[Music] good evening everyone welcome to tonight's school committee meeting it is Thursday April 25th first up on our agenda is Administrative business the consent agenda would someone like to move the consent agenda I'll move it Stephen moves it Suzanne is that a second yes any discussion first seeing none Valerie your vote Yes Mariah Andy yes suzan I'm obstain sorry couldn't get off mute Suzanne yes Helen yes Stephen yes and I also vote Yes all right next up we have possible vote to approve the early GMP budget for the peer school project consigli construction amendment number six for1 13,1 15,19 Helen would you like to talk about this for a little bit I want to move it first want to move it okay then I'll talk yes this is uh I think everybody is aware we did a early package uh for the demolition of the peer school and the good news is it came in 2.6 million under the estimates the uh that money will uh stay within the project in case there there's some uh problems going forward or eventually be returned to the town or not borrowed let's put it that way but right now this is really good news we have also uh I think we have we met since April 12th since the meetings when we got unanimous approval uh have we met maybe not okay have not so we you know there was an issue about the uh article 97 over at the um at the field and putting in the uh geothermal Wells there in order to do that we needed an article 97 um dispensation so to speak oh look at how cute he is sorry I couldn't resist um and um we needed to get unanimous unanimous approval from the Conservation Commission and the parks and Rex commission uh which we got all in one night along with the uh select board voting the um the amendment uh to go forth to town meeting um so we are really on our way we had a public for should I do this now or do you want me to do it when I talk about Capital later when we talk about Capital later but this was uh good introduction this just to do the demolition to take out all the utilities do the Demolition and um and then we'll move forward in the school will move out the end of June um and uh the um contractor will start July 8th and hopefully be taking down some of the building in the fall and winter all right very good so is there a second to Helen's motion Andy seconds Stephen your vote Yes Suzanne was that a question or were you no I was gonna second and it's fine okay so Stephen votes yes Valerie yes Helen yes Mariah yes Andy yes Sarah yes Suzanne yes and I also vote Yes all right so with that we will now move to public comment and our first speaker is Mr Ruby kop he's joining us as a panelist now hi I hope you can hear me all right great thank you um hello school committee members uh my name is Ruby kitov I'm a parent of a senior at Brooklyn High School I've been speaking during public comments at the school committee ever since October 7th advocating for critical changes in our schools related to the rise in anti-Semitism um following a petition that was signed by hundreds of parents in consistent efforts we had a listening session in January at the high school with over 100 Jewish parents and caregivers together with district and high school leaders I believe that David and Suzanne also attended the session as observers the parents essentially asked for three things the first was to bring back the Affinity spaces for Jewish Muslim Students during advisory block at the high school um the second was to enhance the curriculum and provide professional development to combat anti-Semitism and teach about the Holocaust and the third was to build policies and procedures around hate speech I'm very happy that the high school brought back the Endy spaces my daughter says it feels great she's developing bonds with other Jewish students and she really feels like it's a safe space where she can discuss things that she can't really freely talk about in the school um we've been told on professional development that it takes time months if not years we would like to see some progress there as well uh but personally I haven't seen anything concrete yet the third requests around policies and procedures for hate speech is the topic tonight when we asked about the definitions of hate speech what constitutes hate speech and how the district collects reports the answerers was essentially there's no policy what this means as I understand it is that each School leader can decide on their own their local policy they may or may not report it to the administration they may or may not report it to parents there's no reporting mechanism that enables the administration to collect track and report on the number of hate speech incidents within the schools we've heard of the n-word being used inappropriately and we've heard of swastikas being drawn based on rumors between parents the number of swastikas drawn in classrooms has increased dramatically since October 7th but no one knows if that's true or not because it's not being reported or tracked we hear occasional rumors about an email sent to a certain grade at a certain school but we don't know what was done as a result if we want to reduce hate speech within our schools and prevent it we need to find ways to address it Beyond just pure education it is very important to Define policies and procedures for hate speech prevention what constitutes hate speech how to report it and how the administration is going to track these incidents I urge you to adopt a policy and not defer on this critical topic especially during these very tense times thank you very much thank you Mr K next we have Mr hazar delshad um haar you should be seeing a panelist invitation um if you want to looks like you're trying to join now thank you um David maybe we should move to the next uh one second haar's trying to join one more time and haar we can come back to you as well um maybe we should go to the next person David all right our next speaker is Mr David fredman hi thank you so much for having me hope you can hear me okay um my name is Dave Freedman I live on Corey Hill I'm a parent I'm also a lawyer and former first Assistant Attorney General for Massachusetts I want to just pose the question is this if a poison gas were seeping into classrooms and causing vulnerable students to get sick wouldn't we immediately install filters to keep the poison out of the classroom and if we had some filters but then there was one more additional filter that was welld designed to make sure the rest of the poison didn't get in surely we would want to add that too and not doing that would mean not meaning our duty to keep students and teachers safe well hate of All Sorts is poison it directly harms student and teacher Health it interferes with learning and the poison of hate has really exploded in our world in recent years most recently as ruy said we've seen an explosion of anti-Semitism it's a crisis recognized by the FBI the Biden Administration and Congress and advocacy groups have also reported an increase in islamophobia so I strongly urge you to adopt the proposed hate speech policy and I'd like to address briefly two questions that have been raised I think in debate first there are many things that are not covered by exist existing law on bullying or harassment that still amount to hate speech still do great damage and are not protected by the First Amendment the Attorney General's office which I used to help lead has made clear that local districts do need to take affirmative steps to engage and provide guidance on this space in between harassment and bullying now the examples of the policy I think make quite clear that there are things that may not be covered by existing law existing law and bullying or harassment may not cover the student or teacher who says things out loud like Jews control all the media or I hate transgender people there's no such thing or someone who draws swastic is on desks so having a hate speech policy does serve a very important purpose it's an additional filter to keep additional hate out of the classroom now the second thing is the ultimate goal of the policy is prevention and having further Clarity will help prevent hate but some people have wondered about enforcement who's going to Define these hard cases who decides what's hate speech I have two things to say first I think most situations and fact patterns really aren't that hard like the examples in the policy and for cases that do seem close to the line once you have a clear well-crafted policy in place then enforcement can be worked out by the superintendent team working closely with the school committee with Town Council with the AG's office there may be occasional cases that do involve serious hard debate the ACLU has supported um submitted a letter that's raised lots of questions well their job is to spend lots of time on the those very rare cases that end up in court but um as an advocacy organization that that's focused on Free Speech that's what they do based on my own experience and that includes serving as a law clerk at the Supreme Court I'm comfortable that the post hate speech policy does not violate anyone's First Amendment rights or raise serious constitutional issues I believe the important thing is to establish a strong culture and value system and a strong policy and set of rules to make clear that there should not be room for hate in our Public Schools so I thank all of you who have worked in the policy to help address this serious crisis and I thank you very much thank you Mr fredman why don't we try again miss haar delshad hi everyone uh sorry about the technical issues and hello to mini Pearlman very very cute baby thank you for showing us this cute face today um I'm I'm uh here to talk about the hate speech policy um I was really dismayed that we are pushing this policy through it feels very quickly um through kind of being rammed through the system um I was present on multiple subcommittee meetings in which people um including the director of educational Equity showed um incredible um concern about this policy and also had advocated for us to maintain the policies of the bullying and harassment policies um and not enact yet another policy this policy seems very Hasty and it seems not very well thought out um it is build as a prevention policy but it's really unlikely um to be used in just such that way uh it really needs to either be withdrawn or be focused very very very narrowly to make sure that it's not weaponized against uh students these are students who are still learning and it should not be used as a punitive action towards any student in fact the only way that it should be used is to identify patterns and figure out a way that we can address certain biases or certain patterns of hate in the school system and adjust that climate um and most importantly it's really important that we don't rush into any type of anti-bias training most of the anti-bias training is incredibly biased and it is funded by very wellestablished religious and political um machines that promote a certain ideology it's very important that we very specifically cater and pick very specific U neutral um type of uh education faculties and I I really wonder has the beu even been consulted as to this policy if the teachers are going to be on the front line of this where's their input what would they like to be doing uh do they want to be the people that have to report these things so this it's far too early in the process this policy needs a lot more work before it can go live thank you Miss delshad next we have Miss Donna Perry hi thanks so much for having me I appreciate it you can hear me okay David thank you um I'm I'm here today just to speak in support of the hate speech prevention policy I um I certainly agree with AAR that there needs to be a a mechanism to identify patterns at this particular moment in time I'm not sure that mechanism exists I recently requested incident reporting data um for anti-semitic incidents versus substantiated incidents for 2023 versus 2024 um from the district and that data seems to not be readily available though it should be imagine the same is true for the availability of data regarding other types of incidents whether they're islamophobic race-based um related to sexual orientation um and I think that speaks to exactly why this prevention policy is what's needed uh we need to ensure that the type of uh critical information we need regarding data and different patterns in schools and in our system is readily available not only to the district uh and school-based administ Min ministrators but to the school committee to students to parents to caregivers so that we can all as a community truly embody the partnership needed to prevent hate incidents in our schools um I have also spoken to a handful of Educators at Brookline High School and several administrators um in our buildings who feel as though they don't have enough um feel as though they would certainly benefit from having additional um mechanisms which um I believe this hate speech policy provides or hate speech prevention policy I also think that um you know regarding concerns around free speech and the chilling effect of um a prevention policy I would ask that folks think a little bit differently um for just a moment uh in reality speech in our schools is already chilled um I think you've heard this from parents from students if you've talked to any Educators you will have heard them heard this from them as well and so we are already not having the conversations that we need to have um this prevention policy will help us identify hate incidents allow us to intervene much like we would for Ev any other issue with education and not with punishment and hopefully provide a vehicle for us to start having conversations that we're not having at the moment thank you so much for your consideration thank you Miss Perry and with that we are now going to have a first reading of some policies since our public comment was all about hate speech why don't we actually start with that one which is letter B so hate speech prevention policy uh Stephen in particular has done a lot of great work in updating some of the initial drafts uh so even though the subcommittee approved of the first draft that uh everyone saw I think it would make the most sense for us to work off of Steven's most recent draft Betsy would it be possible to pull that up do that right now thank you David do you want me to talk through this yes I'd appreciate that okay hi everyone so um let me walk through this draft let's feel free to interrupt me everyone on the committee um first the beginning David sorry Stephen just as a preface I actually think it was 2019 that well the the AG memo is the the uh memo but the um the the website guidance referenced the December 23 memo and either case I'll I'll look back at it I I'll double check on that so rather than end with a reference to the ago uh guidance I thought we could clarify well let me back up even further previously this was a hate speech policy now this is a hate speech prevention policy we talked about this briefly last time the change in emphasis is that this is not a policy looking to a adjudicate what is acceptable speech and what is hate speech and B it's not looking to um elaborate on what the consequences of our investigations of hate speech are to be that remains left to schools and that's discussed briefly in this policy this policy is chiefly concerned with creating an environment to prevent hate speech and in so doing fulfill an obligation uh set forth by the Attorney General's office saying that we are now legally obliged to prevent and address hate and bias incidents and so we start with that quote um saying that we have to do this in a proactive Manner and that's the uh that's the preamble to this policy that's how it begins um the first change the first substantive change is that uh rather than have it start immediately in the 2425 school year I'm proposing that it start following the completion of initial trainings I don't think it makes sense to have uh reporting take effect immediately upon the start of the school year but rather upon the start of upon the completion of trainings um I'll go on the definition is the same there are changes in the examples um I eliminated what was previously C which was about canards I thought that was duplicative with the with um the previous example which was about stereotypes David if you think it wasn't duplicative and there was something that's lost by eliminating that I'm to to reverting that all right I'm I'm fine with this change okay um I took Val's uh comment that we should we should call we should we should refer to transgender people not transexuals that's a previous term and now a slur U moving on to education here's where there are some very substantive changes I think um the most substantive changes I added C another carve out which is the use of what is otherwise considered hate speech by people within groups against whom that speech would typically be directed as hate speech but when uttered by them in a non-hateful manner which I've described as self-deprecating familiar friendly or reappropriated it is not to be considered hate speech so this I think would constitute a gray area the example I gave is the use of the nword colloquially in African-American vernacular English I also elaborated the uh teacher-led discussions example and broadened it so rather than swastikas in Buddhism I'm I I'm describing swastikas in Nazi Germany so or in Buddhism or as religious symbols or in use by contemporary white supremacist organizations so the point is if they are discussed um by teachers within a historical context that's a legitimate discussion of hate speech and in this case hate speech is uh iconography so that's B so moving on to what is now for vigilance I deleted the mandated reporter reporter approach for two reasons there was an approach in here that stated that if you o I'm sorry let me back up one huge step um one of the big reasons that this policy was drafted in the first place was after discussion with the office of educational Equity we were looking to identify a policy Gap what would what would hate speech what would a hate speech prevention policy do that isn't already being done by our bullying discrimination and harassment policies so just to be really clear hate speech um unlike bullying can happen once hate speech unlike discrimination um cannot necessarily impede access to education cannot create an does not necessarily create an an unequal environment for learning so if you for instance over here a being uttered on campus grounds once in a way that would not have uh otherwise impeded your access to education that could be hate speech though not discrimination and not bullying and that was previously not covered by our policies the reason I'm bringing this up here is one I'm trying to express the possible slot for this policy and two I want to I want to try to fairly describe why the mandated mandated reporter approach was described in the first place in the first place the policy described an approach where if you heard it if you see something say something if you heard it you had to say something you had to report it I don't think that's the right approach for two reasons one is I think um that's not the culture at BHS there's no Honor Code there um and I think having something run against that culture would be a poor fit and two I think uh uh that would create a possible chilling atmosphere around hate speech rather than a very visualant atmosphere I think there are other ways to to promote an atmosphere of preventing hate speech um that's the vigilance section should I stop here and see if there are comments or should I just keep going I feel like I'm talking forever does anyone have any questions for Stephen up to this point I have one on the training and the other first page on training let me let me keep going then because education is going to cover training is it going to cover the time frame in which that has to happen to kick in the policy because that's my question no but let me just cover what it is and let's talk about it um if that's all right with you Val yeah I want to make sure we're talking about the same education I'm I'm not talking about yeah know that's okay let's do this but I I do want to have a discussion on when this gets implemented so okay okay the so I I was a no vote on the subcommittee because I thought this wasn't ready I I'm introducing this with still with ambivalence about the policy and a large reason for that is the education section I I I feel like it's very important to get this right for and what what specifically I want to make sure we get right is who being trained what are we using to do the training and who is doing the training so um I I added a line saying that we're committed to critical thinking skills as the foundation of distinguishing between acceptable and hate speech it's not all about making the distinction between the line it's also about promoting thinking about what hate speech is and then I added a and b so this I'm really Ed in the committee's feedback I don't know whether you'll think this is a good idea or not and I'm very open to anyone's feedback so section A which nobody has seen before is and I'll just read this to prevent the introduction of bias into hate speech trainings PSP will establish a hate speech prevention Advisory Group The Advisory Group will be composed of Brooklin community members who represent diverse ethnic racial religious National sexual identity gender identity and disability identity groups The Advisory Group will be called upon to advise the office of educational equity and the office of teaching and learning to review new training materials in curriculum to ensure their neutrality fairness and inclusiveness B to further prevent the introduction of bias into trainings and materials PSB will make every effort when hiring outside groups to work with organiz when hiring outside groups come to work with organizations with strictly educational missions without other advocacy objectives so this is my effort to ensure that the education section uh works with neutral resources works with neutral organizations um but has not I think yet identified exactly how this is going to roll out there's no how in here yet I might as well just finish this off because I'm almost done uh data reporting is largely unchanged I added a line about restorative justice rather than discipline that's not that doesn't mean that we're only going to engage in restorative justice um I'm sorry I I added restorative justice to the line ofb discipline just saying that there's an array of consequences um and I and I restored what was there in an earlier draft about remediation because I think there needs to be a state that remediation is relevant to this policy I just copied and pasted what was there in the first draft which is that it will be left to schools it will be tailored to the to the instance and it shall uh be aligned to the code of conduct so those are the changes that I made from the subcommittee's last since the subcommittee's vote so I'll stop there all right any other questions or comments from anyone in the committee suzan yeah thank you David thank you Stephen for this work uh I am wondering uh as you talked about the advisory committee if who has been on the advisory of of this of this particular policy have we gotten input as one of our speakers suggested uh from teachers from administrators have we heard from t Council about this uh I'm just curious I I have spoken with um some community members including some of the commenters I thought uh hajar's suggestion that we speak with the be on this was a very good suggestion and we have not um and we have not spoken with Town Council to my knowledge yeah I guess I would encourage us to do that um I also say that I have not spoken with Claire I haven't spoken with with you about it and Jody haven't spoken with you about it either reference both of your offices so this remains an early draft in my view okay thanks Sarah I've been present for all the conversations on this but I um I'm sorry to speak up not to offer um expertise but to ask you about your exper expertise as I haven't ever served on the policy committee could you walk me through any of you not just Stephen where where are the parts that you implemented into the writing of this that you thought that it would really like actually happen you know what when you draft a policy how do you make sure that it's not just something that stays in a file somewhere but it actually has impact and so to answer that I was wondering if you could point at any times that you've tried to use some sort of mechanism or strategy in order to make sure that there will be impact from this policy I yield to you David so I drafted the first version of this and there was a reporting section with certain dates that District staff would be expected to present to school committee its findings once a year to help inform us on the direction to go in so that's one deliverable that's fairly common in a lot of our policies my son's very talkative so perhaps someone else can add in some more super helpful thank you I say Sarah to me there are two objectives of this policy one is to Foster an environment in which hate speech occurs less frequently the second is to gather concrete data around the occurrence of hate speech in our district so that we can make decisions around policy decisions uh um decisions pertaining to the consequences of events of hate speech and so on those to me are the chief objectives of this policy so we'll know if we achieved our goal if we see a decline in hate speech over time we don't have a baseline so in some ways it'll be difficult to measure the former but the latter will at least help us start to better measure occurrences of hate speech I think um Claire and Christina have already done a good job starting to upgrade our mechanism for for collecting data I I thought the job that they did at the last e meeting was agreed showed impressive progress in what we as a district have done previously I know that doesn't fully answer your question but that's I'm just telling you how I view what this policy is doing Aller thanks David um I I do think Stephen we need some dates in here I I think that the reporting is important like in all of our or most of our policies having a reporting mechanism back to school committee um and also on the the question I raised earlier I I worry that if we don't have some measure of time leaving it to when training is complete is pretty vague and um doesn't really give us a sense of when we're going to start implementing policy Zan thank you David so um a couple of things um yeah I know in training I feel like we asked for training in a lot of things in a lot of areas and they're all good uh but realistically I would guess that this training would be a part of a harassment uh discrimination bullying training I mean I so I would encourage us to think about that because it we can't we can't put on training for all our staff in each of the area separately we just don't have that kind of time and we need to tie that together for them so that would certainly be one suggestion and totally agree with that by the way Suzanne I think in the future I would love to see that actually those policies be tied together as well yeah yeah I there just just a lot of overlap unfortunately or it's just the nature of what they are and then the other is on the report Reporting System I just I'm not sure how that's going to work who does the reporting I think did you say there it would be a public reporting or be a place for the public to report as well where would that go and then who would follow up on that on the investigations if it were from so could families report is that the idea or students could report so so I don't think the reporting system should be any different from our current reporting system for bullying harassment and discrimination I I let me let me say two things I think that the the reporting system should be very user friendly should be one simple URL with a poster attached to it with a QR code and that we don't we should have a drop down that's optional if you want to specify the form of discomfort that that the student experienc or the teacher or the person experiences but that someone on the back end could fill that in so we don't have to burden the the person who suffered the abuse with with knowing how to make that distinction that that's my view of what their reporting mechanism should look like and I think Claire and Christina did a really nice job describing how this is being digitized and rolled out in the future but I still think we have a ways to go with upgrading this reporting mechanism I just think that hate speech needs to be ruled into it should not be a separate reporting mechanism yeah that's what I be very simple and direct yeah and that we should actually speak to those administrators and and people who have maybe guance councel of social workers who have been helping with the filing of harassment and bullying uh incident reports we could learn from them what what they learn what works and what doesn't work um so that would be my suggestion thank you Ellen well thank you for your work on this um I one of the things that um I think I heard you said but I'm not sure is that we haven't really included our uh staff so much on this uh and I think that's critical I agree they're the ones we're going to expect to implement if we if we do this um I think it's really critical to have the input and for us to hear what that input is from the the different staff uh certainly our our senior staff and some some principles you know who may have opinions about it that would be one secondly in the past we've usually run um uh policies by Town Council just to make sure that we're not stepping on or doing something illegal or whatever uh so I I would recommend doing that too you can certain C ly run this by Town Council and also make it available for staff to review for input I agree yeah I I think I would I would be more proactive in terms of staff and speaking with them uh about this to address a comment by Suzanne about the specifics of the reporting often times when we draft policies we're told leave it somewhat flexible so that District staff is going to promulgate corresponding procedures that we should not be too detailed and too specific in uh dictating essentially to central office how to handle this that the policy is to set more of a tone and show where the school committee's values are and what it is that we are looking for macro level and then leave it to District staff to implement it so I think that's also reflected in this language here although I do agree with salary that it would be helpful to um have specific dates return just so that we make sure we're moving in the right direction anyone else can I ask the committee pending feedback from the administration and others what's your reaction to the idea of an Advisory Group um composed of the community of community Representatives that is available to I I know it's sometimes my perhaps a weakness of mine to want to create many committees and advisory groups and the school committee has rightfully checked me on this weakness so I want to I want to ask you to check me again do you think this is what do you think of this idea we're not going to see Charlotte so S I think Susan you're not on mute um I I my interest here is in is in leveraging community voice to help ensure that we aren't introducing bias when we're looking to prevent it and knowing that this is a very uh very volatile difficult space I thought this might be the sort of place where an Advisory Group might be an asset to Administration I'm personally very supportive of that St because I think it also provides an important check in terms of public buyin regarding the education that's taking place and the types of materials being used as long as the committee has an understanding that their function is purely advisory and not making the ultimate decision because sometimes that's a line that can be blurred and I think that's where uh District leadership will occasionally bristle at having all of these committees but in terms of having public buyin and participation and engagement I'm always supportive of that Dr Fortune I think this is something I would really want to go through with you I wouldn't want to impose this on your office without thoroughly vetting it with you thanks Zan then then Sarah yeah I just I would just have some qu hard questions about implementation and creation of such aard board or committee or group I guess it is Advisory Group I mean what it would be under Dr Fortuna's office is that or is it Dr given and and who would convene the group who would select the group who would convene it how often would they meet I mean and I know those are the in the weeds but that's that's where something like this gets stuck because it's a lot of details and someone has to attend to those and I'm just curious what your vision is even for that um I don't have in the weed's vision for it so that would have to be worked out well we typically do is have a school Committee Member sort of run the task force group or The Advisory Group and then serve as a liaison to District staff about the group's findings also uh we have an application process usually for anyone who's interested in serving on a particular committee and then we try as a committee to select a representative body uh by different demographics so I imagine we would do something similar here Sarah I feel the need to say the thing that um I think is not being said right now is is a group that would be completely balanced going to make mean that there won't be a decision taken and will this hold up the work so I just wanted to say like is there um are are there ways of doing training that are out there that would make everybody happy like do you do you really realistically think that this group could come to a consensus I don't see it as having an executive function I see it as sourcing the possible objections so that so that the executive making bodies which I think are OTL and oee would be aware of possible objections and could make a decision with the full knowledge of what uh what objections would be so we we wouldn't be caught unaware that say a a potential consultancy was funded by an advocacy organization um in a way that we weren't aware previously that that's my vision of this of an advocacy organization like that I think the space is crowded with complexity and I and I think I mean I think of all of us Dr Fortuna and Claire are more aware of these complexities than anyone else but I think it's probably a full-time job just keeping tabs on who is playing what role in the political and religious advocacy space so I think a group like this would do a lot to keep to keep us well informed on on uh to what extent there's on what might be the most neutal training materials facilitators and so on for any particular curriculum how I see it that really helps me understand what you mean by advisory so that's very helpful okay Helen well just as a suggestion you may want to make this group an ad hoc group rather ad hoc Advisory Group is fine that with their purpose to review new training materials and curriculum and so then the office of educational equity and the office of teaching learning can call on them but that's what I meant so I think Advisory Group has a more permanent sound to me as opposed to ad hoc committee thank you I'll take that suggestion yeah I mean you know it's I'm just throwing it out there Billy for for people it it helps to well yeah Stephen do you have any objection to putting some firm dates back in beyond all June 20th reporting okay I did I take them out I thought I saw them somewhere if I did then I'm happy to RT them the only thing I don't want to do is put dates in that precede the completion of training so I would make I would I would want to make sure that that aligns with what administration feels comfortable with well Val I see that we actually do have dates so the hate speech prevention policiy shall take effect immediately upon passage of this policy by the school committee the protocols and annual report Provisions will take effect during the 2425 school year following completion of initial trainings so while it doesn't have a specific date it does say would happen sometime during next school year do you want some that's more specific than that no but I thought Stephen was saying that he removed that so maybe I just missed it I I thought Stephen you're saying that you removed that so that it was just oh no in the sorry just in the introduction I said that this policy will take effect um the the report the annual report Provisions oh I think I made a I think I made a mess of a sentence the last sentence before definitions doesn't really make sense now I said the annual report Provisions will take during the school year following the completion of trainings so let me fix that no no no the protocols would take effect following the completion of the initial trainings so you can't really follow protocols unless you know how to do them so previously you'd have to follow the protocols immediately upon the start of the school year that was the change I was that's the only change I was referring to regarding dates okay I mean I think as long as the training is within the school year and I think as Suzanne said if it is part of a a sort of Suite of training that we're doing it shouldn't be too challenging to get completed in that time frame Suzanne you I just I'm I'm not trying to get stuck on one thing but I do think uh training of all I'm not sure who would training all staff um that's a lot of people that's a lot of training and so again we should just kind of think through uh what that timing would look like I mean I think you'd have to check with OTL or or Equity office of equity to see what they think that might look like as a time frame you know we talking about every every staff member I mean that's a large large group um and and so you know maybe maybe it's easily doable but I just think we need to think that through a little bit if we really thinking about when this might take effect are we not I'm sorry ignorance here are we not already training everyone in bullying discrimination and harassment though I I guess I assume this would live alongside those trainings yeah I don't I would I would have to check how much training we do every year I mean what whether it's a reminder and or review or whether it's an initial training I mean those so those are the things you have to think about when you when I think about when I think about training that's one thing if you've been trained initially and this is just a review so that you know you remember where everything is and you go aha yeah that's right but if this is the first time you're being trained in this that's usually more in depth and so that I mean that might not be an an auditorium full of a thousand people that might be very differently done it might be done in the local schools might be might have to think about release time I mean I don't know these are just things I'm thinking about when I think about training understood thank you [Music] Suzanne all right anyone else Andy yeah I I think um I I do share what I take to be Suzanne's concerns about just how unwieldy this Advisory Group would be whether we call it an Advisory Group or uh an ad hoc committee or whatever I mean I'm just imagining trying to pull together you know determine the membership of a truly representative and inclusive group convene them at appropriate times you know Focus the discussion well uh digest the results and then make sure that they feed into District actions in the appropriate way I mean seems to me to require the level of effort that we might put into say a superintendent search um and I I worry that this could quickly get out of hand you know or because it's so difficult that it just would come nothing I'm a little less concerned about that Andy because we've done this with sustainability we've done this with school building names we have done this in other areas and often people exess we've done it with program reviews people Express an interest they fill out an application and then we choose a membership that seems diverse based on the interest so I I think it's doable but I I respect how others might feel otherwise and a difference here would be just the level of contentiousness of the subject matter that the committee is called on to address I mean yeah we do have some arguments over school renaming but probably nothing on the level that we would see here we could consider this an asynchronous ad hoc committee as well where we solicit the input of the same um this group via email for instance right that could work where there's a membership but they don't necessarily meet with each other it's just the same people that we go to for feedback yeah I Andy I agree it's a legitimate concern I haven't thought that level of detail all right so this was the first read uh some actionable steps we'll make a few changes based upon what we've heard today we will send it Town Council for his review we'll also uh solicit feedback from staff and then we'll have a conversation about it again on May 2nd and we do have another policy to look at for first reading can I suggest not May May 2nd the next sorry you like it soon I think let let's can we spend a little more time getting uh feed high level feedback all right Helen yeah I just wanted to let people know I need to leave at 6 for the Zab meeting they're going to be discussing our article one on geothermal Wells and supporting it and so they've asked me to to be there so just want to let everybody know why I'm why I'm leaving uh I can try and come back if you're still going at it but we were supposed to finish at 6:15 I think we'll still be able to so so we only have one other substantive item which is first reading of the assignment of students to schools revised policy the policy subcommittee unanimously recommended that we do a pilot run of the portion that would say that students can remain in their original School even when they move to another part of Brooklyn and we would try that on a trial basis essentially for a year see if that becomes unwieldy in terms of our enrollment any questions or comments or further context Zan yeah there was just uh I there's at least one place maybe others where we talk about parents and I'm wondering if we might substitute families or Guardians in there okay we can do that Helen once more my question is have we run this by the staff who would be involved with doing this we have since October and we haven't really gotten a response so I think that's why we've decided to at least the subcommittee decided to move along and try this as a pilot and another reason for that is no matter what data would be provided to us we would never have an answer as to how many families would utilize this given that it hasn't been an option to date it's always been ultimately super intendance discretion and so this would create a new landscape so no existing data would really inform as to whether more families would make a request for a student to attend a school that's in a neighborhood outside of their uh home District or buffer zone anyone else any other suggestions for modified language is the committee okay with trying this as a pilot for next year looks like we are first reading right this is just a first reading we're not voting on it yet but I'm just wondering whether we want to change any of the language around before uh we solicit feedback from the broader community I I once more would like to get feedback from the superintendent on this okay all right next up then we have an FY 25 budget update I don't know if Mariah or Dr given you'd like to provide that is Susan here I'm sorry I can't she is she is okay Susan would you like to give the update or would you like me to give a brief update um either way is fine we have a meeting tonight um at last week's advisory Council um our budget proposal was received well they had a few questions uh they would like us to provide some answers to tonight and we're looking forward to engaging in a conversation with them in uh in a about an hour so um CIP uh Helen and I and um Mariah uh crafted a a memo and sent it off to the board of Selectmen to ask for their support for our uh CIP uh requests for this year um and and uh again that was um a very productive meeting the board of Selectmen will be um sharing some concerns that we share mutually with the advisory committee uh they will be discussing our Capital Improvements um at the advisory committee meeting tonight as well so I don't know if there's any additional uh updates you'd like to include Mariah or Helen nope that was perfect for my end well they may be voting on The CIP and part of it they have reduced our um that what we have asked for for the Baldwin School so that it um is not will not bring the building up to the Quality that we would want and it would be great if anybody here can join the meeting that would be terrific on the school committee uh it's tonight and they'll be discussing it at between 7 and eight what was the rationale given for the reduction Helen I sent out an email the that they wrote up I I don't have time now to go through the whole rationale okay I'll just go look for page five of the email that they sent out giving the rationale and their conditions of appropriation it's important to read that I will thank you okay thanks thank you everybody all right thank you anything else on the update uh Susan or Mariah perhaps you want to share the good news that we got out of town School partnership I didn't attend Town School partnership so I don't have all the details all right so we are going to have approximately another $50,000 in our budget for next year based upon some new calculations all right and oh and also uh I've been reminded that regarding the School attendance policy we would be looking at K through 8 not including beep that was something else that we had discussed so we just want to make that clear is that okay with everyone can you explain how beep would even be impacted by this given it's not a geographic assignment to begin with because some of our K8 schools do have beep classrooms so we're not sure that we want to commit ourselves to saying that because a student is in beat ATR for instance therefore that student gets to stay ATR for the duration of the academic career there I see understood thank you all right so with that is there any new business David this isn't your last meeting is it no one more next week okay um David we do also have the um Mo MOA ask me Moa oh that's right my apologies so we had questions at the last meeting regarding the asme Moa for a 12-month full-time Food Service driver and we had some questions about that Dr given could you perhaps clarify what this contract is for and what it particularly covers absolutely so um for the past several years our drivers have um who are also kind of like like util workers for the food service department um have uh had school year contracts and then uh of course we do provide um Food Service uh programming for the community during the summer and so one of our drivers was receiving a second contract to work during the summer um so what this Mo MOA um allows us to do is instead of issuing one con or two contracts that we would be uh issuing one contract since the employee has been basically working year round anyways so that's really um why we're bringing this forward for your consideration any questions for Dr Givens regarding the contract seeing none I would like to move that we approve the asme contract for 12-month driver is there a second Stephen can I just ask a question I don't remember all the questions from last time but I thought there were more questions about it like is someone in the role now which I think we just answered I know that was one of them but were there other questions from last time I think there had been a question about whether this is something that we contemplated in our budget yes it is okay thank you were there other questions that came up did I recall I think it was those two whether it's something we have now and whether we can afford it whether we planned it in our budget okay thank you all right Stephen your vote Yes Suzanne yes Andy yes Valerie yes Sarah yes Mariah yes and I also vote Yes all right now we get to new business is there any new business seeing none we are aent right good night everyone