okay it is seven everyone's here so welcome again um members of the public who wish to watch our meeting as you know can find the link on the actv uh.org website uh at the top of our agenda as a reminder this meeting as always is being recorded and posted on actant tv.org and thank you to act andv for recording and posting our meetings um we are going to go a little out of order since we're moving along quite nicely tonight and we're going to take the superintendent uh update now before we open our budget hearing at 705 so Peter superintendent update please all right thanks Adam um so March is always the most exciting time of year in our schools um with lots and lots going on so I'm just going to highlight some of the things that are going to be in our memo um you know one huge congratulations to our Science Olympiad team uh they came in first place out of 63 teams from across the state um at the mass Science Olympiad hosted at Wentworth Institute of Technology so congratulations to them um last year we had a presentation from our two of our students uh one of our students who um advanced in the regeneron science competition we actually had two students recognized in that um from the high school timson and heroi and they you know just founded us yesterday with their presentations um to some faculty and students absolutely amazing what the kids are doing um we also had a number of student artists recognized um for the 2024 ma EA recognition award um so I just want to congratulate a number of our students uh lilac shei anxious hands um let's see that was for anxious it's not sorry I yeah um Ashley Goo uh who did luminescence um vavi Murthy uh self-reflection um and the that was it so thank you congratulations um our drama team also advanced in the Statewide drama Festival so big congratulations to them um the high school girls basketball team won the DCL Championship um and our girls gymnastics team also won their big DCL meet so congratulations to them um and we had a Blanchard fifth grade student Annabelle woo who was selected as a top five student in the 2024 National Association of teachers of singing um contest so congratulations there we are also uh beginning women's History Month um which you know is a celebration of women's contributions to history culture and Society uh that's been observed annually in March in the United States since 1987 women's History Month 2024 takes place from Friday March 1st until Sunday March 31st thus the celebration in March um sorry I said it once and said it again and caught myself um women's history month is a dedicated month to reflect on the often Overlook contributions of women to the United States history uh from Abigail Adams to Susan B Anthony sojer truth to Rosa Parks the timeline of women's history uh Milestone stretches back to the founding of the United States so we're excited about launching that month um it's also School breakfast week um nationally um and so our cafeteria staff are doing some things to get students excited about school breakfast in the district um pleased about that we have um a couple of holidays going on for families and students across the district uh this month Ramadan begins at sundown on March 10th um and ends at sundown down on April 9th Good Friday is March 29th and Easter is March 31st um we also have a number of other things that we're going to send out um to families just congratulations there's so much going on uh Blanchet Elementary just hosted 242 students and families uh for Steam and literacy night that's a big deal um and Douglas Elementary just had 15 countries represented as they celebrated their Festival of cultures uh with their students and families so congratulations to Douglas um I do have some updated material materials again on our fy2 budget website um mostly around the budget hearing and I'm working on finalizing a video that you know hopefully in you know about four minutes or less can explain the difference between the A and B budgets um just in really clear community-friendly language so you know people who don't have a lot of time to understand what the two differences are can dig in and understand that so I'm hoping to finalize that over the next couple of days um I also want to thank um the ab Resource Center um and ab cares uh they are going to be offering a QPR gatekeeper training uh which is a suicide prevention training um that is coming up on March 12th at uh 7M so we're sending that out to the community to make sure that they're aware um that's obviously an important training in our community and we want to make sure people know about that and then Adam and I are actually working on setting up some community-based uh couple of coffees um in the evenings for community members who just want to come and you know hear a little bit about the budget and ask some questions and answers we're actually looking at a couple of cafes in the community to make it make it a little more user friendly for people so we'll be confirming that and releasing it shortly so thanks everyone thanks anyone have questions for Peter on the update seeing none we'll now go back to our budget hearing um so noting the hour and a presence of a quorum I'll call the act and boxboro Regional school committee fy2 annual budget hearing to order Welcome to our budget hearing um as seen on the agenda you can uh find all of our budget materials posted um from the February 15th school committee meeting uh on the website you can also visit our budget specific fy2 website to get um all of the information regarding the budget and the assessments I'll note that tonight um we're just having a budget hearing and that our official vote on the proposed fy2 budget and assessments will be done at our next school committee meeting on March 21st so not tonight tonight's just a hearing opportunity for the public to make some comments and uh questions on the on the budget uh and with that I'll hand it over to Peter to give a quick budget overview all right thanks everyone um so you clearly can be proud to have a superintendent that knows that if you celebrate women's History Month in March it means it's March 1st to March 31st I don't know where that came from but I will you keep keep it rolling proud moment for me um tonight is March 7th um which I will note is 7 days into women's History Month um we are doing our public budget hearing uh this is a hearing that is required by Massachusetts General law um it has been posted appropriately in various news places things like that which is is a requirement of doing the budget hearing um you know we're moving toward final budget adoption um your next meeting on March 21st um you the the budget that has proceeded so far is the a budget which is the one that you're scheduled to adopt um just as a reminder that you know you obviously have an a budget and a b budget the only budget that you would vote at this point is the a budget the only reason that you would vote a b budget is if the override does not pass in the town of Acton at which point you would reconvene vote the B budget and then the B budget would move forward to the two Town meetings uh but the a budget is the school committee budget at this point um we are headed for an override vote that override vote takes place on Tuesday April 30th 2024 obviously talking about an override vote in the town of Acton is not to slight box up B there's a difference in the two Levy limits available um and so that's really the reason why you only see one Community having an override vote um annual town meeting however is the same process that it has always been which is a a two-part process uh May 6th in Acton and May 13th in boxboro school committee Bud budget guidelines that we had were really focused on making sure students continue to have access to a robust system of supports for their social emotional behavioral and mental health needs as well as their academic needs and interests um we want to make sure that we're continuing to promote all student sense of belonging through a strong and inclusive School climate and culture and providing resources that address some of the disproportionate outcomes that you have seen and we've obviously been talking about throughout the budget process um this is the highlight of that budget along with some of the major budget drivers um salaries are always the largest part of the expense budget um for any school district um and you can see overall in the a budget the salaries are a 3.39% increase um non-salary expenses which we've talked about a lot as being major budget drivers this year are at 12.4% um and then the use of offset accounts is actually lower that's when you start to talk about you know less the use of end um Circ breaker things like that because we we don't have access to that funding anymore um you can see the breakdown of salaries and non-salary expenses below um and some of the budget drivers um note when we you know even though we've seen some changes now in um salary increases because we have reduced 20 staff in this budget um and the same for health insurance um where not it's a combination of not only reducing the staff but also the changes that that we've now made and we're finalizing tonight in health insurance uh you can see that that number has come down um and but you can see that the cost of out of district tuitions and transportations are are pretty much holding strong throughout this budget process quick overview um of administrative categories um this was your not to exceed budget that you voted in your preliminary budget and you can see increase relative increase and decrease um continuing on into the school sites as well I mean I know this is in the packet so I'm not spending a lot of time on it tonight I just wanted to to highlight it and have it available if anyone has any questions um and then kind of the broad overview of that a budget is that we have you know a total of about 3.1 million in reductions um if you remember we started the process around 2 million that's increased to um the 3.1 million so just want to be clear about that um we do have new Revenue coming in from a number of different fees and other sources as well um that's that's where we are in the budget process so that lands us at the $114 million budget that we have which is a 7.68% increase um and you can see the Acton and boxboro uh assessments respectively at 10.33% and 14.46% so at this point Adam I'll turn it over to you for any public comment and questions thanks Peter yeah so because this is the public hearing we'll go to the public and we'll invite members of the public to come up and make any questions or comments once we close the public hearing um we'll then turn to the school committee to see if they have questions or comments members of the public who wish to ask questions please step forward take my first choice thanks Gary can you hear me okay yeah good thanks uh Gary Kushner boxboro finance committee that's fine may I raise it again um start to be repetitive please change your guidelines for next year this is a pain for me and you listening to me um so moving into the budget part I've asked at least twice other people have asked we really need a multiple year budget this year I've asked for it um um and the big issue is as Peter said box BR is not going for an override this year it's too was too late for us to get to that point once we realized where we were we're at our left limit we actually using stabilization to fund some of the warrant articles this year we need to go for an override next year the issue is going to be we have almost no growth in town New New Growth this year it's about $300,000 next year it'll probably be less which means we're limited to 2 and a half% plus a small amount of new growth for next year this is going to impact the school if the override fails in box Barrow so we really need to know understand what the impact is going to be uh for the budgets for next year and the year after for for uh various items um because if if wax pears override fails we're in in trouble um so please I understand it's been a really tough year trying to figure out the budget for this year with a and b but we really do need to understand going forward I'll answer that one uh so yes Gary we completely agree and I think you'll see an email coming out this evening from the chair of our budget subcommittee inviting respective members from both Acton and boxboro fincom um to a budget subcommittee meeting where we're going to go through sort of our budget model and look at the John thank you where we're going to go through the model with with the fincom um and explain to them and uh sort of build up that projection in in conjunction with the finance committees over the next few years like we've discussed at a couple of finance committee meetings so yes we we've heard that um we were trying to get our head above water from the budget and but very responsive we're going to we're going to bring the finance committees in to help look at that model um very shortly thank you hi John John Peterson six Jackson Drive um so I noticed everybody is now wearing their together buttons and I wanted to make a together comment about all the work that's gone on um behind the scenes as reflected by the executive session tonight um and the vote that you have later this evening related to the health insurance um and the only way that important things really get done and really get done in a hurry is when people work together so I wanted to explicitly thank um Henry Morris um the chair of askme and all of his colleagues um an Chandler the president of the acting boxb office support Association and Mike balescu and his colleagues who I know have been working you know very diligently with um the administration and the school committee to make possible the a budget that we are are currently discussing this was you know a tremendous effort to deal with a really complicated problem and as a member of the public I wanted to make sure everybody knew I really appreciated that thank you thanks John any other members of the public have uh questions or discussion on our fy2 budget as part of our um public hearing okay so seeing no more public participation there um I will look for a motion to adjourn the annual budget hearing so moved second so that'll be Ben and tor's just on a roll for seconding this evening so Ben and then Tori um all those in favor I any opposed abstentions that's unanimous thank you so now we are back in our business meeting Welcome to our business meeting again um this is now a opportunity for the school committee to have any discussion or questions on our fy2 preliminary budget um and assessments any further discussion from the committee and we're talking about a budget right now none great we are now on to our school committee uh sorry our student rep from the high school um to provide us with a monthly report I thought I saw someone here earlier okay 7:30 uh if if if they come back we will perfect so the next item on our agenda is public participation I see fingers pointing hey hey so we are at the uh student rep portion are either of you are student reps I don't think so no so we're going to public participation where members of the public are invited to speak to up to 3 minutes um regarding items that are not on our agenda um you have to be recognized by the chair before speaking and as usual the committee doesn't typically respond during public participation anybody wish to make a comment during our public participation section of the meeting come on upk you thank you um hi hi my name is s a I'm a junior at Acton box Regional High School I'm part of resource force a climate club uh act in that works to reduce the town's carbon footprint and I'm here today to speak in favor of the climate resolution that we've been talking about for a couple of months now um the climate resolution to the school committee is meant to be a foundation for future action um we acknowledge the work that the school committee has already done and it's been amazing work um but we believe that more action needs to be taken and the resolution will help build towards that um we hope that the school committee can commit to Net Zero by a certain time and we hope that the carbon um action plan or the school committee resolution will help do that as well thank you thanks hi my name is kyen VG I'm also a junior at the high school and I'm also part of resource Force likea which is as she said the environmental team at the high school and I'm also here in favor of the climate resolution so as you guys know um there surround us like all the natural disasters and climate change that's been going on um that affects the students um the PO population of acting box bro and also the habitat of acting box bro and it's up to us to fix that um and make a difference and I'm sure you've also noticed the snow like we've gotten significantly less snow more less and less snow over the years and this year I we barely got any honestly like this time I'd be skiing so yeah it's kind of disappointing and we really need to take action um so yeah I'm here to ask you to pass the climate resolution that we have been talking about previously and so we can have a brighter future for both my generation but also the rest of the population of Acton and the younger generations to come thank you thank you any other public participation all right seeing none we're going to move on to guests and presentation so our culturally responsive practices Jen Faber's here with some friends welcome all right um good evening Warren I'm Jen Faber I'm the director for diversity Equity inclusion and with me I have some spectacular culture responsive teacher leaders who are representing a larger group that is actually at home cheering us on as they've promised so I will pass it along so I'm Caitlyn Norsworthy um I teach third grade at conut school and I'm excited to be here talk about this and I'm Jasmine Washington and I teach fourth grade at Blanchard all right so we're going to start talking and and you have seen many have seen this obviously which is our district strategic plan but if really want to focus on our most powerful why which is a sense of belonging and the reason I want to bring that into this space because all the work that we're doing as culture responsive teacher leaders is really focused on that powerful why because when you do have that sense of belonging you have you fulfill a need for connection and acceptance and inclusion additionally when we have that sense of belonging it really does create um strong and resilient communities and that's our hope for this work if we're going to have this conversation around what cultural responsive teaching is there's a lot of different definitions um so what we wanted to share is a definition that we've been working on here we started our work last year with the culture responsive teacher leaders using um the book um by zoretta Hammond culture responsive teaching in the brain so that was the center of our work this is her definition and the definition really provides all of us here and all of the the culture responsive teacher leaders and the school practitioners a shared understanding and the same definition of what it means and culture responsive teaching is defined as an Educator's ability to recognize students cultural displays of learning and meaning making and respond positively and constructively with teaching moves that use cultural knowledge as a scaffold to connect with the student knows to New Concepts and content to promote effective information processing I really want you to notice that there's a lot of cultural um emphasis put in this definition and that's a lot of our work work and ultimately if you don't remember all of these words and that's okay if you don't what I do want you to remember is that culture responsive teaching is really the intersection between equity culture and instruction oh well thank you um so I really wanted um all of you to understand the work that we've been doing for the past two years the culture responsive teacher leaders we currently have 20 at the elementary and secondary levels we have two here with us um um the part of the work that they do and their responsibility is that we meet monthly myself and Michelle Shannon who's a national coach facilitator we lead these professional learning sessions um and then the work that they're learning there then gets spread and distributed in this model to all the schools at all the different levels um each one of these explains some of the work that we've done throughout our sessions and they're going to highlight that and before we highlight that I really want to understand that it's not just this work that they do they're also thought Partners in the schools they are providing resources they're celebrating the wonderful work that's happening they're also collaborating with their school-based Administration team on any school-based goals that they might have as well as District goals that they have so it's a lot of work that they do um and so that's why I'm really glad that we're able to celebrate this work and celebrate the work that they've been doing enough of me I can talk a lot and I don't want to be that person that elongates any school committee Mee meeting so um Caitlyn and Jasmine are going to start talking about the work that they've done um so as you can see from the pictures up on the screen uh the first picture to the left is a picture from this year where we actually had the opportunity to move into breakout spaces to work on some problems of practice um as you know we have a new El curriculum for language arts this year and so one of those groups focused on um some poetry that came up in a unit um and we worked through what that would look like what we would do moving forward as we do this work in the pre years to come um and we also had a look at a read aloud that someone had brought forth to our attention and so the group read the book and sort of thought of what might need to happen as you're working with that as a just fun read aloud versus a teachable moment and how you might um build background knowledge or other things as you're introducing that to your class um and so then if we shift to the middle picture um Caitlyn's going to talk about that but I'm going to just jump in since it's easier than passing the mic back and forth the third picture is from actually last year the first year that we were working together as a group and this was once we had sort of begun to build some of the trusting relationships that we now have as we're able to talk about some of this challenging work um and a big part of our culture responsive practices in general is being able to build allies as a group build trust um and be able to have successful learning Partnerships so we had to pick this giant Rod up off the floor with the group of 20 of us and who's moving what in that way of communicating communicating and making sure that we are effectively meeting everyone where they were to be successful um and so that is a lot of the work that we're taking as our group and then implementing it and working on it with both our staff and our students so that middle picture that we're looking at is actually a picture from one of our first meetings um in the summer this year at the beginning of this school year um and it's it's an activity that we did right at the beginning of our meeting and we brought in cultural artifacts from from home to share with a partner and share with the whole group and it was really just like a reconnecting time for us because like we had those experiences from the year before and kind of like a touch point for us to like connect with each other build rapport with each other so that we could do this work that we were planning to do for the rest of the day and for the rest of the year so all of this work and and K and Jasmine and I have talked a little bit about some of these quadrants so I want um to explain explain the framework this framework is really how we operationalize these practices in the classrooms Setta Hammond um has coined this ready for riger framework and she has it into four quadrants we're not going to go through all of these and I can't honestly even with glasses can't even read half of these bullets um but I'm just going to highlight some of that so you understand the concept of the quadrants so the first one which is the first um section of the book and it's exactly what we did first which is that self-awareness so understanding your own so cultural biases identifiers all of that and then you move into that um developing the cultural competence but then you move into then the student awareness do are you aware of your students cultural identity and all of those markers that everyone has and this is also a place where we really talked a lot about um our implicit bias and the biases and assumptions that we have and that we bring into spaces and that are in the classroom existing once we had that awareness um and we're still working on and evolving we're still learning but then we work into that we walk into that learning partnership this is one of the most critical and hardest concepts of this framework and learning Partnerships is really about Connections it's about Rapport and allyship um it is about emphasizing that collaboration with students with families and the teachers it's also about becoming a warm demander which is something that we talked a lot about and being a warm de warm demander is really about pushing your students to the highest level and expectations but you're doing it with care um so we talked a lot about like how do we become those warm demanders so often Educators we're more in the level of being sentimentalists and nurturers we really want to care for our students and that's okay to do it but we're still going to push them to that highest level of expectation the next one is information processing and this is about how do we challenge our students what challenge ing learning experiences do we provide in order for that brain stimulation and that brain growth in this this is really this intersection of learning and culture this is where it comes together this is also where we provide feedback um and teachers provide feedback all the time but we dug into it and said how do we provide wise feedback and when we talk about wise feedback we talk about being acable and honest um and really making sure that we are telling our students students where they need to go and where they're going to grow and learn we also um talked a lot in this section around understanding students cultures and how they learn and how they process information so one of the topics that we covered that is not in this slide deck nor in the memo is um understanding the cultural archetypes of individual versus collectivist cultures so um I'll give you an anecdote I'm I come from a collectivist culture America is predominantly individ individualist culture right about competition and self whereas the um the collectivist um you typically will learn through or oral Traditions um and that's a big concept of how one learns and so one of the things that we did and I think it actually pushed the culture and you can speak about this pushed them the most was we said all right the same topic that you would teach which was about the election do it in poem do it in song do it in word play and I it was like quiet in the room they're all like what like we can't just sit and teach and we're like nope let's do it let's do oral tradition it's a different way of having students access the same information but really pulling into that archetype so that is that information processing and then the last one um the last quadrant that I'll speak out about which is really one of the most important things and I think um act and boxboro teachers do this really well is is building a community of Learners and um engagement and this is a place where we really want students to have voice we want students to have agency additionally um this is a place where we need students to feel safe emotionally and academically um and if we do all of that super easy um and we implement this framework um we are really ensuring that our students are ready ready for this rigor that we're presenting but also leaders of their own learning which is critical um so you can see up here is um zarat Hammond's um culture tree where she outlines various levels um of culture in her work um and we have to understand that like these different levels affect the students in various different ways and so we have to think about that in our teaching um and so we also have to understand that culture encompasses more than just ethnicity or nationality we have to think about all of those different things and how they influence our students identity and their like learning profile um and so if you look up at the top in like the leaves um that's the surface culture it's the most easi observable part of someone's culture so it's things like language and food and clothing um and these aren't as um like deeply emotionally impacting to students although they are very important um it's just not as deep as some of the other layers that we're starting to um get into um and so after that like the trunk of the tree is shallow culture and so that's like unspoken rules it's things like norms and values and behaviors and there are things that might differ across cultural groups and this is definitely something that we' we've been working with um and then we get into like the roots of the tree which is deep culture which are things like um beliefs and worldviews and historical um experiences that really shape someone's identity in ways that are much more difficult to see on the surface um and so it's things like what Jen was talking about with collectivist or individualist um cultures that if you don't know about it it's hard for you to like see and so it's something that we've really been been working through um because there is such diversity in our classrooms um it's really important that we think about all of these different layers for all of the different students for how we can make sure that they feel included and like we're um like really respecting and understanding them another thing that we have been talking a lot about and actually bringing back into some of the schools um is this idea around independent versus dependent Learners it's really important to recognize the diversity in learning styles and preferences among students and it helps teachers and students be aware of how we differentiate different accommodations for those students both as independent and dependent Learners um we actually have done a lot of work at Blanchard with this where we added it as another aspect of the learner profile when it comes to class placement thinking about students that can take initiative or advocate for themselves compared to students who might need other check-ins or more support around those things really allows teachers to help build those skills for students to move across the Spectrum from dependent to Independent but also allow for a more balanced classroom um so this is something that we we've taken and worked with not only as ourselves thinking about the styles that we learn about and then us as Educators and then what we see in our students and how it it really is a spectrum um at Blanchard we started the in the fall asking Educators to sort of put their students that they work with on a spectrum um and then do it again and so we did it again this winter and saw maybe some students regress why might that be asking questions about what's happening for that individual child and then allowing um ourselves to think about what changes we could make to either continue to build that Independence or maybe seek out other supports for the reason why they might have shifted down or towards the dependent side of the spectrum and then we are going to do it again in the spring to again help us uh enforce balanced classrooms and hope to build that better understanding of the students in front of us as Learners and to add to that the activities that you're going to be hearing about is those were activities in in um I would say sort of learning experiences that we had at our monthly professional learning sessions that then the culture responsive teacher leaders then go back and share that with their colleagues so um during one of our sessions we asked all of the culture responsive teacher leaders to take really a long pause in our session and map out their students on the spectrum of dependent to independent and then they were able to bring that back to their classrooms and their schools me me me um our next one is this year we actually added two additional professional learning opportunities for our culture responsive teacher leaders um we've decided to do school visits this year so that the culture responsive teacher leaders are visiting each other and learning from each other and Caitlyn and Jasmine are going to talk a little bit about that and then problems of practice so this is really looking at some real world examples that are happening here in our classrooms and bringing it to this Think Tank to be able to really work through what are some of these challenges that we're experiencing and what are some of the actual steps that we can take so I'm really going to let they're living this so I'm going to let them um highlight that for us wh whom is going first um yes so one thing that I have really feel like I've benefited from so much is our school visits that we've started this year um as crls we've been able to visit classrooms within our school and some people have been able to visit classrooms in other schools as well um and just that observation has been so powerful to view um and looking at it from a cultur responsive lens gives you like another insight um so when we're doing this like the first thing that we do is we meet and we talk about a focus um for that visit so like what are we really observing for because there's so many things that happen in a classroom it's good to have like a a focus area um and then we actually go in and we do the observation and we take notes on on what that was and just like other things that we're noticing um and then after I think the most valuable part is that we actually debrief so we have a time set aside where we can talk about the experience talk about what we noticed talk about what we're going to take away um and and it's really encouraging I will say to be able to have those conversations and get those ideas from people who are um like learning the same things as you and actually see them in action because when you're trying them you can't see yourself doing them too so it's that's been a really valuable thing for us um and I think it's really fostered really deep collaboration and Trust among teachers um and really just builds that reflection and reflective practice as well yeah I will add just quickly sharing my experience as well um it's been really powerful I feel like a lot of times when people are coming into our classrooms it's to be observed for um your job your evaluation um and so it's really nice to have colleagues come in with hopefully that shared Outlook but also shared understanding of the work that you're trying to do and the improvements you're you're sort of working towards to make um with the Elder culture responsive teacher leader that I did our observations with it was great because I was actually working through a problem of practice that had happened from a previous day with my class and so it was nice to to have another set of eyes and ears listening to how we were reflecting on that um I had students share how they were feeling from sort of being asked to reflect on the incident that had happened and then allowing him to kind of share what he saw and like so how did it go now it's been a couple days since I was in there like what changed or what happened for you how are the students responding to that and then the opposite of when I was in his classroom I got to observe it was sort of a a it was the 100th day of school so it was a different activity versus the typical curriculum that you would see and yet he approached a lot of the ways that he was communicating with his class with questions allowing them sort of the opportunity and uh ability to sort of think about what they wanted to do and how they were going to do the activity individually um and he hadn't noticed that he was speaking to them in that way so bringing those things to light and being able to sort of be vulnerable and know like we're all working on different things and having that culturally responsive lens only makes us better Educators in the long run um so in addition to all these like districtwide initiatives that the crtl are doing we've definitely individualized some of this work at the different schools as well so I can speak to my experience at Conan a little bit um one thing that we've been doing that has had some really great success has been we have a monthly um Dei article study group um and me and other crtl Taylor we actually spend some time like looking through articles which has us definitely reflecting more and think about like what is like timely at the time for our for our staff and so when we're looking at them with um everyone everyone reads through the article we come together it's a group that gets to choose whether they would like to come um but it's been a really like Lively group and we've really been able to learn from each other um most recently we read um an article that really focused on the intersection between race and disability which which was a really like interesting article and really like um like thought-provoking and really helped um the conversation like go further into things about udl and like really like whole schoolwide things um and it's been a real place for just collaboration and just learning from each other um with people that wouldn't be at all of our meetings which is really nice um the other thing that at conut we've definitely been doing is um we've kind of been like a like a thought partner um on different like school events and school initiatives and just like being there to think about like the cultur responsive lens um and making sure that like events that we have are accessible to all and responsive to all and that everyone will be able to participate in them um I think it's been a big part of our work at this time um and I've spoken to some of the things that have been happening at Blanchard and I would just add in we saw the culture tree um earlier and what Blanchard and our group of crls last year decided to do was actually have our staff break into small groups and we gave them sort of a blank culture tree we gave a little background knowledge as to what they were looking for and what we meant through surface culture down deep to the roots and we had the small groups brainstorm Blanchard's culture what are some of the aspects of the shallow culture and we worked through that as a small group we actually asked administrators to do that separately so that the teachers didn't necessarily feel pressure based on what their responses were and then we came together as a collective group to sort of think about not necessarily just the good but just some of the natural things that have built themselves and rituals and traditions at Blanchard along with other events that we're doing um one it was really eye openening for new staff that might have not known all of the stuff that exists or that has kind of just been the way um but then also looking at things that um we needed to be more aware of and we needed to maybe shift our thinking or make sure that we have that culturally responsive lens to then allow administrators to see what we did and we also got a glimpse as to what administrators charted for their culture Trace so was just another way of taking some of this work and applying it to the whole school setting so any questions or comments suggestions thank you all right we're gonna start with Ben and go lme and I'm just going to go around the table this way so prepare yourselves Ben so first off I want to thank you for the amazing work that you've been doing in fostering a culturally inclusive environment within our classrooms speaking as a parent of a seventh grader I can say that my son has directly benefited from this program within his classroom instruction the one question I have is with the Spectre of the two budgets being presented if the override were to fail how would this program be impacted if there would be substantial budget cuts okay I read the room I'll take it um so you know I've been sort of thinking a little bit about that because the impact would be stiens so there it's a stien in position um and they do a lot more than really commensurate of this stipend um so one of the things that we can consider alternate ways for this to continue still doing the work maybe not at the same capacity and scope but it could be that they get pdps or another way that they're can be a commensurate of the work that they're doing and if you were to reduce the scope of the work work how would that impact their students it there would be impact right there's not we're not going to be able to do maybe as deep work that we're doing um because it is a time commitment also away from their classrooms so we'd have to look at that and balance it out for what we're providing them as a as a fee or stien and then the work that they're doing absolutely um I think another aspect of that is like the hope of the program moving forward it started with this cohort it's built we're building on the work even as new culture responsive teacher leaders become part of our group but like the long-term hope is to get this out to more Educators and far a larger capacity within our schools which wouldn't be able to happen if that were the case thanks me so I have had two boys through the school system so I really would would have appreciated this kind of program but I wanted to ask you two questions I have seen it through the school system how things work and things don't work so one of the things that I ask is how do you work with the staff the Educators who have not been uh trained to work this way through these lenses and uh that questions comes from the um belief or experience to say empathy cannot be that taught to people that easily right so what comes out of it is superficial practices not real change and for a program to be effective you have to listen to what the kids feel not what you think put in place as a feedback system but what kids say kids feel so I wanted to ask how are you measuring that and is there an Avenue for the kids to come back and say hey this is not working for me rather than them going to the their parents and then parents coming to you um so as far as the measuring piece we do have surveys um that go out to really focus on that sense of belonging so that's how we're doing that measurement it's a baseline of that there are several questions around the survey around that so that's one piece of measuring um and going to the other piece of how do we get those who aren't necessarily along the journey as farther long as I could say like they are um there is a spectrum of learning and that is the jour Journey that we have to be on and I think that's some of the hard work that I have to do that they have to do is really seeing where people are just like we do with our students and get them to the place that we need to and we also have to be responsive to who they are um I'm not saying we're saying no we're not going to work with you we just have to be responsive to where they are in their journey and get them to that place we're not giving up we're just it just going to take us a little bit longer to get them there there's going to be resistors in a lot of the work that we all do in education that that is just something that we're used to working with and then your final question was around parents is that what you no I was I was asking about I mean asking parents is not the most effective feedback loop right I think how kids feel and their well-being I mean we talking about these budgets being addressing the emotional issues of the kids are we really addressing the emotional issues of the kids not getting the feedback through the parents or events or some cultural superficial things how are the kids feeling uh how do we get that okay so I did answer this so that's the surveys that we do so we the surveys actually go out to the students yeah and to families as well so there can be a cross-section looking at both um because you're right sometimes students are reporting one thing and then the family is reporting something else thank you did you want to say anything continuing around thank you for the wonderful presentation um I have two questions number one is that um so you guys talked about school visits I was just wondering that for the culturally responsive practice I understand Conan andage some of the schools in the district are more traditional quote unquote the way they teach students and then there are schools that are more Project based does the culturally responsive practice look different in those different schools or they look the same so I think that some of this work is around like having we we all have an idea that like kids need some of that voice and choice and we're definitely seeing a lot of that um in Conant for sure I would say that even though people say it's a very traditional school I think that it has changed a lot over the last several years too so I don't know that that's necessarily as accurate anymore um I also think that like like through us we're kind of like building out some of those ideas so I think that some of the things that you'd see that we talk through are very similar across across schools um I will just say like based on the observation that I did of another cultur responsive leader it was a total choice-based project on um the Southeast region of the United States where students could make a brochure online or they could make a brochure on paper and they could work in a group if they wanted to so I think that some of that has changed in the areas where it can and then also we have so much shared curriculum now that I think it is more Equitable than it was in the past thank you oh sorry my second question is so when when you go into the schools and this is a very structured practice right you know what exactly you're doing um my question is that on the daily basis in the schools that students can experience you know a comment from a peer or those kind of things that are that are not planned that are accidental um how do you support a my understanding is that a lot of teachers would sort of take a pause and go do I want to say something right now or I'm afraid of say saying something to make the situation worse um have you guys thought about how to support a staff and I see the blanch your teacher is reaching for the mic um well so it's it's interesting and part of this is like we're culture responsive teacher leaders and so much of of our work all of our work impacts students but right now we're honing in on the practices for ourselves to have that impact and so those types of things happen all the time and um we actually had a conversation at Blanchard where um a teacher brought sort of that problem practice of like I was caught off guard and I wasn't sure what to do that there was that pause and that already is a step ahead of a lot of other people where they're just ignoring it or not acknowledging it and they were able to come to um a meeting that we had and brought that up to us as we were talking a little bit about what you can do because acknowledging it at some point is better than not acknowledging it at all and so they then shared we had given them some ideas around what they could do we had student uh teachers then share like yeah I've kind of like Turned blind turned my back or what however you want to say it and then other times we've shared experiences where some schools say like ouch oops like if something said and I'm not ready to address it at least giving students the language of like that was something that either caught me off guard or made me feel uncomfortable whatever the parameters are and so we're we're building that but we're having the conversations with teachers because not all teachers are ready depending on the topic depending on the student if you hear something in the hall and they're not your student there's so many layers to that that we're having those conversations and trying to build awareness around that so that teachers feel more comfortable to act in the moment no no I also want to add um through the leadership Coalition one of our um goals was to really educate our teachers first around how do you interrupt these messages that are being heard and so uh there was a small group that was created from leaders um from seed crls administrators and others and we created a slide deck training that is about interrupting hate and bias messaging in our schools three of the schools um have already done that and they have until the end of the year um to be able to complete that training and that training is for the adults and it gives them explicit strategies of what to do um and one of the most powerful statements that I've gotten from um some of the curated work that I've been doing is that silence serves no one and a lot of times the silence actually comes from Fear um fear of so many things fear of incompetence fear of the unknown and so what we're trying to explain to the teachers is give them actual strategies that you can do and so one of the things we talked about is that by first you have to recognize which Jasmine brought up that's the first thing um and once you've have that recognition then how do you interrupt it it's not a common practice right all of us don't walk into like Market Bast and be like I'm going to interrupt it and I know exactly what to do so you really have to think about what do I feel safe doing and how do I feel safe doing that and with the interrupting we've said really we're teachers we Educators we're here to protect and to make sure that students feel safe and so we're coming with an inquiry stance so asking our students can you tell me more about that um and then our next step would be the educate piece so that's some of the work that we're doing and so that's a side note but it is something that is happening in the district once we've completed all those that are student facing individuals teachers assistants and so forth then we're going to do that same work with our students um in in a developmentally appropriate way and explaining that as well the strategies as well I really appreciated this whole uh presentation and I just wanted to say that you know I think it's sort of maybe surface level to say oh bring in books for students to be able to see themselves in and you know for the Poetry unit I have a fourth grader e Conan um so I saw some of the different poets that were offered you know offer non-white poets not just Robert Frost but I it I really appreciate the depth that you all are thinking and the community that you're building because I think that that really is what sort of provides that resilience to keep going and to have those really hard conversations because you know as Yin said like those moments will pop up and all of us can freeze but having each other you can lean on and ask questions and like have support from I think that's fabulous so thank you so much I'm gonna go next since I'm going in order tonight um you know the the image of the culture tree that you put up sort of made me think that you know there are definitely different ways that people perceive and and take information in um and it it sort of made me think about some of the responses that we've gotten from the community about you know why do we need to have this stuff when I had kids in school I had 30 kids in my classroom and I'm I'm curious do we have a metric of the number of different cultures that we have in our schools today versus where we were 10 15 years ago when this town in particular these two towns were probably more homogeneous like what what else has changed and you know I think that's been been a theme for us a lot so I'm curious do we have any sort of metric of what the what the diversity of cultures looks like in in the schools I mean we have the official sort of desie data around race and ethnicity like that's one piece and then each school has definitely collected their own information in different ways they've done surveys of families teachers themselves also collect that information for their individual I haven't collected it personally as as the office um as far as our whole entire District I think that would be really interesting to do and I think it take a little bit but I know that each of the schools does have that information yeah yeah but let me just finish the thought and then you can go I you know the the the reason I'm thinking about this is because the top of the culture tree is like what you see and what you portray but even at this room and around the table and all the folks in this room there are some people who all look very similar but have very different cultures and expectations and and and methods and so I think that that's something that I would love to be able to highlight more so that even though there are group of people who all look the same the the lower layers of that culture tree are very very different for them go ahead I was going to say something similar in that you know I think at probably the the extreme level we have you know about 5,99 different cultures among our students uh because culture you know we tend to want to group kids but there's also a very individualistic nature to to culture as well and I think part of the work you know we we can often tend to want to overg group kids um and that loses sight of kind of the individual experiences that different students have and I think at the deepest level the work that our Educators try to do is understand the unique experiences of individual students and use those experiences um and strengths to help guide what they're doing with with the students um that said everyone is going to have areas of culture that intersect with others and they're going to have areas of culture that are unique to them um and I think that's actually a really powerful thing for our kids to understand too is where do where do my values and beliefs and other elements that I identify as a culture you know where are they unique but where do I also intersect with my peers my Educators things like that and that's some really powerful connection that I think comes up yeah and if I can add um last year when we were doing each of us had to create our own culture tree as an as something that we as a practice um when we were learning about the culture tree but I remember this and this was private so they probably don't know this but someone came up to me and said I'm a white middle-aged woman I have no culture and um she said it like laughing but she also was like frustrated she's like what do you want me to write in this culture tree like I have nothing and so I sat with her and I said listen you told me that you make Sunday sauce every Sunday and your family comes over and your neighbors come over that is your culture you have created that um um and so I think we also have to be able to expand what is the definition of culture right like my family has created their own culture of Cuban um and we do different things but we've created that and that's the culture that my family brings so when we say culture it's also about like what you bring what are those things that make you special and makes your family special so I think that's also so I'm glad you brought that up Adam it's it's important and Peter it's important for us to note that everyone does have a culture it's not sometimes just as easily defined as we think can I come back too after we get through the rest of the group same Tori this was awesome thank you this is the stuff we like to talk about um well yeah so and um I guess my two questions I was curious um Caitlyn and Jasmine where you both are in your professional um journey and what brought you to this work it's vitally important it's awesome you're doing it clear clearly you're having an impact just curious about what brought you here and then also besides passing the a budget that we're all going to go and vote for on April 30th what else can we do to support you de Jasmine and Kaitlin well I think what's brought me to this work is just the students so like the students are are so diverse in our schools and like working with them and really understanding their identities is so valuable and like brings Joy to me as an educator that like doing this work while some of it is hard work it's rewarding so I think that that's what's brought me to this um it's a complicated question I wasn't ready for that one um a lot has brought me to this work um I think an obvious thing is I am one of two or three black Educators um and so there are a lot of comments made by students unintentionally with bias just not familiar that I sort of navigated and struggled with as a newer educator um but I sort of jumped on any and all things Dei related um post George Floyd um I sent an email to Peter I sort of said like this is what my experience is it I haven't left the district but I I need more and I want to do more but also want everyone to be doing more and so as these roles and um practices and opportunities came about I'm a seed facilitator as well and I think while I don't think I need to be doing the work I want to help others do the work and so seeing the impact of my students but also my faculty and the people that I work with on my grade level team it's just been a wonderful experience but something that has to be done and has to kind of still be out there regardless of if we're getting paid to do it unfortunately I would just say the continued support we've always felt that um from Peter we felt it from the school committee um I really feel like you've all been Champions and just continue to Champion and celebrate our work and this is an opportunity right like we get to celebrate like everyone's like oh are you nervous I'm like no are you kidding me this is a gift like to be able to share the work that we're doing that the work that's happening across the district like you don't get opportunities like that so um I think it's just the continued support and and knowing that we might be quiet but the work is is really deep and it's happening in all the schools I'll just add one thing to that I think one of the things that school committee can really help champion in this work um out in the community is helping to develop an understand among understanding among community members kind of on those one-off conversations that the work of culturally responsive practice is academic work you know the the research around brain-based learning is very very clear that when we're using student culture as understanding and deep instruction we're actually improving student outcomes because we're improving the the synapses in the brain and how they connect but similarly when we don't think about culturally responsive practice we're actually creating barriers to academic achievement for for students and so I think you know we need to be really really clear about the link between this work and the academic outcomes of our kids so that you know members of our community continue to deepen understanding around that thank you as well um on a personal level I just I appreciate when I can take things and learn and then apply them to other work with students um and so thank you for that and I also just want to say to kind of Ben's point about sty pens just want to reiterate that it's super important to compensate people for this work cuz like while some people you know have desk jobs and they're not super thrilled about it and they just go and they sit and they leave um that this work requires you to show up like with all of your stuff um and so I just want to say thank you you because we really could use more adults in this world who have had experiences of being able to grow and learn um in spaces that feel safer um and so just thank you for being here and thank you for doing the work yeah also want to say thank you very much uh for your work I should also mention that my wife is also a black educator um both my parents are teachers uh I myself have taught my grandmother's a teacher um my sister is a teacher um but uh what's really interesting here is uh I think uh I don't know that culture really largely and the reason that we have this here now is because largely culture has been hierarchical right with white people at the top right and colonialism and basically everybody else at the bottom right and what we're trying to do is break that cycle and realize that all cultures are equally valuable and that's essentially I think what you guys are teaching um and I think clearly the right place is start is with the teachers themselves who buy and large are white and have you know these biases that either recognize or unrecognized um but but the work that you do is incredibly important I myself by to of graduate high school and got to about uh is it 10 different schools around the world and from Switzerland to India to California to you know uh so it's it's just really important to bring culture and and to Peter's Point teaching two people's cultures right to show a book that here's a character that looks like you the child can then you know absorb that much more he because oh that looks like me can really relate a lot more and so that you know the learning is is much greater in these instances rather than somebody who doesn't look like you at all doesn't live at all like you it's hard to relate when you're learning um so I think the work you're doing is incredibly important and I fully support what you're doing Ma we hi uh I have to tell you I have my cultural tree would have an item saying she doesn't thank every time right so I don't thank people often enough I am I have to admit that I I'm actually very thankful for your work um that is the part that actually got me onto the school committee that I think emotional health for the kids is is essential for their like Peter said that defines um the their academic achievement so having said that I am curious at the same time A Part skeptic on how easy is it to accomplish that I mean I would really like to hear your um um opinion or whatever um your uh research um observations on that what I found through my living through school system was um not every teacher can be empathetic uh I really don't subscribe to that that if you define yourself along race gender and um gender identity all those are very cheap tricks to kind of quickly get um to resolve this uh diversity angle I think like he said uh Peter said 5,9 900 whatever there are that many personalities a teacher has to be able to I identify at that level so having the teachers who cannot do that actually I've seen in my kids's case it hurt them so um in some cases some cases it didn't matter but some cases it did hurt them so and from that experience I realized that empathy really cannot be taught especially to grown adults it's extremely difficult they actually once you set the practices they actually play that superficial I game of following and like kids do they say things that they're expected to say so when you talk about these um the monthly things how do you separate what they what the real change is in what they doing versus um what they're doing it for because this is what is expected of them when in the classroom with there's nobody else how are they actually do do following the those things that we have laid out to be part of these practices so right now because this is still year two of this work it's the teachers that want to do the work that are doing the core of the understanding the diving deeper into what we can change and what we can bring back to our schools so it's hard to speak on the teachers that are resistant to this work yet because we haven't we want all people to be good people and be value value the students that they have in front of them and hear all voices and be empathetic but that's just like any other human in any other role like that's not always the case and right now we can't say what we would be doing because we haven't necessarily pushed this out in a way that all teachers can access it's also not a curriculum that you can pick up and like work off of so there are going to be people that might not be as empathetic but building a awareness which we hope to do is we continue to push this work into our schools will at least allow them to think more deeply before maybe acting or just assuming that what they feel is the way that they should push that towards students um so it's not something necessarily that we have done yet because right now it's the teachers who are choosing to do this work and we're picking things that we feel are accessible to the rest of our staff right now um some of that deeper work in responding to students and their own understanding and learning and education around being culturally responsive hasn't happened as to every single teacher in our in our schools right now we hope that people just learn to be better people but we can't force that um so I think it's important to know that what we're choosing to push out to our staff members are things that we sort of want to start with the more loow hanging fruit or more easily acceptable practices and ideas to get the Buy in to hopefully allow them as we continue to push them harder or deeper into this work that they're more accepting of and willing to sort of adapt those practices with their students thank you yeah I mean that was wonderfully said and and that's part of what I was going to say is that awareness piece that we have to work with and that's not up to the cultur responsive teacher leaders to be like you're not self-aware you have to work on that that's really um administrators are the ones who have to who know where the cultures are really growing and expanding in the school buildings and the ones that they work with the the school-based administrators to be like where else can we support and help out in our school what's our what are some of our goals that we have to work on but truly that that is like that first quadrant it's that self-awareness and that is really hard deep work and it takes a very long time and it's an evolving practice and it doesn't come easy to everyone some people are open books and we like I'm ready let's do this and some are like this I can't be that vulnerable and we have to work with all those teachers and make sure we get them to a place of awareness so in that case um would you be able to kind of identify um who cannot be um taken in that direction I know it's just still year two but we are spending so much District money to get this going because we really care about kids at some point this whole uh progress is going to Plateau because there's enough resistance beyond that you can't get much return what are our Cho chance choices uh once you reach that uh what do we do you know I think one of the things um when we when we think about educator push back I think it it kind of begs a question of going deeper to understand reasons why someone why you might experience push back I think it's easy to make assumptions about push back being disagreement with something that that's taking place and often times when educators are pushing back what I think we're increasingly understanding is they may have other things that are priorities for them they might have too many initiatives that they're being asked to undertake and they can't do everything well that they're being asked to do and so they're having to find priorities like if we're doing you know A literacy program a math program culturally responsive teaching practices and seal all at the same time you know people have different skill sets that are strengths and areas of growth and so sometimes you might see push back or feel push back but you don't actually know the reasons going into it so I think for us it's just important to understand that you know we're all on some pathway of growth and you know sometimes it's people just have to come to it over time there is a curve of adoption that you know will show that you're going to see plateaus for a period of time but as the overall population grows you know you're going to have early adopters you're going to have kind of reluctant um adopters who are in the middle and then you're going to have some people who might be adopting at the tail end um it's not just the will to do it it sometimes is just the Readiness and when someone comes to it so so the balance is the kids emotional health versus the adult acceptance of um this this kind of training right so where where do we draw the line which is more important yeah so obviously you know student and educator emotional health is always Paramount um and you would like to think and I wouldn't call this training I would call it learning uh because a training implies that there's a training and then someone's good at it whereas learning is a growth curve um you could say the same in terms of you know um educa who are coming new into you know a new math program that there's going to be a skill adoption curve the same thing for you know we're working on the early literacy right now in the literacy adoption there's a curve to that um you know I think we can rest assured that the Educators we have in our classroom we hired them because they have the values that we're looking for and the commitment to students and our Educators over time have really exemplified that um we know that any new skill we're asking them to learn is is is just it takes time because it's a new type of learning I I'm I'm empathetic to that but I also think that that's probably true in any type of work that a teacher does thank you thank you okay Yan shin and then we're gonna move on um I have a comment and a suggestion the comment is it's very interesting because out in the community a lot of people will ask like so what does the di do like what do they do all day here we are um I think what you guys presented is a vision um um again like you said this is year two right it's you know there there's a long way ahead ahead of you but I'm also I also want to let you know that just like all the people who was saying 20 years ago when my children are in school there were like 30 kids in school you guys are writing ab's new story so 20 years 30 years from now on later not from now later people will be like well we were doing culturally responsible practice when my kids were in school so that's the future um and also I want to say share that last last spring I took a national coaching license course at the time you it was the US soccer's new curriculum and what emphasizes on was who's in front of you the player is an individual so you're looking that person we're not going to the course to learn how do we teach them to play coach them to play better soccer we were taught to recognize them as individuals so this is what you guys are doing too it all ties up I know we can often feel like we live in silos of cultures but um know that you are not alone uh my suggestion is is it possible can we have some kind of a districtwide communication regularly um because my children came home one day from Blancher and say oh we we saw a lion dancer today and that was it I'm like what else was there nothing and later I think I read the parents square that there was a whole thing going on like the immigration stories and everything I was like oh that was what the lion dancer was about so I think part of it could be When the Children experience things in school they're like okay that was in school when I get picked up what did you do in school today nothing so that creates this whole vacuum that parents may not know what's been happening in the schools so I know it's a lot to ask but that's my suggestion okay thank you all very much thank you uh up next we're going to invite Katie Neville up to give us an update on the ab Resource Center K Katie I want to hear about your experience being on that side of the table now after having been a Committee Member a while ago yeah if you can turn your mic on and we can reminisce about how uncomfortable the seats were in the junior high library and how much nicer it is here that would be great a slide deck do I need to do something it's what you say I don't know oh there it is I see it got it I can do theie yeah just over on the right oh you it's all right so I am the executive director of the acting box boxboro United Way and we have been delighted to partner with the school administration to launch the resource center this year and we're just at 6 months which feels somewhat unbelievable um it feels a little bit like it's always existed and a little bit like we started it yesterday so we're at that sweet spot of growing um this was us not quite six months ago when we just I think there was probably still wet paint on the wall at the ribbon cutting um there was but for those those of you at home who can't just peek in the window next door this is the resource center it is a dropin center where all residents have acted in boxboro are welcome to come in and learn about all the amazing resources that the community has to offer um we hope that people will learn about resources proactively rather than getting to a point of Crisis and then scrambling to find resources right so people can come in and learn about either opportunities to connect with the community so come talk to us about the awesome nature trails that Acton has or volunteer opportunities with United Way plug um or come talk to us about Local transportation options and food security resources so we really want it to be a place where people can come and learn about what they need to find opportunity and belonging here in in town and it's open for all all residents so we have senior citizens coming in as well as many families from within the schools and our numbers just keep trickling up where it is getting out so um we thought December with the holidays oh we really hitting Peak and then January with the snowstorm we were hitting Peak and here again February um and we're finding that we're now getting more repeat customers if you will so people had a good first visit and then another question comes up and they're coming back in to find out more which is which is great um and it's a good spread sort of across acting in boxboro um so we do our best to collect anonymized uh Dem graphic data when folks come in and so those who have shared with us we know that at least 61% of people coming in are from Acton well 20% are from boxboro um 10% are staff bringing students over so especially uh counselors walking up with high schoolers or teachers walking over from the Twin school here um bringing whole classes bringing whole classes sometimes which is great so a whole class will come up and then the next week one of those students will come in with their family because they learned about it coming up with a teacher so that's really cool to see um the visits we get many languages so we've prioritized multilingual volunteers but 58% of the visits have been communicated in English 21% in Spanish 18% in Portuguese and then a good smattering of every language in between um and we are constantly learning as new questions come in every time so that's right um the big draw is AB Exchange so if you haven't peaked in there I please do invite you all to come visit we were able to set up this great little Boutique where people can come shop for essential needs with dignity um when Goulds closed they offered us their lovely fixture so it really does feel like you're shopping when you're in there and we've given out over 2,000 items as of the end of February through the exchange including over 300 winter coats over 90 backpacks um and then we've done I think over two dozen deliveries to individual schools so teachers are able able to fill out a form to request when they notice that one of their students doesn't have snow pants to go out for recess for example um we've tried to do a good job of keeping the nurses stocked with extra sweatpants and I know that they've expressed appreciation for that so that's been lots of fun too and so the the ab exchange is really the draw that brings people in and people who might not otherwise be at a point where they'd be seeking out other resources but while they're there we're then able to talk to them about what else the community has to offer so that's been wonderful as well and I think we all have great little stories The Exchange is sort of the sweet spot where like it's the bucket filler if you will right so my personal favorite was one a girl who had just registered with Candace came over and picked out what happened to have been my daughter's backpack and she was so excited to teach me that it was Mary posa's on the backpack so she got to like be a little empowered and sharing about the butterflies and so it was just a super sweet moment um I know Jen got to see it the moment her husband's coat went out actually um so Peter was there with me and um this gentleman was really like asking Peter and I maybe more peter than me and he's like does this look good does it fit right and we're and I of course wanted to like outfit him from head to toe and we're like yeah it looks great and then Peter and I were walking afterwards and I like I was trying to hold back here so I was like I'm not going to cry in front of the superintendent um but it was my husband I already cried in front the superintendent anyway but um it was my husband coat so it was the same situation that I was like oh and I was like okay and I went home and told my husband I was like it was like this chain reaction of impact that was so immediate and it was so wonderful and he was so proud of like how he had styled himself so it was it was a nice moment to share with with Peter yeah and so it's also it's called AB exchange which has wound up being a brilliant name we've had a number of families who have come in and offered their kids clothes that are too small now and they get to trade so I think that allows people to come in with dignity who might not otherwi wise take up take us up on this great resource um but it's a lot of work is so much work like it could be its own full-time organization in itself um the wonderful Jen and Debbie worked to get us this great donation bin um so it is the one to the the right when you're looking at it the gray one is the one that comes to us and then to close the loop on things that we couldn't accept uh we got a textile donation bin to sort of be the outward bin next to it so just so that everyone knows please when you donate look at the sign um but the textile donation bin is trickling a little bit of a rebate back to the school district which is great in our first month so it was installed February 1st so February was the first month and I think $51 or something there you go so you know a little bit of something which is great that's right budget a and then just a big shout out to facilities for letting us creep on their space our bins take up space on the stage back here uh in the custodian space on the other side so they've been so sweet and as long as we're in fire code they're very nice about letting us have the back can I add um the other piece that has been really helpful is that the staff um at the resource center if we don't have an item we then ask the individual what size is it that you need and then we push out to the community in so many different ways we do it through our news folder um I do it on like social media personally and we just try to gather I you'll see me on the streets of Sudbury just taking stuff um from the curbs um in order to make sure that we have what we need and so even though we may not have the size we take three extra steps to make sure that we do get that item for that family or that individual which does take a lot of extra but it's a lot of fun so Leela can tell you she's coming to help sort clothes before so we appreciate that so we've had a few great events here in the six months since we opened um right when we kicked off in October we had I think it was 21 organizations come in and set up booths so that people could come learn about them and it was also great for all those agencies to sort of see right off the bat what we're doing here and think about how they could be involved so that's that was a great way to build connections right off the bat um in January Subaru reached out to us about giving out shoes through operation warm so we had 39 families come through and gave out 70 pairs of brand new shoes and they brought pizza it was a great fun Friday night here um and a bunch of the extra new shoes are still in stock in the exchange so they're still going out and then beyond the 2,000 things we've given out directly through the exchange we had so many extra donations that at the end of January we did a big all free clothing event eight hours one day it was a marathon but 138 families came through I would easily say thousands of items went out we were just pushing it out all day and it gave us an opportunity to talk about the sustainability of thrifting too so that was great so I think we brought in more people than might feel like they wanted to shop at the exchange and pushed out more clothes back to the community so that was lots of fun um and then the resource center is also sort of served as the centralized coordinator of community supports for the emergency shelter at Minuteman Inn so the last week in December Community donations brought in robust holiday gifts for the 21 children that were there then so that was a lot of fun and we hope to do that more widely for kids throughout the district this coming holiday season um and then we have organized we had a great Spanish teacher helped teach community volunteers how to teach English in a sort of immersive way so we now have a great group of volunteers offering English language lessons at the shelter 5 days a week which is awesome um and then have been working to help with transportation and some children's activities and the things that sort of fall outside what the management company for the shelter is doing um we've done popup shops for the exchange there because it's proven somewhat difficult to get the families to the resource center although we have had some come through um so that's been great a couple things that are coming up that I just wanted to flag next Tuesday in the center we're doing a QPR gatekeeper suicide prevention training so that's through AB cares um and then for Earth Day we're giving out free trees so there's a great group called neighborhood forest and if you register you'll get a free tree um we also have been continuing to build out our Community Resources website so that people can access our infinite knowledge uh even when we're not open it translates fairly easily and um it's sort of the we're trying to make it the first stop for anyone who's looking for Community Resources and acted in boxboro and then just how can anyone help you can volunteer um and then you can yeaha U and you can donate so in addition to donating clothes we accept them for all ages we also have an Amazon wish list that you can access on the resource site for things that um that we need here at the center all right that's it excellent so just a big thank you to the administration too like Jen's amazing Peter's been entirely supportive Andrew's our biggest superhero so like it just everyone has embraced us with open arms like acting box for United Way this is our office now we live here and so like the administration building has just been lovely so a huge thank you it's wonderful to be able to share this space with you guys too it's so great to have you here uh all right questions and comments we're going to go around the opposite order vicam um just I I work for Oxfam so uh I know the work that you do uh I'm I just almost brings tears to my eyes of stuff that you're doing I want to get involved more I want to have more time um you know it should be noted for those who don't know that being poor is not a crime nor is fleeing violence political or other otherwise that's not a crime either um just amazing amazing I'm so glad to see the thing is just flourishing I just what a great Shining Light thank you yeah I just want to say thank you and just share a quick story that um there was a picture of the holiday gifts that were collected from the community and when we dropped them off at the shelter the staff were a little overwhelmed by the volume of stuff um cuz I I don't think they were expecting in that and I think it's a testament to how much our community is willing to come together just not to provide basic needs but also you know to take care of kids and let them have some fun um so thank you all for organizing that this is awesome thank you I remember there was a form sometime earlier this year with uh to provide contact information for some of the links that are on the website I know there's one that's outdated and I've been trying to go back in and figure out how do I get that information to you you can email resource center abschools.org and we'll sounds like a plan thank you I was just wondering if um the high school students could get uh volunteer hours if you've tried to organize so we have a great little cohort of high schoolers who come up every early release day right now our hours are our hours are the next thing that need to change so right now we're open Monday through Thursday 10:00 to 3 which obviously for a lot of people doesn't work um including for high school volunteers so we are looking at what the next phase is to grow the hours we're thinking about maybe it's late Thursday nights when there's school committee meetings because then you all can say hi to us too um but yes we will absolutely be relying on high schoolers to help us with those extended hours and would love to have them well there's also situationally they come to so if we have different events so the clothing event the welcome dinner all those different things that we've done they they part I mean they were a huge part of the clothing giveaway um and so they're young and they have really a lot more energy than we do of folding clothes and doing all those things it's been really great so we've used them in different ways I I would say um for all the different events as well it's really exciting to see all of the different things that are going on there and to know how many families you've been able to help um I think it's great that you guys you know if you don't have an item are trying to make sure that you keep in contact and get that item that's in need to those people um yeah I just I look forward to more volunteer opportunities so I can help fold some clothes because you know as my kids get older I get less practice at home thank you you're lucky um I have a question thank of all the things you do um but I have been approached by community members and asking that if they're looking for translation services and assistance should they reach out to you guys or can you point them to the right direction so I tely want to say Yes um so we're building out a great network of multilingual volunteers and they are more than happy to help translate when we're working with folks in the resource center um we are not go we do not yet have the capacity to say accompany someone to an external appointment for translation services yet it's on Jen's 3.0 dream list but we're not there yet we're facing we're faing yeah just iting what Liz said I thought she said it perfectly thank you um quick question do you coordinate with a grrm to help families in the district or is it too independent so we let folks know about hgrm we are somewhat intentionally not a referring partner because we want anyone who's going to go to hdrm to make sure that they're connecting with the town community service coordinator for anything else that she's able to help them with in terms of monetary support and all the all the sort of Next Level things that the community service coordinators can unlock um so we help make those referrals that way thank you actually and to add to that um which we forgot to mention is that we have a monthly meeting um and so the town of boxboro town of Acton community care coordinator Community coordinator service service coordinator the town of Acton Dei um uh the resource center staff myself and our multilingual coordinator we meet once a month and we really plan out what are some of the things that we want to do um what are some of the things that you're going to do how do we support each other so we've really built this really great team to be able to have all of the towns come together and do the work together on behalf of our families and not then everyone duplicating work amazing thank you I concur with both uh Andrew and Liz simply amazing simply uh a inspiring thank you excellent thank you both very much I I'll just note you know from from a budget perspective you know I think what's so cool about the resource center and the partnership with ABW there's obvious an expense for the district because we've talked about that through the budget process but you know one in its first year this was fully funded through the the state earmark next year you know of the $75,000 about 70% of it or so is through the District budget and then we also are able to use some of that migrant shelter grant um to offset cost as well but for total Allin funding of about $75,000 a year you can see there's far far greater impact than $75,000 on the community so the return on investment I think has been absolutely tremendous in terms of of what the community gets back for the investment that we make for sure thank you okay next item on our agenda is an initial discussion on the student Opportunity Act plan Dr bookas is going to join us hello all right all right hi hi so good evening everyone um it's nice to see you all um I'm here on behalf of the entire leadership team um and I'm just really happy to be here and to share some of our preliminary work on our new um student Opportunity Act plan for 2024 um before sort of we get I give you that overview I thought it would be important to share a little history of the SOA um so the SOA was actually born from the 2015 Foundation budget review commission's final report um they were really worried about the adequacy of the foundation budget and so subsequently the SOA was enacted in 2019 and what it did was it injected a significant new funding into our educational system which is great um the quotes on the bottom of the slide really articulate the underlying principles of the student Opportunity Act and that is to ensure that the funding was used effectively and accountably that's their word accountably that was a new one for me um focus on the most vulnerable and that's their language um students and also to reduce achievement gaps and you can see you know those principles actually really nicely closely align with your school committee budget principles so um it's something that we need to do every three years um we have not and do not receive any of the funding with our SOA plan um but we have that accountability portion of it um we are accountable so this slide just restates the purpose of the SOA in its most current form districts are requireed ired to submit a three-year evidence-based plan aimed at closing persistent disparities and achievement among student groups the SOA plan really becomes one of the district goals um when we write our SOA we are really thinking about the other ongoing work that's happening in the district we're thinking about where it's responsible responsive to some of our internal priorities um and also our district goals um and you can already you'll see already um tonight how it already connects to some of the things you just previously heard around the culturally responsive practice work so for example I'm going to take you back to our 2021 SOA plan which was written around early literacy um at the same time when we wrote that the state was giving us guidance around early literacy screening um around the dyslexia regulations that came out we were beginning to implement mtss and we were also planning for the implementation of our new literacy program right so all those things were happening and coming together at the same time specifically we chose to focus on closing the early literacy gaps for our students who are black Hispanic or economically disadvantaged students who have IEPs or who are multilingual Learners we are now in the third year of that plan and I want to just highlight some recent data for you at the beginning of the school year uh 15.4% or 50 of our kindergarten students out of 324 scored significantly below the Benchmark in Dibbles early literacy screening that is a screening that we use for the dislexia regulations from the state at the middle of the Year screening this percentage had already dropped to 6.5% number of 21 students and I think it's important um to note first that we cut that percentage by more than half at the midyear Point um and also that The Benchmark increase is the greatest from the beginning of the school year to to the middle of the school year from 279 to 355 at the end of the school year it's 405 so that greatest jump is from the beginning to the middle of the the school year um this chart depicts the demographic information of the 21 students which really now more clearly represents our overall demographic data so if you're reading the chart from left to right the number of students so there are in the 21 student cohort three Asian students one of whom is economically disadvantaged one student also um has an IEP in special ed and another um Asian student who has no other identifying markers um then Hispanic and we have two Hispanic latinx students one of whom is a multilingual learner one is economically disadvantaged and the other one um has economically disadvantaged as an identifier one black student also economically disadvantaged um 15 Caucasian students one economically disadvantaged and um identifier and one who has an IEP and the other 10 without any so again our demographics now more are more representative of our overall demographics which is what really what we were hoping for um the uh chart on the top right again shows the jumps and the benchmarks for kindergarten so the beginning of the year the Boi um 279 the middle of the Year 355 in the end of the year at 405 I wanted to also share with you so the progress of the 21 students so the range um right below 355 we have nine students in the range from 345 to 355 so they're very close to that midmark um seven students 334 to 344 and five students from 323 to 333 so all on their way um and of course these are the students we're keeping we're monitoring and keep making sure they are making progress towards that end the year Benchmark another piece of uh dat recent to share is this chart which shows the midar aggregate reading screening results of I ready every Elementary School for grades 2 through six is in the high performance high growth quadrant and that's really something to celebrate and I want to stop and recognize the collective work of all of our Educators it really does take a team of our school leaders and our district leaders to make that happen so what this says to us is when we have the time you know we're putting the effort in and the structures and the systems and the support um and your support as well the when it came to budget two former school committee members who sat here and really supported the work that we were doing and challenged our thinking around it provided us with resources um these are the kinds of results that we can achieve for our students so thank you all right so now turning to our next um student opportunity plan act plan um this is the timeline we received the information in late December um the January piece does not apply to us um we will not have to do um the addendum guidance um it's non applicable to AB um we were supposed to get the link to the online submission form in gems which is the online platform that the state uses for Grants um I checked this morning it wasn't there yet but I'm sure Desi will share it with us soon um the really important piece um of this really short timeline that you all need is that you all need to vote on The Plan before the deadline and the deadline is April April 1st at 11:59 p.m. they couldn't pick a better date than April 1st right so this is why we're here tonight to share the preliminary piece with you and in two weeks they'll come back with a you know more final plan um to share with you for your vote so I want to go over the uh components to creating the SOA plan um and this this this is a guide that we need to follow from the Department of Ed so we first need to analyze and select our student groups for that focused support we then need to identify a priority area and select one of their three um strategic objectives we need to engage families and caregivers and other stakeholders and just recently we sent out a survey to all parents and caregivers and staff um started on March 5th it closes on March 11th um and the response rate has been terrific so far um we then will take all that information back we'll finalize the focus area determine what evidence-based program or programs we'll use and identify the strategies to address those disparities and out outcomes and then we'll set some ambitious three-year targets for improving the student achievement just like we did in our last SOA so the next few slides I'm going to take you through some of those steps so the first one again is analyzing the data and selecting those student groups so our leadership team has been meeting um and we've analyzed our existing data to deepen our understanding of really our current context to address the disparities among our student groups we've taken a look at our student outcomes data that's things like accountability data our chronic absenteeism rates graduation rates our Dropout rates we've looked at mcast scores and growth data we've looked at I ready data dible scores for grade three we've looked at um instructional data um observations we've made on learning walks specifically around mathematics and how mathematics is being taught we've looked at perspectives data um culture and climate surveys from our students and we've looked at systems and structures data which is things like our school Improvement plans our District's um strategic plan that can undergr some of the work after all that analyzing um the leadership team identified chronic absenteeism as a priority area and this we selected the student groups um in the blue box um for our focus and one of the reasons the research really talking about chronic absenteeism is it's been linked to students not you know reaching those Early Learning Milestones um it does have an impact on student achievement performance measures it does impact High School graduation and then ultimately adult life experiences so we think it is a very worthwhile thing for us to focus on the next area is um to identify the priority area um which we did and then select the Strategic objective so before I go into the Strategic objective I just want to stop for a minute and um talk a little bit about what is chronic absenteeism so that we all have a common understanding so chronic absenteeism is defined as the percentage of students missing 10% or more of their days in membership so an example is in a typical 180 school year day um this is the percentage of students who Miss 18 or more days and to calculate the chronic absenteeism rate um that's for a school or for a student group Desi determines whether each student is or is not chronically absent based on the students total number of days in attendance and their total number of days in membership that's once they started school they were enrolled in school and then the rate is reported as the percentage of students in the school or group who are chronically absent the other important thing to note is that chronic absenteeism is the calculation includes both excused and unexcused absences we identified um again our priority area as chronic absenteeism the department of Ed then provides three strategic objectives from which we can choose we chose strategic objective number one which is to cultivate systems to support the whole student and Foster joyful healthy and supportive learning environments so all students feel valued connected nourished and ready to learn and again you can see some real common elements in that statement what you heard earlier in the presentation tonight under that Desi then lists three Focus areas um that we can consider um 1.1 is to promote students physical and mental health in welcoming affirming and safe spaces 1.2 which is on not on here but that's Implement an mtss that helps all students progress and we've already done that's already underway in our district so the other one we are thinking of focusing on is developing Partnerships with students and their families so the next thing we need to do the next step is to engage family caregivers and other stakeholders and that is to hear um take get their input on the focus area and their input in general so we are engaging in the following stakeholder groups in the development of that plan and again for parents and caregivers and for our staff um we've already sent out a survey um through parents Square available from March 5th to March 11th um my understanding is that CPAC has a meeting next week the one that they had yesterday was um cancelled and so I've created some slides for principles and for Jen um teslo and for Maryann young our um coordinator for multilingual Learners to share with both their parent advisory councils to set the context and to also get some input from their their counsels um Maran has also sent out a link um and an email to all of um parents who are multilingual Learners and former English Learners um and doing it in a digital way also has the questionnaire in the emails and it's uh translated within the email oftentimes that's another opportunity to complete the survey so they also don't have to go to the link so we're trying as many ways as we can to gather as much information as possible so we will use all of that input from the above stakeholders to inform our final plan um the next phase is to finalize the focus area so we'll get our senior leadership team back together again um focus in on our evidence based program and then determine what strategies we're going to use to address those disparities and I want to just make sure we clarify um program we're not talking about something that you purchase off the shelf it's not that kind of program when the state talks about programs they're really defining that as having a system in place that integrates and aligns different Services different structures learning supports opportunities Etc right so it's thinking about a systems approach um and we'll do this in order to address our primary area and then in fining finalizing our plan what we really need to do again back to the original tenant is to prioritize the needs of students as having the least access to the systems vision and you know when we think about our priority area it's hard to access the system's Vision if you're not attending school right so ultimately we want kids here in school um and just in closing want to share that you know chronic absenteeism is a very very complex issue um three years will help us you know Focus as a good amount of time to discern what we can improve we know that there are internal and external factors that impact student attendance all of those are worthy of our time and our attention the most important place we know to start is by better understanding why our students aren't attending school um and that's having the conversations with them so most likely we're going to start with our students and hearing their voices um the work has already been underway to develop a consistent way of recording when and why our a student is absent um and again you know seeing how this creates um and connects to our priority area connects to the culturally responsive practices presentation tonight really creating a safe environment where students are seen and heard and valued challenged supported it's all it's all the work that we're already doing and so we just need to think more um deeply about that work and set some targets for us to work towards um that would be the next step is to set those ambitious three-year targets so we can measure um our our efforts and then in two weeks um like to come back and share with you sort of an overview of the plan that we need to submit to Desi and get your vote so we can make sure we meet that deadline love to hear any of your questions your comments input that you have for us to think about as we're developing the plan thank you thank you okay we're running light so we're going to go around the group once Ben LAX me so this is a three-year thing right every three year so how much did it change from the last time do we have one in 200121 I'm sorry my M okay um the plan from 2021 we had focused on early literacy that's when the start the the presentation and showing you where we've come in that work so this is a new plan now starting for the next three years going forward so did is this from Dy or is this from our experience our our metrics that we we Dre drew the plan from so we are required by the department of Ed to submit a plan every 3 years and within those three years we have to provide updates to them we can look at our own data which is what we did in order to determine what our priority area is to focus on okay so that's what the 21 students was from okay thank you you're welcome Ben sorry Andrew went the wrong direction around the room Andrew thanks U I'm I'm interested in the chronic absente ISM piece of this because this isn't about about the treny and the way that we you know were mentioned in the 30s these aren't The Little Rascals or hanging out of the pool hole running numbers or you know playing craps with the changes in our world over the last few years many kids are out school for marri reasons and I think a lot of the understanding of it has to come from expanding data collection and expanding categorization you know I'm glad to see that the idea of chronic absenteeism appears to be of some more holistic look for a solution I'm interested to see how this plays out and looking forward for this to start cuz like to help uh I have two questions the first one is that the when they say the 18 days out of 180 days is it unexcused absent or excused or unexcused both count towards chronic absenteeism could it be possible that postco a lot of family are more cautious like it's one of the external factors when we think about health there's been you know different policies the state the CDC our district you know so yeah and and also parent people's own sort of thinking and feelings about sickness and and health and so absolutely it's contributed that's one of the external factors for sure that's impacted absenteeism okay I think one of the things just to piggyback on that that we our leadership team looked at is if you look at the state Trend around chronic absenteeism there was a spike but it actually has started to come down and at the same time the state rate of chronic eism came down ours continue to Trend upward so that that's why we as a leadership team wanted to really dig into that and and learn more about our families but it's also coinciding with some shifts in our demographic trends that we we want to be thoughtful about and make sure that we're really responsive to the students that we're we serving right I was going to say because there are many countries well not maybe not many but there are a few countries in Asia the borders will close for like two three years straight during Co so like now it's a time for everybody to go back if they can um my second question is that how the has our district look into um the absentee rates in different schools like is it more heavily in elementary schools junior high or high school yeah so I think I'm going to actually turn that over to are you here still Jen yep she's still here she's been working with Jen's still here um one of the other things on Jen's list is that she's been working with our assistant principles to you know create a more consistent approach to um recording absenteeism and the wise around absenteeism and so I don't know that we've done that analysis yet about where in the work you can come here this or that I think that'll certainly be one of the pieces we do look at when we start diving into this though is to figure out where it's happening yeah I would say looking at it this year and working with the administrations at all the schools which is what I've been doing in order to really create um a consistent process of collection of information um and also figuring out when we meet with families when we call families all of that is is the work that I've been doing and it's yet to be finished but I would say junior high and high school um are definitely where we're seeing more of the absenteeism that's anecdotally okay last question sorry um I said it was two but it's I'm sorry um have have we compare our data to our neighboring school districts or similar districts um we haven't done that analysis yet um I also was interested in the public health angle and how we could sort of mitigate some of these I I feel anyway anecdotally like I get emails constantly saying oh strep in this classroom strep in that classroom stomach bug so I feel like my family's been sicker this year than the last couple years but maybe that's not actually true um so so I'd be interested to know both the data and then mitigation strategies um but then I also had a question about um when you're talking about chronic absenteeism at the high school are you going to be looking at students who are absent the whole day or students who are skipping classes here and there because I know that also factors in I think the chronic absenteeism comes in when they're marked absent for the day so they may skip a class in between right and the school sorry um the high school is looking at those like absentee the absenteeism from the different periods they're definitely looking at that and working with the counseling department to make sure to understand the story behind that because there are times it's like why is that a consistent class that you're missing what's happening what's the antecedent sort of working through that so they are looking at both but for this particular formula it is the full day I believe JY Tori I really appreciate the um connecting with families about this um so my n of 36 students in a school private school on the edge of conquered and Bedford we H we struggle with this it's our our high school kids who are struggling the most um when we get kids to come into school who haven't been there for incredible amounts of time it's because we are partnering with the families it's because the parents have the text message to send to the teacher that we're outside can you help come help my kid get out of the car and through the door um so I think it's going to be really interesting what this reveals I think we all need to be ready to figure out what we have to do to support and I really appreciate the way you're thinking about understanding the why because I think that's critical thanks I also appreciate the the piece around the why just just kind of purely out of curiosity I i' love to be updated on this I don't you know I don't know but um I I would just be curious what you're finding um as you kind of continue in this work um and I think I forgot my other piece and Adam's probably really glad I was just going to make the comment that this this seems to tie in really well with some of our district goals and some of those long-term goals so I think that we'll probably be seeing some ongoing reports on this great and that jogged your memory yeah sorry um it was just around I know that chronic absenteeism is you know an issue that a lot of districts are seeing and so not that that minimizes that we have work to do um but have we thought about like collaboratively learning around this like even in the region or with other districts that are also seeing some of these Trends um one of the first things that we've been trying to do is to find some other resources for us to better understand sort of you know digging into that why um is a wonderful um resource called attendance Works um and I don't know if any of you listened to on point but recently last month there was a fabulous podcast and they interview the executive director around that and so they've worked quite a bit even in Massachusetts and so connecting with other districts who have taken this on already and learning from them what they've already experienced what they've already tried and quite honestly in other states as well there was a gentleman on that podcast from Colorado a principal and some of the work they've done around mentoring and messaging and trying very similar to mtss a tiered approach a universal approach to change some of the culture a strategic approach some of the things that you can do and then some of those real intensive kinds of things um that can work to help support attendance so yes absolutely learning from our peers learning um from other agencies and folks out in the field will be tremendous support um I feel everybody's asked pretty much all the questions and you've answered them uh it seems really good I'm also interested to see what the data shows uh but I think good what you're was saying is you know if we can find out commonalities across other districts and then you see commonalities are addressing those issues as well um obviously you're already doing that but thank you quick one so um sorry last one quick one um so I noticed that out of the most of the most of the 21 they were economically dis disadvantaged there were I think six out of the six or seven out of the 21 so it wasn't most remember the last column um the last three there was two five and 13 students okay so it wasn't one for each of those last ones so it wasn't okay so but this question probably is not completely based on that but my question is it it's a three-year plan and if we focus on absentees and chronic absentees as the foundational problem uh could we miss the Mark I a year from now um I think that's why we monitor sort of that progress because it's it's 3 years but it does allow for us to make some shifts and changes and so if we find there's a need someplace we can always alter the plan and that's actually part of the reporting that we have to do to the Department of Ed how's the plan going what changes have you made what is working well um yeah so we can we can alter the plan along the way thank you yeah so you know to to go back we're we're going to move on because I still need to go and then we have a member of an advisory committee that needs to go so um the the one thing that I would point out is that um as you introduce this this was part of the foundation budget review Review Committee which landed with our student Opportunity Act the point originally was to look at the foundation budget and figure out how we a portion funds correctly um our district is still in hold harmless we don't benefit from additional funds from student Opportunity Act the work that we did around literacy is our first grouping uh or first plan and the work that we're going to do around this from my view is an unfunded mandate from the state it's super important I don't want to Discount that but we're going to expend funds in a budget that is extremely extremely tight on a very important area for other districts this is this is work that's tied to they're receiving their additional funds from student Opportunity Act and we're not at that point yet so we can in should reach out to our legislators we and many other districts in hold harmless are held accountable for students Opportunity Act performance but are not receiving funding to support that and I think that's something really important for the committee to to remember and and socialize when people are coming to us and saying why are you doing this we have to and like members of some Finance committees have asked what is the work that you're doing that's unfunded mandates this would be one of them so I just want to point out that the uh CPAC is an advisory committee to the district and so there are times um particularly with something like this that was not on our agenda in advance where they may have something that they need to advise advise us of or give us some some input so Amanda I see you pensively walking towards the microphone please tell us what's on your mind thank you Adam so my name is Amanda Bailey I'm one of the co-chairs of the special education parent advisory Council and speaking in that capacity um one of the drivers for chronic absenteeism is trauma either School induced trauma or externally induced trauma and the Leslie lifs trauma informed program for our Educators was sacrificed in a previous budget next year we are slated to lose the aset valy wraparound Services we are starting from behind when it comes to having supports to help Educators and to figure out some of these these situations with families to be able to support these students so I would wonder what the district currently has in place this may be part of the the next iteration of this what do we have in place still to begin this work what are our assets as we're beginning this my second question is tied to more you know across the state we're seeing a lot of districts file 51a on families for educational neglect in these circumstances and these are vulnerable populations and I'm wondering what act in boxboro is doing when we reach those situations if we're doing that as a matter of practice or not I can start off and then I Peter can add in any other information um it's not our practice to file 51a I mean that's like a very last resort um we really try to be supportive empathetic proactive um in our approach um so you know just for for definition 51a if you're not familiar with it is um Educators along with Physicians and other categories of professionals um are considered mandatory reporters if there's suspicion of abuse or neglect of a child um I think you know what Amanda's referring to is at times some districts around attendance will resort to filing 51a um I think you know our priority is always working with families first um and so you know we that's one of the reasons why why we did develop asimit Valley now obviously we don't have the funding for it moving forward which is a significant concern um we you know continued to want to prioritize cartwheel um because not only do they provide the Direct Services to students but they also do family consultation um and so that certainly is another asset that we have um we still do offer the Leslie lifts program for our Educators as professional learning um so we actually have our I believe we are in our either third or even fourth cohort of the five part series now um and continue to offer those courses even the the first part to to Educators um and you know what we have done also is really look hard at you know what we used to call probably child study teams um and have shifted to be instructional support teams um or instructional leadership teams to to really think about holistic child- centered data um to understand how we're going to work with students and families around that and then Jen Faber um you know know even before the state started publishing the data we saw a a trend around absenteeism that was concerning for us um and so Jen Faber has been working with the assistant principles as a cohort across the district to look at the attendance practices that we have to establish more consistency better data collection systems um so that as we you know which you know I don't think we even knew that we were taking on this is an S SOA plan but we knew we needed to do it anyway um and to prepare so I think you know we have we have assets ready to be able to leverage and I think one of the important things for us as a leadership team with the SOA plan because we don't receive funding you know with the literacy work we were doing the literacy work anyway and we use the literacy work we plan to do as our SOA plan um because we we can't just pick some new random initiative to start uh because there's no money for it and so we recognize chronic absentee is something that we want to really look hard at as a district and so because we want to do it and we think it's important we feel it's appropriate for the SOA plan thank you sure all right thank you so we'll look forward to seeing you at our next meeting with a plan two weeks to come up with a plan I mean come on piece of cake all right we're gonna we're gonna finally move on to our ongoing business we were so ahead earlier this Mo this evening and now we're a bit behind uh first item on ongoing business is uh a vote to withdraw from the Acton health insurance trust effective July 21st sorry July 1st 2024 um and transition to the miia health benefits Insurance trust Peter do you want to give us an update on that before we sure um there's a memo in your packet I think we've beaten this horse you know to death at this point um you know obviously health insurance is in the state we in the memo describes when and where um I just want to thank you know AB Osa AB afme um ABA for all of the work they did huge credit to Andrew um and Human Resources because shifting health insurance is a major undertaking um you know I think we're at a point now where for for a variety of reasons not only cost of acting health insurance trust but the the this relatively small size of the trust um it's time to move on from that um and so we have a plan in place we are looking to join Maya and so we're asking for you know two two different motions um one is to um withdraw from the act and health insurance trust and to move to Maya the second motion that we're looking for um and recommendation is to approve theou um that we've worked with um our three unions on informations posted in the packet happy to answer questions but that's what we're looking for thank you so I'm going to take us a little out of order because I want to do these two votes back to back we also have on the agenda agenda an update on the health insurance trust so um Andrew Schwarz can you give us a quick update on the health insurance trust from your perspective happy to and I don't need thanks thanks health insurance trust met on March 1st 2024 focus of the conversation was basically related to reviewing the financial documents those documents are provided on the document share of the hit on the Acton town website um the discussion of the disillusion of the trust occurred providing the basis for the vote that we're going to take today our next meeting will be March 2 8 at 8:15 a.m. just up the way thanks thank you all right so now we're going to take a vote uh in fact Let me let me rephrase that is there a motion to move to approve the withdrawal from act and health insurance trust effective July 1st 2024 and transition to Massachusetts interlocal Insurance Association health benefits Insurance trust sove wow I vicam had his microphone on so we're gonna give that to vicam and Tory was the the only one who could second that so now secondly is there a motion uh oh sorry all those in favor I any opposed any extensions I figured you were all in favor since you all moved for it um is there a motion to approve the memorandum of understanding with the ABA AFS CME and Osa regarding transition to Maya health insurance trust so moved Ben second seconded Again by Tori all of those in favor I any opposed any exstension uh again a big thanks to the team working to um move us to Maya the team negotiating with our unions and our unions for coming to the table and making this a as John said it was a big lift it was a big project um and everyone came together in a in a really uh compressed period of time to make this happen and one very quick but very important note you know you voted to withdraw from the act in health insurance trust effective July first that will effectively dissolve the trust because a trust can't exist with only one member um it's really important to note though that there's going to be a dissolution process that has to take place I do expect that to be you know minimum of 6 months but likely a year or two um to fully pay out all of the claims for hit um we have budgeted a contingency fund um in our District budget of about $600,000 for fy2 just in case there's not sufficient money um and we're waiting on cash flow projections from um Gallagher with with hit in order to really get a handle on is their potential liability for fy2 or not the current hope is that the rate increase will have built up sufficient funds within the trust to then pay the runout claims period uh but we need confirmation of that but we do have a buffer in the fy2 budget thanks Peter all right we're going to move on to our school committee communication goal update um we've been hosting office hours uh folks who've had uh visitors join them at office hours do you want to share anything that you've heard from the community or been able to speak about with them um so I think the ones in the libraries I think they have more attendance the ones in act in town hall know so much um I think it was Liz and I and Diane um I was wondering if we can ask the town to put the school committee office hour is that like their rolling screen downstairs by the elevator but I don't know who to contact cler what clerk yeah I mean you could start with the town manager and he can way down work work your way down I I think there's a bigger question here which is what are we doing to publicize these office hours and what else can we do um so that we get some attendance so we're trying to put ourselves out there um but we we're not seeing people come and I think part of it might be timing you know they are during sort of working hours yeah in the middle of the day um but also I just don't know if people know about them so um the one thought I have and I'm I'm looking at Liz from the boxboro side is to reach out to the folks um for the boxboro newsletter the the the publication that they're doing there um tor's made a great um sort of postcard of what our hours are maybe if we can get those updated to include whatever additional hours yanin has put in place and then if you could send those to Cassie over at um boxboro news and they had our original set as well cuz I did when I made it up I sent it to them you and sent it to um send it to act exchange as well send it to act and exchange so it's it's been out in a couple of different okay and then I guess the other thing would be social media for everyone's individual social media sites if you can put something up um just inviting whomever uh to come join us if they've got questions clearly Peter and I are going to be doing some more coffee sessions um I'm going to be reaching out to the the Two Towns uh select boards and see if we can do some um joint Community sessions with the the town select boards since this is a an overarching budget um conversation um you had uh a visit with the Acton Senior Center this week yeah I did and uh David Martin from the select board actually joined me which is great because um you know we had a good little group of uh seniors there there were about six people listening and asking questions uh people clearly are connecting the issues with both the town and the school finances together so that you know really helps for the override discussion um and it was an interesting sort of range of questions and comments um a lot of stuff that you know we've sort of hit with like FAQ anyway um you know questions about health insurance um postco you know there's a question about like money that was spent during covid and you know how exactly were teachers shuffled around um questions about tax base you know um about you know bringing in more commercial people so that was great to have David there to sort of speak to that um you know questions about boxboro what happens if they say no so sort of like process questions um and then I think a lot of people wanted assurance that we're being really diligent um we're being really careful we've gone through every line in the budget um we're being good stewards of you know the tax money and then you know we had one individual who really wanted to talk about some sort of out of the- boox ideas which was great and he um was throwing out ideas and you know I said that's really fabulous to know that you're really thinking about this definitely email us email the select board because you know we definitely want everybody um involved and engaged in this process um so then I let everybody know um in the senior center put it on their calendar we're going to be going there again uh next Tuesday at 6 PM so maybe we'll get an even bigger audience maybe some of those same people will come back and uh David Martin's also going to try to um attend that one as well um and I invite anybody else who wants to it was actually a really fun time thank you Tori um I got to talk to a bus stop worth of parents which was awesome um and Peter do your comment earlier about putting together some videos that are you know very short sound bites very short explanations that was the big my big pit takeaway there was that we may not be seeing the volume of people that we're hoping to see coming to us because people are just busy they know this is out there they just haven't had time to dig into it and it seems big and so the more clear concise very short things we have to give people that help them get their heads around this the better off we are I will say just looking at analytics on the videos the the first one I did around you know the the gaps that we were seeing in the budget and that was feels like two years ago but it was probably October November um there were 1600 views on that which is a significant number number of views we did one more specific on health insurance and there were still over there were about 500 views um so which is still significant and and good and gets the word up because even if someone views it they're probably telling two other people about it so um that seems to be a a usable medium and then people can digest it on their own and if we post it on our website then anyone who goes to the website also has the ability to share that video um widely and so you know my hope is to get good information on the website and then a lot people to link to that share it and and and use it however they see fit great I'm sorry Alyssa we don't take public participation after the beginning of the meeting thanks for trying though yenen um can I have a suggestion so in my email to you guys I did ask if you have specific dates that you can make it please let me know because otherwise I feel like I'm throwing darts at a board um the other thing is that now the weather is going to get nice right um we all have the button so go out go outside walking around there's a spring concert coming up in the district next week on the 12th um and there will be a holy celebration soon too um go mingle with the crowd can we set up tables can we set up tables there I don't know who's hosting whoever is hosting the Holly celebration we could reach out we ask but are we allowed to ask them yeah it's it's not our event so we'd have askas cover is running that is that all that yeah okay nothing else okay we can ask any other thoughts or updates on our communication goal getting Outreach vicam and then Liz what what about putting like yard signs around about about it with a with a you know a link to a URL you know so I think that the yard signs would be great except they cost a lot of money and we've got some budget issues right but I mean I know I realize that but I mean putting the budget of of getting these out things out there would that be something we would be allowed to do and what could these signs actually say that would be I mean could we say support you know a or I mean what could what could they say that would be allowed putting this cost aside for a minute I you know I don't know um I mean I think there's already a group that's putting yard signs out um they this is not a yard sign this doesn't get as much attention no they're putting yard signs out I'm it's an idea right that's what we're talking about isn't it yeah so so there's so there's a group that's putting yard signs out then in fact tor's got one in front of her house I know of already so and that does provide a link to the the together for acting group site which provides um some FAQs and some connections for well suppos I want to buy one of these and put one in my yard how would I do that I I don't know but you it would be good if people knew how to do that right because then they could put their yard signs in their yard and thereby further get the you know get get out there sure just trying to help what okay there's a website that you can jump on that no I think I think we're gonna yeah it's it's 9:22 we're going to move on um because we still have some other things to to hit so we've got subcommittee member reports uh we have a budget sub update followed by an ALG update all right the budget subcommittee met on March 4th at 3:30 p.m. on Zoom uh we continued talking about budgets uh talking about any updates to the revenues um as more information becomes available uh discussed some more about the B budget plan and how to communicate with stakeholders about those proposed budget cuts um we're also planning to connect with the select board and fincom members from both towns um in fact I'm sending out an email uh tonight as mentioned to fincom members from both towns to invite them to um uh talk about um you know looking forward uh about budgets and um also to sort of strategize you know should the override fail you know how we're going to mitigate some of that damage uh we're going to meet again on March 18th at 3:30 p.m on Zoom um please continue to reach out through email or come to meetings make your voices heard we really appreciate all the support from the community so far throughout this process ALG uh ALG also met on March 4th but at 7:30 a.m. at the Town Hall um uh we talked about how the select board voted to put the override question on the ballot for the April 30th vote um we talked about keeping uh 1 million in untaxed Levy capacity out of that $6.6 million uh override number uh and how we should add any you know surpluses generated to that um between now and the vote to allow that money to stay in the pockets of taxpayers um and be available to sort of ease our path forward because we all recognize we don't don't want to be doing this again in the next couple years we want to go another 20 years um before we have to have this discussion again um we're going to meet again on Monday the 25th uh at 7:30 a.m. at the Town Hall and we'll continue that work thank you all right we only have one item on the consent agenda which is the approval of our meeting minutes from February 29th is there a motion to accept the minutes so so moved second Ben and Tori all those favor I any opposed extensions that is unanimous Becca you've got some uh warrants to read for us please yes only three uh I move that the school committee vote to approve the below listed warrants totaling $261,250 56 AP vendor warrants as follows 24- 018a dated 229 2024 in the amount of 200 66699 24-18 JH dated 229 2024 and the amount of 17379 6 and 24-18 he dated 229 2024 in the amount of $ 27,7 15751 second thanks Tori all those in favor I any opposed extensions that is unanimous um let's see other than a community cof that Peter and I will be hosting on the 15th we're going to move that from virtual no that one's staying virtual no we're looking to move that from virtual to in person but we're waiting for the location to be confirmed probably tomorrow morning before we send it out so there'll be an update on that uh with that is there a motion to adjourn so moved second second that that's going to be Ben and Tori again just to keep the uh the consistency all those in favor any opposed any extensions that's unanimous thank you everyone have a good [Music] night