##VIDEO ID:nLTFjoYDLNc## [Music] uh good evening and welcome to the November 14th 2024 meeting of the Brookline school committee uh I'd like to start by moving the consent agenda and do I have a second for that Suzanne okay thank you does anyone have uh questions or comments on the consent agenda before we vote okay um and seeing none from here and hearing none from our remote attendees um we'll move to the vote um Jesse yes Suzanne yes Carolyn yes Val yes stevenh yes Mariah okay oh there you are great and I vote Yes as well um and I'd also like to draw attention to the fact that um as at the last meeting we have the uh draft 2526 calendar um attached to the docket for this week's meeting so in accordance with our policy on these things um this preserves the option of voting on the calendar at our next meeting uh it's not yet clear sort of what our Best Way Forward is in light of the uh active open meeting law complaint um but I hope we'll be able to get clear on that after talking with Town Council uh later this evening all right with that uh we'll move to Kieran for the student report um yeah thank you guys um so November has been a busy month once again at the high school um to boot quarter 1 has officially ended um for students we received report cards today they've been made available on Aspen um the quarter ended a week and a day ago on November 6th um so there was that bit of languishing time between um when the quarter ended did and when report cards came out um the sort of in between period I know my friends and I like to call it um and that is officially ended today with report cards so we are officially in quarter 2 um and more importantly perhaps um The Varsity Sports Teams at BHS have been having just some incredible success um particularly the girls volleyball team so the girls volleyball team are in the first um D1 state championship game since 1978 for our school um which is obviously just remarkable um you know I know many of the girls on the the volleyball team and I can just tell you how you know sort of excited everybody is um to play they play Saturday uh November 16th at 6:30 p.m. um against Newton North um so it's a pretty exciting game it's going to be the number one in the state versus the number two in the state um so I can tell you that everybody at the high school is has already booked their ticket um cross country championships um the BHS cross country champ yes where where is the the game going to be held the volleyball game um so I know it's going to be held at a neutral location yeah Mr Meer did email so I can I can forward that to you guys um it's Bill R it's being held in Bill RKA thanks um yeah so in addition to the girls volleyball team we have the boys cross country team um so the boys cross country team has been one of the most successful sports teams um certainly in my time at the high school um for the past two years they've won the D1 state championships um and this Saturday again um they're looking to repeat for the third consecutive year um so that's at 11:45 um this time around so Saturday is going to be a very busy day for VHS Varsity Sports um and then additionally we have our BHS girls soccer team who are actually they should be playing as we speak um at Parson field um they're in the round of eight the quarterfinals um and so you know we wish them obviously all the success all the best um and no doubt that they're going to get very far in this tournament um and then on November 1st uh to begin the month the latinx Club hosted the annual Hispanic heritage assembly um so this is an annual thing that the the latinx and allies Club puts on um you know usually it's contains speeches it contains dancing it contains um you know music um and really it's just a celebration of what it means to be latinx in Brookline what it means to be latinx at BHS um and how you know we as a larger School Community can celebrate that diversity can celebrate the Heritage that they bring um so so this um this year's Edition was particularly special we heard from um State Rep Judith Garcia um who was the first Latina woman elected to the Massachusetts state legislature um and she spoke during G block this assembly was held during the last two blocks of the day um during G block and F block and so um in addition to to that speech we also saw speeches from club members we saw a dance from the um hipop and Latin music class at BHS which is an elective offered by the Performing Arts Department um and really the event um I got to go personally cuz I have an F block Spanish class um but it was really just an amazing way um not only to celebrate you know Hispanic Heritage at the high school but really just to celebrate with the community um and you know essentially be an ally um and so that is the November report um for VHS it's a bus busy month and we look forward to many more busy months um as we kind of move towards at least the halfway points in this year so all right thanks Karen if members have any questions for Kieran just speak up if you're remote because I can't see you okay if not then uh we can move to Dr gillery for the superintendent report good evening everyone it's great to be here with you even though I am home I'm dealing with the sick little guy so um and my wife is out of town so that may put me on Dad Duty for tonight um I want to begin tonight's superintendent update with a staffing uh note change um we have um Dr Susan given is um going to be transitioning out of the role of Deputy superintendent into another executive level role uh to support me and the superintendent's office and we are able to do that um through a resignation that we have um within the um within the administration and finance office so it's a onetoone exchange uh in the role um and we will be going out to search pretty soon for um a replacement um while she can't be replaced but a replacement for Dr given uh and the um to so for someone to lead the Administration and finance office I'm looking um to finalize um that posting to get that out either later tomorrow or first thing Monday but we'd be looking at um um we're looking at some modifications to the role uh just slightly maybe something in the title uh as well because we want to be able to cast as wide a net as possible to get uh the best qualified candidate to come in and Lead this Workforce um so I wanted to um and we'll follow our normal hiring process or vetting process for that um which is uh given that this the that role is a uh school committee statutory Authority process um so we'll go through that process and bring and I'll make a recommendation to the school committee for final hiring on that um so this is a um always a hard time when we have transition certainly midy year but um we are moving forward so we are the process of notifying staff so that they are aware of this change um to make it as seamless as possible and try to answer and support folks uh through this transition next up we have an update from our health and nursing initiatives the health um offices collaborating with the town of Brookline to um order more supplies uh for the covid-19 tests um so we want to make sure that our our team has what they need in terms of being able to uh test themselves um and like last year nurses are no longer testing students or staff but we want to make sure that our community has the resources they need if they're feeling sick or think they may have Co we are uh engaging in free CPR and AED uh training for our p PSB staff PSB has partners with partnered with the American Heart Association to host free CPR and the alternative uh def uh fius course uh for interested staff um this happened at Wednesday on November 4th at Lincoln School and the course is designed to equip staff with basic CPR skills and uh we're very pleased that Trisha laham has been able to continuously um seek out and provide training for our staff um in various needs so more to come as well and I'm sure there'll be requests for additional trainings um on this as well uh Clinical Services um um as part of their health programming School staff are working to teach students about mental health the signs of suicide program teaches students about this difficult topic and encourages them to seek help SOS has been used by thousands of schools for many many years Studies have shown that it effectively teaches students about depression and suicide while reducing the number of students uh self-reported suicide attempts um the program is being delivered um during Health classes which are scheduled for late November or December the fall Universal screening for students in grades 3 through 12 ended November 8th um the screening measures School belonging supportive relationships and emotional uh regulation skills Pleasant feelings and unpleasant feelings and you all may remember the Deep work that um that OSS uh did and Matt Dr D'Or shared out these results over the course of last year and we starting to see our data Trend up which is very powerful for grades uh for students in grades 6 through 12 the survey includes the phq 4 which is a brief screening tool for anxiety and depression school teams use this information to identify students who may who may need additional Support over the next two weeks the data will be analyzed and the building and District level to identify Trends strengths and areas of need for the PSB mental health programming openhouse to view potential literacy materials the Dr funa joined me this morning um with the PTO leaders and um she did a very nice job of walking through um where we are with the literacy materials and so this again is our CommunityWide blurb to share that the uh office of teaching and learning is hosting a community open house for PSB families to learn about three new programs that have been identified for the K through 5 literacy instruction the open house will take place Monday November 25th from 5: to 6: here at Town Hall following the curriculum subcommittee meeting and um for more information feel free to reach out to Dr Jodie Fortuna the three finalists are Ark core eel education and fish tank promoting team building we want to shout out Sarah Ladner Apollo the director of wira Pals uh for grade 6 through 12 she coordinated a special afternoon of team building at Hell reservation in Westwood on November 5th uh staff drove out um to strengthen the ties across different programs that work together the staff challenged each other learned from each other and walked away feeling rejuvenated for the work they do thinking about how they can bring those experiences to went through pal as a result of new connections staff is now planning staff exchanges across the middle and high school programs to build stronger transitions for students between 8th and 9th grade and help students of all ages adapt with less familiar staff in preparation for postsecondary opportunities so thank you to Sarah as well as the um winr house team and with that that concludes the superintendent update for tonight all right thank you Dr G any um questions or comments from Members speak up if you're remote yeah um my my my only question was the um curriculum meeting is from 4: to 5:30 and this starts at 5: is is are we going to miss half an hour of if you want to go to the literacy review no so it's actually the it's folding into the other so we start at 4 uh we have two items on the agenda one the sustainability task force and the other is going to be the um literacy curriculum so 4:30 to 5 we'll an overview of the curriculum and then at 5: the public will join us and so oh perfect we kind of ease into that thank you uhuh all right if there are no more question Andy I have a I don't have a question I have a comment go ahead Maria thank you I just wanted to um acknowledge Susan given's contributions in her current role um really it's been tremendous the work that she has put in in that role and while I am sad she'll be stepping out of that role I am grateful that she will be remaining with the district to provide continuity and I'm excited to see what she can do in in this new advisory strategic advisory role so my thanks to Susan I second it same yeah M as well for the um huge amount of necessary work that you've initiated and that I hope you'll be able to continue contributing to all right um so with this we move to public comment so tonight we have 25 speakers signed up for public comment um everybody will have three minutes uh so this means that the first five speakers um will be going now and then the remaining speakers um will go starting around 8:25 so I think um we can forego unless there's something very urgent um our subcommittee and Le is on reports and give some of that time to um to public comment okay um so a couple of reminders before we start so our practice is that we listen carefully to every speaker but we don't react or respond um in the moment and secondly um please keep in mind that we're all responsible for keeping our students safe so uh speakers are requested not to name individual students or staff uh or to speak about them in such a way that they can be identified individually all right so with that let's go to our first Speaker Maya Abramson Miss Abramson floor is yours for three minutes hi good evening um committee members and um audience um in the room at in home uh my son is a ninth grader um at the high school and just finished a Lincoln high uh Middle School um I'm personally appalled about the opport the the possibility that a high school high school student will be speaking uh during a day of um I'm looking up the name of this day that the high school was having um diversity Equity um and uh apparently going to be spewing um hate speech um during uh this day that's supposed to be highlighting diversity uh inclusion um uniqueness of every nation around the world and the school um and the uh people in charge of Education in the city or in the town are allowing this to happen I'm personally mortified mortified that I'm putting my son in the hands of people that would allow a student to spew hate against anyone in our community this we're living in Massachusetts the C the the state with the most intelligent people in if not the country maybe the world and to think that I'm putting my son and my my friends are putting their children and the hands of people who would even think about doing such a thing is just unfathomable to me um you should understand that um no one should be allowed to spew hate especially not in high school this is a captive audience and you're subjecting them to hear hate against another population in a school that I'm funding and we're all funding with our tax hard hard earned tax money so I'm calling upon anyone in charge of this day to in no way allow hate speech to be directed against any population do you not see the connection between the encampments on MIT campus which I was there holding my Israeli flag an American flag and I on the campuses of Harvard and other universities and these are people who are who are who are violent in their in their in their words and their actions and just this a week ago people were haunted down to be killed or taken hostage in the streets of Amsterdam is that what you want in our streets of of Brooklyn is that what you want Brooklyn to be known as for we have stickers with these the Jewish star with the swastika on it and I'd like to actually share I don't know if I'm able to share a video um Miss abson please wrap it up you've exceeded three minutes already okay thank you please do not allow this to happen we are all mortified from this idea even thank you um our next speaker is Lisa shatz okay you hear me okay yes we do okay thank you very much I'd like to share the views of three moral Giants of our time that could help give context for the current Strife around the world with regard to the Israeli Palestinian conflict and point away for Brookline schools to handle this conflict in school events and in the curriculum first there's Middle East expert in religious Muslim Dr Ed Hussein he's a professor at Georgetown University with senior advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair and through his leadership in various thing tangs helped promote peace in the Middle East on a recent trigonometry podcast when asked by co-host Francis Foster why does this particular conflict enrage people like francis's Muslim friends and not other Middle Eastern conflicts Dr Hussein States Francis your friend doesn't seem to be angry at Yemen he doesn't seem to be angry about Syria he doesn't seem to be angry about Sudan and Egypt might it be that he has a problem with Jew hatred because we didn't see outcries when millions of Muslims and Syrian Arabs were being insulted and abused we don't see weekly protests pertaining to Yemen or Sudan or Egypt now I'd like to shift to the late Rabbi Jonathan saxs who was the chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth and he describes anti-Semitism in this way way anti-Semitism has been hard to Define because it expresses itself in such contradictory ways before the Holocaust Jews were hated because they were poor because they were Rich because they were Communists and because they were capitalists because they kept to themselves and because they infiltrated everywhere because they clung to ancient religious beliefs and because they were rootless cosmopolitans who believed nothing so in the Middle Ages Jews were persecuted because of their religion in the 19th and 20th centuries they were reviled because of their wace today Jews are attacked because of the existence of their nation state Israel denying Israel's right to exist is the new anti-Semitism each time as the persecution descended into barbarity the persecutors reached for the highest form of justification available in the Middle Ages it was religion in post-enlightenment Europe it was science today it is human rights whenever you hear human rights invoked to deny Israel's right to exist you are hearing the new anti-Semitism and now I'd like to switch to uh what Robert burn said he is the founder of Human Rights Watch and he disavowed his Organization for its anti-Semitism and here's what he wrote Israel with a population of 7.4 million is home to at least 80 human rights organizations a vibrant Free Press a democratically elected government a Judiciary that frequently rules against the government a politically active Academia multiple political parties and judging by the amount of news coverage probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli Palestinian conflict meanwhile the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over 350 million people and most remain brutal closed and autocratic permitting little or no internal descent the plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well- financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as human rights watch's Middle East Division prepares report after report after report on Israel so what I'd like to emphasize here is that anti-Semitism is Insidious and our school leaders need to be cognizant that when planning events such as this upcoming event and and other topics in the curriculum when where students and teachers can feel emboldened by the worldwide protests against Israel I I would they need to understand before they go and opine on the conflict on Israel and Gaza thank you very much thank you Miss shatz and next up we have Ariel grman I think it's a he's a sorry that uh hello uh I will make it uh short and I'll try to make it a little bit um to the point um I'm here to talk about uh the day of racial reform and solidarity that um is going to happen in Brooklyn high and especially about the events that happened last year and I'm sure the school committee know about what happened last year and we were promised by uh the school administration that things going to change and going to be monitored more closely so we these things won't happen again so this day is approaching and we're finding out that when again I'm trying to be very careful here and one of the speakers one of the kids uh participated in a hate rally now we know there are kids and it you know sometimes they talk things in their heart and they don't fully grasp what they saying but still if it was someone let's assume the person that was supposed to speak was in a white supremacy uh Rally or a KKK rally or some other hate group will the you think you would allow it would you think you would find a teacher that will sponsor this kind of uh individual that's the equivalent that you have to ask yourself so if the answer is no you have to find a way to solve this um this issue so I don't know what I understand the purpose of the day but if it's coming to the to a point that it's creating this kind of division in the community ask yourself what's the purpose of it the world is changing the world changed things that was true a year ago two years ago are not true today you have to change your perspective and look at things more critically you see it what happened in the elections you see what happened around the world things are not the same so you you cannot now um uh judge the things those things that the borderline political right the this day is borderline political we can argue that we take that as granted as it's something that needs to be done as as as as um as something to educate the kids but it's some people say this is some sort of indoctrination so we have to take a step back and evaluate this day what it what what it brings back to the community based on the things we see thank you so much right thank you Mr grman next up we have Joseph Cass that's all right thanks uh so uh my name is Joe Katz I'm a town meeting member Precinct nine uh I'm a parent to two students at f frr um heading to the high school next year the older one um and I've been in Brookline for 6 16 years now I love the community um I mean that's really why I've stayed in Brooklyn um is the community that I've we you know my family has fell in love with a quick relevant background on me so I grew up in an Interfaith family uh my mom was Roman Catholic my dad uh was Jewish I was raised in reformed Judaism and my sisters were raised Catholic so confusing childhood for me um but I grew up in a little suburb outside of New York City and I was unfortunately one of the kids that was probably one of 10 who got bullied just for the sake of having a Barb mitvah and being Jewish so I know what it means to go through that as an adolescent and a teenager um you know and it continued all the way up through being a senior so wasn't it wasn't a spot in time where that was something I dealt with um to get to the point in the late 1990s you know the idea of a day of racial reform and solidarity was a distant thought of a high school administration um if ever a thought at all back then unfortunately right so we didn't have the opportunities that are happening today um but here and now in Brookline um this event makes sense right this is this is a place where we value the understanding that everyone should be able to go to school and attend school with a feeling of safety regardless of their identity so when we offer an opportunity to strengthen those beliefs and values through the vehicle like the day of of racial reform and solidarity we shouldn't contradict that sentiment by polluting the day with anti-semetic and other hate speech sometimes disguised as some version of revolutionary expression or otherwise positive cultural affirmations build a diverse Community while grievances like what we saw last year are creating and furthering polarization in our community so school committee and administration any correlation of this day their speeches and activities that further bigotry or bullying in our community need to be accounted for so I call on the school committee to require the head of school and Dr gillery to review any of these speeches before they released to the public and presented on this day thank you thank you Mr Katz and our last speaker in this block is Elliot Wayne uh thank you so um my son is a sophomore and as uh one of the other speakers said went through a little bit of a difficulty last year he called me afterwards being very upset and we were promised a different school committee we were promised changes and 13 months later it doesn't seem like much has changed in some ways although there's a lot of new faces which is hopeful for some of us um so I I too rise about this day of whatever it's called I don't even understand what it's called I don't even understand why we're having it um but that really is the problem here the problem is as I see it is the lack of moral Clarity that's been from the school committee through Dr Giller and down to uh Anthony Meyer uh about October 7th we went and I don't want to rehash because I don't have much time all that happened last year okay but now on October 6th or whatever when Anthony Meyer sends out his uh for the week how he how we didn't mark it in any way now I know there's different views about different things and I'm not talking politics but our job is to call out evil when we see it that's why we teach the Holocaust it's evil it's a unique evil in time October 7th was evil it was rape it was murder it was kidnapping what happened after October 7th it's a whole different conversation but the school should have taken the approach that this is a learning opportunity a teachable moment as they say but he again gave a effectless uh way out and and I I have it here uh I am mindful that tomorrow marks the 107 Milestone that will impact different members of our community in different ways I don't really understand what that means in different ways who who's going to be impacted a different way but let's go on let's remain conscious that tomorrow will land differently across our school Community again does that mean some people didn't find October 7th in a certain way and if so we have a different problem in town so uh be mindful that speech and actions can upset others so I find this feckless I really don't have any words to to uh to express the ton deafness uh look I understand Israel and Gaza it's politics it's complicated it's emotional for everyone but as I said this isn't politics October 7th there's no moral ambiguity of what happened on that day and our Educators starting at the top what happened last year and to allow this to come to this day all over again with a student who said whatever he believes and that's his right to say whatever he believes but doesn't have the right to get up in front of my kid at school in a forced event to spew his feelings okay and as I know my son is staying home that day he's going to be sick and I I would advise all the other kids to walk out like I've seen the Brookline kids do in other times and other places for other for other causes so that's what I would encourage the young people to do because this event go on right thank you Mr Wayne so that concludes this first segment of public comment uh we'll pick it up again in place of our subcommittee and liaison reports which are scheduled to start around 8:25 all right so we move now to our presentations and discussions of current issues uh first up we have the office of student services present our attendance report Lisa and Matt DUIs Matt Shar my screen great well tonight uh Dr Dubois is going to be providing a brief targeted report on attendance Trends within the public schools of Brooklyn and at Dr giler's suggestion we thought that these positive data Trends might be complementary to the enrollment report that will follow and before I turn it over to Dr dub I just want to take this opportunity to thank him for his extraordinary leadership in coordinating Clinical Services for our PSB students and promoting social social emotional learning across our schools it's an honor and a privilege to work with Dr dubba and uh and I'm just delighted to turn this over to him thanks mat of course well thank you uh Lisa good evening everyone and so as as Lisa um offered we wanted to give an update about attendance or about a quarter of the way through the school year so we thought the timing of this felt right uh for folks um who remember back in March we gave an update and this is going to feel pretty pretty similar uh to this and um over the past couple of weeks I I found myself in a position with a lot of our clinical teams with a lot of our administrators talking about attendance and and for me whenever we are are talking about attendance I want to Anchor it in this really big idea about why it is so important we believe deeply in the programming that we're building out for our kids we know that school offers this very unique sort of Irreplaceable experiences that really impact kids academic their social their emotional their cognitive development so being available being at school every single day is incredibly incredibly important and unfortunately with the pandemic we saw the impact of what not attending school regularly does to children and so I just want to Anchor in that really big idea about why attendance is such a driving force for so much of the work that we're doing and so here you see this listed that we want to make sure that every single student in our district is able to show up to school in time remain in school remain engaged uh and participate in the programming that we're building out uh for us on the school side accurately recording attendance every single day for every single student we have legal requirements obviously to do that but it actually carries really meaningful implications uh for both me and also for for kids um for administrators we use attendance uh every single day and we're using attendance to really evaluate much of the programming that we're offering students and for me in my uh lens when I'm looking at our mental health programming attendance is this really important secondary uh indicator that we can use to evaluate how we're supporting things like belonging mental health and so it's data that we're interacting with just about every single day for individual students we're also oftentimes using attendance to monitor how responding to interventions often times attendance is a lever that we're using to provide students additional supports at school as Wells helping them access community- based uh supports um what's also important for us to be thinking about with attendance and this is going to be sort of thematic uh when you look at the literature and sort of best practices with attendance it's really important that your monitoring it at all times we want to cat we want to catch issues with attendance as early as possible uh for anybody who um has worked in schools or you know worked with kids who struggle with attendance it can move pretty quickly and so at the very first signs of of an issue we want to make sure that we're supporting kids and catching them as early as possible um and so as I just mentioned accurately recording attendance is really really important and uh one thing that our our school teams are wanting is additional granularity where we can be really specific um in recording why a student might has been absent uh two uh um categories that we've added this year are School refusal and family emergency those are two pretty common reasons why students are are missing school um for you to know this school refusal category we only use that category when uh somebody from the clinical team is working closely with that student and with the family so we're accurately recording uh what that is now this granularity is important because obviously you know if we can sort of think back last week we'll be able to identify why a student might have been absent but when we're looking back in previous school years it's really important when we're looking at Trends to help explain why it is that a student um was absent to sort of give an example of what we're thinking this might help us with if a high school student has started to struggle with attendance we can then go back and say hey was school refusal something that was difficult back in fourth grade or in middle school and so we're hopeful that this granularity is really going to help us understand why it is that a student might be struggling with attendance um as I mentioned um uh catching attendance issues as early as possible really really important another big idea within the attendance research is that we want to communicate with kids and families really often about why attendance is so important and so I have some uh Snippets here from a communication that goes out to all families in August we also provide this information upon enrollment to families and this communication is really meant to be this first time um not the only time sort of the first time in a school year where we're talking about why attendance is so important what you'll also see here is we describe uh things that we can excuse things that we can't excuse we offer some tips and tricks to help support uh attendance um not uh seeing here but we do describe that if attendance becomes a challenge we're really encouraging families to reach out as early as possible so we can begin that collaboration um another communication that we will typically send out to families is when a student has missed uh their fifth day of school for unexcused reasons there's a legal requirement that we have um that all schools have that you need to notify a family once a student has their their fifth unexcused absence there's a lot of ways that you can do that sometimes they're doing in email sometimes they're doing that uh with a phone call um but this is a letter um that a lot of families will receive we've refined this letter quite a bit over the years and as you see what we're really trying to achieve um in this letter is bringing awareness that attendance has has been a challenged so far and really taking the supportive stance where we're building a really close relationship with the family and sort of talking about strategies that might be um supportive for them um when attendance um it's really common that when attendance is an issue that we're talking to families every single day and so again neither of these are meant to be the only forms of communications they're sort of the first line of communications that we're having to to help support attendance all right so I'm going to move into uh some data now uh folks who saw the presentation last March um this slide is going to look pretty famili uh pretty familiar so what I've done here is I'm posting our chronic absenteeism rates going back to 2016 and 2017 um as you uh might know chronic absenteeism is measured as missing 10% or more of school days in you're enrolled so for most students who are enrolled for an entire school day 180 school days uh this would represent missing 18 or more school days um what and and I also want to know that these are combined excused and unexcused um I offer this back in March but I want to uh surface it again here there is sometimes this narrative around attendance that we were feeling really good about attendance and then the pandemic hit and then attendance sort of fell apart and it's absolutely true that the pandemic worsened attendance but I also want to name that we saw an increasing trend of chronic absenteeism leading into the pandemic this is also coinciding with increases in mental health symptoms among Youth and those things are absolutely related so I just want to sort of frame that as a larger context and moving into the pandemic we were concerned with attendance and obviously we continue to be um and so when you look at these for most school districts uh definitely in the Commonwealth throughout the country school year 2122 was sort of the height of chronic absenteeism uh so much so so that in Massachusetts Desi actually created a new statistic to capture chronic absenteeism and this is this 20% number here um in the corner these goals are the goals that are specifically referenced within our strategic plan so there are a year by-ear metrics that we're looking to achieve and so going back to this main part um of the slide you see last year we had this really nice um improvement in our attendance where we moved from 14.5% down to 11 and half percent and so we're getting close to where our goal was for 26 27 and I'm really hopeful I'm really optimistic that if I'm presenting these data um deeper into uh the school year that we're going to come close to surpassing this what I want to frame and I know this has come up with other goals in the Strategic plan if we hit this goal early great and the work is going to continue right so as on as if we're going to wash our hands we hit our goal and move on attendance is that important that's the thing that we're always going to pursue that we're always going to work on and so I just want to frame that uh when I presented in uh March I um pulled out I sort of offered what this looks like with kindergarten students without kindergarten students um the current number right now is at 88.8% when I excluded kindergarten students it was at 8.7% so to keep the the slide less cluttered I just um include everybody here but right now um I guess on Tuesday actually our chronic absenteeism rate was at 88.8% for all students um K through 12 with this 20% number being at 2% If you're sort of interested in a a grade byg grade uh breakdown uh that's presented here and what I I really want to call out is this beautiful strength we're seeing uh within uh the high school uh the high school has always been really interested in attendance um I've been really impressed with the work that they've done particularly in the last two years to help support attendance um if you walk into that ninth grade um building you will see Deans and counselors all over that place talking to kids building engagement building relationships and this was really a North star for them is trying to make sure the kids were in the building and in class and so the the strongest attendance that we saw last year was in ninth grade now we look at the 10th graders we're seeing some pretty um uh strong maintenance of that um growth for this grade and then continuing to see ninth grade uh being pretty strong so I just want to call off that really strong work that's happening um at the high school um just to sort of give you sort of a a feel for how the school year tends to play out so this uh this line here this solid line looks at our chronic absenteeism for September October and November this dotted line is what we observed last year so what we know is around school vacation weeks we tend to see more absences we're moving into cold and flu season we tend to see more absences so I just want to frame that we're moving into a part of the school year where we typically see our most absences then when we come out of April break is where we typically see it decline pretty rapidly so just want to sort of frame that as sort of a a scope and sequence of the year um if you will uh last thing that within this side I thought was sort of interesting last year about half of our absences were excused about half were unexcused right now about only a third of absences are on excused right now all right um in March uh when I when I going back here when you look at these metrics um these metrics apply to all student groups so it's not just that 30,000 foot View right so this would also apply for example students with disabilities right we want to make sure that we're hitting these stats for all students and so um these are sort of two sort of um quick data points here where we have seen discrepancies in the past with attendance uh me and my role um uh kids with disabilities is something that I I look at quite a bit within our attendance and within our engagement uh for a little bit of context um this 16% number is pretty close to what we saw um with students with IEPs prior to the pandemic I think the number was around 14% um at its um most challenging I think we were around like 26% of students with IEPs were chronically absent um last year this number was uh just under 20% so again really nice growth in this area uh but of course we still have more work to do um so in terms of um what we're doing within schools um some folks may know we um a contract with a company called open Architects and they build out data dashboards for us and this has been really helpful um for us particularly with attendance and so open Architects actually plugs in directly with Aspen so all of our school leaders a lot of central office leaders we can see attendance almost live it updates every single night and so we're able to in really powerful ways understand which students are are able to come to school regularly and what students are not and that helps us um really Target our support um We are continuing um to sort of think about how we can utilize home visits to support attendance uh throughout last year we were building out a home visit protocol and we're continuing to work on this um and we've had some really nice success of having home visits generate attendance and so um that's something that we're going to continue to work on so I know that was relatively uh brief um but that's sort of a snapshot of what we got going on right now all right thank you very much Matt um I see a hand from Step so you can kick off our questions and comments Stephen thanks Andy um and thanks Matt for that presentation just I have a question um that is something that I'm remembering from last year's conversation around attendance I I may be misremembering but your your slide about communication got me thinking I I feel like we discussed after your presentation last year um how we communicate with families where there's chronic absenteeism and there was some concern that the messaging to those families may be overly Rusk or may border on the the punitive sounding and there was maybe people on the school Community can correct you remember Y and so we we made some tweaks to yeah I just wanted to follow up on that if there was if there were changes in how we are communicating to families where there is chronic absenteeism in the family yeah and so um I think a thing that people rightfully had a reaction to so in that letter that you may have seen last year we did reference that there are occasions um in which we would have to for example work with the Department of Children and Family and so in the current letter uh with our initial Outreach there's no reference to that and so it's a purely supportive stance purely sort of thinking about how we build that that relationship thanks that's great okay I have a question um oh well go ahead Suzanne okay um so Matt you mentioned the the outstanding work that's happening at the high school and the very low um chronic absentee rate for 9th and 10th grades in particular looking just above that on the chart um you see that over the three years of middle school there's a really steep rise right from 7.6% in sixth grade to 9.7 in seventh grade to 12.2 in 8th grade so do you have any ideas on what's happening during middle school for for that to be curring besides yeah besides just Middle School yeah know it's a rough time no you know I think you know what's nice for I I haven't noticed that to be a trend consistently over the past couple school years so it could just be sort of a random fluke or sort of a random variance um data um but yeah something that I think it's worthwhile to keep an eye on okay so that's not something that you saw not that I've obser historically now you know I mean been and again not enough that I think would move the data I mean there's sometimes um you know sort of like instead of senior itis is sort of eighth grade itis sometimes that can sort of impact things but not to a degree where I I can sort of put my finger on it being that's the reason why but again something I think we'll continue to monitor okay thank you um I think Suzanne yeah Matt I was just goingon to say it's the same Trend in 9 through 12 that's sort of mirroring what Andy had pointed out in 6 through eight so you know senioritis theme seems to answer that one but it's almost the the doubling from six to eight and a doubling from 9 to 12 so that's a lot of absences though yeah and I think you know what's sort of nice with us being able to have this level of granularity is so I think once a Trends emerge then we can really Target our support right so if we have concerns that you know once kids are hitting 12th grade or in eighth grade there's some disengagement then we can really Target um the support there you know for example in eth grade we're really building toward towards high school and there's no there's no switch that gets flipped right there's so many student skills that you're continuing to build out throughout eth grade and so um that's what sort of nice about um the platform that we use that we can get that granularity to then really Target our support Z yeah thank you thank you Matt so um I often think of absenteeism in the younger grades is kind of a family concern uh because you know six-year-olds aren't I mean for the most part aren't saying no I'm not going and they can't get there on their own so I kind of think of that as a family approach and then as they get I don't know at what age they start to shift but at some point they they kind of become in charge of their of their own attendance and how they get themselves to school and um how they engage and so I'm my my question is a little bit is is do we have slightly different approaches for children who are younger than we might have for children or students who are older what a what a beautiful question uh definitely but and I would I would offer that almost every time we're concerned about attendance we are engaging the entire family obviously that's going to look a little bit different um you know just as an example you know for a five six and seven-year-old we'll coach a parent up that if your child is crying it's okay we'll come out to the car we'll receive your child we're going to take really good care of them so that might look a little bit different obviously for a for a high school family we're going to be doing some coaching around morning routines and making sure that bedtime is not at 2:00 in the morning right so that approach looks a little bit different um but I would say almost always we are trying to engage the whole family and is it our counselors who are doing a lot of that work who's doing that work our or our clinical teams oftentimes are Frontline again in it it it's oftentimes interfacing with mental health challenges as well i' say that's one of the really common reasons why kids struggle to come to school uh Vice principls principles de counselors psychologists again you know as um problems become more intense not just attendance problems but in general as problems become more intense the team widens and so in our cases for kids who who are really really struggling it's not uncommon that it really is a collaboration between the family a counselor an administrator outside providers the student of course um we're all sort of coming together and taking a team approach on it and and would that team come together as a child study team I mean could you yeah would that happen say it's not uncommon for um students who are being presented to our child study teams to have um attendance challenges yeah um again a big idea here is that we want to intervene as early as possible so for example when we you know recommend a kiddo for um child study team sometimes you know it can take about two or three weeks for a student to to be seen so oftentimes really at the first sign that we're concerned with the student we want to apply intervention we don't want to just wait for that meeting that's two weeks out a sort of a a both end yeah thank you Jesse yeah Matt question um how does this 88.8% chronic absenteeism or or attendance levels in general um fall within the catchman area that you normally compare against District to District I mean I don't I'm not even going to throw out city names but maybe you can provide some context yeah so I would say relative to other districts we're usually um ahead in terms of our chronic absente as a number so they're looking a little bit uh better um you know for me I think that that's helpful to contextualize um the issue um it's also helpful you know when we're talking to our neighbors to sort of think about what's working and what's not working I know you're not not saying that but for me I always sort of you know caution that you know our goal is just not be oh look we happen to be better than that neighboring District right we owe our kids much more than that and so it's helpful to know right that you know that that number um um is is you know a little bit better than neighboring districts but you know that won't impact the goals that we have right are there any other questions or comments for for Matt all right I don't see any so thank you very much Matt for this beautiful clear presentation as always and for the work that that you're doing with our families I appreciate it you okay agree y yep Carolyn's agreeing Y in her mind thanks um yeah okay okay so our next um presentation y have a question okay go ahead seg Wang on um and forgive me if this was discussed before I came in I was late um which of us are here and not here I mean I see who's here but we have an unusually high number of not in the room yes present in the room are Betsy Karen Carolyn Suzanne Jesse and myself um joining us remotely are val Steven and Mariah Sarah y so Sarah and Helen are are not with us all right all right so this brings us to our enrollment report uh from I believe Susan and perhaps Megan yes okay we got it oh yes Hi Megan there she is all right good tag team yeah so tonight we are going to present you with um our o official October 1 enrollment um data um and of course uh annually every school district has to uh provide the Department of Education with um enrollments as of October 1 so um it goes through this process and then ultimately it goes from unofficial when um everything has been reconciled out and um we're happy to report that our October one enrollments are official now uh so one of the things that uh Megan did earlier today was change our slide deck to reflect that these are actually are official as opposed to unofficial October 1 numbers um but this is a point in time and uh if we were going to give you the enrollments today it would look different than it did on October 1 um so shifts in enrollment um throughout the year are normal for every school district but one of the things that uh I noticed that was uh uh really uh quite surprising to me is the magnitude of change that you have here in Brooklyn and it presents itself uh in different ways um as we develop the budget and provide support and programming to students so what we wanted to do is to start off with um sharing some information with you about what we refer to here in Brookline as churn so those are students that um migrate out and then my others that migrate in it is really significant here um and so the period that we're going to take a look at is uh from June until this October one report because as in all school districts that's when you're going to have your greatest churn rate we're also going to look at um you know um what populations are transitioning in you know where where where where do they come from um because that is also an interesting uh bit of information that we use when we start to think about how do we need to staff to support the students that are coming in um and those that are going out not just our students but our staff as well so Megan's going to go through uh those slides and then she's going to give you kind of the high level look at our October 1 in Romance over time and then uh she's going to share our K8 um average class size information and uh and then I'm going to look at you know how do we do on our projections you know and then we'll look at uh what our projections are for next year and and why we're changing our methodology a little bit and that is uh we'll conclude our presentation to you tonight so without further Ado I will turn the mic over to Megan to um review with you uh some some patterns and Trends um related to our churn great thank you Susan for uh that introduction and um it's nice to speak to everybody this evening um I'm Megan gainy I'm the manager for enrollment here in Brooklyn for those of you who have uh not had the opportunity to present to you previously um so this first slide as Susan uh so kindly teed up for us is uh looking at our summer chm um you'll see just to orient you to the information that you're looking at there are three successive school years presented here the current school year is to your leftmost the uh last school year 23 24 is in the middle and the prior school year is to the right and each of these areas we're going to see sort of how many students left at the closure of a school year in that summer window between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next um and then the next column is students who have entered newly uh or returned in some cases um back into Brooklyn Public Schools and what sort of that volume looks like and how it's distributed and then the third column will short of show the uh replacement uh cost or benefit if you will to the class sizes um during that window and as Susan mentioned we have selected annually to present present this particular time period this end of school year to the beginning of the um you know the end of the October one reporting period uh because it is the period that is the most highly uh busy in terms of students leaving and new students coming we do see churn throughout the year it will just simmer down just a little bit more uh during the school year but this is our most volatile period so it is a nice window into seeing what happens each year um and the important story here is that generally speaking you'll find that overall our enrollment numbers may not change that much but in looking at this information this is representing individual student human people and families uh and their experiences that we're working with so the individual students making up our classrooms change quite a lot from year to year and many families are making big Transitions and saying goodbye to their public schools of Brooklyn families and schools and then uh many also are being welcomed in and our staff and our uh Community are working really hard to get them on board and integrated and welcomed as well so that's the the the overarching story that is associated with our enrollment numbers um October one numbers are numbers and they they tell us lots of helpful information but I always like to sort of key in on the fact that these are individual human students that we're working with and they all have their own stories and work that comes with them um so the overarching story this year is that our net gain and loss overall across the district was about 46 students um which aligns much more closely with 2022-23 which was uh 58 student gain and loss uh last school year 2023 24 you'll see there's a big gain 222 students uh which we are going to out identify as an outlier if you're looking at the withdrawals you can see that that is significantly lower than our usual 400 something whereas the new student intake was only marginally higher um and though we can't like certainly state that this is the case I do believe that that and a aberration there is because of that was part of our covid recovery uh period wherein families who had not come to Brook line and then began sort of their experience here which we often see you know families who come for two or three years for you know various academic or or work um obligations they may not stay forever um but we have many families who do come for you know short medium term stays they began those in the 2022 23 school year and just didn't leave uh so the the the turn cycle um sort of was in a reset last year um this year we've returned much more to normal in terms of where we're seeing significant moves um our first grade lost students which is not typical uh normally we gain quite a few first grade students um but we gained a huge amount comparatively of second grade students um so that was unexp expected cohort to have um a bunch of new students come in and we saw losses in our fifth and sixth grade um that's very normal families entering into the middle school um sort of cycle of Education that's very common that we will lose students in that window the six seven and eight um area and then normally we do see a bump in our ninth grade um cohort not too many people register their seniors of high school but every once in a while we do get a few um so that's the the less likely areas uh for us to see a lot of gains um and then as far as who these students are these individual families are that are coming in again we're going to orient you it's the same preschool years aligned in the same order um and these are the representations of our reporting codes for what students lack School experience was prior to arriving to the public schools of Brooklyn when they registered and so I'm just going to go over those codes and what those mean and what they uh implicate um so the first is those students who are arriving from US public school so that's any place outside of the state of Massachusetts within the US uh who had been attending a public school before and they've moved to Brooklyn and they are choosing to attend public school again the next section is students who are arriving to Brooklyn and their prior School experience was a private school somewhere in the US then we next have new to education system and what this means is kindergarten these are only students who are entering in kindergarten and it's very key that I'm making a point that the number of students registering in the summer for kindergarten these are those who did not make it in time uh either they didn't live here yet they forgot um hadn't decided whether they were going to engage in public education uh as a Brooklyn resident for their kindergartener they did not make the pre-registration period which runs from January through June um so these are only for summer enrollments um of kindergarteners and then the next group is families who have moved into bookline from another Massachusetts District whose children were previously public school students and then we have Massachusetts private schools some of these students may have already been Brooklyn residents attending private school others were from other municipalities moving in and choosing to move from private to public and so there's a mixed bag there as far as where their last place of residence may have been and every year we annually have a few students who may be engaged in home education Brands uh homeschooling who returned back to the public system um and then the last baby cohort is our International students H and what that means does not mean that their place of origin or place of birth was outside of the United States it simply means their last educational experience was outside the United States so we many families who maybe go away for a year sabatical uh for parents and they study abroad for a year or two and then return back to Brookline those students are equally well included in that cohort of international students um and what I'll just sort of point out here is that the trend pattern you can see these bands are quite proportional to one another in um across these three years this year we found a few fewer homeschool students returning back but our hes School population has also decreased as we're exiting the pandemic period of um many more families had chosen to homeschool um we're finding that that population is smaller in general so we would have fewer returning um and in terms of families coming to us from outside the US the uh countries of origin of those students is quite typical uh there was no disproportionate um place of origin for any particular group of students outside of the typical Brookline pattern of uh places of origin um so we are right on Trend and we are welcoming all these many many families in bre uh during the summer and uh what that ultimately comes to is our October one number so the pig exciting official number and a Susan mentioned we can confirm that as of today desie has certified that our number is correct and final uh so as of this year we have 7,023 students enrolled in the public schools of Brookline as reported to desie and I'm going to just make a quick couple of caveats about what that number includes and what it doesn't include just so that you're um looking at sort of a fuller picture because of the types of reporting that Dy requires some of our students don't fall into this number so the first group of those students is those students who are in early childhood education who are under the age of three at as of October one so we have 13 students in our classrooms who are not represented here uh because they're days are a little bit later and they will turn three as the school year progresses but they are in there and they are acting as general education U role models in our preschool classrooms um to fill out those um and engage those preschool classrooms so we acknowledge those 13 students and honor their presence in our classrooms and then the other group of students who is not represented in the 7,023 students is our students who are currently uh in out of District special education programs we report those students we just report them separately because of the way that desie um covers that kind of information they request it go into separate stream so we are also going to represent our 66 students that we report this school year um as our out of District students we may have more than 66 students just as a little asterisk on that asterisk um because of the uh various agreements and cost sharing with perhaps divorced families who live in multiple municipalities there's some agreements and some complications so the 66 students are those that we are financially accounting for this year and that may change uh you know by anually and uh for some students so just keep that in mind but again we represent them and honor them as our school population um and generally speaking the point here is that the trend is quite flat uh we are 16 students few than we were in the 2023 24 school year um and that was only uh you know 19 students fewer than the year prior so we are very much flat um and pretty consistent which is exactly what we had expected we were not expecting any drastic shifts up or down um in projections which Susan will um share more about with you in a few minutes and we just wanted to take a couple of moments and sort of show you what the sort of overall um pattern what this what this number looks like and how it distributes out to our schools um so we've chosen to present to you the average class sizes because of course that's you know that's the lived experience of our students in our schools um at our elementary school level because the way the High School courses work it's quite a bit more complicated and it's not just sort of like a place in a class we've chosen to use this Elementary model to to present to you uh the key here um I will also note that this slide has been updated from the one that was um maybe in your packet um there was a typo so it has been corrected you will get a corrected um copy if you haven't already of this slide um but just in case you're looking at a paper sheet that looks different than what you see on the screen this is uh the correct data um overall what we can say here is that our class sizes are excellent um to have class sizes averaging you know 20 or under is spectacular um we really do have capacity to absorb new students without you know expanding staff um and you know of course as I mentioned earlier we will continue to welcome new students throughout the school year the enrollment number that 7,23 students is not static um it's already moving uh as we are speaking you know into November we've changes in our school population and we'll continue to do so um but the good news is the way that our class sizes are distributed we do have the capacity to absorb new students as they arrive um without making drastic changes and we can always use our buffer zones um to help us moderate these class sizes so when we observe any uh concerns that things are getting more um full than uh like classes in a neighboring school we able to use those buffer zones to um do our best to have students and staff have Equitable experiences of class sizes um and uh just a couple of things that I think might peek out to other folks as they sort of observe these columns here um we did see some class depreciations in our Pierce Community particularly in first grade and eighth grade our eighth grade cohorts somewhat small um across the board just in general by the way um but because of the peer School construction project we did see some folks choose to either not come or they left or they chose different School options um this is quite normal for construction projects I've been doing this here in Brookline for 10 years now and I think this is about the fourth or fifth school um that's been under construction and every time a project especially in its first year um starts it's quite normal to see um a depreciation in class sizes um the loss in first grade was larger than anticipated as I discussed a little bit earlier um we saw the bump in grade two but the the loss in grade one was um definitely observable and you can see that at Pierce um as in particular um and then over at Driscoll in their middle Elementary classes you can see that some of those class sizes are uh on the larger side they're well within the the the class siiz guidelines um that we work with and try to maintain um but the popularity of Ral school is perking up a little bit and some of those um sections had been collapsed in Prior years due to again building construction depreciation um so they're totally within management but those are some of our bigger classes um and then I am going to pass this right back over to Susan so she can uh talk to you a little bit more about um how we got there and how well we did with our best guesses about uh the the crystal ball of enrollment yeah thank you Megan that was uh that was excellent uh one of the things that I was noticing as she was presenting is that uh 50% of the new students that arrive in each of those years have been from international schools previously and I was thinking to myself how that when I look at um uh Desi student um demographic data here in Brookline one of the things that I had noticed is is how high our El population is and that our program is pretty substantial here and it's an area in which we have some concerns um and seeing that here tonight I made this connection between that in a real you know kind of epiphany way uh the connection between the two so I thought it would I would share that as I was observing uh that that data point um uh and making the connection with the with the other data point that I'd shared at the finance committee last month so um now we're going to turn our attention to our projections so there were two projections last year um one that uh was in-house and it was very simple what we what we did last year uh inhouse was just to roll the cohorts for forward so kindergarten became first grade first second second to third we made no adjustments uh as the cohorts moved up uh didn't have enough data at the time coming back off of um covid you couldn't really make really meaningful inference from cohort survival because the the year that we were looking at and the out years were were just uh odd because of of covid um so we opted last year to just move the cohorts forward for the kindergarten we said kindergarten would be the same um this year as they were last year having no other information also we had the CER mcgibbon uh Team come in and do this you know really comprehensive study and presented us their their uh report back in February which was of course well after we had presented the budget so I thought it would be interesting because I'm a bit geeky like that to to look at you know how did the October 1 enrollments uh look in comparison to these two pro projections to see what I could learn from that and and also are are there ways in which we could strengthen our um methodology in order to you know close any any Gap so uh in looking at uh this information the first um thing I I'd like to call out is like the overall projection not by grade level but when we look uh globally uh the projections were pretty pretty strong um uh we were a little we we projected a little higher than what the enrollments came in but not anything that would be like stat statistically significant really and uh when I look at um the changes between overall our projection um if you take out uh preschool we're pretty much overall on point so in other words if I take out the change in preschool um of 62 students and I subtract that from uh 7082 we're at 7,020 and then Romans came in at 7,023 pretty good happy to see that um but what you can see also is Megan pointed out is that in some grades we had shifts that that were a little surprising to us so I want to point those out um uh kindergarten for one both Cropper as well as our in-house projection was higher um than what our October 1 enrollment came in at so we had uh projected 491 Cropper 502 but the actual number was 473 so that was that was really kind of surprising especially with um uh Hancock Village and some of these other you know you know Hot Spot areas that we were you know wondering how how that would impact Us in fact um out of the uh um Hancock Village uh um development we've only had eight students enroll so that was significantly less than what projections uh had been made um you know leading up to uh uh the approval of that and then the anticipation of the impact so we've only had eight students enroll from from there of course more more housing has coming online um and so we still have kind of our eye to that but it hasn't been uh significant and as Megan pointed out we have capacity within our um uh uh class sizes to absorb more students without hitting guideline um so I wanted to to point that out and then uh first grade you know it looks looks pretty consistent there uh but the second grade our projections were low you know we don't have really an explanation for why that is uh that number was um was was quite a bit lower than either of our projections and then again in the fourth grade um our projections were low so um those were kind of some of the areas that that that we wouldn't have necessarily thought that there' be a bigger variation of course as Megan pointed out um in everything that I've looked at you can see out migration of students as they move into the middle school grades and then um some return back at the high school uh level um so uh that that isn't surprising and that was you know uh somewhat taken into account um but cohorts would be adjusted as you roll them up based on that so that those were kind of The Impressions and uh the overall um you know kind of conclusions uh that we've made made as we looked at how we landed versus how our projections came in so uh it it influenced a bit um how we approached the projection this year uh we do have as Megan said some stability in how our numbers are looking um which is great because it it it allows us to to identify patterns um and uh some are validating and some are are are new but um uh as we approach this this uh projection for 26 we rolled forward the cohorts as you would um but with then we made some some tweaks to the numbers um based on a cohort survival method we looked at a three-year uh rolling average and a four-year um to see uh what we could learn we lean more heavily on the three-year because um we still felt that there was more covid recovery uh back in the uh four years ago then that wouldn't necessarily you know uh serve us to to consider as as uh as a as a strong marker of of where uh patterns might exist so what I provided here is is a list of uh where we made adjustments to the cohorts um in an effort to uh even strengthen our our methodology now uh you could say well that was you were pretty close the last time why not uh stay stay the course um and some of this is because when we're looking overall is one thing but we have to budget and plan for it by grades right and so if we can get a better um um if we can hone in on um projections by grade and make some modifications there um uh we'll see how that you know making these tweaks to our methodology serves us when we look at October one enrollments next year but um we felt these were prudent and Justified so for so for example when we rolled the kindergarten up to the first grade we added 15 students um when we rolled the first grade up to the second grade we added 15 Etc so that's how you use this chart to understand if I didn't make an adjustment we just simply rolled forward a cohort okay so you can kind of follow the math if you look through um so I don't need to to to read it off you you can kind of look it over at your leisure um I think the the the bigger story here is that um overall we anticipate enrollment to go down again slightly next year not significantly just slightly so our our our pattern our overall um pattern looks looks similar and will look similar next year uh where it is impacting um our numbers is uh really at the middle school and the high school the variation is bigger there um and so at the middle school what what you see uh rolling up is uh is is uh a bigger Middle School population in general as you most move the cohorts up at the high school you have a um um a large uh outgoing class um and a smaller incoming class um from the e8th grade and so uh that really is in essence why you see uh 59 um uh a reduction of 59 students overall at the high school so um you know those are the projections we have we we'll we'll continue to monitor you know make Megan provides me with um the data monthly and I you know put it in my I look at the class sizes and and all of that if there's any further tweaks that need to be made before we finalize the budget um you know I would I would call that out but um I'm inclined to stick with these as our forecast since uh they landed pretty solid last year um I think we continue with our planning using this data it has been shared with the administrative team and and as we've uh begun the budget building process uh these are numbers we're using so that concludes our report Susan you may have said this go back a slide Megan or whoever is driving how how do these projections compare to Cropper yeah so croppers overall were about one 1% uh uh it's it's not significant right but ours were a little tighter than theirs overall um and again if you take out the preschool on both of them you know you're you're talking less than a percentage a really really small number so um the other thing too I want to mention is that for kindergarten this year we were were staying with what our kindergarten was this year but because it was you know much lower than what we anticipated it would be I've added 10 um to the kindergarten where last year I had just um you know kept the number the same I did increase um the forecast for kindergarten to be 10 higher because it just didn't feel that it warranted like like it seemed like it might be an anomaly that we had a dip and I just didn't want to I didn't want to um uh overreact to what we experienced this year um and it and it really if you if you take it across every every every school and you're adding 10 across eight schools you're adding one it it it's not going to have any appreciable difference but you know um I felt it was warranted so I added there any questions we're happy to take them um yeah thanks very much Susan and Megan I see Mariah's hand up so go ahead Mariah thank you thanks Susan and thanks Megan for the presentation um my question I think was what lonus was answering but I don't think you answered it Susan my question was how does the next year projection enrollment projection compare to the Cropper McKibbon projection I thought when you answered you were talking about the actuals of this year but I thought he was asking about the projection for next year I could be wrong yeah one of the areas that I I I leaned more towards um our methodology because I felt ours was a little bit tighter in comparison when I looked at I was going to use the Cropper enrollment for kindergarten but the number didn't make sense to either Megan or I so we uh our professional judgment was to go with our um our number as opposed to theirs because it was it was sign ific anly less although I understand that theirs is based on far more data points than ours um I it just didn't feel I didn't feel comfortable moving forward with that but we did look we did look and we weighed that um but uh um so so it informed your um numbers as opposed to being presented alongside it you used it as a data source we exactly exactly okay and and the churn rate and all these other pieces that we see boots on the ground that you can't necessarily take into consideration and they did try in their last report to account for that but um yeah so and we did look at nesda as well we tried to look at all of those and and and in our best judgment we felt that uh based on what we're seeing um in local Trends right now um this was the methodology we felt would best service in the upcoming year thank you and then one more question um 3K I remember when we talked about it last year we talked about how the October one number um versus the sort of program capacity are extremely different because many spots are being because the spots are held during the year are filled during the year and in part due to children who acquire IEPs during the year and so one of the things that I was struck by in the numbers was um when we include these numbers and we're presuming that there's going to be 320 but then there's 260 but that was really part of the plan but then it makes it look like we dropped enrollment when we really didn't necessarily drop enrollment and the same thing with your projections you're projecting a drop but then if those students actually you're there like we're not because we might have more than I don't know how many students we have like whenever it is at the peak but to me just the prek thing is throwing me off because we're comparing I think actuals to projections when the when there's a different I think it's an apples and oranges it is a bit because one of the things we learned through the uh process last year um was that uh we were looking at a capacity number not knowing some of the nomenclature that's used here in Brooklyn you know every place that you go you use certain terminology um and and so when looking at the information that came over from beep uh we interpreted um the capacity number as being the enrollment number and so last year when we moved forward in the planning process we had over um estimated um and so the 321 is really not reflective of what your en historical enrollments in preschool have been we did look at that 259 is is pretty consistent with um the enrollments in beep um in Prior years Megan and I looked at that but you're right it it it does throw this presentation off which is why I mentioned if you if you took out the preschool numbers and you then compared it as a whole our numbers are pretty uh are much closer but there was a a little um misunderstanding when we put the data together last year that we've course corrected for now Megan can certainly speak to yeah and I was just gonna affirm Mariah that that uh you know as I was talking about how the enrollment will will flex and bend and change throughout the year that's more true in 3K probably than any other grade because it is uh as you said we are holding seats for children who become eligible for special education services when they turn three so those are not filled because we need to have them available um when when children arrive um and seats are filled through the year for other reasons as well um just you know uh interest as well um with the new full day program there's lots of different components that families are considering um when choosing beep over a private daycare program um which is always true but I think with the new programming offered this year families are a little bit still trying to figure things out and the the program you know I'm still enrolling kids in De beep um in November which is wonderful we can't wait to welcome the little munchkins in um but I think that you know when I say our Peak number is not October one no no one class is more true than than beep um PRK numbers all right thanks I see stev's hand up and then Carolyn thanks and thanks for the presentation um I have another question about the Cropper forecast and its value so I know this is just one year's uh uh data set um but I'm wondering I'm just wondering about your assessment of the value of the Cropper forecasts um given that you were able to get ailure pretty close to the forecasts with what you called a pretty rough model of your own is it that um that we don't require as sophisticated a model as what Cropper provides or is it more that uh we got lucky with our forecast or that um if you replicated our model in enough years uh we would need a more sophisticated model to capture outlier events that didn't crop up this year get I'm curious about your take about the value to Brook line of investing in Cropper mcgibbon studies in general I think it's always good to have a benchmark right otherwise you you you know you're you're not you know I I don't believe in use one Daya point when you're looking at information right um and so I find it to be valuable um as a source of uh you know as you true up your projections you know what other information should I be looking at and how should be um how how does that influence um um the choices we were going to make you know when we wait Susan are you saying that we need more than one data point in the sense that we need more than one model or we need to run the two models against each other in multiple years I I think that periodically doing a report like proper MCG is valuable because it gives you another third-party eye um with that takes a different approach using a different methodology I think if you look at the overall Trends on their report even um an R projection and you look at nezda they were all pointing in the same direction right so it gives me some measure of confidence that when we're looking at numbers decreasing next year that it's it there's a validity I I believe to that because different methodologies that were used to do our projections by NASDAQ last year and Cropper MCG kind of confirm that so I think it is valuable I don't think you need to do it every year but I think um doing it periodically um is is enormously helpful I mean theirs takes into consideration things that I can't take into consideration you know and um and and some of that is birth rates and and and all of that um I was hoping uh that that I could use um that this year uh when I was projecting um kinder Garten but our kindergarten numbers were odd this this in in this year's uh October 1 so I'd like to see how it looks next year you know and like I said we're going to use this methodology and then we're going to we're going to assess it again next year and now we'll look at Cropper MC Gibbon's report we'll look at ours we'll see how we land and then uh we'll be able to better um um know uh exactly what value it does bring to us but I I think it was it was worth the investment um thanks that makes that makes a lot of sense yeah yeah and I will just make a note that um CER Gibbons themselves would tell you and remind you that they don't have a projection they have a forecast um and nezda does a projection um so if you want to get into the Nuance of that a little bit um given the the demography factors that they're using and CER MIM um it's so Broad and there's so much Nuance to Brookline as a community with birth rates uh the don't always perfectly translate as they might in a community that's a little less mobile um that that's where the kindergarten part makes it a little bit tricky um for all of those models I see thank you again Carolyn thank you um thank you Megan and Susan um Megan I'm sure that it's a lot of information to pull together on top of of all of your daily work um getting into our school so thank you um I have two questions okay not withstanding what I just said I would love to see the school by school breakdown um sort of like what you put in the the budget books where we see each school grade classes yeah the little table by yeah I mean this is great averages but this tells us sort of one thing but it's I think it's important and interesting at least for us to know the experience in the in the buildings um especially because some of our buildings you talk about staff capacity and then we have building capacity like we know Lawrence feels crowded Baker feels crowded Driscoll probably doesn't feel crowded so so I think that's important too um yeah if you could get that at some point that would be awesome and if there's a way to do it or maybe we just include I liked I mean it was helpful for the purposes of us understanding how you were budgeting that you I'll do it your way you know what I'm saying yes 17 to seven like to the next year and then sort of how true these stayed those numbers turned out to be would be interesting do you know what I'm saying like where you brought I don't know cohorts forward um exactly yeah and I'm so I'm just curious whether I haven't looked at that I do have the other because I was looking at that we we've looked at this data in all kinds of different ways yeah we tried to summarize it in a way that is not too overwhelming um but I but I have that that's that's easy enough I we can talk more about the the other this so I have a better sense of of of what you're hoping to see on that but I the first request I can do the the second one is really just a curiosity whether where you said when when we had the budgeting and you said for example like I circled the the Pierce 8th grade because it's super small and we knew that right it was 15 last year you projected it would be 15 and it is 15 so just curious so whether there were sort of spots where where those variations are I think and it might not tell us anything but I'm just curious but no big deal yeah but thank you and then also I just wanted to confirm I'm sure you mean with the Hancock Village which is of interest to me because I live in that neighborhood um eight new students moving into in the new construction facilities specifically Village total this year yeah well it only opened this year no the tower ref well there's two towers but you so so I know that in October of 22 there were 42 new Baker students in the new Hancock Village construction like it's been opening in phases so and I don't know how many new came last year but I'm I just wanted to confirm that was what was meant by the eight are the eight are the ones that uh joined us from the new Hancock Village Development this year this year okay eight is for this year yeah I'm just gonna clarify and be super explicit it is the the the brand new facility that just opened as of this September the very very large one yeah Franklin yes thank you I couldn't remember the name what they're calling the building thank you just refer to the Franklin Sherman building yeah the biggest one Sherman and Gary yeah yeah um so just that one brand new facility that just opened out of that large building that's open we only gained eight students out of that so far oh yeah well it's be I'm surprised that there's any because I think it's barely open so but regardless thank you so but anyway that's just this year yeah yes just this year yeah and I I'm surprised there's I thought it was not even open yet so I guess they're opening it in phases okay thank you and another just so you know another part of our process we meet with the planning department too that is part of our our practice is to meet and and talk uh with Cara about what is she seeing what developments are going on yeah uh so so we do have a nice collaboration with her as well um she gives us more information about yeah well it's been delayed in opening and you know um so you know keep your eye on this or that so she's she's been really great to work with as well so I'm not up to date on Hancock Village are there more phases there that are expected to um give us more students so it's just this one last building I do believe that this is the final significant they've applied for so the so the the biggest building which is 250 units is they haven't finished construction completely but I guess there's at least eight people living in it um and then they have applied for adding more units to the o to the first big building so they're two big buildings one has 250 units one has 127 units I think they've applied to add I don't know 25 more or something units um there okay but the great majority of eventual units have opened or or about to open our our the construction is complete or almost okay all right thanks um all right does anyone else have questions or comments about the enrollment report Suzanne y yeah I think I'm following up maybe on Carolyn's first uh comments uh so what I'm looking at the page that has the class size average by grades by schools um some of those are four section schools or some of them are three section schools yes and some maybe to and that makes a big difference when we think about class size right if so if it's a four-section school you would well the ability to collapse is what it influ yes that's what I'm saying yeah so so for that reason I guess it would really help us in budg going forward abely yeah yeah we can do that yeah thanks and it been the same format you've been seeing it in so it'll yeah it's not a problem Andy can I make one more comment I see Mariah again go ahead thank you um I just wanted to say that the Cropper McKibbon report though I mean I think you mentioned this Susan but I would just elaborate that if I recall correctly it shows pretty flat projections for the first five years following by escalating projections in the out years and I think that that so that kind of data is very valuable because if we just are looking one year ahead at what's going on we aren't able to react to Future Trends so the two reports are are complimentary and it's really helpful to have that long-term perspective informed by demographic um Trends and birth and death rates which are valuable thank you that's really helpful Mariah thanks for that all right thank you Megan and Susan uh I guess we're moving on now to the uh fiscal year 25 first quarter report Susan do you want to do it or do you want me to typically I would just give a quick summary and and if I miss anything you can fill in does that sound okay sounds fine all right take away thanks so we um heard the first quarter report at Finance last night and um a couple of highlights from the report one is that it's our first quarterly report that was delivered as a site-based report meaning that it um reported the budget um for both salary and non-salary expenses for each of the 10 schools and then for the five central office and um that ties with how the budget was provided last year and that ties with how it should be provided as per um the school reform Ed reform of the 1990s so that is a great um update and allows us to keep things aligned which is wonderful um we talked about some of the trends and the interesting quirks of schools in which you often see non-salary expenses highly front-loaded in the first quarter and yet um Personnel expenses tend to last because school has just started um with that said um Administration and finance office is able to project um based on running salary based on um encumberance encumbrances and the non-salary line they're able to project where we will um end up the year and that's really exciting because that happening in the first quarter means that we have time to course correct um and so the um net projected deficit at this point is around 1.2 million am I remembering Susan correctly one yes I don't have the report yeah 1.2 million um but senior leadership will be looking at that um making some decisions um and hopefully coming well not hopefully and will be coming back with um a plan to adapt um and that'll be reported to finance subcommittee next month did I miss anything suan is there any place on this document where where we're seeing something related to those projections the B these are only the hard facts as we currently know them so if you if Andy if you turn to the um last page of the general fund budget you'll see uh the last uh table is all in yeah so it shows all of the um salaries the expenses to date and then I've encumbered uh uh what I uh we believe is going to be the remaining expense from now until the end of the year if everything remains as it is right now um the two the two things I want to point out about the salary deficit is part of that is was known right we knew that we had not captured all of the extra comp pieces because I couldn't see them last year I didn't know them and so a lot of the work that has taken place um in this first quarter is getting our arms around what is the extra comp pieces here because it's 5.5 million dollar worth of salary expense which is significant um of course the the the base salary is the the bigger number but if you're off by uh a million dollars and that's not a good thing right so we have to know um what we're obligated to and how much our programs cost and so there's been a lot of work done to try to um pull that information together the long in the short of it is that uh $726,000 of that 1.2 Millions is attributed to extra compensation that we were were not able to um identify um last year and time to include it in the budget so that's that's the most significant part of the deficit the other part is really um when when you um put together a a budget we know inherently that we're going to have open positions throughout the year we also know that we're going to have people leave at let's say Master's 15 Step 10 and we're going to hire somebody at a at a bachelor's step five we also know that we're going to budget for somebody at Master's step five and hire a PhD with Master's 8 right and so we call this variation it's called breakage and so we had anticipated that we would accumulate um a breakage of about $1.2 million I haven't realized that yet I wouldn't realize that yet in the first quarter of the year so if everything Remains the Same right now we're still going to have to address the $726,000 but I should be able to accumulate close to what I need to close the remaining gap of that $1.2 million with positions that go unfilled we won't be hiring more staff we'll just be replacing staff as they exit and come back so that's that's well I'll see better as we get closer in historically you have used a placeholder of 600,000 so I pressed that last year when I was looking at the salary information it was like um $2.5 million we had a lot of positions that went unfilled um the good news is is that with all of the Innovation and uh restructuring of HR and payroll that we open this year with almost a full compliment of professional staff which was not true last year or the year before or the year before so as our fill rate becomes better and we are able to retain staff throughout the year especially your professional staff it's fantastic but that also means that the breakage so I'm in a a place this year where the good news and the bad news we did really super over here um and hopefully um we'll we close the gap um and I'll be able to report out it next time um and unencumber any unused uh resources for open positions so I just wanted to make note of that thanks uh Caroline um thanks and I'm gonna shamelessly just say that there's something I totally don't understand um and I was in the finance meeting yesterday but part of the time I was at the pediatrician with my son um this is so clear thank you so much and I I'm going to ask this question because I really want to I feel like I have the potential to to you are giving me the potential to really follow this so the 726 26 yeah are you saying that that's this breakage number that you okay that is is that from last year yes so okay okay that was the like all that so when you say comp that's like comp time extra hours that or compensation compensation okay so there's additional compensation it comes in the form we kind of categorize it in four buckets right there's there's benefits that that folks get that are not part of their base salary so it's extra compensation it can be for stiens for coaching um as before and after school it's your summer programming so it's not part of somebody's Bas pay in fact it comes in the form of additional compensation so longevity um sickly BuyBacks vacation buybacks all that fun fall under the category of benefits um Subs things like that okay so when when a a teacher is out if a PA professional um covers for them they get a differential um custodians get a differential for working different shifts all of that as extra compensation so what I was able to capture in the budget last year was most all of uh the items identified in the cbas but there's things that were not clearly defined in the cbas that that that had to play their way out because the documentation uh was not um um in a form that I could I could um that I could clearly see what we were paying for and why and to what extent so in other words the coaches unless I have a budget that tells me I'm hiring and this isn't I'm just using this as an example because actually Athletics is is was probably one of the cleaner ones um but it's easier for people to understand if I talk about that uh but if I don't have a budget that says I'm going to hire 25 coaches in the fall and this is the amount of money then what I have is a number and I don't know what the number means MH so in order to be able to know and manage a budget you have to have some detail that you're managing from and that's what was lacking in extra compensation and has been lacking for quite some time so this is not um so this good news it's good news so when I say extra compensation it's those forms of compensation that people receive that is above and beyond their base pay for other assignments that they can apply for and then but still what is the so that's 700 so the Delta on that what we were not able to capture um the deficit associated with this extra compensation that is unfunded in the budget right now is $726,000 the other part is that um uh the $1.2 million that I was going to make up in unfilled positions and breakage from hiring people at at from a higher level to a lower level so I have some capacity there I haven't realized $1.2 million and so therefore I still have to carry the salary however we will have unfilled positions as a year goes on because we always have a certain amount of turnover and so I'll pick up more as I go along so of the 1.2 million 700,000 is extra comp and the other Delta is really associated with that and that second part should tighten up as we go through the year and so the next quarterly report I would see that go down right so our deficit from that piece should close but I don't have an answer for how we're going to cover the 7 126,000 and that's what senior leadership will meet and and discuss uh how we're going to close that Gap in the upcoming weeks was that helpful did I clarify right any other questions or comments on the first quarter financial report well thank you very much Susan for um for the restructuring of the report to be building based and for the early attention to you know the fact that we're maybe running a bit hot so yeah it's as I said last night the good news is you know that we're really making significant progress uh the bad news is is as we make progress and we put these internal controls in place the good news is we see it early and that was the whole point right when you have good internal controls you you know about it and when you know about it it gives you options you know so we don't run into a situation where you have to jam on the brakes and stop you know programming that would be unnecessary we can make informed decisions because we have the data um well in advance of of of a a catastrophic event happening right so thank you okay all right this brings us to our one school committee action of the night um this is about possibly going to the Supreme Judicial Court uh to try to expand eligibility for the abidan scholarship Mariah do you want to summarize um what we learned at Finance sure So Yesterday um we heard from Susan Harris in the office of Town Council John Hodgman who is a member of BCF um and initiated some of the scholarship programs in the town Scott Bart who's a former um High School teacher retired who is also on the high school scholarships committee and they let us know that um the scholarship request which was made about about 100 years um about 100 years ago has grown from the initial amount um of $3,000 to approximately $3.4 million um and the reason for this is that the scholarship um is designated for female students who attend either Radcliffe or Simmons I believe was the second school um was it Simmons I believe it was Simmons yes thank you and um again doing this off of memory um and there's a limited number of students who are eligible for this award um and so to um there is a mechanism available called cpre which is um allows uh uh that would allow the town to expand the eligibility of potential recipients to Beyond those just those two schools um and so um the vote that the finance subcommittee recommended unanimously to the full school committee would essentially allow um Town Council to pursue this um within the state to to allow the original designation to be broadened and so that is the motion which is in front of us which I do not have the wording of in front of me but Betsy are you gonna pull it up I I happen to have the wording in front of me shall I just go ahead and make the motion um and then we can have the discussion it's on the screen too oh I see well in that case do you want the honor sure um so I'll make the motion to um vote to authorize that the office of Town Council on behalf of the school committee um seek the ascent of the Attorney General's office and file a complaint for C pre with the Supreme Judicial Court to modify the restrictions on the Abid Dean fund to increase the pool of eligible recipients do we have a second um okay Suzanne is seconds um all right let's open the floor for any discussion anyone have questions on this yeah I do Jessie um the original two colleges were um for uh female colleges and I wonder what the discussion was in finance Mariah about when it says extending it to student female students to any college they go to was there any discussion about restricting it in cye to just female colleges potentially in Massachusetts um not that I recall okay I mean Radcliffe merged into Harvard so that's not available there are no they would they're already to your point they're already giving students but Harvard already gives full financial support right so but I believe Harvard was one of the ones that was allowed between the time that this is what I understood from yesterday between the time that Radcliffe merged with Harvard but before Harvard was giving full financial support some students were receiving it that's what I understood from our conversation my question had to do more with the I I get that my question had more to do with the fact that cypre generally is used to say you know in the same manner in which the original person who who wrote who had the will WR written uh is this sort of in the same line of thinking they might have had so I was thinking you know Radcliffe and Simmons were both female only colleges I wonder if the original intention now to be brought in would still hold a condition that it had to be a female college female only College uh for undergraduate um as compared to any college we didn't discuss it like that we only discussed the fact that some of the recipients did go to Harvard so I guess there's already the the track record that it's being applied to schools that are not women only do we have do we have Mr Hodgman available to try to answer that hi this is haris from Town Council I might be able to jump in if that's help okay great yeah so as as you noted CPR has to do with um looking to the original intent of the donor there's really no one right one right answer here it really requires considering what the original intention was in the will and then what the so-called waste or unspent funds is so taking a look at how can the town spend the money that it's looking to spend and avoiding waste while staying as close as possible to the original intent it does require some guess work as to the the original intent um you know at the time the will was written in 1914 um Simmons and Radcliffe as you noted were female only colle Coles um but women could really only go to female only colleges at that point for the most part so we are not looking to change the restriction on the um award benefiting female graduates we are looking to expand it Beyond those two schools because um those schools are doing a pretty good job of meeting the unmet financial need of the students attending there so we are um we have not narrowed down exactly what the Restriction will be we're continuing to research this and we'll be working with the attorney general 's office we think it's likely that we would be seeking to leave in place a preference to female students attending Harvard and Simmons and then expanding eligibility beyond that does that answer your question Jesse uh not yet because I'm still um expanding eligibility to all colleges is different than to female only colleges I understood Susan to be saying that that it hasn't actually been decided yet yeah sure okay okay all right anyone else have questions on this if not then I think we can move to a vote um Jesse Yeah I guess I guess one just a quick question is this going to come back to us then after the ag office comes up with a with a um decision for the town to make the decision or is this the only vote we're going to have uh Susan do you mind walking us through how this process would go sure so I think um you know we could leave it to you a little bit I think our our view was that we'd be coming to you now getting permission to file this complaint um and and intending that you would um sort of defer to us and our work with the Attorney General's office and crafting what the cpre complaint would look like um from here if we have your authorization this will go before the select board for their authorization as well since it is litigation so it is controlled by them um we could come back if that's something that the school committee wants um but I don't know that that is necessary I guess it depends on what your view is I'm content to leave this to the office of Town Council unless somebody wants to um make a motion that's different no that's fine all right so let's move to a vote then on the motion that's on the floor um Jesse yes Suzanne yes Carolyn yes Mariah we'll come back tomorrow sorry I couldn't unmute yes all right Stephen yes Val abstain and I vote Yes so um yeah thank you for for those who have done so much Spade work um in preparing for this um yeah there's been a lot of archival research and a lot of thought that's gone into this up to now so um good luck and thank you very much thank you all right um so this brings us back to public comment I believe because we are done with the school committee actions we're going to um unless somebody has something very urgent to report about subcommittees or Liaisons I think we can forego that segment tonight um and just do it next time um and I think we can just um resume our public comment that got interrupted earlier can we take the slide down Andy yes okay we're um we're starting this 15 minutes earlier than um than I had said before so you know obviously anyone who's not here uh we can come back to them but the next on the list right now would be Stephanie Spectre Andy I'm sorry before we start can I just say um that policy subcommittee is going to have public comment at it at our next meeting next week so I just want to um get the word out on that okay thank you uh and that's sort of about anything yes okay um I don't understand that what what what do you mean Steve um we're we're inviting the community to give public comment on issues that come before the policy subcommittee next week oh so so the public comment is meant to be on the policies that were discussing next week not on anything that's on the minds of the public uh no and any matters that come before the policy subcommittee ever ever ever of all time I see okay thank you here all right so the next speaker on our list is Stephanie Spectre Miss Spectre are you available right now okay okay so meon Batley is uh is the next on the list and um while we're waiting let me just repeat what I said before the first segment uh for anyone who wasn't here so um the school committee's practice is that we listen carefully to every speaker but we don't respond or react uh in the moment um and secondly since we are all responsible for keeping our students and staff safe um we're requesting you not to name individual students or staff or speak about them in a way that allows them to be identified as individuals okay it seems like the next um person on the list who's available right now is nerit Freelander so uh oh y we can see you but not yet hear you yeah you're muted there you are hi hi hello uh my name is nit frander and I'm chair of ion Israeli American Civic Action Network and I have a friend whose daughter attends this school and is terrified I'm speaking on her behalf um I'm Sorry Miss Freelander just a few seconds ago I don't know if you were on at the time but I specifically asked that um individuals not be named or in fact spoken about in a way that allows them to be personally identified okay I'm sorry um how did we get to a point where we need to ask Educators not to legitimize a speaker who spreads hateful speech and insights violence is it reasonable to give give a platform to a student who celebrates October 7th as a year of resistance who Advocates that mass murder of the elderly and infants and the brutal rape of young girls is a revolution who justifies heinous acts of Terror supports horrific anti-semitic actions and downplays the suffering of innocent innocent people as part of a movement on what grounds are you serious this is not about freedom of speech because freedom of speech doesn't include incitement and the promotion of murder freedom of speech doesn't include the freedom to call to genocide as an advocacy for a a revolution when it is in fact an advocacy for genocide where is a freedom of students to feel safe where is the freedom of students to feel that their school is their safe place where they will receive the support and respect that our educational Community deserves we urgently demand that this student be immediately prevented from speaking this student should be brought in for a disciplinary conversation instead of educating him about humity you are giving him a stage in front of all the school students including e Israeli and Jewish students who are still suffering from the trauma of the October 7th Massacre student who undoubtedly have varying degrees of connection to the victim of the atrocities why are you exposing our children to a narrative that claims that ongoing their ongoing trauma is actually a revolution why are you instilling fear in your students why do you hope to what do you hope to achieve in the name of free hate speech this approach only creates division hatred and encouragement of violence against a minority population I'm here to say that if this event is not immediately cancelled the Israeli Jewish Community will not remain silent across all media everyone will speak out about this school in Brooklyn that promotes incitement and hatred against Jews we will make this story go viral we will ensure that everyone knows about a school that provides a platform for hateful anti-semitic anti-semitic rhetoric under the guise of perspective we demand to understand one thing how does a narrative that Advocates Terror and genocide align with the values of respect for human dignity basic humanity and unity how does this narrative you want to amplify align with normative human values and miss m please wrap it up you've exceeded your three minutes I'm finishing we implore you not to bring us to a point where in the United States we as parents must fight for our children's right to feel safe and accepted in their schools I appeal to your conscience and ethical standards which can distinguish between legitimate free expression and dangerous messages hatred and fear thank you very much thank you Miss Freelander and let me say again to all speakers please refrain from naming or identifying individuals who may come under attack as a result of what is said here tonight all right our next speaker is Karen Sten rude hello um my name is Maya I'm uh junior at BHS and my mother Karen St gave me her time to speak today um I think that anti-Semitism is of course a extremely um important is issue that should be taken completely seriously um and um addressed appropriately um I also would like to say that I was um there last year at the day of racial reconciliation um and solidarity and um the speech that was given that has been referenced um recently um had an overarching message of uh cooperation and coexistence between different groups and I think it's completely um inaccurate to assert that a student who's going to be making a pre-recorded speech for a school event that will be reviewed by teachers and administrators would in any way have the opportunity to spread hate speech and I think that it's then inappropriate to single out the student for something that they're simply not doing um and I urge the school committee and the BHS staff to support um BHS students in um appropriately um having the opportunity to engage in um a day uh at BHS um that's important for our community um and that accurate information is provided um about that event thank you very much okay thank you Maya okay Ruby kov is next on our list hey can you guys hear me okay um dear members of the school committee my name is RI kto on a town meeting member in Precinct 6 uh thank you for listening to our concerns uh we have a student speaker who uh asked to speak at doors's nbhs and we're very concerned that the student will choose to speak about things that he seems most passionate about the Israeli Palestinian conflict or the war in Lebanon which he revealed in his recent rally first off the school has wide latitude on whom to accept as a speaker this student chose to speak at an event celebrating the massacres of October 7th as a liberatory Act of resistance would the school ever contemplate platforming someone who speaks at a rally that celebrates a mass killing event of black people of course not but that is what BHS is about to do only it's about Jewish people I understand that the speech will be vetted and pre-recorded but we saw last year um that the people vetting such speeches are not sufficiently informed in what will make Israeli students and most Jewish American students feel marginalized and attacked that is why we're asking for independent advisers from the potentially affected group to V the speeches I also wish to express that the Israeli Palestinian conflict has no place in an assembly about racial identity in America for those of you who are not yet aware Jews come in all colors there are white ashkanazi Jews Brown spartic Jews and even black Ethiopian Jews Israel actually has more Jewish people of color than white people Jews of all colors and races were massacred on October 7th Arabs and Muslims also come in a variety of races as race is defined in America not all Muslims are people of color so it is difficult to understand why the Israeli Palestinian conflict is relevant to racial reform Israel's military operation in Gaza and the settlements in the West Bank are related to disputes around land and religion between two rival indigenous people not about race in any way shape or form some teachers at BHS believe that the Jewish colonizer narrative around Israel where Jews have also been an indigenous population modern Israel is made up of Jewish people escaping escaping from systematic oppression Mass expulsion from the Arab world and from the worst genocide in history we know the political views of the two advisers that have volunteered to help vet the student and a speech we believe they are both anti-zionist and that both think that it is appropriate to teach The Narrative of a genocide in Gaza at a schoolwide assembly one of these advisers also coached the student who spoke last year about Gaza and later thought it was a great speech if the Israeli Palestinian conflict comes up in this student speech it is bound to inflict harm and cause further divisiveness within school should Jewish students walk out of class or skip the day entirely we might even see a Jewish protest outside of school on the day of doors is this what the administration wants isn't doors meant to educate so that people can understand each other better in order to strengthen the community BHS has chosen to give a platform to potentially harmful speech it is not too late to change course and avoid the mistakes of the past thank you thank you Mr viov okay next up we have meon Batley hello um I'm a BHS graduate and I am Arab and Muslim I made this decision to speak at this meeting when I learned that there was an organized effort by parents to cancel a 17-year-old Palestinian speech this issue resonates deeply with me because I understand and have experienced firsthand the silencing of Arab and Muslim voices at this school now to hear adults organizing against a teenager to prevent him from speaking about his experience is beyond what I imagined possible to recap what we have heard so far there is there is an assumption that the student is going to spew hate speech or to directly quote another parent spew his feelings um person said I know these people and that these people are violent in their speech and action one parent described us Arabs as barbarians another student said that that another person said that the student describing his experience at the um Day of Reckoning would be indoctrination a parent said he was bullied as a teen for being Jewish and is now participating in an organized bullying campaign against a Palestinian teenager another parent called for walk out out on the day of racial reform and solidarity because he anticipated he would not agree with the perspective of a student I am shocked no horrified and Disturbed at the utter unabashed racism I have heard tonight from adults who claim to be educated the aim of the day of racial reform and solidarity is to educate students and the school Community about race and racism in the US and promote anti-racist pract practices activism and empowerment that means pushing boundaries and being okay with being uncomfortable it is not to pretend racism is in the past clearly anti-arab racism is present and widely accepted in this community it would be nothing short of hypocritical and laughable to remove a Palestinian student from this event on the basis of his identity and to the parents who have contributed to this doxing and bullying campaign shame on you shame on you shame on you I thought you might try to hide your violent racism but you have made clear exactly what you mean when you say you don't want this student to speak we don't want to hear a Palestinian kid speak because we don't want to hear what he has to say because we are genocide apologists and deniers thank you thank you meun okay next up is Zena Osman hi um thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak I am the my name is Zena Osman I'm the mother the very proud mother of uh the students that so many speeches have been about that that has been the targets of many of the public comments today uh including someone naming him uh I'm very distressed um and I would honestly have liked for me and my son to be with you in person and have the opportunity to respond to the comments made today but hearing about the pressure campaign against him we both did not feel safe in this public forum hearing adults call my teenage son barbaric evil anti-semitic and hateful on speech and action is disturbing and at the very least dangerous and honestly tantamount to child endangerment in the community where he lives and the school which he has to turn up every day to receive his education that these things are being said in such a public forum and in this context means that this committee and the adult parents that spoke these words today must be held accountable maybe one of your speakers who spoke of bullying when he was a student at High School can recognize what is happening here is nothing short of that and if I may call on his empathy I would like to bring out and I I I would also like to bring out the same empathy in myself to understand what is driving some of the speakers today to attack a teenage boy but as a mother as an adult and as a human I cannot see any circumstances where that would be acceptable my son intends to share his experience of being silenced as a Palestinian student living in Brooklyn how unfortunate and apt that we are witnessing such an example of this silence today such a horrific one honestly in closing I have a message from my teenage son to the adult parents uh who are uh uh requesting to friend him on social media and he feels that he finds This creepy including that creep near it who tried to friend him yesterday and just called him by name called him by name thank you very much for your time all right thank you very much Miss Osman um all right next up we have Lindsay Davis hi my name is Lindsay Davis I'm a teacher at Brooklyn high school and one of the organizers of the day I've been collaborating with teachers on the lesson plans I have read each of the speeches for the day none of them are hateful there are absolutely guidelines for each of the speeches they need to be personal narratives about race um three faculty members need to have read them and they will be pre-recorded and embedded into lesson plans as someone deeply involved in the day I can tell you that there has been misinformation shared tonight and I would also extend the invitation for folks in the community to reach out to me and the supervising dean of the event is astred Allen we are adults who would be the appropriate people to talk about this event I welcome you into my classroom I'm at the high school we can sit down and have a conversation about curriculum and programming at the high school I would be delighted to have you in we can sit down together and talk there have been some adults who have reached out to particular students who are speaking that is unsafe and needs to stop now um the students are watching and listening to us tonight and I would encourage us to lead with curiosity and welcome dialogue to support our collective learning moving forward thank you very much and thank you very much Miss Davis next up we have ai Liss good evening board uh everybody watching listening and attending uh thank you for your time and for overall sentiment and consideration of this matter obviously it's nothing easy um I think it's yeah I'll just to Quick Step is I think it's incorrect to uh accuse the the student of doing anything oh and by the way I'm a parent of a BHS student and another Rising student a BHS student um I don't think it's the child you know the student has uh Everyone's entitled to their own opinion I think the issue is the content um and the delivery versus um you know actually what the actual speech is right so I'm an attorney also um and the first amendment is you know not so ambiguous but obviously if there's untruth and it's dangerous and it could involve incitement it does create a significant concern and issue and when the local community is saying that this would be insightful this is hateful and there is a question as to the accuracy and intent of the speech um that's something that the that the school board should look at and that's for all for all people contributing not just this one particular uh Speech uh that is at at topic evening um you know I worked for a little bit with the Anti-Defamation League and I can tell you that in general these types of events while their intent is incredible and generally the results are overwhelmingly very positive um what happens is the intent never um never exceeds the uh the execution of results and and and that is what's concerning in a town that is very clearly divided on this issue um I just it's one of those situations where I don't think we win and I don't think we lose we're not trying to silence anyone I'm not specifically I think everyone should have a voice I just don't know if this is the pro proper platform um or venue specifically because this is not a race issue as was alluded to earlier um you know this is um maybe we do a separate event where there's a separate dialogue specifically to this um I would welcome that and I think dialogue and I think uh lindsy Davis you know those th those Open Door policies are excellent for the town and excellent for the parents and the students um and for American Jews Israeli Jews we should all we should all work together for that and Arabs and Palestinians and just everyone you know the more we talk the more we understand the more uh tolerant we all become and that's really the focus uh I think of everyone in this town that's why we're here um so my my caution to the committee would be to you know have these not just read by this the Deans because obviously everyone has agendas but why not open it up to third party review just everyone can have their eyes on it um or table this particular concept and let's do something a little different and more you know more planned out so the parties can um have equal time and equal face and we could do something in that way to benefit um the overall Community but otherwise I think this unfortunately is such a heavy topic um that you know it's not it's not a good decision for the school to potentially have this this topic in a in a race cont conceptt because it's it's not that you know it's just not um if you could okay thank you guys very much for your time I appreciate you all thank you very much next up we have Eric bery pardon me if I'm mispronouncing your name okay Eric Burke Burke okay I'm Eric Burke um I'm a 25-year resident of Brooklyn with two adult children I'm very concerned about the sharp increase in anti-jewish and anti-israel rhetoric and incidents around Brookline and in Brookline schools so of course I'm very concerned about the upcoming day of racial reform and solidarity at BHS there appears to be a student who's being provided a platform to speak at doors under the mentorship of the same BHS Educators Who provided supervision for last year's anti-jewish speaker this student has appeared in videos spreading anti-jew and anti-israel tropes and smears at other events smears and lies about Israel committing genocide and the glorification of terrorism used against Jews and the Jew and the Israeli people I'm very concerned about our Jewish students at this event as occurred at last year's event having to sit through an anti-jewish anti-israel speech aimed at them their families their people and their faith think about the effect this hateful rhetoric has on their developing sense of self leaving our children feeling attacked ostracized humiliated and embarrassed the Brooklyn schools are no place to condone these kinds of verbal attacks and smears the Brookline School should be a place of inclusion and learning and celebrating our differences it should be a place where words like genocide occupation and terrorism are studied as to their meaning and usage not used to demonize and vilify a significant segment of our student population and so I'm asking the Brookline school committee to ensure that no harm is done at doors next week and to take affirmative steps to create a school environment that is safe and inclusive for all students and prevent hate and bias incidents from occurring by one providing concrete written guidance to all student speakers and faculty advisers in an effort to depoliticize speech and two by securing an external objective well-informed Source on various forms of hate and Prejudice to preemptively review all remarks to be made at doors rather than placing this burden on Educators who may not be appropriately trained to identify anti-jewish speech thank you thank you Mr Burke okay next up we have Jamila arcilla hi everyone thank you so much for the opportunity to speak uh on October 20 this year my daughter was published in the cypris she wrote about her hopes for the new coexisting club at BHS one of the things she noted was quote being Palestinian in a town with a large Jewish population can be somewhat intimidating I don't feel threatened however I'm not always sure what I can and cannot say about myself my family and my Heritage so I don't say anything I am so proud of her for continuing in that piece and every day to talk about our family and our heritage to be fair it's mostly mundane aside from the violent dispossession of the NECA and the way the current genocide is breaking her grandmother's heart in a new way each day I know these are difficult words for some present NAA genocide but we are allowed to say them in this forum in this town and in this country they are in the air in the news and they are regrettably part of our stories as Palestinians I would ask this committee not to forget that my daughter is not at a point where she regularly engages in these difficult conversations out loud with her peers she is 16 with all the emotion and insecurity of that age however it would seem that her initial reticence was well founded while I remain incensed as a parent by the absolutely unacceptable cultural limitations placed on my daughter and others in the climate to this point this has amounted to amateurish and laughable eraser when compared to the overt attempt at censorship on display in this meeting today at a moment and Eternity really when Palestinians in Gaza suffer previously unthink thinkable atrocities it is is it possible that you would entertain the notion of silencing a Palestinian and Lebanese student from speaking to his peers on a day that is designed to platform precisely these voices and to empower future voices is your message to this student speaker and my daughter just don't say anything your suffering must be carefully vetted before it can be discussed and it will be silenced if we disagree ree I hope that fair Minds will prevail in this case and thank you again thank you Miss arcilla and next up we have Donna Perry hi good evening uh my name is Donna Perry many of you know me I'm a Brooklyn mom of two teens one of whom is at Brooklyn High um I was trying to think of how to explain to the committee how I feel and and here's what I came up with I'm sure we all know a million variations of the light bulb joke you know the one that goes how many blanks does it take to change a light bulb well it feels like we're living inside of that joke but it's not funny so how many Jews does it take to tell PSB that something is anti-Semitic so far you've probably heard from 20 or 30 Jews is that enough I don't know um this is a day of racial solidarity and yet you have a large group of people all from the same minority telling you that you have made them feel like they do not belong that their voices don't count and that their pain isn't real but it's okay it's just the pesky Jews who are centering their white voices on a day that's supposed to Center the voices and experiences of students of color at least that's according to one BHS educator I guess I should reach out to that same educator to check where my son fits in he's sixth generation Israeli so back in the days of the Ottoman Empire is my American Israeli son a student of color or is that descriptor only allowed for Middle Eastern students who don't identify as Israeli I actually realize it doesn't matter because doors isn't about factchecking um and most people sitting in the audience at BHS during this mandatory day of racial reform have no substantive understanding of the Middle East or the history and cultures of the many many different groups religious ethnic linguistic socioethnic so ethn religions and other subgroups in the Middle East I'm sure the complex nuances of anti-Semitism will surely be caught by the Keen eyes of your screeners so this part is important it's not just the speeches that need to be screened but by allowing a speaker who was featured by an anti-semitic group you have already sent us a silent message the truth of the matter is that the mandatory day of racial reform form and solidarity doesn't really do any of the things that we want to pretend that it does because if it did we wouldn't be here trying to figure out how to explain the pain and Injustice in a way that maybe just maybe you'll understand thank you thank you Miss Perry next up we have ziv Rosen bloom okay looks like uh Mr Rosen Bloom isn't available so next we have Abigail baraha uh okay Mr Rosen Bloom is is on now so let's uh let's hear from him we can't hear you at the moment or see you um you might need to unmute oh can you hear me uh now we can hear you yes okay thank you sorry for that uh my name is z Rosenblum I'm a parent of three kids in the public school of Brookline um I came to the US 20 years ago from Israel been living in Brookline for 12 years and today I want to talk to you about leadership and doors and Sh I want to start with a short story I'm a CEO of a the Energy Efficiency space I serve over 5,000 builders in the US uh being used on one in three new homes making them more energy efficient very successful organization that was that I was about to lose several years ago back then I uh my my leading sales person he was talking down to uh for for a while for as one of our entry level subcontractors and I ignore that I said this is just words you know they can figure out I'm busy and then several months later this person came to me and she was she quits she wanted to want to leave her job and she told me how she felt and that opened my eyes to figure out how bad it is and I I immediately I realized I have to do something and I set some some guidelines of what's allowed what's not allowed and few weeks later I had to let that person go one of the toughest decision I had to make you know in my career but also uh the smartest because then I realized how deep it goes just was that just the tip of the iceberg three other employees were about to leave and five of my clients were looking for some other Alternatives because he was talking to down to them as well I was about to lose my company and you know words is meanings and our role as Leaders is to set the boundaries of what people can do give them Vision Direction letting them know what is allowed right and and in most cases we just see the tip of the iberg now you are also leaders and you are the one that setting the nor St of Brookline School and the reality is that you have a problem right students from both sides are afraid to go to school parents are concerned and the F fabric that bring us together is falling apart and this is because you know you don't give them the uh the the guidance and Leadership to support the sense of belonging of all students and this is your time as Leaders to set up guidelines before we eat the big iceberg thank you thank you Mr Rosen Blum do we have Miss Baraka available now ah oh okay okay it seems that uh there's nobody else who's in the queue to speak at this point okay we'll try um Miss braa once more before we close the oh uh there's Mr Rosen bloom again okay she's joining now so hi there yes uh thanks so much for taking the time um I'm in South Brooklyn I have three kids I have one who just graduated from BHS I have another one who's at BHS um my kids have loved this school um I just want to bring a couple of ideas here uh you know growing up uh in the US many years ago we had a sense of of sort of national pride of being uh proud to be American and proud of of a country that was a Melting Pot and that diversity created uh a better uh a better place for everybody um I do think that there has been a stark shift in the last maybe decade around a mantra that is very anti-American um anti- um and and really goes against some of the the real values of of this special place uh that encourages everybody to to be themselves um and unfortunately I think there's intimidation on maybe many sides and I do wonder whether this event has any purpose um when I went to school nobody talked about these things you know what we got along just fine uh and I do wonder whether this is just part of the woke movement to start airing everything in in schools in companies and maybe this is just maybe it's not the place um because it hasn't created a Melting Pot it's created a lot of tense emotion people feeling intimidated and unsafe and I do wonder whether that's what public school is for um I also wonder if we're really teaching students the beauty of America and the incredible path that we've taken to get to a a country that has taken Asylum Seekers from every religion and from every country um there is a glorious history that should be celebrated that I think gets undermined by things like events like this I don't think this kind of event actually glorifies what America has done for so many Asylum Seekers of of every nationality and every every religion and I just wonder whether this I I wonder what the point of this event is really because I don't even know if it belongs in in a public school um I don't think anybody should feel intimidated and I do wonder if students are feeling intimidated and and and uncomfortable whether this is serving a purpose to anybody um I would also say that I think the narrative has been very corrupted The Narrative of what it means to be American what it means to be um um a person in this town I think a lot of the narrative has been um twisted and and manipulated um for other people's purposes and and corrupting um the the Trope of of what it means to be American I think is really tragic all right thank you Miss Baraka I are you finished I am done okay I do wonder the purpose of this and whether you know we need uh wokeism in public school all right thank you for the comment and that unless okay so it it appears that everybody who signed up to speak and has and is here has spoken oh we have someone in the room who I'm sorry oh okay so we have one speaker who's here in person so um es AB please go um who's the other uh Miriam MIM okay um so you're first on the list and then um and then Mr Al Dam please yeah yeah please go to the podium um yeah I'm sorry about that okay so I was very disturbed when um I saw this today and I saw the word genocide and I wondered whether the person using it is either misinformed they don't know what the word is or if they do know what the word is and they're lying on purpose in order to express your feelings and that's an awful thing to do to lie I mean genocide means that you want to get rid of a people do away with them there is a war going on in Gaza civilians are dying but nobody's aiming to kill civilians that just happens in War uh you don't tell people you want to kill get out of the way cuz there's a bomb coming so when you use a word like this then he makes me think well what else are you lying about so what he comes out is a feeling that you're trying to intimidate you're you're saying ugly lies about somebody or about a group of people to make them feel bad and so if this is the case this woman or man whoever the student is shouldn't be allowed to speak week you're supposed to have a day of I don't know making people feel better about who they are accepting all Races well you can't be doing that if you're telling a lie um and uh I think that this last woman who just spoke really said it very very well I don't think this belongs in school at all it seems to me that we are creating hate rather than creating good feelings between among students thank you thank you Miss MRI Kim um next up we have Isel Abdul diim hi everybody thank you um my name is is ABD Dam uh I have a a son in the high school I have a a middle schooler um I first want to take a moment uh to express my gratitude to you all for your decision uh two committees ago uh to recognize as a category one holiday um thank you all for your careful deliberation uh your vote shows a strong commitment to honoring the religious and cultural diversity within our community I know this will have a positive impact on both Muslim and non-muslim families and I pray um that it'll Foster greater understanding and respect amongst all our students and our community at large um Second and along a similar theme I do want to um speak about the importance of the of racial reform and solidarity and I think it is important that it be in our schools um it's a day meant to challenge all of us to listen to reflect and to learn from one another a day that acknowledges the power of div diverse voices and lived experiences within our community especially those of our students so it saddens me deeply to hear members of our community again seeking to censor a young student who wants to share their lived experience with their peers and these are these are his lived experiences these are young members of our BHS Community showing the courage to stand before their peers to express their truth as they see it if we respond by silencing them what message are we sending about who deserves to be heard what are we teaching our children about the value of empathy and the courage it takes to speak out and the courage it takes to set down your personal beliefs for just a moment to really listen to really hear someone else's point of view in a world filled with division and conflict we cannot afford to silence our children instead of avoiding discomfort we must teach our children how to dis Embrace discomfort how to listen to different viewpoints and engage with the complex realities around them let's not stifle their voices in the name of protecting certain narratives instead let's lift up all of our students all of their voices encouraging bravery kindness respect and a genuine desire to learn from one another this is what it means to challenge preconceptions and long-held beliefs this is what doors should stand for let's let our children's words enter the marketplace of ideas and stand on their own Merit teachers and parents should act as facilitators of this process not as censors around this time last year my son said to me Baba we sometimes need to go through a place of discomfort to get to a place of understanding we need to trust our kids trust them to engage with their peers to Grapple with the difficult conversations and to view the world through someone else's eyes even when it's uncomfortable especially especially when it's uncomfortable they will be better for it they will be safer for it and they will begin to craft a world that is more just more compassionate than the one that we have now I'm almost done doors wasn't always called doors it used to be called uh asking for courage day let's honor that spirit let us show our children that we have the courage to listen even when it's hard because we if we want them to be better than us they need the opportunity to have conversations now as colleagues as neighbors and even better as friends thank you thank you Mr abim so Betsy unless there anyone else has appeared is there anyone else who's in the room who had signed up to speak oh all right Victor zil brot the floor is yours for three minutes good evening school committee members uh my name is Victor zot I'm a father of three children in the brooken and school system and a proud member of the Jewish Community the day of racial reform and solidarity is an important occasion to express diverse views and reaffirm our commitment to Unity I'm here tonight because last year this day was in part misused to spread hate against my community instead of Building Bridges the platform allowed divisive rhetoric to take place while I tend to assume good intentions I can't ignore the trend of hateful voices around me and I feel a duty to urge you to be vigilant against these dangerous patterns like any bad habit if it isn't stopped right away it only grows worse this year I am concerned that if this misuse isn't addressed it will become even more damaging I'm here to ask you to take action to prevent that people who promote violent rhetoric anti-Semitism or anti-American sent senent should not be given a stage in front of our children my request is simple please ensure the day of racial reform and solidarity fulfills its true purpose don't let it be taken over by Voices with political agendas aimed at spreading hostility rather than Unity um another another note beyond what I wrote just you know sitting here and listening to everything I have to say it's very depressing and I'm really hopeful that we can come together obviously the community is so divisive um I see the kids I see organizations um that work together uh in my company we have Arabs and Jews and everybody is so collaborating and um I see my kids for fostering friendships with their peers um and I I really hope that we are not ruining it h for them and hopefully they are you know uh we can trust them to build something better than what we are doing I hope we'll find also um the voice and the courage to speak with one another and and come to Common Ground um because we have an opportunity to do it thank you thank you Mr zot we're just checking to see whether anyone in the room uh is still signed up to speak okay it looks like we've reached the end of our speaker list so thank you all very much and that brings public comment to an end for tonight uh next up new business would anyone like to bring forward any new business Carolyn um I okay um so there is no new business as far as I can see uh no one remote okay I did have one okay Jesse yeah I don't have to wait for the computer I'll uh add littleit um in in terms of new business um I I noticed that the select board had voted to move the SRO topic to us and I was um I think that in my reading through the select board results this was a direct expression of their um responding to the overwhelming support that the building leaders gave to us when we met with them and brought up the topic of SRO and so I was wondering um at what point we would be um potentially docketing that so that it comes up uh to us for a uh you know robust discussion it certainly will come up for a robust discussion um I don't know when it would be docketed but the last time the skill committee addressed the issue it was um there was a long way and there was a lot of speed work so I I don't necessarily expect that we would have such an elaborate process but it would not be a oneandone Caroline has new business as well um of something that I've brought up before and so I'll bring it up again because also and it's related to I know we're going to talk about the calendar in executive session but I now I don't have my notes in front of me I want to point out again part of the conversation that we had at the August Workshop around the calendar and challenges with the academic calendar has to do had to do with concerns about learning and the limitations placed on learning homework test assignment Etc by the various categories so after that and after our October meeting I spent some time really looking through everything and the so we have the calendar and linked to the calendar is the guidance sometimes it's called guidance sometimes it's called instructions and the in those are the instructions around homework and assignments and those say the the the letter that I believe Dr Giller inherited from previous superintendent and is sent out to families and building leaders says that the guidance is aligned with the public schools homework policy but it's actually not and the policy is less restrictive on learning and teaching and assignments than what's currently linked so be that as it may that there are various issues to work out related to the calendar it seems to me that that misalignment would be a simple fix um and I think from the feedback that we heard from building leaders via Dr gillery in August um that that would be welcome because it would be less restrictive so um I would love for that to be docketed for discussion sooner rather than later that's not I I don't think that's controversial it has nothing to do with holidays it's simply that right now the guidance is actually not aligned with the policy so I would love for us to be able to discuss correcting that sure to be clear reading of the policy and the guidelines the guidelines are consistent with the policy they just go beyond the policy be that as it may um I think you know at the very least we are going to need to vote the calendar itself which we we which we still haven't done right so when that comes up Um this can be part of that discussion all right any other Andy can you can you clarify when is that coming up because at the last meeting sounded like we had all thought it was February and then it was moving to December but de two different there are two different discussions here right there's the the immediate issue of at some point before February we need to pass the 2526 calendar um and as I've been saying it hasn't been clear how we should proceed on that given the open meeting law complaint that's um that's active we're going to discuss that momentarily in executive session with Town Council um there's also the broader issue of what is our approach to the calendar in general I think that when the 26 27 calendar draft comes before us again early next year um that would be the time to have that discussion sort of with a longer Runway with more more preparation in particular by staff um so that we can approach it the whole thing in a more principled way so okay so even though we heard it might be moving up to December it's not who heard that we might be moving it up to December or last meeting lus said it lus said that if we we he wanted to move it up to December well the the December portion um so we I realized we were conflating two things so typically what happens is um around the December break is when I give a draft calendar for the upcoming year uh to the union for their review and then we have until as and they saying around mid February for the committee to vote on it if the union and the uh District haven't necessarily agreed on it so I think what Andy is doing is trying to tease them out so that we're clear on what course of action that we need so right now it's taking care of the 2526 calendar um and then what we learn here um we'll be able to incorporate in the 2627 so some of the things that Carolyn's talking about as well as uh looking at how we go about identifying the days and those types of things all right I think we've pushed this one to the limit of new business to it so all right so unless there's a new topic on under new business I think I'll move to meet an executive session um let's see how do we word this we're addressing the question the purpose of meeting an executive session is to address the question of I'm just reading off of this whether the school committee um sh okay the question is whether the school committee shall enter into executive session for the purpose of reviewing a proposed response drafted by the office of Town Council and possibly taking remedial action regarding an open meeting law complaint received onor about October 22nd 2024 and filed by Maria kogan pursuant to purpose one an oml exemption allowing discussion of complaints or charges brought against public officials general laws chapter 30A section 21 A1 and to review and approve minutes from the July TW 29th 2024 and September 12th 2024 meetings pered suant to purpose 7 under general laws chapter 30A section 21 A7 uh do I have a second Suzanne all right Jesse yes Suzanne yes Carolyn yes uh Steven yes Mariah yes Val yes and I vote Yes as well so we are going into executive session and will not be returning to open session thanks everyone