6.5.2024 Fall River School Committee

um I like to call to order the Wednesday June 5th special meeting of the farest school committee uh Deb could you please call the rooll Mr Agia here Mr Bailey here Mr Cory here M larv here M Pereira M rodri here may kouan here uh pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are

therefore advised that such recordings and Transmissions are being made with a proceed CE or uned by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible um salute to the flag please I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all um we have one individual signed up

for Citizens input um three minutes Jordan James Sylvia it's on the topic on the agenda Please Mr Silva hi I'm assuming the uh agenda is based on the new superintendent yes correct all right so I basically came here I don't know if any of them are in attendance the people applying for the job I don't believe so no okay so that's super concerning um cuz I came here to warn them that you're applying for a job

uh to be the head person for an education system in a city that's not serious about education um contrary to what everyone says uh I say that because again as we have this give and take I've said numerous times three minute thing nobody wants to hear from the public um and also the fact that the the people who are applying for the job they clearly don't care about parental feedback or from the community they they

want to cash a paycheck from so it's super concerning um but if they ever do get to watch this my concern is um last time I was here asked to leave right because I was calling people out for lying regarding the tany street the tany school issue um and then when they were caught about the lying they they were they came in here and you know I mean gave me a hard time

whatever um more than that billions of dollars we've spent on education in forever we get 50% graduation rates that's says when're not serious about education um you guys are supposed to be responsible for this person who's going to take this job and ultimately all the kids in the city um who's responsible for putting you guys here because I don't want to put it on you city of forever people like me right voters n

90% of them don't show up right to to vote so that's what I mean by saying the city doesn't really isn't serious about education that's the reality right um it's it's I could go on and on for hours I'm not not allowed to speak over the 3 minutes obviously I'd love to talk about John torado and his essay on Psychopathic schools and you know how we're actually Mal educating kids um in

many ways nobody it's not a topic that people really want to talk about I asked Maria Pon to talk about it to bring some sort of financial literacy to the to the school system no appetite for that even though during the election heard some of the candidates mentioned that specifically balance and checkbooks respect respectfully that's not financial literacy that's like normal basic human survival right uh that's

that's clearly not again these things lead to five Decades of poverty and ignorance and forever so I'm sitting here hoping somebody is brave enough to do something out of you elected people or this person who's supposed to head this whole system and actually Buck the system and change anything but that's not what happens in Forever it's personal financial gain at the expense of all the kids and their Futures how

about this if we get 50% graduation rates kids who get straight A's coming out of here go to IV League schools who's to say they're educated they're coming out as Communists right and they for censorship and everything else successful people capitalism is all evil so I would ask all of you guys this person who's going to run this system do some soul searching right and and like who's going to really do

anything to fix this system you know that's all I'm asking for appreciate it thank you there are one thing I'll leave you at Mr Coogan I know I detailed a lot of adversity the Silver Lining is in all those problems there's opportunity to improve thanks thank you thank you guys all right so we're going to take a brief recess wait for the uh arrival of shell she's supposedly stuck in traffic on way

right now Mr Agia just a procedural question on um is there anything in place for and maybe it is and I just don't haven't heard for the candidates to have equal opportunity to watch the other candidates in the order is there any procedures in place to protect that once they're done they can sit here or they can leave but we're trying to make sure they don't hear the questions the other candidate so that it's fair

everybody hears the question when they're at that table so candidate two three and four not have they in the library uh Glen cooch is watching them then they're going to come down when they called I'm saying there I'm asking if there was a process I I didn't know if they're all in the presence they're going to be sequestered in the room like they're sequestered in the library and they're

waiting till their time after they finish they're more than welcome to stay because it's over and then they can either uh leave or you know stay till the end thank you yep

we will talk a little bit about what we're going to do um is that all the um members picked questions that they want to ask um so we're going to rotate I know uh some of the questions are going to be out of order but that's okay so it'll be um with the questions that we have it'll go the next one I'll lead then Shel then so we'll go through the questions on a rotating basis maybe

we'll go to the back so that uh Sarah and um Kevin make sure their questions are asked first I don't have any problem I told I told them we're going to be fair and rotate through so everyone gets the the opportunity to ask their questions now when you say wrote may I so if I go start with one on this one who's number uh at the end the next the next

individual uh might I believe Deb put him in order yeah but they don't rotate do they oh they do okay fine rotate but I just want to make sure everybody has the opportunity rotate okay all right 1 through thank you Mr coocher we're just waiting for uh committee woman Pereira she's in traffic right now uh she said a couple minutes thank you

some

okay oh thanks appreciate it I don't all right back out of recess um we want to thank everybody for coming out to the superintendent interviews for the for public schools our first candidate tonight is Dr David Thompson come on

down yeah that's

it okay Dr Thompson we want to thank you for taking time to come down um we're trying obviously with seven individuals we're going to give everybody roughly eight minutes with you if there's followup if you don't use all the time it's going to be a strict one hour interview we're going to time it um okay we appreciate you working with us to the best of your ability to give everybody the answers they're looking

for and again we want to thank you for coming down so we're going to start I'll start the clock are you going to start it or I can start all right so let's start the clock and I'll do the four minute you do the hour okay thank you um Dr Thompson first questions come from uh Mimi larvi Vice chairman hi Dr uh Thompson hello good to see nice to see you again uh could you

share with us a bit about yourself Beyond what's on your resume and please tell us why Fall River and why now yes um so first of all thank you for having me it's a truly an honor uh to be here I've spent um a good amount of time looking at and researching uh the Fall River schools um and you know there's qualities here that I have been searching for and that back up to what I

have done uh in Norwood and this is a good opportunity for me to continue the work around uh Equity uh and inclusion it's an opportunity for me to work on academic um success in and around student outcomes I am very focused on improving student outcomes and opportunities I focus in ensuring that students are enrolled in programs um given feedback for growth and use that so that every student has a pathway and

a purpose as they as they leave um leave our schools uh I believe in District Improvement facilitating uh strategic plan I love creating a vision uh and ensuring that that Vision becomes a reality I'm trained in uh uh planning for Success the deese uh process for strategic design um I then set up my administrative team so they have roles and responsibilities with that and that's twofold to make sure the work

gets done uh but also to ensure that we're building leadership uh in the leadership team um and you know why now um this is kind of you know I think you know in some aspects that this is uh the opportunity I've been waiting for um I've been greatly fulfilled by the work that I have done in Norwood and just to give you a little context when I uh in 2019 uh our high needs population was

about 38% it is now just north of 60% um and that has changed the work in the district it's a very short amount of time uh to have that kind of demographic change um and we're really only about 20 points off of Fall River but the um the important piece of that for me for me is that that work has been deeply fulfilling um and personally something that I would like to continue thank you

very much you're welcome Mr um next um please provide your philosophy and budgeting and provide us with what PRI what your priorities are when you build in a budget yeah so um when I look at a budget and I'm gon to I'm probably going to keep harping a little bit on the Strategic plan aspect but the Strategic plan and what we want our district to become should be driving our our budget decisions um like to

start you know you know as close to zero as one can get in building a budget and building those priorities around what is going to positively affect our students and our student outcomes um so with that there's a collaborative process with that I asked principles to go back look at the at their school Improvement plans look at their data in their buildings and look at what they need to do again

to get those student outcomes bring those to the table um and you know we construct a budget from there starting at zero building up from there um and ultimately what it comes down to is what is going to um you know the most juice for the squeeze what is really going to affect our student outcomes what is definitely going to change you know some of the um data that we're seeing and make sure

that our kids have the best opportunity for a successful future um it is a collaborative process there is a lot of conversations um with uh the you know the the the city Side the the the municipal side of of those aspects as well as with the school committee and developing that budget um and ultimately we need to be in a position when I hand that budget over that the school committee is comfortable with that and

able to defend and support that um in in the process here in Fall River um I have you know over the last seven years built very strong relationships with you know the town manager the selectman and the and the fincom uh and take every opportunity to explain what the challenges and budget drivers are not just during budget season but throughout the year and it is a back and forth conversation and then when there's

things where I can um help them out you know with the school department key example was when we shut down with Co and we started making meals for families um with our food service so we work collaborative together to to ensure that the town uh is moving forward thank you um Shelly perea thank you I want to apologize for my tardiness I did not right it's fine I got to greet I got to greet everybody

who came in so it's perfect it was perfect your time I want you to know that I'm sorry about that um I have my question is a little longer than most so if you need me to repeat it um all of it are any part any time I won't hold that against you um so some recent surveys show that there are approximately 55,000 various educational positions open Statewide the teacher shortage is

not just a Fall River problem but a national crisis educators are reporting causes varying from lack of support unrealistic expectations classroom safety and pay what do you feel the reasons are for the teacher shortage and what experience do you have in recruiting and retaining Educators and educ educational staff and lastly knowing our district do you have any concrete ideas that you will be bringing

forth to help support the staff we have as well as recruit and retain new staff yeah yeah and you're absolutely right this is this is a national crisis um I won't go too far off the rails but you know for 20 30 years um unfortunately we as Educators have heard how we're not prepared to do the job and we're not doing the job and we're not doing this well that doesn't necessarily entice a

lot of people to join the profession which is a you know it's an incredible profession it's one that makes a difference you know you know everyone is in the position they're in because they were taught by people and we need to we need to get back to that um in Norwood we started doing signing days for people going into education are graduates um so and all of the all the things that you

have um listed here as reasons for leaving our symptoms of our society at this point in time ultimately we need to create um a place of work that is safe and secure where teachers feel valued and able to be successful and that they can maximize their potential those are those are three key things that that need to happen um I did look the the retention rate this past year was 75% in

Fall River that's really kind of alarming um nor what I think was 93 or 94% um and we have done a good amount of work not perfect a good amount of work on those three things making sure the teachers feel supported they're able to reach their their potential and um and that they have a future there most of our move people who have moved out have moved for family reasons to to be closer

to where they work that was a big change after um after Co um the question I would ask is what have we done with exit interviews is to identify why people are leaving and then you know be in a position where we're addressing um th those issues um as far as recruiting you know I started a long time ago going to college fairs especially Bridgewater State uh using handshake which is a a

national um job posting board to try to get our jobs out Beyond just School spring um you know and we our our shortages have not been in teachers it's been in Paris actually um as far as so that needs to continue we need to encourage um you know people to go into the profession that Dynamic needs to change uh the other thing that we are doing now is that kids that are going

into education we are trying to recruit them to help run uh and work in our summer programs so twofold we're giving them experience and we're indoctrinating them to to some extent uh the other thing that we should really start looking at is actually building our own system of developing and creating teachers and that can be twofold you know you you have Bristol Community College here I I mean I taught at

Diamond for AIC for a number of years and their education program there I don't know if they're still working over there or not this seems to be a better building I know they're building a new one but maybe we can get them here but running programs in District to develop uh our own teachers from our from our own residents in Fall River would be something that I would definitely want to look

at thank you um next Tom Cory good afternoon Mr Thompson my question revolves around alternative education would you be an advocate in support of f River's alternative middle and high school the Robert madis resiliency Preparatory Academy when it comes to the curriculum the physical plant and possible chapter 74 grants to enhance the Hands-On component to skills learning uh the the short answer is yes

definitely but I'll but I will uh elaborate a little bit so again back to my original comment about every single um student having a pathway when they come out of high school and leave the Fall River Public Schools I firmly believe that not everyone um wants to go to college should go to college is necessarily a good fit to go to college and especially now where um you know even those that are going to college

need to have a real good plan and idea what they what they want to do otherwise you know they're circling around extra semesters here and hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt so we need to be very proactive for all of our students about what their pathways are and what their opportunities are after they after they leave us key component of that and I'm actually very excited to

have chapter 74 programs here at at dery um and that you know it is giving kids another opportunity and a way to engage in learning and to move forward you know we all we all have seen the um the lack of Trades people in our communities when when we need someone to do it they are fantastic careers you can work a long time and there's no reason why we shouldn't be supporting those um you

know as far as getting grants and expanding programs we have done that it has been not been chapter 74 but we have created Pathways uh at our high school we have two we're adding two more uh they really are kind of but they're both college and maybe you know delaying college and I'll give an example one is a healthc care pathway uh we were partnered with Norwood Hospital which is

not online right now but uh there was a flood that took it out but also with Harvard Medical School so our students are learning uh you know medicine skills or medical skills it's not just doctors or nurses it could be everything from you know a um a a um x-ray technician and these sorts of things they're gaining all of these skills uh they're getting micr credentials as well so when

they leave high school they could work for you know a medical facility as an as an underp person to become uh trained as an x-ray technician or or a fotus or something along that line and the thought there and again very similar demographic you have a lot of first um if they go to college first time in the family first college goers in the family um and just them jumping into a

four-year College might not be a realistic financial piece but I wanted our kids leaving the high school was some sort of work that was beyond you know nothing against Dunkin' Donuts but against working in in the food industry and not being really able to make a living wage so they could work that there and then go to Community College for a couple years and then get into a technical uh school or what have you

what have you and again to ensure that they have some way of being successful ful uh and economically valuable as members of our community thank you you're welcome uh next question up um Sarah Rogers so like my colleague this is a multi-art question so if you need me to repeat anything let me know and I also speak really quickly so if you need me to slow down tell me so we have roughly

a 30% 30 33% special education rate in this District so we have a substantially um higher figure of special education students than other districts across the state of those about a third of them are in substantially separate classrooms so can you tell me or can you tell us about your experience with creating and implementing inclusive practices for our special education students um in the mainstream classrooms

in our gened settings how have you specifically worked to dismantle those systems of subpar placements as the norms and promote the inclusion of all kids in gened and finally can you give some specific examples of how you've worked to really dismantle that often siloed approach to special education services yeah this is um hopefully I won't get too passionate because I I have um experience with special edit you

know as a classroom teacher as a building level and and District level administrator and also as a parent okay um so it is something that very passionate about you could probably go back into the mid90s and and see some heated discussions with me and members of the Department of Elementary and secondary education over mcast and how those tests were being uh administered to students with disabilities but I will

I will get to um the question um so basically you know we need to have a realization that after grade 12 the the special education laws stop and we're basically at a 504 American with disabilities situation and if we're not preparing children to function at a reasonable level when they leave our high school okay they are going to be at a disadvantage in the workforce okay because they have to make

the workforce has to make reasonable accommodations no one has to read the directions to them okay so this is a longitudinal long-term process where we need to have students students included um and we're scaffolding our instruction and you Universal Design for Learning Katie Novak's work is instrumental in this right and training teachers on how to how to do that but ensuring that the

the standards are being met and the outcomes are being there but there are support so that every student that is possible and there are some that you know have significant disabilities that don't fall into this category and I'm not specifically talking about about those students but most do but they have to learn how to work around their disability okay um and again for that reason I mean you're not going to have

you know if they don't learn how to work around that disability it will consistently hold them back disabilities don't go away okay they don't go away but we can learn to compensate to use tools to work around these things we need to be putting students in our regular classroom with their peers who who they learn as much from as their teachers in many cases to do the real work the core

work the standard work that is um that is that is required to get a to get a high school diploma okay uh to ensure that they're and as they gain um you know skills and abilities to work around these we we take down some of the scaffolds so they become um more and more able to work independently okay um and I can tell you multiple stories um you know I I was told at one point when

my child was in third grade she would never pass the mcast and she would never get a high school diploma she is an associates degree okay uh I have a cohort of students from Raina Middle School who have gradu who same sort of thing we did this then we did this then um and have now graduated college okay so what I have done with with that is that I have implemented that both in

Blackstone milville and in Norwood what we are doing and it's again it's it's multifaceted you have to get parents to trust you and and buy into what you're doing because you have to change the IEPs you also have to educate and fortify the you know the teachers and the Educators on how to scaffold and support students in the classroom you have to have enough uh you have to have special Educators in the classroom co-

teing um and what we what we did is we brought in Lisa deaker out of the University of Florida who is one of the experts in co- teing I did it in Blackstone Ville milville I've done it in Norwood I did it in Rainham to teach teachers how to do it and the excitement once it starts rolling it starts picking up speed um so and once we get into the

I I am capable mindset then you get away from the sub separate as the default piece welcome thank you again um next question uh Bobby Bailey um during your tenure as a leader can you name any specific initiatives or programs that you've implemented or planned to implement to promote cultural Proficiency in the district yeah so we have done um in Norwood we we started uh well so when

I when I arrived in in Norwood in 2017 and again you know start this entry process look at the data there was a um huge discrepancy in um severe discipline for students of color okay uh so that was one of the first things that we were looking at why that was happening uh and making amends so there are two things that we that we did we talked about um and we had training in implicit bias um

and we also looked at our suspension they and basically what happened is that they did not have any alternative to out of school suspension um so we put Alternatives in there to change that dynamic because sending a kid home does not necessarily change behavior and actually that separation can actually increase behaviors over time because they're further and further behind and not connected to the curriculum so then

um you know we we get up to 2019 2020 um and we determine as a dist we were going to do an equity audit uh we had Mass Insight do that audit uh for us um surveyed you know parents students um and came back with some recommendations from that the two most important recommendations uh were to look at our hiring process to get more representation in our um in our

classrooms I think at that point uh we only had two um people of color working in our schools one as an aid and one as a teacher uh the other one was looking at teaching practices that raised our our level of cultural proficiency so we worked on both um we have used um Highlander to do that training and the school committee and the administrators did it first um and then we've done two

two years of training with with the teachers and again it starts off with a cultural social awareness of what those barriers are and how we should should address them building a culture in the classroom where we're not allowing that to happen and raising um the expectations for all that all children can learn and setting those up then there's the instructional piece where we are teaching them how to um you know how

to approach problem solving perseverance uh and looking at um skills on thinking and problem solving uh and then the the last piece which we're still working on is really getting kids involved and and active in that as well uh the hiring piece um we changed our hiring practices a little bit we do a little more screening to make sure we're not eliminating uh people just based on a

paper screen so we do kind of a quick uh five or 10 minute um you know video interview to make sure we have representation uh when we get that and since then um we have gone from one I believe we're now at about 22 people of color uh working in our schools which makes a huge difference uh thank you next uh Kevin agar it's not a secret that Fall River has struggled with academic achievement

excuse me uh overall data shows that we are barely getting back to pre-co achievement levels which were not adequate to begin with can you explain any specific situations where you were instrumental in quote unquote moving the needle to improve academic achievement data in an urban school system yeah so you know I think everybody saw that dip and there's a good portion of us that are battling to

get back to um that piece so what we what we have done uh is that we have put in um a progress monitoring and really ramped up our multiple multi-tiered systems of support uh in doing that formalized that in uh in Norwood so there are blocks of time that that is happening um and we are measuring that progress um you know continually uh what we're seeing right now is we're seeing really good growth

scores universally even with our um even with our students with disabilities you know in the 40s in that normal range for overall they're in the mid to high 50s which are pretty good when you consider all the different populations um unfortunately that has not broken through the glass ceiling of mcats but I expect that it will happen um I will say that looking at some of your your

numbers here obviously 24 numbers are are not in but there has been progress um and again we're still not there but we need to keep pushing and and doing that sort of work the other piece that that I think we need to go back to doing is looking at ensuring our students are connected to our schools and to learning and engaged in that so um what is that cultural piece and this gets into the

absenteeism piece as well but how are we connecting with students how are we making sure that they are connected to our schools and that cultural piece I think is something that we lost during covid and we're having a very hard time bringing back um and you know the the other piece is engagement and what is our instruction looking like um in our classrooms and one of the things that

you know and I'm I know you guys have brought in Project Lead the Way uh at the high school I'm really excited uh about that but we're looking at taking that methodology and applying it to other curriculum areas specifically to raise that engagement and you know for our students if it's you know if we're working on real world problems and it has meaning to them they're they're going to learn more and learn deeper and

hopefully that is going to um shine through you know and you know I'll go back as principal of Randon Middle School we became a level one school from that same sort of piece but the but the one thing that made the difference is you know and again I'm dealing with middle schoolers was basically telling them that that those mcast results counted for something because we would make decisions on academics and where we

would put them in the fall based on the numbers we would get in August um and once that happened there's a little more urgency in May and June so thank you thank you uh next um Shelley perea we know that diversity and inclusion in any workplace promotes creative problem solving better decision making as well as increased productivity and decreasing staff turnover rate Fall River serves a diverse population and we

aim to promote diversity inclusion and Equity throughout the district can you tell me what you believe the difference is between equal and Equitable and do have strategies planned to execute in the district to promote equity in all our classrooms lastly can you give us an example of when you have promoted diversity and inclusion in your workplace please provide any barriers you had to overcome and if and how the

outcome is beneficial to the group yeah I think I might have answered a little bit some some of this with the other um with the other question but but you know equal and Equitable equal is everybody getting the same and Equitable is getting what individuals need um um going back to that cultural proficient teaching strategies that I was talking about earlier you you would have a menu of

scaffolds and strategies to bring all students up so they get access to curriculum but you wouldn't use them with everybody all the time you would use them where they're needed that would be Equitable um so you know as as far as promoting Equity first off is we need to make sure we're hearing multiple voices okay and ensuring that everybody has a voice and feels that they belong and can

see themselves represented in in in the schools and that can be everything from you know symbols around the holiday to Flags um as they come in one of our more uh our most diverse uh school which is in South Norwood has a flag of every student from every country they're from and there's about 35 in that cafeteria okay so that ensures that they feel welcome and feel part of of that culture

um and you know example of promoting diversity inclusion in your workplace so we have done so I'll do a couple things we have gone uh started this past fall Affinity groups um where we're bringing groups together to offer support and have conversations about that and they are led by different members uh of the school Community uh the other thing is that you know we have been diligent and you know when I first WR I

was kind of shocked because in December it was like there was only one flavor of holiday when I when I first got there we've we've had those conversations uh We've push some of those things that um are not um culturally appropriate for everybody to outside of the school day not eliminated them you can still have you know breakfast with Santa but we're going to do it on Saturday morning not

during the school day these sorts of things um and then you know and you know with that you know there you know that's that's a change and change is hard um and you know a little bit of push back and you know said you know we're not eliminating your traditional event we're just moving it outside of the school day because it's not part of the curriculum and it's not something we we shouldn't just be doing

you know if we're going to be doing a culture we should be doing all cultures uh and looking at that and there's multiple ways to do that some sometimes you can have an event that's one for all or maybe during those times of the year when those events are happening you take a little bit to talk about the different cultures and different celebrations thank you um Mimi lar full river is a a very large and

complex Urban District please tell us a little about your leadership style and how you will motivate and Inspire uh F frps staff to achieve their best performances yeah um yeah I I won't argue that it's that Fall River is a complex District but so but so is Norwood you've got uh we've got neighborhoods that are very much uh Islands upon themselves so um my leadership style fir first and foremost

um is very collaborative um I like to bring people together um my decision-making style is to bring a problem forward and have a conversation about that and get advice from people especially someone uh walking new into a district who might not have all the historical context for some of the decisions that might have um existed beforehand um with that I am also uh very clear on a strategic vision and

objectives and outcomes and uh measurement um along that side I believe in uh developing leaders I'm a leader of leaders if you look at um my resume I've been um you know president of the principal Association on the national board of the principles Association I have taught um leadership in at the college level uh and I have mentored uh incoming aspiring leaders through the through the principes association so

that is important because I fully realize that the rubber meets the road with the principal in the school so I need to make sure that that person is operating at the highest ability that they can operate um and often I'm a thought thought partner with those people they uh they know that I have you know been in every seat along the way and I can remember the good times and

the bad times and and go through those and Mentor them but I'm my I am trying to grow leadership in others I am trying to ensure that we are all on the same page uh and I'm trying to ensure that we have our goals uh and that we are all rowing in the same direction so what I do is we have a strategic plan the school Improvement plans are based off of that the educator Improvement plans

or the educator development plans are based off of that so that everything is flowing in the same direction and there's a priority um but getting through where we have got and that's a collaborative effort okay it's not me sitting in you know in a closet you know scheming things it's something that I engage the community with um both you know city council school committee other various stakeholder groups bringing in

and developing a vision and a plan for improving uh the school system so it's collaborative people will tell you that um I am you know am working to develop others that I listen intently and I'm always willing to learn and I'm willing to go the extra mile to ensure that they're s because if they're successful in their buildings in their classrooms in their district offices then we're all successful thank you thank

you next up is um Tom Cory yes Dr Thompson for river is is a city with so many agencies throughout the whole Community this question is involving Community engagement do you believe in building relationships with the many agencies in our community that provide services which in turn affect our school children and their families uh the short answer to that is yes and I and I will give you um so if

this is important work if the schools are not involved it's probably not working to the extent where it needs to be because the you know those students are with us for a third of the day sometimes more right so um we need to you know in you know in some cases partner to get the work done in other cases facilitate but in all instances cooperate uh and you know I will go back you know I'll go

back you know as a principal you know had students who were who were getting counseling from from the local counseling session you know because of scheduling you know they would come in and and do it um do it you know during school hours and come in and take the kids for half an hour because that you know without the know that that lower level safety security piece of ma maslo we can't get to blooms where they're

learning at a high level right so then you know go fast forward and this was kind of one of the few AG disagreements I had uh with with the Union because we wanted to do the same thing because we had kids who needed the problem is is that you have kids who need services and they can't all get it after school because there's not enough slots to do it right so if we're not facilitating

that then that that's a problem then they're not getting the services they're they're not in a position to to learn and perform in our schools but even more so um there are other you know Community uh focused things that we have done um you know so we have um the I'm trying to remember the name but um there there's a mental health group um in Norwood between the health department

ourselves and several Community groups including uh Faith Partners as well working on Mental Health uh getting getting grants through um through the health um the health department to facilitate that and make improvements we now have a service where anyone in Norway can call and get mental health help um we also uh looked at youth risky behavior from our from our Behavior survey and there is um impact Norwood is

another group police fire uh selectman fincom again Faith Partners other community members come together once a month and work on programs for that and we've seen our our youth risk behaviors decrease because of that effort um so again when yes I believe in that it's something that if we're actually going to I mean you know people have talked about wraparound Services we need to we

need to give a big hug to to make sure we can wrap around first thank you sir you're welcome uh next is Sarah Rodricks okay so social emotional learning has become a little bit of a buzzword in education um but there's not always a good understanding of what that actually means in action so how do you ensure that the design and implementation of social emotional learning special education and core

General ated instruction align with the goals values and priorities of the district can you describe a time that you've successfully facilitated that coordination and collaboration and then how do you promote that shared Vision overcome barriers across those different departments right I'm trying to it's not she just she just came up with that question oh she just came up with that question one of the ones that I had

originally had planed that's I'm sorry could you could you read it again because I was trying to find the question so social emotional learning has become of a bit of a buzzword in education but there's not always a good understanding of that actually means in action so how do you make sure that the design and implementation of social emotional learning special education and core general led instruction aligns with

the goals the values and the priorities of the district and then can you describe a time that you've successfully facilitated coordination and collaboration among those stakeholders and then how do you specifically promote that shared vision and overcome barriers across those departments yeah so um so when I first started in Norwood there was there was a social emotional learning was you know

and again that that is teaching these you know the the self-management the relational skills the organizational skills the interpersonal skills that you know for various reasons don't don't seem to be sticking right now right um but there there was that was simply just a quick time on the carpet we did it and we're done there was no positive behavior intervention system uh there was nothing that

really what we would often call uh a school culture right so that was a major emphasis when we started was to to develop that social emotional uh learning we have upgraded the curriculum we have brought it all the way up through um grade 12 looks a little different at the high school than it does obviously in first and second grade but the next key piece to that is that you're teaching the

lesson but the learning is in the doing right it's not about listening to a lesson or a story it's about applying it right so how are we integrating that into the curriculum into the self-management skills that we're teaching in the special ed and various other places so that those are being secured then the next piece that we need to do is we need we need to measure whether the kids are actually acquiring

the skills and making progress and if not and this is another piece that often doesn't happen we don't go back and do the tier 2 targeted intervention I piece where we're reteaching those skills or revisiting those skills with those kids because those are important if they don't have you know other terms are soft skills right if they don't have the soft skills are they really going to be able

to function in the community in a job setting and and and do that work um so what what we have done is that we have um you know improved the the curriculum combine that with a positive behavior program in each of the schools and it's different okay the acronyms are different the overall arching goals are are the same okay but U you know you know whether it's bluebirds over here or

Cardinals over there I mean the the fundamental skills are the same some of the verbiage is a little bit different then you get to the middle school and it's the same um and then that feeds into the positive behavior the school culture piece etc etc etc um all of that is aligned with the with the Strategic plan on social emotional goals student safety and what have you so again you know do do I think we're 100%

there yet no I you know we had the the co disruption there's still more work to do but we are in a much different place than we were back in 2018 2017 thank you thank you um the next one's mine any Innovations you believe will help to improve student attendance something different you didn't know student attendance student attendance yeah um yeah that is um well again so so so there's two things that connectedness

piece and that engagement piece all right are two things that we need to focus in on so if students feel connected to the school and that can be as easy as hey we missed you yesterday we did this we did that we could have used your help I mean it's not this is not rocket science right but you know so that that connected piece I missed you I wish you were here people need kids need

hear that as well right and the other piece is the engagement piece if the work and what they're learning is important to them you know most of them are not going to miss school okay and the reality is is and we need to get on it early and often and partner with parents to work on it because the more they're out the the bigger the problem becomes right the the greater that that separation and

that lack of connectedness okay the more difficult it is to get them back in school and engage um we we've dropped about Five Points this was a major emphasis this past year um there's still work to do um sometimes I get angry calls from parents because I'm picking on their kid but as I said we you we just need them in school so we can teach them um but that is that is

it's it's another one of those issues that um is not just any particular Town it is pretty much Universal and it it again it comes back to being connected to the school there's there's a disconnect that we are still trying to reconnect after Co and we need to be more purposeful about how we're going to do that I appreciate it um next Bobby Bailey uh communication with the school committee um without jeopardizing any

sensitive information can you describe a time when you had to make a difficult decision that involve working closely with the school committee and how you approach the process yeah never no I've never had a difficult decision um yeah better question is when isn't there a difficult uh decision um yeah so I guess you know I I'm going to go back to probably the the last one um and I don't know as if it was so much

a decision as it was a situation um we received um a school threat notice from the police department um the problem with this was that it came right as we had launched the buses to pick the kids up for the Middle School um so we get a call from the police chief there's been a there's been a threat you know so everybody's moving and doing our uh normal threat you know assessment

process where you try to determine if it's real or not and what have you um and and just to kind of take a step back you know so we have the most up up toate safety protocols um in in Norwood that there are out there part of that is um the chief who's who's now retired is just absolutely incredible uh and just a great person to work with but he's

always on top of the first the latest of greatest thing from the FBI the Secret Service I mean we're we're constantly looking at that and going forward so and we had used the same protocols for you know three years without without a problem but this one ended up being different and we didn't know until it was a little bit late so what happened was there was a text message that went

to a group of kids the night before and they shared it with other kids but it didn't come to the police department till the morning okay and neither the police nor the schools realized that it had been traveling around until after school opened and you know for those you who have who have worked in schools you know that the two mosta uh chaotic times of the day right at the

beginning and the end right so um so we're trying to get everybody in and so that caused a a a viral response that we became aware of about 30 minutes after the beginning of of school starting um so the process went well and we were able to determine that it was not credible um the other tick to this was that there was enough digital information that the police felt that they could find the

person responsible so they didn't want us to say much so that added some fuel of the fire so that um became an uncomfortable situation parents flooded um the school and you know wanted to take their kids out and where and obviously we're not going to say no you can't take your kid um but in in doing that um we had parents who were upset didn't feel that the schools were safe and whatever and the schools were

safe because we pretty much knew early on that it was not real uh but we couldn't say that and you know all this other sort of stuff so um so what happened from then was there was a community you know piece of do I have to stop or fine go okay all right so um so so I'll try to be quick so basically we went through got through the day did our

plan the kids came back um this was on a Friday so um we we kind of had the weekend uh came back on Monday but there was still that nervousness in the community um and the school committee was getting phone calls I was getting phone calls the principal was getting phone calls and anytime we have um an incident that's not going well we do an incident response review so we went through that

process with the police chief you know with the principal myself uh other members of of the Safety and Security team went through that uh and identifi things that you know we needed to do better first is kind of have some pre canned responses to some to these uh sorts of things the other thing is with the police when they figured out that it had been discovered earlier we needed to

know that sooner um and the other piece was that we really needed to educate parents on what these things actually mean because there was a big misunderstanding between what that meant and what was really happening and parents didn't realize that if there was actually a real threat they wouldn't have been allowed near the school because everything would have been locked down so there was a there was a

knowledge Gap there so we put together a plan to do that um and you know every single parent that wrote me or called me I responded to got more information about their concerns and then responded to them afterwards because they deserved that kind of response from me um so it kind of was a sobering thing to to to realize and it was a it was a comedy of errors um but both this and the school

committee was involved with that because we did part of that incident review with the school committee because they had gotten a lot of these phone calls um so hopefully that but but you know I guess the important thing is that you know you're you're going to have um you're going to have situations you're going to have things that aren't going to work your way but how do you handle

it okay I handle it kind of taking it on head on this is the problem we need to look at it we need to come over the solution we need to communicate that going forward thank you welcome um uh Kevin Aya before I ask my question I just had a you had mentioned before about your resume and you were just talking about Norwood is your current status in Norwood as superintendent are

you I my my contract I am leaving uh Norwood at the end of the year and did they have an interim or they they have they've appointed a new superintendent so like you guys are overlapping yep thank you what is uh this is about curriculum Y what is your philosophy on curriculum choice and how would you ensure that the chosen curriculum is working for all students and being implemented with Fidelity second part is

how do you plan to ensure that the programs that we purchase are fully utilized in our schools yeah all right so there's two so there's um two pieces so there's several things that oop I'm not talking on the microphone I'm sorry so there's several things we need to um need to look at so you know the the the department has got a collection the Cur curate of curricular materials that they

have determined meet the state standards so that's usually where you start unless it's not on that list for some reason um so start with those and then you need to look at so I'm going to go back so when we so I firmly believe in a curriculum review cycle um and that was something that I implemented in in Norwood uh they didn't have that before I got there but to look

at curriculum every every four or five years or so and it goes in a cycle so it's not all of a sudden building from zero but when you do that the first thing to start with is is an assessment of your current program okay is it working how well it is working if it's not working then you're looking for something different or if the standards have changed you needs something different right so then

we go to the curate look at some of those programs select two or three for a committee to look at and when they're looking at it they're looking for several things first of all cultural proficiency does it represent multiple points of view and and multiple uh cultural backgrounds um is it does it meet the state standards um does it come with the pieces that are going to allow us our teachers to use that in a way

that is going to meet the needs of our students is there some sort of measurement and progress monitoring piece of that does it have all those comp components you know the extra additional pieces the remedial pieces to do tier one tier two tier three and extension in our classrooms um so do you know all all of that work and then we're going to probably boil it down to a couple choices we're going to try out

right and I firmly believe um in piloting but not you know you pilot this and you pilot that because then it's hard to have a comparison if you haven't used both programs right so we go through that we do an evaluation um and and then then we kind of select a program so then we get into implementation I prefer to be in a situation where we are uh at least starting the training before we break

for for summer break um coming back and trying to learn something as you're trying to set up your classroom is stressful to for teachers I would much rather have the materials and be able to have a PD session on how to use our our new tools before they break um teachers being Workaholics and type A personalties will will take those books to the beach um and and look at them and

and try to get ready for for their kids and how to use the program and then come back and do that uh PD needs to continue on so that you're revisiting it throughout the year it's not one andone um as far as um you know and what I tell uh my teaching staff is that you know for the first year I want you to implement it with Fidelity I want you to

use it the way it's supposed to be used okay the way they're telling us and then we're going to assess what works what doesn't work what else we need and what we might change to fit the needs of our kids and as far as ensuring it's being used and used property that's a function of walkth through observations which I like to do with principles it's also a function of um we we call them

instructional rounds where you're going around you're looking for things and that's staff driven um but hopefully they're asking for feedback on how this is working you know with the new curriculum implementation thank you you're welcome thank you um well that completes our rounds um so I would say we'll give you the opportunity to make a closing statement you got three or four minutes go right ahead there Dr time

what if I need 20 20 is going to cut into the next person and we're trying to be fair so I appreciate it all right um yeah so couple things um so you know hopefully um you know you you heard several things but my core values really start with with educating the whole child and ensuring every child has a path After High School can meet success in the classroom and reach their fullest

potential uh that's important to me that's why I got into this um you know I like to create learning environments where you know all students can be successful and that takes a talent and we start with one or two and we keep adding to it um collaborative and adaptive leadership you know being able to adapt to challenges that come along use using a team developing team making it a high functioning team to

ensure that we're leading the district collectively you know in a way uh together um is important to me um building trust in the community and stakeholders um this is you know with without that you know it's relationships relationships relationships um and I as a superintendent have to model that have to be out there have to be working with people and there is and building those relationships and there's informal and

there's formal you know showing up at a soccer game and and having having that conversation versus you know a um you know a coffee with a superintendent or some other meeting where they can give me uh feedback and I also include in that stakeholder students you know meeting with with a leadership group from the high school from the middle school you know your fifth graders um you know to find out what's important to

them and how things are going help me help uh the administrative team and the building principles meet the needs of those kids um I am laser focused on making decisions that are in the best interest of my students and my teachers and then then you know for the district you know I I don't I'm not looking for personal Glory I'm not someone that goes out and shines a light on myself I'm

more interested in where the district is going and making sure that my kids are are getting what they need um you know and I firmly believe in the importance of Education I think unfortunately you know that thing that I mentioned before about 30 years of of beating up Educators is is really hurting us and the and the positive effect that we can have as Educators on on teaching on our

students and ultimately on the community is so important to what we do um personally uh you know trustworthy honest um probably to a fault uh compassionate a lot of empathy um and you know my values are my values you probably saw in there that I'm an eagle scout I take that very seriously I try to live to those ideals every single day um it would be an honor to be here there

is um really you know when I look at the data and I look at the programs and I look at the things that are being done um I'm really excited about a lot of those things and I think a lot of it is just kind of getting those pieces kind of together and pushing some other buttons so that we can get where we need to get and and you know

really take this to the next level well I know we all appreciate you coming in today Dr Thompson thank you very much for being here Mr chairman Mr Ang I know we have a few minutes and I just would like to ask one follow-up question go ahead so we didn't touch as much on human resources as um I would like so we've had some situations here in the district where we've had some people

that haven't been treating others appropriately let's just say from the top down uh what are your experiences with human resources uh holding people accountable making sure that staff's treating people right the students treat treating each other right just the general Human Resources what can you bring to the table um yeah so B basically you know I've gotten a little Support over the years but starting off

I I I was the human resource guy uh because the town didn't really have a fully developed human resource department uh it does now so I have someone to bounce ideas off of um I am not tolerant of mistreating anybody anywhere for any reason um it it's it's one of my bugaboos and you know perhaps if we have another conversation uh I will tell you that the probably the reason why I'm sitting in this chair um

is because of experiences like that and wanting to be the kind of leader that I would want to have okay so um that's a that's a that's a no-o with me you need to PE treat people with respect you can have disagreements you can not agree on things but we're all trying to get to the same end you know that belief in the vision that belief in where we're going

is important um and you know making it a joint effort and created together helps helps us us get there but there's no excuse for harassing or being mean or dismissive to anybody um I have had a couple instances where I've had to call people out on it it has been few and far between because I was um convincing early on let's just say I was convincing early on um so we did not have that

again um but it is it is a core value that everybody be treated with respect thank you okay anything okay thank you Dr Thompson we appreciate you coming in okay I did I did draft an entry plan I don't know if anybody wants I mean I can I can I don't know how I give you oh Scott Scott can grab it yeah so um just not to be presumptuous but just to

know what I'm so you know what I'm thinking thank you very much thank you thank you Dr Thompson 10 minute did you call for 10 minute Rec I we're going to grab we time everybody set okay um our next candidate is um Tracy Curley hello welcome welcome thank you um welcome first question will come from Mimi larvey hi Dr curlyy could you share with us a bit about yourself Beyond what's on

your resume and please tell us why Fall River why now yes not on my resume although I do think most people here um know that I'm from Fall River um and it's really what brought me here um in kind of and brought me back um I am you know I grew up in the fall for public schools I grew up in the community I grew up and lived in neighborhoods all over the city um I

was I think I didn't know it at the time whether I was different or the same as other kids in Fall River um but I've learned a lot about myself actually coming back um I did attend three different elementary schools um before going on to middle and high school I lived in nine different places by the time I graduated high school um and I was a kid in Fall River who um you

know I I enjoyed free breakfast in the basement of a school every morning before it was something that we did for all students after the bell in classrooms and um I didn't again I didn't know if it was the same or different or or whatever um but I enjoyed school and I enjoyed um how school made me feel I you know I come from a really great family um who was you know fell on

Hard Times most of you know most of my upbringing but um I came from a good family and I went to good schools um when I left um when I left fallover and went on to college um I know that I was able to do so um because of resources and um support that I got outside of my family unit and that started primarily in schools I was a student who um you know I did pretty

well and I you know I did kind of the things kids were expected to do but I didn't I didn't have a ton of support at home in terms of school but I had teachers who supported me and encouraged me and just made me feel feel very welcome in our schools I I also though um made a connection in our community and um it really wasn't until about I I think two two years ago I kind

of put my finger on um why I love to do what I do and why it's so important for me to do it here uh we had to do an assignment as part of our Lynch leadership program and we had to talk we had to develop an understanding and be able to communicate our moral imperative um and just you know why we come to work and I think that people um throughout their careers I'm sure plenty

of people here have had to as part of um their educational Journey kind of identify what it is they want to do and why and I felt like I kind of skated through that assignment repeatedly um okay but so but as part of this assignment in terms of moral imperative um I I kind of I was able to put my finger on it and um I was able to really

nail it down and and be able to talk about being able to dream with dignity because I had a person um in my life who allowed me to do that who um was my my life was very M very different from um the life he was um providing for his children and um I was welcomed into a home and I was made part of a family um that recognized my family and

appreciated my family and helped me appreciate my family in a way that made me know that I could want more for myself without forgetting who I was that's what I really want to do for all students in Fall River of you know on a on a whole diverse um spectrum of of upbringing um and resources is is help kids support kids to grow really grow get better be better cou more Dr curly a couple more seconds

okay but in a way that really pays tribute and is respectful of where they came from so thank you thank you it was our error we didn't tell you'd be on a 4-minute timer okay so if you hear the timer we will give you a little bit of an extended time okay you're welcome um uh please provide your philosophy in budgeting and provide us with what with what your priorities would be in the farest

schools I think it's imperative that we identify our values um and that we fund all of the things that we say we're going to prioritize and then within that structure I think we have to look at what resources are most important to us and I would say that our people are what's most important to us and then when we think about people we think about people who are providing Direct Services in the places where that that

that we are prioritizing and so when we think about student groups when we think about specific initiatives um we think about first the people um and then the overall structures in which um those people are working and for us in the fall of public schools you know we certainly are are are prioritizing and I would and and I believe that we should prioritize student groups that are um

that have been marginalized historically and for whom our data says you know we have not we have not done um all that we need to do in terms of providing support for students and ensuring that they have Equitable access to opportunities in our district for us we know that that's our English Learners and it is our students with disabilities thanks uh next question Shelley per thank you Dr Curley um some recent

surveys show that approximately 55,000 various educational positions open Nationwide the teacher shortage is not just a for of problem but a national crisis Educators reporting causes varying from lack of support unrealistic expectations classroom safety and pay why do you feel there what what do you feel are the reasons for the teacher shortage and what experience do you have in recruiting and retaining Educators in

educational staff lastly knowing our district do you have any ideas to bring forth that can help us recruit um and retain new staff as well as support the staff we have yes so since you know since I've been in the district certainly we've talked about Recruitment and and retainment of staff and I've seen um strategic plans and I've seen annual plans that identify this very thing as something um on which

we on which we have to focus and I think that we've gotten better at doing some of the things that we we've said we were going to do in terms of deepening our Partnerships with with local um colleges in terms of identifying and um developing some programming so that we can you know maybe if we've identified some people with with promise really but that we're able to put them on the right

track and in hopes that they are going to remain with us and we make the education affordable and um and you know we make the right introductions and get them into the right programming programs but it hasn't been enough where we've seen success though in the district and I think it's it's something that we need to really drill down with um tap into and then see how we go full scale with

it is really around very personal recruiting um and doing it in a way that is is selling our schools to people so we have principles in the district who do it so well they're out in you know wherever they are they're beating the pavement in terms of you know what Fall River has to offer what they are going to do to support teachers and those are schools that are recruiting people and

they're retaining people they're not seeing high levels of turnover here in the district I mean I do think that we have to get very focused on some pay structures that help us to recruit people but that is that's only going to go so far maybe it's a signing bonus maybe there are there's a stip that's paid annually to people in high needs positions people won't stay for that and I think you've identified in the

question you know lack of um support unrealistic expectations so we have to simultaneously build something within the district and we are building it um in terms of new teacher support so we have a system that you know is really um getting more formalized where schools are building new teacher support programs and then the district is doing the same we've had teachers say at our new teacher you know I talked to some

people like what made you show up why you here today what brought you to this new teacher support session teachers are reporting that they are they feel supported in their schools but they want to meet other new teachers so now they're coming to the district pieces so I I think it just has to have arms I think it has to live in our uh you know a multi-year strategic plan in a way

that is not just um we're going to do better at this and we're going to measure this but to identify the concrete steps that we'll take and understand that is a like a multifaceted multi-year plan where these are the things we can do now these are the things that we're going to do next and then this is what's coming a year two three down the road thank you uh next question Tom

Corey hi Dr kly how are you hello so my next question is is surrounding uh alternative education um would you be an advocate and in support of fall Riv alternative middle and high school the Robert madas resiliency Preparatory Academy when it comes to the curriculum when it comes to physical plant and when it comes to possible chapter 74 grants to enhance the Hands-On component to skills

learning yes um so I I I do think that alternative education for me is something that um you know we do well in in in some places and I think that there are some components to what some people might think of as alternative um in other districts we see as part of how we do business even in what we would consider a traditional setting right and so we've got the CTE Pathways and we've

got after dark and we've got an evolved program and we've got early college and we've got dual enrollment and we've got all these things and then we have an alternative high school and so that to me sits out there as something um I don't know almost like it doesn't need to be right in in terms of being different from what we're already building out in a traditional setting there has to be something alternative

about it right there there are some for some students a large Comprehensive High School is not the right pathway but it doesn't mean that within an alternative setting we can't build similar Pathways it doesn't mean that you know at a resiliency there aren't students who absolutely should be participating in an early college program or that they shouldn't be have the same kinds of

access to CTE programming so I just see it as you know it's an alternative site and there will be some Alternatives there that we're not offering um at a larger Comprehensive High School but I do think that we need to have some similar Pathways at the alternative site so yes thank you uh next question um Sarah Rogers okay so my question isn't on the question sheet there because we wanted

to make room for social emotional learning so it's a little bit of a shift so here in FL River we have roughly a 30 33% special ed rate and about a third of those kids are placed in sub separate classrooms so what's your experience with creating and implementing inclusive practices for students in General Ed classrooms and then how have you specifically worked to dismantle those systems of sub separate placements as

the norm to promote um the inclusion of all students and then how would you or how do you dismantle those often siloed approaches to special ed okay I can summarize that if it's easier too yeah no I I I I get the gist and if I miss a part of it you can redirect me but I do think so you you've identified what we all know as you know

a I'll call it a problem right that we have here and it certainly exists in other places um in my experience it it really it comes down to making sure that we have built into you know students plans visioning for what will happen most immediately and what a a longer term vision is for students and so I think the most important thing is that we are including students where it

makes sense in terms of the growth of the student and that we're not including students in ways that don't um that aren't enhancing their experience because I think that sometimes what happens is we we might put students into a situation um where they're not successful we haven't provided the supports um there hasn't been enough communication between special Educators and general classroom teachers and then

it doesn't work out and it was like oh now we're going back and we're going to a restricted environment that is is not is not necessarily um the correct longer term placement for a student so you know right now we're we're prioritizing classroom settings General classroom settings where we're trying to lower class sizes so that we have that we're not having kind of this midyear oh we're looking to we want to

include this student or this group of students and someone says sorry no room and now we're scrambling to try to make um to create a setting that doesn't exist so I think it comes down to uh preparation for like you're committing to it it's about like getting an entire Community to have that vision and to commit to that kind of programming so that we are planning for it and we do

have um that there are plans in place so I I think for some students that happens um in you know as part of the day in a social setting and maybe we start by integrating students during morning meeting or we're doing it in a way where there is in you know still in more intensive support around some AC mics where someone is accompanying student a student into an inclusion setting it's about meeting the needs of

the individual student and and building a system that's ready for that thanks thank you um next question uh Kevin agar I thought it was gonna be Bobby but oh I'm sorry my mistake you are correct Mr agar I'm sorry Bobby Bobby Bailey I skipped you he's quiet during your tenure as a leader can you name any specic specific specific initiatives or programs that you've implemented or plan to implement to

promote cultural Proficiency in the district um yes so I mean right now we're in you know we're in the midst of um this very kind of planning um and and it's not it's not wasn't new today or anything but it's fresh in my mind because you know we were we were talking about it this morning um really having a vision for what it means to to for individual for our entire district and

for individual schools to be welcoming and supportive environments for students and for their families so having a vision defining that for people and then spending very concrete time um we have an admin Institute coming up and we have some schools that are doing this so well they're doing it well they're um they're they've developed programs where they are truly working with families and and

they're able to do that that because they have um they've done the work on individual on individual teachers in their schools and on a school as a whole one thing that we've identified potentially as a um as a barrier for us right now is that I'm going to be quick because I have four minutes but we one thing that we've identified as a barrier as part of our mve toward cultural

proficiency that was part of why we were getting high quality materials into teachers hands right so that we our kids could see themselves in our materials we'd be able to provide them with experiences that played to people strengths and things like that but we hadn't done the work really of of maybe removing um people's personal biases personal barriers to actually implementing the curriculum well and so

you know right now we're planning on you know a little bit of you know a step back so that we can make sure that as we are adding resources that we're developing programs that we have you know Buy in but investment um of our staff and so that's that's our most immediate plan we've got so many resources in place and we know that we have to work on you know ourselves as

adults and as a school community so that we are making the most of the resources that we do have um uh Now Kevin it's not a thank you it's not a secret that for has struggled with academic achievement our overall data shows that we are barely getting back to pre-co achievement levels which were not adequate to to begin with can you explain any specific situations where you were instrumental

in quote unquote moving the needle to improve academic achievement data in an urban school system yes so I think that I would agree that overall it's it's acknowledged um and we and we talk about it all of the time how when the state was really encouraging districts to get back to pre pandemic and we were like yeah we're getting back there we're not losing ground we're actually we're gaining some

ground of getting back to 2019 that that isn't where we wanted to be in 2019 and it's certainly not where we want to be as we're coming out of 2024 so I think that um my my my part um my being instrumental has really come in in the form of laying the groundwork do I think that things that we are going to start seeing an acceleration of learning absolutely we have spent time and resources

um either through our local budget or through grants um where we as I've said we're getting the high quality instruction materials in people's hands we're seeing moves in teacher practice that we know are going to translate to changes in student outcomes we have data you know from this year it um where we've been able to support some granted Grant they were Grant funded but Grant

funded opportunities um where we where we got in on the ground floor of high dosage tutoring um and a lot of work around early literacy where I feel like in Fall River we've been talking science of reading um long before it was like the thing in Massachusetts and we're seeing gains we're seeing gains at some of our neediest schools where we're looking at um oral reading fluency data

that says that that we have not seen before coming out of some of these first grade classrooms and um do I think I've Been instrumental in that yes because I think that um I am I'm working with I'm working alongside um in leading a team of educators of Administrators who um have dedicated themselves to doing the work and as the leader of that team I do feel like I've had a part in all of it

can I just clarify about and also open it up to any other situations that you've ever been in your entire educational career didn't have to be just now I didn't know if the question didn't articulate that but anytime in your career have you had data that uh you've moved the needle with on academic achievement I I didn't want it to just be now that's all I mean I certainly um

we'll always come back to this but I think that in general in Fall River we've what we've seen is um making making strides in in pockets and so in Fall River as an administrator have I been part of some of those moves where we where we've started to make some gains absolutely and certainly as a classroom teacher I know that I was not a teacher in Fall River but certainly as

a classroom teacher um I do feel like I was instr m al in um the gains of individual students and and in classes thank you sure um next question Shelley Pereira we know that diversity and inclusion in the workplace promotes creative problem solving better decision making as well as increasing productivity and decreasing staff turnover rate Fall River serves a deserved population a diverse population

and we aim to promote diversity inclusion and Equity throughout about the district can you tell me what you believe the difference between equal and Equitable and do you have strategies planned to execute in the district to promote equity in all of our classrooms lastly can you give us an example of when you have promoted diversity and inclusion in your workplace please explain barriers you had to overcome and

if and how the outcome was beneficial to the group okay so um in terms of the difference between equal and equitable I think about you know it's the it's the difference between giving everybody the same or giving everyone what they need so that they can they have an opportunity to achieve the same so I I think what we've been most focused on what I've been Mo most focused on is really about

um you know Equitable outcomes through removing barriers to access I think that that's been the focus um um when we think about promoting equity in all of the classrooms I mean we certainly have we've we've made some of those moves I've mentioned the high quality instructional materials we know 100% that the materials are they're part of a foundation and they were a first step for us in terms of making sure everybody

was getting um just the high quality resources in the hands of teachers and so that the students could make so that we could hold students to high expectations in terms of grade level work so that there was that standard there for grade level work um an example of promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace um are you speaking specifically around adults yes okay um I think

that I'm skipping over to the next part in terms of barriers to overcome and so I don't know that they're connected but I think that for me I've promoted it um certainly within my team but I know that it's not a hard cell with my team and I know that I work with people who are dedicated to the same kind of work and and see the same kind of value but I

think that when we and and we and it comes through in terms of talking about who we're recruiting how we're recruiting and then how we're supporting people so certainly one of the things that we've identified um is the fact that we don't always have stu um teachers and and other staff who mirror um the demographics of our students and I'll be honest with you we came across um some questions last year from

candidates who asked us um who wanted to know what are the numbers like how many people of color do you have that are principles how many people of color do you have that are administrators and teachers and that really it was something we'd been talking about to but to be asked that question um by one of our candidates we it was a very real moment for us in realizing that as we are trying to

recruit people we have to be very attentive to how we're retaining people and to make sure that we have supports in place for people and that people do have um peers because just like our students are looking for people like them I think we have adults who want to know that they're part of a community that values um the diversity continue thank you you good yeah okay thank you next question Mimi

lar Fall River is a very large and complex uh Urban District please tell us a little about your leadership style and how you will motivate and Inspire our Fall River Public School staff to achieve their best performance so over time and certainly since I came to Fall River I think I've taken on a much more um distributed leadership style where I recognize that I am not the person who can get it all

done and I think that that's something that absolutely has evolved over time for me I think it's about um recruiting team members and retaining team members who aren't necessarily likeminded in terms of uh their practice or the way they go about business but they're like-minded in terms of what um you know what we envision and what the goals we have for our students and for our staff so for me my my leadership

really right now comes from um looking to empower people I think that I I have respect for people on my team they have respect for me um much of the way we do business is around larger collaborative meetings and we've become much more collaborative I would say over the last two years where people are sharing in the work across departments and um so we meet in larger groups and then I meet

with people individually so and that's a time for us to talk about you know data that they're Gathering and you know you know around their specific projects what they're doing in terms of their annual goals and um and then encouraging people really to for as I think about um inspiring people I think the one thing that we've all gotten better at in the last couple of years is really around you know our own

vulnerability and ability to ask questions and to raise our hands during meetings and um and say I want to know more about that it doesn't always come in the form of someone at the table educating it comes in the form of sharing resources and and really encouraging people to to go out and do some of the work and so I feel like I inspire people to do that because

that's what I do and it hasn't um I think it's something that has been that has motivated um people on our team to do the same thank you thank you um next question Tom Cory so Dr Curley could you share your philosophy in uh building relationships with the many agencies in our community that provide services which in turn affect our school children and their families I think the Partnerships

are so important um I think that as we think about ourselves as part of a larger community in this city we have this we have this task as as a department as a school department um to educate children the the academic education is our primary task and it would be it's it'd be wonderful to think that any of us could take on this idea that like well they have to come to us

ready to learn and if they're not ready to learn I mean what are we supposed to do nobody here does that but in order to help students and support students in their Readiness to learn we do absolutely depend on out side agencies so when I think about a philosophy I think it of it as a i it's it's it's a need we're all part of this like larger um this larger organism and and we and

we need them really and so the one thing I would say is that I think we are very good in Fall River um in terms of schools reaching out to agencies and agencies reaching out to us schools reaching out to different departments in the district and then sometimes we're reaching out to them I think we we likely need to take stock of all of those different Partnerships do a you know a a kind of a deeper

review of what part different agencies are already playing and then what other resources they have so that we can take a much more comprehensive approach Not Duplicate the kinds of services unless it's necessary because we just PL need more help um so I I just think that in terms of you mentioned a philosophy and for me it's it's really just more of a um it's just how we have to do business and that

we that we want to do business because we're all serving the same children the same families and um all reaching you know toward the same goals thank you uh next Sarah Rogers okay so social emotional learnings become a bit of a buzzword but there's not always a good understanding of what that actually means in action so how do you make sure that the design and implementation ofal special education and core general

education instruction align with the goals with the values the priorities of the district and then can you describe a time where you've successfully facilitated that coordination among those stakeholders and then how do you promote that shared vision and overcome barriers across those departments so how is it how is it all um how is it all aligned how is that instruction all aligned right amongst

those departments and then how specifically how have you facilitated that coordination and then how do you overcome barriers and and share that Vision among those groups okay so right now our we have a teaching and learning team that meets every week and at the table I will say that in the past at that table was a teaching and learning team right maybe an assistant superintendent along with um directors

from various departments when we get together now as a teaching and learning team we have three assistant superintendents at the table and we have all of our departmental directors and so we are doing that work right now of of of doing what you described um taking a look at what's this idea of social emotional learning I mean it's really about making sure we talk about social emotional needs right which kind of

triggers this idea that like we want our kids to have something that they don't like there's something missing but really it's part of the way we we we we learn and grow as as a people as a community and so we talk about social emotional learning um for teachers we talk about it for students and right now the focus is how are we getting how are we making that happen in schools in a

way that doesn't just live in morning meeting it doesn't live in a social group or a Lunch Bunch but it is part of how we are educating our students so that when we think about academic routines we're building in an opportunity for some relationship building within there we're we're building in um opportunities for students to reflect on how they are participating in a group and what role

they play and we're setting up those structures as as part of teaching and learning so that we're not operating in terms of a special education department someone who's overseeing social emotional learning someone who is you know very concerned with the um you know how how we're addressing or how we are viewing different types of diversity in classrooms and so as the um assistant

superintendent some people would say I'm part of the team of three assistant superintendents but for me I feel like it is something that's coming out of um coordination through teaching and learning that um that this is happening thank you um I have the next question um obviously for struggles with student attendance can you think of some Innovations or some things you'd like to

try to improve student attendance in for yeah so I mean I would say that I am very lucky to be part of a team of people um who are very focused on that and so everybody knows that Dr b um has really taken attendance on and we are seeing huge gains um some of that is by doing some things that we've talked about over time but um they're happening

now and and what we've done um is you know being a we've been able to tie some of the attendance pieces you know using some things that we have going on in schools academically to drive attendance um we recognize that at you know some of the lower grades whether or not a student attends is not necessarily their choice right they have parents who um are or not able to get them out in into

a building in the morning and when kids miss the bus it's a you know that sometimes is the difference between attending or not attending so uh you know a lot of the work that we're trying to do even around the academic piece is that communication with parents so you know some of the things with we're doing with early literacy and tutoring now we work with um we're working with an organization that says hey this only

works if kids show up right we need to see this percent percentage of attendance or this particular thing is going to work so part of what we're doing right now and what I think we need to do is communicate with families um as students are coming up you know through those Elementary grades and certainly in kindergarten when attendance you know doesn't quote unquote count um but it does because that's where kids build

habits it's around that um consistent communication with families and and really the idea is by classroom teachers not not by someone in the office and not by automated call but by having individuals reach out to families to say your student wasn't here today we missed your student this is what your student missed and we do have that opportunity in terms of some of our programming um to be able to have

conversations with with parents to say here's what they miss and here's the impact that it's having on your student learning and we're getting traction there where we're seeing student attendance increase um and we attribute it to that collaboration with families thank you um Bobby Bailey without jeopardizing sensitive information can you describe a time when you specifically had to make a difficult

decision that involved working closely with the school committee and how did you approach the

process um I would say that in my experience um to be honest with you there's always been somewhat of a buffer between um me and a school committee um as a you know as a member of a school council that that um had to um you know go before school committee with school Improvement plans or as a principal or even in my current role um I don't know where the opportunities um have

been necessarily for for me to make a difficult decision um that involved working with school committee but I think I would say that the way if I have a couple minutes um to talk about it is I think the way to do it really is around um you know structures for communication um and an ongoing an ongoing dialogue that happens um certainly within the you know within the confines the structures the regulations

of how that communication takes place but to be able to share um information as appropriate that will that puts kind of all parties on an equal playing field right so I feel like um if I'm making a difficult decision and working closely with the school committee it's the school committee is going to have the same information that I have um as the superintendent and you know kind of the

CEO of the schools I'm someone that would be entrusted um with the school committee to be you know a partner somebody that whose opinion is valued and so I know that a lot of decisions um when we're dealing with school committee the ultimate decision is by the school committee but the idea is to establish myself as a as a trusted competent educator um with informed opinions that people could look to and um take into

consideration when um all of you are making your decis decisions thank you um Kevin a what is your philosophy on curriculum choice and how would you ensure that the chosen curriculum is working for all students and being implemented with Fidelity and secondly how do you plan to ensure that the pro that the programs that we purchase are fully utilized in all schools so we've come a long way I'd say

in the last few years in terms of um building con disty across schools and um it's it's not without push back right so I think that um we're look and I and I mentioned this a little bit before where in some cases potentially we have we we did put the cart before the horse and we we said to people here's this curriculum um it's really good we and we did we

vetted it we we've gone through Pilots we've we got some very positive feedback from teachers and then once you go to full implementation and teachers are feeling like they don't have much choice in the matter um it starts to get really uncomfortable and so we've we I mean we we've gone out we we have individual meetings with schools we've met with individual teachers um some of that is a

listening tour because we're learning about where people are um coming up against it in terms of implementation or where people are coming up against it in terms of whether or not um they feel it is having the desired impact with with all students um but the message for us has remained the same that we are we build it into our um instructional priority we've done it for the past few

years where we're saying you you know we're we're going to work within this framework we're going to support you around implementation of this product and we feel pretty confident that we can do that because we did vet it um so well because we did get feedback along the way because we didn't just pick something um and feel like it was going to work we depended on research um we looked at data and now

when I think what we've done is taken some of the guesswork potentially out of whether or not um this is a a problem with curriculum or if it's something where teachers just need more support or if it's we have uh you know are rethinking around the kind of support that we're that we're providing for people so I think we're we're certainly operating right now where we're asking people to

implement um with Integrity where we're we we're saying hey we we don't know we don't know all there is to know about how these different pieces can be leveraged so we're doubling down on making time for doing that supporting teachers during planning time to examine the resources um get a really deep understanding of all everything that's built into individual curricular resources and um in supporting them to

do it and so when we're going into classrooms we're always collecting data on whether or not people are using the prescribed resources or if they're using something else there's always a follow-up discussion with teachers around a choice that was made to not use and then there's always the discussion around you know some people will say like well I needed this because our resources don't provide that there's

always that opportunity taken to bring people back to the resources so that we can identify for them and support them because it's there it's there for the use uh Mr AG like we talked about fairness you would ask the human resource question we do have a little time you want to follow up now and then we'll ask the other members thank you we've had some instances here of Staff being mistreated or treated

inappropriately here in the fall Public Schools uh please explain how you would hold staff accountable for making sure they're not mistreating others as well as what can you bring to the table related to human resources in general sure I mean I think the you know first and foremost um you know I as the um the leader of a school district um would have to model the behavior that I want

to see from other people in terms of um my treatment of them my respect for them um the the ways in which I value um what people are bringing to the table um certainly when there are instances and and and I I know of instances where people um where people are mistreated it it requires action it requires an appropriate kind of reprimand it doesn't just um require a conversation I don't

think I think it requires more than that I think that we um you know we have to show I think about it in terms of the what we do with um even with students and running that parallel if we can't Mo if we can't show students that we support them by standing up for for them um we we'll lose them right because we're giving permission to people to for people to mistreat I feel the same way

about staff we we have a responsibility to protect our staff and sometimes I admit it will it takes protecting staff from other staff members and I think that we have to do everything that we can to ensure that it doesn't happen again and depending on the situation I mean there there are a range what I don't think it requires is just having a conversation I think that it has to we

have to document it in a way that when it comes up again we recognize it as cumulative we recognize it as a pattern of behavior um and that we where we are in a position to do something about it Ian that's that's it so there was the second part to the question second question was just what can you bring to the table related to anything related to HR Human Resources so I've never worked

in human resources but I think that um you know in in in any of my roles um there certainly you know there is an element to human resources and an element to the way um you treat people you work with um the people that you work for the people who are working for you and so I think that I I treat people fairly um I treat people in a way that I want to be

treated and um and I in in the way that I operate um on my team I hold people I have high expectations for the way people treat each other and um and I'm not you know I feel like I'm a resource I will say this I certainly have had people on my team um in the past few years who have come and said like I can't do this can't work with this

person can't I'm not getting anywhere I you know I don't want to collaborate I don't think it's going to go anywhere and I have been able to um facilitate Improvement in that area and um I think that we are a pretty high functioning team thank you uh you have a few minutes left unless someone has a question would you like uh would you like to wrap up with tell us a little bit about yeah I

already talked so long at the beginning but I will say this I mean um I talked a little bit about this when um I interviewed with the original panel I think that um some people see that my um being um from fallover and having worked in fallover for 15 years um is an asset and I think that um there are other people um on this committee or out in the community who see that as um less

than an asset so I I think that I really want to make clear that um I am an individual I do bring to the table my own strengths um that I feel like I've been able to leverage as part of a team and I know that I'll be able to leverage as um a leader in the district um I I think it's a matter of I I think I'm asking people to recognize that um I'm

asking people to recognize that you know my being here is an asset because I do have the lay of the land um but mostly because I do know that I do know and I recognize that there are areas in which we need to improve and I know that we have a team um that I can leverage to make sure that we're addressing those areas and I don't I guess I don't want people to

um I don't know to say like this is a person who's played a part in a district that I think is failing or we think is failing I'm asking people to take a look at the places in which we are gaining um some steam and ID and being able to identify the ways in which we are accelerating our practices um and our performance and our outcomes for students and um you know to give me a

chance to get the work done thank you okay thank you Dr kly thank you than you Dr curly thank you thank you all right so just five 10 minutes we 20 okay so we'll take about another 10 minute break right now and then we'll so we'll Recon uh 6:20 at 6:10 uh there's some snacks in the back room I'm going to out to Diamond you going out there we can go out that way Bobby I

got I got to go to bathroom Okay um yeah we'll be back here by 620 hopefully back we're back out of recess our next uh candidate for superintendent Elizabeth the G welcome um your first question you'll get um will come from Mimi larav hi nice to see you again nice to see you uh could you share with us uh a bit of your yourself uh Beyond what's on your resume and please tell us why Fall

River why now just hold on one second I forgot to say it's one hour interview we're timing it roughly four minutes for an answer would be good again it's a shotgun thank you thank you all right thank you there we go so I have been in education this my 31st year um I started out in Central Falls uh school system went to University of Rhode Island um after that that went up to uh Central Falls and

that was my first teaching experience physical education and health I fell in love with the urbans I fell in love with Central Falls um I was there for 20 years uh I went through race to the top I went through the Takeover um I know what it's about I know what urban life is about and I loved every minute of it and I would have went back to Central Falls if my mother did not um have

dementia and I moved back to New York and I took over a school district in um uh Upstate New York and White Hall I stayed there for about a year and a half almost two years and my mother passed away and I had an opportunity to come back to mass took over school district uh East Bridgewater um it was a school that was $2.2 million in the hole and I came back I've always been a change

agent I've always been someone that comes in and fixes things or someone that looks at a problem as the uh looking for a solution I'm not there to be a problem I want to help I want to support I commit and I get the job done we went in um asked the uh the unions to hold on uh they were all in negotiations at the time I asked them to just hold on

for me so that I could get in there we didn't lay off anybody um since then I have had successful contracts with the ebea Teachers Association the administrative assistant assistant principles pair of professionals we call them teacher instructional assistants um and I just uh just last night or two nights ago just finished with the teamers and custodians I love public education I want to be with kids and I

want to be with teachers all the time and when you ask about who I am if people if you'd ask people say would say she loves kids wants to be with kids and wants to fix what we need to do for schools to make them better my father was a teacher for 304 years my mother was a teacher for 35 years so public education is where I come from and every child deserves an opportunity and access

but I also want to change the way we do things with teachers we need to support them we need to commit with them and we need to strategize with them uh to continue our roles and that's why after 9 years in East bridgew I have I am in a current contract I was asked to stay for another five years in a current contract I saw F River Public Schools come

up I looked into it and I said this is a bigger Central Falls this is you can continue for a little bit yeah and when I looked in further and deeper into Fall River I said this is it I want to be I I I want to go to Fall River as I walked around East Bridgewater today and looked at my kids and talked to my principles uh two weeks ago or

three weeks ago whenever we had our last interview um I don't think anybody wants me to leave it's emotional but yet this is a this is for me an opportunity to be in a place that I could do some good good I know I could do good and I want to be part of the solution not part of the problem and I think Fall River is is on the cusp of just taking off and and just

being just terrific great thank you thank you uh the next question is from me um provide your philosophy for budgeting and what your priorities are when you're setting a budget so my philosophy is I I need to have a reliable predictable and sustainable budget I need to be able to make sure that I can sustain contractual obligations but also support students in the classroom I need to make sure that how

we provide and how we commit to our teachers that we have professional development we have uh um good good schools clean schools I saw the capital plan um I'm building a new school right now I've done some other things in that area but my philosophy in budgeting is really is to get a sustainable predictable reliable budget that is not all over the place and that I look at what's important we put plans

in place what where are we in the curriculum cycle where are we in our Capital cycle where are we in our professional development what do we need for professional development you don't know what you don't know until I get in here and understand what Fall River needs but the budget process it's a process It's a Grind it starts early in the year and it takes the whole year um for a

superintendent and the the uh I have a finance uh business administrator we work very closely together we're talking all the time we look at salary we look at professional development we look at curriculum instruction we know this year in East Bridgewater we know this is going to be a big year it's uh comes up English when you're doing English it's it's K through 12 and it's a lot of information or a lot of it is a

lot of curriculum it's a lot of instructional strategies it's a lot of things that we need and a lot of professional development so I look at the whole picture I prioritize what the schools need I prioritize what the principles are asking and the leadership is looking for and then I look at what we have um in I look at our Chapter 70 funding I look at what the district is

going to get or what the the the city is going to provide for us I look at our federal grants I look at Grants how many teachers are on grants how many teachers are on the salary uh uh on salary how many teachers are um get stiens those types of things I look at I look at at the beginning what do I start with um and I think my philosophy is get it done with what you

have but also look for opportunities and grants and other opportunities with partnering with other districts um I I started the Early College um South Shore Early College um couple more seconds uh uh we have a Consortium and uh we started I I got together with 11 other school districts and we've we've Pro we've provided grants we've had over I think five uh this year I think a little over 500

students go to early college classes that are in high school I know you have a very vibrant Early College here I've met some of your um guidance counselors at different um events that we've gone in early college so looking at Grants looking at the whole process working with your office as well as working with my office and getting it done thank you thank you um next questions from uh Shelley

Pereira some recent surveys show that there are approximately 55,000 various educational positions open Nationwide the teacher shortage is not just a Fall River problem but a national crisis Educators reporting causes varying from lack of support unrealistic expectations classroom safety and pay what do you feel the reasons offer the teacher shortage and what experience do you have in

recruiting and retaining Educators and educational staff lastly knowing our district do you have any concrete ideas you plan to bring forth to help support the staff we have as well as recruit and retain new staff thank you I think there's a work uh work for shortage in all areas in education it used to be one of the highly most regarded professions that is out there and every first day or every young

teacher I always meet or when I when I bring them on as a teacher that will teach for me I always say you are this is the best profession that you could possibly become be in because because you get to be with kids every day and you get to be with other people who love what they're doing and love kids the best part of retention is if people love it what they are doing in

the district that they are in they will recruit for you they will say come to Fall River be part of this school district be with us we have trouble with it um recruiting we we go to um uh we go to colleges on recruitment days uh we brought back 66 um resumés from uh Bridgewater State and Stonehill College back to East Bridgewater um I also went to um one

that we got a grant um Scott NE from Carver superintendent uh received a grant for um trying to get minority teachers um to teach uh to come and to become into the profession and to teach in in the South Shore and we went down to Plymouth uh three week three weeks ago did not have a great turnout but we did it and if we keep doing it more and more people will see that we want more

more Educators and more diverse Educators um there's a teacher S I do think that I don't know if there's unrealist I do think that Educators say that there's a lack lack of support we need to do a better job of that those that's one thing that I could tell you my teachers and my principles would would never say that they do not have support for me unrealistic expectations I do think that people have unrealistic

expectations in every every part of their their lives um classroom safety and classroom pay I started at $22,000 a year 31 years ago we've come a long way but we also can need to go a little further there are different ways of getting there and there are um opportunities out there for us to pay our teachers raise their salaries along with par professionals along with all all staff in Fall River when I went to East

Bridgewater we um I looked at their contract and I did some I did some some really good things and we are right in the middle now um I think my top step is about 103,000 um I do have some teachers at 109 and 111 at their TOP Step so we have done some really good things I just finished uh um this this week uh with the teamsters we gave a a a good

increase to our custodians uh we have increased pay for our uh who really needed it was our instructional assistance um paying par professional 1617 an hour is not right um we've got them back and we brought that up so those are things that we need to do and I have ideas for Fall River got to end this one gold okay yep very nice next question is from uh School Committee Member Tom

Corey good afternoon Mr well yes good afternoon um as far as alternative education in that area would you be in support of offall river alternative middle and high school the Robert madus resiliency prep Preparatory Academy when it comes to the curriculum that services that population the physical plant itself and possible chapter 74 Grant to enhance the Hands-On component to skills learning

absolutely Universal Design By learning alternative education it doesn't matter how a student gets to the end it matters that they that they have growth if we have an alternative school and where we put them and house them it should look like this beautiful dery high school school it should have 21st century skills and work um opportunities for them to transition out to and with having chapter 74 grants we are very

lucky there is a lot of money in votek and there's a lot of money in Industry right now especially in manufacturing and with the grants that are being offered through Desi and in chapter 74 there is so much we could do there's so much that uh Fall River could do um with students who need alternative education doesn't mean that they need to be someplace else it doesn't need to be out but transitioning them in to a

career transitioning them uh to understand listen you got we got to get you through here and we got to work together to get you through here be part of the program be part of the solution and let's figure out what you want to do um you have Decap here so early on in students education we find out what what do you want to do where do you want to be in

life what's your career look like and when we start doing those things over time we're all going to change our minds five or six times um and an alternative student will do the same but an alternative student deserves opportunity and access like any other student and chapter 74 is a great way to get there with the grants and the money that is offered thank you thank you um next question um Sarah Rodricks

so mine isn't going to look like what's on the sheet so if you need me to repeat it sure and I talk really fast so you know feel free so here in Fall River we have roughly a 30 33% special ed rate and of that about a third of those kids are placed in substantially separate classrooms so what is your experience with creating and implementing inclusive practices for students in gened classrooms and then how have you

specifically worked to dismantle those systems of subpar placements as the norm and promote inclusion of kids and then can you provide specific examples of how you've worked to really dismantle that offens siloed approach to special ed yeah we are totally inclusive in East Bridgewater I do not believe that we need to students deserve direct instruction in math English soci stud in science if they need if we need

instructional assistance in the classroom then they will go with the student to provide support we also want to offer PD to both teachers uh not only special ed uh but our the Gen Ed um math teacher the fourth grade teacher who may not have a special education license but we offer PD so that we can have two teachers work together I started um I think it was five year uh had to be three four five

six four years ago we decided myself and my special education director that we would have no more um sub separate classrooms that we would have access in therapeutic classrooms and sub separate we would sometimes maybe have to um have some quiet time or to REM to bring students and have the sub separate room available so that maybe have to work and and dive into a little bit deeper with a student

but we wanted that student to be with their peers in the classroom for direct instruction and the subber classroom teacher what we started to do we started in sixth uh we started in third uh sixth grade we put two special education teachers on the sixth grade team we put two special uh in our first year in our second year two in the fifth grade two in the fourth grade and we just finished

this last year in third grade I've supported that through the budget process by looking down the road and saying we need to get kids direct instruction and not be in a classroom down the hallway away from their years and even having that allowing that teacher to be in with another teacher to co- te and to have an inclusive classroom and look at Universal Design for Learning be part of the solution and

have everybody working together um we do not we offer therapeutic classrooms we offer access classrooms we have uh I try not I try not to use the old word uh resource um to pull out students but if we need to pull out a student and to support them in their reading or their or their math or they need some extra time on an assessment we certainly do that but we certainly support and i

would support uh looking at that model here and saying how do we get this done how do we get all students in all classrooms it's called direct instruction we we've got to get kids all students take the same mcast all students take the same assessment if you take them out of there H how do they know what's what's coming if we're if we're using the they using the same math book or they use the same

English so those are things that I would need to look at designed uh work with special education uh work with the programming directors and find out what do we do now and and how do we move it down the line we've done that in East Bridgewater uh we've done it at our high school we've done it at our intermediate school or middle school grades three through six we have now started out in our

elementary schools we do the same as well in our elementary school Central Elementary so we've done it I've done it I've been involved in that and um I believe in it thank you thank you um next question but uh Bobby Bailey during your tenure as a leader can you name any specific initiatives or programs that you've implemented or plan to implement to promote cultural Proficiency in the district

we've done a lot on in Dei it's on my goals it's into my evaluation um but one of the things that we have done is we have had a lot of professional development but now we're into train the trainer model is that we want our teachers to understand where their students come from and we want to make sure that who our students are where they come from what they look like that they have somebody else that

and that we understand that or they have someone that looks and comes from the same um neighborhood and in Central Falls this was this is something I did um I implemented um a community walk and it was at the middle school when I was the Middle School principal and we went out and we visited homes and my teachers my staff got to visit where their children their students lived and we got to walk the streets and

we went to people's homes and we said hello and when you go to someone's home and you see where a child is coming from you have an opportunity to say wow I didn't know that about him I didn't know that about her and your eyes open up and you say okay I need to do things differently or I can do things differently um we have uh our our professional development at East

Bridgewater um we brought in um uh Dr khis warnham she is working with our um Administration and our teachers and teach the teach uh uh we are teacher the teach model a teaching model um or train the trainer model where our teachers are now starting to train other teachers in in how to work with all students um when we talk about cultural proficiency I don't look at it as um as

just race or one one Avenue I look at it as everything the culture of your building if you love it and you want to be here and you're committed to it then the culture feels and everybody is going to row in the same direction so I would think that that would be if you want to talk about culture that's where I would come from thank you uh next question is from uh Kevin

agar it is not a secret that Fall River has struggled with academic achievement over our overall data shows that we are barely getting back to pre-co achievement levels which were not adequate to begin with can you please explain any specific situations where you were in instrumental in quote unquote moving the needle to improve academic achievement data in an urban system Central Falls um I did a few

things um in Central Falls at the middle school um we separated everybody into teams um we had we offered support and we committed a lot of financial dollars to that middle school and what we did is we put students on teams we had um special education teachers on the team the the kids were in inclusive classrooms then um and they they moved around in a team and it was all about

success when I find it that in Central Falls I became the high school principal I opened up the nth great Academy there was a building that we were that housed no one I asked the superintendent at the time can I take over that building she said why do you want to do that I said I want to offer academic achievement opportunity and success to nth graders we have a high dropout rate for these ninth graders

they don't want to come to school we have excessive absences we have a tardiness in our ninth graders that's where you find them feeling their oats and they want to they want to leave we opened up a nth grade academy we called it the Renaissance Academy rebirth they got done with e8th grade they came out of a school that we that we hugged them every day at the m at the uh at

calut middle school and when I met hug we they knew that they were cared about we had a 98% attendance rate we were we were a turning points or Carnegie Unit School um at Kell cut Middle School in Central Falls as I was the principal we were one of the number one Urban middle schools on the East Coast while I was there our attendance we increased it by offering we were there in the morning we

were there in the afternoon I offered stiens for people to stay after school and people just started staying kids stayed we stayed everybody felt the culture was about success to be successful when we opened up the n9th grade academy we had a guidance counselor there we had was an adjustment counsel then and social workers would in we we call them social workers we had um the students got individual attention

every day and they were on teams we'd go to their house and get them if they weren't there we offered breakfast we offered lunch we offered after school um they still had gym we walked down to the YMCA we offered swimming to kids that never knew how to swim we would go down the YMCA I got a program with the YMCA down the street um because the nth grade academy we took over over Broad Street

Elementary to achieve for students to achieve they need to feel that they can and that our teachers want them to achieve and that they feel that their teachers are here for them and that's where as a superintendent of schools that's my job my job is to support if you saw my organizational chart uh I sit at the bottom of the organizational chart my job is to hold it up with support and when

students are low achieving we need to figure out why is it our curriculum is it our instruction is it not enough professional development what do we need to do are our teachers not happy okay thank you um next question Shelley perau so we know that diversity inclusion in any workplace promotes creative problem solving better decision- making as well as increasing productivity and decreasing staff

turnover rate Fall River serves a deser a diverse population and we aim to promote diversity inclusion and Equity throughout the district can you tell me what you believe the difference between equal and Equitable and do you have strategies planned to execute in the district to promote equity in all our classrooms lastly can you give us an example of when you have promoted diversity and inclusion in your

workplace please explain any barriers you had to overcome and if and how the outcome was beneficial to the group what I believe the difference between equal and Equitable not everything is equal to everybody but we want everybody to have opportunity access to everything that we offer so it may not feel equal to everyone at the same time but the Equitable it but we will offer opportunity access to everyone

uh equity in all classrooms is about I I I don't know what I don't know about Fall River so when you ask me that question I would have to say to you I need to get in here I need to be in the classrooms I need to walk around I need to listen I need to talk to teachers I need to hear from them that's probably one of my better

qualities is that I go out and I listen to teachers and I work with them and I need to know what's going on in the classroom so I can help and support how do I promote diversity and inclusion in your workplace everybody in East Bridgewater has opportunity and access to every program to every sports team if we offer if a child wants to take an AP class he can take or she can take an AP class

we try to do and give kids everything that they need and to be supported to be successful I think it's that important that I put it in as a goal on my evaluation and right now we're working on sort of of what that will look like and what who will do the audit and how what what the scope of the audit will be and maybe that's something that we would

need to do in Fall River so I could know what we need to do and I would be I would be um remiss if I were to come right across and say I know what Fall River needs because I'm not in here because you got to get in here and you got to weed it out and you got to think about it and you got to you got to listen and then you can make things happen

um I think the barriers that we all overcome is communication is we don't communicate well enough with each other and we don't communicate well enough with parents at times and we don't communicate with the at large community and tell them what we're doing and why we're doing it and I think that's something that I have learned and that have tried to um get take those barriers down and to

be I don't like the word transparent because not everything is transparent but everybody should know everything that's going on but I like when parents call me and say can I come in and see you or I have an issue I always go back to the the principal first I don't do it myself um I tell you this I I when you talk about overcoming barriers when people uh call uh email me

I call them right back and when the principal emails me I don't email back I go down to their school so when you talk about barriers I don't know what they are yet I can tell you what I've done in Central Falls and I can tell you what I've done in East Bridgewater but here you'd have to get in here you got to dig and then you work with each

other and you make it happen and you keep moving forward and forward and forward oh thank you uh next question is from Mimi larvey Fall River is a very large and complex Urban District please tell us a little about your leadership style and how you motivate and Inspire our Fall River Public School staff to achieve their best performance communicate get out be involved in the community be involved in

my schools I can't be at everything at every day but I will be in their schools I will be out in the community I will go to um cultural events I will be part of faculty meetings I will go listen I will my leadership style is to support my principles in leadership support my teachers and all staff and to be part of the solution I do not look at my class ever as half

empty it's always half full or three4 full I'm very positive there is nothing so bad that we cannot handle and I've told teachers that have been or have gotten in trouble that have come into my office and all I say is tell me the truth if you went into East bridgew today and you asked one simple thing and said what you know what do you think about Liz they would say never

lie I can get through anything with a student with a parent with a teacher as long as I'm told the truth right off the bat we can get through it my leadership style is commitment to my school district to my faculty and staff and to my student achievement and to their families my leadership style is on there every day I don't think I had a sick day in East Bridgewater I don't think I had a sick

day as a teacher um and I don't think I had a sick day as a principal I'm there every day and as a superintendent I'm there every day I do take a couple of professional I do take my a couple of personal days because I do play golf um and I do go into some tournaments but other than that I'm there every day so um it's collaboration it's trust it's Integrity character is most important important to

me and communication being part of the solution um we can disagree but we can't be disagreeable and that's something that I think that we all need to keep working on as a society thank you thanks uh next question Tom Corey as far as your philosophy in building relationships with the many agencies throughout the community that provides services which in turn affect our school children and their

families absolutely I need to have relationships with the police department with the fire department uh with the DPW with the Community Action um the Coalition groups um the festivals go to Feast listen to um our families be part of the community helps people understand that the commitment from their superintendent is here that she wants to be involved in what's happening and when you talk about

agencies whatever agency I I go to um the Council of Aging and I always go and sit down with with the Council of Aging and talk to them about my budget we have a coffee and I bring coffee and I bring donuts or whatever we bring and we sit down and we have a conversation because they're going to come and vote whether they get picked up in the van and brought up they're going to be

there to vote and they should have an opportunity to understand and have a onetoone conversation um agencies if if we work with uh char schools if we're working with Bristol Community College if we're working with um domestic violent agencies if we're working with what agency whatever agency we're working with I need to go there they don't need to come to me I need to go there so yes will I have will I have

involvement in agencies absolutely thank you thank you um our next question Sarah Rodricks so social emotional learning has become a little bit of a buzzword in education but there's not always a good understanding of what this actually means in action so how do you ensure that the design and implementation ofal special education and core general education instruction align with the goals values and priorities of the

district and then can you describe a time when you've successfully facilitated that coordination and collab collaboration among those stakeholders and then how have you specifically promoted that shared Vision built trusts in that overcoming of barriers across different departments yeah so I think you know we needed social emotional learning before covid Co just Ju Just intensified

it and made us look at it differently and when we came back to school we were we needed to put more adjustment counselors in the needs of our students have grown the amount of supports we had prior and still today probably are not enough for the needs of our students and our families and that's something that goes back to the first question and second question of budgeting you know if

our needs are getting greater in areas how do we get that budget to facilitate and to operate into support for social emotional learning what I think that what we have done um and I've always said this is I not need only we not only need to take care of children we need to take care of the faculty and staff we uh just uh brought in a program care soless to work with us

so that we have um we can call and get on online Zoom uh any one of my teachers or staff and and students can call and and talk to a licensed professional um if we can't get to that student or that adult during the day or in a in a relatively short period we now have an online service for our teachers our staff anybody can call and get 24-hour support that was one initiative that we

brought forward we've had uh professional development in social emotional learning but I really think it comes down to us as people and how we offer and we deliver instruction and if a student has an IEP to go back to your beginning if a student has an IEP they have it for a reason we don't go out and just you know it's not you know you're just not throwing IEPs out

you know we we we there's a process to get an IEP and so if a student sign an IEP then then we need to do something and offer supports for that student and if a student struggles in Reading if he struggles in man managing his time he will get or she will get frustrated and then you you need moreal right so we need to figure out how to work with a child understand what it's

saying in the IEP and offer our faculty and staff strategies how do we get through the day what is the multi-tiered system that we use how do we support students that are frustrated how do we support faculty and and adults that are frustrated um it should be part of every day okay the opening of class should be part of every day thank you thank you uh it's my question next um we're looking for innovative ideas to

help improve student attendance that's a big thing student attendance what have you done what have you done there well des's offering a grant for chronic absenteeism right now we're part of that I signed us up and we don't have we're not a huge chronic absent ISM but I still want to I want to be part of the conversation um I think the biggest thing innovative ways to look at this is

why our students not coming to school find the root of the problem go to their homes get some people uh get staff to um homeschool Liaisons uh to work with students um and figure out why you're not coming to school what don't you like about it what can we what can we help you and what how can we get you here we usually find it starts in about 9th grade 8th 9th grade and attendance

starts to go downhill at that time and then the dropout rate increases between 10th and 10th and 11th grade we know that that's not something that's just started two years ago or in covid that was it's probably been 25 30 years since I've been in education so innovative ideas I think is first of all I I'd like to know more about why they're not coming to school how we get them to

school I don't think a I don't think going to a later time is what we need to do but there are different ways of alternative education and looking at it if you've got chronic absenteeism that student is first of all is the student truant is he uh or tardy is he not coming to school or is he just coming late so that's part of it so do we have an after school program to make up and

catch up on that time and show the student that we're committed to him or her to make sure that they're going to have and move forward into life you can't go late to work you're going to get a job you got to get on time so we have to make sure that we Embrace that and that kids want to come to our schools they want to come to our high schools and so you got to

dig deep you got to look at it we've got to find the people to support it uh in Staffing um and we also need to talk to kids who may have had chronic absenteeism who are graduates and who work now and come back and talk to our students if they're out in the community right now that's probably one of our best ways to talk to uh students that are here now that students that made that turnaround

and said you know what if it wasn't for Mr Smith or Mrs Rodriguez to um you know meet me at the door every morning I would have never gone to school you know it's important if I could have one one teacher with one student every day or have five five one one teacher call five students every day imagine what that would do that would be an Innovative idea and that would be something I would work on

because I think you you receive a call from a teacher who says hey we missed you today not why were you not here and when you're coming back and you miss this and you got to get this done how about everything okay what do you need you need me to come and get you do you want me to send somebody to come and get you so those are things that we need to

change I think and go goes back to Social and emotional are we are we talking the talk can we work with kids and can we get them here and be part of their solution and not part of any of their problem thank you um next next questions from uh Bobby Bailey without jeopardizing uh any sensitive information can you describe a time when you specifically had to make a difficult decision that involved working close

with the school committee and how did you approach the process that's all this chair is as superintendent is there are difficult discussions every day there are difficult decisions that have to be made every day um I just had my my school committee just changed over one of my favorite times is when the change over and a new uh chair comes in the chair comes in and I say how do

you want what do you expect of our communication and how do you want this to work when you ask about decisions with the school committee I think about you know what is your role and what is mine do I need to come to for financial that is the school district over spending are we in a ho do I have to come and tell you something like that and be come in and say gez I I think

I've overspent that should never happen because we I should have communication with the chair and say hey we need to talk and I we need a subcommittee meeting we need to sit down and hash this out um my job is to handle the teachers handle my staff work with students and handle the school district on a day-to-day basis my job with the school committee is to communicate to you what's happening on a

day-to-day basis and what are you looking for what are your expectations as a school committee of me and when you ask me are there difficult decisions absolutely and there are difficult conversations I've had them they're not always easy but they have to be done and that's my job um the person who sits in the superintendent seat the seat never changes it's the person who sits in the seat so policy procedure and

protocols that's what we do it's how you handle them that is the difference between that person so without getting um when you ask how do I approach the process I would go through the chair and talk to the chair and ask what are your expectations and how do you how do you want me to work with you and that's what I did last uh Monday uh with the new chair and I asked him

what his expectations of me and how he wanted me to work with the board was a a school committee so thank you um Kevin agar what is your philosophy on curriculum choice and how would you ensure that the chosen curriculum is working for all students and being implemented with Fidelity and second how do you plan to ensure that the program the programs that we purchase are fully utilized in all schools so

it's a great question so uh my assistant superintendent head of curriculum instruction um we talk about what's happening what direction we're going in what I'd like to see um they bring it back to the professional development team and they talk about math the math program we did math uh I think we're going into ma this this year we're going into math we've hired a math consultant

consultant to work with us we're looking at new curriculum to go k through 12 so that we're seeing the same type of language we're using the same type of book my principles need to be held accountable that the curriculum is going to be used in the classroom that our coaches are going to be held accountable that they're helping teachers do help with the instructional strategies in the

classroom and that when financially when we buy curriculum we're just not going out buying something off the shelf that we bring in three or four or five different companies we let them come in we let them talk to the uh professional development team then we bring these and we have a curriculum facilitator um and we uh bring the curriculum out and we test them out at different grade levels

and we test all of them out throughout a whole year it's a whole here process and the teachers decide along with the professional development committee and along with the assistant superintendent of schools and then I will sit in and weigh in and listen to that and find out is this is this what teachers want if I'm be quite honest if they're not part of the process in buying curriculum

choosing the curriculum they're not going to use it and it's going to be up on the Shelf they're going to go back to there's always you can always go back and have a resource of an old curriculum or an old book or an old strategy you can always bring that out but you can't when you move into a new book a new curriculum a new strategy you have to support that strategy and

it's got to come from the building and it has to become from the teachers because if they don't like it they're not going to use it financially the last the last piece of that question I think was you know how do you do it um I negotiate with companies all the time they'll come in and they say to us you know you know this is going to cost you I think we just pay

$289,000 I was like I don't have that kind of money I say can we do that over three or four years give me a give me give me um I'll let you come in and take some pictures I'll let you come in and in video it the instruction being done in the classroom takes some you know we negotiate that's my job and the business administrator job we we negotiate with these companies and say hey

look we we can't afford this but we want this curriculum our teachers want to use this can we pay you overtime can we pay you you know uh 55% this year you know 37% next year whatever it is and 18% the third year and every every time we've gotten to be able to make a deal with any of these companies my teachers are fully invested in the curriculum process being part of choosing what we

use in the classrooms then it comes to the professional development Academy and then we move forward and we purchase it and then and then I hold my principles accountable that it is being used in the classroom thank you good well that's um actually closes our rounds of questions but um Mr AG had a question that he asked all the other candidates so we might as well be fair and make sure

everybody gets it so we have had some instances here of Staff being mistreated or treated inappropriately in the fall Public Schools please explain how you would hold staff accountable for mistreating others and the second part is what can you bring to the table related to anything HR related I would hope that no one treats anybody disrespectfully or inappropriately everybody needs to be held accountable for their

actions it starts with me and the way that I treat people regardless of teachers regardless of of Staff regardless of who it is or the community or students I will treat everybody with respect and that comes from me and that will come from my principles my uh super uh assistant superintendents and chief operating officers um and it will come from teachers to students I would and again that question

I would need to dig into that but to hold people accountable that will not be tolerated nobody is going to treat people people you can as again you can disagree but you can't be disagreeable you got to work together we're one school district everybody has to row in the same direction you may not all you don't have to like each other but when you're working together you're going to love

each other and you're going to show the students that if students don't see that cohesiveness it's not you're going to have issues your second part of that question is just what can you bring to the table related to Human Resources anything like that so I think Human Resources is is about human resources it's about communication it's about understanding it's about being involved handson

direct not walking away and turning your head knowing policy and making sure that people understand when we hold someone un accountable we follow a progression if it's a discipline we follow Progressive discipline we follow a procedure and a protocol we also have conversations Human Resources is about human capital when you have the right people at the table the right things are going

to get done and some we can always do this but at the end we have to figure it out how we're going to move the district forward it's not about one person I mean I think your the community is 990,000 people the district is over 11,000 2200 teachers have staff uh or there's a lot of people here not everybody is going to agree not everybody is going to understand what

everybody is trying to say and trying to do but at the end of the day you got to believe in Fall River Public Schools and you got to believe in each other to make that next step thank you uh you have a few minutes left uh you want to wrap up a summary or let us know something or if given the opportunity to come to Fall River I think I could do a lot I know I

would do a lot of good I would be part of any solution that you're looking for and I would come in ready to move ready to work and ready to go tomorrow it would be difficult um to do everything in one year but that's why you have that's why you that's why you have a succession and that's why you have a plan and whether it's the Strategic plan that we work

together on whether it is a capital Improvement plan that we work on or whether it is just getting to know my teachers and my staff over time that's very important to me my commitment is once I come in to a district I commit when I went into East Bridgewater I committed got rid of a $2.2 million deficit we've never had a deficit since we've never laid off a person

that's one of my goals my goal is always to have a productive community communication with the unions work with the Union presidents um so my commitment to you to the school committee and to the district of Fall River would be at 100% I think if you were to ask people who I am my character speaks for itself I have integrity I move people forward and I can work things out and there's nothing

so bad that we cannot work out and if there's anything um people would say would be that um I like to have fun I like to go out to the schools and see kids I like to be part of the community which I want to be part of the community and I'm not I'm not unable to have difficult conversations whether it's with you mayor whether it's with the vice chair of the school committee or whether it's

for the entire school committee I'm not I'm not so far away that I can't have communications with my teachers and staff and sit down with people and have conversations or to go to a go to a a family home and have the conversation so if that's my if my summary is I've had a tremendous run as an educator I love teaching I love being principal I love being assistant a deputy superintendent

I love being superintendent if given the opportunity I'd love to be in Fall River Public Schools thank you thank you thank you very much thank you I will take another five minute recess and then we'll have um our final

candidate stairs on there's stairs on the other side just lunge lunge up we would want you be able to see him right away that was actually the first test could you get up there good evening Anna uh it's about a one-h hour interview figuring seven of us ly two questions about four minute answers but we let people play around with it we're not going to hold you too tight um and then hopefully you have a

closing statement at the end and we'll go from there sure all set yes um first question is from Mimi larv hi nice to see you again so could you share with us a bit about yourself uh Beyond what's on your resume and please tell us why Fall River and why now okay um so I am a Fall River right I was born here I was married to another Fall River

we bought our home here we've raised our kids here I have five Derpy graduates so far and one that will be a freshman this year um so we are uh definitely all about um Fall River it's home I I don't know if I have a better answer than the why Fall River other than it's my home I care deeply about this city and about its success um both for my family and all of yours um a

little something about myself in addition to I'm on my makes me feel old 33 years in education I'll say that I'm also a very um proud Portuguese American my parents immigrated here from the azors I was born a few months after that so when I went to kindergarten I did not speak any English I learned kindergarten in school with my classmates um and it was certainly something that seemed normal when I was

young when I got to high school I think I got a little I'm ashamed to say now that I was embarrassed by it you know all the homemade clothes homemade Portuguese food and parents with an accent was something that when you're a teenager all feels a little um not great as an adult I've come to appreciate everything my parents did to make uh this wonderful life that my siblings and

I have um you know they worked really hard got jobs my dad had gone to school in Portugal came here had to get a degree translated which meant coming all over again which he did while we were all young and in school um and it was really something that's inspired me to uh believe in education and really see it as the great equalizer something that um will open the door for anyone if you

commit to it and you complete your education it is the key that unlocks a successful future um I my dad passed away just about two years ago this month and um I'm reminded that he was the keeper of all of our Portuguese traditions so just to make you see how Portuguese I really am when you do that 23 in me fun fact I was 100% And so I have committed um that I'm

going to take up U my dad's mantle and I'm going to make sure that my my own children and my nieces and nephews all um remember and know their Portuguese culture so I know you're all fall rivits and you're acquainted with um the Holy Ghost for Portuguese church when we celebrate with a procession and those seven gifts the Riley will be hosting Second Sunday next year um the gift of

understanding um but I really just want my kids to appreciate all of that and um so I think that's a lot of what makes me other than my resume um is just that strong belief in family and culture and Heritage thank you um please provide your philosophy and budgeting and provide us with what your priorities are so um I really believe that a budget should be driven by a district strategic plan

what are our goals what are our commitments to the community to the students um and to ourselves that we're going to abide by and we're going to work towards so if we have a strong strategic plan and have our priorities laid out our budget should fund those priorities um in my current District last year I was the CFO and superintendent for about six months so I I did the the budget process really from

Soup To Nuts and got to see it on on both sides both the accounting parts of it but also uh working with all the stakeholders and really creating a balance so I think it's really important to have a timeline to include um all of the principles as part of that budgeting process but before the principles come to central office to work work on their budget or present their budgets I think it's important for

them to sit with their sit teams to be with their school Improvement teams and talk about what is it that our school needs to be successful what are our priorities and what would we like this budget to fund particularly if you're doing zerob based budgeting you have to know what you're working towards and so if you don't have identified priorities what are you budgeting towards and so for me

that's where it starts you have a school Improvement plan you have District strategic priorities the budget process starts there then principles work with their school Improvement teams they bring it to central office we work together we have to review all the priorities of every school it would be great to say yes we're going to give everyone check the box they all get what they need but using that District

strategic plan we can identify which needs are really going to move us toward those goals and how we're going to get there so that process um really gets deeply engaged in with the principles I have always invited school committee members to those meetings because I think it's really important for you to see the nuts and bolts of how it's being built and and really have a deep understanding I pride myself on creating

a budget document that's easy to understand and that any Community member could pick up and read and understand what the priorities are what we're spending our money on and what the costs are um I did a lot of work last year two years ago now uh when I I worked at the department of Ed on uh what's called student-based budgeting which is kind of a a Nuance to zerob based budgeting

which looks at it also reminded me it was similar to Chapter 70 but at a school level where you fund schools based on the student needs so schools that have more um IEPs more students who are MLL or um might be more um higher poverty level at a particular school gets weighted funding and that's just determined you know by the school committee by policy and so that student-based budgeting puts money where

the most needs are at every school so I do think that in an urban District like Fall River that's something that I would like to think about and talk about uh with the committee to really make sure that each of our schools have the funding to support the needs within their building if we're going to say to them reach these goals and meet meet the priorities we've laid out we have to

make sure they have the funding to do that and be successful um but I like to be a very open process a transparent process that includes as many stakeholders as possible in those conversations so when we come to a public meeting we all have a deep understanding as a team of what we're presenting and why thank you um our next question from Shelley Pereira hi Anna thank you um some recent surveys show that there are

approximately 55,000 various educational positions open Nationwide the teacher show shortage is not just a Fall River problem but a national crisis Educators reporting causes varying from lack of support unrealistic expectations classroom safety and pay what do you feel the reasons are for the teacher shortage and what experience do you have in recruiting and retaining Educators

and educational staff and lastly knowing our district do you have any concrete ideas that you could bring forth to help support the staff we have as well as recruit and retain new staff so the first part of that question is what do you feel are the reasons for the teacher shortage and I I think they're outlined right in in your question I I would say that one of the contributing factors a significant

contributing factor to that is really um teacher morale and what we can do to support that um as you said it's happening in every District the district that I started working in now two and a half years ago um was in the final year of a contract that had expired two years before and so the morale was really no low and I knew that that was something that I had to work to improve if we were

going to ever have um a successful negotiations and improve the culture within the district because if the culture is not good it doesn't matter what you pay people they're not going to stay you have to really work on that teacher morale so uh we uh partnered with our our our Union and uh looked at some research driven work around improving teacher morale um we partnered within every building with principles

and Union leadership within the buildings to identify what the highest needs were for support and a lot of these things came up safety student behavior um and we asked the buildings to to choose one you know what what is the thing that's most impacting you feeling um successful in school and and happy in your building and and we asked them to work together on some solutions toward that and our job as central

office was to support whatever they decided they were going to do to implement to work at um improving whatever that priority was we've been doing it for about a year and a half now and we're really starting to see the benefits of it um our teacher attendance has improved tremendously um you can just feel it in the buildings if youve walk through your school buildings you can tell when the culture is really good you

walk around and and you see people smiling and happy um and I'll tell you right now in my district I have two postings and one is for you know that unicorn chemistry teacher that no one can find and really an addition not because we lost anyone but because we need to add one um and the other is high school spe special education which is also a really um hardto fill spot um recruiting and retaining Educators I

I think it is a lot about the reputation you build for your District um people want to work with a know other people are happy um and so part of creating that really good culture and supporting teacher morale is the fact that they tell their friends and as teachers we tend to be friends with a lot of other teachers and Educators and so our best recruitment strategy are our own people

and that's why we have to work at creating that good morale because they are the best ambassadors out there so when they meet someone who's looking for a job and they say hey do you know if anybody we want them to say yes you should come to my school it's awesome and and here's what we do and here's how teachers are supported I I mean it is it is important to have that competitive

salary and benefits um package because that's just good practice any employer wants to make sure that they're going to attract uh people with a living wage and with Benefits that can support a family but I do really believe that in addition to that if you don't work on the culture and morale of staff you're not going to keep them so even if they came because the salary looked good if they come and

they're not happy or they're miserable they'll go someplace else so I think part of that retention strategy is really about making sure that we're supporting teachers we're supporting teacher morale and we're doing those um sometimes small things sometimes big things to make sure that they are feel safe um that they have the tools they need to meet the um the needs of the students I the lack of support piece is

one that that we should never hear because that's us that's our job so when a teacher says there's no support then we haven't done our job so I think that's the piece where we can directly make an impact and correct um specifically oh thank you specifically that that issue but I do think that those um pieces will help recruit and retain staff okay the next question is from Tom Cory good evening Mr

Riley so um my question around alternative education and um in your philosophy um would you be a strong advocate in support of Fall Rivers alternative middle in high school the Robert madas resiliency Preparatory Academy when it comes to the curriculum of the population they serve the physical plant itself and possible chapter 74 grants to enhance the Hands-On component to skills learning in a facility like

that thank you um this was exactly one of the first places I taught when I was in Fall River and we didn't have a school yet there was no um alternative school we were bopped around I think three or four years in a row where we taught we shared a space with the National Guard my first year and then we moved to a senior center we were on the second floor of a

senior center and then I think our third year we were um on the first floor of an abandoned other Elementary School in the district so it makes me really proud that we have a dedicated facility in Fall River for both our middle and our high school alternative students because all of our students deserve the opportunity to be in a facility that welcomes them and supports them and provides what they need to be

successful the fact that we're building in more CTE programs just speaks to the fact that it's an alternative program we need to Prov provide them with opportunities to engage be successful and be prepared to enter the workforce or college many of our career tracks actually lead to either or depending on the direction that a student wants to go in um but I am a a huge supporter of

chapter 74 programs period I've grown them in every District I've I've worked in I doubled them in Bristol Warr in just the short time that we've been there I think that kids need Pathways and they need to really start to engage in the opportunity to try out um careers through apprenticeships or through internships both through chapter 74 but even just through partnersh Partnerships

with businesses we've long held that kids can earn credit with uh community service why can't they earn credit with apprenticeships and opportunities for internships so that they can really um dig in and get to know what are what is what are the things that they're interested in that they want to do and that they can do in the moment and learn about it and figure out is this for them

what do they need to do to be successful in that kind of a field or maybe they find out that's not for them and then they can try something else that then might guide them towards their career path um but for me it has always been a passion um and and really something I believe in strongly that students don't all learn the same way and we have to have alternatives for kids who can't be

successful in what we call our typical high school structure thank you you thank you uh next question Sarah Rodricks so I too am 100% Portuguese according to 23 and me um fun fact so here in Fall River and my question is not on the sheet because we did not have ancl question on there so I kind of readjusted my questions so here in Fall River we have roughly a 30 to 33%

special ed rate and of that about a third of our kids are placed in substantially separate classrooms so what's your experience with creating and implementing inclusive practices for kids in gened classrooms and then how have you specifically worked to dismantle those systems of substantially separate placements as the norm to promote inclusion then my third part is um can you provide some examples of how

you've worked to really dismantle those often that often siloed approach to special education sure um so I don't have any in my current District um when I worked in um Portsmouth we also did not have any substantially separate classrooms the only classrooms where students um were in the same room for for more than literacy and math were intensive classrooms and I'm talking about students who are in the 1% qualify for

um the alt assessment um and needed more intensive care but even those students were included for much of the day um as far in my my person personal belief is that all students deserve to be with their peers that is our number one goal and it's our job to figure out the Staffing and the support to meet students IEPs within the inclusive classroom and it's done in lots of different places there's no reason why

we can't do it here it just takes thoughtful planning and support for for Staffing to make that successful so other than that 1% every student with an IEP has to meet the same proficiency level as every other student that's in that classroom um they need to be exposed to all of the tier one instruction that every student is exposed to and so when we pull them out of the classroom we're taking that

opportunity away from them and so I have never been a proponent of that and have been able to either not have it exist already or dismantle it and create an inclusive Pro program I'll tell you even as a a principal in Fall River I was the principal of talbet middle school and it was the um elll school at the time time and when I got there all of the elll students were in a sub separate

classroom and I well how are they going to learn to speak English and and hear the tier one instruction if they're not in those classrooms I was there a month and I dismantled the program and pushed students into classrooms it's just unacceptable to keep students from their peers and that tier one instruction I feel strongly uh about every student with an IEP being in their community and

being able to to study and learn with the kids who are going to someday be their neighbors and community members um if we have to send a child out of District I need to know that we have done everything within our power and utilized every tool and resource that we have in the district and can demonstrate data that that wasn't successful otherwise they belong in the classroom with the PE learning hearing that tier one

instruction it's the job of the special educator to provide special specialzed instruction within the classroom and I think that that's something that we really need to work on both with professional learning and really with the perception of what special education support within the classroom looks like um something that I have been working on um in in my current district is really looking at what is the role of

this bed special educator in the regular Ed classroom and how are we making sure that what they're providing to the student students is above and beyond um what they're getting from their teacher most special education students are a year or two behind their peers it's not enough for them to have one year of growth so what are the structures that we're putting in place to make sure that

that our students with IEPs are growing at a faster rate than the than the regular ed students so that they can get on grade level and so that sometimes requires um different training for our special Educators it might require different structures extended day um esy some summer learning to help them get there but in order to close that Gap we have we have to continue to grow them at more than a

Year's length at a time it's just not enough to get into one year but I feel strongly that without the tier one support in the classroom we're just creating a structure that continues to grow the Gap thank you good time um next question is uh Bobby daily during your 10 year as a leader can you name any specific initiatives or programs that you've implemented or plan to implement to promote cultural Proficiency in the

district so I think you have to start by really valuing diversity so this is a community that really values diversity um I'm in Bristol Warren oddly the only District in the state of Rhode Island whose uh percent of students who are elll students are mostly Portuguese every place else it's Spanish but Bristol War it's still Portuguese so as you heard before it's a it's a very nice fit for me um but we

have implemented so uh many initiatives around really making sure that teachers have an understanding of cultures within their classroom so I'm saying Portuguese is the largest group but it's not our only group um we have multiple languages and multiple cultures in our district we work really hard at making sure that number one we help principles and teachers identify which cultures are in

their building what are students backgrounds what is what are their Heritage what are we bringing to them because it's important for both the principal and for classroom teachers to get some knowledge around those cultures and backgrounds you have to have some understanding and I would never expect that any of my teachers or my principles come with that because you don't know which children are going to

come into your classroom on any given year um we have uh quite a few refugees from countries where we typically wouldn't have students from and so you really have to do your homework and find out a little bit about their culture how is it that we can best communicate with that family so there's some homework on our end to be culturally proficient to be culturally competent you have to

learn about the cultures that are in your building and then I would say you really have to celebrate those cultures so how are you letting that student know that they're a part of your school community that we're recognizing um during some special lunches some of the foods from their country recognizing special celebrations they have um there are certainly things that we can do within the classroom to welcome a

student and and to make them feel known in in that classroom there's also managing the Dynamics of different cultures and more so in a large District like Fall River not all cultures are in Harmony and so how do you manage the Dynamics of cultures that might have some opposing beliefs within a school but still recognize value and celebrate all of those and I think the last bit of

that is really at the end of every year self assessing what could we do better what did we miss this year what could we make sure we include next year how could I as a teacher as a principal as the superintendent get better at recognizing this culture this Heritage this Dynamic I don't think that anyone ever becomes perfectly culturally proficient we're a melting pot particularly in a city like Fall River

we are going to have a dynamic change every single year and so you have to keep learning so there always has to be that professional growth really um and with the internet I say there's no excuse for anyone you can Google anything you can find out about a culture in a heartbeat um and then really I I think the most important part is that self assessing what can you do

better in the next year what did we miss out on um what are the families that we weren't able to connect with how can we do better about that next year and what is it that we need in our building in order to be able to do that thank you thank you next question Sally Pereira oh I'm sorry Kev I skipped over because there's no question there Kevin ngia please he really likes my question

I think I I love your questions Kev it is not a secret that Fall River has struggled with academic achievement our overall data shows that we are barely getting back to preo achievement levels which were not adequate to begin with can you please explain any specific situations where you were instrumental in quote unquote moving the needle to improve academic achievement data in an urban school

system so I'll say I have improved outcomes in every District I've worked in including this one as a principal here in Fall River I was the principal of the first expanded learning school um they published a book about it I'm happy to share it with you um and also we made the most growth in the entire State and I'm going to tell you the only people people who can improve student outcomes

are our teachers so it's our job as Leaders as principles as the superintendent to support our teachers they are the ones who are in the classrooms every day doing the hard work so we have to make sure they have the professional learning they need and want the support they need and want and the tools they need and want I I saw in in a lot of your um website and in your background that

you you're purchasing high quality curriculum and you're implementing that for classrooms those are great tools but teachers need support in implementing those tools so we have to make sure we're not just buying the materials but we're providing with them with that support and then you have to really look at the student data and that really happens building by building because in

order for teachers to be successful and move student achievement you have to look at what they need so I'll tell you um currently what we do in my school and and I've been doing this since I was a principle is we have grade level meetings we have plc's I'm sure you you've heard that acronym professional learning communities where teachers at the same grade levels get together they

look at their data they review the scope of of the um whether math or literacy whichever one that they're looking at and they look at where are students struggling where are our opportunities where where do we see that most of our students are excelling and we can uh maybe move a little faster through this part of the curriculum and where do we need to take our time and dig in deeply

to make sure students get this Core Curriculum um I think pacing guides sometimes um hold us hostage and teachers feel like they have a timeline on what they have to spend on and sometimes we do a little too much reteaching because we're worried kids didn't get it but high quality curriculum is always a spiraling curriculum so there will be other opportunities for students to get ahead

on topics they may have struggled with when you were working on them in the classroom um the worst thing that we can do for kids is not get through the standards that have to be covered in within a year because that's where students start to get behind um I'm done with using covid as an academic excuse we're on year four po postco we we have to stop talking about covid as the

reason why kids aren't being successful because now we're back we have been back full-time in school for a couple of years now and so we have to just really focus on what are those interventions we're putting in place to support students so you heard me talk about that tier one that's what the whole class is going to get they're all going to work on that then we're going to look at our

student data every six weeks or so we're going to look at our internal assessments and we're going to say okay it looks like three qus of the class is on Pace they've got this down packed what are we going to do with this other 25% and maybe 20% of those kids need a little tier two support they need some help that would be one of the things I would need to know about where are the

teachers in terms of their skill sets in providing tier 2 support in the classroom that's something I've been working on in my district because we have a new um high quality curriculum in literacy and so they're getting acclimated to the text and so there's some time there's some learning in there there's a span but there's urgency around what we're doing with kids because kids are only in second grade

once hopefully seventh grade once and 10th grade once so we don't have extra time or an extra year to give them the stuff that we didn't get to and so tier 2 intervention should be happening in the classroom and then for that small percent of kids who still may not be getting it we have to find time within our schedule I think I saw in your um in your program of studies that you do have

some wind blocks what I need now blocks so those are the blocks we use in our district for students to get their tier three support they might be getting enrichment during that time or that might be the time where we're digging deeper into a content with with all of the students uh but I think you have to use the data to figure out where it is that kids are struggling put the interventions in

place to move those students along and then continue to to provide the standards for all the students the reason that we can't get them to proficiency many of the time is we're not getting to all the standards within the school year so that is something that we have to work towards getting the standards doing interventions when necessary and then um making sure that we're giving teachers the tools to do

that within the classroom thank you uh next question is Shelley Pereira so we know that diversity and inclusion in the workplace promotes creative problem solving better decision making as well as increasing product it and decreasing staff turnover rate full River serves a diverse population and we aim to promote diversity inclusion and Equity throughout the district can you tell me what you believe the difference is

between equal and Equitable do you have strategies planned to execute in the district to promote equity in all our classrooms and lastly can you give us an example of when you have promoted diversity Andor inclusion in your workplace explain please any barriers you may have had to overcome and if and how the outcome was beneficial to the group so equal means everybody gets the same thing Equitable means you get what

you need and I think that's the way we always have to look at students I am not of a a proponent of uh the one size fits all because that's I have six kids of my own I'm going to tell you this they're all different so I can feel confident in the belief that no kid is the same and so to look at them through the same lens um is certainly not the way that we can

promote diversity equity and inclusion um so I'd say a strategy that that I have planned and that I I brought up earlier when we talked about budgeting is really looking at that student-based budgetting it really is an equity um it really is an equity tool that provides an opportunity for students who need the most support to get it districts that have used it Boston is using it Hartford

used it New Orleans used it they have seen growth um in their special education um High School graduation numbers and they've also seen Gap closing within their special education students so really thinking about putting our money and support where we need it where the students are that need it most um lastly can you give us an example of your pry inclusion in your workplace um sure so so this is also workplace I'm

sorry I was focusing on students but think about adults too I think it's really important for us to make sure that we reflect our students um and in Fall River we are a Melting Pot and the adults are a part of that Melting Pot so how do we make sure that we have inclusive profit Pro we have inclusive um opportunities for all uh people to join our faculty our staff our team how

do we make sure they feel welcome how do we make sure that student that adults who may have a language barrier or an education barrier have a way to close that Gap to be a part of our community um so we did some work in my current District last last year and the year before to really support getting more teachers um certified as multilingual learner teachers because we knew even with the support we were giving our

students we wanted more teachers to have that skill set um because really a lot of the work that you do around um and I'm sorry I'm saying MLL which is multilingual learner and I know in Massachusetts it's elll I have to retrain my brain um so our elll students really benefit from having teachers who understand different learning styles and how to approach Literacy for someone who

for whom English may not be their first language um and so I think those educational opportunities are things we can provide both students and adults so how do we help adults who bring a wealth of cultural competency that we were just talking about to the district who may not have the credentials to necessarily work in the district so how do we help provide opportunities for adult professional growth uh both through

professional learning but also through attaining degrees certifications so that really our adult population can better mirror our student population we need kids to see role models and to see themselves in those positions someday um we are providing students every day with the opportunity to see what it's like to be a teacher so we shouldn't have a teacher shortage so we're doing something wrong because we should be

modeling how awesome it is to be a teacher and what that good work looks like and that every student in the room could be that next teacher who's standing in front of you and so we we really need to make sure that what we do for the adults create opportunities that someday our students will have so I think that it's the barriers are really many times funding I would say and then really

getting people to take that risk to trust us and and become a part of the system and to join us in getting that um working towards that degree are working towards that uh professional learning to to be able to be successful within the district thank you uh next question uh Mimi lar Fall River is a very large complex Urban District please tell us a little about your leadership style and how you

would motivate and Inspire our for Public School staff to to achieve their best performance so I think um I'll I would start by just saying I'm a very transparent leader um I try to be genuine in all of my conversations and then in terms of leadership styles I think you have to vary the leadership style based on whatever problem it is that you're tackling um I can certainly be in a very

um coaching leadership style where working with my team to really dig into a topic and listening to their um opinions and expertise in an area I try to always hire people smarter than me so they can share all their information and we can use that Collective um collective intelligence to really come up with the best answers so sometimes it's about being a leader who's the coach and really bringing the team together to

come up with the right decision for whatever whatever problem we're working on um I do think you have to be the inspirational leader you have to be the champion of that strategic plan you have to be the champion of the goals for the district so that people want to achieve those goals and they want to follow you to get there so I do think there's a component of leadership where you have

to be the Visionary so as your superintendent if I don't believe it why would anyone else believe it and so I try to model for my staff what I want I have high expectations I have high expectations for students I have them for me and I have them for my staff and I try to model model that on a regular basis um and then I I'll say there are

times when as a a leader you have to make quick decisions so sometimes there's not time for for input because there may be a crisis or there may be some um emergency that requires you to be the quick decision maker and the goal is that by the time you have to make those quick decisions you have built trust within your team and within the school community that people can count on your decision being one that's

thoughtful regardless of whether or not they were able ble to provide input on that so I think your leadership style does have to vary depending on the problem that you're tackling but I'd say if I had to identify some traits about myself as a leader is that I am a a a very genuine transparent person I try to be that as a leader thank you thank you uh Tom Corey as far as uh this question is

involving Community engagement and in your philosophy uh as the chief uh executive officer for the schools in Fall River U what you believe in building relationships with the many agencies in our community that provide services which in turn affect our school children and their families absolutely so I am a firm believer that it takes a village I know this from Raising six children trying to

be at four soccer events on the same day takes a village um same is true about a school you need to partner with all of the community agencies with not just the community agencies but with businesses and with with all of the resources that we can um pull together within the community to help make us successful I think that our children and their families are still coming out of the a

traumatic event we all went through covid and so we still have many families who have needs that schools can't solve alone and we need to really engage in our Community Partners to make sure that we are supporting our students not just while they're with us for 7 hours you know and 180 days a year but that they have what they need outside of school um if we're not making sure that our our

kids have a place to live something to eat and and good health care um they can't be successful in school so these agencies help to provide us with those wraparound Services they also help to provide us with those enrichment opportunities within the district and to Provide support for things that where they have an expertise that we may not have uh both in mental health but also just in creating relationships with

students um relationships are one of the things that really hold students in school and so we can leverage Our Community Partners to really help us build those supports um I know when we became an expanded Learning Time School in Fall River we brought in so many Community Partners to support the extra work that we were doing one of the goals of that Grant was um it shouldn't look the same as it did before and so we

worked really hard to implement um strategies that would help students we had one of the highest obesity rates of all the elementary schools in our school and so we partnered with the nursing school at UMass Dartmouth and they came in and they did lessons on good food healthy eating healthy cooking like it was amazing what that brought out we had the doctor from Pediatrics actually say

what are you doing at your school all of the kids in this school are really turning around their health habits I mean Our Community Partners can have such deep impacts that we don't even recognize when we first bring them in um so I am a a proponent of partnering with anyone who wants to partner with us how can we figure out how we can create a mutually uh productive partnership for for both groups thank

you uh next question Sarah Rodricks so again my question's not going to be there so if you need to repeat it just you know and I talk really fast so again if you need slow down just tell me so social emotional learning has become a bit of a buzzword in education but there's not always a good understanding of what that actually looks like in action so this question has a couple of

parts so how do we make sure that the design and implementation of social emotional learning special education and our core General Ed instruction are aligning with the goals with the values and the priorities of the district and then can you describe a time where you've successfully facilit ated that coordination and collaboration among those stakeholders right because we know that we have different folks and then

how did you specifically promote that shared vision and overcome barriers across those different departments so you're right's been batted around in many contexts for many years um 20 years ago now when I was an elementary principal we did PBIS that was oural we had you know this positive behavioral support system in place for students um seal has moved so far beyond that at this point you heard me mention

earlier we've all been through a trauma we've all been through covid for some folks that trauma was very small for some folks that was significant but it was a time where where students really um were home didn't have the support of school for a quite a long amount of time and it really contributed contributed many opportunities for additional trauma for a lot of students so we are still working to overcome

those traumas um the traumas that opioid abuse has brought to so many of our of our Urban centers and really looking at a generation of of children who need lots of support and role models and so um seal has become um again more than just this a positive incentive system but really has become a curriculum in and of itself so there is some really good research-based curriculum I think I

saw that some schools in for are piling second steps so I have used second steps in in three of my districts um it is a research-based curriculum that helps build students um emotional learning it helps them to build the skills that they need um to cope uh to cooperate um and to be productive citizens um and there's some some really great work in that area really K to8 it has been embed it's it's

built to be embedded into a morning meeting but is built on topics that teachers can weave throughout the day so if if the month's Mantra is um you know kindness then how do we talk about kindness throughout the day whenever we're we're doing our work so uh teachers embed it in literacy they embed it in in their math groups they embed it in any opportunity they have within the work that's happening in the classroom

because we have to keep modeling it for for students and helping students recognize what it looks like um at the high school level I I haven't found a really great curriculum around it at the high school level it's a little trickier but we have some opportunities during advisory I would say that's a great opportunity to do some relationship building and really provide some targeted um social

emotional learning how do we teach kids coping skills how do we teach kids um some of the simple things that can help them with their stress level deep breathing there there are some some really easy things we could build into um an advisory that's not a heavy lift um for the teacher who may be in that group but really provide students with the opportunity to build um those coping skills so that they can U meet the

challenges uh that are going to come before them as they work through not just school but work and then anything beyond that I do think that it has to be incorporated throughout the day if if we're not intentional about how to weave it into academics then it we're not modeling what it's supposed to look like we're kind of doing it as a standalone um it's kind of what we say to kids in math like

kids will say why do I have to learn this and we're like well you have to know math you have to be able to you know operate out in the universe you have to understand what a fraction of something is well you have to understand why kindness is important and how that's engaged so um we have been doing a lot a lot of work I think you asked for an

example right yes so I'll I'll I I thank you you long way so it was how have you how have you specifically promoted that shared build trust and overcome those barriers across the different uh Departments of special education that General Ed um curriculum piece and bringing into those Realms yeah it's it's by including the teachers in all of that training they are the again they are the most important person in that

classroom and we really have to make sure they have the training they need and the professional learning they need so we have done a lot of work and training around professional learning we've really utilized our mental health support staff to also um pitch in and and help build up everyone's competency around providing social emotional um lessons and support and everyone's a part of that no one's excluded from from

being a part of those lessons so particularly for middle school and high school where it's advisory everyone's gotten advisory so whether you're the special educator the math teacher or the biology teacher you've got an advisory and so we're working through those opportunities for folks to take part in in Seal lessons across the board because then it's our job to model those lessons

throughout the day just doesn't end when we're done with the lesson but throughout the day we're modeling what that looks like thank you okay it's mine Anna um some Innovations you believe that could help us with student attendance yes the other common factor for all of us chronic chronic absenteeism absolutely I actually been doing a lot of work around this um really it it takes it it takes some it

takes some digging it takes some data and there there are uh some basic reasons why kids are absent one is they don't have a connection to school they don't have a connection to peers they don't have a connection to an to an adult the other is they may have some kind of school um phobia some kind some something that prevents them from feeling safe about going to school whether it's a mental

health reason or a physical reason that just keeps them from from coming every day this has been there's a lot of research around this is particularly true of students who were in transition grades during covid so your kindergarteners fifth graders eighth graders they they're finding like a real Trend around kids who were in those groups really struggling with that and and fitting that chronic absentee list

um and then you have kids who can't get there they either don't have the transportation or they have to babysit or they have to work they have another barrier another obstacle to overcome before they can even show up at school so it takes some work to figure out why are students absent oh I'm sorry and there's one other one there four the fourth one is um because we were able to

provide online learning during covid we do have a lot of families who don't see the importance of in-person learning and think kids can just make it up when they come back um but I think the other part of the research has shown us that that online learning was really not good for kids and so we have to break folks out of that habit that they can just make up what they missed by doing online work so

digging into the root causes of what that absenteeism work is and then one of the initiatives that we took part in we actually partnered with a group out of Harvard the district management Council and did some training for uh staff across our schools and we made them attendance coaches they this is not the truin officer or the guidance counsel all the people who typically um get to

handle um absenteeism but we asked for people to volunteer to be trained as attendant coaches and then we gave them very small case loads one to two kids we identified about um 30 to 50 kids per school who were either chronically absent last year or just shy of it or just over it so we know 18 days is chronically absent so kids who were anywhere from 16 to 22 days were

assigned to this coach and the coach met with those students every single day if they didn't come to school they still had to connect with them every single day and 80% of our of those students were identified are not chronically absent because they had that personal one-on-one connection we had a student who the previous year had made chronically absent he had 19 absences the year before as of and I haven't

checked lately so I'll have to check again but as of April 1st he hadn't missed a single day of school and when we asked him why he said because I know that Mr so and so is counting on me and he's going to check in with me today and he's going to ask me why I'm here so it's work I won't tell you it sounds really I just made it sounds so easy it

is not easy um it takes those it's a commitment on behalf of the folks who who asked who volunteered to be attendance coaches and they were really um kind of across the Staffing we had uh T who did it we had School nurses who did it we had classroom teachers who volunteered to do it um you know assistant principles who may have been volunt told to do it but did it anyway

um and did a good job with it um but the outcome was so positive positive that it's something we want to continue we want to try to recruit some more coaches uh for next year to to continue that work um but part of what made it successful was regular meetings we brought the coaches together we said what's working what's not working who's struggling who's still got kids who aren't showing up what can we all do

what can we brainstorm around to help get that child to school um for us at least what we found that root cause around a connection to peers and adults made the most impact that was the one that really I think brought us that turnout that awesome um Improvement in attendance but I it's definitely replicable do it anywhere uh next question Bobby Bailey um without jeopardizing sense of

information can you describe a time when you had to you specifically had to make a difficult decision involving working closely with a school committee and how' you approach the process I I almost say every month this doesn't this happen all the time um we have to be a team I I said to you before I'm a very transparent person I I I I try to be very genuine in my

conversations um I gosh I think I talked to my school committee chair almost every single day um there are no surprises no surprises from the school committee to me or me to the school committee when something's happening there's a sensitive situation there's um a crisis an emergency a parent issue a legal issue we are in constant communication my rule is always no surprises I will always keep the school

committee apprised of what's happening and my expectation is when you hear something I don't want you to have to worry about it I want you to come to me and I will get you the info and I will get you the details and I will help you figure out um what it is that we have to address if we have to address anything um but I think it is I don't think we can be successful

unless we're a team I think that's really important I think that's something for you to think about as you choose your next superintendent whoever you choose has to be a team member we're a team school committee and the superintendent we are the ones who drive the the district I need to be able to count on you and you need to be able to count on me um communication is of the

utmost importance um there has to be always um some good reflexive communication I want you to see and hear all the good stuff that I see and hear in the district so I would share as much of that as possible with all of you I think it also has to be responsive like I just said if there's an issue a an issue of concern that first hour within a crisis is the most important part it's

the most important time we have to show parents and the community that they can trust us and we're always going to give them the right information they need to come to us and that's we're the right Source we have to build that trust um and that comes with the trust that's between the superintendent and the school committee and then I I say the last part of that is really being um

reflective about when we communicate and why we communicate and the purpose of that communication particularly between us um I try always to share all information with the full committee the chair and I talk more often because there's just a lot of planning that goes between the chair and the superintendent but if there's information to be shared I share that across the school committee

um there's not one thing that one of you know that you don't all know because that important for the team for the team to be successful we all have to be playing from the same context and so I try to be real thoughtful and careful about that think did I get to your question Bobby okay um next question is Kevin Agia what is your philosophy on curriculum choice and how would you

ensure that the chosen curriculum is working for all students and being implemented with Fidelity and secondly how do you plan to ensure that the programs that we purchase are fully utilized in all of our schools be very so um I know Massachusetts is working towards high quality curriculum as U Rhode Island Rhode Island actually enjoys making things a law so they made it a law that we had to purchase high

quality Curriculum by set dates for English math and science so we've been doing this over the last I've been doing it for the last five years both as a a superintendent but then also as the Deputy Commissioner so in my role at the department of Ed I was the Deputy Commissioner of instructional programs and it was actually uh my job to make sure we had vetted vetted high quality curriculum that districts could choose

choose from the law mandated that the department of Ed uh narrow the scope to um three to five in both math English and science for districts to choose from so that there could be uh consistency across the state um but also be able to ensure that every student in the state of Rhode Island have that high quality curriculum um most of the curriculum that is rated green is very similar

what we found when we were going through the curriculum and as being part of the department we were in uh Prov the District of Providence was in takeover by the state so we were also looking at highquality curriculum for um Providence and so um much like Fall River Providence is a very culturally diverse City and we wanted to make sure that the highquality curriculum not just met all

the components of a green curriculum which is tied to research and the science of reading um but that included culture proficiencies that's not rated in the rating of high quality curriculum so that's like an extra step you have to take on your own as a district to make sure um that it meets cultural proficiency and so um some are better than others at at providing that so that's something that I would want to

be sure we were looking at because we have a culturally diverse um District that we're looking at curriculum selections that not just that don't just meet the high quality threshold but ALS also provide um that cultural piece that's required otherwise so much of our material is biased that without having some uh culturally proficient register you're missing out on an opportunity to provide not just

our elll students but our students who come from different backgrounds are being exposed to in literacy I'd say in stories in vocabulary and in all things that would build their schema their their ability to create cont context um so that's an important part of that highquality curriculum that's just the selection of it and and I would say that should be done by a team of folks it should be

done by the folks who who are really leading that work within the district um teachers curriculum directors the coaches um our mult our English language learning staff that should all be a part of that special education because you want to make sure that whatever curriculum we buy has all the components to support the the different groups of students that we have in the district

and then once you buy it that's the easy part buying it easy right pay your money the books show up the hard part is implementation and what that looks like because you can't just expect to give teachers uh a pile of curriculum materials and say have at it that is not going to work and it's not the intent of the program um when you talk to vendors and you meet with the ones who really

care about their product they talk about implementation and professional development it's usually a thing that districts skimp on because it's an extra cost after you just spent millions of dollars on all of these textbooks and materials um you're like oh we can figure it out well it's not like a user guide that goes to your car and even that sometimes is too hard for for a folks to follow it actually does require

training and practice and reflection it's not here let's have this training off you go take your books and go work on it a good implementation provides training throughout the implementation and I would say for for the first three years of implementation so that teachers can provide feedback and ask questions about well the pacing guide says we're going to do this but how are we there's

too much to do in this we're never going to get to that part and talk that through with the experts and the folks that wrote the curriculum to figure out how to parse out what has to be done with what should be done based on the students in front of you because a lot of this high quality curriculum is really a super to not program meant to deal with every variety of student that

could show up in front of you so you have to learn the curriculum in order to be selective and make sure you're hitting all the components that meet the standards but it's driven by the students that are in front of you and that takes professional learning and time to be reflective we only have a few minutes left I'd like you to give us a wrap up in that'll be great you went right up against it

thanks so uh sorry I don't mean to interrupt you but there was a question I know we're I know we're in a rush we're running out of time but we're not going to give her that same question way over okay we don't want to do that it's got to be fair I I appreciate we have 10 minutes no we started at 7:33 oh I had 7:40 no 7:33 and 8:3 8:32 I want to give her a

few minutes to wrap up sure go ahead Kevin go ahe Kevin go that's my question quick so we've had some instances of Staff being treated inappropriately here in Fall River please explain how you would hold staff accountable for mistreating others and secondarily what can you bring to the table related to Human Resources anything related to Human Resources sure I'll answer it quickly um I think it's

really important to have as I mentioned before high expectations have them for myself have them for staff have them for kids um the way we treat each other has to be a reflection of how we expect to be treated how we treat kids how we expect kids to um treat each other and so I take it very seriously when we have a complaint on staff against staff or student to staff or staff about um

parents um all of those things require conversation sometimes an investigation um I have done um staff investigations I have of course had to interview staff interview um families around a situation that may have happened I have as the as a superintendent I've always supervised human resources but also at the department of Ed I was the supervisor of ahr since that was mostly adults without

kids there were more issues that were kind of relevant to what you're speaking about and in order to create that good culture that I talked about early on that's so important for hiring and keeping people you have to address issues where where where folks are mistreated immediately if there is mistreatment there have to be consequences and I'd say up to an including termination depending on the extent of what the

infraction was um but we can't allow anyone to be disrespectful to someone else particularly not folks who are working together and should be team members thank you I will give you a couple of minutes to wrap up Anna sorry sorry uh I mean really I I I'd say in wrap-up um I'm going to tie it back to um your first question that said why Fall River for me it's more than why

Fall River it's really about values for me I love this community I love everything that we represent and so to be the superintendent of Fall River is to be that representative to help students see what an amazing City they live in what all those opportunities are and that they can be a part of it be of value and contribute to the place they live in and then be proud of that place

that they're in and to me the superintendent Fall River has the opportunity to to really be the model for that to be the Fall River kid who became a teacher who became a principal who became an assistant superintendent and then can be the superintendent of Fall River um just really I can't quite put into words for you so I would say that as myself well thank you very much thank

you thank you Lena do we want to go to a recess or just get right into it recess I could use the restroom you going to use the restroom five minutes go to the bathroom

again just wait one second the chair declares that this matter of selecting a superintendent is a appropriately before the school committee the chair then opens the discussion now about the candidates Mr Agia yes so uh I want to thank you uh thank all the candidates thank the search committee uh for this support and bringing us the candidates I enjoyed being here tonight listening to

all the candidates and I think it's something that it's a real big decision and I think we uh we all stated at the beginning myself included that the time is now that we needed to be all committed to hiring the right candidate the best candidate free of any politics or any other inter interventions we just need the best person for the students the staff and the families in Fall River

I've done my research I looked at all all the the resumés the candidates and I sat here tonight and and watched uh and listened to all of the questions the district right now has a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done uh we need to overhaul a lot of different systems we have a lot of needs and my questions were around academic achievement and I think that's the

biggest piece for me that uh we need to turn around our district has had low academic achievement for far too long and I believe that we had a um some candidates here tonight tonight but one to me stood out Above the Rest an experienced leader tremendous credentials answered the questions spoton whether it was the special ed the budget um the knowledge and the um experience was something that

I'm very happy that we had before us um she served as a a business manager assistant superintendent Deputy she speaks multiple language she's done she's basically done it all and I I really it was are very impressed by the last candidate before us uh Mrs Riley I think the time is now to bring in a seasoned leader to move this District forward I think she presented the best out of all the candidates and I think

she gives us the best chance to move this District forward for all of our students for our staff and to work with us as a school committee to make this the greatest school system in Massachusetts so I'd like to make a motion that we appoint Anna Ry superintendent I'm see I don't we why don't we give everybody an ample opportunity to talk and then you can make it um with someone second your

motion I'm sure yeah I just wanted to make the motion that's all so fine as long as it comes back to me I'd be happy to have everybody thank you um anybody else have anything to say about any of the candidates Mr Corey yes I took uh I listened intensively to each candidate and I took notes on each one of their responses I have several pages of notes in front of me that I compiled

tonight because as I write down their responses it helps to embed inside of me a feeling that I get and so many of the questions were great questions I thought that our school committee provided to the candidates um I was duly impressed with all of them they all bring a real lot to the table and in many ways so many responses were incredibly simp similar there was some that stood out uh

each candidate had their own personality and style those kinds of things stood out the thing I'm looking for as a school Committee Member in fall river is developing a culture of consistency and I know that as far as my own thoughts on this matter are concerned then our candidate Dr Tracy Cur really stood out to me because she's been here in this district for so long and she's our chief curriculum officer

she has that data down pat she knows exactly what direction we need to move this school department into and she's she has a working knowledge with this community because she's from this community and those relationships are very well established they're also very well established within the ranks of our school department so as far as I'm concerned my uh my vote is going to be for Dr Tracy Curley tonight I do want to

make a a comment about um Kevin's motion I think when everybody's done the discussion we will just pull the members and they will give us their candidate and everybody will have their vote and we'll see what we end up with someone that gets the four is the winner whoever it is um and that's um kind of what the recommended procedure is so we don't really need a motion Kev we'll just go

like we do alphabe Mr AIA yeah the reason why I make the motion is because uh as part of a parliamentary procedure in any of our deliberations when the personis makes a motion and that motion is seconded that particular motion is up for discussion and I think it's important that if we're going to articulate the reasons why we're either for or against a candidate we need to actually have that discussion on each

one so I'd respectfully ask that you state stay with your commitment to allow me to make the motion if it fails it fails and then we can make a different motion for someone else and discuss that particular motion because right now it would be too much of a generality and we wouldn't get a chance to actually discuss in public transparently for why we we're going to have plenty of time to

discuss believe um Miss perea I think Sarah had oh Sarah had her hand up first go ahead Sarah sorry so you know I I appreciate the the different types of candidates that were presented I think everybody had their own unique presentation and their own strengths and their own values that they can bring to the table um I think when we are looking at what we need to move forward there were a couple of things

that stood out to me that really to be honest didn't sit particularly well um one of those things was kind of hearing about fixing this community I don't think we're a community that needs to be fixed I don't think we're a community um I think we're a community that has needs and those needs to be addressed but I don't believe that we are a community that needs fixing right that implies

that we are broken and we are not a broken community so that's that's one piece of it I do think we need someone with extensive experience um and you know I if since we're naming candidates I personally would second Kevin's motion to nominate um M riy just given her level of experience in the district that is not to Discount Dr Dr Curly's experience in the district I do think um Dr Curley's even last statement of

asking us to consider what she's brought to the table is important right her relationships her experience in the district her knowledge of what's Happening Here that's all extremely important information to have but I don't think we can discount kind of what that level of experience leading a district of this size of of this High need at that level there are a couple of things that I think are I I think for Dr

Curley it's a it's a not yet not a not forever um I think that again there are things that need to be had and um there was a lot of discussion about the needs of this district from Miss Riley including just how we discussed special education there was some self-correction and how we talked about it in a more respectful dignified way there was a piece about bridg the Gap and growing

above the needs of um kids in the general education setting right that's a piece that also needs to be integrated there was a huge piece about understanding what the trauma uh that has been created not just in our district but but all districts there are very specific answers which I think are really important when we're looking for what our next move is going to be and with that I yeld um got job um um Miss perea

so of course as as everyone else has said we obviously want to thank everybody for taking the time to come out um many of the answers were very similar as they probably should be because they all had the same questions right um certainly some people I think maybe interviewed a little better than others but that's I don't think is the be all end all um when I'm looking at things I'm looking at experience I'm

also looking at consistency so I hear what both my colleague Mr Corey is saying and and my colleagues at the end and the way I scored it when I was listening I jotted some notes but then I gave every question a score based on 1 to 10 how solid I thought the answer was so then at the end I could sort of add that up and see um and Dr Curley and M uh Miss

Riley were the two the two ones that scored the best in the way I looked at it I think they're two amazing women both love Fall River um both from Fall River both I think have fall River's interests at heart um so this is literally I think the worst decision I've had to make being on here I really don't like this part of my job um I think they were all very qualified

um I'll be honest with you the the thing that kind of is is my driving Factor is I don't know if it's the elephant in the room or what have you but um I sat here several maybe a month ago whenever we had the superintendent evaluations and I was up here and three of my colleagues were not able to participate in that process because of conflict of interest throughout the district which I

understand they're elected officials they're allowed to serve even though they have family members who are also employed um I do struggle with having a superintendent whose husband is a principal I think that's a lot of um brings a lot of opening for conflict of interest certainly I don't think that's the reason she shouldn't be hired but it's something that I do think about in terms of part of her job is to evaluate

principles and um last time I checked we made a motion that that's what the superintendent should be doing cuz for a little while we had Dr Dr Curley right if memory serves me we had Dr Curley evaluating the principal at dery but I think we changed that um I believe not long ago we had decided that wasn't appropriate that the superintendent should be the one doing that um which is

why um some of my colleagues couldn't evaluate the superintendent at that time and I agreed with that then it should be the superintendent's job to do with it to do that um and I still agree with that um so I think with that I think the two strongest candidates we have out of those due to all those other circumstances and the fact that I have every confidence um in both of them then

I'm going to I'm I'm going to have to go uh today with Dr Curley all right so do we want to vote on kev's motion to say something first well I just want then then I was going to ask if we could go to the ballot method you know what I'm saying then we go to the whatever you want to that way we can we can vote on your motion that you got a second on

for Anna Riley and then I would rather make a motion that we go by a ballot where everyone says who they're for I would think maybe you want to hear from everybody else just to be a it's going to keep going to the ballot question we're going to keep talking but I want to clear up that motion that's all I'm saying so on the motion that Kevin made was for an O'Reilly for

superintendent Sarah did you I Sarah Sarah um seconded it um I would like to go to a ballot motion if Kevin wins then that's a uh Kevin's motion passes then that's a different story but on the motion so that we can continue talking and go to the what was recommended as a ballot where everyone just says who they vote for I would ask that if Deb could call the role unless someone has a

comment and just don't I have a comment Mr agar so to me it's a it's a real simple uh clear I think it's clear to Folks at home I think we need experience I think I think we have some issues in the in the district that need to be corrected and they need to be corrected by an experienced leader Dr Curley is currently in the job has zero experience as a superintendent zero and other members

had more Miss Riley has over 13 years experience as a superintendent several as a Deputy Commissioner of Education her credentials are without comparison amongst anybody that came here before this interview that's the reason why I'm passionate about the fact that I think we should be appointing her as the position to answer my colleague's question and to use the as a concern whether her husband has the job has a

job currently that should not prohibit her from getting this job it really shouldn't even be a factor our policies are in place such that they allow for various situations to happen and there's Pro processes to go through for that our policies allow that so using that as a reason to say we're not going to pick the best candidate that came before us today I don't think is the appropriate

thing we have an opportunity to pick somebody that's the best candidate and we're going to choose somebody who has never had any experience and is looking for a chance and I appreciate Dr cury coming before us but you nobody on this board can say that she has any experience relative to the superintendent's role I know budgetarily she has not done a budget she has does not have the credentials of Miss Riley

or several of the other candidates and I think we're making a very very big mistake in putting her forward what we are doing if this vote goes the way it is is we're doing everything that we said to this public that we weren't going to do we weren't going to we said we were going to hire the best candidate with outside of politics and if this vote goes the way it does now if this

goes if this vote goes today and M Riley does not get the job as the most qualified candidate it is very clear it is very clear that this will be about politics which is a problem rather than the best candidate Kevin can we please go to the vote and then we can do the same debate on the ballot question I don't know why you're so headstrong on the motion why why can't I finish my

conversation about the motion the only one dominating the vote I was trying to let everyone have an ample opportunity I asked if you wanted to say something and Ne going to do B said nothing the whole time okay why why can't he weigh in on whether he was going to go for a candidate because we're going to do it on the ballot method that's what I said to you no one's going to be restricted

from talking but because your motion is more important to you I want to get for the district I'll Stand 100% by my coms Motion in a second on on Miss Riley and all my request is that we go if this motion passes it's Miss Riley if it doesn't then we go to the ballot method I'm going to ask for a motion in a second and everybody will say who they support after everyone talks after Kevin

talked Deb could you please call the role on that the motion is to appoint Anna riy a superintendent cor of the schools Mr AGA yes Mr Bailey no Mr Cory no Miss larv no Miss Pereira no Miss Rodricks yes mayor Coogan no I'll entertain a motion to use the ballot method to elect the superintendent second no make a motion who made the motion and you seconded it I'll make a motion Tommy second it okay

could we vote on just going to the ballot method to make the selection if I can say something real Qui go ahead Bobby on the ballot method but no no not he just wants to say something he wants to say something okay is it is it too late go go go no no no we're not it's nowhere near too late yeah okay I thought we're going to vote on the

ballot method that's what I want to give a chance to talk you want talk now everybody has a say call the RO on the ballot method Mr Agia no Mr Bailey yes Mr Cory yes M lar yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Rodricks no I don't even know what may M yes Bobby Bailey this is AB all right so for me um I want to thank all the candidates for coming out um I think

every candidate did a great job I think they were very strong um for me it's uh looking at all the candidates like some of my colleagues said I think it was similar questions um similar answers that were brought across but um for me um I thought a very strong candidate with Elizabeth um I like where she was going with things um talked about putting someone seasoned in place um although I think Dr Curley and uh Miss

Riley did an amazing job um I think Elizabeth spalk my interest um I think she was different I think she came with some different ideas um I think she was very unique um so for me that's who I was really interested in at the time but we got to make a vote with the other two um we'll make that vote so um anyone else um Miss larv thank you and and

again same uh same thing I want to uh thank all four as well um I've been fortunate enough this is my second round of interviews I chaired the search uh committee and I really got to know all of them um when I left the original uh search committee interviews I I left the room uh struggling uh because I knew it was going to come down to a couple maybe three in my after my experience three

two or three candidates and exactly kind of what I thought happened and um I have to make a a difficult decision because I I think Anna riy is an incredible candidate um I think the other two and Dr curlyy is an incredible candidate as well I think um I have to lean towards Dr Curley because she does have a lot of experience in this District she has learned from the best she's had many

opportunities to learn from the best she has has ample time to study under the people that have have mentored her and have gotten her through the last three or four years um five years in in this particular position so um I I think it'd be an injustice not to let the team that is here now um stay together and continue the work uh to lead us into the future and uh bring this District where

it needs to be I have the utmost confidence and Dr curly and um the team that uh Maria has kind of uh formulated and started to build I think uh I think it's time that we get we give them more time to work together at this time thank you um Mr Corey yeah to build on my uh my statement on the cultural consistency first of all I I was very impressed with all the candidates they certainly

brought a tremendous amount of knowledge to the table the reason why I like Dr Curley is because she's been here since 2008 or 2009 she's been consistent she's a gr graduate of our city she was an outstanding student at at dery high school I'm looking out at the crowd right now and I see other assistant superintendents and I see our Chief Financial Officer here and I know that our team is already so integrated and so

strong and everybody it's a Well oiled machine this is why I look for the consistency Fall River is unlike a town in Massachusetts or other cities we're we're a city that's born on small neighborhood relationships and those relationships have been deeply embedded for years in our city that's the culture of this town and she represents that with with a plone and I have no no no reservations that uh there's going to be

any type of Hiccup as far as experience is concerned concerned she's experienced she's already driving the curriculum data in this city and she does so she's got a great relationship with desie and like I said her support team is a great support team our school committee has put some wonderful people in place and I'm placing my trust in that thank you anything further Rod I have a lot of concerns about the

things that I am hearing I have tremendous concern about appointing someone who does not have any experience as a superintendent has Dr Curley been able to work in her position as a as an assistant superintendent yes however she has no experience leading a district to say that it would be an injustice to not put her in that position screams to me that this is very much a this is someone who's been in our

district so therefore we must reward her by promoting her to superintendent absolutely that is not how we have to look at situations I look at situations as we need to have someone who has the best interest of the students and has the experience to drive that work forward I'm sorry but Dr Curley does not and I can appreciate that everyone has a different opinion but what I see is a

district that is in desperate need of solid leadership and I don't see that in any other candidate that is all I have to say because I am speechless for one time in my life and with that I yield Mr um Mr Agia then miss per I'll second what my colleague just said uh I'm very concerned about it uh I've been concerned about this process how this process went right from the Geo when I asked for information

relative to the search committee I've asked for minutes of those meetings point of order point ofc we're discussing the candidates Kev the candidates we're not talking about the process I have a rationale no no the candidates right this is a rationale for my decision on who I'm choosing to make V and and I have a chance to articulate that again to talk about the candidates so the process has not been transparent

it has not been point of order mayor Kevin please stay on the topic it's not the process we're talking about the candidates what is the what are we doing right here the candidates so we're talking about the picking a superintendent so the process is very valid to me explaining why I'm going to vote a certain way why not a certain way it's the four candidates we're talking about Mr uh attorney Assad can

you please weigh in on this because I'd love to hear your Insight this is uh this matter is to discuss the the candidates the uh the actual process is not on the agenda and would not be uh appropriate at this time the this is a ballot method that is is being used uh it is a situation where the individuals have an opportunity to express their views with respect to the candidate that

they would like to see as well as with other candidates uh but with respect to beyond that that is not something that is contained in the ballot method itself so how I arrived at my vote and my decision has nothing to do with this conversation I think it the well as long as as you want to State uh what the situation was and why you would vote for uh particular candidate as opposed to

another that's very valid with respect to the process itself is not something that's within the ballot method that you would vote on or discuss today okay so based on that we are making a major decision here and this is an absolute travesty if we do not select the right person here when I look at the situation and say why are we going to hire a superintendent as Miss rodri just indicated with zero

experience in leading a district I can't imagine any other reason any other reason than politics or just because we want to feel good and when we look at decisions that we have to make amongst our leadership amongst our assistant superintendents our principles we hold them to hire the best person for each job outside of politics and outside of anything other than the best person for the job to educate our

students that's what we hold our other people to and we as school committee members aren't even upholding any of that at all so what's happened is we now have gotten a situation where in order to justify my vote I have to explain to anybody that's out there in the public listening to be transparent to say why do I think that we need to make some changes relative to our Administration

we don't have a well-oiled machine right now between our current superintendent all of our assistant superintendant working together and our principes we have a very fractured Department right now we have a tremendous amount of issues going on that people cannot make a decision people are asking for help they're not getting it we have a very broken Administration right now Kevin we have

pockets of people that are going to do a great job Kevin Kevin we have a broken Administration you're yelling we're talking about four candidates I don't know what you mean by Administration we're talking about the four candidates one of the four candidates so one of the four candidates please lower your voice one of the four candidates is a member of our leadership team she has been a

member of our leadership team for several years more than every all of the other assistant superintendents most of our major issues are related to academic achievement and instruction right now our academic achievement our instruction are in the tank they're not good Dr Curley has been in that position longer than all the other assistant superintendant so I find it to be an injustice if we're going to say at this

meeting that we have a well-oiled machine and everything is great because that is an actual Injustice that's a travesty to have anyone actually believe that that is happening right now we have a fractured system we have a person that that applied for the job who has been in the job and not getting it done in that job but here in here in Fall River Public Schools what we do is we have a

job and if we're not doing good at that job we fall forward we fall forward into another job and if we're not doing good at that job if you know the right people politically you fall forward into another job and then you fall forward into another job and lo and behold what we have here today is now with all of those things that are going wrong and we're not a high functioning District

things are not going well guess what fall forward one more time and now become the superintendent of schools in a needy district with zero experience as a as a superintendent zero experience from managing a budget doing Human Resources I asked a question today about uh treatment and harassment Dr Curley was in her current position when people were getting harassed and I heard it right here today but I heard it today

that we can't allow that to you yelling why are you yelling I'm not yelling yeah you are yelling okay I'll talk soft I'll talk soft that would be much more appropriate when you're talking about harassment sure cuz we're getting harassed right now no you're not yeah we are so Dr Curley was in the position over the last four or five years when people were getting harassed continuously and guess what happened

nothing so the best idea that we should do in that case is we should promote her to be the next superintendent with zero experience it's a travesty it's a bad decision and I I just I'm totally flab gasted that we are even making this decision and then to add to that we're going to use that that the superintendent has to evaluate Mr Riley as a principal who if we do right now Mr

Riley gets evaluated by the assistant superintendent anyway so if we were going to hold ourselves to that standard why wouldn't we be doing that all along this is a travesty of of being on a school commit you know what I think a travesty is honestly you know what I think a travesty is is the fact that we can't sit up here and disagree respectfully and you're going to sit there and you're going to accuse me of

being political because I made a choice you know what I feel is political the fact that I knew who the two of you were going to vote for before I even heard an interview that's political can make whatever face as you want I'm done we all have a right to make our own choices Kevin we all have that right Mr chairman he just told me to be quiet Mr Mr chair

hold on no you talked you have talked enough let other people have a turn please let's be fair let me be let me be clear cuz I have I have the floor now yes what I think of travesty is the way that the behavior is happening right now that because people on the other side of this table disagree you're going to act like we're political we don't care we're going to appoint somebody who can't do

the job let me ask a question the last superintendent we had I thought she's great I think she's great I think we all thought she was great we unanimously voted for her where was she superintendent before she was superintendent here what district did she working anybody know oh she didn't we promoted her from in house and it wasn't an issue then yeah right was it an issue then we're talking about the

The Experience somebody has and we're going to blame something we're going to blame a human resource issue that we are going to blame a human resource issue on one person you're going to do that publicly when no one out there knows the story you're just going to throw that out and that's professional and I'm sorry but yes Kevin I was the one that with you I agreed with you when you said the

superintendent should be evaluating the principles because before that Tracy was doing Matt's Matt's stuff so our colleague here was able to do her job but you know what I agreed with you cuz it made sense then guess what still makes sense to me now I don't change my opinions cuz I have friends and I'll be honest with you if I was going to make a personal decision it would be to vote

for Anna cuz I've known her almost my whole life and I think her and her family are amazing but I'm not up here to make personal decisions I'm up here to make the choice that I think is right and I don't want want to be criticized because you disagree I don't want to be called political or or make it a stupid decision or whatever insults that you want to move the question move the question

move the question right question can I can I just say something very quickly okay hold on we got a we got a motion we move the question does the debate stop no no debate 2third vote 2/3 vote okay there's no motion you there's no motion we're voting no so was the B it was to use the ballot method right but we want to go to the ballot method

now is are we out of she made a motion to move the question now we're going to vote on that two3 2third of it the question moves and we vote so if anybody feels like they need to continue to talk they vote no on the move to the question that's all exactly all right call the roll and move the question so we can get get on with the night so what we voting

to just move the question yes I need a second I need a second second second I have a motion a second Mr ago no Mr Bailey no Mr Cory no you can say what you got to say yes oh no yes no yes back to the debate okay Mr Cory and then M Rogers uh I don't appreciate being called political because I made an informed choice I spent my career working in this

School District I know a lot of people internally I know the workings of this school district and I don't like it when somebody says that the school district has problems that cannot be overrun every school district in the Commonwealth has issues our problems are because we're still bailing out of covid it still is a viable reason in this District as many schools are but I can tell you that our our our leadership

team in this district is cohesive and I want to mirror the point that our current superintendent has served so admirably and she had no prior super uh superintendent experience except that our current superintendent spent her entire her entire career practically in this district from the elate 70s until now that's called dedication that's called commitment that build consistency that develops culture those

are the values that I look forward to in driving our school district forward and Dr Curley is in that ilk she is a highly intelligent woman with a tremendous support team around her to help her in all the decisions especially the budgetary decisions because of our chief financial offices expertise in driving our budget and my trust in his expertise so when you label the district like in

in so much need Mr agar your lack of trust shows mightily and I'm placing my trust in the leadership team that is already driving our district forward that's the point I want to make this is not a political decision I like the level of consistency that Dr Curley has shown in our district as assistant principal from dery and now is assistant superintendent and she's ready to face the big time with that I yield Miss

Rogers I told us she was next trying to gather my thoughts so when I look at the candidates I specifically am looking at someone that has a vision for special education someone that has a vision for social emotional learning and someone who has experience in bringing those pieces together I would like to feel like this district is a safe place to put my disabled son and I have never

felt that way and I was really hoping that I could sit here over the last couple of years and try to move that change forward I think we have Miss obenchain who has worked extremely hard to do that however those changes cannot be made unless there is someone who has a vision for those departments if I'm going to sit here and hold on to the values that I had about special education about making sure that

our kids are a priority there's there was one candidate that stood out to me there was another right Bobby's the Bobby's Choice actually also had some good discussion about that right however Dr curlyy did not and Dr Curley has been in this district for a long time and I have not seen those specific changes in special education and social emotional learning that I personally am looking for when I

say personally I'm talking about advocating for the 3200 special education students in our district that is a substantially higher number than any other District in the state okay so if I'm going to sit here and make a decision my decision has to be based on what my values are in those pieces and those are my values I will not be a part of a of a discussion like this and so

the only last thing that I'm going to say is that effective immediately I am resigning from this committee okay anybody else to talk Mr AGA so I felt coming into here tonight that we had an opportunity to move this District forward I 100% feel that we're going backwards I think that when we sit here we can we can put our heads back in the sand and think that everything's going great we can think that there's no

issues going on in the schools we can think that all the administrators are in support of Dr Curley we can think that the assistant superintendent and so everybody's a happy family everybody's doing great but the sad reality of the situation is that's not the case right now decisions aren't being made uh planning is not being done properly it's just it's a really sad State of Affairs when we can sit here

and have the majority of members of this committee actually say that we're going to hire somebody with no experience we are just definitely going backwards it's a sad day as far as I'm concerned uh for this committee for the school system and for the city of Fall River and if anyone gets offended you can get as offended as you want but let me just say for the record before I close this decision is

absolutely political period I don't care what anybody says you can get as offended as you want it's political it's not picking the best candidate and with that I yield um pleas yes I I I haven't even talked oh I don't you know do you need to I just a second I want to make sure that our teacher ERS and our parents and our hardworking staff that were telling all your schools are in the tank no

issues in our schools no nobody up here saying that this is hard work if you noticed every single candidate that came to that table tonight every single one of the four talked about what was going on positive in Fall River they said something good about the the district they wanted to be here and I compliment all four candidates but I know dog on well that the that when people start a

search for a superintendent and the first thing out of their mouth is we're going out of the district then you know what that is that is political so my position is we are going to vote on what we got from our interview and what we think is the best candidate and we're going to follow um along with the process that was given to us and I hope everybody understands that because one person on the stage

yells it's political that doesn't make it so I want you to know we're getting the best candidate we can and we're going to go forward moving this district and continue to show Improvement um since we voted to use the ballot method um Deb would you please call the role and ask each member of the committee who they're supporting Mr an Riley Mr Bailey Tracy Mr Cory Dr Tracy Curley Miss larvie Dr Tracy

Curley Miss Pereira Dr Curley Miss Rodricks mayor kouan Dr Curley can you please um that is does anybody wish to change their vote could you please tell us the vote Miss uh Miss cabal five votes for Dr Trac curlyy one vote for Doc uh for Anna Riley um the chair will now be looking for a motion move that Dr Tracy Curley be appointed superintendent of schools and the for public schools subject to a

successful negotiation of a contract of employment mutually agreeable to the candidate and the school committee signed by both parties or their designes I need a motion so moved do I have a second second I have a motion a second uh Deb can you call the roll on that Mr ago no Mr Bailey yes Mr cor Mr Cory yes Miss lar yes Miss Pereira yes Miss Rodricks May Coogan yes I'll now entertain a motion to

adjourn make a motion to adjourn second I have a motion to Second Deb call the roll Mr drel yes Mr Bailey yes Mr Cory yes M ly yes Miss Pereira yes M Rodricks May cgan yes