August 24, 2026 – School Committee – Video & Transcript

August 24, 2026 - School Committee

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Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Wayland School Committee meeting. It is August 24th, and it is 6.07 p.m., and we're going to get our meeting going. We'll call it to order. We are being recorded by Waycam, and we have all of our school committee members present. We also have our superintendent, assistant superintendent, director of business and finance, and our director of student service. By a show of hands, individually, who plans on giving public comment, if you could raise it? So all individuals. Separate comment. Yes? So, okay. So we'll go to two minutes each for public comment. And I would just ask that if you're going to make public comment, just make sure that it's within the purview of the school committee and that it is respectful. And Kate will set a timer, and that will go off when your time is up. Okay? So whoever wants to go first, come on up to the table and just tell us your name and your address, please, for the record. Is this here? Do I sit or stand? You can do whatever you'd like, but yes. This is my first time. Yes. Welcome. Oh, gosh, everybody. Hello. My name is Leah Levine. I live at 9 Gray Birch Lane. I have a rising fifth grader at the local school, and I have a rising seventh grader at the middle school. Good evening, everyone. I am actually here tonight to speak in support of trying the new pilot, not because I think it's perfect, and this is for the music pilot, and not because I think music is unimportant. I highly value music, and both my daughters are heavily involved in it. I'm actually here to support it because I think we need to understand that the current model we have is not working for all our students, and that we need to be willing to try something different. I have had the privilege of working with Brian Jones for the past seven years, and I have tremendous respect for his professionalism, his judgment, and his solid integrity. I know 100% that he would never support this sort of a change without believing it was in the best interests of the students. I completely understand how complicated this issue is and the strong feelings around music. I love music, but we also have a bigger picture to look at. Our students are receiving little to no instructional time in science and social studies, and we're barely meeting the hours required across the board in our instructional hours. So it's not simply a music issue. It's a broader instructional time, scheduling, and equity issue. My understanding is that there have been years of different efforts to work around the scheduling so that we can get adequate time, and the model was developed, this model, the pilot, was developed under the purview of the school committee, the parent council at the local school, the administration, all three principals, and many teachers are also in support of giving it a try. I think an important piece to note here is now I understand that under the proposed model, the ensemble instruction will be approximately a 1 to 10 teacher-to-student ratio as compared to some time? Well, I just want to say with equity too, by having financial assistance doesn't necessarily mean that it's truly equal. So we have to consider the time and the barriers for accessing music. So I hope we can give our trust into the people who made this decision to try it and put our efforts towards finding other creative solutions. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thank you very much. Dear members of the school committee, Dr. Fleischman, Ms. Gavron, and Mr. Jones. My name is James Markey, and I live at 49 Pequot Road, along with my family. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time and for your efforts, all of your efforts, to ensure that our children are getting the best education possible, and for permission for me to speak this evening. Since well before our family moved to Whalen, 13 years ago, this community has been one that values music education, not just because of what learning an instrument does for students and other areas of their education, but because musical studies are worthwhile and important of their own accord. Musical studies, rather than being about music, are about doing music. There's a difference. While a person can learn about something in 25 minutes a week, it's nearly impossible to learn to do something with the same amount of time committed. This is Truel Loker, happy hollow, Clay Pithill. Now, as a parent of four children myself, three of whom completed Whalen Middle School, and one who is set to embark this week, I believe myself qualified to attest to the robust education in both social studies and science that our middle school students enjoy. And to date, there's been no discussion or evidence presented that the middle school students who attend Loker for their elementary school see any adverse effects compared to their peers at Happy Hollow and Clay Pithill. If we believe there's a problem at Loker with time spent on these subjects, the middle school's robust education brings all students to a comparable level. I'm grateful that Mr. Jones acknowledged that this pilot to reduce music education by half will create an issue that Loker's music students will have fewer and less developed skills, they'll be less prepared for sixth grade music than their peers at Happy Hollow and Clay Pithill, and it will create a new problem that doesn't currently exist. I only hope we can all similarly see that the justification for this attempts to address an issue for which the middle school's current program already provides a solution. Thank you. Thank you.
Hello. I was wondering if I could have an extra minute because my friend Neil Olmstead, who lives on Bow Road, couldn't be here, and he was saying he wants me to speak for him. Sorry. All right. My name is Christine Foss, and I live on Sedge Meadow Road. It's beautiful. This morning, I listen to the birds. I listen to the birds every morning.
I know their calls, and I know why they sing. Why do birds sing? Birds sing to communicate. Birds sing to connect with other birds. This is the most fundamental life force that we have is singing and communicating. This is not just about an extracurricular fun activity like throwing a ball, which also is a very valuable skill and thing that students should have. This is about life. Music is who we are. Now I'll read what I wrote. Music is sound. Everything around us is connected to sound. Human beings are wired for music. Music in its most raw form is language and basic human interaction. We engage in musical behaviors every day by the language we speak to each other. We're all musicians, whether we know it or not. Music isn't about performance. This is how we're different than birds. Birds are so great that they can connect, but we're different because we have brains that can develop and get better. Music makes our brains better. It's about daily practice. This isn't about performance and anxiety and all that stuff. This is about our brains developing. There's heavy research about this. Simple Google searches will give you enough information. The Economist, research suggests that musical training enhances brain structure and function, improving memory, executive function, and reducing cognitive decline. Johns Hopkins Medicine, keep your brain young with music. Here's some more headlines. Stanford Report, how music supercharges brain stimulation. Harvard Medicine Magazine, music lights up nearly all of the brain. Harvard Medical School says of those reported often being exposed to music as a child, 68% rated their ability to learn new things as excellent or very good, compared to 50% of those who were not exposed to music as children. This is a fundamental educational issue. The studies, neurologists have written books about this since the 70s. This is not new. This is old news. There have been TED Talks about it. Is my time up? Awesome. So thank you so much for considering. This is more than just my passion. Yes, I'm fortunate to make a living playing music. I taught at Berklee. There's so many wonderful, wonderful activities to be done with music. It's not about that. It's about the students' brains need music. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Vicky Lai. I'm at Tang Queenview Road. I've been a resident of Wayland for 17 years, and I have three children in the Wayland Public Schools. I'm also the current president of the Creative Arts Parent Association, C-A-P-A, CAPA. For over 50 years, CAPA's fundraising has supported fine arts opportunities and resources that fall outside of the school budget. From CAPA's perspective, the elementary music program is not an isolated experience. It is the beginning of a pipeline that feeds into middle and high school music programs. These students become part of an ecosystem where families attend concerts, volunteer, donate, advocate for the arts, and often become involved in CAPA. Fewer students continuing instrumental music into middle and high school ensembles means fewer participating families and fewer volunteers and donors, which could reduce CAPA's ability to support not only orchestra and band, but also theater, chorus, and visual arts. CAPA also believes that equitable access to a well-rounded education means preserving meaningful access to the arts, particularly for families that can't provide private lessons for their students. I've watched all three of my children benefit from Wayland's music program, and as a mom, I want future Wayland students to have that same opportunity. Not just my own children, but every child in our community. And as a Wayland resident for more than 17 years, I'm also concerned that this significant change to an established part of our school program is moving forward without broader community engagement. Wayland families deserve a meaningful opportunity to understand the proposal, weigh its potential benefits and consequences, and have their voices heard before it is implemented. For these reasons, I ask the school committee to reconsider the proposed reduction in elementary instrumental music instruction. Hi, thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm Penny Wayne Shapiro of 8 Bigelow Road. As a director of Wayland School of Music since 1997, as an educator for several decades, and as a former member of an international orchestra, I would like to speak out in the strongest possible terms against the proposal to cut music instruction at the time. I'll point out there's zero personal benefit to me in doing this. In fact, quite the opposite, as those students who end up losing instrument time could potentially come and have lessons with us, but that is not the point. The point is that music instruction is not an extra. It is a fundamental, excuse me, the work of the music is that the brain develops fundamental skills for learning in a way that nothing else can. When a child picks up an instrument, something remarkable happens in the brain. Learning to play is one of the few activities that lights up nearly every part of the brain at once. When you play, you're reading notes, you're counting rhythms, you're coordinating both hands and listening, all at the same time, which also involves the integration of the brain. Over time, that workout helps to build stronger memory, sharper focus and attention, better fine motor coordination, problem-solving skills that reach beyond music. I'm sure many of you have seen the studies about music and math, the impact of music on math skills is just one example. These things are far more important than any one subject area. Connections formed in the brain by playing an instrument significantly influence how your child thinks, focuses and learns. A better integrated and more efficient brain will impact their ability to learn more effectively in all subject areas, including the social studies and the English language arts that we've been told are somewhat under threat. In addition, music provides a significant social opportunity and an emotional outlet, which is particularly important as we read that kids are more isolated, more depressed and more focused on screens than ever before. For all these reasons, the decision to count music instructional time is a shortcut not to better learning, but I believe to less efficient learning in all subject areas. Sorry. I strongly urge the school committee to reconsider the civil advice decision. And I would like to add, as a parent of a child who was in Whalen Middle School and High School, that jazz band was one of the few places that he felt comfortable and felt that he had a place. And there are many kids like that in our schools. So thank you very much. Yeah. I'm Daniel Hardy, and I live on Bay Colores Drive. Good evening members of the school committee. My name is Daniel Hardy, and I'm speaking on behalf of more than 450 Whalen and Boston Metco parents, caregivers, educators, and residents, who signed a petition opposing the reduction of fourth and fifth great instrumental music at Loker from 75 to 45 minutes per week. The central premise is that removing 30 minutes of instrumental music will provide additional instructional time and improve academic outcomes. But where is the evidence that this is necessary and where is the evidence that it will work? Loker has an 86th percentile DESE accountability ranking, and approximately 75% of students meet or exceed ELA expectations, compared with approximately 74, approximately 42% statewide. None of our elementary schools are identified by DESE as requiring assistance or intervention. Whalen provides more than 1,100 instructional hours annually, which is approximately 22% above the state minimum. The cited 160-minute weekly deficit is not a state requirement. And now the district has said that 30 minutes will be used for science and social studies. But where is the documented deficiency? The district has claimed it is not meeting many standards, but has not identified which state standards and how many additional time, how much additional time is actually required to meet these or why taking 30 minutes from music is necessary to even address them. In fact, Whalen's 2025 eighth grade civics MCAS ranked the 99th percentile statewide. Wanting more time for a subject is not evidence that the time is necessary or that music should be sacrificed to provide it. The district is also implementing a new literacy curricula, including CKLA and Kaminos, while changing the schedule. If outcomes change, how will you determine whether the cause was a new curriculum, additional instructional time, the music production, or some combination? You cannot meaningfully evaluate the two major interventions simultaneously without even establishing a baseline. And I'd like to, if you want the petition, it has over 450 signatures. Do you want it or? You can just leave it there. That's fine. Thank you. Or you can actually give it to Diane. That's great. Thank you. Hello. My name is Joseph Hardy, and I live on 14-day Gloria Drive. So good evening. I'm a local parent, and I'm here because I believe the school committee has an obligation to exercise meaningful oversight of the decision to reduce musical instruction. So simply adding instructional minutes does not guarantee better outcomes. Instructional quality matters, not merely seat time. Music and instrumental instruction is not simply lost time. It develops auditory processing, memory, attention, pattern recognition, discipline, and other cognitive and developmental skills. We also need to talk about resource allocations. When families are told that staffing and scheduling constraints require taking instructional time away from children, the district should be able to demonstrate its fully examined administrative staffing scheduling alternatives first. The school committee may choose to allow this pilot to proceed, but if you do, we would expect actual oversight. First, we should establish measurable objectives in the baseline now. Define the specific problem this pilot is intended to solve, what success looks like, and how you will distinguish curriculum effects from schedule effects. Secondly, there should be a formal mid-year evaluation. After the first elementary report card period, publish a public report evaluating student progress, instrumental time, scheduling, and feedback from students, families, classroom teachers, and music staff, and determine whether continuation is justified. Third, there should be a full staffing scheduling analysis before the 2028 budget cycle, including options for restoring the full 75 minutes of instrumental instruction. More than 450 constituents have already asked you to reconsider this decision. We're asking you to do what elected oversight body is supposed to do. Examine the evidence, question assumptions, and listen to the people you are elected to represent. Thank you. My name is Casey Shirell. I come here from a different perspective as a professional musician and professional educator. I'm a product of public school education. For seven years at Newton North High School, I ran the jazz program. There's a volunteer because we had similar funding situations. These are kids that I brought up in music, volunteering as a parent in programs in elementary school. But before that, I was a professional in Los Angeles. I recorded on records with Dizzy Gillespie and Chaka Khan and did some television shows and things like that. Decided I would like a teaching engagement to a Berkeley college. I taught there for 32 years. So the thing I'd like to say is that in music, the statistics that everybody's throwing out are 100% accurate. They're facts at this point, inarguable. But as a teacher, music is, it has built into it a special needs piece. At Berkeley, I think Christine, who's taught there, anyone who's taught on the college level, you start to see so many kids who come that have autism. You don't see it in the beginning, but as you, I teach one-on-one private lessons. As you get to know the kids, you see that there's so many mental issues that kids who don't fit in, maybe they're, you know, uh, Kurzweil, one of the big computer people, modern world, he says music is one of the seven, you know, basic intelligences. And I believe that because I've seen so many kids who just cannot succeed in school and they have a music program and that's where their intelligence shines. My son who has epilepsy, the big study at that point in time when we realized he was having seizures, is that musicians and kids who study music, when they have brain issues, they get in car acts, they could have accidents with their brains. Your brain is already rewired to re- to change the functionality of certain parts of your brain. I saw my son go from this with epilepsy over the course of a year, getting back into music so he could go to Berkeley. That became his alternative school. Anyway, thank you so much and I hope you keep it in the program because I'm a product of public school education, you know, uh, music education. Most of the kids are not going to be professionals. It's to enrich their lives. There's nothing like it that I know of like music. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Anduise Klaus and I live at 15 York Road in Weyland. Um, I'm here as a parent, a professional musician, and I will submit my full statement because I'm trying to, um, like just say. But I understand that the reduction is on, in the small group things. And I've been in orchestras, bands, and choruses, and I've also, um, stood at, um, I've also stood in front of college student orchestras and, um, and, um, as the conductor and music director for shows. And as a participant, my lived experience has been that the small groups are very important for fostering a sense of belonging. It's a safe opportunity to open, be open about challenges, make mistakes, and find solutions. You form a closer connection to the teacher-director. They learn your strengths, and over the years they've become a trusted adult and mentor, which is important, particularly for adolescents. While you work on a piece individually, that work doesn't often translate directly into the big group, especially in young players or singers. Um, so, uh, also, um, I have a background as a high school, um, varsity track athlete. And so, from the conducting perspective, without the small group, it's like having one coach, coach, hurdles, high jump, discus, long distance running, and sprints all at once. Um, you might sort of be able to do that with people who have engaged in the sport for several years, but with beginners who have rarely, um, done it, you can't say, you know, just jump a hurdle while I go on a five-mile run. Um, alternatively, imagine coaching soccer, basketball, volleyball, and baseball at the same time. Conducting a big group can feel that way at times more so if all the participants are beginners. It's unreasonable to expect elementary students to just pick up an instrument and make progress without small group training, and to then expect the high school to still have a strong program. Adding teachers to orchestra helps with crowd control, but as each instrument makes sound, doesn't help with small group practice. With the pilot, we won't see the resigned results for many years, and so I thank you for taking my perspective into consideration. Um, as someone who has experienced, but also a parent who, um, wants future elementary school children in Weyland to have access to a comprehensive evidence-based education. If you have that written and you want to give it to Diane, she... No, it's longer, and I have, but that's at home. Oh, okay, okay. Okay. Anybody else? Um, hello, I'm Joshua Nussful. I live at 22 White Road, and I'm a recent graduate of the Weyland High School, and not just Weyland High School as a whole, but of the music program. Um, I now attend Northwestern for viol performance and for applied math, and I'm here to say that I would not be able to do any of that without the music program that we have here. My parents, uh, knew nothing of any music education. Um, they would not have been able to put me in the right programs to give me the proper lessons to do all of the things that they needed to in order to get me to this level. So now that I'm able to pursue this, um, at a, at the highest level possible. Um, these music lessons that are in the elementary school are so, so important, not only just for the elementary schoolers, but for every, like, middle school or high schools, because, uh, this sets the foundation for the skills that they need in order to progress, right? They, uh, they cannot learn that more advanced skills. They do not have those base skills, which will then be, uh, not learned in elementary schools because of these, uh, cut lessons. And so cutting these or cutting these 30 minutes will destroy the music program more than most people realize, especially those who are not music educators. Um, those who are not music educators simply do not understand just how complicated it is. And, uh, to my knowledge, this decision wasn't made with any music educators or any input from the music educators, like Ms. Memoli or Ms. Tandon were to my knowledge completely, not completely ignored, but weren't taken fully into account. Um, I also would like to speak on the trial program. The trial program itself won't even do what you guys or what the committee will think it will do for multiple reasons. Like was already mentioned, um, there are multiple new programs being implemented and those new programs, uh, could be the cause for any improvement or not improvement. And so there could be a third factor and this is not a controlled experiment. And so I ask that you guys, um, maybe take a little more time to reconsider and to plan out the program more and to maybe listen to the community who has many concerns for this program very clearly. Thank you. Mara Sherman and I'm at Fort Whittemarle. Um, hi, my name is Mara Sherman and I'm the PTO, uh, president at Loker. Um, and I'm not here today to express my opinion on the music program. When the announcement was made about the program changes, it was obvious that parents would be passionate either way. Um, I received many emails and calls, um, and I made my stance clear from the start. As PTO president, I didn't find it appropriate to take a personal side. Instead, my line was always simply, how can I help you as a parent? Um, I think I'm kind of editing this because it's going to be a little long. Um, but as a parent who's lucky enough to volunteer in the school and to be at pickup every afternoon, I can say that Loker is a strong loving environment. Um, Principal Jones and the administration care about the kids. And I believe that the school committee and the administration wouldn't make a decision that would purposely, I, I just think that there, that there would be a lot of love and thought going into it versus being a rushed decision. So what I would like to say is that I do not want to say my personal opinion. However, I do think that there are constructive ways to have these conversations and moving forward. It would be great if we were all able to come to the table and actually talk about it clearly and have comments be kind and appropriate. Um, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Who's public comment?
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Are you running? Running point on technology. I'm going to go, uh, plug in the, okay. Do we not have this? It's in our email, but not in the folder. Oh, okay. Thank you. Can you help David? Oh, can you help David? A few days ago, maybe Thursday or Friday.
Oh, never mind. Got it. I got it.
Do you have a separate presentation or are you just pulling them up? Just pulling them up. Okay. Okay. Ready? We are ready. Great. Good evening, everybody. Um, so a little background and context. For our goals. Uh, we began our goal setting process July 21st and 22nd during our annual summer administrators retreat. And the first thing we do when we do a goal setting process is really take a look at our goals from the previous year and take a look at what goals have been accomplished. What goals are we, are we, um, really need a lot more work on. As you know, many of our goals are multi-year goals. Um, and those are much more common. I should say that the school districts have many goals, whether they be academic and social and emotional. Um, but our goals that we share with the school committee tonight are where we expect to spend time and energy over the coming school year. Um, we will spend time and energy at faculty and staff meetings, at meetings with administrators, and also where students can expect a new initiative, whether it be a curriculum, whether it can be a teaching strategy. Um, we also have goals related to student services. Um, and we think about co-teaching began last year, but it's certainly an ongoing goal as we expand and refine. Um, because there, there's some subjects that you may not see in our goals. It doesn't mean there isn't being work done. It just may mean they are not getting significant attention over the course of the year in various meetings or initiatives. So I'll, I'll start with that. Um, here at goal areas we'll talk about tonight. Um, we're going to do this. We are very much a team. And so you're going to have a few of us speak. I have a 10 minute rule. I don't speak for more than 10 minutes in a row, just like our elementary teachers don't during mini lessons. So fortunately I have my colleagues. We're going to jump in at various times, which will be good for all of us. Um, so those are the goal areas we're going to talk about tonight. They've been really consistent throughout on these six goals. So our first goal area is to build on what we started last year. As we think about our portrait of a learner work, um, last year we had various focus groups with different stakeholders. This year we're going to begin to think about how we move to the next level of how we begin to think about operationalizing our, our portrait work. I also think portrait work is really important right now when we think about what do we want our students to be given our current world and what's really most important. Um, it's important sometimes we're in the midst of so many initiatives and to take a step back and think where do we want our students to be given this, this changing world. And, and I think it's really important to think about, um, particularly in light of how the world has changed. You know, I think about, you know, students who four or five years ago majored in computer science and if you were only getting computer science skills and skills in coding, very technical skills, where did that prepare you five years later when the world has changed? But what skills will students need throughout their lives that we can address in schools? Um, that's something where we're going to think a lot about as we think about our portrait work, which will really sharpen our focus and strategy moving forward as well. So we will, um, you know, continue our final draft and also think about what our faculty can do to address these issues, um, in their classrooms, but also in our extracurricular activities, um, as we think about some of these, these virtues. They're also about keeping, making sure we keep the humanness in schools, um, because ultimately those are skills that can't often be addressed outside of schools, those adaptive skills. Um, in terms of academic achievement, um, at our high school departments will begin a multi-year curriculum, curriculum mapping process, um, really clear maps about what do they want students to know and be able to do at different points in their high school experiences. And, um, the next one, I mean, and also thinking about social emotional, not just the academic achievement, as we think about aligning our curricular and social emotional wellness to the state's standards. Betsy is going to talk about a little bit of our multi-tiered system support work, which of course is ongoing. Yes, this is certainly a multi-year goal, as we think about the different, um, different levels of support and, uh, instruction that students get. Sort of when we think about tier one, we're thinking about our whole class instruction, tier two, a smaller group based on need, and tier three is our, our most intensive, um, intensive programming there. Um, so over the past year, we have really worked to develop our student support, um, teams and really have them be more consistent across all of the schools. Um, we have established new procedures and protocols to help us do that and ensure that all the work there is, uh, data driven and based on, um, analyzing, uh, different, different data across, um, and monitoring the progress of students as they're going through different levels of support. So, also including, sort of, some automatic, um, places where students would be enrolled in, um, student, the SST process to see if they needed additional, additional supports to be successful. Um, so that is part of the work. Um, within, within the domains of, um, SST, we're thinking a lot about the executive functioning, uh, professional development that we've had over the last two years with Sarah Ward. Um, she's going to come back to do some, um, work with us on a consultative basis. So she'll be meeting with small teams of teachers, looking at different practices, visiting classes, um, and, and doing some coaching there. Um, so we're very excited about that work and that will happen at all five schools. So that's part of it. The high school, um, underwent a process, uh, of evaluation of their MTSS program last year. Um, so they'll be doing more work, um, implementing the recommendations that had taken place, specifically looking at, um, executive function strategies within classrooms. MTSS piece. Betsy, can you, oh, sorry. Can you just remind us, MTSS, just core academic areas in executive functioning or entirety of the curriculum? No, so, uh, MTSS really has three different domains. We have the academic, the social emotional, and we also think about sort of attendance strategies as well. So it's, there's, there's three tiers within each of those areas. So we'll be looking, you'll see later when we're talking about sort of Wayfinder, um, um, we'll preview for, for the next goal. Um, last year we adopted Wayfinder and implemented the core lessons that was new for teachers. And this year we're looking to integrate more fully the assessment capacities of that. Um, and we had some teachers do some summer work too around, uh, our counselors around integrating the Wayfinder lessons with other resources that they have. So last, at the end of the last school year, um, you heard Sarah Sondack, Sontag, who leads our ELA team, present on the recommendation to adopt CKLA Caminos. Um, and she demonstrated some of the feedback during the pilot. So now this year it is operationalized time where all students will have the opportunity to engage in this new curriculum. Um, and it obviously involves grade level teams, special education teachers. I also want to just briefly address, you know, for each goal, we also have intended outcomes. And so when you start a new curriculum, it's really important to establish achievement and baseline data. And so that's an important outcome that we expect to have established achievement data based on the implementation of the curriculum. And that will be done by Sarah, the reading specialists, teachers, um, that'll be really, really important. The other, you know, part of a goal when you start something new is fidelity, is making sure it's implemented with fidelity or else you cannot establish the consistent data. So, those are the outcomes that you can expect us to report on as we adopt this new curriculum. I will talk a little bit about, um, the next level of work with our Spanish Immersion Program. So our cohort, our lead first cohort has just finished seventh grade and headed into eighth grade. There's been a lot of work done over the course of last year and through the summer, um, to, uh, get them ready for the eighth grade curriculum. Um, at the same time, we're also working with the high school as well. We've been, uh, consulting with Corey Matthew, who's a real expert in high school curriculum development for Spanish Immersion Programs. And she has been, uh, a wonderful resource as, as we're building out our, our plans. Um, we'll, we'll ensure that there is, uh, collaboration between our fifth and sixth grade. So that transition between schools, those teachers sort of visiting each other's classes, getting to know the students. Same with our, um, rising eighth to ninth grade. So there'll be intentional collaboration at those, those transition points as well. Um, as we were talking about outcomes, we want to see sort of steady improvement in all of our language proficiencies in each domain. Um, we use the apple testing for, for that. Uh, we will continue these, um, Spanish Immersion has a, uh, separate kind of, kind of council that meets, um, and they meet quarterly, both at the middle school and the elementary schools. All right. Our, our next goal, um, Jen Judkins, you're here. We were just talking about this goal today, um, around AI use, but I actually think the topic is broader than that. And I think about some questions that our school committee members asked us last year, because we had you in mind when we were developing this goal around what's appropriate in elementary schools. Um, and we have taken that feedback and listed as a goal, which is evaluate how to use, we use technology with our youngest learners, time and purpose, and make recommendations about the appropriate use at the elementary level. Things have really shifted. The questions we used to get were, how are you going to get technology in the hands of all of our learners? Now for our youngest students, the questions we're getting are, how are you getting the technology out of the hands of our youngest learners? So it's really important that we focus on time and purpose at the elementary level. And I thought it was important to publicly acknowledge that in our goals. Um, things are trickier, you know, at the secondary level. One thing we know, this is really, really early. And, um, it is really, really complicated in how to address this. You know, this summer I was reading articles in the last year about AI detectors. Well, if you just focus on AI detectors, the students are going to beat us every time. And so this is really about more adaptive work, about how do we change practices. How do we have conversations with students about this? Um, that's what we're going to need to do, which is think about student lessons and experiences to help students under, you know, their understanding and its role and function in learning. And what does learning mean today in the age of AI? Um, so as we think about students using Gemini, um, how do we use it? And what role does it, does it play? And this is really something that nobody's figured out. It's causing a lot of stress in all kinds of organizations, including school. Um, but it's something we, we can't avoid. So I think it's about those lessons. Uh, we actually talked about this today in our meeting. We'll need different lessons, obviously be very different at the middle and high school level in terms of what's appropriate. Um, but there's no doubt that students are, uh, many are using AI in a range of, of ways. Who do you have as responsible for this? In that? Oh, we left that, like we will fill that in for you. Yes, we will, we will, we will, we will, uh, we apologize. We, in some ways we're all responsible is the answer, but we have people who are thinking a lot about this, like Jen and her colleagues. I will also say that this is, there are no answers here. We're all trying to figure this out because no one's figured it out. Um, I'm just like, we will, we will have people responsible and, and address this there on work. Okay. This was, uh, we have a lot to do. You know, we started this in, in third week of July and we try to get it done by tonight and we all try to take working vacations in between and finish all this, but we're just about done. We'll, uh, we'll fill that in. Yeah. We're going all the way through and that's going back. Technology teams at each, um, school, uh, Jen and I have been talking about really having those teams focus on, um, AI and what it looks like at the, begin to think about at the middle school level, but certainly at the high school level where we're going to be, begin rolling it out slowly and intentionally. And if any of you have questions, feel free to like jump in. Those of you who are new members say, well, that's what I was going to ask. I thought we were going all the way through, but do you want to do, like we're happy to, you want to do real time questions, feedback, anything like that? I lose them if I don't ask. Okay. Okay. So I think with this issue, I know that in, in the college age group, there's data now showing that there's skeptic, you know, there's skepticism, right. And generationally, it's like, I guess the, the, one of the big questions to think about as you all are exploring, right, is like, how do we provide balanced perspectives so that we're not over normalizing use, knowing that there are some industries, right, that are also starting to reject this? Um, cause I, you know, I feel like we have to teach students also like the critical thinking skills, which you all are really good at around, around the technology and then the, the big wicked questions around it that they're going to be navigating as they're aging beyond our district too. All right. I have to play catch up then. Um, sorry, always come back. I know, but now, but it's easier. So one thing that would be helpful in, as you finalize, this is a note where it's a continuation of a goal. So I think that this, cause we've seen this before and we've talked at the table about there being multi-year initiatives. It would be very helpful in each artifact each year. If it says net new for 26, 27, you know, year two, right. And like, cause it particularly as our committee members transition, but also for us to just understand was this originally two years and now we're seeing it a third and what is that like, why? And so I think that would help me on Spanish immersion. I think it's really important as the initial cohort enters eighth grade that you seek student feedback in a not raise your hand and tell us, but I think you will find some very interesting insights from your eighth graders about how much or not of the language they feel they're actually getting, how they feel about their ability to speak, how they feel. So I would, and also just generally, if one of the goals is to foster broader cultural diversity, I also would strongly encourage us to start now that we have three grades at the middle school to actually have some kind of measure on whether or not the presence of that program is fostering more bilingual awareness, more interest in language among non-immersion students. So I think one of the really critical success metrics of the program at LOCR was that it really did infiltrate around schools. We've talked at the table before about how do we bring those benefits to other schools and other students in the district. I think there's still room for us to figure that out and I think we, it's time now that there's three grades at the middle school to actually start to have some goals around whether or not non-immersion students are benefiting from the presence of the program in the school and if not to the way we hope, what do we need to look at in setting a goal for that. So I'm not, I'm seeing these, this goal in the middle school level being very focused on that cohort. I'm very mindful of how do we make sure the benefit of the presence of the program and district reaches more students. And then I I personally would encourage looking at whether this technology AI goal is really two separate goals. I think you're tackling a tremendous amount in this. I have significant concerns that we do not have looking at middle school reliance on Chromebook in here in addition to how much technology and device usage is happening at the elementary school. I have a middle schooler, I have two coming. I talk to a lot of middle school parents. There is some, both here and in neighboring districts, there is a lot of concern and frustration about the amount of education happening in Chromebooks. And so I would like to see more middle school scrutiny in this goal. I was listening and agreeing. I just happened to stop speaking. Part of the landscape shift that I was talking about. Yeah, I, I agree. I think that needs to be broken into potentially two goals. Two different goals that are evaluating two separate things. One being the role of technology across the board. And then two, I think, being the AI.
Structural thing. David, I think outcomes and measurements are probably two separate columns. Just kind of actually thinking about it. When you mix the two, like how do we know when a certain outcome isn't achieved. You list outcomes in one column and then. How we're measuring whether we hit it. I agree. The second one. Yeah. Also agree with Betsy's earlier point about which one's new, which one's continued. CKLA is new this year. We had a goal with more, last year was more planning year. We were piloting, but this is an operational. So that's great feedback. Yeah. And then, AI stuff. I mean, you can sign me up. That's what I think about all day. So, um, people thinking cognition. So we have to, they have to, you know, use it creatively. I also think that on those goals that are multi-year, we need to specifically reference what we're doing with the results of year one or year two in year two or year three, whatever that may be. Right. Almost, is it a phased effort or is it just that the goal will take us two or three years? There's sort of a difference there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you're almost, there's two visual elements, right? There's the dashboard of like red, yellow, green, right? Like in progress, completed, not started. In danger. Yeah. And in addition though, there's the layered of like, this is just year one of three. Dashboard is like the word of summer, I feel like so.
I'll take it in real time, preferably.
I think what he was saying was send this to us in a smart sheet next time. How much jargon can we introduce? I'm trying to avoid jargon. I know. Two separate goals. That's really helpful because they are different. And I think expanding that elementary goal into middle school to think about like. Yeah. And one of the things that I'm hearing is, I think some concern at the middle school level with the work of the cell phone task force and the success of moving to the reduction and elimination of personal device presence during the school day, there is some mixed messaging and confusion, if then a tremendous amount of their actual academic and school instruction is device dependent. Yeah. And so I think that's something that we didn't discuss as a task force that I'm now hearing a year into yonder and our, our work there, that there's sort of this. Yeah, I'm smiling, I'm smiling at Kim, because we had this very discussion today at 1230. The same discussion. So I'm glad we're, we're all the same page about that. And Jen has lots of thoughts on this. So, uh, she's not at the table tonight, but we will obviously have this on the agenda. And AA literacy will be part of the new graduation requirements as voted in this, uh, in June. Yes. What that means. I was going to say. It's still not clear. Also changing on a month by month basis. We're not. Yes. Um, so. How to complete your work without it is. We're going to shift. So these are, these are some areas where we're going to spend time over the course of the school year. Um, belonging and equity is also really important. I should say that this fall, we are going to share data with you from the Metro West adolescent health survey. And certainly there are always certain questions about belonging. Um, as a matter of fact, we can get data from schools in terms of our belonging data, in terms of do more students feel connected to an adult is one example. And that, that, that is part of, of surveys. Um, so we'll, we'll do that. We're going to, uh, we're going to have at our next meeting, a draft calendar of topics for agendas. We just couldn't pull it off with the goals. It's okay. We didn't want to overwhelm our school team members. So we'll, we'll, um, we, uh, just so far, new school team members. We report on goals at different times over the course of the year, as you know, when you joined last year. Um, but part of our fall work is we're going to share the Metro West adolescent just, you may be familiar with some of those surveys from your, your prior work, I'm sure, but they're very important in helping us analyze where our issues are as we think about belonging and social and emotional. So, um, one thing we've been working on, and this is actually, this is year three is restorative circles as a strategy to build community and belonging. Um, and so we had, we've had lots of teachers and administrators trained, um, in this strategy. As we think about, we know that students learn when they feel connected. And so restorative circles are really, really important, um, and training is required to do them well. Um, and we've had teachers at all levels, uh, use them and students will experience them in schools in, in different ways. At this point are all, because I see trained students in the circle practice, so they can co-facilitate circles and tag at the middle school. Does that mean in tag at the middle school, all staff members leading tag are now certified? Because I know we were eking there last year. Middle school has the most, um, teachers trained and most tag groups have. Um, but there's, there's been a lot of success with student-led circles as well and reports out from other communities and sort of where the research is, um, that student-led circles can be really powerful as well. So Caroline's going to do some training. We're going to pilot doing some training students six, just in sixth grade this upcoming year, um, to co-facilitate with adults. Great. Yeah. So that is like, this is year three of a multi-year goal, but there's like new parts to it each year and we, we tend to iterate and build. I feel like that's a great feeder for the peer mediation initiatives, um, if it's successful, because those, you know, those are students who are willing to facilitate conversations, you know, potentially across difference. And we do have, um, there's a peer mediation program at the high school, um, so I can, I can envision it being a nice feeder skill, as you're saying, for, for, for that programming. Um, we continue to embed, and this is sort of like an every year goal, that we're always embedding, uh, cultural proficiency, um, in coaching and learning for our teachers. Um, it's like a never finished goal, it never will be, so it's a long journey. Um, particularly in this upcoming year, I think our coaches and our, um, we've talked a lot about like embedded on the job, um, coaching in, in PLCs, sort of where are the, um, where the practices that we can infuse within, um, different, different curricular design areas. So our, our coaches sort of embedding, um, training as it, as it applies to particular lessons and units and modules, um, for students in the upcoming year. So, you may recall when we were doing the overview of choosing, um, the different curriculum, there was an equity pause sort of in every, at every meeting that we had and kind of looking at the why of the data and the disaggregated data as well. So not looking just at our overall achievement data, which, you know, is, is among the highest in the state as we've, we've heard, um, but where are the subgroups that are not, uh, achieving as well and how can we support, support those students as well. All right. Our final goal, um, in terms of belonging is updating our discrimination response protocol. And there are three aspects to that, which is accountability and learning and healing. Because after all, we're, we're an educational institution. And so we're always thinking about how do we address all three of those more effectively. And that involves, of course, staff training, um, and updating our trainings and thinking about how we can use them more effectively, um, use data to address what a system. For our incidents, we know students make mistakes. Our job is to focus on sure they learn from them and they're held accountable and they heal. So, um, we'll continue working on this. This was a major effort two years ago, and now we continue to work. Team that met this summer to really work on resources to share across schools. How, how much of an overlap is there realizing, recognizing there's like cross-function of the circles and the restorative circles training and then the restorative justice elements that you're trying to get at with this? There's a huge overlap in that. And, um, the administer, administrative team and a couple lifters, um, engaged in tier three training this summer. So we did tier one training, the administrator did tier one training two summers ago, tier two training last year and tier three training this past summer. Um, we had a really powerful, um, leader in that work. And, um, I think demystified some things about tier three training that, that was really, really helpful. Um, but, but I, I think that will be another tool in our toolbox, um, for, you know, addressing both the harm doers and the harmed. Um, I think many of us really thought that the goal was always sort of to, to bring those two together. And that is not always the case, certainly not in a bullying situation, but in, even in others, um, what the, what the different circles might look like for both, both parties. So that was really helpful training. Um, Betsy and David, this goal or this element of this goal, will this include, um, looking at sort of, um, quantitative data since we adopted the protocol and what that looks like year over year? Okay. Yeah. And I, um, and we've, we've, we've actually been working on the feedback that we've gotten around it from users of the, the tools and the protocols this summer, um, and making some adjustments to the protocols and making, uh, sort of the data easier to use and access. Jen has been working very closely with us on updating some forms and, um, helping the data collection be less labor intensive and streamlined. Yes. So looking forward to those changes. Is it actually going to be changes to the protocol or changes to the reporting forms? Both, um, slight adjustments in some of the language, uh, so for example, um,
the tools actually use slightly different in different schools. So, uh, in some schools, like a teacher who may have seen something or does something will report to an administrator who will then fill out the form and other schools, the teachers are filling out the form more. Um, so we're going to have our DEVLTs do more sitting with teachers to fill them out. So it's a first, first hand account as opposed to a second hand account, you know, a report within a report. So that's an example of one area that we're, we're looking to make some, some changes in progress and getting teachers more comfortable filling it out. We're also changing the name of the report form, um, from discrimination, um, complaint form to, uh, bias incident reporting form. Because I think people get nervous about filling out that says discrimination complaint, whereas a bias incident feels like that we'll be able to capture some of the smaller, um, lower line behaviors. And if we can get a handle on those earlier, you're going to prevent some of those, uh, bigger, bigger issues. This is, is, is, is the thinking and the hope. And Caroline did a beautiful job sort of refining the slideshows with the, the, the what's and the why's. And she's going to roll those up in each of the schools this fall. So the idea is that we won't permit under the protocol, having someone else that's not the witness to the incident reporting that we're going to require that or we're going to certainly encourage that. Okay. Um, and, and have some people in place to support that. But if somebody reports something to us, we're still going to. Our next one, um, actually, you're going to, you want to talk a little bit about this one? Um, sure. So this is, uh, we're in year two of our Wayfinder work. I mentioned this earlier. So we're going to, um, last year we, we had some training from Wayfinder around the Wayfinder assessment component of it. So some people did some, some playing with it last year, some, getting some baseline pieces. Um, this year, the, the plan is to implement all the components of our program. And so all of our teachers will be, uh, collecting baseline, um, data as well as, um, sort of midterm benchmark data, sorry, mid, mid, midterm progress monitoring data along the way. All right. So our, our next goal, um, I kind of referred to it earlier with our Metro West data. We know that student anxiety is something that is, we have to pay attention to, um, because the implications are significant, uh, for mental health or behavioral health. And so Jessica, my former colleague, before she came, became famous, Jessica Minahan, uh, this is her area of expertise. And she'll be helping faculty and staff understanding the underpinnings of anxiety, as well as real practical strategies, because she is a practitioner, um, as we think about how to support students and prevent dysregulation. Um, and that's something that Jessica will do this. Another part of the school, maybe it's good to bring Ronnie's voice into this as we talk about our C-STAG training, because that was in your area. Um, yeah, um, last year all administrators and counselors were trained in C-STAG, so it was recommended from our consultant and from best practices that we needed some sort of protocol for threat assessment. In case of a school-wide threat, in case of a suicide threat, we needed some actual evidence-based protocols to follow. So all, um, district administrators, principals, vice principals, special administrators, um, and all, um, school counselors, social workers, got it, everybody, um, went through level one and level two training. And then for any new administrators, we'll do, uh, another training in the fall. Um, and it was really, I think, very helpful. Um, Betsy was there as well. Hannah Rubio, who is our school adjustment counselor at the high school, is a trainer. So she, she facilitated our, the level one is online, level two is in person. And it really was eye-opening in, um, how we deal with, you know, you know, threats. Um, and what we should be saying is, you know, something that, something that was just said and then something that needs to be investigated. And now we're all working from a consistent baseline, um, and have a monitoring system. So I feel like going to the school year, we're in a very good place. And lastly, um, student attendance. You all recall, this was a topic that, this is a topic that has received significant attention since COVID. According to our school community members last year that we really had seen progress in this area, there's, there's certainly some more progress, uh, for certain subgroups. So we will have a team that will be meeting every six weeks. We address attendance over the course of the school year. Um, so that work will continue because I feel like we still have to stay focused on it. Um, and obviously we monitor that attendance very, very carefully. David, just before we leave that, is the plan to continue the same communication, reach out strategies that I think you felt were pretty successful last year about raising community awareness and caregiver awareness of this? Yeah. And, um, for our students who, um, were chronically absent or even approaching chronic absenteeism, I know that the summer administrators were doing outreach, um, to help, help families begin to sort of plan and, and get the attendance based on the radar and, um, be proactive in terms of supporting good attendance habits, so. You know, it's a combination because you, I'm glad you said support because it is about support and not just accountability and finding that, that balance is really, really, really important. Okay. Student services. Um, so we have three goals and they're all new goals this year. Um, I just wanted to. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Um, I, and maybe this is me not seeing it, but I would suggest that we include follow-up on the cell phone working group and all of that as part of the technology. Yep. That's good. Um, I believe there was an intent to carry that forward, do evaluation on the yonders in the middle school, et cetera, as far as year two and carrying that through. So I would suggest that we build that in. And continuing the discussion at high school. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. We have a separate technology goal from AI, AI, I think that's good. That's okay. That's good. Okay. Um, so I was in the document, so I put like new goal, just because you were asking, um, last year we had like a continuation of another goal. So, um, this year we have three new goals. Um, so the first one is around kind of our co-teaching model and expanding it. As you know, we piloted co-teaching last year at the, um, elementary levels and it was very successful. We are continuing it this year at all three levels with some tweaks and changes based on student cohorts and needs. Um, but we're going to be implementing co-teaching pilot at the middle school in math and English and at the high school and a number of level, a number of classes. I mean actually at the high school, the pairs of teachers, um, are given some time to work over the summer just to, you know, facilitate, to kind of get to know each other, syllabus, things like that. Um, I want to talk for our, for our new members, like what's different about this that, that took place before? A little bit of context. Sure. Sure. Sorry. Um, so a co-teaching model is when you have a full-time general ed teacher and a full-time special ed teacher in the room at the, for the duration of the period or the day. If it's elementary school it's for the day or half a day, for the middle school and high school would be for that period. So a traditional model of special education is what we would call push in or pull out. So a special education teacher may push in to support a student three times a week for 30 minutes on writing or may pull a student out of classroom five times a week for 45 minutes to work on writing. The benefits of co-teaching are you're getting those supports in real time. You're getting those accommodations, those modifications in real time. You're not taking kids away from their environment. They're getting their instruction from their special education teacher in the classroom. So they're doing a social studies lesson and it involves writing. Well, now the teacher, the special ed teacher's there to support that student to provide the accommodations modifications as opposed to saying, well, I already did my 30 minutes of writing. So the kids are actually getting quite a bit more programming than their IEPs call for. And at our elementary level, we're fortunate that we have staffed the rooms with a special ed teacher, a general ed teacher, and as teaching assistants. There's actually three people. These classes are general education classrooms. They follow general education curriculum. They follow general education pacing. They are not special ed classrooms. There's just more students. It's actually beneficial for all kids. It was very successful last year. We did a meeting at the, I think I reported out last year. And I'll be really monitoring the middle and high school. This year, our, we have a number of teachers who are going to be engaging in it. This year, I offered a PD for anybody. This summer, many teachers took me up on it, um, and took it just to kind of get some of the basis, uh, basics of co-teaching. So, um, we're excited to expand it. Well, I mean, just when we did the elementary, I think it was volunteer-based for classrooms. Were we able to do that at middle and high school? What are we not on the flexibility? Um, yes and no. Okay. Um, it wasn't quite as voluntary at the, um, middle and, because there's only so many pairs. And, um, at the high school, like we needed the, the certain class had to be co-taught. So, I, I, there wasn't like too much discussion, but I know Allison and Lauren and Sean had conversations with the teachers. And that's why we offered the, um, opportunities for them to meet over the summer so they could build those kind of relationships. And, um, so if you have a student in a co-taught classroom in the elementary school, you know, right? Because you're told that it's a co-taught classroom. Do students in the middle school to high school know? Or do families know, oh, my child's in a co-taught math? Is that as obvious? It's, for some students it's on their IEPs, that they're in the co-taught. That's where they're getting their service delivery. So, those parents do know, um, I mean like. I was asking, is knowing that my child's in a co-taught classroom, I'm thrilled knowing that it impacts all students equally. There's a benefit to everybody. So, if my child is in a middle school math and it's co-taught, ah, they're getting the benefit of all of these. But you won't, you know, you kind of don't know. You wouldn't necessarily, I think, I'm not sure if they're scheduled. They may have a back to school night. They will have a back to school night and I don't know if in power school it says it. I don't know if it says it. I just think it's good for people to know because it's such a powerful model. Absolutely. And I want middle school and high school families to know, hey, your child, regardless of which child, is getting a benefit here from co-taught classrooms. I do think, um, like, because we've been doing co-teaching for ELA with the LBC cohort at the middle school for years and those parents do know. So, I think so, but it's a good. Just for community communication, I think. Yeah, I think you're right. There's something important here. And I think everyone needs to know. It would typically be when you see two teachers head back to school night. Yeah. Because usually there's a gen ed parents typically wouldn't know except for that. Yeah, I don't know if it shows up on power school. Like, because, you know, you can see in power school the schedule. I don't know if it just says one or two teachers. Okay. And I don't even know that you would think about that. If you're, if your students are gen ed across the board, you're not going to necessarily think just because there's two teachers in the classroom that it's a co-taught. But absolutely something we can, we should, um, especially because we're, it is new for, the high school's been dabbling in this. This is not totally new for them. Um, but it's, we're definitely being more intentional about it. And we're really in IEPs putting services in that B grid as opposed to the below, which is nice. Um, our second goal is around dyslexia. So I think I mentioned this last year that the definition of dyslexia was updated in 2025. Um, and that was, I was part of that dyslexia institute that Sarah Sontag put together. Um, so I thought this was an important goal because also our, um, introduction of CKLA and, um, it's really based on the science of reading and we really want to make sure that we are, um, providing interventions and we're catching kids as early as possible who are at risk for dyslexia. So, um, it's off, you know, one of my, the goals is around, um, really ensuring everybody has an updated understanding of the new definition and the implications. So one thing that they drilled into us at this institute is you can use the word dyslexia. Like you can use the word dyslexia. You should be using the word dyslexia, uh, when it's appropriate. So, um, we really work with the special ed staff for the administrators to standardize our evaluation process and make sure that we are properly identifying students and early, um, and that we're aligning our goal writing. It did a lot of work around, um, not just writing generic, you know, decoding goals, but really focusing on there's three areas that a student can have deficits in if they're found to be dyslexic. And so really focusing goals on one of whatever area they're deficit in, not just overarching, but really focusing if it's on automaticity, if it's on word retrieval, really focusing on that. Um, so does that mean now that in an IEP, but sorry, not an IEP, um, like a neuropsych evaluation coming out of the schools, you wouldn't still, you wouldn't necessarily put dyslexia in there or yes, you would. So in terms of like eligibility, it still is not one of the categories of eligibility for an IEP. So it's like specific learning disability, but if evaluating a student, it's more, I wouldn't know, I wouldn't necessarily say it would be in a report because the teachers don't typically put like findings and reports as much as those are part of team discussions. So like we would have a team discussion and say, well, we found this and this is now leading us to say the student has dyslexia. Or, um, has dyslexia. So I don't know that it would necessarily be in the report like an outside neuropsych because we're, we're a little bit different, but using the words, you know, and we have a nice, um, chart now, graphic, um, that we plugged in scores to and it clearly shows if you're dyslexic, what, like, is it automaticity? Is it, or like, where is it that you're struggling? And so that would be really the discussion point where we would be putting, having those, those targeted discussions. In terms of the family education, I would, um, sort of a question, but based on what I'm hearing, you use the term. There's a lot more emphasis on screening earlier and identifying students at risk. I think families will be potentially confused about at risk of, finding that you're at risk of dyslexia means now we're talking about services, including the team, whether we're like, so I think that it, it's great that we're getting crisper on communication of the definition, but I do think that where, where we're at a point where we're making a finding of a specific learning disability and talking about an IEP could actually get murkier with these early grades where now we are identifying kids and we're now hearing about remediated dyslexia, which is, I think, very new terminology when you catch a kid at risk early, do intervention, and actually we see them then make up those gains or start reading on grade level, and so I don't know how that fits in or if it would fit in here, but you may get those questions from parents. I completely agree. Um, part of Sarah Sontag's presentation or slides that we have, actually we were just kind of going back and forth about it, is like a continuum to really discuss that very point, so something that I certainly will highlight, you know, when it is time for an evaluation, um, what we do first, and, um, so I'll be, that's a good point. Um, okay, and my third goal is around, um, trauma-informed strategies and integrate those practices effectively across the district. So, um, as we had talked about for previous meetings and we'll talk about later, um, there's a new, uh, regulations around seclusion and time out in the state. They actually went into effect Monday after August 17th, so they are in effect. Um, and I can say that we have trained 60 educators over the summer, um, so that was great, um, and we have a training plan for everybody else. The training, this is what's really important about the training. The training is not just around the new seclusion. The training is five, six modules, and the first module is all around the new policy. The next six are all about trauma and how we, how we can help kids and stop, um, when, when they're in this trauma response. How do I identify it? How do we get out of it? How do we, um, prevent it from happening? And it was a really great training. Um, so Naomi O'Brien, who's a special administrator at Clay Pitt, and I went to a train the trainer, so we've been doing all the trainings. Um, and it's really been very informative because it's very, um, it's, it's something that the educator's like, I can use this right away. It's, it's real time to use, and it really plays into Jessica Minahan's training. So she wrote the behavior code and the behavior code companion, which we've purchased for everybody, and, um, a lot of the trainings, um, that we've been doing really focus on things that she's going to reiterate in her training, so it'll be nice to, um, together. Um, in addition, I've, uh, we've, like, we had to revise all of our protocols, all of our reporting, um, and we had to kind of re-so, just making sure that we're, we're good on our documentation. And then, you know, a goal, um, is really just to see how teachers are implementing this. So one of the things we really talk about in the training is, um, you know, one thing that we talk about is, like, the difference between your upstairs brain and your downstairs brain and talking about that. So I was going to purchase, like, an actual picture of a brain for everything, all the elementary classrooms, and, like, how they can actually start using that language with kids. Like, oh, you're in your downstairs brain right now. We're not going to be able to problem solve this. We got to wait until we can get back into our logic. So, um, just really trying to integrate it into our language and teaching kids about their own, like, nervous system, um, and, and how to regulate it. Um, I will say, going to this training, we're, we're in a good place. We're in a, we're in good shape. We've done a lot around co-regulation. We've done a lot around this type of training, but I think this is really kind of, like, pulling it all together and really giving, um, valuable, um, insight into when kids are dysregulated, what we can do. From Ronnie in the spring. Got an update on these. Absolutely. These really, really good student services. When are you planning on bringing these back for a formal approval? Are. Out of your drafty draft statement. Yes, we moved, that was my friend Eva Thompson. I saw that, yeah. We used her language. Uh, we're going to bring, move away from drafty draft to a final draft at our next meeting. This is why tonight as I, we always get the feedback and respond to really good questions because questions make us better, which is why we all work together. So, um, our next one, you know, when we think about engaging the community, I always think every year, like, what are the right times to engage the community about? Last year, there were a couple. Certainly our facilities needs. We did a month, a bunch of community forums, communication. We also introduced the portrait work, um, last year. So we thought this year, you know, clearly communicating, continuing to communicate about facilities, but also where are we in our future financial planning? We thought that was the, the top need, um, in the district right now, given the town is getting through its two and a half percent cap and to talk about just educating the community about our needs and let people know where, how we've achieved efficiencies over the last several years by looking at staffing really carefully. And every position, Ronnie, just today, we had a, you know, late resignation from a staff member. And the first thing we do is, do we need to replace this person? And could we deliver these services more efficiently? Like, those are the questions we always ask before we just fill a position. We always think about the needs of students, but we always keep the fiscal needs of the town and the district. Um, so, communicate about financial planning, um, as a matter of fact, in meeting with our town, our town boards, as a matter of fact, a week from tonight, with some other town boards talking about our future financial planning. Um, after we finish, kind of, I look at this as like the first part of the year, we're going to focus on the future financial planning of the district. And then we're going to get back to thinking about our future facilities needs, um, as well. I don't think we could do it once is too much, but we have a lot of good information from our consultants from last year as we think about submitting a statement of interest. Uh, we have our taskmaster over there who will keep us going at our statement of interest. They're doing April 1st, right? All right. It's taxes. I get confused. So we're going to submit, we're going to submit early and get that, get that together. Uh, what else should we know about an SOI? Reviewing it with HMFH just as a kind of, um, additional consult, um, because it's quite in-depth and lengthy what they ask for and want to see in that process. So we want to make sure that we, one of the districts that they will likely consider different lens and spin on it will, will help us. Uh, HMFH, that's our architectural firm and they, they do a really good job and they're really good, good partners and we, we forward in with them. Um, the last area is, you know, opportunities for families to participate in community circles at different times over the course of the year when things happen. That's something where we think we can bring in terms of continuing with families in terms of creating a sense of belonging. Um, some of you know that Jameel Adams who did some terrific work in Wayland last year, conversations, not confrontations. He's really skillful and we look forward to doing some, some work with him. He did some work at high school last year following, uh, and I'm, you know, unfortunate incident and he just does really good community. So that is, uh, that that's really where we are with community engagement and finally, and in some cases almost, in some areas most importantly is to, uh, think about executing some of this work. Uh, you want to talk about feasibility studies, town boards? Well, the feasibility study is what we would be, uh, looking at, conducting if we got invited into the MSBA process. So we wouldn't just automatically do that. Um, we want to wait until we've been, um, invited to, to do that, which is why it's also on, um, the agenda later for our FY28 capital request because we have to be prepared any event that we are and we will be invited in. Um, so that is the, um, rationale that then we would, um, go through that process which in and of itself is yet another year, um, for the feasibility phase of that and those are still, um, considered costs that would be reimbursed a portion depending on what level of reimbursement we would be getting. So, um, although the, the amount is daunting, some of it will be, so that is what our timeline is. When we're accepted to the MSBA. The first time,
this would be the third time. Well, we're thinking forward now. Just, just saying. Absolutely. Third time's a charm. Yeah. This is the first time we've taken steps to employ architects and go through a whole process which has helped so the MSBA knows that we're really, really committed to improving our facilities. I think we did so much heavy work last year that holds. And then obviously, I, you know, operationalizing, uh, our financial planning, engaging in the community, future resources so that our history, firm financial footing. So we will, um, first of all, I really appreciate the thoughtful questions and feedback and I believe our next meeting is September 9th. So we gotta get, because next week we'll try to have it to you by Monday, September 7th. Oh, that's a holiday. There's so many holidays. September 8th. That wasn't good. The morning of September, we will get it to you before the next meeting. You're right. I'd be careful. I was trying to be generous and that didn't work. So was the Friday before schools closed. So you may need to get to us by September 3rd. That's a Thursday. We're going to get going. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Nobody's looking at me.
I'm happy to review it on Labor Day. I just want to say on the circles piece, um, Deborah hosted a few sessions with caregivers last year using the model. And so if you're looking at all for like testimonials, um, definitely like the graduated, you know, PTO and I saw like Heather was here earlier. There are some folks who participated in those and could potentially help to promote it. Oh, that's super helpful. Yeah. She ran, she, she used it a few occasions with the caregiver conversations. I know you've replied to the, uh, the emails around parties and others. Um, is that on this plan or is that something we're doing? Yeah, no, I think over the course of the school year in terms of engaging the community, like after, after January, we just have so much until January. And Aaron and I talked a little about that, but to work on that, we've had some kind of internal discussions about it. And then it's about managing our kind of calendar. Yeah. Just curious. I mean, I've heard a lot about Jamil Adams. Maybe that he's a, he's a good person to engage with that. Yeah. Yeah. How to have conversations, which is popping up in lots of informal circles. So yeah. And there's a, there is another initiative in at a higher like town level that is going to involve like convers, like dialogue and conversations, um, as well. So I think more information in terms of how do we scale what's happening within the district as part of that, like scaffolding that's happening across the community. I think we have to be intentional about bridging those initiatives. Super helpful. Can you share anything about that? Just, it just, yeah, we don't have to do it now. I just mean, if there's anything that you can just, yeah, I mean, I can just say that I know that funding was recently approved and there's, um, there's an organization that, um, they'll be kind of, I, there's a, there's just been an informal working group that's some folks are skilled at dialogue. Um, and I had kind of come into that group myself cause I have a little bit of that background. Um, and there's this model that exists in neighboring towns like Wellesley, for example, is a town that has this where there's leaders and various community members who kind of co-facilitate these dialogue groups. Um, and so really wanted to bring that to the town, knowing that there's a lot of separate, um, programs happening with the goal of bringing more people into conversations. Um, so more to come, but I know that Yangni is involved, uh, with it as well. And I found myself, yeah, I found myself involved in it. Um, but we literally just found out like a week ago that funding has been approved for our next meeting. If we get, uh, Erin, I don't know if Jen's been waiting patiently. Oh, sure. Yeah. Um, what? Oh, for, um, money, for financial. This time I brought you money. I'm bringing money to you. Thank you. Sure. So do we want to, um, pass to financial matters just to do those now? Jen, do you want to come up and do financial B or do you, I don't know if you want to, or if you just want us to approve it? Well, I'm happy. I was here in case there were questions because there's, it's money, but with strings. Yep. So So let's, um, is everybody okay with that? We'll skip to, to, okay. Thank you. Um, I thought she just wanted to be here and support everybody. And so this is is two, number two. Jen, I have to tell you, I got an invitation. That was another wasn't, wasn't, um, my school, but it was my home. And because of everything I went through with my school email, I reached out to the person and I said, this looks a little sketchy. Is this legit? Like, are you actually inviting me to something? And she was like, fishing, don't do it. And I found that little hook and I were really nervous. And it helped you. Yes, it did. Yeah, it's an inbox like it's here. It, I learned that really in a very difficult way. It's not your friend. No. Um, okay. So everybody, do you have this? I know you're off your phone, Jessica. Um, but okay. So it looks like this is the first item in the folder. Jen, is there any commitment we match? I'm trying to find the strings. Sorry. So what it is, is it's, um, so this is with, um, the map, what is it? Cyber Resilient MA grant. And what it's going to be doing is it's, we apply together with the town. So the total grant is like 47,000, but it's about a 70, 30 split in terms of who gets what. And that's because the award is based on the number of endpoints or devices that it's protecting. So we're purchasing this to replace an existing service that we paid about $20,000 a year for with another service that will cost a little bit more, but is a much more robust service. It's actually a lot more costly per device. The reason we're even able to do this partly is because we're shifting to Chromebooks at the high school. So all of those devices don't need this endpoint protection product so we can invest more money to buy a better product for the devices our staff use. So previous to this, the product that we had, no one was watching it, right? Like someone would have to know to go in and see an alert. Um, and what we know is that threat actors often are doing these things in the dead of night, on the weekends and holidays and whatnot. So it's really great because what this has gotten us is 24 seven coverage of, of actual humans monitoring and responding if they see something happening on a device that we monitor. And because we had already kind of budgeted that cost for the other product, that Sophos product, it's really a small delta. Like, like over the course of three years, it's around $5,000, which is really nothing in terms of what this gives us. It's also just a really great program that we were able to partner with. I love everything about it because it's this idea of pooling municipal, you know, pooling resources and trying to serve places like us which don't have, you know, deep pockets and, and, and, you know, large teams to be able to support this type of work. So it's really interesting because it's a commonwealth training program too. The, the student, the people that are working at the SOC or the, this, um, this network operations center that's sort of monitoring this 24 seven, not only are paid professionals, but also are training students who are part of, um, a, a program in cyber ranges across the state at different state programs and community colleges. So it's kind of a cool like workforce training piece too. Um, and we really benefit from it because this is getting us something at a cost that we could not otherwise afford. But it does require that we sign a three year commitment and what the grant is essentially providing is a full year of service. So think about it as a 30%, right? Like 33% discount over the three years. So I'm proposing though it's not required for the grant, we can take the money, they'll give it to us up front and we could spend it all this year. But I'm just trying to pace it out, just more responsible that way. I feel like, um, so we did, we're proposing 50% of the grant this year and then 25-25 so that we can budget accordingly. But, um, I am really excited about it. I think it's a great opportunity. I don't think there's a downside, but I wanted you to have an opportunity to ask any questions that we could answer. This is just for when you say endpoints computers? This is just for, and it's actually just for staff computers. Okay. Not for iPads or Chromebooks. They don't really require this type of thing. Um, and so prior to this we had to protect the MacBooks that students had. So there were just hundreds more devices. So we couldn't afford to purchase a more robust product at the time. So this is a great opportunity for us. And the red baseline SOFOs contract cost legacy, that was what we had planned to spend. That's already in our budget. Exactly. So we won't be spending, we'll be moving that cost into this service. Okay. And we can terminate that without any. We just gonna ask that. Yep. Uh, we can, uh, boy was that, this is like one of those, like, we really don't have time for this, but we have to make time because they weren't going to let us extend for just a few months. So I'm like, okay, so now is when we're doing it. So yes, we were able to, the, the team really worked very well with us, um, because it was a pretty quick turnaround. Um, but we were able to get sign offs and time so that we could have it on the new MacBooks that just got deployed. Is there anything we should be considering with a change in how this is being monitored with how we need to notify staff, teachers, et cetera, that will be using the devices? It is not more, um, like intrusive. No, it's not. Um, I will also say that we, we say this, people sign off on a yearly and it's true of any workplace for anyone, anywhere that like, this is not your device. Right. And you know, yes, we can look at what you do if I had things, but if I needed to, um, but we don't have alarms that go off in our office when people navigate to certain websites. None of that is happening. It's really just, it's really just in the event of malicious software being downloaded and executed. This is monitoring for, for the signs of that and flagging those machines and telling us we need to isolate them. It's less about, um, you know, their network traffic and more about what's happening on the device itself. Um, and, and it also is, what it also is, is including is, um, a service that will help get us up-to-date information that will deliver to the town firewall about malicious domains that are kind of active. So every like week we get like an updated list, um, through the national registry that, that does this. And so it will hopefully keep us, you know, all these things are just all improvements. We're so much better than we were a year ago. Um, we've made a lot of progress in this area. So this would just be another step in that. I think this is my last question. It's split out to be 70 30. Is that staying regardless of whatever share of endpoints either the town or the school side has throughout the three years? It is because we, we anticipate that those are our fixed endpoints. If we need to add endpoints, we could expand, but this was based off what we know is our fleet of devices that we have to support the staff on both the school and the town side. Okay. So Nick knew, you know, when we went into it that, that this would be the split. It was really all based on the endpoint cost per year because that's what they're funding. Um, really appreciate the thought that you and Christine put into across the three years. The next question is at the end of the three years, this product obviously is more expensive for the number of endpoints. Um, if we needed to revisit for financial reasons, I'm assuming there's no like locked in implementation we did, like we would be able to go to the market and sort of see what else is out there in three years. Yeah. And honestly, I'm working multiple angles. So I'm also working with the, the board of directors that I'm on, which is for the Massachusetts Technology Administrators Association. So we are actually working with, um, MHEC and trying to negotiate some contracts relative to software because there really isn't, there really aren't software contracts with negotiated pricing. We run into this all the time where I've got to call multiple friends to find out what they really are paying because there's not transparent pricing. And it just really drives all of us crazy. Cause it's like, come on, like, what is, what is it? What is the price guys for your product? Like, why is it not public? So, um, we're trying to look at, you know, opportunities for volume purchasing, but to be honest, the pricing that we're getting for this Sentinel one product, which is talk to your product, um, is quite a bit lower than I would have gotten myself if I went to market. So part of what this is doing is it's leveraging the power of, of like combined purchases because I couldn't get that volume pricing. So we're, we're benefiting from that. The hope is that the program will continue to grow. Um, I'm actually talking on a webinar about it for some other colleagues just to share with them, but like I talked to a colleague at Andover Public Schools to get their feedback after they had been in the program to hear positive things before I signed us up for it. So I think, you know, we're, we're fairly early in this, um, but, but we're not on the bleeding edge. So other people have come before and had good success. And I think we're, it's great timing for us because we were up for renewal on August 1st for SOFO. So it was perfect timing. Anybody have an additional motion?
So move to approve the school's portion of the Mass Cyber Center grant in the amount of $33,110 for the contract costs of three year technology monitoring as presented. Second. Uh, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? None. No. Thank you. I can't always bring you money, but
we've a long memory that you do that. Do we want to go back to handbooks or, well, I guess, do you want to discuss handbooks? Do you need those definitely approved tonight or can those be discussed and potentially kicked to another night for approval? I put them on because you, last time we met, you asked to have them. Right. So they will go into being within the idea that if we need to make changes, we'll make changes. Have there been any changes made since the ones that were distributed last year? Last year? Yeah. Only because I looked, I was curious. I didn't see a, like a, of what had changed. We don't want to do it like that, but, but yeah, there was, we didn't really. We did not. We added, um, the C-Stag information. We added C-Stag. We added the seclusion changes. Change of the regulations. Yeah, and mostly regulations changes. There wasn't a lot of other sets to do. For a little bit of history here, I don't think these have come before the committee for approval in a while and so one of the things that had come up during different discussions was they should be and we should ensure that they're being reviewed. Um, and so I, I appreciate that you put this on here. I'm just not sure if people need a little more time to kind of review and see if they have any questions and if, you know, we move forward with whatever we need to move forward with, but, um, maybe on our next meeting we could just raise any questions or concerns. Otherwise, is that? I could use more time. Agreed. Yeah, so. So could I and I'm consolidating them for you. Yeah, so there's just a little bit of, like, sort of more editorial cleanup that we're doing because we've got the, particularly on the elementary side, because we have that district elementary handbook and then the supplemental for schools. So I'm still merging some of that. You might want to wait a second and then there's less to read because there's a lot of redundancy. We're just trying to clean that up. We're talking about the schools. Just the schools. Just the schools. Yeah, this was just, this is the district-wide one, but that links to each of the schools. Right, right, so yeah. Yeah, so we should, they're all kind of tangled up together. I did notice the middle school contact names had not been updated. It might be, it might be pointing to the wrong. Let me just double check. Yeah.
No, and I'd be, I mean, some, just to get ahead of, like, looking at it quickly, the professional expectations, policies, and procedures, just looking at that with an eye to some of the work that we've brought into the district around circle practice, training, co-teaching, right? Like, I just want us to think about that as we look at that language, that we are inclusive of some of the changes that we've been bringing into the district from a sort of expectation and standard setting around how we all work together. That may not be reflected in a legacy version. Yeah. The district handbook was new last year. We didn't have a district handbook prior, and so we made a first pass at it. We ran it through legal, and so I think this will continue to iterate as. Mostly what's going to happen is we're going to end up trimming the school handbooks because they were supposed to lose some of that extra language because we did consolidate it up, so it's mostly going to be a reduction of extra redundant language. I do think this is another, like, really important area, especially around, like, what you had shared with us earlier in the summer around, like, the changes in, like, the technology use policy. I know I can say assertively that the ninth grade parents' WhatsApp chat, there's definitely been a lot of discussion and concern around how kids are being communicated to about sports team participation and all that. And, you know, I chime in and say, like, policy's been updated, but I think it would be helpful to hear from the district and then also share, like, expectations for families whose kiddos are participating in extracurriculars of, like, these are the channels that they should be hearing from folks in. No, I have really great news to report to the committee. Just last week, I want to say, I think it was Friday or Thursday, there was a meeting with the coaches and Mark Lefebvre, our high school instructional technology specialist, came in and provided training on ParentSquare. Okay. So we have created ParentSquare accounts for all of our coaches and I checked back in with Mark Afterwood and he said it went very well and that it was made very clear to them by Heath that this was the only way in which they were to communicate with students. So my hope is that things will start to change, but this was the first time we've had an opportunity to do that. As you can imagine, our coaches are from all areas and really there are very few opportunities for us to do this. So we had spoken to him last year about the importance of this and he put time on this on that meeting with them. So I'm really happy about that and Mark's been working closely with the high school athletics team about that. So I need to just check and see how does that, you know, how do we make sure we're getting middle school in that because I know that he's been working with the high school athletics department about this, but I know that we've been making a concerted effort to create accounts for coaches and to provide them training. We'll continue to do that, but please let us know if you're doing another one. No, it's really, that's really, I think, I think folks will at least, at least it would be helpful for folks to hear like, hey, that's how, you know, if information is being shared with you, you should expect to be receiving it. I think the other piece there is holding the coaches accountable for that and there are certain insistence where I'm sure they might rely on their captains and captains cannot be using Snapchat, Facebook, whatever either. Yeah. So I just think that's one more piece that may need to be really clearly communicated. Yeah, I mean the good news is we have the language now in the policy, but we may need to do some education around that because there's been some long-standing habits that might need to be learned. Yeah, like matriculating captains who were the recipient, like, right, like, I mean, I think there's just a sort of habit that forms and like, oh yeah, they gave, you know, I have a, use the copy of what I sent last year. Okay, well, I'm going to get Facebook finding that. Yeah, right, it'll take a little teams once it's groups within parents. Right, it's hard before you have like, Mark is working closely, yeah, but that's great. Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, and I think the other piece to that is making sure parents understand with their kids participating in sports that when you're registering your students through Arbiter, the coaches are pulling in that data. So whatever you're putting in there is what they're going to have to use for you as a parent. Right, so don't use the Yahoo account that you only use when you're signing up for junk mail, right? Like, I think that's right, that's how they're getting only when they don't want to see you. That was not a dig, I'm just saying, I was just using an example, right, like, folks sometimes will use accounts to register. Or, yeah, so just thinking about that, it's like a parent education too. Yeah, I'm going to double check. These are custom groups, so we are building them from scratch. They're not just syncing from PowerSchool, but I actually think we are syncing the contact data from PowerSchool. So I actually, generally the parent square groups are built through PowerSchool data, so it's PowerSchool that's the source of truth for contact data, period, full stop. Okay. I don't, now the Athletics Department probably use, may use contact data out of Arbiter, but I will double check that to make sure we're communicating appropriately with families about where and how to change because we want to always make sure families are changing contact information with the school's main office. That's where it changes in PowerSchool. But we're going to be sending updates coming up anyway for returning student form to remind everyone what we have on file for their information, but that's a good point about Arbiter. I'll double check. I know that's how the coaches pull stuff in. I mean, not maybe all of them, but I, yeah, yeah. Now that we're making the list, I wonder if that would be different. That's something, so something to just kind of. Okay, thanks. Yeah. You know, it's so helpful that we use many different systems. Well, we're trying to, we're making. No, I know you are. I'm just trying to, but that's one where that's the sports stuff versus, you know, so. Yeah, don't get me started with Arbiter. So, um, does anybody need any more kind of preview questions answered related to Superintendent's Update B around the handbooks?
And Jen, do you want to let us know when we, when you kind of feel like it's good for us to look at? Or, I mean, I think I, I've got to get them ready so we can send out the returning student form. So, I would say, you know, um, by Wednesday morning. No pressure. I'm just like, I've got to get them done because I've got to get that returning student form out. Okay. All right. Anybody have any questions? Are you good to just kind of, we'll come back with any? The only last one I had on the district handbook, I'm assuming there's like models that we started from, or did we have to literally build it from scratch? Okay. Okay. You don't have to say more. I just wanted to orient to like when we look at it. Okay. We are very open to your feedback. Understood. Always. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Thank you. I mean, a lot of it is sort of policy. Well, as I say, a lot of it was pre-existing. We're just sort of trying to, trying to bring together. Yeah. Yeah. It was more realizing that there were all these separate things and there's not enough that's different about them that warranted all these separate things to review annually, so. I think that's the civil rights really wants us to know. Maybe you're changing it in one place as opposed to make sure, you know, Ronnie sends out the latest special ed update, make sure it happens in six different handbooks. It's easy to miss one.
Financial matters. A is the second part of the PRISM grant, right? Is that, am I going crazy or? You're two. Additive allocation, so. Bye, Jen. Thank you. Thank you, Jen. Thank you, Jen. Yeah, so this is year two. Year one, as you recall, paid for half of our K-3 curriculum, plus a lot of the implementation, training costs, all of those pieces. This newly awarded grant is going to pay for more PD this year. PD for sort of our leaders, our building administrators, as well as our teachers, and it will pay for the stipends for teacher leaders as well, which we're really excited about, which will maximize the potential of those PLCs that are happening on Wednesday afternoons. No, so really what this is is a cost avoidance, so it's a budget. We are being given this additional funding so that we don't have to come up with it out of our budget, which is significant. We wouldn't have been able to do exactly the things that we can do with it this year, and the groups that we've worked with, the school kit, Rachel, who was super helpful last year, will continue her work with us this year.
Anybody have any other questions on that? Would you like a motion? I would love a motion. Oh, great. I'll move that we approve acceptance of the year two PRISM grant funding for FY27. In the amount of? The way it was, yeah, I guess it was written as budget avoidance, but in the amount of $302,000. Thank you. Do we have a second? I second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Okay, great. Not $302,000 books, not $302,000 pencils. I just want to make sure we're clear there. That's fair. Could be frank. Okay, congrats again. Yeah, that's great. Okay, and then Hirsteen, do you want to talk about that at all? Okay, so we had a very quick turnaround. We had to submit our FY28 requests by August 7th, so without being able to formalize or request it in advance, you know, speaking with David, we really thought it was important to prioritize the feasibility study and what the HMFH consultants had identified. The amount of $2 million is what we should expect for a project, one of the projects, Weyland size, so there was originally a $1 million hold or reserve in fiscal year 30, so what I had submitted was to change that to $2 million and bumping it up to FY28, so that in the event that we do get, that when we get accepted, we are ready and prepared for that feasibility process because we do have to show confirmation of the supporting amount to conduct that feasibility study, so that is something that MSBA wants to know up front that you've secured funds to do that, so that was our priority project, and it's really just shifting the timeline. The other items that I included were just for future construction for the remainder of the years, and I just said TBD and that they would be identified as likely debt exclusion items. Again, this is to make sure that we have notified select board, that we've notified the town, that everybody knows that we are looking at school building projects, and this is the mechanism now that we have to make sure that we just keep it on there. We're not suggesting that the feasibility study, though, be debt excluded. No. Right? We're putting that as capital and to stay as capital. Yeah, however they want to fund that, that's open, but the timing, the timeline was necessary to change. Okay. And the amount. Christine, as we submitted it, is it clear to the CIPC that, or GenCom, that it, the funds sort of assume the acceptance by, like, presumably if, I know when we're accepted, this will be needed and we need it, but I'm like, are they aware that in the event that we're put off for another year, that this will move? That's what we'll be explained. It's a condition. Right. So I have not been able to attend a meeting yet. Tonight was one of their meetings, so we have this ongoing conflict. I don't know. I think it's a fun game, but we're trying to get, one of the next meetings, I believe September 2nd might be when I attend with my FAIA, so we typically go and review, because even though those are facilities projects, they list them as school projects. So it's, they're facilities building projects, but they identify it as a school if it's being done on a school. I was going to say, Betsy, that this money is usually, like, set aside, so to answer your question, it's kept for an amount of time, because you don't actually know when you're going to use it, but it's very important to have it, or else you can't advance. Okay. Awesome. We would not request that they borrow for it up front next November if we did not get an invitation. So yes, that would be expressly explained. That's to secure an invitation with MSBA. Yeah. I want to make sure we get ahead of anybody thinking it's premature. Is that how much feasibility study costs? That's what HMFH has identified the going rate is for the size of our project. In the study. There are lots of samples. It is looking, you have to show that you looked at all options beforehand, which is major. There's also a big part of this cost estimating. Right. This is the deep dive that they would go into for identifying which project that we would secure. Okay. It's there, it's very in-depth. Yes. And it's different from what we did with HMFH in terms of the facility. Those are the same guys who presented the different plans. Was it one of the representatives? Who's here? Mm-hmm. And typically, the firm, if there's your feasibility study, does your project, because they know it so well. Not always, but it's highly likely. So you have to go through a whole bidding process. And it's through MSBA. They would, they would identify. Are you guys using AI? Cut costs? Accelerate timelines, do anything. That could, you actually could be on the group, on the feasibility, the school county representation. As you all know, because you went through it before, Betsy. Absolutely. Betsy served in the community. We did the RFP. Yes. Well, we were doing, we did a different, it was a different RFP at a smaller cost to do the, like, design feasibility or location feasibility. So we did a, we had six response, we interviewed six different response. We did RFP responses, including budgets and timelines. And so this is the next phase. So I think the two million, presumably we would need to then select a firm to do that. And we would then get a proposal around that. I think that this is what we're being told by the firm that was elected to do phase one, is what we should have available. And I presume that's consistent with what you heard from MSBA. MSBA runs it. Yeah, that's what I figured. You don't really have a other side. No. It's not our program at that point. They just do it. Got it. It's all outlining, you're just implementing the steps. Got it. Okay. We still need a vendor to do that for us. They don't actually do it. They like, yeah, they run it. They have a list of already pre-approved. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Would we entertain a motion? Feeling in my heart that we are going to be approved for the first time. Yes. We're going to move to approved the FY28 priority capital request in the amount of $2 million for a school building. Project feasibility study. Yeah, I don't know why. No, for a school building. For a school building project feasibility study as presented by the director of finance. Do you have a second? I'll second again. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? None. All right. We'll update you with Rani. Do you like to discuss? Do you really advise timeout regulations for policy JKAA? Yes. So the policy is now, it's the fiscal restraint policy that we've always had. Nothing has changed for fiscal restraint, but now it adds in the definitions and the requirements for seclusion timeout. So the new requirements are you can no longer, seclusion is involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area with or without adult supervision for which the student is not permitted to leave. That is no longer allowed unless in emergency situations and there's things that need to be done ahead of time before allowing it and those are all listed in this policy as well. And then timeout is a behavior strategy, you know, that separates a student from their learning or classroom either by choice or direction and the student is permitted to leave. So this policy is in line with the new seclusion and timeout regulations that went into effect on the 17th and would replace the old policy. And all staff is either already been trained or will be trained by the end of September on that call. So this isn't a revision, this is a total revoke the existing and replace with this? Yeah. But all the information on restraint is the same as the... Nothing on restraint has changed. It's just on timeout and seclusion and it's on record keeping and it's on documentation and it's on the, there's a little bit on the timeout rooms. Actual restraint has changed. Does this go through counsel? This was given to us by the counsel. Oh, okay. I mean, I assume mask has one. They do. It's not as robust. Got it. Um, so, um, our, I reached out to our attorneys at the end of last year and they said you could, but here's what we're... Do you have any questions? It's, it's not, it's, um, it's the state law now. Yeah. So, uh, do I think there's downsides? Yeah. Um, potential. Um, but we'll see. Um, the state is asking us to track the data, uh, over the next three years to see what it shows. So, um, uh, I met with the principals today and monthly we'll be reviewing their data. That's part of the policy that we have to review it actually weekly and monthly. Um, so, um, and that's actually in one of my goals for measurable outcomes is, is to review monthly and look at patterns. Um, hopeful it's going to be, um, positive. Um, that's why a lot of the training is not just focused on the policy, but on what we can do to better help kids who, how we can be more proactive. So I'm actually really excited about all of that. But I think, uh, we had said, I think David actually said last year, you know, this was came down as like a
schools. This is a, it came down from federal, um, and that there were schools who weren't using it. And like I said, in Whelan, I think we're in a really good place. I don't think we were using anything excessively or really. So I don't think it's going to be that big of a, a shift. Um, but all the other stuff that we're doing, I think is great. This was a result of some highly publicized incidents that were in the media and sometimes that forces institutions to make kind of very quick changes. Put this out right now. I feel like we should maybe edit that policy
about the policy. I mean, because like in public comment, because we're not gonna take public comment on this. It's a state. Revise it. It's the law. So we have to implement it. So I feel like we can do that, but it's efficient to end. It is. I mean, maybe if parents had feelings about it in a broader state, they could say it. Yeah. Give opinion. But we're not gonna take edits. No. Right. I will move that we approve. Wait, can I take a step back? Yeah, please. Um, are you still on the policy subcommittee? I can't remember. I think you two should please put that on your next agenda. Okay. Um, for review and potential revisit with the committee. Sorry, Betsy. Not at all. Um, move to approve, uh, to put out for public comment the new Weyland Public Schools policy on physical restraint and timeout. Do we have a,
you asking for a second? Well, friendly edit. Yeah. That we approve the policy. It would be, oh, you don't want to have it come back after. Yes, that's fine. Okay. So sorry, Diane. We're going to take that again. Move that we approve Weyland Public Schools policy on physical restraint and timeout as presented by the director of student services, uh, and put out for public comment. Second that. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Great. See, you've got two improvements for the price of one. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Ronnie. Yep. Yep. Thank you. I appreciate it. That was like the last step, so thank you. Okay. Um, administrative matters A, we need to have, which I believe we did do this. If I'm... We did this last time. I thought we did this last time too. I thought we did. I thought it was you. You might have been. I think it is you, right? We're in the minutes from. Okay. Yeah. So let's just revitalize and reaffirm our vote to appoint Jessica T as our, as our, uh, member to the Education Cooperative Board of Directors. Do we have a second? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Aye. I did. I did. I really want you. Very validating. Okay. Um, he is, so we've been having these ongoing discussions. Kate and myself have been attending, um, future financial planning, as David likes to call them. I like to call them the override group meeting. Yep. Um, he's not here, so I can get away with that. Um, with some members of the select board, um, member of the finance committee, um, the, uh, Kirstine, um, David, uh, Michael McCall and Brian Kevney. Um, and, you know, just kind of discussing this, the state of the town's financial wherewithal or lack thereof. Um, and we were asked to present at the select board meeting, which is, I've learned is going to be fully remote on Monday 8 31, which is a week from today. Um, I said I would be there because I didn't want us to have to push it to later, um, in the year, really. I, I don't expect anyone else to force themselves to attend, um, but I would welcome any and all support at the meeting. I am, um, from Carol that told me the time. She is expecting that the meeting will be 7 25 for us and the select board. She's giving approximately 45 minutes for this discussion. Um, I will get an email from her slash Abby down in, um, town manager's office, um, either tomorrow or Wednesday to kind of let us know the finalized agenda. Um, but so fully remote, um, and I am, I've asked some questions of David and Kirstein with respect to putting together some level of presentation that walks through different things that as a district have been looked at over the past few years related to cost saving measures, whether it be, um, capital items, um, or personnel, um, and trying to get some real hard data and numbers from these guys so that we can present that. Um, that's my plan. I don't know if I'm going to actually put together PowerPoint slides or what. I'm not there yet. I welcome anyone else to offer to work with me on that, what have you. Um, but I don't want to make anyone do it. Um, so that's the plan for 831. Um, David, Kirstein, Betsy, Ronnie, I doubt that you want to be there because you probably just want to, but, um, yeah, we're getting late for it. I'm trying to move it. It's all right. I'm still good. It's only, it's not 830 yet. I'm good. We got two minutes. Okay. Um, but if you wouldn't mind attending just to be able to answer questions if they're raised more specific to numbers that I might not be able to answer. Um, and that being said, it was called to my attention that to date no one, no board committee, et cetera, has formally requested, um, an override of the select board and pursuant to the process in our town's bylaws that needs to happen. So I think that barring any issue from the table, um, that might be the best time for us to do so. Um, I think I'm done talking. Does that require us to identify an amount at this time? No. Okay. No. Um, I think the point is that we look at what we've done, where the projections are coming in from both Kirsteen and Brian against prop two and a half for at least the next year, potentially the next three, um, and look at it and look with and seeing where that falls versus what we've already done and say that we can't recreate without a severe cut to service, et cetera. Um, and therefore we are requesting an override for
fiscal year 28, 9, 30. And do we know, is there then a process by which, because I can imagine given the sort of healthy skepticism that this topic has had and the fact that it's been floated now for two years at town meeting and Wade and we're having one and we're not having one at some point, I would anticipate questions around like how do our services compare to others? What would a cut look like? How do, right? And I don't know if that would be this or that comes later. I don't think we necessarily need that for Monday night. I think that that and Kate, you guys that have been in these meetings with me, um, please feel free to chime in. But I think that that will come as hopefully we're moving toward educating the, the community on what an override means, why we're asking for it, where we've been and where we're going. I think that'll be more where that needs to fall. Okay, so you don't feel like we have to be ready with that on Monday. No, we've had a lot of discussion about that in our working period because I was planning on coming on the 31st. Yeah, I can, I can come too. I think more support is better. You know, we've had a lot of discussion of when do we start to educate the community and how, you know, what are the different levels of education that we can do now versus in October, which is when the select board is just voting on if we need an override and then sending it to the town. Um, so I was under the impression that I thought I was told that boards could not ask the select board for an override, that the select board decide. So is this different that now we can go to them and say, these are the facts. This is what our finances look like. I don't think it's different. I think it's just that it's part of the process and they weren't really speaking about that part of it prior to. And so I don't want that to be the hold up for the select board, not to make that determination. And so I'd prefer to be proactive on that and say like, we need the override. Early communication right now, when we have the attention of our families at the beginning of the year, I think is very important because we know what happens. It'll be, you know, December in two blinks. And then we will likely have control. So it's how we can get that in. So the discussion Betsy has been basically that like the select, the select board is the only body that can call for an over, like that can say we need an override to the town, to town meeting. Right. And so, but pursuant to our bylaw or code, they need a recommendation from the finance committee prior to that. So that's what I was going to ask because I would think normally it's a FinCom. So, but apparently someone needs to ask. So that's fine. I just, is there benefit to us mentioning other, whether they're in our purview or not, I think they're also, sorry, let me take a step back. There's also been, um, uh, FinCom just had a meeting with the select board joint meeting last week, two weeks ago. I can't remember now. It was last week. Okay. Um, on this topic. So it's, it's like being explored. And the thought is that hopefully by the time October rolls around, the select board is ready to vote, to put it on a ballot. But that would be for January, February prior to annual town meeting after the holidays. And it gives, they would like, they would prefer to be able to give a 90 day window from when like the town is kind of notified that the select board is going to move forward with putting this on a ballot. To when it's actually going on a ballot, um, to engage in a number of discussions with the public regarding education and all of that. And having a better idea of where our numbers were next year. When I say our, it's not just this. So that's where I was going. I don't want this to be the schools override. There are others. But I do think that there's going to be folks who will read the minutes, right. Or watch on Wacom after the fact, not having seen, you know, a little bit of this discussion that's providing some context here, um, and jump to that. Right. Yeah. We have emphasized in our planning group meetings with all of the people at the table that this is not just, uh, um, the schools need the money. Michael, you know, I think is an agreement that he needs to demonstrate. These are all the ways that the town also needs the money. This is how your town service will be impacted. If you don't, if we don't have an override. So we're all aligning, you know, this is what this really means for every member of our community. And this is not the, oh, the schools are driving this override. This is a community. And actually a lot of the things that are being discussed around the table are things that the schools have no control over, such as rising healthcare costs, the water issue, the water, um, all of that fun. And it's really important that we continue to emphasize all of the, uh, mindfulness that you have done over the past few years to be fiscally very responsible and conservative. So we just keep trying to emphasize that because this isn't coming out of nowhere. We've been planning.
I will make sure that everyone gets the zoom link for Monday. As of right now, shoot for probably 725, maybe 45 minutes. Um, usually what they do when it's like a joint meeting is you get like a special notification while you're in the zoom that now you're like a panelist or something. So you can talk openly. So just kind of be aware for that. Um, I'll let Carol know that the majority of us should be there. And that, you know, if you guys can let me know who will plan to be there from your side, administration side. Um, otherwise we can't have more than three of us kind of collaborating for plan. We can't have more than two of us, sorry. Um, collaborating around a presentation, if you will. Um, but maybe you and I can kind of be in touch prior to Monday. I don't know if you need slides, but I feel like almost a one-page artifact kind of what I'm behind might be good. Yeah, that's more of what I'm thinking based on early discussion. How long it's been since we had to do this, like, uh, responsiveness to our
management of budget increase in recent years, you know. It's something that's evergreen enough that we can utilize it in the next. I think I continue to just be confused that the public messaging of the override simultaneously with the long-term facilities plan is just complex. Like, it's just, it's where we are and there is no real avoiding both, but I think that it is a lot to package. I do think, though, that it speaks to this continued, like, idea that we can't spend money. We can't spend money. People are too afraid to spend money in the town and that, like, oh, well, what's a, what's a little lever we can pull to delay it? What can we do to delay this? And that's been kicking the can for the maintenance of the buildings has now turned into every building except for the high schools under distress. And has unexpected costs annually hitting operating budget. Correct. When trying to, if, if the, if the communication was kind of continuous and really looking at where we're at, what's reasonable, at least there could be healthy discussion regularly about it with the, with the full community. Um, you know, like, oh, well, we avoided the override for one more year. Yes, great, but we're still here and there's no, been no real further discussion around why we need it or what we've done. Um, and I also sort of think that it puts this, like, false thinking that there's always something more to be done to avoid it or something more to be done to kick the can another year. And we're just at, I don't see how it's possible without severely impacting our entire community. You will likely all think of this, but since we are limited in collaborating, absolutely mention all the grant money in recent years that we've been able to increase. I would mention a lot of the innovative programs in student services. Well, that's what I wanted you to pull all of that in because we've done so much work. I shouldn't say we, Ronnie and all of you have done so much work in really finding those efficiencies to both improve special education service delivery, but with overall cost savings. And making some strategic near-term investments and, like, programmatic changes that should have a downstream payoff. Like, we're not going to see that right away. You could decrease OOD in the next five years. I want them to see that, like, we're not, like, we, because often the conversation around OOD is just like, well, it's the law. We can't do anything about it. And it's like, no, we're actually being thoughtful about it. We're trying to prevent, like, you know, meteoric rise or unexpected impact. And I don't think we get a chance to tell that story. I mean, right. There's only so much we can do if someone moves in. But at the same time, in areas where we can strive for improvement, I think the story there is we have done a lot of work. And we can do all of those things. And we can still have huge health insurance, huge retirement, things that impact the entire town, not just the school. And we have zero control over. So we can be perfect. And it doesn't really matter. We still need. Yes.
No vote needed. Just wanted to talk at all of you. Okay. Um, thank you to everybody who's been spending time in those important discussions. Um, consent agenda, any issues, any questions? Well, this is a good refresh that the minutes from 624, um, when we had Brian Jones come in and do a second, um, update on the scheduling pilot and just kind of talked through that and further answering of questions. That was, no, that was the one thing I did think was important to reiterate on the record tonight is that the committee had not one, but two, um, meetings to discuss that and opportunity to ask questions and discuss. And so anyone who gave public comment tonight who may not have had a chance to watch those meetings may find them informative. Um, quick point on that. Does Brian post his, like, community letters online that he sends out to his school community? I'm just wondering, because those let the first letter he sent was at least, I think it was the first letter on, um, June 22nd. I thought that was a really informative, well thought out and
letter that you saw my responses. I shared it in all my responses. No, but, but I'm wondering if he, yeah, well, we have a lot of constituents that are not current school participants or community members that might not have seen it. I think that's a very good question there. I tried to find it and it was very brief, my search. I didn't see it. Doesn't mean he doesn't have it out there. Which was, what was the date? 622. Even if just on the locker school. That's what I mean. Yeah. Right. Right. Because it would, it would have only gone to current families because of the security ways in which things are set up. So, perhaps. Um, obviously not for tonight, but it did remind me that we had, there were a couple of unresolved issues around fees and also how it was going to, like, how it was going to look different for the locker ensemble in light of this. And so I, I do think there were some open questions that we talked about. I'm just going to put that on for next meeting for the revisiting of the fees, etc. I, I mentioned it to them. Yeah. And I think Prashat had asked too about just like, what are the object, like, what are the objectives or what are you going to be measuring? Like, what, what indicators are we going to be using for evaluation? I think that was like an open question. I don't want to put. No, no. You had asked it. Yeah. You're choking my memory. I mean, I think now, well, scientifically, like, reduction of new interventions. That's, I think, I think that's a legitimate sort of concern as to, because it'll be hard, no matter what we measure, it's kind of hard to determine what determine what. Because we're changing two parameters. Yeah. Right. The CKLA is new. All right. So two things we need to be tracking. We don't have a baseline. In other words, baseline came up quite a few times today. I just want to be careful because I don't think, I would go back to Brian's letter, that like, those two things were necessarily causative or correlated. Like, there were many other reasons that went into why this instructional time and what would be used with it. So I, we are hearing a lot of this because of ELA, this, and I didn't hear that. Other people may have, but I thought it was more multifaceted. I, I think when I revisited the letter, this letter from the 22nd, as well as the presentation that we received on the 10th, it really kind of answered some of those, like, it was a refresh for me and answering the questions of, it's not because this, we have to do this. It was, it was really like, so many things coming together. And that, um, that the, the ensemble piece, if I'm explaining it correctly, um, was kind of the, the best place, unfortunate as it is, to be able to pull minutes from, um, and still try and find ways to keep the experience semi-consistent, um, for those instrument players. I think that's fine, but I think that the issue is still, how do we find out if we succeeded with the pilot? I agree with you. I think, yes, like the objectives and what are we measuring a hundred percent. Um, some of that I think is still going to be subjective, um, because some of the data that, or the information that was shared with us is subjective. So, like, 71.8% of teachers believe that our current schedule is preventing us from providing support for scholars who need it the most, right? So, you know, to address that, is it that we found additional time to provide intervention to needy students? Or, like, do you understand what I'm trying to say? Like, I think some of it's still subjective, and so it would be helpful to, but it would also be helpful to, I think, ask that same question again next year, because if the perception or experiences haven't changed, then that's helpful information too. Um, yeah, even though 71.8% may still feel. Well, that's what I'm saying. Our hours are not right, right, right, right, but that's what I'm saying. It's like, okay, but we're, but in this, but in this community, right, like, you're given this opportunity, there, there's this additional opportunity that is hopefully coming from the pilot, but if the perception among the teachers is still saying, I, it's not sufficient time, then have we actually made any gains from that? But it can still be insufficient and improved at the same time. Like, that's why I want to be careful how we suggest the question. It's like, I would be interested. So one of the things we heard is the students who either aren't able or choose not to participate for any variety of reasons that I've heard from people, like, are in a classroom, not advancing curriculum, often on an iPad, like, so I think we, there's, you know, I want to be careful that our measure of success is not only focused on what is the impact of the pilot on students who were, who chose to enroll in music, but I also want us to be thinking that there was a group of students that were sort of not in, not participating, that were having a suboptimal educational experience. Sorry, I, I, I'm being very mindful of the fact that we didn't have this on the agenda, and so, um, I, I don't really want to go further down this, this path. Um, I do plan to put this on the agenda for a revisit with specifics around fees, etc., but maybe, Betsy, you could come with a plan to sort of address these concerns with Brian, you know.
Thank you. And I, I'm not trying to cut anybody off. No, no, it's a very fair point. It's a very fair point. If I really don't want to. Yep, yep, absolutely. That being said, do we want to add anything to the minutes, or are we okay with everything as is? Um, keeping in mind we can't edit what we're talking about here to edit what was actually talked about there. Yeah. So, if anybody has any comments or, I mean, I think it captures what was discussed and, um. Not the presentation. There was no presentation that night. Oh, it was the earlier? It was the earlier, the 610 had the presentation. Understood. Okay, thank you for that. So, would, I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. I enter executive session for the purposes of discussing strategy related to collective bargaining with the Wayland Educational Association, WEA Unit A, and the Wayland Custodians, as permitted by MGL Chapter 30A Section 21A3, and reviewing and approving executive session minutes with the intent to redact and release said minutes, excuse me, as permitted by MGL Chapter 30A Section 22 for June 24th, 2026, and August 3rd, 2026. The school committee will be joined by David Fleischman, Superintendent Betsy Gavron, Assistant Superintendent Kirsteen Patterson, Director of Finance and Operations, and Diane Marabella, Recording Secretary. Ronnie, you got out easy. The school committee will adjourn an executive session and will not reconvene an open session. Do I have a second? Second. Uh, Betsy? Yes. Kate? Yes. Jessica? Yes. Prashant? Yes. Erin? Yes.