That's 532 so I guess we can get started and we'll start with public comment. So Beth right now you're the only one that has your hand raised so we can start with you. Hi everyone for the record. My name is Shabnam Beth Nolan and I'm a mock player resident with three kids to have been in the school system and one coming up. So I just wanted to sort of take the opportunity to reset ourselves in the charge of the committee as I noticed on the agenda some of the questions later down or you know what you're talking about sort of defining safety and thinking about it moving forward. And so I just wanted to ask of everybody on the committee that as you think through those questions that you consider ensuring that the framework in which you're answering those questions questions is rooted within the charge and looking at whether or not having an SRO and defining safety whatever that definition may be fits within our equity policies as a school district. So just wanted to take a second it's been a while since we've gotten together and wanted to just bring that up really quickly so that if people needed to take a look back at the charge and see what that equity policy was to make sure that as they're answering and discussing those questions they're comparing it not just generally to what you may think as an individual or you may think generally about what's good and bad about SROs but how does it compare and and go under the light of the equity policy. So that was all thanks. Thank you. I see we have a couple other members of the public and I just want to make sure that we honor the fact that you're here and if you have anything that you'd like to say during this time this is the time carved out for public comment. I'm just here to witness. Thank you. Great thank you. Okay so we can move to the consent agenda. I do just quickly want to say that Sue and Keisha are here and they are going to be facilitating tonight's meeting primarily so I'm going to turn it over to them a little bit later after the consent agenda. So on the consent agenda we just have approving the meeting minutes from December 17th. Do I have a motion? I'll move to approve them. Oh second. Thank you. All right. Will? Oh sorry is there any discussion? Does anyone have discussion on the minutes or any changes to make? Okay. All right. So I'll take a vote. Will? Hi. Amanda? Hi. Edie? Hi. Eliana? Hi. Joan? Hi. Catherine? Hi. Mia? Hi. Susan? Hi. And Zach? I can't hear you Zach if you're speaking and I also see that Jay you're there too but you didn't put the asterisks next to your name. Jay, yes. Great. Okay so the first item on the agenda is to set the context for this meeting and I think we're going to start with Keisha. Thanks Emma. I've been trying to think of how to frame this in a way that doesn't feel overly partisan or leading in any way but it really felt as though we could not start this meeting in the moment that we're in without acknowledging the very real feelings of danger and a lack of safety that many people feel in the country including in Vermont. I won't go too deeply into what we saw on Wednesday but we are also looking at safety threats that may take place on January 17th or 20th here in Vermont and in your capital city may take place on another day altogether but there are a lot of reasons that people are feeling really concerned in that we're trying to explain to our young people how we failed them in many ways as a country and as a civil nation and as a democracy. We don't really have the luxury in many ways of changing our agenda which sometimes feels like that kind of inhumane white supremacy culture that works still must happen and we have to sort of keep moving forward in some productive way so we wanted to really just acknowledge what's going on and also make sure people felt full permission and license to bring up however they're feeling in the context of the questions tonight because I think as we talk about what safety looks like in our community it's really hard to separate that from how we're all feeling right now knowing that our kids and our community and how our school schedule is going to go are affected by very real threats of danger right now so I hope you know I don't know it's hard not to offend people right now in the world on some side or another but I just think it would be impossible for us not to to address that as we start to say thank you kasha I really appreciate that yeah I mean I think I think it goes without saying that anytime if anyone's sort of feeling overwhelmed by this process or the conversation that you know feel free to step aside or if there's something that you really want to say in light of current events then always feel free to voice those things as well um so I was going to start with the reviewing the committee charge and the role and the timeline I received a few questions over the break about mostly the timeline of how things were going to go from here on out and I wanted to sort of clarify some of those things and then also make sure that if you had questions that I answer those or attempt to answer them I'm going to just put in the chat the language of the charge that sort of states the two parts of our charge if you can see that so that it's not I should have it was had bullet points and now it doesn't but the first part of the charge is to make a recommendation to the board on how to proceed with the student resource officer um school school resource officer position by December 2020 which we got an extension on and then the second part of the charge is to provide a broader report on safety through the lens of our district diversity equity and inclusion policy by march um so this first part I mean what we talked about it at the last meeting that it doesn't have to um look like a recommendation and what Sue and Keisha and I have been working on um for this agenda and what we discussed at the last meeting was sort of how do we what do we present to the board and what what does that sort of product end up looking like um I did talk to Jim Murphy um board chair and he's going to give me five minutes at the next agenda the next meeting which is January 20th just to give um an overview to the board members of sort of what to expect from us from this committee for the February 3rd meeting and on the February 3rd meeting we're going to have you know substantial part of the agenda um to present whatever we decide to present to the board as a committee and then the board will have time for discussion and ultimately make a decision I believe that night that's the intent um so so what um Sue and Keisha and I sort of discussed was that this doesn't and it's been mentioned at the other committee meetings is that it doesn't really have to look like a recommendation it doesn't have to be this committee recommends X about the SRO this is what we want you to do and what we've decided is to go more in a direction of sort of summarizing our findings um summarizing our key takeaways and providing them with all of the various work that we've done up to this point um and I believe that all of those items the the Q&A document the stakeholder feedback survey results um you know the key takeaways and the themes and all the stuff that we produced as a committee I feel like those things are going to go a long way to help the individual board members um with their task of having to land on a yes or no vote around the SRO so there's certainly some movement in that plan um you know room room for change in that plan and at the end of this agenda we have um reflection in next steps and input on our next agenda so as the meeting unfolds and as you start to sort of see these products that we're going to be working on for the board um you might keep in mind other things that we might want to spend our next meeting doing so is it um January 26th so we will have one more meeting before we actually presented the board and um and you can have a role tonight in setting the agenda for that meeting so if there's something you feel that we're missing or um you know a strategy that you would like to present to the committee tonight about how we should potentially present to the board um we're going to be all ears on that so is there any questions have I answered people's questions around the timeline um our role in this process the charge the point the point where we're at right now you have any questions just raise your hand or speak up sometimes if you just stay quiet a little longer a question emerges good teaching Trisk Emma I did have a question about the presentation to the board um on the February 3rd were you envisioning that as like a collaborative effort or like a few people or would you do it as the chairs of the committee do it or do you have any I definitely don't think um well I would not want to be I would not be interested in being the sole presenter at that meeting I think it certainly you know this has been such a collaborative effort and we've all put in so much time and energy that I would love to have people help present our findings to the board I think some people will be more interested in participating in that aspect than others and I and I'm not going to like put anyone on the spot and force people to present to the board but absolutely if um and that's something that I have in in sort of my notes for later in the agenda tonight um and it's something that we could decide at the next meeting you know you could have two weeks to sort of consider what do I want my role to be what would I like to work on you know um I mean I do think we need to be relatively organized and succinct in our presentation but I think they'll give us time you know I'm not exactly sure we haven't worked out that agenda yet so I'm not exactly sure how much time but in my mind I'm envisioning 20 minutes half hour I'm hoping for um so we'll see and then and I'm also thinking that board members will probably have questions for us as a committee and and I'm hoping to provide them with a lot of the documents that we have up to this point at least the raw stuff for them to be able to sort through between now and and even January 20th or February 3rd because there's a lot of there's a lot in there and there's a lot to read through and I would like to give them enough time to um you know honor all of that any other questions Edie emailed me ahead of time and let me know that her voice is hurting tonight so she's gonna give her vocal cords a little rest um but if you have any questions you can also put them in the chat okay um like at the presentation maybe each of our not stakeholder groups for like faculty students like administration there it should be like a good like variety of people who are presenting so there's they get some good perspectives going yeah thank you that's a great point Eliana and also Eliana Eliana and I met and we talked about maybe doing one of our famous committee surveys to see to sort of gauge your level of interest in being a presenter so maybe we could do that um between this meeting and next meeting and then at the next meeting sort of share the results of that and if all 15 of us um are interested in presenting or if only five of us are interested in presenting um you know we might that might be a good starting point but that was something that um Eliana Eliana and I floated at our last meeting I also want to apologize that um the students had a meeting planned for the 8th I believe it was last Friday and I was just spacing I wasn't able to attend and I was sort of spacing on the the whole like zoom aspect of it that I had to be there to start the zoom link so some of you may have arrived to an empty zoom meeting and I apologize for that we have it rescheduled for this coming Friday um and there have been a few questions um that I've you know email exchanges that I've had with some of you about different people to potentially present to this committee and I'm sort of grappling with like when do we have those people present and in some ways I feel like those a lot of those presentations like the one idea was um there's a woman who specializes in trauma informed practices that really wants to present to us and then another idea was floated about Matt Nisley who is the former SRO potentially presenting to us and I'm just not sure when the appropriate time is to bring those people in and if there's an urgency and it makes sense to have some of those people come to our next meeting on the 26th or if we should hold off and incorporate their presentations for the second part of our charge so that's something you can be thinking about now and then we can dig into a little bit at the end of this meeting okay so I think the next part of the agenda is for assuming Kasia right or am I yeah continuing I think we're ready to continue on thank you Emma hi everyone well first I just want to acknowledge uh this will be uh Kasia and I our last time kind of formally with you all and we are really just so impressed with the work of this group and you all have done a lot of work and um as Emma mentioned we think this work is going to really be able to serve not just the school district but the city we think you've learned some things that are going to be very useful so I hope you all feel really good about what you've done so far and tonight our hope is to try to help you take some of this work and create some things with it that will be useful both to your committee as you move forward into the second part of your charge and also to the board for their more short-term decision-making so I'm just going to take a minute and share the screen sometimes it helps to just have a visual look at where where you are and where you're going and Emma already kind of talked about your charge we just acknowledged that the you know is extended a little so tonight we're we're hopefully going to help you work with some of the feedback you've received to share some recommendations with around the SRO position I'll speak more about that in a minute and then what Kasia and I feel really excited about is this bigger picture charge around developing a broader vision um for school justice safety and the future of the relationship uh between the district and the police department and so we hope that what we do tonight and what you present to the board will really position you to continue on with that work and let's see if I can and so you know just as a reminder you've all done a lot of work gathering input from stakeholders through surveys and conversations through that work early on you started to identify a shared vision and a shared set of concerns related to safety across stakeholder groups and then you all did a lot of learning you had a presentation from Libby you've had a lot of conversations we shared some articles and things like that and so we just again want to acknowledge all the work that's happened and we're really going to try to build on that work tonight and for tonight's meeting what we want to do is give you a chance to review some of the key themes from the work of the committee and that's going to happen throughout the meeting in different places we also have structured this meeting to give you an opportunity to really come up with a set of core values related to safety and again using some of what you heard around people's vision and concerns we hope that you can use that to identify some values that you think should be the foundation for the work going forward and then the third thing we want to do is give you an opportunity to create some recommendations and as Emma said we thought it would be more helpful and more appropriate given where you are with your work to share really do this in the form of sharing with the board what you've really been hearing from people and so with all of your best thinking all the stakeholder feedback you've heard being aware of the diversity and equity policy for the district your conversations with each other what is your best thinking around benefits of keeping the SRO position what is your best thinking around benefits to eliminating that position and then what are some other key considerations that you would like the board to keep in mind as they move forward and so that's how we've framed that piece of the work I think I'll just pause there and see if there's any question about what we're going to be doing tonight so I'm going to keep going then and we want to just go over with you the key elements of the vision we I took this from you'll see that Mia and Catherine and Will got together and they created a document that contains themes from all of this work you did we thought it was really important to theme some of this work because there's so much data that you collected we wanted to make it usable so I just want to take a minute and share some of the key elements of the vision and the concerns and we're going to be asking you to work with this in a little activity that we have coming up so here's some of the key elements that you all seem to hear from across stakeholder groups for the vision so one part is that the district is a friendly inclusive place where student staff and families experience a sense of community and belonging there are trusting relationships and good communication between adults and students and staff offer both academic and emotional support for students there's training and professional development around a lot of different areas including de-escalation restorative practices equity implicit bias systemic racism mental health and competency that schools invest in social workers to support mental health and that there are clear expectations related to safety safety and there's personal responsibility and ownership for meeting those so those were some elements of the vision what what stakeholders would like to see going forward and then we also ask people what are some of your key concerns around safety so one was this idea of lack of training and trauma informed care for police and also staff and especially as it relates to interactions with people from marginalized groups and students a lack of transparency as a concern bullying mental health issues fear and anxiety around the threat of danger and the presence of weapons on campus whether in the hands of police or others so with that I'm going to just stop sharing the screen for a moment and see if anybody has any response to that or questions about that before we move on to our activity okay so I'm going to share the screen again for a moment so the idea of using values a lot of our work we do with communities and organizations we really hone in on this idea of making sure that people have a really good idea of what core values are and they can be like a north star or a compass they can help us keep us headed in a right direction so for example as the community goes forward and maybe starts making some specific recommendations we hope that you'll be able to return to these and say how do these recommendations align with these values the things that we've said are most important when it comes to safety so the first thing that I'd like you to do is keeping in mind the vision and the concerns that we just talked through I just want you each to take a minute and if you have a piece of paper and a pencil or something that would be great or you can do it electronically but I just want to encourage you to write down three to five words that you think represent the core values the things that matter the most to this community when it comes to safety at the school district so does anybody need more time what I'd like to do is just invite Emma because I think she has the ability to do this to just create some breakout groups maybe pairs of two or three Emma and I'd like to invite you to share your core values with each other and let me just share the screen again for a moment first of all give you a chance to say hi like Kasia said there's a lot happening so please feel free to take a moment to check in and then we'd like to invite you to share your values with each other and talk through them and choose a couple of words or phrases that are most important to your group and then we're going to ask you to share your words with the full group and we'll do about we can do 15 minutes for this or actually if we do pairs or threes maybe we could try to well let's stay with 15 minutes we don't want to rush this and Emma do you need any help with the breakout so you can if you want help I can if you make me the host I can um I've got it so how many minutes do you want them in the breakout room or us in the break rooms let's do 15 minutes and let's do groups of three to four oh three to four two to three I think in 15 minutes I think we'll be the right amount of time I'm just gonna need to recreate um just a second okay I see I don't end up automatically in a room but I can go to a room um okay and then so should I do 14 minutes with the 60 second notice yes please okay all right here we go it looks like we're with orca media yeah here comes Emma there's Emma too hi hello should we just start by reading what we wrote down or hi a little check in since we have 15 whole minutes that's a long time I know we're not used to having a long time yeah how have you been Catherine I haven't seen you in in person in forever pretty good we had a good you know holiday break and then all the craziness happened so we're right I feel like I'm right back like in uh just bizarro world um but how are your kids doing oh they're pretty good but you know Taylor's had a tough time he's gonna go back to in person next semester which I think will be good so he was virtual and it was just really tough and in the whole pandemic period has been a lot tougher on her on him than we realized it's so hard to be like that's such an important developmental time of life and like really your like social world is 90 percent of your interest and like where you're getting your growth and you know you're disconnected these days yeah so we've definitely benefited from some of the social emotional uh help of the school so we'll definitely plug the high school for their support and all of this and I mean in vtvlc you know the teachers they were great too it's just like it's a perfect storm for online learning is like a whole thing where like some kids you know are fine with it and it makes sense to them and they just sort of like chug through the online classes and then other kids just don't have that like human connection with a teacher and it and it doesn't work for them he's like I will never take it on the land class again in my life so yeah but anyway we're you know it's drawn us closer it's been humbling it's been you know just uh creating empathy and yeah so uh and julia and jacob they're fine you know julia complains in the morning but she enjoys it so but you could tell so you know it jacob really needs like he really wants to have human interaction with friends outside of school so it's really been tough how about you guys how about petra and petra wakes up every morning and says susan used to be petra's teacher but she wakes up every morning and um and is like I hate school and you're you could see I mean petra pretty much likes school like she's good at school she's social and she generally likes school but she wakes up every day and it's like I don't know how much of it like I definitely take it with a big grain of salt I don't know how much of it is just sort of like her mantra these days um but she's like I hate school and I hate COVID and but she's really doing fine you know um we've had a lot of we've been really focusing on like getting outside and going skiing and going ice skating and going sledding and just trying to like do whatever we are allowed to do to the you know to the furthest extent so my kids are okay but then my older son he's 13 and I think and he's going to be in high school next year susan yeah high school and he's like almost as tall as me he comes up to like here on a picture of him recently you know I was really surprised yeah my gosh but he's in that same sort of boat with Taylor maybe is just like you know their social lives are so important to them at that stage and um he misses people and dances and things we have one of our kids moved back home our 24 year old um she needed to for she really actually didn't have a job or a place to live so and it's been really nice like at 24 she's appreciative she's like oh you guys are giving me food thank you like she's just appreciating you'll get there eventually but it it's a little gift to have time with her right now at this time in her life and so far she's not depressed but she's looking for something interesting so if you hear of anything um she's in uh her field is environmental biology and earth sciences earth sciences so she's uh she'd like to be working outdoors hard time I heard a rumor that earthwalk might resume next semester she could consider reaching out to them right it's a good tip thank you okay so we our words were I actually found this activity kind of challenging right about safety yeah me too like I thought of all the words safety's a hard one to think about what my values are for I just think I went back to our our stakeholder feedback survey and sort of the themes that came from that and and the things that we kept hearing over and over again in there which was about safety it was rooted in safety what are your visions and concerns of safety and I wrote down equity like seems to be this huge theme and then I wrote social emotional well-being of kids so sometimes it was around like you know safety concerns around like bullying and peer pressure and things that were happening in their peer groups um and then sometimes it was about stuff that was happening at home like safety from home but like just sort of um you know so their social emotional safety and then I went from there to creating a safe space in the school for them to really focus on learning um and then I wrote student centered so what is best for kids in terms of safety added communication I felt like communication was a thread throughout and the systemic organization when what I meant was like something for our whole district in terms of safety a system that worked for all the different moving pieces in our district and then I also had a sort of compassion empathy along with the equity so I had fairness which I think goes along with equity I also wrote compassion empathy and non-violence that's that's a good interesting word choice I didn't I didn't think of it but I like hearing it or non-violent I don't know I also had the word protection and I feel like that popped up because like I'm really I didn't think this way until last week's events and living in a capital city and thinking about staying safe next week protection like I'm valuing protection right and so that's not one that came exactly off of our our survey but like that goes with safety I think protection definitely I think sort of related to a lot of these words it's um there's been a growing sort of um sentiment of just the value of community input stakeholders like I've been really appreciative of this process and how inclusive we've been of a variety of stakeholder groups and it's been really important to me that the police were represented and that the administrators were represented and that everyone had you know their time to talk to the committee and that's been feeling really important to me because I do think we're a close-knit town and you know it's a small town and people know each other and I think we all tend to generally come from a place of like respect for each other um and I appreciate that in in this process and in developing and thinking about safety yeah along those lines like when we say equity like I sometimes do wonder like where are there voices that we're not hearing you know like hearing what you're saying this stakeholder input I think we've done as comprehensive as as we could but then a little part of me is like oh did we miss some voices are we not hearing from some of our community but I always think that but I think that's the equity lens that we put on as we think you know I just realized like I revealed information about my daughter to orca media like do I know I thought that too well I guess we'll just I wonder if orca actually records the breakout rooms but I guess we'll find out we all did yeah oh well I'm okay with it I guess now I'm like thinking back what did I say about soren and his we just won't tell them we said anything yeah they don't watch um so are we supposed to be boiling this down to sort of like or synthesizing it all I forget what our I think we're supposed to win it down to like one big idea about so like if we had to define safety I guess like or core values small group activity to identify core values all right Susan put that in all into a sentence okay it's not writing is not my strongest suit captain you then okay um I'll give back to that word protection because I think that can be protection from protecting our children or in our staff you know social and emotionally and also protecting them physically so I don't know um of course equity and fear you know that was the one we all touched on and so maybe creating or I don't know so we're gonna do this in one like phrase or can we just do word I think you can do whatever whatever you want whatever feels comfortable and makes sense I do think that the part you said I'm about community input or like collaborate like we're not just looking at one perspective right like we're really for safety we have to we have to think about safety for everyone and so that's where the equity comes in that's where the protecting everyone comes in protecting one group you might be feeling like you're not protecting another group so I guess community building community building is really kind of what we're saying isn't it like I like that community building with a focus on compassion empathy equity yeah and social emotional well-being um building a vision of safety or protection as a community together oh that sounds great you got you got there but I'm still relying on one of you to repeat that again building a community building a community safety plan of protection I didn't say it that way but whatever sorry together I mean I know I use the word together um so I think that's like my main thing that I really appreciate about this town is sort of like our togetherness Catherine do you want to share or do you want to share Emma I heard a pass the buck from Emma Catherine is I'm seeing Catherine write something down so building a safe space together as a community focused on compassion empathy and equity I didn't put protection in there all right the protection word that's okay I think safe space implies so do we have everybody back Emma I think we do I think so yep all the breakout rooms are closed great so what we'd like to do is we'd like to hear from each breakout room and Keisha is going to record all of your ideas um and on a jam board and which we're going to share in a minute and then we'll just see if there's some uh alignment and we can kind of try to see if we can narrow this down to a manageable number of of key values so Keisha do you want me to share the screen or would you like to share the screen so share the jam board as we go yeah um why don't you share the screen since you'll be doing that okay so I think we'll start I'm going to start with a group I was in an amazing group with Zach and Eliana and Zach if you want to um just give a quick overview of what we talked about and then Eliana's going to tell you the words we came up with and then I think Keisha's going to add those to the jam board which I think she probably already started with her group's work so go ahead Zach all right um we talked a little bit about um just kind of how we're feeling and how are things going um and then um a little bit about um how we want to keep these like words or like phrases in mind going forward and using them as a guide for future and current reference um and just kind of highlighting um the goal of our conversations like within that group and as a bigger group as a committee thanks then Eliana if you could share the words we came up with all right lots of good ones uh equity acceptance um physical safety um I can oh I'll just start over um equity acceptance physical safety gentleness and compassion as one um and a voice last one voice student uh yeah student voice got it I'm also um when I hear one twice I'm going to make it a little bigger so that we can see what got a lot of play here right thank you and so let's go to another group um the group I was in was with Keisha so ours are up on the board already so maybe we we could go um we also did a little go around check in just how ever each of us are doing and feeling in this moment um um before uh sharing with each other the ones that um rose to the top for for us uh so diversity equity and inclusion came through from all three of us had some version of that um justice um empathy uh taking a nuanced approach to be able to um take holistic next steps and um seeing the humanity and fullness of each student um those two combined are um one of the we realize that that's um sort of the picture of how any one individual is moving through the system of of our district right now that or just when they show up when they show up at school um and that the one of the big challenges we as a committee have in the district has is to be setting a core set of standards um system-wide and then um and then making sure that each individual is um with everything that is going on with them can uh can show up and uh and and meet those standards and and have um uh and have the most access to to learning uh possible uh so that's why we that's what the sticky for system-wide standards and individual nuanced approaches um where that comes through we also named that relationship building is um an important value and um addressing unique traumas and lived experiences uh and the last one I think was having in uh having optimism and a belief in others great thank you and Emma I think you were in a a group that wasn't hasn't reported yet to someone from your group want to share yeah I think Catherine was taking notes yeah so we had a similar experience checked in with each other and then um talked about our words that we came up with and we we kind of put it into a definition um so you can take the words out of it if you want to break that out but building a safe space of protection together as a community with the focus on compassion empathy equity and social emotional well-being and that was fast I can read it again Kasia's pretty fast okay I could put this over here Kasia some other words that we came up with were non-violence um communication systemic organization that is just kind of like what the last group said you know having a you know kind of standards of going forward for the whole system to follow or be a guide in providing safety another word was um student-centered which I don't know if I see on the board oh right that's who I realized you were doing some magical theming and I was like moving back around okay we're you know this is good so um we uh let's see were there was there one more group so I think maybe right there was mine do you all are you okay with me speaking on behalf of the group yeah okay um I was with Joan and Katelyn and Edie and some of the words that we came up with um were an environment uh okay can you start again because we just had the background noise thank you um we just said relationships relationship building it's really important um an environment that is transparent open caring and inclusive um we talked about um this we also mentioned student-centered um and we talked about this word holistic in terms of like students physical health also their mental health and well-being and also just what students bring into school with them from their world outside of school I'm just kind of honoring all of them all of who they are um those are I think our main words acceptance restorative yeah great could I add a word that I'm not that not on the board um that I had mentioned was just the word transparency maybe it goes in some ways along with communication I was there one around communication anyway I put transparent transparency ended up with all the other ones in that string oh okay I could just oh I see it yep okay and then I think Katelyn just suggested anti-racist as a word as a theme that is a value excuse me is that I think that's all the groups right so we started uh Casey and I just started kind of moving some of these around a little bit but if people see um any themes that they want to name because of course when you come up with something like this you you want to try to narrow it down to a manageable number because you want to actually like as a committee be able to just remember what your core values are what these core values are so that when you're making decisions and coming up with strategies you have an easy way to go back and make sure that they are that they are addressing what you have said matters most so theming this a little bit can be helpful and you all can do this after the meeting too but if anybody sees anything that they'd like to suggest right now in terms of things that that you think should go together we can move things around a little bit I am going to stop sharing the screen and and Keisha maybe you could share the a link to the jam board in the chat so people can see that so that was great work and um as Zach and Eliana and I were talking about uh the the having a list of values what we would suggest is that you narrow these down to a manageable number of ideas and then you create a statement for each value so that when you look at the word if the word is student centered that you all have a shared idea of what that means okay and so that's some work that the committee or a subcommittee could do between now and when you're meeting with your board so with that we're going to take a little break for about 10 minutes and then we'll get back to the next part before we break does anybody have a reflection about the work that we just did together or question I just think oh no go ahead Eliana I just think it's going to be like extremely helpful for the board to see these values as like they haven't had the context that we've had with all the research and stuff and like it's just like giving to them pretty straight like you should help hold yourselves accountable to this moving forward and like it just resets our understanding as well so I really appreciate it that's great okay so we're running a little bit ahead and we could give people 15 minutes if we wanted to and still be on time would people prefer a 15 minute break or five minutes more time at the end yes or possibly with that really I like that I'm attending early would be if possible 10 minutes we'll see you back here at 640 thanks everyone get started again so for the next 45 minutes or so so we are going to position the group to be able to make your very best recommendations to the board and what we're going to try to do first is to just get your your thinking flowing by talking a little bit about some of the articles that we had sent earlier in the process that I think Emma had shared and whatever other research you all have been doing so we're going to do that. Eliana is going to lead an activity to do that work then we're going to review some of the themes from the stakeholder feedback and then we're going to break into groups and look at the results of the survey that Emma just shared and we'll give you some more instructions about what we're asking the groups to do then so for the first part of this I'm going to turn it over to Eliana and we're going to have an opportunity to look at talk a little bit about some of the research that you all have done individually. Eliana did you want me to share a slide for this or do you just want to talk through it? I could talk so basically some articles have been sent throughout the past few months and we're hoping that you took some time to look them over and so we're going to break out into small groups and just share what stood out for everyone and some key takeaways on whether that influenced like how you feel about this audition and if there was any other research you found you could bring that up too and then after you do that just have a few people from your group to the larger group so that's pretty much it. Eliana did you want to do the breakout rooms or do you want me to do those for you? It looks like I'm not able to make that right. If you wouldn't mind doing those breakout rooms that would be great and and I think maybe we should maybe have them be you know like six six or seven minutes. And same three to four people or or less or more. I think mixing it up two to three people mixed up for about five or six minutes would be great. All right here we go. Oh let me just make sure I always forget that I'm not sure if Orca should be considered a person because they're not participating so I don't want them alone. Okay there we go. All right here we go. I was scarfing down dinner. I can't hear you. You can't hear me? Oh no I can. I can now. Oh it just took a second to catch up. Okay so I think the two articles there I should have asked this before we went into breakouts are the one about SRO data and the Essex Westford statement updated on the SRO. Just because that's what I just heard them reference like these are two articles that Sue and Keisha had shared with us at the early on and those are the two that they shared with us early on. So the first one was from the Brookings Institute or Brookings does policing make middle schools safer and then the other was from Essex Westford what they're doing they're sort of how they're moving forward from having an SRO I guess and we're supposed to be stood out to us I think. Yeah so I have some notes I can just like read over them. So the first article some things I wrote down were little is really known about the safety outcomes. It seems like data is definitely a theme like lack of data. The question is it a money issue you know or is it are we really making these decisions you know like we're doing right now which is trying to get to the bottom of whether it's good you know what's the best thing versus oh we don't have the money but we do have the money let's make the decision based on that right. It also said that student experiences at school was a better predictor of feelings of safety so I think it really does depend on it talked about the school community and the school climate and I think that really does it's different for every school so yeah that's something that's really stuck stuck out to me with throughout this whole process is what is our school climate you know that's something that I mean especially with we have a lot of new administrators so I think this is the time to set that you know I think the principals have a big big role influence on that so yeah I remember that fact really sticking out to me as well the the correlation between success in academics actually it felt like this article anyway was positing that that means more safety whereas I had been approaching it from the other perspective of like we should have a safe culture and climate at school so that academics but they go it seems like at the very least they go hand in hand yeah that definitely stood out to me too. I just noted that they talked about school violence fighting arguing bullying religious teasing people not being listened to things not being addressed disrespectful behavior the question of is an increase in an investment in the SRO a deterrent to violence have there been you know there's just questions about how there has there been reductions in violence due to the SRO or not without the SRO it's not really clear yeah it seems like well the the sort of audience or whatever for this for this Brookings article was more a little bit at the state legislative level but it seems a kind of I know I know that's okay seems like it can be transferable to where we're at because it it seemed like the article was saying like listen when when a crisis or an act of devastating violence happens at a school the rush to react in a way that's like that to to to increase safety is is not working like the and putting more money toward police is not working seemed like the general theme or whatever of this article and and and it it emphasized for me the value of this more holistic view of safety so that it's not just about kids showing up and being able to access learning because they feel safe but that their their academic achievements are all too short you're trying it's always a balance right of trying to honor people's desire not to be on the call all night and then also trying to give you enough time to have real conversation so Eliana I think she's Eliana's gonna lead a brief opportunity to hear from a few people so I'll turn it over to you Eliana oh yeah so I guess I'll just call on people I don't know who is in what actually no uh how about okay so how about Joan you can speak for our group and then next I know that Mia wasn't in my group so you can go after that um sure yeah so we we mostly focused on just about one article that was most recently sent about do does police make middle school safer and I think our shared takeaway was you know the article really putting forward that in that particular state data not just not supporting not showing clear evidence that certain metrics were being met in terms of like reduction and disciplinary action or you know gun safety um and um just this opening up wait Joan you're muted was I just talking I was totally muted were you all trying to tell me I was looking over there am I supposed to finish I don't know the host muted me it said I think I was gonna head off yeah that was my fault sorry about that but we didn't miss anything that you said so you can continue okay um I think the last thing I was saying was just um the uh that the article really um seemed to be encouraging right like uh opening up to other possibilities of how an SRO position could be constructed and and questioning whether it needs to be quite as comprehensive as they've been set up if you know having quite as many responsibilities hopefully that covered it for my group yeah it's pretty good um transition because um it was Catherine and me and Orca media so really Catherine and me um in our group and um we focused mostly on that same article um with the time that we had and just to piggy back off of what Joan said um because because what pretty much what Jones um summarized for her group also stood out to us is that that there's um more uh safety is a more comprehensive or needs to be a more comprehensive um we thought out than just through this lens of having a police officer at school and in particular one sort of data point that stood out to Catherine and me when we were reading this article was that um academic achievement is a um uh a better tell of whether or not a school is safe than um then lots of other things I'm you know I'm not going to summarize that exactly right but it was that stood out to me because I had been approaching this as we need schools to be safe so that we can have academic achievement and so seeing that academic achievement leads to safety was a big um it just really struck me um and it and it makes me feel like well certainly the the two at the very least go hand in hand um if not then uh what does that say to us for where we should be allocating our resources because when we think about if we're dedicating um some set of resources to safety and we know that academic achievement is a good indicator of safety then um it feels like that's a really good um learning to draw from that uh a man would you just say my name Eliana oh yeah I was wondering if your group wanted to go you're you're a little fuzzy which is why I wasn't sure if I heard you oh my hair is on my mic yeah there you go okay Susan you want to help me out but I Mia what you said was exactly like a main point that Susan and I talked about from that article just about achievement being a real indicator for helping decrease um disciplinary action and behavior and increasing safety um I also we were also just talking about how there's in the things that we've read it there hasn't been any I haven't read anywhere that has has shown data to say that an SRO has improved school safety and in fact everything we've read I feel like has has just done the opposite has shown that just having an SRO has not proven has not shown to improve school safety so I thought that was an interesting theme um did we talk about anything else Susan yeah I I was just really smitten with the um Essex Westford model that they were trying this year with the community liaison officer and um I really would love like some updates on how that's going but I found in addition to the Brookings Institute article I found that really intriguing to look at uh thinking about safety in a in a different way and also giving that person in that role a real charge this is what we'd like you to do so that's pretty much what Amanda and I talked about great uh Edie would the group like to go um I think Will would probably do a better job summarizing than I would so I'll hand it over to you I doubt that I would but I will anyway um we talked about um well it was it was Edie and Caitlin Edie Caitlin and myself um and since Caitlin's a member of the community um and didn't get the the homework at first we summarized um the initial articles that we got and then um talked about how later resources that came up um reinforced much the same thing that we saw initially um and in addition to what what what other people have already talked about in other groups um we talked about the the noticing that there's a great deal of data about in this study and in other studies that we've seen since and other resources there's a lot of empirical data of harm um and then a lot of anecdotes of benefits um and and in that initial homework that was represented by the the news story the tv news story that we saw um of the sort of student petition to not dismiss their local SRO um so then I think that was Massachusetts um and that's sort of what we've seen all along we've seen data of harm caused and anecdotes of benefits and a lot of a lot of frustration is um from a lot of different directions on the lack of data um whether it's our former police chief um talked at length about um frustrations and the an inability to provide data on on how the position works um and I during the expert thing I spoke to the executive director of the ACLU in Vermont who talked a lot about the same thing um and said he was unaware of any national study um on the topic at all um that demonstrated um benefit of the position um so that's what we talked about we talked about seeing that same empirical versus anecdotal pattern throughout most of the resources all of the resources um I think there's one more group uh Jay and Zach me yeah it was Julie and I Julie I don't I don't know that we have too much else to add to what's been said I don't know if you want to chime in that if you do that's great if not I think everything we covered has been said and then Zach was uh talking with me and Keisha so uh Zach do you want to share some of your thoughts sure um um I think we mostly talked about um I believe it's Essex but I'm not 100 sure the school that um in Vermont that removed the position um like removed the the officer from physically being in the building um but they still kind of do their job and how that has the possibility of um functioning in Montpeliers as kind of like a reduction of harm because harm cause is often or harm or perceived harm um whether that be like just anxiety around having a firearm in the school building um is reduced um by them not being there but still being available um as a resource um and that kind how that kind of could work for um most people despite like differences in beliefs and have that still work for everyone and especially the groups that are affected by um violent pleasing. Thanks Zach and Illiana thank you so much for facilitating that part of our discussion is there anything you'd like to say before we move on to the next part okay thank you so now we're going to do one more kind of context setting thing before we have to do some more work so this is all leading up to the recommendations and what I wanted to do was you all did a fantastic job gathering a lot of stakeholder feedback that was specifically related to uh the SRO position and Will and Mia and I believe Katherine also helped theme some of that information just to make it manageable and what I'd like to do is invite them to briefly if it's possible just share a few highlights from those themes and um so I can also I made some slides that just basically took the themes document and cut it up into different groups so I can just share that it's too many words to read but it might be a good visual reminder for the subgroup as they're thinking about what key points they want to make would you would that be helpful if I do that and share a visual or would you rather just talk to the two people I'd rather just talk okay go ahead so um I'll just turn it over to Will Mia and Katherine to do a quick overview and if you could just mention each of the groups and just a couple of words about some key points that would be great um I can go ahead and get started so just again we're on the the document that is the themes from MRPS stakeholder feedback and we're skipping over vision for safety and concerns about safety because um uh Sue covered that earlier in today's meeting and we're on to themes related to the SRO position um and at staff I'll just start with staff the first one here um seemed like a big thing that rose out of these themes was the was two things that stand out to me one is relationships and um those and skills skills in and um uh whether that's conflict resolution or de-escalation or assessing a situation for what the what's you know most needed um that those kinds of skills um and relationship seemed like big things coming out of staff um Will do you want to take other schools and then Katherine community members do to do I'm sorry can I go next my notes I'm tracking down my sure Katherine do you want to go to share any themes from other schools um sure um I didn't know I was going to have to present on this so um me me neither we're just doing this on the you can do it I can do it I'm finding things I am I didn't even put you on the spot but I didn't want to just talk and share your work so that I was offering that but definitely didn't want to put anybody on the spot all right so Will do you want to do sure I now have the document in front of me but which which one am I doing again other schools other schools just a few words about each of the remaining stakeholder groups that would be awesome okay um in other schools the relationship building was really just covers a lot of territory in terms of how everybody described the work no matter who was doing the work that the importance of communication and collaboration and relationship building with the families um and that went that went in a couple of different directions um in in depending on who who it is building that relationship and where that responsibility is understood to reside um but that was um that was my biggest takeaway really um teamwork communication all of that fits in restorative justice was often mentioned as an ideal with varying results in the actual as execution um and the other big theme um was just the word alternatives that um there were there there are many different alternative models including at least one district mentioned um that their plan to hire an additional SRO so there are there are there are many ways that this can go and um while while theming that this that came up as a big takeaway that just uh having having the imagination which is really difficult in a crisis like neurologically it's really difficult in a crisis but to to to recognize that there are many models of doing this work um and that the one that we have is not inevitable um whether or not it's desirable is is a larger question but it isn't we are not beholden to the way that we're doing this because lots of people are doing it lots of different ways so relationship building and alternatives i could have just started with that that would have been short yep okay done all right so community members um i would say like one of the main themes is maybe just not really knowing what the school safety plans are that not being clear communicated well so um that's a need um definitely there were emotional reactions and triggers from seeing police on campus and different you know just seeing them there um and also um having their child interact with um the SRO for disciplinary procedure um so reactions mainly from the parents or um talked about in negative reactions um so i think there's just a concern about you know equity issues racism making sure that people are feeling comfortable with the safety plan that the schools have in place and not knowing really what those are so and how the SRO plays into that great um i'll just round it out with experts i don't think there's too much to add here it um on top of the other schools um it feels like those kind of went hand in hand that there are alternatives to an SRO position and that the it in the places where they're using alternatives the it's the network within the school that is holding much of the um much of the safety responsibilities okay thanks everybody so now we're going to now that you have all this context we're going to do kind of the heavy lifting of the night in the next period of time and i'm going to share the screen so i can just so we can be all kind of clear on uh what we're asking you to do and then um how we're going to do it so hold on a second here um okay so we're going to divide into three groups and each group is going to uh create some statements based on one of these three things and we're not going to ask you to be in a group of the idea that you support right so this isn't about your personal opinions it's really more about well of course you're going to bring your personal perspective in but it's really about given all the feedback that we've heard and our best thinking if the school district were to decide to keep the SRO position what would some of the benefits be based on all that you've heard and that you understand the second group is going to look at the question based on the feedback we've heard how would we describe the benefits of eliminating the position and then the third group is going to offer any other considerations that they think the Board should keep in mind and so to help us do this work Emma put out a survey before the meeting so that you're not starting from scratch so i'm going to share that in a minute and so i just want to let you know this is for clarity so people can write this down but group one is going to be looking at column B of the survey group two is going to be looking at column C and group three is going to be looking at column D i'm also going to share another document that's a table so that once your group is doing its work you can put the statements in the table so your job is to look through the comments in the column that your group is working with and to see if you can synthesize those or if there's any key themes that stand out and then the group is also free to add anything else that's kind of missing that you think is important are the instructions clear okay so i'm going to ask you to create three groups and we let's start with 15 minutes if people need more time i think you'll be able to text Emma as the host and just let her know and so i'm hoping 15 minutes will be enough but i think we may need 20 minutes actually let's do 20 minutes because this is really important we don't want to cut this short let me put some links in the chat okay so this first link is the survey that you all just filled out earlier today whoops i didn't send that to the right group i'm going to wait for people to be able to access the links before i move everyone because i don't think you have access to the to this chat when you go into the breakout rooms okay so click on the links now while those things are being shared sorry to just clarify again that product that our group is trying to do the outcome of our group in the next 20 minutes to share in the large group when we return again is to come up with your best thinking your recommendations to the board if the board were to keep the SRO position what would the benefits be that's group one if the board were to eliminate it what are the bank so but are we trying to because we've done that like as a committee in terms of our so are you trying to synthesize yes okay you're trying to synthesize your best thinking into a series of statements that you can share with the board okay any number of statements doesn't matter it doesn't matter i mean i would try to make it manageable okay we talked about removing duplicates and then also you may find that there's some things that you want to add sure great you you know and some some people didn't have enough time to fill out the survey ahead of time so there might be people that want to add okay so do have you put everything that you want to put into the chat yes so there's the link to the survey that you'll review as a group and then there's a link to the table to record the feedback for your group so each group will be it's labeled on the table which box you'll be putting your feedback into okay so whoever is interested you should probably go to the chat and open up those documents i'm guessing most of you have them open now because i'm as soon as i open the breakout rooms you will lose access to the chat and those links right there's no editing access to the spreadsheet those are just the survey results but there is editing access to the other document the tea okay you can fill that out okay will we know which group we're in when we show up in our breakout group can you say one person from each group so they'll know i've titled them to breakout group number one breakout group number two breakout group number three to match great so it should be self-explanatory i'm just it's always a little tricky to make sure that we have enough committee members in each room sorry and kasha's not back quite yet kasha's back and she and i don't we probably shouldn't be in the room so we can just stay in the main room but we can also leave you don't have to deal with that don't worry about it we okay anyway okay okay here we go are you ready it would be helpful i can send since we're group two i copy and pasted the um things we're supposed to send that to this chat oh thank you zach yeah i think or it's or it's this whole thing but but yeah great so we are based on the feedback we heard how would we describe the benefits of eliminating the position and so we're good we're looking at the survey that we got today or yesterday or whatever yeah i think that's a good place to start all i'm see mm-hmm yep did it did you guys i i did get a chance to scan through this today did either have you got a chance to look through it i haven't read the survey answers there's like a lot there we have a big task ahead of us um i think there's only two really big answers okay go for it um would you like me to read them or should we individually read was that i'm curious what you mean by two really big answers that might be a good starting um on the like uh the synthesis of sro insights um in terms of like like there's only two super long like oh i see difficult to read um if if i could just have like two minutes just to read just column c that i think i'd be able to contribute to the conversation so thank you i got to my answer so i can skip over those show me that i can't read the whole last box is there a trick you guys oh yeah that's the only trick is not a very good one if you go up into the area of the spreadsheet where you would be entering it you can kind of scroll in there yeah that is good actually at least i can see before i got like more creative thinking got it so we're basically putting the same information on a different table we're synthesizing it down a little sorry that's okay i yeah i think we're summarizing yeah that's that's pretty much it and because for example as i read through this i see a lot of um this has put us in compliance or not full compliance of course but this follows the ethos and spirit of our equity diversity and inclusion policy is one that has been repeated over and over so i feel like that's one that we would say goes into the table i feel like there's one entry in particular that's really quite helpful and it's it happens to be the one that's duplicated um the one that starts with bipoc lgbtq plus i feel like those three points are really the ones that keep getting reiterated um how do you guys feel about that one yeah i see that one a lot um within these i just feel like the three points made there do a nice job of synthesizing the other statements i think that's a great place to start and then we can just go back through the other statements and see if there's anything that we that stands out that we think is missing what is it possible what do you get that i know i guess it's it's like a view only right if it's view only hold on i think i might have just gotten it wrong where'd it go we're talking about um uh row 10 right yeah and on mine it looks like that's actually repeated in row 11 as well but i don't know if yours looks like that so yeah i just feel like that those three when i read it earlier today too i was like oh that that person nailed like nailed the three big ideas right in one little cell but i i can't really copy and paste i i've got it Susan okay um just getting up into that little mini area up at the top oh wait that's a very good tip oh yeah all right so i've gotten it in to the word document the srl recommendations shared doc awesome so the group that is in group one has a lot in the shared not that you know this is a competition or anything um julia are you able to see the recommendations shared doc you should be able to it says anyone with the link can access i think so is that the one that i'm not sure i got i i think so it's the one on the link again that would be good with this stuff zach thanks yeah thank you zach okay oh i hadn't seen that one okay thank you okay so now we kind of want to maybe go back and see if there's anything like in other statements that maybe we missed yeah i think that's a good idea one thing that's that's in there that i don't i'm not sure it's sort of in the one that that we just kept that you just copy and paste it over but um the the opportunity for creativity or for like rethinking the system people called out a few times and i thought that was really interesting you know it's like a it's a good yeah it was it yeah it's um it's it is in the spreadsheet so it's in that last one i'll go and grab it from there because they they articulated it really well whoever wrote that one we didn't get it into the word doc yet but it was in the spreadsheet i'm not following you but thank you for whatever you're doing what julia just mentioned is in that final cell at final box oh got it got it it's the last one that wrote yeah the and the last point in there oh somebody fixed that and the other thing i yeah the the other thing i don't see in that box box or row 10 box is the is the what you called what you said mia at the beginning of that you know sticking to the diversity equity and inclusion policy of this or values of the school and and and and like acting on the anti-racist values that we are aspiring to as a district yeah yeah i i mean i know we're not the column d group but that did get mentioned a couple times in the column d group about like should we even fly the black lives matter flag if we're not really um that way i know that's not our job today but it was really interesting to read that yeah sure um oh calm what row is that um i think it's eight um we don't it's about testimony from staff at schools and bringing police officers to a home visit um do you think that would be beneficial to include in our little statement thing i'm just reading rereading it now zack as you mentioned it yeah it's the third point down there's a lot in there i think it's a good idea zack because we kind of don't have that sentiment anywhere else so it would be good to include it i think i can grab it thank you mm-hmm back in to the spreadsheet see what else i find the budget piece i personally have uh i have feelings about this one that you know that we could that there's a savings impossible savings yeah personally think that that savings need to be reinvested in whatever you know whatever beginning of the creative replacement needs but i think you know that's that's we're not talking about my personal pending here i'm not even on the committee julie i think it's a good point because we we don't have that on the you know on the new yeah that's yeah that's where i was going with it for sure i can find where that is but i know i couldn't find it either zack it's way down the i think it's cell 12 in the middle i'm not sure if that's what you're talking about um there is that one one with like a 45 000 i think oh let me control yeah that's what i was thinking too i think it's eight again okay yeah it's like the fourth from the bottom yeah this person was verbose mm-hmm thorough well i guess then we should talk about are we do we want to emphasize that there's a cost savings is a benefit to eliminating it or do we want to emphasize that there is an opportunity to reinvest that money i think the reinvest person well i guess it's not our personal right we just need to yeah no she did say we are allowed to bring our personal opinions into this i did hear susai that i think we could i i know that the you know this this is would be editing what somebody had written which i also think we is okay for us to do because one person wrote eliminating the position opens up the possibility for more creative thinking around safety justice and restorative practices that could also more deeply engage the broader community and we could just slide in opens up the possibility for and resources for more creative thinking around safety just yeah yeah that person second bullet also talks about the funding anyway in box 12 the very last person yeah it says if the position is eliminated funding is available for other means of promoting safety um maybe something just if we're looking for more things i think the very first one um that cites the disability law project in vermont legal aid what they say about soros could be useful maybe just as like a these organizations are these reputable places are also like this could be better yeah i mean yeah it could even be i think it came up over and over again you know i think people multiple people meant mentioned both of those legal aid and disability law project and you know it could be some it something along the lines of like coming into into line with the recommendations of the aclu the disability law project of vermont legal aid you know listing the organizations that have made that recommendation yeah when i think about we're going to be sharing this with the school board i wonder how that like how does that benefit i i i think of will they ask like why is that really a benefit why do we want to be in line with vermont legal aid disability law project and aclu how would that convince the board i'm curious i'm just wondering that right now i mean i think that like with our equity statement and like general like trying to include um like people of all all like minority groups um i think having these like bigger organizations that um say the same thing can also i'm not sure exactly in the context of the school board but i have found in other things it can really uh substantiate an argument to have like a big big organization behind you or like they're to support i hear you so it's not like it's not like we should follow their leaders more like they've validated this they are yeah this is this is what we have found in much of our interviews and research and it's also validated by these reputable organizations yes it's written out in box eight um like a list of the of the organizations and it says the research and data that these organizations have provided to support their position is compelling for their most reputable of the s our opposition right i mean if like to take it a step further if you want to if it would be stronger if it was pitched to the school board to say you know you would be bringing the school district in line with these leading organizations who are you know like i think there's something about like i don't know best practice is an appropriate term there but that's what it sounds like to me operating and isolation which we have a tendency to do sometimes as a small district in vermont and so i think being aligned is really crucial and important and so i like i really like including that information i think it'll help the board uh oh 40 seconds left or we'll have another minute it looks like after that but okay please work though thanks for getting that on yeah i don't know if it's if the board needs this the rehab received feedback from students and families from marginalized groups in box eight as well um you know that whole tell us your stories piece get that in there okay great thanks thanks y'all yeah hi good work team okay here they come we let them in a timeout this is everybody everybody's back great great so we were hoping to have all the groups report back but we think that it's more important to give you all the chance to not be here longer than we said and you can look at the other groups work and when i was talking with you about next steps we think that it would make sense for you to figure out how you want to do the work to refine that is everybody okay with that if we don't do report out so we just go right to next steps okay great and then just can i see a thumbs up if that went well did you all feel like you got some good work done in that awesome great okay thanks cd all right amma we're gonna turn it over to you okay well i mean steps are to you know we have we i'm going to be sharing this information and sort of a general um give the board a general idea of what our plans are for february third and it's a very brief you know i'm getting a couple of minutes on the agenda just to say yep we'll be presenting to you our findings it's probably not going to come in an up or down uh recommendation on the SRO position itself but it's going to be more of an overview of everything that we covered as a committee um in the past few months and i'll be doing that at the january 20th board meeting and then we have one meeting on january 26th as a committee before the board meeting where the board will ultimately make a decision on the SRO position so i feel that it would be a good use of our time in the next 10 or 15 minutes to discuss as a group um you know how best to use our time at the next meeting and um the sort of general direction that suing kation i felt like it would probably be best to um uh sort of synthesize and and organize our thoughts um and provide the board with a few like make kind of like cover letters so like the the um themes bullet point document that we saw earlier that would be the cover letter for the visions and concerns of safety survey feedback data and we would provide those to the board together and then the um the document that we just were working on in our breakout groups that would be sort of the overview document of um of um i feel like it's two or three different pieces of information that we're synthesizing in that document so we would provide the board with a couple of like sort of summaries and then the raw data that we that we um created those summaries from so you know it seems like at the next meeting we can sort of refine our work that we just did and make sure there's no duplicates and articulate things the way that we want to articulate them and um have you know hopefully have the committee members feel comfortable and confident with what we're presenting to the board and then also decide how best to present it to the board so is it do we want a powerpoint presentation do we want to have um the different stakeholder groups sort of give a quick summary at the beginning and sort of what is um what will that look like so i want to open it up to you all for um to create the agenda for the next meeting and we can start brainstorming some of those things now if you want mia um i i got really excited about that jam board at the beginning of this meeting and i feel like that um we really just got started on that and that that also feels like a key contextual piece for the school board um so i would love to spend some time at the next meeting doing kind of what sue recommended which is um finding themes from within those themes because it started it i was noticing a lot of overlap in what we said and then also giving like the kind of one sentence or two sentences about what that means to us like what maybe like what we see it what how we will know it when we see it you know like centering students or centering student voices we would then add like the one or two sentences i think that would be a really um not just a i think that would be helpful as a contextual piece for the board when sharing our sort of quote-unquote findings with them and it feels like it sets us up well for our work beyond that i like it mia it should also be possible to synthesize some of the other stuff that we did tonight because a lot of the same a lot of things we put on stickies early on came up later while summarizing or or um or theming i'm not used to using theme as a verb but um it's there were there were a lot of shared themes in the different breakout groups so some of what mia just described could synthesize a lot i think that um going through the matrix of like raw response from the community would be great because we can like attach those values to specific like testimony and also like actual testimony from previous board meetings like just so the board can have like the value and like clear evidence that supports so i think when it comes to the part about planning how we're going to present to the board it's going to be super important to think about how we use visuals because in these zoom meetings we like totally have to think about engaging video visuals to help get our message across we have a lot of words on our documents and that's not going to translate well so i i don't exactly have a plan for that but i would like to dedicate some time to that okay this is just a really simple thing but it might be useful um especially in in excel where you can change the color of a thing um that what eliana just described about grouping responses according to grouping them according to to themes concerns um if those were color coded then pulling back gives you like look at how much purple there is um if we know if we know exactly what purple represents and what blue represents um in term then then it provides a visual that's otherwise impossible because there's a lot yeah and some of some of the stuff some of the feedback that we received could certainly fit under a few different core values core value themes and um so i think um another way to do it perhaps is to plug it in kind of like what we did with the questions the q and a document where we took the question and then we plugged it into all of the stakeholders that we wanted to answer that question we could do the same thing with the feedback and plugging it into all the core values that we feel like it lands under and then if we want color we can add that also i know i spoke once but um is it okay to speak again i um i really wonder if the board needs some kind of time to consider its values or revisit its own equity statements if like if when we're making our plan of presenting to the board we need to approach it from like a real like um i don't know we need we need people to be thinking personally about their feelings and their values and if the exercise was really helpful to us i'm not suggesting that we go through that whole exercise with the board but we may want to consider how how we can reach people you know so it's not just like another business item so it's really has meaning for them i saw that eliana said that she thought that was a great idea and i also think it's a great idea because the board is a policy governance board and the decisions that we make have to be framed in our own policies or the budget so um i think it's good as a reminder to start with reviewing that how are people feeling about um participating in some sort of presentation and what that might look like the silence is saying everything i'm sorry i was to go go ahead me i'll just say like it's not my favorite thing public speaking but i would be happy to as a team effort um be a participant in presenting i was taking notes sorry about that wandered back into an uncomfortable silence but i'm also happy to present okay and susan put in the chat that she liked the idea about a survey about level of interest of um presenting so is that something we want to try you want me to email out okay so i'll try to put something together and um eliana and eddie if you could help me by just looking at it and giving me some feedback before i send it out i don't want to volunteer anyone but in the spirit of being student centered it seems like it would be really great to have it be like students are the main act and some cameos by other main stakeholder groups represented on the committee if they're willing sounds good yeah that sounds good as the silent stretches on i'd just like to say on behalf of group three welcome to whoever used a bunch of the top of our space we welcome you to our square our actual notes start a little bit further down we're wondering how you might feel about that that was us we um we we feel fine we just want to mention in case there's any confusion that that has occurred yeah we we noticed that there was a couple of things that seemed to fit better in that third category that it wasn't really didn't fit squarely in our category so we were like i think that might be better in the third category uh june cannot attend the february third meeting that's really unfortunate sorry okay well in the spirit of um trying to end slightly early um i'm going to pass it off to keisha to do that you're closing and um i will be sending circulating a survey on your level of interest in participating in a presentation um sort of being mindful to put the students at at the center of that presentation to the board and it'd be great to have as many people present at february third pencil it into your calendar i think it would be i i picture you all being on hand to answer questions or provide commentary called upon wait i have a quick question about that um are we still gonna provide space for like will members of the public still have the space to like have testimony and stuff or is it just going to be like us because i feel like that's really important public comment is always at the beginning of every school board meeting so it's just the way that we do it here too although i tend to open it back up here and there um at the board meeting they tend to be pretty strict about having it be at the beginning of the meeting so if you know of people who want to come and provide public comment then um you can encourage them to do so another thing that i want you to be thinking about that that just reminded me of is you know we've talked a lot about um suing case and i have talked about like individual committee member feedback to the board you know because the work that we're doing in the presentation that we'll be doing will be more like broad umbrella of of everything that we've worked on and um not taking a position one way or the other and i want to leave room for you all if you do have a really strong feeling and sentiment and position i think um it might make more sense for it to be um in the form of public comment or email to the board members but we can talk about that at the next board meeting so we can discuss what that might look like yeah i was just saying before we jump to kasha and sue there are a couple of logistical questions in the chat um zack the board meeting starts at 6 30 on the third and they're supposed to go until 8 30 but they often run longer and i can imagine that this is a board meeting that will go beyond 8 30 probably the one on the third and then jone is wondering what time is this meeting on the 26th the committee meeting on the 26th okay so we had been doing i think it was five to seven right um the one of the reasons why we shifted to five thirty was because some people had obligations that were ending right at five and it was hard for them to get from that obligation to this obligation um but i i think we can probably shift back to a two hour meeting instead so five thirty to seven thirty does that sound good to people or does five to seven really you started to get used to that format five thirty works for me okay so we'll plan on five thirty to seven thirty great thanks emma um i think people have given a lot today um and we don't want to keep you too much longer um i think i can speak for sue in just saying this is the kind of work that really gives us joy and nourishment and hope um you know it is really hard sometimes to look at the national level and some of what is out there in the great wide world and it's really important to return to where we can really make a difference and sort of create fertile ground for change and you all are really embodying that um we're so grateful to have spent this time with you we're not going anywhere we have a lot of work to do with the city and the school district um and and we will you know try to offer to emma and the team if they'll have us you know a follow-up opportunity as you're finishing out to see if we can be of help in the next phase um and we look forward to staying in touch with all of you we thought that we would end by asking people what is a hope that you have for the next phase of your work and kind of in this context of you know the the moment that we're in you know what's a hope you have for the safety of your community so it could be something you think this group can do or just a hope you have for for your community and its safety um and I just wanted to take the liberty to offer for people who have kids who have bedtimes or you know just need to go you'll all see each other again so you know feel free to jump in and share your hope and sign off if you need to and catch up with folks later give them that it's getting late so I was I'm looking in my screen at Mia and Joan and some of the folks I know are you know really trying to end on time um and let you share a hope and sign off Mia do you want me to call on you can I call on you sure I was I feel like I talked a lot today so I was trying to let others but um my hope is um for an openness to possibilities we haven't imagined Joan um it's I feel challenging to put words to my hope is for the safety of our community in this moment um um and but the word that comes to mind is just really peace peacefulness okay I'm gonna start making some assumptions and also people can totally feel free to go Amanda yeah um my hope is for us to be truly restorative and really understand that and work towards that with fidelity Edie do you want to put it in the chat or do you want to say it out loud I can say it um my hope at this moment is that I can be happy and satisfied with the work we do together and that it comes to a resolution that leaves me feeling like I served as community to the best of my ability and um to the best of my aims um Catherine one of the things that stuck out to me and some of the public comment from a student he said that kids are growing up in a world influenced solely by disease and death and my hope is that kids are not seeing the world that way that we can make a positive change so that kids have joy thank you Zach still got you yep um my hope would probably be um I don't I don't know the right word exactly uh I guess I guess creating a community in which everyone feels that they're like able to they they have contributed um or they've had um a contribution that was meaningful to them and that we just like reach a resolution that reduces the even if it's not a cross order resolution whatever um that we just reduce harm with everything you do thanks Zach Eliana um I just hope that we can really hold ourselves and our community accountable for to to hold to to making sure that those core values we recognize are like a central part of decisions going forward I feel like that was really important work um and I just like I don't know being in a community that can appear to be liberal or whatever I it just I want to make sure that really holding true to that in like every part of like school whatever we can thank you Susan um my hope is that the the work that this committee does um ignites our community and our community becomes excited about um moving forward with and making some hard decisions but that we really can gather community support and feel some sort of excitement about this decision-making process and the outcomes thanks will um how to say this in a way that hasn't been said already uh I I mostly wanted to say this actually to the representatives from school admin and none of them are here so they don't get to hear me sympathize with them and so that's their loss um I just wanted to express how extraordinarily difficult it is to take stock of the landscape around you and the context for the work that you're doing while in triage mode um I mean while in survival mode you see the next 10 steps in front of you and that's it and this requires more than that and so um my hope so I mostly wanted to say thanks to everyone able to look at the whole landscape while in a context that makes it extremely difficult to see more than 10 or two steps ahead um especially if you happen to be in charge of running a school you know this year um and so with that understanding and acknowledgments what I the hope I wanted to express was the same as me is just a hope for a sense of possibility that the way things are is not the way they have to be and that we can we can hold ourselves accountable to our ideals even um if the actual execution of that is complex thanks Will we could end on almost any of these like I want to see Julia wanted to to weigh in before we let Emma have the last words That's a hard act to follow Will um yeah I mean and I was going to say also something among the lines of of creative new possibilities um that that bring the community together I really liked I think it was what Zach and Edie I think both said something about contribution that really value the contribution of everybody as well as the safety and inclusion and um dignity and humanity of everybody in our community Thanks Julia All right Emma you have the hardest job of all tonight let's take us out Well most of I mean what I what I wrote down is almost verbatim what Edie said and she said it better than I did so but ultimately you know um I want all of the members of this committee who have worked so hard to to land in a place where you feel satisfied moving into the second part of our charge that you feel confident with what we've provided to the board and and ready to go on to the second part of our charge I think I see some tired but nodding and supportive faces there so Sue I don't know if there's anything you want to add this has been really tremendous for both of us I just want to thank you all during this moment to be working with communities practicing democracy which is what you all are doing it's fantastic I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing so thank you for giving us a chance to work with you all it's been wonderful Thank you thank you so much Kasia thank you for guiding us you've been wonderful you have some great work product like a huge amount it is it's really impressive so just take a moment to enjoy that and feel proud of that we hope you all have a beautiful peaceful night Joan I loved that word and um and Will I'm sure will be in touch Emma will keep us posted on how things go and we look forward to hearing how this progresses good night everyone take care everybody take care