[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] h [Music] you [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] is [Music] [Music] GL [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] ch apologies for starting a little late today we had an executive session in another room so we will begin with administrative business consent agenda would someone like to move it I'll move it dude all right Valerie moves it is that a second Helen yeah all right Suzanne your vote Yes Andy yes Helen yes Sarah yes Valerie yes Steven yes Mariah and I also yes sorry for the delay yes go ahead I I just want to do a shout out to the staff and the parents and families who are going on this trip to DC I did one of those many years ago with eighth graders and it's a hoot and but we I really appreciate the effort that people put in to support our our students on these trips that's all I wanted to say all right with that we will go to the superintendent report good evening everyone so great to be here with you this evening let me switch to the slide deck here and again the goal here um as promised earlier was to give a little bit uh deeper insight into some of the workings in and around the district and this uh at this report we're going to focus on uh the Central Central level or Central bodies of work districtwide in that regard and then maybe I'll do a Cadence of district schools um so hopefully we find this informative just to orient ourselves um the goal will be to present as we present to tie um our bodies of presentations to our strategic plans um that we have that the school committee has adopted and so we're starting those now um and we'll continue this process through 27 or through the adoption or continuation of the plan again to remind our community of our mission to educate and Inspire every student to lead a fulfilling life and make positive contributions to our world and our vision is to provide every student with an extraordinary education through enriching learning experiences and supportive and supportive communities so that they develop to their fullest potential so looking at our students first from the office of student services PSB remains committed to establishing relationships with Community Partners who can increase mental health supports to students and families the Brookline Center is currently recruiting caregivers to participate in parent support groups the public schools of Brookline is also partnering with care soless to support the well-being of student staff and their family members care soless is a confidential care coordination service that can help you quickly find mental health our substance um use treatment options match to your needs regardless of circumstance and both of these flyers um will be shared or published with the material so that folks that are interested we'll have uh more details um there cart will continues to be a trusted mental health partner to the PSB as well as uh the partnership with cart willll will continue through the next school year cart willll is a trusted mental health partner and assists families and schools by helping to build multi-tiered systems of support to catch students before they fall referrals to cart will likely make sense in cases where a student or family prefers virtual counseling a student likely requires short to moderate term therapy that is 3 to 6 months a student has health insurance except for tri care but available Community Partners do not accept it so again this is a another support mental health support for students and families and looking um at BHS um our transition services for students with special needs require specific steps to ensure positive postsecondary outcomes to this end the Brookline High School has created an independent living center uh this is a simulated apartment space that allows students to practice skills needed for future independent living and decision-making life skills vary from student to student but Preparatory skills include self-care activities laundry skills meal planning and preparation room organization and maintenance and a few other things so this these are a couple of shots of the newly uh developed um apartment at the high school in the office of teaching and learning um in an effort to design middle school and Elementary schedules that provide consistent time on learning the office of teaching and learning has completed guidance uh time for learning these time allocations outline the minimum number of minutes that uh students need to spend on time um time on learning for all students by grade level band in order to comply with Massachusetts state law and that law requires that at the um Elementary level requires at least 900 hours of spent inst structured learning activities at the secondary level 990 hours time is a precious Resource as we know in our learning environments and we must allocated wisely as a general example a 10-minute non-working snack results in 30 hours of learn lost learning time over the course of the year so we will be taking a closer look at our schedules as they come to fruition uh in the uh 25 school year the time allocations in this guided document identifi total minutes per day and week that should be used to develop teachers weekly learning plans um and we'll continuously update uh the committee on how we um will execute um on the time on learning reviews families were informed of there that their world language courses for Rising sixth graders were finalized we are pleased to share that we were able to accommodate all of the students who registered in the portal with their first language Choice the World Language office placed those students who did not register in a course this was done per each school's typical enrollment pattern and Staffing families May review the finalized course by following the same process that they used to register uh for their course selection the office of teaching and learning held the second meeting of our district leaders literacy leadership team and the purp purpose of this team is to create a structure of distributed leadership across the district provide oversight of the literacy initiative by ensuring that all activities are linked to the district literacy plan and utilize problem solving strategies data analyses um and expertise to review and edit literacy goals and activities throughout the school year uh the goal of this meeting was to analyze data from the literacy needs assessment for Community connections this week uh as you've been hearing the buildup to the TFM or the tier Focus monitoring review PSB hosted Aon Vander Vander from the Department of Elementary and secondary education she and her team were here this week visiting schools and program and met with staff and community members commendations and areas for improvement are expected in the coming year uh within UH 60 days and so uh we had our exit interview with um Miss Vander Vander today and learned of um the areas that we were expecting commendations in and then the areas um we'll wait for the targeted areas uh or suggestions for improvement um and what partnership we'll have with her over the year for uh implementing Sid um improvements we also want to welcome Kelsey Nash to the office of student services in the office manager role K Kelsey replaces Linda who retired this month Kelsey has dawned many hats working in Brookline for the last seven years she started out at the sperber education center working in the K science and World Language areas departments she was uh then this was Then followed by a stent in the unified Arts Building at BHS and for the past four years she has supported the K12 visual arts career and tech ed and nursing we're excited to have her in this role in OSS the brook Line special education parent advisory Council has two co-chair positions up for election the spring all voting members are eligible to run if interested please declare interest and eligibility by April 24th elections will take place in May with results posted at the May 16th CPAC meeting new officers begin their new duties on July 1 for any questions please email info at Brooklin cac.org our commitment to educational Equity uh equity in uh strategy in progress the oee is busy in the district working on the equity strategy of school residencies as Claire and christe talked about previously um they've also been holding an equity focused PD cycle and implementing uh working to implement the equity leads positions um the work on the Equity um comprehensive comprehensive Equity cycle has been happening at F frr where the office has been meeting with administrators facilitating and supporting equity and belonging work with Educators at grade level meetings supporting collaborative all middle uh level work observing instruction and providing targeted coaching teachers have been provided collaborative feedback and access to Tools in written and video exemplars the office has also launched the lead application and currently has 13 applicants thus far they intend to begin interviews after the a April break and the equity leads would then participate in 10 hours of professional development in preparation for leading work across the district in the upcoming year the uh office of educational Equity is also uh participating and engaging in hiring and retention e efforts the office is continuing its efforts to support the hiring and retention of educators of color through both internal and external Partnerships the brook line educ uh Educators for educational diversity have partnered with oee to focus on those efforts in two ways the be there was a retention event held in March and 40 plus participants attended and beid has partnered with oee to hold an IND district career fair that's slated for May 2nd the public schools of Brook line has also partnered with Teachers Lounge care in their classroom leaders of color Fellowship it's a 2-year cohort model from ear for early career K12 uh teachers of color the clog fellowships Vision curriculum and program are intentionally designed by and for educators of color they aim to develop maintain and improve the skills and tools to create uh increase early career Educators input impact and income and to make early career education and more sustainable profession the clock uh Fellowship provides OPP the fellows the opportunity to build community participate in development mentoring mentorship and coaching coaches and Mentor mentors share uh with shared identities will meet with the specific needs of early career educators of color while developing maintaining and improving the skills and tools to avoid burnout and clock is a free to uh free to us as a district partnership um but teachers will need to be released um for monthly uh sessions uh if they participate in this um art fellowship and from the office of administration and finance um under the goal of management and capacity building um we are pleased to share with our community that we are launching have instituted position control for those that don't know um position control is a coding system that will be used in mun munis and in all hiring activities through hrn Finance uh basically no hires will be approved without confirmation that a position exists within with the appropriate funding in the budget for every staff position in the school department you can think about it as having two parts a chair which is known as the position and the body which is the person hired so when we create position control we keep a precise count of the chairs and if the chair is occupied we know the true cost of that chair and if it's empty a projection is used um that pretty closely tracks um with the cost and without uh position controls hiring hiring managers tend to think in terms of replacing people and sometimes will lose track of how many chairs uh that have actually been funded the last day of school is now June June 18th due to the snow apocalypse that was uh predicted to hit Massachusetts um so students will be dismissed at noon on June 18th cafeteria lunches will be will not be scheduled on the last day but grab and go lunches will be available our eighth grade graduation dates are currently being uh established and uh school principls will be sharing those out and communicate that information in the coming weeks um we hope that all of our community was able to participate um in the solar eclipse while we weren't in the path of totality BHS and Hayes students gathered outside to catch a glimpse of the solar eclipse um and we also understand that a large group was also over at lores Anderson um as well so um we had uh telescopes sunspots um students had the viewing glasses um and BHS actually broadcast NASA's um held a screening of NASA's solar eclips broadcast uh as well dris scho now uh some of our general announcements last week dris scho celebrated one of the its most beloved Traditions the Arts Equinox Arts Equinox is a celebration of art where teachers administrators parents and students take a break from the normal school day and explore their creative side students experienced a mix of Hands-On Pro uh projects workshops and performances um specially curated for curated for individuals uh individual grades I'm sorry past performers include drumming groups dance troops storytellers theater companies representing cultures from all over the world workshops for students taught by adisal teachers artistic parents and Vis visiting artists include paper making for phography beatboxing drumming improv Flamenco dancing hip hop dances ceramic sewing and Shakespearean acting the kickoff for Arts Equinox has always been a huge all School Art Exhibit and Miss Olivia rette who happened to be named a um cavarly um Award winner today uh and a dedicated team of parents make sure that every student's work is represented in the show and the whole Community turns out to celebrate the joy of art making art and I had a chance to view some of their projects uh when I was over there this morning here are a few um shots uh as well April is Autism Awareness Month a global initiative dedicated to promoting understanding and inclusion of the autism uh Spectrum the rise reaching for Independence through structured education program at hay and rle works towards meeting the needs of students with autism these students receive academic teaching social skills training behavioral intervention and speech as well as occupational therapy and physical therapy as needed for each student an important focus of Rise is to increase independence with a variety of skill including daily living social skills behavior management communication and executive functioning BHS LGBT Q day of dialogue Wednesday April 3rd was the lgtbq day of dialogue um at Brookline High School the day was dedicated to hearing the stories of our students and staff as well explore as exploring issues related to the queer Community today BHS Art Exhibit learning by hand the public library of brookline's Brookline Village location is holding an artic exhibit featuring artwork by BHS students the exhibit called learning by hand will showcase artwork created by students and Ceramics Metals engineering and other classes in Brookline High School's unified Arts Building learning by hand will run through the end of the month and again you can check that out at the brook line Village Public Library location and lastly superintendent school visits I've recently completed visits to BHS Pierce Hayes and beep and following April break we'll start the next cycle and um which is f frr Baker Lincoln ronl Lawrence and Pierce um and so I look forward to those each month and we feature the work that's happening in those schools at the next uh school committee meeting are there any questions before we go on to the spotlight on excellence it's not a question it's comment I just want to say Dr gillery that I feel like we're really making progress in some of the areas we've been working towards um to hear that social studies and science will have full minutes in the lower grades our lower elementary is very exciting we started talking about that about five or six years ago so I'm very excited to hear about that the clock fellowship program sounds great for our teachers and uh having position controls will make a big difference I think in our our budget in process so I just I just wanted to do a shout out for the things that were near and dear to my heart and I feel like we're starting to make steps in the right take steps in the right direction so thank you Sarah I feel like just another couple sentences about um position control would be helpful to help people understand and I have a note on my desk that I did I realized that I didn't bring uh with me uh but essentially what um and it's it's amazing that I find myself getting excited about position control when I was a principal many moons ago that was just a normal part part of my budgeting process um and again there have been various um iterations of it that have occurred here in Brookline but we're locking it down now so basically each position in the district will have a nine-digit code that's attached to it the first two digits of this and Diane I hope I'm doing you a good service here the first two numbers of the uh position control will be the location so each school will have its two code identifier then the next three digits of that number will then represent uh the program uh the category um that the position sits in and then the last uh four numbers will be what grade levels how many um uh folks are in that role that type of thing but it's it's truly a way for us to then do better accounting over time when we're looking at changes or increases or decreases uh in positions uh that will allow us that and Diane did call this a a smart coding system because it's going to have all of those identifiers that come along with it so hopefully that gives a little bit more clarity to it Mariah thanks um I just want to Echo Suzanne's comment it was really great to see the work aligned with the different areas and um congrats to the team for that I had a couple questions lonus for the literacy team could you describe the membership of the literacy I don't know if I'm getting the name of that group right but do you know I'm talking about the literacy group I do uh Jody are you online you don't see her um I don't have that at my fingertip uh Gabe do you have Gabe is here Gabe has it here we go um so I don't have precise details but we have It's a combination of teachers from all grade level so we have high school middle school and Elementary we have um administrators so our curriculum coordinators for ELA and we have some literacy Specialists um members of central office teaching and learning so myself Michelle and Jody are there and am I don't think I'm forgetting anyone but that's essentially the are there are there are there special Educators also on the literacy group uh Lisa just should said she was invited to join and we'll be that we'll be at the next meeting okay sorry did you say community members I didn't I said special educator oh okay that was a question for game Sorry Sorry no it's just staff um thank you Gabe Jody is online I think she can hear she says we do have two parents uh also thank you um lonus my second question is could you just uh if you know how many of our educators are participating in clock at this point in what the the clock the in the clock program so what Claire shared was that um the invitation has gone out now so they'll be uh going through that selection process pretty soon but um CLA have do we have a do we have a goal number hi there how are you um my goal is to have at least I would say at least between six to 10 that's what I would like to have um that'll be a nice cohort and I think something that's affordable um the partnership is free to the district but we will need to have um teachers released for the day so there will be a cost to get um sub coverage so um I'm thinking no more than 10 teachers to participate for this coming year thank you you're very welcome and my last comment line is is on autism and there's a big movement to not call it Autism Awareness because many people are aware of autism but autism acceptance there's students who are autistic throughout the district not just in the Rise program and it's great to continue to not just be aware but to accept students in neurodiversity in general thanks absolutely thank you all right Spotlight Excellence all right with that and I just click something that I shouldn't have clicked on my screen so let me see if I can get back Lisa let me pass the mic to you while I reorient myself here oh thank you good evening everybody um well uh Robin Fabiano our director of special education for Brookline High School wasn't able to be here tonight um but I very much wanted to be here uh so pleased to bring Kyle Williams and Amanda Moret here to share a little bit more about Unified sports in my first year here um Kyle and I began to talk about Unified sports in the spring and basically Brooklyn High School in partnership with Special Olympics piloted unified basketball during the fall 23 athletic season with approximately uh 20 students coaches staff volunteers working hard through the fall to make our inaugural season a great one and the addition of Unified sports has just provided so much joy and positivity to our BHS community and we look forward to Growing this program in the coming years and are uh thrilled to have Kyle and Amanda here uh to share a little bit more about the program thank you thank you Lisa I'm Kyle Williams athletic director at the high school and uh thank you to Dr Giller for taking the time to recognize the hard work of our students and staff and for recognizing the program that we're really excited we think it went really well in this first year and we're hoping to grow uh thank you to the school committee for your support of the program um and I want to thank uh Anthony Meyer Robin Fabiano our three coaches Joselyn uh Lexi and an and all of the staff and volunteers that helped to make the first season a success I'm going to pass it off to Amanda Moret here who was integral in US pulling this off this year she joined us from Newton where they already had Unified sports she's a background in basketball coaching and in special education so she was the perfect person to carry us through this first year hi everyone thanks again for having us here um I'm just going to kind of talk about what Unified sports are um give you a little overview and show you some slides of our student athletes um Unified sports are students with and without disabilities participating um in different kind of sports this year in the fall we just we piloted the basketball program um it's an IT combines it's an initiative from the special Olympic pick program um with our Sports governing body the MIAA the Massachusetts inter Scholastic Athletic Association um this next slide just shows you some photos of our games this one is our first ever game against Newton North um we won with a buzzer beater shot right at the end and I can tell you that our fan support in our community was unmatched um even at away games um so the students participated in four games so we had two home games two away games and then we had a jambur over in um Cambridge that was it was just really special to be a part of um next you'll see guidelines for Unified sports they're um administered and supported similar fashion to other inter Scholastic sports teams they have an equal number or an approximate equal number of athletes and partners um athletes are students with disabilities and partners are students without disabilities just to give you some overview on that um it's a genuine compe competitive experience um and all teammates are meaningfully involved in training competitions okay all right next we just have a little video put together um by the student athletes we good okay um by some of the members of the team um and I think them speaking about their experience is um the best way to explain how Unified sports um helped our community and what their experience was like we can't really hear online yeah the audio is not coming through I also did special um I really like making friends and um playing without my friends and also scoring a lot of points nice do you feel like you improved throughout the season I think I did I mean I also did Special Olympics too so I had a lot of experience with it too great um what was special about unified basketball to you um I guess all the coaches I guess basketball what did you like about unified what did you like about unified basketball this year um I like making friends and um and uh playing with all my friends and also scoring a lot of points nice do you feel like you improved throughout the season I think I did I mean I also did special RS too so I had a lot of experience with it too great um what was special about unified basketball to you um I guess all the coaches I guess awesome and are you going to do it again next year I will amazing B what do you like about unified shoot shooting Hoops awesome did you make friends on the team yeah do you feel like you got better at basketball throughout the season yes do you want to do it again next year okay awesome Tom do you like unified basketball yeah is it fun fun what do you do at unified basketball look this way Tom what do you do at unified basketball you shoot and you SCH good job Tom thanks Michael what sport did you play this winter uh basketball awesome did you like it yes what was fun about it the dribble ball dribbling the ball yes did you score a lot of baskets this year yeah I think so and um are you going to play again next year yes awesome Michael thanks so what did you like about unified basketball this year I like that we played all and we played at different schools nice um do you feel like you improved throughout the season yes awesome um and do you want to do it again next year yes good to hear what did you like about unified basketball this year I also play with 19 awesome do you feel like you got better throughout the season yeah I've been playing basketball since I was six s what was special about unified basketball well I'm a veteran on my Special Olympics basketball and I got to B with some new in the East nice and do you think you'll do unified again next year yes awesome glad to hear it what did you like about unified basketball this year um I think my favorite part about it was getting to meet all kinds of new people that I wouldn't have normally gotten to meet and I really loved how at the games the other teams would support each other and it wasn't always like a hyper competitive environment and do you think you and the rest of the team improved this year I definitely think um everyone improved I saw in terms of basketball everyone got a lot better um people you know that were too scared to even catch the ball at the beginning of the Season were scoring points left and right and in terms of me um my basketball improved a little bit but I think mainly my patience and my understanding improved a lot great and do you think you would participate next year definitely I'll be the captain again next year and do you want to share anything else about unified basketball and how you contributed to the um founding of it here in Brooklyn uh so how it started was I saw at my friend school was um Newton I saw that they had unified there and I was like well why don't we have it here at BHS and I think in the future I would love to get more Unified sports going basketball um there's track there's bot or even just playing like we we talked about doing soccer just kind of recreationally and not having games I think that'd be really fun awesome thanks so much all right so the student voice is the most valuable piece of this the second most valuable piece was the community voice the school the staff and the way that they supported this initiative and and were energized by it was something that I didn't even anticipate um but the emails the attendance of staff that we don't get at uh we hadn't gotten at previous athletic competitions we got at Unified sports and as Amanda said they tra they traveled with the team we had some uh very impressive um attendance figures out a away games looking forward with Unified sports we felt like this first season was a really successful pilot we've talked about trying to add one offering per year for the next two years so that we have one offering per season um of Unified sports so that would be next spring we'd be adding unified track and field the following winter we'd be looking to add unified bachchi and the challenge with both of those and actually the reason we chose basketball first is because we thought basketball was the one that we were most prepared to host um with facilities and we had students that were prepared to participate due to their participation in um youth Special Olympics basketball and so these next two are a little bit of stretch goals for us but we're anticipating given a success of bask basketball we're anticipating a really good enrollment and unified track in the spring and then bachchi will have to do some education around but I think we can we can rally the group for that as well um but it's really important that we have an offering across each season so these students can feel engaged throughout the year one thing that's been particularly cool this spring is we did see enrollment by some of the students who participate in unified basketball and some of our other athletic offerings as well um so they're stretching themselves in ways they hadn't before and to that end the role of Unified sports and that could just say the role of sports is to break down barriers bring people together enable participants to gain New Perspectives um and to build community and inclusion and if L would go to the next slide I think it Bears out that that's what we're working really hard to do in the athletic department not just through Unified sports but through all of our offerings is to develop sense of belonging I shared when I think I was hired a couple years ago that one of the things I love about Brookline is that everyone can find their Niche we have so many different offerings for me in high school was baseball and soccer but it was also Performing Arts I was in technical theater and it being able to expand our offerings in a way that wraps more people in and lets them feel like a warrior is really important to us and the chart here is just our participation numbers and the blue line gauges interest it's Seasons registered and the red line gauges our ability to meet that interest we're glad to see it going up and we're glad to see it going up at roughly the same trajectory and exceeding the increase in enrollment so we are doing a good job of growing our programs and that's largely because we've gotten support from District leaders School leaders from the the school committee and also from the broader Brookline committee through the uh community Through the override so thank you to all of you for allowing us to do good work and to be spotlit today so thank you any questions regarding the superintendent report or the spotlight on Excellence Helen it's more of a comment than a question I think you know this is a an excellent example of what Equity can do for the system and for the kids in the system uh I'm really impressed that you're able to pull this off to do it and be so successful with that um I think it's it really speaks to what you've done here in in the short time that you've been well what you you is a plural as opposed to the singular but thank you thank you for that Mariah I also want to say thank you and and I I think this is wonderful and I remember us talking about it last spring as part of the override and I want to say thank you to the community for supporting the override and allowing this kind of meaningful and exciting expansion of our Athletics programming at the high school and thank you Kyle and Amanda so much and to the entire Athletics team um for this wonderful program Stephen yeah I just want to say also I thought that was a wonderful presentation thank you for giving it I want to know what you think is needed to expand it and what kind of obstacles you face and what kind of resources you need to overcome him uh I'm I'm laughing only because the easiest answer to that is a additional track and field in town um and no better example than our track meet this week where we competed against Newton North and we had 460 athletes just competing in track and an additional 100 playing lacrosse at the downsfield facility um so to safely add unified track next spring we're going to get creative about how we use spes how we distribute those spaces it's no different from what we do with all of our Sports it's a fun game of Tetris um and it's not necessarily the ideal roll out of having the track in front of the school where we can really create an accessible environment I'm curious about how you settled on Bachi as another sport personal passion no um it's one of the other sports that uh area high schools play so one component of Unified sports is that it has uh a competitive component it's not just a recreational we're not just rolling balls out literally with Bachi but we're not just saying go play we have an opportunity to represent our school our community against others and so the winter offering that allows for that is botchy there's another winter offering or or multi-season offering which would be a just a general fitness and that would just be house at high school it's not a competitive it's not a bodybuilding or or weightlifting all right thank you Helen I'm curious how many schools have this program you STP me there um plenty there there are a lot of schools in eastern Mass and throughout the state and actually probably beyond massachus that have Unified sports so the base State League all yeah so our our schedule this uh fall was against Newton North Framingham Needum and one other regular season that is escaping me and then we played Cambridge Watertown Newton South um and someone else uh Needum came back to the jambur um but most so there 10 schools in the Bay State conference and the majority of them have Unified sports um the two primary being basketball in the fall and track in the spring there there is only one track in town yes is and believe it or not no covered hockey ring if you've not heard that and believe it or not I'm sorry I didn't hear that what I think you're just making me repeat it I said believe it or not no covered hockey ring in case you hadn't heard that otherwise no that one I heard um but and you're working on that on the open space uh assessment right I thought you were there on Tuesday for me not I'll take give the opportunity I will take it the 2006 open space plan does ask for a lot more athletic facilities within town there have been many open space plans and since then uh we do have a deficit that would help to support our growth thank you all right with that the public schools of Brookline Spotlight on Excellence is awarded to the BHS Unified sports program with particular gratitude to Kyle and Amanda for your leadership in bringing the univi Unified sports program to BHS your dedication to students ensures that all with intellectual abilities have the opportunity to play together which leads to a path of lasting friendship and understanding congratulations congratulations all right congratulations and with that we will move to public comment and our first speaker is Mr ABI shalat if you can come up to the podium so feel free to hold this up leave there have sorry um good evening everybody I sent a letter in my name is AB shalot I am a brookl parent a uh professor at nor Eastern and I sent a letter in regarding the placement of geothermal Wells for the Pierce new building I'd like to augment that letter with two additional points the first one concerns the negative externality argument I made in the letter and specifically I want to highlight a study that I recently found its title is monitoring the impact of intensive shallow geothermal energy use on groundwater temperatures in a residential neighborhood by Thomas vinin at all in geothermal energy and I can send you the reference and I'll mized the basic results so what this did was a German study of a neighborhood that was .1 square kilm and it was basically 57 wells in a residential neighborhood and they very carefully monitored put temperature sensors around the entire facility after its use and they very carefully accounted for the seasonality between summer and winter and they monitor this for about 24 months and what they figured out was that essentially if you measure the temperature be there was a natural underground water that basically goes through the ground it does that in Brookline as well and if you measure the water temperature the groundwater temperature which is kind of a um a measure of the amount of energy in the ground before that residential neighborhood and then after Downstream they measured about 1.2 degrees difference 1.2 Kelvin degrees difference between the input and output uh across this 24mth period that was the maximum accounting for seasonality and Etc what it shows is that even 57 wells in a particular area have the capacity of extracting heat these are the type of shallow Borel B whole Wells that we are planning to install in our park over here and essentially what it's saying is that even a small facility like this ours is 80 Wells that was 57 that was for residential ours is for a more commercial sized building uh basically extracts heat in a measurable way from the ground and in particular what this does is affect the efficiency of other people's ability to essentially install geothermal especially the people that are living around the school so I that's one study there's several studies it's a active scientific question as to whether shallow type of Wells shallow geothermal Wells can basically support the energy needs of a region because of this particular effect it's not like Iceland or any geothermal where essentially there's really hot temperatures underground from other activities that we're trying to extract so that's a point that I'd like you to consider uh interestingly the the budget of that entire installation was around €750,000 Euros which is roughly the same so very much in similar in scale the second argument I'd like to do is to uh basically point out the danger of the rhetoric that I've heard in the discussion of this topic that because these geothermal Wells are out of sight and out of mind because they're underground somehow they don't affect anything in particular some some Representatives have basically said that because the baseball field will be returned to a condition that's better than it is today then they should justify the type of uh Wells that we plan to place under there and I think this is a very very dangerous and flawed thinking or justification for this type of project in particular it is the same sort of thinking that's behind every major EPA superf fund site that essentially putting stuff underground where it can't be seen or can't be heard or under the scientific theories of the 70s that supported that basically wouldn't have a long-term effect okay it's uh essentially the same sort of disaster behind Boeing that if you don't really because you don't see the screws or the bolts or the way that fuselages are fused and so forth you can kind of just ignore cost cut in that matter and not basically have any long-term consequence which right now we're basically seeing um my final argument is based on the moral use of the park so our history is really pockmarked with attempts at essentially industrialists and others to extract gold and minerals and oil and basically energy from our national Parklands and if you take a look at for example the activity behind the formation of Yellowstone Park and in fact all of the mining activities that are were just until a few years ago allowed it goes to the same rhetoric and I I know in those situations you have a critical nation state balance between energy needs and the violence that energy basically causes and essentially the enjoyment of a park right so it's very different than our situation but essentially the moral argument is that parks and the pleasure of parks have really no purpose in uh for us to collect energy from and if you take that moral argument essentially there's really no justification for us to put the geothermal Wells across the street it's an engineering nuisance and it's it's uh there's a moral argument for it and really the only justification is because we think that today that saves about $700,000 and even that $700,000 is kind of a false measure of economy as I've put in pointed out in my letter the extra pumping cost the long-term cost of having a field that's called colonial meaning away from the place where it's actually being the energy is actually being used uh is is basically there so of course I know I understand I come off as a man that's tilting at windmills and I know you're oblig is to move this along and to balance the competing urges Perfection should not be the enemy of the good but I nonetheless urge you to avoid the engineering blunder and essentially do so before the first shovel has ever been uh uh basically has has hit soil and I urge you to reconsider moving that field uh and essentially I'm willing to do any sort of engineering work or more due diligence if that argument is persuasive uh to essentially place the field right underneath the school which I think is can be made cost effective and actually would be the superior long-term solution thank you for your time thank you Mr shalot I believe we have one other person for public comments if you could come up and identify yourself for us hi I'm Toby rold and uh I have a son in 10th grade at BHS and my daughter graduated last June um and I know you have a lot of very important issues like the one we just heard and budgets and so forth um but I really wanted to bring something to your attention um last Friday during B Block at the high school my son was sitting in his math classroom and noticed a swarm of bugs later determined to be termites flying around him also on his sweatshirt his backpack on his desk and on other students in his class and yes termites fly and I encourage you to Google swarm of termites and imagine what it would feel like not just to look at a picture of them but to have them all around you so my son's teacher responded calmly she canceled class and help my son and the other students get the termites off them and help them pack up to go home as you can imagine my son was very upset and rattled I was upset as well but I was even more upset to learn that this is the third time in 5 years that there's been a termite infestation in this exact classroom I gather an exterminator has been called when there are other outbreaks and then things go back to the way they were the teacher asked me to do what I could to raise attention to this problem so after getting my son calmed down and back to school I called the main office and was told to talk to Mr Mason who I did not plant here but it's here um and he responded and said that um they have an exterminator looking for the termite nest and that um it is a very complicated issue and the old part of the high school building has wood doors and wood frames and lots of issues that complicate the matter um but the message back didn't leave me feeling confident about the school's ability to get rid of the termites or have an ongoing Pest Management plan so I had an exterminator come to our house on Monday to make sure none of them came into our house and he said it was too early to tell but he didn't see any um and this is what I learned about termites he told me that when a wellestablished colony of termites is looking to expand they swarm so he thinks that's what happened at the school which makes me think there's more than one nest and probably several Mr Mason also told me this has been going on for seven years and not five years so as it stands today the janitor nailed a piece of metal to cover the hole where they thought the termites came from and the teachers and the students have had to continue having class in that classroom um I'm here to ask you to use your voice in the school committee and the superintendent um to find out whatever resources are needed to address this I don't know if Mr Mason has the resources he needs or if there's anything more we can do because it's really gross to go to school and be swarmed by termites um I think we do a great disservice to our children and our teachers when we ignore problems like this thank you all right thank you and that concludes public comment for this evening we will now go to 2024 annual town meeting warrant articles public hearing discussion and possible vote on articles and first up will be 2024 special town meeting warn Article 1 submitted by the select board on behalf of the school committee to authorize an empower the select board to petition the general court for a special act to authorize the town of Brookline to use a portion of the subsurface area below an existing playground peer School playground for purposes of geothermal Wells related to an adjacent School building peer school I'll move it uh any discussion we're just moving it we already discussed it once when we put it forward all right Helen moves it is there a second second yes Mariah seconds all right votes Suzanne yes Andy yes Helen yes Sarah yes Mariah yes step yes Valerie yes and I also vote Yes I'm here too David oh sorry we have Natalia now Natalia your vote uh I think I'm gonna abstain having heard the public comment uh thanks okay all right uh and and Helen can you comment on how there's always um to to address public comments a little bit how the engineers are always looking at well they looked at every option uh they looked at it under the building they looked at it across the street um they felt that the um there were a number of reasons to go across the street um certainly it makes it much more complicated for us legally but it's a much more simpler way to do the field uh it's more cost effective uh putting it underneath you have to work between all sorts of first of all you're not sure we're not sure what's under there right now there may be another building underneath the building that's there we found that in many instances um it could delay the project it could make it last longer it would make it last longer that's the other piece because we can simultaneously build the building and do the fields um at the same time so for all those reasons our Architects our um uh Engineers uh suggested it I've seen pictures in Cambridge where they're put under Fields adjacent to the buildings uh and in um I think it was Lexington or Belmont and right now I'm uh I don't remember but one of the other uh those other school it was Lexington um that also have their um their geothermal walls on on fields that are adjacent the distance from the park to the school is probably the same as any of the distances and any of these other schools because they're right next to one another okay all right anyone else okay so with that we will move to article 10 submitted by the advisory committee fiscal year 2025 budget which includes four Appropriations related to the schools one of them is appropriation number 38 $ 4,670 29 for renovations and upgrades to school buildings a second one appropriation number 39 is $200,000 for school building modifications to meet IEP accommodations appropriation number 40 in the amount of $250,000 is for long-term capital planning study for school buildings and appropriation number 41 in the amount of 77,4 32 for classroom capacity needs so would you like me to speak to this so that everybody can understand the request and what we were given Etc um a little later on in the uh on my Capital sub committee report I will go through our CIP requests in detail so I'm not going to do that now but I just want to point out our request for this coming year was two well no $2.1 million and we were given um 4.5 million more by the town to use over the next three years this year the 2026 and TW uh 20 yeah 2026 and 2027 um because there was um the free cash this year was uh came in at 25 million um that's unusual it hasn't happened in the past but that's why that number is that number we're our actual ask and what we're going to be able to accomplish for this summer is the 2.1 million which I will just talk about later um for school building modifications to meet IEP this is a new one that we have a new um uh category and we feel it's really important often times there may be a student who's heat sensitive and we need to put in a um a unit ventilator uh not a unit ventilator a I'm sorry right heat pump thank you um or there may be a need for a rug or there may be a need for hearing devices so those sorts of things you know something to make the room more compatible for somebody who has hearing issues uh so that's a new category just like the Ada categories that we have in in this same uh CIP and warrant article what you've done here is pulled out the ones that are just School related but there are you know there's like 50 or more town uh CIP items uh the $250,000 for long-term capital planning was something that we requested um the advisory committee is not looking at that favorably uh the appropriation for the classroom capacity is what we need for the temple emth and the um uh Temple o Shalom uh leases um and that includes uh for o Shalom going up to 3:00 as opposed to 1:00 when we used to end there considering our expanded day for beep um so this is um these are the basic categories for uh that I would recommend we support Helen someone like can can I just say that just one comment is that the IEP modifications we had requested 50,000 and we were given 200,000 so like the Deferred maintenance category that represents multiple years expected multiple years oh thank you for that correction I wasn't aware of that yeah not a correction just a additional context okay thank you all right so would someone like to move that we provide a support statement for article 10 for the four Appropriations 38 and 41 before we do that can is there an update on um has advisory already voted in support of any of these no okay personally I would personally I would prefer to wait until we know what advisory votes before I wanted to um vote to support a support statement in case they modify the amounts in case they modify the amounts I want to be able to I I want our vote to represent what is going to be put on the floor of town meeting and until advisory votes that or at least the capital subcommittee does I would feel I personally would feel more confident at that point considering a support statement I think this is being taken by the full capital or by full AC on April 25th um and I don't know i' I've lost the plot a little bit on the subcommittee I don't know if they where they're at in terms of their decision I so they've had four meetings to discuss our Capital sub uh Capital requests our CIP requests they have not had a vote yet we had a visit to the Baldwin school yesterday I was going to go through actually our IP a little later on um and talk about it a little bit more in detail but they tomorrow supposedly they will have they will vote our CIP at uh I think it's 11 or 12 o'clock tomorrow or they're supposed to davidan does it Mariah does it not help that we support this that they know that so well we sub we submitted it so they know we support it we already voted to submit it okay but this is submitted by the advisory committee that's submitted by the advisory committee to town meeting because it's Town meeting's budget so this warrant article went out when I think I assume uh Mariah and correct me if I'm wrong uh when Melissa put together the full CIP these were the numbers uh that she put together now the advisory committee decides what their numbers are we could still I think Mariah support this and then make a you know our uh support letter if it's different than what the um advisory committee is putting forward we could then highlight that for town meeting what is the deadline for submitting a statement oh so we have time okay I can we can wait till my second sure sure all right yeah Helen what would it mean for us to put forward a letter to town meeting that is not actually about the warrant article that's up at town meeting I'm just not sure how what you're proposing would would work so no when I'm I it's not clear to me what they're going to put forward tomorrow I mean I have some ideas but it's not clear they've been talking about this now at four meetings two-hour meetings each one and now we're getting to the last meeting hopefully they'll make a decision and um then we'll see whether it works for what we need for example Andy if they voted to strike the capital plan the capital plan that Helen mentioned that they were looking less favorably on we might want to write a letter that disputes the Striking of it from the from the CIP would that be would we also submit an Amendment then or would we just write a letter well that's why I don't want us to vote now to me it feels precipitous to vote I feel like we should wait and see what the the facts on the on the on the table are after their vote and then we make a decision on how to proceed otherwise now we're just speculating endlessly with no real [Music] information all right so we'll defer on this until May 2nd so that brings us to presentation and discussions of current issues Brookline High School neasc accreditation commendations and recommendations from the May 2023 collaborative conference visit okay y yeah hi everybody um so uh I'm going to kick us off we'll do some introductions and then we'll dive into kind of what's a summary and progress update on our accreditation process um so I'm game McCormack senior director of teaching and learning for secondary education John Andrews English coordinator Brooklyn High School Jen Martin social studies coordinator BHS how Mason assistant head of school at the high school so um Nas stands for the New England Association of schools and colleges and it's our partner who accredited offers accreditation for us uh it's a 10year cycle we are actually number of years off cycle we got a delay through covid and through the building project um so it's been more than 10 years since we've gone through this process but um we are kind of in the middle of it um they do what they call a collaborative conference visit and then we have about two years to make adjustments based on their recommendations and their recommendations and they do the final accreditation visit and we'll show you the timeline for all of that and kind of walk through where we are in the process and what we have so far great so what we're going to do is talk a little bit about the process and timeline as Gabe just said we want to share with you some of the um main findings that we got from nas uh both commendations and recommendations and then talk about what our next steps are moving forward um and we'll all participate in this in one way or another uh so timeline as Gabe said we are a little bit off cycle Co slowed us down a little bit so we started back into the nas process in August when we received a letter from their Commission on public schools that we had to uh engage with this process uh in September we formed a a self-reflection committee which included both a steering committee of 10 Educators and then some teachers and other Educators who joined us as writers to help us write the self-reflection report um in the winter we surveyed parents and students and teachers using surveys from neas to collect data and our self-reflection committee and our steering uh the steering committee and the writers collected more information from various sources to create the self-reflection report which we worked on from October of 2023 through March of 2024 um self reflection report is a a long document uh that covered many aspects of our school and then we sent that off to uh neas uh for them to look at uh for their visiting team to come and give us a visit in May uh called the collaborative conference visit they stayed at our school for two days was it two days um visited many classes interviewed many players uh students teachers uh parents Librarians special Educators uh District administrators and then they wrote a report uh for us uh describing what they saw in the fall they shared with us their collaborative conference report uh which we have shared with you I think this week week um there's been some back and forth about it over the last few months but we finally got it and shared it with you all um and then we're going to talking a little bit about what they uh what they highlighted and what they asked us to focus on can I sure go back one slide so the May 24th should be May 23 oh my goodness you're right and fall 24th should be fall 23 correct okay good my error that's right so that was May 23 and fall 23 I'll fix that on the slide or maybe everything got pushed back no everything everything else is right it's just those last two okay my apologies Helen I'm sorry no that's okay that I just wanted to make sure that absolutely otherwise it didn't make yeah yeah yeah no that's right this is this has all happened everything that we've shown you so far so far has happened and we have a different slide about what's going to happen so we'll share that with you when we get to the end sorry about that thank you can I just ask one clarifying question on back on that slide do you mind just rolling back does the self-reflection happened before this Pro process or after this process like was that 22 to 23 for the October first we self-reflect then they come and see and then they so is that is that one also so that one's Also earlier or I'm like totally lost now when did this happen sorry we we'll edit it okay but when did it actually happen that's what I'm trying to understand was it this fall and this 22 to 23 okay thank you yep um if you can trust us here we are I'll take responsibility uh the steering committee is led by John and I um and we have an incredible team actually if you just look I'm not going to go through everyone but lots of curriculum coordinators and lots of really strong teacher leaders um Deans program leaders who kind of help to write and do the self-reflection and through all of that kind of social capital of these incredible Educators we're able to pull in lots of people within our community really diverse perspectives so we were really happy about the committee itself um so neas has five foundational elements that they are evaluating schools on and there are many many things that fall under these categories um but essentially when you get this report they sort of say did you pass the categories or not um to make it just simply put um we did pass most of them which is great and there are two where some things were I identified that we would not be able to get accredited unless we fix those things um we have lots of time to fix it just so that we'll talk about the next steps um in a bit but I should I'm going to draw your attention actually to the bottom here in terms of professional practices learning support learning resources we got high marks we're going to go over a few of the commendations um two student learning um one has to do with a safe environment we're going to talk about doors and access to our building a little bit later in the presentation um the need for a vision of the graduate which is actually something that the district at the district level that's um we'll also talk about Gabe will talk about and then learning culture a very interesting one which has to do with sort of having a more concise and unifying written curriculum among similar courses and so this is a very big undertaking especially in a community like Brooklyn where we have amazing Educators who all have amazing things that they want to do but sort of how do kids know how do parents know that sort of thing um what exactly is happening in each of the classes so we'll talk a little bit about that too um so that's sort of where we landed um we just wanted to highlight I mean honestly this is like there are so many slides with commendations they were incredibly impressed with our school so you should know that the committee neas committee is made up of other Educators from other schools who serve on the committee so it's kind of fun because you have these other Educators come over and say this is an incredible place I mean and I I really can tell you that is what their reaction was so we cannot go through every Commendation they gave us but we thought we would highlight a few of them just a quick question I have on that point so in terms of Educators coming in from elsewhere are these all teachers or they include administrators who had prior teaching experience yeah both yeah so Nas employs some of their own Staff first of all right so they have usually they're being led by a Nas staffed person who then gets volunteers ACC combination of teachers administrators might have a vice principal you could have a history teacher and usually there's schools that are have just gone through the process or recently had so they're very familiar with you know for their own educational environment they've also done it um so yeah it's and they all are practicing Educators if that makes sense um so I will just say many things were outlined as being incredibly good um so in the idea of like written curriculum one thing they did say is though we need to have a written curriculum the amount of courses programs extracurriculars is basically you know I think we all know this this is what makes workline really special um and I think a lot of them were incredibly surprised by just how much we can offer our students um this idea also of just hearing from teachers and from students and parents how much Educators care really about the kids that they teach which felt really good I think for the teachers to hear because certainly we feel that way but to have parents and students reflect that back to us was really great um and then they especially highlighted our nth grade um collaboration that's going on in teams and I think that relates certainly to uh you know our goal of reimagining the nth grade and that definitely came out in the report um I'll let John do a few of the commendations too than much great um they were impressed by the number of intervention strategies that we have in place to support students they they noted that um that we have lots of different ways to help lots of different students and they were very impressed by the community uh engagement and Partnerships that we have with organizations like the bef the Brooklyn High Innovation fund the Brooklyn PTO they felt that we had a community that was supporting the work that we were doing um as well as uh we were supporting the students in lots of great ways and then one more slide of of accomodations because we're really proud of uh our school and what we've done but they also really were impressed by the nth grade building and all the work that had happened around our campus and our supportive spaces we made them spend most of their time in the ninth grade building to really drive home because it was new uh then anyway it was it was very exciting um one of the things I also wanted to emphasize was they felt like our report matched what they saw so they read our report and said okay that's great now let's see it and then everything that they saw in action was aligned with what we said was happening so that was great now what were some of the recommendations that they gave for us I think that's next yeah so it's kind of interesting because I told you about those five foundations and they have a lot of sub genres underneath them or subcategories I should say so I'm actually not going to spend a ton of time on this one because I'm going to talk a little bit about the three things that I highlighted before which are the most important for being able to get accreditation recommendations of which there are very few when you compare commendations versus recommendations we're going to address a bunch of these actually in our foundational elements um but I just wanted to you know point out we're going to we're going to cross over to them but recommendations are kind of interesting because they don't uh necessarily need to happen in order to get your accreditation in the same way that the foundational Els but it certainly crosses over so what are our next steps well in order to get accredited by nask we are going to have to make sure to address school safety and that's why we brought Harold Mason here thank you Hal thank you Jen so one of the key elements that the NES visiting committee found that we were in need of is the is locking the buildings and this is something of course that we've been talking about for a long time it was a key part of the building project and in part of the building project we started to talk about how will we now on this very different campus right we have this beautiful campus but it's a very unique place we have a school where students pass every day on public streets into buildings that have multiple uses it's very unusual there are very few schools in cities or in other towns that are like this and part of that means we need kids to continue to have open campus and this nothing about what we're going to do what we're planning to do our pilot of Access Control is going to change that we'll continue to have open campus students and staff will'll continue to have access to all of the same doors all the same routes that they take two and from school and two in from each class that will continue the difference will be that we're going to implement locking mechanisms on all of our doors we've already done that thanks to the building project again this was all part of the expansion of the campus and now we have rolled out ID cards for students and staff so all students and staff have their ID cards and these cards are all tap enabled the only change will be that when the visitors come when a visitor comes to the building and this is not really a change because it's always been the policy that when a visitor comes to the building they come to check in in the main office you come in the front door you go to the main office you sign in you get a visitor pass there's nothing revolutionary about this we're just now going to make it force people to come to that front door because what open campus has meant in the past has been really just come in whatever door you want whenever you want and that of course is not really a safe environment and the ne ass people saw this and they're like that's no good you have to change that and so we're rolling out very thoughtfully and carefully this project of this this uh pilot of Access Control we've been talking with all of the uh constituent Partners about what we need to do we've been talking with police we've been talking with we we're scheduled talk with big we talked with wreck we're talking with Adult Ed we're talked with um Athletics we talked with drama all the people that will have different needs around getting into the buildings and what that will look like and what how we'll have to get those cards uh rolled out and who will um How we'll get different groupings on the cards so kids will be able to come after school once they'll be able to get into the building all of those aspects are what we're working on now and what this is what we want pilot beginning in the very beginning of May where we're going to start looking at what does it look like what the day-to-day uh reality of this what changes will we have to make do we need to add tap readers in some places do we need to add little door cameras such as what what the elementary schools in some places all of those changes are things that we'll be looking at to bring this element to really close the loop on this element and have um a safer building with better Access Control any questions are we taking questions one at a time like or are are we doing all the questions at the end yeah I think for yeah we can do these one for each for each of the four um areas that we of concern we can take the questions as they come Mari thanks um thank you Hal for the explanation so I have one question first off a question and then a comment my question is can you clarify are all high schools accredited by Nas or at least all high schools in New England accredited by Nas what is the I'm a little vague on the role of Nas versus the state in allowing us to provide a high school or whatever yes NES does accredit all high schools public and private in New England so they are the regional accreditation board it is it a requirement not not a legal requirement but um it is an expectation I would say certainly you know and Helen would have the history on this if we went back to the last uh accreditation 2011 uh that process was such that it really led us to question whether this was worthwhile it was a huge visiting team 20 plus people put up for 4 days in at Brooklyn hotels it was very expensive but even beyond the expense and beyond that the bloat of what that committee was it didn't seem like a very useful process to us it didn't seem you know we we we also wrote a preliminary report but we had to engage every member every faculty member in the school had to be forced into to working on that preliminary report for a year and you know we got some good things out of that there were some good documents and some good thing good um writing that came out of that about the school but it was a waste and it didn't really help the school it was much more of a dog and pony show and the visiting committee part was not at all useful and I'm sure that's what we reported I'm sure I was the was the uh the uh coordinator that year for that project I'm sure that's what we reported that it really didn't feel as if it was very useful and I know Bill and Helen and others were began really having serious conversations about why we're paying a lot of money to be accredited we paid a lot of money for the visit itself is this worthwhile should we keep doing this and I think the process that John and Jen went through now is a reflection of some of that push back that bill and Helen and others and other districts got together and said this let's really look at what we're doing and why we're doing it this way and the CH I think that reflects some changes so what happened actually was Ed education collaborative that we belong to that now no longer is um spearheaded by uh John Sills um got together with Nas and said we're not going to do this unless you change and you you know and if we don't do it nobody else is going to do it so you know considering there's some many communities in Edco at the time and um I think they they worked hard John did together with a number of other superintendant and and Nas to really make it a better more valuable uh process and no question it was you know they they really came to us this time and said what is it what do you want to look at what do you what do you feel is important for us whereas in the past I'm sorry uh we'll get back you know in the past it was it felt like it was a gotcha it felt like oh we're looking for this and if you don't see this here's the booklet you know if we don't see this every one of these Pages filled out exactly right you're going to get dinged on that and there was none of that this time there was none of that procedural changed over time because if I go back to in the middle 90s when we did it it it helped us to get the first renovation of the high school because they said you know your your building does not reflect the teaching that's going on in there and we use that to help us to Sure renovate the high high school at the time um so you know it's it's I guess who's in charge and how they're doing it but at least it's better now and I'm happy to hear that a much better process this time Stephen thank you wait I didn't ask my make my comment that was a long answer to my question which was very helpful um I guess my comment is on the the access control and the school safety is and I've expressed these comments um privately to to some of the high school leadership before and I want to make them again in public comment which is I think that um there this qu there's a couple different questions of culture and I appreciate what you said Hal about the buildings contining to be continuing to be open um for those who who are there who are who are supposed to be there but I also think that there's a question of culture and and none of these none of the buildings are actually secure if the practice um is for um is typically polite for example for one person to hold the door for the person behind them and so I I I don't want us to get into some sort of a security theater situation where we have all these systems set up but but human human nature immediately and consistently foils them and I want us to be really thoughtful about that because that to me is the most important thing is is a culture of of safety and not necessarily this idea of laun all the doors and swipe cards because I don't think it's really going to be a I have doubts about how functional it's going to be in practice and I also want to make sure that um that before we really get this going if even if it's still part of the pilot but dealing with all the things like how people get into the other buildings when they're a couple minutes late all of those questions that we've already sort of raised they all need to be detangled before kids start missing class or being held up or whatever it is because we haven't worked out all the these wrinkles right and and so that's part of why we're looking at this as a pilot because I'm sure there are things that we haven't thought about I'm sure there are certain scenarios that we haven't really considered you know we we've already talked about you know the the change of class how what that's going to look like what we'll have to do with the mechanisms and timings for when kids are going to class uh having doors unlocked for that time in between classes for example all of those are things we want to experiment with and see what will work best but I I don't disagree with you we don't want this to be just something that becomes you know a bunch of lights on doors that people just figure out ways to bypass you want this to be and again there are a lot of schools that do this and every college does this where you know there's kids passing between classes every day at nor Eastern every day at be but when they get to that dorm or when they get to that classroom with uh into those buildings they do have to um present their ID in order to and I just wan to I just want to say that that is not what's happening at Northeastern in our buildings for classroom use as an employee of North Easter that's not what's happening dorms are different but BHS doesn't have dorms not yet next Expansion Project Stephen thanks and thanks for this presentation I just want to follow up on Mariah's uh first question and this is really out of ignorance I wonder if you could just say a little bit more about the value of this accreditation um since it's not necessary for the for the legal continuation of the school what can you just say more about the value of it um I just want to add that at least and this was in the previous process um I went to mount Holio college and when I was getting my teaching degree Holio or sorry South Hadley high was not accredited by ask they failed their accreditation process and it had a hugely detrimental impact on that school district because whether or not we agree right now oh we will or won't use it you also have to think about certainly for Brookline residents what it means if someone's searching about the school and it says it's not accredited um because it will appear right so there are also ways in which what does it mean to not be accredited by Nas when the majority of schools are accredited so you certainly can take a political stance to say we just won't do that but most schools the vast majority do go through the nas accreditation process so a little bit like Helen was talking about if a big group of schools were to say we're just not going to do this anymore that could work right it seemed to work and I have to say the process I thought was very generative for us so one of the benefits I would say is we felt like we had a generative very doable process so that's the number one I think great thing that happened because they came I think the things that you're seeing as next steps are all worthy next steps that the district had already and the school had already been like we probably need to do this but it was a great moment for us but then on the side note it's also like what does it mean if Brooklyn high school isn't accredited but like all of our neighboring schools are and whether it's perception or not I think there is an interesting question there and certainly schools that haven't been accredited for my own personal experience I can say it has an impact on you know whether people want to go there and and send their kids there and stuff so um real real or not real or imagined I guess um but I would say the number one reason why it was great was because it generated a lot of great conversations um and feedback from everyone including students um so I don't know that would be my answer to that thanks anyone else David or can I just ask how much did this cost just in terms of smaller now just so you know uh I don't have the number off the top of my head and it's um shown it shows up over multiple years it's essentially a threeyear process so we could grab that but again I don't have it at my fingertips ballpark is it five figures six figures oh definitely less than six figures um I want to Ballpark it to maybe $25,000 all in that includes like teacher stipend um it depends a little bit on the size of the team that comes which is much smaller now as how was mentioning so covering their visit is less of a burden than it used to be thank you all right so the next um piece which is also under um one of the foundational elements is this idea of a vision of a graduate and um in discussion you know we have like we meaning the high school team um sees this as part of a district concept um it's not unique to the high school and we know that it's already in the Strategic plan um as under goal one and so um you know our intent at this time is to you know fully participate in the process as it gets rolled out through the district level and so we don't see any concerns in terms of meeting this foundational element um as long as you know we're fully participating in the process that goes through the through the district as part of the Strategic plan and it it is really important that it's not just the high school right all of our schools feed towards the vision of a graduate and so if there's a certain expectation that we have of a student when they leave Brooklyn High We want to make sure that that nth grade teachers sixth grade teachers fifth grade teachers kindergarten teachers are all working towards that Vision in some way or another so again we just wanted to identify it but um no actual concerns about meeting that expectation we don't see an issue Sarah I'm I'm really excited about that I think that when you have a mission statement it's different to have the portrait of a graduate portrait of a graduate is like visioning the end results and it really really does sort of put emphasis on the sequence that gets you there so I'm very excited about that worken so actually following up on what you're saying are we going to use the portrait of a graduate um mechanism to do this or we we have not made that determination specifically there are an option we started some work using that model a few years ago it was a bit of a false start and kind of incomplete um and so I think we still need to do the work to to determine exactly what type of process we're going to use because there's a lot of community involvement in this absolutely it's not just the school determining what the or the school committee determining but it's actually the whole Community yeah in some ways it's parallel to like a strategic plan that we would want lots of different stakeholders involved in offering their perspectives all right so the next piece um is common practice um and so some of this work has already begun as um John and Jen were kind kind of referring to part of this process has helped emphasize work that Brookline High has already been talking about and so the the school for many years has talked about various common practices and so through um work that I've been doing um delivering professional development on things like formative assessment as well as through our partnership with land Landmark Outreach on different instructional practices uh the school has been engaged in a professional development cycle that uh will run over multiple years so teachers take um one of three strands um over a period of years and they'll be adding um additional strands for folks who have completed it but um really it's making sure that Educators have a base right so we can say we need to have these common practices in place but if we don't train people on how to do them it's hard to have an expectation and so that's been a modification to the faculty meeting schedule so that once a month the faculty meetings are professional development and folks break up into the different series and so um we have we really when I say we I really do mean the high school team it's I'm just kind of on the side of it but um have been able to make sure that Educators have access because it's during the contractual faculty meeting time as well as making sure there's enough space in the sessions and so the the session run by Adam hickey from Landmark has something like a third of the school in it it's about 80 to 100 Educators um and then SE uh seed seminar for um anti-racist practice and is the third the third session in addition the one I'm running um and so again um we don't see any concerns about meeting the standard for the NEOS accreditation um and one of the steps will be taking um among the common practices that have been presented through professional development doing some selection and narrowing down a number probably three to five that there'll be sort of an expectation that everyone will have and these are daily things that would show up in class such as you know setting an agenda for Learning and making sure to reference it um one of the you know marking the midpoint of a lesson and again these are support structures that help um all students kind of know where they are in the learning and know what's expected of them so that they're not surprised or confused during class s when you're looking at PD can you help us understand um the degree to which you like to use like sort of teacher leaders and teacher modeling um as opposed to having like an outside consultant a you know a big name come in and present and I I don't mean just um teacher uh leaders when like the same teacher leader is leader all the time but um professional development groups where there's like a bit of a rotating leadership sharing yeah want to um so really the intent um for this round because this is a real shift in how Brook line High has used faculty meeting time was not asking teachers to be leaders at this time to let them be full participants and really be Learners um and to try to set a sense of common Baseline um things like the The Landmark practices have been in pieces um Adam hickey has worked at Brookline for 13 or 14 years I say till about 20 since about 2010 and so a lot of people have done that professional development they may not be in that strand right now right they're in the Strand either with me or they're doing the Strand in seed and so um really the intent at the beginning was not to kind of ask for additional labor from from Educators um I do think there's a vision over time of building some of that in um and I know certainly at like faculty meet or department meetings um there are times when teachers take on those roles and certainly um one of the Educators Brianna Brown has been doing a leadership program and so she's been alongside um supporting the structure of the professional learning and making sure it's coordinated so that answers a little bit no like not at this time Suzanne yeah thank you um oh sorry go ahead go ahead can I just add one more thing to what you said Sarah um so so we really tried to shake up how we're doing uh PD uh this year and so there's been a a structure of once a month formal PD and gabes leading one strand of that and Adam hickey's leading another Strand and Darby neier is leading is leading another strand um and that's a once a month uh work on on assessment or differentiation or social emotional support um we've also really shifted our faculty meetings um our faculty meetings tended to be like emails that could have been done as emails and people just talking at us and so we've really shifted that model to focus on mtss and um intervention strategies tier one tier two tier three strategies um and that's having much more uh engagement by different teachers leading different aspects of it and so some of it is that we've developed like a small group cluster for all these faculty meetings where a different person leads each small group so we're really trying to get um trying to activate more of the the teacher leaders within the school in different roles and change the way we do faculty meetings and change the way we do PD structures so that people are having an opportunity to step into their power as teachers and share what they're learning and what they know and guide other teachers through it so we're trying a little bit of both um I think we've overcorrected in One Direction and now we need to correct back a little bit um but we're getting there and I think we we started the year knowing what you asked how are we getting more voices involved in the learning and the engagement and not just the same voices over and over again we also have a seed right so that's another Strand and did we mention teachers mentoring teachers we also have a a program for new teachers that's that's a great model yeah it is a great model and those are teacher leaders who are guiding our new teachers through induction into our school so sorry that's no problem thank you Suzanne thank you David yeah thank you so what I'm not hearing that I want to hear a little bit is professional learning communities I'm not sure what you might call them but you know this idea of maybe looking at work looking at uh the curriculum looking using protocols does any of that sound familiar absolutely and and that's happening on the department level okay so what we've been talking about has really been whole school professional development and sort of whole school structures but I know within the history and in the English Department we have grade level teams that are meeting weekly and we're reorganizing so that nth grade teachers are getting together and veloping common assessments um building uh activities that all nth graders will experience um this month we talked about collecting work next that we can discuss next year for norming and shared evaluation um so I think on the department in the department level we have some of that happening um again we're trying many strands at once to uh shift up how we're doing professional development but we do have some some memory of plc's at the school and how small groups of teachers learning together can be really powerful I mean I do think it's powerful totally is and I do I do think you can bring even districtwide professional development down to the smaller groups um so so it's music to my ears to hear that you you know about this and you're you're working on it I would I would also add that um our mentoring program in the second and third year for teachers so the first year is really a building based culture building but the second and third year is a professional learning critical friends group model where teachers are bringing problems of practice and um really this year we've I would argue upgraded that by with a partnership ship through the Harvard educational ethics organization to um really raise the types of dilemas that teachers bring and um highlight the ethical dilemmas that are inherent to education that's a whole additional strand that um the K8 schools are also doing but the high school second and thir de teachers are doing as well ni so following up then so I'm a little confused there's the department meetings and what is the professional development then is is it the whole school is it in the auditorium or are we talking about a smaller group yeah it's a few large groups so um essentially High School teachers have some kind of meeting every Tuesday is like a rough way to think about it 36 yeah and so two of those a month are department meetings where teachers are in their history department or social studies Department math department Etc right one of those approximately is a full faculty meeting so that's the table groups that John was talking about sometimes that is sort of the large group informational setting but more and more of those have been in the kind of the table groups that are mixed across departments but it is the whole school kind of in the atrium of the 22 tapen building and then on the professional development meetings which are again once a month um teachers are split into their strands so all the teachers doing formative assessment are with me which is about 50 or 60 we use one of the build the rooms in 22 tapen that has the movable wall so it's a double-sized classroom that I work in um Adam hickey has such a large group for the landmark work that he's in the atrium and then the seed groups are kind of in their seminar settings I see okay thank you that that's helpful just to get a a sense of yeah do the teachers get cus for those or yeah pdps what is it pdps professional development points profession and then with seed there's actually an option for graduate credit as well um so that's a lot of different types of common practices that are in development right and again the stage that we'll be working towards at the end of the year is doing some selection and narrowing um so that there's um you know it's focused enough that we can support it right we can't support all the things under the sun and so setting the these are what we're going to expect to be common across the school and then here's kind of the additional pieces that people can select into to go above and beyond that um so the last piece here is the idea of written curriculum right and as Jen alluded to um this is probably the biggest task ahead um and so um you know I think either Jen or John can kind of talk about where they see this going in the their departments but the basic idea is not that we have to be really strictly aligned everywhere but that the the basic course that we say 10th grade world history or Global Studies is the same course depending on who teaches it right like that there's a consistency within course yes um also just want to say because we had earlier questions this idea of like how we landed on the complicated but useful one month sort of cycle you know how we're doing our PDP I will say I do think came a lot from our NE ask report which is that we engaged in this year-long thing and it helped to illuminate the we knew there was something off and then it gave us kind of the language like right this is we need some common practices how do we do that and so um you know Brian along with other teachers kind of worked over the summer to really make a robust PD and I've been here for 19 years and I really feel like this year has been as John said it's almost an overc correction I'm like I'm so productive on Tuesday afternoons I miss the days of sitting in Auditorium sometimes but the point is neas uh I think is is what pushed us into that direction which is interesting I think written curriculum is exactly the same so the Strategic plan says that we need to do this so this is not um neas coming up with an idea that we didn't already know um we want to have consistency at all grade levels starting in you know uh kindergarten moving our way up so this was this is already in our district strategic plan I I think that as we talk about it as a neas team most of this work will happen in the Departments and that is mostly being overseen by an administrative group that we call coordinator administrator team which Meeks every week um with Anthony and it's basically all the curriculum coordinators and the program leaders so that we talk about large scale how is this working for the school and then I as the social studies curriculum coordinator go back to my department and say okay for social studies what does this mean and for us we're really making quite quite a bit of um progress actually so we're meeting you know if you're on a team if you've been assigned to a team my teachers are meeting once a week on that team doing PLC work using protocols um to come up with you know what are what is what does it mean to teach Global Studies how is it different from world history you're both 10th you're 10th graders at different levels um and so it's been very generative um in that respect but I also think these are long-term things so while it might seem simple to come up with a syllabus that says this is what students will learn I can say for history teachers there's a lot of things you could pick about World War II so um you know part of the process part of my job is to help guide that work while listening to teachers sort of figure out where our commonalities using our state um standards to figure out what does the state want us to be teaching um they ask us to teach way too much so you have a little bit of choice in there um so yeah I think it's been great and I think the neas process helps to support the things that the district already wanted the department chairs already wanted and that the cat team has already started talking about and has been talking about questions so one question I have in terms of current practices so I would assume that there are written descriptions of some kind regarding at least some of our curricula so what does that look like is it just uh it's not really in an organized centralized fashion it's each department has their own written curriculum or a summary of what it will be David it sounds like you'd be a perfect neas uh team member um you're identifying the exact thing that the neas team is asking for which is you are right so I'll give you an example um if you go to wisp teachers and say what is the course about they have tons of documentation to say here's what it's about here's a syllabus here is um our class expectations here are the common assessments we'll have but if you were to ask the 10th grade team they'd be like yes it does not look anything like the Wisp one but we can also tell you that information so you just have inconsistency literally in formatting like what is the doc are we talking about unit guides are we talking about common tests like each department has within it variation and then across the school we have variation so what does a unit guide look like for English versus history versus math and so while if you were to ask me any of those questions tell me what United States history is about I can definitely pull those docs I can get them from teachers and we would have a consistent they're mostly the same truly it's not like so hard for us to age what we're going to teach about World War II but we do not have a consistent document or something that really is easily accessible for the community for students for the school committee and that's exactly what Nas pointed out in the report which is why we didn't pass that particular section so it literally says in the report you need to have a more consistent formatting and I think just quickly one of the other benefits that is maybe an unintended consequence that Nas doesn't really ask for is that this is a really strong way to support new teachers and so if a brand new teacher comes in and says what does brookly high do for US history and we show them five different people's work and it's different that puts the new teacher in a really hard position right but if we say this is sort of the the default setting for US history and then there's space for teachers to add their own flavor or add their you know breathe a little mid more here move a little quicker here right we're not expecting a 100% like lock step day five lesson five that's not the expectation at all um but we again have sort of a here's the core here's the basic class that people can then work from so again a new teacher is not starting from scratch or trying to Cobble together five veteran teachers variations and I would just say under the written curriculum when we say it's coordinated by cat I think to your question David it's going to be cat's job next year as we anticipate the visit of Nas again looking to see what kind of progress we've made to decide what is what what does the community need us to produce right so those are the kinds of questions that'll be very interesting to me like how am I in relation to math in relation to science um you know in relation to our arts program what kinds of documents should we produce what should the formatting be to make it accessible for everybody um and I think that's really cool and interesting work that admin is going to definitely engage in and then have teachers join us with all their expertise Sarah and of course you're going to keep it really interesting it's not about all having the same font it's not about putting it in the place it's not about having the same lesson or unit plan right it's really about the material yeah so I will say that maybe and other departments have said it differently the one of the ways I talk about it with my teachers is sort of thinking about you know having expectations that are common but the flavor is the teacher you know if you have me as a teacher I have certain ways of being people might not be able to replicate that perfectly but we can expect that you will leave having covered for example one of the topics we've talked a lot about that you asked about the Holocaust what is our consistent you know what are our plans how many lessons are we going to do on that what can we expect what can the community expect and for us to have enough consistency too that if another need arises which I think this year we've been asking a lot of questions about what are our kids learning that we're able to say well we know basically most of us are you know all of us are doing this we can add this subtract that so exactly we don't want it lock and step like Gabe said but we do want enough consistency that we can answer questions you know well I've heard when we talk about curriculum U like the standards are the what and the teacher is the how oh yeah so right so yeah essentially essentially we almost have a written statement already those are the standards that you're going to pick and choose but for the most part totally tell you what 10th grade math is going to look like yes and then how it's presented the flavor as you said Jen that that's really the the creativity right and the Dynamics of the teacher totally so so it it shouldn't be that hard really I think to come up with a written it just has you have to do the work I guess if we haven't done it um yeah I mean I know it's a lot of work I'm not no I know you know that I think there's also something in which um written curriculum and common practices kind of intersect with each other too which is like there's also the flavor of Jen but my flavor shouldn't be so flavorful that it that you're really you know one kid is able to do you know totally different practices that are happening in the two classes so I think it's it's really a combination of the two um and I think all of us are excited about it and I know even in strategic planning meetings at the beginning of the year it's really a district level desire that I I think we're all wanting so again this is um intended as like a progress update right we are in the middle of the process so we are working primarily on these four things just to make sure that we're on track for the visit and um we hope to have a successful update later in the process oh sorry no it's okay um so uh that's the lead into our last slide so um so we're sharing with you uh with no date on this one so I couldn't get the dates wrong uh we're sharing with you the results of the visit um we now need to write our school growth plan where we take their recommendations and what they asked us about the foundational elements um and what they asked us about other things to look at and we come up with our growth plan like this school like the town has come up with the the vision for the school systems growth plan and then we prepare for their return visit in Fall 2025 and I think that date's right I think that date's right and what we have to show them when they return is that we've made progress on many of the things that they've recommended not that we've solved everything or that we have um resolved everything but that we're moving uh on on the plan that we've that we're implementing so we wanted to talk with you about some of the things that we think are beyond our control and may be we need your help with like the safety of the building and the Locking of the doors um the vision of the graduate which came up and also the things that we need to work on and develop for ourselves um I just want to add that coming out of covid I think this was a very useful process for us and that Co disrupted schools enough that it was useful for us to take a a six to eight months and say where are we what are we doing what what do we need to get back to um and the questions neas was asking us uh aligned with questions that I think the district is wondering about as well but it forced us to engage with them uh in a good way so I I understand the questions about the process overall but I do think the timing wasn't bad for us I think it really helped so I think that's it is that it that's it question all right thank you very much very much appreciated we look forward to more and with that oh I'm sorry and you had a question my apologies yes I just added one question sort of followup to what you were saying just now um that was great and I'm glad that sort of the external reviewers had the same ideas that we' already been talking about but so what you plan to do next does any of it have budgetary implications beyond what we're kind of already uh we're already sort of planning for as far as I know everything that we've planned for is planned into the budget um I know so all that PD is it's not it's not going to cost more than what we'd already been planning to do no that we've known about that desire since the beginning of the budget process so Anthony wrote that into the core budget from the beginning okay the actual cost of the visitors coming that's also been yeah I I built a three or four year plan two years ago so that it can be carried forward great thank you thanks all right thank you and with that we will now welcome Casey Boston executive director of the Brookline teen center who will be presenting on what's new and what's ahead there we go is that better oh too much um I'm Casey Boston I'm the executive director of of the Brookline teen center um I've been there for about 7 months and one of the challenges that I wasn't expecting at least was that a lot of people don't know about the brook line teen center or they have heard of it but they don't really know we do and um so I met with a couple month or so ago um and he invited me to come and tell you all more about it and hopefully other people can learn about it seems like exposure part of the problem am I the problem the problem uh oh um so just a little bit of background I uh was not familiar with Brookline um as a community or the Brookline teen center and so I've really focused my first six months um on meeting with almost everyone that I can and I'm looking around and I'm really sorry that I haven't met with all of you I would really like to after this if you have the time and your schedule to meet with me one-on-one um but I've met with tons of obviously teens and middle schoolers and parents and administrators and teachers and religious leaders and politicians and really everyone I could kind of get my hands on in Brookline who was willing to sit down with me and talk about what they love about Brookline and what the challenges are and kind of where the gaps are and so you're probably like what the heck does this girl know about anything related to Brookline and I I didn't and I don't and so everything that you're seeing here and what we're kind of uh looking for for the future Bas on the feedback that I've gotten from the families and the Youth of of Brooklyn so um um quick history for those you that don't know uh it was started by Paul and sasia Epstein um they had a vision to create a place where teens could go and create and explore and discover who they are and what they did was really put the teens at the Forefront of that planning process so the teens had um a really hands-on experience in creating what the team Center was going to be including the actual design sorry it used to be an auto body shop and they worked with the architect to this group of teens and created what is now currently the home of the BTC and if you haven't been there please come by and check it out we have an incredible physical space um which I think is hard to come by in Brooklyn and the Boston area so the building alone is incredibly impressive and I think gives teens exactly what they need uh in an after school space so we open the doors uh in 2013 in that mission of teens being at the center of everything we do continues to drive us um they we have teen councils they come up with the clubs and the activities and they lead the majority of what we do at the teen center and the adults are there to support and help people continue to make good decisions um but we kind of would let let them take the Reigns um so one thing that's very exciting is for the first time ever in the history of the teen center thousand years we are now opening our doors five days a week to um sixth seventh and eighth grade students um and our high schoolers so it never before has every age group been able to come 5 days a week and that actually started like this week that we let in the sixth seventh eighth graders all 5 days so it's a really exciting progress and again that is one of the top uh pieces of feedback I got from teens and families when I started asking people uh was after school programming for that middle school age group was a huge gap and uh we're trying to fill that that's our board of directors just in case you're going to ask me I didn't think I'd be able to uh tell you off the top of my head so we can come back to that later if you're curious and that's just a picture of some of our staff our leadership team so what happens at the BTC so we have six through 8th grade programming every day um from whenever school gets out which changes um until 6 p.m. we have 9th through 12th grade programming every day until 8:00 pm and we have a really robust music program including one-on-one uh lessons small groups U music engineering studio recording this is one of the huge aspects that gets teens um in the door is not a lot of other places where you can go and practice your music and record it and upload it and get it out into the world so it is definitely a highlight and I think it's one of the things that keeps teens coming back uh day after day so we offer everything from food which if you know anything about teenagers it is extremely important um we have a hot meal every single day uh tacos grilled cheese pizza um and then we also have snacks throughout the day so if you are a hungry person come to the teen center we will take care of that um so that basic need is always met and then we're offering homework support mentoring and tutoring really we're trying to be um a supplement to what's happening at all the incredible schools here and provide that wrap round service that Circle of Care um help them to kind of go deeper into their academ uh in whatever way we can so like everything else it's very te driven sometimes believe it or not they don't want to do their homework when they get to the teen center um and sometimes they have big projects or exams coming up and they do and we really try to let them kind of lead that um drive so outside of that um academic support we're offering social emotional support Workforce Development we've took done three HBCU trips now um taking teens down North Carolina done some college trips um we're doing we got a shuttle van donated which is amazing so not only are we picking up from the middle schoolers now daily the ones that are outside of walking distance but we're going on trips around the city and um taking them on adventures that we wouldn't have been able to do before and because it's teen Le our programming changes all the time based on their interest and their needs um and we try to adapt with uh with the needs so some pictures here are um a bunch of teens waiting at the counter to get fed um our weightlifting group some bowling and then some Middle School boys playing the Minute to Win It game where you put the cookie on your eye and you have to like W wiggle it down and catch it in your mouth here uh some examples of some of the clubs so we have over 30 clubs weekly that they can opt into and this is just a few examples of what we're doing so there's Supper Club where every Wednesday they walk to local restaurants that have uh welcomed us and they have a dinner out in the town we have book club we have a film program um we have every sport you can really imagine uh and cooking classes come by it's a really cool place and just a few more pictures to capture the life inside of there so we have a ping pong tournament recently more bowling and and that's um some of the trips we've done so we've gone to Kings Bowling we took them ice skating um and we've taken them to the commons so we're trying to get out and about and fill that opportunity Gap so who relies on the BTC we currently have over 500 members um team sign up as members for the school year uh we have about 75 kids coming per day on Fridays it's a little bit higher because things are just even more fun uh so we're at about 100 people um we truly do welcome every any student who lives in or Goes to School in Brook line um I think it's important that all teens feel like they can come be in our space uh and about 65% of the teens that are coming um live in Brookline Housing Authority or our Meco students and then that is a really quick list that I could come up with that is not extensive um of the different groups that come and use our space um so all the time we get requests for groups to meet or have the gym or have their PD day there or their teacher staff meetings um so we're often opening our doors extra uh to accommodate those groups this is a list of some of our partners just uh to give you some kind of insight on what we're doing uh we had a really exciting event a couple weeks ago in partnership with step success in the Brookline Housing Authority we did a three-way collaboration and we had over 150 people come through the doors for our resource night we had like 16 different um nonprofits in Brookline there represented um sharing Resources with families we had dinner kids were running around playing games um it was a really really successful and fun night and then the pictures at the top are from the um Brookline for racial Justice and Equity event where we had about a hundred of Brookline leaders in the room to discuss um inclusion access and opportunity in Brookline and one of our teens there with the mic um represented kind of the Teen voice and amplifying uh her perspective on what teens in Brookline need so two the two pillars of kind of what I'm focusing on um since I got here would be access for six sth and eighth grade students to provide that after school consistent quality programming and teen jobs um the lack of teen jobs the lack of funding for teen jobs was kind of striking um and so one thing that we're doing uh and I'm really excited about for this summer is partnering with Viking Sports so we'll have their camps running out of the BTC which is awesome for the young people of Brookline it's awesome for the profit share that we're going to do um but I'm mainly excited about the jobs that it's going to open up for the teens so they can work at the teens Center as part of these camp um start obviously making income but we also have um a pretty Rob robust training program so they will get all of the Workforce Development skills professional development personal development also figure out what they'd like to do um because we still have our youth scapers positions so teens will get to opt into Youth Development and child care work or supporting the town beautification and different Landscaping projects and kind of figure out what clicks with them because I think one of the most important things about having your first job is figuring out what you love to do and what you hate to do and then kind of adapting so trying to give teens options um but all teens regardless of which position they have will um be engaging in our Workforce Development trainings and then we'll be open after the younger kids go home for teen drop in teens can be there every day from 3:30 to 7:30 hanging out eating food playing games and just kind of spending time together so real quick some of the main goals for 2024 25 um is to really be the third space for teens of Brookline so as you all know the first space is the home the second space is the school um and we are we want to be the third space and we are the third space already for a lot of people um and third spaces are crucial to teen and Adolescent development um and figuring out kind of who they are and who they want to be and having the space to to kind of develop that um sense of identity um it's it's needed for not just teens but for it to have a whole and healthy Community um I think Brooklyn is and will be a better place when teens feel like they have that this place to go to um we intend on continuing to support guidance counselors and kind of teachers and being part of The Circle of Care so really wraparound services for some of the teens uh in Brooklyn who need it the most who aren't getting all of their needs met um within the school school day that's kind of our focus on who we can really support and add that extra layer of care for um I'm really excited about our new partnership with steps to success so starting next school year their six seventh and eighth graders are going to be coming to the brook L Center every day as their after school plan so that's amazing for us because it brings 45 kids into our space to help us fulfill our mission and it also opens up space for steps success to have more resources going towards their younger students so it's also helping them to fulfill their mission um so this is like to me a win-win when this is what Partnerships are about um I think we're getting making each other stronger and better and I'm really looking forward to having those students um with us every day and part of their kind of groundwork is really focusing on homework completion and enrichment activities so we will be doing that with all of our students not just the steps kids but really focusing on making sure that homework is done in the getting that support before we move on to um basketball and music making and art and all the and opportunities we provide um and then we want to continue to support the public schools of Brookline so we offer space right now tons of groups are coming to our space staff meetings PDS workshops clubs um it's happening really inconsistency right now and how it works and so I would love for moving forward for us to have more of a general contract um right now if you reach out from the club we have a rental agreement that goes out you have to provide kind of like year insurance information we talk about is this a free event is this are you making a payment is our staff coming in early or staying late and what resources are you using and kind of like how do we support every group and club by also keeping our doors open um and helping our budget so I would love to move in a Direction Where We have an agreement that all groups um in the public school system can and should be using our space whenever that would be would benefit them but it would be nice for it to not be so um so so oneoff and so different for each group uh and the understanding and the expectations could be much clearer if we can make that agreement together um we want to be a resource for I mean throughout the day in the evening we have so much great meeting space we have so much good performance space um I think a lot more schools could be doing more in our building if they knew that this was an option for them um and then we want to support the pier school um I don't know what that process is going to look like but we're there and we're ready to help out however we can during these Renovations I'm sure you're wondering where does all the money come from so the BTC is funded solely by donations and grants it does not receive any funding from the town um our current operating budget is 1.5 million we do we have been receiving arpa funds we got arpa 1 and two and that's 30% of our current budget as you know that money is not lasting forever and is in fact um we got about one more year of it so we really are kind of at the point where we're grinding to figure out where is that replacement coming where is that replacement funding coming from and how can we secure that so we can keep our doors open as many hours as we would like to and as we've heard is needed from the community so our fixed costs are covered um but all the variables all the things that I think really make the BTC special are really funding dependent at this point um so every every dollar we receive kind of now moving forward would go towards Staffing and food and enrichment trips and really keeping our doors open we've never done this before having five days a week um for the hours that we have and I'm excited I'm a little nervous it is a risk it's a risk we're willing to take because it's what we heard everyone needed but we're really going to need the community to support us um for this to be a sustainable thing that we can move forward with Shameless plug for our Gala I really hope you can all be there it's going to be a super fun night don't worry I'll email you more information and just some more pictures of kind of all the great things we're doing um basketball music recording tug of War we did a big squid games tournament that they loved dodgeball is huge right now Dungeons and Dragons Pool um that's kind of it I thought that would be a better screen to end on than the Gallow plug um but if youall have any questions I'd be happy to answer them I tried to talk fast I don't feel bad that you guys are here for so long so for those of you who have not been inside the teen center it really is quite spacious it's much larger than looks from the outside and so that does provide a lot of opportunity to have all these different programs there and even simultaneously Helen so thank you for your presentation was really excellent and I actually today happened to get your ma your email awesome and it was quite informative I really enjoyed reading it oh good and finding out and highlighting the student was a really good idea yeah you know he's wonderful but the student you know how they're feeling about being there and what it's given them y so and and the fact that you're working together with steps I think is an excellent yes excellent move yeah I'm very excited about that so thank you for all that thank you anyone else Natalia I just want to say I visited recently maybe about a year ago and recently I was at the the bridge event and it is really really beautiful and sorry to ask this question what about Rising sixth graders do something in the summer I do have a rising sixth grader like can they do the dropouts or does it start after they start sixth grade um that's a great question so I am like a total sucker and like a yes lady so just like maybe I should I encourage you to consider Rising Su maybe I shouldn't like publicly say that but like yes I'll just decide right now like I I truly it's such an incredible space I want people in it I want to and like the middle schoolers in particular they're so excited to be there and they brought such an incredible energy and there's definitely a fear a you you know I get it that like teens older teens won't want to come anymore if the middle schoolers are there we've created a third floor space that's just for them so 10th 11 11th and 12th graders are the only ones that can go to The Loft Lounge area so they can have their quiet space and be way cooler than everyone else um but I've also been surpris we've all kind of been surprised with how well they're intermingling so we have specific activities that are just for the middle schoolers and just for the high schoolers but they're doing a really great job and I feel like they both rising to the occasion of being in the same space and it's making the middle school a little bit mature and it's making the teenagers a little bit Kinder and like like a little more thoughtful in in their language and in their attitude and it's really I think been a great benefit so I'll have to say I'm really happy to have everyone who's ready to be at the team Center at the teen center you mentioned that you have about 500 students who are members can you talk about how membership works yeah so um teens and or families can sign up online it's a $50 membership fee for the whole year um and there's also a free option um if you need that financial support um and you just click a button there's there's not a lot that goes into that and then the food is free everything else is free yeah once you have the membership there are yet everything is included the music studio the basketball tournaments the food it's all part of it and we have some incredible Partners I know that was a really brief slide but like the country club is incredible to us and donates a ton of food a lot of other businesses and restaurants um are are supporting us really well the food pantry um so we're getting a lot of of great support from people Mariah hi thank you um I'm the parent of two teenagers both who have been who have um participated in teen center activities over the years and it's always yeah it's such a great a great support for them and I just wanted to say how wonderful it is to to hear all of the new things you're coming up with too like for example the van I mean my kids my older two went to pierce and so it was easy to be at the teen center but certainly friends they had in other parts of town had challenges getting there and so just to hear all the work you're doing around like the van and thinking about all of those excess things and as um Helen said earlier the partnership with steps I mean there's just so much great stuff you're doing and I just love to see the continued Innovation and thoughtfulness so thank you so much for continuing that Legacy I know you're relatively new but I can see what a passion you have for it too and and I'm so grateful that that you're here to continue the the wonderful work thank you I appreciate that a lot Sarah back when you could rent it for a party I rented it for a party one time so you still you still can you still can and anyone watching you still should uh it is truly it's one of our our best sources of income and it's really important that people are renting so and then I have a son too that's there regularly for basketball awesome yeah thank you yeah on the Pierce Point because again my my children are peerce have been thinking about it because the sixth seventh and eighth graders are going to be up far it does feel like parents are anxious about what will happen is there a possibility for the buses like some buses to drop up like I feel like there I mean they can walk from the old Pierce but the buses will bring back to the old Pierce right I think it' be good for the parents to know because there's something I I don't know what like after school activi will happen up at the new school like it just seems like that decided yet but I'm sure you're in touch with Jamie [Music] right yeah I mean in general transportation I think is thank you for asking is one of is one of our biggest challenges at this point so obviously there are four schools that are pretty reasonable walking distance when it's not like freezing cold but how do we get the other kids to the teen center that want to be there and we want them there and so um you know how can this group support I think I think I think partly it is that like can can we help brainstorm together on on how do we how do we how do we work on Transportation our shuttle van is amazing and it's worked but it's a 14 seater so like longterm and as we open I think before when we weren't five days a week we just we weren't like we couldn't be the actual answer for our families for after school care I think it was like a fun thing you could go do some days I think in the fall if this is your after school plan for your child how are we getting them there and so like we figured out how to get our doors open and how to staff it how to have awesome programming um but we definitely need support on how do we get the the kids from further out to to our spot um and that is the challenge with our steps success partnership too like we're we've we've locked down that we want to do it and I think that Transportation piece is the last missing um part of that anyone else all right well thank you very much for coming in and for this presentation and for sharing the great work the teen centers and its vision for the near future thank you so much for an invite and truly come by anytime and see it and and I will email Betsy um but and so you can send out my info but I really would love to have a one-on-one with a coffee with each of you if you're willing to do that I appreciate it I'd like to put in a plug again for the team Center Gayla it's really a fun event I go this year no really but uh I'm I know Saturdays and may are are risky I really recommend it uh if you have a chance to go and see it yeah thank you it's fun we know how to party all right thank you so with that we will move to our next agenda item which is the FY 2025 budget update so at this juncture the budget number Remains the Same um we did see some information that the um house has uh is looking to increase um the student Opportunity Act portion bringing that up to $104 per student so on the house side how much are we getting now 30 so it could be a $70 increase per student we're minimum yeah we're minimum a so we yes yeah so uh we'll continue watching to see how that makes way through the Senate and final budgeting uh process but my purpose for grabbing the mic at this juncture is to say that the uh the schools met with the school um the AC school subcommittee on April 3rd and 10th and last night the um school subcommittee did um vote to send uh our budget uh allotment to AC for full consideration there were some questions um and helpful suggestions on how to make our presentation even stronger so our group is going to work on those aspects and include that going forward Mariah is there anything else to add to that no thank you anyone else with anything fy2 budget related all right in that case we will move to a Bittersweet portion of the meeting which is a farewell and thank you to departing School Committee Member Dr Natalia lenos and I I know you were only with us for about a year uh but you've certainly left an indelible imprint on school committee you've brought some very important perspectives uh early on you looked at a lot of issues through your public health lens and of many other lenses thereafter and thank you very much for everything you've done for the school committee for the Brookline Community uh I understand that you're moving on to a new position and maybe you'd like to describe a little bit about what you're going to be doing thank you David and it is indeed Bittersweet actually this has been I don't know my my favorite extracurricular activity um my my uh husband it hasn't been his favorite but um it's uh you know it's it's been so nice working with all of you like it h I have learned so much and I felt genuinely like this committee works so well together and really respectful and we disagree and you know and we agree on some things and I I have never doubted anybody's intentions and desire to sort of like I think we're aligned on that and so it's been really fun spending so many hours together and I am I am going back to the UN so I'll be at the United Nations development program um and I'll be in a role in a health role but I I'll be working on the I'm an adviser on the determinant of health so not Health Care like you know the environmental social the portfolio that I'll have is um and you know the UN has the global team the policy team in New York so that's where I'll be and then there's Regional teams and Country level teams and policy sort of advises on how do you support countries that are dealing with big issues so climate and health Ai and Health Equity are going to be big ones and I will probably have the gender based violence portfolio which is one that I actually my PhD was on gender-based violence and I've always done some gender work so you know I'm delighted and I I go back between kind of the very high level policy to the very and again my husband laughs at me sometimes I'm listening to Tom Brady about the one tree in Brooklyn and I I actually get quite excited about you know the very local and obviously at the UN that's not what I'll be doing so I will miss I will miss the very tangible nature of school committee that we're talking about specific individuals and specific kids uh because it will be very very very big picture but um I I promise that I will bring some good examples from from Brooklyn and from Massachusetts like the initiatives I mean I have struggled with with things being in in a town where it feels that you know we're talking about getting rid of say fossil fuels from future buildings and knowing that the UN and who is still recommending gas because the alternative is you know burning you know wood in in houses and sort of like the inequities at the the global local scale has been difficult because I in these two for you sort of recommend very different things you like get gas out of Brooklyn put gas into you know these kind of poor communities and so there are some struggles but I'm hoping anyways that is to say that I'm excited to be at the global scale but I will miss I will miss a lot of what what we do and thank you for welcoming me and for for even the one year it has felt like uh it has been a difficult year and and we know that and my perspectives have maybe not been aligned on everything but I've been uh grateful to be part of this team I really have anyone else like to have some more to Andy so Natalie I remember being really excited when you decided to run for school committee um and since then I think we've we've thought differently and often voted differently on quite a number of things but for me you've always been a warm and trusted friend on the committee so I'm really going to miss you um but I'm glad that you now have a chance to you make a difference on a much bigger stage so yeah anyone else I'd like to say word I I think you've been an amazing addition to the the committee and and we don't always agree but it doesn't matter we can agree in an we can disagree in an agreeable manner you know and I think that's what happens here with with all of us you know that you know we have different ideas but but we can come to consensus and work together and having you here was just it was good to have your voice here and your presence I mean you know beyond your voice I think is just I'm Gonna Miss You Mariah adalah it's been such a pleasure working with you on the committee like Andy was so excited when you chose to run last year and it's been such a treat to have you and one of the things that I most appreciate is that you know your opinions are informed by your brain and they're informed by your heart and those things really are so potent to see such a a position of care and empathy for the community um backed up by all of your experience and your worldview and so I'm really grateful for the time that we've had you and I wish we would have you even longer but I'm very excited for your next chapter and congratulations Stephen um Natalie I'm really going to miss having you in the school committee I'm gon to miss having you in Brooklyn um I think I agree with you a lot um I'll miss that too um and I just it's just it's just really nice having you in the school committee I think you're really courageous I think you are uncalculating you just you just say what you think and you feel and you vote how your integrity demands that you vote and I respect you and I admire you and sad that you're leaving but I'm GL I'm glad that you have opportunities thatwait you anyone else Suzanne well I feel like I'm losing a neighbor you're just down the street from me so uh but do I do want to thank you for everything that you've contributed you asked just wonderful questions Natalie things that perhaps I haven't even thought about some of it from your own experiences and I think some of it from your your academic work that you've done and that you you really brought those inquiries and those deep questions uh that came to the whole committee then and we had to we had to think about them and that was a lot of hard work you know our loss is a global gain uh but we will probably be here for a while so when you decide that you're ready to go back to local come on back we'll welcome you best of luck anyone else just want to say it's been a pleasure to have you on committee and a delight to work with so wishing you all the best in the next leg of your journey so on that note we do have a little momento very welcome welld deserved and now we go back to business so you don't you don't leave yet all right school committee actions propos statutory revision to the student code of conduct second reading and possible vote do we have Lisa here okay right we we've already gone through it and we heard from uh Lisa previously so I'm going to go ahead and move that we approve the statutory revision to the student code of conduct is there a second Natalia seconds Natalia your vote yes Suzanne yes Andy yes Helen yes Sarah yes Mariah yes Steph Yes Valerie yes and I also vote Yes now we will move to discussion and possible vote to approve memorandum of agreement with asme 12-month full-time Food Service D driver so you should have in your packet the notice uh this is a new position that's being added um to the uh asme un uh unit um and it's a food service uh driver for a 12-month position so um Liz um our G our Council worked on this um on our behalf and is recommending that we um recommending the committee adopts this uh agreement any questions comments Helen so does this get paid for out of the Food Service budget now I don't have any of the specifics in terms of the funding aspect of it um but I can get clarity on that for you that would be Susan worked Susan worked on this with Liz and um but any of your specific questions around it we can get those locked in Mariah um just to well I presume it must be being paid for out of the Food Services budget because we don't have anything like this budgeted in the operating budget right and everyone else in Food Services is paid for out of the revolver so um I would imagine it is is could you just clarify as this this is a new position and there's nobody in it currently right like no who has been driving food around now I guess is my question and in previous Summers because we've had people we've had food going to different sites for several years now so how who's been doing that until now and that's uh that's a question that I would have to get clarity on from on S from Sasha on Mariah um but I think this was um my understanding was that this was um a flag that the union threw with concern so it may have been that was being added to others workload to some degree but we I'll get clarity on that question for you as well I guess I'm just confused what they're doing the rest like during the school year where is Food being driven I guess I'm just confused how it's a 12- month position so I would like to understand more okay thanks when does this position begin because do we have time to wait till the next me to get all the details well I I thought that this was coming up at the previous meeting but we punted it um out uh as well so I think there was some urgency around it okay you now this was negotiated by by Dr given correct yep and Liz doesn't say right it doesn't have a start date on the contract to the April 2024 that might be just now you know it might have been helpful to have a job description just to understand what theob obvious so we can I mean if you're not comfortable voting now we can get clarity on those um and if there's uh greater urgency around it but um given right now that I'm sure that it's being covered um because it's in the normal this so this is going to be you know covering the summer months so start in July one perhaps so but we'll get a job description and get clarity on the questions if there other questions you can send them our way too okay all right okay so looks like we're going to hold off on this until the next meeting so that brings us to subcommittee and liaison reports and first up Helen with Capital Improvements and a review of our deferred maintenance submission sure our deferred maintenance mini CIP we call it both and it's it's a combination um so the capital subcommittee hasn't met for the last couple months but we have gotten together the CIP together with input from principals and input uh from uh Susan was involved with it and Karen King and um Mariah uh was was also involved with this we looked at all those deferred maintenance that we'd had over the years and made a spreadsheet and figured out how to do it in different years so for this year we submitted to uh um to Melissa for the CIP the funds that you see for or the projects that you see in fiscal year 25 um uh at those schools I mean the only school that we're not touching as you can see is the high school which still actually that's not true because there are the oh gosh I think this is the wrong list because there is the high school um there's $125,000 in this for the high school tables the uh cafeteria tables that's not in deferred maintenance though that's in a that's in the fixtures and failing fixtures or whatever it's called fixture yeah yeah okay thank you thank you for that correction then um but I wanted to share it with the school committee so that you could see what it is we're asking for how it's been spread out over the years and um just so that it becomes public so people so you all know what what it is we plan to do and hopefully do all of this this summer I'm not sure um you know it's a lot of work a million dollars to spend in in two months is is not easy and to supervise it um and Mr Simmons will be out uh for a few months so a lot of this is going to be uh a lot of hard work on the part of uh Karen King and Sarah um in the building department working together to to make this happen uh the greater majority of the money last year I don't know if you remember we spent on Lincoln School refurbishing uh renovate not renovating but freshening up the school the school is was opened in 97 I think and um uh so we're getting close to 40 years not just 30 no 30 years right yeah um and so it needed it you know the you know everything was tired and so we've done the first floor except for the library and the cafeteria this coming year will be the second and third floors and then the last will be the um cafeteria and the gym uh which will be done the library I think is getting done this year this summer so um yeah the library is um it's on the list so I think you know what we've tried to do is take one school and really do all the things that need to happen there and then do you know whatever other monies we have to do the important things that have to happen at other schools for instance at brl um the multi-purpose room uh was not functioning as well as it it needed to be in terms of the sound system the um uh lighting Etc and so we put money into that for for that school this year Helen on on Lincoln School yeah uh when are the when will the H vac are the those heat pumps yeah that's a separate it's not in the CIP thank you for ask no but it's an important question because what um Mr Simmons has done the ahead of the uh our operations in the building department is um he's taken schools and put in heat pumps and different rooms that have been extremely hot once he can then get money back from eversource for those heat pumps and then he uses that money to then purchase new ones for other schools um I can't remember who's up for this year I don't know Mariah do you happen to have that or remember I don't remember off the top of my head I'm sorry um but we can try and get a listing of of who is going to get it this summer he he goes from the most dire circumstances uh and works works down from that um and I think it's been a really good way of of using our money wisely and getting with the rebates to be able to then buy more and continue the process um so I hope that answers your question are there any other questions about what we're doing or plans I think you know we've gone over this with well I've gone over I've been at the advisory committee subcommittee on capital for four meetings each one two hours um and there's a fifth one tomorrow morning uh some of the issues have gone through very quickly and very easily um they have been having some difficulties with us doing the Baldwin School and we've been trying to work that through I took a a group uh yesterday of five advisory committee members through and one select board member through the um Baldwin School and um I'm hoping that tomorrow they'll be able to to vote it um and that we'll have they they will support our CIP but to be continued yes Helen I was just what uh and peer school at fiser Hill I don't know what we're calling it that's what at Newbery right at Newbery so is that is that g to be oh that's work done this summer or is that all it's all so that so first of all the funding source is different it comes out of the project right okay and um it um is well on its way to being finished um and um there there may be one item up there that's not clear how that will get funded in terms of putting in a basketball in that basketball not net what is it the system a basketball poop poop but you have to have a stand whole a stand and everything whatever it's called um and uh in the parking lot we're we're looking to try and do that but the they we have have to figure out if that can be accommodated within the project or not um the Lincoln School is mostly just clean up and not bu um real work that needs to be done there and wasn't there a tunnel at the high school or so that's an interesting yes oh thank you for bringing that up that was um actually uh been discussed it so at the high school where that so if you're looking at the front of the high school there's an entrance to the right between the schan gym and the main uh that was the old one of the oldest parts of the building and apparently there was some water infiltration there and some issues with the way things are put together there and inside the building and water infiltrating from the outside the uh we have Engineers working on figuring it out and doing a plan right now um my understanding is that it's nothing that's dire and nothing that will happen the building's not going to collapse or anything like that but that it will be um the actual project won't happen till summer of 25 so um yeah thank you for asking about that that's I have a question about bathroom Renovations since it came up last time around gender neutral bathrooms is that something that you said that Pierce is going to be all gender neutral moving forward like are you envisioning any cu I know we have out years thinking through other schools that we could think about that for I think it's really complicated um if you look at our bathrooms they're not very big and so when you start to make gender neutral bathrooms you need to take up more space you need to build walls and what we're doing it appears there'll be floor to ceiling uh walls so there's privacy and so it becomes very complicated to try and retrofit that uh that's not and I pretty sure all our ba all our schools have at least few gender neutral bathrooms um but it's something that I think as we do Renovations as we do um more and more work uh in buildings or or you know rebuild certain ly um that's something that we we need to to do I think Pierce will be an interesting uh example of what how it works any other questions about any of the things that uh at the ha school so appropo to your question um Dr Giller the ha school we we in order to be able to put in any of those heat pumps we need to upgrade the elect electrical service and so that's what the uh 250,000 is there to to be able to to accommodate that uh we're at the the limit of the power there um and then you know there's the regular wear and tear on the buildings that that needs to be done every you know 10 to 15 years or so if not sooner I think I think that's it um I think you know uh is there anything else the Pierce project oh yeah thank you I'll give quite a bit of a update today sorry um so we're moving along the um we're going to be getting the contract actually to sign for the demolition uh soon at 13.15 million I think it is um yeah it was estimated at 15 and it came in 2 million under uh there will be some Community meetings um to talk about the Pierce project on April 24th and May 22nd actually we're going to be doing them here in the school committee room um it it's a sort of a twofold uh Community form it's one to talk with the contractors and talk with the Architects to to find out what it is we're doing how we're doing it when we're doing it um and also to talk about the geothermal and um so that those pieces will all be addressed in a presentation then a lot of time for Community to to be able to um to discuss and talk about it there will also be Outreach at the park uh about the geothermal on a Saturday so that any residents who have any questions or want information can find out there'll be uh our expert will be there she'll also be here at the meeting on the um the 24th of April and the one in in May um I think that's and the the school will be moving out in the end of June after um school is out and uh everything should be ready I the the plans for all that is have been worked on uh Karen King's done a amazing job at getting things together and and making that happen um Susan and and Charlie and everybody else have worked on the the needs Jaime's been very you know reasonable in terms of what she has she's very used to working with very flexible spaces let's say so you know Newbery is just another flexible space that uh provides some classrooms actually with doors and windows and and walls uh as opposed to pierce so um I think it'll be an exciting experience I think it'll be different for the students there but I think it'll be really good uh to be able to be in a a new environment and take advantage of of the outdoors there the park that's next door so I think is there anything else I missed Suzanne did I oh no I did not thank you that was a yeah I guess there are some people who are still in the first season I'm already in the third season now but um yeah so uh we very um there was a wonderful meeting on Tuesday uh April 2nd of the select board uh joint meeting of Select board the um Parkson Rex committee and the Conservation Commission uh to discuss the warrant article and to we needed a unanimous vote from both the parks and wreck and the Conservation Commission there were Pierce uh a lot of Pierce families there and supporters and um a lot of good questions and we got the unanimous vote from everybody in I think including the select board um and uh so that allowed us to move forward with finalizing the contract for the demolition that we're going to be getting to sign and I sorry yeah that then the at the meeting at 8 o'clock that was a very long evening of meetings uh at 8 o' the building commission uh approved the early package for the project they were a little bit reticent because of some of these permissions and once they heard that those were in place uh they felt much more comfortable with doing the early package um The Architects working on the construction documents now as we speak and you know we would probably be getting the full package uh next uh January or so uh in terms of what the full ter full cost will be for the project January February so what else did I leave that that's it I that's it if not next time all right thank you for that very thorough report we will now go to Suzanne to discuss curriculum thank you David curriculum met March 19th feels like that was a while ago um one of the things we spent most of our time with open architect looking at the data dashboard uh looking at uh the data from the early literacy assessments that our students have uh taken twice now I think beginning of the year and middle of the year um we we had a good time looking at uh the data and getting into it um I guess what I would suggest is if you're interested maybe Michelle can give us a cheat sheet and we can pass that on you could just spend hours I could spend hours looking at the data and putting it together taking it apart but it what it's it's pretty easy to do once you get in and you have access to it and there's just a lot of um meaningful uh assessments and just information to help you understand really looking at Trends um teachers are learning how to do it at the at the student level and the classroom level we were looking more at District level and trends for the district but so that what was the story that the data told us which Story I mean you looked at all the data on those oh just just we were learning to use it yeah we we didn't actually come to conclusions of identifi Trends but we did that uh then we did spend a few minutes talking about the student opportunities act which now the committee has voted on uh at March 28th meeting um and it really does follow our uh strategic plan so um actually it was quite helpful that that Jody had the Strategic plan and she could just fold that into the student opportunities Act is it called act plan student opportun act the plan for that um and then she mentioned that uh the new literacy program will probably cost 1.5 million over three years um a lot of the coaching will come um from um the publisher but they haven't decided on the publisher for the curriculum for next year um the literacy review will probably be ready in May is that right lus I think sometime in May we should have a review from um office of teaching and learning on on what they have what review recommendations are in the findings and uh that was about it we had world we had uh not World Language no we had uh the English nth grade English on the agenda but um the high school team has asked uh for a little more time to think about what they want to do for next steps uh in terms of the unleveled course in English in ninth grade so they will continue next year as they have this year and uh we'll have some more conversations about Direction will go in the future and our next meeting is somewhere April 30th I think April 30th at four o'clock thank you that's it Susan can I ask a question sure sure is there an ETA for the decision on the literacy purchase on the literacy coaches purchase purchas um yeah no I don't know exactly I would would is she okay is there a is Jody is there a um ETA for when that purchase is going to be made um our hope is over the summer we need to convene our team to evaluate um a few options and once we've done that um hopefully over the summer we'll purchase and be ready for a launch um in the next school year oh so it's not for a September lunch um I don't think we'll be completely ready for a September lunch and maybe after the first quarter um once we get all the um professional development and training done ahead of time okay I'll follow up with you about that later I'm confused thanks thanks Mara all right uh Valerie diversity Equity inclusion and Justice mine is going to be so short comparatively speaking um we met on the first of the month and looked at uh O's data on bullying and discrimination in the district it was it was great to have uh Claire present us with the initial set of data to look at um bullying and harassment by um category and uh work with them to refine that a little bit so that they come back um with a bit of a deeper dive on some Trends uh and um to see whether there are any Trends in terms of types of discrimination that we're seeing all right thank you uh Suzanne back to you negotiations uh we met with the uh be you on March 26th um we are looking at uh the beep program and uh any impact on um our teachers and through with the contract uh and so uh there's been a response back and forth and uh we just sent them one about their concerns we sent them a response and we're wait and hear where we're going next with that sorry I got a little crossy there and went out of order uh but thank you very much in uh Mariah Finance um no updates Beyond those that lonus provided earlier and we meet at the end of April I believe the next date's the 24th anything for accounts payable not tonight all right Valerie government relations no update all right so for policy we met earlier this week on April 9th we uh began by discussing the public art on the outside of school buildings draft policy as part of that discussion we were addressing whether or not we would want it to include art installations that are large scale that are inside the buildings in addition to outside ultimately uh we decided that we don't really need a policy on this because uh it was brought to our attention that the Brooklyn Arts commission would like to uh be invited to participate in providing guidance around some of these decisions and we determined as a subcommittee that we could engage in that Outreach anyway and we don't necessarily need to have a policy around reaching out to the Brookline Arts commission and other potential stakeholders that would just be part of good government and anytime that we are seeking that assistance and uh input and feedback we would certainly reach out to them and to anyone else with an interest in art installations at our school uh so we did not move forward with that policy then we also ended up discussing the revised assignment of students to schools policy and what we uh landed on there was to remove the portion that talks about students being able to remain at the same school uh even if they move to another location within Brookline and to have that as a standalone pilot policy for a one-year period so that we can measure whether there are many families who make that request to uh keep their students in the same school even if they move to another part of town so that we can figure out whether it would become too unruly to maintain that as a policy so it's it would be one year to start maybe we would renew it maybe we wouldn't because in terms of getting the data as to how many people would make the request we would never really know that unless we actually affirmatively say okay you can stay at the same school even if you move to another town and just see what happens sorry excuse me within the town I'm getting I'm getting tired within Brooklyn within Brookline you still need to live within Brookline another school correct uh so we're interested in pursuing that as a pilot and the uh subcommittee unanimously voted for referral uh for that pilot policy Helen you're not CH changing the Open Enrollment part of policy where somebody can if there's space available ask corre go to another school that still stands no substantive changes there there have been some relatively minor modifications to other portions of that policy but the part that we wanted to take out as a standalone was the one about being able to stay at the same school even if you move elsewhere within Brooklyn uh then we also had a presentation regarding uh hate in hate incidents and the reporting data that we have so far on it uh that was followed by a discussion of an updated draft on the hate speech policy uh there was very vigorous discussion around the hate speech policy But ultimately the subcommittee recommended by a 3-1 vote referral to the full committee um we will certainly have further discussions on it anyone who's at that meeting would you like to talk about what your positions were on it or what you feel needs to be worked on no okay so then uh Stephen raise no uh I was gonna take you up on your invitation sure go ahead just to say David that I umum I drafted a new version of it with with comments that uh addressed areas where I had been concerned so I'll send that along to you uh this week and you can do it what you will all right thank you so even though we had a split vote it was still a very collaborative discussion and so I appreciate that Stephen is U providing some of his proposed revisions and we'll next discuss this at full committee go ahead Natalia I mean I'm not on the uh subcommittee but I think an important distinction when they were showing us the data is that they we collect number of reports not number of incidents and it I would advise that we have another column to say like you know if one incident that everybody observed received 20 reports at the moment you would get 20 reports and you wouldn't necessarily know that there were 20 incidents or one incident so really using for whatever data collection comes back making it clear that they need to if they can um clarify how many in they're talking about I think that would be really useful to have both I guess yes thank you for bringing that up because that is a very critical point of information that was uh it was part of our presentation because uh Christina happened to include it in as one of her examples but more broadly speaking we wouldn't know if the 50 refers to 50 distinct events or 50 people reporting the same incident and so that is an important data point I agree Mariah um I was wondering if you have scheduled yet the discussion or the first review of the class siiz guidelines if you'd already gone to the building leaders to present to talk about it I don't think we've scheduled that yet but we can we can get to that soon okay thank you all right are there any additional liaison or other updates seeing none is there any new business all right so I going to move that we meet an executive session pursuant to Massachusetts general laws chapter 30A section 21A for the following purposes purpose three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the Brookline Educators Union be Unit A and per professional unit if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining and litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares and purpose three to discuss strategy with with respect to collective bargaining with the Brookline Educators Union be unit a grievance if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining and litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares and we will uh there a second Andy seconds Natalia your vote Yes Suzanne yes Andy yes Helen yes Sarah yes Valerie yes Steph Yes Mariah yes and I also vote Yes and we will not be returning to open session so good night for those who are watching recording stopped e