##VIDEO ID:bOUQCJCurQw## [Music] in [Music] in [Music] bet see is somebody speaking we can't hear them if they are no not yet we haven't uh sort of turned our mics can you hear me now I can thank [Music] I'd like to start by moving the consent agenda uh before uh any comments or questions about that do I have a second uh thank you Stephen um yeah any comments or questions on the consent agenda I would like to point out that the um the change order for the Driscoll school project is actually um a credit for $119,800 Helen do you you want to explain what that's about figure out it's just for they did they were going to do some work on testing of Windows and they didn't have to do it so all right all to the good um any questions or comments on the consent agenda before we vote occasionally we do get um credits for things throughout on building projects okay seeing none let's move to the vote uh Jesse hi uh Sarah yes Steven yes Helen yes Carolyn yes uh Val yes Mariah yes and uh we have another member remote Suzanne yeah yes and I vote Yes as well um next we have the student report welcome back K it's great to see you again and anyone who happen not to notice uh kieran's oped in August for the Boston Globe should definitely check it out they were dueling editorials about Biden's proposal to term limit Supreme Court Justices very cool so Kieran will we always are you identical or not we are so we won't know who is cut here the two of you switch like a switch at the [Laughter] end uh but just as I begin um I just want to preface um my remarks by saying that this is my first official meeting um as the um student rep for the school committee and I am beyond excited and very grateful to have this opportunity um so just um I want to talk a little bit about what September has been thus far to students at BHS um so it's been an exciting time returning to school um returning from our summer breaks um the school year began September 3rd um 8:00 a.m. for nth graders the rest of us were fortunate to come in a little bit later at 10:00 a.m. so we did have that opportunity to sleep in um and all students had sort of advisory in the mornings um and one classwide assembly through the week um where they would address specific classwide concerns um that they had you know I can tell you that as a senior for example our um assembly addressed College preparing for college um ensuring that we were still having a non-stressful student year um as a senior um and really you know just kind of easing our way back into the school year um after the the summer break um and uh attached on the screen um are the schedules that have been implemented um for BHS students um which were developed by BHS administrators um so BHS uh currently has implemented a few new policies and continued some policies that they began last year on personal electronic devices as well as attendance um so what you see on this uh screen here is the tardy policy that BHS has been continuing with for the upcoming school year um so four tardies will result in a student detention um that will be monitored by the teacher who class they've been um late to or tardy to four times um really as you can see the progression of the punishments um for being tardy get worse and worse um you know so if any students are watching don't be late four times because you may wind up in a detention um but BHS is also implementing this year late uh left to class and super tardy policies so teachers right now have the ability to Mark students um absent present tardy in terms of their attendance um but BHS is is also trying to implement two new features of attendance one is called left class and one is called super tardy um so if a student arrives to class more than 9 minutes late they are marked as a super tardy um which for all intents and purposes the same as an absence um and teachers can also Mark students as left class um if they have left the class you know to use the bathroom per se or just to walk around the school um for more than 10 minutes um so these are policies that BHS is you know trying out um this year they were not implemented last year um but you know we're going to see how this does uh how this does um I can tell you that you know I've already had some friends who have had a little bit of run-ins with with these new policies um but you know for the most part I think that you know students have adapted to them um and are you know beginning to to live with them in their High School experience um the new personal electronic device policy is one that's being continued from last year um which is a similar progression um as the of the attendance policy that BHS has um it except that many students um are now um sort of learning in classrooms where teachers have implemented phone caddies um I can tell you that last year I had no teacher who you know had a phone caddy like a little cubby where we would put our phones at the beginning of the day um that's almost virtually widespread now um I think most of my teachers if not all have some sort of method by which that they can collect their phones um or collect our phones at the beginning of class um and again the progression is similar where a fourth violation will result will result in an email home to parents as well as an email to a students's administrators Deans guidance counselors um where teachers will work with students to try and make plans to sort of address the continued use of personal electronic devices um it's worth noting that personal electronics um you know they typically mean phones Apple watches um in some in some cases they can mean computers um if they're not authorized during class time um you know so for example if a if a teacher is you know uh giving notes to students students are expected to write that down without their computer you know they may assign a warning um if a student has their computer out and is doing non-class related activities on it and um a little bit of on a happier note um on Wednesday the BHS um student body kind of celebrated its annual Club Fair um there was a I want to say record turnout in the number of student organizations student clubs that were um at the club Fair this year that were promoting themselves um we had more than 140 different student organizations that really truly reflect sort of the rich diversity that the student body has to offer um you know we saw activities ranging from activist activities um you know we saw ethnically related clubs such as um the Latin X club which is um shown on the screen here um we saw we saw advocacy clubs activism clubs that's the students for nuclear disarmament among others um you know we saw sort of career oriented clubs you know I for example um Captain the mock trial team um so again if any students are watching and have not signed up for the mock trial team we would love to have you um you know please take those words seriously um but really they kind of reflect just the sort of PL panoply of of you know different experiences that BHS students have um and sort of again the rich you know kind of diversity that BHS students bring um you know in their personal lives what they bring to BHS um you know many many different clubs this year 140 came out and you know BHS students really came out in full full force to kind of support to kind of sign up to promote their own clubs um and that was you know particularly noteworthy given that I think last year there were just about 60 clubs that came to the club fair so this was a notable increase um in the number of students that turned out and you know it's it's really I think um a good thing for BHS going forward that you know we have so many students who are taking leadership who are taking initiative you know to kind of make change that they want to see at the high school and to you know offer support to students at the high school um but it's a really really great thing that we have so many students who are coming out being at the club Fair and really just expressing what they want to see at the high school and so that is it for my student report um it continues to be a busy month in September um and I'm you know very excited to see what the rest of the month has in store for VHS all right thanks very much Kieran uh it's great to have you this year and yeah any comments or questions K I could so I think it's a great idea for the Char charity policy however to get from the fourth floor of 20 to tapen to the fourth floor yeah how long does that take and how long do you have between classes so for me at least um so we have seven minutes between periods um I think that the times in which I've had to travel from the fourth floor of the tap into the fourth floor of the high school um it's it's not always often because the fourth floor of the high school is reserved for SS I know that um but I think that you know for me the times that I've had to do it it has certainly taken all seven minutes um if not more yeah um so um you know students are or teachers have discretion you know over the the tardy policy um you know so I think on a case-by Case basis you know if a student comes to them and says you know I have to travel all the way from the fourth floor of the tap in building to the fourth floor the fourth floor of the UAB to the four yeah know exactly I mean I think that teachers will use their discretion um you know and and make distinction sort of between you know students who have to commute um you know between buildings versus students who are kind of just you know languishing in the hallways and and come a little bit late to class because as a result great yes go ahead could you share the list of the 140 uh clubs with us um yes just by email um yeah yeah so I can definitely share that with you guys um it's also available on the um BHS Brookline uh k225 website um so I think that Mr Meyer our head of school um has also recently listed it there but I can definitely email you guys that that would be great yeah thank you Stephen um thanks for that it's really great to meet you Karen uh I just wanted to ask you more generally so I've been here for this is my fourth year we've had two really wonderful student reps so far I'm expecting you'll be the third no pressure but I'm just wondering if there are any particular topics that you're looking forward to covering or if there's any um ways of going about representing the student body that you're excited about uh undertaking as a student rep um I mean yes so I think that you know I was particularly motivated um you know to to run for the student rep position um um because of really like you mentioned the wonderful job that we've had um from Claire a few years back from Laura last year and the year before um and so you know just kind of seeing how a student could actually advocate for other students to you know position of power like the school committee um you know which is is quite different than you know for example the VHS Student Government the VHS student council um you know so I think that I was really just motivated to you know kind of be an advocate for students for students to be able and to you know feel comfortable coming to me you know saying like hey I have a concern I've noticed for example um you know we've had I remember last year we had problems with with the elevator so students with you know physical disabilities we having trouble getting up to the fourth floor in many cases or other floors um and so you know kind of just being that person that people can go to that people can feel comfortable going to um you know with with you know deeply personal concerns and saying you know I trust you to represent me and my interests to the school committee um and so I think that that's really you know what what I have gotten out of it so far um what I definitely want to get out of it so far um you know in terms of topics that I'd like to see addressed you know I'm kind of just playing it by ear almost um you know seeing you know what comes before the school committee I think you know if the last year taught us anything it's that you know we unforeseeable events you know may come to dominate an educational experience um and so you know I am you know game for whatever you know comes the school committee's way um and you know always trying to solicit you know student feedback student pers perspectives on any issues that come before the school committee that's always going to be my number one priority and if any remote members have questions or comments please just speak up because I can't see all of your hands at the moment all right seeing none um thank you very much Karan look forward to many more uh many more reports from you this year um next we have the superintendent report and for this uh We've blocked off a whole hour because uh there are two very weighty pieces here first is the introduction of new staff um and the second is an update on school opening good evening Brookline it's great to be with you tonight I think the way that we're going to do this is um I'm going to go through the slide deck introduce all the new staff members and then those that are present with us um I'll call them to make um any remarks and then allow the committee to uh engage with them that way I think that's how we'll try to proceed all right with that the first up we want to introduce to the community Mr Jose Albuquerque as our new director of operations Joe brings over a decade of experience in operations and Facilities Management fiscal Administration financial analysis staff management workflow optimization project management and operational and capital budgeting joeo is a Masters in Business Administration from suuk University and a bachelor's in civil engineering from Northeastern welcome Joe next up we have Sarah Apollo Ladner Apollo this is a change in position for her Sarah has been with BHS wimp th house for 14 years having served as a math teacher for 11 years before moving into the role of program coordinator in the last three years Sarah has led the move of Winthrop house onto the BHS campus and continues to navigate the adolescence Mental Health crisis as director she will help establish a pilot middle school for Wom winr House program at Drisco next up this is a change in position Dr Briana Brown as a high school science curriculum coordinator Dr Brown has been teaching biology and AP environmental science at BHS since 2010 she has previously taught undergraduates at bu and LEL University Dr Brown has developed several new science courses for BHS serves on the BHS legislature and is a member of the BHS student interv ion team next up we welcome Mr Alvin Cooper as our director of Human Resources Alvin brings 30 years of educational leadership staff development and Human Resources experience he has served as Executive Director of Human Resources assistant principal and classroom teacher he worked with the Boston Public Schools as a senior recruitment manager overseeing recruitment hiring and support for 137 schools at that time School leaders and central office staff next up this is a change um in title we welcome Margaret Eberhart as the principal she held the title interim principal for two years and so she's now um been named principal of beep she has been an early childhood educator for 25 plus years this year will be her seventh year working at be a graduate of teachers College in St Lawrence un University Margaret hold an Masters in curriculum in instruction and a BS in biology she has served on the Milton school committee for six years and was a member and president of the Milton foundation for Education next up this is an introduction to the community because Cassandra galinos has been with us um this past school year but she missed uh she wasn't on board at the time uh of our beginning of the year Cassandra brings over a decade of experience in administ ative support and has demonstrated her expertise across various sectors including nonprofit higher education and private experienced in improving operational efficiency project coordination and managing executive Communications Cassandra helps coordinate the Department's initiatives um and support of the district's growth and she is the executive assistant for the office of administration and finance next up we have Mr Neil gka again uh a name that we should be familiar with um Neil has been with us a portion of last year he brings 5 years of experience in marketing content creation and Communications across various sectors originally from Mumbai India he has lived in Boston for the last three years he completed his Master's degree in digital media management from North Eastern University last year where he also worked as a student employee in multiple marketing and Communications roles next up and name again you in face you're familiar with is Christina Hernandez who's our assistant director of educational Equity Christina comes with uh much experience working with students of historically marginal marginalized backgrounds and multilingual Learners besides leading Deb initiatives at the James w henan k school in Boston she has taught kindergarten students uh in the sheltered English immersion program and worked as an ESL or an English as a second language specialist again christe has been doing great work here in the district um as well Diane Johnson again a name that uh you should be familiar with as our Director of Finance Diane has been serving public education since 2004 in various capacities of school business administration she has had previous Financial experience at the WGBH Educational Foundation Diane is an active member of the Massachusetts Association of business officials where she served on the committee that worked to increase state aid to school districts new to us is Meg McCulla and our as a registration and enrollment specialist Meg has a ba in English and Communications from tulan University and a master's in teaching English as a second language and Applied Linguistics from AA State University she has taught English as a second language for 10 years around the world and in the Boston area most recently she has worked as a graduate programs administrator at tus University next up is Melvin merlos again the name some of us may be familiar with as our Employee Engagement spe specialist Melvin brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in the human resources and talent acquisition space he specializes in creating a seamless onboarding experience checking in at various points to the identi uh identify areas to improve supporting existing employees with Lane changes and exit interviews among other things Kelsey Nash is our new office manager uh in the office of student services Kelsey has daed many hats while working at the PSB for the last seven years she started out in the sperber education center working at with the K science and World Language um departments this was followed by 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 um over at the high school and Kelsey joined us um shortly after lender retired last year Ashley O Sullivan is our head clerk for Grants Ashley has had a strong focus on community throughout her career she started off in the private sector with experience in property management and marketing and has since transitioned to the public SE sector at the town of Brookline she has worked in the central Administration office for the DPW and more recently as a finance assistant in the treasurer's office so we welcome Ashley to the public schools of Brookline Christina pentius again is a name that some of us may be familiar with she started last year as well Christina brings seven years of experience in Talent acquisition her role to attract new talent and guide them through the interview and onboarding processes having recently transitioned from the private to the public sector she is excited to apply her skills and knowledge and making a positive impact at the public schools of Brooklyn Tamara Gonzalez is our new executive assistant in Medco originally from New York City Tammy is a proud first generation Dominican ameran and Spanish speaker she has been a teacher a parah for uh Boston Public Schools as well as the public schools of Brookline as a prep n Alum meco's mission statement is very near and dear to her heart Kareem ISB is a BH BHS Medco coordinator born in Alexandria Egypt but raised in Brooklyn Kareem is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a dual bachelor's degree in political science and history and a minor in Black studies and has a master's degree from Boston University School of Education he is currently pursuing a master's degree in principal lure in educational leadership at Clark Atlanta University Ellen Nyan is new to the PSB she is the new executive chef Ellen comes to PSB with 10 years of experience as a chef and food service director in school Mills prior to working in school Mills services she has worked as a chef in health care several restaurants catering and as a private Chef she specializes in scratch cooking student engagement local procurement and farm to school V uh iret uh perin is our new food services coordinator he comes to PSB with over 20 years of experience in the Food Services industry from 2015 to 2024 he served as a kitchen manager assistant director and eventually director of food and nutrition services at Salem public schools and last but not least we introduce Rachel craigan again this is a new role for her um she was interim Early Childhood um program coordinator and she has now uh been made um the title of interm has been removed from her Rachel has uh be began her career in PSB in 2006 as a special educator at beep in 2022 she accepted a new position as the interim Childhood Program Coordinator which uh which transitioned into a permanent role in 2024 Rachel has a degree in social justice from umast amher and two master's degrees one in special education from Cambridge College and the other in organizational management from indicot college and with that is the our introduction our slate of new and returning folks to PSB and I see we have a few of them online with us so I'm going to um offer them the opportunity to make uh one minute or less remarks because we have a lot of them and then allow the committee so I'll have everyone uh go through and then we'll have the committee engage with them so first up uh let's go with um now my screen is moving iret let's go with you Mr pin IR we can't hear you not yet let's try let's uh we'll we'll come back to you IR uh Joe let's try you hi good evening evening everyone um just wanted to say thank you so much for a warm welcome since I've started uh from the school committee leadership and the school um Community as a whole uh I'm very excited to be uh the director of operations and working closely and hope and will be collaborating with all of you some sometime down the line on projects initiatives uh to grow the district um and on an operation facilities Transportation U Services perspective thank you so much I appreciate it thank you Joe next up Christie let's go to you Christy Hernandez hi everyone um I've had the pleasure of working with I think everybody on the committee yes starting last year and I'm excited to keep doing so this year I know we are all here to serve kids to the best of our abilities and I'm really excited to pursue that work together thank you Christie Meg hi everyone um it's nice to be here um I started in April and it's been a really great experience so far learning a lot and I've really appreciated all of the help and collaboration at PSB um and feeling very excited to have made it through my first round of school registration over the summer awesome thank you uh Margaret who's not new to this group at all Margaret we can't hear you yes hi good evening everyone thank you so much for having me tonight and I want to thank you for um offering me the opportunity to be the permanent P principal of the Brookline Early Education Program I've been here in different roles for the last seven years so I feel a little odd talking but I'm super excited about all that's happening in beep land Rachel Erin and I are having a wonderful time and we look forward to collaborating with all of you um as we move to a school day program in beep and continue the wonderful work of special education and inclusion for children so thank you for this opportunity thank you next up Neil um hi everyone thank you for having us here um I've been at PSB for almost a year now and it's it's been wonderful working with individuals who are so passionate so dedicated about education and uh just last weekend I had the opportunity of meeting a few of you on the school committee uh at Brookline day um I look forward to working with you more in the future thank you thank you Neil next up Ashley hi uh good evening and thank you for having me I'm very excited to join the public schools of Brookline I started in May um although I'm not new to um Brookline I have previously worked in the treasures office I'm just excited to start and expand my career with uh the public schools of Brookline in the office of teaching and learning thank you Briana uh good evening everybody thanks for inviting me here um I'm excited to be in this new role uh supporting my colleagues with the in the hard work that they do uh and I'm really excited to get into their classrooms and and get out of my biology bubble and see what's happening with chemistry and physics so uh I'm looking forward to the to the year thank you awesome Rachel hi thanks for having me um so excited to be permanent um mostly because it means Margaret's permanent so um I've had a great two years uh learning underneath her incredible leadership um we have had a huge transition to a full school day program that we are incredibly proud of um and we are doing a great job if I may say so myself the teachers are um working out all the scheduling changes Food Services has been phenomenal um supporting us in delivering meals and breakfast um the building and Facilities uh folks that it helped us move and secure spaces and classrooms it's just been such an enormous couple years and a huge team effort and it has been really exciting to be a part of it so I appreciate all the support from the school committee and getting this done um and I'm looking forward to more big things in the future thank you thank you iret we're going to try you again we still can't hear you Mr [Music] pan say that again I know his his mic isn't muted as unmuted yeah but it could be could oh do you have your yeah your microphone on on your computer yeah I div that sometimes where I turn it off and I'm wondering why nobody can hear me get a mull again I'm telling you let's do this oh well I can't do any messaging here well maybe while he's trying we can yeah so why don't we start with um we'll pass it back to you Andy to the committee and Irv uh we're going to try to figure something out with you um yeah okay uh Sarah would this be an opportunity where we could hear where beep is currently located the different locations gladly um so we're at drisol we're at frr we are at Hayes rle we are at Tempo B Shalom on Beacon Street which we call be bom Beacon and we are at Temple emth in South Brooklyn which is um where we call beep at putterham uh what did I miss Margaret oh and the Lynch Center of course our heart and soul the Lynch Center thank you course Helen so I want to welcome all of you to Brooklyn for those who are new and for those who have been promoted I'm so happy to see so many people who have been in the system and have a pathway to to moving some of you may think it's up some of you may not think it's up but but it is uh an uh a advancement in your career and and it's nice that we can do that in Brooklyn and um thank you all for being here Meg can I ask you one question is Megan still here or has Meg yes she is y oh okay I just wasn't sure that's why it's so how do you differentiate between is it Megan Megan basically yes yeah it makes it very confusing for people calling to talk to I would imagine but welcome thank you um Stephen um welcome everyone it's great to see some some people who I've known already and welcome to everyone who I haven't met so far um I just have a question for Neil can you say a little bit more about uh about your role is this is this a role that was previously filled or is this a a maybe this is a question for you Dr gillery is this a redefined role or is this a uh is this filling a role that was previously vacated yeah previously this was a role that was previously vacated okay yeah okay welcome Neil thank you that was my question iret are you can you speak to us now you're still showing muted on our end everyone sorry hey now we can hear you now we can hear you well uh I'm really to to be part of this team I think from day one I've been having a a lot of support from everybody been welcoming us I everybody made it easy uh with all new satellite kitchen starting so um I'm really I'm really happy to well Mr P we're GNA we're going to give you another chance to come back and join us and give you over so that we can really meet you as well because your your audio we can barely make it out but we can hear part of it so again welcome right sorry do any other school committee members have questions or comments for our new stff and I see none so yeah again um hearty welcomes to all of you it's great to great to see you and great to have you here thank you so we'll continue with our uh theme and I think Kuran um brought it uh in it's been a busy uh start to the school year our theme for the year is focused on belonging and uh we are drawing on the theme a place where we all belong sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came you want to be where you can see our troubles are all the same you want to be where everyone knows your name greetings PSB Community welcome to the 2425 school year I have thoroughly enjoyed spending time at all the schools uh opening events the past two weeks the staff meetings the department meetings the welcome session and the opening days as I enter into the fourth year of the role of superintendent here in Brookline I'm excited about the powerful and transformative work we do together as I step into this new year I want to uh help us Focus intently on our strategic goals for the year which are year one of our strategic plan which uh has five broad areas teaching and learning community and connections culture and climate management and capacity building and governance our first priority is to enhance academic Excellence we must continue to push the boundaries of what students can achieve by providing them with the tools resources and opportunities they need to excel this means fostering and nurturing a culture of innovation in our schools as well as encouraging creative teaching practices and embracing the latest techn technologies that can enrich learning it also means staying true to the fundamentals ensuring that every child has a strong foundation in literacy numerous Y and critical thinking we must also commit to educational uh to equity and inclusion in everything we do our schools must be safe welcoming and supportive environments for every student every staff member and every Community member regardless of their background ability or circumstances this requires us to be proactive in identifying and dismantling barriers to success whether they are academic social or emotional there's another critical element that underpins all of our work and that's a culture of care and respect it is not enough for us to strive for academic success and Equity we must do so in environments where everyone feels valued everyone feels supported and everyone feels respected we must also acknowledge the challenges that inevitably lie ahead challenges are not a sign of failure they are opportunities for growth and learning they test our results they push us to think critically and ultimately they make us stronger as a district we know this year will bring its share of obstacles and we will address them with the mindset of collaboration and problem solving thank you to all of our families thank you to all of our staff for choosing team Brookline we share with the staff whether this is your first year or your 41st year the work that you do as Educators as staff in our system is incredible and the impact that you have cannot be understated the heart and soul of our district lie in the dedication passion and expertise that our staff bring to their roles every day we call them The Architects of possibility every interaction they have with students allows them to succeed and uh pres in the present and prepares them for the future let us embrace the responsibilities We Have I Told a little story um to staff at the beginning uh in my opening remarks that each year my son gives me a gift before the first day of school and this year he gave me a gyroscope so I told the story about the importance of our Educators and staff being a stable Force for our students and so I won't go into that detail with you but it had meaning for our staff at the time so sometimes you want to go where everyone knows your name and they're always glad you came you want to be where you can see our troubles are all the same you want to be where everybody knows your name let's make this year one of growth one of joy and success together with our shared Vision Collective efforts and unwavering commitment there is no limit to what we can achieve and with that um in the spirit of everyone knowing your name we want to take this time to remember our own Mr Mike denafo we are deeply saddened by by the sudden loss of our very own Mike was one who knew everyone's name and his passion that he brought to us um will certainly be missed Mike worked with the PSB for over 16 years first as a director of administrative Services later as a finance manager for the office of student services in 2023 he moved over to the town's Finance Department of Public Safety to assume the role of finance manager but my did not turn his back on PSB he continued to be over here just as much as he was over there and so to all of those uh who work with Mike Rem we remember him as warm kind and a reliable person again he will truly be missed I want to also share that we have um again been very busy with quite AIT of work our office of educational equity and student services has uh drafted a beta version of uh a discrimination protocol that we've shared out with principles uh and a a small group of parents as well and we'll continue uh having our team uh work through and vet that and modify that continue to improve that so that when incidents of discrimination do occur we are responding to them in a way that's consistent across the or organization but also is individualized to meet the various needs of the individuals that are impacted um there so we'll continue to work on that and we'll share that up bring that up um at an appropriate subcommittee when when ready there I want to thank the um uh I think it's amorette at the high school that reached out to me at the beginning of the year to remind me about dwali so I did do a calendar um update and correction we did Elevate Dali to Category 2 we've shared that out with staff uh with staff and that'll be going back out to families tomorrow but that is an update uh in the system that we've elevated DW to Category 2 and that was as a result of the presentation that our students did with us last year uh about the importance and significance of that uh we want to share from uh the office of administration Finance uh you've heard um and um the appreciation for the staff um and the work that our operations team has done getting beep moved to its location getting Pierce moved to its location um getting all of our bu buildings ready for the start of school year the town has done a fabulous job of partnering with us and so with that we've also um had our human resources team up to speed and that's been a sigh of relief I know for Dr given but also for our entire ire organization because we've been able to um make some great gains this year so we're very excited uh to share with you that um in addition to our summer hires and additional assignments this year's hiring season we hired 125 new employees that's from July 1 to September with a September one start date our overall fuel rate um as of September 3rd I believe Dr given was 9 6.55 so again we're now getting to a point where we're going to be able to regularly share metrics about the work that we are doing in the organization the majority of these openings that are still remain are paros a PA of positions and 20 of the positions that are open right now there are that were 50 and it changes each day but 20 of those 50 were due to late resignations meaning that it would have been a much smaller number had we not gotten late resignations our recruiting and hiring um and onboarding re-engineering efforts resulted in a significant improvement in our candidate pools as well as a sign significant reduction in our turnaround time meaning offer letter to start date um an employee experience we introduced our redesign in January and the start of the hiring season since then all PSB new employ employees have enjoyed a more personalized Light Lift experience from the application process to their starting at PSB or sitting in the seat and uh I went over had the opportunity with the senior team to go over to our new teacher orientation and there again was a significant shift that folks were getting their computers their badges a customized packet with a map of the school they were meeting individuals from the school so it it turned it our new folks coming in are having a very positive experience as they're entering the district our some can I just ask a question on that how does the 125 figure compare with years past Susan do you have any intel on that I mean it's don't yeah but we can we can look and see um our quantitative results um we've reduced our hiring process from a 14 to 20 turn around uh 14 to 28 days down to um 3 days to two weeks so we're really making some headways there and anecdotally new employees uh expressed that they felt welcomed and supported throughout the process and their positive energy and Readiness was observed during their orientations um of that 125 new employees by gender 77% % are female 4% uh left it blank 177% um are male and 2% are non-binary our new employees by race 66% identified as white 13% identified as black or African-American 9% identified as Asian and 12% identified as latinx when we look at our and 10 of the new hires did not select a category did not respond there um when we look at our prek enrollment by grade as of September um 3rd and this is all in meaning our 18 to 21 year olds as well as our out of District out of District numbers we're looking at about 7200 students um at this juncture uh but again there's still a lot of movement and Meg uh and Megan will tell you that is not settled by any shape form or fashion but Dr given did give us some preliminary uh information that our enrollments are a little higher than the Cropper McKibben as well as what uh by about 45 students and Higher by 57 students from the estimate that we did internally for January for Budget planning our beep enrollment right now is slightly down but we know that our beep grows over the course of the Year our kindergarten is slightly lower again by eight students than what we planned for and our grade 1 through eight enrollment is higher uh than the estimate that we used in January for Budget by 63 students um and our BHS and um uh 18 to 21 year uh year old students uh is up by 45 students over what we were projecting there so right now p uh prek through grade 8 um numbers are all within the guidelines uh but we are seeing some sections in some schools that are right at the guideline now um and I think that will conclude my opening remarks all right now thank you Dr Galli for a presentation that was full of very interesting information and thank you also for the tribute to Mike denafo who will be um missed hugely by anybody who had anything to do with PSP um certainly certainly including me um so does any school Committee Member have some remarks or questions they'd like to make and after this portion uh new staff if you want to drop off some of these questions may be for you like Margaret and Rachel if you're still here but other than that I think you all can drop off okay Carolyn thanks Sandy um I'll basically sort of second your thanks to Dr Giller um that was super interesting really like the kind of information um that I'm interested in for kicking off the school year little snapshot um I love this fill rate metric so thank you Dr given for all that you continue to do also um and the hiring information really interesting um I loved your quote Dr gillery um I I I I wrote down the part of that our troubles are all the same um I really love the idea of unity um and I feel like that particular aspect of that quote is is directionally there the more that we share and come together I think the health healthier we all are and Mike denafo um was a father at the baker school where my children also went um and happens to live close to the neighborhood and um I didn't know him very well uh but we have very close friends in common and if you didn't know him it's really difficult to um to describe how unique and special he was he really was a person who brought a a sort of calm Joy uh everywhere he went and he it's just absolutely shocking and stunning that he passed suddenly so thank you for acknowledging that also Helen yeah I too appreciate you taking time to talk about Mike I was here when he was first hired and have uh seen saw him grow throughout uh his experience here in uh the public schools of Brooklyn he was always there always there with a smile and um he will be missed you know it's it's really sad um so thank you for doing that um I had one question about your uh report so we often times have teachers who go out for a year and we hire for them I know you said there were 125 new hires but I'm is that's not 125 new positions correct so maybe we can just sort Fair it out what how many are replacements for people who were versus and some I and some retired yeah some retired exactly uh we have we didn't have a ton of retirements this year no the majority of them are just uh people migrating out for a variety of reasons could be commute is a tough thing to get here to Brookline so I think uh that influences some people's uh decision to to say or go um we will be uh putting together some exit survey information and working out our exiting process next year this last year the focus was really on Recruitment and Retention we will continue with our efforts in that regard but uh we'll also start to build uh the system systems for exiting so we can get some really good data on that and then we'll be able to share you know exit uh information have a better sense of what's causing that um so I'll have more to report um in the years ahead and for those watching outside the room that was uh Dr given our Deputy superintendent for administration and finance thank you thank you both um any other members like to comment or ask a question um if you're at home if you're remote just speak up because I can't see the thumbnails right now Andy this is Mariah hi Mariah hi um might I ask Susan given a question uh you might she's coming to the podium right now okay yeah I'm stalling to give her a moment so my question um Susan is and and maybe you're the right person maybe not to answer this do you know what percent of our overall staff5 is and um does that do you feel that that's a good like a healthy level of turnover too high do you know that that's a great question um I don't know whether it is too high for Brookline um and I think that's some of uh the information I'm hoping we can gather so that we can compare year-over-year I don't have good data from last year prior years to be able to see if this was uh typical or if this was you know atypical for Brook line um I can say that what I feel good about is when I look at uh the fill rate and um I look at what we were unable to fill in time for the school year that uh the only teaching positions we weren't able to fill uh were really related to uh not having pools of candidates that were qualified um and so in the areas for example of word language uh getting any um uh French teachers not just a problem for us they're just not there um also in uh the office of student services you know we have some openings there again there's there's not a huge population of people um out there that have certain certifications and so OSS and related Services is always tough so OT speech things like that we've had a history and that's not just in Brooklyn that's like an industry issue um also El um so we have as I was looking at comps um from the State website uh we have the highest population of English language Learners from any of our comps in the area and and at the same time um there isn't a huge pool of candidates that are qualified uh to support those students and so those are kind of pain points they're not just our pain points but they're pain points broadly um I can say that last year we opened with uh with many more vacancies than we did this year and so one of the things that we did was re-engineer the entire process for recruit and hire so that we were on cycle for hiring there's five hiring Cycles when you're in schools and if if you can hit those then you're getting talent and and then you're also um um creating a a really efficient system for hiring then you're able to like recruit and hire in a really timely fashion people off the market so I feel like the quality of our candidates uh because our pools were much greater this year and better this year than they were in the past also led to us being able to fill uh positions um timely and early um uh our onboarding process we completely revamped that so that we were doing a lot of the onboarding right along right after we uh did the offer we had people start doing their onboarding not waiting until 2 days before school starts and doing all of that at once and what that does is is it it's it's like putting the ring on you know we say we would like to have you they accept but then they take action to start to become an employee and I have found over the course of my career that when you're able to get that kind of a commitment where they're actually engaging um uh with the school district that um they show up you don't have as many people turning away because they haven't done their paperwork and things like that so a lot a lot of work and we feel really good about um uh and we have a distance to travel um but we made a lot of progress in that regard so that doesn't entirely answer your question um but it does uh it is my insight into you know how we have fared better uh this year as we start the year than we had in the past but I don't know uh the percentage number I look into that and see if I can't get you something moving forward thank you Susan and thank you and the entire HR team for what sounds like an amazing amount of work to get that beginning of the year the hiring season and beginning of the year off to such a great start um all right um next up we have public comment um so this year I'd like to align our practice at public comment with the way the select board does this um so as before right every Speaker gets three minutes uh the change would be that after 15 minutes uh we would move on to the rest of our agenda and any remaining public comment occurs at the end of the meeting um you know this is to allow us to keep to our agenda um and it's really to respect the time time of staff and others who need to join us at particular times to discuss particular agenda items um and you know as as before people are welcome to email the committee and those emails are read very attentively so um that's how I'd like to to run public comment this year uh it's not an issue tonight because we only have one person signed up and that's um Miss Carrie Goldberg wait I'm sorry Andy Andy so so we're restricting the initial public comments to five uh that' be yeah assuming that they all take their full three minutes right but after 15 minutes uh we would sort of hold the rest until the end of the meeting um all right so this is um Miss Carrie Goldberg so your yes I I just wanted to update you again on the public records request that I filed almost a year ago now uh seeking emails related to the messaging by superintendent Giller after the October 7th Massacre what you have before you is the entire of the district's response to my public records request do you think that that is the entirety of the emails that came and went from superintendent Giller during that week after October 7th um I have reason to think it's not so I've continued to pursue this request the state supervisor of records has already determined twice now that the town is not complying with the law in relation to my request and I've now appealed for a third time and I've suggested it's time to refer this matter to the attorney general now I think you all probably were copied on Town Council Joe kalinin's 1200w email to the supervisor of records and I would never actually expect you to read it but the bottom line here is that the town has produced only that one email with as you can see all the names blacked out and it it uh and all it says as you can see is that there's a draft of a Google doc so it has completely no content basically at all the town has not given a justification for blacking out the names and it's claiming that this email is the only one which would be responsive to my request which we know is untrue because some email senders have shared some of their messages with me and the Brookline news has even reported on them so I asked a friend of mine who's a lawyer if this level of resistance to a public records request was normal and he said the big question here is what are they hiding and I don't know I have no idea but I'm thinking more and more that the district wouldn't resist this hard if it weren't something pretty bad which just magnifies the concern that prompted this request in the first place I know that the public records law can be quite a pain in the neck for public employees but if you talk to people from other municipalities it's a really normal practice to have to hit forward forward forward on a bunch of emails in response so why hasn't that happened in this case and I'd like to emphasize this is a normal request it's a single modest request that asks for a very limited period of Public Employee emails that are subject legally to these requests so I was reading the guidelines for public comment and I saw that if the chair chooses they can request an answer to a question if they deem it expeditious so Mr chairman putting you on the spot you don't have to do it but I wish you would just ask the superintendent here and now or sometime soon but in public why why in the world are you not just exceeding to this legitimate legal public records request thank you all right thank you m Goldberg um yeah so as you know the practice of the committee is um that we listen very carefully to public comment but we don't react on the spot so I think we I think we'd better keep to that um you've certainly given the committee and the superintendent a lot to think about but uh for now let's let's leave it leave it where it is thank you um all right thanks so our next uh item is presentation and discussions of current issues um and here um before we get started I'd like to reintroduce a practice that um Suzanne um had in place a couple years ago during the pandemic when she was our chair and this was really to give uh to make sure that all members had a chance to to speak um and so uh what I'd like to do and what Suzanne had done in the past was is that before anybody speaks a second time um everybody who wants to speak will get at least one chance so um we'll just make a conscious effort to um you know to call on everybody who wants to to be called on uh before anybody um uh speaks a second time and when when it is your turn um if you could um sort of ask one question or sort of make one point and of course you know if there's an immedia followup that's fine um but the idea would be to sort of keep it to one train of thought as long as there are others waiting who haven't had a chance to speak yet all right um all right so we have two items uh under presentations and discussions of current issues um there's the FY 26 budget development calendar um and um Dr giler's presentation of some draft goals and focus indicators for the evaluation so let's go to the budget development calendar uh Mariah and Susan over to you thank you Susan are you going to take this or do you want me to she says she doesn't have it in front of her so you can okay Betsy do you mind pulling it up on the screen thank you see you're already ahead of me so at the um August 21st meeting of the finance subcommittee the finance subcommittee voted unanimously to recommend the five dates that you see bulleted at the top of this document the rest of this document is our working calendar for the year for all of our meetings but we pull these five um dates out to be the the the key dates that the um that the finance subcommittee would recommend to the full school committee as our budget development calendar so um the dates that you see are February 6 2025 um that would be the FY 26 initial budget request presented to the school committee with the budget overview um then the 13th the following week would be the um public hearing um on the FY 26 initial budget request um and that's when we would vote to send the preliminary budget request to the TA the 26th the 12th and the 20th are all different um budget deliberations the 26th of February is the finance subcomittee and then two more um full committee budget deliberations the 20th of March is a budget only meeting and includes a possible vote on the final budget um so this process is relatively similar to the one that we walk through last year um and um what actually maintain our compliance with the town bylaw which doesn't apply to us anyway according to Town Council but it would still keep us in alignment with the general expectations of when the budget would be sent from school committee to Town Administrator Susan did I miss any of the key points you did an excellent job Mariah um are there any questions okay so well actually seeing none but I I have one which is um I mean I know there are a lot of constraints on on this calendar like if you were designing this from scrp like where are the where are the points in this schedule that just don't work great but we kind of have to do it well um I'm just asking what are the parts of this calendar that where we're just kind of constrained but where it puts a lot of pressure on on staff um to do things earlier than would be ideal and this is just for future reference yeah yeah one thing I would highlight and we discussed this finance and Susan you should jump in is that the February 6 date is 3 to four weeks later than the date that we when that we received the budget last year so that's a significant additional amount of time um being put into to allow the um budget team to to prepare and scrub and refine and finalize the budget okay great I think another uh reason to have it be at beginning of February it's after the governor's budget has been published and one of the things I observed last year was that uh there was a lot of preliminary information out there about what our revenues were going to be and with your town School partnership agreement which is kind of unique it's not in in place in all places where it's Revenue that's going to drive what our number is having as much information about what the revenue is um as we as we um submit to you our proposal is really important so that will take some of the mystery out of um you know where we're Landing with money because that's the number that's used throughout the budget process so I think that that's a positive now if the governor's budget comes out um you know a few days early like on the 26th that gives us just a little bit more time to refine our proposal that's coming to you know before the board so I think that that's a a real positive as well thank you so again this the finance subcommittee recommended unanimously to the school committee to approve the budget development calendar dates would you like to move it Mariah I have a question um yeah let's let's let Mariah move it if she wishes to and then we can have the discussion so moved um and do I have a second I see Jesse okay Stephen go ahead so a number of these sessions are only if needed what are the conditions that would require them you're looking this is that you're looking in the working calendar section of this we're only discussing the five um dates at the top that's the official school committee calendar the rest of that is just the finance subcommittee working calendar so we have additional dates marked if we need them for the finance subcomittee okay thanks okay any other questions or comments Jesse Yeah Mariah my question um has to do with this September meeting coming up joint with curriculum being my first year um on the school committee and my first year on the curriculum subcommittee can you just take a moment or two to explain the relationship in that meeting between finance and curriculum specifically sure so the sips that you see there on the calendar for September 18th are the school Improvement plans and and Susan jump in if I get any of this wrong or Linus um the 1993 or four Ed reform law made clear that school Improvement that schools are supposed to basically budgets are supposed to be allocated to the schools and so School Improvement plans are part of the budgetary cycle that drives where investments in schools should be made so because um the sips are supposed to direct some of the budget they are part of the budget process but they're also tied to curriculum thank you uh anyone who's remote should just speak up because I can't see you yeah Andy can I go ahead please yeah I was just going to say also just uh this curriculum Finance uh joint meeting uh people should be aware that we're actually talking about a budget that's that will be a year out so I mean it's for the next school year budget School Improvement plans are happening now so they have to kind of anticipate what they're going to need almost a year in advance but that's an important conversation to have around Finance so I just want to add that piece Andy I would just add to that the the the discussion of sips in September early in the fall slash we're trying to realign an overall budget calendar so this is part of that work and that's not quite where it should be finally but we're moving it to we're getting it towards the direction of where when we need to talk about sips to be able to do the strategic planning um and and long-term planning that's Suzanne just referenced yes thank you all right I'm not seeing any more hands so unless someone speaks up let's move to a vote on this um on this calendar um Jesse I Sarah yes Steven yes Helen yes Carolyn yes Mariah yes Val yes Suzanne yes and I vote Yes as well all right this takes us to um Dr G's presentation and discussion of draft goals and focus indicators for the uh 2025 superintendent evaluation um you'll recall that from the summer workshop this was sort of the major change that we made to our process from last year so this um these goals and focus indicators are coming up first time now and again uh in October so that the school committee has a chance to weigh in um on what those goals are and um you know try to understand how they align with our Strate iic plan awesome thank you thank you for that context and setup Andy so these are draft um draft draft goals uh and I say that because uh next week I'm Dr Giller we lost your audio there we thank you um so these are drafted draft draft goals um and I was saying that next week I'm going to uh the professional development series that I'm participating in um next week and so I anticipate getting some additional feedback and guidance uh on the goals there as I share with you um since I've been here supervision and evaluation is going to be one of the um you can expect to see it year after year um and we'll focus in on different aspects of a supervision and evaluation but I think this year given the work that we are planning to do in the Strategic plan um and the measures that we have there I thought it important to remain maintain our focus on student engagement again and drilling down in that and I think a lot of the uh work that's happening in the various departments are talking about uh instructional rounds and visits to classroom room looking at the materials that students have in front of them uh as well as what's the students interaction with those materials and so this idea of nesting or or focusing in on supervision and evaluation that's number one ensuring that uh from my standpoint the 17 or so folks that are on my case load are evaluated which then Cascades out to their direct reports and so on and so forth so this notion uh and we do have a metric in our strategic plan that also ties to um evaluation as well so this idea of nesting and getting uh coherence and you'll see that a little bit later but this F first uh goal a goal one is on supervision and evaluation and I have that nestled in the student learning um goal um for that particular indicator and then for the standard uh right now I have that identified as standard 1D um so I think we can um we can talk through them if we want to do it that way or I can go through them all and then have you all respond or or you can send me your responses later whatever makes sense um I think why don't you just talk through them all now um we're well ahead of schedule we do have some time okay and it's quite a lot to take in all at once all right so why don't I just read it for the record then um its current iteration goal one supervision and evaluation active ongoing feedback is a leading indicator and high performing organizations PSB will continue to prioritize supervision evaluation and ongoing feedback as a means of continuous Improvement the focal point of my work with principles this year will continue in the area of student engagement throughout the school year I will prioritize the supervision evaluation and provision of ongoing action able feedback to principles with a focus on improving student engagement success will be measured by an increase in student engagement metrics as observed through classroom walkthroughs and again um some of these parts still have to be developed I have to think through how I really want to capture this or um and Baseline this information as well students um to ensure inclusivity feedback will be tailored to meet the diverse needs of schools with additional support for schools facing the greatest challenges in student engagement uh the initiative will emphasize Equitable practices by allowing resources and professional development to schools with the highest rates of disengaged students ensuring that all students are actively engaged in their learning so again this notion of um our extremes what are our um our higher performing students need because parents have been talking to me about what what might my student or my child be doing once they've already mastered or so how do I push them further so I'm thinking about that student and then I'm also thinking about the student that needs additional support and resources as well so it's the book end there um Sarah so I had something that wasn't actually for you but it's for the rest of um the fellow committee members we we talked a lot about process when um we last talked about this and so this is the place where it would be appropriate to tell the superintendent the types of things that you would like to see in order to fulfill those goals so if you don't feel happy with the process then you can you know be supportive in in saying what you would like him to report on later thank you Steve so thanks for this Dr Giller just a comment about the benchmarks so one of the difficulties I had with the evaluation prev viously is that the some of the benchmarks weren't easily reviewable by the school committee so some of these benchmarks seemed seem like benchmarks for you which seem understandable but I'm not clear on how it would be reviewable by the school committee so a suggestion I have is that all benchmarks should be easily reviewable by the school committee so for instance if if something you want to do is deliver feedback in the moment to school leaders that that be somehow documented and available to school community members so that we could review your summary of that feedback so we can understand how it was delivered perfect Andy can I sorry can I ask a question too by means okay um on this specific one uh in the summer I don't think I provided I think I did not respond because the data As I understood it did not match the indicator because the indicator is about the all the people who are supposed to be evaluated being evaluated and this is about your direct reports and while I think your direct reports are very important and the and the evaluation or the feedback you're giving them ongoing is important I also would like if we're sticking with this one to understand whether everyone in the district who is being evaluated has been who needs to be I know that it's not every year for some people but it is for as you're starting off early so whatever that is to make sure that the people who are supposed to be arbing I would find to be an important addition to this because part of this is about the district right and just not about your you as a single employee but as a who oversees a team but as the head of an entire District right and part of that is um we have that also captured in the Strategic plan I believe as a an evaluation metric as well so it will couple nicely with that so we'll be able to provide um better stronger data on that area as well Andy this is Suzanne go ahead Suzanne yeah so I would just like to say that I think this is a really critical goal for uh eventually student learning and that we're really asking principles to be instructional leaders and the way to help them see that role which may or may not be new for them many of them already understand that but some may not is that when Dr Giller is evaluating them that models for them how they can then evaluate their staff and so um I I think this is a a critical goal and I uh am glad to see it here and fully support uh making that happen thanks Suzanne Caroline did you still want to say something sure thank you um and I'm I risk sort of being like off base here because I'm this is all new um but what Suzanne just said is is really helpful and I I recognize that the that Dr Gill's goal Dr Giller your the goal here is for you to be working on supervision and evaluation and that's clear um some of as Stephen I think alluded to for me some of the metric stuff still feels a little Elusive and also fully recognizing that this is super drafty um but for me I think um and I mentioned this briefly at the workshop I'd love to understand or even have it be made explicit kind of what is meant by engagement um like wise disengagement and so where you say for example um additional support for schools facing the greatest challenges in student engagement like so my brain just says like what is that what does that look like um on a granular level so although I recognize that your goal is not the student engagement piece but you're evaluating your direct reports on that um I'd love just more sort of concrete would help me understand that that better and what exactly um the measurables are thanks right Helen and then Stephen so following up on that I think one of the metrics for me at least uh in terms of student engagement is attendance just being there and The Chronic attendance uh chronic absence uh metric uh if that might be one that you might want to think about um using as a a tool to see how student engagement is going I mean there's some chronic you know absences because we live near the hospitals that are unavoidable and I'd like to take those out of the uh but there are other kids who who aren't always coming to school I mean we saw that this last year we had some reports on it so I mean I I agree it's hard to how do you how do you put a metric on student engagement I mean absences is one thing that I could think of at least but I'm sure there are others yeah the only I just thanks I I just wanted to follow up um on my point and then Mariah's point so I I liked where where Mariah was heading with the um in the systems Direction um and so I wanted to add some specificity to my suggestion I my understanding of One D aligns well I think with with yours Dr Giller and that it's it's more specific to your assessment of your immediate reports except for in the example evidence of 1D there is a piece that I think aligns with the direction that Mariah was pushing which I like um and that is it gives under the evaluation indicator analysis of school and classroom observation data and Analysis of student and staff feedback data I thought that went nicely with your your fifth Benchmark there so if you wanted to um add detail to that or revise it in that direction so it was more clearly your analysis of how other people were doing their own evaluations um that might help us understand how you were pushing out evaluation at a systems level rather than how you your own evaluations were proceeding just a suggestion for how that Benchmark might be applied to your use your your promotion of evaluation systemically thanks all right shall we move on to the second goal District coherence sh go ahead Caroline and apologies if this is overly granular but um just piggybacking on what Helen said about absenteeism um that made me think about the two new uh practices that our student rep Kieran um said that the high school is going to be um utilizing um tar tardiness extreme tardiness and leaving the classroom um which seem pretty Concrete in terms of Engagement so thank you District coherence now this one I have listed as a district Improvement goal and I'm still going to try to align it to some specific indicators but I see this as still a very broad brush of of overall system here um and again I still have to I'm playing with the the language here but I'll read what's written go to District coherence beginning in the 2425 school year I will lead the public schools of Brookline in developing the districtwide coherence uh developing districtwide coherence by utilizing the multi-year integrated strategic plan to drive continuous Improvement this process will focus on building a sheared understanding of the district's key initiatives across all schools and departments success will be measured through staff understanding and alignment with District goals and by tracking improvements in student outcomes tied to strategic initiatives the initiative will include targeted professional development and regular collaborative sessions for school leaders to ensure inclusivity and support for diverse needs across schools to promote Equity special attention will be given to ensuring that all schools particularly those with historically underserved student populations are fully engaged in the coherence building process progress will be reviewed at each semester with adjustments made as necessary to ensure all parts of the system are working together to achieve their desired outcome and again this is the desired state will continue to push refine and tweak this uh as we go along and I think you know some of the work that we saw this evening around Human Resources operations uh the work that uh students Services is done as well as o uh OTL to get the schools ready uh number of the bodies of work that oee are leading as well so it's that um what we think of here the the four corners and everything in between here so some still some more work to do on this one [Music] Stephen I I just want to say I thought this one was really nicely articulated and I also think it aligns really well with uh with 4E the shared Vision indicator I I thought that the um the example evidence uh bullets were example leadership team meeting agenda items and analyses that dovetails I thought nicely with your first Benchmark and the second one was about communication with staff families and community that dovetails neatly with your second one uh you you were thinking of it more as a final document but that one's I mean maybe maybe it is a final document maybe it's just regular Communications both seem reviewable to me and they both work well with that for shared Vision indicator if you were looking to align it that might be a place for it and that's under professional culture so for me this seems like a very um Broad and ambitious goal and I'm sort of having trouble pick pulling out sort of particular items that um I guess would be comprehensible to the school committee um certainly to me so I don't know if it's possible to be I don't know to zero in a bit more on sort of specific instances of of the coherence that we're seeking that would be helpful for me uh Jesse Yeah just to follow up I guess on what you said Andy when I read this um yesterday or this morning when Betsy sent it um I had an issue also in trying to understand what you mean by coherence is this just Vision alignment is this objective alignment what is it really Vis and systems working together I mean Vision alignment but also systems working together is the way that I'm thinking about it but your your point is well taken to again make it more Lucid yeah yeah and I guess my um my second question um here had to do with the sentence again you were talking about wordsmithing it so when you talk about um Equity you mention that particularly those with historically understood that schools are fully engaged in the coherence building process but you align it particularly here with historically underserved student popul ations I would suggest perhaps that adjustments need to be made in both directions for low achieving students or students that have been historically disadvantaged we want to make sure we're align we're aligning all the schools together but at the same time for the um cohort of high achieving students we want to make sure that they're getting what they need as well equitably and so um perhaps there could be some balance in the statement about um our effort to align our objectives to meet the need not only of historically underserved populations but as well I made a note when I read it earlier of of high achieving student groups as well Caroline thanks um also just sort of a a wording question in that that same sentence and actually that phrase historically underserved populations it wasn't clear to me reading that whether that's um a term of art well meaning something specific or whether we're talking about Brookline which has its own unique and really important aspects as Susan was mentioning um I think last year we had 31% of our students not speaking English as a first language um so i' I'd love to just sort of understand a little bit more what's what's meant there um and how it relates to to this piece okay and Andy one other yeah Jesse um I like the um the action of number five of establishing the data dashboards but sort of picking up on the the sort of the themes that step had mentioned earlier perhaps that should be a benchmark as well in other words if you want something measurable it's to what extent were data dashboards actually delivered are they usable could the school committee make make uh the kind of efficient use of them that was planned uh or not so perhaps that's a a convenient item to put down in The Benchmark section as well and Sarah if these are you said for the first goal that it was definitely multi-year is um District coherence multi-year as well yeah so then to um maybe help you be able to drill down do you want to site a particular curricula for this year to look into instead of having it be in all different subjects just to be more specific so that the goal can be more measurable and then in other years you can look at other curricula especially if we have curricula that doesn't feel established right now it might be good to leave those ones out yeah so the theme Here seems to be um sort of we might be looking for greater specificity even if it does mean narrowing the focus all right goal three internal District communication by the end of the 2425 school year I will Implement a districtwide internal Communications plan aimed at improving the frequency Clarity and effectiveness of communication between District Leadership School administrators and staff success will be measured by an increase in staff satisfaction with communication as indicated by annual surveys and by an increase in participation rates for district-wide meetings and initiatives the plan would include monthly newsletters and regular leaders regular leadership meetings progress will be reviewed through staff feedback and participation metrics with adjustments made as necessary and I have that listed as professional practice goals standard for C Stephen thanks um I think this is a great goal um just one suggestion for benchmarks I think you already listed one of the benchmarks in the description itself which is the the uh the collateral the the the the actual pieces of communications I think actually more important than the the the collateral is the is the procedures and protocols though that's the other suggested Benchmark um because I think um I I'll speak for myself I think that's what I would find more useful is a description of the of the occasions that would warrant specific kinds of communications collaterals to to specific stakeholder populations so in in what circumstances would C pieces of communications be created and sent rather than uh evidence of those specific Communications I would find that a very important Benchmark could you explain that I don't understand I'm sorry I I think I I guess I feel a wash in the actual specific pieces of communications myself um and that is listed as one of the potential benchmarks for 4C there's another potential Benchmark which is listed as compilation of procedures and protocols to communicate effectively with the school committee um selfishly I love that one it could just I'm reading from the example evidence that Dr Giller sent to us earlier it could be with any stakeholder group though I think just a description of procedures and protocols and the kind of communications that that different circumstances would would warrant uh what what comms circumstances would warrant um that would be very helpful to me so for instance if a if a certain uh event occurs at a school what would be communicated to whom at at what date that I feel like that's the kind of thing we're always talking about that sort of thing would be a protocol I think and that would be a a benchmark for for 4C that I would think is Meaningful I don't know do does that sound right to you it's clearer now what you're saying okay this is Suzanne uh Stephen just I'm not sure that's what this goal is saying um so sounds like it's almost a different goal that you're asking for this this sounds to me like a regular districtwide internal communication plans not uh specific to an incident or a complaint or a grievance or something then I would suggest putting it under 3C because I think 3C is more about communicating to various stakeholder groups whereas I think for is is very specifically about procedures and protocols for school committee communication I I'm just reading from the the example evidence document that Dr gillery submitted to us to help understand what meaningful evidence looks like okay I hear you Suzanne I'm not disagreeing I that was just my interpretation of what 4 c means and if by if goal three is intended to mean something like what you said I think it aligns better with standard 3C can I can I add a little bit to what Stephen is saying though I think as a member of Staff I'm I'm a member of Staff elsewhere and a lot of my satisfaction isn't about the regular Communications about regular stuff but being communicated to about the irregular stuff at the right time so to um to exclude that from the planning here I think I would see that as a missed opportunity if we're really looking at how we make sure staff are satisfied and know what's going on making sure there is a plan for when we what we communicate about that isn't part of the regular uh you know weekly message or whatever it's going to be I think there is value to that so I would I would endorse Steph's Point only because again this is about doing the right thing for staff and includes making sure that they have relevant information at the right time even if that falls outside of a of a standard operating procedure for standard Communications yeah I understand what you're saying Ryan I'm not disagreeing I'm just saying the way I interpreted this goal as it's written it does not address what you and Stephen are talking about so if that's what we want to talk about we add that ask Dr G to add that or we tweak this to include that or we make them two different goals or we pick one of those two that's what I'm suggesting I guess we need to establish now whether the the committee feels strongly enough that that what Stephen and Mariah have been talking about should be the goal or should at least be a major part of the goal because it does involve a wholesale rewriting of um of what's currently there so why does it involve a wholesale rewriting because it it's a different sort of thing like nothing that's written here excludes what we're talking about I guess it's a Communications plan we're just calling out a bit of it that should be in there maybe to put a finer point on the question does the committee believe that um it should be um a goal of the district to have sort of clearly written out communication protocols dealing with sort of unforeseen events and telling the community you know who can expect what kind of communication um on what time Scale based on the type of event that occurred but this wasn't about the community this was about communic with staff those are two different things um okay I guess we can limit it to communication with staff but um anyway I think the the for me the main question is is that where we want to go and and do we want to actually would we like Dr Giller to embody that in a a goal for evaluation this coming year Jesse and then Sarah did you have your hand up first by the way you sure you sure oh okay I didn't catch who had their hand up first I guess my question here is that um in reading this yesterday this is one of the big four Dr Giller for for the next two years so I guess my my question honestly was like is there that big a problem with internal District communication and so list in my brief time you know since May so you know I'm getting a ton of stuff that Betsy is sending out that are cc's of things that are going out from you things that are going out from the building leaders um I know that there's site counsel in PTO Communications going out very very regularly so when I saw no benchmarks I'm saying well what are we going to measure here and I'm asking myself how how um significant of an issue is this to start with in other words our survey I mean there's no information here that I'd be able to say judge and say the sures have shown that it's Dreadful and so this is like a really big communication uh goal because we need to get from Dreadful to amazing so I don't have a sense of how serious the situation is that generated this goal maybe you could help me sure so no there is definitely a need for internal District communication so right now the pattern has been every Friday and when I tell every other superintendents that they get our community get something every Friday they their mind is blown by that because they say well it's once a month for me or twice a month at most but our community gets something every Friday but what we realized was that our staff the the time at which they were learning things was either through social media through the Friday communication of through school committee so they weren't getting internal information prior to so this is an opportunity to lead with that to have make sure that our staff is informed as such and we we've already started a beta version of a communication uh as well so um but there it's more refinement certainly and I didn't I don't think I put the benchmark I mean I mean when you're saying you started a beta already what is what what does that mean one went out yesterday so is this is this um basically the frequency between Communications is shortening to respond no I would say that that folks are getting communication that they weren't getting before so this is this is a new um a new mode for communicating directly to staff um right but if this is I guess I'll push a little harder if this is a twice a week or three times a week or as needed then how can this be a two-year plan other words what's what's what what do you do next after that that this is going to cover for the next two years if it's already sort of being addressed because you know it's an issue and it's the changes are happening almost like in real time apparently well it's starting to be addressed now right it hasn't and so what we've we've started a small portion there's a whole design piece of it so there was an initial communication that's gone out what inform to my R's Point what information would be helpful as such so all of those things will be figured out over the course of the year and we'll keep improving it and refining it as we go along okay yep I could just go ahead Helen I think this is oh I'm sorry no you go first you sure I'm sorry I forgot um I actually think this is important if it's a perceived I mean staff should not be blindsided and if they're feeling blindsided that's not good M so I think it's a really critical goal um to to accomplish and hopefully it can be accomplished in a year it's something that seems simple but sometimes you know a doesn't know what B is doing and it's it's hard uh all the time to keep everybody informed and I think having this as a goal is important and I think the satisfaction of the staff you know sort of doing Baseline now what do you think has happened in the past and then at the end of the year has this improved you know what what is this like would be a I think a good it helps I think it with engagement of staff and people feeling part of well I guess I just I'll just add to that then that um you mentioned there's a beta maybe at some point soon you could articulate what that framework is is it some digital media platform that PSB is using that's allowing uh staff in almost real time if you need to reach them about something to be able to tell them something that they all get either texted to them or email to them how's it being sort of managed and structured so that um when you do the satisfaction survey or get feedback from staff the um results go in the right direction that people feel they're getting it in time and accurately Stephen I I guess I don't want to be prescriptive here I I think if this stays align with 4C I think Mariah said the best possible Benchmark which would be a comm's plan and however you want to Define what protocols and policies mean for driving Communications strategic Communications that we would defer to you but I I if I I don't want to sound prescriptive about what circumstances it should um adjudicate I but I think a good Benchmark would be a comm's plan I'm out of curiosity is is Neil's position a strategic comm's position would does that include that role no Neil Neil does more or um well Neil Neil does more like preparing the slide decks for the evening he does our he does the weekly Friday message that you get if there's uh emergency communication he works on that as well okay well so my only recommendation here is that if it stays in line with 4C I think a comm's plan would be a great benchmark all right let's go to number four budget process again um Susan and Mari have already talked through this uh or talked through the notion of uh tightening our budget process I will enhance the district's budgeting process by building on previous improvements ensuring that budget allocations are transparent Equitable and aligned with District priority success will be measured by achieving an increase in budget manager satisfaction so these are the f F that are preparing the budgets are building the budget their knowledge are they getting more comfortable uh with this as we align um as Mariah talked about to uh it Reform Act of 93 and schools being the cost centers um with the budget process is indicated from feedback from school leaders department managers and community members I.E through School site councils again previously shared and by maintaining a balanced budget with minimal variance and this is I hope Dr given doesn't throw a shoe at me uh by maintaining a balanced budget with minimal variance between projected and actual expenditures uh this process will include quarterly Financial reviews with principles and department heads again this was at a time we were very um Central centered on our budgets so our School principles and um department heads um had had uh minimal input there so we've expanded their roles and responsibilities with the budgeting process uh since I've gotten to Brookline um to ensure inclusivity budgeting process will um actively involve again the notion of the historically underrepresented groups ensuring their input is reflected in final decisions Equity will be prioritized by allocating resources to schools and programs servicing High need students progress will be monitored through ongoing feedback from stakeholders and adjustments will be made to ensure con continuous Improvement in the budgeting process again we have a number um three of our schools that are still Title One that are Title One um that being Lincoln F frr in high school for now who's who's now Baker oh Baker's now Title One okay um so that Dr Fortuna why don't you come up and and make loose the the title one um aspect and then we'll answer any questions that folks have there I don't know how Lucid I'm going to be able to make it we are considered targeted assistants for title one which means that we look at schools and we rank our schools based on the poverty that each school is experiencing and I don't have the cut off um in my head i% it might be Helen I just I don't have it right right now I would defer to you on that with your vast experience thank you so basically Title One indicates a higher percentage of families under a certain poverty is it State median the feral Federal median okay or the federal and it's gathered from sensus data okay and we get extra funds tell's a grant that one gets so somehow the district reports that and then we those schools the state gathers that data from the Census and they let okay thank you so much you're welcome let's go four I can so you said Baker Baker Lincoln F frr the high school and the high school mhm the high school has never been before that's interesting it's been since I've been here yeah H they were were last year mhm so um if if you're done presenting that go okay um so my question would be would we be looking to the budget book um like or the layout of the budget book or information in the budget book um for evidence about whether these things are happening well this this is going to be um I right now I have it more of a process uh piece for the education Dr Gib and I have been talking about how to increase our um budget manager strength in the budgeting process their understanding of it in alignment so you know a great example uh of this uh and I I'll use this with principles is that um right now our collective bargaining agreement has um what we call uh exceptions to the highing process where you can hire someone at a at a higher scale we get 15 I have 15 of those slots every year and so when a principal is saying well I really want this particular teacher they're coming with this experience it's a hard to feel spot as Dr given has talked about uh we um they're coming from a district or they may be coming from out of state and we have to pay them a much more competitive salary than what our entry requirements are so one of the things that our principles have now gotten better at is saying if I'm going to go for this particular exception I have to think about also um what other adjustments I may need to make in my hiring or in other budgeting matters so that I don't inadvertently quote unquote break the bank uh in a sense so just getting people to really be thinking intentionally about certainly the educational need but then also so what's the financial impact of the decision that I'm making so the budget book may be one example of this but it's also the um the trainings that we are also going to do or the preparations that we're going to do or the experiences that we're going to take people through as we uh as we develop this year's budget so it's more thinking about building their experiences their um their financial muscles if is a nice way to say it as well um we may be able to see that it may manifest the stuff in the budgeting book but I'm more thinking about their experience in the budget Bill process so this would become visible to the committee through sort of narratives that through their through the narratives are either either looking at the um the um their products that they submit for the budget uh as well as examples but uh and those make their way to the budget book so that's a great synthesis place for it as well okay thanks um anyone else have remarks or questions here Jesse are you referring to just overall anything about these um well if there anyone has something specific to this goal and then we can maybe get more General uh okay I'm not seeing anything so go ahead Jesse well okay um I guess my question Dr Giller is the following um I'm trying to understand like why only these four goals maybe again my first time through the process um um whether or not there is a go a space for a goal that has to do with a specific um goal for the entire District an example that pops into mind right away is say literacy or numeracy you mentioned it earlier actually in your opening statement from the superintendent's uh first report of the year or the welcoming letter I think I and so I'm wondering that's something that that would tie the superintendent's um goal to a massive District goal which is to raise literacy where it is today which we know is a serious issue to where we'd like to get it same thing with numeracy so would that be a reasonable get my first time through the process a reasonable goal that the superintendent would set which is we and and it ties in with that coherence message earlier as well about everybody wants to be on the same page about getting um getting the improvements that we're hoping for in literacy in all its facets um all the way from you know young children to our graduates uh of BHS and so that would tie a lot of things together and it would sort of send I guess over the next two years a very clear message to the school community and the town of Brooklyn At Large about the superintendent's goal and that particularly you know very important area yes so what what we think about there is we're looking at what we have already articulated in the Strategic plan which this year is um for the next 3 years a heavy focus on literacy it doesn't mean that numeracy and critical thinking aren't happening in the organization but we also have to think about um how much um the same staff are going to be doing all of these things so we have to also think about um their load the load that they're carrying also as well and um when we are ready to actually review our math curriculum for that so it's again an order of operation as such and right now literacy is the one that's on the docket so it doesn't mean that the others aren't important it's just doesn't mean that that's necessarily where I'm digging in on uh at this moment so any other remarks on the evaluation sorry I do have oh sorry Helen and then Caroline sorry I think you know you can only be evaluated on so many items you can't you know there are many goals and many things that are happening in the system that will continue to happen that we will you know different uh Deputy superintendents and principals will make sure happens in the schools and so you have to you know and and this crude way of evaluation which I am not a fan of um is hard makes it hard so I think you know it's not not like we're not doing it it's not like there's not a whole crew of people working on literacy it's just that that we have to figure out is that what you know one of the goals and you know forget about some of the other ones you can only do so many goals in a year that you can be evaluated on I don't think you can be evaluated on everything that happens in the system so I don't unless there's a better way of doing it and I guess my question is how many goals are a regular set of goals that's CU I don't know I see four maybe there should be six I think or I think they recomend for but I'm not sure somebody may know better than me all right yeah okay yeah the template for superintendent is really not that different from the template for teachers like me actually it's the same very much the same format um so yeah it's pretty stereotyped Carolyn thanks I'll be quick and um yeah I I like this goal um but again and recognizing that this is super drafty and cuz maybe I'm not that smart I need things super concrete um so like where this says clear communication budget priorities through public forums um that makes me wonder is that like the public forums that are required for Budget review and that we usually do anyway or is there something else in mind like where you could say I'm going to do XYZ and then if XYZ happens that's great um and again that clear the phrase historically underrepresented groups ensuring their input is reflected in financial decisions um I think I probably get where that's going directionally on a meaning level but like I don't fully understand what under represented groups means in this context so I would be looking for just a little more understanding there but I like this goal thank you um all right uh so thank you very much Dr gillery for pulling all of this together earlier than um than you've had to do in the past and thanks to the committee for their for their input so um timeline on this is um I have it right in front of me so I believe on October 10th yeah this will come back before the committee for for a vote and in the meantime we'll have had um a discussion we we'll have briefly Revisited the Strategic plan at our September 25th meeting so that will be in fresh in our minds as well because that's coming out as a um as a fully fleshed out document and we'll just be taking a quick look at that so all right that brings us to subcommittee and Le on reports um many subcommittees have been meeting over the summer so um we've set aside some about half an hour for this um so let's start with Capital Improvements I thought it was a half an hour for me oh for you well so I I have some a lot to report because the summer is the time that capital projects really happen uh when students aren't in school and we have the opportunity to empty a whole school and uh not use it during the summer um we had our Capital subcommittee meeting on August 27th um and started it with a actual tour uh we had it at the Lincoln School and uh started it with the tour of the school so that people could see the work that's been done over the last two years it's not finished it will be finished next summer but we've uh refreshed the school for 30 years it hasn't been touched and so we determined that you know that we would take it offline for two years now it's going to be three years we had hoped to finished it in 2 years and um a lot was done and it really does look much much better and can last us for another 20 years because it's a very good school with good bones and works for teaching and learning um at the meeting we also discussed uh we got an update on the other minic CIP uh projects that were done this year this summer in a number of the schools uh uh at at Baker Baldwin Lincoln Hayes Lawrence and mon schools and you can read the minutes if you want for the details I'm not going to go into all of it uh but a lot of it was painting flooring um and things like that that needed refurbishment stairwells Etc um and uh we had a short report on uh repair and maintenance because uh Charlie Simmons are uh director of uh buildings um was not able to attend he was still off on um on leave uh and we discussed a little bit about utility costs um at that uh meeting and the um higher electricity cost that we've been experiencing part of it is a phenomenon of um Driscoll school being all electric and not having the geothermal working this last year so the cost skyrocketed skyrocketed um we began the discussion of a CIP uh our CIP request for next year we did not finish it unfortunately because um we didn't have the building department there and we need their input too um so our hope is to have a meeting either in October 1st or October 7th to um go over the final CIP request Quest it's a little bit later than usual this year um but um that's that's the plan at this point um we also I don't know if any of you have gotten but I've gotten a number of uh uh emails from Lincoln School parents about the condition of the playground there which also hadn't been updated for 30 years and was having both drainage issues and playability issues uh with water congregating in the um mud bowl there I guess you could call it that um what's the good news is that DPW they also contacted DPW and um DPW has determined that it is a a bigger priority and will has moved up the uh planning and um the planning and um design work uh for 2027 CIP so we're going into 2026 CIP right yeah and so it would be the following year for planning um they have like 400,000 in there for planning and then the following year 5 million for uh redoing the playground it may need to be faced it may not all be you know in one summer just because of the amount of work that needs to happen but at least it's moved up and it's it's uh in the the pipeline um I think I got everything from the meeting was there anything else so they are doing they did do some work on the drainage this summer they um put down pavers behind the uh kindergarten classrooms uh so they did do some work to get rid of uh to redirect some of the water uh I don't think it's all the work that needs happen but it's a it's just you know some of the work and that was through the DPW funds that they have um but there you know at least we're on the CIP if Parkson Rec voted it last week which I'm hoping they did vote their suggested CIP uh but we will have a chance to look at that um okay and so now i' um Driscoll School update um the school is finished for the most part inside everything you know there's maybe some more a little bit of uh punch list but not much but the playground has not been finished it is somewhat done the geothermal has gone in the playground equipment is in they're talking about L uh pouring the the surface underneath the play structures next week and hopefully getting the playground um second week of October Helen October not September 19th no not September 19th October okay I missed that one sorry it keeps on moving well one we'll find out in these building projects you'll see over time it always takes longer it never happens or if it does it's sort of like by the skin of our teeth that we get in on time so just that's what happens with construction I'm sure if anybody's Done Construction in their own home they see that it at least it doesn't often times people talk about it costs twice as much and takes twice as long it never costs us twice as much that much I can tell you sometimes it takes twice as long is this an addition to the playground that's already the new one that's already in place on Westborn Terrace playground so there's there's uh the field is there that the soccer field was put in but other play areas that are in process there's a younger kids play area where some of the um play structures as Helen said have been installed correct the but the um uh they need to pour the surfaces uh the splash pad is going to actually be the last thing that happens and I believe the second week of October um also the gardens the rain Garden um no the other Garden well yes the other garden and some other plantings need to happen but also the rain garden needs to be completed um and and like I said the final thing will be the splash pad um that's sort of on that side close to where the staff parking lot is unfortunately most of it I mean I know that Val said October I think you know by the time we say goodbye to gilbane the contractor it'll probably be January you just in terms of what usually happens but the good news is school is is functioning and doing well and everybody seems to be very happy um right and they're using the field already they're using it I yeah but I think they ALS correct me if I'm wrong doesn't it need some infill um it has the infill and it was it was tested and and everything was um was optimal or better so um that field is being used yes yeah it's it's fenced separately from the construction we were there last week oh okay this week actually this week terrific thank you for looking at it um so peer school um as most of you may have or may not have seen the bridge is gone that was done on a Saturday and was really exciting I actually walked over there and saw some of it um and they're in the process of um recycling much of what is the school I think I'm trying to remember the percentage and I don't want to give the wrong number so I'll give it next time of how much of the bricks the cement and all the material materials in the building are being recycled we did the abatement of all the Hazardous uh and there's still more to do around the bricks unfortunately and Pierce in case you didn't know has a double layer of bricks because it was leaking and so they had they decided the only way to fix it at the time was to put another layer of bricks on it um but that being said um the um the school got moved this summer through the Herculean efforts of Karen King and Sarah uh Sarah help Gooding thank you sorry Sarah if you're watching um they really made it happen the and what I'm going to show you now is some pictures of both old Lincoln School and Newbury and how they moved everything out of the old school into the new school everything ended up in the right place libraries were set up we reused the library furniture from um Pierce that was fairly new at Lincoln that had 30-year-old uh shelving and um so here we are at Pierce at fiser Hill uh or old Newbery uh school and we have a penguin the penguins are Pierce in case you didn't know so they have two cafeteria areas this is is one and one of them and then there's okay we can go there and there's the second one and so they can you know split the kids up it's actually worked out beautifully uh from all reports from both principles things are working very well let's move on to the yeah this nurse's office um this is the uh Library um and then this is a class classroom and there's another classroom on the other side of that divider Pierce is very used to having dividers for cl for to specify where the classrooms are but they're thrilled with having four walls and a door too uh I don't remember which classroom this is uh or this one um these are just different classrooms within the building the building department did a wonderful job of making them bright and clean and this is the science uh lab um and that I don't it must be just another class these are just different classrooms within the building this is outside where they can picnic lunch so in addition to the inside they have outdoor lunches and this is where the basketball you see a basketball court there right everybody there's a basketball court there um and now we're at Pierce at okay and now we're at Pierce at Old Lincoln School is this is the auditorium with the um plaster uh statues that are there those were brought over by Mr Lincoln from many moons ago um cafeteria I just thought it would be nice for all of you to get a sense of what what everything looks like and not have to although um I was speaking with principal y off and she's more than happy to give a tour if anybody wants of any either of the spaces uh she'd prefer if we did it in a group rather than separately but um can we go on uh little nurses office thank you um this was the nurses office when the high school was there when many other places it's a second grade classroom I think these are the different classrooms this the rooms at Old Lincoln are wonderful where old Lincoln is located is awful it's on Route 9 and the playgrounds are acoss the street but the rooms the light in the rooms the Space is really wonderful this is the art room uh fifth grade and uh the teachers have done a magnificent job of putting things together making it look you know just great um it's it's a really fully functioning school so okay I think we've gotten to all the classrooms um I think we should also thank Jamie y off the P her head custodians andice the custodians Jim St and the rest of the the the staff there we would never be here Jamie worked incredible hours throughout the summer to make sure that this happened and happened well and parents from my understand well we haven't gotten any complaints let's put it that way and parents are really happy with the the school they t tour of it um so I I really think that that's that's going well okay I also want to give a shout out to the maintenance staff and the custodial staff their contributions to making this happen as well yeah everybody was working most of the summer to get this build these buildings up and functioning and ready for students um they did a fantastic job um and thanks to the building department for all the work that they did within there for things that needed to be fixed Etc last piece that um sorry I have a can um are you are you moving on from Pierce or I'm going yeah I'm going to another piece of Pierce but oh okay the freezes okay so I'd love to just jump in with one and I don't know I so this is all great and it's sort of unrelated ated but I just feel like as a school Committee Member I like um there was an E I think today I got saw at least two emails from community members with concerns about roadway Crossings and maybe that's not capital and maybe it this isn't I know it's not necessarily the time it's not on the docket but I just feel respons as a public person like cuz there's conversation about the crossing of Route 9 and the sidewalk and Crossing out here and so I just felt like I should mention to it somewhat um it's a work in progress uh but it is happening the students are walking to Old Lincoln School we are aware we have crossing guards at most of the main Crossing areas if not all we have one on Route 9 UM and there's still some Kinks to be worked out there's a crosswalk that was put in because the C the walk was um along the school side of school street was has been closed by the contractor because they need that space so there's a new crosswalk and that one has been complicated we're working on it to try and figure out a solution for it we the staff is working on it I'm not working on it well I am somewhat but but it's more the staff and the town are working together to figure out Solutions of how to make sure students cross safely okay and yeah and just to be clear I'm I'm sort of just feel obligated to pass that on yeah it's I haven't been to either space and it's not so much my question as just feeling like I should yeah no no I express that because it's coming from the community it usually comes up I remember with the high school we had a similar question about safety for students welome back and forth to the high school it's the beginning of the year we're working on it we're aware of it you know and I'm sure it'll be fixed within the next week or two of what needs to be fixed I'm not sure the the one area that that I understand is the biggest um issue has to do with the crossing at school street that there is a way to go safely and the principal has been telling parents to have kids go down to wash Washington Street cross with the light and with the police uh um police person I don't know who it is who's there that is the safe Crossing to get to the bus the direct way to get to the bus is to cross through that crosswalk that is more difficult for both drivers to see and for kids to do safely so that's that's where the there's a an issue um any other questions about this part about any of my report no right Helen can I ask a question I'm sorry I don't know if I first Jesse and then let go no Jesse go for it well it wasn't a question as much as a comment that in my meeting with the public health department I um they shared with me just so people on the committee know that there is some kind of non-arab born ASB bestus in Pierce in in the old building so during the demolition they're going to try to learn from what happen what's happening now on um Pleasant and John Street in the demolition there that got stopped because the neighborhood suddenly got inundated with people saying that there's Airborne as bestus and now um uh that that you know the entire Hancock Village group construction team it's all on hold so when I when I met with Seagal um she pointed out that they they're going to try to do an even better job now of communicating to the neighborhood that as the old Pierce comes down that this is going to be monitored and analyzed and well so I'm glad you brought that am man of responsible I'm glad you brought that up because the contractor has been very responsible both in terms of air quality right making sure that the dayc carees that are right next door checking their air quality checking their vents making sure that you know debris or whatever um particles is not getting in the is not getting into it and measuring the vibrations so that you know if there's any all the neighbors could have had had the opportunity to have their basements inspected Etc their houses so that if there's vibrations caused any kind of damage they can show it so but there there will be those monitors throughout through the Demolition and it should be coming down sometime in October the the major part of the building um and um hopefully we will be going out to bid uh in the end of November uh the 90% drawings are finished and um they will be going out for estimations and hopefully it'll come out well and then um uh the 100% drawings will go out to bid sometime in end of November beginning of December um Mariah yeah thanks Helen my question um is about the traffic around the site I don't know if it's been brought up yet but the seems like the traffic that's both on on School Street and Aspen Mall in either direction is backing up even more than it ever did before and it seems like it's providing like or it's posing somewhat of a safety challenge for the different intersections I was wondering if the building or if the transportation board or someone will be revisiting the traffic plan so the transportation board is in charge of the streets they're the ones who determine if a street gets a narrowing or not they agreed to I mean what's going to be happening eventually is there'll be bike lanes and uh a bigger sidewalk for pedestrians on School Street uh in the meantime the traffic is backing up my sense is that people will start to find other ways to avoid it or they won't uh I've been caught in it the traffic light has been extended for that left turn and going straight so that to hopefully help with the problem that's as much as the project can deal with it the rest can I just add something Helen yeah I think a lot of it is tboard because um it all is not just well it well some of it might actually be the state when you get closer to route nine because almost simultaneous to School Street going down to one lane each Direction um the bus lanes were added so that there's there are you know convergences of of cars from Harvard and Washington toward route n but I don't think that those lights have been adjusted to account for there being one lane there instead of um two where you can turn left onto Route n and so that's also backing up and so I think a lot of this is light cycles that hopefully they can look at and adjust some of the light cycles as well one of the things when we had the uh traffic consultants and they did their study they found that the greater majority of the traffic was coming from outside Brooklyn using it as a cut through to the hospital areas and so I think some of the Hope was that they would find a different route to go to the hospital areas as opposed to going by um School Street because in addition to what we have now eventually when the school is there there will be two humps in the road and a light for sco for students to across to go across the street to the playground so um it may even get slowed down I think the um when we discussed it in pedestrian advisory for the last two and a half three years um it ranges all the way potentially even to become just a pedestrian walkway with no no traffic not sure what the final final de no no there was no the transportation board did not agree to not having the the issue with the issue with the um speed bumps or traffic calming there might also be for first responding vehicles ambulances and things like that I think they're going to be lower they're not going to be the big saying is that that's the most direct route to the hospitals from that area actually so nobody wants them to have to go farther distances so we're going to have to work that out and and there are to Mariah's Point um continuation of images being posted on social media seen about the backups which will I think you know they need to deal with the tra the transportation board that's not something that we have expertise or knowledge or ability and it's not our jurisdiction correct yes so but what is our jurisdiction is wait a minute Stephen you had something you wanted to say no okay uh what is our jurisdiction are uh the historic plaster freezes that you see here that were at the um in the historic building at Pier School uh I can't remember the numbers of them I think there's 17 of these or maybe a little bit more 16 I think 16 Mariah helped me with the application that's I know you can chime in at any time um so these uh freees are um work in with our teaching of Greek and and Middle Eastern history uh in sixth grade and since they are artifacts that we have in the school we felt that it was really important to preserve them and restore them so in order to do that uh we did get them removed um there's a company in town uh not in town in Watertown actually called Deus that um refurbished the Supreme Court building and a number of other historic buildings and also did the algen marble freezes that we have at the high school because the owner of the company was a peer School parent and his son who now uh runs the company is was a peer school student um and so he has uh we the town has paid to remove them and store them with Deus we are um Mariah has been very gracious to help me with the uh the eligibility determination um submission to the community preservation act under historic preservation and uh in order to we actually were approved for eligibility pending school committee vote tonight hopefully and uh also the preservation commission determining that this is a historic artifact that needs to be preserved um I you have in your packet all the details more than what you you might ever want to read about these freees um but uh I think it would be important for us to I I feel these sorts of things that are have been in the schools that we got them in 1900 Mariah ish yeah um and uh I just think these sorts of things are important to keep and it's important for students to see these things because when they go to Denmark and see the originals they'll say oh I saw that or when students at the high school go to Greece to go to the Parthenon they can say ah I'm familiar with with that so would you like to make a motion and that was actually I'm sorry I'll go back two steps that was Mr Lincoln's purpose in in bringing the alen marble freezes to the old Lincoln School in that Auditorium that you saw there with the statues at the top these were the the ones that are presently in the high school and refurbished were in the same condition that you saw here for these freezes and um we're sitting there Nancy Helen and I at the time felt it was really important to have them visible for the community because they weren't really being seen much there and that's how they well it's not that quick we did some fundraising and got uh the uh Brooklyn Savings Bank where Mr Lincoln who was a school Committee Member and was president of the Brooklyn Savings Bank um what was the point yeah the Brooklyn Savings Bank funded a a the majority of the restoration thank you would you like to make a motion on sure you don't want me to talk more about the history of the bookine school I read it um so I'd like to uh request support and approval by the Brookline school committee uh of our application for a community preservation act funding for restoration and reinstallation of the historic freees at the Pierce School Mariah would you like to second sure but um Helen do we need to specifically say anything about having the Pres like going to preservation commission no because we are approving the application just app we can't they won't accept it without preservation but don't we need to do we does the vote need to be um also not just support and approval of the application but also support and approv or some sort of something to go to the preservation commission to seek that um okay why don't we do it this way why don't we do support and approval of the district's application for the community preservation act and for the um the designation seeking the yeah historic designation from the preservation commission so these are like separate applications yes they're two separate pieces yeah but we can do it as one vote because if we don't approve it nothing goes forward if we approve it then we have to go to preservation all right is there any further discussion on this topic Caroline um so I have a two things I want to say or a question so when I'm looking at the CPA um application process step one is after cing coming up with an idea after coming up with an idea and getting agreement from the owner applicants blah blah blah that's us right then submit project eligibility determination form and my understanding is that's already been done that's been done and they voted on it so I guess it I guess I'm surprised that I'm I don't understand why we're only being asked for agreement now at school committee because when this is already meeting of the Year okay well the CPA and that was due last week okay um I attended as your representative their eligibility determination meeting and um because I'm co-chair of the peer school project yeah felt that that would be okay um but if you don't want to vote it that's okay too so well my concern just is that sort of is sort of the the process and it that we're hearing about it now and the school department is the owner um and then also just as a school Committee Member and I've gone through this CPA voting plan the CPA voting as a town meeting member um and the CPA can cover lots of community needs um housing open space cleaning up open space cleaning up ponds um improving Parks so it's all a matter of prioritizing um ultimately for town meeting members to prioritize or or not to prioritize because they're they're bundled and last year at Town meeting there was a big discussion about whether certain CPA applications or projects could be taken out if people didn't want to vote them as a bundle cuz some people liked some things and and not others um so ultimately there's a limited amount of money uh for the CPA to spend and I think so to advocate for cleaning up these freezes it's not a matter of keeping them or keeping them it's only a matter of cleaning them up and without knowing what else is going to be uh included in the CPA um that might seem more important um to me I I would have trouble and considering that we have 212 million public dollars being spent on the peer school and now I don't feel comfortable as a school Committee Member asking the public to spend $60,000 more to clean up these freezes through the CPA um so I love I'm a preservationist the freezes are cool I'm glad they're being kept I like the idea of cleaning them up that's great but it's not something that I feel I can advocate for spending that money um in in that context so I think the one thing that you're mixing together there are certain amounts of money set aside reservation Y and the CPA will determine what makes sense you have a right as a town leing member to vote and you have a right here to vote and and to be clear my I'm I'm describing you know what will happen ultimately at town meeting I am repres my opinion is as a school Committee Member and I know the CPA can spend you know a certain amount on public housing a certain amount on Parks or preservations but again I don't feel comfortable advocating it has to spend certain amount it can't I think those categories Can't Be Moved is my understanding and there'll be lots of applications actually from my understanding there's enough to cover most of the applications already that have come in this year so as a school Committee Member in the context of that we have have $212 million being spent on the pier school I don't feel comfortable asking to spend $660,000 more of taxpayer funds to clean up um these freezes so um thank you but I'm glad that they're being saved I think we are now ready for a vote unless anybody else would like to comment all right Jesse yes Sarah yes Steven yes Helen yes uh Carolyn no Suzanne yes B yes Mariah yes and I vote Yes as well um thank you thank you all and thank you for listening to this rather long report so that's it for Capital yeah all right I think so um very good next on our list is curriculum um Suzanne I believe you wanted to hold curriculum until next our next meeting yes if we could please uh all right but also to remind people that we have the joint meeting on the 18th with Finance to hear the school Improvement plans yeah all right uh Sarah thej so um we have a meeting coming up that we've already discussed a couple of times because it got cancelled and it's on October 9th it's going to be an in-person meeting only and this is when we're going to finally if if we are all comfortable doing it do the case study and this is the case study that's from Harvard Ed ethics that our not the exact same case study that our teachers have done but they have done other case studies from this same group and my motivation I just sort of wanted to um bring it up again because there was a little bit of email activity after um was that when we are discussing issues that have a lot of values that people hold that might not you know not be same from um a member to another member they might even be competing um we as a school committee you know come to consensus anyway right we we discuss things and we figure it out even though we might have different different values so I wanted to say that that is kind of the you know experience that we would be doing by doing this case study and um everybody's welcome to come it's a subcommittee meeting that you know those of us who are on the subcommittee will commit to to being that all right thanks Sarah um next we have Finance Mariah hi um so a brief report on our summer activities um the end of the fiscal year um there was uh the discussion of um The Reserve fund transfer that was handled very um well by the finance team so thank you finance team um and then we met in August to discuss um I actually I think it was the end of July to discuss um policy But ultimately we've decided to defer further conversation of the policy update until the spring once we get through the um budget so that's been put on hold and then at our we had a meeting um three weeks ago or so um where we discussed some other Finance topics including the calendar and the um and the first draft of the budget guidelines um um and we also looked at sort of the Susan gave a really great presentation talking about sort of the expectations of Finance subcomittee um so that was all very helpful um I did want to give a quick update on the accounts payable because I haven't had the chance to report since um the middle of May because of our summer recess so um for the balance of FY 24 so end of May through the end of June there was 3,443 18757 in approval of um different charges and nothing particularly struck me as unusual and um since the beginning of the fiscal year there was 4,435 something5 even um of expenses um that's through tomorrow because I went today to sign tomorrow's um and again it was really it's kind of interesting to me that there hasn't been anything particularly unusual um and and and so it seems pretty straightforward you know a lot of expenses for um transportation and for the um food for Food Services um and just sort of the standard stuff so nothing unusual to report all right thanks Mariah next we have government relations so that subcommittee now consists of Helen Suzanne and me will be meeting on the 19th um it'll be a brief meeting just to consider which uh town meeting warrant articles uh will come up to the school committee for for discussion I believe it's the 19th yeah week from today um short meeting um fully remote um all right policy Stephen uh okay so we met twice the summer I think heard about our first meeting with masc we had our last meeting August 19th I think with uh a number of School principles who gave us a lot of very helpful advice on what areas the policy subcommittee could helpfully consider to provide guidance and or Clarity to them as School principles and building leaders um a couple of things one um So based on their input based on a list of policies that we've partially considered previously and based on MC's guidance that we fully review our entire backlog of policies over as expeditious a period as we can manage I've put together a master calendar for the next year that integrates those three objectives not the entire policy got got manual just a subsection of that uh with the intention of um making it public so that um interest groups and various stakeholder groups could join in the deliberation and help uh help us um deliberate to make sure these policies are responsive are excellent and so on um before I share it out I want to review it with you first Dr Giller to make sure it meets with with your needs and then I want to review with the subcommittee members and then Betsy I I want to discuss with you how best it could be um disseminated um the the one basic idea is that not to bite off too much per session but that there is a lot of work done between sessions so I've divided all the sessions up ideally into three blocks two main working blocks and one small additional block um where we don't get a lot done but hopefully we could take on some small piece so so uh with the idea that all the subcommittee meetings will be an hour 40 minutes going forward sorry for that additional 10 minutes so we can have two 40 minute blocks to take on some bigger piece and then a 20 minute block at the end our next meeting is September 23rd is that right Betsy I think that's right um Loosely docketed is going to be the first section for review which is sneak preview is going to be section J of our policy manual which has some really meaty stuff in it um one area that was recommended by School principles that I won't discuss just yet because I want to discuss it with you first Dr Giller but it's an area of interest to the principles where they've already started a good deal of work and I also want to spend some time discussing some work strategies for us as a policy subcommittee so we could figure out how we want to divide and conquer tasks and um make them more and more boring so that's my goal that's it all right thank you Stephen um we can move to additional Le on and updates I'll just also say that there's plenty of open slots in the in the master calendar too so if there it's not totally blocked so we can still accommodate issues as they arise yeah I mean every year things do come up that seem to suggest the writing of new policies or the revision of old ones yeah I tried to leave about a quarter of the blocks unfilled Stephen can you share some of what the it was a great meeting by the way so kudos to Stephen for engaging the principles um I thought it was really interesting and I really appreciated having their um their input and insight can you share off the top of your head some of what they were talking about sure I thought that that I captured four main areas that they were recommending we take up Betsy captured it in six so I'll try to say what I remember they recommended that we take up a mobile device policy that's new we haven't had that before they recommended that we consider building security that was important to them and a subsection of that could be a reconsideration of our SRO policy they were interested in our I'll have it down hang hang on uh an attendance policy that was very that was something that they wanted guidance on um they wanted more information or Clarity on Staffing for after school programs which I thought dovetailed nicely with a few other priorities that have either been part of a policy or draft or um what we've talked about um supporting after school for instance how does that work with building access it doesn't necessarily just have to be about are the doors open or closed to parents in the morning it could be a broader policy but again before I dock at something like that I want to discuss it with Dr Giller what shouldn't should be included um they also talked about possibly updating graduation requirements but that sounds so ambitious that I don't know whether it's appropriate to be under policy or whether that Andy needs to be something that you decide where it really belongs if that's part of something that's above policy closer to vision and goals I don't know um Betsy is there anything that you captured outside that I think you I think you put it as Staffing for after school programs also that to me could be part of um a broad building access policy too um where are we on this question of um which if any handbooks require school committee so handbooks are what we're required to do is we're required to update the general handbook in section J um which is one of the areas that I've prioritize for our review this year um the letter of the law says that we have to review any policy that comes through including anything that comes out of k8s but the way they the way we we talked a lot about the issue of of a process by which the school the school whoever we are at the school committee as able to fulfill it its duty of reviewing and approving any building based policy which is one that we haven't really exercised in the past but to do so without causing an undue burden on the leaders who may need to tweak policies here and there so this turned into a conversation about how to do it for the high school versus how to do it for the k8s so uh Val hopefully Senter on the statute val did you have any update on your interpretation of that statute I I didn't take a deeper look at it sorry St okay we're required to review it all but the k8s the way they do it is they they really just compile and aggregate versus uh generating new policy as BHS does so it's a bit of a different assignment for BHS does that answer your question kind of yeah it was it was a confusing discussion yeah it was a complicated conversation mhm all right um so just one thing um so in the past when high school graduation requirements changed because it used to be gym four years and English four years and that was it that was pre uh Ed reform um we the school it went to curriculum we went over it and then it came to the school committee for a vote so I would suggest that might be a way that we might that sounds reasonable to me too deal with it so Suzanne maybe that's a suggestion from their principles you want to take up on the curriculum subcommittee instead of it starting at policy is looking at graduation requirements with OTL sure do is Jody noding her head now it's not I'll talk to Jody we'll talk that makes sense to me also is there overlap with portrait of graduate and yeah I think I think curriculum can grapple with all that and figure out you know it makes sense to do portrait of a graduate and then do the requirements afterwards but I'm not we may need to do some requirements sooner I don't know I don't know if the state has changed anything but we can talk about that in curriculum which I won't be I'd like to thank our members who represented us at Brookline day um recently would anybody who was there like to talk about what that was like yeah I mean it was um it was a lot of fun spent more time there than I signed up for and then spent the next hour and a half walking up and down there was a lot of excitement from people coming by and these stickers um you know um were very very popular we held them out right in front of people so they couldn't miss them and a lot of former students and current students and their parents came by too there was just a ton of energy around it so it was uh it was very nice it was just a you know a popular place for people to stop by I I'll add that I think that Jesse is an excellent salesperson for PSP and um I thought the our bibs Mariah was uh was a hit yes so I I retract my my grimaces from all those times you brought it up at all those meetings I feel so Vindicated right [Laughter] now and thanks to Betsy for organizing for organizing making iten and and those hours that I spent there I think no no no there was there was one grievance and that was the quality of our our BHS scoreboard but everyone else had had just questions and praise and so it was a really nice Vibe the whole time and yeah Betsy thanks for all the organization and logistical support Betsy excuse me you set it up you had everything there you ordered everything you did everything and thank you and I would just I would just add that Mariah's daughter Rita was a big energy source for about two hours coming back to us anytime we turned our head from forward she would pipe up and say stay focused yeah we got it yeah yeah she made sure yeah all right um excellent any other leaz on reports and updates uh uh yeah um I had the opportunity to um after a couple um schedule changes meet with Seagal ree in my capacity as leaz on with Department of Public Health and um we had a wonderful hour together and um EST we already knew each other from other past and other other topics in in town but um in this context we um we spent um a good a good amount of time speaking about um substance abuse within within the um within the district and and some of the plans and programs that they have around that um we uh certainly touched on the topic for a while of cell phone policy and electronic devices and um she pointed out to me that um and then I heard later from parents and things that across many of the schools apparently there are um there were directives given by the building leaders on day one of school about their own handcrafted policies for cell phones and electronic devices um even in the fourth and fifth grade I know at hay now they're dropping their smart watches off and whatever things else they have in a bag uh when they get into class um and um that's that's that's good it may help our policy subcommittee Stephen you know since there'll there'll be there'll be these things going on in fact we did a walk by the Driscoll school as part of pedestrian advisory on Monday night and I met a woman Nicole who from who's a parent at Driscoll on the uh PTO I think she's writing she's working with the team of parents to write a cell phone policy for Driscoll so I mean it's coming out of the woodwork now as people all I think come in agreement that these devices don't belong in don't belong in school um um scull and I also talked about Community Education both within the school and within the entire community and we we touched on the topic for a bit about sro's as well um how important it would be to have them back in the uh in in the schools for so many so many positive reasons uh given given the push on um how to get to school we talked about safe routs to school and biking safety sro's also could be um you know useful in um teaching kids and and staff if they'd like to refresh on biking safely and making sure you know kids whose parents want them to bike to school on their own do so in a safe Manner and we covered already the espece abatement thing and um and we talked about nursing and the immunizations uh programs for kids from families um who need to get those immunizations perhaps within the school uh within the nurse's office and um so it was a great conversation we covered a lot of ground um and uh we'll just continue to you meet on a regular basis I'll be attending their meetings uh starting I think the first one is the end of this month early October right thank you that sounds like a very crowded hour yeah all yeah can can I ask question um did they happen to talk about covid shots for no it didn't come up because I was wondering about the new Co shot and whether we were you know in the past they've been very good about giving it to the community just didn't come up during the time okay thank you I'll give a quick quick update I met um in my capacity as the liaison with the bef I met with the new um executive director Kim Barnum um and Jenny rofman um so that was very very nice not as eventful as Jesse's conversations um Kim seems amazing um I had no idea her fabulous background or that she's my neighbor um she can practically we can practically see each other's houses apparently um I'll be attending their first board meeting and um mostly I think just observing the awesome work that the bef does but that was exciting to meet the new director who is a former teacher in the school yes just okay a former teacher and a former um like coach of like the mentor to the mentor Ms so um her her words were that this executive director job is her dream job on steroids so and she was extremely gracious and I appreciated their time great well thank you both for for those meetings and for continuing to attend those um further meetings of those organizations um all right is there any new business I see none so that means that I will move to meet an executive session session pursuant to Mass General laws chapter 30A section 21A for the following purposes purpose three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the beu 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 purpose seven to review and approve executive session minutes from the following meeting July 29th 2024 do I have a second second thank you um all right let's vote Jesse I Sarah yes Steven Helen yes Carolyn yes yes Mariah yes Suzanne yes and I vote Yes as well we will not be returning to open session good night everyone recording stopped [Music]