[Music] should do something EX [Music] for [Music] Dom we're going to do the countdown 5 4 3 to recording in progress the May 16 2024 meeting of the Brookline school committee is called to order I would like to read the letter from town clerk Ben Kaufman confirming that newly elected members have taken their oath of office let's say congratulations to Miss Carolyn Thal Dr Jesse Hefner and Miss Sarah mck tot for winning their elections and they've been elected to three-year terms on the committee congratulations [Applause] the school committee chair and vice chair are to be I'm sorry I didn't read something thank you Betsy I read your eyes I Ben Kaufman town clerk for the town of Brookline duly qualified in acting as such and having custody of the records hereby certifi that at the May 7th 2024 annual Town election held in accordance with Massachusetts general laws chapter 41 Section 1 Jesse hefter Sarah M totter and Carolyn Thal were elected members of the school committee for the town of Brookline for a term of three years I further certify in accordance with Massachusetts general laws chapter 41 section 15 that Jesse hefter Sarah mock totter and Carolyn Thal were sworn to faithful to the faithful performance of their duties as a member of the school committee for the town of Brooklyn so at this time the school committee chair and vice chair are to be elected for a one-year term by a majority of those present unless a vote is taken to the contrary no member may serve as chair for more than two consecutive one-year terms so at this time I will ask if there is a nomination for someone for the office of chair see Dr aronberg I'd like to nominate uh Andy for the position of chair is there a second second I'll second Suzanne seconds is there any other nomination for the office of chair seeing none I will ask that Miss Fitzpatrick pull the members of for a roll call vote to appoint Dr Andy Lou to the office of chair so for the roll call vote uh Steven how do you vote Yes Suzanne yes Jesse yes attorne Andy estein Sarah yes Mariah yes Carolyn yes an valal yes motion carries congratulations motion carries congratulations [Applause] Dr is there a motion to nominate someone for the office of Vice chair Dr Lou uh I'd like to nominate Suzanne is there a second Miss uh NOA seconds uh is there any other nomination for the office of Vice chair seeing none Miss Fitzpatrick will call the role to appoint Miss federspiel to the office of Vice chair okay roll call vote for Suzanne as Vice chair Stephen yes Suzanne yes Jesse yes Andy yes Sarah yes Mariah yes Carolyn yes and Valerie yes there you have it congratulations Suzanne congratulations so at this time um Betsy you want to uh present the gal you go Dr L all right thank you very much yes I I hope to use this as little as possible all right so I think we need to switch some seats so that there at least well I happen to be sitting alphabetically in the chair spot um but Suzanne I think should take her traditional Vice chair seat have your yes Andy is that your drink this yes it is the chair it is now all right all right so um as his first official act the chair moves to appoint Betsy Fitzpatrick um to serve as the secretary of the school committee and do I have a second Mariah seconds uh are there any other nominations for that position no I see none so let's move to a vote um Steven yes Sarah yes Jesse yes um Suzanne yes Mariah yes Carolyn yes Val a very enthusiastic yes and likewise an enthusiastic yes from from me all right so with that done the school committee has been reorganized um so we can move on to our administrative business um firstly the consent agenda would anyone like to move that okay Suzanne moves it do we have a second from Steven um so I'd like to draw attention in particular to the last item on the consent agenda the BHS rowing team is going to uh the Nationals competition in Sarasota Florida this was a late addition to the docket because I think we only found out that they had qualified um a few days ago so congratulations to them um so let's have our vote on the consent agenda Steven yes Sarah yes Jesse yes yes Suzanne yes Mariah yes Carolyn yes B yes and the chair votes yes all right next we have our annual vote uh on the question of school choice um so a little bit of background information on this uh the school choice law that's part of the Ed Reform Act of 1993 presumes that each school committee will admit non-resident students under the school choice program unless there's a vote to the contrary taken by June 1st of each year following a hearing on the issue so the the committee combined the hearing for school choice with our public hearing on the fiscal year 25 budget um that occurred on February 1st 2024 um and in the past we have not participated in school choice and we've cited the following reasons um the reimbursement rate is substantially lower than the cost of educating one of our students um and the district has no excess capacity in its buildings um so you know our agenda tonight includes a possible vote to not participate in the school choice program for the coming school year 2024 25 um I would entertain emotion who not participate before we do that can I ask questions uh well let's have the motion and then we can discuss it's a negative motion a negative oh you'd like to actually move that we do participate no it's written as possible vote to not participate right so so I'm I'm I'm I'm entertaining motions to not participate well I'm going to move it to participate okay do only because I want to ask questions about it that I mean I don't know sure do we have a second to that probably not maybe if I could have asked my questions before we insisted on having a motion there might have been a second second Mariah thank you yeah I think we have a motion and then we have the discussion right but I guess um I got forwarded two weeks ago an email about Newton considering participating in this I don't know if anyone else read that article um and um and I guess my questions are what's the reimbursement rate I and first off and just sort of like more questions about how it works and we haven't had capacity in the past do we have capacity now that we want to consider this I'm just sort of throwing open it's been very reasonable to not participate in the past given where everything was and I think we're in a different place for the first time in a long time and I'm just curious about the details of for example what is the reimbursement rate MH I think to get all that information we'd probably need to postpone this vote to another meeting right so so um Betsy do you think that it would make sense to try to gather all of this before I suppose we meet next in 3 weeks and is there a deadline before then for us to take this vote so we have some information I believe Dr Giller you can help me out here I believe the reimbursement something like $5,000 oh that's it it's nowhere near actual cost of Education okay I mean there could be discussion and whether what that how that compared to the marginal cost of educating one more student right as opposed to the average cost ofed I don't think we're ready to calculate marginal costs I think we're only ready to calculate average costs is my sense okay I withdraw my motion all right thank you so we can go back to um the chair entertaining any motion to u to not participate if someone wants to make that I'll make that motion do we have a second yeah I'll second I'll second okay Jesse seconds um is there any further discussion on that before we go to a vote okay seeing none let's have a vote um Stephen yes Sarah yes Jesse yes Suzanne yes Mariah yes Carolyn yes Val yes and the chair votes yes as well all right that brings us to the end of our administrative business um lonus you have the floor now for the superintendence report and the spotlight on excellence all right good evening everyone I'm great to be here with you this evening we're going to walk through our superintendent update tonight uh for May 16 2024 so uh by way of updating the committee we have um several surveys screenings and support services information that's out one is a family cult cult and climate survey that's designed to better understand parent guardian and caregiver perceptions of their schools that their children attend and we are encouraging all parents Guardians and caregivers to take this survey it's been sent out um via uh the superintendent's newsletter as well as um several blasts on social media Etc and the results from this survey um again if we think about uh the alignment with our strategic plan the results of the survey will number one help um each School Community understand how parents or what parents are thinking about their individual School communities as well as looking at what uh additional opportunities uh may be needed or missing uh from those various communities so we look forward to hearing the results of those surveys at our June 6 uh meeting and our offic of student services will bring be bringing that back to us likewise our spring Universal social emotional screening uh for students in grades 3 to 3 through 12 is also underway and these uh results will be shared again at our fall compared to our fallen winter surveys and will also be shared at our June 6 meeting and if you'll recall uh especially for our newer members that uh for our existing members but for our newer members Dr Matt du our director of um our guidance uh of social emotional learning often um does a great job of walking us through those surveys additionally this again is an opportunity for us to better understand what the unique needs of our communities our students are and better Provide support to professional development for our teachers our Educators as well as for our school communities and so again that uh that connection to our strategic plan of how can we as an organization better service and support uh our students families and caregivers and then as a reminder uh we have partnered with car soless um as a confidential um care coordination services for mental health needs for those that need that and that can be accessed uh under carol.com site Brookline we also want to make aware and I think everyone was present last night at the the finance subcommittee meeting and you heard the or saw the report or some of the details around our transport our cost overages with Transportation being one of the largest drivers of that um and again for those uh that may recall last year when we were developing the budget one of the things that we were quite concerned about is the office of operational um and I forget the d uh Susan um oh oh it's O I think uh OS OSP OSD um talked about this notion that um um service providers for out of District uh or out of district schools could charge up to a 14% increase uh there in those costs and so we are realizing some of those costs this year typically that number has been around 2 to 3% um as costs and um a couple of months ago the Tri County Superintendent it's a group about 33 of us met with various uh members of the house uh to express our concerns um going into this next fiscal year about the budgetary concerns and I think we're seeing some good news in that direction that they at least heard us around some of those concerns with cost that's not necessarily helping us this year um but that was uh many District's concern that we would uh we would run uh Dr given calls it running hot but we would run short in that um for a long time PSB has not sent its bids out it contracts out for bid and this year we have gone out to bid and we are sharing that at this time RSC Transportation has been selected as a transportation vendor the office of student services um OSS will be meeting with the transportation vendor to make sure that they're underware aware the magnitude of the supports and services that are required by our students so that they understand fully what they have signed up for so we hope that will be put us in a better light as we go into fy2 for our budgetary concerns there lonus can you just comment on that is there some risk that they don't know what they've signed up for and there's going to be additional issues or costs related to the contract don't know yet but we are doing an initial meeting with them in that we we put it out there for them but but it was in the bid documents the that's where my understanding is but we want to make sure that they understand the full magnitude because they are new they are a new vendor they are not an not just new to Brooklyn new to new to yeah okay thank you new to providing the services yeah so they're new new and also um our previous and uh I think Lisa you're on um I think our previous um ycn is no longer an option for us I think they've partnered with Newton um for next year um as well so we don't have that group as an option for us as well so we can say more about that as folks may have questions about that Jesse you had a question uh yeah I just you're saying they've never sorry was on yeah were you did you mean to say that they haven't done school bus transportation before yep so this is a this is a new brand new Venture for them as well yeah and and as we can see the transportation Market is pretty lucrative so folks are uh are jumping into that to try their hand at it as such so but they did meet the requirements of the the bid um that was put forward okay thank you on the horiz and new curriculum and again for our newer members um we have been active in um literacy uh selection or uh working through a process to identify our needs and so our district team is wrapping up um our engagement with the heill which was the Consulting Group that we partnered with and so the uh big news here is that for um as we start narrowing down the U possibilities um we are again updating the committee at this juncture because we would like to um have representation from the curriculum subcommittee um once we get down to a final selection and we expect that to happen later this summer uh into the summer months when we get down to actually selecting um the curriculum that we're going with here and again the question may be why are we entertaining this notion of a new curriculum we understand that there's been quite a bit of research around U reading and reading instruction and the need for um evidence-based and research-based instruction in our within our organization and we also know that a number of our students are not uh doing well or advancing well so this we see this as also an opportunity to um get um get some tighter curriculum um that will help meet the needs of all of our students in that regard on the horizon uh we also have a new Civics assessment this is again a Statewide assessment from desie this year um schools across the Commonwealth participated in the field test Administration uh of the eth grade civics assessment um I won't read through the various I won't read which schools did what but the um the students were um had to complete a performance task uh in these uh particular areas and each School within our district was assigned to one of the um uh top topical areas so the philosophical foundations of the US political system the development of the US government the institutions of the US government rights and responsibilities of citizens the Constitution Amendments and Supreme Court decisions one of the reasons why so uh that I'm bringing this forward to you is number one to make you aware that we are now adding an additional mcast assessment to um to us so our students now have science math will now have social studies and uh still the ELA component we also have a number of our students that take the access um exam as a requirement and my purpose for um preluding this with you now is that um at the workshop we are going to have a conversation around the calendar and the notion of um additional holidays category one and category two items that will be coming forward or there have been some requests to add additional holidays to the calendar I think it's important for this committee to understand that with our current slate so principles have alerted me that with our current slate of category 1 and Category 2 um holidays as such that this was there they're remarking that this was the first year that they had to administer uh mcast on the half days or the shorten days as well as on Fridays and we know that uh very few students are going to be um motivated to remain once school is dismissing as such we're now adding an additional assessment to the calendar as well so there's very strict competition for the FI this 180 days that we have within the organization as well um and we when we get our findings from the TFM I'm also somewhat concerned about um our time on learning aspect so the what impact that will have once we get that impact what what impact that will have on our the length of our school day and those types of things so there's a lot of work heavy work that's going to be coming forward um but we're going to try to nest and situate our presentations to you so that we have uh we're not taking a narrow view but we're taking a wide angle View of what impacts um the decisions that are coming forth that we have to really consider and dig into so this is my reason for bringing this to you in the context of now we need to also think about the calendar how do we handle requests um as our population and demographics change um and shift over time so by what way do we make those types of decision so as a committee we need to have that conversation I ask good question L sure um am I right in Remembering category 1 are days where we do not have school so those would not affect the 180 but Category 2 have no homework or no homework okay so that affects we retain the day but we don't have the ability to do some of those other things during the day that we might be able that would affect mcast and the like okay yeah thank you but do and is there a firm and I don't want to get too far but is there a firm decision of what makes a day of low atten that's day one no my understanding is when Dr lupini pulled this together the that he and the team looked at what days the schools were currently closed and just call those category ones so that's when when school was not in session category two then looked at um how might we limit um homework and assessments during those times so we just need to think about given our current needs um what are our current needs but then also by how do we then make those determinations going forward so that it feels fair and Equitable um to everyone expanding our battery of Assessments so again as we talk about mcast assessments and those uh types of things you will recall that um this year we added uh third grade for our mclass uh assessment on the the literacy side of the house and next year we will be looking at Star Assessments in grades 4 through six because we don't have bandwidth there um for um our jod is this more not progress monitoring but what do we screenings um for grad students in grades 4 through six so the question will be then well what are you doing for Math and grades K through three right now um and we want to study and see what the result result are like for grades 4 through six with this particular assessment and then possibly grow that down on the math side um as we look as we see how beneficial this uh particular information is for us if that's if that determined as a need yes ma'am yeah Dr Gilly I'm wondering if a curriculum might have an opportunity to take a look at what these are in slightly greater detail could we do that absolutely okay thank you and with that our there any other questions before we turn to the spotlight on Excellence I have a question um just going back to the hill group um I don't know if there already has been a a midpoint but will the will the hill group be doing a presentation at some point to school committee like you don't have you want to come up Jody thank you I know they were contracted to do the work with within um and so there's a finite amount but jod can speak to more specifics the committee will be getting a report on June 13th but it will be presented by U Michelle Herman senior director of teaching and learning and myself it wasn't part of the RFP for the hill to actually present to school committee but you will be getting um a report I look forward to it and other questions one more as long as you're still up here on the hill so in the scope of work initially for the hill um it was one of the points in the deliverables was possible recommendations of curricula but um in this in this report and in Michelle Herman's read out to CPAC this morning it seems like that's not on Hill scope anymore and that's being done without their consultation not objecting I just want to understand what the hill is and is not advising when it comes to specific curricular recommendations they are not making a specific curricular recommendations Beyond curate which is the state um review board and Ed reports which is a National Review Board and any program that we choose would come um from one of those two sources so was that an explicit change in scope from their from the from the S so it was once they um started the work they explained to us that that wasn't part of what they did that they would recommend that we need them or don't need them but they wouldn't recommend a specific program that would be an additional cost okay thank you you're welcome Val I can't see if you have a question or not not I know okay keep it wrong but so with that we will turn our attention to our Spotlight on Excellence since 1984 the nnest r caval award for excellence and teaching has been presented by the Brookline Education Foundation to Brookline Educators and recognition of professional achievements and contribution to the public schools of Brooklyn two awards are given annually one to a high school educator and one to an elementary school educator the Educators receiving the awards are designated as Earnest R cavarly Associates in recognition of their dedication to the ideals of Dr Ernest R caval A distinguished public leader educator and Brookline School superintendent from 1931 to 1964 this year's deserving recipients Are Driscoll art teacher ol Olivia rette and BHS English SWS teacher hiara Flynn Carson we are pleased to have with us bef executive director Liz asy and Olivia uh with us tonight Kier will join us at a later date I will now turn the mic over to Liz thank you very much um it's a pleasure to be here uh yes it's a pleasure to be here um Olivia ra has been working in Brookline since 2015 and her impact on dris the Driscoll community and her students has been enormous as an art teacher Miss ra teaches every single student in Driscoll school every year they are there as a result she has a unique perspective on the students as she is able to see them and teach them as they grow up while with while with some teachers that could just mean that hordes of essentially nameless kids come into her classroom day after day and year after year with Miss ra this means that she really gets to know and have insight into every one of her students many teachers in school come to Olivia to get her thoughts and advice about various things including students parents and teachers alike say that all of Miss Ra's assignments are well integrated into the curriculum um and enhance whatever the students are learning in addition to working hard every year to ensure that the Arts Equinox takes place and as a success Miss ra goes above and beyond to be a warm and welcoming adult presence for her students Miss Rea middle school kids can eat lunch in her art room students feel free to make mistakes and know that she will help them and she is often the last teacher to leave the school in the evening her kindness and warmth also e extend on a number of occasions to students who are having difficult a difficult time for one reason or another Olivia rail is an exemplary te teacher person and Community member and now she can add to this list of superlatives a cavarly winner as well let me introduce Olivia ra [Applause] I have to say hi to Jake but I don't know which way to look Val is Jake there he just left he was when I he was uh listening in on you yeah no well tell I I say hi um this is going to be round two for a few of you um so thank you for listening and congratulations new school committee members um when the Cavalry team entered the Driscoll art room a few weeks ago I was confused shocked and very very nauseous such an incredible and unexpected surprise it is an especially supportive Village that enables me to be successful and happy in my job I could not manage working without all the people that bolster me and my teaching I thank the Driscoll School teachers staff and administration who really value and understand the importance of the Arts I so appreciate their invaluable support of me and my often scattered brain self they are an awesome team collabor is a big ingredient to who I am as a teacher the driscal teachers and the art teachers across the district Inspire and challenge my thinking which betters me as an educator and to the bef all Educators and students are so fortunate to have you you encourage and support us to think outside the box to imagine something new and exciting to bring to our teaching and to our classrooms the bef has provided teachers with excellent individual collaborative Department school and townwide initiative and funded has funded so many inter disciplinary projects in this town your work translates to Joy in our buildings my path as a learner is likely what led me right into the into a career in teaching my elementary experiences in the mainstream classroom classroom were often anxious ones I traveled a very bumpy road where traditional teaching practices often did not compute for me in the academic settings I struggled to make sense of systems that seem simple for my peers fortunately in the Arts there was a world of excitement Discovery and a feeling of Competency and joy students learn learning is full of emotions it is present in how to learn what to learn and most importantly how a student feels about learning at one point or another we have all been asked what was your favorite memory in school earliest memory or favorite teacher when I look back over my most poignant memories of school the memories have either Joy or anxiety attached to the emotion the truly joyous memory in school was when I was in fifth grade and I was handed a clump of pooped yellowed sheep's wool I can remember the smell of a farm as well as the scent of the Sheep's landolin the class was called Sheep to Shaw we were taught how to card the wool using what looked like two dog brushes as the bits of dried grass and poop fell away we were ready to wash the fluffy wool over the weeks and then months we chose our dyes to color our wool we're taught how to use the spinning wheel to spin our own yarn and then how to knit these Hands-On interdisciplinary learning experiences engaged me completely my finished piece was a scarf that I wrapped up and gave to my mother for Christmas my mom wore the scarf on the coldest of days saying that it kept her whole body warm I actually don't doubt that because it was closer to being a rug than actually a scarf I remember putting it around my neck and talking about how itchy it was and my mom responding it's not itchy on my neck it also still smelled like a farm but my mom responded I don't smell a farm mom was willing to cut me some slack and wear the smelly itchy scarf to prove my success this paints an accurate picture of my mother my first teacher I had no better Champion my mom's understanding of how excited I was by this project led her to rent me a spinning wheel to have in my room at home the teacher and her helped me realize that if I worked the spinning wheel while she read my required School reading out loud my comprehension was nearly perfect my parents recognized that I was a capable student given to diving deep into areas of interest and interest and processes that allowed me to control the pace and scope to imagine more than one solution this was important to my self-esteem both my parents recognized that the Arts made me feel successful and reflect on how and what I had learned with learning not coming easily to me in most academic subjects I often felt anxious and inadequate in third grade my classroom teacher Mrs Frick Richards discovered that I really couldn't read through first and second grade ID worked really hard to fake it and became my really really good at it I learned how to memorize Mac and Tab books to by listening to neighboring kids read them aloud there was clearly no Fountain to simpel or Bas testing back then Mrs frck Richard explained to my parents that I had very early emerging reading strategies but that was about it this was the beginning of a very long journey for my parents and myself to discover what kind of learner I was the art room the wood shop and the athletic fields became my sanctuaries at school when I was drawing painting or sculpting I felt challenged but relaxed art provided me with a means of self-expression where I could communicate thoughts and feelings that were difficult to articulate verbally or in writing the Arts allowed me to escape from the challenges of the classroom curriculum expectations and to immerse myself in a world where I felt C capable and in control moreover art and Athletics offered me a sense of validation and acceptance from my peers thank goodness for this because as we know self-esteem and confidence is everything I've always loved the joy of Discovery for I have always loved the joy of Discovery for myself and early in my life I realized that children experience Discovery constantly as they explore their world working with children was a natural path for me when I was still a child myself I was always drawn towards babies and toddlers my first babysitting job was when I was 11 for years I was clear that I wanted to grow up and have five children of my own luckily for my husband bill I outgrew that idea and my desire to surround myself with children more from having a large family to having classroom surrounded by students my parents were my biggest cheerleaders throughout my schooling and as I was a developing artist and athlete they encouraged me to consider it applying to art school as well as liberal art schools when it was time for college I was certain that becoming an elementary school teacher was what I wanted to become so I went to Liberal Art School majored in art and then went on to receive a masters in teaching my first job was a second grade classroom teacher I was hired in a school that was committed to creating collaborative interdisciplinary lessons for all grades our teacher meetings were spent pooling our resources and talents to develop thematic units such as the one on Boston Harbor first and second grade teachers worked alongside the theater art music and gym teachers the students acted in a play about sea creatures that inhabited the harbor students wrote letter to letters to legislators to advocate for cleaner water we participated in a beach cleanup R and for the culmination of their social studies we turned the uh we turned an area of the school into a vibrant Harbor with three-dimensional lighthouses boats and nautical Flags the students had constructed papier-mâché animals show showing the devastating impacts of an oil spill after the eight years of being a first and second grade teacher I was fortunate to be able to hit the professional pause button for two years to have the greatest joys of my life my daughters Eleanor and Grace by stepping away from the classroom during that time I was able to pinpoint what kept my engine running as an educator the giant 3D beehive when we studied communities and social studies or the woven Hut made from cardboard strips when we studied the culture of the Zulu peoples my students could crawl inside and let their imaginations wander these projects were what brought me and my students immense Joy the creeping pressure of meeting academic benchmarks for my six and seven-year-old students was challenging what I love the most about teaching in 2006 I returned to the classroom as an art teacher and it was the right decision for me teaching art fulfills my own creative needs watching the imagination of my students unfold so naturally with a paintbrush or a pile of torn paper is truly the best each time a student exclaims Mrs ra did you know that when you mix yellow and blue you can make green it is exciting being part of so many exciting discoveries is truly the best kindergarten Ellis said out loud to her table group painting makes me feel amazing and yet another kindergarten student screamed I hate this stupid rabbit and tossed his artwork to the floor after a Sharpie marker took an unexpected turn being able to then explore the various Solutions with a student where they can make a mistake into something artistically meaningful is truly the best the times are numerous over my 17-year career as a uh art teaching art where I've heard you know what Mrs rail I'm going to be an art teacher when I grow up one of my former students was shocked to hear that I actually get money to do my job on top of it being from their eyes so so fun students love crave and need this creative Hands-On expression as well as in music dance and theater recently a sixth grader shuffled out of the art room with his peers mumbled to his friends I just don't understand why we have art just once a week it doesn't make any sense I asked this very significant question by my kindergarten through eth grade students regularly so my journey as a teacher continues I come to school every day knowing that having the Arts in our schools is critical for our students that the Arts boost self-confidence and reduce stress creating allows students to learn life lessons on failure perseverance resilience and rigor the creative process exercises students critical thinking and enhances communication skills the Arts encourage Civic engagement promote empathy and cultural awareness theart enrich the educational experiences of all students no matter what their learning style is as they prepare to succeed in an everchanging world I'm grateful for the many villages I have been part of during my teaching career teachers succeed when a vibrant Village works together where children gain confidence develop the skills to flourish and to be able to realize their hopes and dreams I look forward to being a student a novice a beginner this summer Beyond The Unbelievable Cav cavarly award I have also been given a bef Grant I have the opportunity to travel with My Librarian colleague Anne Reed to Costa Rica this summer to start planning and and researching for Driscoll's 2024 2025 year of the turtle the trip will allow us to participate in sea turtle research and learn from those who have devoted their careers to protecting and understanding these amazing animals our goal is to share our gain knowledge and excitement by bringing endangered baby freshwater turtles into the library at Driscoll Through the Zoo New England Turtle conservation program The Zoo New England hatch program is referred to as a Head Start program for baby turtles students will become researchers and become part of the local conservation efforts we plan to create interdisciplinary experiences at Driscoll school for our students where they will study turtles up close and of course create meaningful artwork inspired by these creatures and in September I will come to school fully charged all in ready for the next chapter of my teaching Journey thank [Applause] you are there any members of the school committee who would like to add remarks or questions suzan yeah I just want to say um the piece we missed tonight were the all the pictures of the art were so I just want people to know that not only did Olivia give a great speech but you also provided uh samples lots of samples of the students artwork that you inspired in them and it was fabulous so I heard it um it landed quite well with that piece and I intended it obviously to tell the amazing picture of my students but also did distract a little bit from a speech and it sounded like both of those goals were thank you that was so special thank you anyone else from the school committee and Mariah Olivia I just want to say that was beautiful it was really touching and I really am like and just to tie a couple of conversations together some of what you said about when students learn and grow the most both in your own experience and the students you see experience and our discussion right beforehand about how we spend our time and and new testing and this really brings me sort of these are these are two opposite perspectives of how we should be spending our time and what is most impactful for students and I just want to say thank you for just giving a beautiful illustration of of what can be the most impactful meaningful moment in students lives appreciate it so Andy can I go uh yes well I'm gonna cry if I don't go quickly um so I I luckily have um some really personal experience with Olivia finishing nine years um going to say with her as a teacher for my son but it's really more of a a 360 degree caring uh of my son and um much like how art um saved might be a dramatic word Olivia but um changed your trajectory it has changed his and you have changed his um there's nobody else in the world I'm convinced who would who would have him able to take a zblock health class to ensure that he's taking two art classes in the high school in the fall uh so um thank you for that thank you for connecting him to all of the art resources and supporting him in every way outside of art as a human being um we love you and our family and and really appreciate you in brine thank you cheers and Carolyn yeah thank you Olivia that was an amazing speech and congratulations this is such a huge honor it's a so exciting as a parent in the district to watch every year who gets this highest award so amazing and I I've never met you before but um obviously from your speech and what I'm hearing um you are awesome I really loved a lot of what you said um I appreciate your personal story and talking about um how you found traditional systems in school confusing and not engaging um and I I know this committee and the school department has worked on the Strategic Plan and there's been some discussion about in the future talking about what a PSB graduate looks like so I feel like there were Colonels in there that could just are really important for us all to think about as we think about our students and our our children about engaging and what success means and validation so thank you so much and congratulations yes thank you for telling us your inspiring story as a student and an educator you've touched my life as well through the art made by your students I live surrounded by by folks from Driscoll yeah oh Jesse I'm sorry I didn't see your hand up thank you for all your remarks it really was so heartfelt and uh I've already written a note to myself how soon can I get to see your area at Driscoll once the turtles are there and as things are moving along I can't wait I mean and and and to to sort of um step one further than what maybe Carolyn said as well and Mariah is that um when things get tough on the academic side um coming to your classroom must be a great miracle for the students who come through together with you and it's something we really need to pay attention to and to um to keep as foremost at our mind as the academic side so thank you for bringing such a spotlight to it to the bathroom there you go we talk a lot about data thank you all right Miss where El the public schools of Brookline Spotlight on Excellence is awarded to Olivia r the 2024 bef cavarly Award winner with gratitude and appreciation of your professional achievements contributions to the public schools of Brookline and exemplifying the very highest standards of teaching each and every day congratulations [Applause] to the studio all right so that brings us to public comment uh tonight we have I think one speaker signed up Miss Carrie Goldberg so if um Miss Goldberg you're on Zoom we can promote you now great okay great there we go can you hear me okay we can welcome and the floor is yours for three minutes great thank you so that really was a beautiful speech Mr R Al um I am a longtime Brookline parent and I've also been a journalist for decades including at the New York Times the Boston Globe Bloomberg News and in case my voice sounds familiar a WB for about a decade but I'm not an investigative type reporter however on October 16th I filed the first public records request of my career asking for emails related to the superintendent's initial message about October 7th which you may recall upset many students parents School staff and others in the community on October 30th I got a confirmation of my request and ever since then every couple of weeks I've sent very courteous emails to people in the administration asking for my request to be fulfilled sometimes I get answers sometimes I don't but what I haven't gotten over the last seven months is the actual emails that the law says I'm entitled to and I'm speaking about this to you now because transparency was a major theme in the campaigns that led to the three newly elected members on this committee and I'd like to say you know this could be a really good test case for whether the school committee will in fact further greater transparency I don't expect you to get involved in this specific case but I'm hoping that you can put the word out very clearly to the administration and to the Town Council that they are expected to obey the law when they get public records requests and on all matters of public process of course and I just like to add uh you know superintendent gillery put out a corrective after that first message and I really respected that but I think that that initial misstep needs some sunlight because it was a big one and the community members who were so upset by it need to know how it came about so I just want to thank you all thank you all for your service and I want to let you know you know I've been here a long time I'm feeling more hopeful about the direction of Brooklyn public education than I have for about a decade so wishing you all godp speed thank you right thankk you miss Goldberg um since we since this is a new committee tonight it might be worth mentioning that um you know our policy as a committee is not to respond during the meeting to um public comments that we receive but it certainly doesn't mean that we're not listening very intely and sort of thinking about it you know at the time and later as well just wanted to say that because we have a new committee tonight all right thank you very much um so this brings us to our presentations and discussions of current issues um we first have an hour devoted to educational Equity reimagining a plan forward so Claire the floor is all yours for even I just want to talk about for those watching at home are just trying to work out a laptop connection so the presentation can start thank you so good evening we're um Claire Galloway Jones um I am the executive director of educational Equity really excited to be here and um of course I had the I was going to jump right in but after listening to um Miss ra it just brought me back to some memories of when I taught second grade at the John Marshall school she talked about making mistakes and there was a a favorite story of mine it was part of our Anthology Regina's big mistake where Regina was a little girl who had to draw a rainforest and this rainforest was not coming out right but it was always the the best story really of the year so um she's gone now but um I really appreciated that cuz I love teaching second grade it just made me think of of all the special things that come into play and um I took a couple of notes um I so appreciated her talking about U inter interdisciplinary practice um providing students with varing u modalities and access the content so um I think often times we we forget the important pieces of the work that we have to do um and art is a big part of that and um the skills that students actually use when they're um participating in in varying varying content so again really excited to be here you can introduce yourself as well hi I'm Christy Hernandez assistant director of educational Equity I'm very happy to be here with you all tonight and share a little bit about our office's work and what we're going to be doing moving forward so christe and I will be popping back and forth so lus move forward all righty so for tonight's presentation I am going to close this I'm getting distracted um was really about redefining the office of educational Equity outlining a path forward through collaboration and unpacking findings and recommendations lus Could you actually refresh yours thank you so much all righty so the goals for this year this was our preliminary plan listening and building trust oh my goodness um increase PSP's data collection measures for educators staff and families we really wanted to focus on amending current data collection measures to be culturally relevant and Equitable all this to provide accurate actionable data on the current state of our school system and belonging as from every angle um acknowledge and name areas of strength and Improvement establish a plan for a portrait of a culturally competent responsive school district and educator continue to build upon a plan for capacity building and establishing consistent communication so the public schools of Brookline vision and goals our vision Brookline provides every student with an extraordinary education through enriching learning experiences we just heard that from Miss Rael and supportive community so that they may develop to their fullest potential and these are our goals our joy in learning excellence in teaching culture of collaboration celebration of difference commitment to equity and ethic of Wellness we also want to highlight um the desie vision um the department of Elementary and secondary education I think um what's really important is for us to understand the the three bullets that are here but I do want to um highlight um dese's Vision the goal of this work is to support students to thrive by creating affirming environments where students feel feel seen engage in deeper learning and are held to a high expectations with targeted support to realize this Vision Educators must have the mindset knowledge and capacity to serve all students well particularly students from historically underserved groups and communities so all students uh are known and valued learning experiences are relevant real world and interactive individualized supports enable students to excel at a great level at grade level or Beyond so in this work um we were really trying to figure out how can we really ground it and so for us grounding um educational Equity we really wanted to highlight um masks educational Equity policy I actually have to open up because I can't see that far and the font's a little small educational equity for the purpose of this policy is defined as providing all students a reasonably practicable excuse me um the high quality instruction and support they need to reach and exceed a common standard to achieve educational Equity the district will commit to um systemically when appropriate use districtwide and individual School level data disaggregated by race ethnicity gender gender identity national origin language special education socioeconomic status and Mobility to inform District decision- making raise the achievement of all students graduate all students ready to succeed in a diverse local National and Global community in order to the go in order to reach the goal of educational Equity as reasonably practicable the for each and every student the district shall one provide every student with access to highquality curriculum support and other educational resources two seek to promote educational Equity as a priority in professional development and three Endeavor to create schools with a welcoming and inclusive culture and environment provide four provide multiple Pathways to success in order to meet the needs of the diverse student body and actively encourage support and expect High academic achievement for each student and in this particular slide what we're really trying to highlight are the takeaways in the alignment high expectations embracing valuing differences and targeting supportive Community this is really the through line here so all of these these three buckets that we are pulling from the PSB Vision as well as des's vision understanding what the mask I I know it's not our particular policy but I think it's a really good understanding of what educational Equity is pulling all of those three things together really does outline what a culturally competent and responsive Community is a community that is um I I still can't see community that is really rooted in equity a through line across the board so this also leads us into cultural responsive practice cultur responsive practice the the use of this term specific and deliberate and requires that educational education leaders understand and simultaneously attend to a strong Foundation of cultural understanding again making sure that um that Equity is truly the foundation of our work the academic success of all students we know that all students can learn if we give them the proper um if you give them proper access cultivating and deepening the cultural competence of themselves and the adults they lead the cultivation of soopal iCal Consciousness so in this slide we're talking about our our findings wins and our next steps so as we go through the rest of the presentation I want us to be thinking that um PSP and OE have um have strong relationships and collaborations um PSB leaders are actively participating in professional development that help frame and Lead Equitable work PSB teachers are actively participating professional development that impacts equable practice with all of that we we know this is a journey and that we have more work to do specifically as we think about fy2 so established relationships uh we are really for fortunate that we have some professional organizations that we partner with as well as Community Partners we have the Massachusetts partnership for diversity and education which if you've been to some of the subcommittee meetings you've heard me talk about this mpde this is a relationship that Brookline has partnered with for some time um we have mass already um um Massachusetts racial Equity diversity inclusion this is a leadership practice Network um we are in the group foundations too this is um again this is the mass um superintendence and then we have seed which is um training um that Brookline has been um part of for some time now that's been supported by bef uh we have four cohorts that are happening now so with the co co- facilitation actively uh act activating Equity again four cohorts we have the B um BHS cohort and then we have three cohorts that are k through eight then we have our Brooklyn Educators for educational diversity that's beid um the Teachers Lounge which is a new partnership for us Brookline Asian-American family Network Baffin and the Coalition for anti-racism in education care so we have been really busy this year we've um attended a lot of webinars symposiums and conferences um this is just a snapshot we've actually attended a lot more again just because it's so far I'm going to open up my screen so you can just be patient just one moment so you'll see here we've um attended at least 50 plus collaborative meetings with commity partners and identity based groups so when we say um collaborative meetings we're talking about um office of um educational Equity office of teaching and learning as well as the office of student services we've met at the high school with several um groups we've met here and our offices here at central office um we've done a lot of Zoom meetings um during the day as well as well as in the evening um we've had Community listening sessions with uh Jewish and Israeli caregivers as well as uh Muslim Arab and Persian caregivers um some of this is just a snapshot of some of our symposiums and conferences just recently participated in the brandise day of learning this is brandise University's presidential initiative to counter anti-Semitism and higher education it was a very unique experience for us to be at brandise it was a really put together for a lot of Independent Schools but there were several um public school districts there Brookline was there Newton was there I believe Lexington was there in AC in boxboro as well um training for families for our lgbtq plus Brook line students um race and equity in Brooklyn Summit about the national strategy to counter anti-Semitism in K through2 schools concerned about anti-Semitism um in Brookline as we had I believe Rebecca I sorry about the name I think it's shagas if I pronouncing it correctly um racial Justice action committee of First Parish in Brookline I've met with them several times we've been on webinars with the US Department of Education multiple times throughout the year the office of civil rights and the convening on racial Equity the brook line for racial Justice and equity on the brj and then what we thought we would do is try to go through some of the presentation with our goals and and really trying to tie the work that we're doing with the goals that we have for this year and also really highlighting some of the work that we're going to be doing next year so so we look at goal one teaching and learning H if you could move the slide um oee School residencies this was a something that was really passionate for myself and Christy this year that we really wanted to figure out a way to get into schools and really pull some anecdotal data we knew that um we H to be doing instructional rounds but we knew this year was going to be a little bit different as we had a brand new team with myself and Christy being brand new to oee as well as partnering with um office of teaching and learning as well as OSS that we thought we would do residencies initially we were looking to do five days it looked like we were doing this year got very busy so we were doing three days so the purpose of um The Residency is really um is very similar to instructional rounds I know some folks around the table understand what that is where we have an intentional focus on observation and lived experience over time in all aspect of the school so classrooms transitioning time the unstructured times we're talking recess um um cafeteria time and just hallway transitioning and attending meetings with staff so we had opportunities to attend um CS team meetings and um other team meetings as well um we have completed six of three-day residencies at beep um putterham and Lynch BHS Lawrence Driscoll and f frr um these are some of the trends and findings that we have so consistent um we really found that we had strong clear dedicated a of staff and faculty Again by the person who just was just honored you can hear that and everything that she shared today um effective questioning student engagement emphasis on analytical strategies and writing instruction now we did find some variability as well instructional best practices that provide access to all students so differentiation visual aids manipulatives presenting information in multi um in a multimodal ways um and behavior management and then so for goal number two we have community and connections I'm going to pass it on was the third one I you do that's me I apologize so we have our online reporting systems I didn't look at my notes I apologize so um I'm just if you just go back one um community and connections develop and Implement cultural response of community engagement plan to Foster connections among caregivers schools the district and the community this was really important to us I we we we've had a really tough year we've been really honest about that it hasn't been easy so this goal has been really important to us and um we've been really trying and in all of those meetings that we were having with community members we knew that we needed to respond and try to figure out what we could do so folks could actually reach out to us and share their experiences lus thank you so in this slide you'll see that we had um new online forms for students caregivers and employees to share experiences and suggestions so we have the bullying and discrimination in reports um options to report anonymously also to report with the choice to who will receive the report we have some reports where you just directly send it to the office of educational Equity um all of the bullying and harassment reports actually go to all the school administrators but they also are reported to our office as well as the office of of student services and also trying to really combat the fear of retaliation so that was so important to make sure that some of these forms really there was a there's a field in there that you can be anonymous because sometimes that's why people don't report because they're actually thinking that there would be some form of retaliation and so next we're going to talk about our efforts that support goal number three which surrounds climate and culture um so one of the things that we're really proud of is that our office in collaboration with OSS specific specifically Dr Matt duah we are well we have already um instituted the first staff and family climate surveys that have gone out districtwide since 2019 um these surveys are a combination of Li gir scale questions as well as optional open response qu questions like scale being um you rate on a scale of strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree and the outcome every question was designed with with a specific outcome in mind which is clear actionable feedback um That central office and school leaders can act on quickly and make the changes that our practitioners that our families are telling us that they want to see um so the staff climate survey measures the following elements that you see school belonging cultural awareness and action District climate School climate staff administ relationships professional learning and teaching all students we wanted it to be really comprehensive um for the family survey it measures school and District climate family engagement and family/ school relationships as well as school support and fit here we've pulled a couple example questions from the staff climate and culture service you could have a feel of what's being asked in the areas that are being covered so a couple of the liky gr scale questions are number one are school and staff have the resources and knowledge to effectively teach diverse Learners EG students who are English language Learners students with ip/ 54s students with social emotional needs Etc the second I feel I can respond to incidents that require disciplinary action effectively the third the feedback I receive on my work is useful and actionable in the fourth I know who to go to for support when an issue related to to diversity arises two sample open response questions are what can school and District leaders do better to support positive relationships with Educators in the second is what do you need to serve all students effectively I think these questions give an idea of the breadth and depth of the survey and that we really want this to function and to create a channel by which the voices of our Educators and practitioners who are with our kids every day reach the top we can go to the next one thank you um these are a couple examples of questions that are pulled from the family climate and culture survey so first the light Girt scale ones um my student school is welcoming to parents and Guardians number two I know who to contact at my student school if they're experiencing challenges number three my student School effectively handles issues related to bullying and two sample open response questions are number one what is your student school doing well to support positive Family School relationships and what can your student school do better to support positive family and school relationships and we can go to the next thank you so I feel like when we talk about the data that we're collecting it feels like it leads back to this question of so what are we going to do with it what's going to happen with this data um and there's a few things we wanted to highlight so first it's that this directly supports the Strategic plan goal three which under it one of the bullets is that we administer a baseline survey and create action PL surrounding the results so this fills that need and the two main things that we want to do with this dat are number one it's to inform individual School Improvement plans and thus support and structure the work of principles and school leadership this data will be shared with them they building specific data will be shared with them and then number two to inform Central offices work and action plans with this new climate and culture survey the data that comes from it is something that will be shared amongst all departments here we all take a lot of data separately but I think this fills that gap of something that we all review together to ensure alignment across departments to support that collaboration across departments um and to be responsive to the needs of our practitioners School administrators and families whose responses make up the data all right so we're going to move on to goal number four management and capacity building develop resource management and capacity building systems that will ensure educational organizational goals are accomplished timely and with transparency so here I wanted to highlight um the public schools of Brook line policy manual section g the in the Personnel section it's number two recruitment selection and Staffing Equity policy staff Recruitment and Retention this was voted on on April 27th 20 um 23 um the public schools of Brookline recognized that for the sake of student achievement community and belonging the demographic makeup of the educator Workforce should broadly reflect that the student reflect that of the student body accordingly PSP seeks to recruit and retain Educators from groups that are currently underrepresented relative to the local community served by PSB so this recruitment will be led collaborative by the office of human um resources and the office of educational Equity so it's recruitment retention and we think about retention it's mentoring Community Building supervision evaluation and outcome measurement so here we have um the Recruitment and Retention these are just some of the um the Partnerships that we have we think about diversity and recruiting efforts uh partnership with mass partnership for diversity education they have a career fear and a toolkit that we have access to as members again this is a membership that brookline's had for some time um I've been a member in other in former districts as well but this has been a really great partnership where when they go off to a career fear we're able to attach and make sure that all of our postings go with them so as a representative of Brookline and mpde I attended the Harvard career fair and I was able to bring our um positions there um our talent acquisition person was able to create a nice little one fly with a QR code so although I was there representing the organization of mpde I was also representing Brooklyn at the same time highlighting the positions that we have available for their um diversity career fear we have the Teachers Lounge um which is a new partnership for us us I'm really excited about that um the Teachers Lounge really focuses on trying to ensure that teachers of diverse background stay in the field we know that um within the first 5 years many people leave the field and um for folks who are moving into districts where they don't see many people like themselves often don't have a sense of belonging they don't stay in those districts and as we're really working if we think about the policy we want to make sure that we're reflective of of our population it's really important for us to partner with organizations who are intentional about that work um we have um in-house um organization Brooklyn Educators for educated diversity bead um we just had a recruitment fear in May 2024 which was really awesome that was you'll see a couple of photos in a moment that was held at 22 Tappen um it was a there a really great group of Educators who've been working here in Brooklyn long before I got here who are really committed to diversifying staff but also really thinking about retention as well and really making sure that they can support their colleagues who are here so as we um also think about oee we um created an implicit bias tool to be used by interview committees um we have our diversity retention efforts again our Massachusetts partnership for diversity EV education they have a building bridges conference every year it's an amazing conference that's really great for um a lot of times um we'll have a school district that may have assistant superintendent of Human Resources they attend um often times we have our finance um Deputy superintendent who attend those meetings as well um in that conference just to learn more what are we doing about hiring and retention and what are we thinking uh they oftentimes spend a great deal of time on some of the systemic issues that really impact the retent hiring and retention of of diverse staff again the teachers LS this partnership we're really excited about we just launched this it's the clock program the classroom leaders of color Fellowship where we have asked our principales and coordinators to recommend teachers this is a program that's specifically for teachers really in the first three years of their teaching where they have followed for two years they're part of um this program where they get mentorship they are able to go and do observations in other districts um it's free to us for them to participate um the only cost is that we would have to um require a sub one day we are looking to um have six right now we have three people who've been recommended we're looking for six they have a cohort of six and again the cost is um a one-day sub um monthly and then again um we have Bead organization we held a retention event at Golden Tempo which was really it's event about fellowship and really having an opportunity for folks to get together share their narratives but really to kind of socialize and support one another in that way um we also have the feedback forms that we've talked about um professional development and we are in the process of trying to develop our bip Park Mentor program and here's just a snapshot from this is the career fear the mpde held they they hold a career fear every year looking like we're going to have maybe a second one but this was in Easton back in March and we have um Jamie yof there Michelle Herman and Melvin meros from HR who attended it was a great day um Susan was there for a short time as well um brought the brochures and all the swag um her and Jamie we took that picture right after you left I'm so sorry Susan and then um we had um be this is our diversity recruitment event um I think what's really special about this um this was a event that was sponsored by um mecho NB and what was really interesting is that um you'll see this kind of a blurry but you'll be you'll have the deck out there where you can really see there were a couple of students um that participated and um um um janon Wang um reached out to me through her guidance counselor Rich Gorman and he been they've been trying to get in touch with me for like two months and we were going back and forth trying to set up time to get together but part of her her ask was what can I do she said I've only had one teacher of college since I've been here she's a high school student she said what can I do the partner with OE are you doing anything around um hiring and retention which I thought well wow that's just so profound from a high school student and I said well we're actually having an event coming up and she said well can I come and volunteer I said yes but only if you come and bring a friend and she did as well as would you say a few words and so it was just a really nice event it was it we were really it was last minute we kind of threw it together and it really it did come what was beautiful is that we had faculty that that came we had um so the comod of teachers and um and building administrators that came we've had I think three connections that were made from that um I thinkr was able to connect with a student we had all of our um interns who were there I think in the top right you can see we have a bunch of our interns who um were are already in the district that make connections with other principles throughout the district so I would say that it was successes I if they hadn't done a beat hadn't done this event in the last couple of years with covid and things like that and kind of getting back so this was it was great to to relaunch this and Claire was this like a hiding faar where candidates were actually being interviewed or was it they were not being interviewed but that's the next step so our hope is that you know we've done it this year again this is the first time they've done it I think in three years so we're hoping that next year we'll have a little bit more time and we're finding that actually interviewing folks on the spot is great I will say what's tough is that we are slow to post so we didn't have a whole lot of positions so I mean I don't think that's you know unique to right now that's been unique to brookly for some time so I think it's just kind of trying to figure out what can we do so that we have enough positions to actually show show folks um it was I will tell you a beautiful day we had a lot more people registered and less people showed up and I think people said well I sent you my information you have my resume today the first day that like 72 and I'm going to going to do something else so but it was a it was a well turned out event and this is another beti event this is the retention event at Golden Temple in March and you can see there were tons of people there I think we had 43 people that attended um so it was really nice folks felt like you know this was something that they really needed it's been a tough year just school's just hard we know that you know many of us are Educators in this room by the time you get to March you're like I did a little stint in um independent school I left public school for a little while and my first year I had to give up my April and February vacation I had two weeks in March it was the best two weeks in March I've ever had in my life because I didn't realize what two weeks together could actually mean because I had never experienced it as an educator so March is is is a time you need something and this was just a really good time um I'm going to put Christy on the spot here she met a family member at that event come talk about it just for a second every now and then you got to have a fun fact so basically I have two last names my mom's last name is V today which Hernandez okay you're going to find a million of them but VI is a little bit more rare um and ver Hawkins vi from Drisco is also Cuban and from Miami as well and I was like could it be that we're and we talked about it she pulled up pictures that her dad had made of his family tree with names who are all the names of my own family members so it was just so crazy I've never met a Cuban person here and then in all places Golden Temple in Brooklyn find a family member years at BC eight years in Boston public schools and she meets a family member here she's only been it was so great so again fun facts are always fun and so but with that they shared that at the it happened right on the spot it was just a beautiful culmination to the event and then we have the um the oee educator and staff feedback form I'm going to pass it back over to so we wanted to revisit the educator and staff feedback form which was the earliest iteration of a data collection form that we sent out um we collected data on this form from December 2023 to January 2024 um and it was meant to fill that need for data to structure our action plan while we were getting the St and climate Sur staff and family climate surveys off the ground so what did this data lead to I'm really excited to highlight this part the data from this form filled out by Educators staff members led to the comprehensive Equity cycle at frr that I've been doing and I'm continuing to do um to the development of a pilot program to train staff and 10 competencies of equity which we're going to present to you a little bit later um this pilot program is going to be piloted at F frr Lawrence and Pierce and we're so excited for those Partnerships um it also led to the creation of video modules written templates and extensive resources for educators So based off of the feedback we received on that form and many of the common scenarios that teachers were brave enough to say I don't know how to handle this incident that's occurring in the classroom I was able to film multiple video series with video exemplars of how I would respond to those incidents to provide teachers with real life EX examples not just like a little script but to see somebody doing it that they can always refer back to um that it lives there in the Google Drive and a place that is accessible to all PSB staff right now um and it also led to whole staff professional development sessions which I've given at F frr and Lawrence next um and then just to shed a little bit more light on the equity cycle that has been happening at f frr um this cycle has is really centered on meeting with administrators facilitating and supporting equity and belonging work with Educators at grade level meetings and I think that Equity equity and belonging work it is centered around students but it's also centered around staff because we know that adults who do not experience belongingness it's very hard for them to create environments of belongingness for children so um we've been able to do that work with both of those uh populations um we' I've supported collaborative all middle school work observed instruction and provided targeted coaching next okay and this part I'm so excited to present this part I'm really proud of this based um off of all the data that we've been able to collect this is the theory of change and action plan for 2024 2025 that will guide my work for the better part of next year um this was prepared with ru Clark who is a do Toral candidate um at Harvard GSC he was also the intern to superintendent Giller um and an all-around brilliant person um and I really want to highlight that what you're about to see isn't just my work it is the work of so many people that have supported this it's been done with the feedback and the invaluable input of Dr Giller Claire Gabe McCormick Dr Jodie Dr matu and Michelle Herman and I really want to highlight that and I think this is a beautiful example of across departmental collaboration okay so the basis of the work for next year and this is what I was talking about when I said that this will form the pilot program that will start at F frr Lawrence and Pierce the idea this whole thing is built on this idea of train the trainer and thus build capacity so these three schools will have an equity team which here it's listed as it will comprise the principal the vice principal the guidance counselor and the equity leads specifically because these are typically the staff members that facilitate a lot of the team meetings that occur in middle school which is where we'll be concentrating this pilot program next and the idea is that I will be training those Equity teams who will then go on to train their grade level team so sixth seventh and eth um I will be training these Equity teams on these if we could just click one more time the idea is that I'll be training these Equity teams on these 10 competencies of equity which are listed there so restorative justice circles both Community Building circles as well as addressing harm circles um high expectations courageous conversations story of self El strategies internalized biases behavioral support peer observations partnering with families and empathy interviews and I think what's so beautiful about these competencies is they come directly from the extensive feedback of Educators administrators directly from students and from uh families as well and these are the 10 competencies that teachers have named if I had strong training in these things I would feel very confident in my ability to provide culturally proficient and relevant excellent instruction to all students and that students have named as if my teachers knew how to do these things I would feel a hide and sense of belonging in class um so oh we can still stay on that thank you so the idea is that I will develop toolkits or rather modules that can be completed in 45 minutes each so a cp2 period designed to be able to be completed during the day keeping in mind that our teachers work so hard and we don't want to give them anything else to do that can't be done in their day already um so each competency will have a 45-minute training module that will have video exemplars and every single tool and resource that a teacher would need to do this competency with excellence in their classroom and that those materials the idea here is that we're creating a brand new system where these materials will live on the Google Drive accessible to all PSB staff and will hopefully Outlast us all so we actually put in place things that last beyond our 10 years here and with an eye towards the future um and I think that to me is really important that capacity building element um and we could go to the next slide and just to give you an idea of how this work also with the understanding that in partnering with these three schools some of this may look a little bit different based off of each school's needs but the general plan that we have to govern this work taking us through March 2025 is that by Fall 2024 I will have completed the creation of the first five toolkits and Equity teams so those principal vice principal guidance counselor Equity leads will be trained in restorative justice circles 1.0 we thought that was the most important module to start off the year based a lot on what we've all the events that we've seen happen this year I think it's really important to have our practitioners have uniform training across all schools and how do we handle it when these things come up how are we creating environments where students are safe to talk about these things in class um so after that winter 2025 the idea is that Equity train Equity teams will be trained in four of the five toolkits and that Equity teams have then implemented three of these five toolkits at their schools so Equity teams will have trained the sixth 7eventh and eighth grade um teams during their CBT meetings in RJ circles high expectations and courageous conversations by that point and then looking forward to Spring 2025 uh the idea is that Equity teams will be trained in all the first five toolkits as well as internalized biases um and Equity teams will have implemented all five toolkits at their schools the ones that are listed below and at that point we will it it serves as a checkpoint to decide based with school leadership okay so what are we doing now are we continuing forward with the next five blocks or next five modules of this cycle or are we focusing on the previous five blocks deep diving them and in year two doing the next five modules So the plan is structured enough to be helpful but hopefully flexible enough to account for the fact that each school has different needs um and I just wanted to say I'm so I forgot this part in the beginning but I'm really grateful also to Dr giler Who were able to present this today with his support and I want to recognize that thank you so thank you Chrissy Chrissy has worked incredibly hard um I just want to say Ruiz um the in um Dr Gill's intern was amazing he did so much work with us um he was a huge huge huge asset and support and mentoring um Christie um I always say we're an office but we're a two-person team and it is pretty hard to get all this work done um we were hoping that we'll be able to expand the team at some point going forward but um he was a huge help I mean free labor but uh incredibly bright and just really willing to um roll up his sleeves and dig in and and support all of our work I know early you heard from um Dr jod can I say the AI thing sure um that you heard from Dr Fortuna Fortuna in regards for the work that he did with the Strategic plan and pulling um some of the common themes earlier in the year but he was awesome um I'm going to let Chrissy jump right back in because she's got a really good piece of information she would like to share forgot one really important thing so um there's something else we have going on the side that is meant to support the work of that action plan for next year which is Ruiz was able to develop an AI tool called Brookline Equity coach and we've been testing it and like really looking at it but basically teachers can type in teachers will have access to it and they'll be able to type in like write me a lesson plan on restorative justice circles for fifth graders and we've tested it it generates a lesson plan like a very actionable one and we're testing it on every single module to ensure that it serves as since we are a team of two and we can't be everywhere at every time but we want practitioners to feel supported that they will feel that support by utilizing technology in these ways that we can use it so it's so exciting and keeping in mind that um this tool is whatever we put into the tool that's what gets spit out so we're doing a lot of work with zaretta Hammond we have some of that work coming up with some of our Equity leads we also have Dr funa has um Z Hammond coming um to the district so everything is connected in collaboration so we're really excited about that um so on the horizon um we're going to be continuing our residencies we have our e Equity lead interviews that will be starting next week um then the training will begin June 3 and then um we are accepting bids for um the equity audit right now we have one from Handover research we're awaiting one from um Equity um process and then Long View education so um the next thing is questions yeah thank you Claire and Christie for the very comprehensive presentation do we have questions and comments from the school committee [Music] Mariah thank you both that was interesting um I have uh seven questions I prom I'll try to be quick um could you just just update a little bit on where we're at with um the data on understanding our Educators in terms of how like bringing up the policy how they represent the student Community I remember we had the meeting in February or something when we were talking about that there was the multiple sources of data um and some of them were we got your demographics correct okay I still don't have much on that I mean I I'll be partnering with Susan I think um we are still in the process of trying to find the right mechanism to do that um Susan I'm not sure if you have an update in regards to what's happening with Aspen I know we've been trying to figure out how we can utilize some of the tools that we have but we're still in the process of trying to figure that out so I'm sorry I don't have anything on that oh that's an update okay thank you um when you were talking about your work in goal one and you talked about um sort of the common excellence and then the variability um how is the variability in that you saw there shared back with OTL or with the principles and sort of what's the systemic action that's coming out of that right so right right now what we've been doing is debriefing with the school team and then coming back in touching base with Dr funa and then we'll be doing that with the principls and principal meetings Okay so is there a systemic action that's sort of coming out of that or like is there some sort of professional development that's going to be structured around that or so she's in my a the training models yes but also thinking that next year as we are right now um oee OSS and OTL we are in a pro process of planning our professional development for next year a lot of that anecdotal data will be help informing what systemic changes we want to put in place in regards to instructional rounds next year I think next year what you're going to see is it won't just be our team there will be members from various groups myself from oee Christy and I from oee we have someone from OTL as well as someone from OSS and different um School members actually joining as a full instructional round team to go into schools and do a more comprehensive um data dat a data dive it makes so much sense because a lot of the things you were talking about were accommodations for diverse learning styles right so to me it was really interesting that this was an oee perspective but it really does speak to OTL and OSS as well well I'm really hoping that we can start to redefine the work of oee that is the educational Equity office and that we we know that we do a lot of work on culture and a sense of belonging but really it's about the instructional practice that we really want to dig in and partner with OSS and otln that's wonderful to hear um you mentioned the web pages and forms you've created we had the we looked at those was it last month I was just curious if you had the chance to sort of like update the website yet we've updated a little bit but um we really realized that there's a lot of work that still needs to happen there I think early on we were trying to really we had multiple forms because we were really trying to make sure there was something for everybody but a lot of the feedback we Reed in subcommittee and even emails that we have received from community members who are using it it's hard to figure out like what and we don't want to put that much pressure on the person who's actually trying to submit and do a good thing whether there something they actually observed or if someone who's experiencing something I remember Andy you had mentioned something about and either you or around talked about someone like the victim having to kind of decipher what they you know what their experience was as they're trying to report it which might harassed or bullied they don't exactly so I think that's where we are now you know the the form that was used before for my understanding I've never seen that form I don't have access to that um that form was one comprehensive form that was just bullying and harassment I think we were trying to get away from that and try to see if we could have um different forms but I do think it makes more sense probably to go to something more comprehensive in one um but that's not too daunting because I think we have to remember that if it's too many questions and too much people won't fill it out yeah thank you so you're still working on it we're still working on okay um you mentioned that the the staff and climate Sur the community climate surveys um haven't been done since before pandemic I thought one of them was brand new wasn't the staff one brand new we did a snapshot earlier in the year um that was the one that had 150 responses that really kind of highlighted that the work that we needed to no I meant like pre-pandemic where is isn't one of them I thought the staff one was never done before is it not I was mistaken okay but you said they were done before the pandemic too will the data that's from these new ones um be comparable like will there be will we be able to compare certain things across whether it's sentiment or some of the questions will they be comparable from pre- pandemic to now to sort of have more longitudinal data so yes a lot of them will be the same but Matt and I we went through and we made a more thorough version of it with an example that we had from the Department of Education from the US Department of Education where we added some questions especially since the survey the previous survey was older we wanted to make sure that now we really deeply understand that there's so many elements of diversity in someone's identity and we want to make sure we're asking questions that hit at that too so particularly what you said a focus on are we asking about accommodations for for all types of Learners are we asking about who we're providing access to we want to make sure that that's included whereas I think previously sometimes earlier iterations of surveys Focus mainly on one or two aspects of diversity more so this one is similar but more comprehensive thanks um I'm getting close to the end I promise Andy um I am coming on to the question I've got two more after that does the staff survey include demographic questions so that you can disaggregate experience by different identities so yes it includes demographic questions and this is speaks to the point of that we want to ensure we're collecting data very accurately we've added additional categories for ethnicity so for people to be able to disclose if they are Middle Eastern Arab Persian Etc based off of a lot of the community feedback that we received as well well as like very extensive demographic questions but what we really want the community to hear is that those Dem while we can disaggregate that data the data that is available to the school administrator will not have that demographic info attached to the response to protect the anonymity of all respondents um and that's really important for the community to hear okay thanks um you talked about an implicit bias tool for the interview committees could you just describe that a little bit more sure um so the the tool was put together in collaboration with mpde and was a tool that um really helps in the the pref phase so when you're meeting with you you're pulling your team together it's an opportunity to go through it's ours with the professional development where you're just going through and really trying to make sure that you are aware of biases that exist because often times it's just really difficult to even acknowledge that you have some um but to really go through and some of the you know the quick ones that see we there's one that comes up that there's a a a cartoon and the person's really overweight and often times we we talk about that because you know oftentimes we talk about race uh we talk about gender but people don't talk about things around other physical um attributes and weight can be a huge piece where someone walks into the room and it totally changes um often times people are willing to cover up names and things like that sometimes that's helpful but often times it's it's not um as we think about our effort to really make sure that we have a diverse population we want to look at everyone um we also talk a little bit in this tool if we talk about um requirements and preferred so if you really want someone with a doctorate then you need to say that as opposed to you know putting it out there you know preferred doctorate or preferred Masters and then when someone comes in and does not have that but has all the qualifications there's a bias in you that really you really wanted that so that's what you really wanted so we need to say that so sometimes it's about going through the tool and really naming some of the things and then having us revisit some of the pro procedures and policies that we have thank you so it's more of like a training not it's a training yes um last question the OE feedback form I think you said before that it won't be continuing now the climate survey like that was a one in a oneoff because now the climate surveys will be providing that content okay thank you you're welcome it was great really helpful thank you any other questions from the committee SAR so thank you for all this I I really feel like our you know when you've talked about this being a difficult year it's been a difficult year for teachers as well and I think that um the support that they can feel through you know the um the examples that you give and the you know all of the resources you give them is is just so helpful and that you know improves the student experience right and I'm already hearing from the teachers that they that they like to have those templates for writing letters to parents and you know it's it's helpful because we all know our our own points of view but if we're representing a school system we need to have somebody who has has our back and has sort of expressed um ideas that we can then you know put out there to the community so that's super helpful I also really liked looking at um hearing from you about how much you talked to students and um teachers and community and I just sort of wanted to know going forward instead of like this being something that kind of like happens to a teacher where are the additional times the teacher can or the educator can weigh in on things like are they able to is there a a you know is there going to be further surveys is that part of what you're looking at are you going to um use teacher expertise when there's the different modules could a teacher choose which module they start first so there's a little bit of choice could you just speak to the continued process so this this isn't something that we're doing two Educators but like what is their part in this um so first I would say I think it's going to be incredibly important for us to always be able to provide space so some of the work I think we're doing with building leaders is really starting to understand what is it that each building can provide so that teachers feel as though they have an opportunity you know to have some of that Affinity time with with with one another whether it's through common planning time is there some time that can happen during um staff meeting time for different type of discourse because I think often times that doesn't happen enough so I hear I hear what you're saying in regards to like feeling like something's being done to them and they need that opportunity um we don't have anything formalized this year we did not offer Affinity spaces for educators this year which was something that my predecessor did um this wasn't something that we had to bandwidth for but um I do think that there's a place for having some of that space um for for teachers we want to make sure that as we're going through the climate survey there are a lot of needs you know the fact that we have we partnered with be to have that event around retention for our diverse staff it was really important for folks to be able to come together so we don't want to ignore that I do think we have to figure out how we can become more creative with less and less time and more and more being required of people and more and more needs for our students um in regards to um I'm a coach you know that was what I did for many many years an instructional coach and and in coaching you know you train the trainer you're really hoping that folks if you have an expertise already in a particular era we want them to Jump Right In and be able to help and help do that modeling with folks but also be able what's nice about the modules that Christy is setting up is that there are places for everyone to start and we know that we have lots of Staff that's already gone through RJ through suff University so this time they have a foundation um we do plan on offering rj1 and two it might be that they don't need rj1 they can just go right to rj2 and so there flexibility and I I'm hoping that if anything we've expressed that we want to be flexible and we want to partner with folks and that we're willing to for folks to do an assessment and say you know what I think we can kind of tweak this this will work better for I mean there's some schools that are further along in this work than others so we have to consider that that as well can I just share one too also I think one thing that I wanted to highlight is before these modules before this plan and any iteration was shown to anyone it was first shown to teachers and it was completely like revamped recreated adjusted based off of their feedback and expertise as somebody who was very recently a teacher I think I have so much respect and honor for the expertise of teachers and what they do and any plan that happen without their input it's not going to work you know and I think that's highlighted in why the one of our first huge efforts was the establishment of the staff culture and climate survey because we know the expertise lies with the people that are with our kids every day and so we need to create the channels where their their voices are directing the action of the people at the top so I really appreciate that question and I really want to be clear and with the training program nothing moves forward there without the expertise of teachers thank thank you Stephen thanks so first thanks for this presentation I feel like um I feel caught up and I think it helps uh me as a school Committee Member and hopefully anyone listening to have a deeper appreciation of just the sheer breadth of activities your office been engaged in for the past year so thank you very much for that um I have um three questions one is um so in the Strategic plan for for this foundational year there were just two um two activities that the that OE is supposed to as far as I could tell reporting out on one you touched on which was the equity audit that it was going to be contracted within this year you mentioned or there was on the slide that there were there were three potential offers for that are we still on track to contract I think so I do I do think so um folks a couple people have sent the pr Min AR I'm looking for a real quote you know a real Bid And I S I think that's something I'll actually need to be working with Susan's office a little bit more I received something else today and I'm like well this is not really it so um that's something that I need to work with um with o office of administration and finance just to make sure we get the the proper bid in okay and and one B for that the other one was there was a mention of working uh creating a working group on bias for the 8th to 9th grade transition I didn't see anything in the presentation on that was that is that still in scope for this year or is that it is and I think the year is just about over but it's really trying to pull people together to to figure out what is that actually look like I mean I think we need to be transparent that eth and nth grade transition is has been challenging and some of the the smaller Fighters I say small and big firus that we put out has had a lot to do with our eighth um eighth graders and so it's a work that really needs to happen I think our work with msan um needs to become stronger um this year we were not able to really fulfill the to really utilize that I think that those resources will be a huge help for us and that's something that we're trying to pull a team together now we've talked to Matt du about that as well to kind of come together to really feel um build a solid team so that we can actually meet that goal okay okay so that was question number one question that question to that question um that's why the training plan is centered around 6th to 8th grade faculty to support that 8th to 9th grade transition and so the idea is that the each school's Equity team will be sort of leading that work within their middle school but that a task force of Dr Giller myself Claire matu Michelle Gabe and Dr jod will be meeting to monitor progress quarterly on if the trainings are serving the purpose of facilitating that transition and facilitating belonging for students from middle school to high school and we'll be going over the data measures that we have on that too okay I think the the only thing that was actually in the Strategic plan was just constituting the team so is the team itself going to be o plus Deputy superintendent plus the equity teams at the school is that what you're envisioning for the team or is there something else the team right now the task force is right now Dr gillery myself Claire Jodie Gabe Michelle Dr mat Bo okay and and that's what we're thinking is going to be that that that's that yes that's the team that's meeting to monitor progress on on that e8th to 9th grade transition and how the training modules are supporting that effort and then it's the equity teams that will be doing these efforts at their middle schools but I think you're referring to the um the team on bias yeah yes which I think there'll be multiple teams but I think the team that I'm referring to was more about the bias and in that again trying to make sure that we have representatives from the schools because I think that's the most important thing is to make sure and so that's been the key piece like so I brought up M because we weren't able to fulfill our commitment with that the way we wanted to because we need commitment from really from Seventh and e8th grade Personnel whether it's a counselor um and then also Matt du and as well as OE working together with that team to actually create the bias team so that's what I'm referring okay so that's still that's that's in the works and we hope to have it done before the end of the school year okay thanks okay so now the bigger question this is more for you Christina so I was really excited to hear about the theory of change that you were working on that you put together um I I I guess I want to I want to know more about it um and when I think of a theory of change I think of like a big if then statement if we do 1 2 3 four and five then this will happen and your theory of change look to me like if we do these 10 competencies then but I wasn't sure what the then was so um could you say more about um like if we do this to around these 10 competencies around which we're going to be creating this BPO curriculum at of oee what's going to happen as a result yes um thank you for that so we do have a developed if then statement but I strategically did not share it here because since this effort is a partnership with these three schools I want to ensure that we are fully aligned in that and in total agreement before sharing it here knowing that certain schools like we said are going to have needs are a little bit different and that may subtly change that or adjusted by school so I strategically do not share it here but you will know it at some point I hear that okay um and I I respect that you're wanting to do this as collaboratively as you as you can I I would just ask that as you develop the then part that there are um indicators around the then so that we as a as school committee I'm sure I'm talking to preaching to converted here have a way of assessing the success of the initiative because it seems like a really ambitious Rich initiative and I want us to be able to celebrate it success I have good news for you Stephen we already have the indicators and we already have a schedule for when we will be taking the data at Benchmark midpoint and at the end of the cycle and I we'll just smile and then my my third and last question is why bespoke curriculum why not off theh shelf or customized curriculum why would we want to create this in-house when some of those 10 competencies um look very familiar totally um to me what I think is the most effective materials and resources are the ones that directly respond to the needs of the population that they're meant to serve and I think in Brooklyn that looks different we have a community here that or a school district here that is very different than the makeup of any other school district that I've been a part of and thus there are dynamics here that require that we handle these competencies like with further nuance and I really want to be responsive to that and especially like thinking of a lot of the scenarios that teachers have been so brave to say and they in some of these faculty meetings they say in front of their admin which I think is such a sign of Courage this thing happened in my classroom I don't know what to do I think I might have mishandled this scenario I need advice on it I think making a bespoke curriculum allows for that level of personalization um to the common incidents that are arising out of PSB schools rather than just kind of like one size fits all this can be really specific and thus hopefully extremely effective that's the idea okay I hear that I guess I think when I see like restorative justice as a competency there's obviously so much training around that already I I would think that um the more bespoke we are the more difficult it would be to have a common indicator around that so if we chose one that's already well established that has strong indicators around it that we customized thoroughly to fit the Brookline context it would be easier to measure than building one from scratch that and we could still satisfy what you're saying is important to have something that's thoroughly localized rooted in the Brookline context oh and I want to be totally clear all these are based and so the rj1 for example is completely based in the principles of the suff training but I think the idea is that in making it bespoke we're able to shorten it to 45 minutes to be able to function kind of as like a thorough crash course for educators that can be completed during the required time that they're meant to be at that CPT meeting once a month so I think that's the point of making it bespoke that it's like we're distilling it down to these are the ultimate things you need to know to be able to do this in your classroom in a time efficient manner I see okay thanks very much Christ no problem Suzanne yes thank thank you Andy and thank you for the presentation um so I just want to kind of go back to what Sarah was saying just again reiterate that restorative justice circles are not new to Brookline I don't know how far we are but I know that the beu has put some effort into that uh looking into it the training and so um you know I think so if you have a restorative justice one 101 and then you have a 2011 or something might be that would sounds like a good idea to me because I'm sure there many who have been through some training and um don't need to start at the at the beginning exactly and I'm sure there are many who need the training because you have turnover and new new uh staff and all that so I just wanted to back Sarah up on that be sure to check in with the teachers on what on what they need um I didn't hear anything about Equity review of materials or of uh even our curriculum are you doing that are you leaving that up to OTL or no I think um You didn't hear about it for this right now but that's where we're leading to so some of the work that we'll be doing with OTL coming up on the next few we really be trying to get a schedule together so we can start um thinking about how we do that work and planning for that for the um stud and so when you were doing your residences did you have any sense of that did it feel like most of the materials were spot on or did you feel like well I think some of the rare bills variability that we saw there's lots of materials that are curated um by our teachers so there there's there's a variance there and so there's there's definitely um anecdotally I can say there's some things that you know rais an eyebrow I'm like okay I can see why you make that connection I know the standard that type of thing but also that you know we need this this there's some room for consistency and making sure that um and part of that part of doing um a review would be really important for us to make sure that that's happening yeah okay great and could you talk on that can I just say I I it's my understanding that that was a year two strategic plan activity okay but that's it is but it's something that we would be doing any your two is next year no year One's next year oh year sou foundational year so that's a long time but it is work I and I I think when I look at the Strategic plan we know that that's something that we're following but there's there's work that's happening parallel to that that we know that we have to do yeah thank you could you talk a little bit about coaching what that would look like who would do coaching are you in the classrooms coaching on Equity I I need a coaching staff I was a coach it's hard I mean we are a team of two um we're hoping with the equity leads this is going to help support that work but I think we've talked about this all along when we were going through on the proposal and the budgeting process that it's going to be daunting work for um our Equity leads because they're classroom teachers um and if if all things were perfect we'd have coaches Equity coach um between one or two schools and so we'd have let's say five or six Equity coaches that would be able to work K through um eight for be assigned to two schools and have you know Equity cycles that would really work um it's going to be challeng ing I I want to be transparent I don't know what that's going to look like because we don't have Equity coaches we're going to have Equity leads and we have Christy and myself and you know we don't have the bandwidth to do that now in the schools that we're doing the pilot work you're going to see coach like work happening Christy is already doing that work at F frr she's doing an exceptional job and she is coaching teachers the modules that she um just put up over the last couple of months is just kind of like the the last of what she's been doing she's been doing individual coaching with te teachers um it is as as a former coach I know how difficult it is for a teacher to be vulnerable and to be able to say I need some help and the fact that they're reaching out to her is huge um so she's built trust in those schools and that coaching is happening but again she doesn't have the bandwidth as one person to be able to do that um across um those three piloted um schools and across all the schools that we have in the district so as we think about um years to come let's think about how we can expand this office and how we can collaborate more with OTL um I know we're going to be doing a lot of work with mtss again trying to make sure folks realize that Equity is the foundation it's even through everything that we do it's not a separate arm Equity is embedded in instructional practice um someone said today I think was Michelle she said it's the leverage you know um you know instructional practices The Leverage for Equity that really is the work and that it shouldn't be seen as something separate we know there aspects of that work that you need to have um some indiv idiz um professional development expertise and but Equity is the root of all the work that we do I'm hoping it as I was sharing des's Vision um matching it with our vision and also thinking very much about um masks um you know definition of educational Equity that's not our definition but as we start to work towards what we think this office should look like and the work that we do in is connection to OSS and OTL I'm hoping though that's the thinking that people will have just let you know Claire I was a coach too I know you I know we have common I know you know so I I know how important coaching is and I've not seen it in the budget for this year or probably for next year I don't know uh maybe some things to think about are um lead teachers who can serve as coaches for their colleagues um maybe we make sure huh or seed seed I don't maybe maybe some of our seed um partic Co participants have applied for the equity leads I mean think the equity lead are very similar to lead teachers um but I think it's it's it's going to be daunting we advertised for 22 we had 14 people respond um it's it's a lot of work it is a lot of work the other thing maybe is um some of our interventionists could be really thinking about wearing a the equity lens so that and I think that's the work with OTL and Os we need doing the work we have they're doing multiple jobs which is hard but as long as they're in there anyway helping you know maybe that I'm just trying to brainstorm I think I think that's exactly where we're going though as we think about instructional rounds and doing those instructional rounds with our with our office OTL OSS and and other um team members it's really an opportunity for us to look at instructional practice in a much broader sense using the new rubric that's um that Des is launching I think that's going to help this because Equity is built right into that so it doesn't look like a separate armor of the work right so thank you and and I put down tier one and um doing the tiers and instructional at the at the basic level again if those people are really focused they on equ understand which tier one and tier two is everybody's responsibility yeah yeah I understand what those are so thank you welcome all right any other questions from the committee um yes so Jesse and Carolyn I'm not sure who had their hand up first go ahead Jesse so thank you very much um my question has to do with I think goal two the community and culture um one of the ways of knowing that we're doing better and reaching sort of um where we want to get to together is measurable outcomes so that requires that we have the data and so you mentioned about the bullying and harassment forms um maybe you can update us um at a subcommittee meeting of De deij some time back the number of incidents that had been recorded was probably low compared to the reality within the schools and so I guess my question on a practical level is how far away are we as a school culture and Community from where we need to be and how can the data we've gotten so far help us determine that or not maybe we just don't have enough data and we really don't know and of course the equity measures that are being put into place in the training I guess the goal there is that it will begin to impact the culture in a way so that less incidents happen but if we're not not meaningfully collecting all the incidents how will we be able to measure that we're getting to where we want to be I think there's a couple different things I think in regards to you know there's the the data that we're going to collect on incidents that take place but I also think there's really taking a good hard look at school climate um that's really important for work that we need to do I think that's some of the work that you'll see in some of the school Improvement plans but I think we need to take an honest transparent look at each IND each IND each school has its own Community I think that's something we need to be doing I think that's um in the work that we'll be doing with principles that's some of the work that oee will be working on is really taking a good look in an assessment of school climate um and school culture at the individual schools I think it's something that we have to consider districtwide as well um trying to collect the data for specific incidents has been tricky I mean we've been really honest and transparent about that the numbers that we're getting are low in comparison to what people are saying um I think the mechanism needed some work as well when I think when it looks like too much work people just don't um and when we've talked to students they just some of them have felt like what's the point in in reporting this is specifically when we're talking to our high school students that they don't think anything's going to happen so they're not going to and they might share with their parents and then their parents come and share with us but they're not actually reporting it um but again I think there's work that we need we can do um better like we talked about at the last subcommittee meeting meeting making sure that there's a QR code so when kids can everyone has a device they can just click on and then they're able to actually report something um that's work that we have to do um it's going to be challenging though this is something we talk about every week Christy and I kind of look at this form like what can we do differently but um I think it's something that we need more support with we reached out to um our strategy team as well to figure out like what can we do I know we're trying to realign some things with Aspen that might be helpful when things are happening in buildings they put the notes in Asen we need to make sure all of our systems are talking to one another so that's just work that's going to to continue but I do think we need to try to have more of a more of a pulse on the school school climate so I hear what you're saying I don't have the best answer to put it in a nice neat boat but it's something that we're aware of and that we still have to keep working on it's going to be a journey it's not going to be a quick yeah I was going to say it has a lot to do with communication because um you know speaking personally four or five months of campaigning so I went to every corner of Brookline l and you know and this was a very common theme from parents and of current students and from parents of former students you know parents who have taken their kids out of the system for various reasons and a very common theme was that there's sort of this like you're saying it's hard to quantify because they know what they're feeling and they know what they're hearing from peers and students know what they're hearing from other students and a lot of parents talk but they don't have a way of measuring it and so I think as a as a school Community the the more quickly we can get to a quantitative measure of this situation for all groups of people and be as transparent as possible so people know we're wrestling with it um so then they know that all the work we're putting into it has a goal to reduce and provide a way of measuring something that will produce some some desired goal we're aiming for that would probably um uh sort of satisfy you know at least in a beginning way a lot of people out there who are wondering what's going on how come we're hearing things but we're we can't see the data that support what I think what's really tricky too is some of the things that get reported if we were to see a a drawing or something if somebody drew something on a desk you may not know who actually drew it right but that's now being reported because we're encouraging our building leaders to make sure that's reported but then it's like well what's substantiated it's hard to substantiate something was written on a desk you don't know who did it but it was found a teacher may have found it and it reports it to the principal so I think it's having these open conversations and dialogue as to I I think what we're looking is for a hard substantiation and often times we're unable to provide that in some of the webinars that I've been attending it's been really difficult most of the examples that they give us are really egregious they're not the situations that we're dealing with that are really hard to decipher sometimes because again we don't have cameras in places we don't know know who's done something so it's hard to figure out like what will be the next step other than a Public Communication to the community this is happening this is what we're doing on our end to try to make sure that we are meeting the needs of the students and trying to repair the full community from harm thank you you're welcome Carolyn thanks um thanks for that presentation um I have a question also about data the data that was used to inform the the plan um that you showed in the presentation with the the 10 things and that but I also have a couple sort of is CP what is CPT time collaborative planning time okay and then this um plan that you have the 10 competencies is this something that would be mandatory for CPT time for educators in 6th through 8th grade like what's the implementation here so the implementation in regards to we have worked with our building leaders there are three schools who are willing to Pilot this so there are common planning time that is directed by administrator and there's common planning time that is held by the teachers and staff so the time that is owned by the administrator that is used to do professional development and this is a form of professional development that will be provided okay so and so per but it would be so all sixth through eth grade teachers yes it would be mandatory yes okay thank you super clear um and then I I did I lost the thread a little bit on the data that informed this so I understand there's a survey that's currently out to parents and are you saying there's a similar survey a culture and climate survey that's out to Educators so a culture and climate survey was sent out to families and caregivers as well as teachers and staff okay but that's not the data that's informing this work because you don't have that we don't have the results of that so the data is the snapshot the 150 so the data that's informing is a combination of the snapshot but also the anecdotal data that we've been receiving from our residencies and from our classroom visits and school visits and observations okay and then and the 150 snapshot that was done earlier in the year I think you said that was a snapshot of of Educators and staff so can you be more specific and then I understand from earlier in the year there was also um a feedback survey attached to the Strategic plan that I think had about 750 responses and those responses I believe were really focused on the community talking about the desire for um academic high standards and challenging curriculum so how does that data tie into this so the the first question you have is in regards to what what are what part of the the 150 responses are you looking for I'm sorry I'm just making sure I'm catching I just want to understand when you you say Educators and staff like just basically who were those 150 teachers okay and also to par professionals bcbas special education Educators people that run the gamut of all staff at PSB and also to a lot of the came from that also came from I've been doing this Equity cycle atfr entr trenched there for months and months and a lot of data came from there as well as from our residencies from meetings with community members from meetings with teachers just from all the work we do every day so much data results from it and that's what's informed those competencies in the plan that you saw okay and I I also have a question about restorative justice and when does that s sort of happen can what do you mean well what would trigger a restorative justice intervention or restorative justice Circle or there's there's multiple ways that it it might so it could be that there could be an incident that actually took place where there could have been a disagreement between two students in class it could have been a very light disagreement but a teacher might decide specifically as we're thinking about elementary they might do this during their you know their morning meeting time where they would run a circle where there was a disagreement let's say on the recess um field or there was something that took place during Center time and they want to get ahead of it so they would do a restorative Circle um restorative circles are often about you know about classroom climate and making sure that we all being good citizens within the community so that's what would trigger let's say something in elementary it could be something that's a little bit more egregious where there could have been a physical fight that took place it could have been you know something awful was said and so then the teachers are now then going to come together and try to do a restorative Circle to restore the harm that took place with the two students and if it actually also impacted the rest of the community there's also really proactive circles that happen through restorative justice where you're kind of you know again trying to build that that climate within this the school um the classroom and um School climate classroom climate two which is why actually to your point we broke it down into these two modules because I think restorative circles they fall under these two categories right one is the community building circles and the other is addressing harm and so the hope is that if practitioners and the the whole way restorative justice circles were designed is that if we're doing these Community Building Circle circles consistently that we're creating that culture where students are deeply known and they use this quote in the suff training that is like you don't bully someone whose story you deeply know so the idea is it's like a preventative measure to create that strong culture so that we need to utilize restorative justice 2.0 addressing harm as infrequently as possible because the idea is it'll reduce those incidents of harm and Al also really considering the fact that you know our many of our guidelines and and laws have changed I mean it's really important we want to make sure that we keep students in school we we are responsible to making sure that we provide restorative practices to make sure that we're not doing um suspensions with schools and things like that so that that's greatly important and speaking to Jesse what you were saying just around school climate doing the community building will be so important in hoping that we start to build um a better climate within um our classrooms and our schools across the district I know you had another question about some data though I just want to make I was a lot of seemed like there were a lot of questions I just want to make sure I caught them all my question was about whether the 750 responses in the Strategic plan Community feedback survey inform this we work at all I would say yes and also one thing like the main theme when we categorized it all was belonging as well when we looked at all those responses and like codified them so I think that was a huge part of what informed this all right thank you very much clar and Christie for presenting to us in the community and for fielding so many questions from the committee thank you both both are so yeah all right so next up we have um the fiscal year 2024 third quarter financial report so this was presented already at yesterday's uh Finance subcommittee meeting so Susan and Diane Johnson presented um all of the school committee members who were at this meeting were also at the finance meeting yesterday um as were some folks from the advisory committee who also wait in and so at this point I'll turn the floor over to Susan and to Mariah to um summarize you know what was presented yesterday um what the conversation was then and to get us going on further discussion of our finances so I think what we'll do is I will make a very quick 90 second recap of our 90 minute meeting from yesterday most of which but not all of which but the vast majority of which was focused on this topic um and then everyone should have received the updated memo earlier today um and I know it's posted on the materials page of the website as as well did we get it printed out too I don't know if oh it's awesome thanks Betsy so um so you all have it in front of you and we thought we'd take the remaining 18.5 minutes of our 20 minute allocation basically for if there's additional questions that have come up from the committee as a result of the memo not to rehash what we've already discussed yesterday but really additional questions additional thoughts additional anything that we want to add to the conversation understanding that this is still a very active um topic obviously and we will be getting ongoing updates so so we don't want to do what we did yesterday again we don't need to retread the same ground um the quick update is and I made notes for myself to make sure I didn't forget anything um essentially that um the projection at this point is that the budget will be in will be overspent by 1 M 79,2 186 um the analysis by the finance team shows that the bulk of the overspending is in the services category Susan correct me if I get any of my summary wrong but I'm pretty sure so far I'm right um and there was actually the the the the net is this 1.7 million but there was a larger deficit and there is a freeze in other areas of the budget that's offsetting um the larger uh $4.6 million overspend the Finance team has come up with four actions to mitigate the deficit and um I can't remember them perfectly so I'm going to look at the notes from the report but the first one is um because the non-salary accounts are um have very little money in them at this point there's going to be a transfer of 1.2 million to cover from the salary line to the non-salary lines Susan I think in our policy that level of transfer actually has to get voted by school committee so I don't know if you need us to vote that but we might want to I guess we do that yeah we might want to consider we don't usually do that but we don't usually get told about transfers so this is an exciting momentous day for some of the right reasons and some of the wrong reasons can I interrupt with a question about that line I mean what would it what would it mean on the ground to transfer that much money from salary to non-salary like what happens to people when we do that um nothing will happen to people um but the way the system set up we can't actually issue purchase orders for the money that we're are already obligated to so we're not going to be able to see it in the financial system unless we can do the POS so the idea here is to transfer the money from salary which isn't totally consumed yet because we still have X number of payrolls in front of us so that we can encumber the money see it and manage it for the rest of the year um obviously uh we're upside down so we don't have enough money overall in order to pay all of our bills by the end end of the year which uh means that um if we're unable to make any more adjustments um from what we see today which I do believe we will but if we weren't able to then we would um go to uh the town for and I guess advisory committee here um and request a reserve fund transfer so that we would have enough in our appropriation to cover the expenses it's not a cash flow issue it's a budgetary issue so so that sort of covers um so the first one is the transfer the second two are really about continuing to just monitor the POS that are in the system um and to track expenses um and find or post as you say identify funding sources and at the end if we need to we do a reserve fund transfer and the impacts to the fy2 budget from the ongoing discovery of FY 24 budget are still um being determined so now we get to the part where people can ask additional questions from the documents or or other questions that have come up to them Stephen Andy do you want me to call on people are you calling on people sure you can call on folks except yeah it's fine yeah just continuation of Andy's question um another naive question what what is the concrete impact of freezing what what is not being spent and what is the impact of not spending that um well in essence uh since the middle of March um for the most part any any any resources we absolutely did not need to spend doesn't mean that we didn't want to or there wasn't um value to what we would have spent money on um but rather what was absolutely essential we have encumbered but other areas we had to uh suspend any further um processing of POS for the year so uh hit particularly hard would be OTL as many of you heard in newspaper articles or maybe maybe they were social media I don't read either for here um but uh the trout project uh we weren't able to fund transportation for that um also you know I can give examples but that's an examp example of that um in the area of uh my my area we have spent no more additional resources during the hiring season on recruitment efforts um and so anywhere that uh we could we we just are not spending money so uh not ideal not what you want um but it's at this particular Point none of this is what we want and so we have to take action to uh um try to stem the tide of this uh challenge that we're faced with so um uh we're we're not able to I don't believe by the end of the year we're going to be able to close the entire Gap but we're certainly um have identified the the Gap as we see it and now we are going to do more forensics um and dive deeper into are there any expenses that are currently being charged the operating budget that perhaps should have or could have been charged against other special Revenue funds um some of the um areas that uh some of this is learning for us we're all new to Brookline and so as you know through the budget process um Andy uh pointed out you know that we uh seek reimbursement for the beu president um and so we were able to reduce those expenses well I found another situation where uh expenses have been charged to the operating budget but we're going to get reimbursed by bef now the practice should be that those expenses should have hit the bef revolving fund or Grant fund not the operating budget will correct those types of uh transactions moving forward um but it's it's really looking deeply at those expenses and seeing if there are other areas in which we can um uh can and or should have charged off uh expenses in other areas so that's some of the work that that will take place in the next uh you know 3 weeks by the finance team and um and we'll keep you posted also if if uh we're able to unencumber or reduce encumbrances on existing POS and that frees up um uh funds available uh that will then reduce our um $1.7 million um Gap right now and Dr given you also um at one point talked about a number of transactions that were I'll call them blind to the school department where there were some charges that were being made against our accounts that weren't necessarily passing through you so you put in safeguards around those as well um to the extent that we can see them you know and I say that over and over again this year you know what we see we share um and uh you know we we certainly have communicated with staff about uh you know how how to um manage some of these um um challenges that have uh documented here so uh people are well aware you know that contracts need to be reviewed and signed by me um they're aware that purchase orders need to be in place before they engage in work with other vendors and or buy products um so all of those um uh internal controls that are talked about here are not this is not the first conversation internally we're having about those um so I we believe I mean I have no reason not to believe that that that all of the information we've requested um has been shared with us but um you know I I can't guarantee that but I believe that at this point and if it's if it's not so I will say so I have two questions um my first one is you said that the essential essentially we're working on only funding essential things and I think the trout field trip was a real punch in the gut for a lot of people and I'm wondering are are there other student facing expenses which will be which will have a meaningful impact on student experience that we are not funding at this point and I think I want to say with regard to that particular the timing of that was the was was the biggest challenge so those um funding for those trips so POS weren't cancelled so let me be clear they had not been executed order did to encumber the money for that and then we couldn't encumber money because there wasn't sufficient resources available in the non-salary lines to execute a PO and that happened around the time that this project was taking place um and I don't mean to relitigate I just use asle things that were impactful and some of it was impacted because of the timing of that and until and in in fact when this first happened the finance team believed that there was a like a s system problem not a not a budgetary problem and so it was a it was a a pause put on the brakes to figure out what was going on on the backside as if it was a technical problem but in fact it it it turned out not to be that um so I I know that I can share the process so the FY 24 budget the finance director is really uh managing and navigating that uh my focus has been on the fy2 um but I can say that uh when this occurred that um folks submitted all of their um musthaves between now and the end of the year and I know that uh the finance director and the finance team worked with with OTL and and others um uh to to winnow down you know what what we felt was absolutely necessary between now and the end of the air so were were programs impacted absolutely were impacted I I yeah there's one other field trip that was canell okay the same you want at the same time as the trout field trip was supposed to happen there was supposed to be a first grade um trip to the pond to observe Intex and do some naturalistic observing and again because of the transportation and not being able to encumber the money to get the kids to said Pond um the P we've brought the pond to the students um with some pond water and some bugs um to have an experience in their classroom okay but is that the only sort of student facing like meaningful student experience you think that's got caught in this okay and then my second question is um in the part of fy2 hold on let me find it because it's in the memo um in the impact of FY 24 projected deficit on FY 25 budget planning you highlight that there's three categories that um you had already you knew an FY 24 you could already project were going to be higher than had previously been budgeted and you've already increased them in FY 245 but the FY 24 overage so far is almost 2.5 million but the FY 25 increases only 1.8 million so there's already a $700,000 gap so how are we how are we closing the rest of that Gap or whatever might exceed it for fy2 so when the original um budget was put together Transportation I had carried the higher number and uh uh the deputy superintendent of OSS you know reviewed that um um very closely and she reduced the amount that she felt was necessary to carry forward and then um we went out to bid as all of you um have heard multiple times and in order to be able to um hire a contractor that uh would be able to uh provide all of the transportation services that we need our current vendor though they have uh been with us for a while um has not been able to meet the demand and so one of the reasons why these expenses are so high this year is because they have been unable to provide that and so then we have uh to go out without any competitive process um and with the market the way it is in transportation there isn't really a lot of competition anyways so if you if you have a student that uh is on on AP and now has a placement that's in another location from where they were before um we have to bring that student to their uh to their school when we have agreed to do that and um and so in many ways we have had to pay some really exorbitant um transportation fees because we have no way to be able to um get a competitive rate the contractor that uh was awarded the bid does have sufficient vehicles um and Staffing to be able to deliver um all of our student population within their contract so that will help uh contain um the costs that are really um uh that we're unable to contain this year so the combination of the two um now again if we this is based on 65 students in AO District placements if that becomes 75 students there then that that that becomes a problem for us again right but the the good news is is that should that occur we have rates already bid and they have an obligation to provide those services and based on our research they have the capacity to absorb more than what we're asking for so there are guard rails on that for next year and um there was a lot of effort put into researching The Firm um they do provide special education I just want to clarify they do provide special education um uh Transportation now not for us um also for homeless populations mckenny vento what they haven't had is a significant all-in um special education contract like this they're very motivated a lot of effort went into again checking references meeting with them multiple times times to make sure that they clearly understood and could deliver on all of the um requirements that were clearly and in detail spelled out in the RFP so the purchasing team downstairs worked with our transportation coordinator and Diane our finance director who has a significant amount of experience with this the RFP was was developed in in in collaboration with OSS so we feel we feel you know we've done our dut diligence there and um you know feel that we're in pretty good shape for the upcoming year doesn't help us here um in our circumstance that contract doesn't come into play until July 1 so we're you know uh but the year is closing and um you know we feel like based on the information we have from OSS that that we have the we'll be able to cover the expenses but not until we move the $1.2 million over and we can uh increase and or um execute another Po in order to cover the remaining costs can I ask a follow-up question Andy does our current um outo District transportation contract include any sort of penalty clause and will or does the next one include any sort of penalty Clause if they commit to being able to to deliver X rides and then they don't and we end up in a financial predicament there's no penalty for I I didn't write this particular one but I've been told that that there are some guard rails what they are I don't know I can find out and and get back to you on that though okay I mean the guard rails in the past on Transportation contracts have involved like volume going up and down without like like right like oh they could have we could ask for up to 10% more and have it be at the same rate but because this is such a huge impact on our operations across the district if and essentially if there's every benefit to them of claiming ex capacity and no downside if they can't deliver it seems to me it's important that we get what we I mean our whole budget depends on on us getting what they're claiming they will deliver so I think I just broke this I I don't know what they are because I I didn't that was something but I can I can thank you that would be helpful to understand absolutely uh can do that no problem Suzanne yeah I don't want to go line by line but I the one that I'm stuck on are the pair of professionals and I know you didn't write the budget you didn't create it um but I'm just curious is is how did we end up with such a variance did we have additional um PA professional positions we did not anticipate or did I I'm just curious why there's such a variance there it's 1.2 million 1 Point almost three I I I can't okay I don't know if it was under budgeted um I I that I can't tell I wish I could it would be helpful what I can't say is that um any of the par professional positions all of the par professional positions that um were um on our payroll as of the end of December are in our fy2 budget the Gap right now is there's 12 positions that have um evolved since then that are not in our FY 25 budget and OSS right now is going through now that we have position control to see if those 12 are in fact should have been assigned to an open slot um or if they're in fact um additional positions required because of student need and I don't know that yet either way you know we'll I'll be able to answer that question for next year unfortunately I don't know if it was underfunded or it probably was a combination of underfunding and then additional need arose um and and and Paras perhaps needed to be added and I'm I'm um interested because we haven't filled all the perah spots that we have are you just trying to encumber money to the level that we will need them for um or are we like no for this year no these are people that are already employed are already employed are already employed yeah and that's a that's a great question so when you budget of course even this year we haven't had a HR Director all year we haven't had a director of operations we haven't had a lot of positions filled that have nothing to do with um PA professionals and so by not filling those I mean it's it's killed the rest of us but um but it also um which is not a good thing I no not I don't really appreciate that no um it's not a fault uh it's a circumstance um but that does help uh offset the impact of some of this uh but it you know a lot of this as much as I could see I built into your fy2 I don't have a baseline for 24 it's been really hard I mean I I I wish I could uh we developed a a staffing plan when I when I realized um after a lot of effort that it there I was not going to be able to get that information um then I uh invest at the time with the with the principles and um you know my uh colleagues in senior leadership and we we developed one um and that's the best I can do so I can't tell you what it was supposed to be I can only tell you what is and next year I'll be able to tell you what we planned for and what went uh left or right of Center and um I wish and I've been doing this a long time so for me to sit here and say that I uh I I can't I can't trace back to your original budget and and it's not a it's it's because of the the it was like a perfect storm situation you know changing of account numbers um not you know you went through an override last year and then and part of that override was a commitment to cut $1.85 million well your town meeting is at the beginning of June and then these Cuts have to be made and uh now you have a shift in the person sitting in my office office uh somebody made mention uh last night that he had you know really basically a part-time Finance director and you really didn't have a deputy superintendent last year well I guess Mariah was your inim Deputy say word on the street wasn't here uh and uh um so you you made um you know you did the best you could with what you had but when all of those parts change and then you also had this convergence of all of these grants that closed so money was pushed off from the budget over to the grants to spend those out and I agree uh taxpayers should be the court of last resort right not the first place you hit for money if you can spend somebody else's spend theirs first right well those grants were coming to a close so so now expenses are then pushed out um and if you don't have a map of what the thinking of the of of the of the parties before you had and what was pushed out that was normally in it's all of these um things happening simultaneously that caused it to be so incredibly messy this year and so I can't change that so I'm the type of person that looks and says what can we do and how do we not find ourselves here again um and so my energy has been into building the systems um and I haven't got them all built I mean how can I have no HR Director so I'm trying to build over there and run your HR department um at the same time trying to support your entirely new Finance team um with no director of operations it's it's been a lot um I feel incredibly proud of the people that have stuck through this um and what I'm trying to build is a team that will stay you have had such turnover here such turnover here it's it's really you're feeling that now you know you can't lose 40% of your tacit organizational knowledge over and over and over again and expect that you're going to be high performing we'll say so things are very dysfunctional and we need to change that there's a saying in leadership right when you have high Readiness you can have low structure and when you have low Readiness which is what you are you have high structure so unfortunately you didn't have any High you don't have those High structures in order to navigate through the uncertain times so we have to put more structure in place and there's a heck of a lot of training that needs to happen and changing of practices as I've documented here for you thank you Susan thank you to the team right and thank you for the extensive memo which is a lot to take but I think we'll be very helpful in preparing us for discussions with the advisory committee did you say expensive or expansive extensive extensive okay am I like systematically not being clear it's me 70 the so many um yeah so just to remind people that yesterday's meeting was recorded if they want to hear the extensive version and you'll be giving us more details as you and the team are understanding what's going on and I think the only thing we need to do right now is make a motion to transfer $1.2 million from the salary account to the non-salary side that would be great um I'm not sure we can do that without it being posted first I think we should do it and if for whatever reason we need to redo it we redo it all right so um let's see if anybody wants to make the motion okay that that that was me making the motion not just an encouragement no you have moved it do we have a second I'll second all right Sarah um do we have any further discussion on this topic before we vote the motion is to move $1.2 million from the salary account to the non-salary account and is it exactly 1.2 million that we want to according to the memo okay yeah yeah all right we have 69,000 um available we need another 1.2 million to cover it's written number one okay yeah so this can't wait um all right so if there's no further discussion and I see no raised hands so let's take a vote Stephen yes Sarah yes Jesse yes Suzanne yes Mariah yes Carolyn yes B yes and I vote Yes as well thank you thank you very much Susan I'll just stay up for the next um right well there is one item before your backup um but do we want to swap the have to um yeah we could do that I I ALS let's let's do that so um we will for we already voted these do you want me to just quickly skim them okay so yesterday I do want one clarifying one when we get to the uh non align memo Okay so yesterday um at Finance um the finance subcommittee voted unanimously to recommend to the full school committee a vote to extend the school bus contracts there was a memo provided the memo said that the service has been good and the staff recommend going ahead and so as I said Finance unanimously recommended it and so I would move the full school committee um extends the school bus contracts sorry I do have a question that I should have asked yesterday about the school bus contracts um let's have let's have it seconded before we Sorry Sorry questions and discussion would anyone second I second all right now Caroline sorry new person also a somewhat new way of doing things I think so um I can't remember the amount was something like $600,000 for the school can you just give a quick like what that represents or even I think my memory is that like one school bus doing around daily for the school year was something like 180 per year $180,000 per year is that generally what we're talking about for however ever many bus routes are used yeah I believe there's nine bus routes okay um and and uh there's there's some routes where they do multiple routes um so for example at the um at the high school at at the end of the day there's an early bus and a late bus it's the same bus but it does um double duty on the routes so um the 600,000 is for your regular education like before and after school busing um and uh then you have before and after school Meco buses that uh provide transportation to our to our students in that program so that's really what these two are and then the third one is the one that Dr gillery mentioned in his report which is for special education so there's three bus contracts Al together okay and and is 180 do you know off the top of your head is like in District regular Ed did that stay around $180,000 if you don't know that's fine I have nothing to pull from at this hour I'm sorry I I do remember we were told last year they were like 140 I thought I it's it's there but I can't pull it out sorry I I I'm happy to to Circle back and yeah all right are we ready to to vote on the contract extension Steven yes Sarah yes Jesse yes Suzanne yes Mariah yes Carolyn yes Bell yes and I vote Yes as well second item is a possible vote on non-aligned hourly rates and stiens can I make our my big pitch for the whole thing and then you can make the clarification so we discussed this yesterday at finances well we unanimously recommended um approval by the school committee um the there were some questions and sort of the details of what this document represents and I think you I haven't actually gotten the chance to look at the cleanup but I presume all the things we talked about about cleaning up what was hourly versus thank you um that's great and what we really talked about sort of more broadly is um this document represents sort of a um whether it's a first effort or a renewed effort we'll say It's A Renewed effort at really pulling together all of the different um non-contractual um payments that happen to staff so that there could be standardized rates and we could move ahead with shared information across the district about what these are and um and there was some discussion around for example um do the as one example because I asked this question you know does the beep extended day cost being charged actually cover the costs that are being outlined here um and so there's opportunities to continue to refine the analysis but the finance committee appreciated the um the effort to advance our shared understanding and documentation of um Finance so again it was a unanimous recommendation from finance and I'll leave it at that yeah great would you like to move it well Susan had to add one thing and then I will move it one of the things I wanted to point out so yes um a lot of what the work was between last night and tonight was just formatting so that it was uh communicated in the same kind of nomenclature throughout the document um but there are uh a couple of changes um when I reviewed this one more time with um with our staff um I learned that um so if you turn to page three if you're looking at the document if you turn to page three you'll see a few items that are in red um and those rates are different than what you saw last night um and or new information was added because we discovered that um there was an additional form a compensation that's non align that we didn't have before on the old memo that I wanted to incorporate here so if you just turn to page three I'll Point those out the one that you saw last night under student intern rates had four different uh colleges and universities that we had contracts with at the time the original memo was written which was three years ago um those contracts expired and the only one that we have in place right now is Northeastern so I eliminated the other three so that I wouldn't create confusion any more than I already have um and I put in the Northeast Eastern uh intern rate for next year so that I wanted to point that out and then um under the mentored professional learning coach um we we had the wrong number in that particular one and then we added Garden stiens so those two were omitted on yesterday's um and we believe that we have captured all of and on aligned and this is important because when when in my prior memo in the financial report we talked about extra compensation yeah and so this is another piece of putting that structure in that it's clear that these are the rates if there's a rate to be added then that a conversation needs to be had because it should be approved by the school board which is why I will move school committee acceptance of this document we have a second go girl thank you Jesse uh any more discussion before we move to I just have one question if you don't mind Susan is for the student intern rate that 18,000 is that one student or yes one one student intern that's the six-month period correct yes yeah yeah six or the year right they're here for the year yeah class no that's for the six month six month yeah well I will you defer to me as the northeastern Eastern classroom they're building AIDS they're building AIDS yeah so these are yeah there's just one I think most of the buildings have two don't they no they have one um now Pierce will have two one for each site okay one at a time two per year that could be true okay I just have the one I I don't know about that I don't want to say I don't I don't want to they actually get paid on an hourly basis so I wouldn't I mean I wouldn't want to get too far into it and there's different rates depending on what year you are but okay we can leave it at 18,500 and this memo will be refined going forwards in future years and I'll actually get to see the contract and I directly to it okay I have to collect all those contracts that's another part of my other memo Stephen why does this require a vote um because compensation is something that's in your baile week so these are the ones that are not in um so contracts Personnel contracts setting compensation is uh a responsibility of the school board so that's why you have collective bargaining so is this an amendment to an existing bargaining no these are the ones that don't fall within nonaligned exactly so just like you said the salary range for the superintendent myself other people that are on individual contracts that are not governed by CBA these are the other forms of compensation the piece that you had the last time this was presented but we have more work to do also included all non-aligned positions but that is so out of date and I did not have time to do any market research obviously without staff you can't do those kinds of things that I didn't bring that forward for you to um accept because it's it really is outdated so um that will be on next year we'll be able to do that and then you'll get the full memo as you had previously I see yeah so not I'm sorry I thank you for helping me so not aligned means that they're not aligned with any existing agreement yes okay thank you yes yes yeah good good good point because I've never heard them referred to that way that's that's a Brookline term so yeah means they're not aligned to a collective bargaining agreement all right I think we can move to a vote stevenh Yes Sarah yes Jesse yes Suzanne yes Mariah yes Carolyn yes Val yes and I vote Yes as well thank you very much Susan thank you all right so our last item of business before a subcommittee and leison reports is a very brief preliminary discussion of one of our core responsibilities which is to evaluate the superintendent so desie down an annual evaluation process um we're supposed to be assessing the superintendent's progress toward meeting certain goals as well as certain standards and so the goals this can be kind of confusing I believe are set by the superintendent himself so the superintendent needs to define a professional practice goal a student learning goal and two to four District Improvement goals and then the standards are handed down by desie so those fall under the headings of instructional leadership management and operations family and Community engagement and professional culture each of those headings has a bunch of subheadings along Each of which we're to evaluate the superintendent so for the moment I just wanted to uh float a timeline for this process and see whether folks were okay with it um the current plan would be that Dr gillery will provide the committee with um a summary of his work toward meeting the the goals and standards by um June 18th um and then our um our Workshop is on June 26th so between the 18th and the 26th um the individual School commit members would submit um their forms which are provided by Desi and in fact are made public and posted on the school committee website um we would then discuss those at the at the workshop and what we did last year was to actually go line by line through the evaluation form and kind of vote on what score we wanted to assign um under each subheading um and then after that Workshop uh I guess it would be the chair's responsibility to sort of write an aggregate um evaluation that embodies all the results of all the votes as well as incorporating the the free response uh comments that are also part of everybody's individual form so are folks okay with that timeline there's not a lot of time between uh Dr gillery submitting his evidence um and us having to meet and discuss the evaluation June 18th is the last day of school I think and it's just like for anyone who might have or not I mean just having kids though and having them be home if they're home is that's a really tight time there any way to like this is done during the summer and many of us have kids at home over the summer so I'm not sure why that particular week is it's just short amount of time because you've got kids home during the summer and you're supposed to be writing an evaluation um and there there are other problems with having the workshop on the 26 there at least two of us who can't be there I can't be there either so that makes three of us who can't be there that day I can't be there either I have a board meeting I I didn't realize we were doing a Wednesday yeah it's currently like that day from 2 o'clock to 7:00 I was going to ask when it was when lus was talking about it earlier cuz I was like oh when's that scheduled so yeah can we change that date okay so um let's go back to the drawing board on the date the early July may not work so it might have to be postponed substantially if if we're to postpone it beyond June yeah just a question so Dr Gill do you want oh sorry I just had a question the first part was the that Dr Giller sets the goals and then we're going to get a summary against those goals next month about a month from now is that what you said yeah uh right June 18 so are the is the first document available the goals like what whatever's been set already is that available for sharing among the committee yeah okay yeah because so just I mean we can have this conversation but uh you can get a pass this first time because you've only been on a month well you've been on one night but yes I forgot to so typically uh if the very first year we wouldn't you went you went weigh in because you haven't been a part of it right but it would still be useful to see the you still get the goals you can get those even though we're going to be mute for the rest of it and sorry I just say if we're moving our date back I don't know if Dr Giller needs more time or not that would be helpful well if we're moving it forward that should take care of the you could leave Dr Giller submission date the same and we could just move our our Workshop forward no maybe he needs more time I'm just asking if few sure sure sorry I think what we'll do is um so when when are we talking about the workshop at this juncture we don't know we don't know but I think if we postpone it at all it would probably be postponed to the probably the second half of July yeah um so if you push back then what I'll do I still want to get you the information in June so I'll just commit to getting getting it completed you have at least two to three weeks of time with can can we disconnect the workshop from the evaluation like could we just have a separate meeting that's just the evaluation so that we even if the workshop is delayed we don't have to delay the evaluation something for you to mle Andy well I thought that what we needed to delay right now was the evaluation meeting no but not to the full second half of July like could we do a short meeting earlier than then that's not the full day where people have to like okay you know what I me let's take this offline and what works for for everybody thank you yeah I just I remember last year we did not all do all the indicators nor did we ask Dr Giller for evidence for all the indicators so um we had a different interpretation of of the evaluation form and I I don't know if we need to discuss that because it I abstained for a lot of it because I thought that I should only evaluate Dr gillery on evidence that he provided for the goals that he selected and the indicators I think it would from my perspective I think it would be very helpful to have another like evaluation 101 thing where because I realized right when we were going through it and I thought I did it right I checked with like other people and then I still didn't do it right so yeah I would be very helpful I agree with you right I think it was hard to aggregate last year because people had different things they wanted to say in the evaluation but everybody had a different notion of where to say a certain thing right under which heading or subheading yeah I mean it's a clumsy format I mean the evaluation is pretty I think clumsy just one one suggestion I think Dr Gil if you if you want to put which goal um I think part of the problem is that we we were attaching different goals to different parts of the evaluation and so we ended up different yeah so we had it in different orders so if you want to just propose which goal matches up to which part of the evaluation then we'll just take your cue and then we could we could have it you you could propose where in the rubric it fits in the other thing I wanted to propose maybe this is this belongs to us another conversation is that now that we have the Strategic plan if part of the evidence you submit can also include um the the school year 24 goals so that we can have evidence that you submit about the achievement of school year 24 goals too or or whatever selected goals from that that you think we should outcomes thank you that we should be evaluating for this particular year there were just a few for for for sy24 okay so I the achievement of those outcomes or their deliberate postponement or their discard or whatever it was that you deemed appropriate and Caroline um even though I'm thankfully not going to have to um participate in this yet um I don't mean that disparagingly towards Dr Giller um are there previous um copies of these available yeah it's actually public okay public accessible okay thank you all right so we will work on um rescheduling our like our written evaluations in the meeting to discuss them but Dr Giller has undertaken to provide the evidence still by June 18th so that's great for us um all right so next up on that a doodle poll from you Betsy for okay um let's move on then to subcommittee and Le on reports so for Capital Improvements Helen is not here does anyone else have updates on um capital or building projects I can make Mariah it's not much of a comment but just that um Helen and Betsy and Susan and I worked on the or an article 10 uh statement to town meeting that's in the combined reports so that was submitted okay great thank you um all right moving on to curriculum Suzanne uh uh we haven't had a meeting since the last time I reported our next meeting is Tuesday I think that's the 21st at 4 o'clock the two big agenda items are taking a look at the grade n English classes and taking a look at World Language grades 6 to8 all are invited all right d j Val um we haven't had a meeting since the last meeting that we had and um in terms of government relations the Senate Ways and Means budget came out and um mirrors mostly anyway uh the house wayss and means budget which increases this the um per pupil rates uh which are really impactful for Brookline and um also holds firm on the student Opportunity Act and Associated funding all right thank you question yes Bel this we we already accounted for this though right in the in the 200 and whatever thousand that was already added to our budget for next year is that right we did okay thank you next we have Mariah for finance and accounts payable warrants thank you so we met yesterday as mentioned and almost all of the key things we talked about have already been talked about today but three other things um one is our next Finance meeting is June 18th which is the last day of school and I'm wondering if we can move that one um not a great day for afternoon meetings and um One update on the gifts that we uh voted to approve earlier today was I noted that the there was the volleyball gifts was a pilot from um last year and requested that we get feedback on how that was going and whether we could Implement that more broadly because there are many different programs accepting donations through third party portals which charge extortionate um fees administrative fees or other fees um as opposed to the district which discharges the town website which discharges credit card processing fees so it would be beneficial to our students in programs to bring that in house if we can so there will be a report at our next I think our next meeting about that um we only briefly talked about it but um Susan and team will be putting together a executive summary for town meeting which starts on the 28th and the goal is to get that into the combined reports um which should be sent sometime next week I don't does anyone know what the date is for the not the supplement is what I meant to say not for when it's sent but when it's due got the other one I don't know yeah so anyway we're going to get that draft but the nice thing is there's already the executive summary um from the initial budget so that will just need to be refreshed and updated with the everything that's happened since January um and then report on accounts payable so since the last time I reported which was February 8th so just about 3 months we've signed off on 6 million 991,50 32 in expenses and um I'm trying to think if there's anything super exciting or notable in that and I don't really I can't really think of anything super exciting it's just a lot of food um and school supplies and transport portation and tuition um and I guess that's all I've got to report on that okay oh so just for our new members um this is required that someone signs off on these bills and I sign off on them and then report it out to you and if there's anything very exciting I'll let you know sometimes there really is exciting stuff um but mostly it's just like um school supplies and food and such so that's that the reason we keep talking about trout is that it came up on some of these account yes it was one of my favorite purchases that I would routinely report on and so that's why the trout field trips were particularly poent in the context of accounts payable so yeah okay next we have negotiations Suzanne yes so we met this week with the beu this is on the beep uh concerns and challenges and issues uh we started off with 16 we're now down to eight that's what they recently presented us we did a lot of listening there were eight yeah um we did a lot of listening and uh it's now up to us to respond so we're getting closer we're not quite there yet was it positive who is the negotiation subcommittee now that Andy has stepped on yeah I'm not there anymore so Mariah's joined us joined and Val is on and Suzanne is chair and I'm chair all right thank you Suzanne and um we have policy so our policy chair David is of course no longer with us so unless somebody else uh has any updates on policies that we're working on um any additional oh I have one comment on policy and then one question for you my comment on policy is that we received the notes um from the lawyer on the policy the day and the life policy so that's helpful life of the school life of the school policy life of the school after school I think was the latest name of that in fact we've had it's turns out we've had that for a while it just hasn't been circulated right I've been asking about it routinely and they finally turned up anyway so that's great news to continue to hopefully advance that Andy can you just give a timeline um yeah of like what when you'll be doing committee assignments and reassignments and other assignments oh I see um so our next meeting is in three weeks I hope to have it done long before then yeah right um okay any additional Liaisons and updates are you going to send out an email asking people what they want um I'll be sending out emails and talking to folks thank you yeah Stephen just two quick things one is I circulated an email updating the uh Communications email response protocol if you all want to take a look I also sent out a proposed draft of uh Communications Norms I invited Mariah you and Val to uh edit the document bearing in mind that we can't collaboratively edit a document without violating oml so per perhaps we could include that on the stocket for the workshop this summer okay um also I just wanted to mention with government relations I attended on Tuesday uh uh Boston Globe um uh what's the word when you moderate something moderated a panel on uh on literacy again in the state and there they updated us on s263 which is the bill that's currently in ways and means on evidence-backed curriculum um and it continues to sit there the only interesting thing about it was that Pete do Pete do D Domino who's one of the authors and co-sponsors of the bill was there to update Us in its progress which is that it they it should move or Not by June so I'll just keep you apprised on the movement of that legislation which should either give us momentum or Not by the state we we're one of 13 states that does not have any Statewide mandate to back our literacy curriculum with evidence all right thanks Stephen um Suzanne just you know to remind us I think we've all signed up but for those who are new that may not know we traditionally attend at least one graduation 8th grade graduation so there is a form that Betsy says oh Kathleen sent it up yeah yeah conveniently there are like nine schools and um and nine committee members so but but there are like 15 events though Andy when you include the others so there are about 15 events to cover yeah right so just I've gone to Ace many times SWS is fun I mean some of them are really touching and fun Meco was a lot of fun last year fun yep all right um any new business I wondered if everybody here has been through the training to be a school Committee Member if that's something that's significant or is going to happen again you should definitely do it yeah I try to do it with other two new members together it doesn't matter okay it didn't matter in my experience it was very um unidirectional okay yes right um and back in our day it was online it was Zoom so I don't know whether now that things are in person again this is also in person when I did it yeah maybe it's less from a direction perhaps yeah I do remember being being talked at over Zoom yes um yeah all right um we have no need for an executive session tonight so um I will adjourn the meeting or perhaps I need to move to adjourn and then we take a vote no I just adjourn the meeting all right thank [Laughter] you recording stopped