Oh, sorry to get over it. Yeah. So I'd like to call the meeting of Union 26 to order. This meeting is being recorded and live broadcasts or tape broadcasts, tape broadcast by Amherst Media. And I'm Mike Morrison, the superintendent. And the reason I am starting this meeting is it's a reorganization of Union 26. My only task as temporary chair of this is to facilitate this election of a chair and then I gladly hand the gavel over to whoever is selected as chair. But before I do that, I want to introduce Cielo Sharcus. He's the new recorder for our committees. And those of you in Pellum got to meet her last week. So thank you, Cielo, for taking on this role. And just because Cielo's new and is taking notes on a very complex set of meetings tonight, I wondered if we could go around and just say your name, your role in terms of what committee you're on, and particularly noting whether you're on Union 26 or not for this first round. So Ms. Hall, would you mind starting? Sure. Sarah Hall, Pellum, and Union 26. Romany, Pellum, Regional, and Union 26. Kip Fonch from Regional and Labor School Committee. So just to note, not Union 26, yeah. Allison McDonald, Amherst, Union 26, and Region. Anastasia Ordonez, Amherst, and Region. Kerry Spitzer, Amherst, and Region. Eric Nakajima, Amherst, and Region. And just to note it, Allison McDonald is the vice chair of the Region and I'm the chair of the Region. Peter Demling, Amherst, Region, and Union 26. Duran Cunningham, Assistant Superintendent. And so I'm going to ask, if you're on Union 26, not just for Cielo, but also for the audience, could you raise your hand just so we could see who's in a meeting right now and who is spectating a meeting right now? That's all right. Mr.  So I believe that the membership of Union 26 from the Amherst School Committee is defined as the three officers from the Amherst School Committee. So I think by de facto, the chair is a member of the Union 26, unless I'm mistaken. Sorry, no, that's absolutely right. I was, for some reason, thinking about the Region. Amherst School Committee, that's right, Mr. Demling. So we'll try that one more time. So if you're in a meeting of Union 26, which has been called, could you raise your hand? Thank you. And so as I said, my only role is to facilitate the selection process for chair. And then that chair will then take on the next step of officers and then we'll move on to our next meeting. Mr. Mino. Who's the current chair? So I'm the current chair because there is no chair when we're organized, but the prior chair. No, no, I don't mean to be so funny about it. I'm just trying to answer. But the prior chair was Mr. Demling from Amherst. Is there any nominations for chair? Mr. Mino. Mr. Demling. Is there a second? Second. Mr. Demling, is that amenable to you? Yes. Are there other nominations that people would like to share? Seeing none, all those in favor of Mr. Demling becoming chair, please say aye. Aye. Nay. Abstention? Same. OK. Well, you may abstain, but your chair, not the last. OK, thank you. OK, so we'll move down the line. We'll do vice chair next and then secretary. And just so you know, the secretary in this context is really vice vice chair. It's not note taker. And the role really only comes into play if both the chair and the vice chair are not available at the meeting. And so the secretary would chair that meeting. So are there any nominations for vice chair of union 26? Ms. Marjina. Anastasia. Is there a second? Second. Anastasia, do you accept this nomination? I am flattered. However, I'm also a little concerned because this is a re-agreent organization and I will not be running for somebody at the end of this term. So while I'm happy to serve in this capacity for the next couple of months, it would require a reorganization very soon after. OK, so we had a nomination. Do we have a second? I'm spacing. Yes, I had. OK, a second. OK, other nominations for vice chair. I would nominate Ms. Marnino. Is there a second? I second. It's not me in second. Ms. Marnino, is this amenable to you? Yes. OK, so we have two nominations on the floor. So we'll vote on the first nomination first. All those in favor of Ms. Ardonias as vice chair. Opposed? Abstain. So the nomination fails. One vote in favor, Mr. Marnino. Three votes opposed. Ms. Hall, Ms. McDonald, and Mr. Demling. One abstention, Ms. Ardonias. Fight. I counted that correctly. For the second nomination, all those in favor, Mr. Marnino for vice chair. Please raise your hand. Opposed? Abstain. OK, that carries 401 with Mr. Marnino abstaining. Congratulations, Mr. Marnino. Thank you. For secretary, it will take nominations for secretary. Yes, Mr. Ardonias. I would like to nominate Sarah Hall. I'll second that. OK, are there any other nominations for secretary? Seeing none, all those in favor of Ms. Hall as secretary for union 26, please raise your hand to signify aye. Opposed? Abstentions? And that carries 401 with Ms. Hall abstaining. So that concludes the reorganization item. We will now turn to our joint meeting, and I will turn the gavel over to Mr. Nakajima to call to order the regional school committee. Yeah, I'm going to do that. But I'm going to. Seeing the presence of Quorum, a call to order this meeting of the Amherst Pell and Regional School Committee, it is being taped by Amherst Media for future broadcast. As a first item of business, actually, prior to the item number two on our agendas, just wanted to offer a public comment. I don't see anyone here to make a public comment, but it's one thing we always try to do. So it was an omission that it wasn't on the agenda for this point. And if we have a future joint meeting of Union 26 in the region, we'll make sure that the published agenda does, in fact, have a public comment section on it. I don't assume there's any announcements from the joint committees. OK, seeing none, we'll move on to item two, timeline of superintendent contract negotiations. This item is intended to be a discussion of the two committees. And I'll turn it over to Mr. Dilling in a second for his comments as we begin. But what we're talking about and what we're not, I just want to be clear about what we're talking about, what we're not talking about. What we are talking about is the question of what the timing would be for our committees to discuss the future contract status of the superintendent at the end of his current contract. We have the option of beginning negotiations now. We could wait until some time in the future to begin discussions and negotiations on the topic. That's up to the committee to decide. I'm distinguishing between that and the content of those discussions, which would include items like what the length of a contract should be, what the changes and other elements of it would be, or even, frankly, I'll even include within that the desirability of having an extension or future contract or not having a future contract. This is literally about the timing of doing so. And so this could actually end up being a really short conversation if the members of both committees have clear opinions on the subject. It had been the impression of the previous and current chair, I mean, in 26, as well as myself. And then we talked briefly with Dr. Morris about the question of when his current contract is up in June of 2021, June 30th. And that would mean that next year, for one of the better ways of phrasing it, depending upon whether or not a contract is successfully negotiated, if we chose to do that. If we didn't, he'd be a lame duck, essentially, as you might call it, meaning that the status would be indeterminate going into the final year. The actual contract language we have says that we need to notify the superintendent no later than December 31, 2019, 2020, excuse me, 2020 of our decision in failing any communication whatsoever, the current contract provisions automatically provide for a one-year extension of the contract, which then, at that point, runs its course and terminates at the end. So that's the provision in the contract. Be that as it may, in our discussions, and then we reached out to, and the superintendent may have something else to share, but the Glenn Kutcher at the MESC on the question of, is there, in fact, a sort of standard approach or expectation around the timing of when these contract negotiations occur? And Kutcher was very generous to write back. I was like, we can share you the content of the email with you after the meeting. But we got it back from today. And essentially, what he said was that it is a general expectation of superintendents that they would not, they prefer not to go into a final year as a lame duck, is the term I'm using with no end. He said there is a variety of approaches to that. The most minimal approach is engaging in some preliminary discussion during the second to final year of the contract that indicates a desire to negotiate an extension or a new contract, which signals to the superintendent a general interest on the part of the committee to extend or create a new contract. But it is, in fact, a more standard practice to negotiate and execute as a typical matter, a contract extension. There are circumstances in which fully new contracts are negotiated, but oftentimes what they do is given the timing of one to three year contract ending being in year, the second year, either way you go, you're in the second year, you're counting down from two to one or from one to two, that rather than saying, okay, we'll negotiate a new contract and it'll be three or four or five, whatever the heck it is, years from the end, which means from 2021, it'd be a matter of negotiating a contract now and doing it for one or two, three years. So I'm literally summarizing Glint Gutscher's email. But that the gist of it was that it was not typical to leave a superintendent hanging in terms of what's gonna happen to them, going into their final year. The comment Mr. Gutscher made in addition to that was that if you're not, his advice was that if you're not careful it can have a negative impact on staff morale or expectations, because they're unsure where the district is going. You can take that, we can collectively take that advice or not. But that was the discussion of it. So then the two different points then would be, I'm not trying to say everything, Peter, I apologize. But I just have the thoughts summarized in my head really clearly. So I apologize, I'm going through wrongs. You're going to summarize me very well. So the two questions, and we don't actually have to answer them tonight, we can answer them then if we so choose. We don't have to answer them tonight. But also I felt my personal feeling and Mr. Demling's personal feelings was that going into essentially the beginning of our year, the last thing we should do is have a matter of this importance, which is obviously one of the central duties of the school committee, just sort of be out there in the ether and maybe we'll get to it or talk about it whenever, and that just doesn't sound responsible. The responsible thing to do is to lay the issue on the table, have a conversation about it, and then we can then make a deliberate decision on our parts collectively about how they want to proceed. So that's where I was going with that. You have anything? Yeah, you can call in yourself too. One of the camels. No, I just very well summarized. I guess the only thing I would add to that is once you decide which year you want to start your negotiation or evaluation of whether you want to negotiate and extend, the next decision point is when over the course of that year, you want to get things done.  And so if you were to go a different direction with your superintendent, you would want to finish that process up prior to the November timeframe. So that was the other reason for wanting to to get that item on our agenda earlier. I think when I think about best practices, that one is, we always want to do best practice and we all want to be respectful in acting in the best interests of our superintendent. But we also want to establish good reputation as a district, right? And so being able to set the expectation that we follow best practice I think is a wise thing, which is why we wanted to identify what that was. So I don't know if you have anything, you may have nothing you ever want to add on this topic tonight, but I just thought I'd ask. No, I appreciate it. Or the assistant superintendent, okay. Okay, I'm seeing that. So really we're having a discussion tonight. We're laying the issue on the table. Are there any questions anyone has or are there any initial thoughts? Yes, Ms. Medina. We're going to discuss the timing. Yeah. What is the earliest practical point we can begin the discussion? I think now. I mean, as a practice, I mean, as a literal matter, not, I don't mean literally the second. I mean, as an earliest practicable time, we could make a decision tonight that we want to begin that process. I would suspect if we did so, what we'd have to do at a near term future meeting is start laying out what that process is going to look like and then probably also, I am not seeking this tonight, but there also are going to, people are going to need to get copies of the current contract. They're going to maybe even want to review their evaluations. They're going to want to look through those provisions and you may have questions you come up with that would say, do we want to change any of these provisions? Or since they're, I mean, to be honest, as a practical matter, I know school committees always exist and never term out, but as a practical matter, there are people on the committee now who weren't involved in the previous negotiation. So there may be a desire to get up to speed in what the current provisions are and why they're there. Understand alternatives, look at other alternative contract models and explore them. And I think from members of the, that also logically, once we initiate that process, the superintendent himself is going to be free to come up with those similar, that similar reflection has now been a couple of years, what do I think? What am I coming up with? And my point is that point of exploration could occur even in advance really substantively of actually any negotiations because the committee's got to become comfortable with what it's doing and then think of what the process is going to be for doing it. So you know what I'm getting at? So my point is that you want- You have outlined a process that could be involved and time consuming. So I'd like to begin the process as soon as possible because to say go ahead with it doesn't imply much because you're talking about months of review. Potentially. Are there other comments or questions, either one or thoughts? Yes, if you're gonna miss. I think I agree. I don't know why this keeps falling off, but. I agree that we would want to give ourselves enough time to review the current contract terms and look at other options. And I think given what the chair has laid out in terms of thinking about perhaps adding an extension or just reviewing our different options that I would also be in favor of starting sooner rather than later. It sounds to me, given the process that we went through last time to get this contract in place with our superintendent, it was a few months worth of work and that was under, we were a little bit rushed because the circumstances were not ideal. And I was comfortable with the contract that we came up with and I think we negotiated good terms and we had a good process in place with the committee sharing information and all of that. But I definitely would prefer to have a little bit more time or a lot more time to think about all of that. So I think my preference, if I were to just float a timeline would be to begin serious review among the committee this fall. And that gives us presumably about a year or so before we actually have to begin the formal review process and the formal contract negotiations process next year and before the 2021 date. So thinking about this fall gives us a few months to talk with the superintendent about whether or not he's even interested in continuing and then we can start thinking about the contract terms that we would want to use and then the following fall presumably begin the actual contract negotiations, does that make sense? Other thoughts? Yes. Yeah, and just to echo that, I like the idea of starting sooner rather than later. It's new to me, so I agree, I agree. Oh, I wish I would. So I also agree that we should start sooner rather than later. I am a little concerned about when we end the process. I think if we go into next, for a year from now and the superintendent is still in the current contract, well so as of July 1st of next year, he's in his lame duck year. And then we get to the fall and he's less than a year and then we're in the fall where we then after a year decided whether we want to meet, to even discuss whether we want to, so right now we're not talking about whether we should extend them or not, we're just saying whether we should, ostensibly meet in an executive session and talk about how that discussion. So I guess my concern is that if we wait that long, he's into the lame duck year. Now I don't think that there's never a need to have the superintendent go into the lame duck year, but my personal preference would be to see, first get a sense of where the committee is because we can't even really have that value discussion right now. Get a sense of where the committee- More partly we're not going to. Yes, exactly. So I would be in favor of having the discussion of getting a pulse of where the committee is to see where we want to, when we want the process to end. Because I can imagine a scenario in which the committee would want the process to end sooner. What's your opinion? I was going to second that. Can we talk about a time frame with a beginning and an end? We can, I mean I don't know that we need to. I mean to be honest with you, if you make the decision, I mean, not to sound funny about it. Well look, if people knew for certain when they wanted it to end, we could certainly make a decision about an opening and an end. I would argue, I guess my argument would be, I mean I agree with what Mr. Demling just said, and I think I've telegraphed slightly by the beginning of my comments that I think the information from Mr. Kutcher about that it's not the norm to go into lame duck years. It colors my thinking about how I'd like to approach this. But I also recognize that we're going to do this all together as a group. All of us, every member of the committee is going to be engaged. And both committees are going to be engaged. And so to do that we need to make sure that everyone is operating from the same information in the same level of comfort with how we proceed. And so my point being is that what that would allow me to say we could do is we could start the conversation and then whether we decide, I'm just saying this based on the conversation we've just had, if we end up deciding to negotiate a final contract a year from now, that could be an outcome. If we decide to do it sooner, that could be another outcome. And we don't really have to force either outcome now. And I'll be blunt, I don't think it's desirable because of what I just said a moment ago. Everyone on the committee, on both committees has to be engaged in this process. And so the last thing I want to do is force it as an ending decision or even a substantive decision right tonight. So I think that's, I think it's not a good way to build that collegiality and collaborative comfort. But we could clearly start if that's the sentiment of the boards. Is there any other, what I want to do now, frankly? Oh, Mr. Foncho, it's good because you're the next person I'd call in anyway. I want to go down to the table and get other views. I would support starting as early as possible. And I would also piggyback at the end that we end it as soon as possible without rushing through the process. And the reason why I think that it's important to identify an end date is that we're not only evaluating and determining whether we're going to continue to hire a superintendent, but it also has a ripple effect on the rest of the district. Other administrators are going to look at this and wonder, what are we doing prolonging the discussion of the superintendent? Staff is going to be looking at this in terms of what's the direction of the district if we wait until the superintendent's a lame duck. I think that's just not good for the district. It's not good for the staff. It's not good for the administrators. So I would hope that we could not rush it. I'm not trying to say that, but I think we should try to microscope the beginning and end into a period of time that we avoid a lame duck situation. Mr. Dowell? I won't, I don't have anything to add. I agree with this sentiment from Mr. Foncho of wanting to start as soon as possible and then keep the pressure's not the right word, but keep sort of the pedal to the metal so that we just keep going and don't sort of set this aside and just keep sort of the sense of urgency to get it done when we can. Mr. Spitzer? I'd agree with what's been said before if we should start early. Anyone? I'm going to wrap this up. Yes. I just want to add and acknowledge Mr. Foncho and what he said. I do agree with what he has mentioned and also having a superintendent in a lame duck year is not a good thing for the district or for the superintendent either. If we begin as soon as possible and I'm not saying next week or the next meeting, then we should be able to put a timeline together which allows the superintendent an opportunity too if he chooses to start looking elsewhere if that's a need. So it gives everyone an opportunity to know where they stand and so I think we should have a start and an end time. Well, yeah, and it's funny actually because the reason I hedged initially when that start and time came up was that since one of, to be candid, one of the outcomes of it can be that the superintendent can always decide to work elsewhere and it could be as a matter of, I mean, it could be for any reason you'd want meaning it wouldn't have to pertain to the negotiations. It could be extraneous to that or even to just a life situation outside of it. You never know. And the point is any factor like that, my point, I guess my point is just one of what we said earlier is the timeline then becomes extremely artificial because essentially if that were the direction it went, it would end whenever that decision was made. You'd be done, right, regardless of anything else. So what I was hearing is I was hearing a sentiment to get started. I think, I mean, we heard a variety of sentiment around how fast to move. I think the next step of that would be finding, sending out the copy of the current contract to all the members again, just to make sure you, what should I say again, they're new members. Make sure you have it, look through it and then we'll, I'll reconnoiter back with the chair of Union 26 to try to figure out how we can arrange the next step. As I said, what I would like is I would like, we may even consider having MANC come in as a field assistant to come in and do some training for the committee so that we can go into this the right way. And as I said to me, it's extremely important to me. I respect everything the assistant superintendent said and echoed some of the comments myself earlier, similar comments, but at the same time, I wanna make sure all of you are entirely up to speed and feel completely comfortable with what we're doing. And I think we could do that in relatively short order. So I'd view that as sort of marching orders for September, frankly, to make sure we get there during the September, this today being the 10th. Everyone good? Or anyone have anything else they wanna say? You don't? Okay. And we're done with this. All right, I would entertain a motion to adjourn Union 26. Second. All those in favor of adjourning Union 26. All right, it's unanimous, we adjourn. Okay, so we're now back onto the region, region only. If anyone's leaving, have a good evening. The first item of business is approval of the minutes of August 29th, 2019. Hopefully you've had a chance to look at the minutes. If there are edits people have, they wanna, yes, Mr. Mosh? We need a motion to approve, we can only discuss this. No, we don't have to have a motion, I'll take a motion if you wanna. And I would draw the attention of the committee to number four, Chair's update, and the last paragraph, and the last sentence, and the last paragraph. I'm not exactly sure how to correct that, but I don't understand what it says. I think there was an intent to convey some important information, but I don't think that's threatening, there's much clarity there. So the paragraph, if a decision hasn't been made, if they haven't made a decision, how they will, and thinking about the possibility of a failed assessment and budget. Yes. I'd like to suggest that we re-watch the tape, because I agree that it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, it's funny actually, because it may seem self-involved with me, but this was a section I was wanting to revisit as well. Since some of these things I said, and I'm not sure I said them, is that, I guess one question I'd have is, is it possible for us to do this and bring the minutes forward again at our next meeting? Yep. Is that literally, is the smartest way to do it, to just say let's not mess around with it then? Yes. Ms. McDonnell? I'm moving on to another correction. I think, can I? Oh, sure. Yeah. In the discussion about Triple E, I believe, and I'll turn to Ms. Ardonias, but I believe that the comment that Ms. Ardonias made was about standing water, as opposed to water activity. So that's into the superintendent's update as well. Our superintendent's update, right? Yes. Yeah. So the same page actually, higher up on it. Third paragraph from the top. Yep. Okay, any other, any other edits, out of the minutes? Again, we're not going to vote on it tonight. It's going to come back as an item. I don't see any. So I'm going to move on. Okay. Next item, committee announcements and public comment. Just as a note, this week we actually have subcommittee updates later on the agenda, so we don't need to have them during a committee. Are there any announcements from members of the committee? Seeing none, let's see what time it is here. It is now after seven, and this is a time to item for six, 50. So I feel good about the timing. I'm opening public comment. I frankly don't see anyone present to make public comments. Just also, I guess, for the benefit of people watching this on television later. So given the fact that it's 15 minutes past the time, the public comment was announced. I'm going to close public comments and move on, because I'm assuming somebody would have been here by now, and people would have been here by now if they wanted to make a comment. And just to be clear, since people can watch us at home, public comments are only one and obviously a very visible way to communicate with the school committee or apparently the superintendent. We also have email addresses and other means, and as well as written letters that can be sent to us. And also, people do come public comments and submit written comments that are pending in the minutes. So just to let people know, there's multiple ways to get in touch with us. Next would be the superintendent's update. Yep, and I'll be brief partially because Ms. Cunningham and I are suffering from the same early fall cold. But I mentioned this orally at the last meeting, but now we have more formally that the Puerto Rico Day celebration is September 23rd at 1230 at Town Hall and Amherst. There will be both elementaries from both Amherst and Pelham as well as regional students who participate. You all are welcome to come as well and just something I shared last time but a little more detail this time is we changed the timeline. It used to be in November and intentional quotes around discovery of Puerto Rico was the day that was historically celebrated. And so we've changed it to Grito Delores which celebrates an uprising against the colonial rules. You can see the 180 degree shift in terms of the celebration philosophy. It also happens during Latino Heritage Month which starts later this weekend I suppose and it goes to October 15th each year so we hope to see as many of you there as can do and thanks to Dr. Guevara for my comment last year like we can't do this again on discovery day and she's taken the ball and run with it and she was at the town council last night and the town council offered a proclamation and we'll be partnering on the event as well. I think many of them are gonna show up as well so thanks to Dr. Guevara for both her planning and also for being presenting last night to the town council. Mr. Jones here, thank you Mr. Jones for being present for part of the meeting tonight. There's a community kickoff day on Friday this week at the high school and I think this is the fourth or fifth year I was trying to go back and remember that the high school has done this and it's been incredibly successful in having an event early in the school year where actually classes stop so there's a condensed time frame of classes in the morning and the afternoon is a variety of different activities many of these organized by students as well as faculty to make deeper connections and to kind of stop what, excuse me, stop our normally daily actions and get to know one each other and build that sense of connection that we know is critical for students and faculty members so thank you for all your work, Mr. Jones and I know Mr. Siddique has been the primary person in our system principle organizing it and it's got all maps so I got an email today and I appreciate the work. Last Friday along with other area superintendents I met with the commissioner, Jeffrey Riley I think the three take-homes he spoke clearly about are the need to increase our focus on teaching and learning not just that's the second part is reducing the focus just on standardized assessments described being a teacher in Maryland in the late 90s where their state assessment system was actually a collaborative assessment where no individual scores were offered that students worked collaboratively together to do real life tasks and the school received a score in the district but individual student wasn't the focus the district had those assessments so we're far away from that vision but he uses that as an example of how assessments can be married to good instruction because you want your assessments to look like good instruction and right now that's misaligned in Massachusetts in his opinion and really to empower teachers to be creative in teaching to the standards the standards are out there but there's a million ways to get there and he wants to encourage and explore how to remind teachers that they don't have to teach page 57 on Tuesday that we're not a textbook state and we should be accessing the creative teachers we have in Massachusetts just a reminder that last year there was some advocacy that committee, oh I'm sorry there was Mr. Funch Just a quick question Mr. Morse in your judgment does this phrase here reducing focus on standardized assessments suggest that the commissioner is moving away from test being a graduation requirement? So someone asked that question so you're not alone one of my colleagues asked the challenging thing for him in that regard right now is that he doesn't have the discretion to make that decision that's both the board decision that's been put into formal regulations so he's walked into this he did not answer the question he answered the question the way that I described it it wasn't a yes no but I think his thoughts in general that standardized tests served a purpose they brought and he described being a teacher in Boston before standardized tests and everyone doing whatever they chose and there was an alignment and how negative that was for kids particularly with kids with disabilities but you know I think his phrase was we've got as far as we can go with standardized assessments as they currently are we now we need to look much broader about the student experience and also he talked a lot about social emotional health which is harder to assess based on a standardized tool so you've met Commissioner Riley a few times now and he's a little more than a year into the job and he's obviously working in a fairly conservative desi leadership environment under Baker and he always talks a great talk whenever I've seen him but he has some really disturbing privatization actions that he's participated in the last year I just wondered if you get a sense from him whether he's actually someone we can work with he always talks of like I'm a teacher I come from being a teacher and he talks about reducing testing a lot but I just can never tell whether he's being completely sincere in terms of trying to achieve practical results or not I don't know if you had any sense after a year or so So a couple of things I'd share briefly one is that you're right he's come out a lot to Western Massachusetts so I think as a Western mass group of superintendents we're appreciative that he shows up it's notably different from especially people who've been in the role for a lot longer they may be notably different historically from how commissioners have come my personal experience at date with him is that he's a pretty straight shooter he's given answers that weren't the popular answers when people challenged him on things and the particular question of privatization that has not come up in conversations I've had with him so I can't speak to that directly but it does my interactions with him he has seemed authentic in being candid even if the answer is not they're gonna be the popular one in the room so that's all I can go on school choice is just a quick reminder this was a topic that came up at the region last year there was some advocacy that based on a ruling in May last year our current elementary students are grandfathered in but incoming students who are school choice students who weren't grandfathered in other words they weren't school choice students as of school choice students at the end of last year will no longer have a highway or a pathway to the region other than reapplying for a school choice network last year the advocacy was well received by local legislators but it was after most the vast majority of the budget process so it is something that may come back again and I wanna repeat the cycle of thinking of this too late for legislators to consider it so just wanted to put a bug in all of our mine too, collective years to come back to that because it is a critical issue for all four towns director of finance actually I'm gonna skip one I'll do that last so adaptive physical education again another one about the high school so just really exciting so the PIP programs pathway independence these are students with pretty significant disabilities and a collaboration between the PE department and the special ed department they've created it's not a new course in terms of course catalog that's why it wouldn't come before you like other ones in the winter but a new program for an adaptive PE class for students in that program that is something that's new so far it's only been we can have school but it's gone really well and I think what speaks so highly of all of our students is students who are not part of the PIP program can apply for an alps which is an alternative learning program self-designed course to improve the access of students in the PIP program into it and there's a wait list now of students who want to be a part of supporting students in the PIP program within a physical education environment so kudos to the special ed staff there and the PE staff who with open arms thought this was a great opportunity to expand their reach around access and it was just really exciting hearing the report from both sides today I was able to talk to the special ed side as well as the PE side and it was really neat and it really neat came up I mean something I shared with the committee certainly the convocation for those of you who are there was that Ms. Cunningham and I have scheduled what we're calling Make Us Better Meetings just to get on the ground with any staff who wants to come to hear feedback we had our first one of those at one of the elementary schools yesterday but also inviting two staff members a week randomly chosen to have just a 15, 20 minute conversation with me if they so choose about anything on their mind and that's actually how this topic came up it was just like what's going well and the first thing was this is neat, this is neat you got to come over and see this and so it was just really nice that that mechanism was working finally in less positive news from my vantage point last week you received an email from finance director Sean Magano he doesn't want me to do this so apologize Sean in advance second time today but I really think it's worth us appreciating for me I want to appreciate all Sean has done for the district you think about many of the major initiatives that we've had over the last few years and Sean's been connected to all of them so if we think about food service program and how big a shift those of you were here when we were in a model with a vendor and went in-house and before we had a food service director as well as supporting food service directors that have come since then Sean has been critical we've had different assessment methods each year your former colleague and chair Mr. Baptiste every year would have a say is the Magano method we're now on Magano method 4.0 I think something along those lines that has worked effectively in challenging times with four towns each with different needs and priorities and challenges fiscally to make that happen but I think the thing that I want to share both with you all as well as publicly so you know the newspaper is going to write a story I never know what's going to get in it is the human connection so we think a finance director perhaps there's a negative stereotype connected to that about the level of time spent in front of spreadsheets versus time spent on people and I think the unique thing about Sean is how many staff members feel connected to him and I'm not talking about business office I'm not talking about Doreen myself principles how many general staff members feel like and have been invited just come in and talk to me about whatever is you know on your mind or this concern he's gathered, he's developed processes to gather feedback on the budget process from a wide variety of stakeholders and I remember being in this room last year we were doing a budget update how's the budget looking and the comfort level that our high school staff members and middle school staff members had to ask real questions and know that they'd get answers back that were digestible, that were understandable about something as complex as the regional budget that is really unique in my opinion so I'll stop here because you know someone got out thankfully has agreed to continue to work until the end of the calendar year but I didn't want to not say something as that will be more public I guess in terms of newspaper tomorrow I don't know you got the hemo on Friday if I could add my two cents I think for speaking for Leverett on behalf of Leverett I think we all feel that Sean is one individual who no matter what the issue is on the table we can trust him to make the best effort to try to help us resolve it without too much arguing back and forth I think that's been particularly true for this ongoing assessment battle but also during the discussions of regionalization you were there to provide numbers that turned out to be accurate could sound numbers that helped us try to make a decision on that particular matter you have left behind big shoes and they're gonna be very difficult to fill not only in terms of financial expertise but also in terms of character and personality I wish you well but I'm sorry you're going Mr. Nellman? I'm just so grateful for the body of work that Mr. Margano has done for our region and our town and the benefits that students have received as a result of his work just can't be we don't have enough time to go through the list because it's all a waterfall right that we have such a complex relationship of regions and budgets that he manages and one little efficiency has such a trickle down effect and that creates financial opportunity for us to make a further investment in students and so anytime that a parent has had an art class that has impacted their child or a para educator that has made the difference for a child that's you can in some way tie that back to Mr. Margano's work I remember when I first came on the school committee and Sean does this great onboarding for school committee members where he walks you through and school finance is not a simple thing for anyone to understand and he has such a clear patient way of explaining pretty difficult concepts and I really saw this on display the last year when we were trying to advocate for a school budget changing some state law with our state representatives and very short timeframe of trying to understand very convoluted data that Desi produces and how does that impact our district and what change should we advocate for and the number of times that I relied on his expertise to make it clear so that we could then engage others you know I won't go on except to say to say he will be greatly missed is an understatement and our community should be very grateful that for a time that we had him as our finance director is there anyone else? I just want to take a moment also to thank Mr. Margano for all the incredible hard work that I personally have witnessed I think as superintendent said he hasn't just played the role of a finance director but has also been integral to our union negotiations we sat through many, many meetings many meetings as we hammered out union contracts and I've just always been incredibly impressed with his ability to carry information there's never been a question or very rarely a question that I have asked that Mr. Margano did not know the answer to and that just shows a very bright mind but somebody who's just incredibly open-minded and willing to find the solutions no matter how difficult the problem seemed so I have personally really appreciated working alongside Mr. Margano and I agree we have some very big shoes to fill and I wish you the best of luck. Mr. Margano. Hi. I remember when I first came on board I went to his office and he told me about the school committee finances and he toggled spreadsheets and he just had thousands of spreadsheets he could toggle back and forth and stuff like that but he'd been very helpful to the helm school committee especially the school options committee that we had he mapped out various scenarios and was very patient all I can say is Sean, please don't go, don't go, stay. Okay. You haven't heard me yet. Well I was going to say it during the chair's report but since you want to say something I will say it now. I agree with everything everyone just said so this may be a mixed bag compliment for you I have no idea but I worked in state government with the business manager CFOs of major blind agencies and secretariats and with a lot of the line staff at the state office of administration and finance and I think you are as good as any person I ever worked with in any of those departments and many of them were absolutely brilliant and so you've been, we've been extraordinarily lucky to have you and whatever you do next you're gonna be successful at and I think the heart and care and diligence and good humor that you've brought to this work is not to be underestimated but I just mean it's hard because this work so many of the victories can feel parric like the idea that you look out and say well I guess our district's not on fire because we managed to solve the regional assessments doesn't sound like an amazing victory but the reality is sometimes the most important thing you can do is to help keep the lights on find ways to finance a project that looks unfinanceable and to make sure that the people who are doing work and who are directly interacting with children and staff every day and families can focus on what they're doing and instead of focusing on whether they're gonna get a pink slip, focus on whether things are gonna fall off all the part, focus on whether they have the materials to do the job. So you've been at the center of every good thing that's happened in the district and you're extraordinary. I wish you were staying, but whatever you do next you'll report back that it's gonna be great and I wish you all. So I haven't cried since The Lion King it was like five, when Mufasa looked at the scene so you guys are pushing it. Thank you all, I'm gonna miss all of you Superintendent Cunningham and you have my promise I'm gonna be remain focused on the district until my last day and I'll continue to help the district as best I can after that, so thank you all. Okay, so we're a little, lots of understandable reasons we're a little behind schedule I wanna try to move us along just as the chairs update a couple things, one of which happened so quickly I could have forgotten about it which was that there was a hearing last week for the joint community and education on a bill that would deal with or extend basically no food shaming, ending practices of food shaming statewide in school districts, things like alternative lunch calling out in some way in a way that stigmatizes a student that they have a deficit in their account for foods and our district has continued to be called out as a best practice and so our representative, Mindy Dom, I shouldn't say R, R is in Amherst and Pellum sure representative Blaise doing a great job and she was spring lever but for those of us in Amherst and Pellum our state representative was testifying on this bill and really wanted us to be able to offer our thoughts which I thought was great but the advocacy as well as also the desire to be able to showcase the work of our district so I very rapidly put together some testimony based on information from the already lauded finance director, Mr. Mangano, well as sort of the facts of what we did and put it together, what the history was and that testimony was delivered last week so I hope that goes someplace but I'll share with you the testimony. I mean luckily for you, since you lived it, you'll look at it and say, but that's just what we did and I'm like, yeah, I know. No creative writing. Beyonce, that was wonderful. I'll also point out Amherst Media which is still trying to work to get these cameras live as said that Mr. Champagne and the IT department have been glory to work with and have been wonderful so I think that's really cool. Nice to hear and thanks to them and this may sound orthogonal to the regional committee but it actually isn't. Ms. McDonald and I spent a few hours again Mr. Mangano at the part of the Joint Capital Planning Committee which is a committee of the town of Amherst dealing with capital project issues earlier, when was that, last week? Last week and I just think this committee and its constituent communities should be aware that there is a capital planning process that's being launched in probably a more organized way now to try to figure out how the town of Amherst is gonna pay for its capital needs across the board including major big items like schools and libraries and fire departments but that has a flow down implication probably to what money is eventually available for things like athletic fields and recreational fields let alone anything else that affects the region. So I'm saying this both so that we're keeping it in our minds but even though typically we keep the different committees and districts hermetically sealed off from one another the reality is if you got one dollar it's only one dollar no matter how many ways you slice it up, right? And so that means there's an implication to thinking about capital planning at the regional district as well and thinking about how to constructively engage in those conversations knowing that frankly the price tag of some other capital items the town of Amherst are so large that if you think of like a multi-year plan for multi-million dollars to redo our athletic fields okay that'll happen I'm sure right? Again scarce dollars so we're gonna have to it's an item for a future agenda but it's something that we're gonna have to engage on and then think about how and what the best way is aside from the regional assessment of our operating budget what's the best way to engage all four towns on a discussion of where we think we are planning for our capital needs. Anyways I'm gonna leave it at that because we have to go over. Subcommittee updates are there any subcommittee updates? Yes, there's a doubt on me. See? The policy subcommittee met yesterday evening briefly and reviewed the policies related to roles and responsibilities of the school committee versus the superintendent. We don't have anything to show for that today but we will be continuing work on that at our October meeting and hope to bring that back at that time we are after that time the other thing that we worked on and talked about was the policies that need updating because of the new town charter in Amherst there's several about organization and elections that just need to be updated. We have direction from the town manager on where he thinks some changes need to be made and so we're in the process of drafting that and expect that we'll be reviewing that also at our October meeting and bringing it back to this full committee after that. Other subcommittee updates? So just very briefly to update the committee on there was a earlier this year or last academic year there had been a letter that had been submitted by Amherst media with a request for this committee to consider opening up a discussion around the possibility of Amherst media using part of the space here at the high school part of the building I should say for their purposes for the nonprofit organization and so at the request of this committee I was tasked with as a liaison with Amherst media to be a part of those conversations. So just wanted to report back that we have continued we've met several times with Jim Lusko the executive director of Amherst media and superintendent and principal Jones also to talk about the physical space here to just talk about some of the ideas. I think Amherst media is proceeding very slowly and carefully and rightfully so understanding that we have also not made any decisions and that the district hasn't made any decisions so this is all just exploratory and this is a plan B quote unquote so Amherst media has purchased land in downtown Amherst which they are pursuing at this point to see if they can build a new building there if that does not pan out, if that does not work out then this the option here at the high school would be something that we would discuss as a committee so right now just to be perfectly clear we're just kind of keeping tabs on a conversation and engaging the executive director and the board of Amherst media and the principal and staff here in answering any possible questions and just thinking through some potential scenarios but I'll keep reporting back to this committee if things develop and as they change. Any other committee, except for the agents. So we'll move on to new and continuing business item A in which there is a potential vote that we can take this evening is to offer feedback and vote if we choose to one of the superintendent's goal for the year so I'm hoping and assuming that the superintendent would introduce this topic. Absolutely, so thank you for the feedback at the meeting a week and a half ago and so what my process was is I tallied where people, the things I heard most often from the different committee members I looked at also the content of it but I started with just a scatterplot of where did people prioritize, what did people prioritize and how did they prioritize things and then came up with a list of four goals for your consideration. Again, could be voted tonight if there's different feedback certainly could come back two weeks from now. The month of September would be great to have these voted for the end of the month for sure. So I'll just read them aloud and there's one thing I wanted to add onto the first goal in terms of a standard. So the first goal is to develop a conceptual framework on wellness that includes issues such as substance abuse, LGBT inclusion and later start times among others and begin implementation of an action planning along these dimensions. In this two standards, one thing and I'm sorry it was a draft and didn't get on here was adding standard 3B1 and I'll read that since you didn't have it beforehand which is about sharing responsibility and indicator student support and it's really about providing professional development both for staff but also for the community on issues of wellness. So I apologize that that was omitted from this version. Goal number two or the draft goal number two is complete the study of the viability and implications of moving sixth grade to the middle school and engage the larger community on the findings of the working group to gather additional feedback to inform a future decision or a decision on this topic. That incidentally was the most common response when I tallied up just for what it's worth the different responses of different committee members. Traffical number three is to continue to diversify our staff through the refinement excuse me of our hiring process and provide ongoing professional development on diversity and equity, all staff members and administrators and goal number four is engage the faculty and staff of the schools to complete the strategic planning process by adding initiatives that will achieve the objectives begin implementation, evaluate effectiveness based on evidence and make course corrections in the plan where needed. I think one thing to note is that three of these four are directly connected to goals that were prior that they're not the same but they are continuing this key critical work in our district and even the one that isn't which is sixth grade to the middle school was part of a larger capital expenditure two years ago to look at the infrastructure needs and now is continuing the work. So Mr. Donis is always reminding me in a really positive way that we're an organization that should build on future and on previous work work that was done well and needs to be extended and worked in a wellness case where I think out of my goals last year both in terms of the committee evaluated by my own self evaluation didn't necessarily get as far on that goal as some of the other ones last year. So I want to get back at it and make further progress. As I said, I'm open to any feedback. So your questions or feedback right now? Absolutely. All right, I'm going to just start over here and run down the line. I like these goals. I think you did a good job summarizing the feedback from last time I was here at the meeting but saw the meeting. I like, so one thing I think is going to be a challenge for you, by the way, I also feel comfortable voting these tonight. I think number four is fairly ambitious in terms of its scope of initiating the objectives, begin implementation, evaluate the effectiveness and make core script, that's a lot. So I think scope particularly in the evaluate effectiveness because you're going to have to wait until things actually happen in order to evaluate whether what you've tried to do is effective and you may just run into a time constraint with the year and whatnot. But I think that's one thing we'll watch. And I really appreciate my other comment on number one, develop a conceptual framework. You know, when I first read through how you described this goal on wellness, my initial reaction was well, it doesn't seem very well-defined. But I think that's the nature of this topic of wellness. And I think, I've heard that in my own comments about wellness, I've heard that from comments from other committee members that this is a really important area to focus on. It's become increasingly important and yet it's pretty hard to articulate exactly what the mainline thread is. So I really like the develop a conceptual framework. And I would look forward next year's goals having those build on this. That's what's on there. Thank you. I also agree this is, it's nice to see how you've edited the goals for a better term. I would echo Mr. Dublin's comments that I originally was a little uneasy with just developing a conceptual framework, but I believe that if we're, the second part of that sentence is begin implementation of an action plan along these dimensions. So I wonder if it's, before you can begin to implement the action plan, you actually need to go from conceptual framework to action plan and then implement that action plan. So it almost feels like there's just a little bit of a step missing there. But maybe the conceptual framework is the action. I guess just some clarity on the terms there because I think it'll be easier to evaluate whether or not you achieve the goal for clear. Otherwise, one other comment which is with engage the faculty and staff of, for four, engage the faculty and staff of the schools to complete the strategic planning process. Remind me, I felt like the strategic planning process originally involved folks outside of just the faculty and staff of the schools. And it's fine if at this stage now that we've got the broad outlines that we no longer continue to engage with those folks. But it was just a question whether or not there are people outside of faculty and staff who would be a part of that process. Please. So absolutely to answer the assumption you had is correct. That it was a broad cross-section of stakeholders who participated in that process. And for us, just hearing from and actually talk to Dr. Masa today who's been our facilitator and is gonna stay with us in a more limited role this fall as we work on this. When we get to the initiative section it's essentially saying, okay, we have these objectives and outcomes we want. And now we need staff to both, who are part of the process but the more larger collective staff to both understand where we're headed and Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith led sessions on this actually at the beginning of the school year and then figure out how are we gonna get there given the constraints that we have 180 to school days a year and there's a lot of other things that staff are responsible for. So I think I could edit the language a little bit on that but it is a more staff directed role to figure out the kind of how to get from point A to point B now that we've defined where point B is that their feedback and input helps drive this part of the process because they're the ones that are eventually gonna do the work. And so, but I think you're right, it's a valid critique like how do we continue to engage broader set of stakeholders even if the more directive process will be heavily staff driven. So that's the helpful feedback, thank you. Mr. Jones? I agree with every comment that's been stated so far and I appreciate the way that you pull together the very diverse comments I think that we have at our last meeting. And the only thing that I would say is on number three the point about diversifying staff. I believe that most of the conversations that we've had around diversifying staff are actually related to equity in the district and the diversification of staff is actually to benefit students ultimately right and to benefit our district. So I would like for that to be reflected in the school some way. So perhaps it's continue to diversify staff for the purposes of improving equity in the district. But I think it's important for the community to hear and to understand that it's not just about adding more people of color and different experiences and identities in staff but that ultimately that's to benefit the kids that are coming here. I think I could comment briefly on that and not to belabor but I think that's true. I think a secondary goal but an important one is also to continue to improve the retention of staff of color as well and the experience of staff of color. So both things can be true. They're not competing. They're actually complimentary but I think from our vantage point or my vantage point I'll say that both of those things are really important and both perhaps can be called out because I think it's not just about the recruitment of the retention pieces. It's also critical as we've discussed. So I think being explicit about that makes sense. Thank you. Mr. Call? Here. Why? So I will echo a lot of what I've heard from everyone else here. I too struggle with understanding what is precisely meant by a conceptual framework. So if there's a way to build in some specificity of what that looks like and I like the suggestion of maybe actually spelling out that it's an action plan or maybe it's just changing the word includes to addresses these issues and then implementing the action plan that something feels missing there. And I also agree on the comments about number four and it's interesting because that seems to feel like it's one of the biggest goals but only has one rubric that it addresses. So I don't know if that is the case. I don't know the rubric very well but I can't remember who called out the question about evaluating effectiveness if we're still identifying initiatives and just going to begin implementation. And so and we talked I think the last time about this being a multi-year goal that it's not necessarily, it is a strategic plan so implementation is going to begin and we're going to be evaluating effectiveness over the course of several years. So maybe phrasing that in a way that addresses that and reflects that it's a multi-year evaluation process. Mr. Orange. On the elaborate school committee discussed the eight goals last night and I can tell you that they were very impressed with the breadth of what those goals were. However, they expressed considerable concern over whether or not it's possible to fulfill all of the goals and objectives. So it's good to see that you made some effort to kind of condense without losing the impact of the substance of the goals. So to be applauded for that. I think it also, given the language of all four of these goals, it's related to what our discussion of the evaluation process. I see the language here as a bit vague and a bit ambiguous. You know, one of these goals intended to be achieved and are we going to give you enough time and space to be able to do that? That kind of concerns me. And that's saying these aren't possible or noteworthy goal. It's just that I think that there's a very strong connection to the evaluation process. And I want to make sure that while we're looking at these goals, the evaluation is fair to you. Also, in number one, I would like very much to make the suggestion that you include the concept of mental health in that language. I think it's a bit more explicit. And it's in addition to the other concerns that you've articulated there, excuse me. And I want to finally commend you on your effort to integrate and mold these into a workable language. It's really hard to do that, especially these sort of broad concepts, conceptual framework. But I think it's on the way to being able to come up with language that is easy to communicate to stakeholders. And I think that's really important. And finally, actually I lied, one more. Number four, I worry about number four because if you look, as I look at the strategic plan, it's enormous. It's, well, it's enormous. And I just worry about us setting or you setting expectations too high that you can only fall. And I hope together we can work to keep some sense of objectivity and realism as you proceed on these. I think that's really important. Otherwise, that's off. And we can find the rubric we contain, the information as to how we would know if these were achieved or when they were achieved. Yeah, it's a description, how you should be looking at it. Thank you. Miss Mina? Well, the four goals are laudable. They're clear. What I look forward to is the preparation of the rubrics for assessment purposes to see how you actually did achieve these four goals. I'm no fan of strategic planning. I've went through 40 years of it at the university, but my experience here has been implemented nicely. The initiatives have been fair. They did involve various stakeholders. And we do have a strategic plan, which I think is admirable. I look forward to your assessment. I forget what you call it. I had it slip my mind. Perfume? The list of accomplishments. Right before we do the evaluation. Oh, I guess it is artifacts not a portfolio. Art, the artifact. The artifact. I'm the worst thing in portfolio assessment. Sounds nice. I like it better. Well, I look forward to the artifacts document. That's it for you. All right. Yeah. Yes, please. I'd like to comment on the goal statement. You mean? So when I look at goal number three, it talks about continuing to diversify our staff and it continues on to look at the refinement of the hiring process. And I agree with Anastasia with what she has mentioned. And I'd like to add that instead of looking at refining the hiring process, we look at identifying and addressing barriers. So the process was refined, yes. And of course, everything can continually be refined. But if we can identify what is causing this to not occur as we're hoping it would, that should be something I think would be a better goal for the superintendent. And in addition to that, identifying the barriers, that we look at how we can grow our staff professionally, not just the professional development that we have, but have our teachers maybe go into an administrative program that we help support them. And just as we have the special ed program that we in district are providing so that our teachers can get an add-on special ed license, that we look at other ways to grow our teachers and our staff. Cool. I mean, I honestly, I think I know, I mean, just all the comments collectively have been really helpful and informative. And I basically agree with them, including. So I just, I think that, and honestly, for as substantively the general categories, I think makes an enormous sense to me. I think also as tough as the strategic plan is to do, we just started doing it. So like it's got to be on air, right? I think there's not any choice. And I agree with what we said earlier that you're not, we're not, you're not really, in my opinion, you're not really going to be using an evidence-based tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategic plan this year. That's silly. I think actually even establishing an evidence-based tool which you would want to, which would be transparent, explicable to third parties and could be used going forward would be completely awesome. I mean, by the way, good luck doing that. Because that sounds hard enough, right? Especially something that corresponds with data we actually collect. And then similarly, I think the language on the front end, I don't want to go through everything people say. Because like, when I said I agreed with that, I do agree with it. It's like the first one needs to be tightened up to figure out what actually it's doing. I love the edits to the diversity so-called goal. I think that's great. And then similarly on the last one, I think you should just think about, think about literally what you're going to do this year and whether you point to a multi-year or don't point to a multi-year. I mean, it reaches really about the next nine months. The only thing I'd say too, is that we can't vote on it tonight because we can't vote on a tool that we don't have the exact language that nine months from now we're going to be looking at the exact language, right? So we got to do that first. The good news is what I did not hear and members of the committee should squawk if I'm ever wrong, I didn't hear anyone say that the general purpose and direction is wrong, which means essentially when you get up tomorrow morning and you think about what you're doing that day, you can effectively start acting as if these are your goals, even though the specific language that characterizes them won't be voted on for next time. Makes sense? So now please, anything else you want to add? The last thing was what I was going to suggest. So we're going to align that, I'll do some edits, we'll bring them back next time, but what I heard was the same as what you just said, that general direction makes sense, cleaning up some language, clarifying, sending some of the goals, come back in two weeks. Right, and one of the reasons I wanted to make that final point that you just made too, is that for public tuning into the meeting and watching it, I don't want to get a sense that we're just cavalierly saying you'll start thinking about how to implement this stuff in a month or whatever or in two weeks or three weeks. It's like, no. You've been thinking about it already, you're working on it already, and, you know. And it's actually why I like the, it's just the superintendent's edits because you'll be doing that as a team anyway. So it's not like, it's not like, you know, you'd ask her tomorrow, so what did you think anyway? Oh, darn it, I wish I'd edited it. It was better than the conversation. All right, so we're going to move on and we're going to look forward to that coming up again in the future for a vote. School committee goals, calendar and agenda items. I'll invite the vice chair to offer her comments as well as superintendent. The only thing I'm going to say at the beginning is the reason why the front end is better of this calendar is better defined in the backend is that when you think of the conversation we're just having, a lot of what the superintendent's going to be doing is working through now, okay, how do I operationalize these things I said I was going to do that the committees agreed I should do? And so that has some implication for the front end of our calendar, but it has a huge implication for the back half of our calendar where ideally there'd be reports out or engagement with the committee and it'd be completely artificial if Ms. McDonald, Dr. Morris and I had just sort of made up stuff and put them in blanks. So the back half is intentionally thin because it's going to be filled out as we go. So I'll invite any other thoughts you have on the calendar. No, other than just a high level sort of overview of how we got here, and we took the discussion that we had at our last meeting and sort of where we thought we were the discussion about the goals and started to map that out, how that could look like because part of our conversation had been what can we feasibly as an organization, the committee, but also the superintendent manage, given our meeting schedule and the fact that we really want to keep to our efficient two and a half hour meetings. So this was an attempt to sort of illustrate what that could look like and as Mr. Nakajima pointed out, we're really only looking at the first three months here and then the latter part of the year will start to get populated once we have more concrete goals and know what the timing and what that could look like but it will follow and mimic a little bit the process that we took for this first few months. Ms. Medina, the superintendent update reminded me of a topic for further discussion. When do we, at the end of this meeting, we propose topics to be added to this list? Where can we add them now? I think you can add some of them now if you want. The focus on standardized tests, what is the philosophy of the school? I don't know what it is. I've heard Amherst High downplays to focus the standard exams, but how do you downplay it? Ms. Bitzer. Just as the chair of the Evaluation Subcommittee, I think we could, I don't see a reason why not and maybe somebody would want to advocate for one. We can't start adding into the end of the year the evaluation of the specifics of those things out but we know we're going to have to do that. Right. Mr. Morris. I can wait till Mr. Doniz. I actually just want, yeah, I'll, I'll just say. No, if you were talking to Ms. Bitzer, please. I wasn't. Okay. I wasn't. Okay, Mr. Doniz. So we of course just had a long conversation around our finance director who was leaving at the end of the year. And so it makes me think that we have a budget process that is starting at the beginning of the new year. And we also had a conversation about trying something new which was sitting down and reviewing the budget in more detail and taking some time to do that. And so I'm just wondering if we can include that, you know, some of those timeline things in here because they will affect the budget process this year in multiple ways. So, you know, I see that the FY21 budget projections in process for October 29th. I'm not sure if that's the sit down review process that we had discussed at the retreat or if this is something different. But in any case, I just want to make sure that we're highlighting that in some way in this calendar. I just numbered in another edit for the minutes. When I went through the minutes for the last meeting, one of the things we said was that there was going to be a budget subcommittee that would meet and would go through this potential recommended process and timeline and report it back to our committee, to the total committee. And so what the October 29th, and it could be moved up if it could be moved up, but the October 29th budget item was not only sort of the initial budget discussion, but it was also an opportunity for that subcommittee to report back its recommendations to the full committee on how we could approach budget deliberations in our budget process for the year. I mean, we could move it in other words. Having explained that's what that means. If folks have another idea, we can do another idea. But that was the intent of it. Yes, Sir. I think that makes sense for the subcommittee to come back. But I am also thinking that it seems to me that we would probably need to add, and maybe I don't know if the committee's response to this would be, but I think it feels like we might need to add an extra meeting or a special meeting, specifically for this purpose, that allows us to really dive into the budget for a couple of hours, right? So it's not just having it be an agenda item on another regular school committee meeting, but really have it be its own thing. Is that a question for you on that? My assumption was this, as we talked at the retreat, and there seemed to be a really favorable response to having a special meeting just about the budget. So my assumption was that one of the recommendations that could be reported out by the subcommittee would actually be for there to be a day or a special meeting, and that the good thing about the report out would be that it would be then synced with all the other decisions and things we're gonna be doing. So then instead of making a decision, we're gonna have a special meeting, it's more a matter of we're adopting a process. Here's where that meeting fits with other things we're doing and other decisions we're making. So are you thinking we need to find time for that meeting, that special meeting, now, or can we wait to have that report out? I mean, again, I think it's up to the committee from my perspective. I think because we're calendaring, it seems to make sense that if we wanna fit in an extra meeting that we can work that with the committee while we're together in public and ballpark an estimated date or something, or at least a week when we wanna aim for that. We also have superintendent and assistant superintendent here, so hopefully they would, and Mr. Moncano, at least for a few more months, could also help inform that thinking about timing. Could I make a non-content but more of a process suggestion? Sure. So I wonder if at the end of many meetings, our past practice has been future planning. If we keep this as a living document and this document actually comes in all the agenda packets of that, like I'm thinking back to the comment about superintendent evaluation timeline. I know we had a conversation in one of my other districts about whether to align or not aligned. In the past, they've all been roughly aligned with timeline. I think there's an interest at least to re-engage that conversation. So that as subcommittees, whether it's the finance subcommittee or superintendent evaluation subcommittee, that we're just constantly coming back and filling in, and I don't expect Mr. Spitzer to give me an answer to that now because I don't think my understanding is you haven't, like that conversation hasn't happened, but if we make it a more regular item and not just looking at a meeting or two, that way we can kind of calendar more regularly. So we have kind of this map and then we can come back and have this conversation each time. So as things come up from any subcommittee or any committee member, we can then plug in. Because invariably things are gonna come up that aren't on here, that are not predictable, like the thing I mentioned about school choice at the beginning. I mean, my hope would be at some point this fall, that's not on here explicitly, but that we get that. So I don't know if that's like a protocol that we could use perhaps. Well, I think that makes sense and I think we're gonna need to do that anyways because by essentially being, again, for the public who might not have watched the last meeting yet, what they should be aware of is that we've been trying to be as a committee with the leadership of the district, more intentional and sort of organized about how we're doing our calendar, which helps with transparency, helps with the staff preparing for these meetings, helps us prepare and think and engage the public, and also it respects the fact that we have limited time and how do we use that time well and most effectively. So for people who are aware out there, that's why if you're looking, it looks like we're picking out our old fashioned used terminology, our day timers and figuring out when we're gonna do different things, there's actually a much deeper purpose behind it that's simply organizing agendas. It's about really organizing our work more effectively. So I think in order to do that, that means we're engaged in committee, we're engaging the student evaluation committee and others, they're gonna have to the budget committee, they're gonna have to report back. In order to do that effectively in a way that allows us to engage, it'll have to be on some level of living document. I mean, if there's any, I guess one thing I'd ask Mr. Magano and if he's given any thought to it, if there's a time that we think we would want to do a deeper dive on the budget, that could be calendared, we could, if we knew that now, it actually isn't a bad idea at all for Ms. Figueroa, probably to try to figure out like what dates on the calendar could possibly work, right? Because that's gonna be hard to do. So I don't have a date in mind, but I would do an update. So the budget and finance subcommittee is scheduled to meet on the 17th. And so we could come back, there's a meeting shortly thereafter on the 24th, we could come back at that meeting with the budget calendar more vetted and then have a date for the committee to consider. I wanna give you that. Okay. The committee objects. Ms. Figueroa. Yeah, I might very well get stoned for starting off my comments with this, but I'm very hesitant to cancel any meetings regardless. And that's because this is the only opportunity for me to find out what's going on in the schoolhouse. And so we had this discussion last night in Leverett and I lost because people don't like meetings. But for me, this is the window on your reports, et cetera, really provide that. So I like to have our meetings. Having said that though, I noticed that this calendar is front loaded and purposely so because other people's dates sort of dictate what we do here. And I'm wondering if when I look at the second page and particularly the third page, if we might not project some, what I consider to be important discussions for later on in the year, specifically your goals. If we could have a report on each of your goals, one goal a month, beginning in maybe late winter, early spring, that might be a good use of those times. And it might also coalesce with the evaluation process. But if we hear some detailed reports about where we were and where you are now, say in April, that might be a good way of using that time. Just for the, one second, sorry. Just for the purposes of clarification, no one's suggesting taking away any meetings. In fact, the only thing we're trying to do is run the meetings we have more efficiently and more effectively. And in fact, actually the only motion on the table, so to speak, I mean that metaphoric one I've literally was to add a meeting. So you're in luck. We're actually, we're only adding. I'm really excited about that. And as I said earlier, I mean, I think there's been a general consensus that where we can fill in items on here now, including about like the evaluation process, which is going to include review of goals, we'll try to do this as soon as feasible with the next, hopefully for the next meeting. So that we'll make those staff at doing that. This isn't for nothing. I just wanted to add that the school equity task force did have some goals that I have been reporting on annually. And I'd like to add them if possible, either to the May 26th or the June 9th meetings. And that would specifically be on discipline data and possibly the progress of the RJ course or program. Do you want both meetings or one of them? Well, we can split it one in each. Okay, cool. May 26th and June 9th, right? We have lots of other work today. I don't know if it's just tonight, but I mean, all's we've done with this item is make more work for ourselves. So, all right, so we will move forward. Next item on our agenda is the pool contract. It says your discussion not vote. So I guess we're having a discussion. Hello. So there's a little memo in your packet. I'll probably just go through it, summarize each question and the response. So this is a follow-up to our discussion at the last meeting. There were some questions and additional information that was requested. And so this is what we have so far. So just in general, one thing that's changed since the last time we spoke is LSSE, Leisure Services, has also come to us and asked for more pool time because of the top men closing. So that in the last week that that happened. So when we get down to the calendar, you'll see that piece of it. But the first question that was asked last week was how much was top men charging for the pool usage? It was very, very low. Apparently they came up with a rate when people first started using that pool and it was never increased, which may be why it's the pool closed, I don't know. Not gonna make assumptions about that, but it was in the $8 per hour arena for one of the renters, but both LSSE and the trients also use top men. So they're both in that same boat with having to find alternative space. Does the swim team need the equipment that was proposed to be donated? So I haven't got a definitive no, but I'm getting the no vibe that we've survived without that equipment and the equipment's not super new. Some of it's newer, but it's not super new and that would we use it possibly, but it's not a need of the swim team of the school district. Are there any scheduling conflicts so far for what's being requested? And the answer is yes. So when I factor in the new request from LSSE with what's being requested from the trients, you can see the two calendars there. There's some conflicts Tuesdays and Thursdays potentially, on the weekend potentially. So there are conflicts that we have to hammer out and so I've reached out to the trients and LSSE schedule meetings so that we can at least, before even all decide on what we wanna do that we can have a calendar proposal that works. At the same time, I've got the tentative schedule from the swim team and our local, our high school swim team. We wouldn't have any conflicts during the week because they practice before any of these times start, but when there are meets in our pool, then there would be a conflict and that's always been the case.  Does DPW have any concerns? So I reached out to them. Actually talking with Alan Snow tomorrow who mostly DPW has been the lead on maintaining the pool so I'll get more information tomorrow but we did reach out to them. And what do other pools charge? So we reached out to UMass and Hampshire College. Haven't heard back from either one. I did talk to a neighboring town which charged 40 to $60 per hour depending on I think certain days of the week and certain peak times but they also provided a lifeguard so you have to factor in that there's a lifeguard costs in that rate. And so in general, the main thing we're gonna ask you tonight is if you're open to us coming up with some sort of tiered fee schedule for both LSSE and the trients to factor in their transition out of Topman and using our pool more with the input from our facility department, other stakeholders like the DPW and the high school swim team and to bring back some sort of proposal to you hopefully at the next meeting for you to consider. Super good. So just briefly one of the reasons we didn't bring that here and we didn't ask for a vote some of this information came to us. Like the LCC piece. Like yesterday and so that's why you didn't get this too early in the packet and we didn't wanna ask for a vote when you didn't have we didn't have enough information that was critical but the other piece and I know Mr. Vangano said it but I wanna emphasize it is that we're looking at significantly increased usage from both vendor or both organizations I should say and so we wanna get some feedback on looking at them perhaps equally and provide some context so that we can come back taking your feedback into account because the prior meeting was really just looking at the tritons and LSSE as well as not part of the region they live in our building and it is a slightly different set of scenarios that we have now but we had the last time we came to you so I know we were hoping to get to a resolution place but we didn't feel like we had new information and we didn't have complete information so I just wanna apologize for the delay but we didn't wanna push you all to move faster than the information was coming. And this is like the opposite problem from what we had like four years ago that nobody in our pool and now everybody wants to be in our pool so it's a good problem to have we just have to find a solution that doesn't that sustains the pool into the future we don't wanna obviously put the pool at risk from overuse or anything like that. Two points. I think you said the agreement if there is one the high school swim team needs will take priority over all the uses. Yep that's explicit so for both parties we have what's called a license agreement that lays out all the responsibilities and that's in both of them are all our license agreements that high school teams have priority. The second point this is a tremendous increase in usage and exposure to liability does this have any insurance implications? Yeah so both parties have to provide Certificate of Liability Insurance that are consistent with our coverages in the district so they both that we've had our insurance age it provide. So your insurance policy will not go up? It goes they have to we're insured as well but they have to provide their own Certificate of Liability Insurance. Are there other questions or guidance to? I guess just in terms of what you all are thinking about the ballpark of the fee schedule I think my feeling is you certainly want to cover your costs that's kind of the bare minimum and then there's a difference between that and what a market rate might be that you could charge in a regular scenario but then there's the consideration that these are community organizations these are town organizations and so you might not want to philosophically charge top dollar even though it might bring in top dollar so I don't have you had any initial thoughts about you know is this a money-making opportunity is that how you're looking at it or is this a you're looking to break even and do a good deed? You want to start? Yeah I'll start so I think you're right and I agree with what you're framing so I think three thoughts one is that we're not looking to make money but we are looking to have a significant amount in the reserve fund so that invariably if there's increased usage have wear and tear that we actually have funds to pay for the impact that wear and tear and it's not something that you can predict down to the penny because you don't exactly know what it's going to look like but we are looking to if we're going to have this much usage we do want to have a fund that kind of then proportionately increases over time so that we maintain what is now a really you know high quality pool which wasn't always the case we had a lot of problems we put money into it so that's the first point I want to have I think the second is that there's it's hard to quantify fully and the weekends if there's no custodian there and we have to hire a custodian to be there that's easy to quantify during the week no matter how well these groups clean up for themselves there still is an additional load on custodians so even if they're already working and we're not hiring additional custodial support it has an impact on the operation of the building so that's where I think we struggle with philosophically with how to quantify that because it's not like we're hiring someone else except that person now has more responsibilities and we don't really need another full person but how do you actually make what's the calculus of that is a challenge so I think what me and Mr. Argano and you could jump in Sean, I'm sorry I'm being long winded are thinking is can we make a rate that is defensible that adds to the balance that we have but also can provide us the necessary support so that our school, our middle school is well maintained in addition to the pool and we're being fair to our community organizations and that's at least our philosophy of how to make this all work to do look at so much usage we may not wanna keep the $30 per hour but we don't wanna go too low where we're actually having a negative impact on the school Yeah and I'll just build off your first point so when we didn't have anybody in the pool the only reason we were able to sustain the pool and provide all the chemicals and keep it going without any impact on the general fund was because we had such a large reserve from prior decades when the pool was heavily used we were able to use that that was really the impetus for why we started to get people back in the pool because it got low so I think we do wanna build that reserve for the capital improvements we just recently we cleaned all the grout and kind of repolished everything we bought a new heating system those things have to be done every five to 10 years at least on the grout piece of it so I think that's again we wanna build that pool reserve for those types of things so that we can keep it going long to the future cause the pool's as old as the building I think so it's you know, talking 60 year old pool, large pool so. Any other questions or comments? Oh, hi. Sorry. I understand that tonight's conversation is about the pool but I want us to also be open and keep in mind that there are other agencies that have been looking to use our facilities I would like the conversation to open more widely to those other agencies that work with our students because they've asked the question about facilities use so whatever our decision may be about the pool I want us to expand it and expand our thoughts to think it about the other facilities too. So this is less about financing but more about the idea of having this calendar so it seems like we wanna make sure we're building in time when people can come and go. I'm just thinking if we book it too closely so that the titans are leaving at the same time as small children who are doing less I'm sure somebody's thinking about this but the flow of people in and out in the different populations who are affiliated with each of these groups it seems we should make sure that we don't maximize to the point where we're getting overcrowded in the locker rooms and things like that. They currently even in this past year they sort of had that tight transition but I haven't heard any issues from Elsie and Elsie's first I haven't heard any issues with like kind of being overwhelmed with people coming in but I'll check when I meet with them just to make sure. Yeah, there's something I was thinking about if you're in there with small children. Yeah, especially the locker room transitions and things like that, yeah. So I guess my comment would just be that I like the fact that you raised the question of how do you build in, what's the, actually I think I'll take, this isn't superintendent's frame first. What's our philosophy towards opening our facilities and how do we think about pricing in that regard? And I think that the idea that it has to be budget neutral in terms of covering costs including some wiggle room for the idea that you can't completely anticipate the need for custodians or whatever it is or cleaning up, whatever the situation is, the reality is we know there's gotta be some sort of fudge factor in the number that allows for the possibility that things over time are gonna even out at costs at a slightly higher level than you anticipated initially and if that's not sure you can adjust after a year or two and go down and go downwards. One, two, I think the idea that we would also build in some conception around replenishment of our capital or of our facilities into the pricing also makes enormous sense and I'm saying this precisely because of what Ms. Conningham was saying that you can now port those concepts from this discussion into any other discussion you're doing, the challenge is getting good numbers and figuring out what's a reliable basis knowing that if you charge too much you can always scale back, if you charge too little it could be really challenging to increase prices once you get the sticker price in there and so what I'm thinking about it in terms of a future item, I'm thinking about it in those terms. What is there, is there a statement, I think this is actually like as Mr. Dunlinks said earlier, is there in fact a philosophy around how we're opening these facilities up and making them available from that perspective and then show the numbers that can show that we're being conservative in how we're doing the pricing. Once we've accomplished those objectives because we're a public facility and this is a public head, we're trying to offer people and participate in the idea that I'm a non-profit, I guess I'd distinguish that from a for-profit but the idea that a non-profit can benefit from it at a reasonable price point that's discounted off of the private sector doesn't bother me at all as long as you can assure our taxpayers and your neighbors that we're not actually unintentionally subsidizing the activity for that expressly making the decision to do so in some way. Mr. Serena? I agree with what you said, but in the entire discussion we should remember this is a school first in a community center, second pair, second. It's not a community center, it's a school. Yeah, I don't think anyone was actually contradicting your observation earlier. But I had a question that there are a lot of organizations interested in using our facilities. This can't be a community center. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that I've been in touch with Mike and our facility director, Rupert, about is that aside from the pool, which is sort of an emergency thing that popped up because of the additional request, we do want to review our facility use procedures. Both the guidelines are on the website that have a fee schedule, but that definitely needs to be reviewed and updated. And then there's some procedures online as well, which aren't policy, but they're just some procedures that support that sort of guidelines. So both of those need to be reviewed sort of with what everybody said in addition to the pool. And the pool needs to be included because the pool is not even part of that right now. The pool is separate from that. We gotta move on. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that toward you. No, no, I meant it toward you. I thank all of you. I appreciate your time. Okay. Give me a recess if it's okay. Thank you. Hi, what? Thank you. Let's see, give me a minute. Yeah. Yeah, they use a lot of our facilities. I don't think they do that. How many courses are you taking this semester? So I'm taking like four. Uh-huh. How does that look? Yeah, it was progressive. Usually they take about two or three. I'm just taking half of it. It's about getting ahead on A and G. Oh, okay. Gotcha. So then some of these stuff with the mechanics right now. What building are you all in? So I think we're living in March so far. What do you mean by that? It's an engineering club mixed in with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I missed you over there. I was actually really wanting to conclude that I didn't, so I could take the recess. And so I was fixated on getting the committee to speak and wrap up. I didn't take offense. I was really a tunnel vision. I was going to say, if you didn't notice me, I was going to say something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I decided not to turn over the chair to Ms. McDonald for the final item on the agenda. I thought I could just do that. And then I could come back, I could go town and get some ice cream and come back and see how things were going. But I decided not to, I thought. The barge is still open. It's a nice little barge. The sun's still up. You can go in there right there with you. You can come me up and be like, the barge's open. You ever been to Flavors of Cookfront? Of course, yeah. It's so good. That's really good ice cream. There's a, what road is that anyways? Maple, isn't it? Maple? Yeah, going towards like Atkins and towards the mountain range. You're in Target and you go off the road that's behind Target. Yeah, and you just keep going. Keep going, go through two stop signs. You'll happen is you'll start driving through a working dairy farm in which there's like barns and cows on both sides of the road.  And if you want to like stare at the cows, you can stare at the cows including little baby calves and stuff. But if you go inside, they sell milk, butter, eggs and homemade ice cream that's absolutely circular. It's one of the best ice creams in the world. And they have apparently sandwiched in the stoops and stuff like that too. I myself, I'm a. They're not very famous in California. My kids call it the cow place. Yeah, exactly. I mean, they hear it. Like how often do you see cows and stuff like that? It's totally a whole structure. And that was a dairy shop. Yeah. So I feel like, you know, it's. I think that's awesome. It was such a hard job. Oh, I'm sure it.  And she has, she loves farms, but she has a different perspective on sort of the Catholic child of them. Like don't get her on chickens. No, it's okay. I was just going to say we're going to get started. We'll talk. If Amherst media is ready, we're going to resume. So I think that's I'm going to take that as a yes. So we're back from our recess of the Amherst Polynesian School Committee. And the next item on our agenda is item D, review of policies related to harassment. And as this is introduced as review current external policies that determine that the policy subcommittee should revise current policies related to harassment and protected groups. This is a discussion, but one of the outcomes of the discussion could be if the committee is interested is that this topic could be referred to the policy subcommittee for action. And you know, just as an introduction to this topic and there may be a broader framework that the superintendent or this is the superintendent want to place on this. But I would I would just say that one of the gaps that we has become apparent to a few of us is that we have existing policies on variety forms of harassment when it comes to students engaging with those students, staff engaging the students and staff engaging with each other. But we don't have not limited to this. We don't actually have any approach or policy related to how the public engages with either with the staff and the school the school community broadly speaking. And we're either on site or electronically or otherwise. And the superintendent I'm sure we'll talk about this further, but there was a particularly significant issue that came up in the Pellum School District last year, right? Last year in which this topic again about how to how do we even understand when how do we approach supporting staff to have an environment workplace that feels safe, comfortable, supportive. If you look at the value statement that was in your packet from our district, my guess is everyone I'm hoping, but I guess everyone agrees with all the value statements in there that are very positive ones. And they're talking about going beyond sort of a baseline of you're sort of minimally safe to it's actually nurturing supportive community that reflects positive values more broadly. And so that became an issue in Pellum. I think for leadership in the district, individual staff members as well as also our school committee, there's also and this particularly becomes relevant in talking about the superintendent, other public facing officials in the school committee. There's an acute challenge around how to balance the need and desire to receive feedback from the public and get the reality is if somebody comes to us and they have a concern over how either an individual within the employee of the district, including the superintendent, or us as a committee setting budgets and other decisions, they're likely if they come up to us and screw up the courage to stand at the microphone to be in a position where they have very strong opinions about what they're standing. So the reality is whether it's by email or in person, there's no way around the fact that if you're in a public facing job, there's going to be a lot of criticism. So it's going to be expressed in ways that people might wish in hindsight they hadn't said. And that's the nature of the business because the reality is and there's actually, I'm not an attorney, but we've looked at this enough. I think other people have looked at this enough to know that in the public realm in general, there's a built-in structure of legal bias in favor of speech and in favor of the ability of people to redress government to say what's on their mind and to speak. And so that's well established. And I think a lot of what we've been trying to do the last few years, at least while I've been here, I'm not saying not before, but I'm just saying I've only been here three years. And during those three years, I think we've tried to set a total transparency. We've tried to think of different modalities of how to engage the public and listen. And so we've tried to walk the walk. We can always improve doing that. And I'm framing that out as a principle because when we engage in the discussion around how we engage the public and what policies or rules are set up around it, the natural counterpoint to a concern over some of the speech or some of the behavior or actions that might negatively affect staff or the leadership, including the school committee, is going to be saying, well, how do you know that what you're doing shouldn't be just purely protected speech? And you'd never, and as we all know, you never get into situations where you strain speech. As a matter of fact, the Superior Court decision regarding the NITIC School Committee last year said, in fact, someone can get up and come before you in public comment and say all sorts of things, some of which could end up being actionable on the party who says it, but you can't restrain the speech in advance. You can't silence the speech in advance. So I say that as a framework because the alternative circumstance can, I think, also confront us. And I think, in fact, over the last year has confronted us as a school district where you have patterned behavior of speech and recurrent speech and other actions coming before both line staff, supervisory staff, administrators, senior leadership in the district, and members of the school committee that seems to push the limits of what should be considered fair and reasonable, not a speech per se, but as a pattern of behavior that conceivably could constitute harassment or bullying. I say that because if you look in our packet, we had a number of things in here of other states that have adopted policies on the general public that talk about defining harassment and bullying. And so the reason why this topic is right in coming up is because of the fact that we realized and sort of wrestled with, and I'm just speaking for myself, I wrestled with this past summer, how do you provide an environment in which the staff is obviously held accountable, obviously responsible to the public, obviously is accountable to their peers, but at the same time, when they show up to the office, when they open their email, when they do their job, they feel like the condition of their appointment is naturally conducive to a positive environment that feels progressive in the sense of professionally developmental and supportive and where criticism is organized in a way that's designed to elicit the best organizational outcome and outcomes for families and students and staff, right? And the truth is we don't have a policy or tool that allows us to guide us in figuring out how to do that. And so the discussion that came to us here is figuring how to do that. Now, everything I just said, I'll be honest with you, has been said hopefully fairly, hopefully reasonably, but also in a fairly bloodless language. Part of that is because of this balance point that we're talking about where we have to recognize our responsibility to accept criticism and understand that probably the trips, meaning the tripwire of where you go from acceptable public comment to something that we can consider abusive, the bias is always going to be in favor of speech. The bias is always going to be in favor of free speech. And so figuring out how to do that is hard on the one hand. On the other hand, and I'm just going to say this once, if you looked at the totality of the emails just in volume that we've been getting, but also the ways in which the language of those emails disparately target a variety of individuals from, again, line staff to supervisors to administrators, the senior administrators, school committee members, there is every reason for people who are colleagues or who work for us as a school committee to feel insecure, angry, anxious, perhaps even to the point where they might consider leaving and going to another district to work or leaving the employee. Those risks are real and they exist and they're a fact. That's not even open to debate. What I just said is a fact. And so we don't have the tools right now to effectively deal with this. And we've got to figure out whether we as a committee want to engage in finding those tools, knowing that if we develop such a policy and understood what the flow-down implications of the process and any remedy that would exist within the tools, then they would be implemented on a going forward basis. So I'm going to leave it at, I know that was like a 10-minute introduction, but still a 15-minute introduction, but I'm still going to leave it at that and open up for the superintendent and the assistant superintendent to offer their framing and other thoughts. But honestly, because I know whether it's you or your colleagues that you're living this, I thought it was important for me to say first that at least as chair of the committee, I'm taking this very seriously and I want to work collaboratively in the framework that I just expressed to be very supportive of staff and colleagues, while also keeping true to those pillars of public engagement and openness that we describe as being our values. So, please. So, just a little framing, as the chair said, this is an issue that came in public comment last year, and I'm looking at Mr. Minnino because he was at that meeting. And we heard from some staff members based on dialogue between community members of the public that in that instance wasn't actually directed at them, at staff members, but for them what they shared is it created a work environment that didn't feel safe, and they weren't referring to physical safety and to be really clear, but that they expect to go to work and not hear the language they heard that day. It impacted them greatly. Mr. Minnino, that a fair summary of? Yes. And so the Pelham School Committee requested that I meet with staff members, and I did so. And one of the, and I thought the principal, and I said this in the parliament, I'll say it here, that the principal responded very appropriately and met that balance that you described, and what I think was disquieting for us was that when we went to policy, we didn't actually have a place, I like to stand on, actually, to make a judgment. So, we did the thing that we felt like was the right thing to do to support staff members. I think it was done sensitively in terms of follow-up, but if challenged, there wasn't a great place to go to say, oh, actually, this policy was violated. We didn't have that. It's not in the book. The Pelham School Committee talked about this last week. They are choosing to move forward, you know, and perhaps they'll collaborate if this committee wants to or perhaps not. But one of the things the chair of the Pelham School Committee and I talked about is what other places do on this issue? Amherst is not, we joke about being unique and maybe there's some truth to that in some ways, but this issue is a broader issue of workplace safety. And if you read the paper this morning, not our local rep, but a local rep in the general area is proposing language at the state house, actually, around it. And it includes language from Representative Sabadosa to how to address language to prevent verbal or physical conduct that, quote, is intimidating, hostile, offensive, or otherwise untenable workplace environment. And so I think just broadening the scope I think is helpful because it's not, yes, you know, we may have an acute issue or acute issues in multiple districts, but I think the broader conversation about workplace safety and workplace environment is really where, for me, is the most important thing. And again, the purpose of this agenda topic is to raise an issue that is currently affecting staff members and discuss whether this matter should be referred to the policy subcommittee, not to come up with a policy in and of itself, but the Pelham School Committee Chair and I reached out to, actually, on her behalf, I did to the Massachusetts Association of School Committees just to say, you know, what are other places doing, and she put out a feeler, actually, to her national network of school committees and school boards associations. And so it's in the packet, which was in the Pelham packet, as well as a couple other examples of states how they approach this issue with their model policies. And I think in particular, I think the most instructive one is the last one in your packet, NCSBA, which is North Carolina School Board Association. And if people want to actually, I'd like to read from there more than actually talk about other things I also talked about because I think the Chair mentioned much of that. So if you look at page two of 10, there's a footnote at the bottom and that's actually the crux of the matter for me. And essentially what it says is that a policy prohibiting harassment bullying is required. And so that's really in that section one above. So if you look at harassment bullying to A1, places a student or school employee in actual a reasonable fear of harm to his or her person or damage to his or her property. In the Pelham situation, that was actually the core principle of that wasn't met. And it was really unsatisfactory to staff when I met with them who, again, incredibly professional in how they approach this that that is essentially our standard in talking to our legal counsel right now based on our policy is that people have to, you know, if that got tripped, there would be other actions that me as a superintendent the principal could take. And so the interesting thing about the footnote is the second sentence to me. This policy adopts a broader definition of harassment bullying than is required by their general laws, which are very similar to Massachusetts, which does not include conduct that creates a hostile environment by adversely altering the conditions of an employee's employment. And then they go on from there. And I think so the key question for the committee to consider is kind of on that first tier of if a school employee feels physically unsafe, while it's not in policy, we have mass general law which supersedes policy and, you know, we have action steps that we can take. It's really about that second piece about the hostile work environment and whether the committee would like to engage on what that looks like to understand and actually, you know, walk in and live the tension between how do you define that, how do you do that without constraining free speech in ways that would be inconsistent with our philosophy. We ourselves, administrators, both ourselves and for our staff, we expect, and it's not just like a hope, it's an expect that all staff members are open to critical feedback as part of our continuous improvement process. So I think we have lots of tangible examples both at the committee level but also at the administrative level of ideas that came from other places as critiques and have been now integrated into district practice. We are better off for it. You know, we think about, we talked about the hiring process earlier. It's definitely critiques about our hiring process for many years that weren't acute to one year. We took that feedback and under Miss Cunningham's leadership significantly adjusted the interview and search process and that's what we do and that's the expectation we have for all staff and so how to balance taking authentic critiques that may be framed in ways that are, not how one would love them to be framed. I think we have to make sure that stays clear, pure and part of our operations, not just for all the free speech reasons, legal reasons, but that's actually how we get better, right? We can't only listen to feedback that's framed the way we want it to be framed. At the same time, when we get into bullying and harassing behaviors and particularly bias-based behaviors and comments, that's where the workplace safety and the harassment and bullying come in and so it's an easy distinction to feel. It's a harder one to identify in real life with real scenarios but I think this footnote for me is the crux of the matter does the committee rather want to engage in how to do that? Does it want to look at what are models out there like the ones here or other places and extend beyond physical safety of employees as well as perhaps school committee members to a broader definition of what that means and I was going to say other things but I think that's actually where I'll leave it a thing. Mr. Rep, do you have a set number of things? I think you said a lot. That's very important to have been said. I look at the superintendent's bill number three that talks about diversifying and retaining once we correct it or add to it retaining staff and when we look at the things that are being written or stated about the staff the morale has been compromised, right? And I'm not saying as Dr. Morris mentioned that we should always hear great things about how well we're doing and we should receive that criticism and there's a point and a limit to how things should be stated, right? So it's encouraging for me to hear that we're thinking and looking at the possibility of a policy on this topic and I know that if and when this does occur it then can impact staff morale, retention and all the other things that we talked about identifying why people are leaving the district and then I want us to even go a further step and talk about, okay, if there's a violation of our policy what the result would actually look like. So I don't want us to just put something on paper and say we have this document that says don't do this but I want some tangibles for our staff to say if there's something that takes place here's what the district or the school committee has said that they will do as a result of that. It's interesting, I apologize, I'll throw it to everyone else in the committee in a second. But it was interesting when I was reading through the examples that were put in the packet. One of the first things that struck me was whether or not there was any articulation of what the potential either remedies or sanctions or other sorts of or even requiring mediation, whatever it is it could be any number of kinds of responses. I have an idea that if you can't articulate what the sort of remedy or response or a corrective action is then I mean what's good is the policy. And I think particularly in a situation like this where you're talking about something where I've already beaten, like I couldn't say more times than I already did, that we're trying to find an appropriate balance where we're respecting free speech and constructive criticism or even not constructive criticism, just criticism with this question about what the workplace environment is like and how to support staff and the leadership that if you don't take that next step of translating it into what the remedies are then it becomes meaningless because it means whenever you actually try to use the policy everyone's first thought is oh my god we've never given any thought that I'd implement this and here's the key point, we don't know what's legal what's best practice, what's legal who should be the responsible parties how do you keep it... a lot of us keep things confidential but I'm just saying because we're talking about something that would involve theoretically a member of the public who's not subject to the normal sort of personnel and HR rules how do you do that, how do you do that appropriately, right? If you don't think about those things in advance and more importantly don't think about them when you're not thinking about like a particular case in Pellum, right? I mean not to pick on Pellum but you can't be doing it framing out a particular instance or circumstance it needs to be positive, it needs to be something that could apply in any situation even if it allows for continuous improvement and learning so I'm sorry to throw all that out but I agree wholeheartedly and that even means in my view if the policy subcommittee wanted if the committee wanted to engage in this and the policy subcommittee wanted to engage in this I think there needs to be some dialogue between the committee and the administration while we're developing it so we can actually practically put forward not just the policy but also the view towards implementation steps that come almost together at least in some framing this is like a big, I know the committee knows this and you've been getting emails too this is like a really big deal topic so I apologize if I'm going off on it like this but this is like a really, really important topic for our district to confront and deal with in a way that's really constructive but is also meaningful is there anything else? Yeah I think I think that given the severity of the situation that you've described and I think that what the superintendent has described with the issue in Pelham last year that this topic rises to the level of attention for the entire committee I think personally I would appreciate probably having the policy subcommittee take a close look at some language and making some recommendations to the full committee but I think that this requires input from the assistant superintendent various administrators school committee members everyone seated around this table has been impacted in one way or another and will continue to be so I think that having a process that is clear and transparent that involves the full committee input and that is done in public is the best approach for something like this you know I think someone mentioned before about the potential loss of staff that is 100% something that I'm constantly thinking about you know the description here in this language from the North Carolina school board is incredible language right because it talks about hostile environment and it talks about how basically harassment or the bullying because really that's what we're talking about that the conduct is subjectively severe or pervasive enough that a reasonable person would agree that it is harassment or bullying and that signals to me the degree of engagement that has been happening right there's you know it's anyone any reasonable person who would look at the volume of messages the you know posted online there's a lot of you know a lot of things that go above and beyond the usual kinds of comments or criticisms that we receive and I can say having sat on this committee now for three and a half years that you know I've heard from the community when they're angry about things right and that's a normal part and I actually invite that and we'll sit down and have conversations with people but when you are receiving you know level of rage really you know messages that are being directed that we've seen directed to staff and to administrators and to school committee members there's no degree of conversation or reasonable you know dialogue that can be expected with something like that and so I'm hopeful that you know a policy that we can put together can help address that degree of severity and acknowledging that we are all here because we believe in free speech and we think that it's important and we have never taken any steps to try to curtail or stop you know people from expressing their opinions and their viewpoints on the way that we run our district at the same time there is a level of responsibility that is required when engaging you know other human beings that we all expect of each other and so I hope that any policy that we can come up with reflects that and helps put an end to the hostility that you know that degree of severity that we're describing right now so I would agree with all of the comments from Mr. Donas my sort of way I try and frame this is that if we're going to be looking at a policy to address harassment and bullying that leads to a hostile work environment and yes I definitely think we should do that and I think collaborating with Pelham and any other committees that would like to do that is a good idea I think we need to articulate a little more clearly for the public exactly what's been going on we've talked around it and a bit directly on it but I think I sort of see this as a collaboration between the public and the school committee and administration and I think the first logical step in getting to a solution is to identify the problem as specifically as possible so I think in that sort of fact finding spirit there's two things that I would like to see happen one is I'd like to hear from the superintendent and assistant superintendent a little more specifically to what degree is this a current issue for you and your staff and what is the nature and extent of this harassment including we've heard people mention emails does this include phone calls actions at formal meetings formal encounters public records requests other forms of communication what is the nature of this problem so that's one the second is we as a committee can share with the public in a bit more direct detail what we've observed happening for the past year and a half because this has been a long process that we have observed and what we've been seeing is not normal we're not talking about mainline social media channels this is abnormal activity that we have been seeing what I'm specifically referring to is this and it's already been mentioned the sustained high volume of direct personal criticism not policy criticism personal criticisms and accusations of wrongdoing through email that we've seen but also through public internet and social media channels that have targeted but have not been limited to the superintendent the assistant superintendent superintendent the finance director the special ed director the assistant special ed director the high school principal the middle school principal and numerous teachers and staff and multiple individuals on this committee that's an incomplete list that we've observed and again to be clear we're not talking about strongly worded criticism or even passionate emotion which I completely agree with Mr. Arjunya we should totally welcome and that's part of the nature of what we do here but these are personal criticisms that when they're combined with the accusations in this extreme high volume aggregate that we've observed can be reasonably constituted as intimidation bullying or harassment and not only do our staff not deserve that but when I hear from our assistant superintendent that morale has been compromised and when I read some of the specific examples of what I in my view are vile personal criticisms it really concerns me and I don't know what the solution is but I do think in order to get there it has to be a collaboration between the school committee the public and the administration and the reason we're engaging on this difficult topic is because we do want to create and maintain that safe environment for our teachers and staff I encourage you to formulate a policy if for no other reason to find how difficult it will be these emails make me sick to my stomach they raise questions of fact that I can't begin to address they accuse certain staff members of doing something I don't know whether they did them what are the consequences on a member of the public violating the policy I can't begin to visualize a formulation of a consequence that we can mess out but I think it's important that the community knows that we know that it's a problem that we're trying to fashion a remedy but what is the solution except just to endure harsh language the presidential contenderous