The Fall River School Committee's Parent & Community Outreach Subcommittee convened on Tuesday, January 25, 2022, to discuss its purpose, mission, current parent engagement practices, and future needs. The meeting, attended by Mr. Harp and Ms. Rodriguez, began with a presentation by Cindy and Superintendent Dr. Taylor outlining existing communication strategies such as open houses, parent-teacher conferences, robocalls, and community resource events, emphasizing the translation of materials into home languages. The subcommittee agreed on a shared mission to empower families to partner with schools and actively participate in their children's education.
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like to call to order the parent and community outreach subcommittee meeting of tuesday january 25th 2022. so can you please call the rule mr bailey mr harp here ms rodriguez here um
0:25one 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 to 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
0:53do we have any citizens input no we you do jump right into our agenda the first item on the agenda is a discussion around identifying the purpose of the parent engagement subcommittee and to determine the shared mission so i think it might be helpful if we just started with what we see as a rule for this particular committee um i know that we have a review of the current practices in
1:22need so maybe it makes sense to go over some of that first and then we can develop our shared video so he's got there i know that we have a presentation here i i mean i think that we can turn it over to dr taylor she can open it up um open the meeting up thank you good evening everyone so what we plan to test your presentation you'll hear about what we're doing more broadly
1:53um in the central office in terms of parent and community engagement you'll also have an opportunity to hear what's happening in the special ed line and also with our english learners so i'm going to turn it over to cindy to talk about what we currently have and dr taylor i didn't see you on the computer there so i didn't address you because i didn't notice that you were sitting there so sorry about that okay
2:14all right i'm wearing it all right hi thank you for having me so excited to revive this committee it's such an important aspect of student success so just wanted to talk a little bit about well first of all parent engagement is so key to student success so you know we're always looking at uh what our current practices are and how we can do it better um we can always improve in all our you know practices and
2:45strategies so some of the current strategies that we use for communication i kind of just listed them um with an overview of what we do throughout the district some schools do things a little bit different um so i just sort of listed all that we do or maybe not all but most of what we do open houses family nights parent-teacher conferences routine school letters newsletters weekly school robocalls providing
3:18information on current events personal phone calls to families positive behavior and accomplishment postcards sent home to families communication through multiple methods include phone calls emails information packets drop-in hours school website social media and so forth communication in families home language is always a priority for us so anytime that you know we send out letters we are thoughtful in
3:52translating those in the home language anytime possible same with the robocalls community parent cafes and we've been doing those for for years parent workshops and then community resource events try to participate in any community event that will allow us to have tables oftentimes we have each school represented there and also like a district table so really trying to get our parents to partner with us
4:30in their in their child's education um just talking a little bit about how the importance of working collaboratively with parents to really help help partner in so that they can help their students at home their children at home and some of those ways that we do that are with learning based activities like our literacy nights and math nights the parent workshops that will provide parenting skills
5:07such as supporting the child through covid with with different stressors anxiety parent cafes which we really try to get some feedback from parents of what the needs are and bring in different presenters to support those needs to address those needs and build a skill level in our parents um like i said the community events and then uh whenever we have these events we've really tried to bring in some of our
5:39community partners to really educate parents around what the resources are in the communities for example when we've had our open houses we'd also invite community partners in to set up tables and really talk to parents around what they can provide and how to access those services providing support and resources to students and families during breaks such as you know reading activities for summer
6:13math packets all that just keep their skills shopping throughout the the summer to to really avoid learning gaps um you know and then parent teacher conferences as much as possible we try to keep them in person however you know obviously due to covid there's been you know we're open to the virtual or phone any way that a parent can partner with us we're open to those possibilities um even for you know
6:44different school meetings we really you know one silver lining with covet has been you know the virtual meetings and and that's really helped to engage some parents so we're although we love in person we're absolutely open to the virtual piece and sometimes that needs to happen due to safety um concerns due to coverage can i just interrupt that um so just in the interest of i'm just trying to stick to what our items
7:14are in the agenda would you say that the purpose of the current engagement center is exactly what's listed here that we're looking to empower families to partner with schools and be active participants in their children's education absolutely okay so if we're thinking about a shared mission do you think that that fits into the shared mission and alignment of how this subcommittee can be helpful
7:39yeah yeah i mean absolutely i mean i think that um sometimes when we're doing the work we you know we get stuck in what we think we can do better but getting like a fresh vision um to to sort of give us feedback will absolutely um enrich anything that we do and we it's so valuable because i come from this wrap around collaborative approach so i'm looking at you know this subcommittee is responsible for
8:11supporting the work that you're doing and giving input but absolutely supporting the work you're doing so if we're looking at a shared vision just to look at that first um agenda item then i think can we agree that what we're looking at is our our mission is to support you in empowering families to partner with schools and be active participants absolutely okay do we have any other
8:33questions on that particular addenda item oh good okay let's see where i'm going with this so now we jump into great what are our needs what are we currently doing and that's what you were where you were yeah yeah so uh just building upon what we were talking about um some other ways that we create that family connectedness is through you know clear signage banners bulletin boards um you know when
9:04families come in so sort of this information place that they can just you know when they walk into the building kind of see what's happening in the school and just get you know some uh overall information of what's happening and how they can access supports different events that's going on we really encourage our schools when they have families coming in to greet them at the door and just really
9:33make those personal connections that are so critical in really engaging our families ensuring that we have active ptos where they work collaboratively with the school to you know to support student learning and enrichment hosting parent forums and discussion groups how important is that just really hearing from our parents of what their needs are how we can improve upon our engagement activities but just
10:05really working collaboratively to support their child that can look so different in you know so many households so just really being thoughtful about getting that feedback from parents directly and then principal coffee hours that you know pre-culven were were i think uh you know some of my favorite things that i've ever participated in where it's it's really that you know um one-on-one sometimes you know
10:34conversation where you're really having those deep thoughtful uh discussions with families um and really connecting in such a deeper level to support their students and and what the needs are and really getting their feedback of how we can not only grow but improve you know our permanent practice community collaboration we have the most amazing community partners that you know anytime we bring a need to our community
11:13partners they really go above and beyond to support us not only to support us but just to really enrich our our staff our students and fill those needs in such a miraculous way sometimes whether that be feeding our families to supporting them for the holidays to you know personal hygiene products um these are all ways that you know we're supported you know just adding if if we come to
11:51our community partners with maybe some counseling needs or group needs they create those those resources for us and really tailor them to the needs of our families and students coming into our schools anytime the school has a specific need um so that that's very critical in supporting our students success some barriers should we talk about those yeah in this section yeah so some back barriers that we've
12:24heard back from families and just experienced in general um just availability you know with work schedules and how the family functions in them coming into the building you know that that that's one language barriers you know families um who who may not speak english and just not confident enough to come in and you know really trying to build our language capacity in all our schools
12:52we do have some translation services that we utilize and apps that we utilize but you know the need is is so great um so just continuing to really focus on being thoughtful when we during the hiring process to really try to build that language capacity um to a place that we can um you know offer the support and that our families so desperately need cultural differences um that's obviously
13:24you know a barrier um and just really educating our our staff around with what those are and really empowering them to open themselves up to supporting those differences embracing them and just really working together on that low level literacy so what we've noticed um sometimes when we send the letters home we have families that that can't read it even though it's in their home language
13:55so really being thoughtful around that when we're communicating with families um you know to not just uh send it out in written form but but really have that verbal communication so that we can ensure all families can access the information um lack of understanding i think sometimes because a family may not you know be able to read the letter we're sending home or um you know just just really making
14:27sure that we're asking questions to families to to make sure that they've understood when we're having those conversations with them i know for me i'm fluent in portuguese but you know not brazilian portuguese so i am very thoughtful when i speak with the brazilian family to ask them to repeat that so i can make sure that what i'm trying to say is being understood um so there's just some
14:53examples of really training and building our staff to to um you know to have those conversations and being thoughtful about uh making sure that the understanding is happening and then finally cover 19 i mean i think that's the biggest one right now right um unfortunately but shouldn't stop us from moving forward and building and um you know being innovative in how we communicate and engage our families
15:29so i think um we really sat with this right and what what the needs are that would really impact our families um the most um so so what we what we really talked about was really having you know an identity and i'll give an example so we have a family that has three children three different schools and what we found was um we had so many people communicating with the family it became overwhelming so really
16:06keep going um so what we found was really just having like an identified person that was that was communicating with this family regularly so it wasn't overwhelming so really like taking the time to um to focus on that and really um you know think of how this must feel for a family to have all these people calling them sometimes about the same thing right so we think that we really we really need to identify a
16:43person in each of our schools that becomes a family liaison type person so that that'll be the go-to person at the school we hope that this person would be bilingual or trilingual and we would choose the language the second language if possible based on what was the highest need at that point on particular school but that's that's a person would would really be the one that would um
17:16me you know reach out to families you know on a daily basis or you know if the family needs something like we know that would be the target person that person then would refer to whoever else in the school um you know that that would connect with the need that this particular family may have um i think just you know just being there at the curriculum nights and and open houses to be able to translate um
17:52that's also so important um but i think that would be maybe our top need as far as really starting to do this this work of getting this feedback you know from families and also what each particular school might need to improve upon their skill level you know obviously would be overseen by by district personnel where we would have district-wide initiatives to really also streamline our processes so
18:33parent engagement activities looks the same throughout the whole district we're all aligned with each other i mean it may be different variations of the same but the act the core activity is the same and that alignment really happens so uh goals would be you know we're in the process of serving all our schools to really look at uh what practices i used and how dedicated they are and gentlemen so really looking at
19:11um you know each activity do they do it every time do they sometimes use it you know and just looking out so that we can we can then build this alignment of these are the you know maybe minimal standards or activities that every school must do um you know on a minimal basis and then building from that um providing training to all our staff find best practice that's so key and critical to this work
19:42identifying that core set of district-wide strategies that are practiced in all of our schools continue to offer the district-wide family workshops and building on those and serving our families on their needs you know maybe the goal for next year would be pre and post so in the beginning of the year and then at the end of the year so that we really see what i measure what our growth is throughout the year
20:12okay any questions i really appreciate that you really took us through all of the things that we've had on our journey and the reason i highlighted that piece of what is our shared mission is because if families are watching i want families to hear that this is this is what people want that a lot of times it can feel very much like in us versus them and we don't ever want it to be that way so
20:39that's why i wanted to stop and highlight the fact that that's what we were doing so i didn't i wasn't trying to just interrupt you for this type of interrupting but i wanted to highlight what you said because it was really important so that's why i did that so i really appreciate that my colleagues asked whatever well um thank you very much for this it's really good and i think uh i'm glad
21:05that uh the chairman uh chairman uh had this meeting quickly uh because we really haven't met in a while uh unless i don't think well i i will say that this is a committee that was set up years ago many i think dr costar was still on board they met um once and then it it has been dormant this is an opportunity as we said yesterday at one of our meetings also
21:32we're trying to put some systems in place where we get our committees on a cycle and really get input you know from the committee as well as vet our uh anything that we have um to the committee so it's important like i think it's important for us to we're parent engagement we have to define what engagement really is right because where we our vision is to create this district we have systemic needs as well as
21:58individual specific needs at each school because everybody does as cindy said things differently we have lots of good things happening in pockets we have to make sure we systematize some of those things build on them and we also recognize that we have to create this district or these schools that we remove barriers that are keeping parents from coming to the school create these inclusive welcoming
22:24environments where a parent is not afraid to come into the school and to have their voice heard right because that's what i feel that's what engagement is all about right it's not really about just participating it's really about being part of the process so we need to put some good systems in place where we create in our schools and in our district this relationship with our families so that our families feel like
22:49they are part of our process so superintendent just by saying that um you said that there's pockets of success can you give me just give us some examples of what those successes are as it pertains to this well i mean i'll use an example of um when we were everybody says kovid kovitz it was a huge barrier that's true but we have to look at like so a place like tansy that
23:15had regular town meetings virtual town meetings but they had them in the evening to include their parents to involve their parents to keep them you know um you know informed with everything that was going on that's one example some another school like uh letourneau they have a yearly multicultural night where they have this huge celebration that there's dancing there's food there's
23:39opportunities for for people to show their pride in their heritage those are just examples of some some some ways that we are celebrating our families i went this summer to that um right before school started so that you know the basketball tournament where we had you know the tournament there we had cornhole tournament we had a whole bunch of different community partners there that was the best
24:04attended event that i've seen in a long time that was during covid but it was we have to be creative it was outside it was in everybody was intentional about what they would put together and who the audience is we have to create many more opportunities like that where the more we build things events opportunities to bring our families in the more our families will feel welcomed
24:32yeah no i i agree with that absolutely i think too it's not mentioned here and maybe it's something topic to bring brought up somewhere else but i think that what plays into the apparent engagement is the abs are our absenteeism rate once that's improved i think that'll that'll help out as well um and i guess my question would be that what um as far as the language barrier do we have enough uh
24:55um folks that's that's they're speaking the language of the district of of whether it's spanish or no we don't have enough okay i mean i'm not gonna absolutely not absolutely not we don't have enough i know we do have some but not we don't we have some but we don't have enough has that been an issue as far as hiring is it um well i mean i think that we always look for multilingual people yeah
25:18in our hiring processes but you have to recruit people that are actually i mean it's it's it's deeper than that it's the language knowing how to speak the language also our our staff needs to reflect the students that we serve etc so that's it's a huge piece in our hiring processes that we need to work through but it's not an easy task everybody our our community has changed we have to change with our community so
25:45um yeah i mean we have a handful of principals who speak more than one language a couple of them i i'm not even say a handful a couple of them who speak multiple languages but not all of our and we have teachers in every building you might have a couple of teachers but it's not um as widespread even our community facilitators we are we have made an effort to bring on spanish-speaking
26:09portuguese speaking but we know that we need to go beyond that and make that more widespread so we have we've are working through that but we don't have anywhere near what we need to at the pace there you know you have all parents coming in to register their children parents that are coming in from all different places we need to have many people that speak multiple languages yeah and i think you know
26:33oh go ahead i'm sorry i would also add that just as it is in other positions in our district the pay scale for this for the community facilitators position is very small uh and so that also is called the barrier recruitment that's what we should consider it's a deterrent low-level pain position as dr taylor's saying and you know it's it's not attractive enough to recruit people
27:09um i think you know there's going to be obviously there's going to be a lot of needs to be need to be prioritized but i think the language language is very high priority just for me and i'm sure for everybody else but also too um as far as cynthia you're you're in your office do they have do you guys have uh team meetings and uh how are you gonna go again
27:33is there team meetings that um that you think that that can that help when you have those meetings or do you have the meetings and you might maybe if you if you don't have them do you think that might help to maybe prioritize things yeah so um my office is at the parent center so no we we don't bring in and that's definitely one of our goals to bring it in once we've identified that person at
28:02each school to really have those um focused meetings regularly so that this work is done um collaboratively and in this extreme life who throughout all of our uh schools and district wide so absolutely that's a huge need and i i would throw just one more just and i would think too i mean that that's very important i agree with you um and getting the uh the needs for prioritize for the
28:32language uh barrier but also too maybe even possibly if you're not doing it already uh more parents maybe parents that are um parents that are that are are that are involved with their children maybe they can also help in the school with their with with other parents yeah just a thought there yeah are you thank you i'm really bad at not interrupting because i get really excited i'm gonna
29:01try to keep myself in check for him oh no i was just asking as far as like recruiting processes and stuff um and like family and community liaisons like how does that look as far i know i'm a little late i want to apologize for my attendance had a hard time continuously having a hard time going through this but um i just wanted to kind of know how like that process goes
29:21is that like something um because me doing a lot of work in the community a lot of the things that i see is there are a lot of people that are willing to actually volunteer come up show out um but it's also one of the biggest things is it's people that they know so you know some of the and just for me personally some of the things that i've tried to do is almost
29:41break things down into certain uh districts if you would say um to kind of try to find parents or like family liaisons and community liaisons that you can work with that you can make those connections um you know because i think for me one of the easiest things has been reaching out to certain people in certain neighborhoods that can actually draw these kids in or draw families in because there is a cultural
30:05no matter how we put it as a cultural barrier there's a language barrier and the only way we're going to be able to break those walls down is to actually get people at the table to have those discussions so that's just one of my i'm a bit long-winded right now but that's just one of my biggest questions it's just like the recruiting process around like family liaisons and community yeah i mean um
30:31it's been a challenge i know that we've reached out to different schools and colleges as well you know and really looking at you know putting it out there we've done some job fairs but yeah we're struggling with with just getting the applicants in and then once we do uh for example i i've had a position open for for months and i i've offered the position four times two bilingual people who are able to you
31:06know who are very qualified to do the job but once they find out the pay they've declined the position so um but i'm so i've been really dedicated to i need to find a bilingual person i can't just you know it's so it's so key at the parent center with the level of or the amount of families coming in that don't speak english i i really need to stick to that committed commitment
31:34um so it's it's been it's been a challenge was paid one of the biggest deterrents from the position would you say um it's paid to turn yeah it's it's a it's it's so significant i mean four times that i've offered it i i'm embarrassed to say that but it's it's the reality it's the truth of you know what's happened um so yeah it's definitely a significant barrier i do think that
32:01one of the ways that we we have to we have to be visible out in the community and we have to plan these events and and create opportunities to to that draw people in so that when you have people that come and then then you get to meet parents or or relatives or former students that say oh yeah i want to do that and then you that's how you recruit people right by building those
32:28relationships and saying join us join our team come on over we have something for you we i mean you know like we i think we need to do more of that so that we can you know draw people in and um you know i i do think that um one of the things that like an example we have parent-teacher conferences or um you know parent night why can't we do
32:52some of that stuff in the community go to people instead of having them always come to us and then you you meet them halfway and then you take away that barrier i am when i was back on the school committee i came to berlin how long ago but um it was meg brown was the superintendent and um we were we were uh toying with the idea um and this is just
33:22you know the idea and it didn't come to fruition but i thought it might might work for engagement with with the community uh to have maybe once every quarter have yourself and maybe a couple school committee members uh maybe one or two go out to different schools and uh talk about you know what um what we're doing uh what we're doing as well curriculum any new programs coming up programs at
33:47the school see how that program is going after school is that working out and i thought it was a pretty good idea um but it just never happened so i was like maybe you know thinking thinking if that's something that we could possibly consider absolutely absolutely doors are open yeah so i think it's taking those ideas and just making them concrete like how do we make those actionable
34:18so i have a little question um what languages are we seeing the most of right now spanish and portuguese okay personally important brazilian portuguese how many staff do we have like at the parent center how many folks do we have that can speak those languages so all of my staff except for are bilingual so we've got portuguese capacity spanish capacity khmer i think that's my real what language
35:00capacity do we have with an actual real-life person yeah so those are the three um they said english are there other languages that you're seeing kind of slowly increase like i know in a neighboring district they're actually seeing an influx of families that speak arabic so i'm just this is just one of our neighboring towns i was wondering are you seeing some of that stuff too um so we we get
35:28our big families coming in here and there but it's not it's not significant we're not um i know and usually when they come in um they've always not usually always i haven't had in this while i've been in this role a family in arabic family that because we do have staff that speak arabic that i could call to to help with the translation um but they've always come in with an english speaking
35:54child so there's always either child or family member that that has come in but i do i do know that we have staff members that speak it and i would reach out to them to help us through the process i have no problem doing that you know if we had you know maybe this past summer we had someone who spoke french so i was able to just reach out to someone that i knew spoke
36:20french in another school who was able to help us um translate and get through the process um so where we we've had to be resourceful with that and will not hesitate um you know with any language that you know we might need i think the reality is we have to create a culture where financial folks multilingual folks want to come and work here yeah and so you know we can't be
36:48we can't be coy about it like our city's been all over the news and not for great reasons in the last few years so we've got to do something to kind of rectify some of that and make people want to come and work here in order for us to get even the applicants through the door because we're not going to be able to if people are like oh i don't want to go there i've lived here
37:10my whole life i'm proud of this city but not everybody that's been here you know has that same mentality so we've got to make this and i know i'm preaching to the choir here but we've got to make this district somewhere that people want to come settle in and stay here right we've got somebody who's been here for 30 years right but how many more of those do we
37:32have i know we have some of those right we've got people that stay but we have even more that that week and so we want to create that culture well and i think we need to be competitive too because i i've had you know a bunch of my staff who've known others who who are bilingual and encourage them to apply because they do love working here um but then they're making more other places you
38:00know so it's really hard to to um you know get and some of my staff have taken pay cuts to work here and they love it and they don't regret it you know and and we're proud of that it is an amazing place to work and and we have such a an amazing community that we service um so i think once they're here they're happy it's it's really getting you know or being competitive but
38:30you know it's hard to take a pay cut these days and you know it's it's the reality though in many of these cases of of people who have come in and were really excited to to join our team but then couldn't afford the pay cut i just have two other questions um what is our engagement with our special education and our ll ml students right now are we seeing kind of that same
38:58engagement um are we seeing some strong engagement from those specific populations or are we seeing what are we seeing i think you know we've remained consistent with our specialized engagement primarily due to the models we put out last year and we were one of the few districts who for our substantial substantially separate classrooms stayed open for them the entire year which i think is something we should all
39:22be very proud of and then for our inclusion students also providing a hybrid model for them in high quality instruction remotely so i think we kept good connections with them i think we've seen consistent numbers and attendance in a lot of our sub-separate classrooms um just because you know there wasn't that significant break in the action along with the fact we've also provided
39:43consistent in-person summer services but at least made that offer to families to have those present as well in terms of engaging our families and other pieces we've kept our cpac meetings online uh which we've actually seen higher attendance being having them be virtual as opposed to previously when we had them in person we've been averaging anywhere from about uh 30 to as high as like 75 participants in past
40:14past meetings over the past like a year and a half which is great we're about to start to go on board with our partners of smec as well as rochester regional in their community talks series which is basically just uh to bring resources onto parents and be able to learn about certain different areas of disability or community resources so we're about to jump on board with them so another big
40:41uh option to offer out to our families our other piece in terms of like meeting engagement for parents we've we've seen as we've seen a great uptick in participation since provide our home it's made it a lot easier for parents to attend and engage and be a part of their kids education which is one of the primary things we need to make sure we're doing as a district we've seen a good better response rate
41:04looks an attendance rate you know this year with less restrictions we have offered a lot of our parents the option if they want to have an in-person meeting they can but we've seen a lot of them really stay remote just because it's much more flexible for their means you know taking barriers out of the way of this place and they don't have to take off work they don't have to have transportation
41:27so it's a much more manageable situation uh for a lot of our families i think that's what we've seen you know just a much higher level of engagement in the past two years as for our ml department they do have an lpac which is advisory council also it's a formalized process they have officers that are elected uh annually it was formed in january 2020 with the president the incoming president that was
41:55for this year they have pretty good attendance um at each meeting between 30 to 45 families usually it's virtual um uh the meetings and usually there there's an agenda where they discuss current uh issue like we have access testing that you know their children were participating in we had test and stay just to explain those things but and obviously there's different people speak different
42:23languages so there are al those meetings are always attended and well attended and people are there to do translations etc so fernando vera cruz our ml director has spearheaded that piece that's grown in the last two years and our expectations that it's going to continue to grow just like the cpac that michael and his people have started and work through and that's just yet another way parents can
42:56lend their voice um in regards to their students and and their needs so when i think about that i'm thinking that the cpac in the elpac probably have some good practices already in place that we could then use to reach out to the greater community right so if we can bring some of those if i can make that suggestion we have a ton of stuff that we're doing there's no shortage of attempts to engage families
43:23but i think what you're saying cindy is like if we can if we can make those systems more concrete and have them be across the board then we're going to be in better shape so when we think about next steps if i can make a suggestion that would formalize those next those systems right if you're saying that tmz did town halls and those were really successful is that something that can be
43:48differentified but i think right here in your presentation and correct me if i'm wrong i think you have a great plan to to create these systems like let's survey our schools let's survey our families great we do a concrete needs assessment and then you hit on these next key steps and i think if we formalize that process and bring these supports bring these pieces of engagement to families versus
44:16having them come in on them i think we're going to be in really good shape about opening up that door but we're only going to be as good as the systems that we have so if we can create really good systems by doing these pieces and i'm sure everybody at this people is willing to help try to make these you know actionable steps that we can take and i think we're going to be in really good
44:40shape because you're doing so much to engage families it's not for lack of trying i think we just need to formalize all of that so that we have one system and just one other thing cynthia do you think you have enough people in your office right now oh well i mean i know you could use more but yeah i mean i i think because it's a daunting task honestly it's in focus
45:11and i said we have ten thousand kids yeah across the district and you know the peace center doesn't have ten thousand yeah exactly folks to reach out to every family we could always use more right sorry we totally took over yeah i mean if we if we could envision you know you know pollyanna right just it would be those people um you know maybe one other person at the pace that will help with um
45:39you know really bringing the people that are at the schools because we really need them at the schools in the middle of you know the school each school community and really working firsthand with our families so that those one-to-one connections are happening because that's really key in all this we're not we can't just engage with um you know community events and you know events right or or uh you know these
46:10nights it's those one-to-one communications really need to happen on a daily basis so i think that those are the greatest needs having the personnel to do that um that has the you know the ability to communicate one-on-one with families supporting teachers so that teachers can also have that one-to-one communication because that's really essential we have some community facilitators last
46:40year we added some to the budget our goal would be to have a community facilitator at each school for next year to add the remaining ones to the budget so that they can every school can have that person that is the link between home and school and does some of that work with the school staff as well as with families creates those workshops works together with other community facilitators to create opportunities to
47:07engage parents etc so that's a priority that we need to um invest in if you think to superintendent that um given the size of some of the schools one is enough or well i i mean i'd like to think that we're going to start with one yeah and go from there first i i would like to see if we can build that foundation go from there and then um build as
47:28needed but um we need at minimum to have one in every school mr hart's going bigger the community facilitator position is the same position that you're talking about here about a family right yeah yeah okay so i'm just asking that question like out of ignorance i just want to make sure yeah i just didn't
47:57and you answered my next question was you know how do we make that happen because you already said that that's the plan moving forward to make sure that happens that we have at least one in our school but now the question is how do we make that a more enticing position for folks i think we would have to bring that position if we want to change the scale we would have to bring that position
48:23with a proposed scale to the school committee with the rationale of why it's important for us to pay them more equitable salary to be more competitive with our neighboring communities and recognizing just the importance of that role so i think that's something that we need to to look at and to um to bring forth so can i make one more suggestion about that so new bedford has a similar model
48:50they don't have one person each each school but they do have one person in certain identified schools can we look at like comparable what is it that they're paying their focus because they're not having a hard time filling those positions that would be my only other suggestion for that so we operationalize our goals and then we see what the other districts are doing and we bring those here yeah absolutely
49:18this is real quick i was just going to also say when you're looking at how dang building a model um just kind of like collaborating with community partners and almost like a crossover world because that's that's one of the biggest things is just um you know making sure that um you know we're obviously it's not our job to completely serve the community but when you're looking at some of these roles um
49:41you know it kind of has to be a crossover where you're doing a lot of these things and obviously yeah i'm part of the committee but i'll you know i'll be around helping with a lot of this stuff to make sure that it kind of takes off so and it's got to be people that are um entrenched in the community because if you're going to um hook families up with services within
50:08the community you need to know what's out there you need to be able to be that go-between and really you know it's almost like a care coordination type of thing right speaking the language and that's just another thing too i know i mentioned like reaching out and engaging the community and then teachers at the schools maybe once a quarter but also too i forgot to mention enabling groups
50:32throughout the year yeah so that that's something we should do i remember when i first came on board when i became the principal at durfee that's one of the things i travel to all the neighborhood groups just to introduce myself i mean it's a good opportunity for us to do that so let's go on a road trip yeah bring it on the road let's go because we're not going to do that different dunkin donuts yeah
50:52we i think at last count we have something like 28 of them so you know why not we'll hit most families by hitting all of those right although we could play local and do a little like do you have any other questions or anything else that we want to talk about i think dr taylor has a virtual handout oh i'm sorry i can't see from here i'm kidding you don't have to i'm kidding
51:23that was quite all right um downside of technology um cindy and superintendent pat have cleared you know they've been clearing their summations but that family liaison community facilitator position is the linchpin to make any family engagement initiative successful so if you got something else that is critical um and i would also argue that we need 16 new values potentially we would also sydney would also be support
51:50in supervising those positions and thinking through greater district-wide ten thousand students that we have to study for a large number um for one person to supervise 16 on top of the ten that you already have and we should really think about capacity and not burning around i appreciate that i appreciate that for you do we have anything else
52:29mr bailey yes ms rodriguez