? And so, we don't want that. And so, Gemini is, and when you pay for a tool, like ChatGPT, you're getting that also not training. And that's why companies are saying, use this, but only use this tool, because they're trying to keep their stuff in the paid version where it's safe. Um, so we, we don't restrict, but we haven't, to, to maybe answer your point more clearly, we haven't recommended a tool exclusively to say, like, use this, um, only this. But like we say, like, we, we don't encourage ChatGPT and other, um, chat up tools that we, over Gemini, because Gemini is our, that is our environment. That is what we will continue to suggest. Um, we have reports that we can pull and have been looking at a little bit. I don't have the data off the top of my head, but we can look at usage over time. So that can help us sort of monitor a little bit, like, the level of adoption, right? Um, so, we, we definitely have seen that increase over time, but what I would also say is, it's, it's just a narrow group of, of staff within the district that are doing most of this AI use, and then other people are doing none of it. But that doesn't surprise me, because just because they're not showing up on my reports, what I'll also tell you might mean that they're, they're experimenting in other applications that I may not be pulling reports for. I would say that in speaking with staff, I, I think there's, I think people are aware that, that, you know, you, you cannot, should not feed PII or personally identifiable information into these tools. Um, and I think people, especially our adults, understand, like, once you hit enter, it's out of your control in many of these things. So to be thinking about that, um, but I, I think people are thinking about that. I would say, if anything, they're being very cautious in not using some of these tools. I would say our teachers are, are probably proceeding with extreme caution, which is not terrible. Um, and so, but I think, from the adult's standpoint, that, that's my, that's my assessment. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions about AI? Thank you for stopping me there. Uh, yeah. I did. Sorry. Um, so we just talked about staff. What about students? What AI do they have access to? Um, yep. So, um, technically, on a school device, not just technically, but practically, they, we prevent them from accessing AI, like, we block those things proactively. But, I can't necessarily really prevent, I mean, you know, a phone, like, all the ways. Um, I, I would say that we know that students are using AI tools outside of school, and they're typically using ChatGPT. Um, because it was kind of first to market, it was like the foot, you know, so that, that's it. What I'd also say, and what, what I, I would say, I'm hearing from other districts, so I would say our experience sort of mirrors what other districts are seeing, is that they're using these tools more as search engines, or as ways to sort of shortcut the, the, the work, right? And so, this is why the messaging, and the, and the, um, not just the staff, but really the students, and the reason why we want to really start having these conversations, and move past sort of like this fear that we're in a little bit, to, to really start talking candidly with students is, if we don't, if we're not going to directly address it in the classroom, then, then that leaves students, you know, they're being told like, you're not supposed to use it at all, right? Not, no use. That, that is the policy. There's no use allowed. Okay. Great. But, we also know in, in conversations with students confidentially, they're, they're certainly, it's very clear they're using, to, in different ways. And so, we want to, we want to use this as an opportunity to say, okay, well, what are the ways that you can use this that supports your learning, and what are the ways in which you're using it that is actually cognitively offloading things, and really preventing you from, from doing that, you know, from, from growing academically. You know, the analogy that was used in a presentation today, which is perfect, and I've seen a few of these, is, you know, you don't go to the gym, to, the purpose of the gym, and you going to the gym, is not to move the weights up and down, right? Because, you know, if you hired someone to do that, and you sat next to them and ate a burrito, like, is that really the point of going to the gym, right? But yet, like, silly as it is, that's really what we're doing with AI in many cases. We're, we're allowing AI to do something for us, and then we're, we're losing that learning opportunity. And so, I think, you know, my hope is, is that if we can start to have real conversations with students, we can have real conversations about their own agency, and their own learning, and, and, and, you know, they are, they are pretty protective of that, generally. So, my hope is that, you know, our focus can be around training them how to use it as a tool for learning, as opposed to, as a way to avoid hard things, right? And so, in order to start those conversations, the sort of chicken and egg problem we have is, can't really do that until we launch, allow the tool to be used in our environment, and yet we're not quite ready for that, because there's just so many things we want to get lined up neatly and be ready. So that's, that's where it's like, I hear you, like, there's a pressure, it's like, use the thing. And it's like, well, why are we creating this pressure when we're not quite ready? Like, I want to be thoughtful about this. And so, I appreciate that the district as a whole seems to accept that, no, a thoughtful process is more important than a fast process. So, I appreciate that that is the culture here. And so, that's how we're proceeding. Did that answer your question? Yeah. All right. Any other questions about AI? Okay. So, I have, oh, sure. I was just going to say, when I'm looking at the Generative AI Use Guidelines Wayland, Yeah. And under the Transparency in Use, it states that staff are encouraged where appropriate to acknowledge when AI tools have been used. I would think, as a learning piece for students, we would want to highlight, require it to be disclosed if you're using AI, not from a data privacy perspective specifically, but more as, and here is how I used it to support me. Yeah. Versus, I had it create this lesson for me. Or, that somehow a student sees it somewhere else, or whatever, or says, oh, that's the ChatGPT format, or whatever it is. Yeah. So, I'm just curious about that. Yeah. So, I think, you know, a lot of this is really around sort of, like, what are some of the new, like, normals for us in communicating some of this. And I think because it's so very new, staff, I think there are many times throughout any day or week that you might say to someone, did you use AI for that? And they might honestly tell you no, not realizing that they kind of did, or vice versa. Like, you know, I think even determining, like, you know, you can't even do a Google search without AI totally being in the middle of it, right? So, like, I think what we've talked about is, well, at what point is the clarity around that really important, right? If it's just to brainstorm ideas, do I really need to disclose that? I mean, it could. I can tell you I did not use AI to make my presentation. I find it to take me too long because I just, like, I end up spending more time, like, trying to tell it, like, how to exactly do what I want than just do it. And so I've learned that that is not an effective way for me to use AI. But it's really great for me to, you know, kind of brain dump when I sort of, like, am trying to summarize information or highlight key ideas or things like that. And so I think it's, a lot of it becomes, like, well, how did you use AI? And so there are some really great, I didn't include them here, but there are some really great examples that are in use in high schools and other districts where they might say, like, what specifically the task is and how AI might be used to support that task. And then to even further delineate, like, is that allowed or not allowed within that classroom. And so trying to, what I'm hearing when I talk to colleagues who have moved forward a little bit faster than us, and I would not say that we're incredibly slow here at all, actually. We're kind of where most places are right now, which is we know we need to do something about this. We're really being thoughtful. We're really, you know, we're really getting closer every day, every month, but, like, it's not on yet for kids. And so we, when I think about the, I'm sorry, where was I? I just saw community engagement and got lost. When I think about, like, that level of structure, when I've talked to other colleagues, they're like, the trouble is not just, like, when you turn it on, like, things don't magically change, right? Then it's, like, now the conversations start of, like, okay, we're starting to pilot in a few places. And those teachers are realizing that, oh, I need to be more explicit about, you know, how I'm directing students around that. So I think a lot of those nuances around, you know, how much do you communicate the use? And when is the use appropriate? And how are the ways in which to address what you're saying? Like, so that people start to realize when it can be useful and when it's not as useful are going to naturally start happening as we open things up. And as these experiences start happening potentially with students, I think that clarity is going to become better articulated. Because we're going to find that we need to be that clear. That's what I'm hearing when I talk to other districts is, like, it's not enough to be very general, but, like, really more specific about, like, that red, yellow, green light thing of, like, what is okay to use? What's sort of, like, well, maybe in some scenarios certain circumstances and what is just a hard no? That concept, you know, really trying to think about that. Okay, for lab reports, for, you know, like, very specifically, what can you do? What can't you do? And what might depend on the specific assignment and even the teacher whose room you're in at that time? So a lot of questions. I'm not going to have all the answers for that any time soon, but I'm happy to do my best to address them and I appreciate the question. These are all the same kind of questions we're asking each other. So community engagement, we had a real fun start to the year with ParentSquare. So I can't wait to start talking about that. So we have really been focused on trying to think about how to unify our communication so that when we message families, it's not coming from lots of different places and where is it and how do I find it and who sent it. And so ParentSquare has turned out to be a really great solution for us. We've seen a lot of really positive feedback. It's not perfect. We've, you know, made some adjustments along the way, but we not only did we have the communication platform launched, which happened, but then we most recently have launched the SmartSites tool, which is the new website. So we have now that nicely integrated stuff of the school website now can also surface the, you know, principal's newsletters and other things like that. So we were able to launch that this year and we create, we're working on creating or communicating about this, a style guide that we put together and that included like logos and the color codes and all of that so that when people start to make their own things or, you know, create other, that we don't start losing the branding that we spent so much time carefully thinking about. Because the colors are not just for consistency, but also around accessibility compliance. So that's part of what we've tried to communicate with this style guide and a communication guide that we're developing is, it's not just about having a consistent look. It's also about making sure that it's accessible for people visually because of the importance of color contrast and things like that. So next steps for here, we're working on that communications and posting guide. We've been speaking with the leadership team, really trying to think about like those communication channels and what goes under which, you know, what belongs in that all school news and, you know, what belongs in a principal newsletter and when might we send these so that we're not sort of stepping on each other to ensure that families are receiving this information. So that's been a focus for now through the end of the year. And then we also want to do, we kind of soft launched ParentSquare. We had a lot of things at the beginning of the year and we didn't want to overwhelm people. So we launched PowerSchool at the start and that felt like enough for families to kind of manage. So we didn't really want to do too much with ParentSquare. We kind of launched that more actively and the messages were coming through that to them. But ParentSquare has an app and the app is kind of awesome. And you can use ParentSquare without the app but it's just not as robust an experience for the family members. And so we want to more proactively promote the use of the app. And not because it's required but because I think it's a better experience for parents and it allows them more control over their notifications and all of that. And so that's a plan between now and sort of start of the year. And then we're going to continue with some staff training more focused on the high end users and the main offices to make sure that they feel like they've gotten out. We're kind of trying to work with them individually to update the templates that they have now to incorporate these new colors and logo designs that are on the website. And so we're going to use now to the end of the year to get that all tightened up so that when we start back in the fall we're rolling out the fall with everyone having their consistent templates and things like that. Jen, I think this is all great. And I really appreciate all of your work with the website and ParentSquare and everything. It's made such a difference to me. Everything looks more consistent now and I can more easily find things. So thank you very much. I do have a question and this relates to something we were talking about at the policy subcommittee about when students need to contact groups of other students, for example like a team or something like that. Can they use ParentSquare? We're thinking of, you know, like instead of using social media, which kind of a lot of kids have but maybe some don't and maybe some don't, you know, want to get. Is there a way that we could use ParentSquare or do you have a recommendation for another sort of app where people can very quickly message, students can message other students? Yeah, what I love about ParentSquare is kind of one-stop shopping, so I love that part of it. So ParentSquare has a tool, it has another component called StudentSquare actually. Put a pin in that for a second. But in response to the email that one of you sent me about this, I forget. Yeah. Okay. So that was actually, I appreciate you flagging that for me because this is so, so often a problem where we're sort of like you focus on the staff that are here during the day around the training and how we communicate and all of that, and then you have people that you bring in who are coaches that might not be regular staff and might not be getting that same communication. So we are working more closely now. We've reached out to Heath and Mark is working with him to, you know, really make sure that we have been setting up accounts for our coaches but really talking about that as the required tool for communication, but we can't require that until we make sure everyone's been trained and supported for that. But I think that's really important because we don't want, we really should not be sending messages out. It's certainly not something we would expect happening from our staff during the school day to have messaging about important events through social media. That can be an additive way but not as the primary and only way for those communications to happen. So we do have the ability for coaches to create groups and those groups can be for their teams and so we are working on that now. And in terms of like students communicating with other students, I guess I'd have some more questions about what you were talking, you know, what specifically that might look like, but there are some options for that depending on what we decided to do with permission. For example, you know, doing your Broadway, right? Like there's a student leader and they want to message the student crew about something. Okay. What are their options to do? I would say depending on, if they're all in the same school let's say, students can message other students via email. Like that already is a thing. Okay. I would acknowledge that students don't generally, email is not the way they communicate. Email is too cluttered. Right? What are just other options? Okay. You know, although that makes me laugh because the sixth grader thinks their email inbox is a lot. I don't know. Didn't we talk about this when I got here? My stick is bigger than yours. I'm pretty sure my inbox is way worse than yours. So, yeah. My sympathy only goes so far. But, yes. I think also they're just the mode of communication is more phone. I mean, it's their phone. It's text messaging. This is why we moved to ParentSquare because it's also true for us as adults. Like you really want my attention? Don't send it to my email. Like text it to me because that's the right now messaging, right? And so, ParentSquare is made for mobile first. Like that's the concept. So, in terms of what students can do, I really, to be honest, I don't have an answer for you as we sit here right now. Because I haven't looked into that because it hasn't been an ask for students to communicate through ParentSquare with other students. But I know the capability is possible and it exists. I would just want to really understand what we're trying to do and what that looks like. And make sure that there's some monitoring of an adult of those communications regardless of how we do it. And so, we can certainly explore and get more information about that. But I wouldn't want to set up a venue for students to communicate just with each other with not an adult being able to monitor those communications. Because I would say to you that, well, I wouldn't want to make that possible. And also, we already struggle with that a little bit where students sometimes grab a Google Doc and decide to use that as a chat window for themselves. Like, we already struggle with that a little bit now. And see what happens when they think they're communicating with no adults watching. And so... They're so creative. They're so creative, yeah. They really are. If only they would use that ingenuity for... And that's the feedback that we're getting from parents. And you know, you've seen the back and forth that we've had. That captains are using Snapchat or Facebook or other social media to communicate with clubs and teams. Yeah. Separate from coaches, separate from faculty. And it is in our policy that communication needs to have a stack mirror, right? But that's not happening with Snapchat. That's not happening with Facebook. No. Parents are not comfortable allowing some of their children social media. So, can we recreate the norm of how communication happens, student to student, with something like parents or whatever? They also... You know what I forgot to mention, actually, because this is kind of a big deal. We do also have Google Chat available for students, and it is available at the high school. I don't think it's available at the middle school. That's correct, right? But I think it's available at the high school, not the middle school. Yeah. So, again, all these things have granularity. We can... We have knobs that we can change for any of these things. But that has been in place at the high school for some time, is my understanding. So, students can chat message. But what's nice is if they're doing those types of tools, like, I actually have forensic ability of those things. Like, there's nothing they're sending through that that I couldn't pull a report on later if I wanted to. Do I spend time looking at it? No. But the ability exists, and so that's what we want for these tools. Like you said, I have none of that. You give me a FOIA request, I can't help you if it's in Snapchat. I've got nothing. So, that's the other reason for public records, for all the things that we want to try to make sure those communications are within that district control. Okay. So, I agree with you. I agree with you, and as you find more of these, you know, you can just let me know. But we, you know, we thought, you know, after your email, we've been working with Heath. But if there are other things, like, never even occurred to me that thing of like... Yeah, I guess my concern, and maybe I didn't articulate this or whatever, is student communications. Yeah. To each other. Yes. Not necessarily from our staff. Uh-huh. So, can we give them a tool or tools to enable that, so that they're not just left to Snapchat or Facebook. And it sounds like maybe Google Chat is, and maybe CurrentSquare could be. Mm-hmm. But it would be nice to be able to offer some. I would just say, as a former middle school principal, those things go off the rails real quick. Okay. Even, even, which is why we, it's not, Chat is not churned on that middle school. Yeah. We've had enough challenges. It's the middle school. It's really the high school. It's the high school. It's the high school. Okay. That, you know, X group is using Snapchat to organize practices or get-togethers. In addition to, perhaps, a coach's communication. Or in lieu of a coach communicating to parents who really kind of need to collect that information from the coach for children who are mostly under 18 and need a parent to get them somewhere. It's the high school. It's not the high school. Okay. This helps me. It might be possible, but I have reservations for reasons. And also, you know, but we can look into it. And I, that helps me to better understand the ask. Thank you. Yeah. I have to say, the freshman soccer coach used Parent Square and it was fabulous this fall, this past fall, to communicate with parents. And to be fair, most of them were doing it because we didn't give them anything else, coaches specifically. Like, they weren't even getting email addresses for the most, like not always. And so, like, that was something when I came, I was like, no, they should have to get email addresses. And so, but that's just one more thing to manage. Someone has to know to ask. And so, you know, we're trying to make some of these changes because I completely agree. If these are school sponsored events and the communication is relative, is about those events, then the expectation should be that they, that that communication happens over school, school supported communication channels. And I think we can address that a little bit in our, sort of like that communication and style guide piece. Which is where we're trying to set those, those norms. And, and that will be kind of, that might be a good place to put something like that as we think through. I mean, as you know, I'm not going to get kids to stop using Instagram as their primary way to communicate with each other. Like, it's just, they're going to do that. But I, I agree that participation in a school activity shouldn't require you to have an Instagram account or insert the other thing. So, thanks. Agreed. Okay. Last area, friends, operations. This is all the stuff we do that no one understands. But if we didn't do it, it would be really bad. So, it's been a really busy year. We had our first school year with PowerSchool Assist. That's where all of our data lives relative to students. The state reporting, our, you know, report cards, attendance, all of that. And we've been focusing a lot on integrating additional systems to talk nicely to PowerSchool. And we've had some great success there and continue to, to do that. We are working on and planning for a refresh of devices. This happens every year. We have device refreshes. But I think it's worth mentioning. It is not a non-event to tell you that we have, after some really careful discussion and investigation and piloting of devices and getting feedback from students at our help desk. And talking with our instructional technology team and, you know, different department folks to try to understand what, you know, what would be the impact if we made this change. Because we were identifying a number of positive reasons to try to make this shift. And so, but we also know that a transition to Chromebooks would, would require us to think carefully about each content area. And if we needed to support that area in some different or modified way to make sure that they can continue to do all of the great things they're doing in classrooms with their students. And so that's been a focus this year is, is really making a plan so that in the fall, when we would be due for a refresh of student devices at the high school, that those devices will be a 14 inch Chromebook plus model of some sort. We've narrowed down to about three models that we really like. And now we just have to pray that the inventory will arrive on time, given all of the worse than COVID supply chain issues that we're facing right now. And I won't even discuss the budgetary impacts of the fact that these prices are changing about every 30 days right now. So, Morda, we'll just, just have to keep you posted on that, but we're doing the best we can. And I think the move to Chromebooks will have a positive financial impact. Although, these are a really high-end Chromebook model. These are not the price point of the middle school device. And I think that's appropriate. I think it's appropriate for us to equip our high school students with a, with a device that feels like a professional level device that they can do all the things in. And so, I think it's worth making that additional investment in these devices. So, these are Chromebook Plus models, which are, um, a larger model and a higher, um, you know, more processing speed and more memory and all of that. So that it will, um, have great performance for them. And then, uh, as I mentioned to you, Google Workspace updates. It's really just about hardening our systems to make sure we're, um, as ready as we can be to prevent, um, cybersecurity issues. I'm sorry, you had a question? My question was, when do we refresh, um, teacher-provided laptops? Yeah. Actually, we're going to be doing that as well. So, we have, um, we have about 200 or so teacher devices that will be replaced over the summer. Um, those M1 MacBooks currently, which is the same model that our students. Yeah. Those will be replaced by the new Mac Neo. We've been testing it and we love it. And that's what we're going to be targeting for teacher replacement devices. Cause it's the same, um, you know, it's, it's essentially, they've, they've added that layer. They didn't have that option when we last evaluated leases. And so, just in time for our refresh, that launched and the, and the feedback so far and the press around it has been really positive. So, we're, we're likely to, to move in that direction. That's what we think so far. Why would we switch kids to something other than Mac and keep the teachers with a Mac? So, that's a great question. So, um, teachers have had Macs for quite some time. So, that's, that's their, that is the device that they're comfortable with as their primary device. But they also have Chromebooks available in the form of Chromeboxes, which are attached to their interactive panels. So, to be honest, most of our teachers are teaching from and with a Chromebook. And they have as their, their, you know, sort of work device supplementary, supplementing that, um, their Macbook. So, when they're interacting with students and when they're teaching directly to students on the board, they're doing so, um, most often using the Chrome box, which is essentially a, like a mounted Chromebook on the, uh, that's, that's attached to, or built into the, in the front of the classroom display. It's not true in every single classroom, but it's, it's true in most of them. Um, it might be true in every single classroom at the high school actually, um, just because we happen to be talking about that one. But, um, so, so our teachers have proficiency in both devices. Um, and the teachers, you know, the, the real limitation of a, of a Chromebook technically is, um, you can't install software on them, which makes them more secure as a rule because of that. Um, it's all web-based applications. Um, the fact is, we, most of our teachers don't need that. Um, most of our teachers technically could do most of their work on a, on a Chromebook. Um, but we, there, there, there are a lot of factors that we looked at for this. Um, and there wasn't enough sort of, like, compelling reason to, to change that, that teacher device out at this, at this juncture, because we had this Chromebox piece in place to, to mirror the student experience. And, and we want to try to stabilize things for teachers and keep their experience consistent because that is their device that they may be doing for, you know, lesson design or other things. And they may be using other tools or installed software on the Mac that are things that they've come, become accustomed to over quite a long time. Um, whereas students, they've, they've had those devices for, you know, at most, you know, their four year high school career. Um, we've got teachers who've been teaching this district for some time and that's been their platform. So, um, not to say that the Chromebook couldn't do the things, but we really weren't looking to evaluate that. At this time, it felt like a big enough move to shift our kids. And let's see how that goes and, and really take that feedback. Um, and so we weren't even, it wasn't something that we had really been evaluating. What's the price point difference on those? Between the Chromebook that the, the larger Chromebook that we're looking at for the kids versus the Neo. I know the Neo is like 600 bucks, right? Yeah, and it's, it's really not a big difference in the purchase price. So then the Neo is like around 600. The Chromebook models that we're looking at, um, are, and they vary a little bit. But I want to say they're, they're, they're right. They're sub 600, but they're certainly, you know, over 500. So they're, they're in that range. Um, and the truth is like, I have no control over what might happen. These prices may go up for both of these devices, you know, anyway. Um, what I want to impress upon you is that the, one of the major reasons why we're looking to move to Chromebooks for students is actually because we want to make sure that, um, we are able to access all of the tools that are available for students and, and, and, and teachers within the Google like environment. And there are things that we actually can't do right now because the students are not on district managed devices, um, in that Chrome environment. So we are actually leaving some things on the table that are kind of powerful. Things like locked, you know, Google forms for locked assessments where a student can't navigate away when you're doing an assessment that happens to be done in a Google form. Like just things like that. Um, but also I, you know, I look at this not just at the purchase price, which is not insignificant, but at the total cost of ownership. And what I can tell you is the cost of repair these devices is significantly lower, which means that the, what we are charging or, you know, requesting for families to either, um, elect in for optional insurance or, and, or the cost that they might have to pay out of pocket if they elect not to get the insurance and we're repairing in house, which we do to try to keep the cost low. I mean, frankly, a MacBook screen right now that breaks costs me $500 to replace. I can buy a new device for that. So I, the idea of continuing to give students, um, devices that they're pretty rough with in these backpacks and, you know, going to sporting events and, and all of that. Like they're pretty rough with these devices. Um, they're not made for that type of wear and tear and, um, they're not made to be repaired in house either. Um, they're really not made to be repaired. They're made to be replaced. So, um, so I, you know, I, I just think about the number of repairs that we need to do, um, and the importance of that being a quick turnaround, um, and being affordable and sustainable. So that's a bigger reason. The management of these devices will be able to cut some costs on, um, we, we use software that manages devices from a security standpoint. I won't need that because I can use Google to do that. So there's, there's some other more of hidden savings that are maybe less obvious to you but are, are clear benefits for our team and our ability to be more responsive and deploy these quickly and effectively and safely. That's really helpful. Thank you. You're welcome. I appreciate the questions. Uh, okay. Next steps in this area. Equipment layer replacement. Uh, I didn't mention but it's also worth, uh, and look, the staff devices. See? I was already, I had them. Oh, 250. Okay. So, um, and we've got front of the classroom displays to replace. I want to say about 40 or so that we are hoping to, uh, to put in place. Uh, this would be, uh, interactive panels or projectors depending on the situation. And, uh, primarily at LOCR but some additional locations as well. But, LOCR will have the most of them just because it happens to be their time right now in the cycle of replacement. Uh, what else do we have? Cybersecurity improvements. Oh, we've, um, we've launched, um, we started using a tool called Know Before which is through a cyber security, a grant through the state. Um, they basically pay for the subscription for us which is awesome. It's a tool that helps train, um, users on email security by sending out test phishing emails. Um, they are very good and that's coming from someone whose job it is to detect these things. Yesterday, they sent the, um, they always send the site coordinators the emails ahead of time so that we can know what's going to come. But I didn't realize from my calendar that today was, you know, whatever, yesterday was today with it coming. And so I found myself, like, opening one email and being like, that's, that's suspicious. That's totally phishing. And I went and blocked the sender. And then a few minutes later, I got another one. And I went and blocked the sender. And I was like, why am I getting so many in a row? Like, I mean, I usually get multiple in a day. But to have, like, by the third one, I was like, wait a second. So, uh, I realized after, um, after I asked the town to block multiple URLs and I had blocked multiple senders that I was in fact preventing myself, uh, later from sending out these campaigns. So, they're really effective. Um, they looked real to me. Um, and so, uh, what's really great about it is I can report to you that we had our first phishing campaign last month. Um, what I can tell you is that the sort of click rate of, like, staff, like, falling for the fish, if you will, was around, um, 9.8%. 9.8%. It's under 10%. And, um, for your understanding, that is about half, like, that's actually pretty good. Uh, K-12 educators having had none of this training or within the first six months of this training based on their, their, you know, data, um, would be at more closer to 20%. failure rate. So, we're already starting in a good place. And what is also funny, but, funny and also great is, like, the staff, like, don't want to, they don't want to, they don't want to be tricked by the fish. So, they're really actually all on high alert, which I love. And, um, whether they're on high alert because they are afraid that they're going to be on some imaginary naughty list, or whether they're on high alert because they really want to make sure that they don't get a fish. Like, I don't actually care the reason. I'm just really glad they're on high alert because email is, is a real danger for us. And, um, as busy as we are, it's easy to make a mistake. And we've all done it. And some, some of these consequences can be really scary and serious. So, um, I'm pleased to say that we have that in place. The staff has been really, um, supportive of it when they could have been really annoyed about it. I think they're, they're being pretty great. Um, and it's not so annoying because it's really just this, you know, once a month kind of thing. Just kind of keeps it in the drinking water so we don't forget about it. Um, so, so that's, uh, that's what we've been up to. Thank you, Jen. This is so much in, in so many different areas, so. All right, it's a lot. Yeah, but there's a lot to do. We really appreciate it. Thank you. We've got some things to do, but it's been really great to be here. I'm wrapping up my second year here, and it's great to have all these things accomplished. The team's been super awesome, and I appreciate the opportunity to help make things a little better here. So, thank you. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you, Jen. Oh, yes. Okay. A little contact setting. Okay. Good night, Jen. Hi, thank you. Good night, Jen. This has been a year of, uh, planning, um, in the area of facilities planning, as well as portrait planning. Um, and what's been interesting for us is we've really tried to think about what should the portrait of learner process be here in Wayland. Um, and we just didn't want to do a cookie cutter process. Um, we're also mindful of how the world is changing. Um, it kind of connects nicely to Jen's presentation as we think about our students and, and technology and what their futures will be. And I was talking to a few colleagues recently about how it's really important for us also to be positive about our students' futures. And that's become more of a challenge right now. Frank Bruni is a New York Times columnist who's teaching at Duke now. Talked about since he's been teaching their students. It's been hard to, as a professor, to make the students positive about the future. And I was thinking about this K to 12 connection, just what's kind of going on in the world. Technology. Will there be jobs? Will there be higher education? I mean, if you think some of the institutions that we're now questioning, many of us didn't have to do that. We're near these stages. Um, but what we know is, we need to be optimistic about the future. We need to prepare our students for the future that may look different. And there may be multiple portraits of what a learner should look like. And so, part of our job this year is to think about that, but also set the stage for how do we operationalize some of the changes that we might make next year. Because this is going to be a multiple step process. The same way as we think about kind of doing some facilities planning this year, but also making some decisions at the start of next year about where we head. I think there are some analogies to take a look at. I know you have this presentation. I will toss it to Betsy to talk about some of this presentation as well. Thanks Ronnie. Um, so David's just giving me a little bit of context. We'll add to it just a smidge. Um, talk about what the process of our timeline has been up to date. Um, and we had a couple key groups that participated. Our steering group, our focus group, and our educational forum. We'll give you a little bit of insight into each of those. And then talk about kind of our next steps in the process moving forward. So, what is a portrait of a learner? Why are we doing it now? David just gave you a little bit of information around that. Um, go ahead Ronnie. But it's really, um, thinking through what is our vision of the skills, knowledge, and mindset that we really want our students to develop in order to be successful in school and then beyond school in the life that they choose. Um, so that they're ready for, for college, for careers. Um, so it's, it's really about defining those, those outcomes that we're looking, looking for. And our portrait of a learner process has, um, been really community developed. It's been a real collaboration. Um, and it's been, it's been a really exciting process. Um, David talks about being hopeful. It, I, I think has really brought a lot of hopefulness to the work, which is, which has been a lot of fun. Um, and, and one of the things that, that our steering committee that we'll talk about really kept coming back to is, as, as AI is, is, and computers, and this increasingly automated world. How do we ensure that schools really make, become a deeply human endeavor and that we're, kids are spending time talking to each other. We heard from Deborah last time around accountable talk and, and really ensuring that that stays front and center in, in our schooling. So, what's the trajectory of our process been? Um, so back, uh, really last August, we established our steering committee. And they've been meeting regularly, very often in the fall, um, and throughout this entire process. We have focus groups that met in, um, January, in the month of January, at three different focus groups sets. Um, our educational forums met in February and in March. And we'll be starting to service that community feedback, um, this month and in May. So, that's kind of where we're at to date. So, we've, um, we're really fortunate to have a lot of great people and can talk about their roles. So, you can see up there our steering committee, um, number two for sacred feet. Tanaba. Um, and it was a nice cross-section from the different levels, um, both teachers and administrators. And it's, it's just an incredibly thoughtful group. So, what was their work? Um, we started back in, back in the fall by researching other portraits of the learners and getting a sense of different people's process, processes. Um, we met with the former principal, excuse me, superintendent of Menden-Upton Regional High School. Um, and his name is Joe. I'm forgetting Joe's last name. Joe. Hold on. It's a freaky last name. I just called him Joe. It is. Joe Maruzak. Yes. So, he was from Menden-Upton. He's, uh, currently working down at the Cape now. But his portrait of a learner process was really rich, robust process. So, he, he met with us and kind of walked us through, um, both how they created, but then, really how they operationalized it in a very powerful way. Um, so then, from there, our group started talking about what our process would look like. And that's when we brought in Mike Perullo, who some of you got to know through our educational visioning with our facilities project. He came on and has been working with us for, through our portrait of a learner's process, which is great because we didn't want to have two educational visions going in different directions. It's really had some nice intersection and cohesion. Um, so with Mike, we co-developed our process. And then the steering group has been very useful kind of throughout different components. So, there was, we had focus groups meet, and then they reviewed the focus group data. We had an educational forum meet, they reviewed what they did. Kind of refined at each point before we go into the next segment. Um, and then they will do the same once we've gathered community feedback. They'll help kind of integrate that into the next, next iteration of the process. I was just gonna have, in terms of the focus groups, uh, we used students as well. Yeah. So that was really, really exciting. Students, both middle and high. Middle and high school students, yeah. As well as. So, Ron, if you head to the next, um, we'll talk about a little bit about how we engaged the different groups. So what you see here is just, um, questions that this team generated, um, with Mike's help, for our current students. There was, um, an equivalent version that was, was focused on our, our parents and caregivers as well. So those are some of the questions that were asked. And, and I gotta tell you, I, I get to sit in on the high school students and their, I mean, their answers were just, were just fabulous. As they really thought so deeply. And, like, hearing high schoolers talk about, like, wanting to find their passion and joy in the work. It was just really, again, hopeful and energizing. Um, so, what I've pulled out in the next three slides is just sort of some of the themes that emerged across groups. So there were a number of different areas. Here's just one example. So, an example of, um, where kind of curiosity and intrinsic motivation came into play. And you can see a number of quotes from kids. Um, so this is actually the caregiver voices quotes. I'll give you a moment to read them over. The importance of curiosity and intrinsic motivation. And then we could see similar themes across the high school voices. You know, what, what was motivating to them. When they felt curious. The care that they put into things. And similarly for the middle schoolers as well. Honing in on the times in their learning where, where these, these, these things came up. Um, so that was an important part of our work. Um, we then took all of those things to a larger stakeholder group. So we had 27 educators. You can see, um, really from across all the levels. From all different departments. Um, a combination of administrators, teachers, um, that were a great group. So there were 27 educators. And then on the next slide you can see the names of all of our parents and caregivers who also volunteered. So we had in total 36 people who came together for five hours. Two two hour sessions and one one hour session. And in our first session, um, we really started broadcasting a wide neck. So, so Mike and Paul, um, led us through three different exercises. We started, um, by sorting a range of kind of these words into social, emotional skills, transferable skills, and global competencies. Kind of created some posters with those. We then looked at professional and future ready skills. Um, we met in, we found different people who had matching cards. So for example, you might have been the carbon footprint coach. That, that might be a, um, future job. And thought about what kind of skills you would need in order to do those. And kind of had some of those conversations. And then the third exercise we did was to look at the, those focus groups. The student, um, caregivers and middle school and high school students and caregivers. And looked at the themes across of those. Out of those, um, three activities, at the end of it, we put everything up around the room. And then each person went around and, and showed the 15 ideas, themes, words that really stood out for them. And that was kind of the end of session one. At session two, um, we took everybody's 15 words. So there were many, many overlaps, but you know, some unique. And then we grouped those into what we thought of as buckets. So, um, we had kind of a, these big giant posters with seven different buckets on them. And we organized, you can see a group of, um, teachers here. And a little bit of you, David, in the corner there. Um, organizing some, some words and themes. And then once we did that, um, we cut out the buckets and, and organized them across the different groups. And sort of looked at, you know, it's kind of a honing down process that happens. And then each team took one of their groups of buckets and refined them into big ideas. And so, out of that there came seven sort of buckets as, as we thought about. One was entitled empowered well-being. We had problem solvers. Civic and global citizenship. Belonging to your communities. Critical thinking. Productive interactions with others. And ethical agencies. So those were the seven things that came out of it. After that, the, um, the steering group met again with all of these. We had a two hour session and we, um, refined those buckets and kind of what came under them into what you see here. Which are the current sort of five, um, different areas. So, we had approaching the world with curiosity and wonder. We looked at some parallel structure. We kind of put, put some things together, um, around each of them. Another big idea was communicating to understand and be understood. And then we looked at seeking balance, meaning, and joy. Kind of what that meant to the group. And we had a sort of taking risks, persisting, and adapt ideas. And then building just and democratic communities. So those were the four or five big ideas that we came to and refined. Um, and then brought back to this educational forum for one final session. Um, and so you can see that we have those there. Again, they were on big posters in teams. We then marked up these big drafts. Um, putting green checks where we agreed with things. Purples where we still had some questions. And orange to mark up with specific edits. So for example, one of the things that came out of, out of here, um, we decided we'd like the introduction of, um, as learners, we, at the top, like, we looked at some, like, what did you want to come before these five big ideas? Um, because we wanted the educators to also be a part of that, not just students. So we kind of ended in that space. We also talked about moving all the language in this from kind of third person to first person plural, sort of using we and our statements instead of they and their. Um, and then other bunch of refinements. Um, and so then on this Friday morning, the steering committee will get together again to look at the seven different groups' edits and put those together. And then we're going to send it out to parents or parents and caregivers, teachers, and students to get more sort of feedback on that. So from there, um, we will use that to sort of finalize the portrait of a learner to bring back to you in June. Um, we plan to use that as a key component to our administrative council retreat this summer. So we're thinking about that and looking about, you know, initial ideas. Um, at some point, we'll need to come up with a, what does that kind of look like, a portrait of a learner graphic that we would have on our website and in other places, um, so that it can be front and center and not just something that fits on a shelf. Um, and then we'll really spend next year thinking about how we would go about operationalizing that. So that's kind of the next level of work. Um, the last thing we did with the educational forum was ask them, um, through one of the Mentimeter exercises, you know, what is one way like to see this kind of come to life in the schools? Um, and the kind of the themes that came across was, you know, there were nine folks who really focused in on project-based learning that kind of integrates a lot of these skills. We had some talk about curriculum alignment, student reflection, it being a tool for student reflection, ways we could engage a community around it. Um, some folks were wondering about like a portfolio kind of process that would happen along the K-12 journey. And then if there's teacher development that could come into play. So I ended this with a few, um, quotes, kind of one from each of those areas. Um, a kind of hearty hope that the people had of how we could actually use this. I'll let you read through those. Like any questions that you have about the process or where we're at or our next steps? Um, I won't say it's been an incredibly energizing process, uh, for sure. And it was just a great, great group, both our small group and the big educational forum with, uh, real good energy in this room. It's really, um, insightful to get the viewpoints from all the different constituencies to, to hear from the students and the educators and the caregiver forum. Like, it's so well-rounded. Yeah. You know, Betsy, we did that twice this year. We did it, um, with facilities planning. And there hasn't been a lot of that. Typically, we do that separately. And we've got lots of feedback in both forums how helpful it was to have multiple stakeholders together at some times. We meet separate, but also together, and how valuable that is. And it's funny how that feedback tends to align, even though they're very separate groups. The feedback seems to be better than each other. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I kind of pulled out just sort of how you could see those similar themes across different groups. Um, and you know, the themes that really come up are the ones that have ended up in those, where we're at with the five at the moment. Were there any that surprised you? Any areas of focus that were like, huh, hadn't thought about that, but makes a lot of sense? Hmm. That's a great question. Still, for me, it's having, hearing kids talk about the purpose, the importance of joy. You don't, you know, I think that's what Mike said to you. He's like, I've done a lot of these in a lot of places. Like, I've never had kids, heard kids talking about, like, their desire for the joyful side of learning. Yeah. Which, that came up a lot in the caregiver group as well, talking about the joy and that we wanted them to have joy in learning. But you wouldn't, I think, accept that so much. Which maybe speaks to the time that we're in right now. You want to find that joy. You want kids to really find their passion. And for some of the kids, that will happen inside the four worlds of the school. And for other students, it will happen outside. And I think our steering group was really, wanted this, you know, kids to be able to reflect on their more global experience and not just inside of school. And so, you know, as we use this as a tool of reflection, we really hope kids will focus on not just what they're learning in school, but what they're passionate about in other places. And I think that really ties in with what our students were talking about when they came last meeting, when they were talking about really wanting to be impactful in the world. Yeah, that's the word that keeps going through my head, too. Right? And we heard and we saw that, you know, through this portrait process, that the importance of making a difference, you know, having just communities, that those kind of things really shine through. Right. At our last meeting, I wove in the students that came here in our meeting because so many of the qualities we're looking for and some of the goals were coming from the students. I'd also say that some of the discussion, I think about what are things that would often be in a discussion and what are about our current world. Like, if you think of the adults and talking about helping students function in a democracy, even where we are, I thought that that was really interesting that some of it is like where we are, others would be areas that would kind of often be schooling, so there's context shifts with time. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Betsy. Well, I agree. I think building off of that, it's sort of two themes that I think can be difficult as the world gets more complex and as the sort of macro world is more charged or volatile is the connecting what they're doing in the four walls to the broader world. Like that's happening to them more and more in a younger and younger ages just because technology is at their fingertips. And so I think really needing to figure out how we meet them where they are and recognize that it is partly a responsibility to make those connections between what they're learning and the ideas and concepts and the real world, even though I think that that's getting harder and more challenging every year. And then the other is, I'm a huge proponent of project-based learning. I think it's incredible. I think that interdisciplinary connectivity has exponential benefits and eureka moments. I think it's hard, but I see that here. And I also think that increasingly, those complex connections are what they need in a workforce. You know, I think we talked a little bit during the Accountable Talk about how much cross-functional work has to happen and how much you're expected now professionally to really not just know how to do your lane, but at least have an appreciation and understanding of what the other lanes are doing. And I, you know, those connections are really, really important that they understand how math connects to history and connects to English and why those skills extrapolated actually can be very powerful when combined. Completely. And that it's not just a siloed thing. They do have all these cross and really important topics. I think my question actually kind of piggybacks on Betsy's. And I was kind of waiting for that cross-section to happen. And I think maybe we're too early in the planning phase, and that's the next phase, right? Because the aspirations of our learners are fantastic. The categories are fantastic. I think they got to, like, the heart of how one is going to navigate the world. How they're going to interact with the world. How they're going to communicate in the world. But I didn't see that connection of how are they going to survive in the world? How are they going to thrive in the world? You know, beyond communication. There's so many more skills that we're going to equip them with. Will you be kind of, is that how you're operationalizing it? Is that the next phase or the phase after that? I'm going to sit with that for a moment. You know, I think one of the things that a lot of processes do as part of their next phase is really thinking through, like, what does this look like in second grade? You know, if I can do these things, what are the I can do statements that come out of those? And, you know, we had a big discussion around in the whole communicate section. Like, should we be explicitly using writing? Should writing be in there? And they're like, well, some kids communicate through a device. Some kids communicate more, you know. We still want kids to be able to, you know, our kids to be able to write. But we want to really honor all forms. And by leaving it broader, are we better off kind of thing. So, you know, there were times when we looked at things and it kind of looked more like a standards document, like reading, writing, speaking, listening, you know, all of those. We didn't want just a list of skills. So they are broader. But I do think to be usable at different levels, you want to think through what is this, you know, if I'm a successful fifth grader, what might these skills look like at the developmental level? So I do think the adults really sort of sitting with it, but also bringing kids into sort of some of what, how do you make sense of this in kid-based language will also be important. I'm not sure that completely answered your question, Erin. Erin, is your feeling that it feels very aspirational right now? And so the next question is, how does it become concrete? Inspirational. Yeah, I think so. Yes. And I think that's fair. Like, I come away from this feeling super inspired. Absolutely. But this is the sort of what, and I think you're asking about the how. I'm thinking of my 17-year-old, my 15-year-old, and my 10-year-old. Oops, he's 11. Like, how this looks for them. Right. And what they leave Wayland High School with. What I've already seen as skills that they've obtained that aren't on this, you know. Completely. We've talked about the possibility of this becoming, and we talk about self-portraits a lot, and how do you look at these and assess yourself against them? Or, like, I might be way more heavy in one area than another. And can that be okay? And what does that look like? And, yeah, I do think, again, this next year will really help us unearth exactly how, and when we use it, how we intentionally use language from it in our day-to-day work with kids. And I hear expectations. Yeah. You know, I'd love to see kids do a self-assessment, you know, at 3rd grade, 6th grade, 9th grade, 12th grade. What does this look like? And how could they change over time? You know, they might not have developed a particular passion there until they were in, you know, at the end of middle school when they were involved in some club or whatever. I'd love some sort of portfolio idea that they can sort of see themselves at different snapshots in time. Well, it gives them agency. Like, I think one of the things I like about the statements of the learners, as learners, we, is that it isn't this, I'm a student and information is sort of being imparted to me. It's that I have a responsibility and accountability to own my learning with conviction. And so even that sense, as you're talking about, you know, what does it look like in a self-portrait? I must want to say, yeah. And I want to see and have them articulate. And what are their goals? Because finding your joy, some of us are lucky enough to, like, stumble into that. Some of us just have to do the job because the job has to get done and some of life is that. And sometimes, in order to find your joy, you have to try a lot of things that aren't it first. And, like, so this notion that you have to take agency in your path to find that, it's not something that is just going to divinely happen to you or that you're going to happen to sign up for it or stumble into it. It would be great if it were that easy, but for a lot of us, we have to take a lot of roads before we hopefully land there. Absolutely. And some kids might get to the end of high school and are still on that path that's seeking that. But hopefully with the idea that, you know, they'll have enough skills to find it. I don't know how to articulate how I feel like all of this. I think joy is really important. It's something I said in our retreat, like, two years ago. I want kids to find the joy in school. I also want them to realize that they can be good at a lot of things. And it's not necessarily what you find joy in. That pays the bills sometimes. But also, you know, I found a lot of joy in science. And so I kind of specialized in that in college. And I don't think I took full advantage of my liberal arts education because I didn't find joy in writing and history and stuff like that. And looking back, it would have made me a better lawyer now. And I wish I did that more. And so I think it's important to balance the joy around, maybe. And I saw something up there about perseverance or, you know, something like that, which I think, you know, it's nice when you do have joy, but not everything is joyful. But you still have to do it, like going to the gym and picking up the weight. So I'm never going to find joy in that. But satisfaction can also be a form of joy. Like, I agree with you. This notion of joy can also be like chase that we're supposed to be happy all the time, which I do worry is sort of a prevalent message in the world of social media in particular. And it's funny, there's a book I'm reading right now that talks about like a situation being glamored. And it's sort of like I think of that as all the like rough edges are rubbed away and like all the imperfections. And I agree. I think we need to strike. I would encourage us to think about how we strike a balance about finding joy through hard work. Through hard work. Absolutely. You know, working up that sweat is satisfying. You might not always be super psyched when you get up. You know, I was talking, I was sitting next to a colleague who was talking about how much, she was still talking about how much weight she had deadlifted that day. I'm like, did she want to get up at 5 a.m. today? Probably not. And how satisfying it was to have added more weight than she thought she had. And did that 207 and a half pounds. Deadlift. Really tiny too. Yeah, I mean, accomplishing hard things that aren't necessarily something that brings you joy or fills your bucket is accomplishing. And that feels good. Completely. You're like, I did not want to do this. But I did it. I accomplished it. And that's something that we definitely need our students to leave with. We all, we do that every day. Right? Persisting through challenge is all embedded in this as well too. Right? It's not all fun all the time. It just isn't. I appreciate how inclusive the language is. Anyone can be a learner and you could be lifting the 200 weight or you could be lifting the 10 and you're still learning. So I appreciate that this is a wide portrait. We will keep you updated. The next is survey. Yeah, feel free to fill out your survey. But no, it's not good. All right. One thought on the survey brought to the community. Like, I don't, I don't know. I'm going to think about this. But something just to noodle on is this work feels very, as we talked about, aspirational, but also sort of like, if you could design it, what would it be? I'm curious if the community survey piece will have some of like, what's missing today. You know what I mean? Like some of like benchmarking against where we think we are or where our baseline is. Because I think there is an element of how do we know what to build and where to put our investment in our timeline of evolution. If we don't, we're not honest with ourselves about sort of saying where we think baseline is to where we think we're trying to go for a future. Is there any information that anyone wanted to discuss, bring to the table, et cetera, around the discussion of potential vote with respect to Super Wednesdays? So Ronnie and I were with, gosh, a whole room full of stakeholders around this to try to figure out what's the best time to have the Super Wednesdays. Shared sort of feedback that we've gotten last time. We tried to have a semester. Yeah, it was around vacation. There was one that's still close to a vacation. There's so many factors that we think. There's no good answer. There is no good answer. Thank you. That's just where we live. We looked at them very, very carefully. Everybody, every reason that I have, someone else has a reason why that's not. Right. That was the best we could get. I'm smiling only because two years ago our esteemed chairwoman said something similar as we were discussing this topic and after that. And now after year two, I'm like, yup, that is, she is correct. And we go through it with a fine tooth comb thinking that it's going to change. Actually, last Wednesdays, I think for the Wednesdays. I heard you say this. Mostly, Veterans Day is a Wednesday that takes a Wednesday away. I heard you say that. The plus side to that is, we've doubled up a day where we need extra parental coverage where our kids aren't in school. And a Wednesday where we would typically have to be worried about getting out early. So there you go. That is a real win. To win. To win. To win. Why am I short a Wednesday? Why am I short a Wednesday? There you go. I mean. I'm just trying to pull up the, we also tried to move it earlier. I haven't done the exercise before. Do you want me to make a motion? We tried to move the last one. No, I just wanted to actually look at it on a calendar before. I'm doing it right now. Tell me. So, October 12th is, what is it? October 7th. No, we had moved it away from Columbus Day, I think. It's the 7th, I think. It's like the week before. Yeah. I think we tried. I'm just worried about, like, I'm like, ooh, can I have a week and a half vacation? Like, February 10th is right before February break. I think we had, there was, um, one of them's a week away from a break and we moved. Always. So, October 7th is the Wednesday before Columbus Day. We moved that one originally. I think it was the 14th to the 21st, but we moved it for a reason. I know because I booked a presenter and I had to change it. That's not what we did. I know. Um, and then December 9th is two weeks before the holiday. I apologize. Our school closure from December 23rd to December 31st. Oh, I know it. Sorry. No, it's okay. Um, February 10th is the week before the February recess. We tried to move it, um, a week further back and it ran into, um, end of semester, um, final year. Senior, yes. A week, uh, high school, winter week. Winter week. Uh-huh. And March 10th is, um, there's a closure on March 26th. Yes. For good friends. So, no, we're just closed. Oh, sorry. Sorry. We're just closed. Enticipated attendance. Correct. Um, but one of the reasons why we did pick these dates was also conferences had to fit in. Um, so we had originally picked, like, the October date. We had originally, I think, picked a later date, but then conferences needed to be earlier because of that no school day in November. Uh-huh. Um, so then it bumped everything back. And then, um, we wanted to make the last one not too late because this year, in, next week. No, it's the end of April. It's the end of April. The end of April. And once the feedback we got was make it earlier so we can use it. So we tried to get them all done before April. I love that. But not have them all. But not all together. Yeah. So we tried to take all the feedback and make it work as best we can with the calendar. You've got a magic wand to accomplish that. That's why we had them all clustered, right, with the new math curriculum. That's the reason we clustered them previously. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we have the new ELA curriculum that we're launching, but Sarah Sontag was part of this and felt like the way we have it and it worked. It's okay. Um, I know this has been asked before. I can't remember exactly what the answer was, but if we're going to have something so close to February break, is it possible to do it on a Thursday instead of a Wednesday so that, like, or Friday people have some flexibility? Friday I think is, like, but, like, do we have to do these on a Wednesday? Can we move the February 10th to, like, February 11th? And aren't we tracking low attendance? People. We are. We have. Low attendance is the day before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is. Okay. Okay. I'm just worried. I'm seeing, like, two and a half days the week before February break, you know. I don't know. If it were on a Thursday, maybe, but we would get more attendance on a Wednesday instead of missing Wednesday and Wednesday and Friday. I could imagine some people might love the cheaper flights on Wednesday or Thursday. Anyway, that's what my day would show. We are encouraging people, of course, to be in school. We've sent many attendance messages. Many. I have also received those messages, which I want to talk about at another time. And maybe this is for the future. I think it's something that we've talked about and considered. And Wednesdays were because they were always, were Wednesdays, and those were always the days. But maybe it's a future discussion of doing that day. We've also talked about, do you just not, do you have a day as opposed to, you know, I think, open. Open a full day? Yeah. But you still need 180. But then you add a day. It extends a day on the end for the teachers, right? And the students. Nope. Both. For the teachers. It would extend a full school day. Period. It would give a full school day. Right. Like, some towns do it on, and we have school on election day, but like, instead of a lot of towns, we have professional development elections. Our elections are here, but because they're the schools. You're right. But we have a school night. Right. We tried to move to two threes. That would be two weeks away from vacation. That was the end of the semester. That was winter week. That was winter week. Yeah. Also report cards. And report cards for the thing. And having enough time. You couldn't move this one up because you needed a week before conferences to get ready for conferences. Yeah. We looked. We tried to do it the end of January, beginning of February. We did try to move that. And because of winter week and report cards, we got pushed back on there. And the semester ended. Cool year. On Monday after winter break? I mean, does it have to be on the Wednesday? We don't have to do them at all. They're not contractual. We don't have to do them. So we can tell them to put them on a different day. We can do whatever you guys want. We're here. We're here to work the calendar. I'm fine with whatever the committee would like to do. We have gone around and around this. Every year I've sat at the stable, and I'm out for today. I just don't have it in me. Well, can I ask? One of the benefits that it's already a short day, so you're just extra shortening a short day as opposed to losing. Like, I guess one of the things that we don't have to get into it for this year, but maybe another year. Like, I'm curious of the educational impact of one day where they're just not in school versus these little short days where they're in school for like less than three hours. Like, I guess the super early's are just really super short days. And there's kind of really no point for our kids to go on those days. And they'll all tell you that, and I say that with love, and it's not against any of you. There are districts that do it every Wednesday, as you know. We have districts that do 8.30 to 12 neighboring districts every Wednesday, so we certainly have more time. The challenge is if you're doing work over multiple, you know, one-shot professional development like one day, that's the downside. It's not, you know, versus multiple, like if you think about Sarah Ward as an example. Well, but we always have Wednesdays. Wednesdays are available every week. They're early release. They can be leveraged for PD. They're short, though, in terms of travel, you know, in terms of time you get there. Not long, that's why. So, because Wednesday is a short day, that's the thinking behind doing that on Wednesdays versus other days. That's actually the reason. So then why do we have short Wednesdays to begin with? If we can't, I understand they were in place prior to the start times. Is that something we should continue to do? And that doesn't impact Super Wednesdays today, but why keep doing that? If we really can't use them anymore? Do we replace them with more super short days? There are certain things we can't, we need longer blocks of time for. That's what I would say. So more in-depth. Yeah. We could maybe put this in a separate item. I don't know that, you know, because tonight we just want to, I'm just thinking about, because our agenda, but we could put this on another agenda. I don't know if it's something.
Especially the ELA. They would have preferred to have the entire day. She's like, spoke a mile a minute, trying to get it all in. But, you know, we have Jessica Minahan coming in next year to do some training as well. Like, we need longer than an hour for that. We try to save our big meeting stuff for these days. Time is definitely of the essence. Yeah. In so many ways. I gotta Zoom.
Alright, so maybe not for this year, but maybe for the future. Is it worth considering removing Wednesday partial days and increasing half days on Wednesdays, and having one a month, or something like that? Does that make more sense? Is it more effective? I think maybe thinking creatively for next year might be a really good idea. Because we do seem to keep coming here, and we all appreciate that we've unturned every stone. You mean for 28? Yeah. For fiscal year 28. Yeah, exactly, Betsy. Just a thought, food for thought. Shall I move to approve them for today, or do we want to put a pin in it? I do not want to cause our administrative team an issue with trying to schedule, and I am mindful of that fact. So if they need these approved, I'm inclined to do so sooner rather than later. Okay. And what I am hearing from the committee is that we'd like to have further discussion around how we schedule and plan for in-service days and workshops and PD, et cetera, as a whole. I agree. We can do better. So I reluctantly move. Can I say that to approve? Super Wednesdays, October 7th, 2026, December 9th, 2026, February 10th, 2027, and March 10th, 2027. Do you have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Thank you. What's your favorite agenda item of the year? There's only a few that get me to that point. Diane, would you kindly flag this as a follow-up item for after town meeting? Please. Are you saying the one you just discussed? Well, not necessarily. Not necessarily. Just discussion around calendaring. Because I'm going to be bringing the 2027 and 2027. Right. Which, you know what? You can put it at the same time. That would be the ask. Please. I'm politely letting everyone know that we are 26 minutes behind schedule. Next up. Review and discussion regarding the TEC forward rate update and fiscal year 27 post budget. Is that you, Erin? This is me, but I did not prepare this. All right. So do you want to kick it to next time? Kick it. Okay. I need 10 or 12 minutes. I need 10 or 12 minutes. Easy. I need 10 or 12 minutes. Easy. You two worked that out ahead. I did. You need time. I got time. I will be ready next time. Can we revisit February.no? With all this found time. Don't dare you to find a new date. This is not found time. Let me tell you how I work this stuff, okay? So, Kate and Christina, there was some, I don't want to say like heavy, but there was some discussion around this next item, which is to vote, potentially vote to approve a revolving fund that would permit us to take tuition in for students that are outside of our district into various special education programming. Ronnie, David, Betsy, Kirstein, and other members of Ronnie's team have done a lot of thoughtful planning around availability for seats. I believe the only real potential for next year right now, I think, would be in the high school program? Yeah, actually. Or the 18 to 22 program? The high school. Okay. But most likely not. Oh. But. Okay. So. But it was. Okay. That wasn't because we held up. I know. I just almost. No. No, no, no, no. But it's, again, like we will go through the process and move very meticulous about it and it just didn't seem like it was the best move. So. Okay. You know, it wasn't. It's not my. I'm not. I just want to be clear. I'm not the one, like, steering the ship. Like, so. I'll give you an example. Like, another town emailed about language-based programming. Um. I emailed the team at, um, Clay Pit. They gave me their numbers. We. Our. Our numbers for fifth grade next year look. Are good. But there's just not. There's, like, only one or two open spots. So. I was like, nope. We're not going to do that. So. Um. I don't. I don't even offer to look at a refer. I mean, I've only done it once. This has been ongoing. But, um. Until I talk to the team. So this is not, like, me operating in, like, a silo. I'm trying to learn about it. Um. And I. Talk to the teams, um, immediately. Um. Or if I know that there's not room. I mean, just ignore the emails. Sorry. So. We. There were just. I think, um. There was an appreciation for the fact that the two of you weren't here. I think you both had some questions when we had kind of talked about it a few months ago. Around budgeting. Um. This would need to exist in order for us to actually do it. Um. There was potential for viability for a specific opening. Apparently no longer. But, um. And so we did talk about different, um. Ways to build criteria around when we, you know, how the process would play out. And bringing the student in. And seeing if the student, you know, if everything looked good on paper. Did the student fit with the program? Did the program fit for the student? Um. And so. That was kind of like how the discussion went. Um. We asked just to push this to tonight to have a little bit more discussion at the table. Um. And. Um. You know. Um. You know. Uh. I think some of it is that there's, um. Um. A very high level of, um. confidence in the group around the table tonight. And there was some reservation around if this group were not to be here in the future that the fund is there. And would we have comfort level around controls in when that would be leveraged? Because we certainly wouldn't want to take away from our in district students that are in those programs. And I think that's kind of where we left it. And that's how we felt. Um. Um. I am open to further discussion or making a motion. I don't know how much you guys were able to watch or listen to or look at anyway. That was kind of where we landed. I watched it. I thought it was a good discussion. I don't think I have questions but I have comments. Do you have questions? Um. Just like big picture philosophically. Why are we only looking to do this for special ed? We have. We're not at capacity in some classrooms. Why? We're not a school choice district. Why would we not offer to fill three seats in the third grade somewhere? Because the revenue that you have, you know. We're not at capacity in some classrooms. Why? We're not at capacity in some classrooms. Why? We're not a school choice district. Why would we not offer to fill three seats in the third grade somewhere? Because the revenue that you get from school choice is, what's that? I'm saying, I'm agreeing with you. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. About what you're about to say. Okay. Oh, good. We're so aligned on some things. So it's a great question, Christina. But the revenue from school choice is why a lot of districts don't participate. It's fairly minimal. Well, we're not. This isn't school choice, right? No, this isn't. This is tuition for programs. We would set the tuition. We set the tuition. Can we sell seats in our third grade classroom? No. We would have to participate in school choice. So this isn't specifically for special ed because it's a special ed program. Exactly. Okay. And because Ronnie and these folks have created programs and or revitalized programs that have become, you know, highly covetable programs and the teachers that support them. And so it would help the viability for the program for our in-district students and the potential growth for some of those programs like the students that are participating in the 18 to 22 program and get some more exposure for them if we were able to kind of increase the numbers. I mean, one way I look at this is that there are years where there's not a cohort in a specific program. And that can really test the viability of the program because in-district programs still have to be viable from a financial perspective. And what this kind of does is it's only when you have significant openings. And Ronnie just gave a good example. When it's one or two, you don't do it. When you have several spots open in a cohort and there's no chance it's going to be filled, then to keep, especially if there aren't like peers, for example, or cohort based on our staffing model and we want to retain skilled staff, this is a way to do that. That's kind of what we're really talking about to be really clear. I mean, I think it's incredible that we have so many programs. And I will say as a small district to have the amount of programs we have is pretty incredible. Which we're all created before I got here, so this is not what you know. But we are a small district, so it can be tricky some years. Some years it's not. Some years that they just, and I would hate, you know, if you don't have the cohort, then you potentially can lose staff. It's potentially not the right program for a student. It may then lead to an out of district because we don't have a cohort and it's not, you don't want kids to be isolated. So it really could be a win-win. And I also want to reiterate, this is not like opening floodgates and having like dozens of kids. Like maybe it would be one a year, maybe two a year. I mean, the district that is sending wants to keep their kids. They don't want to do this. So this is a very rare, like I said, in my, before I came here I never tuitioned into a public. And since being here I've only, I've done it, you know, three times and they're very specific situations. The last thing I would add, Ronnie, is, you know, if you think about the future, we've been talking a lot about the future, and if you look at our upper elementary grades, you're talking about 228 and fourth, you know, fifth grade, and 220 and fourth grade. We're talking about like 165, 170 cohorts. And what that's going to mean, it's going to be harder, that's in, you know, the overall population, it's going to be harder to have cohorts because of that population dip. I think so often around this table we've said, wouldn't it be nice to be a leader in X, Y, and Z? We've had so much growth in the past however many years of us who have been there in the before and the after. So it's nice that we could be a leader in this for some programs that do have small cohorts, and to be a truly inclusive program you need to have peers there. So if we could get there that would be great, and it feels like growing pains for some of these programs. Growth is scary and growth is hard. And if we do have those strict parameters around entry and capacity, which we can trust our administrators to guard, that feels important, especially knowing that financially what we could be up against in the next few years and protecting the programs that we have and the students that we have and keeping it inclusive for those students. Thoughtfully said, Kate, and I left the last meeting and I told Ronnie I'm going to think through everything and I'm going to send her questions, and really I asked I think all of my questions and just needed to kind of sit with it. And I went through every single scenario I could imagine in my head, and I arrived there. And I still have a little bit of fear going back to what Erin said. I think we trust everybody at the table. We know all the thoughtfulness and parameters that has gone into this, and we hope you stay here forever. And that's never a problem. But I think the fear is if anything changes, does this change? And I had an idea, and I have absolutely no idea if this is a good idea or it's viable. But is this something, like we have an annual vote for out of district, right? Is there, could we revisit this annually to see? Annual vote for out of choice? School choice. School choice. We annually vote on school choice, right? This is not that. No, I understand that. I understand that. But is it something, oh sorry. Is it something that we could revisit once a year at this table to determine is this something we want to continue to do? Keep the revolving fund open for tuitions in. But would that mean removing students who are already in the program? Good question. That wouldn't happen anyway. Exactly. We lost the faculty. That's what I got from listening. True. If we don't have space the next year, then this is not available. But that's not us as a committee saying, nope, we vote against it. That's our program saying we don't have space for Wayland students. And so you other districts need to figure it out. So I've been thinking through this stuff. We change every three years. Every year. So who can make a policy? So I looked into this. Some districts have JFAD, which we don't have. And it's about tuition and students. And they can put guardrails on it if we only want up to X amount of spots per program to be eligible for this or something like that. If you wanted, you know, a policy on this, we could put it. And it sounds like, Ronnie, you've already put thought into that. It's just not necessarily written in the policy, right? Yeah. I mean, like, any student that we did tuition in, the sending district has to sign a contract. And that contract's only a year. So it's every year. You know, there is, like, a termination clause. There is, like, a... I mean, that's where I think you could put some of the language also is in the contracts. Obviously, I don't have one developed. I, you know, I was looking over one that I signed for another district. I mean, the other district has to agree to sign it, obviously. But, you know, just, like, they are... If at the end of this year we were like, oh, no, our... We just got, like, a whole huge move-in. We can't... Then I would let that other district know and say, you know, unfortunately, I'm giving you enough time. But, unfortunately, we don't have room for next year. And then they would have to find a new placement. And that would, you know, be in the contract. I don't anticipate that. Because I would just... I mean, you never know. But you just want to make sure you give enough notice. Because these are kids and we don't want to be moving them all around. But, you know, some school, like, an out-of-district school just closed. You know, like, schools, unfortunately, sometimes those things happen and kids do have to move. And I think that if you didn't want to do a policy, I think that, you know, the language in the contract, which we would have employers obviously look at, would protect us. I think for me, thinking about what a cohort is and thinking about stability for the students in that cohort, I don't like the idea of both for the Wayland students or the students who would be tuitioning in, it could just change every year. And I just think it makes it very hard to make meaningful friendships that way in your cohort. And, you know, I get it from the financial point of view. I get it from the staff retention point of view. But I'm also trying to think a bit from those students in that cohort point of view. Not only the Wayland students, but also students in other districts that aren't even Wayland students, but would be our students. And, you know, I get it. It's important to have cohorts and, you know, could make for a bigger cohort. But if there's not consistency in that, I can see it as problematic for students in these programs that are already isolated. Christina, in my experience having accepted students, usually students are there for the duration. They are. Just so you know, they're there for the duration. It's just, you always sign a yearly contract. But, you know, barring any major change or anything, yeah, I mean, typically you would keep, you know, have students. And usually it's mutual. If you don't, if you, if you, if the program is not appropriate, it's not, you know, it's usually mutual for the family and the parent. I mean, the family and the school and the funding school and the receiving school are all like, you know, we're not meeting the students' needs. Because that's why we're being very particular, because I would hate to have a student start in our school, make friends, join a club, and then be like, mmm, it's not working out. Like that, mmm, that's why we have to be very, very sure that we can support the student and that it's a right fit. Because you don't want things like that. You don't want somebody to help make friendships and then be like, no, it's not working. That's not why we're working. And that's why I'm not the one making the decisions, because I don't work directly with the kids. So I don't know the cohort. So if, you know, if the teacher's like, nope, that's going to set this student, nope, nope, that's, you know, not going to work for this group. Okay, great. It's like, I'm not the one making that decision. The other thing is, I got from the meeting last week that if they needed any other services that those would be paid for, like if they need BCBA for speech therapy, whatever those would be paid for. But like, it also does increase the caseload of our SLPs and whatever in the district. And I don't know how stretched then they already are or how much bandwidth they have in their caseload, but. Yeah, that's a factor that we'd have to look. So when we look at the IEP, if it says something like, you know, times a week of speech, you know, we can't. And then you're honest with the sending district to say, you know, we think this is appropriate, but unfortunately, you know, we looked at this and this is not something that our program would be able to provide. So for instance, if somebody in like a therapeutic needed to see a counselor every day, that's just not, you know, sometimes it's, but it's, we can't guarantee that. So we would have to say, you know, unfortunately, we don't have that capacity in our program. And also we would check with the service providers to make sure that we're not, you know, I know, I keep a list of all of them. They share their schedules with me and their caseloads and everything. So I have that in mind and I know how far they're stretched to know where we need to deploy people. But if they needed like additional things like a one-to-one aid or hearing equipment or, you know, a walker or physical, that would be paid for by the sending district. Those are not fit the costs that we would. I just remember like when I first got on the school committee, I think like there were certain therapists that were like at capacity and there was a lot of discussion of needing IEP and stuff like that. And with our move, our TCW move, it actually didn't really help that because it takes away travel time for specifically our OT and our PT. It's one less building they have to go to. And so that helps as well. And also then there will be two SLPs that have the auto now for both. Yeah, we, I mean, and I definitely keep an eye on it. And the SERP, I think of speech in particular, they do, you know, like a while last year, the Clay Pit, the SLPs were like, we need a little bit more. So we increased them a little bit more. You know, the psychologist at the high school is like, I'm just covering the entire high school by herself. She's like, I could just, you know, I looked over at case load, we gave her some more support. So we're, we keep looking pretty close eye on that. I don't have anything pending right now. So if you want to take more time, it's fine. I don't have anything like this is urgent today. Do you want to hold? Do you want to? I'm supportive of moving, but if other people want to hold, I want to be respectful of that. I don't object to having more conversation if people want, but I'm sort of settled with what we've got. Okay. I'm just reluctant that we say yes today, and it's today and forever thereafter. I think that's what my fear is, but I don't want to disrupt kids. I'm just not here yet. It's not, like we don't have a policy on it. Maybe we should look at a policy on it and what that might look like and come to the table next time. Does that make sense? I'm not on the policy squad, so. The policy squad's got to get a move on it if they want to get it. I know. How many more readings do you guys have? I don't know, but not a lot. No. Yeah. I'm open to a motion. I'm open to, I'm going to move to approve the creation of the revolving fund. Okay. Do we have a second? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? So it still wins, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'd also, we're going out like this, put it on the agenda for potential policy creation. Should we have news? And it should also be in a special educational, you know, report in terms of, it often is, would be in enrollment. There's a revenue side. So there's all kinds of kind of, I would say, built-in accountability that we follow. And teachers will definitely, I, there will be. There will be. It'll be. I don't think we worry about you at all. I don't think that's a concern. Thank you. And you know, a lot of programs, a lot of schools are creating, it is, a lot of schools are creating their own programs. Um, like I, I think last year we did a presentation or maybe I shared it on like the cost benefit of creating these programs. I mean, in addition to the, just to create a good, like, you know, in district programming, but it is, it is a cost benefit. So a lot of schools are creating programs. They're just at the forefront of a lot of them. So I can put that on the agenda for the next meeting if policy subcommittee thinks that they can maybe come with a proposal. Okay. I'm so jealous. Diane, my scribe, my love. Would you be so kind as to add that to a policy item for discussion around potential policy, JFAB? Thank you. Um, we have the consent agenda. We don't appear to have the payroll and warrants. Are there some tonight? Yes, payroll and warrants. Oh, okay. We didn't get them. I don't think so. I don't know that they're in the folder. Yeah. Sorry? There's not an AP warrant, just the payrolls. And then I think the agenda says February 31st. Okay. I don't know that they're in the folder. Yeah. Sorry? There's not an AP warrant, just the payrolls. And then I think the agenda says February 31st. But I think it's March 13th. And it looks like there's a blank in the minutes from March 13th that we have to fill in. There's a second missing. But I was not at the meeting. I think that was the question mark. On 2-11? March 13th. March 16th. Yeah. On 2-11? On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 3-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. Okay. So let me make the edit in here then. Can we still approve it as a bundle or do you need to do a separate vote with the edit? We can just do it as a... I was just going to do that. Okay. Okay. We should be able to do it with as revised. Okay. Is that the only edit other than... You guys were like the motion making queens that night. I'm going to move to approve the consent agenda, noting that the minutes contained in the consent agenda are March 13th of 2026 and March 25th of 2026, as revised for March 13th, 2026. I'll second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? I know. Okay. Any matters not reasonably anticipated? We move. No, that's... Oh, no. I move to enter executive session for the purposes of discussing strategy related to collective bargaining with the Wayland Educational Association, WEA, Units A and B, as permitted by MGL Chapter 30A, Section 21A3, and for the purposes of reviewing and approving executive session minutes with intent to redact and release said minutes, as permitted by MGL Chapter 30A, Section 22 for March 25th, 2026. School committee will be joined by David Fleischman, Superintendent Betsy Gavron, Assistant Superintendent Kirsteen Patterson, Director of Finance and Operations, Ronnie Kessler, Director of Student Services, and Diane Marabella, Recording Secretary. School committee will adjourn in executive session and will not reconvene in open session. Do I have a second? I'm going to second. Uh, Betsy? Yes. Kate? Yes. Erin? Yes. Christina? Yes. Erin? Yes. It's a really important. Well right. It's valid that any time or bye? Yes. Together there'll be 예 undoes. Christina. Ngay Right. James. Yes. Is there a nice time? It's okay about finding some new form? Yep. It's oke. It's actually a decent tool. It's almost all in our studio and this integration from the opening spring. And yes, it provides many hours for most days and comfortable in the evening period, and you can see lots of new ways. Cool fine. Women have been there since it has to reach out for a day. It's a good time. Yeah. Bいた tenha.
We have a special matter on the agenda first tonight. All right, bear with me. I'm just getting my phone a little bit.
David, are you or Kirstine presenting on a fiscal year 27 for the budget hearing?
I'm sorry, if there's nobody here, do you want to do it anyway? We have to. A little bit about our budget. This was a budget where our goal was to maintain services. And just a broader context is that it's getting challenging out there. You know, as we read about some of our peer districts and what's going on in terms of... And the challenge for everybody right now is how do you maintain your level of services? And we are able to do that next year, which we're really fortunate to do. And, you know, we've been talking... During the budget, we talked about the fact that it is kind of one more year. This is our last year, given that Wayland's getting so close to the tax levy, that next year we will need additional revenue in order to maintain our services. So, that's where we are. And the big idea really is about maintaining our services. We have all the information we need in terms of health insurance. Of course, the state budget is not finalized. They're working on that right now. But we're hopeful we may even get a little more revenue. That's possible. I don't think we will get less. The state is in a really challenging spot right now because of the Medicaid situation, which is really challenging. For state governments, the number one expenditure is always health insurance. And number two is education. But with the federal changes in Medicaid, it's really, really hard right now. But we are going to be okay for next year in terms of achieving our goals and our staffing. We've had minor shifting in enrollment. But overall, our enrollment is pretty stable, as we shared during the budget presentation. So, that's really where we are. Anything to add, Kirsten, in terms of context for our budget? I think you covered all the continued pressures of the facilities, maintaining buildings, out of district tuition that we're really trying to keep a close eye on. And I would say health insurance, you know, when you read about where are the areas that districts are really facing the pressure, health insurance is one. And our health insurance number was pretty much on budget. Brian, obviously, Kevin, does our health insurance budget. It was pretty much close to where we ended up. We didn't get a huge savings because we have some more plans being used. But it was roughly kind of where we are in terms of the, it was 12, he budgeted well. Percent. Percent. Yeah. So, we're about on target of where we should be. And obviously, you know, Kirsten gave the budget update last week in terms of where we are. You know, maintenance continues to be a pressure point because of just our buildings are older. But we are going to end up okay this year in terms of being balanced. It's looking good with not a lot left over. You'll recall last year was $4,000? Mm-hmm. I'm an optimist, so it will be more than that. But it's still, you know, we budget tightly because we want to get all our programs and everything in.
Anybody have anything? So far, and the percentage increase, you know, was 4.5 and that, if that got lowered actually at the end, it was about 4.48. It was initially 4.98 and lower as we reduced a little bit later in the budget process, just with some changing and additional retirement and some other staffing issues. Right, so that dropped our overall personnel number, right? Yes. And, just trying to remember from the, the vocational ed was reduced.
Vocational, well, you're talking about the town side. The town budget is going to be going up for vocational education. Because it said that we reduced it overall by over $22,000, and then that the school budget came down about $145,000, right? That was the personnel piece, yes. Mm-hmm. Is that the only thing that factored into that? Yes.
And that was? That was a reduction from the initial budget proposal. But it's just one personnel change? Yes. Right? Yeah. Okay. Based on enrollment, we ended up reducing a position, based on just our kindergarten projections.
And just to put that in perspective, so one employee is an overall reduction in approximately $145,000. It was a piece of another employee, but overall, I think it was overall one with salary and benefits was pretty close. So is that, that was going to be my question, is that straight up salary, or does that include the benefits for that individual as well? Well, on our side, it's just the salary. That's what I thought. Yes. Because the benefits is all covered on the, and this is part of like that reserve hold that, you know, was the variance that we had that's part of the second Warren article of the town meeting. So that, that number just came down. So it's all in the personnel line item that that reduction is recognized. Anybody have anything they want to discuss? Mention? Et cetera? Et cetera. Our thanks to all involved in the budget process.
Okay. Agreed. Yeah. I mean, I think it was not easy, but given where some of our peer districts are, I think for next year, we're, we're fortunate. It's tough out there. If nobody has anything else, I'm going to close the budget hearing. Yay. We will close the budget hearing. 6.16 p.m.
Okay. Is anyone here for public comment? No.
Okay. With that, we can roll right on to superintendent's update. First on the list is Children's Way transition update.
We have a couple of. Okay. Oh, thanks. So, um, just a little bit of context. At our, um, as you, you all have been a part of our facilities planning presentations, and one thing we've talked about in our facilities planning presentations is the idea of having pre-K in elementary schools, and, um, it's something, um, Kate, you were at our visioning session where we heard from the TCW teachers that they would love to be part of an elementary school. That came up at our, our visioning session, and this is something that, um, we thought we were doing in the future, but given the enrollment reduction at Happy Hollow, it's something we're doing earlier than, than projected. It's certainly something we've thought about and certainly talked to the team there about. Um, just a little background. Many, many districts, larger districts sometimes have their own preschool, and some districts have preschool and elementary school. There are some districts also that spread the preschool classrooms around, so they have multiple classrooms in a district. Um, the advantage, there are certainly advantages of having a preschool all in one location in terms of collaboration, support, related services, um, all of the above. So, that's where we are right now, and then, um, we have a couple of slides that Ronnie and I will go through, um, as I said earlier, um, we have some space and, um, it allows TCW to be part of a larger school community, um, and all the benefits of being part of a larger school community in terms of programming, um, collaboration, um, on the staff side with special education teachers. We can actually go through some of the, um, advantages and benefits, um, mental health support, psychologists and social worker, um, the potential for art, music, and PE, uh, obviously math coach, literacy team, as we think about ELA and math, um, the special education team at the school, participating in professional development with them, um, just vertical alignment as we think about curriculum and instruction, make, we're really a pre-K to 12 district, um, it also retains FTEs at Happy Hollow. As we think about schools getting smaller, oftentimes staff members become not full-time, and, and to maintain full-time folks at Happy Hollow, and lastly, um, base hours, right? You talked to, uh, Yeah, base right now on Wednesday, then, to 45, it's going to extend to be 445, um, for the children's, right? And that's because they'll be able to leverage the same folks that are there for Happy Hollow, or, uh, K through five kids. Well, because Wednesdays, it's a, it's always been shorter on Wednesdays because they end at 11, um, so it's just a long base time, but now that they're there, um, Curtis and I are going to extend their hours, which will be helpful. So the kids won't go to school any later, but they can attend base longer. Yeah, for, you know, parents who need it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And do you want to take next steps? Sure. Um, Um, so we've already spoken with, um, the Happy Hollow, Nicolette, um, the principal spoke with the Happy Hollow staff. David and I spoke with the preschool staff. They've already had visits and meetings and well on our way of, um, planning next steps. Um, you know, we are scheduling a meeting, um, like a meet and greet in May for the preschool families to meet Nicolette, um, the principal of Happy Hollow, um, and, um, eventually, like, and then set up a time for tours to see the spaces. Um, some teachers are moving at Happy Hollow, but they're, you can see where the spaces are. We've already started talking about logistics and drop-off and pickup and parking. Very much aware that those are logistics that we are, um, very much aware of, and Nicolette is well on top of these things and, um, advocating. And then the playground, that's our big, that's a, you know, we know we need a fenced-in playground accessible to, um, our preschoolers, and that's our big, you know, um, kind of, like, top of our, our list. Um, but, um, we've, I think we've, we've, we haven't solved everything, but we've thought of everything, and we're in the process of planning everything and really good problem-solving with the preschool staff and the Happy Hollow staff. This is a silly question, but is this starting next year? Which is why the planning, and there's a planning meeting today, there's a lot of planning. There's a lot, yeah. Involved whenever you do something like this. And everybody thinks of something different, so, like, so it's good to have everyone's heads kind of, you know, the preschool staff thinks of things that I didn't think of, and I didn't think of, what I thought of. But, um, has there been response from parent, community? We haven't really, very little. Um, we sent out an email to all existing and future, so, um, we have our, you know, roster of people who have signed up, and we've sent an email out as well. We haven't. There's a large cohort, Erin, that we're moving to kindergarten this year, a very large, so the numbers next year are not as large, so as new families come in, this will just be the norm, um, going to Happy Hollow, but there will be some transition, uh, certainly for the students who are there now. It's nice, it's, you know, it's one of the nice things is, um, preschools, they have to walk up the stairs, you know, um, it's a little bit more accessible, which is nice, um.
Are, um, the, like, time in the morning, the drop-off time going to be the same, or will they have, like, a separate entrance? I just remember, like, going to the children's way, that was, like, an endeavor to get. I had, like, the double stroller, right? Like, preschooler, right? Like, and lots of other people do, too. Like, it's just, it's a lot different than elementary school. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, um, they will have their own, they will have a separate entrance, um, and coming in after the Happy Hollow drop-off a little bit, but we're also hoping maybe to do, like, a lot, because parking is going to be, like, to do, most preschools do, like, a live drop-off, where you just get out, so you don't have to worry about the doubles. That's so nice. So that's what we'll be doing, um, so you don't have to get out. That's great, yes, people with, you know, infants in car seats will appreciate that. Any of you who have seen the back here, when there's the drop-off in cars coming in, it is not ideal. This will be, in terms of safety, uh, this is an improvement. And they get out at 2, so they'll be gone before the buses, or rolling buses will be gone before they start coming. I wonder if it might encourage enrollment, maybe not next year, but in the following year. Because if I am a happy, hollow family, and I have a happy, hollow toddler, why wouldn't I want my child to go there, knowing that this is a place that they're going to grow? It seems like a good opportunity, um, across the board. Yeah. I agree. I mean, I like that it aligns with our long-range building plan. I think I had some questions from parents. You guys really adequately addressed them. I think people were maybe concerned that we, were we, um, do we have enough space to accommodate? And because of the declining enrollment, you really do feel that there is a space to accommodate those students. So, I agree, Kate. I think it's, we have to start to make moves towards our future, and this does that.
Did you get any feedback from, um, the TCW teachers? That they're looking forward to it, given this is what they had asked for? Yeah, I think so. Um, they seem, you know, they have questions, obviously. But I think so. They've already been over to Happy Hollow to look at the spaces, and they seem excited about it. Um, you know, I think it was all pretty positive when we told them. Um, so, yeah, I think overall, I think it'll be positive. It'll be much faster, as you know, we talked about it, this, this visioning session, we were planning, like, ten years in advance. The plan all along. It was the plan, which we talked about, and now it's, um, I will say one of the pluses is that we have a principal at Happy Hollow that is very excited about it, and that's really helpful. So, it's not, you know, sometimes when you talk to a principal about a change, it, Nicolette loves young children, and she's embracing this, and is really excited, um, to have additional students, because sometimes, you know, in a school there's declining enrollment, that's not a good thing. So, in terms of the burst of energy, and population, and welcoming new families, that's something that she's very excited about and embracing. And I think her, um, going over and, you know, meeting with all the teachers, she's reached out, she's emailed, she's met with them all, and inviting them, I think that's helped, you know, already ease the transition. And Debbie Dixon will be at Happy Hollow in terms of, on the IEP and special ed side, as we transition, and she has a lot of expertise in this area, so when families have questions, your staff should be very helpful. Seems like there are a lot of synergies here. Thank you for thinking creatively and not in a box. Yeah, we're, you know, at some point you just have to, like, we were talking, and I was like, all right, we've got to just do it. We're trying to make a decision. We had, we had also a date, I said, this is our deadline. Um, and we did take a look, you know, as we look at our kindergarten enrollment, and where it's been, we now have a trend in terms of the numbers that we're seeing, because we're now three, four years in a row of the same number, and so that's something. The other thing, um, because we have, you know, Happy Hollow and Volker in terms of kindergarten, they're relatively close. So as we think about managing, this is where, you know, we could come to you with maybe increasing a buffer zone slightly, because, um, that's, that's what we would have to do, but that's also plus, um, because we do have that flexibility as we think about managing kindergarten numbers.
Great. Thank you. Okay. Um, Jen. April 1st? Wait. We did. That was our deadline. We beat the April 1st deadline. It was just self-imposed, just so you all know.
Fabulous. Okay. I am inviting Jen up for, next on our list, technology update.
All right, Jen is not going to, last time Jen was here, I was here to our administrator team. She did a Gemini training, and shortly thereafter, I used Gemini at this very meeting and referred to, so I will, I, that's how. Wonders never cease. Yes. There you go. So, we, we were all in on that, so one piece of a broader district goal. Great. I love hearing that. Yeah, we got some good feedback from that. So, nice to see all of you. I'm trying to think when I was here last, but, um, it doesn't take long these days for things to feel like they've changed really a lot in a short amount of time, right? So, um, it's nice to have the opportunity to share with you some of the progress that we've made, um, when we think about our role in the district. Because, um, you know, as you'll see, we, we've, um, if you go ahead and Betsy, um, if you want to just put all that up there, that first slide. So, what you'll see as I go through this is we've got, um, you know, where's the support department effectively different from some of the other departments here in the school district, but I, I really think a lot about how, you know, our job is to make everyone else's job a little bit easier, right? So, when we look at goals, and you guys have asked for an update towards goals, our goals are, are sort of, you know, embedded with other people's goals. So, what I had done was gone through the goals for the district to, um, align kind of where we have had the most impact, I would say, and where, where we have been so more clearly, um, identified as supporting these goals. So, that's kind of how I've, um, divvied this up today. And so, we'll go through, uh, goal area one, five, and six, these, um, areas of achievement, community, and operations. And I have for each sort of like a slide of like what we've accomplished so far this year and where we're hoping to, you know, next steps for us. So, thanks, Betsy. Um, so, in thinking about that first goal area, this is, um, academic achievements. And this is about supporting responsible AI use. This is at least for, like, in terms of like the area of academic achievement, the focus area for us is around thinking about what does responsible use look like, um, for generative AI, but also just more, more broadly, especially from our, for our younger learners, that concept of digital literacy, which involves, you know, things like screen time and like, um, understanding, like, uh, differentiating sort of like fact from fiction, which is becoming increasingly challenging, and, um, uh, you know, healthy habits, like those types of things, uh, are more targeted with our, with our younger learners. And then when we look at our, at our older students, where they are academically, and, and, uh, then that's where more this generative AI piece is, is front of mind for us, thinking about how we can support that. So, in terms of our progress so far, I'm going to start with the, um, high school. So, the high school, um, has really been in a, a very thoughtful process that's been led by Mark Lefeb, who is our, um, instructional technology specialist on our team that, um, services the high school. And he has been working with the tech committee to evaluate what does, what does responsible student use look like? Um, you know, as you can imagine, AI is causing us to have a lot of really, you know, serious conversations about what, what does it, what, you know, what is, what does this look like for us as teachers? What does this look like as humans? Like, how do we navigate this challenging moment, right? And I think we vacillate between being really excited and kind of scared at the same time. And, and that's all super normal. And so, we've just really tried to remove the pressure that, that I think the world has created for us and, like, you've got to hurry up and do this to kind of say, well, let's just make sure that every move that we make is really thoughtful because we have a lot of responsibility here with kids. And so, we want to really think about that responsibility as we move forward. So, so to do this in partnership with the teaching staff is really the way to do it. And so, um, what we hope is that at the end of this year-long exploration that we'll be able to, and I think that might be, oh, well, that's, that's coming. I'll talk to you about that in a minute. But, but we're, uh, that's where we're at is, and so, um, in the middle school, this is a little bit different. So, in the middle school, um, and, and Mark and Bethann, the counterpart at the middle school, have been working closely together and, and thinking about what this looks like. Um, if we were talking with students about what gender-to-day, um, is and, and a little bit about it, if we're doing some preliminary lessons, we've been able to do so, um, deliver some preliminary, like a, a mini lesson to students, uh, at the middle school that's linked there if you're curious about what that looks like and what it contained. Um, and that was really great because we had great support from the middle school administration and staff because they're taking valuable time to be able to do this. But I think we all agreed it was important, um, to, to deliver some, just baseline, um, understanding or, you know, communicate some baseline information to students and staff. Um, so that happened just last month. So that was really, a, a, a really important accomplishment and pleased to say that we've been able to do that. And then, um, earlier in the year and in time for sort of the start of the school year, we had developed AI use guidelines and a quick reference which were really targeted for our staff. Um, we're not ready yet to, to deliver this information to students. That's, that's really what this year-long, um, process has been about what does that look like. So, but we needed to start the year off with having this information for staff, right? If we, if we're silent on it, then we kind of leave it open and people are wondering and asking questions. So we've, we've put that together and that, um, has been distributed to staff. And, um, but we, we plan to do more of like a little bit of roadshow kind of thing with that and, and I'd like to be able to be at staff meetings to maybe speak to that because at the beginning of the year there's lots of things that staff get to look at and we'd like to take some more time with this. Um, and then, um, I'm really pleased to report that the elementary team who, um, have been joined this year with a new member because we had a, a retirement last year, um, has been working really well, um, together to update their curriculum particularly, um, around this idea of, um, you know, like I said, sort of digital well-being, right? And, um, addressing with our youngest students with really high quality resources. I've linked some there if you're curious more about them. Um, but, but using some of these really high quality resources to update our curriculum, which we're constantly doing, so that we're, um, you know, targeting these skills in a developmentally appropriate way. So no, no work with generative AI or even using that terminology with our youngest learners. Really focused instead on healthy digital skills and online safety, that type of stuff. Okay. So then in terms of next steps, so, there's always more to do. We're, we're working on developing that framework for responsible use. As I mentioned to you, that's really the work that the high school's been focused on. And our hope and expectation is that we'll be able to, um, have that articulated in time for the fall. Um, and so we have been really focused on building staff capacity through professional development. I actually spent the day today in med field with, um, multiple members of the team here. Both the technology team and members of the technology committees at all levels were, um, invited. And so we had a number of people there. And it was great because the focus of the day was on AI and K-12 schools. And so we were there with other educators. Most of the sessions were teacher led, which was really powerful for people to hear from other professionals. Um, and so it was, uh, it was a great day. And we've had a lot of those kinds of, you know, wow, that was a lot of information. That's a lot to discuss. Um, but I think it's an important part of where we are in our process and in our own learning is, is to really, um, focus a lot on professional learning for our own team to, to grow that capacity. Um, and we're gonna continue that AI literacy work, um, over the summer and into next year. We're, we're talking as a team about what, what kinds of supports can we, um, put in place this summer and during the school year and next year to continue to support staff, you know, in a, in a professional development capacity. What does that look like? So, um, we're also, um, reviewing Google workspace settings right now. Um, you may have, you may recall that I mentioned to you I, I was able to get a grant for about 20 years only $22,000 or so from the state around cybersecurity readiness, um, through, uh, Mass Cyber Center. And what was good about that is one of the pieces of that included, uh, an audit of our Google workspace domain, which, like many things, you know, you set it up in the beginning and then so many different things change over time that it's really worth taking a close look at all of those levers to understand do we have it configured for best practice. And so, we're working on that, um, right now. Actually, we just got our 300-page report back. Uh, that's gonna take some time to process. But it, what's really great about it is it gives us a very clear roadmap and it sort of, you know, shines a light in all the dark corners. And, you know, I, I knew we needed to do some adjusting on some things to just really try to make sure that if and when, you know, you know, we determined that in the fall we're, we're ready to enable some, some generative AI use with students with specific tools that we've identified. Those, that tool, those tools would most likely be, um, tools like Gemini, Notebook LM that are associated with our Google workspace instance. And that is for security reasons. It's for all the reasons that you would want it to be, which is we have control over that space. And so, it's a really great platform for that, um, very much in, you know, in competition with tools that are available like ChatGPT in a, in a paid version. We have essentially a tool like that, but, but Gemini is not used to train models when it's used within the workspace domain. So, we want to drive the, if and when kids are using these tools, we want to drive those tools through safe venues as opposed to free things they may be finding online. So, we know there's some level of urgency importance to making sure that our workspace is configured correctly for when we do enable for students that, that all of those safety pieces are in place. Everything that we have the ability to set. So, looking at that now. And, um, community engagement, this has kind of been a fun area this year. Too much, sorry. Do you mind if I ask you a quick question on AI before? Yeah, absolutely. I should take the pause. I'm just curious because in, certainly in like the private sector, I feel that we are getting sort of pushed AI to in a number of our workplace tools. And so, you brought up Gemini. I had written down a question. I was curious. Is Gemini active at all in the district right now? And, or are teachers sort of having AI assisted like curriculum technology tools that because, like, third party tools are updating all the time. And so, it's, you know, I'm like a passive, you know, adopter or integrator of it just by virtue of the tool that you might be subscribing to or have a license to. So, just, you just give us a little sense of how much like AI assisted tools are at our faculty's fingertips, um, as of this year. Yeah. So, we, um, in terms of what is available to staff, we don't technically turn anything off. I mean, I would sort of generally say that for staff, we generally leave things open for, for adults who are professionals to make determinations. However, we do advise staff on a regular basis the importance of, of verifying that any tool that they're using, particularly if it involves any kind of student information, that, that they are checking to make sure that that tool is on our, uh, data privacy, we have a data privacy agreement in place for, for that tool. Because that, that affords us some additional coverage. You mentioned sort of like things change all the time. That includes terms of service. So, I don't want to worry that when I read, because I'm one of those crazy people that read that stuff. And so, if I read it, it might be, I might be okay with it today. But you know how you log back into a service and it's like just by virtue of you using it, you're agreeing to that. So, the beauty of the, the tech data privacy agreements that we have, for which Wayland was one of the, I mean, gosh, was, was sort of the originating district of this concept, which is now, uh, they just picked up New York Public Schools, guys. Like, I don't know if you realize what a big deal it is, the thing that you started here in Wayland. But this data privacy consortium that serves, uh, serves Massachusetts also serves New Hampshire and, uh, Connecticut and Rhode Island and, and, and now New York. So, the power and beauty of that is, one, we don't, we're not, we're not beholden to just the terms of service because this, this sits on top of that. Um, but also, it, it provides for us some additional, um, benefits around, you know, forcing, compelling data destruction and other things that they wouldn't, that would, they have to agree to for us. So, that's the big deal. So, we, we always point back to that. And then, um, we, uh, so there are tools, so, so Gemini would fall within that, as would Notebook Allen, which is sort of like a subset within Gemini and some tools in classroom. All kind of Gemini is sort of the, the engine behind that, if you will, the element behind that. And then, um, teachers have also explored, um, not just this year, but even prior to, to my arrival, um, some tools like Brisk, uh, Magic School. So, some other tools, um, School AI is another one. Um, and, and I'm, I'm comfortable with all of these, like the, you know, the ones that I've heard and seen, I'm comfortable with. What I've tried to do, and we've tried to communicate, um, at every opportunity when talking about AI is, and when I say AI, I should, I should clarify, I'm talking about generative AI and all of this context, right? So, um, that, you know, when you're, when you're using things that involve student information, first of all, only approved tools, and even then there are some, some caution. But when you're not paying for a tool, you are paying for it with your data. And, and that is, I think, I think the whole world needs to know that to be true, because these pieces of software don't make themselves. It costs money to develop them, and, and that's how you're feeding the machine, right? And so, we don't want that. And so, Gemini is, and when you pay for a tool, like ChatGPT, you're getting that also not training. And that's why companies are saying, use this, but only use this tool, because they're trying to keep their stuff in the paid version where it's safe. Um, so we, we don't restrict, but we haven't, to, to maybe answer your point more clearly, we haven't recommended a tool exclusively to say, like, use this, um, only this. But like we say, like, we, we don't encourage ChatGPT and other, um, chat up tools that we, over Gemini, because Gemini is our, that is our environment. That is what we will continue to suggest. Um, we have reports that we can pull and have been looking at a little bit. I don't have the data off the top of my head, but we can look at usage over time. So that can help us sort of monitor a little bit, like, the level of adoption, right? Um, so, we, we definitely have seen that increase over time, but what I would also say is, it's, it's just a narrow group of, of staff within the district that are doing most of this AI use, and then other people are doing none of it. But that doesn't surprise me, because just because they're not showing up on my reports, what I'll also tell you might mean that they're, they're experimenting in other applications that I may not be pulling reports for. I would say that in speaking with staff, I, I think there's, I think people are aware that, that, you know, you, you cannot, should not feed PII or personally identifiable information into these tools. Um, and I think people, especially our adults, understand, like, once you hit enter, it's out of your control in many of these things. So to be thinking about that, um, but I, I think people are thinking about that. I would say, if anything, they're being very cautious in not using some of these tools. I would say our teachers are, are probably proceeding with extreme caution, which is not terrible. Um, and so, but I think, from the adult's standpoint, that, that's my, that's my assessment. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions about AI? Thank you for stopping me there. Uh, yeah. I did. Sorry. Um, so we just talked about staff. What about students? What AI do they have access to? Um, yep. So, um, technically, on a school device, not just technically, but practically, they, we prevent them from accessing AI, like, we block those things proactively. But, I can't necessarily really prevent, I mean, you know, a phone, like, all the ways. Um, I, I would say that we know that students are using AI tools outside of school, and they're typically using ChatGPT. Um, because it was kind of first to market, it was like the foot, you know, so that, that's it. What I'd also say, and what, what I, I would say, I'm hearing from other districts, so I would say our experience sort of mirrors what other districts are seeing, is that they're using these tools more as search engines, or as ways to sort of shortcut the, the, the work, right? And so, this is why the messaging, and the, and the, um, not just the staff, but really the students, and the reason why we want to really start having these conversations, and move past sort of like this fear that we're in a little bit, to, to really start talking candidly with students is, if we don't, if we're not going to directly address it in the classroom, then, then that leaves students, you know, they're being told like, you're not supposed to use it at all, right? Not, no use. That, that is the policy. There's no use allowed. Okay. Great. But, we also know in, in conversations with students confidentially, they're, they're certainly, it's very clear they're using, to, in different ways. And so, we want to, we want to use this as an opportunity to say, okay, well, what are the ways that you can use this that supports your learning, and what are the ways in which you're using it that is actually cognitively offloading things, and really preventing you from, from doing that, you know, from, from growing academically. You know, the analogy that was used in a presentation today, which is perfect, and I've seen a few of these, is, you know, you don't go to the gym, to, the purpose of the gym, and you going to the gym, is not to move the weights up and down, right? Because, you know, if you hired someone to do that, and you sat next to them and ate a burrito, like, is that really the point of going to the gym, right? But yet, like, silly as it is, that's really what we're doing with AI in many cases. We're, we're allowing AI to do something for us, and then we're, we're losing that learning opportunity. And so, I think, you know, my hope is, is that if we can start to have real conversations with students, we can have real conversations about their own agency, and their own learning, and, and, and, you know, they are, they are pretty protective of that, generally. So, my hope is that, you know, our focus can be around training them how to use it as a tool for learning, as opposed to, as a way to avoid hard things, right? And so, in order to start those conversations, the sort of chicken and egg problem we have is, can't really do that until we launch, allow the tool to be used in our environment, and yet we're not quite ready for that, because there's just so many things we want to get lined up neatly and be ready. So that's, that's where it's like, I hear you, like, there's a pressure, it's like, use the thing. And it's like, well, why are we creating this pressure when we're not quite ready? Like, I want to be thoughtful about this. And so, I appreciate that the district as a whole seems to accept that, no, a thoughtful process is more important than a fast process. So, I appreciate that that is the culture here. And so, that's how we're proceeding. Did that answer your question? Yeah. All right. Any other questions about AI? Okay. So, I have, oh, sure. I was just going to say, when I'm looking at the Generative AI Use Guidelines Wayland, Yeah. And under the Transparency in Use, it states that staff are encouraged where appropriate to acknowledge when AI tools have been used. I would think, as a learning piece for students, we would want to highlight, require it to be disclosed if you're using AI, not from a data privacy perspective specifically, but more as, and here is how I used it to support me. Yeah. Versus, I had it create this lesson for me. Or, that somehow a student sees it somewhere else, or whatever, or says, oh, that's the ChatGPT format, or whatever it is. Yeah. So, I'm just curious about that. Yeah. So, I think, you know, a lot of this is really around sort of, like, what are some of the new, like, normals for us in communicating some of this. And I think because it's so very new, staff, I think there are many times throughout any day or week that you might say to someone, did you use AI for that? And they might honestly tell you no, not realizing that they kind of did, or vice versa. Like, you know, I think even determining, like, you know, you can't even do a Google search without AI totally being in the middle of it, right? So, like, I think what we've talked about is, well, at what point is the clarity around that really important, right? If it's just to brainstorm ideas, do I really need to disclose that? I mean, it could. I can tell you I did not use AI to make my presentation. I find it to take me too long because I just, like, I end up spending more time, like, trying to tell it, like, how to exactly do what I want than just do it. And so I've learned that that is not an effective way for me to use AI. But it's really great for me to, you know, kind of brain dump when I sort of, like, am trying to summarize information or highlight key ideas or things like that. And so I think it's, a lot of it becomes, like, well, how did you use AI? And so there are some really great, I didn't include them here, but there are some really great examples that are in use in high schools and other districts where they might say, like, what specifically the task is and how AI might be used to support that task. And then to even further delineate, like, is that allowed or not allowed within that classroom. And so trying to, what I'm hearing when I talk to colleagues who have moved forward a little bit faster than us, and I would not say that we're incredibly slow here at all, actually. We're kind of where most places are right now, which is we know we need to do something about this. We're really being thoughtful. We're really, you know, we're really getting closer every day, every month, but, like, it's not on yet for kids. And so we, when I think about the, I'm sorry, where was I? I just saw community engagement and got lost. When I think about, like, that level of structure, when I've talked to other colleagues, they're like, the trouble is not just, like, when you turn it on, like, things don't magically change, right? Then it's, like, now the conversations start of, like, okay, we're starting to pilot in a few places. And those teachers are realizing that, oh, I need to be more explicit about, you know, how I'm directing students around that. So I think a lot of those nuances around, you know, how much do you communicate the use? And when is the use appropriate? And how are the ways in which to address what you're saying? Like, so that people start to realize when it can be useful and when it's not as useful are going to naturally start happening as we open things up. And as these experiences start happening potentially with students, I think that clarity is going to become better articulated. Because we're going to find that we need to be that clear. That's what I'm hearing when I talk to other districts is, like, it's not enough to be very general, but, like, really more specific about, like, that red, yellow, green light thing of, like, what is okay to use? What's sort of, like, well, maybe in some scenarios certain circumstances and what is just a hard no? That concept, you know, really trying to think about that. Okay, for lab reports, for, you know, like, very specifically, what can you do? What can't you do? And what might depend on the specific assignment and even the teacher whose room you're in at that time? So a lot of questions. I'm not going to have all the answers for that any time soon, but I'm happy to do my best to address them and I appreciate the question. These are all the same kind of questions we're asking each other. So community engagement, we had a real fun start to the year with ParentSquare. So I can't wait to start talking about that. So we have really been focused on trying to think about how to unify our communication so that when we message families, it's not coming from lots of different places and where is it and how do I find it and who sent it. And so ParentSquare has turned out to be a really great solution for us. We've seen a lot of really positive feedback. It's not perfect. We've, you know, made some adjustments along the way, but we not only did we have the communication platform launched, which happened, but then we most recently have launched the SmartSites tool, which is the new website. So we have now that nicely integrated stuff of the school website now can also surface the, you know, principal's newsletters and other things like that. So we were able to launch that this year and we create, we're working on creating or communicating about this, a style guide that we put together and that included like logos and the color codes and all of that so that when people start to make their own things or, you know, create other, that we don't start losing the branding that we spent so much time carefully thinking about. Because the colors are not just for consistency, but also around accessibility compliance. So that's part of what we've tried to communicate with this style guide and a communication guide that we're developing is, it's not just about having a consistent look. It's also about making sure that it's accessible for people visually because of the importance of color contrast and things like that. So next steps for here, we're working on that communications and posting guide. We've been speaking with the leadership team, really trying to think about like those communication channels and what goes under which, you know, what belongs in that all school news and, you know, what belongs in a principal newsletter and when might we send these so that we're not sort of stepping on each other to ensure that families are receiving this information. So that's been a focus for now through the end of the year. And then we also want to do, we kind of soft launched ParentSquare. We had a lot of things at the beginning of the year and we didn't want to overwhelm people. So we launched PowerSchool at the start and that felt like enough for families to kind of manage. So we didn't really want to do too much with ParentSquare. We kind of launched that more actively and the messages were coming through that to them. But ParentSquare has an app and the app is kind of awesome. And you can use ParentSquare without the app but it's just not as robust an experience for the family members. And so we want to more proactively promote the use of the app. And not because it's required but because I think it's a better experience for parents and it allows them more control over their notifications and all of that. And so that's a plan between now and sort of start of the year. And then we're going to continue with some staff training more focused on the high end users and the main offices to make sure that they feel like they've gotten out. We're kind of trying to work with them individually to update the templates that they have now to incorporate these new colors and logo designs that are on the website. And so we're going to use now to the end of the year to get that all tightened up so that when we start back in the fall we're rolling out the fall with everyone having their consistent templates and things like that. Jen, I think this is all great. And I really appreciate all of your work with the website and ParentSquare and everything. It's made such a difference to me. Everything looks more consistent now and I can more easily find things. So thank you very much. I do have a question and this relates to something we were talking about at the policy subcommittee about when students need to contact groups of other students, for example like a team or something like that. Can they use ParentSquare? We're thinking of, you know, like instead of using social media, which kind of a lot of kids have but maybe some don't and maybe some don't, you know, want to get. Is there a way that we could use ParentSquare or do you have a recommendation for another sort of app where people can very quickly message, students can message other students? Yeah, what I love about ParentSquare is kind of one-stop shopping, so I love that part of it. So ParentSquare has a tool, it has another component called StudentSquare actually. Put a pin in that for a second. But in response to the email that one of you sent me about this, I forget. Yeah. Okay. So that was actually, I appreciate you flagging that for me because this is so, so often a problem where we're sort of like you focus on the staff that are here during the day around the training and how we communicate and all of that, and then you have people that you bring in who are coaches that might not be regular staff and might not be getting that same communication. So we are working more closely now. We've reached out to Heath and Mark is working with him to, you know, really make sure that we have been setting up accounts for our coaches but really talking about that as the required tool for communication, but we can't require that until we make sure everyone's been trained and supported for that. But I think that's really important because we don't want, we really should not be sending messages out. It's certainly not something we would expect happening from our staff during the school day to have messaging about important events through social media. That can be an additive way but not as the primary and only way for those communications to happen. So we do have the ability for coaches to create groups and those groups can be for their teams and so we are working on that now. And in terms of like students communicating with other students, I guess I'd have some more questions about what you were talking, you know, what specifically that might look like, but there are some options for that depending on what we decided to do with permission. For example, you know, doing your Broadway, right? Like there's a student leader and they want to message the student crew about something. Okay. What are their options to do? I would say depending on, if they're all in the same school let's say, students can message other students via email. Like that already is a thing. Okay. I would acknowledge that students don't generally, email is not the way they communicate. Email is too cluttered. Right? What are just other options? Okay. You know, although that makes me laugh because the sixth grader thinks their email inbox is a lot. I don't know. Didn't we talk about this when I got here? My stick is bigger than yours. I'm pretty sure my inbox is way worse than yours. So, yeah. My sympathy only goes so far. But, yes. I think also they're just the mode of communication is more phone. I mean, it's their phone. It's text messaging. This is why we moved to ParentSquare because it's also true for us as adults. Like you really want my attention? Don't send it to my email. Like text it to me because that's the right now messaging, right? And so, ParentSquare is made for mobile first. Like that's the concept. So, in terms of what students can do, I really, to be honest, I don't have an answer for you as we sit here right now. Because I haven't looked into that because it hasn't been an ask for students to communicate through ParentSquare with other students. But I know the capability is possible and it exists. I would just want to really understand what we're trying to do and what that looks like. And make sure that there's some monitoring of an adult of those communications regardless of how we do it. And so, we can certainly explore and get more information about that. But I wouldn't want to set up a venue for students to communicate just with each other with not an adult being able to monitor those communications. Because I would say to you that, well, I wouldn't want to make that possible. And also, we already struggle with that a little bit where students sometimes grab a Google Doc and decide to use that as a chat window for themselves. Like, we already struggle with that a little bit now. And see what happens when they think they're communicating with no adults watching. And so... They're so creative. They're so creative, yeah. They really are. If only they would use that ingenuity for... And that's the feedback that we're getting from parents. And you know, you've seen the back and forth that we've had. That captains are using Snapchat or Facebook or other social media to communicate with clubs and teams. Yeah. Separate from coaches, separate from faculty. And it is in our policy that communication needs to have a stack mirror, right? But that's not happening with Snapchat. That's not happening with Facebook. No. Parents are not comfortable allowing some of their children social media. So, can we recreate the norm of how communication happens, student to student, with something like parents or whatever? They also... You know what I forgot to mention, actually, because this is kind of a big deal. We do also have Google Chat available for students, and it is available at the high school. I don't think it's available at the middle school. That's correct, right? But I think it's available at the high school, not the middle school. Yeah. So, again, all these things have granularity. We can... We have knobs that we can change for any of these things. But that has been in place at the high school for some time, is my understanding. So, students can chat message. But what's nice is if they're doing those types of tools, like, I actually have forensic ability of those things. Like, there's nothing they're sending through that that I couldn't pull a report on later if I wanted to. Do I spend time looking at it? No. But the ability exists, and so that's what we want for these tools. Like you said, I have none of that. You give me a FOIA request, I can't help you if it's in Snapchat. I've got nothing. So, that's the other reason for public records, for all the things that we want to try to make sure those communications are within that district control. Okay. So, I agree with you. I agree with you, and as you find more of these, you know, you can just let me know. But we, you know, we thought, you know, after your email, we've been working with Heath. But if there are other things, like, never even occurred to me that thing of like... Yeah, I guess my concern, and maybe I didn't articulate this or whatever, is student communications. Yeah. To each other. Yes. Not necessarily from our staff. Uh-huh. So, can we give them a tool or tools to enable that, so that they're not just left to Snapchat or Facebook. And it sounds like maybe Google Chat is, and maybe CurrentSquare could be. Mm-hmm. But it would be nice to be able to offer some. I would just say, as a former middle school principal, those things go off the rails real quick. Okay. Even, even, which is why we, it's not, Chat is not churned on that middle school. Yeah. We've had enough challenges. It's the middle school. It's really the high school. It's the high school. It's the high school. Okay. That, you know, X group is using Snapchat to organize practices or get-togethers. In addition to, perhaps, a coach's communication. Or in lieu of a coach communicating to parents who really kind of need to collect that information from the coach for children who are mostly under 18 and need a parent to get them somewhere. It's the high school. It's not the high school. Okay. This helps me. It might be possible, but I have reservations for reasons. And also, you know, but we can look into it. And I, that helps me to better understand the ask. Thank you. Yeah. I have to say, the freshman soccer coach used Parent Square and it was fabulous this fall, this past fall, to communicate with parents. And to be fair, most of them were doing it because we didn't give them anything else, coaches specifically. Like, they weren't even getting email addresses for the most, like not always. And so, like, that was something when I came, I was like, no, they should have to get email addresses. And so, but that's just one more thing to manage. Someone has to know to ask. And so, you know, we're trying to make some of these changes because I completely agree. If these are school sponsored events and the communication is relative, is about those events, then the expectation should be that they, that that communication happens over school, school supported communication channels. And I think we can address that a little bit in our, sort of like that communication and style guide piece. Which is where we're trying to set those, those norms. And, and that will be kind of, that might be a good place to put something like that as we think through. I mean, as you know, I'm not going to get kids to stop using Instagram as their primary way to communicate with each other. Like, it's just, they're going to do that. But I, I agree that participation in a school activity shouldn't require you to have an Instagram account or insert the other thing. So, thanks. Agreed. Okay. Last area, friends, operations. This is all the stuff we do that no one understands. But if we didn't do it, it would be really bad. So, it's been a really busy year. We had our first school year with PowerSchool Assist. That's where all of our data lives relative to students. The state reporting, our, you know, report cards, attendance, all of that. And we've been focusing a lot on integrating additional systems to talk nicely to PowerSchool. And we've had some great success there and continue to, to do that. We are working on and planning for a refresh of devices. This happens every year. We have device refreshes. But I think it's worth mentioning. It is not a non-event to tell you that we have, after some really careful discussion and investigation and piloting of devices and getting feedback from students at our help desk. And talking with our instructional technology team and, you know, different department folks to try to understand what, you know, what would be the impact if we made this change. Because we were identifying a number of positive reasons to try to make this shift. And so, but we also know that a transition to Chromebooks would, would require us to think carefully about each content area. And if we needed to support that area in some different or modified way to make sure that they can continue to do all of the great things they're doing in classrooms with their students. And so that's been a focus this year is, is really making a plan so that in the fall, when we would be due for a refresh of student devices at the high school, that those devices will be a 14 inch Chromebook plus model of some sort. We've narrowed down to about three models that we really like. And now we just have to pray that the inventory will arrive on time, given all of the worse than COVID supply chain issues that we're facing right now. And I won't even discuss the budgetary impacts of the fact that these prices are changing about every 30 days right now. So, Morda, we'll just, just have to keep you posted on that, but we're doing the best we can. And I think the move to Chromebooks will have a positive financial impact. Although, these are a really high-end Chromebook model. These are not the price point of the middle school device. And I think that's appropriate. I think it's appropriate for us to equip our high school students with a, with a device that feels like a professional level device that they can do all the things in. And so, I think it's worth making that additional investment in these devices. So, these are Chromebook Plus models, which are, um, a larger model and a higher, um, you know, more processing speed and more memory and all of that. So that it will, um, have great performance for them. And then, uh, as I mentioned to you, Google Workspace updates. It's really just about hardening our systems to make sure we're, um, as ready as we can be to prevent, um, cybersecurity issues. I'm sorry, you had a question? My question was, when do we refresh, um, teacher-provided laptops? Yeah. Actually, we're going to be doing that as well. So, we have, um, we have about 200 or so teacher devices that will be replaced over the summer. Um, those M1 MacBooks currently, which is the same model that our students. Yeah. Those will be replaced by the new Mac Neo. We've been testing it and we love it. And that's what we're going to be targeting for teacher replacement devices. Cause it's the same, um, you know, it's, it's essentially, they've, they've added that layer. They didn't have that option when we last evaluated leases. And so, just in time for our refresh, that launched and the, and the feedback so far and the press around it has been really positive. So, we're, we're likely to, to move in that direction. That's what we think so far. Why would we switch kids to something other than Mac and keep the teachers with a Mac? So, that's a great question. So, um, teachers have had Macs for quite some time. So, that's, that's their, that is the device that they're comfortable with as their primary device. But they also have Chromebooks available in the form of Chromeboxes, which are attached to their interactive panels. So, to be honest, most of our teachers are teaching from and with a Chromebook. And they have as their, their, you know, sort of work device supplementary, supplementing that, um, their Macbook. So, when they're interacting with students and when they're teaching directly to students on the board, they're doing so, um, most often using the Chrome box, which is essentially a, like a mounted Chromebook on the, uh, that's, that's attached to, or built into the, in the front of the classroom display. It's not true in every single classroom, but it's, it's true in most of them. Um, it might be true in every single classroom at the high school actually, um, just because we happen to be talking about that one. But, um, so, so our teachers have proficiency in both devices. Um, and the teachers, you know, the, the real limitation of a, of a Chromebook technically is, um, you can't install software on them, which makes them more secure as a rule because of that. Um, it's all web-based applications. Um, the fact is, we, most of our teachers don't need that. Um, most of our teachers technically could do most of their work on a, on a Chromebook. Um, but we, there, there, there are a lot of factors that we looked at for this. Um, and there wasn't enough sort of, like, compelling reason to, to change that, that teacher device out at this, at this juncture, because we had this Chromebox piece in place to, to mirror the student experience. And, and we want to try to stabilize things for teachers and keep their experience consistent because that is their device that they may be doing for, you know, lesson design or other things. And they may be using other tools or installed software on the Mac that are things that they've come, become accustomed to over quite a long time. Um, whereas students, they've, they've had those devices for, you know, at most, you know, their four year high school career. Um, we've got teachers who've been teaching this district for some time and that's been their platform. So, um, not to say that the Chromebook couldn't do the things, but we really weren't looking to evaluate that. At this time, it felt like a big enough move to shift our kids. And let's see how that goes and, and really take that feedback. Um, and so we weren't even, it wasn't something that we had really been evaluating. What's the price point difference on those? Between the Chromebook that the, the larger Chromebook that we're looking at for the kids versus the Neo. I know the Neo is like 600 bucks, right? Yeah, and it's, it's really not a big difference in the purchase price. So then the Neo is like around 600. The Chromebook models that we're looking at, um, are, and they vary a little bit. But I want to say they're, they're, they're right. They're sub 600, but they're certainly, you know, over 500. So they're, they're in that range. Um, and the truth is like, I have no control over what might happen. These prices may go up for both of these devices, you know, anyway. Um, what I want to impress upon you is that the, one of the major reasons why we're looking to move to Chromebooks for students is actually because we want to make sure that, um, we are able to access all of the tools that are available for students and, and, and, and teachers within the Google like environment. And there are things that we actually can't do right now because the students are not on district managed devices, um, in that Chrome environment. So we are actually leaving some things on the table that are kind of powerful. Things like locked, you know, Google forms for locked assessments where a student can't navigate away when you're doing an assessment that happens to be done in a Google form. Like just things like that. Um, but also I, you know, I look at this not just at the purchase price, which is not insignificant, but at the total cost of ownership. And what I can tell you is the cost of repair these devices is significantly lower, which means that the, what we are charging or, you know, requesting for families to either, um, elect in for optional insurance or, and, or the cost that they might have to pay out of pocket if they elect not to get the insurance and we're repairing in house, which we do to try to keep the cost low. I mean, frankly, a MacBook screen right now that breaks costs me $500 to replace. I can buy a new device for that. So I, the idea of continuing to give students, um, devices that they're pretty rough with in these backpacks and, you know, going to sporting events and, and all of that. Like they're pretty rough with these devices. Um, they're not made for that type of wear and tear and, um, they're not made to be repaired in house either. Um, they're really not made to be repaired. They're made to be replaced. So, um, so I, you know, I, I just think about the number of repairs that we need to do, um, and the importance of that being a quick turnaround, um, and being affordable and sustainable. So that's a bigger reason. The management of these devices will be able to cut some costs on, um, we, we use software that manages devices from a security standpoint. I won't need that because I can use Google to do that. So there's, there's some other more of hidden savings that are maybe less obvious to you but are, are clear benefits for our team and our ability to be more responsive and deploy these quickly and effectively and safely. That's really helpful. Thank you. You're welcome. I appreciate the questions. Uh, okay. Next steps in this area. Equipment layer replacement. Uh, I didn't mention but it's also worth, uh, and look, the staff devices. See? I was already, I had them. Oh, 250. Okay. So, um, and we've got front of the classroom displays to replace. I want to say about 40 or so that we are hoping to, uh, to put in place. Uh, this would be, uh, interactive panels or projectors depending on the situation. And, uh, primarily at LOCR but some additional locations as well. But, LOCR will have the most of them just because it happens to be their time right now in the cycle of replacement. Uh, what else do we have? Cybersecurity improvements. Oh, we've, um, we've launched, um, we started using a tool called Know Before which is through a cyber security, a grant through the state. Um, they basically pay for the subscription for us which is awesome. It's a tool that helps train, um, users on email security by sending out test phishing emails. Um, they are very good and that's coming from someone whose job it is to detect these things. Yesterday, they sent the, um, they always send the site coordinators the emails ahead of time so that we can know what's going to come. But I didn't realize from my calendar that today was, you know, whatever, yesterday was today with it coming. And so I found myself, like, opening one email and being like, that's, that's suspicious. That's totally phishing. And I went and blocked the sender. And then a few minutes later, I got another one. And I went and blocked the sender. And I was like, why am I getting so many in a row? Like, I mean, I usually get multiple in a day. But to have, like, by the third one, I was like, wait a second. So, uh, I realized after, um, after I asked the town to block multiple URLs and I had blocked multiple senders that I was in fact preventing myself, uh, later from sending out these campaigns. So, they're really effective. Um, they looked real to me. Um, and so, uh, what's really great about it is I can report to you that we had our first phishing campaign last month. Um, what I can tell you is that the sort of click rate of, like, staff, like, falling for the fish, if you will, was around, um, 9.8%. 9.8%. It's under 10%. And, um, for your understanding, that is about half, like, that's actually pretty good. Uh, K-12 educators having had none of this training or within the first six months of this training based on their, their, you know, data, um, would be at more closer to 20%. failure rate. So, we're already starting in a good place. And what is also funny, but, funny and also great is, like, the staff, like, don't want to, they don't want to, they don't want to be tricked by the fish. So, they're really actually all on high alert, which I love. And, um, whether they're on high alert because they are afraid that they're going to be on some imaginary naughty list, or whether they're on high alert because they really want to make sure that they don't get a fish. Like, I don't actually care the reason. I'm just really glad they're on high alert because email is, is a real danger for us. And, um, as busy as we are, it's easy to make a mistake. And we've all done it. And some, some of these consequences can be really scary and serious. So, um, I'm pleased to say that we have that in place. The staff has been really, um, supportive of it when they could have been really annoyed about it. I think they're, they're being pretty great. Um, and it's not so annoying because it's really just this, you know, once a month kind of thing. Just kind of keeps it in the drinking water so we don't forget about it. Um, so, so that's, uh, that's what we've been up to. Thank you, Jen. This is so much in, in so many different areas, so. All right, it's a lot. Yeah, but there's a lot to do. We really appreciate it. Thank you. We've got some things to do, but it's been really great to be here. I'm wrapping up my second year here, and it's great to have all these things accomplished. The team's been super awesome, and I appreciate the opportunity to help make things a little better here. So, thank you. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you, Jen. Oh, yes. Okay. A little contact setting. Okay. Good night, Jen. Hi, thank you. Good night, Jen. This has been a year of, uh, planning, um, in the area of facilities planning, as well as portrait planning. Um, and what's been interesting for us is we've really tried to think about what should the portrait of learner process be here in Wayland. Um, and we just didn't want to do a cookie cutter process. Um, we're also mindful of how the world is changing. Um, it kind of connects nicely to Jen's presentation as we think about our students and, and technology and what their futures will be. And I was talking to a few colleagues recently about how it's really important for us also to be positive about our students' futures. And that's become more of a challenge right now. Frank Bruni is a New York Times columnist who's teaching at Duke now. Talked about since he's been teaching their students. It's been hard to, as a professor, to make the students positive about the future. And I was thinking about this K to 12 connection, just what's kind of going on in the world. Technology. Will there be jobs? Will there be higher education? I mean, if you think some of the institutions that we're now questioning, many of us didn't have to do that. We're near these stages. Um, but what we know is, we need to be optimistic about the future. We need to prepare our students for the future that may look different. And there may be multiple portraits of what a learner should look like. And so, part of our job this year is to think about that, but also set the stage for how do we operationalize some of the changes that we might make next year. Because this is going to be a multiple step process. The same way as we think about kind of doing some facilities planning this year, but also making some decisions at the start of next year about where we head. I think there are some analogies to take a look at. I know you have this presentation. I will toss it to Betsy to talk about some of this presentation as well. Thanks Ronnie. Um, so David's just giving me a little bit of context. We'll add to it just a smidge. Um, talk about what the process of our timeline has been up to date. Um, and we had a couple key groups that participated. Our steering group, our focus group, and our educational forum. We'll give you a little bit of insight into each of those. And then talk about kind of our next steps in the process moving forward. So, what is a portrait of a learner? Why are we doing it now? David just gave you a little bit of information around that. Um, go ahead Ronnie. But it's really, um, thinking through what is our vision of the skills, knowledge, and mindset that we really want our students to develop in order to be successful in school and then beyond school in the life that they choose. Um, so that they're ready for, for college, for careers. Um, so it's, it's really about defining those, those outcomes that we're looking, looking for. And our portrait of a learner process has, um, been really community developed. It's been a real collaboration. Um, and it's been, it's been a really exciting process. Um, David talks about being hopeful. It, I, I think has really brought a lot of hopefulness to the work, which is, which has been a lot of fun. Um, and, and one of the things that, that our steering committee that we'll talk about really kept coming back to is, as, as AI is, is, and computers, and this increasingly automated world. How do we ensure that schools really make, become a deeply human endeavor and that we're, kids are spending time talking to each other. We heard from Deborah last time around accountable talk and, and really ensuring that that stays front and center in, in our schooling. So, what's the trajectory of our process been? Um, so back, uh, really last August, we established our steering committee. And they've been meeting regularly, very often in the fall, um, and throughout this entire process. We have focus groups that met in, um, January, in the month of January, at three different focus groups sets. Um, our educational forums met in February and in March. And we'll be starting to service that community feedback, um, this month and in May. So, that's kind of where we're at to date. So, we've, um, we're really fortunate to have a lot of great people and can talk about their roles. So, you can see up there our steering committee, um, number two for sacred feet. Tanaba. Um, and it was a nice cross-section from the different levels, um, both teachers and administrators. And it's, it's just an incredibly thoughtful group. So, what was their work? Um, we started back in, back in the fall by researching other portraits of the learners and getting a sense of different people's process, processes. Um, we met with the former principal, excuse me, superintendent of Menden-Upton Regional High School. Um, and his name is Joe. I'm forgetting Joe's last name. Joe. Hold on. It's a freaky last name. I just called him Joe. It is. Joe Maruzak. Yes. So, he was from Menden-Upton. He's, uh, currently working down at the Cape now. But his portrait of a learner process was really rich, robust process. So, he, he met with us and kind of walked us through, um, both how they created, but then, really how they operationalized it in a very powerful way. Um, so then, from there, our group started talking about what our process would look like. And that's when we brought in Mike Perullo, who some of you got to know through our educational visioning with our facilities project. He came on and has been working with us for, through our portrait of a learner's process, which is great because we didn't want to have two educational visions going in different directions. It's really had some nice intersection and cohesion. Um, so with Mike, we co-developed our process. And then the steering group has been very useful kind of throughout different components. So, there was, we had focus groups meet, and then they reviewed the focus group data. We had an educational forum meet, they reviewed what they did. Kind of refined at each point before we go into the next segment. Um, and then they will do the same once we've gathered community feedback. They'll help kind of integrate that into the next, next iteration of the process. I was just gonna have, in terms of the focus groups, uh, we used students as well. Yeah. So that was really, really exciting. Students, both middle and high. Middle and high school students, yeah. As well as. So, Ron, if you head to the next, um, we'll talk about a little bit about how we engaged the different groups. So what you see here is just, um, questions that this team generated, um, with Mike's help, for our current students. There was, um, an equivalent version that was, was focused on our, our parents and caregivers as well. So those are some of the questions that were asked. And, and I gotta tell you, I, I get to sit in on the high school students and their, I mean, their answers were just, were just fabulous. As they really thought so deeply. And, like, hearing high schoolers talk about, like, wanting to find their passion and joy in the work. It was just really, again, hopeful and energizing. Um, so, what I've pulled out in the next three slides is just sort of some of the themes that emerged across groups. So there were a number of different areas. Here's just one example. So, an example of, um, where kind of curiosity and intrinsic motivation came into play. And you can see a number of quotes from kids. Um, so this is actually the caregiver voices quotes. I'll give you a moment to read them over. The importance of curiosity and intrinsic motivation. And then we could see similar themes across the high school voices. You know, what, what was motivating to them. When they felt curious. The care that they put into things. And similarly for the middle schoolers as well. Honing in on the times in their learning where, where these, these, these things came up. Um, so that was an important part of our work. Um, we then took all of those things to a larger stakeholder group. So we had 27 educators. You can see, um, really from across all the levels. From all different departments. Um, a combination of administrators, teachers, um, that were a great group. So there were 27 educators. And then on the next slide you can see the names of all of our parents and caregivers who also volunteered. So we had in total 36 people who came together for five hours. Two two hour sessions and one one hour session. And in our first session, um, we really started broadcasting a wide neck. So, so Mike and Paul, um, led us through three different exercises. We started, um, by sorting a range of kind of these words into social, emotional skills, transferable skills, and global competencies. Kind of created some posters with those. We then looked at professional and future ready skills. Um, we met in, we found different people who had matching cards. So for example, you might have been the carbon footprint coach. That, that might be a, um, future job. And thought about what kind of skills you would need in order to do those. And kind of had some of those conversations. And then the third exercise we did was to look at the, those focus groups. The student, um, caregivers and middle school and high school students and caregivers. And looked at the themes across of those. Out of those, um, three activities, at the end of it, we put everything up around the room. And then each person went around and, and showed the 15 ideas, themes, words that really stood out for them. And that was kind of the end of session one. At session two, um, we took everybody's 15 words. So there were many, many overlaps, but you know, some unique. And then we grouped those into what we thought of as buckets. So, um, we had kind of a, these big giant posters with seven different buckets on them. And we organized, you can see a group of, um, teachers here. And a little bit of you, David, in the corner there. Um, organizing some, some words and themes. And then once we did that, um, we cut out the buckets and, and organized them across the different groups. And sort of looked at, you know, it's kind of a honing down process that happens. And then each team took one of their groups of buckets and refined them into big ideas. And so, out of that there came seven sort of buckets as, as we thought about. One was entitled empowered well-being. We had problem solvers. Civic and global citizenship. Belonging to your communities. Critical thinking. Productive interactions with others. And ethical agencies. So those were the seven things that came out of it. After that, the, um, the steering group met again with all of these. We had a two hour session and we, um, refined those buckets and kind of what came under them into what you see here. Which are the current sort of five, um, different areas. So, we had approaching the world with curiosity and wonder. We looked at some parallel structure. We kind of put, put some things together, um, around each of them. Another big idea was communicating to understand and be understood. And then we looked at seeking balance, meaning, and joy. Kind of what that meant to the group. And we had a sort of taking risks, persisting, and adapt ideas. And then building just and democratic communities. So those were the four or five big ideas that we came to and refined. Um, and then brought back to this educational forum for one final session. Um, and so you can see that we have those there. Again, they were on big posters in teams. We then marked up these big drafts. Um, putting green checks where we agreed with things. Purples where we still had some questions. And orange to mark up with specific edits. So for example, one of the things that came out of, out of here, um, we decided we'd like the introduction of, um, as learners, we, at the top, like, we looked at some, like, what did you want to come before these five big ideas? Um, because we wanted the educators to also be a part of that, not just students. So we kind of ended in that space. We also talked about moving all the language in this from kind of third person to first person plural, sort of using we and our statements instead of they and their. Um, and then other bunch of refinements. Um, and so then on this Friday morning, the steering committee will get together again to look at the seven different groups' edits and put those together. And then we're going to send it out to parents or parents and caregivers, teachers, and students to get more sort of feedback on that. So from there, um, we will use that to sort of finalize the portrait of a learner to bring back to you in June. Um, we plan to use that as a key component to our administrative council retreat this summer. So we're thinking about that and looking about, you know, initial ideas. Um, at some point, we'll need to come up with a, what does that kind of look like, a portrait of a learner graphic that we would have on our website and in other places, um, so that it can be front and center and not just something that fits on a shelf. Um, and then we'll really spend next year thinking about how we would go about operationalizing that. So that's kind of the next level of work. Um, the last thing we did with the educational forum was ask them, um, through one of the Mentimeter exercises, you know, what is one way like to see this kind of come to life in the schools? Um, and the kind of the themes that came across was, you know, there were nine folks who really focused in on project-based learning that kind of integrates a lot of these skills. We had some talk about curriculum alignment, student reflection, it being a tool for student reflection, ways we could engage a community around it. Um, some folks were wondering about like a portfolio kind of process that would happen along the K-12 journey. And then if there's teacher development that could come into play. So I ended this with a few, um, quotes, kind of one from each of those areas. Um, a kind of hearty hope that the people had of how we could actually use this. I'll let you read through those. Like any questions that you have about the process or where we're at or our next steps? Um, I won't say it's been an incredibly energizing process, uh, for sure. And it was just a great, great group, both our small group and the big educational forum with, uh, real good energy in this room. It's really, um, insightful to get the viewpoints from all the different constituencies to, to hear from the students and the educators and the caregiver forum. Like, it's so well-rounded. Yeah. You know, Betsy, we did that twice this year. We did it, um, with facilities planning. And there hasn't been a lot of that. Typically, we do that separately. And we've got lots of feedback in both forums how helpful it was to have multiple stakeholders together at some times. We meet separate, but also together, and how valuable that is. And it's funny how that feedback tends to align, even though they're very separate groups. The feedback seems to be better than each other. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I kind of pulled out just sort of how you could see those similar themes across different groups. Um, and you know, the themes that really come up are the ones that have ended up in those, where we're at with the five at the moment. Were there any that surprised you? Any areas of focus that were like, huh, hadn't thought about that, but makes a lot of sense? Hmm. That's a great question. Still, for me, it's having, hearing kids talk about the purpose, the importance of joy. You don't, you know, I think that's what Mike said to you. He's like, I've done a lot of these in a lot of places. Like, I've never had kids, heard kids talking about, like, their desire for the joyful side of learning. Yeah. Which, that came up a lot in the caregiver group as well, talking about the joy and that we wanted them to have joy in learning. But you wouldn't, I think, accept that so much. Which maybe speaks to the time that we're in right now. You want to find that joy. You want kids to really find their passion. And for some of the kids, that will happen inside the four worlds of the school. And for other students, it will happen outside. And I think our steering group was really, wanted this, you know, kids to be able to reflect on their more global experience and not just inside of school. And so, you know, as we use this as a tool of reflection, we really hope kids will focus on not just what they're learning in school, but what they're passionate about in other places. And I think that really ties in with what our students were talking about when they came last meeting, when they were talking about really wanting to be impactful in the world. Yeah, that's the word that keeps going through my head, too. Right? And we heard and we saw that, you know, through this portrait process, that the importance of making a difference, you know, having just communities, that those kind of things really shine through. Right. At our last meeting, I wove in the students that came here in our meeting because so many of the qualities we're looking for and some of the goals were coming from the students. I'd also say that some of the discussion, I think about what are things that would often be in a discussion and what are about our current world. Like, if you think of the adults and talking about helping students function in a democracy, even where we are, I thought that that was really interesting that some of it is like where we are, others would be areas that would kind of often be schooling, so there's context shifts with time. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Betsy. Well, I agree. I think building off of that, it's sort of two themes that I think can be difficult as the world gets more complex and as the sort of macro world is more charged or volatile is the connecting what they're doing in the four walls to the broader world. Like that's happening to them more and more in a younger and younger ages just because technology is at their fingertips. And so I think really needing to figure out how we meet them where they are and recognize that it is partly a responsibility to make those connections between what they're learning and the ideas and concepts and the real world, even though I think that that's getting harder and more challenging every year. And then the other is, I'm a huge proponent of project-based learning. I think it's incredible. I think that interdisciplinary connectivity has exponential benefits and eureka moments. I think it's hard, but I see that here. And I also think that increasingly, those complex connections are what they need in a workforce. You know, I think we talked a little bit during the Accountable Talk about how much cross-functional work has to happen and how much you're expected now professionally to really not just know how to do your lane, but at least have an appreciation and understanding of what the other lanes are doing. And I, you know, those connections are really, really important that they understand how math connects to history and connects to English and why those skills extrapolated actually can be very powerful when combined. Completely. And that it's not just a siloed thing. They do have all these cross and really important topics. I think my question actually kind of piggybacks on Betsy's. And I was kind of waiting for that cross-section to happen. And I think maybe we're too early in the planning phase, and that's the next phase, right? Because the aspirations of our learners are fantastic. The categories are fantastic. I think they got to, like, the heart of how one is going to navigate the world. How they're going to interact with the world. How they're going to communicate in the world. But I didn't see that connection of how are they going to survive in the world? How are they going to thrive in the world? You know, beyond communication. There's so many more skills that we're going to equip them with. Will you be kind of, is that how you're operationalizing it? Is that the next phase or the phase after that? I'm going to sit with that for a moment. You know, I think one of the things that a lot of processes do as part of their next phase is really thinking through, like, what does this look like in second grade? You know, if I can do these things, what are the I can do statements that come out of those? And, you know, we had a big discussion around in the whole communicate section. Like, should we be explicitly using writing? Should writing be in there? And they're like, well, some kids communicate through a device. Some kids communicate more, you know. We still want kids to be able to, you know, our kids to be able to write. But we want to really honor all forms. And by leaving it broader, are we better off kind of thing. So, you know, there were times when we looked at things and it kind of looked more like a standards document, like reading, writing, speaking, listening, you know, all of those. We didn't want just a list of skills. So they are broader. But I do think to be usable at different levels, you want to think through what is this, you know, if I'm a successful fifth grader, what might these skills look like at the developmental level? So I do think the adults really sort of sitting with it, but also bringing kids into sort of some of what, how do you make sense of this in kid-based language will also be important. I'm not sure that completely answered your question, Erin. Erin, is your feeling that it feels very aspirational right now? And so the next question is, how does it become concrete? Inspirational. Yeah, I think so. Yes. And I think that's fair. Like, I come away from this feeling super inspired. Absolutely. But this is the sort of what, and I think you're asking about the how. I'm thinking of my 17-year-old, my 15-year-old, and my 10-year-old. Oops, he's 11. Like, how this looks for them. Right. And what they leave Wayland High School with. What I've already seen as skills that they've obtained that aren't on this, you know. Completely. We've talked about the possibility of this becoming, and we talk about self-portraits a lot, and how do you look at these and assess yourself against them? Or, like, I might be way more heavy in one area than another. And can that be okay? And what does that look like? And, yeah, I do think, again, this next year will really help us unearth exactly how, and when we use it, how we intentionally use language from it in our day-to-day work with kids. And I hear expectations. Yeah. You know, I'd love to see kids do a self-assessment, you know, at 3rd grade, 6th grade, 9th grade, 12th grade. What does this look like? And how could they change over time? You know, they might not have developed a particular passion there until they were in, you know, at the end of middle school when they were involved in some club or whatever. I'd love some sort of portfolio idea that they can sort of see themselves at different snapshots in time. Well, it gives them agency. Like, I think one of the things I like about the statements of the learners, as learners, we, is that it isn't this, I'm a student and information is sort of being imparted to me. It's that I have a responsibility and accountability to own my learning with conviction. And so even that sense, as you're talking about, you know, what does it look like in a self-portrait? I must want to say, yeah. And I want to see and have them articulate. And what are their goals? Because finding your joy, some of us are lucky enough to, like, stumble into that. Some of us just have to do the job because the job has to get done and some of life is that. And sometimes, in order to find your joy, you have to try a lot of things that aren't it first. And, like, so this notion that you have to take agency in your path to find that, it's not something that is just going to divinely happen to you or that you're going to happen to sign up for it or stumble into it. It would be great if it were that easy, but for a lot of us, we have to take a lot of roads before we hopefully land there. Absolutely. And some kids might get to the end of high school and are still on that path that's seeking that. But hopefully with the idea that, you know, they'll have enough skills to find it. I don't know how to articulate how I feel like all of this. I think joy is really important. It's something I said in our retreat, like, two years ago. I want kids to find the joy in school. I also want them to realize that they can be good at a lot of things. And it's not necessarily what you find joy in. That pays the bills sometimes. But also, you know, I found a lot of joy in science. And so I kind of specialized in that in college. And I don't think I took full advantage of my liberal arts education because I didn't find joy in writing and history and stuff like that. And looking back, it would have made me a better lawyer now. And I wish I did that more. And so I think it's important to balance the joy around, maybe. And I saw something up there about perseverance or, you know, something like that, which I think, you know, it's nice when you do have joy, but not everything is joyful. But you still have to do it, like going to the gym and picking up the weight. So I'm never going to find joy in that. But satisfaction can also be a form of joy. Like, I agree with you. This notion of joy can also be like chase that we're supposed to be happy all the time, which I do worry is sort of a prevalent message in the world of social media in particular. And it's funny, there's a book I'm reading right now that talks about like a situation being glamored. And it's sort of like I think of that as all the like rough edges are rubbed away and like all the imperfections. And I agree. I think we need to strike. I would encourage us to think about how we strike a balance about finding joy through hard work. Through hard work. Absolutely. You know, working up that sweat is satisfying. You might not always be super psyched when you get up. You know, I was talking, I was sitting next to a colleague who was talking about how much, she was still talking about how much weight she had deadlifted that day. I'm like, did she want to get up at 5 a.m. today? Probably not. And how satisfying it was to have added more weight than she thought she had. And did that 207 and a half pounds. Deadlift. Really tiny too. Yeah, I mean, accomplishing hard things that aren't necessarily something that brings you joy or fills your bucket is accomplishing. And that feels good. Completely. You're like, I did not want to do this. But I did it. I accomplished it. And that's something that we definitely need our students to leave with. We all, we do that every day. Right? Persisting through challenge is all embedded in this as well too. Right? It's not all fun all the time. It just isn't. I appreciate how inclusive the language is. Anyone can be a learner and you could be lifting the 200 weight or you could be lifting the 10 and you're still learning. So I appreciate that this is a wide portrait. We will keep you updated. The next is survey. Yeah, feel free to fill out your survey. But no, it's not good. All right. One thought on the survey brought to the community. Like, I don't, I don't know. I'm going to think about this. But something just to noodle on is this work feels very, as we talked about, aspirational, but also sort of like, if you could design it, what would it be? I'm curious if the community survey piece will have some of like, what's missing today. You know what I mean? Like some of like benchmarking against where we think we are or where our baseline is. Because I think there is an element of how do we know what to build and where to put our investment in our timeline of evolution. If we don't, we're not honest with ourselves about sort of saying where we think baseline is to where we think we're trying to go for a future. Is there any information that anyone wanted to discuss, bring to the table, et cetera, around the discussion of potential vote with respect to Super Wednesdays? So Ronnie and I were with, gosh, a whole room full of stakeholders around this to try to figure out what's the best time to have the Super Wednesdays. Shared sort of feedback that we've gotten last time. We tried to have a semester. Yeah, it was around vacation. There was one that's still close to a vacation. There's so many factors that we think. There's no good answer. There is no good answer. Thank you. That's just where we live. We looked at them very, very carefully. Everybody, every reason that I have, someone else has a reason why that's not. Right. That was the best we could get. I'm smiling only because two years ago our esteemed chairwoman said something similar as we were discussing this topic and after that. And now after year two, I'm like, yup, that is, she is correct. And we go through it with a fine tooth comb thinking that it's going to change. Actually, last Wednesdays, I think for the Wednesdays. I heard you say this. Mostly, Veterans Day is a Wednesday that takes a Wednesday away. I heard you say that. The plus side to that is, we've doubled up a day where we need extra parental coverage where our kids aren't in school. And a Wednesday where we would typically have to be worried about getting out early. So there you go. That is a real win. To win. To win. To win. Why am I short a Wednesday? Why am I short a Wednesday? There you go. I mean. I'm just trying to pull up the, we also tried to move it earlier. I haven't done the exercise before. Do you want me to make a motion? We tried to move the last one. No, I just wanted to actually look at it on a calendar before. I'm doing it right now. Tell me. So, October 12th is, what is it? October 7th. No, we had moved it away from Columbus Day, I think. It's the 7th, I think. It's like the week before. Yeah. I think we tried. I'm just worried about, like, I'm like, ooh, can I have a week and a half vacation? Like, February 10th is right before February break. I think we had, there was, um, one of them's a week away from a break and we moved. Always. So, October 7th is the Wednesday before Columbus Day. We moved that one originally. I think it was the 14th to the 21st, but we moved it for a reason. I know because I booked a presenter and I had to change it. That's not what we did. I know. Um, and then December 9th is two weeks before the holiday. I apologize. Our school closure from December 23rd to December 31st. Oh, I know it. Sorry. No, it's okay. Um, February 10th is the week before the February recess. We tried to move it, um, a week further back and it ran into, um, end of semester, um, final year. Senior, yes. A week, uh, high school, winter week. Winter week. Uh-huh. And March 10th is, um, there's a closure on March 26th. Yes. For good friends. So, no, we're just closed. Oh, sorry. Sorry. We're just closed. Enticipated attendance. Correct. Um, but one of the reasons why we did pick these dates was also conferences had to fit in. Um, so we had originally picked, like, the October date. We had originally, I think, picked a later date, but then conferences needed to be earlier because of that no school day in November. Uh-huh. Um, so then it bumped everything back. And then, um, we wanted to make the last one not too late because this year, in, next week. No, it's the end of April. It's the end of April. The end of April. And once the feedback we got was make it earlier so we can use it. So we tried to get them all done before April. I love that. But not have them all. But not all together. Yeah. So we tried to take all the feedback and make it work as best we can with the calendar. You've got a magic wand to accomplish that. That's why we had them all clustered, right, with the new math curriculum. That's the reason we clustered them previously. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we have the new ELA curriculum that we're launching, but Sarah Sontag was part of this and felt like the way we have it and it worked. It's okay. Um, I know this has been asked before. I can't remember exactly what the answer was, but if we're going to have something so close to February break, is it possible to do it on a Thursday instead of a Wednesday so that, like, or Friday people have some flexibility? Friday I think is, like, but, like, do we have to do these on a Wednesday? Can we move the February 10th to, like, February 11th? And aren't we tracking low attendance? People. We are. We have. Low attendance is the day before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is. Okay. Okay. I'm just worried. I'm seeing, like, two and a half days the week before February break, you know. I don't know. If it were on a Thursday, maybe, but we would get more attendance on a Wednesday instead of missing Wednesday and Wednesday and Friday. I could imagine some people might love the cheaper flights on Wednesday or Thursday. Anyway, that's what my day would show. We are encouraging people, of course, to be in school. We've sent many attendance messages. Many. I have also received those messages, which I want to talk about at another time. And maybe this is for the future. I think it's something that we've talked about and considered. And Wednesdays were because they were always, were Wednesdays, and those were always the days. But maybe it's a future discussion of doing that day. We've also talked about, do you just not, do you have a day as opposed to, you know, I think, open. Open a full day? Yeah. But you still need 180. But then you add a day. It extends a day on the end for the teachers, right? And the students. Nope. Both. For the teachers. It would extend a full school day. Period. It would give a full school day. Right. Like, some towns do it on, and we have school on election day, but like, instead of a lot of towns, we have professional development elections. Our elections are here, but because they're the schools. You're right. But we have a school night. Right. We tried to move to two threes. That would be two weeks away from vacation. That was the end of the semester. That was winter week. That was winter week. Yeah. Also report cards. And report cards for the thing. And having enough time. You couldn't move this one up because you needed a week before conferences to get ready for conferences. Yeah. We looked. We tried to do it the end of January, beginning of February. We did try to move that. And because of winter week and report cards, we got pushed back on there. And the semester ended. Cool year. On Monday after winter break? I mean, does it have to be on the Wednesday? We don't have to do them at all. They're not contractual. We don't have to do them. So we can tell them to put them on a different day. We can do whatever you guys want. We're here. We're here to work the calendar. I'm fine with whatever the committee would like to do. We have gone around and around this. Every year I've sat at the stable, and I'm out for today. I just don't have it in me. Well, can I ask? One of the benefits that it's already a short day, so you're just extra shortening a short day as opposed to losing. Like, I guess one of the things that we don't have to get into it for this year, but maybe another year. Like, I'm curious of the educational impact of one day where they're just not in school versus these little short days where they're in school for like less than three hours. Like, I guess the super early's are just really super short days. And there's kind of really no point for our kids to go on those days. And they'll all tell you that, and I say that with love, and it's not against any of you. There are districts that do it every Wednesday, as you know. We have districts that do 8.30 to 12 neighboring districts every Wednesday, so we certainly have more time. The challenge is if you're doing work over multiple, you know, one-shot professional development like one day, that's the downside. It's not, you know, versus multiple, like if you think about Sarah Ward as an example. Well, but we always have Wednesdays. Wednesdays are available every week. They're early release. They can be leveraged for PD. They're short, though, in terms of travel, you know, in terms of time you get there. Not long, that's why. So, because Wednesday is a short day, that's the thinking behind doing that on Wednesdays versus other days. That's actually the reason. So then why do we have short Wednesdays to begin with? If we can't, I understand they were in place prior to the start times. Is that something we should continue to do? And that doesn't impact Super Wednesdays today, but why keep doing that? If we really can't use them anymore? Do we replace them with more super short days? There are certain things we can't, we need longer blocks of time for. That's what I would say. So more in-depth. Yeah. We could maybe put this in a separate item. I don't know that, you know, because tonight we just want to, I'm just thinking about, because our agenda, but we could put this on another agenda. I don't know if it's something.
Especially the ELA. They would have preferred to have the entire day. She's like, spoke a mile a minute, trying to get it all in. But, you know, we have Jessica Minahan coming in next year to do some training as well. Like, we need longer than an hour for that. We try to save our big meeting stuff for these days. Time is definitely of the essence. Yeah. In so many ways. I gotta Zoom.
Alright, so maybe not for this year, but maybe for the future. Is it worth considering removing Wednesday partial days and increasing half days on Wednesdays, and having one a month, or something like that? Does that make more sense? Is it more effective? I think maybe thinking creatively for next year might be a really good idea. Because we do seem to keep coming here, and we all appreciate that we've unturned every stone. You mean for 28? Yeah. For fiscal year 28. Yeah, exactly, Betsy. Just a thought, food for thought. Shall I move to approve them for today, or do we want to put a pin in it? I do not want to cause our administrative team an issue with trying to schedule, and I am mindful of that fact. So if they need these approved, I'm inclined to do so sooner rather than later. Okay. And what I am hearing from the committee is that we'd like to have further discussion around how we schedule and plan for in-service days and workshops and PD, et cetera, as a whole. I agree. We can do better. So I reluctantly move. Can I say that to approve? Super Wednesdays, October 7th, 2026, December 9th, 2026, February 10th, 2027, and March 10th, 2027. Do you have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Thank you. What's your favorite agenda item of the year? There's only a few that get me to that point. Diane, would you kindly flag this as a follow-up item for after town meeting? Please. Are you saying the one you just discussed? Well, not necessarily. Not necessarily. Just discussion around calendaring. Because I'm going to be bringing the 2027 and 2027. Right. Which, you know what? You can put it at the same time. That would be the ask. Please. I'm politely letting everyone know that we are 26 minutes behind schedule. Next up. Review and discussion regarding the TEC forward rate update and fiscal year 27 post budget. Is that you, Erin? This is me, but I did not prepare this. All right. So do you want to kick it to next time? Kick it. Okay. I need 10 or 12 minutes. I need 10 or 12 minutes. Easy. I need 10 or 12 minutes. Easy. You two worked that out ahead. I did. You need time. I got time. I will be ready next time. Can we revisit February.no? With all this found time. Don't dare you to find a new date. This is not found time. Let me tell you how I work this stuff, okay? So, Kate and Christina, there was some, I don't want to say like heavy, but there was some discussion around this next item, which is to vote, potentially vote to approve a revolving fund that would permit us to take tuition in for students that are outside of our district into various special education programming. Ronnie, David, Betsy, Kirstein, and other members of Ronnie's team have done a lot of thoughtful planning around availability for seats. I believe the only real potential for next year right now, I think, would be in the high school program? Yeah, actually. Or the 18 to 22 program? The high school. Okay. But most likely not. Oh. But. Okay. So. But it was. Okay. That wasn't because we held up. I know. I just almost. No. No, no, no, no. But it's, again, like we will go through the process and move very meticulous about it and it just didn't seem like it was the best move. So. Okay. You know, it wasn't. It's not my. I'm not. I just want to be clear. I'm not the one, like, steering the ship. Like, so. I'll give you an example. Like, another town emailed about language-based programming. Um. I emailed the team at, um, Clay Pit. They gave me their numbers. We. Our. Our numbers for fifth grade next year look. Are good. But there's just not. There's, like, only one or two open spots. So. I was like, nope. We're not going to do that. So. Um. I don't. I don't even offer to look at a refer. I mean, I've only done it once. This has been ongoing. But, um. Until I talk to the team. So this is not, like, me operating in, like, a silo. I'm trying to learn about it. Um. And I. Talk to the teams, um, immediately. Um. Or if I know that there's not room. I mean, just ignore the emails. Sorry. So. We. There were just. I think, um. There was an appreciation for the fact that the two of you weren't here. I think you both had some questions when we had kind of talked about it a few months ago. Around budgeting. Um. This would need to exist in order for us to actually do it. Um. There was potential for viability for a specific opening. Apparently no longer. But, um. And so we did talk about different, um. Ways to build criteria around when we, you know, how the process would play out. And bringing the student in. And seeing if the student, you know, if everything looked good on paper. Did the student fit with the program? Did the program fit for the student? Um. And so. That was kind of like how the discussion went. Um. We asked just to push this to tonight to have a little bit more discussion at the table. Um. And. Um. You know. Um. You know. Uh. I think some of it is that there's, um. Um. A very high level of, um. confidence in the group around the table tonight. And there was some reservation around if this group were not to be here in the future that the fund is there. And would we have comfort level around controls in when that would be leveraged? Because we certainly wouldn't want to take away from our in district students that are in those programs. And I think that's kind of where we left it. And that's how we felt. Um. Um. I am open to further discussion or making a motion. I don't know how much you guys were able to watch or listen to or look at anyway. That was kind of where we landed. I watched it. I thought it was a good discussion. I don't think I have questions but I have comments. Do you have questions? Um. Just like big picture philosophically. Why are we only looking to do this for special ed? We have. We're not at capacity in some classrooms. Why? We're not a school choice district. Why would we not offer to fill three seats in the third grade somewhere? Because the revenue that you have, you know. We're not at capacity in some classrooms. Why? We're not at capacity in some classrooms. Why? We're not a school choice district. Why would we not offer to fill three seats in the third grade somewhere? Because the revenue that you get from school choice is, what's that? I'm saying, I'm agreeing with you. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. About what you're about to say. Okay. Oh, good. We're so aligned on some things. So it's a great question, Christina. But the revenue from school choice is why a lot of districts don't participate. It's fairly minimal. Well, we're not. This isn't school choice, right? No, this isn't. This is tuition for programs. We would set the tuition. We set the tuition. Can we sell seats in our third grade classroom? No. We would have to participate in school choice. So this isn't specifically for special ed because it's a special ed program. Exactly. Okay. And because Ronnie and these folks have created programs and or revitalized programs that have become, you know, highly covetable programs and the teachers that support them. And so it would help the viability for the program for our in-district students and the potential growth for some of those programs like the students that are participating in the 18 to 22 program and get some more exposure for them if we were able to kind of increase the numbers. I mean, one way I look at this is that there are years where there's not a cohort in a specific program. And that can really test the viability of the program because in-district programs still have to be viable from a financial perspective. And what this kind of does is it's only when you have significant openings. And Ronnie just gave a good example. When it's one or two, you don't do it. When you have several spots open in a cohort and there's no chance it's going to be filled, then to keep, especially if there aren't like peers, for example, or cohort based on our staffing model and we want to retain skilled staff, this is a way to do that. That's kind of what we're really talking about to be really clear. I mean, I think it's incredible that we have so many programs. And I will say as a small district to have the amount of programs we have is pretty incredible. Which we're all created before I got here, so this is not what you know. But we are a small district, so it can be tricky some years. Some years it's not. Some years that they just, and I would hate, you know, if you don't have the cohort, then you potentially can lose staff. It's potentially not the right program for a student. It may then lead to an out of district because we don't have a cohort and it's not, you don't want kids to be isolated. So it really could be a win-win. And I also want to reiterate, this is not like opening floodgates and having like dozens of kids. Like maybe it would be one a year, maybe two a year. I mean, the district that is sending wants to keep their kids. They don't want to do this. So this is a very rare, like I said, in my, before I came here I never tuitioned into a public. And since being here I've only, I've done it, you know, three times and they're very specific situations. The last thing I would add, Ronnie, is, you know, if you think about the future, we've been talking a lot about the future, and if you look at our upper elementary grades, you're talking about 228 and fourth, you know, fifth grade, and 220 and fourth grade. We're talking about like 165, 170 cohorts. And what that's going to mean, it's going to be harder, that's in, you know, the overall population, it's going to be harder to have cohorts because of that population dip. I think so often around this table we've said, wouldn't it be nice to be a leader in X, Y, and Z? We've had so much growth in the past however many years of us who have been there in the before and the after. So it's nice that we could be a leader in this for some programs that do have small cohorts, and to be a truly inclusive program you need to have peers there. So if we could get there that would be great, and it feels like growing pains for some of these programs. Growth is scary and growth is hard. And if we do have those strict parameters around entry and capacity, which we can trust our administrators to guard, that feels important, especially knowing that financially what we could be up against in the next few years and protecting the programs that we have and the students that we have and keeping it inclusive for those students. Thoughtfully said, Kate, and I left the last meeting and I told Ronnie I'm going to think through everything and I'm going to send her questions, and really I asked I think all of my questions and just needed to kind of sit with it. And I went through every single scenario I could imagine in my head, and I arrived there. And I still have a little bit of fear going back to what Erin said. I think we trust everybody at the table. We know all the thoughtfulness and parameters that has gone into this, and we hope you stay here forever. And that's never a problem. But I think the fear is if anything changes, does this change? And I had an idea, and I have absolutely no idea if this is a good idea or it's viable. But is this something, like we have an annual vote for out of district, right? Is there, could we revisit this annually to see? Annual vote for out of choice? School choice. School choice. We annually vote on school choice, right? This is not that. No, I understand that. I understand that. But is it something, oh sorry. Is it something that we could revisit once a year at this table to determine is this something we want to continue to do? Keep the revolving fund open for tuitions in. But would that mean removing students who are already in the program? Good question. That wouldn't happen anyway. Exactly. We lost the faculty. That's what I got from listening. True. If we don't have space the next year, then this is not available. But that's not us as a committee saying, nope, we vote against it. That's our program saying we don't have space for Wayland students. And so you other districts need to figure it out. So I've been thinking through this stuff. We change every three years. Every year. So who can make a policy? So I looked into this. Some districts have JFAD, which we don't have. And it's about tuition and students. And they can put guardrails on it if we only want up to X amount of spots per program to be eligible for this or something like that. If you wanted, you know, a policy on this, we could put it. And it sounds like, Ronnie, you've already put thought into that. It's just not necessarily written in the policy, right? Yeah. I mean, like, any student that we did tuition in, the sending district has to sign a contract. And that contract's only a year. So it's every year. You know, there is, like, a termination clause. There is, like, a... I mean, that's where I think you could put some of the language also is in the contracts. Obviously, I don't have one developed. I, you know, I was looking over one that I signed for another district. I mean, the other district has to agree to sign it, obviously. But, you know, just, like, they are... If at the end of this year we were like, oh, no, our... We just got, like, a whole huge move-in. We can't... Then I would let that other district know and say, you know, unfortunately, I'm giving you enough time. But, unfortunately, we don't have room for next year. And then they would have to find a new placement. And that would, you know, be in the contract. I don't anticipate that. Because I would just... I mean, you never know. But you just want to make sure you give enough notice. Because these are kids and we don't want to be moving them all around. But, you know, some school, like, an out-of-district school just closed. You know, like, schools, unfortunately, sometimes those things happen and kids do have to move. And I think that if you didn't want to do a policy, I think that, you know, the language in the contract, which we would have employers obviously look at, would protect us. I think for me, thinking about what a cohort is and thinking about stability for the students in that cohort, I don't like the idea of both for the Wayland students or the students who would be tuitioning in, it could just change every year. And I just think it makes it very hard to make meaningful friendships that way in your cohort. And, you know, I get it from the financial point of view. I get it from the staff retention point of view. But I'm also trying to think a bit from those students in that cohort point of view. Not only the Wayland students, but also students in other districts that aren't even Wayland students, but would be our students. And, you know, I get it. It's important to have cohorts and, you know, could make for a bigger cohort. But if there's not consistency in that, I can see it as problematic for students in these programs that are already isolated. Christina, in my experience having accepted students, usually students are there for the duration. They are. Just so you know, they're there for the duration. It's just, you always sign a yearly contract. But, you know, barring any major change or anything, yeah, I mean, typically you would keep, you know, have students. And usually it's mutual. If you don't, if you, if you, if the program is not appropriate, it's not, you know, it's usually mutual for the family and the parent. I mean, the family and the school and the funding school and the receiving school are all like, you know, we're not meeting the students' needs. Because that's why we're being very particular, because I would hate to have a student start in our school, make friends, join a club, and then be like, mmm, it's not working out. Like that, mmm, that's why we have to be very, very sure that we can support the student and that it's a right fit. Because you don't want things like that. You don't want somebody to help make friendships and then be like, no, it's not working. That's not why we're working. And that's why I'm not the one making the decisions, because I don't work directly with the kids. So I don't know the cohort. So if, you know, if the teacher's like, nope, that's going to set this student, nope, nope, that's, you know, not going to work for this group. Okay, great. It's like, I'm not the one making that decision. The other thing is, I got from the meeting last week that if they needed any other services that those would be paid for, like if they need BCBA for speech therapy, whatever those would be paid for. But like, it also does increase the caseload of our SLPs and whatever in the district. And I don't know how stretched then they already are or how much bandwidth they have in their caseload, but. Yeah, that's a factor that we'd have to look. So when we look at the IEP, if it says something like, you know, times a week of speech, you know, we can't. And then you're honest with the sending district to say, you know, we think this is appropriate, but unfortunately, you know, we looked at this and this is not something that our program would be able to provide. So for instance, if somebody in like a therapeutic needed to see a counselor every day, that's just not, you know, sometimes it's, but it's, we can't guarantee that. So we would have to say, you know, unfortunately, we don't have that capacity in our program. And also we would check with the service providers to make sure that we're not, you know, I know, I keep a list of all of them. They share their schedules with me and their caseloads and everything. So I have that in mind and I know how far they're stretched to know where we need to deploy people. But if they needed like additional things like a one-to-one aid or hearing equipment or, you know, a walker or physical, that would be paid for by the sending district. Those are not fit the costs that we would. I just remember like when I first got on the school committee, I think like there were certain therapists that were like at capacity and there was a lot of discussion of needing IEP and stuff like that. And with our move, our TCW move, it actually didn't really help that because it takes away travel time for specifically our OT and our PT. It's one less building they have to go to. And so that helps as well. And also then there will be two SLPs that have the auto now for both. Yeah, we, I mean, and I definitely keep an eye on it. And the SERP, I think of speech in particular, they do, you know, like a while last year, the Clay Pit, the SLPs were like, we need a little bit more. So we increased them a little bit more. You know, the psychologist at the high school is like, I'm just covering the entire high school by herself. She's like, I could just, you know, I looked over at case load, we gave her some more support. So we're, we keep looking pretty close eye on that. I don't have anything pending right now. So if you want to take more time, it's fine. I don't have anything like this is urgent today. Do you want to hold? Do you want to? I'm supportive of moving, but if other people want to hold, I want to be respectful of that. I don't object to having more conversation if people want, but I'm sort of settled with what we've got. Okay. I'm just reluctant that we say yes today, and it's today and forever thereafter. I think that's what my fear is, but I don't want to disrupt kids. I'm just not here yet. It's not, like we don't have a policy on it. Maybe we should look at a policy on it and what that might look like and come to the table next time. Does that make sense? I'm not on the policy squad, so. The policy squad's got to get a move on it if they want to get it. I know. How many more readings do you guys have? I don't know, but not a lot. No. Yeah. I'm open to a motion. I'm open to, I'm going to move to approve the creation of the revolving fund. Okay. Do we have a second? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? So it still wins, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'd also, we're going out like this, put it on the agenda for potential policy creation. Should we have news? And it should also be in a special educational, you know, report in terms of, it often is, would be in enrollment. There's a revenue side. So there's all kinds of kind of, I would say, built-in accountability that we follow. And teachers will definitely, I, there will be. There will be. It'll be. I don't think we worry about you at all. I don't think that's a concern. Thank you. And you know, a lot of programs, a lot of schools are creating, it is, a lot of schools are creating their own programs. Um, like I, I think last year we did a presentation or maybe I shared it on like the cost benefit of creating these programs. I mean, in addition to the, just to create a good, like, you know, in district programming, but it is, it is a cost benefit. So a lot of schools are creating programs. They're just at the forefront of a lot of them. So I can put that on the agenda for the next meeting if policy subcommittee thinks that they can maybe come with a proposal. Okay. I'm so jealous. Diane, my scribe, my love. Would you be so kind as to add that to a policy item for discussion around potential policy, JFAB? Thank you. Um, we have the consent agenda. We don't appear to have the payroll and warrants. Are there some tonight? Yes, payroll and warrants. Oh, okay. We didn't get them. I don't think so. I don't know that they're in the folder. Yeah. Sorry? There's not an AP warrant, just the payrolls. And then I think the agenda says February 31st. Okay. I don't know that they're in the folder. Yeah. Sorry? There's not an AP warrant, just the payrolls. And then I think the agenda says February 31st. But I think it's March 13th. And it looks like there's a blank in the minutes from March 13th that we have to fill in. There's a second missing. But I was not at the meeting. I think that was the question mark. On 2-11? March 13th. March 16th. Yeah. On 2-11? On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 3-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. On 2-11. Okay. So let me make the edit in here then. Can we still approve it as a bundle or do you need to do a separate vote with the edit? We can just do it as a... I was just going to do that. Okay. Okay. We should be able to do it with as revised. Okay. Is that the only edit other than... You guys were like the motion making queens that night. I'm going to move to approve the consent agenda, noting that the minutes contained in the consent agenda are March 13th of 2026 and March 25th of 2026, as revised for March 13th, 2026. I'll second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? I know. Okay. Any matters not reasonably anticipated? We move. No, that's... Oh, no. I move to enter executive session for the purposes of discussing strategy related to collective bargaining with the Wayland Educational Association, WEA, Units A and B, as permitted by MGL Chapter 30A, Section 21A3, and for the purposes of reviewing and approving executive session minutes with intent to redact and release said minutes, as permitted by MGL Chapter 30A, Section 22 for March 25th, 2026. School committee will be joined by David Fleischman, Superintendent Betsy Gavron, Assistant Superintendent Kirsteen Patterson, Director of Finance and Operations, Ronnie Kessler, Director of Student Services, and Diane Marabella, Recording Secretary. School committee will adjourn in executive session and will not reconvene in open session. Do I have a second? I'm going to second. Uh, Betsy? Yes. Kate? Yes. Erin? Yes. Christina? Yes. Erin? Yes. It's a really important. Well right. It's valid that any time or bye? 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