1.22.2024 Parent and Community Outreach Subcommittee

call to order the Monday January 22nd meeting of the parent community outreach subcommittee we will start with um to five oh no de please call the rooll Mr Bailey here Mr Cory here Mr rodri also here now let Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all pursuant to the open meeting law any

person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible is there any citizens input there is not okay so we will Dive Right In I just want to make a point that there's

nothing on this agenda that's you know outray Intense or uh we're really just looking to check in because we know that we have some really good initiatives and it's important that people know the work that's happening in the community so we'll Jump Right In we can talk about item 3.1 The Parent Academy awesome um so on behalf of the district Seal Team I think it's only uh you know right that I

introduce Cindy Kudo um who is the director of our parent and Community engagement Center um I have been working very close with Cindy this year um as we've really looked to put some uh systems in place and supports in place with consistency across all of our schools as we um are building out some really amazing Community Partnerships and predictable uh programs for families as we start to set up some systems and

routines hopefully that families can begin to predictably anticipate um with some regularity behind the work and Parent Academy has certainly been um one of our biggest successes and I would say I think everything has had a really lot of great success across its own right um but Parent Academy has launched in October um and since October we've had an event every single month and our

participation of families continues to grow every month um so I want to kick it to Cindy to speak to a little bit about what we've had going on with Parent Academy yeah so we've um I think what's you know really made a difference is inviting families on a personal level so we've developed a protocol uh with that community Comm facilitators so it's on um we kind of have a schedule when the

Flyers come out we talk about what's happening at the workshop present it in our community facilitator meetings and not only is it being sent out through parent square but we're also identifying families that would benefit from whatever we're presenting and personally inviting those families uh we we're also providing uh child care and food so that that's helping bring in more and more families

um so we're pretty very excited about that and we actually have families now um you know reaching out asking more details about events um we have about a hundred families that have confirmed for this week's parent Workshop so we're super excited for that we also leveraged the translation software headsets that helps add one more layer of translation for our families and that was a real

huge hit at one of our events that was more widely populated across a network of language capacities um so it really helped us also personalize the workshops for those families and created cool little communities of like languages within the event so that families could build their own community and really be able to to communicate not just about the event but also just about being a

Fall River right and you know grow raising kids in the city and it was really cool to just see those relationships begin to establish themselves um and we have been noticing some repeat customers at our Parent Academy events um so it's been nice too for us to Foster those relationships with families because we're seeing them now on a monthly basis in a unstructured but structured sort of time where we can

be social and be human too with them which is really cool um so every month it's the last Thursday of the month uh we've been leveraging Community Partners to be the facilitators of those workshops um this month particularly the topic is so um it's here towards our MLL family so we have three presenters coming in um and it's about um just services for our families who are so we have Source Hub coming in to just talk

about what they can offer to families the Office of the Attorney General to talk about immigration uh tenant landlord rights uh workers rights um and then we have the mass immigration and Refugee Coalition coming in as well talking about um tuition free and tuition Equity law for um some of our undocumented students aome and our biggest biggest Parent Academy event drum roll please uh we

really are pumped we are offering parent ESL classes um so we've launched that um program literally two weeks ago and within I I'm literally within 72 hours we had the rosters completely full so offering two classes 35 people per class um with by the end of the second day and we families had to come in to register in person because we wanted to really um lay out what was the expectation and

they had to fill out forms um to register for the event so by the second day we were already filled to capacity for 70 students um and now today we just uh got the final total up until today we're up to 200 um students or families individuals actually um so 70 will start this um in April um no February to April and then we're going to um add on two more

classes in April so uh we'll be able to um hopefully service all these families yeah and um yeah and we're going to provide child care as well for these so it's twice a week um and we're partnering with our students at the high school and they're going to earn community service hours um to help care for okay in child's care yeah awesome awesome so that's Parent Academy and a

little bit of um a summary do we have a questions I have one question Cindy as far as the kids at school taking care of the kids and child are there any liability issues that go along with that so we're going to have staff there too they won't be taking care of them by themselves so it'll be you know my staff as well there yeah um and but they'll be able to help so we've done that

throughout our Parent Academy so they'll come in play basketball with kids um but it's never just the students Alone um staff it's always staffed so if a child gets hurt in any kind of way it would just be you know just like any other school event okay to oversight in the the liability Li yes we have staff that would be thank you anything else this didn't we have a family Academy years ago yes okay so Saturday

used to be on Saturday mornings yeah okay so I was seeing the parent Academy and then just kind of looking at that thinking we had this something similar in the past and I don't know where that went but I'm glad to see that that's Revisited because the more opportunities families get to engage the better and I I do think we had something similar in the past because on the outside of pace

it actually says Parent Academy and so I said to myself when I was walking in with Cindy back in September I'm like well Parent Academy on the sign we might as well stick with the name right because if it's got recognition we can kind of jump start that recognition again yeah can have another question so along along the lines of the parent Academy so when you guys meet um what about around report card time or

progress report time is that of time for parents to come together too at the same time to check and monitor their child's progress schools do that at at the schools they do um they partner with parents and have parentage conferences sometimes they do in addition to that they have some sort of um Educational Learning um thing going on partnering but they've had a lot of schools have

done um invited Partners in on the night that they have parent teacher conferences so um yes schools will partner with parent parents for a report card yeah that way the the parents are staying on top of the situation y thanks so to just piggy back on that could could there be an opportunity because report cards look different now than they did years ago right especially for our elementary school kids is there an

opportunity to do sort of a parent Academy event where you go over at the beginning this is what report cards are going to look like this is what progress reports are going to look like this is how you understand them this is how you read them this is what a two in this area Means versus you know a one or three in this area so we've talked about that um in and and what we had decided

on was creating mini workshops so it's school specific because school you know Elementary Middle it all looks different so we talked about that in addition to having the mini workshops we're going to uh partner with our Fred TV so that we also have video links so families that weren't able to make it that night or need did refresh it to go back we're going to create a library of all these mini

workshops um you know and then we also talked about like um PSAs around did you know how to read your kids report card right and then like walk someone through when the template comes home these are the items you want to look at this is what it means and um this is how you can reach out for support at your school but like quick little vignettes that kind of get right to the point quick little Digos

and then have L our coaching sessions and larger opportunities for families to come together um for bigger discussions um but yes you know partnering with schools if you notice you know and we'll get to that actually in the discussion of Community Partnerships but we have really begun to develop and overdevelop our parent teacher conferences so that they're not just stand alone come and

get your kids report card events but really taking advantage of um bringing families into the buildings and really turning our buildings into showcases that can offer families more than just report cards right yes we want report cards and that has to be the main agent right talking teaching and learning and student outcomes is really important but oh while you're coming to school how

about connecting with a plethora of Community Partners um who can bring to the table a wide range of varied resources right and as we look at parent Services CD Rec and like so that is one thing that we have been doing some real deep work with right from the beginning of September this year is working with the let's talk Tuesday group um which is contingent upon you know the United Way

Extension with Wendy gar flip and United neighbors and that huge Community Network that we they're all connected to and through um and we've been fortunate to be able to put out recruitment um solicitations to Our Community Partners saying hey come join us come join and be part of it so they have then what we've done as a school department is produce our dates for parent teacher conferences

they've selected themselves in so we can then have a wide range of of access we're offering this mostly all schools have signed up to open the doors and we're really looking at like the first parent teacher conferences happen two times a year um and so depending upon the school and when that happens a combination of open house and parent teacher conferences so that two times a year minimally we can get to our we can

get to the place that every school will host a resource Fair on grounds connected to either open house or parent teacher conferences that are already contractually built in for everybody um that will then generate our opportunity to say at least two times a year every school is getting a robust resource Fair um built into something we're already trying to attract families to um so I

know speaking firsthand that's really what generated a high yield outcome to parent teacher conferences not saying it's directly related but if I can show up get some access to some resources maybe have a bite to eat um a different and then a different activity going on for the kids um really just helped generate really strong parent teacher conference outcomes and just helped support the climate and culture and

relationship building across schools you know um so we are really excited just about that sort of cohesive come together um and report cards have been Central to leveraging that conference conference time I like it it's good and I'll just piggyback on that as a parent so I go to my daughter's parent teacher conference and they Co they had it coincide with the holiday shop that was

going on so they had teachers um they had Parents supporting kids being able to go and shop for their family members while maybe one parent is in or one family member is in a conference you have the kids that are doing something there's access to resources like the library was there um and they were signing kids up for library cards which then they were coming in and doing a popup Library like a the bookmobile was

coming they're so excited about that so just having that vast array of sort of stuff to engage while the parents were coming in made such a difference gives people a reason to go out you know because just a 10-minute conference right rather than just the 5 10minute conference cuz let's be honest that's difficult to do when you know it's 20° outside and it's important but it can be

a challenge but if you have other stuff that sort of dragging and then it's always a positive cool anything else on Parent Academy all right so we'll go to your point to Community Partnerships so for Community Partnerships you know emphasizing the work that we're doing right now um across so many of our Community Partners um I did just speak about the parent uh teacher conferences and the community

resource fairs um I know it's end of January but not all that long ago we were in November and we had our F frps holiday fundraiser um this was our biggest event yet I think as far as even just staff and and seeing people come out so we were really excited about that um Cindy and Claudia LED that work so if they could speak to um our had about 300 participants um in person and raised the

most ever so we were uh we raised a little over 20,000 which 20,000 has been our goal for the last couple of years so super excited about that and that all directly U benefits our students 100% of the proceeds so uh we were able to um assist families in you know taking care of students for the holiday season it's twofold it also is a community building absolutely um for staff it was nice to

see people get involved I've seen some pictures excited yeah um in addition to that as I'm sure the community saw us out um in full force during the for of children's holiday parade um our schools were very much well represented staff you know students families alike always a great time to kick off the holiday season within the community and and we love being a part of it um in addition to

that our community facilitators we really felt this was a great opportunity to um bring up the impact that our growing and developing network of Community facilitators are having within our buildings um we're really seeing some of this monthly engagement and our approach to creating a parent engagement protocol um so that we you know we have a lot of Staff around buildings that are

doing really deep work with families getting to know families getting to learn about families understand the es and flows of the challenges and Es and flows of the successes um that are going on across our school communities but being able to have Community facilitators then follow through connect up around all of the different events that are going on across whether it's the district level or the school-based

level right because keep in mind schools are running their own incentives their own ongoing activities and sports and you know theater programs and music and and extracurriculars um but then there's also the district initiatives that our community facilitat are very marvelously navigating between The Balancing Act of supporting both the district level initiatives to make sure that things are

going out with consistency we marketing programs and and our seal days um our Parent Academy events just really trying to make sure that things have a through line to them and they're not getting stuck at the point of communication um simply because it just gets buried in someone's inbox of mistakenly right um so our community facilitators have really just been instrumental I will

tell you you know we meet once a month as a community at PACE it is certainly one of my meetings that I've grown to really look forward to who's who's Community facilitator can you describe that with so the community facilitators we have pretty much one assigned to every building right yes right we added that to the budget last year so it's our staff it's our staff acting as a facilitator toward all these initiatives

whether they link between home and school Partnerships y y yep um many of our community facilitators speak multiple languages and our you know dual dual language Tri trilingual even um so their ability to really be able to immediately connect with families um is important they're also you know there in the front office and many times they kind of work out of that front office area in many places so they are

centrally connected to and aware of a lot of what's going on across schools being in that main Hub of the main office you know knowing families coming and going um support each other at like parents teach a conferences so you know they'll they'll take turns going to each other's schools to help on with translation services so building that capacity yep um internally they're working very directly with Pace um so a

lot of the initiatives you know we kind of get jump started at PACE and then things roll out to the buildings um and it feels like we're in a great place of the system development um and just having the people between having the people at PACE and the right people and building a strong team that we know we can then count on in buildings um to move the initiatives forward um in

support of the work has really just been instrumental um and not to mention they're a great group um they make you laugh and I honestly they just make me laugh um because their energies are high they're always looking for the next way to be as effective as we can and they get a little competitive right like they want those competitive outcomes they want to know how many people showed up

they want to know you know what families didn't so they can call them back you know um so it's a really cool devel ing position um that we're really excited we've gotten some good structures and systems behind in the first half of the school year so I'm sorry no thank you uh so what you're doing so what you're doing is you're breaking down barriers of communication between schools and families and you're

using the Community Resources around us all right so I'm going to ask I I think this could be a relatable question and in no means is this question pointed at just the floor of the public schools but it seems to be one of the social phenomena postco reaction uh children's lack of attention in the classroom how can these initiatives help our children to behave in a more consistent manner

well we're going to get there we haven't gotten to that far yeah so I mean is that one of maybe the objectives one of our initiatives that we're going to get to in a few minutes yep on theal okay initiatives and family connections piece we'll definitely touch upon that touch that's great okay that's not unique to fall no everywhere it's every it's everywhere Lally at all levels yeah can

I throw my two cents in about that though of course so cuz you know this is like you can do no but this but this is where I live right but when we talk about community facilitators and how that translates to what's happening in the classroom I think there's a big translation to what's happening in the classroom because if you can get families and I say families instead of parents because it's not always a parent

right that's with a kid um but if you get a a family that's more engaged in their child's school right then by by sort of default you have a child that is seeing that modeling happening right you're witnessing that parent being able or that adult be able to interact with other people at the school you're seeing them be able to go through all those so I think that Community facilitator role

is huge in being able to eventually get not the only piece yeah so it's helping to build it's helping to build more capacity that way I get and what you were saying about like our kids are really struggling to just pay attention and engage and sit in a seat right and be able to do all of those things there's a huge developmental lag right now because of Co and it's not

just with the kids yeah which I prefaced my comment by by by this is not a full River problem it's a social it's a societal problem yeah absolutely and uh I just want to know how we can deal with it in our schools I get so excited talking about this so that's where I'm like my hands are everywhere and I'm jumping out of my seat yeah I get excited thank you thank you

absolutely I would just say you know when we look at the Community Partnerships piece the other thing um the United Way right now just to put a plug is doing the warm cat campaign um and so Fall River Public Schools is supporting the United Way um as we are open we've opened up pace and we are opening up here at Rock Street um so should anybody hearing you know this

this meeting today or catch win um let's support the United Way in their cat campaign you can drop all any lightly used coats please just make sure you empty the pockets and they're good to go um here at PACE uh or at PACE I should say or here at 417 Rock um because giving back to our Community Partners whenever we have the opportunity to do so and being part of the greater good uh

we certainly want to showcase our support too so uh we are you know kind of co-p partnering at the same time whenever we have a chance that we can promote and support those the agencies we want to give that opportunity to any other pieces on that you need be Cal oh yeah yeah perfect sorry my God I did I I missed that sorry um so we are really excited it's on the back that's

why um we also are just launching in its infancy stages right now um so we are there was a need with across the community for a host of a community calendar um I happen to attend um a community event back in October and I realized that our bullying event um before the parent Academy as I was trying to Market it and be excited about it there was a very very interesting event that was happening in Atlanta's

Charter at the time um and I was like oh I would have never put this event on this day if I if I would have realized this other event was going on for families and it was open access right and so when we think about the many many events that are going on across the community you know for OFA public schools that can and has the opportunity to be a central play a central role in

that work of hosting a community calendar so that all of the nonprofits and all of the organizations across the community who are serving the same Fall River population to the best of our ability we can don't have to necessarily plan in competition with each other that's good and so by leveraging this community calendar um we've identified a system uh we we created an email with

the tech support from the for of public schools uh we have two uh support staff down at PACE who are going to be the keepers of the calendar we have shared the calendar information with our Community Partners saying essentially start emailing attach the PDFs and we're going to man the calendar um so if you're hearing and you are a community partner who services our community in a

non-for-profit approach uh we are here to Market your events as long as they serve our kids um and we want to be able to Market everybody's events so that number one we have a place to use as a guide so we're not competing with anyone and at the same time we want to be able to recommend to our our families where they can go to find resources should they be in need across the EB and flow

of time that we work with families right what some families need in the fall might be different than what families need in the winter and vice versa of what families might need in the spring and summer months um so by hosting a One-Stop shop calendar our goal will be to celebrate all of our efforts and build a United Fall River um so our calendar is um the it's in its infancy

stages but it's it's up there already we our staff today so we're pretty much ready to go um we are working on the look of it and what that the final look will be um but it's there already and it's going to live on the homepage of the fora public school so it'll be an automatic draw for families uh families who are partaking with parent Square will also be able to know like what's an

event for my school versus an event within the community we're going to color code it for families as well um so we're really thinking outside the box on all the ways that we want it to be like one click in go type of type way for families I think I think I think this is huge um I've been talking about this for some time one of my biggest things is just I

think we have to really overly promote this um especially with the with the Community Partners and um former schools just because my only not concern but my only thing would be um just making sure parent uh families have the the information all right um I think it's going to take some time to actually really get it going but I think this is amazing um but like I said social media

however we can share it um in Community Partners just show we're all on the same page but I think this is a huge win and I think we can do some some cool stuff um shout out to Deb Sardina who's not here with us I just want to give a plug to Deb social media is what kind of jogged my brain right there um Deb has been really instrumental with helping us

see the tech wave through um in partnership with our tech department but also helping us see it from a social media perspective and making sure that things are pleasantly visible to the screen capacity right um so we have begun to take all of these pieces into account it literally launched two weeks ago in January or like last week I think it was last week last week at a meeting and heard about it so I feel like

actually last week so it is literally like just out the gate um but the next phase will be a marketing campaign to get it out there Deb did a really great job with creating a flashy little flyer so our goal is to like get it out there from a visual perspective too so people know what they're looking for um and once we get it exactly how we want it on the website we'll take pictures of that

and then really start promoting so people know physically what they're looking for on the website I I almost think of it like even doing some type of contest I know we do a few contests just to make it um contest based I guess just because I I feel like you're still going to have people who don't know about the calendar um I think of like the MLK contest that we do I mean it goes

Citywide everyone knows this going on I think just like I said I think it can be huge um and I definitely think it's something we needed for some time now so great job awesome yeah so it's all very exciting so as far as promotional stuff is concerned um I got excited when I heard the idea of PSAs moving you know plug plug the positives that are going on inside the Four River schools and in my

one discussion with Maria recently um is there any free time on S to get PSAs going or do they charge for all of their advertising time I look into that because I'm just wondering if there's a if there's a community component and then because s's listenership is like 400,000 it's regional so that's just another great way of getting all of this good news out there beside uh Fred TV and F C media F

FRC media Fred TV wsar and um I think um uh the other news Outlet I forget I forget who they are right now the other news outlet but um s especially and if there's anything that you think I can do to that end just you know inform me so I I I will say that we do have a weekly radio show which is great which we promote um so this should get plugged

every week that you're on the radio show yeah the community calendar moving forward absolutely so I was thinking too with the community calendar as you were talking could we mention the events that are happening so if you're doing a weekly show like oh and don't forget we have this event you can find all of this information the community yeah we can toally come up with a script that you

can use every single week that's right one of the kids even a little jingle to absolutely a little jingle as a notification of the community calendar I make a motion to nominate Tom to create a jingle like zero musical ability no it just it just raises attention to the issue no I love that you said that because we can totally create a reoccurring statement that Maria reads on every session and then what ends up

happening by default even if you don't know this but I do know this from six years of my Sunday call people begin to wait for that segment of your call maybe not wait for but if people are really waiting to about what's coming up they're going to know where that lives in your scpt and they'll log in to hear like what's coming up especially if it's someone who maybe is not as

technologically inclined to log on for themselves so that's a great idea and if we we'll just create that and then we can print them right off the website and then Maria can promote the Citywide events not just the foral public schools events at that point but part of our community lodger we know it's right after the jingle and I mean that seriously like we know the jingle happens and then you know we make the

announcement and then the last segment yeah the jingle would serve as a notification for those ancs absolutely right by the last segment we don't exactly perfect perfect and then on top of that we will get a promotion promotion campaign kind of going and what are the actionable steps of getting the calendar promoted um but we didn't want to miss the opportunity to share it here so so I

know this got brought up at a community meeting that we had attended way back um and there was a a question about where a community calendar could live this is what like a year and a half ago years ago at this point um and then one of the questions or one of the comments that came up is that uh Fall River does have a community calendar right through Viva Fall River um I I think and my

opinion is doesn't really make much of a difference here but I I think it's important that we have a school community calendar right that it's right there and visible because not every family is going to access that but if we have some partnership with them to make sure that we have whatever events they have on their calendar comes on our calendar and it becomes another way of making sure that all of this is tied in

as so we had T I had briefly talked with Patty um I think one of the things that we just want to be really careful about is that we are not promoting individual private efforts right so um one of the things that I had you know again we're not at the point yet in the process of this piece um but had briefly talked with Patty rioo from viva Fall River

around how do we link your link so that if people want to go find events from baa FL River it can all live in one place um but the way that we were going to vet what gets posted on this if you would or kind of sift through would be if you are a partner within the organization and then anybody who is not part of the organization we would send

to Kim Smith and Wendy to kind of let us know if this lives within the guidelines of what our organization is and get the green light from from them as the coordinators of the let's talk and certainly the you know main philan philanthropy philanthropy folks sorry that like thank you good we all have some of those thank you my brain was going faster than my mouth um but just to make sure that we're not getting

duped by anybody trying to be somebody they're not we don't want any of that Shenanigans going on just trying to promote and have everything live where it can live and there's a place that everything can be promoted yeah my thought was more of um kind of crosschecking like oh you have this number you have child and families event on your calendar we don't have it on on our calendar so let let's make sure that

reaching out to them so we get their their stuff and vice versa that's more of what I was thinking and that's what happened two years ago some events that were that's more of what I was thinking like oh so we're thinking both right yes we want to make sure we're not missing people to Bobby's Point like some folks might not even recognize the Calendar's up and running so we want to do access

but we also want to make sure we're staying true to not marketing private um business and and whatnot so um we're just going to live in the balance of that as we figured out in the first you know 6 months or so um and lean into our partners within the community to help us sort of navigate that

pathway um and then we are moving a 3.3 initiatives and family connections I know you have a lot of good work happening there um so we do have a lot of good work happening across all of these buckets um oural initiatives uh really right now is is getting at the the roots of providing some curriculum materials in the world ofal and really exposing our staff to some resources and tools um so that they

can dig in particularly to make sure that we are meeting the identified needs of kids but also meeting the unidentified or not outwardly expressed needs of kids um Claudia has been instrumental uh working in Partnership directly with me all year long as we've been bringing forth a number number of different curriculum and Universal screener tools um looking first at the universal screeners and resources we

gave back in November professional development we had a whole day aligned to giving our student support staff across the district exposing them to the four different umal screeners and the aligning tools andal lessons that help support the development of our kids across the 5cl competenc and the sub competencies within those competencies we have never used a universal screener across the district

so this has been our first Go Round right now we are in the process right now of piloting um two screeners particularly after we went through this investigation process schools identified the screeners they were most interested in they leaned heavily into two really into one screener because of the number of languages being kid-friendly developmental um to meet the needs of our kids from a

k through 12 perspective but then in addition to that the toolbox was extensive um so when we think about putting kids in supporting kids in a small group setting what is then the curriculum that we're going to use to support those kiddos and what social competency are we developing as a result of that so really digging deep with our counselors um to Pilot these materials we've got some schools piloting them K

to 5 we have a school piloting K to 5 uh we do have a Middle School pilot we have a high school pilot all of our special populations right now are seen within the pilot which was really important to us um so our students with disabilities and substantially separate classrooms across the scope of supports and and services that we provide as well as our multilingual Learners across all of the

language needs of our students and language development needs of our students the programs uh were able to attend to those needs so we just finished the screener with one of them last week week uh February 9th PD will expose our staff to the next phase of the program and then buildings will begin using those programs over the course of the next 6 to8 weeks so that we can make some recommendations to the

committee as we come to the end of the year after we have explored experienced and then made some recommendations after those pieces of it in addition to that we've really tried to be uh responsive to school needs and school request the high school was looking to look at a different uhal screener for different reasons with a little more Independence built into the program which is what

they were feeling was going to meet the needs of the kids that they were looking to serve most immediately so they are also right now in the place of piloting that particular screener um so we've got a few different things going on across the district but schools are heavily engaged in that work um Claudia is there anything in addition to that around the screener piece particularly now I think

it's more to come I mean we just close the pilot with one of them and then um the high school is going to be trained on the PD day for their sceno as well too so we're just going to be we're going to be all exposed to it in the next couple weeks yes we will for certain for certain so we are excited about that um and that's for the screener tools and those curriculum

tools as we look at seal curriculum um we do not have currently anal curriculum across the district I say that lightly we have used Choose Love in the past some schools are still using Choose Love um but it is not a widespread use across all of our all of our schools we had received some initial informal feedback over the last few years that you know especially post pandemic um Choose Love

wasn't giving us the tools and resources that we needed to really be able to meet the needs of the kids in front of us um this year um just most recently in the last couple of weeks we have hosted a presentation from two different curriculum platforms we've got schools that are interested in further exploring these particular curriculums and again we are looking to Pilot some of that

that that work in schools that are not using the screener so we are not double dipping on schools and adding too much that schools can't handle um but really trying to get a landscape of exposure on some of our programs so that we can make some educated decisions when we come to the spring to make recommendations to the committee um so those is that second step and second step before right second step and

positive action were the two um programs that we looked at we Second Step before Choose Love for years and years but I know that there's an updated version but we've been using St at least 15 yeah yeah exactly sorry so as far as uh my question was going to be in regard to Second Step uh I actually ran the program um um Meg m brown asked me to uh to run that program and it was extremely

successful I had an opportunity to visit every school in the district and oversee their second step sessions from kinderart through fifth grade and um it built it built relationship it built Temperance it it made kids listen because the technique and second step is to hold whoever's holding the object is the person who's talking and everybody else has to listen and then once the child is done talking then others that

want to talk and weigh in and help the issue have to Holy object so it's always just one child speaking at a time and U it really worked out well the reason why that got nullified was uh the state had passed the bullying legislation and the bullying legislation um superseded all the Second Step programs in and we had a lot of material that I actually had to uh regroup and send back to the to

Seattle um so that we could reclaim some of the monies spent in the program but what I'm speaking to is my real experience in the second step program and that was extremely effective I hope that it's one of the techniques that we're using with some of the early kids yes it's one of the programs that we are exploring to Pilot does second steps have the anti-bullying curriculum within

it so before we even went into looking at second stepable positive action we had a committee from we had members from each school be part of a committee to look at what does Castle have to offer that is research based evidence-based and had to have in the antibullying curriculum those were our asks um and so when we looked across all of the castle aligned curriculum that was out there

that offered evidence View research and anti-bullying curriculum the two that the committee came up with was positive action and second step so Second Step has 20 lessons total in K through well in the K through five which is what we were looking they do k through eight they have 20 lessons total but they have five which are anti-bullying lessons in addition to that they have particularly

up at the high school um in my work with principal dearis and Dr Jessica Stevens the associate principal back in August SE member um some of their initial requests were really helping us to break down the barriers of Transportation um and so we put out a survey uh really that is a multi-step survey you know that leads you down a different questioning pathway depending upon how you answered the questions

before so that we can really get some hard data as it relates to exactly your point where I live um and what are my impacts and barriers to get to school yes um versus some ways with which I could get to school but I choose not to I go a different way um so we are looking at this from a multifaceted approach uh we are also taking a hard look right now um at the neighborhood

School model uh we are looking at a few different shifts that I'm not privy to speak of right now in this meeting but there is some forward planning to really help us get back to the neighborhood School model with which we subscribe to but doesn't always necessarily play itself out that way because of other competing priorities that end up happening um and then what that what that does over years and years of that

compounded well I'm going to move you for this reason this year but now all of a sudden you are historically forever out of your neighborhood school right um I think it's important as a district and as a community that we come back to really supporting and and and understanding the roots of cause of like where a lot of some of these things came from with having kids being placed in

certain schools and the challenge that has come with years of competing priorities around class size prioritizing schools prioritizing special populations prioritizing special programs for special populations and keeping in mind if we look over a 10year window our number of English language Learners has risen our number of special education substantially separate students has risen all of which require

specific programming that is not always been universally distributed across our community so when those decisions had to be made other groups students got defaulted into other schools so as a result of all of those pieces we are doing some very very deep work right now and building some discussion types around 2501 and how that building will leverage some of this discussion um but then also where are our most High um

enrollment numbers across the district and how do we support getting kids back into their neighborhood school so that transportation is not the main variable um my location to my school from where I live right out the gate isn't the number one variable to my inability to get to school um so we are looking at this through a multi-lens Avenue right now um just not at a place that we can report

out on anything actionable and I don't want anyone in the community thinking we're like you know completely moving everybody around that is not what we're saying but just really trying to think critically around how we can set our kids and families up to be more successful um and really lean True to this neighborhood School model that we describe and and Market as the way we do business here in FL but also

acknowledging the fact that in the last 20 25 years or so we went from 28 schools to 16 schools B change huge shift which so much impact right just for the public certification when I was a child I grew up in the Flynn there was the Coughlin there was the Watson there was Deval there was Aldridge and and there was Davis there were five schools in the neighborhood I grew up in and

every student in all of those schools could walk to school with no issues whatsoever and in the '90s when the new schools got built everything changed that's just what we have to deal with in our community but what I'm more concerned about is how desie penalizes school districts over attendance related issues and I don't believe I'm glad to hear that desie is revisiting those gos right

now that's news to me as of today that's good news uh I'm I've sat here for an hour listening to you guys do all this great programming that you're doing on behalf of parents and students and of course our staff in the in the schools and you guys are working relentlessly to try to improve the situation ation at the Grassroots level so with all that great work going on and attendance is still such a thorny

issue I can't help but put the onus on the parents and I know that there are cultural issues involved in this and I know that you guys are working relentlessly to try to figure all of that out and and I think you're getting there cuz I'm very pleased with with the report out in this meeting right now there's a lot of good work being done and as long as desie isn't penalizing Us in any way because

we're working our tails off to get every kid into school every day that's my biggest concern and also I'm making a plea to the parents please parents please my parents made sure when I was a child that I would be in school every day and it served me well throughout life and so so as a parent I made sure my children went to school every day when they weren't sick please parents get your kids to school

every day when they're not sick that's my biggest plea thanks I yield and just to add to that if you're struggling with your kids school please reach out so we can help fix whatever that barrier might be with your child school if for whatever reasons you're not sending them if there's anything we can do to help families get their kids in school we're here for them too um you know and just

be prepared we do come knocking if if they're not coming because we need to make sure that our kids are safe um that we have eyes on our kids um and that school is a priority and we'll do whatever we can to help make it a priority but I think that's an important component is that we're validating that there are barriers and you know I started school 37 years ago right shut up Bob started

calling me old I started school 37 years ago and the needs 37 years ago of families looks very different than the needs that they are now now so I think it's a combination of validating that things are very different right now and um when families are having challenges that the school is a safe place to be able to say I need support and it's not punitive because I think sometimes

families um automat when you say like oh we come knocking right what does that mean and immediately that evokes a lot of fear and concern for families right so when we say like the onus is on families it is right like of course cuz we can't get children out of bed in the morning but at the same time there has to be a homeschool Community ownership of that work and so how do we make that

happen and I think the school piece is happening I think the community piece is starting to happen but then if we we look at the the value and support for families to get their kids in and I think transportation is a big one child care is another big one those are huge issues having clean clothes is a big one and I think the more that families know that schools are willing to support them

in that versus it being a punitive piece it feels more accessible it's my social worker hat I'll take it off anything else on attendance all right so last item is 3.5 CPAC L pack engagement um looks like you've got a lot of great things happening especially in your lpac yeah so we're excited our lpac is in its very right now developing stages um elpac our English learner elpac uh parent academ parent advisory

Council um which is mandated through desie similarly there is a special education parent advisory Council which is also a mandated by desie um our special education parent advisory council is has more history um and more of a longstanding place within the district um I know that the CPAC has regularly scheduled meetings um in December balanced learning presented to families about sibling relationships as

well as the docu sign process which is a very big one across our special education world as we know this fall um the school committee supported the use of docu sign which is uh really in place to help expedite the signing of official documents through special education um so I know getting families trained on that knowing what to expect from the recipient angle of that um is some of

the work that has been done across the cpath there is a meeting tonight um going over organization tips for families of disabled children and I think that's at cus at 6 Y at hence the January meeting is planned for tonight didn't realize that otherwise I would have put that thank you um but they have they do have their regularly scheduled meetings um and Megan Murphy is the president of

the CPAC um and and certainly Works in tight partnership with uh Lori obenchain our assistant superintendent special ed um similarly on the English learner side in the in historically we did have an lpac um and then with some change in leadership and Co the lpac kind of fell apart a little bit Yeah so now we are re bringing it up um right now we are in the process of soliciting Coffee hours

across the district uh that's the little chart that you can see uh we're all over the district between evening hours morning hours at PACE um and excitedly we have had families at every single coffee hour so we are excited that there has been families coming to join us whether it was a small group or a larger group we've been really able to hear some really good information as it relates to the the stories that our

families have experienced through their interactions with the four OFA public schools and through their experiences within the four OFA public schools and Fall River Community at large which has been nice to also you know be the the sounding board for so we will continue those Coffee hours through the course of this week um and in addition to that we are in theit process of also building

out um the ESL Leadership Academy or leadership group which would be essentially like the the the governing board of the elpac as it becomes to take some form of identification um our community facilitators have been really instrumental in helping us to recruit for the Coffee hours um get folks to to be there serve as translators at the coffee hour so that everything was done with a person who could speak the native

tongue we didn't want to be relying on lionbridge or any of those other um tools um really trying to personalize the experience for families so we are excited um that our lpac will be launching uh by the beginning of February as a result of the coffee hours and the information gathered at the coffee hours so that too will be up and running and that was a real Community Partnership between the MLL director

which is Lisa zagarella um who has been so unwaveringly committed to see this off the ground um partnered with the community facilitators in Pace um and together we were really able in a quick amount of time turn it over key turn it and we even were getting participants at the same time which was even better um so we are excited to see an optick of just parent participation across the

range of areas that we're exposing and we're only four months you know five months into the work realistically so um again we're excited to be building some predictable groups for families to be a part of um and predictable opportunities on a monthly basis for families to come together and we will continue to build upon that as we continue to build a scope and sequence for the work um so

that we are meeting the needs of our kids and families across all of our parent networks that do exist whether it's formal or informal I hope that all the good work that that's going on and being developed it translates into better attendance down the road too I hope there's a a direct connection all of that too we're going to get there we are going to get there um I'm I'm I've got lots of

confidence in our kids and families lots of confidence in our building based teams to create these communities that kids just can't imagine themselves anywhere but the for of public schools and when we can get to that place hopefully we're going to be hitting the target at that point and until then we're just going to keep on striving um but ex that one snow day except that one snow day

exactly I'll work on that okay every time there's a snow in the forecast I'm texting talk about just one no I am I I am a Str I think a lot of people are Super Bowl is there any the day there you go is there any other any new business okay then we'll a motion to a turn second be a awesome