September 23, 2026 – School Committee – Video & Transcript
September 23, 2026 - School Committee
Welcome to the Wayland School Committee meeting on September 23rd, 2026. It is 6.05 p.m. We are being recorded by WACAM.
We have four out of our five school committee members present, and we have our superintendent, our assistant superintendent, our director of finance, our business operations, and director of student services here with us.
I have school committee members with us. Is anyone here for public comment? I'm here for public comment. Okay. There was someone who walked out. Was it Kirstein? I can't see. Kirstein, just keep. Okay, all right. So we'll give you three minutes if you just want to give us one second, but you can come up. We'll let you know when you're done just with the chimes, or Kate will. Okay. And if you can just keep it within the purview of the school committee, keep it respectful, and if you can give us your name and your address for the record. Okay.
Okay, my name is Vicki Lai. My address is 10 Plainview Road, and I'm here today to make a public comment about the music program. I know it's not on the agenda, and you probably have heard a lot of the things that I'm going to say, but I still want to say them. Sure. Okay, so first, I hope the committee will consider the process by which this change was made. This is, I'm referring to the local music reduction. This is a significant reduction to an established part of the elementary music program, yet many families, including families directly affected by the change, were unaware of it until very recently. Before making a change with potentially long-term consequences, shouldn't the community have had a meaningful opportunity to understand the rationale, consider alternatives, and provide input? And to that, I think everyone would really benefit from a Q&A session. I hope that the committee can organize something for, you know, the concerned parents. Second, I hope we look carefully at the tradeoff, not simply at what we gain, but what we lose. The additional classroom time may have value, but so does the instrumental instruction that's being removed. Small group instruction gives students instrument-specific teaching, practice, and feedback that ensemble instruction cannot fully replace. What is the educational benefit we expect to gain, and how are we evaluating what students lose in exchange? Finally, I hope the committee considers the potential long-term impact on participation. The strength of Wayland's music program is not just in the quality of its teachers or the opportunities. It is in the number of students who participate. If we begin reducing instruction at the elementary level, we risk eroding that foundation year after year. We could ultimately lose the very breadth and depth of student participation that has made Wayland's music program so successful and earned it 17 years of national recognition. For those reasons, I ask the school committee to pause and reconsider the reduction and to give the community an opportunity to fully understand the tradeoffs and alternatives before this change becomes the new normal. Thank you for listening. Okay, no more public comment.
Closing public comment.
First, on the superintendent's update, is the MetroWest Adolescent Health Survey data. Yes, this is a report that we very much value that has gone on for a long time as we think about our goal about social and emotional wellness. Yes, this informs a lot of what we do, looking at this data, particularly looking at trends that we see that that's really the value, and how do we think about programming, follow those trends. And so we have Jay and Scott will be our team, they've been to the table before, and for our new members, I think you'll really value the data that we examined for both our middle and high school students. And we'll have plenty of time for questions as well. Thank you. Great. You guys want to come up? Here, there, where are we on? No, part of the area is... Okay, alright. Thanks for having us, everybody. I feel blessed. I feel blessed. I got to end the last meeting with you at the end of the year last year, and now I'm back, and it's, what is this, number three or four? Pretty, pretty. So... Yes. Absolutely. So I think, I know everybody, but Scott Parsegan, I'm the director of health and wellness for the district. Jay Fraguski, I'm the director of youth and family services for the town of Wayland. Alright. We'll jump right in, just to give you a little bit of a background in addition. I know I've spoken to some of you in the past about this particular survey, but we're really grateful that we get to implement this survey every two years here in town. We've been doing this version since 2006, so we definitely have some ample trend data, which is great in sample size. We're also really lucky in the sense that because we work at the Metro West Health Foundation for the structuring, evaluation, and implementation of the survey, we do not have to pay for it, which is wonderful. A lot of other communities that I've done this type of work in, before you have to self-fund the youth versus behavior survey, which is what this is based on. So we're pretty lucky to be able to be here and also compare it to the region. If you want to scroll. Just to give you a little bit of information on the demographics, and then I'll talk a little bit about the categories we're going to cover tonight. We do the survey with both middle school and high school students. The middle school breakdown for this particular survey, which was implemented in November of 2025. 423 of our 665 students completed the survey. 207 of those identify as male. 201 identify as female. And then 15 identify as transgender, non-binary, or gender non-conforming. And then if we move on, we can go to high school. Yes? What percentage of that is that our kids took it? 423 out of 665. I can give that to you. I just wrote down that 230 didn't. Yeah, that's one of my, I was going to say, that both in high school and middle school, it's a little over 200 that haven't taken the survey. Okay. For a variety of reasons, we can't ask why. Correct. But, again, there is an opt-out policy or kids don't come to take it. So, again, that's a lot in there. That's higher than in past. It is a little higher. It's a little bit higher. A little bit higher. Not terribly, but it is higher, yes. And that's about the only, I'd say, really part where we're a little higher. Everything else we're doing much better in this we're going to show you through this. I do want to let you know, just to piggyback on what Jay is saying, that this is our second year where we have a dashboard where we can manipulate and use all the data and look at it. We are welcome to give you access to the data. I know all the administrators here have access to it. But as school committee members, if you would like access to it, I can get you set up for that. Just send me an email that you want to have access to it. And you can go in there and play with the data and manipulate. It's a little confusing and not as easy as I think they hoped it was going to be for districts to use. But Jay and I have used it and sometimes you do really want to go back to the paper. I think we talked about as we were getting ready for this and had our two computers side-by-side just bouncing back on some of the trends from last year and this year. But again, if you would like to use the dashboard, send me an email and I can set you up with your own login password to see it. Also, I just want to say that if you remember we were talking about everything last year we were doing here and trying to get Jess Tepero and Healthy Bladeships out of this. David and I applied for a grant from the Metro West Foundation and we just learned that we got it for $20,000. So that's great news and we've already talked to Jess and how we're going to use that over the next two, three years along with the money that also Jay provides and the nurses. So we have a real two-and-a-half-year program and we have money to really do what we talked about. If you remember talking about how we really want to get down to the younger grades, start this teaching much in fourth and fifth grade. Also a plug, again, we'd love to see health education start even earlier. That will be one of my goals when it comes to budget season. I know it's going to be a tough one, but again. Is that a scheduling issue? Well, I don't. It's all going to be scheduling issues. It's part of it. Just curious. I mean, we just heard from music and everything else. But again, we don't have any kind of health education grades K-3. And one thing that I think Jay and I will see is that you've seen some dip in the data in sixth grade. And we think that's obviously, we think it's because we've started some of these talks at a much earlier age. Yeah. Where are you at three of that now? Or four? Yeah, four. Four. Yeah. So obviously the data is there. The first year we took it was the first year we were starting with it. So this time we saw some dips in some of it and we'll mention it again. But we think it is because we are starting these important conversations much earlier. So again, I will be at the table budget season. Again, if we can find a full-time, you know, Jenny Flynn is our specialist. She's part-time. So again, if we could ever make her full-time and start even younger, I think we'll see even better data next time. So when Jenny first joined us, she was grant funded. Is she still grant funded? She is not grant funded. No, she's in budget. Yeah. She's in the budget. Can I ask another question before you? Sure. So if a third of students were non-responsive for whatever reason, do we, are we able to tell if that's generally spread across all demographics? Or is it possible that one demographic in the data is underrepresented? Unfortunately. There's no way you can tell. Unfortunately, we don't have that, you know. All right. Thanks. Do you identify when you're, I don't remember, when you're taking it? Do you tell them in advance we're taking the MetroHealth tomorrow and whatever? Yeah. Both principals sent out a letter to the families, again, letting them know the survey is coming up. They can opt out, you know, and if they want to see it, it used to be they could come in and see actually what the questions are. Okay. If they can't leave or anything, they had to come in and see at the office. Okay. So we do give the parents full access to it before they want to have questions about whether their child can take the survey. Okay. Thanks. Sorry. All right. So the first item we're going to talk about is substance use. This is one of the main things that originally got us into the materialist data. What we can report, and I'll give everybody the punchline right now, literally every category this year we've made marked improvements on. So we're going to talk a little bit about how we're doing that and to back up what Scott was talking about as far as earlier and earlier implementation of health, education, wellness, as well as prevention education. We're definitely seeing an overarching trend of positive response from that. So we're really excited about that, as well as some things that we can't take credit for, like we're not in the middle of a little bit now. But we'll touch on all of that. So one of the positive things we can talk about is 92% of our WINS high school students or WINS students in general choose not to use combustible tobacco products. So this incorporates any form of smokeable tobacco, so cigarettes, cigarillos, cigars, anything of that nature. We continue to see a decline in this. Oddly enough, this is the only topic of substance use where we saw a slight uptick in some of our high schools. I'm talking like 1%, but we are monitoring that because we are kind of universally, seeing a slight return to people smoking versus vaping and using nicotine pouches because we've been doing a lot of education around that. But still, we have really great numbers, clearly, so we're not horribly concerned. Do you want to continue? 10.8% of the WINS high school students have used nicotine vapor products in their lifetime. Just to give you a frame of reference on this, it's 5.8% reduction from 2023. I'm sorry for the horrible color on the screen. That's rough. It's been on mine. It's better on the laptop. In a 25% reduction from the hydrogen vapor product use, which was in 2018. That was really when we saw a lot when we were doing a lot of focus within the schools around how we were going to address it, how we were going to address bathroom use, how we were going to do a lot of things. Since then, not only have we implemented different policies within the schools, we've also spent a tremendous amount of time working within the wellness programs. I go in and I meet with every freshman wellness class as well as every senior wellness class every year. And one of our big topics is nicotine. So we do a unit on the history of nicotine marketing and also directly on one on vaping. Since we've done that, we've seen a tremendous downward trend in vape use. And we've also seen an incredible increase in perception of risk and harm. So we're really seeing some positive outcomes on that, especially with our younger students. The more and more they've been introduced to that prior to making the decision whether or not to use vape products. In addition to that, 88% of the way in high school students report a moderate to great risk, like we were just talking about, associated with youth's electronic vapor devices. Keep going. And 35.4% of our high school students report it's very easy to obtain electronic vapor devices. This isn't shocking whatsoever, but once again, that has actually decreased 19% since 2023. So we were over 50% two years ago that said it's super easy to get vape devices. We have done a lot of work on policy, and we are in the middle of changing policy here in the community, around both at the school level as well as the community level. So we are actively trying to raise the minimum age to purchase tobacco and nicotine products here in the town of Wayland, as well as ban the sale of nicotine pouches. We've already successfully banned flavors in the community. And typically, the harder it is to access, even as an adult, the less use we see within our youth. So it's working. In addition to that, 4% of our high school students have reported nicotine pouch use in the last 30 days. This is something that we're just starting to monitor for the first time in the 2025 survey. So this would include anything like Zinn pouches on bellows, like all the different synthetic nicotine pouches that you see if you go into a convenience store. Sometimes you may see people. They come in a round container similar to, like, smokeless tobacco. They're incredibly discreet because they have no odor. They're very small. You can just kind of slip them in their cheek and you absorb nicotine through them. We have seen a rise in finding pouches and, like, in bathrooms and stuff like that at the high school. So it's something that we've been monitoring and also addressing within the wellness program. Luckily, we're not seeing a huge use of this. The other challenge that we're seeing is there's a lot of other pouches that have hopped on the trend of nicotine pouches that are marketed that either are caffeine-based or nootropic-based. So not all of them are nicotine pouches. So we're trying to figure out how to best address this as well as continue to educate our students on the challenges and the dangers associated with them. I don't know if this is a great time, but we did include our nicotine update to our tobacco policy, which did have nothing to do with this. The wellness committee at the end of last year met with the principals of the middle school and high school. And Betsy and Erin were part of that as well as Jay and myself. And we talked about what are they seeing out of the kids. And, again, that's what Jay was referring to is that we're starting to see some of the nicotine pouches in toilets around the school and trash and stuff like that. And, again, we looked at other schools and what they were putting out. So we rewrote our policy to include all kinds of nicotine, not just tobacco and smokeless. So, again, really targeting some of this stuff that, unfortunately, you see. Even when I'm watching a football game, I saw Vrabel putting in on the other night during the Pats game. So these kids are seeing adults that they're looking up to doing it, not just on TV, but uncles and cousins and stuff like that. And, again, it looks like a mint can. If you haven't seen it, it looks like candy or something like that. So it's really hard to detect. But we know that this is something that we are taking on right now in the way on public schools to make sure that that number does not increase. Absolutely. The other two things that we'll briefly touch on is marijuana use as well as alcohol consumption. So 16% of women in high school students report lifetime marijuana use. This is down 1% from 2023. Luckily, we're actually one of the lowest use rates in the region. We continue to see a decline in general. We do also do a lot of education within the wellness programs around cannabis and the legalization process and also the dangers associated. So potentially that has an impact on the numbers that we're seeing. 9.9% of women in high school students report lifetime marijuana use. This is of all of our high school students, which is also down 6% reported in 2023. Jay, how is that? Wait, those are the same thing. Oh, wait a minute. Sorry. This is wrong. Something is off yet. One of these is, I'm sorry, the second slide is actually current use. I did not update the lifetime to current use. Oh, so currently. So the last 30 days. I got it. Okay. So the past 30 days. Okay. So it's also down 6% for last 30 days. Down 6% is correct for the 30 days. It's just. And the 9.9 is too. It's just, yeah. Okay. Cool. Like the 30 day incidents. Is that just, is this any use or are they asking like how often in the last 30 days, and this is the combination of students who have reported in, you know, like are we capturing if we have students who are using three days a week versus one day in the past month? So the 30 days does incorporate frequency. Um, and when it's explained within the survey, when it's being implemented, um, there is the talk about that as far as like current use is defined as within the last 30 days, more than once with some level of frequency. Okay. Um, and then once again, if you dive deeper into the data, you can actually break it down and there's different categories for like one to three times, like three to six, like up to like 10 plus. Okay. So, um, you can go in and really drill down on the exact data you're looking for. Again, the survey is about 160 questions. Yeah. So it goes pretty deep. And again, I guess one thing they want us to always talk about is how the survey. So again, um, the questions get asked throughout the survey. Um, so again, if a kid is lying, uh, the, the questions asked later again, and it kind of red flags it. And then that survey, that question is taken out. Um, so it doesn't go into the numbers and affect everything. So they have, they developed a pretty intense system on how to do it, how to, how to track and, uh, confirm that the data, and I believe it's what 3% swing either way is what they're talking about. They, they think whenever we talk to the kids directly and I, and I reference this when I'm in the wellness program, I will bring that up. I'm like, remember that survey that you took where you had to answer the same question over and over again. And like, they all remember it at that point in time. So, and I just want to say at the high school, our kids are really taking a lot of surveys. We're also a part of the Metro, uh, I'm sorry, the, um, MGH, um, survey too. So they're taking these, uh, at the same, you know, within a couple months of each other, uh, around a lot of the same questions asked maybe a little different, but trying to get the same actually. So, we have a lot of data. Let me tell you that. All right. We have a lot to look at. Lots and lots. This breaks down just a little bit of our lifetime data by grade. Um, when you go through the survey data, you can, you can break things down by grade, by gender. Um, and then also every category typically has some more specific breakdown questions, which you'll see when we move into other categories that we touch on all of them. Um, but basically what we're seeing here is 6% of our ninth graders report lifetime, uh, marijuana use, which is up 1% since 2023. Um, but then in 10th grade, we're only seeing 2%. So it's down 6%. 11th grade, this is normally where we see that jump. Um, the one thing that I would bring up every year when I talk about this is, and this is the same reason why we actually do our SBIRT screenings, um, at specific ages as well, is in between 10th and 11th grade, typically what's happening is people turn 16. And they have independence and vehicles and older friends. Um, which is really challenging and scary because that means they're actually going out and because they have that independence, making some potentially risky and challenging behaviors and choices. Um, that being said, we're typically seeing, as I mentioned, a pretty positive, um, decline in the choice of use. Um, we've also spent a lot of time talking about the dangers of driving a while high. Um, so more and more of our students are reporting a higher perception of risk or harm associated with driving under the influence of cannabis where a couple of years back that was not so much the case. So can I just ask you a question? Um, this is when you're looking at 9th grade, it's 6% of 9th graders now. And that's up 1% from the 9th graders in 2023. Correct. So those ones would be our 11th graders now. 11th graders now. Correct. Which also went up 2%. So you, like, you could definitely track a class if you try hard enough. Well, and that's what I was, I think we had maybe talked about this was like, with the new dashboard, can you kind of track a class to see how? It doesn't let you go in and be like, the student, like, the group, the same group of people that went here is here now. Like, you kind of have to do that work on your own. Got it. But you can definitely, the data is there if you want to do the work. I probably won't, but I'm just, I was curious if, like, I wanted to clarify that. Yeah. Yeah. No, that is confusing. Unfortunately, there's not a filter to be like, show me the 9th grade class from 2018 or something like that. So. But to be fair, this 9th grade number here, these are current 10th graders. They would be current 11th graders because we do those every two years. But this was fall, this was administered in 25? So it was in 23 and 25. We don't get the data back until the spring of 26. It normally takes about six months to get the data back. Okay. That's not incident, unfortunately. Okay. We thought with going digital we'd get it much quicker, but we can actually. That's not helpful. Any of you'd like? As far as alcohol is concerned, 61% of when high school students have chosen not to use alcohol in their lifetime, which is down 6% from 2023. I can honestly say this is one of the first times that we are, that you'll see momentarily, where we're this high into the majority of our students who are choosing not to use alcohol. When I first started doing this work back in 2006 now. The key focus on a lot of the grant funds that came out of this was around alcohol consumption, and especially around binge drinking. What we were seeing at that point in time is that by the time most high school students graduated, about 94% of them had tried alcohol, and about 72% were consuming on a very regular basis. So we're definitely seeing a much healthier approach to alcohol by our students at this point in time. Can we continue, please? I always tell a story that when I was the assistant principal and we were at a dance, I had a kid throw up on my shoes. It was from the binge drinking and stuff like that, and we do not see that as much anymore. This breaks that down. As you can see, now our seniors are reporting at 49%, which is the highest, which makes sense. Typically as we see our students age up, we start to see them make more decisions around experimenting with substance. With a pretty steady decline, the current ninth grade class continues to be slightly higher. But that being said, nothing alarming and we're still under the general rates of the region. In the metro west. In the metro west, yeah. But as I mentioned, this is the first time that all four grades have been under 50%, unlike the majority of us choosing not to use alcohol. I do want to say when we talk about these numbers, well, it's a survey and kids can lie and everything like that. I do want to talk about John Berry, who's also a wellness teacher. He also runs our SAD program at William High School where he gets to really talk to these students face-to-face and they feel like they can be honest with him. And he's reporting these same trends from the kids verbally right to their mouth who are there on the weekends with kids at all the parties. So I do believe that a lot of good stuff is happening. Absolutely. The next big section we're going to talk about is relationships and dating violence. A lot of the information here, I just want to reinforce what Scott was saying. We can accredit a lot of the work that Just Tepro has been doing as well as the MVP program and the RAD program. As a community, we spend a lot of our focus and efforts to make sure that this topic is covered and that our students have effective resources. But the data can back that up. So typically everything you're going to see on the left is our female students. Everything on the right is our male students to break it down by gender in this particular category. So 8% of our female students report being either controlled and or not being allowed to see friends by a romantic partner. So we consider this to be coercive control. And then 7% of our male identified students are reporting the same. The other categories that we talked on on this one is 9% of our female students report the feeling of being controlled by a romantic partner in regards to phone communication, social media tracking, and or location tracking. And then 5% of our male students are reporting the same. This is one that we spend a lot of time looking at. Just when we talk about control, there's so many more tools and resources now of how you can control somebody and how you can observe or really kind of surveil somebody at this point in time. So it's something we really focus and take a look at. And this is one of the numbers that actually went up. We saw these ones go up slightly. There was some numbers in this category that actually went up. Absolutely. But that also could be a sign that it's less taboo from the work that you're doing around prevention so people are more comfortable self-disclosing. Or there's more technology in which that you can... It's a little bit of all of it. So yeah, I mean it's definitely one of the things. As we talk about things, we definitely find the comfort, which we're really happy about. One of the giant reasons why I do the work that I do in prevention is to normalize conversations and to destigmatize pretty much any topic. What I say about all the work that I do regardless of topic is I'm not here to put myself out of a job as much as I tried to. But I'm really trying to get students and parents to both pause. So basically when there is an issue or they're realizing that they're confronting something that makes them feel uncomfortable, that they pause and they ask that question and have that conversation. Really we're trying to get parents and our young people especially to realize that no topic is off limits. And to hopefully talk to parents about the fact that you want your kids talking to you. Like if your kids are sharing things with you, even if it feels weird and uncomfortable and you don't like it, at least they're talking to you about it and at least you know it. So that at that point in time you can address it and then hopefully you can set the boundaries and limits that you hope for your young people. And our students are talking to us about these relationships. We've pulled Jess in to talk with many different students that are in relationships about how they're going and the perception of what their friends or administrators or coaches or whatever might be seeing. So we've had some great conversations with kids one-on-one and families about the relationships. And in one case there was a family that was really worried about it and was really happy that we were able to see that at the school. Bring in Jess again with the funds and everything and really sit down and create plans with the family. So again, those conversations are happening at the high school, which is a positive thing. Absolutely. The other couple of categories that are within this is 10% of our female students and 6% of our male students identified that they had been sworn actors that yelled at or insulted by a romantic partner. You can continue along. And then 1% of our female students and 2% of our male students reported that they have been threatened with physical harm by a romantic partner. And then 2% of our female students and 3% of our male students have reported actually being physically struck or harmed by a romantic partner. So these are things that we are definitely aware of the fact that they are taking place or not unique in this community to it. But we are grateful that we can track the data and also provide services and resources for our community members, especially our young people. In addition to that, 2% of our female students and 1% of our male students report being forced to engage in sexual intercourse by a romantic partner. And then if you continue along, that number jumps to 6% and 2% for being forced to engage in sexual act other than intercourse with a romantic partner. These are big topics. They're heavy. But that being said, we're grateful to have the data and be able to continue to make sure that we have resources in place. And we're grateful for all of Scott's work and just Tepra's work as well. And especially the focus around healthy relationships and bringing resources to the table. Do you see this concentrated in any particular grade level? I mean, 6 looks small, but when you look at the respondent size, we're in double digits. Oh, absolutely. Like, that's very concerning to me. It does rotate. Like, with that data, it is definitely very, very concerning. And I do very much break that down to actual numbers with humans with actual faces and names. And it's one of those things where we typically, it's really hard to find a trend there where, like, we're not like, we see this happen a lot in the 11th grade or something. It's one of those things where it definitely bounces around. We tie it in a little bit. We, after we finish this category, we'll be moving into general mental health, which was a huge area. I mean, it continues to be a huge area of concern, but was really alarming in our last survey, which we can once again spoil the weight and let you know that it's improving greatly. We do link it up a little bit with that, where we see students with a heightened level of either stress, anxiety, self-injury, things of that nature. But similarly, we see that really, it's really more of a case-by-case situation. I just want to add that today we did have a joint meeting with Lincoln-Sedbury. They had about 20 students. We had about 15, so 35 students getting ready to take on domestic violence awareness month coming up. And again, how we can join the two schools together and do some education, as well as we do it around one of our football games when we play Lincoln-Sedbury. And we raise money for the Lauren Dunassley Foundation, and Malcolm's part of it. And so it's the two communities coming together to really make a statement. We all wear purple and get the word out. So again, we're continuing doing this, and it's one of our big pushes here. In addition to that, with the work of the Messed Grounds Roundtable and the White Ribbon Group, which is a subcommittee of that, we're working currently right now to organize all of the lighting up of buildings purple. So if you remember, in October, you see a lot of buildings that are lit up. That's all done through that. We have more buildings this year than ever. So we'll raise a lot of awareness, hopefully. And there will also be the vigil that will be taking place in October. I believe it's the 7th or the 19th. I can tell you in a second. I actually don't have it in front of me right now, unfortunately. I'm sorry. But you can look it up. There will be the visual for life's loss in the last year. Moving on to mental health. We can, as I mentioned, this was a very large area of concern in the 2023 data. We saw much increased numbers coming out of 21. A lot of that was, we attest partially to still coming out of lockdown. And at that point in time, the reacclimation into our day-to-day lives in society. Also, just the increase, to your point earlier, of the more and more we talk about mental health services and destigmatize and normalize, we have more and more people identifying challenges with mental health that may previously have gone unnoticed or just been told to, like, get over it. And we're really happy that people are identifying and talking and seeking help where needed. But we're also thrilled to see a positive change in the numbers reported. So, as far as feeling depressed, this gets broken down into multiple different categories. We're only going to cover a couple of them, but I believe there's seven within the data that you can dig through. This one, in particular, is the feeling of being tired or having little energy associated with depression. We always typically see our female students report mental health challenges at a slightly higher level than our male students. This has been the norm for about four cycles, pretty much, since we've been really tracking mental health. But once again, we see that at 37 and 22. That's significantly down. Those are both up around 55 and about 42, I believe, in 2023. You can continue. The feeling of depression as far as trouble concentrating in school, which is one that we focus on a lot. Our female students are reporting this at 25% and our male students are reporting it at 14% currently. You can continue on. You can continue on. And then we move into anxiety. So, basically, the way anxiety is also reported is in multiple categories. The most broad one is this, being the feeling of not being able to control worry. So, our female students are reporting this at 39% and our male students at 14%. You can continue to scroll. Stress is the most broad category of all of these. We definitely see this at a very high level regularly, especially with our students that are typically in the college application process. We really see these numbers jump in 11th and 12th grade, which really drives these numbers up. But believe it or not, 78% of our female students are reporting the feeling of general stress around school issues is down from 2023, as well as 54% of our male students. So, we are seeing marked improvements in both of these categories. And then, also, the other one that we really look at is feeling stressed about social issues. So, this starts to injure things like the feeling of acceptance, the feeling of having a healthy social circle, being invited to things, being like they're fitting in, all of that. So, we're seeing our female students report this at 34% and our male students at 19%. And then, also, but on a very positive note, the last one about stress that we're going to talk about is the feeling of being safe within the community. Luckily, we have what is perceived as a very safe community, where most students do not feel for their physical safety or well-being. 3% of our female students and 1% of our male students report feeling stressed about safety issues. The next topic, just to give everybody a little warning before we jump into it, is around self-injury and suicidal ideation. This is something that we had a lot of concern about, once again, and we continue to, but was fairly alarming in the 2023 numbers. Once again, I'm happy to report a positive shift in this, albeit small. 15% of our female students have reported self-injuring in the last 12 months, and 6% of our male students are reporting the same. Our students as well, 10% of our female students have seriously considered suicide in the last 12 months, and 4% of our male students have considered the same. Do we ask, I shouldn't say we, but does this ask any questions about self-medicating? There is conversation around self-medicating, so within our prescription drug tracking within substance, it talks about both taking either more than is prescribed to you, or more frequently, as well as taking prescription drugs that are not prescribed to you. So we can go back and pull that data as well. As far as suicidal attempts, 1% of both our female and our male students have reported attempting suicide in the last 12 months. On a positive, what I can report is that we have witness to mark improvement in all mental health reporting from 2021 to 2025. So that definitely included, like 2021 was really our height when we missed, we were due to have the survey implemented in 2020. Clearly we took that off because we were in the middle of something else. It was implemented in 2021, and then again in 23, so that's how we got on the odd year cycle. But what we're happy to report is that we continue to see improvements around all of this. We're definitely, even in just witnessing students in the day-to-day in the schools when I'm in there working with them, I can definitely say that it feels more and more normal every day, which is a word that I struggle with, but it's one of those things where we see more comfort with, personally I do with the students, as far as just the day-to-day of being inside, being participatory in classes, interacting, socializing, all of it. So it's starting to feel a little bit more like it did pre-2020. Jay, I recall the survey does ask questions about, like, I feel like I have access to a trusted adult, or I feel like, oh, we're getting there. Okay. Right now, right here. Perfect time. Thank you for that wonderful transition. Not done, Betsy. We didn't practice. It's almost a good thing. Protective factors. So that is exactly what we're talking about here. One of the things we really do look at is why our students believe what they do. So this goes back to all of the topics we've already covered as far as, like, how they get information about substance expectations, do they have parents to talk to, do they know where to get resources from in the community. 93% of our students are reporting that they have a trusted adult outside of school to talk to. This is huge. We typically like to see this number as high as possible. It's always kind of hovered right around the 90% mark, so we're really happy to see it above 90% at this point in time. This could be a parent. This could be, it's also listed when they check the box on this one. This could be, like, a parent, a family friend, like, a coach that isn't, like, for, like, a private sports team or a league team or something like that. Like, somebody that they feel comfortable going to, talking to, and is a trusted resource. 76% of our students also report that they have a trusted adult at school to talk to, which is great. We saw this number dip in the last couple of surveys, and we're starting to see that increase again, which is wonderful. We feel like it's really important that students know that they have somebody that they can turn to while they're at school. One of the things that we also saw as a barrier to requesting services previously is that students didn't trust that we weren't going to talk about what they were coming to us with other adults without their consent. We worked really hard to make sure that they know that, especially in my department, that we are all legal clinicians, and we have ethics that we hold up to, and we are not going to go talk to people. We are mandated reporters, so we talk about that and how that works, as well as the vast majority of our other counselors here in the school, whether they're school-based counselors, guidance counselors, but that we are all officially here to help everybody that offers women's schools. In addition to that, 17% of our female students and 7% of our male students have reported that they are actively talking with a school counselor, therapist, or psychologist. Once again, this is an increase to what we've seen historically. Students are becoming more and more comfortable seeking out services, knowing where to find us, how to find us, and we've seen a lot more students actually come forward to talk about what's going on with their friends. Similar to what Scott was talking about with the situation where I just was able to come and step in, we're seeing more and more students realizing that we need to speak up for each other, and when we're concerned about each other that it's appropriate to, which is great as far as people finding the resources they need. All right. There's a lot more in that as well, but we wanted to make sure that we covered a couple topics for you guys and didn't go too deep into any of them, but if anybody has any questions, I'm happy to dive in. I know it was brought to our attention that you all might be interested in technology use, so I made sure that we got some data in here for that. 56% of all of our high school students report that they're spending more than three hours a day on a smartphone or a smartphone-like device for non-school use. I don't know what letter that is. I don't know what letter that is. Oh, that's just a squirrel. That's fine. I was like, what typo did I make? Great. Within those three hours, we're also seeing this is potentially in addition to those three hours, not just on their phone, but that 37% of our students are also reporting that they spend three or more hours a day on social media platforms. We are concerned about both of these numbers, clearly. That being said, one thing that I would ask everybody to do before they sound the alarm bell on this one is think about your own personal usage of technology. I'm not judging anybody. We're all doing it, but we all have technology in front of us right now. We use it constantly. When I do work around internet and technology safety, I normally start third, fourth, and fifth graders and their families. We host nights at every one of our elementary schools here to have this conversation. Sometimes we've been in the middle school as well. And we all mentioned one of the big kind of takeaways that I talk to parents about when they're like, when should I get my kid a phone? I talked about the fact that you can actually still get phones that are not smartphones. And if you're concerned truly with your child just having the opportunity to call you or be reachable or text, there are phones that can do that without full access to the internet. I know people are concerned with how that looks, but at the same time, it's one of those things that's a safe practice. In addition to that, I always reminded parents especially to be good role models. In the sense that every child that I talk to about technology, if I ask them, like, who taught you how to use a phone? Everybody's like, nobody taught me. I just inherently know how to open this thing up and do things. I've watched adults since I've been born. So consider that with this as well. And when you start to think about healthy and unhealthy technology use, you can go ahead and scroll along. Are these up from last year? They are. This is one category that definitely we see a steady increase. Just checking. While we have public school, students report that they have received a smartphone prior to sixth grade. So that 23% of our students are reporting that they have a smartphone prior to sixth grade. Once again, when I work with elementary school students around this, a lot of what we see in this one is most, most families that either have a single child and or the eldest child does not get a phone before sixth grade. But then subsequent children typically end up with a phone when their sibling gets home. So we're starting to see that number creep down more and more. The age creep down. Yeah. And it's just because it's also become so normalized that we will all eventually need a phone. Like previous, like five, six, seven years ago, we were really trying to encourage parents to wait into eighth grade at the bare minimum. There was a whole national campaign called wait to eight before we gave people phones. We are not seeing that anymore as much as we try. And I always think I definitely have a kind of cheesy analogy for this where I'm like, once you take the toothpaste out of the tube, you can't go back in. So like, especially if you're going to give your kid a phone, we recommend always that it is locked down and that like basically they only have access to certain things to start and then slowly give them more and more access as they get it. I very much hope when we, bless you, have this conversation two years from now, maybe, because we've instituted yonder pouches at the middle school, that maybe that's a little barrier to that. Because if you can't have it at school, maybe you don't get it. That's just fine. Planting a seed for two years from now, maybe. Absolutely. And like, and it's one of those things like, the more and more, the more and more we talk about it, the more and more we normalize it, and like, we realize what standards we're setting for our young people. The more tools and resources like the water pouch and everything like that, like, the more you are at that point in time implementing like healthy structure and best practices around it. Um, that being said, like, like anything that we talk about typically that could potentially lead to risky behaviors, the safest choice is always not to do it. Um, but the second to that is open communication and all the information. So. I have not broken down all four of my girls will not get them until sixth grade. Amazing. Maybe until sixth grade. I remember what the last one was, but it was 52% of something. Um, uh, report, just so 52% of our students are reporting that digital media use makes concentrating the school more difficult. Um, a lot of our students, when we talk about this, they are concerned with what's coming in on their phone or even if they don't have access to it, like what they're missing. Um, so we talked about like the concept of JOMO versus FOMO on this one, like the joy of missing out and being present in the moment. Um, we can continue along. We're almost done. I promise. I like being a present person. So I really work on that one. Um, 70% of our students are also reporting that digital media use negatively impacts their ability to sleep. And I know we've done a lot of work on making sure that our students are getting healthy sleep in this community. Um, so that number was pretty alarming to me when I saw it. Not surprising at all. Um, I don't know how many of you have good technology and bed hygiene habits and leave your phone someplace away from your bed. But I know when I leave my phone in another room, I tend to sleep better myself. So. And then 11% of our students also report that they have used online gambling platforms in the last year. Um, this is the first year that we have started to track this at a regional level. Um, the more and more we start to see the normalization of online gambling platforms. Um, the more and more we're concerned about this, um, being whether it's sports betting and now to the point where there's different apps where you can literally bet on anything. Um, we're seeing more and more concern around this, um, especially with our male identified students. Um, so this is something that we'll definitely be keeping an eye on and potentially increasing the amount of resources that we focus on this. We can continue along and that is it. So if you have any questions, I'm happy to take them and I'm sure it's better as well. Jay, do you have a sense whether they're going to add questions in the next cycle around AI and use of like chatbots for either like mental health support or, you know, dare I say, kind of the like relationship piece that sometimes they develop? I don't know, like it hasn't directly been discussed right now. Um, the main challenge of questions is that, um, on this particular survey is to maintain the trend data. There's so many of these that need to be asked every year and we always try to keep it under, I think it's up to like 172 questions max now. Um, so typically every community only gets like a max, like seven to 14 questions that you can add or like alter based off of, in addition to like the core questions. Um, I know I've heard some talk about the fact that AI based question, like one or two might be added as part of the norm, like for everybody, which I'm hopeful for. Um, because we've definitely, I mean, I won't get into my own personal views, but they're not positive around AI personally. Um, I think I was just curious with like the mental health, the mental health specific piece, because, you know, what is reported and you've probably heard similar with like, you know, slightly older adolescents, right? Is there's, depending on the data source, right? I think there's anywhere from like 40 to 60% who are turning to it for mental health support. So, um, I was just curious if, if we thought they might start looking at it too. I'm really, I'm hopeful. We haven't had a meeting yet. We haven't had a meeting yet this year with the Metro West Foundation, but we could definitely bring that up. I was literally there. There was a new question this year, uh, under health for used AI for help with emotional challenges or problems. Oh, is there a number? Yeah. Thank you for reading that. I went through the data. I love it. There you go. Okay. I just love reading that. I spent a lot of time in my life. Yeah. And 17.6% this year said they used AI, which is just, and they were using more apps for help. Yes. Which is, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So that's great. The more that you, I mean, as a team of mental health professionals, like, it's great that we have more resources and it's also highly concerning to that. Like we do therapy. I was like, speed dating now almost too, where like there's literally services out there where you're like, I don't like this therapist, like, and like, I want a different one. So. Well, and we saw some of those numbers drop where, okay, you're going to the school nurse less and you're going to, like, you know, someone outside of school less, but you're using telehealth. Yes. More. You're talking about quality versus the speed dating approach. Yeah. On the plus side, I can also, I mean, like, coming out of COVID, the amount of clients that we see via telehealth still is ample. Like it's a wonderful resource to be able to offer people the opportunity to still engage in telehealth if it fits your schedule better. And it's one of those things where like we're both available in person and online. Um, so it definitely has its benefits, but it's also great when it's a real human on the other end. So. I'm just, this is just natural curiosity, but with, with so many positive norms here, how like do the students or are there any social norming campaigns? Like, do we bring this at all into some of the curriculum so they're able to apply it and then reinforce the messaging among their peers? So as far as social norms campaigns, um, typically, um, out of youth and family service, we try to run at least one kind of widespread campaign a year. Um, this year we were planning on focusing on healthy relationships, um, specifically. Um, we typically rotate through both healthy relationships, substance-based, um, messaging, um, and mental health in general. Um, we have a bunch of like, kind of like micro campaigns that we do as far as information that we get out for social media platforms and newsletters, and then larger ones where we're going in and directly working with the students. We also offer three programs every summer. Um, we run multiple sessions of what we call the Empower Camp, um, which is a free camp, um, that students apply to participate in, which actually is a deep dive into understanding social norms and how we use data, um, to make change on a community level, and also the power of the youth voice, um, in the sense that I say that you all get to hear from me a lot. Um, so no matter how much you value what I have to say, it gets old after a while. I've been talking about the same thing for 20 years. So, um, but when youth get all their information together and come and speak about things they're passionate about, we all tend to stop and listen a little bit harder. Um, so that camp is really built kind of around that and the fact that they can make change. And then we also introduced the StoryCorps program, um, which is the same thing through the art of storytelling. Um, because one of the biggest things that we talk about when we work with young people is that you need all the data, you need the information to back up what you're talking about, but if you can't make people care about it, nobody's going to pay attention. Um, so we really talk about how you get people to care about the things that they're passionate about as well. Um, one thing that relates to, I think in some respects could potentially tie this together. I've just seen more reporting, um, in sort of health publications and in mainstream media about, um, the sort of increasing incidence of exposure to either sexually or violent explicit digital assets. Um, and I'm just curious if this starts to ask any of that, because we talk, we've so much focus on social media, but I know colleges are starting to see some concerning behavior in, you know, later adolescence, and some hypotheses or exposure to more explicit content younger. Um, there are a couple of questions within the survey around technology use as well as, um, I'd have to go through with a fine tooth comb and think about violent content, but I know there is a couple of questions I'd leave around second being like explicit content. Um, so that is covered within there. Um, I know, I believe it's talked about in the wellness department as well. Yeah, we just did a lesson, uh, the other day about deep fakes in AI and how that's impacting relationships and everything like that. So again, we're talking about it as well. Yeah. Yeah, what's the headline for you? What's the headline for me? Yeah, from all of this. From all of this? 50 odd slides. If you were to write a New York Times article, what would you write? I mean, it would be something along the lines of, like, positive trends and healthy decisions.
Don't stop talking about it. Like, like, with the concept also of, like, I'm not eloquently stating that right now, but basically it would be that, um, every time that we've gotten comfortable with, with seeing a positive trajectory and then we kind of shift our focus to the new area of concern, we always see that one bubble back. Um, so like, when I kind of jokingly said I'm constantly trying to put myself out of a job and never will, like, people always make risky decisions, um, and we'll need to continue to educate around it. Um, so it's kind of like, keep the level of, of effort that we're putting at the same or greater, and hopefully we'll continue to see positive returns based on that. Yeah. As, as new things bubble up. Mm-hmm. So you're never getting out of a job. Yeah. Yeah. A couple more years. Another fun tech data point that have just tickled me was in 2023, 51.2% of high schoolers said they checked their smartphone a few times an hour or more during the school day, and last year it was 14.3. Yep. So kudos, high school team, for implementing changes. Absolutely. Um, because that is, yeah. Thank you, high school, that's incredible. Um, I was just thrilled that so many numbers came down, right? Right. Students are feeling more included, they're feeling more connected, they're feeling more connected to their peers, they're feeling less anxious. There's a lot of very significant change since 2023, which is fantastic. Now that things are starting to settle, do you have one thing that you're more concerned about or that's starting to bubble that you think this needs more attention now that everything is settling down? Or that we need to pay more attention to? Yeah, no, I mean, mental health is up there right now. Mental health, I think that's one of our concerns, our biggest concerns. Those numbers are still. Still there. They're coming down so much, but they're still so high. They're still hard to see, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think trying to get to the whys behind the responses is key, too. Like, that's why I was asking about, um, like, prescription drug use and self-medicating. Self-medicating. Because is your alcohol use driven by your increased stress between 10th and 11th grade, so you're using alcohol more or whatever it is. Yeah. Um, you know, I just think that that's, that will help drive improvement further. Yeah. What are some of the themes that you're hearing from students that are troubling to them that in the music community, or is it just personal? Oh. Technology use is definitely a big one linked to mental health and, like, relationships in general. Um, I think that is kind of the newest version of challenge that we're looking at. Um, I always look at substance use, like, as kind of an indicator to, like, similarity to what you brought up there. It was just the fact that, like, we see students using substances for a number of different reasons. Mm-hmm. And, like, historically, like, when I first started doing this work, it was very much to be, like, socially accepted. And, like, it was the norm, and it was, like, that level of, like, popularity and social acceptance was, like, we go to parties. Like, we, like, I reach social pinnacle if I'm invited, and I'm, like, there. Um, when I talk to students about this now, and when I'm, like, in the wellness classes, and, like, they see me frequently enough that they also know that I have a very harm reduction-based approach, and that I'm not judging them for anything, so they talk pretty openly to me. Um, a lot of students are like, we don't have big parties. Like, I mean, they still exist, like, for sure, but, like, it seems like a lot more of what we're seeing is kind of, like, smaller gatherings that are happening. They're, like, 20 to 25 people. Yeah, and that would be, like, large. I mean, like, sometimes I think a lot of people are, like, Yeah, like, six of my friends hung out in the basement and, like, decided to have a drink together or something, but, like, so, like, part of what we're seeing, like, as far as not, like, parties not getting broken up is, like, we don't know that they're happening. Um. I can tell you where they are. You'd like to know. We hear about it. We hear about it. We hear about it. We hear about it. Now I know you do. Um. But still focusing on the work because it's still, it's like, it's not that it's not happening, it's that it's happening differently. It's a different kind of happening. Yeah. Um, your question sparked another question related specific to substance use. So, when you're, when we're doing the SBIRT, um, are you tracking, like, like, this survey asks binge drinking, right? Yep. Right? Like, so is that something, like, that you're tracking, you know, if we conducted, you know, a hundred interviews today, three met criteria for binge drinking. So, like, are those numbers that we're getting from that program relatively consistent to this large data set too? To this data? I would say that it is. Um. And the more, like, I haven't been one of the SBIRT interviewers for a couple years now since, um. Since, yeah, since they came in. Um, but when I was, it was one of those things where, like, the same way, like, where, like, it's a pretty brief interaction that you have with the individual at that point in time, but there's just enough to kind of break it down where they start to feel comfortable. And, like, the amount of times that I've seen a student be like, nothing. And then two minutes later, like, maybe something. Um, so. Okay. It typically adds up to the data that we're seeing. Okay. If we have other areas where we wanted you to just kind of dig in and give us some overall, or would you prefer us to just say, can you give us, like, a login? You can ask for information, and we're happy to give you a login as well. Okay. You can have both. So, that was kind of for everybody around the table and myself, but. There are also, like, if you, I mean, login, deep dive, have at it. Um, we're also going to be publishing the key indicating binders, like, which kind of, like, give you the highlights. Yeah. Um, because they did make a PDF version of that. So, that'll be on the Wayland-Newton Family website. It'll also typically be on the school website since that survey has been. So. I just sent it out today to ask them to put it out. Great. Wonderful. Yeah. On the high school site. On the high school data, we'll be on the high school site. On the high school data, we'll be on the middle school site. Okay. Cool. Okay. We'll also start to plan public sharing of this as well. So, like, historically, we've always done a night that we would invite the general public to come hear about this. Um, we've also been in to talk to staff for faculty meetings. We've worked with the students in the wellness departments. And we typically try to partner with the staff students to identify things that they view as areas of importance or concern that they want to share. Um, to incorporate in newsletters and then have information go out to families. How much do you do in wellness around the results and talking through them? Yeah. A lot? Yeah. We pick little bits. It depends on where we're at, and we take a piece of it, but yes. Okay. And again, it's from 2006, so we have a ton of that. We're part of the first. Yeah. That joined this coalition. This is great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry. Thanks a lot. See you soon. Do you want to send us just like a little blurb on the grant funding? Sure. Just so we have it. Absolutely. Yeah. Congrats again on that. Thank you. Thank you. We're excited about it. That's great. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Good night. Thank you. Up next, we have summer work programming update. Come on. On the way. Oh, is it Betsy? Okay. Oh. Move slightly. We're going to stay. We're going to stay. Try not to scrub the lives in the back. Ready to kick it up? Yeah. So, summer, many people are off, and yet there's a lot still going on in the schools. So, we wanted to give you a brief overview of some of the things that happened this past summer. Tonight we'll talk a little about, Ronnie will talk a little about the extended school year. I'll connect that to Pegasus and the STEAM Explorers and the way those two programs interact with one another. We'll talk a little bit about the METCO transitions program, and then there's quite a bit of adult learning that happens in the summer, from retreats to course work to training and some summer work. We'll share some themes. So, just an overview for most of you, for ESY stands for extended school year services, and their ESY services are for students. Students on IEPs can be eligible. Not all students on IEPs are eligible, but only students on IEPs can be eligible. So, at all initial IEP meetings, review, annual reviews, or re-evaluations, team members have to consider ESY services, and decisions regarding students' eligibility for ESY has to be based on data. So, that's based on evidence of substantial regression. So, we take data before and after school vacations, or, you know, we take June data and September data, and that tells us a lot about regression, and how likely it is. It's also about how long it takes students to recoup those skills. So, there may have been less regression, but even if there's a little regression, it may take a long time to recoup those skills, so that's a factor. And then memory and rate of learning are also factors that we think about. So, all students regress over the summer. That's just, everybody, my kids are, everybody, everybody knows. But, it's the amount of regression, and it must be determined whether a child's regression would likely be substantial and whether the child would require a greater than usual time to recoup those skills. So, everybody, you know, you finish second grade and you start third grade, third grade teachers don't, you know, they review. You know, everybody has to recoup skills, but it's really about that amount of regression and the, like I said, the speed of recoupment. So, these are the programs that we had this year. We had tutoring and related services. We had our language-based classroom, our learning academy program, milestones, our preschool program, and then we had a high school program. So, this year we had tutoring taking place at Clay Pit for our elementary students, the middle school, the high school, and then we also had tutoring in Boston. And those are 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or 60-minute sessions. And it happened Monday through Thursday, typically between 9 and 1. And then most of our programs, our language-based program, and our learning academy and our preschool program are three days a week for three hours. And then our milestones program is our, which is the milestones program at Clay Pit. That classroom is a Monday through Friday, and that goes an extra week as well, and it goes a longer day. And then our high school program, they do a lot of off-site things. They have internships. They actually intern at Pegasus, and that's Monday through Thursday for our program. So, this is just some of the numbers. We had 22 students in therapies and tutoring. We had 13 preschool students, 6 milestone, 8 LBC, 24 learning academy. And our learning academy program is for students who need academic, social, emotional, behavioral supports, our life skills program. And then what's great is since last year, maybe the year before, we are always housed now with Pegasus. So, students who go to Pegasus can also attend ESY. So, it's like one of the questions that you respond is your child's going to go to Pegasus. So, you know, ESY goes 8.30 to 11.30, so a lot of kids then go to Pegasus. If they're students who have therapies or tutoring, I coordinate and pick them up from their Pegasus program and bring them. Make sure Wednesdays are field trips, so we make sure tutoring doesn't happen on Wednesdays. We make sure it happens before lunch. And so, I work pretty closely with Nye and her team to help that be more seamless. But it works out really well, so you don't have to choose. Have you seen an increase in ESY enrollment now that that integration is so much better? Yeah. Yeah. It has. Especially with the tutoring. Yeah. Because, like, I work with someone, I can't get, you know, it's 8.30 to 11.30 is hard. So, having that ability. And, you know, you can stay at Pegasus until like 3 o'clock, I think. Or I don't know if they go swimming in the afternoon. And then they have their Wednesday field trips, so we, you know, don't schedule tutoring on those days. This year, we had five students who, there's a METCO program in Boston that runs for four weeks, 9 to 3. I offer that to students who have ESY on their IEPs because it's in Boston, so it's a lot closer. Because it's a, you know, much love to come out to Wayland, so we give our Boston residents' families a couple of different options for the summer. For elementary, we have the METCO program. I also, we have tutoring, which can be done in person in Wayland, virtually, or in person in Boston. So they can choose. And then we actually have four students from our Boston residents' students that chose to come to our Wayland programming. They had a transportation we provided for them to come in. And a couple of them then stayed for Pegasus. So they did really well. Our staffing this year, we had one BCBA. We had CODA as a certified occupational therapy assistant. And they have to be overseen by an occupational therapist. And then we had one physical therapist and one physical therapist assistant for overseeing. We had two speech pathologists, nine program teachers, four tutors, and 20 assistants. So we were at Clay Pit this year. That was actually nice because our specialized programs are all at Clay Pit. So the students were already very comfortable. We had been two years at Loker, so students had gotten comfortable. But this just added another layer. It was also really nice for our preschool students who were going to be transitioning to Clay Pit. It was like an early transition for them, which was nice. I guess the cafeteria was in the gym and, you know, playground. So it was like a nice early. We increased our communication in coordination with Pegasus and then with parents. I really try to get ESY stuff out. The earliest I can do is March because we do use February vacation data to make these decisions. So it used to be April. Now I get it out in March. And as Ronnie stated, they communicate quite tightly with school community programs, which is Pegasus and the STEAM Explorers. So a couple changes to Pegasus this past summer. They offered different timing on their sessions. They had historically been three-week sessions. This year they offered three two-week sessions instead, which created better flexibility for families who may be going on vacation. And again, broad levels of inclusion that took place. They've seen a much higher participation rate, particularly from TCW students this summer, which was great. Many went to ESY and then over to Pegasus after that. And as Ronnie was saying, that connection to the school that they were going to was a bonus this year. The programs can't happen at Clay Pit every summer just because you need more time to do the deep cleaning. So if you do too many years in a row at a particular school, that school gets a little, not the same TLC. So 54% of the cohorts this year at Pegasus had IEPs. So they were really thoughtful in who they were hiring and the types of supports that they offered. They really focused on student voice and choice that built on kids' interests as they made connections with peers. And as Ronnie was saying, they coordinated services so kids weren't missing the things that they were looking forward to the most for their therapies and pieces like that. And again, the experiences were really designed for kids to feel connected to each other and to the spaces throughout the summer. So really focusing on inclusion, you can see kids' hands on projects. So there were 119 students who participated from preschool to grade five. There was also 22 middle schoolers and then six CITs, counselors in training from the high school. They ran a five-to-one ratio of teachers to students. 18% participated both Pegasus and ESY. And as I mentioned, those three two-week sessions. So there was a half-day option that ended at 1 p.m. and then a full day that ended at 3.30. So that was Pegasus this year. Metco Transitions Program. So there were two things that happened, one at the middle school and one at the high school, to really help those transition years, the fifth to sixth grade and then the sixth, excuse me, the eighth to ninth grade. So help them develop both student skills, get them ready to return to school and increase their confidence. It also helps build the Metco cohort from three elementary schools. You know, the students don't necessarily know each other coming into the middle school. And an opportunity in the summer to make deeper connections is really helpful. It also strengthens the Metco cohort entering the high school. And always the goal to decrease anxiety about those transitions. Is that covered by the Metco Grant? It is. Okay. Yeah. Metco Grant. So there was an academic enrichment component. You can see that they did work in poetry, math, art, student skills. There were high school teachers who came and taught different components of that. And also, you know, as we focus on the whole child, there's the academic side, but also the social emotional learning. They had opening and closing circles every day. You've heard us talk a lot about tier one circles. They were all involved in creating those community guidelines and norms for the team building activities. You can see that they talked about things about being an upstander, having integrity, and really focusing on what makes a community. And how do we support each other in this work? So going to the high school, so that was the middle, excuse me, elementary to middle, it was a similar type of program at the high school. You can see, again, academic enrichment and social emotional learning. The subjects of the high school were history, math, and research methods based on the teachers who were teaching this year. You know, LaTroy was directly involved as well and participated, and she had specific conversations, you know, with kids about the transition to high school. She was a longtime high school director before she came. She was a high school liaison before she was a director, so she's very strong in those areas. But did you know that either transition program have upper grade students come and talk to the rising sixth and ninth grade, or no? I don't think so, in particular. I know for all students, they do some of that. So, like, when the middle schoolers come over to the, excuse me, the elementary school students, they come by school to the middle school, and they're toured by middle schoolers, and there's a whole question and answer session with them. But I don't use those specifically. It might be actually interesting to have the sixth and the ninth graders. Sure. Yeah. As Ronnie was mentioning, there is a METCO program as well that our METCO grant also supports students going to the programming that takes place in Boston as well. Also, to prevent regression, there's a lot of preparation for incoming kindergarten students, particularly those who have not attended preschool before. It's also an affordable childcare option for families and always want to decrease student anxiety. That secondary option, again, is around confidence, building subject, foundational knowledge, and there are also some stretch opportunities for students academically during that programming. So, like in Wayland, there is a combination of subject-based work, math, science, reading, writing, research skills, with enrichment classes, and field trips. And you can see Latoya's really everywhere in the summer because she was there and she was here. So she connected in both places. And as I mentioned at the start, there's a lot of adult learning that goes on. We do a two-day retreat. All right. So, yeah, learning should happen in all parts of districts, and it has to begin with leadership learning to make sure our leadership team has plenty of time to learn. So we have to do a retreat every summer where we focus on four aspects of leadership. Number one is team building. We have new members of our team every summer, and every time you have one new person of a team, or two, you have a new team. And so we work on a lot of team building, and we also, part of it is then what happens, people take the exercises we do at our retreat, and they do them with their new team members once they get to their school. So there's a lot of transfer. The second part of our retreat is leadership learning, which we do every summer. I talked a little bit about that on opening day. We worked on contribution mapping, which is a way to diagnose complicated leadership challenges. We also did some portraits of a learner work. You can see that on the right. And what we're also always trying to do, if you look at the center slide there, we are trying to expand our leadership toolbox. So every summer we have a different aspect of leadership learning that we then work on throughout the year. So we'll be working on contribution mapping as a leadership team next Tuesday as a follow-up, because we never want isolated exercises at a retreat. You always want a through line in terms of learning. The third aspect that we always work on retreats is goal setting. We head down stairs, and we work in teams on goal setting. You all received the goals at the end of August. That started in July, and that's an intensive process that we do as a broad team, because we need buy-in. People have different ideas. We sometimes work in cross-functional groups as well as grade-level groups as well. And lastly, we work on preparing for a good opening, because we know that's really, really important in terms of what are the themes, what are the messages, how do we want to deal with our district over the course of the year. And then that right there, if you look to the left slide, we also do all different kinds of learning. So at the end of the first day, we always do some kind of activity. I always am comfortable with the sports activities, because that's my background. However, it was pouring, and so we did the group learn mahjong. I'm so jealous. Ronnie was one of the teachers, and so we now have a whole team of people. You can see Christina Sansa Donovan there, one of our expert instructors. So we want people to learn and teach each other different lifetime or group skills. So Ronnie is available. I know. I learned, but then I've been playing, so now I'm pretty comfortable. Do you have, like, this year's card and everything? I do, I do. Oh, I come from a long line. Oh. My mom is, like, so into it. And, like, so my dad walks around the house, and he's like, seven crabs. Oh, yes. Well, bam. Like, yeah. And I'm like, okay, stop. But I really want to learn. She's obsessed. It's very fun. We had a really good time. So we are. We're expanding our toolkit. And one of the pieces we worked on is that, you know, is mapping different contributions to complicated problems and avoiding blame. What we often find in leadership of many problems, blame, which is looking backward. What we want to focus on is mapping, which is looking forward. So there's a lot of kind of strategy around that. And you can see some of the strategies that we use in terms of the cases that we're looking at moving from map to action. And, of course, always looking in the mirror and how do we contribute to challenges we have. So we did some good work in that area, and that's continuing next week. And we also did some work on our portraits of a learner and talked about how can we, as we think about operationalizing down the road, getting more feedback, thinking about the skills that our students will need in the future and how a lot of that is changing. But the human part and the importance of the human part in school kind of follows the presentation we had. There are certain things that we can only do in school. And most of them don't involve technology. They involve all of the interpersonal skills, communication, and you can see our five there that are really, really important. In addition to retreats, there's a lot of other learning that happens in the summer. So we offered restorative justice trainings for both Tier 1 and Tier 3. Last summer we did Tier 2 trainings. So there were 40 folks who were trained through that process, culturally responsive teaching in the brain. There were six new folks trained there. We had 60 folks trained, thanks to a grant that Ronnie got, on the new seclusion regulations over the summer and more since then. CKL Camino's training, we trained 70 educators for a full day, some at the beginning of the summer, some at the end of the summer. Our new CKLA leaders that are grade level leaders were trained over the summer. There were 10 of them. We had a two-day AI Institute where 17 of us were trained. You can see a slide from that about the talking with Gemini elements of good prompt there. We had 20 folks at our new educator induction, which is a two-day program right before school starts. And then different educators took 34 different graduate classes over the course of the summer too. There are probably more that were taken, but those are the ones that were put in for reimbursement for. Is the new educator induction the two-day, does that include Caroline's training, or is that separate with the culturally responsive teaching in the brain? Caroline does like an hour at the dual-day orientation, and the culturally responsive teaching in the brain is like a 12-hour class, so it's a two-full-day class. And she offers it a couple different times during the year. And there's other ways that people can meet the culturally responsive, excuse me, cultural proficiency training requirements. Like our ideas courses are one example that people often take. And additionally, summer's a really nice time for collaboration on curriculum projects that folks do. So we had just under 150 days that were financed through our operating budget. And then an additional 91 days that were financed through grants. From the Hates Crime Prevention Grants, Special Education Grants, Innovation Career Pathways, and Perkins Grants. You can see a slide from one of the projects that was created around becoming a skilled-formed demander through organic world language. There were projects at every level, though. So for example, the preschool projects, there was work done in music, PE, and libraries. So what might that look like with our preschoolers now that they're in an elementary school and have access to different educators? At the elementary, a lot of the work focused around our new internalization of our CKLA program. Additionally, we had one of our extended days today where our elementary educators did until 345 this afternoon. We spent several hours working on that as well there. There's also some math intervention resource work done over the summer. At the middle school level, there was a reading for freedom project. There was a rewrite of the general music curriculum. And using project-based learning as a way to integrate a lot of the different things that they've been working on over the years. Like Accountable Talk, for one. UDL, sort of where some of those pieces fit together. At the high school, so Scott here tonight, they worked on all the new high school PE electives, such as dance, math fitness, healthy culinary, mental skills, and characters through sports. So those are just a handful of them. The new French novice class was worked on over the summer. They did a real financial literacy, sort of kind of looking where is financial literacy currently taught. And sort of an audit of what we're doing and how it might work as we're thinking down the road about the new graduation requirements. As well as a new AP course realignment. There were some new things that came out through the AP. So anybody teaching an AP course needed to do some work on theirs. Some of the between-level work that also took place. For example, one of the projects was looking at the middle school, high school, looking at the transition, particularly in social studies. And the eighth and the ninth grade team came together to look at the different assessments that they offer and what are the different skills. And there was some really rich planning that went on there as well. So that's just a quick overview. There are way more projects than that. Oh, sorry. Just to give you a flavor. Thank you. Happy to answer any questions. Do you have a sense how many of our staff participate in summer learning? You just listed a lot of things. A lot of things. A lot of things. Yeah, there are a lot. We can't fund everything. No. There's like twice as many projects that we can fund. Okay. That come through. And some of them they'll ask for, you know, we want 10 days for this and we can give you five kind of thing too. Okay. I can get the numbers for you for the next meeting if you want. Sure. I'm just curious. There's a lot of different people who participate. I think you linked to the list in the slide. Of the projects that get funded. I don't know if all the requests are there but it looks like. It tells you how many people. Actually, yeah. It says how many. It says like days requested, days approved. Yeah. And it tells you how many, who the point person is and how many days that they'll have. So, for example, if they have six days it might be. And then three people doing two days. Or it might be six people doing one day or. Yeah. And it has people working days and like the people. So it shows who participated. It was a greater level of teacher than I thought that I gave you. Is this something where we could try and. And maybe this has already been done and it's just my lack of knowledge. But is this something where well in public school foundation could be pushed to use some of their grant funding because it's one time use. Right. So like for those that aren't going to get it through the district or. A grant that the district can leverage. Could. The foundation support it. It's a great question. Um, Aaron, they, they have in the past. There have been particular projects that. So I would say maybe eight years ago or so there were. They funded a lot of summer work that they were sort of areas that they were interested in and wanted to fund. Um, they moved away from that when I think their revenue intake was a little lower. And so they stuck with some other projects. It's certainly a question. Um, you know, Betsy and I could, could ask them if that was to be something that they'd be interested in again. Okay. Potentially. Just about. We meet with them on Monday. Exactly. Put it on the list. And I'm going to move it to the new notebooks. I only have one more page left. I was thinking the younger. You know. A lot of pushing health down. I don't know. They don't like to do that though. They don't like to do both. But we only looked at four and five originally. So I don't know. I don't know. It was just something I thought of. They don't like to do like, like pilot for like something that would stay for. No, no, no. We did. That was Jenny Flynn. The first chair of Jenny Flynn. Really? Yeah. I was on the foundation. Yeah. It was like too much of a position for too long in their bylaws. But they absolutely can do a certain amount for a year if it's something they think the district will pick up. So anyway. But that's hard. It's hard. But we got Jenny that way. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. That's a good thought. Okay. How did the well flap too? On the well flap side. That I knew. Yeah. That's different. You know what I mean. Okay. Alana, did you have a great experience this summer? I saw your name on there. I did. I did. I did. I did at ESI. It's great. Oh, great. Yes. I knew that. I saw her out there collecting children. Okay. So, David, this is under the superintendent's update. The red lines are in here. I don't really know that you have anything to add or Betsy has anything to add really, but does anybody have any questions, comments, feedback that you want to address? Yes. Thank you for doing the summary of changes that actually I found very helpful to. Mm-hmm. It's all Jen. And you're right. She knew exactly how to do it. Yes. She did. Well, I knew somebody knew how to do it since it didn't come to me to blackline. Yeah. That's true. Um, in the event that people don't have comments or questions, I would just entertain a motion. Oh, I'll move to approve. I'll move to approve the women public school employee handbook as revised and presented. Does the employee handbook? I don't see a student. Yeah. The student wasn't in here. That's why I started to ask that question, and then I saw that we only had the employee. Did that come to us in an email? It came in a meeting before. I thought it came in an email. I'm happy to do that. Oh, we didn't get enough to the fault there. Hold on. I'll definitely retract my motion and... Um... Oh, I guess I got the employee handbook twice. Yeah, I don't see the... Yeah, I don't see the... Jen, that's on the other one. I'm sorry. I didn't get the check, though. Yeah, I looked at the employee handbook twice and thought, good to go. Okay, well, I guess we can go with Betsy's motion. Do we have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. The employee handbook is approved as revised and presented by a 5-0 vote of the committee, and we will hold on the student and family handbook until next time. See how long... Time's the charm. Okay, briefly discussed this previously, I think more than once. Maybe not with this specific committee, but I think it would be... Well, did you guys already look at this? Did you come with a revised... We haven't had it in a subcommittee meeting. All right, so... Go ahead. Oh, yeah, I think it came up recently because there's been three instances just in the past couple months. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I think if you guys just want to tweak whatever we have as the posting policy. Yeah. Okay. And just so we're not doing it on the fly here. Sure. Yeah. No, so we can schedule a meeting. Perfect. Okay. Okay. This is largely for the ones that we're sort of are... That aren't, like, legally mandated. Right. Legally mandated, or there's a lot of policies that come out of Betsy Davron's position in her work across the district that might have procedures that are tied to them that just have to get... There's different things. Like, the wellness policy is not going to be really driven by this group. It's kind of driven by the wellness committee, and it's going through and kind of going to come to us for a blessing and then putting it out for... I'm going to sort of... Mm-hmm. So, yeah. That's the idea. Mm-hmm. There's any other policy that you would like us to review in this meeting? Um... Sponsorship? Which was a good one, I guess. Well, it has come up for us at the table, and then recently, apparently, it has percolated again as well. Okay. So, I think it's worth... We've talked about doing it, so if you guys are game, let's at least talk about it. I've got it. I think we determined... Maybe we don't need chocolates right now, but... Okay. I think it permits sponsorship. It's a matter of, you know, how it's done, slash elicited, slash... Approved, I thought. Mm-hmm. Anyway, it just percolated recently, and if we're going to do something. Okay. But then I thought we also talked about wanting to look at, like... Expanding? Yes. Like, you know, scoreboards, or... Correct. Like actually having... Advertisers on field fences, or other things. After the advertisement, yes. After the advertisement, yes. Advertisement versus sponsorship, because the distinguishing factor there, I think. Okay. That can be a marquee. I look at it all as sponsorship. You and me. I mean, I'm okay with, like, well, public school foundations sponsoring a new scoreboard. Interestingly, my first foray into competitive cheer last year brought me to gyms far and wide in the Commonwealth. And they've all got them. They've... There's a lot of... There's a lot of sponsorship far and wide. You're on your way to Orlando. No, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. It's been a lot of time. Always.
I'm sorry. I will shoulder my personal feelings. That would be very exciting for the Whalen Weston youth football cheer, David. Yes. We'll set a meeting date and come back with a 30-day review. That sounds great. Thank you. I would suggest that may end up happening to be the first meeting in November, because I think our next meeting is early October. The next one will be the retreat. So then first of November, if you could maybe shoot for that. That's in Boston. Yes, but we can cover it. We have some in here? Okay. So we have some time. We have some. Yeah. I think that's a little too much. It's at Vine Street. So the meeting in Boston is not at Med Cohort HQ. It's at Vine Street Community Center. Okay. There's a big parking lot beside it. More space. More space, of course. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Financial matters. Financial planning update. Me. Okay. Got it. So we, Kirsteen, David, Kate, myself, as you guys know, we kind of have been having these like financial planning meetings with other departments across the town and the town manager and select board members, finance committee members, and the numbers related to need for an override have projected, have significantly been dropped based on different numbers that have come in or things that have changed unexpectedly, sort of in our favor, I guess, since the end of last year when we were looking at projected shortfall. And it's looking like right now it's about a high $600,000 shortfall. And that could continue to come down. The need for an override, it's looking like, is probably going to be able to be pushed to fiscal year 28. Is it? No. 29. 29 and 30. 27. 30. 30. 30. 30. 31. 31. 31. 31. 31. 31. to make some shifts in our budget planning and potential cuts. So we need to be mindful of that. David and Kirsteen, they've been looking really closely at projections for us as a district for salaries, etc., based on the new contracts and shifts in personnel. What else? I think we just kind of need to watch closely. I don't think we're going to need to make a big push for an override and do all the education around that that we were thinking we would need to do. However, I think we're going to need to be vocal about potentially looking at a tax rate percentage increase that maybe the finance committee isn't always that favorable to look at because it will be a little over around 5% for us to stay under the levy but also not making huge cuts.
So as much as we need to champion ourselves, we need to champion ourselves there. All right. Anything else from anything? Is that going to be talked about at an upcoming finance or select board, or you'll keep us surprised if we... They're talking about it. Okay. Just happy to, you know, attend even just for optical support if we need to. There will be a lot of talk of it through October and into November, some numbers solidify. Okay. As you all know, we don't get our final numbers really until January or February anyway. Okay. So it's hard, but I still think the work that we were kind of doing around looking at what we've done to date to really be fiscally responsible and planning, and that's still really important. I don't think it's wasted effort. The other thing that, sorry, we as a committee continue to catch some slack for the salary percentage increase that we gave to Unit A, and we did push back, and to, with a couple select board members in the room, and to Town Manager McCall and Brian Kevney, we were able to, with our contract, as we discussed last time, in excess of 29 extra instruction hours for our kids with this contract. So I told them that they could position it the same to their other unions. If they wanted to add 29 hours, they could maybe get the COLA increases that Unit A go.
So I think that's another thing that we should kind of be prepared to defend and support, that it was the right decision for our community, our students, our teachers, everyone. And I think that's all I have to say there. I do wonder if there will be some synergies potentially with the lining up of the need for the override and the timing for hopefully some facilities work. Like, it would be nice from a community education standpoint to not have to do that, gain that momentum multiple times, and have to explain the different, like, why this vote is this thing, and this vote, like, I mean, I know they'll be different, but one can hope that maybe the stars will align and we'll be able to think about those educational pieces collectively. I did raise that. Yeah. And, um, I think it was a meeting that we all did virtually. Not all of us, but we all were there. Oh, yeah, August 31st. Right. Yes. Special day. You know, in an ideal world, our SOI will be approved this spring, so we won't be spending so much time worrying about an override this spring. Right. Well, and we will need to get the $2 million.
Yeah. But they want us to do that as a separate article, so we will need to take that on. Okay.
So, yes, I hear you. I think that that's, you know. Some of the education, I mean, that document that you put together, though, I feel like we have now some of the baseline kind of pieces that we can easily put out there or just gently repurpose when the time comes. Oh, about the MSBA? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. That's why, like, nothing that we've done to date around, like, potential for operating override has been for not. Like, it's all been, it's all able to be used. In one way or another. Okay. Anybody have any questions on that or comments or?
Kirsteen, do you have item B? Do you have anything to? Sure. Sure. So, just to give you some context, this is really just housekeeping for our capital projects. Again, with the new CIPC process, they are going through and just making sure that all the older projects that have been on the books for ages and ages and ages that we are cleaning that out, closing them out, making sure that everything that was expected for the identified projects has been completed and any remaining or residual amounts is just closed out so that we can kind of shorten the very long list of capital right now. So, these are all the items, and this is part of what my FAIA requested that we have school committee just finalize and review. These are all the items that he and I reviewed and made sure that if it was being closed out here, there is already another project that he's already got the work done or anticipating is being in process this year. So, we are not giving up anything per se. This is, again, just basically cleaning up the books in the financial process of this so that we can have a clearer picture, more consolidated of what projects are still outstanding and really get a handle so that, again, as we're looking at our financial status and as the town has to identify amounts for funding and budgeting within the greater context is that they can more clearly identify the capital, the two capital needs for what we are currently having done in place and what the requests are for FY28. So, again, this is the review of items that we have already identified to be removed. This is just a requirement that we have school committee approval in order to formalize that process of closing them out. So, I add that we already closed out the high school field by vote in February of 25, I think? There are a number of them. So, again, these are just kind of that residual housekeeping that is still on their list. So, Mike Fayo was asked to confirm these project numbers and identify that we could, in fact, close these out. So, yes, a number of them were identified even last year in the process that we funded for the curriculum that we needed for FY27. So, yes, again, this is a housekeeping item, really, that just needs to be able to say that we've, as a committee, formally approved the closure of these projects so that we can get them off of that list. Christine, there's a number of them on here that show a positive balance in the cash balance column, but then any amounts unspent remaining don't line up. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. That's correct. That's because it's munis accounting, and the way some of this is is if there's an encumbrance or something that's finalizing, we're saying, yes, we've identified if there's anything finalized, and once that is closed or paid out, then this project is complete. So, we're not going to close anything that still has. So, like, for example, just the second from the bottom, DW classroom cabinetry replacement, original appropriation $138,000, cash balance is, I think, $128,196, but the estimated unspent is zero. So, we're going to close it, but that balance is, like, basically just sitting, waiting to pay. That balance is actually not a real balance because we've already used that to fund the FY27 capital that we had done. So, again, these are, it is very confusing the way that this is the town's spreadsheet, their worksheet. So, I was just providing for full transparency. This is what it shows and what we are returning. But, yes, the cabinetry replacement, the district-wide roof replacement repairs, the district-wide flooring, those were all the items that we had already identified to close out and give back in last year's process. But they're still there, so this is, like, the final, final plan. I guess it's hard for us to, like, reconcile what are we actually turning back on our projects. And I know there are projects, but we don't really manage them. We're not, we're not turning back much, anything that we've already turned over. So, everything else is going to be zeroed out or the small residual amount, the $4,139, the $202.57, all the other larger items we've either encumbered and are being closed out. So, that's why they have, there's going to be a zero balance in the unspent once we're closing them out. But that's what I mean, like, so the cash balance, why we don't have anything in that last column, right? Right. Is that we, I used, we as, I guess, the royal, we have already taken that unspent and said, we're closing this out and that $114,138.12 is going toward the project to do a loker stove just for fun, okay? So, like, in essence, like, we rolled back $114 and then said, and we're going to use it for this. So, we're not truly showing where we didn't, like, where can we recapture that we only spent $106,000, $36,000, whatever the hell it is. I'm terrible at math, on the DW flooring. Well, like, the feasibility study is in here. Right. It was appropriate, like, $100,000. It looks like it came in at $81 and change. Right. We did have some left over, so that would be, that was part of what would be an amount that would be turned over. The other big ones we've already turned over. But it has a zero in the far right. Yeah, I think the confusion is some, somewhere there is funds showing the cash balance or then showing up in that far right column. I agree. The numbers are matching. I agree. This is not my strategy. No, I get it. I get it. I think I'm just trying to reconcile that for a project that was done at the school that was approved for $100,000, if we turned back any money that then just got reappropriated to another item that was school, like. Or did it go back to the town? I just feel like that should be somewhere where we should be able to track that, and that's not done here. Is that tracked? It won't be until we do a final close-up. Okay. They're just hanging on to these kind of artificial numbers until there's an actual close-up. So, yes, like the cabinetry replacement, that was, so when you look at the department, most of these are the facilities projects. So, they're just called the school project because they are on a school building. But they get flagged to us at town meeting for the community, is my point. But also, it's a mix. And it is a mix. Because, like, the feasibility study, the new minibus, like, there's a real mix of things that are more truly ours. So, you're saying at a later date, like, the next iteration of the spreadsheet will be able to show some number that's been carried over and invested. So, we hope that that's what they will do and be able to kind of close these out and have that reconciliation for what they're using and doing because that's what ultimately will be the amount that they need to fund for the FY28 capital piece. Well, I think to the previous agenda item, like, some of, if we are able to get that information, it would be helpful as we're trying to provide, like, rationale or support for, you know, how well we have been doing. Yeah, right. I mean, we can clearly identify that we gave up funds in order to prioritize the reading curriculum for FY27. That's a clear delineation. That is, that's mapped out very easily. So, Christine, we are being asked to take a vote on this. So, I guess you took. Which is the other thing that makes sense. So, that I heard. Yes, heard. But also, you've represented this isn't your spreadsheet. I guess, as a committee member, I'm finding the numbers confusing. And so, are you confident they are accurate? Like, are we sure that this, the numbers as written, I appreciate that you did not prepare this visual for our consideration. But I find it very confusing to look at something that has $114,000 cash balance in one column and then says amount you're returning zero. So, without any kind of footnote or other annotation that says it's zero because that $114,000 was returned to the town general fund was, like, agreed or voted on. Like, so, I do have some, I do have some hesitation because I think we have already closed, to Erin's point, some of these are things we've already taken a vote on. But I also just don't understand the two cash balance columns not lining up. I can request Brian, Kevin, if we can provide some further context once, because we, Mike, we've submitted this in a soft manner that we are in the process of being able to close these out. And, again, yes, we know we've already taken the motion for these major capital funding that we did last year. That's how we were able to get our curriculum project funded. So, the other thing I'm seeing is, like, for the roof replacement repairs, which is item 3899, and then the rooftop air handling units and fans, which is item, sorry, 3901, the amount in the cash balance column is almost equivalent to the amount that was originally appropriated. So, are those just things we decided didn't need to happen? Are those capital expenditures that are going to have to happen next year? Mike Fea has them either scheduled or part of, some of it is time sensitive where he can't be doing these types of projects while kids are in buildings. While kids are in buildings, sure. So, he knows what he's got in terms of the timeline for what needs to be done and closed out for this priority so that we can have a better plan for the FY28. I'll go back and ask Brian if he can provide something cleaner. This is just the small excerpt, the full, it's very confusing, and I live in spreadsheets, so I try to condense it, and it's not great, so I take it back to Brian. Well, it's like, turn back any remaining unexpended project balances in accordance with town's financial policies. Well, I don't want to do that. You know, like, tell me what we're doing, like, I feel like Brian, yeah, we're not going to get it, it's going to go for the cash. Maybe that's more of just like a capital project review. I just, I think, like, yeah, we need to understand what's in the two or three. But it's also, you know, like, there was that 4,000 left. This is, like, such a big conversation.
I'm happy to do what you guys want. We already closed these out, but I'm also happy to wait for more information. And delay. It's fine.
I know we already looked at these and closed them all. Which is also, like, nobody pays attention to what we do. I just, I don't, I'm not, I mean, other people can disagree. I'm not super comfortable with the motion as drafted because I'm not sure which of these balances we're returning. And they're two very different numbers. I think I understand that the highlighted yellow is what's intended, but that's $4,700. And I guess I don't understand, looking at this, that the million actually went to school projects if they weren't used here. Or was this just outstanding against this project and hadn't been, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's not the other way I understand. Because that's the other way I understand. Because we voted to close out, but I didn't see them like this. No, we didn't see them. Like, when we voted to close them out, it was like, there's 11 cents remaining, or. Well, it was, it was different, yeah. It's a good thing there aren't lawyers around this table. So, are we going to wait for more info and make poor Kirsteen go back and say. I am happy to do that. That is not a problem. That is not a good assignment. I'd love to get the task. Okay. Then. More power to you. A request, I should say. Yeah. Yeah, so here, sorry. Yeah. No, I was just going to say, I'm looking at local tile replacement. We closed that out with $361 in it.
Local floor tile. That was my other question. What do these go to? Show me the Warren articles. Tell me how I can reposition this.
Anyway. We can task them and move on.
If you want to, if you get that before our next meeting and you want to send it to all of us in advance, just so people can look at it, just feel free. But don't discuss it on an email.
Okay.
How do you like to make talk money? Not like that.
Okay. I have a draft of our report that I will share with all of you right now. If I just move it, does that make it available to you guys? Into the folder? Yeah. It does, right? Refresh. I think it does. Oh, you have to give us access to it. Hold on, let me. I don't have permission to move items into this folder.
Epic fail, Diane. Just kidding. I'm kidding. It's fine. I'll just give you guys all access to it. I just want your help writing on the last, like the goals section because I have some competing interests in my own head.
Elizabeth Cullen.
I just need to unedit her. Up in the folder? Wow. It's too late, Diane. Broken my heart. I didn't email it in there. Yes, I gave it. I didn't email it to you. I just emailed you access so I didn't get to it. Okay. Thank you. And now I'm moving it to our folder too. So, Kirsteen, to our most recent topic, if you could double check what I have in the end of summary of activities and accomplishments. It lists some capital budget funding stuff. And I felt like there were changes that were made after the budget presentation, so I'm not sure those are 100% correct. Can you just tell us yes or no?
Yeah, I just put it in. So, and then goals for fiscal year 27 is what, this is like a very formulaic, like, this is what they want from us, this is it, this is what it looks like every year. But goals for fiscal year 27, it was supposed to be, let's see, continued fiscal something. Sound fiscal management? Well, I think that's what we had last time, so hold on a second. But does it continue? And then strives to continue making service improvements while strategically planning against expected enrollment and anticipated student need.
But I wanted to tie that together, and then I put in the committee aims to complete its third submission to the Massachusetts State Building, oh, this should be authority, sorry guys, of interest, allowing the district and town to develop a unified practical facility solution that addresses all educational needs in a fiscally achievable way. And I'm open to whatever anyone would like to suggest there. I think that would be nice to capture that that won't address, like, long the sort of state of the buildings, that it's not just that it's going to build practical facilities, but it's also going to address, like, our aging infrastructure.
Continued effort. We're probably going to have to change some of these words and remove the 12 million continued to mitigate the, what did you say, impending infrastructure?
I mean, I say impending, it's not impending, but it is. We can just say the failing status. I mean, given that we literally have a report that says they're not worth repairing, I don't know that we can walk that line anymore. In continued effort to address the failing status of school facilities and rising costs of repairs and maintenance of same. The status of aging school buildings that are past, like, repair or something. The status of aging school buildings and facilities that are past their useful life.
Just past their useful life or something. Is that fair, Kirstie? Okay.
Nice. Good editorial. Well, past their useful life and mitigate.
Oh, avoid. Ever arising. No, I'm just kidding. Well, I was actually thinking the same, like, it's just not going to stop. Escalating. There we go.
Escalating costs of repairs and maintenance of same. The committee aims to complete its third submission to the Massachusetts State Building Authority of a Statement of Interest, allowing by, I'm just going to leave it, just allowing the district in town to develop a unified practical facility solution that addresses all education needs. Maybe we just cap it at Statement of Interest, period. I think you've kind of said why we're doing that. So, above, I think you can't just stop it. Yeah, so I think we just hit it. Just because you've already said that we're going to do that to address the things we just said. I like that.
Plus, that's the only real achievable rule that we can concretely. I did want to address, though, in our, this is one that I needed you for, and I didn't want to bug you today. In the summary of activities and accomplishments, I think we should put something in here about how we were able to grow the balance of the Special Education Stabilization Fund because I think there was a lot of, like, trying to think of the right words, not criticism, like skepticism over that and creating it. Oh, that it would just become a rolling door. Yeah. That, like, oh, we're just going to use it. But I think it would really highlight your all hard work on that. But I don't know exactly how we should say that. I mean, we were able to maintain the balance and contribution.
Levels? Yes. So maybe we just say reflecting the fiscal efficiencies and responsibility of the administration and committee, the special education, and I'm never going to be able to repeat this. Reflecting the hard work and continued efforts of administration and... I want to say that something, I mean, if we can, if you feel comfortable linking it, I want to say something about, like, the positive advancement in in-district programming and specialized programs that has enabled us to, like... That's not the only... No, no, no, but I'm just thinking that, I mean, we haven't seen the numbers yet, but I'm like, if we are able to serve more students in-district, then the reserve fund is able to be adequately funded for truly unanticipated costs. So I said this fiscal year, 2026 budget continued to support expansion of in-district special education programming and reflected a strategic reallocation of assets tied to shifts in enrollment numbers. We could insert it there. Further enabling... I can't do... That's stupid. I mean, it's allowed that fund to really be for these move-in... Right. For the insensuating... Unanticipated... Yes. And to shield the operating budget... And we have it right now, you know, we're not using it right now, but, you know, you never know what tomorrow will bring. All right. I'm just going to, like, put a pin in it, because are you guys... Do you really want to finish this right now, or do you want to just give me... We can do edits. I was just thinking, like, if it enabled us to, like, stabilize the funding of the Special Education Reserve Fund for future unanticipated costs. Yeah. And if you want... Or we can just leave it as is and finish, because really, myself and my four other committee members shouldn't be collaborating on a document outside of helping me do that. You can send me something, though, Kirsten. Yeah. Yeah. I also want to make sure, like, I don't know if it's important to put it in there, like, the importance of it. You'll want it to go. Right. I know. That's what... Right. No. Because we're not using it doesn't mean we don't need it. We can... I don't think we should say we aren't using it. No, no. We're just... Just enabling us to not deplete it. Right. And we don't have to do things like budget freezes and things like that. Right. Because we have it. And it's creating continued fiscal efficiencies if possible. Efficiency, right? I want to capture the relocation of the preschool to Happy Hollow, too. I know that means we're not going to finish it tonight. I just was thinking back on other things that... I can put it in there. I mean, do you guys really care how much it... I was trying to just think of, like, the sort of big, like, you know, significant changes. But actually, that's not happening until this year. Mm-hmm. The budget. Yeah. That's true. This was last year. That's why it's... This is a road map. Did you find the capital budget language okay? Yeah. I mean, it's... It's accurate. It's broad because that's what it is. I mean, it's nothing... But are those correct? Did we do those things? Yeah. Did we do those things? Okay. We did a number of... I know there's more of them. I just wanted to kind of... I was capturing the ones that I was like, I feel like we did these, but I'm not sure if we did those. So, like, and more.
Next year, we can make sure we put in the CKLA curriculum, but this is for some. Does the Educators Association have a possessive after... Nope. It doesn't. Double check that today. Same break.
Sharing it at the link. It's like you review documents all day long. No.
After a statement of interest, I think we might need for the construction of new facilities.
But we don't know exactly. So you think just facilities? Yeah. We don't know what we're doing? Um, oh, for new construction. How's with that?
You're right, because we would only... Yep.
For new construction. I know. I mean, the... Okay. I'm going to put a little star... Or we can just leave out the fund. We don't have to talk about it in here. Nobody's going to scrutinize it that much that they're going to say, We're not funding that next year.
So... Happy day. I can do whatever everybody wants. I am just the typer. I personally think we should let it go one more year in the hopes that we're on a good track record. I'm down. Okay. Okay. Is everybody's name spelled correctly and how they want them reflected? Because every time I try and email Betsy Cullen, I have to find Elizabeth. Yes, thank you.
Okay. Do you need to vote? Weekend, if you want. I think I have in the past. Okay. Maybe sometime I haven't. I don't know. Move to approve the 2026 annual report as presented and revised tonight. Do we have a second?
Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, good. Perfect. All right. Approved. Bravo. I'm usually very loud. No, I just want to make sure I don't miss a... Like a... So... We are a little late in the game as we have had an extremely busy past few months as well as new committee members. And we are a little behind on approving calendar for the 27-28 school year. So, in our folder is our 26-27 calendar for reference, which is this year. And then there are two proposals for a 27-28 calendar. One is labeled as number one, and one is labeled as number two. Would anyone on the district side care to provide feedback on the differences between the two and which may be preferred by the district administration? I will say, you know, there are two decisions, you know, multiple decisions about calendars. There's when do you start, when do you end, and what holidays you deserve. And so we have our teachers, as part of the contract, they provide input, and I think they're getting input and collecting some data from their members. So, the difference in these calendars is one starts after Labor Day, and Labor Day is rather late for the 27-28 school year. Under that calendar, if we have five snow days, we don't get out until June 27th. And then the other calendar begins August 30th, as you can see. So, it's a difference. There is a big difference there. You'll also see, as part of the contract now, we have two and a half days with our, this was a change as part of our negotiations. So, we have two and a half days now at the start of the year, which is really helpful in terms of preparation, because it can get... For teachers. For teachers. And staff, yeah. Yes, that is really helpful, because it can get quite hectic in those days. So, that both calendars include the two and a half days. So, we're waiting for input from our colleagues. We can share that with you probably by the next... Oh, so they have these right now, and they're waiting on what they would prefer? Exactly. They're checking in with their members and getting some input. So, if you have questions, then maybe we could, you know, at the next beginning, have further questions.
Yeah, I think, I think this is just speaking from, like, the constituent side, is that I know that a lot of camps do registration, like, in the next few weeks. And so, I do think that if there's a way to update to say, like, these are the two potential start dates that are being considered without the formal vote, like, I know, you know, I think we might want to at least communicate that out to families so that they can... You talk about camps, like, go to the end of August? Some go to the end of the, you know, some go to the end of August, but some also start, like, June 25th, right? So, like... People have to start registering. Some camps, people start registering for camps in the next, like, four weeks. Yeah. That's the point. And so... You're talking about for the... For the following summer. Oh, no, for the... No, I'm talking about for this summer. Oh, this summer we're all set. We have this year's school calendar. No, but this would be the start date. This would be the start date. So, when people are... People are already asking, like, trying to figure out their summer vacations. Oh, for summer vacations. For next, like, August and more when they put their kids in camp and then when they vacation. And so... It's more of that... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it. We don't have to wait for...
Set the calendar. No. So, we can make a choice around the table right now. Sure. I don't think it's a good idea to share with the community possible start dates. As much as I totally appreciate that people are trying to get ahead of it, I think that will elicit even more lovely feedback. That being said, if people want time to digest and think about it, maybe we could plan to have a virtual meeting on Friday to... Maybe you'll have feedback from the teachers at that point, but also maybe we would have some time to just kind of think about it and potentially figure out what may work better. Um, I don't want to let it really go any longer. What do you think I can go? Yeah, no, I think that could be... We can get feedback tomorrow. We'll leave it up tomorrow. Okay, so... So we can get feedback tomorrow. Would people... We can post a meeting. Oh, shit. I have to do it Monday. We'd have to do it Monday. Which, we don't have a holiday Monday, right? It's not until October? Yep. Right? Okay. We can get feedback. Would you guys prefer to wait until Monday? Would you prefer to make... I'm going to tell you right now, I have zero interest in waiting until after Labor Day. I'd also prefer not to have the third off if we're going to start before Labor Day and go the full week.
The third off is not, no. It's not. Oh, yeah. It's not what? On the calendar number two, when we start on the 30th, we do have the third off. But on calendar number one... It's like what we did this year. And I think it was very disruptive. Yeah, I like it. But I don't like to start before Labor Day. But I appreciate the late June. So this becomes a very, like, individual preference thing. I like to know what is the most educationally beneficial as a committee member. Like, what I would like personally. I think I should compartmentalize from what I think. Education beneficially, you know, going very late in June is not educationally beneficial. It gets too challenging with students being gone and people running out of gas. So what do you, what do you, I ask my colleague, what do you think? I agree. I think it hits June and people are already, like... You hit the first week of June. People are already thinking about how we're done. Yeah. And it cuts into, like, summer programming. So, like, you, if you're, if we had five days and we didn't get out until the 27th, we wouldn't be able to start summer programming until July 3rd, which then means we're going into August with then cuts into people's vacation and then they don't really have much of a break. I also know, like, overnight camps will start and things will, um, miss. It gets harder. It gets harder.
And if there's two days. That's just my own opinion, but, again. It's an operational nightmare. Did we, did we already approve graduation date for, um, 28? We didn't, right? No, but it typically falls on the first. Well, it has been for a couple years. But previously, it was on Sundays. Giving my own feedback, I think Friday evening sucks as a graduation night. I'm not quite sure what drove that decision. So, maybe you can provide more feedback on that. I think there might have been one person who drove it. So, I'm encouraged to revisit that around the table. Um, but I think that if we're going to do that, we should make that decision because people plan around that as well. Um, I think Friday night's really hard for everyone. It's difficult for family to come in from other places. Um, it's difficult for siblings. It's, so, um, this is my feedback as a community member for a long time. Um, and I would suggest that we potentially push it back to Sunday. When did it move?
Three years ago? Four years ago? Now? Four? The only, the only, I will speak, as someone who's done a lot of graduation challenges in my life. Um, the question you always have to ask is, do you have a weather rain date? So, right. Or an indoor facility to use, you know, with, with Sundays? Because. So, you can do Saturday. Like, if we wanted to do a Saturday graduation or. Because we don't have an indoor facility. It's not an option for us. I recall a couple of years ago, we got very lucky. Uh, we had Friday night rain out and the weather cooperated Saturday night. We were very lucky. It didn't actually rain out on Friday night. That was the problem. That was, it didn't rain Friday. We had a weather. We had a weather alert. It didn't come through. Yes. It's New England. Even in Florida. In Florida, all this Sunday. And then we had a rainbow. It was so nice. It was nice. But we, you have to cancel by a certain amount of time, which is the challenge in graduations because of, so. I think, though, like, Sunday morning-ish, late morning, is lovely. People can have parties in the afternoon and evening. That's just my feedback. Right. I think it works better for people who, of all ages. You have to check just religious observances and those kinds of things. With Sundays, I don't know, so. We used to have it on Sundays all the time. Every year. Oh, I'm talking about mornings, by the way. Oh, I mean, we could make it, you know, I'm not saying like 9 a.m. Yeah.
That's my feedback. Do you want to talk about that the next Monday as well, or when we do work? What do we want to do?
I think I've, go ahead. From Ronnie's feedback, it sounds like academically and programmatically, I don't want to put it on Ronnie, but in terms of summer programming. Oh, it's much better. Which we have to seriously consider. Much better. That would sway me towards. That's true. I don't, I don't, I don't love starting before Labor Day either, but. However, um, I don't know how we run programs starting the first week of July, which is really a short week. Short week. Because it's the 4th of July, and that feels, then we don't know when we would have to start school, you know, the next highest. In a bad snow year, it gets very tough. I mean, in a, if, if, if there's no snow days, yeah, you just don't, yeah, um, Purgatory week. Um, I mean, Labor Day is late again, huh? I do think having, like, the 3rd, I know you don't like having the 3rd off, but that was nice. That gives, like, an extra long weekend, so if you wanted to sneak in.
That gives people incentive to skip that week. Yes. Right? I don't, we would have data on that from this year. I don't, we can check. We can check. That's a great question. The great thing is, we can check the data, because it's a really good question. Can we compare it? Because I actually think if you have it, I wonder if it's a low attendance day. Like, I'd love to know both of those things. I don't know if we actually have that data. Right. No, we do, because we had it, we didn't have it. No, because we worry about that Betsy issue, because, like, the day before Thanksgiving is a worry, so we should compare that day, because if it's a day of low attendance, you want to close, and we would have that data from this year. It's a great question. I think we can have it off. Yeah. I don't think we have it off the past couple of years. I don't, well, you're talking about the Thursday before, and you're talking about We've definitely had years when I've worked here, when I've been here and down with school-age kids, and we had school on the Friday. There have definitely been times since I've had kids in the elementary school that we had school on the Friday. Okay. Probably in the 29 years I've been here, we've probably, my estimate would be 25% of the time we've had school on that Friday before Labor Day, and the 75% you've not. I'll be honest, this is one where literally, since my kids are in school, I have to check, like, double-check and triple-check, because I never remember whether we, like, it's not. And you've always said that, David. It's better if it's consistent. The problem is, then you're going late in June, if you go with always after Labor Day or always late. Absolutely. So, if we started before Labor Day, that has staff returning August 25th. When did they return this year? August, yeah, August 31st and September 1st, September 2nd, had better attendance than September 8th through the 18th. So, really good attendance. When we started that first week with 96%, 97% attendance. Great. So, the whole week? Yeah. Only 29 kids out in the entire district. Okay. We have better attendance in the next two weeks. September 1st is our best attended day from this year, from this year. What day is that? It was the second day of school.
Second day of school. Sort of, then, I guess.
Number two.
I haven't seen a holiday this year, David. What's the 14th of April? That is Good Friday. I just looked it up.
I also looked up that Rosh Hashanah is on a Saturday, and Yom Kippur is the same day as Columbus Day. Right. Wow, that's a major... I apologize. What is January 26th? Martin Luther King Day? Lunar New Year. No, 17th is Lunar New Year. Lunar New Year. I was just guessing. So, that gets you... That's a separate discussion about future holidays that we have to have that discussion. Is that we're not having a discussion for this? We can have whatever discussion we want. I think that's a broader discussion that we would need time for to really think through. I was just saying, the Good Friday. I think that April 14th is Good Friday. It is. It's really late. It is. Easter is very late. That's true. And the... Yeah.
It's really what? Oh, it's in March. So, this is coming right here. Oh, is it? And then it's late the following. What do we have listed? So, it's only really one week in December-ish. One and a half. Yeah.
And the 22nd would be a full day of school. A full Wednesday. Yeah. I mean, we don't... Half days, you know, we're not... We're trying really well... We try to limit our half days. I hear you. That's why I was... Yes, the Wednesday is... It's more of an affirmation. Yeah. That was an affirmation. Yeah. I was doing affirmation. Yes. Thank you. So, the 17th, the 26th... I would like to propose that we have a very strong discussion at a later date around where our bar is for closing school. Like, why we close school. It feels like there's not a lot of red on this calendar. So, there must just be, like, a crazy amount of alignment. It feels like an outlier year. Yeah, it's like a really weird one. If this wasn't an outlier year, we would be going to school in July. Right. Like, we would... Yeah. If we had... So, something is totally... Yeah. What's the 29th of May? Is that... It's Memorial Day? The other calendar, also getting out on the 20th and having no school on the 19th, I don't think you would have a lot of attendance. Right, yeah. No, I mean... That's another example, unfortunately, what's going on. Oh, hurry. Yeah, not... They're going to be the same on both of these calendars. Okay. If this year, no... In June and Johnny? Yeah. I'm guessing you wouldn't really have much attendance, you know. And it's not even... It's not... We'll tell you that. Yeah, I mean... It's a first year. Okay. What? If you... The first calendar has the last day on the 20th and the 19th is off. I just... No one's coming to school that day. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I was only... I was talking. And at least, even if we have some snow days in June, with the last day being the 13th, we could have three school days and still not have to come... three snow days and still not have to come back after Juneteenth. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And the odds of having three snow days... David usually gives us one for no reason. Thank you, David. Oh, wow. And... Some of us are the same year as rain days in March. We call it senior day. I know. Senior day. I know. But usually we get... That's a rough... We should just call it a David day. You know that book? No David? That's me. No David. I'm quite familiar with it, yes. I really enjoyed that day, David. So, what I'm hearing is we want to go forward with calendar two, and we don't need another... That's fine. I think... Nothing in there. Right. Except for the... You're proposing having a potential review of commencement. Yeah. Oh, yes. I do think we need to set that. It's listed on here. We either have to take it off and at least get the calendar approved, and then have... Or... I don't know.
There wasn't a ton of, like... It was just kind of done before, and we approved it for a certain amount of years. For graduation? Yeah. I don't know. I wasn't here. I mean, I was here. You weren't here. I know. I experienced. Yes. It was not well received. I don't know that it's necessarily worked that well either with the community. Did you experience both? Graduations? A Friday and a Sunday? Oh, yeah. I've been here a long time, guys.
What do other communities do? Not Friday night. Yeah. I mean, some communities don't do it, depending on their populations. They don't do it Friday night because of religious reasons. Other places do Wednesday, Thursday night. Brooklyn does Sunday afternoon. So communities... We could just... We did a Wednesday night, and you just reminded me of a long time. I was going to say, we could just put it on for Sunday. Tuesday morning class day and Wednesday night graduation. And make it Sunday. There was a comment about that, too. It was very interesting. Sunday afternoon just makes sense. Right. You just like Tuesdays. People don't like it because then there's less party windows. Right. Well, you can party all day Saturday. When's your alternate weather day if it's a Sunday? You don't really set one. You just... That's graduation. Do you set Saturday as an alternate weather day if Sunday looks bad? A lot of people are coming in on a Saturday. It's hard. You just have to... That's the risk. I mean... Right. Do you limit how many families you want to attend? No. The current first year... Okay. And that'll still be the same with the current first year enrollment. The current freshman enrollment numbers. Outside, no. People are everywhere. People stand at the best. There's people, yeah. Stand. Would you ever do Monday? Like... I swear Newton had their graduation teacher on a Tuesday. We had ours on a Wednesday. And I don't know what they do now. I think they do either Tuesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Thursday. That's always... Two high schools, so you've got different days. You graduated on a Friday? I graduated on a Saturday at a Catholic church, so... But we could discuss that and then want to talk about other days of calendars. My question is, if we're having another conversation about calendar, would that only affect the 28-29, or are we approving the start and end date pending a more substantive conversation of other days with no school? That's what I'm not clear is happening or what you're... But if you added more holidays, wouldn't that impact? It would change the start and end date. Yeah, it would change the end date. No, you could shorten your February vacation. I know those are crazy ideas. I disagree. The teacher attendance, if you're not consistent with our district, it gets really hard. That's the challenge. That's why other districts have such trouble with it, the child care issues. And, yeah, that would be tough. I'm open to, like, we would have to get a lot of districts with us, I think. It also creates athletic challenges. You mean, like, how we move the start time and nobody else did in the DCL? We have some folks who... We have some schools in the DCL who move the start time even later. One district. Not at the risk of elementary. Going really early. Correct. Okay, we digress. We did not do that. That is correct. So I think we're all aligned that we would like to at least solidify calendar two with a... I just think we should change graduation. I agree with you.
That's not on here. It is. It is. June 2nd. Oh. Can we remove that pending a future discussion?
What information would change... Right, really? What information is going to change? Say a new date? Yeah.
You can. I guess my question is do... I don't know. I haven't had a high school graduate yet. So it mattered to me when I graduated that my teachers came to graduation. That was a Wednesday afternoon. If you put it at 3 o'clock on a Sunday in June, there's a lot of other family stuff that happens. So will fewer faculty attend graduation? Wouldn't that be a problem? What's been Friday night? When I graduate? No, I've been to them on Sundays. Oh, okay. So I just don't have a lot of data of the things that I would consider in weighing Friday or Sunday. And depending on the size of the community, sometimes you invite a teacher. All I can tell you is it got switched to Friday. There wasn't any input. I don't think it's gone well. I don't think it was received. Why? What's the negative about Friday? It's really difficult for everyone to get there. What time is it? 7 o'clock. 7 o'clock. And what... One year we... It's a little cooler, I would say, than... The year my daughter graduated, my shoes melted on the turf. We sat on the turf because it was COVID and we had to be so many feet apart from, like, the next family. And the soles of my shoes melted. Yes. I have had melting Sunday afternoons, that is, with older relatives. That's the biggest downside. Well, but we always have the tent anyway. True. There is a tent. For family members.
Grammy was there, wasn't she? In the tent. I remember. Grammy took Grammy to the tent. Yeah. We're good either way, so we're... Grammy didn't make it to Abby's. We've got to go to graduation regardless, so... Yeah, it doesn't matter where you are. I mean, the other option is you go to an internal facility that's local that's not your high school. Which is pricey. Pricey. I'm just putting it out there. Yeah, absolutely. There are many, and that way it doesn't matter for rain, it doesn't matter for heat. Or if you have a backup plan, you decide 48 hours before, I've made bad weather calls that way too. Where we go inside and it's beautiful out, but you have to make a decision ahead of time. They need to know set up. Yeah, but us going inside is like, without having somewhere else to go is... Yeah, no, you need a place to go. We don't have that either. You limit... Then you've got people that fly in and you're not coming. Right.
Right, did they live stream it to the... Yeah, we did. Well, we did. We went in an auditorium and you got... Each graduate got one person or two people, whatever the numbers did, and then they live streamed it into the cafeteria in my high school when it rained. It's like, why couldn't we do the auditorium in the field house overflow? No? Is the field house not big enough for overflow? Nope.
I mean, I think if there's no indoor option, I think you have to have a rain date. So I would say you've put in that entire weekend if you don't want Friday night, and then you've got to figure out what your decisioning is, whether it's Saturday with Sunday rain date, or whether it's Sunday and you move it up to Saturday. And that's what Lincoln-Sudbury had to do this past year, is that it was supposed to be Sunday and they moved it to Saturday because of the weather, is my recollection. So could we just put... Could you put three or three slash four? You don't put a rain date generally on the calendar. It goes out in the... We haven't done that before. I guess, yeah... It's been on, like, the invites and the planning, if we put one out. Okay. I think they... I think they're doing it now, given what happened. Why Sunday, not Saturday? Yeah, that's what my question is like. Like, Saturday. No, no, but you had said you... Just because Sunday used to be... Because we... Because it used to be Sunday. Sunday, and that was like... Got it, got it. Yeah, I guess in my mind, like, I'd rather tell people... I feel like people... I guess people would assume the rain date would be the... Like, would be after. Most rain dates are after. Yeah, so families traveling in, I'd rather publish an earlier date. Are all sport tournaments done by that early in June? No. No.
Well, that's why you'll see entire classes of... No, but I'm even thinking of younger siblings, parents who coach. Like, I just... I don't... This is the kind of decision you're... You cannot make everybody happy. Like, so...
Frankly, I think 7 o'clock feels late to me to do... 7 o'clock? ...150 names and a ceremony, and like, I'm guessing that feels late. But I'm also an early riser. It's close to Benton, right? What if we just... They're done with school. They stopped going to school in, what, May, like, 15th? It's usually a week before. No, it's later than that. Really? It's kind of before Memorial Day, but... Yeah. It's like the Thursday before Memorial Day, I feel like, and then they have the whole week after. I'm just thinking they could graduate earlier. It doesn't have to be the first weekend in June. It could be the third, fourth weekend in May or something. I don't know. That's usually the last Memorial Day weekend. Let's do it. The Thursday in the line, you can't graduate 12... It's only after 12 days. That's true. Yeah. I didn't hear you. Oh, 12 days before the last day of school, right? The end of the last day of school. That's right. You can't exceed 12 days. It's our public school. Mm-hmm.
All right. Do you just want to delete graduation and we'll put it out later? I'm fine with the third or the fourth. I think we need a rain date. So I think we have to, if we pick the fourth, then we have to go back. I don't feel strongly about keeping Friday evening, but I'm hearing people perhaps like... Do you just want to talk to Allison and we'll take it off and then maybe next week or next meeting we continue to amend it? Yeah.
At least then people know when we're starting school, when we're ending school. Yes? Feedback from students. It's their graduation. I don't know that they really, except for like the class that was right after the class that graduated on a Sunday, if they really even thought the difference. Right, once it's changed, it's... Yeah, they... So this will feel like a big change because it's been Friday for a while, but then the next class will think it's always been on Sundays. Well, nobody can have parties after... Generally, there's not parties after these on Friday nights. Nobody can get in to eat anywhere because we're not done until whatever freaking time we're done. It's really late.
Do you want somebody to make a motion with the exception of... No.
I don't care. I've now hit my wall. I think we need to have reached my point. Like we have to approve the calendar with graduation removed because people need dates and we need feedback from Allison on graduation date. No, go ahead. Do whatever you want to do. No, I don't have editing access. It asks for you. I can't do it. On what? We can't. We don't have editing access. Only you do. Sorry. I was reading something. There you go. Do you want to do it, Jessica? Wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on.
I've got to delete number two.
Is this going to... You guys are good with the 25th or...
Okay.
That would be the staff return. Oh, the August.
How did we... How were AIM?
How were they on the same day? Because their WBAP is doing two days worth of PD at their 12 hours over the course of the year. They're making their plans as we speak with their... So they don't have to come the day before? They start on the same day because we're starting a day and a half... Or a day... Two and a half days at the start instead of... Did we? We took that out? They're doing now 12 hours to do it differently. They're doing PD just differently. Yeah. Which was more effective. Instead of at the end of the year. But I don't know if that's the way the contracts read. Doesn't it still say that the staff will return the day before the teachers? But if you've added an extra half day that the teachers are coming back, they're coming back like two and a half days before.
Correct. Which makes their start date the same. To me, you have to say the full day and the third day. The language still has... Am I... No, I thought that too. Because that was a hard thing. Yeah, we don't want a dark process that separates. Why don't we look at the... I don't... I just... I saw it as one and I don't think we got that deleted. I don't think that's what they say. I think it... I think it... It says that there you go, 100. But it says that they start the day before the teachers. Yeah. And that doesn't work. That doesn't work. Because we settled that before we... Uh-huh. That's my... We're happy to get back to the collective bargaining team on that. It says the work year shall include 180 scheduled student days, three work days prior to the first day, the first student day. So that's three. So that's three. Yeah, but that's three for... It wasn't the credit card on the teachers. This is Unit B. Exactly. And 12 hours of required professional development equivalent to two paid days scheduled throughout the year. Go to the language for the calendar in Unit A. Oh, I don't have Unit A's. Sorry. Go to the language and the calendar in Unit B. If it's in there. If not... Wait, I don't... That was under work year article. That was under Unit B. It was good because you've been so shy about that reference throughout this evening's discourse. Really was not... I was really looking at a guessing game. I don't see anything.
I got it. Hold on. I don't know. Are you looking at the MOA? I'm not looking at the MOA. I'm looking at the original agreement. Yeah, you're going to look at the original agreement. They didn't touch it.
182 and one-half days shall be scheduled between August and June. We were supposed to meet prior to the final establishment if there were no objections.
I am not finding that language, Erin. I remember that language. I'm not finding that language.
When were you passing March 15th, anyway? No. It would be March 1st of this year. It would be March 1st of 27 for the following year. We have to approve it by March 1. 26. Of 27. We're usually way further. We usually do it much earlier, but the contract just says it has to be approved by March 1. Right.
I don't see it.
No, I know. Do you think it's in an MOA? Negotiations. Should we just talk about it?
Betsy, do you remember it came up, though, because of the... That's right. I remember we were looking at changing the language about the no, like the Monday before Labor Day or the Tuesday before, which is the day before. Oh, I know why. I couldn't just find it. Why? Because I was looking at the 20 to 23. Oh, I was in the 23 to 26, and I can't find it. But I don't know if it's an MOA. There was absolutely a discussion about... It was. That was specifically why they rejected it. That was why they didn't want to do the Monday no longer than the Monday before, because then Unit B would have to come on Friday. The Friday before. Correct. So that came from somewhere. But didn't... But then we... Wasn't the... The 1,0004 Unit B was settled? I just can't remember in time. Uh-uh. It was after. It was after, I think. It didn't come up and... No, we just changed the way that they were allowed to, and I don't think we ever actually changed language on that. Mm-mm. It was just something Ronnie kind of, like, agreed to in the background. What? The way that they're doing their PD.
I... Like, did we actually change wording? In the MOA, it says it. In Unit B. In Unit B. In the MOA for Unit B. It says... It says... Three days before the student's first day. Yeah. It says... Which puts them... Because I think it's... But it's not in reference to the teacher's first day. No, it just says the work year shall include 180 student days, three work days prior to the first student day, as defined by the official school calendar, and 12 hours of required PD. Right, so then they don't have to do, say, the extra two days. That was about the end of the year. But that's the end. That was the end of the year. Yeah, that's what I mean. You were... That was, like, a back-end kind of thing, that you were like, we don't have to do it at the end, they can do it. Yes. Yes, because, well, we would get more useful to do hours of PD as it didn't come the last day as well. Mm-hmm. We don't want to hold up for that.
Maybe we're better off just waiting and voting on Monday and having a... The earliest day because we have to post for OML. We have to post an agenda. It's fine. Okay. It's fine. That was the... It'll be fine. That's fine. We'll have to start the same day as teachers. No, but that's what you have there. They just have to do it. And that's my... It's the same day. Teachers start the same day. So teachers start... Two and a half days. Two and a half days before, so it's the same day, Erin. Yeah. So teachers would be a half day on the 20th day. And the TAs would be a full day. Well, I think you're doing a half day on the 20th day. You definitely... Yeah, the third day. We'll figure it. We'll figure it out. We'll work. Is this right? We don't want that to hold up. Thank you. Oh, thank you. It's on the full balance. So can we vote on this, or do we need to wait until we clarify this? Betsy, you said you read that they have to have a meeting if there's any... It says that... So we can approve it if there's objections to it. Then there's... We have a discussion. We're in a discussion.
Yeah. No, I know. I'm just reading the contract language. I know. I'm just... Oh, okay. Oh, I know. That's right.
Okay, so are we comfortable? Or would you like to meet on Monday?
Whatever you guys want. I'm available. Or I can wait. If you guys want to make a motion, you can make a motion. So as an understanding it, we can make a motion and approve this. And if there's an issue, we can come back. Yes? Okay. I move to approve the 2027-2028 calendar as discussed, with the addition of graduation being decided at a later date.
Okay.
Do we have a second? Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? None. Okay. So what's in there under number two has number two removed at the top. Do you want me to remove the reference for August 25th?
Remove it. What, the August 25th? Yeah. The reference to that, and you can get added in after the fact. It's up to you guys. And we can move forward on the agenda, and that's... It's a... Not a... Okay.
All right, so at our next meeting, we need to be prepared to discuss graduation. You guys are going to talk to Allison? Yeah.
June 2 to 4. I just put June 2 to 4 as... 2 to 5. That puts us within the 12-day range from the last day of school, unless we have an extension of school days?
Do they not count? I think, yeah, it doesn't. You're fine. Um, and plan for a substantive discussion regarding how, when, why we close our schools with respect to holidays later in the year, and plan to have that addressed for the 28-29 calendar. Do you want me to remove 25? What was the answer on that? On the August 25th. Do you want me to just remove it from the calendar for now? Not that... For now, sure.
We could just say school. I think you need... Just take it out of the start. It's by fence, the teachers. Yeah, I mean... Unless... But you're going to communicate that with them, because right now they have two calendars. You're going to have to communicate with them that we approve this. Okay, we can do that. That was why I was saying. I get it. Yeah, we'll talk to them tomorrow. Oh, I think that's a good split. They have that. They have this. Yeah. So, if you want... I'd leave it on. I can't leave it on. Yeah. I mean, we'd have to add it Friday at teachers. But, no. It's fine. Can you see that in there, Diane? I'm leaving it named number two. That's the one that we just approved. And it doesn't have a graduation date on it. It does have August 25th. And I removed number two at the top. I think I just have that, say, staff return. Yes? The units can't be more 12 months. Easier.
Consent agenda. Any comments? Yes. Thank you for the robust August 24th. It was a long... It was a big one. Do we have something to discuss around item A on executive session?
We do?
A and B, briefly. Yeah? Okay.
I'll move to... We'll go to the consent agenda. We do. I was just asking. Oh, okay. I have more to go on. If we're ready, yeah. If we're ready, yeah. Okay. Move to approve the consent agenda. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. The consent agenda is approved. Ronny, thank you for having your card. I'm going to rock it. You'll probably be done before I'm at home. Don't drop me at home before you drop yourself. Good. Good. All in favor. All in favor. All in favor. All in favor, Jericho. Yeah. All in favor.
I have school committee members with us. Is anyone here for public comment? I'm here for public comment. Okay. There was someone who walked out. Was it Kirstein? I can't see. Kirstein, just keep. Okay, all right. So we'll give you three minutes if you just want to give us one second, but you can come up. We'll let you know when you're done just with the chimes, or Kate will. Okay. And if you can just keep it within the purview of the school committee, keep it respectful, and if you can give us your name and your address for the record. Okay.
Okay, my name is Vicki Lai. My address is 10 Plainview Road, and I'm here today to make a public comment about the music program. I know it's not on the agenda, and you probably have heard a lot of the things that I'm going to say, but I still want to say them. Sure. Okay, so first, I hope the committee will consider the process by which this change was made. This is, I'm referring to the local music reduction. This is a significant reduction to an established part of the elementary music program, yet many families, including families directly affected by the change, were unaware of it until very recently. Before making a change with potentially long-term consequences, shouldn't the community have had a meaningful opportunity to understand the rationale, consider alternatives, and provide input? And to that, I think everyone would really benefit from a Q&A session. I hope that the committee can organize something for, you know, the concerned parents. Second, I hope we look carefully at the tradeoff, not simply at what we gain, but what we lose. The additional classroom time may have value, but so does the instrumental instruction that's being removed. Small group instruction gives students instrument-specific teaching, practice, and feedback that ensemble instruction cannot fully replace. What is the educational benefit we expect to gain, and how are we evaluating what students lose in exchange? Finally, I hope the committee considers the potential long-term impact on participation. The strength of Wayland's music program is not just in the quality of its teachers or the opportunities. It is in the number of students who participate. If we begin reducing instruction at the elementary level, we risk eroding that foundation year after year. We could ultimately lose the very breadth and depth of student participation that has made Wayland's music program so successful and earned it 17 years of national recognition. For those reasons, I ask the school committee to pause and reconsider the reduction and to give the community an opportunity to fully understand the tradeoffs and alternatives before this change becomes the new normal. Thank you for listening. Okay, no more public comment.
Closing public comment.
First, on the superintendent's update, is the MetroWest Adolescent Health Survey data. Yes, this is a report that we very much value that has gone on for a long time as we think about our goal about social and emotional wellness. Yes, this informs a lot of what we do, looking at this data, particularly looking at trends that we see that that's really the value, and how do we think about programming, follow those trends. And so we have Jay and Scott will be our team, they've been to the table before, and for our new members, I think you'll really value the data that we examined for both our middle and high school students. And we'll have plenty of time for questions as well. Thank you. Great. You guys want to come up? Here, there, where are we on? No, part of the area is... Okay, alright. Thanks for having us, everybody. I feel blessed. I feel blessed. I got to end the last meeting with you at the end of the year last year, and now I'm back, and it's, what is this, number three or four? Pretty, pretty. So... Yes. Absolutely. So I think, I know everybody, but Scott Parsegan, I'm the director of health and wellness for the district. Jay Fraguski, I'm the director of youth and family services for the town of Wayland. Alright. We'll jump right in, just to give you a little bit of a background in addition. I know I've spoken to some of you in the past about this particular survey, but we're really grateful that we get to implement this survey every two years here in town. We've been doing this version since 2006, so we definitely have some ample trend data, which is great in sample size. We're also really lucky in the sense that because we work at the Metro West Health Foundation for the structuring, evaluation, and implementation of the survey, we do not have to pay for it, which is wonderful. A lot of other communities that I've done this type of work in, before you have to self-fund the youth versus behavior survey, which is what this is based on. So we're pretty lucky to be able to be here and also compare it to the region. If you want to scroll. Just to give you a little bit of information on the demographics, and then I'll talk a little bit about the categories we're going to cover tonight. We do the survey with both middle school and high school students. The middle school breakdown for this particular survey, which was implemented in November of 2025. 423 of our 665 students completed the survey. 207 of those identify as male. 201 identify as female. And then 15 identify as transgender, non-binary, or gender non-conforming. And then if we move on, we can go to high school. Yes? What percentage of that is that our kids took it? 423 out of 665. I can give that to you. I just wrote down that 230 didn't. Yeah, that's one of my, I was going to say, that both in high school and middle school, it's a little over 200 that haven't taken the survey. Okay. For a variety of reasons, we can't ask why. Correct. But, again, there is an opt-out policy or kids don't come to take it. So, again, that's a lot in there. That's higher than in past. It is a little higher. It's a little bit higher. A little bit higher. Not terribly, but it is higher, yes. And that's about the only, I'd say, really part where we're a little higher. Everything else we're doing much better in this we're going to show you through this. I do want to let you know, just to piggyback on what Jay is saying, that this is our second year where we have a dashboard where we can manipulate and use all the data and look at it. We are welcome to give you access to the data. I know all the administrators here have access to it. But as school committee members, if you would like access to it, I can get you set up for that. Just send me an email that you want to have access to it. And you can go in there and play with the data and manipulate. It's a little confusing and not as easy as I think they hoped it was going to be for districts to use. But Jay and I have used it and sometimes you do really want to go back to the paper. I think we talked about as we were getting ready for this and had our two computers side-by-side just bouncing back on some of the trends from last year and this year. But again, if you would like to use the dashboard, send me an email and I can set you up with your own login password to see it. Also, I just want to say that if you remember we were talking about everything last year we were doing here and trying to get Jess Tepero and Healthy Bladeships out of this. David and I applied for a grant from the Metro West Foundation and we just learned that we got it for $20,000. So that's great news and we've already talked to Jess and how we're going to use that over the next two, three years along with the money that also Jay provides and the nurses. So we have a real two-and-a-half-year program and we have money to really do what we talked about. If you remember talking about how we really want to get down to the younger grades, start this teaching much in fourth and fifth grade. Also a plug, again, we'd love to see health education start even earlier. That will be one of my goals when it comes to budget season. I know it's going to be a tough one, but again. Is that a scheduling issue? Well, I don't. It's all going to be scheduling issues. It's part of it. Just curious. I mean, we just heard from music and everything else. But again, we don't have any kind of health education grades K-3. And one thing that I think Jay and I will see is that you've seen some dip in the data in sixth grade. And we think that's obviously, we think it's because we've started some of these talks at a much earlier age. Yeah. Where are you at three of that now? Or four? Yeah, four. Four. Yeah. So obviously the data is there. The first year we took it was the first year we were starting with it. So this time we saw some dips in some of it and we'll mention it again. But we think it is because we are starting these important conversations much earlier. So again, I will be at the table budget season. Again, if we can find a full-time, you know, Jenny Flynn is our specialist. She's part-time. So again, if we could ever make her full-time and start even younger, I think we'll see even better data next time. So when Jenny first joined us, she was grant funded. Is she still grant funded? She is not grant funded. No, she's in budget. Yeah. She's in the budget. Can I ask another question before you? Sure. So if a third of students were non-responsive for whatever reason, do we, are we able to tell if that's generally spread across all demographics? Or is it possible that one demographic in the data is underrepresented? Unfortunately. There's no way you can tell. Unfortunately, we don't have that, you know. All right. Thanks. Do you identify when you're, I don't remember, when you're taking it? Do you tell them in advance we're taking the MetroHealth tomorrow and whatever? Yeah. Both principals sent out a letter to the families, again, letting them know the survey is coming up. They can opt out, you know, and if they want to see it, it used to be they could come in and see actually what the questions are. Okay. If they can't leave or anything, they had to come in and see at the office. Okay. So we do give the parents full access to it before they want to have questions about whether their child can take the survey. Okay. Thanks. Sorry. All right. So the first item we're going to talk about is substance use. This is one of the main things that originally got us into the materialist data. What we can report, and I'll give everybody the punchline right now, literally every category this year we've made marked improvements on. So we're going to talk a little bit about how we're doing that and to back up what Scott was talking about as far as earlier and earlier implementation of health, education, wellness, as well as prevention education. We're definitely seeing an overarching trend of positive response from that. So we're really excited about that, as well as some things that we can't take credit for, like we're not in the middle of a little bit now. But we'll touch on all of that. So one of the positive things we can talk about is 92% of our WINS high school students or WINS students in general choose not to use combustible tobacco products. So this incorporates any form of smokeable tobacco, so cigarettes, cigarillos, cigars, anything of that nature. We continue to see a decline in this. Oddly enough, this is the only topic of substance use where we saw a slight uptick in some of our high schools. I'm talking like 1%, but we are monitoring that because we are kind of universally, seeing a slight return to people smoking versus vaping and using nicotine pouches because we've been doing a lot of education around that. But still, we have really great numbers, clearly, so we're not horribly concerned. Do you want to continue? 10.8% of the WINS high school students have used nicotine vapor products in their lifetime. Just to give you a frame of reference on this, it's 5.8% reduction from 2023. I'm sorry for the horrible color on the screen. That's rough. It's been on mine. It's better on the laptop. In a 25% reduction from the hydrogen vapor product use, which was in 2018. That was really when we saw a lot when we were doing a lot of focus within the schools around how we were going to address it, how we were going to address bathroom use, how we were going to do a lot of things. Since then, not only have we implemented different policies within the schools, we've also spent a tremendous amount of time working within the wellness programs. I go in and I meet with every freshman wellness class as well as every senior wellness class every year. And one of our big topics is nicotine. So we do a unit on the history of nicotine marketing and also directly on one on vaping. Since we've done that, we've seen a tremendous downward trend in vape use. And we've also seen an incredible increase in perception of risk and harm. So we're really seeing some positive outcomes on that, especially with our younger students. The more and more they've been introduced to that prior to making the decision whether or not to use vape products. In addition to that, 88% of the way in high school students report a moderate to great risk, like we were just talking about, associated with youth's electronic vapor devices. Keep going. And 35.4% of our high school students report it's very easy to obtain electronic vapor devices. This isn't shocking whatsoever, but once again, that has actually decreased 19% since 2023. So we were over 50% two years ago that said it's super easy to get vape devices. We have done a lot of work on policy, and we are in the middle of changing policy here in the community, around both at the school level as well as the community level. So we are actively trying to raise the minimum age to purchase tobacco and nicotine products here in the town of Wayland, as well as ban the sale of nicotine pouches. We've already successfully banned flavors in the community. And typically, the harder it is to access, even as an adult, the less use we see within our youth. So it's working. In addition to that, 4% of our high school students have reported nicotine pouch use in the last 30 days. This is something that we're just starting to monitor for the first time in the 2025 survey. So this would include anything like Zinn pouches on bellows, like all the different synthetic nicotine pouches that you see if you go into a convenience store. Sometimes you may see people. They come in a round container similar to, like, smokeless tobacco. They're incredibly discreet because they have no odor. They're very small. You can just kind of slip them in their cheek and you absorb nicotine through them. We have seen a rise in finding pouches and, like, in bathrooms and stuff like that at the high school. So it's something that we've been monitoring and also addressing within the wellness program. Luckily, we're not seeing a huge use of this. The other challenge that we're seeing is there's a lot of other pouches that have hopped on the trend of nicotine pouches that are marketed that either are caffeine-based or nootropic-based. So not all of them are nicotine pouches. So we're trying to figure out how to best address this as well as continue to educate our students on the challenges and the dangers associated with them. I don't know if this is a great time, but we did include our nicotine update to our tobacco policy, which did have nothing to do with this. The wellness committee at the end of last year met with the principals of the middle school and high school. And Betsy and Erin were part of that as well as Jay and myself. And we talked about what are they seeing out of the kids. And, again, that's what Jay was referring to is that we're starting to see some of the nicotine pouches in toilets around the school and trash and stuff like that. And, again, we looked at other schools and what they were putting out. So we rewrote our policy to include all kinds of nicotine, not just tobacco and smokeless. So, again, really targeting some of this stuff that, unfortunately, you see. Even when I'm watching a football game, I saw Vrabel putting in on the other night during the Pats game. So these kids are seeing adults that they're looking up to doing it, not just on TV, but uncles and cousins and stuff like that. And, again, it looks like a mint can. If you haven't seen it, it looks like candy or something like that. So it's really hard to detect. But we know that this is something that we are taking on right now in the way on public schools to make sure that that number does not increase. Absolutely. The other two things that we'll briefly touch on is marijuana use as well as alcohol consumption. So 16% of women in high school students report lifetime marijuana use. This is down 1% from 2023. Luckily, we're actually one of the lowest use rates in the region. We continue to see a decline in general. We do also do a lot of education within the wellness programs around cannabis and the legalization process and also the dangers associated. So potentially that has an impact on the numbers that we're seeing. 9.9% of women in high school students report lifetime marijuana use. This is of all of our high school students, which is also down 6% reported in 2023. Jay, how is that? Wait, those are the same thing. Oh, wait a minute. Sorry. This is wrong. Something is off yet. One of these is, I'm sorry, the second slide is actually current use. I did not update the lifetime to current use. Oh, so currently. So the last 30 days. I got it. Okay. So the past 30 days. Okay. So it's also down 6% for last 30 days. Down 6% is correct for the 30 days. It's just. And the 9.9 is too. It's just, yeah. Okay. Cool. Like the 30 day incidents. Is that just, is this any use or are they asking like how often in the last 30 days, and this is the combination of students who have reported in, you know, like are we capturing if we have students who are using three days a week versus one day in the past month? So the 30 days does incorporate frequency. Um, and when it's explained within the survey, when it's being implemented, um, there is the talk about that as far as like current use is defined as within the last 30 days, more than once with some level of frequency. Okay. Um, and then once again, if you dive deeper into the data, you can actually break it down and there's different categories for like one to three times, like three to six, like up to like 10 plus. Okay. So, um, you can go in and really drill down on the exact data you're looking for. Again, the survey is about 160 questions. Yeah. So it goes pretty deep. And again, I guess one thing they want us to always talk about is how the survey. So again, um, the questions get asked throughout the survey. Um, so again, if a kid is lying, uh, the, the questions asked later again, and it kind of red flags it. And then that survey, that question is taken out. Um, so it doesn't go into the numbers and affect everything. So they have, they developed a pretty intense system on how to do it, how to, how to track and, uh, confirm that the data, and I believe it's what 3% swing either way is what they're talking about. They, they think whenever we talk to the kids directly and I, and I reference this when I'm in the wellness program, I will bring that up. I'm like, remember that survey that you took where you had to answer the same question over and over again. And like, they all remember it at that point in time. So, and I just want to say at the high school, our kids are really taking a lot of surveys. We're also a part of the Metro, uh, I'm sorry, the, um, MGH, um, survey too. So they're taking these, uh, at the same, you know, within a couple months of each other, uh, around a lot of the same questions asked maybe a little different, but trying to get the same actually. So, we have a lot of data. Let me tell you that. All right. We have a lot to look at. Lots and lots. This breaks down just a little bit of our lifetime data by grade. Um, when you go through the survey data, you can, you can break things down by grade, by gender. Um, and then also every category typically has some more specific breakdown questions, which you'll see when we move into other categories that we touch on all of them. Um, but basically what we're seeing here is 6% of our ninth graders report lifetime, uh, marijuana use, which is up 1% since 2023. Um, but then in 10th grade, we're only seeing 2%. So it's down 6%. 11th grade, this is normally where we see that jump. Um, the one thing that I would bring up every year when I talk about this is, and this is the same reason why we actually do our SBIRT screenings, um, at specific ages as well, is in between 10th and 11th grade, typically what's happening is people turn 16. And they have independence and vehicles and older friends. Um, which is really challenging and scary because that means they're actually going out and because they have that independence, making some potentially risky and challenging behaviors and choices. Um, that being said, we're typically seeing, as I mentioned, a pretty positive, um, decline in the choice of use. Um, we've also spent a lot of time talking about the dangers of driving a while high. Um, so more and more of our students are reporting a higher perception of risk or harm associated with driving under the influence of cannabis where a couple of years back that was not so much the case. So can I just ask you a question? Um, this is when you're looking at 9th grade, it's 6% of 9th graders now. And that's up 1% from the 9th graders in 2023. Correct. So those ones would be our 11th graders now. 11th graders now. Correct. Which also went up 2%. So you, like, you could definitely track a class if you try hard enough. Well, and that's what I was, I think we had maybe talked about this was like, with the new dashboard, can you kind of track a class to see how? It doesn't let you go in and be like, the student, like, the group, the same group of people that went here is here now. Like, you kind of have to do that work on your own. Got it. But you can definitely, the data is there if you want to do the work. I probably won't, but I'm just, I was curious if, like, I wanted to clarify that. Yeah. Yeah. No, that is confusing. Unfortunately, there's not a filter to be like, show me the 9th grade class from 2018 or something like that. So. But to be fair, this 9th grade number here, these are current 10th graders. They would be current 11th graders because we do those every two years. But this was fall, this was administered in 25? So it was in 23 and 25. We don't get the data back until the spring of 26. It normally takes about six months to get the data back. Okay. That's not incident, unfortunately. Okay. We thought with going digital we'd get it much quicker, but we can actually. That's not helpful. Any of you'd like? As far as alcohol is concerned, 61% of when high school students have chosen not to use alcohol in their lifetime, which is down 6% from 2023. I can honestly say this is one of the first times that we are, that you'll see momentarily, where we're this high into the majority of our students who are choosing not to use alcohol. When I first started doing this work back in 2006 now. The key focus on a lot of the grant funds that came out of this was around alcohol consumption, and especially around binge drinking. What we were seeing at that point in time is that by the time most high school students graduated, about 94% of them had tried alcohol, and about 72% were consuming on a very regular basis. So we're definitely seeing a much healthier approach to alcohol by our students at this point in time. Can we continue, please? I always tell a story that when I was the assistant principal and we were at a dance, I had a kid throw up on my shoes. It was from the binge drinking and stuff like that, and we do not see that as much anymore. This breaks that down. As you can see, now our seniors are reporting at 49%, which is the highest, which makes sense. Typically as we see our students age up, we start to see them make more decisions around experimenting with substance. With a pretty steady decline, the current ninth grade class continues to be slightly higher. But that being said, nothing alarming and we're still under the general rates of the region. In the metro west. In the metro west, yeah. But as I mentioned, this is the first time that all four grades have been under 50%, unlike the majority of us choosing not to use alcohol. I do want to say when we talk about these numbers, well, it's a survey and kids can lie and everything like that. I do want to talk about John Berry, who's also a wellness teacher. He also runs our SAD program at William High School where he gets to really talk to these students face-to-face and they feel like they can be honest with him. And he's reporting these same trends from the kids verbally right to their mouth who are there on the weekends with kids at all the parties. So I do believe that a lot of good stuff is happening. Absolutely. The next big section we're going to talk about is relationships and dating violence. A lot of the information here, I just want to reinforce what Scott was saying. We can accredit a lot of the work that Just Tepro has been doing as well as the MVP program and the RAD program. As a community, we spend a lot of our focus and efforts to make sure that this topic is covered and that our students have effective resources. But the data can back that up. So typically everything you're going to see on the left is our female students. Everything on the right is our male students to break it down by gender in this particular category. So 8% of our female students report being either controlled and or not being allowed to see friends by a romantic partner. So we consider this to be coercive control. And then 7% of our male identified students are reporting the same. The other categories that we talked on on this one is 9% of our female students report the feeling of being controlled by a romantic partner in regards to phone communication, social media tracking, and or location tracking. And then 5% of our male students are reporting the same. This is one that we spend a lot of time looking at. Just when we talk about control, there's so many more tools and resources now of how you can control somebody and how you can observe or really kind of surveil somebody at this point in time. So it's something we really focus and take a look at. And this is one of the numbers that actually went up. We saw these ones go up slightly. There was some numbers in this category that actually went up. Absolutely. But that also could be a sign that it's less taboo from the work that you're doing around prevention so people are more comfortable self-disclosing. Or there's more technology in which that you can... It's a little bit of all of it. So yeah, I mean it's definitely one of the things. As we talk about things, we definitely find the comfort, which we're really happy about. One of the giant reasons why I do the work that I do in prevention is to normalize conversations and to destigmatize pretty much any topic. What I say about all the work that I do regardless of topic is I'm not here to put myself out of a job as much as I tried to. But I'm really trying to get students and parents to both pause. So basically when there is an issue or they're realizing that they're confronting something that makes them feel uncomfortable, that they pause and they ask that question and have that conversation. Really we're trying to get parents and our young people especially to realize that no topic is off limits. And to hopefully talk to parents about the fact that you want your kids talking to you. Like if your kids are sharing things with you, even if it feels weird and uncomfortable and you don't like it, at least they're talking to you about it and at least you know it. So that at that point in time you can address it and then hopefully you can set the boundaries and limits that you hope for your young people. And our students are talking to us about these relationships. We've pulled Jess in to talk with many different students that are in relationships about how they're going and the perception of what their friends or administrators or coaches or whatever might be seeing. So we've had some great conversations with kids one-on-one and families about the relationships. And in one case there was a family that was really worried about it and was really happy that we were able to see that at the school. Bring in Jess again with the funds and everything and really sit down and create plans with the family. So again, those conversations are happening at the high school, which is a positive thing. Absolutely. The other couple of categories that are within this is 10% of our female students and 6% of our male students identified that they had been sworn actors that yelled at or insulted by a romantic partner. You can continue along. And then 1% of our female students and 2% of our male students reported that they have been threatened with physical harm by a romantic partner. And then 2% of our female students and 3% of our male students have reported actually being physically struck or harmed by a romantic partner. So these are things that we are definitely aware of the fact that they are taking place or not unique in this community to it. But we are grateful that we can track the data and also provide services and resources for our community members, especially our young people. In addition to that, 2% of our female students and 1% of our male students report being forced to engage in sexual intercourse by a romantic partner. And then if you continue along, that number jumps to 6% and 2% for being forced to engage in sexual act other than intercourse with a romantic partner. These are big topics. They're heavy. But that being said, we're grateful to have the data and be able to continue to make sure that we have resources in place. And we're grateful for all of Scott's work and just Tepra's work as well. And especially the focus around healthy relationships and bringing resources to the table. Do you see this concentrated in any particular grade level? I mean, 6 looks small, but when you look at the respondent size, we're in double digits. Oh, absolutely. Like, that's very concerning to me. It does rotate. Like, with that data, it is definitely very, very concerning. And I do very much break that down to actual numbers with humans with actual faces and names. And it's one of those things where we typically, it's really hard to find a trend there where, like, we're not like, we see this happen a lot in the 11th grade or something. It's one of those things where it definitely bounces around. We tie it in a little bit. We, after we finish this category, we'll be moving into general mental health, which was a huge area. I mean, it continues to be a huge area of concern, but was really alarming in our last survey, which we can once again spoil the weight and let you know that it's improving greatly. We do link it up a little bit with that, where we see students with a heightened level of either stress, anxiety, self-injury, things of that nature. But similarly, we see that really, it's really more of a case-by-case situation. I just want to add that today we did have a joint meeting with Lincoln-Sedbury. They had about 20 students. We had about 15, so 35 students getting ready to take on domestic violence awareness month coming up. And again, how we can join the two schools together and do some education, as well as we do it around one of our football games when we play Lincoln-Sedbury. And we raise money for the Lauren Dunassley Foundation, and Malcolm's part of it. And so it's the two communities coming together to really make a statement. We all wear purple and get the word out. So again, we're continuing doing this, and it's one of our big pushes here. In addition to that, with the work of the Messed Grounds Roundtable and the White Ribbon Group, which is a subcommittee of that, we're working currently right now to organize all of the lighting up of buildings purple. So if you remember, in October, you see a lot of buildings that are lit up. That's all done through that. We have more buildings this year than ever. So we'll raise a lot of awareness, hopefully. And there will also be the vigil that will be taking place in October. I believe it's the 7th or the 19th. I can tell you in a second. I actually don't have it in front of me right now, unfortunately. I'm sorry. But you can look it up. There will be the visual for life's loss in the last year. Moving on to mental health. We can, as I mentioned, this was a very large area of concern in the 2023 data. We saw much increased numbers coming out of 21. A lot of that was, we attest partially to still coming out of lockdown. And at that point in time, the reacclimation into our day-to-day lives in society. Also, just the increase, to your point earlier, of the more and more we talk about mental health services and destigmatize and normalize, we have more and more people identifying challenges with mental health that may previously have gone unnoticed or just been told to, like, get over it. And we're really happy that people are identifying and talking and seeking help where needed. But we're also thrilled to see a positive change in the numbers reported. So, as far as feeling depressed, this gets broken down into multiple different categories. We're only going to cover a couple of them, but I believe there's seven within the data that you can dig through. This one, in particular, is the feeling of being tired or having little energy associated with depression. We always typically see our female students report mental health challenges at a slightly higher level than our male students. This has been the norm for about four cycles, pretty much, since we've been really tracking mental health. But once again, we see that at 37 and 22. That's significantly down. Those are both up around 55 and about 42, I believe, in 2023. You can continue. The feeling of depression as far as trouble concentrating in school, which is one that we focus on a lot. Our female students are reporting this at 25% and our male students are reporting it at 14% currently. You can continue on. You can continue on. And then we move into anxiety. So, basically, the way anxiety is also reported is in multiple categories. The most broad one is this, being the feeling of not being able to control worry. So, our female students are reporting this at 39% and our male students at 14%. You can continue to scroll. Stress is the most broad category of all of these. We definitely see this at a very high level regularly, especially with our students that are typically in the college application process. We really see these numbers jump in 11th and 12th grade, which really drives these numbers up. But believe it or not, 78% of our female students are reporting the feeling of general stress around school issues is down from 2023, as well as 54% of our male students. So, we are seeing marked improvements in both of these categories. And then, also, the other one that we really look at is feeling stressed about social issues. So, this starts to injure things like the feeling of acceptance, the feeling of having a healthy social circle, being invited to things, being like they're fitting in, all of that. So, we're seeing our female students report this at 34% and our male students at 19%. And then, also, but on a very positive note, the last one about stress that we're going to talk about is the feeling of being safe within the community. Luckily, we have what is perceived as a very safe community, where most students do not feel for their physical safety or well-being. 3% of our female students and 1% of our male students report feeling stressed about safety issues. The next topic, just to give everybody a little warning before we jump into it, is around self-injury and suicidal ideation. This is something that we had a lot of concern about, once again, and we continue to, but was fairly alarming in the 2023 numbers. Once again, I'm happy to report a positive shift in this, albeit small. 15% of our female students have reported self-injuring in the last 12 months, and 6% of our male students are reporting the same. Our students as well, 10% of our female students have seriously considered suicide in the last 12 months, and 4% of our male students have considered the same. Do we ask, I shouldn't say we, but does this ask any questions about self-medicating? There is conversation around self-medicating, so within our prescription drug tracking within substance, it talks about both taking either more than is prescribed to you, or more frequently, as well as taking prescription drugs that are not prescribed to you. So we can go back and pull that data as well. As far as suicidal attempts, 1% of both our female and our male students have reported attempting suicide in the last 12 months. On a positive, what I can report is that we have witness to mark improvement in all mental health reporting from 2021 to 2025. So that definitely included, like 2021 was really our height when we missed, we were due to have the survey implemented in 2020. Clearly we took that off because we were in the middle of something else. It was implemented in 2021, and then again in 23, so that's how we got on the odd year cycle. But what we're happy to report is that we continue to see improvements around all of this. We're definitely, even in just witnessing students in the day-to-day in the schools when I'm in there working with them, I can definitely say that it feels more and more normal every day, which is a word that I struggle with, but it's one of those things where we see more comfort with, personally I do with the students, as far as just the day-to-day of being inside, being participatory in classes, interacting, socializing, all of it. So it's starting to feel a little bit more like it did pre-2020. Jay, I recall the survey does ask questions about, like, I feel like I have access to a trusted adult, or I feel like, oh, we're getting there. Okay. Right now, right here. Perfect time. Thank you for that wonderful transition. Not done, Betsy. We didn't practice. It's almost a good thing. Protective factors. So that is exactly what we're talking about here. One of the things we really do look at is why our students believe what they do. So this goes back to all of the topics we've already covered as far as, like, how they get information about substance expectations, do they have parents to talk to, do they know where to get resources from in the community. 93% of our students are reporting that they have a trusted adult outside of school to talk to. This is huge. We typically like to see this number as high as possible. It's always kind of hovered right around the 90% mark, so we're really happy to see it above 90% at this point in time. This could be a parent. This could be, it's also listed when they check the box on this one. This could be, like, a parent, a family friend, like, a coach that isn't, like, for, like, a private sports team or a league team or something like that. Like, somebody that they feel comfortable going to, talking to, and is a trusted resource. 76% of our students also report that they have a trusted adult at school to talk to, which is great. We saw this number dip in the last couple of surveys, and we're starting to see that increase again, which is wonderful. We feel like it's really important that students know that they have somebody that they can turn to while they're at school. One of the things that we also saw as a barrier to requesting services previously is that students didn't trust that we weren't going to talk about what they were coming to us with other adults without their consent. We worked really hard to make sure that they know that, especially in my department, that we are all legal clinicians, and we have ethics that we hold up to, and we are not going to go talk to people. We are mandated reporters, so we talk about that and how that works, as well as the vast majority of our other counselors here in the school, whether they're school-based counselors, guidance counselors, but that we are all officially here to help everybody that offers women's schools. In addition to that, 17% of our female students and 7% of our male students have reported that they are actively talking with a school counselor, therapist, or psychologist. Once again, this is an increase to what we've seen historically. Students are becoming more and more comfortable seeking out services, knowing where to find us, how to find us, and we've seen a lot more students actually come forward to talk about what's going on with their friends. Similar to what Scott was talking about with the situation where I just was able to come and step in, we're seeing more and more students realizing that we need to speak up for each other, and when we're concerned about each other that it's appropriate to, which is great as far as people finding the resources they need. All right. There's a lot more in that as well, but we wanted to make sure that we covered a couple topics for you guys and didn't go too deep into any of them, but if anybody has any questions, I'm happy to dive in. I know it was brought to our attention that you all might be interested in technology use, so I made sure that we got some data in here for that. 56% of all of our high school students report that they're spending more than three hours a day on a smartphone or a smartphone-like device for non-school use. I don't know what letter that is. I don't know what letter that is. Oh, that's just a squirrel. That's fine. I was like, what typo did I make? Great. Within those three hours, we're also seeing this is potentially in addition to those three hours, not just on their phone, but that 37% of our students are also reporting that they spend three or more hours a day on social media platforms. We are concerned about both of these numbers, clearly. That being said, one thing that I would ask everybody to do before they sound the alarm bell on this one is think about your own personal usage of technology. I'm not judging anybody. We're all doing it, but we all have technology in front of us right now. We use it constantly. When I do work around internet and technology safety, I normally start third, fourth, and fifth graders and their families. We host nights at every one of our elementary schools here to have this conversation. Sometimes we've been in the middle school as well. And we all mentioned one of the big kind of takeaways that I talk to parents about when they're like, when should I get my kid a phone? I talked about the fact that you can actually still get phones that are not smartphones. And if you're concerned truly with your child just having the opportunity to call you or be reachable or text, there are phones that can do that without full access to the internet. I know people are concerned with how that looks, but at the same time, it's one of those things that's a safe practice. In addition to that, I always reminded parents especially to be good role models. In the sense that every child that I talk to about technology, if I ask them, like, who taught you how to use a phone? Everybody's like, nobody taught me. I just inherently know how to open this thing up and do things. I've watched adults since I've been born. So consider that with this as well. And when you start to think about healthy and unhealthy technology use, you can go ahead and scroll along. Are these up from last year? They are. This is one category that definitely we see a steady increase. Just checking. While we have public school, students report that they have received a smartphone prior to sixth grade. So that 23% of our students are reporting that they have a smartphone prior to sixth grade. Once again, when I work with elementary school students around this, a lot of what we see in this one is most, most families that either have a single child and or the eldest child does not get a phone before sixth grade. But then subsequent children typically end up with a phone when their sibling gets home. So we're starting to see that number creep down more and more. The age creep down. Yeah. And it's just because it's also become so normalized that we will all eventually need a phone. Like previous, like five, six, seven years ago, we were really trying to encourage parents to wait into eighth grade at the bare minimum. There was a whole national campaign called wait to eight before we gave people phones. We are not seeing that anymore as much as we try. And I always think I definitely have a kind of cheesy analogy for this where I'm like, once you take the toothpaste out of the tube, you can't go back in. So like, especially if you're going to give your kid a phone, we recommend always that it is locked down and that like basically they only have access to certain things to start and then slowly give them more and more access as they get it. I very much hope when we, bless you, have this conversation two years from now, maybe, because we've instituted yonder pouches at the middle school, that maybe that's a little barrier to that. Because if you can't have it at school, maybe you don't get it. That's just fine. Planting a seed for two years from now, maybe. Absolutely. And like, and it's one of those things like, the more and more, the more and more we talk about it, the more and more we normalize it, and like, we realize what standards we're setting for our young people. The more tools and resources like the water pouch and everything like that, like, the more you are at that point in time implementing like healthy structure and best practices around it. Um, that being said, like, like anything that we talk about typically that could potentially lead to risky behaviors, the safest choice is always not to do it. Um, but the second to that is open communication and all the information. So. I have not broken down all four of my girls will not get them until sixth grade. Amazing. Maybe until sixth grade. I remember what the last one was, but it was 52% of something. Um, uh, report, just so 52% of our students are reporting that digital media use makes concentrating the school more difficult. Um, a lot of our students, when we talk about this, they are concerned with what's coming in on their phone or even if they don't have access to it, like what they're missing. Um, so we talked about like the concept of JOMO versus FOMO on this one, like the joy of missing out and being present in the moment. Um, we can continue along. We're almost done. I promise. I like being a present person. So I really work on that one. Um, 70% of our students are also reporting that digital media use negatively impacts their ability to sleep. And I know we've done a lot of work on making sure that our students are getting healthy sleep in this community. Um, so that number was pretty alarming to me when I saw it. Not surprising at all. Um, I don't know how many of you have good technology and bed hygiene habits and leave your phone someplace away from your bed. But I know when I leave my phone in another room, I tend to sleep better myself. So. And then 11% of our students also report that they have used online gambling platforms in the last year. Um, this is the first year that we have started to track this at a regional level. Um, the more and more we start to see the normalization of online gambling platforms. Um, the more and more we're concerned about this, um, being whether it's sports betting and now to the point where there's different apps where you can literally bet on anything. Um, we're seeing more and more concern around this, um, especially with our male identified students. Um, so this is something that we'll definitely be keeping an eye on and potentially increasing the amount of resources that we focus on this. We can continue along and that is it. So if you have any questions, I'm happy to take them and I'm sure it's better as well. Jay, do you have a sense whether they're going to add questions in the next cycle around AI and use of like chatbots for either like mental health support or, you know, dare I say, kind of the like relationship piece that sometimes they develop? I don't know, like it hasn't directly been discussed right now. Um, the main challenge of questions is that, um, on this particular survey is to maintain the trend data. There's so many of these that need to be asked every year and we always try to keep it under, I think it's up to like 172 questions max now. Um, so typically every community only gets like a max, like seven to 14 questions that you can add or like alter based off of, in addition to like the core questions. Um, I know I've heard some talk about the fact that AI based question, like one or two might be added as part of the norm, like for everybody, which I'm hopeful for. Um, because we've definitely, I mean, I won't get into my own personal views, but they're not positive around AI personally. Um, I think I was just curious with like the mental health, the mental health specific piece, because, you know, what is reported and you've probably heard similar with like, you know, slightly older adolescents, right? Is there's, depending on the data source, right? I think there's anywhere from like 40 to 60% who are turning to it for mental health support. So, um, I was just curious if, if we thought they might start looking at it too. I'm really, I'm hopeful. We haven't had a meeting yet. We haven't had a meeting yet this year with the Metro West Foundation, but we could definitely bring that up. I was literally there. There was a new question this year, uh, under health for used AI for help with emotional challenges or problems. Oh, is there a number? Yeah. Thank you for reading that. I went through the data. I love it. There you go. Okay. I just love reading that. I spent a lot of time in my life. Yeah. And 17.6% this year said they used AI, which is just, and they were using more apps for help. Yes. Which is, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So that's great. The more that you, I mean, as a team of mental health professionals, like, it's great that we have more resources and it's also highly concerning to that. Like we do therapy. I was like, speed dating now almost too, where like there's literally services out there where you're like, I don't like this therapist, like, and like, I want a different one. So. Well, and we saw some of those numbers drop where, okay, you're going to the school nurse less and you're going to, like, you know, someone outside of school less, but you're using telehealth. Yes. More. You're talking about quality versus the speed dating approach. Yeah. On the plus side, I can also, I mean, like, coming out of COVID, the amount of clients that we see via telehealth still is ample. Like it's a wonderful resource to be able to offer people the opportunity to still engage in telehealth if it fits your schedule better. And it's one of those things where like we're both available in person and online. Um, so it definitely has its benefits, but it's also great when it's a real human on the other end. So. I'm just, this is just natural curiosity, but with, with so many positive norms here, how like do the students or are there any social norming campaigns? Like, do we bring this at all into some of the curriculum so they're able to apply it and then reinforce the messaging among their peers? So as far as social norms campaigns, um, typically, um, out of youth and family service, we try to run at least one kind of widespread campaign a year. Um, this year we were planning on focusing on healthy relationships, um, specifically. Um, we typically rotate through both healthy relationships, substance-based, um, messaging, um, and mental health in general. Um, we have a bunch of like, kind of like micro campaigns that we do as far as information that we get out for social media platforms and newsletters, and then larger ones where we're going in and directly working with the students. We also offer three programs every summer. Um, we run multiple sessions of what we call the Empower Camp, um, which is a free camp, um, that students apply to participate in, which actually is a deep dive into understanding social norms and how we use data, um, to make change on a community level, and also the power of the youth voice, um, in the sense that I say that you all get to hear from me a lot. Um, so no matter how much you value what I have to say, it gets old after a while. I've been talking about the same thing for 20 years. So, um, but when youth get all their information together and come and speak about things they're passionate about, we all tend to stop and listen a little bit harder. Um, so that camp is really built kind of around that and the fact that they can make change. And then we also introduced the StoryCorps program, um, which is the same thing through the art of storytelling. Um, because one of the biggest things that we talk about when we work with young people is that you need all the data, you need the information to back up what you're talking about, but if you can't make people care about it, nobody's going to pay attention. Um, so we really talk about how you get people to care about the things that they're passionate about as well. Um, one thing that relates to, I think in some respects could potentially tie this together. I've just seen more reporting, um, in sort of health publications and in mainstream media about, um, the sort of increasing incidence of exposure to either sexually or violent explicit digital assets. Um, and I'm just curious if this starts to ask any of that, because we talk, we've so much focus on social media, but I know colleges are starting to see some concerning behavior in, you know, later adolescence, and some hypotheses or exposure to more explicit content younger. Um, there are a couple of questions within the survey around technology use as well as, um, I'd have to go through with a fine tooth comb and think about violent content, but I know there is a couple of questions I'd leave around second being like explicit content. Um, so that is covered within there. Um, I know, I believe it's talked about in the wellness department as well. Yeah, we just did a lesson, uh, the other day about deep fakes in AI and how that's impacting relationships and everything like that. So again, we're talking about it as well. Yeah. Yeah, what's the headline for you? What's the headline for me? Yeah, from all of this. From all of this? 50 odd slides. If you were to write a New York Times article, what would you write? I mean, it would be something along the lines of, like, positive trends and healthy decisions.
Don't stop talking about it. Like, like, with the concept also of, like, I'm not eloquently stating that right now, but basically it would be that, um, every time that we've gotten comfortable with, with seeing a positive trajectory and then we kind of shift our focus to the new area of concern, we always see that one bubble back. Um, so like, when I kind of jokingly said I'm constantly trying to put myself out of a job and never will, like, people always make risky decisions, um, and we'll need to continue to educate around it. Um, so it's kind of like, keep the level of, of effort that we're putting at the same or greater, and hopefully we'll continue to see positive returns based on that. Yeah. As, as new things bubble up. Mm-hmm. So you're never getting out of a job. Yeah. Yeah. A couple more years. Another fun tech data point that have just tickled me was in 2023, 51.2% of high schoolers said they checked their smartphone a few times an hour or more during the school day, and last year it was 14.3. Yep. So kudos, high school team, for implementing changes. Absolutely. Um, because that is, yeah. Thank you, high school, that's incredible. Um, I was just thrilled that so many numbers came down, right? Right. Students are feeling more included, they're feeling more connected, they're feeling more connected to their peers, they're feeling less anxious. There's a lot of very significant change since 2023, which is fantastic. Now that things are starting to settle, do you have one thing that you're more concerned about or that's starting to bubble that you think this needs more attention now that everything is settling down? Or that we need to pay more attention to? Yeah, no, I mean, mental health is up there right now. Mental health, I think that's one of our concerns, our biggest concerns. Those numbers are still. Still there. They're coming down so much, but they're still so high. They're still hard to see, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think trying to get to the whys behind the responses is key, too. Like, that's why I was asking about, um, like, prescription drug use and self-medicating. Self-medicating. Because is your alcohol use driven by your increased stress between 10th and 11th grade, so you're using alcohol more or whatever it is. Yeah. Um, you know, I just think that that's, that will help drive improvement further. Yeah. What are some of the themes that you're hearing from students that are troubling to them that in the music community, or is it just personal? Oh. Technology use is definitely a big one linked to mental health and, like, relationships in general. Um, I think that is kind of the newest version of challenge that we're looking at. Um, I always look at substance use, like, as kind of an indicator to, like, similarity to what you brought up there. It was just the fact that, like, we see students using substances for a number of different reasons. Mm-hmm. And, like, historically, like, when I first started doing this work, it was very much to be, like, socially accepted. And, like, it was the norm, and it was, like, that level of, like, popularity and social acceptance was, like, we go to parties. Like, we, like, I reach social pinnacle if I'm invited, and I'm, like, there. Um, when I talk to students about this now, and when I'm, like, in the wellness classes, and, like, they see me frequently enough that they also know that I have a very harm reduction-based approach, and that I'm not judging them for anything, so they talk pretty openly to me. Um, a lot of students are like, we don't have big parties. Like, I mean, they still exist, like, for sure, but, like, it seems like a lot more of what we're seeing is kind of, like, smaller gatherings that are happening. They're, like, 20 to 25 people. Yeah, and that would be, like, large. I mean, like, sometimes I think a lot of people are, like, Yeah, like, six of my friends hung out in the basement and, like, decided to have a drink together or something, but, like, so, like, part of what we're seeing, like, as far as not, like, parties not getting broken up is, like, we don't know that they're happening. Um. I can tell you where they are. You'd like to know. We hear about it. We hear about it. We hear about it. We hear about it. Now I know you do. Um. But still focusing on the work because it's still, it's like, it's not that it's not happening, it's that it's happening differently. It's a different kind of happening. Yeah. Um, your question sparked another question related specific to substance use. So, when you're, when we're doing the SBIRT, um, are you tracking, like, like, this survey asks binge drinking, right? Yep. Right? Like, so is that something, like, that you're tracking, you know, if we conducted, you know, a hundred interviews today, three met criteria for binge drinking. So, like, are those numbers that we're getting from that program relatively consistent to this large data set too? To this data? I would say that it is. Um. And the more, like, I haven't been one of the SBIRT interviewers for a couple years now since, um. Since, yeah, since they came in. Um, but when I was, it was one of those things where, like, the same way, like, where, like, it's a pretty brief interaction that you have with the individual at that point in time, but there's just enough to kind of break it down where they start to feel comfortable. And, like, the amount of times that I've seen a student be like, nothing. And then two minutes later, like, maybe something. Um, so. Okay. It typically adds up to the data that we're seeing. Okay. If we have other areas where we wanted you to just kind of dig in and give us some overall, or would you prefer us to just say, can you give us, like, a login? You can ask for information, and we're happy to give you a login as well. Okay. You can have both. So, that was kind of for everybody around the table and myself, but. There are also, like, if you, I mean, login, deep dive, have at it. Um, we're also going to be publishing the key indicating binders, like, which kind of, like, give you the highlights. Yeah. Um, because they did make a PDF version of that. So, that'll be on the Wayland-Newton Family website. It'll also typically be on the school website since that survey has been. So. I just sent it out today to ask them to put it out. Great. Wonderful. Yeah. On the high school site. On the high school data, we'll be on the high school site. On the high school data, we'll be on the middle school site. Okay. Cool. Okay. We'll also start to plan public sharing of this as well. So, like, historically, we've always done a night that we would invite the general public to come hear about this. Um, we've also been in to talk to staff for faculty meetings. We've worked with the students in the wellness departments. And we typically try to partner with the staff students to identify things that they view as areas of importance or concern that they want to share. Um, to incorporate in newsletters and then have information go out to families. How much do you do in wellness around the results and talking through them? Yeah. A lot? Yeah. We pick little bits. It depends on where we're at, and we take a piece of it, but yes. Okay. And again, it's from 2006, so we have a ton of that. We're part of the first. Yeah. That joined this coalition. This is great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry. Thanks a lot. See you soon. Do you want to send us just like a little blurb on the grant funding? Sure. Just so we have it. Absolutely. Yeah. Congrats again on that. Thank you. Thank you. We're excited about it. That's great. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Good night. Thank you. Up next, we have summer work programming update. Come on. On the way. Oh, is it Betsy? Okay. Oh. Move slightly. We're going to stay. We're going to stay. Try not to scrub the lives in the back. Ready to kick it up? Yeah. So, summer, many people are off, and yet there's a lot still going on in the schools. So, we wanted to give you a brief overview of some of the things that happened this past summer. Tonight we'll talk a little about, Ronnie will talk a little about the extended school year. I'll connect that to Pegasus and the STEAM Explorers and the way those two programs interact with one another. We'll talk a little bit about the METCO transitions program, and then there's quite a bit of adult learning that happens in the summer, from retreats to course work to training and some summer work. We'll share some themes. So, just an overview for most of you, for ESY stands for extended school year services, and their ESY services are for students. Students on IEPs can be eligible. Not all students on IEPs are eligible, but only students on IEPs can be eligible. So, at all initial IEP meetings, review, annual reviews, or re-evaluations, team members have to consider ESY services, and decisions regarding students' eligibility for ESY has to be based on data. So, that's based on evidence of substantial regression. So, we take data before and after school vacations, or, you know, we take June data and September data, and that tells us a lot about regression, and how likely it is. It's also about how long it takes students to recoup those skills. So, there may have been less regression, but even if there's a little regression, it may take a long time to recoup those skills, so that's a factor. And then memory and rate of learning are also factors that we think about. So, all students regress over the summer. That's just, everybody, my kids are, everybody, everybody knows. But, it's the amount of regression, and it must be determined whether a child's regression would likely be substantial and whether the child would require a greater than usual time to recoup those skills. So, everybody, you know, you finish second grade and you start third grade, third grade teachers don't, you know, they review. You know, everybody has to recoup skills, but it's really about that amount of regression and the, like I said, the speed of recoupment. So, these are the programs that we had this year. We had tutoring and related services. We had our language-based classroom, our learning academy program, milestones, our preschool program, and then we had a high school program. So, this year we had tutoring taking place at Clay Pit for our elementary students, the middle school, the high school, and then we also had tutoring in Boston. And those are 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or 60-minute sessions. And it happened Monday through Thursday, typically between 9 and 1. And then most of our programs, our language-based program, and our learning academy and our preschool program are three days a week for three hours. And then our milestones program is our, which is the milestones program at Clay Pit. That classroom is a Monday through Friday, and that goes an extra week as well, and it goes a longer day. And then our high school program, they do a lot of off-site things. They have internships. They actually intern at Pegasus, and that's Monday through Thursday for our program. So, this is just some of the numbers. We had 22 students in therapies and tutoring. We had 13 preschool students, 6 milestone, 8 LBC, 24 learning academy. And our learning academy program is for students who need academic, social, emotional, behavioral supports, our life skills program. And then what's great is since last year, maybe the year before, we are always housed now with Pegasus. So, students who go to Pegasus can also attend ESY. So, it's like one of the questions that you respond is your child's going to go to Pegasus. So, you know, ESY goes 8.30 to 11.30, so a lot of kids then go to Pegasus. If they're students who have therapies or tutoring, I coordinate and pick them up from their Pegasus program and bring them. Make sure Wednesdays are field trips, so we make sure tutoring doesn't happen on Wednesdays. We make sure it happens before lunch. And so, I work pretty closely with Nye and her team to help that be more seamless. But it works out really well, so you don't have to choose. Have you seen an increase in ESY enrollment now that that integration is so much better? Yeah. Yeah. It has. Especially with the tutoring. Yeah. Because, like, I work with someone, I can't get, you know, it's 8.30 to 11.30 is hard. So, having that ability. And, you know, you can stay at Pegasus until like 3 o'clock, I think. Or I don't know if they go swimming in the afternoon. And then they have their Wednesday field trips, so we, you know, don't schedule tutoring on those days. This year, we had five students who, there's a METCO program in Boston that runs for four weeks, 9 to 3. I offer that to students who have ESY on their IEPs because it's in Boston, so it's a lot closer. Because it's a, you know, much love to come out to Wayland, so we give our Boston residents' families a couple of different options for the summer. For elementary, we have the METCO program. I also, we have tutoring, which can be done in person in Wayland, virtually, or in person in Boston. So they can choose. And then we actually have four students from our Boston residents' students that chose to come to our Wayland programming. They had a transportation we provided for them to come in. And a couple of them then stayed for Pegasus. So they did really well. Our staffing this year, we had one BCBA. We had CODA as a certified occupational therapy assistant. And they have to be overseen by an occupational therapist. And then we had one physical therapist and one physical therapist assistant for overseeing. We had two speech pathologists, nine program teachers, four tutors, and 20 assistants. So we were at Clay Pit this year. That was actually nice because our specialized programs are all at Clay Pit. So the students were already very comfortable. We had been two years at Loker, so students had gotten comfortable. But this just added another layer. It was also really nice for our preschool students who were going to be transitioning to Clay Pit. It was like an early transition for them, which was nice. I guess the cafeteria was in the gym and, you know, playground. So it was like a nice early. We increased our communication in coordination with Pegasus and then with parents. I really try to get ESY stuff out. The earliest I can do is March because we do use February vacation data to make these decisions. So it used to be April. Now I get it out in March. And as Ronnie stated, they communicate quite tightly with school community programs, which is Pegasus and the STEAM Explorers. So a couple changes to Pegasus this past summer. They offered different timing on their sessions. They had historically been three-week sessions. This year they offered three two-week sessions instead, which created better flexibility for families who may be going on vacation. And again, broad levels of inclusion that took place. They've seen a much higher participation rate, particularly from TCW students this summer, which was great. Many went to ESY and then over to Pegasus after that. And as Ronnie was saying, that connection to the school that they were going to was a bonus this year. The programs can't happen at Clay Pit every summer just because you need more time to do the deep cleaning. So if you do too many years in a row at a particular school, that school gets a little, not the same TLC. So 54% of the cohorts this year at Pegasus had IEPs. So they were really thoughtful in who they were hiring and the types of supports that they offered. They really focused on student voice and choice that built on kids' interests as they made connections with peers. And as Ronnie was saying, they coordinated services so kids weren't missing the things that they were looking forward to the most for their therapies and pieces like that. And again, the experiences were really designed for kids to feel connected to each other and to the spaces throughout the summer. So really focusing on inclusion, you can see kids' hands on projects. So there were 119 students who participated from preschool to grade five. There was also 22 middle schoolers and then six CITs, counselors in training from the high school. They ran a five-to-one ratio of teachers to students. 18% participated both Pegasus and ESY. And as I mentioned, those three two-week sessions. So there was a half-day option that ended at 1 p.m. and then a full day that ended at 3.30. So that was Pegasus this year. Metco Transitions Program. So there were two things that happened, one at the middle school and one at the high school, to really help those transition years, the fifth to sixth grade and then the sixth, excuse me, the eighth to ninth grade. So help them develop both student skills, get them ready to return to school and increase their confidence. It also helps build the Metco cohort from three elementary schools. You know, the students don't necessarily know each other coming into the middle school. And an opportunity in the summer to make deeper connections is really helpful. It also strengthens the Metco cohort entering the high school. And always the goal to decrease anxiety about those transitions. Is that covered by the Metco Grant? It is. Okay. Yeah. Metco Grant. So there was an academic enrichment component. You can see that they did work in poetry, math, art, student skills. There were high school teachers who came and taught different components of that. And also, you know, as we focus on the whole child, there's the academic side, but also the social emotional learning. They had opening and closing circles every day. You've heard us talk a lot about tier one circles. They were all involved in creating those community guidelines and norms for the team building activities. You can see that they talked about things about being an upstander, having integrity, and really focusing on what makes a community. And how do we support each other in this work? So going to the high school, so that was the middle, excuse me, elementary to middle, it was a similar type of program at the high school. You can see, again, academic enrichment and social emotional learning. The subjects of the high school were history, math, and research methods based on the teachers who were teaching this year. You know, LaTroy was directly involved as well and participated, and she had specific conversations, you know, with kids about the transition to high school. She was a longtime high school director before she came. She was a high school liaison before she was a director, so she's very strong in those areas. But did you know that either transition program have upper grade students come and talk to the rising sixth and ninth grade, or no? I don't think so, in particular. I know for all students, they do some of that. So, like, when the middle schoolers come over to the, excuse me, the elementary school students, they come by school to the middle school, and they're toured by middle schoolers, and there's a whole question and answer session with them. But I don't use those specifically. It might be actually interesting to have the sixth and the ninth graders. Sure. Yeah. As Ronnie was mentioning, there is a METCO program as well that our METCO grant also supports students going to the programming that takes place in Boston as well. Also, to prevent regression, there's a lot of preparation for incoming kindergarten students, particularly those who have not attended preschool before. It's also an affordable childcare option for families and always want to decrease student anxiety. That secondary option, again, is around confidence, building subject, foundational knowledge, and there are also some stretch opportunities for students academically during that programming. So, like in Wayland, there is a combination of subject-based work, math, science, reading, writing, research skills, with enrichment classes, and field trips. And you can see Latoya's really everywhere in the summer because she was there and she was here. So she connected in both places. And as I mentioned at the start, there's a lot of adult learning that goes on. We do a two-day retreat. All right. So, yeah, learning should happen in all parts of districts, and it has to begin with leadership learning to make sure our leadership team has plenty of time to learn. So we have to do a retreat every summer where we focus on four aspects of leadership. Number one is team building. We have new members of our team every summer, and every time you have one new person of a team, or two, you have a new team. And so we work on a lot of team building, and we also, part of it is then what happens, people take the exercises we do at our retreat, and they do them with their new team members once they get to their school. So there's a lot of transfer. The second part of our retreat is leadership learning, which we do every summer. I talked a little bit about that on opening day. We worked on contribution mapping, which is a way to diagnose complicated leadership challenges. We also did some portraits of a learner work. You can see that on the right. And what we're also always trying to do, if you look at the center slide there, we are trying to expand our leadership toolbox. So every summer we have a different aspect of leadership learning that we then work on throughout the year. So we'll be working on contribution mapping as a leadership team next Tuesday as a follow-up, because we never want isolated exercises at a retreat. You always want a through line in terms of learning. The third aspect that we always work on retreats is goal setting. We head down stairs, and we work in teams on goal setting. You all received the goals at the end of August. That started in July, and that's an intensive process that we do as a broad team, because we need buy-in. People have different ideas. We sometimes work in cross-functional groups as well as grade-level groups as well. And lastly, we work on preparing for a good opening, because we know that's really, really important in terms of what are the themes, what are the messages, how do we want to deal with our district over the course of the year. And then that right there, if you look to the left slide, we also do all different kinds of learning. So at the end of the first day, we always do some kind of activity. I always am comfortable with the sports activities, because that's my background. However, it was pouring, and so we did the group learn mahjong. I'm so jealous. Ronnie was one of the teachers, and so we now have a whole team of people. You can see Christina Sansa Donovan there, one of our expert instructors. So we want people to learn and teach each other different lifetime or group skills. So Ronnie is available. I know. I learned, but then I've been playing, so now I'm pretty comfortable. Do you have, like, this year's card and everything? I do, I do. Oh, I come from a long line. Oh. My mom is, like, so into it. And, like, so my dad walks around the house, and he's like, seven crabs. Oh, yes. Well, bam. Like, yeah. And I'm like, okay, stop. But I really want to learn. She's obsessed. It's very fun. We had a really good time. So we are. We're expanding our toolkit. And one of the pieces we worked on is that, you know, is mapping different contributions to complicated problems and avoiding blame. What we often find in leadership of many problems, blame, which is looking backward. What we want to focus on is mapping, which is looking forward. So there's a lot of kind of strategy around that. And you can see some of the strategies that we use in terms of the cases that we're looking at moving from map to action. And, of course, always looking in the mirror and how do we contribute to challenges we have. So we did some good work in that area, and that's continuing next week. And we also did some work on our portraits of a learner and talked about how can we, as we think about operationalizing down the road, getting more feedback, thinking about the skills that our students will need in the future and how a lot of that is changing. But the human part and the importance of the human part in school kind of follows the presentation we had. There are certain things that we can only do in school. And most of them don't involve technology. They involve all of the interpersonal skills, communication, and you can see our five there that are really, really important. In addition to retreats, there's a lot of other learning that happens in the summer. So we offered restorative justice trainings for both Tier 1 and Tier 3. Last summer we did Tier 2 trainings. So there were 40 folks who were trained through that process, culturally responsive teaching in the brain. There were six new folks trained there. We had 60 folks trained, thanks to a grant that Ronnie got, on the new seclusion regulations over the summer and more since then. CKL Camino's training, we trained 70 educators for a full day, some at the beginning of the summer, some at the end of the summer. Our new CKLA leaders that are grade level leaders were trained over the summer. There were 10 of them. We had a two-day AI Institute where 17 of us were trained. You can see a slide from that about the talking with Gemini elements of good prompt there. We had 20 folks at our new educator induction, which is a two-day program right before school starts. And then different educators took 34 different graduate classes over the course of the summer too. There are probably more that were taken, but those are the ones that were put in for reimbursement for. Is the new educator induction the two-day, does that include Caroline's training, or is that separate with the culturally responsive teaching in the brain? Caroline does like an hour at the dual-day orientation, and the culturally responsive teaching in the brain is like a 12-hour class, so it's a two-full-day class. And she offers it a couple different times during the year. And there's other ways that people can meet the culturally responsive, excuse me, cultural proficiency training requirements. Like our ideas courses are one example that people often take. And additionally, summer's a really nice time for collaboration on curriculum projects that folks do. So we had just under 150 days that were financed through our operating budget. And then an additional 91 days that were financed through grants. From the Hates Crime Prevention Grants, Special Education Grants, Innovation Career Pathways, and Perkins Grants. You can see a slide from one of the projects that was created around becoming a skilled-formed demander through organic world language. There were projects at every level, though. So for example, the preschool projects, there was work done in music, PE, and libraries. So what might that look like with our preschoolers now that they're in an elementary school and have access to different educators? At the elementary, a lot of the work focused around our new internalization of our CKLA program. Additionally, we had one of our extended days today where our elementary educators did until 345 this afternoon. We spent several hours working on that as well there. There's also some math intervention resource work done over the summer. At the middle school level, there was a reading for freedom project. There was a rewrite of the general music curriculum. And using project-based learning as a way to integrate a lot of the different things that they've been working on over the years. Like Accountable Talk, for one. UDL, sort of where some of those pieces fit together. At the high school, so Scott here tonight, they worked on all the new high school PE electives, such as dance, math fitness, healthy culinary, mental skills, and characters through sports. So those are just a handful of them. The new French novice class was worked on over the summer. They did a real financial literacy, sort of kind of looking where is financial literacy currently taught. And sort of an audit of what we're doing and how it might work as we're thinking down the road about the new graduation requirements. As well as a new AP course realignment. There were some new things that came out through the AP. So anybody teaching an AP course needed to do some work on theirs. Some of the between-level work that also took place. For example, one of the projects was looking at the middle school, high school, looking at the transition, particularly in social studies. And the eighth and the ninth grade team came together to look at the different assessments that they offer and what are the different skills. And there was some really rich planning that went on there as well. So that's just a quick overview. There are way more projects than that. Oh, sorry. Just to give you a flavor. Thank you. Happy to answer any questions. Do you have a sense how many of our staff participate in summer learning? You just listed a lot of things. A lot of things. A lot of things. Yeah, there are a lot. We can't fund everything. No. There's like twice as many projects that we can fund. Okay. That come through. And some of them they'll ask for, you know, we want 10 days for this and we can give you five kind of thing too. Okay. I can get the numbers for you for the next meeting if you want. Sure. I'm just curious. There's a lot of different people who participate. I think you linked to the list in the slide. Of the projects that get funded. I don't know if all the requests are there but it looks like. It tells you how many people. Actually, yeah. It says how many. It says like days requested, days approved. Yeah. And it tells you how many, who the point person is and how many days that they'll have. So, for example, if they have six days it might be. And then three people doing two days. Or it might be six people doing one day or. Yeah. And it has people working days and like the people. So it shows who participated. It was a greater level of teacher than I thought that I gave you. Is this something where we could try and. And maybe this has already been done and it's just my lack of knowledge. But is this something where well in public school foundation could be pushed to use some of their grant funding because it's one time use. Right. So like for those that aren't going to get it through the district or. A grant that the district can leverage. Could. The foundation support it. It's a great question. Um, Aaron, they, they have in the past. There have been particular projects that. So I would say maybe eight years ago or so there were. They funded a lot of summer work that they were sort of areas that they were interested in and wanted to fund. Um, they moved away from that when I think their revenue intake was a little lower. And so they stuck with some other projects. It's certainly a question. Um, you know, Betsy and I could, could ask them if that was to be something that they'd be interested in again. Okay. Potentially. Just about. We meet with them on Monday. Exactly. Put it on the list. And I'm going to move it to the new notebooks. I only have one more page left. I was thinking the younger. You know. A lot of pushing health down. I don't know. They don't like to do that though. They don't like to do both. But we only looked at four and five originally. So I don't know. I don't know. It was just something I thought of. They don't like to do like, like pilot for like something that would stay for. No, no, no. We did. That was Jenny Flynn. The first chair of Jenny Flynn. Really? Yeah. I was on the foundation. Yeah. It was like too much of a position for too long in their bylaws. But they absolutely can do a certain amount for a year if it's something they think the district will pick up. So anyway. But that's hard. It's hard. But we got Jenny that way. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. That's a good thought. Okay. How did the well flap too? On the well flap side. That I knew. Yeah. That's different. You know what I mean. Okay. Alana, did you have a great experience this summer? I saw your name on there. I did. I did. I did. I did at ESI. It's great. Oh, great. Yes. I knew that. I saw her out there collecting children. Okay. So, David, this is under the superintendent's update. The red lines are in here. I don't really know that you have anything to add or Betsy has anything to add really, but does anybody have any questions, comments, feedback that you want to address? Yes. Thank you for doing the summary of changes that actually I found very helpful to. Mm-hmm. It's all Jen. And you're right. She knew exactly how to do it. Yes. She did. Well, I knew somebody knew how to do it since it didn't come to me to blackline. Yeah. That's true. Um, in the event that people don't have comments or questions, I would just entertain a motion. Oh, I'll move to approve. I'll move to approve the women public school employee handbook as revised and presented. Does the employee handbook? I don't see a student. Yeah. The student wasn't in here. That's why I started to ask that question, and then I saw that we only had the employee. Did that come to us in an email? It came in a meeting before. I thought it came in an email. I'm happy to do that. Oh, we didn't get enough to the fault there. Hold on. I'll definitely retract my motion and... Um... Oh, I guess I got the employee handbook twice. Yeah, I don't see the... Yeah, I don't see the... Jen, that's on the other one. I'm sorry. I didn't get the check, though. Yeah, I looked at the employee handbook twice and thought, good to go. Okay, well, I guess we can go with Betsy's motion. Do we have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. The employee handbook is approved as revised and presented by a 5-0 vote of the committee, and we will hold on the student and family handbook until next time. See how long... Time's the charm. Okay, briefly discussed this previously, I think more than once. Maybe not with this specific committee, but I think it would be... Well, did you guys already look at this? Did you come with a revised... We haven't had it in a subcommittee meeting. All right, so... Go ahead. Oh, yeah, I think it came up recently because there's been three instances just in the past couple months. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I think if you guys just want to tweak whatever we have as the posting policy. Yeah. Okay. And just so we're not doing it on the fly here. Sure. Yeah. No, so we can schedule a meeting. Perfect. Okay. Okay. This is largely for the ones that we're sort of are... That aren't, like, legally mandated. Right. Legally mandated, or there's a lot of policies that come out of Betsy Davron's position in her work across the district that might have procedures that are tied to them that just have to get... There's different things. Like, the wellness policy is not going to be really driven by this group. It's kind of driven by the wellness committee, and it's going through and kind of going to come to us for a blessing and then putting it out for... I'm going to sort of... Mm-hmm. So, yeah. That's the idea. Mm-hmm. There's any other policy that you would like us to review in this meeting? Um... Sponsorship? Which was a good one, I guess. Well, it has come up for us at the table, and then recently, apparently, it has percolated again as well. Okay. So, I think it's worth... We've talked about doing it, so if you guys are game, let's at least talk about it. I've got it. I think we determined... Maybe we don't need chocolates right now, but... Okay. I think it permits sponsorship. It's a matter of, you know, how it's done, slash elicited, slash... Approved, I thought. Mm-hmm. Anyway, it just percolated recently, and if we're going to do something. Okay. But then I thought we also talked about wanting to look at, like... Expanding? Yes. Like, you know, scoreboards, or... Correct. Like actually having... Advertisers on field fences, or other things. After the advertisement, yes. After the advertisement, yes. Advertisement versus sponsorship, because the distinguishing factor there, I think. Okay. That can be a marquee. I look at it all as sponsorship. You and me. I mean, I'm okay with, like, well, public school foundations sponsoring a new scoreboard. Interestingly, my first foray into competitive cheer last year brought me to gyms far and wide in the Commonwealth. And they've all got them. They've... There's a lot of... There's a lot of sponsorship far and wide. You're on your way to Orlando. No, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. It's been a lot of time. Always.
I'm sorry. I will shoulder my personal feelings. That would be very exciting for the Whalen Weston youth football cheer, David. Yes. We'll set a meeting date and come back with a 30-day review. That sounds great. Thank you. I would suggest that may end up happening to be the first meeting in November, because I think our next meeting is early October. The next one will be the retreat. So then first of November, if you could maybe shoot for that. That's in Boston. Yes, but we can cover it. We have some in here? Okay. So we have some time. We have some. Yeah. I think that's a little too much. It's at Vine Street. So the meeting in Boston is not at Med Cohort HQ. It's at Vine Street Community Center. Okay. There's a big parking lot beside it. More space. More space, of course. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Financial matters. Financial planning update. Me. Okay. Got it. So we, Kirsteen, David, Kate, myself, as you guys know, we kind of have been having these like financial planning meetings with other departments across the town and the town manager and select board members, finance committee members, and the numbers related to need for an override have projected, have significantly been dropped based on different numbers that have come in or things that have changed unexpectedly, sort of in our favor, I guess, since the end of last year when we were looking at projected shortfall. And it's looking like right now it's about a high $600,000 shortfall. And that could continue to come down. The need for an override, it's looking like, is probably going to be able to be pushed to fiscal year 28. Is it? No. 29. 29 and 30. 27. 30. 30. 30. 30. 31. 31. 31. 31. 31. 31. to make some shifts in our budget planning and potential cuts. So we need to be mindful of that. David and Kirsteen, they've been looking really closely at projections for us as a district for salaries, etc., based on the new contracts and shifts in personnel. What else? I think we just kind of need to watch closely. I don't think we're going to need to make a big push for an override and do all the education around that that we were thinking we would need to do. However, I think we're going to need to be vocal about potentially looking at a tax rate percentage increase that maybe the finance committee isn't always that favorable to look at because it will be a little over around 5% for us to stay under the levy but also not making huge cuts.
So as much as we need to champion ourselves, we need to champion ourselves there. All right. Anything else from anything? Is that going to be talked about at an upcoming finance or select board, or you'll keep us surprised if we... They're talking about it. Okay. Just happy to, you know, attend even just for optical support if we need to. There will be a lot of talk of it through October and into November, some numbers solidify. Okay. As you all know, we don't get our final numbers really until January or February anyway. Okay. So it's hard, but I still think the work that we were kind of doing around looking at what we've done to date to really be fiscally responsible and planning, and that's still really important. I don't think it's wasted effort. The other thing that, sorry, we as a committee continue to catch some slack for the salary percentage increase that we gave to Unit A, and we did push back, and to, with a couple select board members in the room, and to Town Manager McCall and Brian Kevney, we were able to, with our contract, as we discussed last time, in excess of 29 extra instruction hours for our kids with this contract. So I told them that they could position it the same to their other unions. If they wanted to add 29 hours, they could maybe get the COLA increases that Unit A go.
So I think that's another thing that we should kind of be prepared to defend and support, that it was the right decision for our community, our students, our teachers, everyone. And I think that's all I have to say there. I do wonder if there will be some synergies potentially with the lining up of the need for the override and the timing for hopefully some facilities work. Like, it would be nice from a community education standpoint to not have to do that, gain that momentum multiple times, and have to explain the different, like, why this vote is this thing, and this vote, like, I mean, I know they'll be different, but one can hope that maybe the stars will align and we'll be able to think about those educational pieces collectively. I did raise that. Yeah. And, um, I think it was a meeting that we all did virtually. Not all of us, but we all were there. Oh, yeah, August 31st. Right. Yes. Special day. You know, in an ideal world, our SOI will be approved this spring, so we won't be spending so much time worrying about an override this spring. Right. Well, and we will need to get the $2 million.
Yeah. But they want us to do that as a separate article, so we will need to take that on. Okay.
So, yes, I hear you. I think that that's, you know. Some of the education, I mean, that document that you put together, though, I feel like we have now some of the baseline kind of pieces that we can easily put out there or just gently repurpose when the time comes. Oh, about the MSBA? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. That's why, like, nothing that we've done to date around, like, potential for operating override has been for not. Like, it's all been, it's all able to be used. In one way or another. Okay. Anybody have any questions on that or comments or?
Kirsteen, do you have item B? Do you have anything to? Sure. Sure. So, just to give you some context, this is really just housekeeping for our capital projects. Again, with the new CIPC process, they are going through and just making sure that all the older projects that have been on the books for ages and ages and ages that we are cleaning that out, closing them out, making sure that everything that was expected for the identified projects has been completed and any remaining or residual amounts is just closed out so that we can kind of shorten the very long list of capital right now. So, these are all the items, and this is part of what my FAIA requested that we have school committee just finalize and review. These are all the items that he and I reviewed and made sure that if it was being closed out here, there is already another project that he's already got the work done or anticipating is being in process this year. So, we are not giving up anything per se. This is, again, just basically cleaning up the books in the financial process of this so that we can have a clearer picture, more consolidated of what projects are still outstanding and really get a handle so that, again, as we're looking at our financial status and as the town has to identify amounts for funding and budgeting within the greater context is that they can more clearly identify the capital, the two capital needs for what we are currently having done in place and what the requests are for FY28. So, again, this is the review of items that we have already identified to be removed. This is just a requirement that we have school committee approval in order to formalize that process of closing them out. So, I add that we already closed out the high school field by vote in February of 25, I think? There are a number of them. So, again, these are just kind of that residual housekeeping that is still on their list. So, Mike Fayo was asked to confirm these project numbers and identify that we could, in fact, close these out. So, yes, a number of them were identified even last year in the process that we funded for the curriculum that we needed for FY27. So, yes, again, this is a housekeeping item, really, that just needs to be able to say that we've, as a committee, formally approved the closure of these projects so that we can get them off of that list. Christine, there's a number of them on here that show a positive balance in the cash balance column, but then any amounts unspent remaining don't line up. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. That's correct. That's because it's munis accounting, and the way some of this is is if there's an encumbrance or something that's finalizing, we're saying, yes, we've identified if there's anything finalized, and once that is closed or paid out, then this project is complete. So, we're not going to close anything that still has. So, like, for example, just the second from the bottom, DW classroom cabinetry replacement, original appropriation $138,000, cash balance is, I think, $128,196, but the estimated unspent is zero. So, we're going to close it, but that balance is, like, basically just sitting, waiting to pay. That balance is actually not a real balance because we've already used that to fund the FY27 capital that we had done. So, again, these are, it is very confusing the way that this is the town's spreadsheet, their worksheet. So, I was just providing for full transparency. This is what it shows and what we are returning. But, yes, the cabinetry replacement, the district-wide roof replacement repairs, the district-wide flooring, those were all the items that we had already identified to close out and give back in last year's process. But they're still there, so this is, like, the final, final plan. I guess it's hard for us to, like, reconcile what are we actually turning back on our projects. And I know there are projects, but we don't really manage them. We're not, we're not turning back much, anything that we've already turned over. So, everything else is going to be zeroed out or the small residual amount, the $4,139, the $202.57, all the other larger items we've either encumbered and are being closed out. So, that's why they have, there's going to be a zero balance in the unspent once we're closing them out. But that's what I mean, like, so the cash balance, why we don't have anything in that last column, right? Right. Is that we, I used, we as, I guess, the royal, we have already taken that unspent and said, we're closing this out and that $114,138.12 is going toward the project to do a loker stove just for fun, okay? So, like, in essence, like, we rolled back $114 and then said, and we're going to use it for this. So, we're not truly showing where we didn't, like, where can we recapture that we only spent $106,000, $36,000, whatever the hell it is. I'm terrible at math, on the DW flooring. Well, like, the feasibility study is in here. Right. It was appropriate, like, $100,000. It looks like it came in at $81 and change. Right. We did have some left over, so that would be, that was part of what would be an amount that would be turned over. The other big ones we've already turned over. But it has a zero in the far right. Yeah, I think the confusion is some, somewhere there is funds showing the cash balance or then showing up in that far right column. I agree. The numbers are matching. I agree. This is not my strategy. No, I get it. I get it. I think I'm just trying to reconcile that for a project that was done at the school that was approved for $100,000, if we turned back any money that then just got reappropriated to another item that was school, like. Or did it go back to the town? I just feel like that should be somewhere where we should be able to track that, and that's not done here. Is that tracked? It won't be until we do a final close-up. Okay. They're just hanging on to these kind of artificial numbers until there's an actual close-up. So, yes, like the cabinetry replacement, that was, so when you look at the department, most of these are the facilities projects. So, they're just called the school project because they are on a school building. But they get flagged to us at town meeting for the community, is my point. But also, it's a mix. And it is a mix. Because, like, the feasibility study, the new minibus, like, there's a real mix of things that are more truly ours. So, you're saying at a later date, like, the next iteration of the spreadsheet will be able to show some number that's been carried over and invested. So, we hope that that's what they will do and be able to kind of close these out and have that reconciliation for what they're using and doing because that's what ultimately will be the amount that they need to fund for the FY28 capital piece. Well, I think to the previous agenda item, like, some of, if we are able to get that information, it would be helpful as we're trying to provide, like, rationale or support for, you know, how well we have been doing. Yeah, right. I mean, we can clearly identify that we gave up funds in order to prioritize the reading curriculum for FY27. That's a clear delineation. That is, that's mapped out very easily. So, Christine, we are being asked to take a vote on this. So, I guess you took. Which is the other thing that makes sense. So, that I heard. Yes, heard. But also, you've represented this isn't your spreadsheet. I guess, as a committee member, I'm finding the numbers confusing. And so, are you confident they are accurate? Like, are we sure that this, the numbers as written, I appreciate that you did not prepare this visual for our consideration. But I find it very confusing to look at something that has $114,000 cash balance in one column and then says amount you're returning zero. So, without any kind of footnote or other annotation that says it's zero because that $114,000 was returned to the town general fund was, like, agreed or voted on. Like, so, I do have some, I do have some hesitation because I think we have already closed, to Erin's point, some of these are things we've already taken a vote on. But I also just don't understand the two cash balance columns not lining up. I can request Brian, Kevin, if we can provide some further context once, because we, Mike, we've submitted this in a soft manner that we are in the process of being able to close these out. And, again, yes, we know we've already taken the motion for these major capital funding that we did last year. That's how we were able to get our curriculum project funded. So, the other thing I'm seeing is, like, for the roof replacement repairs, which is item 3899, and then the rooftop air handling units and fans, which is item, sorry, 3901, the amount in the cash balance column is almost equivalent to the amount that was originally appropriated. So, are those just things we decided didn't need to happen? Are those capital expenditures that are going to have to happen next year? Mike Fea has them either scheduled or part of, some of it is time sensitive where he can't be doing these types of projects while kids are in buildings. While kids are in buildings, sure. So, he knows what he's got in terms of the timeline for what needs to be done and closed out for this priority so that we can have a better plan for the FY28. I'll go back and ask Brian if he can provide something cleaner. This is just the small excerpt, the full, it's very confusing, and I live in spreadsheets, so I try to condense it, and it's not great, so I take it back to Brian. Well, it's like, turn back any remaining unexpended project balances in accordance with town's financial policies. Well, I don't want to do that. You know, like, tell me what we're doing, like, I feel like Brian, yeah, we're not going to get it, it's going to go for the cash. Maybe that's more of just like a capital project review. I just, I think, like, yeah, we need to understand what's in the two or three. But it's also, you know, like, there was that 4,000 left. This is, like, such a big conversation.
I'm happy to do what you guys want. We already closed these out, but I'm also happy to wait for more information. And delay. It's fine.
I know we already looked at these and closed them all. Which is also, like, nobody pays attention to what we do. I just, I don't, I'm not, I mean, other people can disagree. I'm not super comfortable with the motion as drafted because I'm not sure which of these balances we're returning. And they're two very different numbers. I think I understand that the highlighted yellow is what's intended, but that's $4,700. And I guess I don't understand, looking at this, that the million actually went to school projects if they weren't used here. Or was this just outstanding against this project and hadn't been, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's not the other way I understand. Because that's the other way I understand. Because we voted to close out, but I didn't see them like this. No, we didn't see them. Like, when we voted to close them out, it was like, there's 11 cents remaining, or. Well, it was, it was different, yeah. It's a good thing there aren't lawyers around this table. So, are we going to wait for more info and make poor Kirsteen go back and say. I am happy to do that. That is not a problem. That is not a good assignment. I'd love to get the task. Okay. Then. More power to you. A request, I should say. Yeah. Yeah, so here, sorry. Yeah. No, I was just going to say, I'm looking at local tile replacement. We closed that out with $361 in it.
Local floor tile. That was my other question. What do these go to? Show me the Warren articles. Tell me how I can reposition this.
Anyway. We can task them and move on.
If you want to, if you get that before our next meeting and you want to send it to all of us in advance, just so people can look at it, just feel free. But don't discuss it on an email.
Okay.
How do you like to make talk money? Not like that.
Okay. I have a draft of our report that I will share with all of you right now. If I just move it, does that make it available to you guys? Into the folder? Yeah. It does, right? Refresh. I think it does. Oh, you have to give us access to it. Hold on, let me. I don't have permission to move items into this folder.
Epic fail, Diane. Just kidding. I'm kidding. It's fine. I'll just give you guys all access to it. I just want your help writing on the last, like the goals section because I have some competing interests in my own head.
Elizabeth Cullen.
I just need to unedit her. Up in the folder? Wow. It's too late, Diane. Broken my heart. I didn't email it in there. Yes, I gave it. I didn't email it to you. I just emailed you access so I didn't get to it. Okay. Thank you. And now I'm moving it to our folder too. So, Kirsteen, to our most recent topic, if you could double check what I have in the end of summary of activities and accomplishments. It lists some capital budget funding stuff. And I felt like there were changes that were made after the budget presentation, so I'm not sure those are 100% correct. Can you just tell us yes or no?
Yeah, I just put it in. So, and then goals for fiscal year 27 is what, this is like a very formulaic, like, this is what they want from us, this is it, this is what it looks like every year. But goals for fiscal year 27, it was supposed to be, let's see, continued fiscal something. Sound fiscal management? Well, I think that's what we had last time, so hold on a second. But does it continue? And then strives to continue making service improvements while strategically planning against expected enrollment and anticipated student need.
But I wanted to tie that together, and then I put in the committee aims to complete its third submission to the Massachusetts State Building, oh, this should be authority, sorry guys, of interest, allowing the district and town to develop a unified practical facility solution that addresses all educational needs in a fiscally achievable way. And I'm open to whatever anyone would like to suggest there. I think that would be nice to capture that that won't address, like, long the sort of state of the buildings, that it's not just that it's going to build practical facilities, but it's also going to address, like, our aging infrastructure.
Continued effort. We're probably going to have to change some of these words and remove the 12 million continued to mitigate the, what did you say, impending infrastructure?
I mean, I say impending, it's not impending, but it is. We can just say the failing status. I mean, given that we literally have a report that says they're not worth repairing, I don't know that we can walk that line anymore. In continued effort to address the failing status of school facilities and rising costs of repairs and maintenance of same. The status of aging school buildings that are past, like, repair or something. The status of aging school buildings and facilities that are past their useful life.
Just past their useful life or something. Is that fair, Kirstie? Okay.
Nice. Good editorial. Well, past their useful life and mitigate.
Oh, avoid. Ever arising. No, I'm just kidding. Well, I was actually thinking the same, like, it's just not going to stop. Escalating. There we go.
Escalating costs of repairs and maintenance of same. The committee aims to complete its third submission to the Massachusetts State Building Authority of a Statement of Interest, allowing by, I'm just going to leave it, just allowing the district in town to develop a unified practical facility solution that addresses all education needs. Maybe we just cap it at Statement of Interest, period. I think you've kind of said why we're doing that. So, above, I think you can't just stop it. Yeah, so I think we just hit it. Just because you've already said that we're going to do that to address the things we just said. I like that.
Plus, that's the only real achievable rule that we can concretely. I did want to address, though, in our, this is one that I needed you for, and I didn't want to bug you today. In the summary of activities and accomplishments, I think we should put something in here about how we were able to grow the balance of the Special Education Stabilization Fund because I think there was a lot of, like, trying to think of the right words, not criticism, like skepticism over that and creating it. Oh, that it would just become a rolling door. Yeah. That, like, oh, we're just going to use it. But I think it would really highlight your all hard work on that. But I don't know exactly how we should say that. I mean, we were able to maintain the balance and contribution.
Levels? Yes. So maybe we just say reflecting the fiscal efficiencies and responsibility of the administration and committee, the special education, and I'm never going to be able to repeat this. Reflecting the hard work and continued efforts of administration and... I want to say that something, I mean, if we can, if you feel comfortable linking it, I want to say something about, like, the positive advancement in in-district programming and specialized programs that has enabled us to, like... That's not the only... No, no, no, but I'm just thinking that, I mean, we haven't seen the numbers yet, but I'm like, if we are able to serve more students in-district, then the reserve fund is able to be adequately funded for truly unanticipated costs. So I said this fiscal year, 2026 budget continued to support expansion of in-district special education programming and reflected a strategic reallocation of assets tied to shifts in enrollment numbers. We could insert it there. Further enabling... I can't do... That's stupid. I mean, it's allowed that fund to really be for these move-in... Right. For the insensuating... Unanticipated... Yes. And to shield the operating budget... And we have it right now, you know, we're not using it right now, but, you know, you never know what tomorrow will bring. All right. I'm just going to, like, put a pin in it, because are you guys... Do you really want to finish this right now, or do you want to just give me... We can do edits. I was just thinking, like, if it enabled us to, like, stabilize the funding of the Special Education Reserve Fund for future unanticipated costs. Yeah. And if you want... Or we can just leave it as is and finish, because really, myself and my four other committee members shouldn't be collaborating on a document outside of helping me do that. You can send me something, though, Kirsten. Yeah. Yeah. I also want to make sure, like, I don't know if it's important to put it in there, like, the importance of it. You'll want it to go. Right. I know. That's what... Right. No. Because we're not using it doesn't mean we don't need it. We can... I don't think we should say we aren't using it. No, no. We're just... Just enabling us to not deplete it. Right. And we don't have to do things like budget freezes and things like that. Right. Because we have it. And it's creating continued fiscal efficiencies if possible. Efficiency, right? I want to capture the relocation of the preschool to Happy Hollow, too. I know that means we're not going to finish it tonight. I just was thinking back on other things that... I can put it in there. I mean, do you guys really care how much it... I was trying to just think of, like, the sort of big, like, you know, significant changes. But actually, that's not happening until this year. Mm-hmm. The budget. Yeah. That's true. This was last year. That's why it's... This is a road map. Did you find the capital budget language okay? Yeah. I mean, it's... It's accurate. It's broad because that's what it is. I mean, it's nothing... But are those correct? Did we do those things? Yeah. Did we do those things? Okay. We did a number of... I know there's more of them. I just wanted to kind of... I was capturing the ones that I was like, I feel like we did these, but I'm not sure if we did those. So, like, and more.
Next year, we can make sure we put in the CKLA curriculum, but this is for some. Does the Educators Association have a possessive after... Nope. It doesn't. Double check that today. Same break.
Sharing it at the link. It's like you review documents all day long. No.
After a statement of interest, I think we might need for the construction of new facilities.
But we don't know exactly. So you think just facilities? Yeah. We don't know what we're doing? Um, oh, for new construction. How's with that?
You're right, because we would only... Yep.
For new construction. I know. I mean, the... Okay. I'm going to put a little star... Or we can just leave out the fund. We don't have to talk about it in here. Nobody's going to scrutinize it that much that they're going to say, We're not funding that next year.
So... Happy day. I can do whatever everybody wants. I am just the typer. I personally think we should let it go one more year in the hopes that we're on a good track record. I'm down. Okay. Okay. Is everybody's name spelled correctly and how they want them reflected? Because every time I try and email Betsy Cullen, I have to find Elizabeth. Yes, thank you.
Okay. Do you need to vote? Weekend, if you want. I think I have in the past. Okay. Maybe sometime I haven't. I don't know. Move to approve the 2026 annual report as presented and revised tonight. Do we have a second?
Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, good. Perfect. All right. Approved. Bravo. I'm usually very loud. No, I just want to make sure I don't miss a... Like a... So... We are a little late in the game as we have had an extremely busy past few months as well as new committee members. And we are a little behind on approving calendar for the 27-28 school year. So, in our folder is our 26-27 calendar for reference, which is this year. And then there are two proposals for a 27-28 calendar. One is labeled as number one, and one is labeled as number two. Would anyone on the district side care to provide feedback on the differences between the two and which may be preferred by the district administration? I will say, you know, there are two decisions, you know, multiple decisions about calendars. There's when do you start, when do you end, and what holidays you deserve. And so we have our teachers, as part of the contract, they provide input, and I think they're getting input and collecting some data from their members. So, the difference in these calendars is one starts after Labor Day, and Labor Day is rather late for the 27-28 school year. Under that calendar, if we have five snow days, we don't get out until June 27th. And then the other calendar begins August 30th, as you can see. So, it's a difference. There is a big difference there. You'll also see, as part of the contract now, we have two and a half days with our, this was a change as part of our negotiations. So, we have two and a half days now at the start of the year, which is really helpful in terms of preparation, because it can get... For teachers. For teachers. And staff, yeah. Yes, that is really helpful, because it can get quite hectic in those days. So, that both calendars include the two and a half days. So, we're waiting for input from our colleagues. We can share that with you probably by the next... Oh, so they have these right now, and they're waiting on what they would prefer? Exactly. They're checking in with their members and getting some input. So, if you have questions, then maybe we could, you know, at the next beginning, have further questions.
Yeah, I think, I think this is just speaking from, like, the constituent side, is that I know that a lot of camps do registration, like, in the next few weeks. And so, I do think that if there's a way to update to say, like, these are the two potential start dates that are being considered without the formal vote, like, I know, you know, I think we might want to at least communicate that out to families so that they can... You talk about camps, like, go to the end of August? Some go to the end of the, you know, some go to the end of August, but some also start, like, June 25th, right? So, like... People have to start registering. Some camps, people start registering for camps in the next, like, four weeks. Yeah. That's the point. And so... You're talking about for the... For the following summer. Oh, no, for the... No, I'm talking about for this summer. Oh, this summer we're all set. We have this year's school calendar. No, but this would be the start date. This would be the start date. So, when people are... People are already asking, like, trying to figure out their summer vacations. Oh, for summer vacations. For next, like, August and more when they put their kids in camp and then when they vacation. And so... It's more of that... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it. We don't have to wait for...
Set the calendar. No. So, we can make a choice around the table right now. Sure. I don't think it's a good idea to share with the community possible start dates. As much as I totally appreciate that people are trying to get ahead of it, I think that will elicit even more lovely feedback. That being said, if people want time to digest and think about it, maybe we could plan to have a virtual meeting on Friday to... Maybe you'll have feedback from the teachers at that point, but also maybe we would have some time to just kind of think about it and potentially figure out what may work better. Um, I don't want to let it really go any longer. What do you think I can go? Yeah, no, I think that could be... We can get feedback tomorrow. We'll leave it up tomorrow. Okay, so... So we can get feedback tomorrow. Would people... We can post a meeting. Oh, shit. I have to do it Monday. We'd have to do it Monday. Which, we don't have a holiday Monday, right? It's not until October? Yep. Right? Okay. We can get feedback. Would you guys prefer to wait until Monday? Would you prefer to make... I'm going to tell you right now, I have zero interest in waiting until after Labor Day. I'd also prefer not to have the third off if we're going to start before Labor Day and go the full week.
The third off is not, no. It's not. Oh, yeah. It's not what? On the calendar number two, when we start on the 30th, we do have the third off. But on calendar number one... It's like what we did this year. And I think it was very disruptive. Yeah, I like it. But I don't like to start before Labor Day. But I appreciate the late June. So this becomes a very, like, individual preference thing. I like to know what is the most educationally beneficial as a committee member. Like, what I would like personally. I think I should compartmentalize from what I think. Education beneficially, you know, going very late in June is not educationally beneficial. It gets too challenging with students being gone and people running out of gas. So what do you, what do you, I ask my colleague, what do you think? I agree. I think it hits June and people are already, like... You hit the first week of June. People are already thinking about how we're done. Yeah. And it cuts into, like, summer programming. So, like, you, if you're, if we had five days and we didn't get out until the 27th, we wouldn't be able to start summer programming until July 3rd, which then means we're going into August with then cuts into people's vacation and then they don't really have much of a break. I also know, like, overnight camps will start and things will, um, miss. It gets harder. It gets harder.
And if there's two days. That's just my own opinion, but, again. It's an operational nightmare. Did we, did we already approve graduation date for, um, 28? We didn't, right? No, but it typically falls on the first. Well, it has been for a couple years. But previously, it was on Sundays. Giving my own feedback, I think Friday evening sucks as a graduation night. I'm not quite sure what drove that decision. So, maybe you can provide more feedback on that. I think there might have been one person who drove it. So, I'm encouraged to revisit that around the table. Um, but I think that if we're going to do that, we should make that decision because people plan around that as well. Um, I think Friday night's really hard for everyone. It's difficult for family to come in from other places. Um, it's difficult for siblings. It's, so, um, this is my feedback as a community member for a long time. Um, and I would suggest that we potentially push it back to Sunday. When did it move?
Three years ago? Four years ago? Now? Four? The only, the only, I will speak, as someone who's done a lot of graduation challenges in my life. Um, the question you always have to ask is, do you have a weather rain date? So, right. Or an indoor facility to use, you know, with, with Sundays? Because. So, you can do Saturday. Like, if we wanted to do a Saturday graduation or. Because we don't have an indoor facility. It's not an option for us. I recall a couple of years ago, we got very lucky. Uh, we had Friday night rain out and the weather cooperated Saturday night. We were very lucky. It didn't actually rain out on Friday night. That was the problem. That was, it didn't rain Friday. We had a weather. We had a weather alert. It didn't come through. Yes. It's New England. Even in Florida. In Florida, all this Sunday. And then we had a rainbow. It was so nice. It was nice. But we, you have to cancel by a certain amount of time, which is the challenge in graduations because of, so. I think, though, like, Sunday morning-ish, late morning, is lovely. People can have parties in the afternoon and evening. That's just my feedback. Right. I think it works better for people who, of all ages. You have to check just religious observances and those kinds of things. With Sundays, I don't know, so. We used to have it on Sundays all the time. Every year. Oh, I'm talking about mornings, by the way. Oh, I mean, we could make it, you know, I'm not saying like 9 a.m. Yeah.
That's my feedback. Do you want to talk about that the next Monday as well, or when we do work? What do we want to do?
I think I've, go ahead. From Ronnie's feedback, it sounds like academically and programmatically, I don't want to put it on Ronnie, but in terms of summer programming. Oh, it's much better. Which we have to seriously consider. Much better. That would sway me towards. That's true. I don't, I don't, I don't love starting before Labor Day either, but. However, um, I don't know how we run programs starting the first week of July, which is really a short week. Short week. Because it's the 4th of July, and that feels, then we don't know when we would have to start school, you know, the next highest. In a bad snow year, it gets very tough. I mean, in a, if, if, if there's no snow days, yeah, you just don't, yeah, um, Purgatory week. Um, I mean, Labor Day is late again, huh? I do think having, like, the 3rd, I know you don't like having the 3rd off, but that was nice. That gives, like, an extra long weekend, so if you wanted to sneak in.
That gives people incentive to skip that week. Yes. Right? I don't, we would have data on that from this year. I don't, we can check. We can check. That's a great question. The great thing is, we can check the data, because it's a really good question. Can we compare it? Because I actually think if you have it, I wonder if it's a low attendance day. Like, I'd love to know both of those things. I don't know if we actually have that data. Right. No, we do, because we had it, we didn't have it. No, because we worry about that Betsy issue, because, like, the day before Thanksgiving is a worry, so we should compare that day, because if it's a day of low attendance, you want to close, and we would have that data from this year. It's a great question. I think we can have it off. Yeah. I don't think we have it off the past couple of years. I don't, well, you're talking about the Thursday before, and you're talking about We've definitely had years when I've worked here, when I've been here and down with school-age kids, and we had school on the Friday. There have definitely been times since I've had kids in the elementary school that we had school on the Friday. Okay. Probably in the 29 years I've been here, we've probably, my estimate would be 25% of the time we've had school on that Friday before Labor Day, and the 75% you've not. I'll be honest, this is one where literally, since my kids are in school, I have to check, like, double-check and triple-check, because I never remember whether we, like, it's not. And you've always said that, David. It's better if it's consistent. The problem is, then you're going late in June, if you go with always after Labor Day or always late. Absolutely. So, if we started before Labor Day, that has staff returning August 25th. When did they return this year? August, yeah, August 31st and September 1st, September 2nd, had better attendance than September 8th through the 18th. So, really good attendance. When we started that first week with 96%, 97% attendance. Great. So, the whole week? Yeah. Only 29 kids out in the entire district. Okay. We have better attendance in the next two weeks. September 1st is our best attended day from this year, from this year. What day is that? It was the second day of school.
Second day of school. Sort of, then, I guess.
Number two.
I haven't seen a holiday this year, David. What's the 14th of April? That is Good Friday. I just looked it up.
I also looked up that Rosh Hashanah is on a Saturday, and Yom Kippur is the same day as Columbus Day. Right. Wow, that's a major... I apologize. What is January 26th? Martin Luther King Day? Lunar New Year. No, 17th is Lunar New Year. Lunar New Year. I was just guessing. So, that gets you... That's a separate discussion about future holidays that we have to have that discussion. Is that we're not having a discussion for this? We can have whatever discussion we want. I think that's a broader discussion that we would need time for to really think through. I was just saying, the Good Friday. I think that April 14th is Good Friday. It is. It's really late. It is. Easter is very late. That's true. And the... Yeah.
It's really what? Oh, it's in March. So, this is coming right here. Oh, is it? And then it's late the following. What do we have listed? So, it's only really one week in December-ish. One and a half. Yeah.
And the 22nd would be a full day of school. A full Wednesday. Yeah. I mean, we don't... Half days, you know, we're not... We're trying really well... We try to limit our half days. I hear you. That's why I was... Yes, the Wednesday is... It's more of an affirmation. Yeah. That was an affirmation. Yeah. I was doing affirmation. Yes. Thank you. So, the 17th, the 26th... I would like to propose that we have a very strong discussion at a later date around where our bar is for closing school. Like, why we close school. It feels like there's not a lot of red on this calendar. So, there must just be, like, a crazy amount of alignment. It feels like an outlier year. Yeah, it's like a really weird one. If this wasn't an outlier year, we would be going to school in July. Right. Like, we would... Yeah. If we had... So, something is totally... Yeah. What's the 29th of May? Is that... It's Memorial Day? The other calendar, also getting out on the 20th and having no school on the 19th, I don't think you would have a lot of attendance. Right, yeah. No, I mean... That's another example, unfortunately, what's going on. Oh, hurry. Yeah, not... They're going to be the same on both of these calendars. Okay. If this year, no... In June and Johnny? Yeah. I'm guessing you wouldn't really have much attendance, you know. And it's not even... It's not... We'll tell you that. Yeah, I mean... It's a first year. Okay. What? If you... The first calendar has the last day on the 20th and the 19th is off. I just... No one's coming to school that day. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I was only... I was talking. And at least, even if we have some snow days in June, with the last day being the 13th, we could have three school days and still not have to come... three snow days and still not have to come back after Juneteenth. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And the odds of having three snow days... David usually gives us one for no reason. Thank you, David. Oh, wow. And... Some of us are the same year as rain days in March. We call it senior day. I know. Senior day. I know. But usually we get... That's a rough... We should just call it a David day. You know that book? No David? That's me. No David. I'm quite familiar with it, yes. I really enjoyed that day, David. So, what I'm hearing is we want to go forward with calendar two, and we don't need another... That's fine. I think... Nothing in there. Right. Except for the... You're proposing having a potential review of commencement. Yeah. Oh, yes. I do think we need to set that. It's listed on here. We either have to take it off and at least get the calendar approved, and then have... Or... I don't know.
There wasn't a ton of, like... It was just kind of done before, and we approved it for a certain amount of years. For graduation? Yeah. I don't know. I wasn't here. I mean, I was here. You weren't here. I know. I experienced. Yes. It was not well received. I don't know that it's necessarily worked that well either with the community. Did you experience both? Graduations? A Friday and a Sunday? Oh, yeah. I've been here a long time, guys.
What do other communities do? Not Friday night. Yeah. I mean, some communities don't do it, depending on their populations. They don't do it Friday night because of religious reasons. Other places do Wednesday, Thursday night. Brooklyn does Sunday afternoon. So communities... We could just... We did a Wednesday night, and you just reminded me of a long time. I was going to say, we could just put it on for Sunday. Tuesday morning class day and Wednesday night graduation. And make it Sunday. There was a comment about that, too. It was very interesting. Sunday afternoon just makes sense. Right. You just like Tuesdays. People don't like it because then there's less party windows. Right. Well, you can party all day Saturday. When's your alternate weather day if it's a Sunday? You don't really set one. You just... That's graduation. Do you set Saturday as an alternate weather day if Sunday looks bad? A lot of people are coming in on a Saturday. It's hard. You just have to... That's the risk. I mean... Right. Do you limit how many families you want to attend? No. The current first year... Okay. And that'll still be the same with the current first year enrollment. The current freshman enrollment numbers. Outside, no. People are everywhere. People stand at the best. There's people, yeah. Stand. Would you ever do Monday? Like... I swear Newton had their graduation teacher on a Tuesday. We had ours on a Wednesday. And I don't know what they do now. I think they do either Tuesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Thursday. That's always... Two high schools, so you've got different days. You graduated on a Friday? I graduated on a Saturday at a Catholic church, so... But we could discuss that and then want to talk about other days of calendars. My question is, if we're having another conversation about calendar, would that only affect the 28-29, or are we approving the start and end date pending a more substantive conversation of other days with no school? That's what I'm not clear is happening or what you're... But if you added more holidays, wouldn't that impact? It would change the start and end date. Yeah, it would change the end date. No, you could shorten your February vacation. I know those are crazy ideas. I disagree. The teacher attendance, if you're not consistent with our district, it gets really hard. That's the challenge. That's why other districts have such trouble with it, the child care issues. And, yeah, that would be tough. I'm open to, like, we would have to get a lot of districts with us, I think. It also creates athletic challenges. You mean, like, how we move the start time and nobody else did in the DCL? We have some folks who... We have some schools in the DCL who move the start time even later. One district. Not at the risk of elementary. Going really early. Correct. Okay, we digress. We did not do that. That is correct. So I think we're all aligned that we would like to at least solidify calendar two with a... I just think we should change graduation. I agree with you.
That's not on here. It is. It is. June 2nd. Oh. Can we remove that pending a future discussion?
What information would change... Right, really? What information is going to change? Say a new date? Yeah.
You can. I guess my question is do... I don't know. I haven't had a high school graduate yet. So it mattered to me when I graduated that my teachers came to graduation. That was a Wednesday afternoon. If you put it at 3 o'clock on a Sunday in June, there's a lot of other family stuff that happens. So will fewer faculty attend graduation? Wouldn't that be a problem? What's been Friday night? When I graduate? No, I've been to them on Sundays. Oh, okay. So I just don't have a lot of data of the things that I would consider in weighing Friday or Sunday. And depending on the size of the community, sometimes you invite a teacher. All I can tell you is it got switched to Friday. There wasn't any input. I don't think it's gone well. I don't think it was received. Why? What's the negative about Friday? It's really difficult for everyone to get there. What time is it? 7 o'clock. 7 o'clock. And what... One year we... It's a little cooler, I would say, than... The year my daughter graduated, my shoes melted on the turf. We sat on the turf because it was COVID and we had to be so many feet apart from, like, the next family. And the soles of my shoes melted. Yes. I have had melting Sunday afternoons, that is, with older relatives. That's the biggest downside. Well, but we always have the tent anyway. True. There is a tent. For family members.
Grammy was there, wasn't she? In the tent. I remember. Grammy took Grammy to the tent. Yeah. We're good either way, so we're... Grammy didn't make it to Abby's. We've got to go to graduation regardless, so... Yeah, it doesn't matter where you are. I mean, the other option is you go to an internal facility that's local that's not your high school. Which is pricey. Pricey. I'm just putting it out there. Yeah, absolutely. There are many, and that way it doesn't matter for rain, it doesn't matter for heat. Or if you have a backup plan, you decide 48 hours before, I've made bad weather calls that way too. Where we go inside and it's beautiful out, but you have to make a decision ahead of time. They need to know set up. Yeah, but us going inside is like, without having somewhere else to go is... Yeah, no, you need a place to go. We don't have that either. You limit... Then you've got people that fly in and you're not coming. Right.
Right, did they live stream it to the... Yeah, we did. Well, we did. We went in an auditorium and you got... Each graduate got one person or two people, whatever the numbers did, and then they live streamed it into the cafeteria in my high school when it rained. It's like, why couldn't we do the auditorium in the field house overflow? No? Is the field house not big enough for overflow? Nope.
I mean, I think if there's no indoor option, I think you have to have a rain date. So I would say you've put in that entire weekend if you don't want Friday night, and then you've got to figure out what your decisioning is, whether it's Saturday with Sunday rain date, or whether it's Sunday and you move it up to Saturday. And that's what Lincoln-Sudbury had to do this past year, is that it was supposed to be Sunday and they moved it to Saturday because of the weather, is my recollection. So could we just put... Could you put three or three slash four? You don't put a rain date generally on the calendar. It goes out in the... We haven't done that before. I guess, yeah... It's been on, like, the invites and the planning, if we put one out. Okay. I think they... I think they're doing it now, given what happened. Why Sunday, not Saturday? Yeah, that's what my question is like. Like, Saturday. No, no, but you had said you... Just because Sunday used to be... Because we... Because it used to be Sunday. Sunday, and that was like... Got it, got it. Yeah, I guess in my mind, like, I'd rather tell people... I feel like people... I guess people would assume the rain date would be the... Like, would be after. Most rain dates are after. Yeah, so families traveling in, I'd rather publish an earlier date. Are all sport tournaments done by that early in June? No. No.
Well, that's why you'll see entire classes of... No, but I'm even thinking of younger siblings, parents who coach. Like, I just... I don't... This is the kind of decision you're... You cannot make everybody happy. Like, so...
Frankly, I think 7 o'clock feels late to me to do... 7 o'clock? ...150 names and a ceremony, and like, I'm guessing that feels late. But I'm also an early riser. It's close to Benton, right? What if we just... They're done with school. They stopped going to school in, what, May, like, 15th? It's usually a week before. No, it's later than that. Really? It's kind of before Memorial Day, but... Yeah. It's like the Thursday before Memorial Day, I feel like, and then they have the whole week after. I'm just thinking they could graduate earlier. It doesn't have to be the first weekend in June. It could be the third, fourth weekend in May or something. I don't know. That's usually the last Memorial Day weekend. Let's do it. The Thursday in the line, you can't graduate 12... It's only after 12 days. That's true. Yeah. I didn't hear you. Oh, 12 days before the last day of school, right? The end of the last day of school. That's right. You can't exceed 12 days. It's our public school. Mm-hmm.
All right. Do you just want to delete graduation and we'll put it out later? I'm fine with the third or the fourth. I think we need a rain date. So I think we have to, if we pick the fourth, then we have to go back. I don't feel strongly about keeping Friday evening, but I'm hearing people perhaps like... Do you just want to talk to Allison and we'll take it off and then maybe next week or next meeting we continue to amend it? Yeah.
At least then people know when we're starting school, when we're ending school. Yes? Feedback from students. It's their graduation. I don't know that they really, except for like the class that was right after the class that graduated on a Sunday, if they really even thought the difference. Right, once it's changed, it's... Yeah, they... So this will feel like a big change because it's been Friday for a while, but then the next class will think it's always been on Sundays. Well, nobody can have parties after... Generally, there's not parties after these on Friday nights. Nobody can get in to eat anywhere because we're not done until whatever freaking time we're done. It's really late.
Do you want somebody to make a motion with the exception of... No.
I don't care. I've now hit my wall. I think we need to have reached my point. Like we have to approve the calendar with graduation removed because people need dates and we need feedback from Allison on graduation date. No, go ahead. Do whatever you want to do. No, I don't have editing access. It asks for you. I can't do it. On what? We can't. We don't have editing access. Only you do. Sorry. I was reading something. There you go. Do you want to do it, Jessica? Wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on.
I've got to delete number two.
Is this going to... You guys are good with the 25th or...
Okay.
That would be the staff return. Oh, the August.
How did we... How were AIM?
How were they on the same day? Because their WBAP is doing two days worth of PD at their 12 hours over the course of the year. They're making their plans as we speak with their... So they don't have to come the day before? They start on the same day because we're starting a day and a half... Or a day... Two and a half days at the start instead of... Did we? We took that out? They're doing now 12 hours to do it differently. They're doing PD just differently. Yeah. Which was more effective. Instead of at the end of the year. But I don't know if that's the way the contracts read. Doesn't it still say that the staff will return the day before the teachers? But if you've added an extra half day that the teachers are coming back, they're coming back like two and a half days before.
Correct. Which makes their start date the same. To me, you have to say the full day and the third day. The language still has... Am I... No, I thought that too. Because that was a hard thing. Yeah, we don't want a dark process that separates. Why don't we look at the... I don't... I just... I saw it as one and I don't think we got that deleted. I don't think that's what they say. I think it... I think it... It says that there you go, 100. But it says that they start the day before the teachers. Yeah. And that doesn't work. That doesn't work. Because we settled that before we... Uh-huh. That's my... We're happy to get back to the collective bargaining team on that. It says the work year shall include 180 scheduled student days, three work days prior to the first day, the first student day. So that's three. So that's three. Yeah, but that's three for... It wasn't the credit card on the teachers. This is Unit B. Exactly. And 12 hours of required professional development equivalent to two paid days scheduled throughout the year. Go to the language for the calendar in Unit A. Oh, I don't have Unit A's. Sorry. Go to the language and the calendar in Unit B. If it's in there. If not... Wait, I don't... That was under work year article. That was under Unit B. It was good because you've been so shy about that reference throughout this evening's discourse. Really was not... I was really looking at a guessing game. I don't see anything.
I got it. Hold on. I don't know. Are you looking at the MOA? I'm not looking at the MOA. I'm looking at the original agreement. Yeah, you're going to look at the original agreement. They didn't touch it.
182 and one-half days shall be scheduled between August and June. We were supposed to meet prior to the final establishment if there were no objections.
I am not finding that language, Erin. I remember that language. I'm not finding that language.
When were you passing March 15th, anyway? No. It would be March 1st of this year. It would be March 1st of 27 for the following year. We have to approve it by March 1. 26. Of 27. We're usually way further. We usually do it much earlier, but the contract just says it has to be approved by March 1. Right.
I don't see it.
No, I know. Do you think it's in an MOA? Negotiations. Should we just talk about it?
Betsy, do you remember it came up, though, because of the... That's right. I remember we were looking at changing the language about the no, like the Monday before Labor Day or the Tuesday before, which is the day before. Oh, I know why. I couldn't just find it. Why? Because I was looking at the 20 to 23. Oh, I was in the 23 to 26, and I can't find it. But I don't know if it's an MOA. There was absolutely a discussion about... It was. That was specifically why they rejected it. That was why they didn't want to do the Monday no longer than the Monday before, because then Unit B would have to come on Friday. The Friday before. Correct. So that came from somewhere. But didn't... But then we... Wasn't the... The 1,0004 Unit B was settled? I just can't remember in time. Uh-uh. It was after. It was after, I think. It didn't come up and... No, we just changed the way that they were allowed to, and I don't think we ever actually changed language on that. Mm-mm. It was just something Ronnie kind of, like, agreed to in the background. What? The way that they're doing their PD.
I... Like, did we actually change wording? In the MOA, it says it. In Unit B. In Unit B. In the MOA for Unit B. It says... It says... Three days before the student's first day. Yeah. It says... Which puts them... Because I think it's... But it's not in reference to the teacher's first day. No, it just says the work year shall include 180 student days, three work days prior to the first student day, as defined by the official school calendar, and 12 hours of required PD. Right, so then they don't have to do, say, the extra two days. That was about the end of the year. But that's the end. That was the end of the year. Yeah, that's what I mean. You were... That was, like, a back-end kind of thing, that you were like, we don't have to do it at the end, they can do it. Yes. Yes, because, well, we would get more useful to do hours of PD as it didn't come the last day as well. Mm-hmm. We don't want to hold up for that.
Maybe we're better off just waiting and voting on Monday and having a... The earliest day because we have to post for OML. We have to post an agenda. It's fine. Okay. It's fine. That was the... It'll be fine. That's fine. We'll have to start the same day as teachers. No, but that's what you have there. They just have to do it. And that's my... It's the same day. Teachers start the same day. So teachers start... Two and a half days. Two and a half days before, so it's the same day, Erin. Yeah. So teachers would be a half day on the 20th day. And the TAs would be a full day. Well, I think you're doing a half day on the 20th day. You definitely... Yeah, the third day. We'll figure it. We'll figure it out. We'll work. Is this right? We don't want that to hold up. Thank you. Oh, thank you. It's on the full balance. So can we vote on this, or do we need to wait until we clarify this? Betsy, you said you read that they have to have a meeting if there's any... It says that... So we can approve it if there's objections to it. Then there's... We have a discussion. We're in a discussion.
Yeah. No, I know. I'm just reading the contract language. I know. I'm just... Oh, okay. Oh, I know. That's right.
Okay, so are we comfortable? Or would you like to meet on Monday?
Whatever you guys want. I'm available. Or I can wait. If you guys want to make a motion, you can make a motion. So as an understanding it, we can make a motion and approve this. And if there's an issue, we can come back. Yes? Okay. I move to approve the 2027-2028 calendar as discussed, with the addition of graduation being decided at a later date.
Okay.
Do we have a second? Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? None. Okay. So what's in there under number two has number two removed at the top. Do you want me to remove the reference for August 25th?
Remove it. What, the August 25th? Yeah. The reference to that, and you can get added in after the fact. It's up to you guys. And we can move forward on the agenda, and that's... It's a... Not a... Okay.
All right, so at our next meeting, we need to be prepared to discuss graduation. You guys are going to talk to Allison? Yeah.
June 2 to 4. I just put June 2 to 4 as... 2 to 5. That puts us within the 12-day range from the last day of school, unless we have an extension of school days?
Do they not count? I think, yeah, it doesn't. You're fine. Um, and plan for a substantive discussion regarding how, when, why we close our schools with respect to holidays later in the year, and plan to have that addressed for the 28-29 calendar. Do you want me to remove 25? What was the answer on that? On the August 25th. Do you want me to just remove it from the calendar for now? Not that... For now, sure.
We could just say school. I think you need... Just take it out of the start. It's by fence, the teachers. Yeah, I mean... Unless... But you're going to communicate that with them, because right now they have two calendars. You're going to have to communicate with them that we approve this. Okay, we can do that. That was why I was saying. I get it. Yeah, we'll talk to them tomorrow. Oh, I think that's a good split. They have that. They have this. Yeah. So, if you want... I'd leave it on. I can't leave it on. Yeah. I mean, we'd have to add it Friday at teachers. But, no. It's fine. Can you see that in there, Diane? I'm leaving it named number two. That's the one that we just approved. And it doesn't have a graduation date on it. It does have August 25th. And I removed number two at the top. I think I just have that, say, staff return. Yes? The units can't be more 12 months. Easier.
Consent agenda. Any comments? Yes. Thank you for the robust August 24th. It was a long... It was a big one. Do we have something to discuss around item A on executive session?
We do?
A and B, briefly. Yeah? Okay.
I'll move to... We'll go to the consent agenda. We do. I was just asking. Oh, okay. I have more to go on. If we're ready, yeah. If we're ready, yeah. Okay. Move to approve the consent agenda. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. The consent agenda is approved. Ronny, thank you for having your card. I'm going to rock it. You'll probably be done before I'm at home. Don't drop me at home before you drop yourself. Good. Good. All in favor. All in favor. All in favor. All in favor, Jericho. Yeah. All in favor.