11 13 2023 Fall River School Committee

Mr ago here Mr Bailey here Mr Hart he's here comes up Miss lar here miss Pereira M Rodricks here mayor kouan here i' like to salute the flag please to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I'd also I'd also like to announce that um Paul H joining us via Zoom persuant 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 uh we have no citizens input tonight um but we do have a recognition award and I'll we're going to go down to

them we'll go down to the front of the

stage thank

too

good evening last month we were fortunate enough to um honor two uh Scholars from dery High School uh who were the recipients of a certificate of academic Excellence um and the certificate reads um this is for Chloe pachico and it reads that Khloe pachico having duly qualified under the standards prescribed by the mass Association of school superintendent is hereby awarded this certificate of academic

excellence and let me just tell you a little bit about Khloe Chloe pachico is an intelligent caring and inspiring student who is ranked third in her class by the end of high school she will have taken eight AP courses earned all A's or higher in them she will have traveled the world through her participation in the history abroad Club served in leadership roles in the club she participates in and has given

back to others by completing community service Khloe never talks about her academic status or all of her accolades she just accomplishes her goals quietly and leads by example Khloe enjoys learning she takes classes that would help prepare her for a future as a nurse Chloe also takes classes that align with her interests and goals she's a student that every teacher wants to work with

because she's going to put in time needed to master the content of their classes Khloe is an inspiration she wants to help others while experiencing different parts of the country and world with her aspiration of becoming a traveling nurse she is selfless and knows how important this work is she wants to have an everlasting impact on individuals who are in the highest level of need Helen Keller put it perfectly

optimism is the faith that leads to achievement nothing can be done without hope and confidence Khloe is optimistic about her future she possesses great qualities that make her a special young lady Khloe hopes to attend UCLA next year and pursue a degree in nursing congratulations to Khloe Pico and her family

spe

than

next item is number four subcommittee updates first we'll hear from uh Miss larvey chair of instructional submit right now hold on can you go to the next one and I'll read mine in a minute okay Kev are you ready to do yours she's not ready yet thank you Mr agar chairman of sped and alternative education subcommittee so we had a very successful meeting uh we had discussed a few options uh one of which was the

attendance policy a lot of good questions from the uh members of the subcommittee uh the superintendent is working on getting some of those answers so we'll have more to come on that but we did forward it with a positive recommendation we did also speak about theal initiatives that are in the district there's a very long list of initiatives that are happening and uh that was good to see as well as we

discussed the 504 impementation relative to some changes in protocol for who is responsible for those so I did think it was a very good meeting and um we'll be having another meeting shortly to go over some of the things that were referred and U I'm really happy with the work of the committee and I want to say thank you to the members for joining and that's it thank you thank you Mr Agia Miss

larvey yeah sorry about that mayor yeah the instructional subcommittee was on was held on Monday October 23rd at 4:30 p.m. at Spencer bordon uh all members were present there were four agenda items discussion to refer uh 2023 data accountability uh discussion to refer uh contracted service with the KD Brown educational program an update on the social studies curriculum and an update on ignite

reading um assistant superintendent Dr curlyy presented a detailed accountability review in a 2019 to 23 administration review the Els I'm sorry Ela math and stte department heads were in attendance and presented results regarding their departments super superintendent part stated the result showed a small Improvement in certain areas but a lot of work still has to be done she stressed the importance of our

students being in school every day improving attendance is one of our first steps assistant superintendent Dr bronhard gave an overview overview of the KD Brown program and what objectives are in place committee voted to uh refer Katie Brown to the full committee uh the committee voted to table the discussions on social studies curriculum and ignite reading meeting was adjourned at 7

o' thank you Miss larvey item number five is the superintendent report thank you Mr Mayor so in our report the first thing you will have you received a hard copy of uh upcoming holiday activities um we put together for every school so that you could schedule put it in your your calendars and attend um as as your schedule allows so you all have those and that encompasses from now until after the

holidays the holiday break um also for our hiring update as of our last meeting um we have hired 15 additional teachers we have five administrator supervisory staff uh 15 parent Professionals for educational support staff and seven operational staff in total we had 46 new hires since our last meeting um important to note is we have uh in place directors for all four facilities and

operations units including a director and assistant director for the custodial Services Department with the selection of a second shift supervisor for the night shift custodians this will complete the Staffing and reorganization of the facilities and operations Department which we came before you um a few months ago go also Transportation Security nutrition utility workers maintenance in custodial we're hiring as

needed but uh key positions have all been filled on the other side of the Ledger um we have lost eight teachers um two administrators one counselor and one VP um four parent professionals three educational support staff and uh no operational staff so we have lost 17 people in total since our last meeting in October we ran two sessions of a preparation course for par professionals

taking the Paro examination which should hopefully help us with increasing the pool for extra paraprofessional candidates and that course was delivered through our partnership with uh Southeast uh Massachusetts uh educational collaborative we have a discussion item tonight for a proposal that will Target trying to help um attract and retain some of our harder to fill positions while build building the

capacity of our teaching staff you will hear about that later and um also desie we had a desie site visit and I know that I uh notified the the committee um and also for the edif edification of the public um it's uh an annual um visit that happens to all level four schools last week associate commissioner KL bassim and Jackie ganster the director of school support visited our two level

four schools fonsica and Watson the purpose of the visit is for them to come in gain insight into each school um as they gauge where they are in making progress and they advise the commissioner in regards to the progress that's being made the visits were positive in that they were able to meet with school teams they met with students and they observed classrooms um the associate commissioner noted that fansa

that the fonsica visit showed great improvements in culture and systems focused on teaching and learning students reported that their teachers help them when they need and they um have people that are their go-to people when they need need someone moving forward at fonsica there are many opportunities for growth principal Cobb and her team continue to be focused on creating a culture that's rooted in high

expectations for all they will continue to work on using plc's to build capacity around planning and lesson internalization and at Watson um the associate commissioner noticed consistency in the systems for improvement teachers are utilizing the instructional materials there is a strong focus on using data to informed decision- making and building teacher capacity through plc's is a strength s

uh students reported that Watson is a welcoming school they feel safe to ask for help if they don't know something and that teachers support their needs Watson's staff students and families have worked hard to support students as is evident by their continued progress in fact just today I spoke to the associate commissioner basine she reported that Watson does not look like an underperforming forming school um

earlier uh just a little while ago I sent you all a letter that was sent by through the commissioner's office um and they noted Watson's progress um associate commissioner actually came down drove made the 90-minute drive met with us for a few minutes and notified us in person um that uh Watson is officially being uh taken off the level four off of level four status um this is news that's been 10 years in the making

so I know firsthand just how powerful um that news is this by no means means that Watson is where it needs to be but it means that it validates the work that's being done at Watson which is what needs to fuel the continued work um that's happening there so I want to congratulate principal Hogue and her team for the work that they are doing at Watson and wish them continued success

as we deepen that work and that's it excellent great news great news any questions Mr agot two questions um I know when we look at the hiring update and then later on in the budget in the agenda it always talks about a appointment resignations and retirements and I think that's the point of that is so that we can notify people when somebody's coming on going in the district I would think okay and my

question is I want to know why we do not add terminations to that so if the point of it is so that we notify someone when they resign when somebody retires or when they get appointed we don't see anything when somebody gets terminated and for True transparency I think we should be adding that to the agenda uh I I'd like to may I uh Mr AGA um I don't know if we're allowed to

print something like that on a Personnel report I really question that Mr Assad can we put down a list of the terminated people for uh Mr agar's question is why don't we have a list of terminations any uh one of the things that U the law has changed back when they went to the Ed Reform Act back in 19 I think it was 1993 is it took any Personnel action except for very few

positions such as superintendent uh away from the school committee and put it in the hands of a superintendent so anything to do with Personnel any type of discipline any type of of uh termination anything that would be reportable in a uh uh their personnel file is basically off limits for this the school committee because only the only reason for that is the fact that it's not within the jurisdiction of the

school committee to determine uh Personnel uh issues in terms of of discipline and so forth except for as I mentioned very very few uh positions uh one being the superintendent of schools uh uh and other than that uh you may have some issues with respect to an assistant superintendent or a legal counsel uh but uh other than that uh that's strictly within the the prview and jurisdiction of a of a

superintendent so so following that logic which I think is faulty then why do we get it on the agenda when we appoint we have nothing to do with the appointments but they're on there we have nothing to do with resignations they on there we have nothing to do with retirements so if that's not under the pervie of the school committee why are they listed on the agenda but lo and behold the only

ones we don't do is when somebody gets terminated I it doesn't the logic doesn't fit if it's not part of the school committee then we shouldn't be getting any of them well the the uh if you're referring to the agenda item that's an informational purposes only and that is not considered to be uh private information the biggest concern uh with respect to any issues concerning discipline are two one is is the law uh

which does not give the jur the uh uh school committee jurisdiction the second is privacy uh they're very very strong privacy concerns um and as we've discussed before a privacy issue doesn't relate to what somebody has done or not done our privacy issue relates to whether or not information is given out that shouldn't have been given out uh and with respect to that there's basically very very strict liability on

the individual so that basically to not discuss or or to look at terminations or discipline is to protect number one the the individual himself or secondly the school committee and thirdly the individual members of the school committee based on what the law is and based on the Privacy rights of an individual I I I just think it's we're lacking in that area personally I'll just speak for myself I think it's

lacking and it's not transparent in any way if someone was to um put a Freedom of Information request in to ask the status of an employee that got terminated Would we not tell them that they were terminated that's not public record totally not public record what is whether somebody got terminated or not no the uh termination is is not u a situation that uh is a uh something to to go out into the the public venue

because of the fact that it is part of uh uh an individual's personnel file in and it it uh it's the law is pretty clear uh one of the very very strict uh requirements is that if there is something there's an investigation or there's a uh situation where somebody has been uh disciplined or or terminated that is confidential information and it raises a lot of questions if if that information uh is given out to to the

public and the individual has privacy rights it could be a potential lwuit yep and the only problem that I have with it is the lack lack of transparency in the information it creates a situation where people that work for the school department that people that know what's been going on they say you can do anything you want in the Floor of our schools and nothing happens to you sadly

most times they're right but I think we should do something about it so that we can show people that no when you do something that you shouldn't do you're going to be held accountable by the for of school department we just I just think it's lacking when we look at it my other question is I asked the superintendent about the and I haven't seen it and I haven't checked my you're

going to be held accountable by the for of school department we just I just think it's lacking when we look at it my other question is I asked the superintendent about the and I haven't seen it and I haven't checked my email recently about the trash the over the last couple days of how much trash was in the um how much do we pay for trash and whether there's any ongoing Communications with the city related to

that I I actually sent that information to all of you this afternoon and what does it say I I didn't check my email but is it it's there's five year is a five year five five years of figures I I sent an email this afternoon to all of you and is there ongoing Communications about trying to change that from the city Side in the there was we had one meeting

with the mayor and um his team um in regards to uh what we were paying and um that's that's an ongoing conversation uh no one agreed to anything and uh we actually are exploring our options uh for the school department it's because it's it's because the cost of trash is escalating so much Mr Aga it's from the city side and for all of our of all of our the people we pick up the merits of

the I'm not looking at the merits of it I can just tell you as one school Committee Member if we have an expense of 400,000 or whatever the amount is and it's being negotiated without the school committee no one I got a problem with that and I think that by by the city saying that we're going to raise it and the school committee not getting any word from it I just don't think that's

uh that's quite disingenuous in my opinion with that I yield we're not negotiating anything we attended the meeting and then we came back and did our work we not we haven't negotiated anything with with them what was the point of the meeting to say thank you we're going to keep it at 400,000 was that the tone of the meeting I don't what was the purpose of the meeting to talk about the increase cost of trash

and that the city would like to actually we actually the meeting was based on your comments at that meeting down in with the city council where you said sounds like we should be paying a lot more that's what they were talking about at one of the meetings cuz I I got to believe in all fan is you were the first one to bring up how much the cost is escalating so I think it was more

following up on what you said and going forward from there because that was what was discussed at the thing that Mr Mr agar knows exactly how much trash is going up and he brought it up at the meeting what are we paying so we haven't come to any set number uh the problem is we're trying to work with our vendors on the other end to save money notify people that we pick trash up for and

it's an ongoing process but that's where we stand I I stand by what I said said for sure yeah but I also said for the last 4 years that the city should be charging businesses and nonprofits for trash I could what I have the problem with is that the school department is being treated totally different than every other business or nonprofit because we're paying for our trash meanwhile you guys on the city side

can't make a decision to say you're going to charge them accordingly so we're being charged something that everybody else isn't those negotiations are ongoing with a number of people Mr agar but the one that the school committee in the school department is a vote of the school committee right on how much is on there and I but we haven't we haven't come to any number yet but we didn't even know there was a

meeting I found out third party that there was a meeting the school committee never got officially notified that we're looking at negotiating a number in something that we vote on the document I don't think it was negotiating anything I think it was informational and again it was piggybacking on your comments we were you you know you made the you made the statement that sounds like we're

paying a lot less for trash than we should and I think that's kind of almost what triggered it and I don't think at that point you were negotiating I think you were just being in informational and I think that's where we stand right now both with you and the businesses and our nonprofits right and to piggyback on that comment that was over seven months ago yeah I know and then the time when

we negotiate an end of the year agreement or or an expense agreement is over that time we haven't had one this committee has never gotten one piece of information other than when I bring it up at a meeting that we say oh we're going to meet about that we're going to talk about that and we haven't seen one thing so that means the last year's one is still in existence yes and

we we can't change that now no and if you're going to change it you got to have four members of the committee vote yeah and if that's the case all I wanted to be is a part of the information you should be well I hope to be in it going forward I don't know who's going to leave you out we already were left out it's not a sec it was informational meeting Kev it

wasn't if for any votes I guarantee you y i yield any anything further uh next up is our student comment um we'll start with Faith from dery okay to start off we have spirit week which actually starts this Thursday to get not only students but the staff ready for pep rally we also do have pep rally on November 22nd which all school committee members are welcome to come and watch I will be sending out an official

invitation um dery has started a new attendance incentive to motivate students to come to school and as what I've received from Mr dearis has been successful so far uh CT uh seniors in early Ed and health assisting have gone out and started their affiliations CTE after dark is flourishing in trades of Culinary Health assisting and cosmetology the theater department is producing Matilda the

Musical which will be showing December 8th 9th and 10th in winter sports tryouts and first practices start November 27th thank you Faith uh yamalis from RPA what do we got um so today um we're doing student council and we selected 10 kids for it and this is actually our first time doing student counc for RPA um we're also um doing cheerleading and basketball for the boys and girls

girls they recommended it and so we made it happen for them um we have a Thanksgiving dinner for the whole school starting next week either Monday or Tuesday not sure what days but we are definitely doing it we have Thanksgiving break starts 22nd um the greatest father of recreation youth out reach program meeting with students for extra help and to Mentor the students as well and People Inc are hiring a um um oh

sorry the homecoming tickets there's students who want to join and obviously attend to the homecoming but we don't have like any of like the tickets so we're trying to like get access to those tickets so kids at RPA can attend to the homecoming and that's everything thank you very much thank you um appreciate the student comments now we have a series of minutes that we have to approve I'll read them

all and if any any body wants a hold on any of them let me know and we'll discuss those or we'll take them as a bundle um 71 approval of minutes for the special education alternative education and early childhood subcommittee meeting from 10:13 23 um well I make a motion to approve 71 72 73 74 and 75 do I have a second second I have a a motion to say any further discussion on

the minutes from the regular school committee on 10:16 the instructional subcommittee meeting on 10:23 the grievance subcommittee on 10:25 or the special ed alternative education and early childhood subcommittee from 10:30 I have a motion on all and a second any discussion Deb would you please call the role Mr ago yes Mr Bailey yes Mr har Stop's got his thumb up down there okay Miss larav yes Miss Pereira yes M

Rodricks yes mayor kin yes um we have a number of travel requests tonight also um we'll start with the Doran community school and interim principal Jason su's request to travel to Roger Williams University motion to approve all travel second I have a motion from Mr agar and a second for Miss larby approve all travel any discussion on the Travel hearing none Deb would you please call the

role Mr Agia yes Mr Bailey yes Mr har he's got his thumb up down here then miss larav yes Miss Perera yes M Rodricks yes mayor Coogan yes uh item number nine is the acceptance of donations we have one donation tonight um which is um superintendent ponts on behalf of dery high school principal request the acceptance of $64.79 from pel Industries can I get a motion a second on that motion will approve with a question

motion with a question I a second I have a motion and second Mr Agia yeah just uh I want to say we talked about this in the past that I believe this is the uh they buy shirts or whatever like this seems like it comes up at a small amount all the time and I think it's more work than anything I would like to make a motion that we request the superintendent to accept donations from

this uh fund without the committee just notifies later I have a motion I second that I have a motion Mr Agia uh a second from M rodri to accept all donations from pal Industries going forward uh any discussion on that Mr Harvey yeah just quick Mr Mayor I believe we agreed on a certain amount $100 I thought we raised that to 200 yeah did we raise it to no I

think it was 100 I thought it was 100 100 okay anything under 100 that we automatically we can C and anything over could I make a motion to change that figure to two uh anything under $200 well Mr Agia specifically made the motion to accept anything from pal industri okay so we'll vot on that vot on that first Mr Agia yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart got his thumb up down there miss

larav yes Miss Pereira yes Miss rods yes mayor Coogan yes Miss lv's motion is right so I'd like to make a motion or discuss another number that we can um uh replace the $100 with make it a little uh easier and less work so maybe uh $300 to start so I make a motion anything under $300 the superintendent can approve without school committee approval I have a motion for $300 cap on donations without

our approval I have a second second I have a motion to Second any discussion Mr Agia yeah the uh as long as we have the superintendent give I think we give a thank you I was looking at the pel because that's not a person but if somebody donates like $250 from a family to the school they should get not recognition so as long as that it's good I'm good with it thank

you okay so on the motion as long as there's recognition the cap is 300 and up uh Deb would you please call the rooll Mr AA yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart thumbs up down there m lar yes Miss Pera yes M Rodricks yes mayor kouan yes item 10 is the approval of Grants we have a number of Grants tonight um does anybody have any concerns about any of them hearing none motion approve I have

a motion second Mr second Mr Agia I don't have a problem with him per se but I think there some uh I'd like to get a quick uh lib of what they are all about okay I can include it in the Friday email is that what you're or do you want someone to talk I have some questions but I don't want it to look like I'm opposed to it but I think

there's some valid questions that come up okay okay let's look at the first one Early College expansion who's going to talk on that anybody sure and if the other people are here that might want to answer a question from mental health clean turn around and after school and out of school time Mr Woodward Mr a first I'm sorry yeah just generally I have similar questions every time we

get more grants and what the money is being used for um it seems like we just keep on getting more grants and more grants and it's hard to for us to keep track of what the what positions are covered what positions are not and one of the questions I had was on administrative uh stiens thank you thank you for having me here today and I'm happy to talk on the Early College expansion Grant and I do

want to thank the committee for their continued support of the early college program uh we're becoming one of the models uh for the state and it's because of the support of the district and the school committee so I do appreciate that on this uh specific uh Grant is one of two grants uh that really uh helps to support the early college program at dery the other uh is the Early College

support uh Grant which was approved earlier this school year um the goal of the Early College expansion Grant is really to help schools and districts expand in Ro en rment um which reflects the diversity of their student body and our goal is to expand Early College enrollment to 25% or higher uh through a smart plan in addition uh the Early College expansion Grant um is designed to help schools and school districts

build sustainable systems of supports and structures that maintain a growing and expanding program um so some of the uh some of the uh uh categories uh that were awarded uh uh through the grant uh the first category is we have two early college uh full-time advisors in the grant pays uh for one of them and so that is a line item in the salary line item there's also um several different groups and the

stien line item uh the largest is uh for uh the one go teachers stiens uh for uh seven staff members uh to support uh the one goal curriculum which is is a tier one support for all early college students and it's designed not only uh to help students be successful academically in their college courses academic academically in their dery courses but also uh the curriculum supports College Planning College

admissions College persistence in higher ed institutions in addition uh new this year um in the salary line item is um we're bringing on an early early college special ed in multilingual learner aison to support uh those underserved uh groups in higher ed help expand enrollment and also uh support success um in in the early college program so they'll be they'll be working to design targeted supports and also building

relationships uh with uh the college disability offices um as well as uh families in addition there is the Early College leadership team um which uh consists of myself and An Early College academic um academic liaison to Early College advisers and the Early College coordinator and the stien hours roughly uh around 1 to two hours per week is designed uh to support uh building the Early College systems of supports

Logistics community events writing writing Grant reports Etc stuff uh that isn't able to be done during the school day so it's done in the evenings and the weekends and finally uh um another category for ipens is for uh teachers who are providing directed study tutoring sessions U by uh the Early College cohorts and that's for students to get extra help and support uh through their Early College uh classes the third

category is contractual Services uh so we have uh tutors from jfy networks uh specifically this year on site two days per week to support students in their English 101 class and other writing intensive uh courses uh we also uh have coaching for change who's helping us develop an early college ambassador program that will pay our um our early college graduates who are currently in college come back and

support students as well as design uh training for them the final categories are in Transportation uh for uh college visits both for early college students and for Pipeline and supplies related to textbooks uh software in general um uh General supplies related to to recruitment uh for early college students I think I found I think I got the answer in there that the administrators will get stiens that's

the longer out of it corrent yes some administrators could uh will get stiens correct yeah as I mentioned the last time I'm opposed to that when we pay administrators the amount of money that we're paying they work long hours I get it I understand it but I don't think they should be getting stiens uh personally I know you mentioned some of the stuff as after school I I have no idea after looking at

all of these grants and trying to figure out when the person gets paid for the school department when they're getting extra whether it's for tutoring or stiping you had mentioned a couple of positions a new position and then a $33,000 position that's in the salary line here correct and it says one ISL is that a new ISL or no uh it's not it's not new this school year it's an existing uh position that I believe was

brought 2 or 3 years ago into um into existence uh so there's two current positions they're both ISL or the college liaison one is funded through this Grant and the other is funded uh through uh the school system right so they get paid 33,000 right correct so the salaries that I'm reading here says teacher salaries total 33,000 that's what I'm reading in the grant it says 33,000 you just explained

to us that we're going to hire a special education something else about another another person is going to get hired Specialist or something like that that's a that's a Le that's a liaison of an existing staff member so it's a it's a sttip in uh it's not a um it's someone who works to support um the special ed or students with disabilities uh as well as the multilanguage Learners uh uh

build targeted supports and help connect with colleges uh because that's uh both of those uh student body groups are are are students that we want to expand enrollment in uh and also uh ensure uh that they have the supports necessary to be successful and when did they do that work so that that work again it depends what it is so this is new this year we're just bringing them on but building

targeted success looking at data connected having um meetings with colleges after school in the afternoon uh uh to build brid to that Gap with the office of disabilities at at the various three schools uh that we work with um uh things things like that um that we're hoping to bring on because we feel that'll be a help to our students and do you know what line that's in I I'm trying to find where it

says 57,000 I don't know what where that what you're explaining I don't I don't see anything that adds up to I think that that specific was 5,000 uh which was 25 roughly 2500 uh for the person who would support uh multilanguage Learners and roughly 2500s in stipid um for the person supporting uh students with disabilities and they're doing it after school I would assume because they're already

paid correct yeah the uh I I don't mean to try to give you a hassle on it's just a very confusing um we got a lot of money in for it and then people are coming and going and paid so I'm going to be uh asking some more questions to the superintendent we can get maybe some summary of the whole picture of early college and what it looks like like and

I know we always ask the same question and you tell us similar type of things but it's it's evolving it's changing so I just want to be able to feel confident when we keep accepting these that it's not just paying extra people to get paid a stip and to work at the same time because that does happen people get stiens to work at the same time as their their regular day job or they get a

stien on top of a stien and then nobody can work 100 hours a week so that's why I'm asking this as sort of oversight so I appreciate the information sir absolutely thank you any any further discussion on early college expansion motion to approv motion to approved do I have a second second I have a motion to Second let's call that one out um Deb Please Mr AGA yes Mr Bailey yes Mr

har he's got he's going to thumb up M lar yes M Pereira yes M Rogers yes mayor KGAN yes but going back to nine for a second guys we did the amend Amendment and we did uh the cap so we did not approve the original donation of 164 uh 77 from pel Industries could I get a motion in a second to clean that there already is a motion in a second the

motion second Deb could you call the r Please Mr AA yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yeah Miss larvey yes Miss Pereira yes Mr Rodricks yes mayor K yes uh going back to Grants item 10 we have theal and mental health any questions on that one Mr agon can we just get a summary of what this is sure Dr B is not here but um this is Woodward's coming down

okay hello again um so this is the seal mental health Grant it's a continuation Grant uh from last year so our goal is to continue to build uh our multi-tier systems of support uh through supporting social emotional learning for all students throughout the district and also to align uh to our seal priority districtwide priority um so one of the one of the major um focuses of the grant

is to bring on a universal screener tool um so um there's um some stiens uh for our district team to review the data to support the pilot that we're we're planning to run this spring and make a final recommendation there's also money tied to the universal uh screener Pilots which we're hoping to launch uh this spring um in addition uh there is a a big priority around bringing Community

Partners into the schools to support seal and mental health uh so some of this grant will be paying um to support uh activities such as mindfulness karate expanding that at elementary schools as well as listen to your art also uh with Community Mental Health agencies um expand in from last year um really with a focus on multilanguage Learners um especially newcomers uh each school that

has a newcomer strand would uh receive two groups to support newcomer students um uh and support their mental health and success in school in addition um this grant will support the leadership program the secondary seal curriculum um so part of that money uh is going to uh supplies other is going through stipends to support a school based team at each School uh to to Monitor and um uh review

and progress monitor implementation each school will be meeting after school once per month uh to review data in addition question oh go ahead Mr a I'm sorry no problem so when uh I was looking at this grant it talks about um Claudia Costa being the lead School adjustment Council coordinator and then somewhere in here it says Mr Woodward director of guidance is that still your title correct yeah and Miss Caster is

now is hers now just coordinator it's no longer a lead School adjustment coun it's still it's still her title is still listed ascl coordinator lead sack that's still her title we didn't change the title Midstream that's still her title that was her title before Dr came on board and it continues to be her title and when I look at mental health like this meeting on and I know you you have

filling in here so I'm not giving you a hard time but the um the seal work and the mental health Grant she's the the lead Miss Costa according to this and she she is one of the leads along with Dr B okay so being technical here I guess in a little bit Dr B's name is not anywhere on the grant and it's dated November 6th so that means we should be updating when

we have new staff or whatever um but I think Miss Costa needs to be part of the mental health uh she's part of this grant as the lead but also needs to be in reality um she's the lead person on all schools adjustment counselor tasks in my opinion that was one of the things I looked at here it looks like you got Consultants it's a lot of continuation stuff we also talked

about this at the committee so I'm in favor of it I'm not opposed to it it's just good for us to get the information so thank you sir thank you motion to approve I have a motion to approve second second I have a motion to Second Deb please call the roll Mr Agia yes Mr Bailey Mr har got is St M ly yes M Pereira yes M Rodricks yes mayor kouan yes

next one is The Gleam cohort 2 um anybody have any questions on that one Mr it's not a question so much as I think it's opportunities for I think we're doing some things that are being done quite well as well as um just better for the school better for the system but when we just approve these things without having somebody say it I think we need to give the people the

opportunity to say why this is we've partially funded it before we're going to fund it now I just think a a 30 BL from Miss Kennedy would help us to understand some of the good things that happened okay Miss Kennedy go ahead yes so last year we applied for The Gleam Grant through um the Department of Education and so The Gleam Grant is really about implementing Equity driven and sustainable improvements um and

programming across Massachusetts and most importantly here in Fall River um through a multitiered system of support in ela and literacy um which just um grounds us in culturally linguistically sustaining tiered practice this year's focus is on implementing our tier one programming which is amplify Ela um and so teachers will receive a ton of support from both the hill for literacy and amplify coaching um so that they

feel best prepared to meet the needs of their students um and so there are we do have a gleam team which is comprised of District admin school-based principles we need them on board for this work and they have been they have come forward full force um and literacy leaders that team will expand to include teachers um as well as other staff members as our um assessment of our current systems comes

to a close so over the summer we had a systems analysis um and that systems analysis was done with school-based Administration um from there the information was like the data was crunched and we had our first action plan which was our short form action plan to get us to launch the beginning of the school year with regard to implementation in support of our new program um and now we are closing up our

needs assessment which um is a full assessment that's being done with teachers par professionals based and trying to gather evidence of the support that they feel they have and the support that they feel they need um so that we can design our ful year literacy plan um that will be done on Friday right now um our partners are in schools interviewing teachers and focus groups as well as

well as interviewing students and um observing in classrooms so they get a full scope of what's going on in our for of a public school middle schools so our principes deserve a huge shout out because they have done so much work to make this happen this week um and any questions anybody have any questions just one question the stiens it says 20 is that all staff or who who gets the

stiens so those are teacher stiens um that's written right in the um in the actual line item that it's educator stiens and so that will be used specifically for um adolescent literacy courses that we've already started running um right now we are not targeting our ELA teachers we are offering those out to school-based Administration as well as special Educators teachers of multilingual

Learners directors um and our social studies and science teachers specifically um the course is focused on disciplinary literacy and where we would love for all staff to be trained uh we thought it was too much of a heavy lift to have teachers lift a new program as well as take a course alongside of that and so those Educators um that are in that the social studies teachers the special Educators the multilingual

Learners teachers will um receive a stien their hourly rate for their after school participation soorry so I thought I heard you say teachers only then you said administrators they're in the court administrators are in the course but teachers are receiving the stipend right that's and the reason why I asked that is because I think it should be consistent if if some administrators get it depends on the grant then all

administrators we should just kind of do a fair rather than just uh will nearly so I totally support it motion to approve do I have a second Bobby Bobby okay that please call the rooll Mr Agia yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart yes Miss larav yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Rodricks yes M K yesk next next thanks step to turnaround assistance grant any questions on that one miss miss Curley want to come down and just

give us a brief overview so the turnaround assistance grant is an allocation Grant a Federal Grant and uh it's allocate money allocated to the district but in service of eight schools that were identified as in need of um Assistance or intervention during the last school year so we had eight schools and for each of those schools were allocated $225,000 you'll notice in the um in the grant narrative

that we shared it is some of the pieces of it are school specific some are for groups of schools some might say that they're for all schools all of the activities in the grant are aligned with our instructional priority that is um a requirement of the grant we have to identify exactly how the work will be rolled out in service of that priority so we have a lot of work focused on our

um instructional leadership teams in compensating teachers for work on those teams outside of school hours there is money to pay for professional development pay for people to participate in that professional development either outside of school hours during the school year or in the summer um I'm not sure if there was any any piece of that that people might have questions on any questions on the um turnaround

assistance Mr my question was just you answered it but I wasn't able to glean that from the information that each school got 25,000 that is under that turnaround status is right so each school so the district is allocated $25,000 per each of those schools and then it is at The District's discretion to either so what we do as a matter of practice over the last few years is we reach out to those schools in particular

and ask if there are any activities aligned with the district priority that they would like to fund in their schools and that's how we get like a first crack at it and then with leftover money we determine other activities that you know from which those those schools could benefit or potentially all schools in the district and that's where you'll see things like ilt all of our schools have

ilts and so we've set some money aside to compensate teachers for participation outside of the school day so based on what you're saying if you'd be able to give us a list of the schools that we turned back some of their 25,000 sure yeah yeah I'm just curious why yeah so you I mean I think you can you can probably see I don't think it's a matter of schools I don't think it's a

matter of school saying we don't need this money I think that there there what we're doing in some cases is we're using some of this money to um pay for some activities that I think schools expect effect will happen over the course of the school year so last year we had we used tag money to pay people for their participation in ilts for example or for PD and so outside of that some schools

are asking for school specific PD but if they know that they are going to be I don't want to say tied up but if they know that they're going to have high participation in something that's already being um part offered by the district they're willing I guess I would say to say like that's the money I want my money to go toward that but we did have some schools who reached out and said

specifically I want to use this money to pay for ilt I want to use this money dery sent us a request they had very school specific um things that they wanted to fund and other schools are participating in the things that the district has recommended so if you are in a school that's has targeted assistance and you have an ilt mhm don't all schools have an ilt they do and how

are they paid we pay them through the turnaround assistance grant how about our other school that doesn't they don't get anything no they do all we can use the money for all schools in the district no no I'm not talking about this grant okay so if you're not a turnaround school and you have an ilt those people volunteer and get zero no we can use the turnaround assistant grant for any school in the district so

we wouldn't pick we we wouldn't fund something for a school that does not I'll pick a school tany not identified as requiring Assistance or intervention we didn't offer the money to tany but if tany has an ilt and we're using tag money for all of our schools that require assistance tany teachers can be compensated with this money as well but if every if there's only 200,000 and there's 8 schools and each

one got 25,000 there should be no money left so it's it's not that this the district writes the Grant and the district is allocated the money on you know in service of activities at those eight schools but the way the grant is set up if talit wants to run a professional development series with the money schools um Any teacher in the district if there are seats could attend that professional

development it doesn't have to be reserved for for those schools we get the money in service of those schools but the money is not reserved for those schools right I I guess the my only when we go through the budget and we start to see things are added and people get new positions and new this and that PDS all this other stuff it's all kind of seem we all know what people get but if we

see it's a targeted Grant and you said it was 25,000 for each of the schools I would say I'd like to get a uh an email to the eight people out the principles and have them respond to to say what they chose to use their 25,000 on I'm not so sure it was that clear because at that point I would say that somebody could say you know what you're going to

pay for the ilt anyway I'm going to pay my 25 Grand on something else and then get the ilt paid anyway that's true and some schools do that the one thing that I would um just want to bring up is that prior to the turnaround assistance grant money becoming available we had already reached out to all schools in asked them to submit um mini Grant applications we call them and basically

is there anything that you want to fund at your school aligned with your priority aligned with the district priority that you would like to see funded so prior to that offer being made through turnaround assistance grant lots of people had already submitted proposals and so we they had already put their programming into place before the money even became available they were reaching

out in September early October before we put the grant out so I I think we it's not that people didn't need the money but some people already kind of had their plates filled they already had allocated some money to an after school program or a professional development series and at that point they weren't going to take on another project because they were already spending 10 15 $2,000

on something else yeah I I do the superintendent I just like to get a report on how we spend this money across the schools and what they have because it doesn't sound to me like they're all created equal the way I'm hearing it so um I'll make a motion to approve it's a grant but we I personally would like to get the information I have a motion do I

have a second second I have a motion to Second any further discussion on turnaround assistance Deb please call the rooll Mr AGA yes Mr Bailey Mr har yeah Miss lar yes Miss Perera yes M rodri yes mayor cin yes after school and out of school time is also a state grant for 75,000 um I don't think Derek feris is here do we have any questions on that one same question any administrators

paid Mr R so the Asos Grant is a grant we receive every year it's to support the dery and green after school 21st century programs and the money is split between staff stiens and um and Par professional stiens any questions and by staff I I'm ass teachers teachers in power this is what it is just teachers yes sir thank you can I get a motion to approve so Move Motion second I was

reading I have a motion to second please call the RO Mr yes Mr Bailey yes Mr har Mr Mr H yeah he's got his finger up Miss larav yes Miss Pereira yes M Rodricks yes mayor cougan yes um approval of contracts now we have a number of contracts tonight one more I'm sorry where is it at the top of next oh I'm sorry strengthening career and Tech ad it's a Federal grant for um Cynthia

syia that's the Perkins going for the CTE program I thought I was off the hook there for a second so it's the annual Perkins Grant it is strengthening career in teched it is multifaceted has different categories that are very specific the Desi dictates how we can allocate funds um I would say some of the more important things that the grant goes to serve is for instance our dery Discovery Kids which are 320

students uh it pays for their OSHA Cards and for their OSHA training uh it pays for all testing whether it be cosmetology testing or whether it be uh CNA testing it pays for um organization and Club memberships for our students it pays for all of our programs to have uniforms uh centas Al loone for our culinary program is approximately $24,000 just to um have a clean uniform for our kids every day so um there are

curricul there is curriculum money for teachers outside the school day because they have to stay current in state-ofthe-art it is mandated by desie that we have curriculum money there are field trip um allocations that are mandated there are travel allocations that are mandated however those travel allocations do have parameters in that um it does not include flights for instance when our

kids go to skills USA or they go to Deca um it has um I'm trying to think but a lot of those are the big nuts that has supplies of materials it has textbooks so because for instance like cosmetology um the state mandates that they have a new textbook every 3 years otherwise it's going to be out of date so those are the things that uh the Department of Education mandates that we

spend Perkins on so that's what we spend Perkins on motional approve second second I have a motion to Second any discussion hearing none uh T please call the rle thank you Mr AG yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yeah thums up M Lar Miss Perera yes M Rodricks yes mayor cgan yes item 11 is the approval of contracts now we have a number of them many of them are tuition for uh some of

our students um does anybody we have new first we are to do the new ones first we'll take those separate any any holds on those one two 3 four contracts one item number number one Mr agar any of the others all right let's approve the other three can I get a motion in a second please motion to approve have motion second Deb would you please call the rooll Mr AGA yes Mr Bailey Mr

Hart he's got a thumb up Miss larvey Miss Pereira yes Miss Rodrick yes may cougan yes going back to the first item uh hydr grass Corp um Mr Agia I just had a question on self-explanatory what it is but it's a new piece of equipment and um how that relates to I think I said you're going to have more efficient ways of doing things so sure so um with the reorganization of facilities and

operations uh the campus uh service department was created and it will take over all of the um exterior of the buildings parking lots um grass playgrounds uh and all of the mulch beds that were originally created when these buildings were built um most of it's overgrown by grass and um what we plan on doing is is going back putting those buildings back into the shape that they were um when

they were new and some of that work or a lot of that work um is mulch beds and uh and shrubs so so this piece of equipment will allow us to do um a school in in a m quicker time and travel from school to school um applying the mulch in the beds and then um just maintaining them in the course of the year um with uh weekly um care the piece of equipment is also

again besides being a timesaver it's a major labor um saver also uh handling the mulch the way we would have to handle it in some of the schools fona comes to mind because it has a bunch of raised beds that work would be very difficult to do um without having a piece of equipment like this so throughout the district um we have a lot of work to do and taking over all of the

uh grass cutting was the purpose of putting this together to allow us uh to have more custodial uh work done in our buildings by our custodians taking this work away from them so this this is one of the pieces of the puzzle to uh put the campus service department where it needs to be yeah uh is that agency whatever we had paid are they done they'll be they'll be working until

until the end of the contract was for the full year so they will end at the school year um and then I as I promised I will deliver a return on investment um and a comparison um on uh them doing the work uh versus the employees so they're doing it until the spring is that what you're saying they would be doing it yeah they would be doing cutting up to June and

Mulch and all that other stuff that's in the contract just at dery high school and this would be every other school yep and you mentioned that the they're going to be taking on the grass cutting is that official so the grass cutting will be taken on yes it is official official we'll be doing time studies as we go through the buildings we've done it on a couple of buildings already as to how much time it's going

to take us to be at the buildings and what work they're going to do they've been doing a lot of um Courtyards uh defensive boarding right now uh which is an enormous undertaking um completely overgrown and not usable um so that work they're currently doing right now and they'll be going into um the uh Courtyard at cus uh next and and then they'll move through the other buildings yeah so the what I heard you say was

that the custodians are no longer going to be required to do the grass cutting the grass cutting what they will no longer be required to do yes effective well they haven't cut grass in a month so at the schools so it's already happening yes all I'm in favor of that I've been saying that for a time right just that it's still in the contract that says they're going to do it so

that's where I you know when I wanted to do that before I was told oh we can't do that cuz it's in the contract now it's still in the contract but we just now said that we don't have to do it so I'm in agreement with what you're saying sir just that it's still in the contract and they're not going to be required to do it so we we have something to do with

that I guess absolutely thank you I yield any further discussion on uh the hydrograss Corp purchase on can I do I have a motion second Deb he's got a mo you got a motion not a second second I have a motion to Second Deb would you please call the rooll Mr ago yes Mr Bailey yes Mr har yeah sums up Miss larvey yes Miss Pereira yes M Rodricks yes mayor cougan

yes now the continuation grants we have a number of them uh anybody have any holds on those I do South Coast Hospital South Coast K Jud renberg Katie Brown we're holding South Coast hospitals anybody have any others I'm sorry judge rotenberg judge rotenberg and I have a question on reads but it's really just an informational question all right hold on Justice judge rotenberg the top of

the page all right so I'm holding judge rotenberg I'm holding um Katie Brown and I'm holding South Coast hospitals those three do we have any more motion approve all the others motion to approved do I have a second second I have a motion a second then would you please call the rooll Mr dram yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yeah thumbs up Miss larav yes Miss Pereira yes M Rodricks yes mayor K yes

uh so the first one in order is Katie Brown educational program Miss lar yeah I think it's more of a a question so Katie Brown was on our instructional agenda and we referred to the full uh committee uh Dr PR Dr bronhard uh gave us a a a short synopsis about Katie Brown but I was under the impression that Katie Brown was going to be here tonight to give a presentation just like

every other community partner has in the past so can somebody just well we actually the other three um contracts that came before the committee were we were looking to increase so we brought them in so that they could uh present the additional services that they were going to be providing um I think that question came up at the subcommittee and because it was just a continuation Dr bronhard brought it to

that subcommittee to say that that we were assessing it working through we're going to um we were going to we want to refer it uh as is um we were not seeking anything additional okay that's why I yield anything further on on Katie Brown can I get a motion second to approve motion to approve second I have a motion second any discussion Deb please call the roll Mr ago yes Mr Bailey yes Mr

Hart M thumbs up Miss lar yes Miss perer yes M rodri yes mayor coug yes next item on hold is the South Coast hospitals group uh Mr agar yeah the um sometimes I feel like I I say the same thing year after year I bet you could get you could guess what my question is going to be related to this contract how many people are we servicing that's one but two these

contracts are supposed to come up to the committee before they get approved and I keep on saying it that we don't get a chance to even say whether we want or whether we don't want a program I said it for the last three years about this particular Grant so I look here it says invoice 2023 24 from October 1 to September 30th that means it's been in existence for 45 days already so when it

was going to come up October 1 I don't know is it too much to ask to say before we do this we know I've already raised this as an issue to say we are we going to continue this or not you can check the minutes of the meetings where I was told and this committee was told it won't happen again it won't happen again here we are again we're approving something now it started

October 1 maybe I'm wrong I'm just looking at it here am I wrong is the program start October 1 we've actually been requesting that contract since August from South Coast they uh they had some internal issues on their end and couldn't get it to us and we just received it about a week ago so when do we vote to say whether we want to even enter into the contract you said it was

requested of them well requested it in advance yes request what we requested it in advance of the anniversary date right but how about the committee when we say whether we should want to spend this money or not so because it lapsed because it started and now we're getting it now we're just going to approve it because we already have to uh this committee has never um declined to

sponsor or fund the EAP program and as I said said we did request it in advance um I did ask for the other part of the question that was voiced earlier about the level of service we're currently servicing over 90 employees through the program and uh South Coast also participated in three um mediation situations with employees internal to the district uh and that's probably at least a 50% increase from years past um

so now more than ever I think the support for our staff is is needed um as I say it's UNT forunate that we didn't get the contract prior to the anniversary date but it has been requested for several months so did we agree to it the contct say we've never received the bill yet we just received the bill a week ago as I said so in the contract

does it say if you do not notify Us by a certain time it's going to automatically be renewed I have never seen a contract all I've ever seen is the invoices Mr agar that contract's been in place for years at service so we just 45 days later we're just going to approve it we don't have any other choices my point do you Mr super Madam superintendent do you think we have a

choice or is this already clear as day well we we certainly I mean I if you want to table it and we'll bring you the information um we can do that but um it's something that it's we offer to our to our staff uh have we brought it so you're saying every single year before it expires we have to bring it and ask your permission to renew the contract is that what I'm hearing

well all I did was ask last year we approved this last year when you go back and look at it it was said we will from your Administration to us to say we will bring It Forward in enough time so we can determine whether it is servicing the right number of students or whether we want to go forward with the program prior to it being enrolled over or whatever they renewed this is for adults

not for this does not service students Mr this is servicing employees yes can I make a point about it though so EAP isn't just through South Coast so I think if we're talking about a contract right there are other vendors that you could go through so just I isn't just through South Coast so I think if we're talking about a contract right there are other vendors that you could go through so just I hadn't really

thought about whether or not we should go through South Coast but I think it would be relevant to ask staff that whether or not they're satisfied with since this has been in place for so long I think it's a relevant question to ask whether or not they're satisfied with Services through their current EAP provider other there are other organizations locally that provide EAP services to

other organizations within the greater fall Rover area so I think it's a relevant question to ask of Staff since they're the ones that are receiving the services to see if they're satisfied with that particular provider that particular vendor and then bring it back to see if there are other options on the table uh this contract has been in place with South Coast for a number of years

and and uh the contract predates my time as the HR Director however I believe at the time of its Inception or whenever we picked it up it was brought to us through the city Side they were providing services on the city side and I think it's just been rolling over from year to year um along with some updates and information that we've asked for them from time to time um with respect

to uh staff being satisfied with Services um that would have to be some sort of an anonymous survey since that's Hipp aprotected when they go through the the EAP program through South Coast um but uh we could certainly send out some type of a survey but I think there's two points to be made one it's you know there there was a statement made about contracts coming before the committee

before even if they were continuations before they were getting approved and then there's a place of just because that's always been the vendor doesn't mean that it needs to continue to be the vendor that there are are other options and it's important that staff have a voice in that I understand somebody mentioned the number of Staff or whoever's using it and with all due respect to all involved I'm looking at

the two pieces of paper that nowhere in here does it say anything about how many people uh are being serviced by this program so I just don't quite honestly I don't know whether it's good or bad I really don't but I don't think it's just rolling it over and not having this discussion and to see the value of how much are we paying M rers makes valid points I don't know do we have to go out

to bid for this service or is this a a non- bid uh opportunity at 37,000 I I I don't know I don't know that answer so with that I'll make a motion to table I'll second it wa what they want to table it wait do we already pay it no we just received this come on these people need this could be Mental Health Services we can't T disc there's no discussion so so we

have a motion to table uh bill has been in effect for 45 days have we had any complaints on their services no as I as I mention years you've been here have we had any complaints about this no not at all as a matter of fact it's a it's an important tool we use when employee seems to be struggling or something it's the first resource we offer them again it's confidential so that we don't get a

report back right uh with actual names we do get numbers on the motion to table any further discussion on table no no debates on the table so go ahead Deb please um call the RO Mr ARA yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart yes Miss larav yes Miss Pereira no Miss rodri yes mayor cougan no next item we had on hold tabled uh was the judge rotten Brig Center uh Miss

Rodricks so I mean I voted no on this every single time that it's come up and I'll continue to do so but just quick question on the increase in cost I'm assuming I know the answer to that um but just wondering about the increase it's gone up a little bit since last year and I just want to know what that's in regards all of our um out of District tuitions have gone up because the

department of Ed gave them you know they could go up 14 up to 14% I don't know Kevin do you know exactly what judge renberg Center went up I don't know the exact percentage it went up but you can certainly get that for yeah it's roughly like a $3,000 increase from last year and I know that doesn't seem like much on the grand scheme of things but again with an organization like that

I'm going to feel very strongly about that so that was my only question about it thanks anything further on Judge Rottenberg Center Mr Agia so the uh document we have says uh increase the date of 31% I'm sorry say that one more time the document that we have in front of us totals all of the tuitions and it says it increases 31% Y is that just because we had a lot of new folks or is it

capped out of District placements that's not just I don't think so so as of this point as of this point when I prepared the report last week um based on where we are right now compared to last year we've increased tuitions by 31% that means more students that means increases in what the placement costs are so on and so forth but the C the individual increases are capped by the

state correct yes yes did you say that was 14% it's 14% yes and out of this money I think I've asked this prior U how much does circuit breaker pay us what percentage they are they reimbursing us circuit breaker reimburses us up to 75% over the foundational um foundational amount the foundational amount is just over $40,000 yeah what I would uh request of the administration both on the city Side

as well as the school department is that we convene a meeting with the local delegation relative to the amount of money that they're reimbursing for circuit breaking I'm of the belief whether it's Fall River or another Community the state is sitting on 3 billion dollar in in revenue or in funds there's no reason why we're not funding 100% of circuit breaker there's no reason why we're not spending paying

100% of transportation for special education and there's no reason why we're not spending 100 getting 100% reimbursement from mckin vento we just keep saying the same thing over and over and over and then we keep on hearing how the state has all kinds of money and we're giving money to this money to this and money to that I'm asking the superintendent to convene a meeting with the full committee and the Reps and

Senators to be here at a public meeting to discuss all of those options that I just discussed thank you meting how about um any further questions on the judge Rottenberg sener yes sorry I want on a little tangent sorry about that but the question I had on that was is this the same student that we had paid for before and we did have discussion on like another either another student that potential is that

person now placed in a different program that student is not at jrc but they were in a different program I think they were like in a hospital or something they were yeah and I'm not exactly sure if they're still in the hospital setting or in an out of District placement I can certainly get you that information um I just don't note off the top of my head but right now there's no other um the

judge Rottenberg we're not adding anybody else this is the existing well to be totally honest with you you will get a report in the future but we were notified by DCF um um probably in October that they unilaterally placed another student from Fall Riv there we are not funding that they know how we feel about it they are fully funding the residential and the um um educational component to it but it's

a much larger discussion um we are working with our attorney on it we've had you will get something Mr agar I just we have to gather more information in order to present that right now um DC f is fully funding it until at least February and then we we'd have to vote to have a new contract for that or would this just be money spent Inc come after the fact yeah to be honest with you I've

not had a situation where a student was just placed by DCF and then we were notified by the school themselves not even DCF in this particular situation we did know the student was another student in the hospital 31 different packets went out like there was some struggle to have this student placed um but what happened where the student was just sent to jrc and they were fully funding it we

didn't even know until the school like I said contacted us for a meeting an IEP meeting which we did not have because we do have a day placement for him when he was with us um and we continue to recommend that day placement yeah no I totally understand I I'm want to vote against it I voted against it before all I ask is that if we're going to pay it please come before the committee so that

with all due respect to us we can take the superintendent and I have already had those discussions and just want to get all the information to present you a clear understanding of what occurred because we're still looking for that ourselves thank you very much I yield any further discussion do I have a motion a second on Judge Rottenberg you do not huh do not we do not can I get a motion second

second I have a motion to Second uh Deb please call the rooll Mr AIA no Mr Bailey no Mr Hart yes Miss lar yes Miss Perera yes Miss Rodricks no mayor cougan yes a point of clarification you can we I we can't really see that but you're seen over there just for the yeah he throws his thumb up I can see it right here Y no that's fine just when they I was on home

last week when you're watching the meeting you you can see the thing I just want to make sure that people can see it so that they're not just thinking we're voting and he's not here but he is down there inct down below yeah he's down below but if the public can't see that they're going to think you're voting for him all right all right good point um 12.1 discussion and vote to refer the

revised no we still have reads and no she had a question I had a question but then it didn't get held and it's fine it's not a big deal ask good okay 12.1 okay 12.1 sorry discussion and vote to refer the revised attendance policies referred by the sped alternative Ed and early childhood subcommittee presented by Maria PS um if I could um ask the committee we actually met um as Mr agar um reported earlier uh

at this uh subcommittee uh we had lengthy discussion about the attendance policy um there were some feedback good feedback about um analyzing some data uh Dr brard and I have met with um the dery team uh we are still looking at data and at this point I would respectfully ask the committee to send this refer this back to the subcommittee as right now we are not ready uh to make any um

recommended changes to the policy I get a motion motion to refer back I have a motion to Second any discussion de please call Mr Mayor Mr a I'm sorry yeah just uh we had a pretty long discussion on this uh superintendent did make me aware that they are looking at some of the valid questions that we asked about data relative to the policy um my only concern is that time is of the essence

and we have a policy and I asked this at the full meeting and this earlier today I was looking at a a different document that came up in right at the beginning of June where it was requested that we vote for this and I didn't have this in front of me at the subcommittee but this was a request to have it to have us actually vote on the new policy and it

was in September so my only concern is are we following the current policy that was created on September 6th right we have an adopted policy and that's the one that we are working with until there's a vote for any um revisions so when we go to subcommittee then back it it's we're talking another whole month so we're going to we're going to be by the term I'm guessing is that's

the reason why I'm asking so that we're um yes I I know time is of the essence we're all aware of that and and I agree with you but um we're not ready so we're not going I right now we can't support a revision until we have everything lined up the way it should and we have all the data to inform our decision-making I feel like we need more data for that

yeah yeah and my last comment I and I'm not sure I haven't checked my email since 4:00 today but there was some other things were asked for at the meeting are those forthcoming the things that we know so we did ask a lot of valid questions and you know I'm going to make make a motion I'm going to vote for this yes to do that and we'll try to

schedule a meeting as soon as we can so the same players are at the table answering the questions U but I I do I can tell you that it's a little bit perplexing to me how we have it and I'm not sure that it's being followed so with that I yield I mean I think that when was the meeting the 30th what's today the 11th 13th a lot of data to get together in

less than two weeks the 13th so I'm not that surprised so we have the um refer back we have a motion a second Deb correct to refer back to this could you please call the RO Mr AG yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart thumbs up down there miss larav yes Miss Perera yes Miss Rodricks yes mayor kouan yes 12 two is a presentation and discussion about the forward post School data as presented by Dr Tracy Curley

assistant superintendent Chief academic

officer good evening so um we've had an opportunity as a district to share out accountability data and um performance data in Friday emails we had an opportunity a couple of weeks ago the teaching and learning team and I met with the instructional subcommittee but this is our first time in front of the whole committee um you actually received many more slides and a lot more information that we'll actually discuss

here tonight but I W I would welcome any questions about any of the information that you did receive um but I think probably for the sake of time and the fact that you've had this information we'll um we're actually going to do a little bit of an a bridged version of the presentation so I mentioned um in the information that I sent out to you that uh we wouldn't spend a lot of time

going over the accountability system uh but I did want to just highlight you know three pieces of it the first um being that the accountability system in and of itself has two components a normative component that actually Compares um schools to other schools in the state and then there is um the Criterion reference Target component and that's something um that has applied to both schools and the district as a whole

where we get annual Targets in each of the um for each of the indicators and we're working toward those targets over the course of a year and we are measured against those targets so in the that second um that second piece there outlines all of the different areas um by which we are measured and then the third piece talks a little a little bit about how schools and um districts are categorized um either as requiring

Assistance or intervention or not so our district overall there is no normative um component we don't get a percentile so we're not going to see anything like oh we're ranked you know 20 in the 20th percentile in the state like we do for the schools but we do receive targets and we are characterized um coming out of this year as having made moderate progress toward our targets so we earned 42% of the target

points for non- high school grades and 57% at the high school level this next slide here you might be able to see it better um on what's in front of you is really the outline for how we fared against our targets for the all students group and you'll notice that there are two ways in in which we're measured um one is for all students um on the left we have the all students in the lowest performing

students and we are we get targets for high school and we get targets for non- high school and if you take a look at the numbers I mean generally speaking we're looking for threes and fours threes and fours here tell us that we're meeting our targets or we're exceeding Targets in each of these areas and so some places that I would want to highlight are the fact that um chronic absenteeism across our all students

group um High our lowest performing group all of our subgroups the district as a whole um exceeded targets for chronic absentees and we made some really great improvements over the course of last year as did each of our um individual schools I also want to point out um on the high school side we see that in English language arts our high school students exceeded the Target and also wanted to point out that

at the high school level we met our Target for um progress toward English language proficiency also at the high school um the ADV cour workk completion Target was exceeded um for our students the next two slides show similar information for students with disabilities and our L's and former L's um this is of particular interest to us because moving into this year we set an instructional priority um for all

students and we really called out those two subgroups and this is the information this is the data that we're really tracking over the course of this year so um again some things I would want to highlight again for students with disabilities is that in that achievement section where we see um achievement in English language arts math and science at the high school level we met our

exceeded targets across those content areas um for high school completion rates um at the high school level we met um we exceeded the extended engagement rate for our students with disabilities and then again for chronic absente ISM in advanced course where we exceeded targets some of this data doesn't look as strong for our L's um and former L's and you can see that in those percentages where for our non-h high

school grades we only earned 20% of the target points and at the high school um in the high school grades 43% of targets and when is you know even a quick scan of the list shows that we really weren't meeting many of our targets we showed declines in some areas um we maybe made some progress but didn't quite meet the Target and the only places where we were um we were meeting or exceeding targets

were around the um progress toward English language proficiency and those additional um indicators of chronic absenteeism and that advanced course work completion so overall um when we look at our class so so we look at the district as a whole and then we look at our individual schools we have 17 schools in the district including the Early Learning Center 16 of those schools have

tested grades so we got a classification for um all 16 of the schools outside of the Early Learning Center and you can see here that nine of our schools were classified as requiring Assistance or intervention so more than half of our schools whereas only seven were classified as not requiring Assistance or intervention um we've used this visual um for a few years which I think captures things um really nicely because

you know we start by putting schools into categories saying they either require Assistance or intervention or they don't um and you can see all of us our schools here on a Continuum um where the schools on the left and you see those blue green and yellow arrows those are all schools that are not requiring Assistance or intervention and you can see the percentage of targets met by

each of those schools Sylvia stands out as um a school in the 27th percentile that met 75% of progress targets which means that's a school that's meeting or exceeding their targets all of the uh the schools in green are schools that made substantial progress toward their targets and the schools in yellow are schools that made moderate progress toward targets all of the schools on the right

are the schools identified as requiring um Assistance or intervention those are all schools in the 10th percentile or low and we you know it's not we do it for all of our schools but it's especially important um for schools that are identified as requiring Assistance or intervention that we're making really great strides and so um where we see some of the schools um with really low

percentages of Target points um being earned um those schools are of particular concern because they're at a percentile and they really didn't make progress over the course of the Year all of you have um have seen the you know have seen the data in terms of um you know percentage of students at each um performance level raw score data all of those things that we sent out but I did want to highlight some key

takeaways from that 2023 data um the first is that in ela and math um it does appear that we are recovering so it's difficult for us because I think um our data did not look great in 2019 but the message from um the department of Ed is really that we need to be kind of we we need to get back there and then and then increase and we are showing that we are in recovery and

we are getting back to um those 2019 levels so that we can plan forward grade 10 Ela performance has actually returned to prepandemic levels and so we're expecting you know that path forward for them um to be you know quicker and and more significant in the next couple of years and they even showed some Gap closing evident for those particular subgroups that we are um for which we're most concerned math

data is just about flat um except for grades five and six we saw slight decreases in science performance um but we're seeing some stabilization at those lower grades grade five was a standout grade for us um because we saw increases there in both math um and Ela and that was really the only grade where that happened we recognize that we have significant ground to make up to reach

pre-pandemic levels um and and one thing that's really important um to note is that you know we're talking about the district overall on average how are we meeting our Target points there is really such variation in the schools and that's something that we would um look forward to digging into um at a later date with the committee so I think um primarily what we want to talk about tonight is really what we're

doing in response to the data um the first thing that's that's here in terms of that is the instructional priority for school year 24 I mentioned that we are targeting some specific subgroups our students with disabilities our English Learners um that is those are two groups for which um we see really large gaps we've talked about them for the past couple of years years in terms

of how we see that Gap widen as students move from elementary to Middle to high school and you know this is really the first year that we've um called out those subgroups um in terms of our instructional priority and that we are very formally tracking data for those students um over the course of this year so the instructional priority reads all Educators internalize the content of

District sponsored grade level materials while considering current student data to plan effective instruction so that all students including students with disabilities and multilingual Learners acquire great appropriate Knowledge and Skills this um action this internalization this terminology um will come up repeatedly um as we go through some of the slides it really is a focus

here it's a focus um of our professional development it's a focus of the work that's being done um in our professional learning communities at every single school and it's really what we are banking on um to help move us forward um over the next few years so we have this system for instructional Improvement um and you can see here um on this graphic that our instructional priority is at its Center

and what we're going to do is just talk a little bit about each of these pieces of the system um and how the work that we're doing is situated in each of those the first piece is high quality instructional materials um I know that we've been talking about that that here for the last couple of years I know that um some of the discussion for us um in our work and and you know with some

folks on the committee is that um we understand that the high quality instruction materials are not the thing that is going to propel us forward but we're really treating those materials as the the the bare minimum something that we want in the hands of all of our teachers and at the fingertips of all of our students so that we can um make sure that we can end ensure that students have access to grade level work so

what's here um on this slide is really just the list I think at some point we've you know talked about all of these things um they've certainly all come before the committee for approval but these are all of the um New curriculum that we've been implementing over the last few years and the one thing I'm I'm learning um in terms of going to meetings uh with people from other districts participating in some of this

Prof professional development is that fall Riv ever um we know that we're lucky but people are telling us how lucky we are um that we have been able to roll out this curriculum over the last few years I think um if you potentially talk to colleagues um in other districts you would find that there aren't many that are doing it um you know with this large of a scope across content areas across grade levels

um and with the depth that we are and so I'm really that's that's it's something um of which we're really proud and you know just really thankful that we've been um backed in that way to roll this out for our for our students um so in addition to the things that we're already implementing we have Pilots going on um and and that last piece there about increased access I just wanted to highlight because we have made

a real commitment this year to making sure that students including our foundational English Learners including students in substantially separate classrooms um have access to high quality instruction materials so we really and we're supporting the teachers to make that work accessible to the students so it's not um you know it's not a situation where we're rolling out high quality instruction materials but

these kids get something different um we're we're really supporting people to implement the curriculum for all student groups the next piece of our system um is focused on professional development and I think um the important the key here is really the variety so we are partnering certainly with um outside um organizations and their work in our district is really twofold um every step

of the way they're providing direct professional development for for teachers and other staff but they're also building the capacity of leaders um in this District so that we can continue with the work when those Partnerships um no longer exist the professional development um is sometimes resource or or curriculum based so we have professional development that's provided by by the you know by Wonders by amplify

by Carnegie and things like that um some of it is very focused on pedagogy and we're doing a lot of work with tiered instruction um whether it's provided by you know our staff or in our outside Partnerships with people like um the hill for literacy and so on lesson internalization in all content areas that's something that you know we'll talk a little bit more about with plc's but we're providing professional

development around how to do that work not just expecting people to do it um there's language development professional development happening um with literacy and math leads so that that language development work can become part of what we do across content areas and then finally some group specific stuff so we are looking at um groups of Staff like new teachers like our teacher leaders in doing some very

specific work with them to improve their experiences and um to improve their skill sets I mentioned ilt a little earlier when we were um talking about some of what we're doing with our um with our tag money instructional leadership teams have become a real focus in the district over the last couple of years um I think schools have had instructional leadership teams um you know for a while

now but I think what we've what we've tried to do over the the last couple of years is really tried to formalize that process um make sure that the expectations for ilts were clear um help schools understand what the vision is for ilts what their purpose is so we've done formalized training with instructional leadership teams um this year we have um our principles being coached around instructional leadership

teams and um some of the things that are listed here that I wanted to highlight the pdsa cycle plan due study act that was something that we introduced um in ilts last year and we had schools just using their their initial data that they that they got either from um early diagnostic assessments with students or their mcast data who started pdsa Cycles right in the first couple of weeks of

school and that was really encouraging to hear as we um um went to schools to um talk to schools about their data um we've got training and coaching going on for leaders and that's something that's actually provided from um within our district we have coaches who are coaching coaches and that's something that's gotten really positive feedback our um the work of ilts is also observations and feedback we have teams

of professionals who are doing uh leadership walks in schools so that they can monitor the progress um and monitor the effectiveness of professional development the materials that are in place and so on and so on the compensation piece I referenced also when we talked about tag and that's just an opportunity to compensate people for for their time we realize that people are working outside of school hours for

these meetings and we're compensating teachers who are participating and then finally I wanted to highlight a contracted partnership we're working with tntp um that is the the vendor that we're using to do some of our work this year in terms of coaching our principles professional learning communities um are another part of our system um and how we're approaching this work um one of the things that we did

for school year 24 is that we worked with schools um in their Staffing structures so that we could increase the frequency um of our plc's for the current school year so generally speaking an elementary school teacher who was not departmentalized and was teaching all content areas in years past would um might have an Ela PLC one week and they'd have a math PLC the next week and then maybe they would do something

um with the whole grade team the following week and maybe couldn't get as much traction as we'd like and now those teachers enjoy two plc's a week so if they're teaching math in ela they have a math meeting and an Ela meeting every week and that is you know something that we that we committed to in terms of strengthening our systems um we have common PLC plans across content areas so

that if someone is planning for ELA and then they're going the following week and planning for or the following day and they're planning for math the structure of those plcs is the same and um making things easier I think um for teachers in terms of their planning we're using a common protocol for lesson internalization um and then this year something that we've been trying to improve of over the years and it

certainly um took a step forward this year is really the team makeup so that special Educators ESL teachers um and our general classroom teachers are planning together that you know they're using the same um high quality instruction materials and we're giving them an opportunity to plan together and then um and finally in our foundational program schools we have co- facilitation of the plc's so that there could be an

MLL coach and a Content area coach um co- facilitating those meetings and so the last piece of our system in terms of um teaching and learning and attending to our priorities is this um last piece of observation feedback and instructional coaching um this year we were able to share with schools a coaching Vision across our schools what coaching looks like you know who are who is doing the coaching

in buildings um and what are those expectations we I mentioned that we're doing a coaching coaches series we have our um RBT atsr course which really is a course for any um anyone who is supervising and evaluating teachers new administrators to the district that is an ongoing um element that you know we've been able to provide and then finally um we're in our third year of the Lynch Leadership Academy and that is

very focused on um instructional coaching for Equity across schools does anybody have any questions about any of that piece the system um for instructional Improvement or comments yes so you just had um the acronyms RBT up there yeah it's different it's research for better teaching okay that I just got really confused about what you were saying I'm like I I don't think that means what I

think it means or okay yeah so just for clarification I I was reading that as registered Behavior technician or registered Behavior therapist and not in regards to instructional coaching so I wasn't understanding why that was there okay thank you go ahead uh anybody have any other questions is this the only part are you is this over no I just wanted to pause here to see if anybody has

anything I'll wait till the end okay you going wait until the end okay um so the next pieces here are related to the other indicators um that were referenced on the original chart where we took a look at where we're making progress um and or not um so the next piece here is our progress toward English language proficiency um and this shows the percentage of students who met their um

proficiency targets um in 2022 and 23 and the story here really is that um it's it's pretty much flat right um it where it looks like we're not getting any better at supporting students to make progress toward English language proficiency um so I wanted to just review um some of the things that we are doing with and for our multilingual Learners and the staff that is um supporting them so that we can um

support more students to make progress just like um I mentioned for all students students um for our multilingual Learners and and their teachers we're supporting the implementation of high quality instructional materials um supporting and expanding the use of supplementary resources in those rooms we're providing um direct School support so that co- facilitation of um plc's is is what's

captured there and then also planning um and facilitation support for school-based professional development so that we do have schools that are um working Direct with our district level MLL staff um and they are kind of making their rounds um to schools providing professional development after school to teachers new for this year um is listed here under developing teaching capacity

around targeted support um we are we really rework the system this year for how we're approaching um supporting students around their elps um the English language support plans and tightening that system in a way that really um provides support for schools in terms of their data collection and how they're intervening rolling out new standards um supporting content teachers at dery rolling out the new weda um model

interim benchmarks newcomer Academy at dery and um again wanting to highlight those Partnerships that were developing with content leads so that we have people from our MLL Department working directly along alongside our content leads and then finally um expanding the use of Lexia Core 5 and power up with our multilingual Learners and the pilot of Lexia English um that's happening there the next piece here is around

chronic absenteeism um and it's it was really a highlight that I mentioned earlier um in this presentation where we really exceeded targets for all students um and you know across schools across the district um and with all of our subgroups um and you can see the breakdown here for our non-h high school students and our high school students um one of the things that um came up at the subcommittee meeting uh

when we talked about attendance in relation to student performance um was this idea um that you know we had been looking at and it's linked here although I realize I actually can't click on the link um but I'll be able to share this with all of you digitally it's the fact that our um we have some pretty strong data that suggests as we knew it would that our students who are chronically

absent are not performing um as well as their peers who are attending school more regularly so when we look at the um when we look at the visuals uh it really tells a story of their certainly being a performance Gap at the elementary level it grows um when students move into to middle school and then at the high school level you see a really stark contrast between um students who are um

meeting in exceeding expectations and those who are not um and it it really is the story of chronic absenteeism so I do want to make sure that I share those visuals with you I know that Dr bronhard has um You Know spoken at length about the work that's being done around chronic absenteeism it really I feel like we've talked about um attendance in this district for a really long time and this

we have much you know a much greater shift right now into looking at Chronic absenteeism and um and it it's being done in a way that's so systematic and um having the same expectations across schools um in terms of implementing the system having their teams what the expectations are for their teams and for me that's the that's the piece that's really thematic in all the pieces of our system to supp

to support instruction it's really about building that consistency and that is um really what Dr B is doing here in terms ofal and the um response to Chronic absenteeism so even though it was an area of significant growth for us um we we know that we need to make some significant strides because our percentages are still very high the last pieces here around um graduation extended great engagement in

annual Dropout rates um I think actually um a lot of these pieces were actually addressed by Mr Woodward when um when he was up here talking about some of the work for um the early college but we are you know we are investing a lot of um time energy and resources um into improving those rates um we have some things that we we've been doing in terms of you know continually trying to um

expand programming for off trck students through credit recovery and grade recovery and things like that we're holding those re-engagement events and expanding credit recovery options at dery um but some new things for this year and of course this some crossover is the new attendance monitoring system expanding that Workforce develop opportunities and launching that new comer Academy at dery that I referenced

earlier this ties in again um with the advanced coursework that's happening um and and another that was another place where we really exceeded expectations we have a very large uh percentage of students 11th and 12th grade students um in our high school um at our high school grades that are participating in advanced coursework and just wanted to identify um and kind of highlight some places

here that we're making um some improvements in this school year um increasing access to project lead the way because we're increasing those science offerings expanding AP offerings with new courses um and launching AP research as a core English course for students so that we can increase enrollment there as well we're also launching a CTE cohop paid opportunity for 12th grade students the last piece here that

doesn't fit into um any particular category but um I actually referenced it in the packet that I sent out to the committee um are some you know questions we have internally about the effectiveness of um teachers on licensed teachers kind of where we are in our work of recruiting and retaining teachers and so I just wanted to highlight some um Recruitment and Retention strategies um that we're

implementing so that you know as we think about all of the professional development in which we're investing um we are investing in some long long-term employees so we do have our graduate reim um coursework reimbursement um program up and running and I um I'm sure Mr Coogan could share some more information about exactly how many I think last I heard we had 40 something teachers who were taking advantage of

the reimbursement um um this fall we have the jet program that's been existence for quite a while and we we do have people who are um participating there we're developing programs Partnerships with local universities um one that's already in place around that cohort cohort financing um so that we can you know people can get low C low interest no interest loans to participate um but we're also exploring

some cohort certificate programs that um we'll discuss a little later and then um finally just wanted to highlight we do have an inservice credit program that allows us to offer in District um courses for graduate credit that can really only be applied right here in in the um District which would encourage people to stay here because they can't take the credits with them um we're

looking to do some work through impact bargaining in terms of um recruiting teachers and retaining them and then finally looking at recruitment fairs and advertising that has been ongoing over the course of the Year any questions anybody have any questions or comments any I have comments okay M Mr Aya just uh I was at the subcommittee so I did hear a lot of this uh can you highlight I know

we talked at the meeting about presenting different information to this full body can you just highlight if there was any I was seeing the slides were very similar I'm just trying to figure out if the feedback was given at the subcommittee was actually taken and presented here yeah I think that what we've talked so some of it was a little bit different in in terms of I know that

at that meeting we we had presentations from all of the content areas right and it was it was somewhat repetitive and so what U we tried to do here was much more of a summary in terms of what's Happening across all content areas um another piece of it that is new and I actually can try um was the information that I referenced a question that came up around student attendance in

performance right so one of the things that we talked about in terms of you know a why this is potentially happening at um I'm wondering Steph if you get out of the presentation we'd be able to click on it um one of the things that we talked about at the meeting and that we got some feedback on was some general information we shared about um why we think students you know why why is the

work so slow right and we talked about um student attendance even though that even though we're making gains um and I think some of the feedback that we received was well I'm sure if you're saying this you must you must have the data to show that it's true right and so this is some of the data and so these are some of the visuals um that that are available in each of these graphs on the

left um is the group of students who is chronically absent and on the right um students who are not chronically absent and I think what you see um in all of these is where students are chronically absent we're seeing more red and we're seeing less Blue in Green and Steph if you scroll down and so what I referenced was that as we as we look through the grades so that was

like 3 to five at the top and then you look at 6 to8 you're starting to see like way more red um for those chronic absente students um chronically absent students and much less blue and green and then if you scroll down more stuff um and you see the high school um you see it you see it a ton and on the right I think that's I think that's the science and so what happens at the

high school is there's still um some of that red becomes yellow but there are huge differences in um the percentages of students who are chronically absent that are actually meeting an exceeding expectations um when you look at the comparison between chronically absent students and um and students who are attending so that was one of the pieces that we added because I know it became a

um a discussion Point another piece that we um that we I did add and then I pulled out because I think the data isn't clean enough is really around um licensed teachers and not licensed teachers um and just looking at a lot of the but don't scroll there Step yeah no um the data is not clean enough and so we've been trying to clean it up up um for weeks really in terms of

what it means to be licensed in this District versus not um what what the difference is between teachers who are who have emergency licenses or people who have um who have you know who have professional licenses and things like that and the data is not clean it does tell a story it in our district it shows that um for students who didn't have licensed teachers they didn't fail too

well when it came to mcass right and I think that was something that we expected to be true and it was true and the data shows that it's true it didn't seem um there were still questions about the data and the validity of it and it wasn't something that I wanted to share the visuals on and then I think the other big piece that you um that we talked about at subcommittee was really

around um kind of what's big and bold and different and um I I feel like what's what's different potentially is not necessarily big and bold and so I feel like coming out of the teaching and learning office um we've made some really strong commitments to the work that we know is the right work um based on Research based on some of our experiences um in the district and it's the work that we

want to do doesn't feel big and bold it feels like the right work at the right time and at the right pace and so I I I guess for me I feel like I'm not the person necessarily to speak to you about big and bold I I I think that's all I can say because I think that even though it doesn't feel like um it doesn't feel fast enough and it doesn't feel like

something that's going to like work tomorrow it is 100% the right work and it's what we're engaging in in and I think it's how we are going to see results the um the first one you said about the not showing us the slide personally show I want to see it yeah you know I think that we can't be afraid of it because it's the fact y so if the

fact that the matter is is we can't get certified teachers in this district for whatever reason it's a combing upon your Administration to come to us and say we can't get certified special Educators so therefore we have to do something big and bold such as pay them money so that that other people are making more than them that's what I'm looking for when I say big and bold now I understand

there's contracts and all that stuff but that's what I would consider as a big and bold move if we know that attendance is an issue so let's throw all kinds of things at the attendance it's the same thing for a quality teacher in front of somebody so personally I don't I'm not um afraid of the of the um slides or whatever you're going to show we don't have enough people that are certified in

the field to teach our kids that's just a fact and your data is going to show that that when that happens the results are less I'm not happy about the results so therefore let's do something about you know the the first part of it the the second thing that I thought was um we had talked at the meeting about when you look at the percentages accountability percentages I thought we were going to

get a presentation on what is the real back story to it and we haven't we didn't get any of it so I'll I have the numbers in front of me that I'm not happy about as one member of this committee that we have 14 schools that were ranked with the accountability we have 33% that are under five or lower percent across the entire Commonwealth we have 50% that are from 10% and under

we have only three schools out of the 14 that are from 27% on those aren't good numbers and those are the numbers that I think we got to do something drastic about bold we have to do something different we also talk about I asked questions how much money have we increased the budget for the last 5 years it's over $50 million so we've increased in 5 years the budget by 50 million our scores

aren't moving I'm not blaming anybody but we're just not doing something something's not happening because the results aren't there three years ago we said we want more results I looked at a Rog chot that I have I happen to keep everything from 2122 dery High School we're going to do a reog of the administration my comments at the top were do something big and bold we need to see real change that was in

2122 now the school is currently at 3 thir percentile there's probably some more to the story which I had asked at the meeting to come present something to show how that 3% might be a better looking 3% we didn't get it but people see this I see it and it's not going the direction that we need to I feel like we just really need to do something bold we talk about the data on on um

subgroups I said this at the subcommittee meeting the math results across the common uh across the district students with disabilities 4% meeting or exceeding four grade 10 students with disabilities 2% 2% and we don't have to do anything big and bold not blaming you this is a general statement but these numbers are not good I don't think anybody's saying that they're good but I don't see the uh

uh the Action meeting that that need in my opinion and you you guys can say that you got all the systems in place whatever I just personally don't have confidence that those are going to do what needs to get done uh me personally but um I still think we need to do bold some bold moves I need we can't just keep doing the same thing because it's not going to help and when I look at 33%

at 5% or lower those people are working hard they're not it's not that they're not working hard the principles everybody's working hard something else has to be going on there has to be something something different because we just been at the same level for the whole time we talked about 2019 prior to co the scores were not good then now we're fighting to just say well we we didn't go back we

back basically back to but we spent $50 million and what do we have for it to show for it we're back to where we were in 2019 which was wul inadequate scores an achievement I just uh personally I don't feel level of confidence but you know it is what it is we're going to keep on moving in the in the best direction we can I just implore you and the superintendent to do something bold

please that's what I'm asking do something bold and attendance cannot be the only bold thing that we do is not the only thing that we do if I can just add I'm sorry that you you don't feel that you have you have the confidence that we can do this we will do this all I am saying is yes we've increased that budget 50 million what that says is that we actually finally have the resources in our

teachers hands that we should have had all along that that's what the money is not a magic um answer it's not going to make our kids ready to learn our kids are coming to school with significant needs they are disregulated they need social emotional support before our teachers can do their job they are playing counselor they are playing parent they are doing all of these things to salvage

some of the time so they can do their instruction we need to recognize that so that our teachers can do their job if they could teach for the entire period without any disruption we would see different scores Mr agar no one no one in this room is convinced that these are good enough we don't believe that for one minute we know that we have to do better but um I think that it would be

bold for us to stay the course we have the we haven't had the resources up until just a few years ago that we needed we're finally Staffing our buildings the way they needed to be uh staffed and we're finally able to provide curriculum that's consistent across the board to all of our schools we're going to support and provide the PD to our staff you you have 22 year olds graduating and they have to do all

the CCL stuff and then do their instruction we have to recognize that that impacts scores there was never at the third percentile so let's they're not where we need to be but they weren't at the third percentile so let's get that straight please um but I I just think that we it's important for us to recognize where we are set a plan of action and make sure we stay the course

and do what we need to do and some of those you're right some things have to be done differently but I think that we have invested a lot in our staff and in our district and I I think that for once we are actually um where we need to be and we'll continue where 2019 was what the Desi said let's try to get to preco so that we can say we can chart the

course yeah we I'm the first to tell you all the time that's not where we want to be that's not a Target absolutely not but we have to start somewhere and we are showing signs of recovery and now we have to move forward it you know with doing the work we need to continue to support our staff our schools our students and and really our our kids coming to school ready to learn is

something that is really far greater than just a school issue and that needs to be addressed so you said you said that apparently it's clear to you that even with all the additions that we've added for staff that we still have teachers that can't teach the period because of a variety of reasons whether it's Behavior or whatever that's what you stated I'm saying that's one of the deterrent that's one of the things

that's keeping our teachers from teaching the entire period absolutely I totally understand that my question is what bold moves are you going to make to to not have that happen any longer what bold moves are going to be done what is the top 10 and I'm not asking for an answer but a nice document to send to us to say these are the top 10 reasons why we're going to do the following actions

so that our teachers can teach for the entire period whether that means we have to toughen on the discipline whether we have to add double the amount of counselors which we've already tripled at dery high school we've doubled in other places if that if that's still the case that the teachers can't teach because we have needs we have behavioral needs what are the 10-step plan that we're going to do to address it in a

bold fashion I've supported every single request for an adjustment counselor and new positions at dery high school and all across the district for the last 3 4 years and I've sat at when I voted for all those things and said we're going to be looking for results and I think that's what everybody on this committee should be looking for we need to see some results now I'm just pointing out

that the results aren't there in my opinion but if that means we have to change course and do something different whether it's how we pay our staff whether we how we pay our teachers whether we have to add more we shouldn't hear that we can't have teachers teaching because we don't have either theal needs met or the behavior issues in the classroom well that's the reality of the work I and I agree with you I

think that we do need to be bold in how we compensate our teachers will never ever ever be able to compensate teachers for the work that they do because they're invaluable but we also have to look at what we are doing and if we want to be competitive we need to be competitive so a bold action would be that we have to pay teachers more in specialized programs when is that going

to come before the the committee and so we can enter negotiations on it that's that's what I'm saying I we all kind of know but let's not talk about it let's not talk about it let's just keep going around and around and and then we just keep hearing I mean it just let's just do it then if that's the case look at special education look at those numbers that I just said it's unbelievable and

there's no reflection on anybody just the fact of the matter is is that we have to have a plan that says we're going to address that issue period I've been saying for four five six years we don't do inclusion right here we got all the money in the world but we don't have an inclusion teacher in half the classes okay so we can't find a certified inclusion teacher so I suggested a subcommittee that we hire a

regular teacher to just be a second adult and teacher in the classroom when has that proposal been before this full committee it hasn't we just continue to say we're not going to do inclusion right we're not going to staff the place because we can't find people the same things that keep happening and when we have $50 million all I'm saying is I really think we could have done and we

should have done some things different but moving forward let's do something bold and different that's all I'm I'm asking everybody's trying their best everybody's working hard from the principals to the staff the you know you know support staff I get it I understand that it's not easy but we have to do something different if these scores are going to change otherwise we're going to

be sitting here two years from now and the scores are going to be flat again because three years ago they were flat here so I'm not trying to give you a hard time I just really passionate about it and I think that we have to do something different that's all with that I yield I I got to say something um I think the additional staff and again we did not increase our budget by 50

million the state increased our budget by 50 million through the student Opportunity Act they funded us we didn't come up here and have a vote and say let's increase it by this but with that money I've noticed and I've don't know which schools I haven't been in yet this year um marked improvement in instruction and behavior and how they're tackling it when you walk through a school and you see counselors that are

in the Halls addressing a situation right there to coach the kid up and get him back in the room it's much different than it was a few years ago I noce marked improvements and you know obviously we should all be cheering Watson coming off of um level four I toured all Watson with the principal and I've been in that school every year for the last four or five years and I can

see the difference I can see the difference in many of our schools and I want people to know that these schools are going in the right direction is there work to do Mr agar is 5 billion per right no one's up here saying we got a perfect school system but at the same time we have to let these people do their work for a little while let's keep grinding let's keep working I I I am

just blessed that my job allows me to walk around a school with a principal and walk into any classroom I want and see what's going on I was at Henry Lord last week with the new principal and I'm fortunate enough that my position allows me to do that and I can get the Hands-On look at what's going on in the rooms in real times and I can tell you that the

adult supports in many of the room are like none I've ever seen before I walk into a room now and I see two or three adults working with our kids in small groups here and there and everywhere and even some of the most challenging students are getting more attention than I've seen in the past now that doesn't mean and you know Mr agar is 100% correct you can look through this whole

data thing and there is plenty of data that isn't positive but there's also a lot of good data in there that I that show things can be turned around and we're going to do it we do have the staff and don't think that shortage of teachers is something you know Fall River is uh is struggling with that the rest of the state isn't everybody's fighting this fight right now I read a

big article in the Globe last week on Brockton and and I say a prayer for Brockton and we might regretfully have that problem ourselves someday but right now we're in a better spot we still have openings we're hiring people let's keep going forward and I have confidence in the team they're going to have to perform I mean I think we got to give them a few years without covid and a few

years where they can get their systems in place and we'll go but at the same time just know that full well that I've been in these schools and I am very very comfortable with what goes on every day with the children of Fall River and 99% of them they're problems Absolutely I'll never say there aren't but we're going to keep grinding and we're going to get it done and we're going to support you

and the state is obviously supporting us now through the student Opportunity Act so let's get real I mean we're not up here saying we allocate 50 million the state is telling us what to spend and if we have to Target the money to different areas I don't have a problem supporting Mr a on that but at the same time let's acknowledge the good stuff that's going on in most of the classrooms I've been

in in this District this year anybody else have anything I do M Rogers um so a few things so I say this each time and I'm going to continue to say our kids are not test scores right so our kids do come through the door with a whole host of challenges we see it every single day our teachers see it every day and yes our teachers can't get to teaching because they're dealing with

every social emotional issue that you can possibly imagine um and more so others that you can't imagine before 8: a.m in the morning right so this is this is what they're dealing with um so I I don't think that mcast scores are a great reflection of the work that happens every single day having said that they're a reflection of something right and so we do need to monitor what's happening there and so they have

been flat for a very long time and that's preco and we can use CO as the reasoning for a decline and we know that that was real right um but they were stagnant prior to that so 2017 2018 2019 they had been pretty flat covid happened they dip and now we're struggling to get back to where they were and they were flat at that point one of the things that sticks out to

me very bleat and it it's frustrating on my end um is the special education piece because when I look at the plan in place and so where it says in place and we continue to support there's a couple of pieces in there support implementation of high quality instruction materials support consistent use of digital platforms and District support right and there's a few other things that are new

to the plan when I look at other areas there are very specific targeted things that are bulleted on there but in special education they're General and I say this often and I'm going to say it again it often feels like our special education department is sort of separate from everything else that when we talk about instruction that special education is sort of Left Behind that they're in

oversight and I don't believe that anyone genuinely feels that way I don't believe for a second that that's intentional but when we use language like strength the collaboration increase participation on school ilts and data teams why isn't that participation already strong right increased instructional support why why isn't that instructional support already strong consistent implementation why isn't that

implementation already consistent right so this is where I sort of get stuck on things when we look at multilingual Learners we have very concrete pieces of support that are there and very concrete create new to our plan objectives but we don't have that for special education so I'm not asking you to answer anything now what I what I am suggesting is that there has to be a better integration of

instruction and special education there has to be a better overlap in order for this work to get done because our scores are not good with our special ed students I mean for the longest time we didn't have Core Curriculum in our sub separate classrooms and so it's only now that we have Core Curriculum right and that was a whole other that was a whole other issue that we came across that we're not getting into

again so this is where I get frustrated and again it's frustration as a parent um but also as one member of this committee that there's got to be a better focus on that integration of instruction and special education and if we're looking at truly bu building an integrated District that we've got to look at pulling theal piece the instructional piece and the special education piece together instead of

looking at them in silos because it feels that that's how it's presented pretty often that piece I that's accurate anything further thank you item 123 is a discussion and vote to approve the CTE advisory committee board members as presented by Cynthia syia CTE director hi this is our annual event where I ask you to accept our 2023 2024 Advisory board for our nine CTE programs actually

10 as we also invited criminal justice although it's not a program as of yet motion to approve second second any further discussion Deb call the role Please Mr AA yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart comes up M lar yes M Perera yes Mr rodri yes mayor C yes item 12.4 is a discussion to vote to approve an addition of an instructional support liaison for the CTE department is presented by Cynthia Sylvia CTE director

um this position would really truly help the expansion of our Early Education and Care Program as we decided to uh move forward with from people's Inc with our infants and toddlers program we have increased our infant program by six infants where they had one last year we have six um and we have eight toddlers in our toddler program and we have a full 10 in our preschool program that

being said we are in complete compliance with eec regulations as we stand fully staffed right now but one person is not there for a myriad of reasons if they call out sick if we have someone that needs to go to an IEP meeting if we have any one of those staff members who are not present in our eec program we out of compliance so many times that's usually me who ends up going into those programs

because if we're going to be out of compliance it's going to be with the director there not with anybody else you can't fill it with a sub you can't put it in with someone who isn't in that program so what I'm asking is that we have this position so that we can Harbor that position in eec provide extra support not only when somebody is not there but also then if we do have a

fully staffed eec program that also provides us flexibility in our other programs so that if we do have an person who's out or we need extra support in a different program we can also allocate that person in that program as well to almost float if we are fully staffed motion to approve motion to approve do I have a second I have a second Mr AGA I know you have it listed here as an ISL

what are the credentials of the person that has to like what would the minimum qualifications to hire somebody to be working in those programs is it less than an ISL I don't know if it's less or more but what I'm going to ask for this ISL for this ISL position is to be eec certified we well I mean we don't have that in the job description so we'd have to that's a

totally different discussion I would say but why I'm asking is that if the purpose of the ISL I believe was to be ready to be a teacher you know like you wanted to be a teacher maybe a bachelor's degree in school that type of situation uh teacher assistant par professional doesn't have that same uh credential but could they manage well in E be bigger e you don't need that same credentialing because in eec you don't

need a bachelor's degree to have a teaching degree in eec our kids all graduate dery with a teaching degree in eec so this ISL position also wouldn't need that same criteria so because it's on the CTE side you know having them be that of a par or or an ISL even further more than that gives them I just would like them to have that Edge since that's where I'm Prim primarily going to use

that person I I appreciate what you're saying I'm just thinking that uh it sounds like a a power professional would service the your need just the same and it's at less of an expense for the let's just suppose you do this once and now you're going to do another um you come to us in the program it sounds like you're increasing enrollment you know so if you want to increase enrollment again

and you could pay somebody 24 Grand or 25 whatever the number is nowadays I don't even know but it's in that ballp instead of 33 Grand now that's 8 Grand you got to to put towards a sec a second person but if I have a power professional in eec that means I can't allocate them in health assisting let's say if I have to have my health assisting people out at clinical if I

have an ISL that's going to give me the flexibility in all of our CTE programs for that person to kind of learn the different programs yet being housed in eec where we need it primarily so then I guess I'm hearing that but not reading it is that um in the in the rationale that we got it basically was for the uh Early Education only so when I read this it has nothing to do with

your other programs so say taking it as just the eared Pro piece in my mind you you should get whoever you can you know you need to have a candidate but if you the purpose of the ISL is that I envisioned wasn't just to have it just to be this equivalent of a par professional it was for something in addition and not just be a par profession not just but you know what I

mean like the credential would be parpro or associates degree or whatever like it's a different thing so when I hear ISL what we've morphed into in this district is ISL is just when somebody wants to get paid a little bit more we call them an ISL that's all it's not really your issue per se it might be more for the superintendent but I support everything you're saying it you you got your stuff together when you

present totally I I get it I just raised that as a question my chief concern is that we do have the the extra support in Early Education and Care that's where it's Prim that's where it's needed um because like I said we need to stay in compliance so that was my primary goal for this position you know whether it's a par educator or whether it's an ISL whichever Pro whichever is going to be the best fit

and that's you know something with Tom that we can discuss as far as that goes um I just want it to support that program primarily probably 99% of the time yeah and if you but if we approve it as an ISL and you can't get somebody that's eligible with their resume to apply for the job as an ISL you can't hire them as a power you got to come

back to us to say we want to add a power I'm trying to give you some flexibility with that probably should have happened before you came here to say what you sure you want to do the ISL you know the back and forth of it but I'm trying to make it as more of a flexible option for you if you can get not an ISL but a a par professional like tomorrow maybe you

do it where is wait and try to find someone tomorrow you know so Madam superintendent do you have any recommendation well my recommendation is for the ISL because that's what the team asked for and that's what um Miss Sylvia is advocating for in regards to her rationale is to make sure that she's worried about the compliance piece and I think that the ISL would be more apt to be um uh provide that service so didn't

we just hear that a par professional would provide the same thing but the par professional would be earmarked then that would be holistically to eec right the ISL has more flexibility in the use of that position I think if she needs that person in one of the other departments to cover she won't be able to use a par to do that because they need to be licensed as a teacher why

would they not be able to cover well I can't take if I hire someone as An Early Education and Care professional I can't go send them to health assisting because I'm H hiring them specifically for Early Education and Care because that program needs to be licensed my Paras need to be licensed it's not you know it it takes on a whole different that particular program takes on a different element

because I can't have non-licensed par educator in the EC I know that but that doesn't say you why you can't use them you just said it any 90% of the time you're going to have them in there then if you hire a person as a par and you say you got to be EC certified but if they're but if they're coming on as an eec parah and I send them to health

assisting that's not why I hired them you know that's them out being out of their element but aren't you going to hire an ISL for the same reason you're going to hire an ISL according to what the document is we have here for the eec program yep and if you needed to you're saying you're going to use them in another place well see that becomes the flexibility in the hiring knowing that

that's the ability that they're going to have to be multifaceted and not just although primarily eec but know that they could be used in one of the other 10 programs and why can't a par do the same I just don't know I'm not getting it maybe it's me maybe I'm just stubborn and don't understand I just think that the par because they have if it it was a par position that we're hiring and a par

position that we're interviewing for and a par needs to be eec certified to be in that program to be a par then they can't go somewhere else that's where they're going to remain in that program I can't send them to engineering because they're Early Education and Care teacher certified I totally disagree but um the other piece of this is I'm trying to help truly I'm trying to help you okay

the SL job description does not require an eec license that's a problem with that I yield okay any further discussion can I get a motion a second I already have a motion there's already a second you already have a motion second excuse me Mr a yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart Miss larav yes Miss Perera yes M Rodricks yes mayor okay yes let just get a point of clarification from the

superintendent Mr agar so we're going to hire an ISL and in the ISL job description does it require say anything about An Early Education and Care license it does not okay neither does the par wi also I understand what I think what Miss Sylvia was saying is that she would be looking as She interviewed should be looking for somebody who was going to was willing to go get eecc certified

you're right it's not a requirement in the job description right so it looks to me like as if if we're going to play the by the book and by technical how it's supposed to go if we're going to hire an e whatever the terminology is certified person to work in her program that we took over from people link then we need a job description that says here's the helper whatever pre Lead Teacher Sam

whatever teacher it is we need that job description to come forward that says we we're hiring a a preschool teacher or assistant at preschool whatever that has in it that says you need to get a license as such that's how we should be doing it not this way I'm trying to help but when when it gets presented and the real questions are being asked up here on the stage versus when they should be

asked in the weeks before it gets to this point so that we get something that actually makes sense and so that she's not sitting here ask getting asked questions on the spot this question should have been asked 3 weeks ago when this was being created she expected to answer questions on the spot cuz she came here asked for a position that's what's here to talk about discuss that's

what we discussed we voted voted on it we already voted on it we already voted on it and I and I was I actually asked a question and I think out of professional courtesy on it we vot excuse me Mr chairman I know but I don't need to get interrupted by somebody at the other end who just wants to say things Kevin you never stop talking no way they can interrup I asked the superintendent a

question on how this was going to be implemented we voted okay we voted on it I asked the superintendent a question she'll implement it and it's not going to be implemented properly just so you know the proper thing to do is bring it before the the school committee with the proper job description thank you Kevin thank you item number 12.5 is discussion and vote to approve the addition of the

e8th grade special education teacher at Morton as presented by Dr Nick Benton

Court come on down

Nick good evening hey Nick go ahead so we wanted we looking at our enrollment numbers this past year the increase in students we also have noticed that in specifically our grade 8 course we're noticing in math with special education population we need an additional staff this would be a special education teacher to service our inclusion sections any any questions for Dr Benton Court Sarah I'm Sorry Miss Rodricks my

mistake if you want to get really technical it's not miss it's doctor Dr rodri I'll call you doctor Dr Rodrick um so it's less a question and more a comment just when we are feeling special education teacher position positions what I want to make sure that we're doing just in the effort to make sure that we're supporting inclusion that we just had this whole conversation about inte integrating special education and

instruction and social emotional learning that we are making sure that we're hiring somebody that really holds those values of inclusion I understand this is for an inclusion classroom but we know that not everybody genuinely holds those values so I want to make sure that whoever's coming through the door that that becomes a real Focus that this is a person that really values that

inclusion piece because our kids do not get enough opportunity for inclusion and our kids are sent off into substantially separate classrooms far too often and then once they're in there they don't come out and so I want to make sure I'm going to say the same comment for all three that when we're doing that hiring that that focus is really there that inclusion has to be at the Forefront for

anybody that comes to our door I appreciate that comment very much and that is seen true with our hiring practices this school year specifically with our turnaround work and our efforts of hiring all staff looking at making sure the core belief in Best Supporting all of our students especially our two populations our subgroups where we have not made much strides both our special

education population as well as our MLL and this isn't that was not a Morton comment nor was it a Dr Bon Court comment it was a overall this is what we need to do as a district and so that's where that commentary is coming from well received and it's going to keep going absolutely anything further Mr ago I'm looking at the page two where it has the numbers and I'm curious how this is

first off I'm curious about how this happened in the first place when we did a budget where we were told everybody had the numbers I I'm not sure why this is coming to us now but how does this um how do these numbers affect what everybody else other schools are doing like what is the numbers in the other schools and this might be a Miss openen chain question but how does

the what we're doing here are they under is Morton under what other places are for the same number of students or what what how did this happen so when I try to work with the Morton team to get to the bottom of how did this come up in September versus like you mentioned during budget season or before this the increase in students last year at Morton they received an extra teacher in sixth grade so the way

that the schedule works is that they put the kids into enough sections that needed coverage from three inclusion teachers because and correct me if I'm wrong Dr B in court but there's different houses right so if I spread the I think it was 40 about in sixth grade 40 in seventh grade and a little bit less in eth grade something like that if I spread them out into the different houses I need an x amount of

special education teachers three to cover those houses when that happened in sixth grade when the students moved to seventh grade there was some type of miscommunication or something happened I don't know I don't have the answer is to why but the the position stayed in sixth grade and didn't move to seventh grade when the kids entered seventh grade this coming year when a teacher resigned in eighth

grade that became a seventh grade position because again it was needed where the students were placed so then we had a disconnect because we saw three special education teachers based on the number of students in sixth grade three in seventh grade but now only one in e8th grade when the numbers didn't support one what we were doing was going looking at the schedule to see how we

could change around the student schedule to be able to either share the special education teachers with 8th grade or move one completely to e8th grade long story short it would be too many moves for kids and it wouldn't be in their best interest because not only would special education students move houses which means different teachers general education students would have to come

out of the existing houses so that the special education students could go in right so it was just too many moves for students not in their best interest so having said that that's where we got to today saying so in the meantime we staffed the um inclusion sections of math with a power professional to see how that would work with some pullout Services being done by a special education teacher again Dr Bon court and

his team felt like that wasn't sufficient they called me down we went over everything and that got us to today Mr agar with like they're absolutely right in the sense of the students need a teacher in the math class um to be able to support those inclusion opportunities so when you compare them to other schools it's hard to compare them because it's based on their overall numbers Morton has a large number of

special education students in all three grades again I'd have to pull out my numberers specifically to compare talit or cuss but right now I know that the classrooms in the other middle schools are covered with special education teachers to meet the needs of the students where Morton is not meeting the needs of the students in the best way that we feel like they need to be met so when you had the sixth so the

sixth grade coming in they had the need for that or is that just a mistake no no no they had the need that's what happened so instead last year when the third teacher was added and those kids moved to seventh grade the incoming sixth grade was just as high it's 40 and 40 it's so if you're going to schedule them the same way they did you have to staff it

the same way it was staffed so they retained that sixth grade teacher in sixth grade and then again that left the only two teachers in seventh grade because traditionally or historically I believe Morton has had two teachers in each of the six seven and eight in each of the grades and that last year they started adding so again they moved that teacher I mean they kept that teacher in

sixth grade took a resignation from 8th grade and it became the seventh grade and again how that happened I was part of that scheduling I'm not sure Dr Brett and Court you might be able to answer it but he was just coming on board people were scheduling it they scheduled it based on the same way they had scheduled it the previous year with those students leaving the Gap in 8th grade I think

some of the my frustration I think it's logical what you say some of my frustration is when we are sitting here at the budget yes and we are told as a school committee by the superintendent by the finance director by a lot of people that we've gone through all these budgets this is exactly what we need we have meetings we listen we all this stuff clearly what you just described

seems like a very easy discussion if you had three and you needed three in two grades that means you should have had six and you only had five like I understand that I'm not you're absolutely right but I'm frustrated because it's the middle of November and we're finding out that this happened in August September when we're doing The Bu you know when you're doing the school so we did the budget in July August and

September Comes and nobody comes to us until November 8th with this document and and I'm I'm not critici I know that it was a change in like you had just come on no in in full disclosure and I appreciate what you're saying Mr aiar with but in true transparency I think it was also with a leadership shift by the time that I was on boarded as well as we are still finding Staffing and hiring

for a number of vacant positions I think that by the time the financial committee had already set and agreed upon for the for this school year there wasn't um a very good analysis of every single position as well as an oversight that the principal should have done so that coming on boarded with all due respect something we found right away we tried to mitigate it through multiple Avenues

we did not get it with the traction that we need to best support our students so this was our effort I totally appreciate everything you're saying I know you came on I get all that I was just trying to say why my questions are so when I ask questions at the budget and I ask a a principal a director or whoever question I get people not only on this committee

but out in that audience that roll their eyes and look around like oh he's asking more questions like oh you know the reason why things like this happen is because we didn't do our job and the administration didn't do their job by saying are you sure this is what you need because with all du respect Dr Dr B you weren't here but there was staff in your building there was people that were

supporting your building that we shouldn't have waited until November to figure out something as simple as we needed six teachers and we only had five whether it's in the budget so when I scrutinize the budget and ask these questions and everybody's rolling their eyes saying well is he going to ask another question there's a reason why so that this wouldn't have happened and those children wouldn't have had no

teacher for the period of time that's that's all I'm getting that so I appreciate your uh your upfrontness and I don't anticipate this being a problem just knowing you and how you you operate so um I do support it U my only question is the par professional that you had and there what happens to them now are they just doing something else no they'll go yes they will go back to continue to

support our populations in a different in the special population but in a different capacity so we were pulling them from something else that they should have been doing correct creating another hole absolutely thank you I yield if I could just clarify Miss dagard that's a good point you brought up but I will say um that that's a question that every single person that comes for us to present their budget I

ask is this everything you need is this everything that you know all the positions you have to to lead your school yes we went through every single Department in every single school um we did do our jobs um and and I have to trust that the principal's presenting to me the budget based on what the needs are of the school I asked the exact same question when we found out about this how did we

not know this when we were coming to the table with you go over your numbers you bring you know we ask what are your numbers what at each grade level do you have people to staff it Etc so we did do our due diligence but unfortunately this is where we are after Dr bretts came in and after the schedule they were fixing the schedule trying to fix it and then

realized no we can't make it work that way but that was you know we've we followed the same process with every single principal every single department head that came before us and and yes it is frustrating because I was frustrated when I found out um and they can tell you that in the budget somebody create asked for two sixth grade special education teachers is what you're saying and that's the part that gets me is

somebody needs on our end your end needs to say you you know your sixth grade you move up it's like if you had four units at one school and then the next year you you know that you're moving up I don't know that like the Trust In just asking somebody uh you got everything that you need need is different than show me your analysis of how many rooms you have how many this year that targeting like

getting really granular is the part that I think we were lacking probably and if we did it more granularly we probably wouldn't be here right now are you thank you any further discussion can I get a motion a second motion approved second Deb please call the rooll Mr ARA yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart thumbs up Mr Miss lvy yes Miss Perera yes Miss rodri yes Mar Coogan yes 126 is a discussion and vote to approve

the addition of a kindergarten special ed teacher at Henry Lord Community School is presented by Shamar Daniels our Henry Lord principal good evening I am the new principal new face up here before you um it's I'm Shaman Daniels the new principal at Henry Lord um so Henry Lord has had a uh increas in enrollment um from since the beginning of the year and we've had um massive enrollment in

kindergarten with that being said our inclusion class which I have to pause and say um you know we are a firm believer and have a vision of inclusion at Henry Lord all of our multilingual Learners and all of our SP um SP students except for our students with intense autism are included in the classroom so we strongly believe in that inclusion model we have a kindergarten inclusion class that has 28 students um

roughly this year we have seven of those students that have IEPs that are now requiring um additional academic services that have not been a problem in the past usually we have two kids this year we have seven students that require six to 10 more um six to 16 hours of Special Education and we only and we need um we're sharing currently a k uh special ed special education teacher

across two grades kindergarten and first we are proposing to really do inclusion right to really do a co- teing model correctly that co- teer needs to be in that classroom all day and right now she's averaging two two hours and trying to um split ourselves between kindergarten first grade so we are petitioning for an an additional SP teacher to go along with the increase and enrollment of our special population

in addition four of those students across K through um first are students with um autism spectrum disorder and we believe strongly and know that the inclusion model Works um and and teaching those students and giving them um general education peers to model um social skills and so we really want a special education teacher who can be a co- teer in there all day to meet the unique challenges of those

students any discussion Dr rodri so we know that I'm going to make the inclusion comment right we know that that's my Soap Box um I appreciate everything you said inclusion does work it really is the best model for all Learners so I appreciate what you said about how it supports our disabled students but in reality it also supports our neurotypical students and in fact it probably supports them more in terms of

Social Development right so they learn just as much from their disabled peers as disabled peers learn from their neurotypical peers um so again I just argue that whoever we hire has that same vision of inclusion that you share and that that person is um deeply committed to making sure that that work gets done um I'd also argue that our students and how you defined as the more intensive

classrooms are also included um because those students started off in subpar classrooms probably shouldn't have been right if we're going to be honest and now it's really hard to get them out so if we're going to do some really solid work if we're going to make big bold moves then we do inclusion and we do it well and I'm I'm excited so it's nice to meet you and I'm I'm happy to hear that

that's your vision of inclusion too yes we actually are meeting this week we are working on including our students with on the autism spectrum disorder we are working on a schedule to include those students that are ready so um so yes that is a a big um push this year to include students in every aspect that we can and yes um inclusion does benefit and that's one of the things there's 28

kindergarten if you can imagine having 28 kindergartens um I want 28 kindergarteners anyway I don't care what their neurotype is so you can imagine there so this teacher can not just help those seven but that it really would help the the build the independence and the social interactions of all those students in the classroom of having 28 little ones um with just um uh uh two bodies that's going to be a hard no for

me no thank you no 28 little ones in room Mr and we do have a candidate we have a veteran who wants to come back to the district and they're a solid candidate because they are the spouse of one of our teachers they are a veteran they are currently teaching in the early childhood um inclusion classroom and so they are waiting in the wings to come back and firmly already believe and

already working in the inclusion model as you said to have someone in our as a vision and they are aware of our school they're aware of our district and ready to come back to our district so that was important for us when we propose the model that we we know how special ed is hard to hire but we already have a veteran teacher of 12 Years ready to to take this

position Mr AA the uh you had mentioned 28 students and is it all kindergarten classes how many kindergarten classes do you have all of our kindergarten classes are averaging 26 to 28 um students and I'm assuming then you're having all seven students with academic services in one class yes that's how we do inclusion so that we can can Co do a co- teing model and so that they can be there

literally we believe strongly in a co- teing model where they are co- co- teachers in the classroom that it's not just one teacher's classroom it's both their classrooms um they are supporting students yeah I I when I'm reading it it was where you're saying they're going to be able to spend the majority of the day in there and I think that um I'm not so sure that classes should all be equal if you have seven children

with and I in it if you're you know if everyone was at 28 and I'm she has 28 students and I have 21 students plus 7even with with an IEP that's not equal per se in my mind but um you're the principal you got to do what you got to do um in that same vein Miss obenchain if that was the model that we can have in a classroom 28 students in

kindergarten with a CO one co- teer for the seven the conversation we just had with the middle school is their model is totally different then I guess right but it if if it's okay in kindergarten I'm not so sure that it's not why would it not be okay in a middle school Henry Lord is piloting the co- teing true co- teing model is a very expensive model to adults in the

classroom and we also the right thing to do yes right investment but um we don't have a true C- teing model across every special education classroom every classroom that has special education students you're right what I'm just I was just asking for comparison so at the middle school level if you have those numbers of what that those classes look like cuz you said they divided them up

on three houses if they were operating under a similar model that this uh woman is doing at Henry Lord would the numbers now not require you to have that many staff or more so they actually are similar to what Henry Lord's doing so if you take 40 kids right and you divide them against across three different houses it depends on how if they're cohorted together in their schedule so

each house has 10 or 12 kids right in them depending on how Dr baton cour or whatever principal however they schedule them they could all end up in one section they could be two groups of five they could be two groups of seven very similar it's where the adult support is I think at Henry Lord um from talking to the staff there just historically they also balance the number of foundational L

students in those other classrooms so they try not to take one teacher having them work with special education and foundational L's and the number of um foundational or level one L's at Henry Lord is very high especially in kindergarten so historically because they've shared that teacher that's why they've gone with the model of again I'm being told historically it was like typically three four students as opposed

to seven in kindergarten for special education had they not need to share a teacher across grades you could actually take those seven and put them in two different classrooms right or eight and put them into different classrooms and give everybody the opportunity to work with special education student students for you know um foundational L's to have the opportunity to receive services from

special education teacher an ESL teacher have the other kids in the classrooms too but the way that they have always shared the teacher it's required them to be in one classroom I like this model I think this model makes the most sense because the teacher is going to be with the students as as it says here for the basically the entire day the model we just talked about and added a staff

member isn't doing that it's only going to be in certain subjects so those children are not getting their needs met in the other classes that's been my argument all along so I totally support this so thank you are you any further discussion motion to approve second have a motion to second dad please call the r Mr AG yes Mr Bailey Mr Hart M ly yes Miss Pereira yes M rodri

yes mayor cougan yes we might as well go right on with one-on-one power professional now required at Henry Lord for student with an IEP um 12.7 any discussion on this item at all motion to approve I have a comment a motion in a second just making my same comment um again I would just argue that this the person that is the one toone pair really genuinely believes in um full inclusion especially because

this is one this is a a staff person that's going to be with this little one all day every day and so that person has to be really comfortable and feel really strongly about that inclusion model and be in there right in the thick of it with the kiddos and really facilitate that support and interaction without sort of getting in the way so again just making my comment that whatever we do

whatever special education staff that we're hiring they are all of our staff and that they're really valuing that inclusion model of course I thank you Mr AGA the um it says here that you were going to try to shift resources um I'm assuming that can't happen that's why we're in the letter it says about shifting resources shifting resources can you sorry yeah it says uh I've conferred

with the administration and assistant superintendent Oben chain to try to shift resources without being able to find another solution both are needed in order to be in compliance so I'm just guessing because it's here as an addition that we can't shift resources we don't have right I don't have another person no I don't but with that being said I I think that the um policies or procedures or rules

whatever we talk about allows the superintendent in a case like this to immediately hire without the school committee Authority so if this has been going on for two weeks whatever as soon as the need comes in the child's IEP comes in boom they're here superintendent in my opinion has the authority to hire this person right away and then notify us after that it was a special education you know exactly what

you did but you don't have to wait in my personal opinion because it's the law and that's what we want to do to support and I I don't even know if there's a I think it was 100,000 or like there's a contingency line but superintendent does have authority to do this thank you any further discussion can I get a motion approve there is a motion un I already there is a motion second de please call

the rooll Mr AGA yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart THS up Miss lvy yes M Pereira yes Mr rodri yes mayor kougan yes 12 point8 is discussion and vote to approve staffing agencies Procare Therapeutics edu Healthcare and solent as presented by Lori oain assistant super motion to approve motion to approve do I have a second second motion to approve and has been second seconded do we have any discussion yes Mr I I ask this every

single time that we pay for an agency that at some point the salary line needs to come before this committee when we do transfers and I don't think we did it last month but this a lot of money so that we got to get the real number so we're paying it out of the right accounts with that I you okay you want to call the RO de Mr agio yes Mr Bailey yes Mr

har Miss lar yes Miss Pereira yes M Rodricks mayor Coogan yes 129 is a discussion vot to approve an additional School adjustment counselor n liaison at the Robert Alerus resiliency Preparatory Academy is presented by Kyle Riley Robert eleris residency Preparatory Academy Prince principal that's a that's a line of long words any discussion on that item at all motion to approve second I have a motion a second um Deb

would you please call the role Mr AGA yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart M lar obain M Pereira yes M Rodricks Mary cougan yes 1210 is a discussion and vote to approve the Mass Dartmouth partnership proposal is presented by Tom kouan human resource director good evening I'll try to keep this as simple as possible currently through the generosity committee you you've uh endorsed a program to

reimburse for two courses per year up to $2,000 per employee UMass Dartmouth has put together a program for certificates in both ESL and special ad which are two key areas for us those certificates could be obtained as short in a short of time is 18 months um uh or over the two years over the two years the offer from the committee is to reimburse for $4,000 the cost of the certificate program

they've put together is approximately 4,800 and they would also uh include a mtel prep class which is needed at the end of the coursework to go ahead and get certified in those two areas uh the additional investment from the committee if they were agree to fully fund that certificate program is 4,800 which is an additional $0000 over what you currently offer um through that program um we

would be looking for an individual agreement with each staff member we've already been in conference with the uh the F about it we'll be looking for a three-year commitment and uh for the additional $800 we could potentially uh start to grow and build capacity within our units um in addition uh to them completing the program in as little as 18 months uh so we would use it as both a capacity building measure with our

current staff as well as as a recruitment tool for staff coming out of um College UMass Dartmouth also ensures that the the four courses that they would be offering could then be rolled into a master's ofed program if they were to continue on uh with the university for a master's program which they need to obtain within 5 years for their teaching license um so it's a pretty versatile program I think the

cost is pretty affordable it does require a little extra money from the committee but uh as we've seen special education and ESL are two areas where where there are dire shortages and this would hopefully uh mitigate some of that any discussion Mr AA didn't we negotiate this no we negotiated the 2000 and we talked about coming back when the cfic program was done and the committee

said to to bring back the program once it was finished but this doesn't need to be negotiated what's that this doesn't need to be negotiated we negotiated the first part of it why would we not no no we you mean negotiate it with the F Rea yeah that's how we did the first part no in the end the F agreed that that didn't need to be negotiated it was an offer on

the part of the committee uh as an enhancement we already have some grad credit uh program language within the uh contract but they did not need to negotiate it so my question would be is how do they get selected I is there a a mechanism to select who it is so well obviously we do some recruiting among the staff that we've identified as as potential people that could have that ability to cross over

into special education licensure and we would also offer it um through the parents queer app we have access to the thousand plus Educators in the F right now as well as the 400 something Paris who uh we've got about a dozen there in the jet program right at the moment I make a motion to approve as long as uh assistant superintendent Oben chain can approve the candidates as long as what I didn't hear

that understanding sorry it's for special education like this is the point of this I believe it's to have special Educators so I would like to have this assistant superintendent weigh in to say Kevin's a candidate Sarah's candidate Joe have input right like approve it but have uh somebody in the field that we would want it's a three-year commitment so we want to have somebody sign off on

we're making a three-year commitment then to that person and no person better than the special ed than the special ed director just a point of clarification um as we go out um in in December as well as in the spring to recruit teachers that are coming out of college um does that approval process extend to them as well because I would Envision this being a potential recruitment tool as well I would say personally yes

because when you're recruiting somebody you want the person in charge of special ed to be able to look at their resume and say yeah that's a good candidate we want to invest in them not just because you go to a job fair and say this person looks good have her be you know but the typical hiring process is done through the principles at the school so that would require them to then I'm sure they

could collaborate okay any further discussion I need a second second do we have a second I need I'll second I have a second Dr Rogers okay so just to piggyback on that I'm going to make my same inclusion comment again I think just having somebody who lives in breeds inclusion and that's not to say that principles do not but just having somebody that's really overseeing that big push for inclusion having that

person at the table to oversee those candidates to be able to ask some of those questions um to really be able to to kind of filter out what what they're looking for I think that's a really important piece and I kind of came in um M conversation but I would agree with Miss that that's a really important component to that CU if we're going to do something you know big in the special

ed education world then I think we've got to really really highlight those those components okay I've got a motion wait how many can I how many Educators do you do you think are going to be served by this partnership program um if they can develop a cohort model which is the preferred model uh the cohort meaning that all those students are taking the same courses at the same time and they

can share in their experience because we currently have uh our sixth cohort going through UMass Dartmouth in the Masters of Ed program right now um they Envision it the target numbers 20 to 22 that's what they would look for at a time that what they would aim for at a time cor correct but they that also could roll so as that first group of uh students moves on to their second course if the

recruitment stays solid then they could then roll a second one in the second semester Etc EXC and go okay I mean I'd like to see it as a recruitment tool we talk about how we're getting teachers into to Fall River and how we keep them here and I think this is something that can work on both ends so although I appreciate what is being said uh regarding the you know the special ed

Niche here um I also think it's really important that these are things that we can use to recruit people when we're out at schools um so I don't know but everybody's in agreement with this now so with that I yield anything further a second right yep de please call the r Mr H yes Mr Bailey Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart M larav yes M Pereira yes M Rodricks yes mayor Coogan yes 1211 is a

discussion and vote to approve the feniz policies presented by Tom KGAN human resource director before you you see the notes and I sent out the packet uh with the with the uh binders this weekend on the fraternization policy um we did a number of U legal articles online as well as uh confirming with attorney Assad attorney Joyce and the masc um their advisories um I would say that the two attorneys expressed some

reservations about creating a policy around this uh and it's pretty rare that municipalities have this type of fraternization policy um the um frat ization policies that I was able to identify in higher ed all had to do with professors and college uh instructors having relationships with students it wasn't adult to adult U among staff members um this particular policy that we've crafted um I think gives the

committee the latitude that they they U have to be able to stay uh within bounds of uh any legal potential legal issues um however um there is a second option there um I think what we're looking for is just that if somebody's in a relationship with a cooworker that potentially impacts the workplace we ask them to disclose it as well as to uh understand that if it does impact the

workplace that we have uh a latitude of of moves that we could make to respond to that uh from anything from uh written uh verbal or written warnings up to um transfers uh involuntary and otherwise uh or in the case of something more egregious um taking disciplinary action um I'll I'll I'll defer to attorney Assad on legal advice um I think we've given the committee a couple different ways they could go here Mr

larvey hi so in um the I think sixth paragraph where feniz therefore is not allowed for any employee who reports to a supervisor you know that it goes on to say in order to avoid allegations of inappropriate influence employees should disclose relationships are we requesting that they disclose the relationships or we saying they must so disclose these if the committee were to make this a policy

or an advisory whichever way the committee decides to go this would be in the staff handbook and it would become part of our compliance work when we have them sign on at the beginning of the year so they've been duly notified that that if this kind of relationship exists they should disclose it um now we can disclose it to HR right we can have them disclosed to HR and HR can assess whether or not that's

a potential conflict whether it's a supervisor or you know a colleague in the building and also caution them on you know proper conduct and and things but if people get in a relationship that's eventually going to get out somewhere and then they need to know that when that comes to us if they haven't disclosed it we're going to consider that right and I understand and agree with everything you're saying I

just I just think it's it's it leaves everything wide open that should word just ask asking are we asking them that to disclose their relationship or we telling them they have to disclose their relationship that's the only aspect I had an issue with with this whole thing is we're not really telling them that they have to disclose you want must instead it should I I don't know I asked

the committee I mean I'll yield and open it for conversation but um I all right but goad S I would say if that's the intention I understand what she's saying you should be nice yeah but not everybody is you know should must is a different word I don't know what you think we should do um if if HR thinks that's what that's what should be done if somebody you know uh must report but I think the

word you definitely have to look at wordage when you're talking about policies obviously so if the intention is to say it's mandated that if a relationship exists that it's reported to HR not necessarily to you know the principal your immediate supervisor but report it to HR if that's something that everybody thinks should happen then we need to word use a word other than should will like must it's mandated and

I'm not saying that that's the case but if that's what your intention is then it doesn't read that way I guess is what I'm saying Mr Coogan I understand um and I appreciate the feedback I think in the effort to try to um I will just say that that MC's response was pretty uh cut and dried that they didn't advise us to do this um both attorneys said be you must be very

cautious with this and uh uh so as a result I I think in my effort to try to create enough latitude for us to act appropriately depending on the situation um should was probably um a less effective choice of words than shall or must anything further Mr Agia yeah I I find it hard to believe how we're still we still don't have this in place after what we've been through here over the last six or eight

months so in one of the P papers here which is once they come to us it's a public document anyway the question is we had a situation this year with a supervisor and a subordinate who were reported to be in a relationship the supervisor denied the relationship the subordinate it also denied the relationship so that this is in a document that's in front of us public document so my concern is when we have a

situation like that what do we do when it was proven that that was not the case and they both lied what would we do if we didn't have a policy to say you're not supposed to have a relationship with somebody that you report to if there's no policy are we then therefore saying that it's okay so a person in the school department supervises 20 people they're their supervisor they issue them overtime they do their

evaluation whatever it is they're the supervisor are we really going to sit here and debate whether we should have a policy that says that supervisor should not be in a relationship with that subordinate is that really what we're going to sit here tonight and say because that's what I'm reading here is that we don't know we talked to six lawyers nobody wants to say that we should have a policy against it but

what's the reality of of uh the situation we we we're going to leave here again without a policy we've had two policy subcommittee meetings we don't have an answer I just don't understand why we just can't have a policy that says if you are managing people you cannot have a sexual relationship with a subordinate period I mean may I let's go slow we go Miss Miss ly oh I'm sorry are you done

Mr AGA yeah that's the question I really want somebody to answer it because I think it's cut and dry what happened oh go ahead I'm not going to dog the time shell I mean I'm confused I don't think anybody's debating whether we should have the policy I think we should I'm ready to vote Yes on it I don't think anybody here dis claims that I'm not sure what you're referring to this story

about this other thing apparently I'm looking around the room more people know something I don't story for another day I don't even care to know if it's in the past but my point is I don't think anybody here is saying this policy shouldn't happen we all agree I'm ready to vote yes let's vote it should be in place to me this is a no-brainer I mean I don't know who's on the policy subcommitte I don't know

why this is coming now and not before no idea but it's here now I agree let's vote on it let's Push It Forward I think the only question uh Miss larvie brought up was a word do is the intention to if I'm going to have a relationship with someone whether it's not about whether it's a superior or not we can't tell people who they can and can't date you can't tell that to adults it becomes

tricky when you're dealing with sexual harassment and things like that so yeah I agree certainly I I would never date anybody I work with I don't think it's the way forward but I don't think we're allowed to tell adults who they're allowed to date but we can make sure that that if it happens in the workplace they're professional and that we have a way to terminate them if they're not

which I'm guessing is I'm guessing was something that's happened recently so yes we need this policy in place absolutely I don't think we can we can tell people who to date but I think we can make a decision of if they have to report it which I think is a good step in protecting that so if that situation does happen where you know somebody's dating someone who crosses paths where

maybe at some point you know I don't know I don't know the story that we're speaking of earlier but I'm assuming I don't know all I know is that we can't control people who work together dating you can try to discourage it but unfortunately that's not the way the world works and most times it does end poorly but people keep doing it so I don't know but I think everybody here wants

the policy passed so I'm not sure I don't think we're debating anything no umad huh I have a I have a comment hold on Mr AG I told him was next I'll defer to miss rodri Dr rodri Dr rodri um okay so the the story that Mr arar is referring to is actually in our documentation that's what he was bringing up so just to I understand that okay just just to be clear about that

like we no one's bringing up anything it's just it it's just literally right there I'm I'm wondering right in reference to this but I'm wondering if it makes sense to just simplify this language so this is a very lengthy paragraph right Friz therefore is not allowed for any employee who reports to a supervisor administrator who has employment conditions that could be impacted by the supervisor administrator

could it just be that the language reads that you cannot have any kind of relationship with somebody that you supervise regardless because we do the same we don't allow folks who are related to people supervise or evaluate or have an impact on promotion or advancement right or any kind of pay increases this is why people abstain from that so could the language read to something very simple like that and that

if there is a relationship just like you would if there was a conflict in a family relationship you would have to disclose that or am I oversimplifying no I think you're right I think but I think it should say employees instead of should will disclose relationship and I I mean as far as I'm concerned we can let this go and I'm sorry can I say something before you go continue I that's what I I

just think yeah I don't I don't know if I'm oversimplifying that but it makes sense the only thing I'm thinking uh is what if it's somebody who might be somewhat supervising me but they're not evaluating me they have nothing to do with my pay or anything like that it's just can be gray you know what I mean so do we include both of those words right somebody that is responsible for my

day-to-day responsibilities somebody that is responsible for my evaluation somebody that is responsible for my rate of pay any of those things if somebody is responsible for test delineation or anything can it just read like that so I think that's so I think that's very clear if that relationship exists right so that's but that's what I'm saying so instead of like this entire paragraph

could it just read like that and then staff will disclose to avoid any conflict of interest but the re that's a clear conflict right that's that's an easier one to solve it's the indirect conflict or potential conflict a group of colleagues go out to bowl or go out you know to to to have a few drinks once or twice you know over the course of a month but there's a

person in there who may be a potential administrator even they not my evaluator now I have a relationship albe it a a friendly one you know I mean it's not a it's not an intimate relationship and then all of a sudden it's well of course that person's going to get the job because they're hanging around with administrators and those admin rators are all going to be on the panel or they're going to be potentially uh

affecting who gets selected or who gets transferred or who gets the right class or who gets whatever so it's that indirect you know I know so and so is Buddy good buddies with so and so and that's why they get the break when the when the opportunity comes up so then and I'm just thinking out loud so then does that con be considered a separate section and and again maybe this has to

go before a subcommittee again I don't I don't know the answer to this um but maybe that is a separate section where where we have very clear pieces right that are simple and then that indirect relationship has to be assessed by a third party I I don't know the answer to that I could just jump in for a second um on about the fourth page over here it says fraternization uh advisory

if you could take a look at the second to last paragraph and that may work based on what everybody's saying individuals in supervisory that one yeah right over here it says fraternization advisories on third or fourth page um I had I had looked at at uh uh the language from the very various different uh uh page areas in here that are in this particular package and sort of try to crafted something that I

thought might work uh and what it says is fraternization is not allowed for any employee who reports to a supervisor or administrator who has employment conditions that could be impacted by the supervisor or administrator and then it goes on it gives some examples and it says any supervisor manager or administrator who engages in a romantic relationship with a member of his or her team must report it to the human

resources department immediately once reported the school department will analyze the situation and determine a resolution failure to compl apply may result in suspension termination departmental transfers or reassignment to a different supervisor and I'm wondering if that uh that works that's kind of what everybody's been saying yeah yeah I do you want to adopt this one fraternization advisor you know take

a look at the rest of the language I mean it's just U what I put together but I think that paragraph covers what we must anything Mr a so the reason why I asked the question is because one covers what anything Mr a so the reason why I asked the question is because when we get the things presented to us there's multiple options that Mr kougan asked us to look at it

wasn't just do we this is my recommendation this one page he created three different scenarios we're talking to four different lawyers to figure out two two different two scenarios multiple lawyers that said here's what some options are so when we're voting if we just say oh let's just vote we're not really know what the hell we're voting on so why I asked the question was because is it the first page the second

page is it the policy advisory that attorney Assad said through the staff handbook so we just need to ask the questions so that we can actually know what we're voting on now the the PO that attorney Assad just read I see it as a conflict because it says first sentence fra fraiz is not allowed for any employee who reports to a supervisor administrator and has in conditions that might be impacted it says is not allowed

so if it's not allowed the last sentence that says if you do have a relationship you got to let us know and we'll we'll determine what it is those two things are conflicting I was good with the first part the second part I think creates a little wedge where we don't know exactly what it is if the first sentence says fraiz is not allowed for any employee who reports to a

supervisor based on that that's all I'm asking because if we had that policy in place the situation that was referenced in an email wouldn't have existed because at that point it's not allowed it you could get terminated once it's proven that it's true you terminated I don't to me that's very clear yeah that's what I've been asking for us since for six or eight months when we've been multiple subcommittees

to just get a clear one sentence it's the same thing we went through with the harassment we kept on going on about how can we make paragraphs and paragraphs about harassment instead of the prior superintendent shouldn't have harassed people like make a policy that says clear as day you can't treat people like that I think we should do something very similar so I don't know if attorney Assad you're

asking this is an advisory can we just make that the policy sure that paragraph and just say sure here's our policy I think I mentioned advisory policy in a couple of places but yeah it's it's uh it can be a policy or an advisory either one I make a motion that that paragraph is a wait a second wait a second wait so what happens if a vice principal falls in love with a math

teacher are we GNA you going to fire them we're going to fire them no no the is that you think of get rid of them no no that's in this case here he's talking about whether they are the supervisor so sometimes in a like if it was the math department head and that person you know like you're in that group I think that would be different personally but no but

I mean what happens that we're going to fire people for that well can I according to this if this were the policy according to that if that were the case they fall in love they have to report it to somebody um they're going to report it to Human Resources hey we're in love okay this is silly that I'm saying this on a stage right now um and then then the superintendent and HR come

together to determine what the next course of action is going to be they're going to determine a resolution that's what it says in the in this policy if they don't comply they don't report it they have a secret relationship and they the VP happens to be the person that is supervising evaluating them they go along and then we find out that they're recommending all of these benefits for

this person and turns out they have this relationship then there could be disciplinary action oh so they get their out so everything's fine as long as they're like this is what's going on I fell in love with Sally or whatever okay I won they report it is up to their discretion to say okay we now separate these two and the attempt to create the latitude was to allow everything from a

verbal warning hey stop holding hands in the courtyard after school to hey this is not acceptable we're transferring one or the other which one of you wants to move or this is totally egregious one of you is going both right so your first line of defense is let's you're going to disclose it let's have a discussion about it does this actually impact the work that you're doing does this person

even truly supervise or direct I would argue in the case of a VP and a teacher that yes that person would have some Authority at some point over that person but then the superintendent and HR get to sit down and with those people and determine what the best next steps are going to be uh all right so if we adopt the ization advisory we vote on it tonight under the condition that anywhere it says advisory

we switch to policy so that we know that that's what's going to be in the handbook for everybody going forward because it says advisory now and if we're going to have it as a policy we got to let people know that can I get a motion in a second on that so moved second any further discussion Deb please call the roll Mr AA yes Mr Bailey he say yes yes Mr Hart yes Miss lar yes

M Perera yes Mr Rodricks yes mayor kouan yes uh this one's uh 1212 is discussion and vote to approve the use of the dery High School naal auditorium second any further discussion hope we see you there it's going to be a great show can I just ask what it is the Suns of sarin dip right here it's a great show I watch become Dr Rodricks Deb please call the role Mr AG yes Mr Bailey yes Mr

Hart Miss larv yes Miss Pereira yes M Rodricks yes mayor Coogan yes 123 and I'm sorry 1213 is discussion and vote to approve the the 2025 budget calendar is presented by Kevin Al Meer Chief Financial Officer good evening everyone um we are essentially moving back to the regular budget calendar that we do um that we have every year um last year with the Govern with the new governor are coming

in the budget was delayed so the calendar was changed by a little bit um this year we're going back to uh the normal schedule where in February we'll present the budget to you um in February after that we'll begin the we we'll do the uh we'll have the individual meetings with the schools um and the Departments uh that's that'll be followed by um the special Comm committee meeting when we'll release the

budget to the public um have the public hearing advertised in the end of March we hold the public Hearing in April um going back to the regular schedule where the budget will be adopted uh for the mayor in April to be submitted to the city clerk in May and to have a city council presentation in May and June so would that the schedule can change if things do come up you know if

we have further meetings that are needed or you know if anything else comes up but this is just a tentative schedule to move the budget forward for fy2 any discussions on second motion to approve and second discussion hearing none Deb please call the roll Mr a yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart M larvey yes M Pereira yes Mr rodri yes mayor C yes 1214 is a discussion and vote to approve the end

of the year report as presented by Kevin ala Chief Financial Officer so I provided you with the uh documentation similar to the way I've provided it through the last several years um the first sheet just as an explanation on uh the essentially the end of the airport SEC uh first two pages the uh third and fourth pages is where we landed for fy2 3 and where we landed for FY

24 so the end of the year report and where it stands as of today it was submitted to the state uh last week on Monday um and where we stand today is we have a shortfall in net School spending um totaling 3,195 310 uh we worked with the city to finalize all the numbers prior to submission uh and have submitted it and at this point the numbers will be reviewed and verified by the state the

state will um will send us a report as to where we stand either at the end of January or beginning of February as they normally do each and every year and we've we've begun the process of speaking with the city to begin the process of getting the funds moving forward and that's where we stand at this time the um the majority of the shortfall is due to the health insurance

and I know that when we did the health insurance the number was around $4 million and the reason I said that it was going to be upwards of $3 million because I had a feeling that the numbers were going to change slightly and that was due to uh the retirement and where we stood with retirement because we were waiting on the Actuarial EV evaluation that was to be done and so with that uh

the numbers changed a bit and this is essentially where we landed so with that I I'll open it up to discussion any discussion Mr Agia so when is the it looks like you there's a lot of numbers in here but the city is underfunding net School spending in the current year by 3.8 million it's so in total it's 3,1 195 310 about 3.1 million yes sir and then we somewhere in here it

said uh budgeted for the um at the beginning for the current year yep is sure I don't can you just explain that again yeah so so I tried to let you know when I wrote the letter out I broke down all the numbers and broke down how we came how we came to everything so uh in FY 23 the the year ended short by $5.9 million and with that 2 million just over 2 million

of that was due to prepaid tuitions because when the state does its accounting they don't include the prepaid tuitions in the year where it was budgeted it it becomes an expense of the Year where the expense actually happened so that 2 million essentially rolls forward to FY 24 so that's why when I opened it up I just to make it to make it short short and sweet and easy for everybody it's it's 3.1 where we

stand right now if you look at just what was budgeted for the current year the city provided sufficient funds for FY 24 where we fell short was an FY 23 because of the health insurance discrepancy and so it all rolls into one that's essentially what happens and so when you take FY 23 and FY 24 combined we stand at 3.1 million dollar right yeah I I I understand what you're saying now I just

disagree that they're the same so in FY 24 budgeted the city budgeted the proper amount we're short the prior year which we've had several years in a row now yes 3.1 million but budgeted wise they're currently the 100% budgeted what they can guess is the with yes so we've always said this we keep going over this every year when are they going to give us the school department that money so

that we can actually spend some time to do something about it do you have an answer on that not yet not yet we've we've begun discussions I don't have an answer not a chance Kevin I think this number changed last week I mean it finalized last week we finalized it last week we talked about it we're going to get it to you as fast as we can but I'm saying you didn't say not a chance I

thought you said not a chance I'm sorry when I asked when are you going to get it you said not a chance I was thinking no no I'm I'm I'm saying I don't I I don't know as of yet when we're getting it that's that's what I'm saying to beir I'm not saying not a chance cuz I will tell you we're going to get it no matter what I I thought you said the same thing

but my face kind of dropped Kevin that's for me to say that's Kevin's not going to say that I'm going to say it I heard I heard the same thing I will tell you that no matter what we're going to get so it doesn't matter so what last time we talked about this every year we used a number that made sense like so they might uctuate 100 200,000 but they're

not going to fluctuate 800,000 so how we rectified this years ago was we ask the city to say we know that 2.5 million out of the 31 is safe to say so then instead of them saying well we got to wait for the final numbers we got to wait for the final numbers and then March and April we're getting the money I would rather have us go to them and say we safe with

2.5 million now put it on the next agenda for the city council so that we get the money before Christmas would be the best thing I think because then we can say s great to S so I think that makes sense to do it sooner than later at least the majority of it with that I yield anything further I need a vote I need a mo motion to approve motion to approve a second

second Deb would you please call the role Mr Dr yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart Miss ly yes m yes M rodri yes Mary Coogan yes I have a number of resignations retirements appointments and sadly some people passed away can I get a uh motion to approve 131 132 133 and 134 any any discussion can I get a second Deb please call the rooll Mr AGA yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart

Miss larav yes M Pereira M Rodricks yes mayor cougan yes um any new business to come before the committee Mr chairman Miss mam superintendent hang on she got something Kevin if I could just for one second um this morning uh through principal dearis uh Miss Sylvia has the skills USA field trip this is in Malboro it is local but it's an overnight trip which requires school committee they

thought it you know they wanted that impression of oh it's in the state but because it's overnight um it it does need to be approved so if I I this morning second I have a motion in second any discussion Deb please call the rooll Mr AG yes Mr Bailey yes Mr har M ly yes Mr Perera yes Mr rodri yes mayor Coogan yes um anything further Mr AA I'd like to uh present something after executive

session for new business I just wanted to leave it open when we return out of executive session I have some new business that I would like to bring up it's related to the executive session and I can't deal with it now oh you mean we going to talk about when we yes so when we come back I want to be able to reserve my rights to make a motion I'll entertain a motion to go into executive

session sove second second I'm so sorry we have a motion a second can you tell us why we're going in please Bruce National laws chap 38 section 21 A7 to review and approve the executive session minutes for October 16th 2023 regular school committee meeting also National laws chapter 38 section 2187 to review and approve the executive session minutes for October 25th 2023 grievance subcommittee meeting Mass

general laws chapter 38 section 2183 to discuss strategy with you to like the bargaining relative to All Professional teaching employees the for a school system including coaches Title One teachers nurses occupational and physical therapist and specialists in the teaching profession represented by the FL of educated Association as the chair has determined that open session may have a detrimental impact on the

bargaining position of the committee M laws chapter 38 section 21 A3 to discuss strategy with respect to collect the bargaining rela through all safety security employees of the forward school system represented by the American Federation of state county and municipal employees uh Council 93 local 1118 is the chairs determined that open session may have a detrimental impact on bney

position of the committee Mass General Law chapter 38 section 2182 to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel and or to conduct contract negotiations with non-union Personnel including Kathleen cob principal of the fonsa elementary school Brian Repose so principal the Talbert Middle School we would reconvene the may may have statement at that

time thank you I have a motion a second that please call the RO Mr AGA yes Mr Bailey yes Mr har Miss ly yes M Pereira yes M rodri yes Mary Coogan yes back out of executive session Deb please call the role Mr Agia here Mr Bailey here Mr Hart miss larv here M par here M Rodricks here mayor Coogan here anything further to come before the committee yes there is Mr Mayor go ahead

Miss lar Mr Mayor I'd like to make a motion to uh re to approve the executive session meetings for meeting for October 16 2023 I have a mo I have a motion second any discussion Deb please call the roll Mr AG yes Mr Bailey yes Mr jart Miss lvy yes M Pereira yes M Rodricks yes mayor hugan yes Mr Mayor I'd like to make a motion to approve the executive session meeting uh minutes for October 25th

2023 do I have a second second I have a motion a second any discussion Deb please call the rooll Mr yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart Miss larvey yes Miss Pereira yes M Rodricks yes mayor Coogan yes Mr Mayor I'd like to make a motion for the superintendent to spend up to $25 to administer an administrative review of various departments second I have a motion in a second any discussion Deb

please call the role Mr agel yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart Mr larv yes Mr Pera yes Mr Rodricks yes mayor Coogan yes Mr Mayor F yes yes Mr Mayor make like to make a motion to approve contract with Kathleen Cobb as negotiated second I have a motion and a second any discussion Deb please call the RO Mr aam yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart Miss ly yes Miss Pereira yes M Rodricks yes mayor

Coogan yes finally Mr Mayor like to make a motion to approve the contract with Brian raposo as negotiated second I have a motion to Second any further discussion dead please call the rooll are we doing this do go ahead Mr Agia yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Hart Miss larav yes M Pereira yes M rodri yes mayor Coogan yes anything further to come before the Committee hearing none I entertain a motion to adjourn Mr agan

made the motion I have a second second second motion second de please call the RO Mr AG yes Mr Bailey M lar M Pera m rodri yes mayor Coogan yes that was

it