Seeing the presence of a quorum, I call to order. This session of the Amherst Pellum Regional School Committee, our first order of business is to enter into executive session. In accordance with open meeting law, Master General Law Chapter 30A, Section 21A, pursuant to Purpose 2, conduct collective bargaining sessions with APAA, and Purpose 3 to discuss strategy with respect to litigation, Hootstein, because the chair finds that an open meeting may have detrimental effect in litigation position of the committee, and the chair does so find and moves the motion. Is there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded. This is a roll call vote. We'll start down on that. Cassidy's an aye. Sullivan an aye. Demling an aye. Spitzer an aye. McDonald an aye. Nakajima an aye. Gosensky an aye. We are therefore now in executive session. We will return to the meeting at the conclusion of the executive session. All right, so I'm gonna return to the regional meeting back to order, it's like 7.23 or so. For those of you in the public, the reason I'm calling the committee back to order is that the first item of business in the open session is to reorganize a regional school committee. This occurs when there's been elections in the towns, and at this point all four towns have had their elections, and have had committee meetings since then to appoint members, and so we have Ms. Cassinson who's a new member to the region with us tonight, and my only role will be to officiate the election of a regional school committee chair, and I'll be then gladly hand the placard and the gavel over to whoever that might be. So, do we have any nominations for chair of the regional committee? Do we have a second? Second. Would you be amenable to that? Sure. Any other nominations for chair? Seeing none, all those in favor of Mr. Nakajima becoming the regional chair, say aye for regent. Aye. Aye. Against? Abstentions? I guess I'm not abstaining. Okay. Very good. Well, congratulations. Thank you. Roy, what else are we doing? We're doing a vice chair. And a secretary, no. At the regional level, I'm sorry, I should be honest, excuse me. No, I didn't think so. I was just confirming. We have a... Yeah. In my mind. So it's... Yes. At the regional level, customary for the region to acknowledge that Ms. Ms. Molden will take on the true secretarial tasks related to it. She's not here tonight. And I can... But I think we could either hold on that vote or we can do that the next time. It's different than at the Amherst and the Pellum School Committee where the secretary is a member of the committee. Why do we do that? Me and well hold on. So we then will entertain nominations for a vice chair. Yes. I'd like to nominate Audra Kosensky for vice chair. Second. Second. Are there further nominations? Are you willing to accept the nomination? Yes. Yes. We'll ask that first. Okay. Seeing no more, we'll close the nominations. All those in favor of Audra Kosensky as vice chair, raise your hand signifying aye. Nay. Abstentions? One abstention. So congratulations to you. So... I mean, I know there's a lot of topics tonight. Subcommittees are in the packet, but we certainly can do that perhaps at a different time. We're totally doing that at a different point. Okay. I wanted a copy of the letter. I'm sorry? The thing. You said you have a letter. I think that item number three on the agenda. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Of course. I'm sorry. Apologize. So seeing the presence of a quorum for the Amherst School Committee, call the meeting to order at 7.25 p.m. And this meeting, this committee has been called to order because this is an issue or several issues actually that impact the Amherst Elementary Schools as well. So that's why we were having a joint committee meeting tonight. Great. So many other next. Nice part of it. Okay. So before we go into announcements of public comment, we became aware, we saw in the Boston Globe, and I don't know where else it was shared around, a superior court decision in Eastern Massachusetts affecting the NADIC School Committee. And the NADIC School Committee had been sued because of the public comment policy that they had and the superior court handed down an injunction against the School Committee and NADIC. They laid out essentially there were some facts around from what we saw, some facts around how NADIC had both organized itself as well as also implemented its public comment policy that are at least according to our attorney, materially or substantially different than what we were doing here in Amherst, Pellum Regional School Committee. But there were also some common elements, particularly the, a lot of school committees across the Commonwealth adopt the model announcement and public comment policy from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. So there's a template that presumably at some point was vetted by attorneys that a number of school committees across the Commonwealth have adopted. So there were elements of the NADIC policy that were pretty identical to the Amherst one. In the superior court, when they were ruling with relative to NADIC, essentially laid out the priority of free speech rights in what they called limited public forums. So in a limited public forum, which apparently this is what we're at, is a limited public forum, you can regulate the period for speech or comments. So things like having a three minute limit on public comments is apparently completely legal. Having a set time period for comments like a 20 minute time period for public comments is also perfectly legal. There were substantially greater questions around any regulation of the content of the comments. Interestingly enough, the despite a 12 page decision that cited a number of court precedents that argued really entirely in favor of not regulating the content of speech, the injunction ended by actually allowing NADIC to continue to impose its rule of not mentioning names or titles in public comment, but that otherwise critiques were allowable. I'm gonna be candid, I'm not an attorney, so that's probably why the mysteries abounded for me, but I actually couldn't understand, based on my reading of the decision, why the court decided to continue to allow an imposition of the rule, disallowing identification of names or titles, because even though they commented, I'm paraphrasing, but the comment was essentially that it could be sensitive and clearly sensitive. If you read through the decision and it actually is available online, every other element of the decision reinforced the priority of free speech rights, and in fact, free speech rights, particularly in governmental setting, so that when you have a governmental body that's making decisions, they particularly have, there's a priority on allowing speech to occur and to not curtail that speech, except for, as I mentioned earlier, by appropriate regulation in limited public forums, like the time limit on the comments or the length of the total comment period. So with that, I'm just sharing with the committee that as I am not want to violate the First Amendment and anything that I'm doing, my proposal in terms of how to proceed just for the purposes of this meeting, and there's an item on later discussion if we're talking later, is that I think we should follow our current policy of having three-minute public comments and a specific period of time for public comment, but that I am not inclined to enforce the other elements of our policy around the content of people's speech. And I'm happy before I proceed to hear from the committee on that, but as I said, I am not going to inadvertently or intentionally violate the First Amendment rights of people who want to come up. Recognizing that it's subject to litigation is not fully resolved. So the point is, the issue is not whether this decision is resolved. In this case, the question is whether or not we, knowing at least some of the limited facts of the native situation, are going to act in such a way that might risk or jeopardize the possibility that we are, in fact, infringing upon someone's First Amendment rights. So do I have that indulgence or not? I'm happy to take comments if there are any. Yeah, I'm in agreement with that general approach. I think it's the conservative approach. Like you mentioned, in the opinion from the decision you mentioned and in the opinion of our attorney, they both explicitly still allow for the prohibition of naming by reference to name or position. So going, again, going according to the most recent legal opinion, we would still be okay doing that. The conservative approach would be to allow that. So I'm fine with that conservative interpretation. Yes, Ms. Hudson. I just have one, sorry, we're down to Micah. One comment, which would be in the effort of protecting the children that go to this school that we would still want to refrain from naming students in any sort of complaint or just to keep their privacy and that's important. Okay, is there anything else? Okay, then so as we proceed and if we need again to extend the time period or the comment period, we will in a sense that, sorry, let me rephrase that. We're starting later than we originally intended. So on the agenda, it says this is scheduled for 7.15 to 7.35. We can still find a way to do this for I guess 20 minutes and see where we are at that point. And we have a timer. Is the timer able to be shown to the public? Nope. But otherwise we're gonna maintain a three minute rule on public comments. And if you have additional comments beyond three minutes, just submit them and writing to the committee please. And they'll become part of the record of the meeting. I should say if you submit them in writing, they will become part of the record in minutes for the meeting. So they will in fact be maintained.  I think I'm in the right seat. Okay, I just wanted to make sure. Thank you. So as I said, so three minute limit. And I'm just stating it out loud again. People have heard what I just said earlier. We're not, it's just a public comment period. So if anyone else come up, please come forward. Identify yourself. The other rules still apply. Please identify yourself. Three minutes, thanks. Hi, Tiffany Tibodeau, proud math teacher at Amherst Regional Middle School and Amherst Regiment. I'm gonna read just a statement and I'll try to stay under three minutes. On May 8th, ARMS staff spoke to you about our concerns for our school. 52 members of the staff signed a letter in support of the positive development of our school under Dr. Bodeau's leadership. Educators do not sign public letters lightly. So those numbers have great significance. On May 22nd, ARMS staff hoped to share further suggestions and concerns. However, the negative remarks and atmosphere of public comment prevented the staff from being able to share the ideas. We are writing to you because we feel it would not be responsible as professional educators to be silent. Our essential message remains unchanged. Our ideas represent compromise. We are concerned that the negative focus that is plaguing our district and particularly the middle school is not allowing for the opportunity for the district or the school committee to work with us to consider possible solutions. Our primary concern is to sustain the positive direction of our school and we have suggested actions that will lead to that. We acknowledge that the district has decided to move forward with hiring a two year interim principal. This is not what we hoped for, but we acknowledge that this is the case. We appreciate that the district has tried to take some steps to respond to our concern and we want to inform you that there are still some aspects for which we seek partnership. Partnership is the culture at ARMS. Since its early days in transforming from a junior high school to a middle school, we have been a school of teacher leaders. We have a history of collaborative and shared decision making in our infantry groups, curriculum leaders, principal advisory committee and our team structures. Together we work to identify and solve problems to improve our school. Therefore, we share our solutions with you. In addition to inviting four members of the staff to meet with the selected interim principal this summer, we ask that leadership structure include Patty Bodie and Alicia Lopez in some capacity. We have non-administrative roles in mind in order to address the concerns about licensure. Patty Bodie and Alicia Lopez could be reappointed for non-administrative positions in our schools. We are precedent for these positions. For many years we've had one and sometimes two teachers serve as dean positions. These positions could be dean of students, dean of faculty or simply dean. We have also had things similar to coaches, instructional coaches and curriculum coaches. All of these were non-administrative positions that were intended to support the staff in the school. These ideas and more could be explored with the middle school staff to create confidence during the transitional times. We see these individuals, Patty Bodie and Alicia Lopez as central to continuing development of the work over the past two years, including making social justice a focal point in our school's mission. Reappointing them to these positions would allow for the continuity of the social justice mission. I see that I'm also running out of time but I do want to submit this letter with the rest of the writing to the committee. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Ms. Raffer. Thank you. This was an excellent role for the vice chair. Thank you. So we got to keep it rolling. Next please. Hello. Good evening, my name is Irene LaRoche. I teach social studies at Amherst Regional Middle School. I'm here tonight for the third school committee meeting in a row to continue to share good news with you. I believe that actions speak louder than words and I believe we need to be self-reflective as well as reach out to others as we reflect upon our work. I believe there are times when critique is necessary but I also believe that collaborative solutions create more enduring and positive outcomes. I have been saddened by the discourse and mistruths taking place about our school district and our school. I've struggled to see the value in tearing down rather than building up our community. Each time I've spoken to you, I tried to share good news of what's happening. Each time it's a snapshot, a simple piece of evidence from our daily work. Currently seventh grade students are preparing for World Forum. World Forum is like a model UN but unlike the UN, which would be made up of only privileged in society, our forum asks students to consider all different people who make up the fabric of a country. Goal of Forum is to consider world view of people from countries across the globe as they discuss a contemporary issue. This year students are looking at women's rights, climate change, indigenous peoples rights, hunger and poverty and access to clean water. In World Forum, students represent realistic point of view of a person from another country and simultaneously seek to see other viewpoints. Students create proposals for action, discuss proposals and vote to see if they can come to agreements and compromises that meet the needs of all the countries represented. Teachers have been ending the year in seventh grade with World Forum since before I arrived in 2003. But now more than ever, the skills of civil discourse, working to understand multiple perspectives and collective problem solving feel critical to our community and our society. We have much to learn from the passion and hope that our young people bring to the work. I hope that our community can move forward with a more generous spirit and collaborative mindset with problem solving and improvement as the goals. As critiques about racism and licensure have conflated, an important fact was ignored in the wave of critique about licensure swept up at least three administrates of color who will no longer be serving our community including one at the middle school. I would like to know that the staff have been talking about it and have concerns about the loss of these individuals and the important role they play for our diverse community. One solution that could be considered is the creation of professional development opportunities for people who do not currently hold administrative licenses. The organization of these opportunities should be inclusive of those administrators of color who are losing their positions as well as other faculty who have an interest in developing skills and expertise for administrative licensure. I am sure there are many other ideas we can come up with together for the goal to sustain and build up our community rather than tear it down. I look forward to speaking with you again in the future to share the good of our students and our school. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is Cynthia Stankiewicz and I'm a veteran teacher at Amherst Regional Middle School. And after working for the past 33 years in Amherst I have seen almost constant of people at the middle school in Amherst. During this time the middle school has been a revolving door with administrators coming and going with such a high frequency that I can no longer remember all of their names. I have worked for the good, the bad, the mediocre. What I have learned over time is that such inconsistency is not good for anyone. With all the complications and controversies surrounding our current administration I cannot help but feel incredibly sad that some very important points seem to have been overlooked or at the very least disregarded. We need consistency and stability. We need an administration that knows us and understands who we are. Two years ago Patty Bodie, Dave Reynon and Alicia Lopez were chosen to lead our school precisely because they understood the community. They were highly qualified educators with years of experience to back them up. Most importantly, they knew us. They trusted us and they were willing to listen to us. Their goal was to restore confidence in our leadership team and to heal our demoralized school. In two short years they did just that. They led by compassion, confidence and example. They provided a humane and sane leadership with a consistent progressive vision and created a healthy atmosphere for students and staff alike. In short, they brought stability to our chaotic and troubled school. To let these people go who have provided consistency and continuity to our community is a shame and a real loss for us all. Unfortunately, we are now back to a rudderless place with question marks about our future. I hope that people who felt compelled to criticize us harshly are feeling perhaps a little more happy now. They may be satisfied for the moment but I suspect that perhaps they will not stay that way. Hopefully one day our community will see how important it is to stop fighting itself. We need to recognize the dangers that surround us. We need to wake up and stop looking at the trees instead of the forest. I'm Steve Zacon Anderson, math teacher at the middle school. Thank you for letting me speak. I do wanna recognize and appreciate people here at this meeting and I know Patty is not here tonight. Who I think have been incredibly patient and absorbing a lot of criticism here and have been very professional in their approach to that. And I would, I'm basically gonna be piggybacking on a lot of what was said and encouraged and hope that the tenor of the meeting stays positive. Our children are watching, so I hope that we are going to behave accordingly. I think I'll kind of share, I'm not speaking for the group as much as my own personal experience. But having come here two meetings ago with this letter signed by 80% of the staff and as was pointed out, in Amherst signing a letter is a risk unto itself. And I hope people understand that that many people signing a letter was not for a crony, for a friend, or just to look out for our own. It's because we care so much about the school and we're so desperate for something that we finally had, which is the word you keep hearing tonight, I think stability and consistency. And we saw that and we wanted to continue that. So I hope that people would hear what a significant statement that was from people that really care about our school and our kids, which by the way are your kids. And over the course of a couple of meetings and actually over the course of the years I've taught here, as we go through this, these transitions, we get lots of compliments. The teachers get told, you're resilient, you rise to the occasion, more upheaval, but man, you just keep going. And I like the compliment, I agree with it, but we're looking for something more than compliments. We're looking to be heard, to be listened to, to be considered, to be part of the solution and to have what we say matter. So I would ask for us to, for hopefully, whether it's asking the school committee to listen or maybe, I know I can't question directly, but someone on the school committee maybe ask the administration how they're addressing the concerns we have in our goal of the stability we desperately seek. Thank you. Hello, Andrea Battle, community person, retired teacher, and very sympathetic person to the plight. However, there's a thing called licensure and certification and no matter how you budget one way or the other, that is the beauty of the public school. Most people are licensed and most people are certified. And I would like to say to the young lady, thank you so much for looking out for the people of color but they should have the same standard. That's what my ancestors and I, who is now 70, have fought for. I do not want to be kept in a position that I technically, if I were white, would be moved. So if you move someone out, you move them out because they don't have the qualifications. I just need to say that because they're yelling at me now from the other side saying, what the heck's going on?  It's not about somebody of color as opposed to whatever. There are certain things you just have to have. And I'd like to see this district get to the point where there's never a question, because that's the criteria. And I'm one of the people who worked on the committee for the process, et cetera, and put in a lot of time on that because it is important. And like I said, I'm really sorry that I liked people and I almost lost a job because of certification and I understood, and they gave me the couple of months because I was about two credits away in a month. And that's the only reason I got a chance. So that's what it's about. Private schools have wonderful students and some of them have students who get through and learn nothing and they can even become President of the United States. Nothing. I'm Chrissy Harmon and I'm here to pick up where I left off at the last school committee with respect to discriminatory hiring practices. This word racism that's repeatedly come up in the past couple of months has made some people so uncomfortable that it's important to discuss what's actually happening here, which is called white fragility. White fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable to the point that it triggers this range of defensive moves. Outward displays of emotion, such as anger. She is attacking me. This woman's the problem. It's not true. Fear, such as argumentation, silence, leaving and walking out of the room. This certainly describes the actions and the behavior and the reactions to what I've been saying up here by everybody involved. The context of racism that I was speaking about is in term of a power dynamic. The power dynamic played itself out in this hiring process. In order to have a self-progressive town, it's very essential to adopt this inalienable truth. And that's that this institution that we're talking about, the school committee, the public school, it was built by white people. And to this day, we all continue to benefit from that institution. And that's just a fact. Until that system is completely ripped down and built up, that's just always going to be true. No one needs to be offended. It's just a reality. Now, that that's out of the way, I would like to take a minute to say that $1,661,489 has been invested in paying unlicensed administrators in the last two years and being out of compliance with the Department of Secondary Education. I would also like to note that the middle school principal search and subsequent temper tantrums that have occurred by people that are not parents of students who were no longer benefiting from this $80,000 to $90,000 a year that they were getting as a paid apprenticeship path to licensure, which is unheard of. Distracted from the reality and the fact that there were actually like five other vice principal positions that were supposed to be posted the exact same time as the middle school principal hiring search. All those people were on hardship waivers. The day they were reassigned around May 10th, those positions should have been posted. It would have been very easy to avoid this mess if the system that long-term educators know inside and out was followed from the beginning. I'm just wanting to make sure in the last three seconds that the school committee is answering to the fact that $1.6 million has been invested in an unauthorized paid apprenticeship path to licensure. And where are the postings for the vice principal jobs? Hi, I'm Norm Price. I'm a teacher at the middle school. And thank you. I just wanted to offer support for the idea that we're part of what was happening here as well is that people involved with hiring were looking for the most talented individual. And I think licensure is very important, but it's also important to have a wide range of experience to do this job, having a job as a teacher, as a principal, as all those things develop over time. And I just want to thank people who are in the hiring position to be looking for people that have this level of experience because it's through that level of experience that we actually get people that know the full range of what's being asked of them in the job. And licensure is an important piece, obviously, but also that experience. And I think one of the things that's happening is we're looking for highly talented people who are experienced in this wide range of skills. There are some frameworks that we also need to realize, which is that one of the reasons we absolutely need the best team on the ground is that we're not just an isolated district anymore, we're facing competition from surrounding districts. So this internal critique that we're going through is important, but we also have to realize that we're not the only game in town and we have to have the best team on the ground to compete with the other school districts that are around us. And I'm hoping that people that are applying critical lenses to our school district are doing the same thing to the other school districts, that is they're doing the same sort of critical analysis so that we're operating under equal scrutiny in that way because I think it's very important that everybody is examined in this way. It's not just about us, it's now in this field where we have other people in the marketplace. So that was my point of view. Catherine Oppie, former school committee member and Amherst citizen. The superintendent has received some criticism recently because the district or the administration recently because the district is not 100% compliant with the state's licensure requirements. That's true, but the complaints have failed to consider a key contextual fact. Amherst and the regional district are 98.6% in compliance, a higher percentage than the state average of 97.2%. I'm also heartened to read in public documents that the district is committed to becoming 100% compliant by next year. This is not defensive or an attack, it's just fact that the district is also working hard to promote equity for students and staff. The vital work, this vital work has to be a sustained effort to address all the ways that institutional racism and bias affect our students and staff every day. I think our school district is on the right track. This past year, for example, the number of staff members of color who were hired reached a five-year high. The retention rate for staff of color is also at a five-year high. At the high school, a new restorative practice program was implemented with a new restorative justice staff position and has included multiple staff trainings, student engagement, and mentor support. A racial equity professional learning community was formed this year to increase understanding of racial inequities, including goals of recognizing cultural and institutional racism and understanding how white organizational culture affects our classroom practice and school policies. The high school did a climate survey this year which showed significant improvement from the same survey in 2015 to questions like, do teachers treat me with respect and is school a place where I feel safe? The high school community is continuing to look into this data to understand what has made the difference. An all-day curriculum day for staff in March had workshops with topics that included how to have a difficult conversation about race and other identities, how to create restorative circles in classrooms, the impact of poverty and class on learning, mental health issues in the classroom with a focus on trauma, how to overcome racial disparities and discipline reports. Many of these programs were directly recommended by the school committee's own equity task force and implemented by the administration. These initiatives are not widely known outside the school community and there are several others that I haven't mentioned. Of course our schools have a long way to go, but our administration and teachers are working in good faith in the interest of all students and staff. Thank you. My name is Sarah Marshall and I have one child in the Emerson system, just finishing eighth grade. Two years ago my family was very anxious about sending our daughter to arms. Given all we had heard about the general instability in administration and low morale among the faculty and we strongly considered sending her to private school. I want to thank Dr. Morris and Dr. Bodie for turning that sorry situation around so promptly and for fostering a very positive culture of respect for all and of academic excellence. Right now arms is flourishing, at least in my eyes. I am all the more astounded at the recent accusations of racism leveled at Dr. Morris. As far as I know, there is nothing in the public record either with respect to the search for a successor to Dr. Bodie or in his words or actions over the last few years in the role of superintendent that remotely justifies such an inflammatory label. None of us, none of us are mind readers and only Dr. Morris knows why he rejected applicants put forward by the principal search committee. Speculations about motives are just that, speculations. It distresses me to know that some members of our community apparently find it easy to believe the worst of Dr. Morris. It distresses me to find that the atmosphere surrounding the superintendent and the school committee is again becoming poisoned by suspicion and anger. I urge the committee to ignore complaints for which there is no evidence, even as it supports the superintendent's efforts to improve hiring practices. Thank you. Do you still have any time? You're staying close, isn't it? What? I'm cutting it off at you. I'm John McCabe, I'm a Crocker parent, the second grade student there. And thanks to the committee for all the great work you do. As someone who served as an education administrator for two decades, I saw again and again how important it is to follow HR rules and regs. I see this whole struggle as what, I teach philosophy, what hate will call the struggle to the death when both sides are right. And I think that's where we're at. Search committee procedures are there to ensure that hiring process is promote both excellence and fair opportunity. We all know that. At the same time, there's always attention, and we know this too, between the need to attract strong and diverse outside candidates and the need to provide avenues of fair opportunity for folks already doing excellent work inside the system. I saw this where I worked. I'm gonna use names, having worked with both Mike Morris and Doreen Cunningham last year. I got the sense that they are well aware of these issues and that Doreen was perhaps hired in part to make a real impact on this and focus on getting Amherst's HR house in order. I'd like to congratulate Doreen or Assistant Superintendent Cunningham on the progress she's made so far on this. And I'd like to lend my support to the idea that hiring and promotion processes should follow proper HR procedures and adhere to state regs regarding certification requirements, okay? That said, I would like to finish by taking strong issue with those who have stooped to ad hominem attacks against our superintendent in recent weeks. Folks, we have real white supremacists at large and out of the closet all through the political system at the national level. We all know about this. We're at a crisis point in my humble estimation where white supremacists are now emboldened to threaten the rest of us on a daily basis. To smear folks here in the room with that racist label for political effect, I think is really not acceptable. It's a degradation of our local discourse and also undermines and degrades the forceful critique and resistance so necessary in this time when so many real white supremacists need to be called out and forced back, quite frankly. Like it's not a racist. Let's hold our fire on that score for people who have had it coming, okay? Thank you very much. Hi, my name is Deb Leonard. I'm a parent of three children in the school system. I'm a Fort River Elementary school parent. I'm an Amherst Middle School parent and I'm a high school parent. I have two points. They're short. The first is I take exception to the public criticism of Mike Morris' professionalism in a context in which he is unable to defend himself because of his professionalism. The second, Mike Morris' leadership as both interim and permanent superintendent has advanced our school district in its mission and I quote, the academic achievement of every student learning in a system dedicated to social justice and multiculturalism. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, we're gonna, we need to hear to our side of that. Give it to the fireman. The orange one, many cage, parent, and Amherst. I wanna throw out a figure of $575. That's what's being requested of me when I submitted my public records request around licensure in the district. That is something that I believe is excessive considering that licensure is already work being done as we have heard. And I don't think it should take that long to compile. So I'd be happy to forward the school committee, my public records request, and the response from the district. So you may consider waiving the $575 for information that is in the public domain that we should be promoting transparency, that this should be information that's not hidden, but it should be out in the open regarding licensure in our district. Thank you. Oh. It's not about the middle school. Although this has been thrilling for a while. I'm Abigail Morris. I guess I'm not, I was a senior at the school. Back in the day. We can applaud for that, right? No, just don't. And I want this to come across as a very positive thing because as going to high school and also the middle school for a year and a half, I learned a lot about being an advocate and an activist in a way, in a place that I was really supported in my views or most people agreed with me. And I think the high school in particular did a really good job of having conversations that were really hard, like these. Mr. Jackson calls them like white knuckle conversations. We really wanna make a fist around the table on Terry Knuckle's turn white about everything from race to sexuality and gender to immigration to ability to refugees, like across the table in school, we've had those discussions. And that's an amazing first step, but it's also a first step. And I think where the high school really fails is taking it beyond that step and showing students what they can actually do to have an impact. And a great example of that is the bill that the math legislature passed recently about gun safety and taking them away from people who are clearly, should not have guns. And that was something that was mostly led by teenagers. And it happened because we called our legislators, we called our state rep and we called our state senators and we told them this is important, we want this to happen. And I don't think high schoolers understand how impactful their voices can be when it comes to influencing their elected officials even if they can't vote. And now I'm speaking about all of you because most of you, with the exception of the two of you are elected officials. And I think that I imagine it must be hard to kind of represent people who can't vote for you. If that makes sense, like your job is to represent students and high schoolers and middle schoolers and elementary schoolers sometimes who are not 18 and can't vote. And I have a whole bunch of issues with that. That's enough for another day. So kind of my proposal, and I think this should be easy, would be to send out an email, like maybe once a month, once every six weeks, and be like, here are the minutes from our last three meetings and here is our next meeting and the agenda for that. Just so students know what's happening because aside from like me and Jack and like with three friends, we can get to like listen to us rant about this, we don't know what's happening in these meetings. But I think if you kind of made that intentional effort and reached out, it's really easy to send a mass email to all the high schoolers and I'm assuming also the middle schoolers that they would be really interested in this. Like I'm sure middle school students have a lot of opinions about this and they don't necessarily know even who you are. Like I don't think 99% of the high schoolers could name even one of you, right? Until graduation and maybe they can name you because you spoke. But they have no idea who you are. I should email them. I think you'd be surprised at the number of students who want to be involved and just don't know how. That's it. Thank you. Send that. Okay. Leah.  Before the next person speaks, we're going to close this after this comment. Good name to all of you and thank you for the opportunity for allowing me to speak. The last time I was here and I'm not sure Mr. German if you had addressed what happened at the last school committee meeting when the committee left in the middle of someone's testimony and I was locked out. So that was partly why I was late of this building I'm in. I just want to say that conversations are difficult to have when they impact us as deeply as they do as currently these conversations that we're having about licensure in the district do. But, and I have asked that all of us try to hear what each one of us has to say on these issues. And I don't think that's an unreasonable request regardless of what side you find yourself. But I want to say as a person of color that I am a little frustrated when white people try to tell me how much is being done for people of color, for students of color. If people of color are coming to you and saying to you that we are disproportionately affected by policies and practices in the district. Please hear us. Please believe us. We're not lying to you. I don't need anyone who has not had my experience to tell me what my experiences are. And I am speaking as a parent and I'm speaking as a person of color, a member, a tax-paying law-abiding member of this community. To please, this is the body to whom we go when we want to, when we have concerns, when we want to speak back to policies and practices, it is our right, you tell us so. And I'm asking you, please, the kind of disrespect that I saw happen here last time of one member of the community being trolled by members of this committee. I found it shameful, sir. And I just wanted to register that. And if we are going to have conversations as difficult as they are, the least we can do is to be respectful. We can hear each other's perspectives and respect each other's perspectives. Thank you very much. So that closes the public comment section. Are there any announcements from the committee? Number of members were actually at the graduation ceremony of the day, but it was actually, as it always is, an inspiring exercise. I'm absolutely looking forward to that. So it focuses on what we're here for. Next is licensure update. So I'll start the update, and then I think Ms. Cunningham will finish it and we'll be open to any questions that the committee has. So, unless you want me to be in three minutes, we'll all jump back, right? So I want to start from a place of acknowledging that our district has had challenges as it relates to educator licensure. I also want to say that we've been and we continue to be dedicated to resolving these issues. That both things can be true. We can both acknowledge that issues have existed and also talk about our work that has been an ongoing effort of this whole year to resolve them. And I want to compliment Ms. Cunningham, who, once you first started in the summer, recognized some of the issues and started to work on them head on. And I think a key phrase we want to talk about is working on these issues with our faculty and with our staff members. That, yes, we need to have licensed staff and that's what we're dedicated to and we also want to recognize and acknowledge that we have wonderful staff members that we want to work with to realize that goal. As in any other area that we have in our district, we're dedicated and committed to implementing the best practices moving forward. And fortunately, we've been able to partner successfully with Desi on the licensure issue. Trying to take how many times between you and I, we've called the licensure office this year that numbers are pretty high number and they answer the phone, they get back to us and they give us clarity on information and they've been an active partner in supporting our work to improve our practices in this area. For instance, one area of guidance that Desi Legal has offered us recently is about the actions and decisions that administrators have made at times where they've been unlicensed. I'm not talking about people who are wavered but folks who have not had an active license at any point. And Desi's legal department has shared with us that the decisions made by these administrators are valid as long as the process used in making those decisions was consistent with state and federal guidelines. We wanted to make sure that if there was a need to go back to prior decisions that were made that we would do whatever Desi's legal department would tell us needed to happen. And that's the kind of support separate from whether I'm happy or unhappy with their guidance. That's the kind of guidance they've been giving us consistently, that's a more recent one but that's the guidance they've been giving us throughout this year. As we move forward, our commitment is that 100% of our administrators are fully licensed for the 2018-2019 school year. And I'd like to talk about the current roster of administrators and the licensure status moving forward. And I think I'm gonna go school by school because I wanna be very specific and try to share with the committee and the community our plans moving forward that are still and some of them are still in process. Some of them are not, some of them are established. I'll start with the high school. So the high school principal, Mark Jackson has his professional license. The assistant principal, Mickey Grimacky also has her professional license. I should say assistant principal, principal license. Talib Siddique who has hired to be the second assistant principal at the high school last month or relatively recently has an initial license in good standing. And the last person who's administrated our high school's Rich Farrow who's the athletic director in both Miss Cunningham and then the Desi's educator licensure office confirmed that there is no license for an athletic director, much like an HR director there is no license for. And there are other roles that work in school districts where there is no license. The only thing that would be a limitation of Mr. Farrow's work or any athletic director depersonalizing it is that they can only manage about, it's under 20% of their time has to be spent evaluating licensed staff members. If it bridges that, then they need a different license. Mr. Farrow has a very light evaluator load. It doesn't come close to 20% of his responsibilities. So that's the administration at the high school. Mr. Farrow also does some work and support the middle school as well. He's primarily at the high school but he also does support the athletic director there as middle school sports. At Summit Academy, Dave Sloven is a principal and he also has a professional license. The middle school, the principal's search is underway. There's multiple highly qualified candidates who have their licenses in the pool. Only a licensed candidate will be hired. Once someone is hired, once a candidate's hired, which will be in the next two weeks, a leadership structure will be determined to figure out the rest of the vacancies at the middle school level. And much like the rest, what we've committed to the community, to ourselves and to Desi is that we're only able to hire licensed folks who have the assistant principal principal license for those roles. At Fort River School, Diane Chamberlain is the principal and she's under a valid initial license. At Crocker Farm, Derek Shea is the principal. He's working under a valid professional license. At Wildwood, Nick Yaffe is the principal and he's also working under a valid professional license. And all the things I just mentioned are not contingent on other things happening. These are their current licenses as of today. So we are currently in the process at the elementary level of reviewing whether assistant principal roles, just for those, some background, elementary assistant principal roles are 10 month positions that start in mid-August. So that's a little different than, for instance, Ms. Gromacky's role, which is a full year role, assistant principal at the high school. But at the elementary level, those are school year plus certain amount of days. 227, yeah. So it does build in days above the teacher contract but it's not, they don't work during the summer. And so we have a little time and so we're in active discussions with our principals about what that will look like, whether we're gonna maintain having assistant principals next year or whether alternative leadership models which are used in several neighboring districts will be implemented. If we do hire for assistant principals at those schools, only applicants with the appropriate licensure will be considered. In the past, we've utilized assistant principals in most of our elementary schools right now all but there were times where it wasn't at all. And there's no state directive or mandate to do so. The advantages of having assistant principals at the elementary level is they can be more heavily involved in student discipline, particularly suspensions than non-administrators. At the elementary level, we have very infrequent suspensions but it still is helpful to have another adult who can be involved in that if the need arises. They can evaluate teachers. That's a role that's clearly defined to be an administrative role. And currently they often share IEP meetings, so special education meetings and 504 meetings. Alternate models use other places, shift responsibilities. So for instance, sharing IEP meetings can often be done by education team leaders or non-administrators with background and expertise in special education. We've had that at different times in the past at the elementary level. It's currently the model at the middle school and high school where education team leaders and the primary folks involved in sharing special education meetings. In terms of evaluation and discipline, if we were to go to alternate models, more of this work would fall to principals but other tasks such as curriculum development and staff leadership could be shared with non-administrative staff or staff in non-administrative roles. In terms of local districts or comparisons, the elementary schools in Long Meadow, Northampton and Wilberham, three districts with similarly sized elementary schools, some of those are a little smaller, Long Meadow in particular has some larger ones. They do not have assistant principals and they rely on other mechanisms to make sure that student and staff needs are met. However, South Hadley and several of the elementary schools in West Springfield do have assistant principals. So it's a local decision that's made by local districts about how to structure their schools to make sure that again, student needs and staff needs can be met. Both models having assistant principals and not having assistant principals can work. The big shift with the different models is who does which aspects of the work does significantly change and that's why we're giving principals some time after the school year to sort through their needs and define what model they'd like to have in their school building and they'll be making the determinations once things quiet down a little bit and most of the staff and students are off for summer vacations and if they do post vacancies they'll engage the school communities in any vacancy that gets posted and having a team of staff members, parents, guardians, community members to be involved in that selection process. So just to summarize before I think Ms. Cunningham shares some of her work around licensure is that we currently have licensed principals in all of our schools. When we look at the teams we have at the high school, everybody's where they need to be with licensure. The middle school will have that sorted pretty soon in terms of the principal and build from there out about what other vacancies need to have and at the elementary level in Amherst, I wanna be careful I'm not talking about Pelham here just Amherst because sometimes we can link those. There's a consideration of what staffing model is going to best meet the needs of students and staff in the schools and that'll be announced to the school communities and there'll be an engagement process around selection whatever the role is, whatever roles are posted. But when you, forgive me. Yeah, please. There's an last summing thought I'd like you to add to that if you're willing to. Please. But whatever staffing model that is it'll be appropriate licensed and the duties will conform of. Absolutely. State regulations and policies and laws? That precisely. So again, our work with DESI has been a very collaborative one. I think they're aware and we're aware and we've been very transparent about some of the challenges that the district has faced over the years and we and they are very committed to us making changes around that in short order and that's what we've committed to and that's what we're gonna do. It'd be slightly more blunt. Please. I'm assuming your efforts to engage the principals in the whatever kind of management model you're organizing for the elementary schools. You're not, I assume you're trying, based on what you just said, you're trying to do this in a way in which you're allowing the principals to provide some sort of leadership in how they're organizing their schools and what you're not doing is you're not reverse engineering an outcome either based on personnel or based on some preconceived notion about how you, in other words, you're not, you're not, the point I make, let me be really blunt, there's an accusation I've heard that you were trying to jury rig how you're staffing out leadership with an elementary schools to reverse engineer an outcome that somebody might have in mind. And what I would rather, I mean, if this is a true statement, I would like to hear from you whether you think there's any validity to that and what you're doing and clarify that you're actually gonna, you know what I'm saying? You know what I'm getting at?  Perhaps I needed that second round of bluntness. No, I think that's about on and to be very blunt back, any position that's get posted, whether it's an assistant principal position, a staff leadership position, we'd be posted and have a fully open, transparent process with community members involved in the selection. It's not gonna be internal postings. They're not going to be anything that has the appearance of nor predicts the outcome of that search is really, can we create a model that's going to work for students and staff? And then how do we find the best person to fill that role? Thank you. Sorry, I was a little thick on the front end of that. So do you want to ask questions? How do you want to go through your presentation? I apologize, I jumped in because I felt like you were dangling in the point you were trying to make. Yeah. I appreciate it. Take care of that. I'll just say the second part of the presentation is only to explain another part of the desi request. Sure. So I just need to... Oh yeah. Does that far enough? Thanks. I'll go down and explain. Okay. So desi had requested some information. Dr. Morris just mentioned part of the information that they requested in our response to desi. And what I will say is that at the last school committee meeting, I said I would take partial responsibility for some of the things that occurred when we requested the waivers. And in taking that responsibility, I showed the current slide about the screenshot that the screen that I looked at when I requested the waiver and how when you look at the screen in school spring, that it just showed one person. And so I requested the waiver saying that one person had applied for the position. So desi asked that we go back now and now that I know how to use school spring, I've been going into the activity log, which was what I mentioned before. So I just wanted to show another screen. Same thing. So here's another screen for another position that was posted where I requested waivers. And I was able to list all the licensed applicants for that position. So these are two things that we were, two additional pieces of information that was being sent to desi to explain why one request or a few, I think about four or so requests mentioned one candidate. And then other requests showed other candidates had applied for the position. So these are some of the shots, the screenshots that I'm sending there so that they can see what we saw. And then we have the letter from school spring. The first thing. Sorry. So this letter from school spring basically just lets us know that as mentioned, it was just my error, right? So I called it a glitch. It's human error. Just as they mentioned in the highlighted portion, a lack of knowledge about certain features that school spring has for me to be able to go back in and find all the candidates that applied. And so school springs wrote and let us know that or let for you guys to know and understand that we did not create these filters that is a default filter in the school spring program. It's just at the time, I did not know how to use that program. So in addition to the screen prints, I'm sending desi this letter that we received from school spring. And I think I just want to share with that that I own is my responsibility for a new staff member to have kind of more updated training and the training that Ms. Cunningham received did not resolve this challenge. So I also want to be sensitive to that. So I was doing the role and the person who did the training wasn't successful at resolving this. And so I don't want Ms. Cunningham to take as much ownership as perhaps you just did. That's why I said partial. I'm just a question because I noticed in the letter that it says that ongoing training is a valuable tool for customers to ensure detailed understanding of the capabilities, features and functions of the solution. So does this mean that they are offering training to the district and will we be taking that? So they have offered training, yes. And we will be scheduling some training with our HR department so that we can then turn key it to our principals and administrators. Great, so are there questions or comments, Ms. Cunningham? Yeah, so thank you for this. It's been a while since we last met. So it's good to get a lot of update. It's a lot to unpack there. So I'll just kind of summarize the comments and then just one question. So I think in general, the approach you're taking of having 100% licensure for the next school year is the right goal to have and only hiring license applicants. I think that's the proper way to be responding to this situation that you both inherited. And as we monitor that going forward, I really look to DESI as the regulatory authority and the body that can speak to is this current situation acceptable? Are we doing the right thing? Therefore, I've been glad since last meeting to know that Doreen has been on this since August, has been working with DESI since August. I think it can get confusing when we have opinions from different vantage points about the nature of licensure. And I'm sure most in our community were probably not down in the weeds and the details of licenses as many are now. But I really look to DESI on this. So I look forward to the next letter that we get from DESI saying whether what we're doing is okay. I was happy to read in the news a few weeks ago that they said this is definitely not an investigation that they've been working with us. And we go forward from there. There was another point that came up in public comment that I was really happy to hear. And that's that when we try and get our heads around the nature and scope of this licensing issue, that we need to put this in the context of how other schools are operating and that someone brought up charter schools. And this critical analysis of charter schools, I think most people would be pretty surprised to hear that administrators and teachers at charter schools aren't required to be licensed. And that the license levels at the charter schools in our area are under 70%. So if you're really looking to dig into a critical analysis of licensure and how that affects education, I think charter schools are a good way to go but I'll stop digressing on that point. So yes, I look forward to the next letter. And I guess my question is another thing that came up during public comment, which is understanding and accepting this the way we're going forward and having had its impact on the middle school principal search. We had 52 teachers sign a letter asking for continued openness and flexibility and dialogue as the middle school leadership structure evolves. And we haven't heard a lot of detail on that because everything has been up in the air, obviously. And so one is I hope to hear more updates from you on that going forward. But I just wanted to get your take on that, what that number of teachers signing onto that letter means to you and how that affects your thinking about it going forward. So we certainly read every letter we receive from whether it's staff member, community member, and we read them closely and consider them closely. What we've done, I think it was referenced a little bit earlier in terms of moving forward is we have put out a call to the middle school staff to create a leadership team that would work with Ms. Cunningham, myself, whoever gets hired. I think we're roughly looking at four staff members and I'm being explicit in saying staff members because there's a whole lot of staff members who identify as teacher and then there's a whole lot that do not as well and they're all valuable to the middle school experience. To work over the summer on the transition, that this transition, whoever we hire, I'm sure they'll be wonderful and they're gonna need to make strong relationships with middle school staff on the get go. I'm fortunate, we're fortunate that we received, you never know, it's summertime, people maybe off doing other things, having other work, spending time with their family and receive a good number of applications and applications is kind of long form. I mean, it was asking a paragraph about their thoughts about things and that's, I think, in my opinion, it's gonna be a critical group moving forward to help make decisions so that when we get back in the fall, the new principal is acclimated to the needs of the middle school, understand some of the tensions that perhaps exist at the moment and has actively worked to build relationships and their understanding of this middle school, what the current needs are and a direction that can move forward. So I'm not saying it's everything, but it was an idea that came up and I thought it was a great one to really start moving forward with a leadership group over the summer that meets multiple times for long stretches, I mean, like half days, multiple times, so that the new principal is positioned for success. It also gives the staff a window into decisions that get made over the summer that are integral for how the school year starts. I think there's a balance or attention, perhaps, depending on your point of view, I guess. I think there's a lot of really good reason to arguments to take actions before someone's hired and I'll just say I've been resistant to that, that my approach in generally has been to support principals and certainly give feedback where feedback is needed, but to make sure they feel empowered to be leaders of their school and so I am hesitant to make decisions before someone's hired. I think the implications of the entry plan for that person are greatly affected when someone in my role or Ms. Cunningham's role starts making, is making multiple decisions that greatly impact how that person's going to experience their role and so, the thing I want to say is the counterargument to that is incredibly reasonable, right? If I was someone whose school year ended next Thursday, the uncertainty of some decisions not being made while I'm at work, it's entirely legitimate and reasonable to have a sense of frustration around that and I want to acknowledge that. We've heard that and I think we heard it in the letter tonight and I want to honor that, that that's a totally reasonable thing from my educator's point of view and for me, I think I had to weigh, I am having to weigh that as compared to making sure that I'm positioning someone we're hiring for success. In my opinion, giving she or he some leeway and some decision making and support along making decisions along with a leadership group, I think that's really important for the entry into the school environment. So I want to acknowledge that there's different points of view on this. I want to acknowledge the reasonably rationality of both sides and explain why I've been hesitant to move forward with decisions before we hire someone of that role. Kaczynski. So I just want to say that I've spent a lot of time reading emails that the public has sent or Mr. Salisbury wrote a nice opinion piece in the Amherst Bulletin and I just want to say that despite that I'm not often in a position to respond, I do read them all. And I think my couple of takeaways as well as all the data the district has provided, I want to acknowledge that clearly, Mr. Salisbury was my teacher 25 years ago. I appreciate his experience in the school and I full-heartedly believe that that was his experience and that that's where we were then. And I hope that in that 25 years we've come a long way and I acknowledge we're not where we need to be. And I think we've made big improvements and I think there's room to grow. And so in that effort, I know you guys have sort of instituted some best practices and are continuing to improve. And I think it's maybe my job as a school committee to make sure that we're measuring you against those goals and that we see that we're continuing to move in the right direction at a pace and speed that makes sense for us. So along those lines, what I was looking for after the summer, I know there's always a lot of hiring that occurs in a normal summer. This one may be even more. That at the beginning of the school year, when it makes sense, everybody's sort of in their positions and we've had time to get the school year rolling would be an opportunity to look through all of the new hires and their licensure status that we checked that they came in, that we have their licenses, that they're valid and appropriate for the roles that they're in. If there are waivers that are applied for that the school committee understands that why the waivers were there and what they were for. And then the other half of that, because there's really two issues here, right? We have the licensure issue and then we have the ongoing, you know, are trying to reach our diversity goals within the school staff. And so the other half of that is part of that you were, I was able to get data from your summative evaluation artifacts that showed some of the metrics that you've been keeping internally, but just to report on those sort of annually, which is, you know, have we hired, you know, what's the percentage of new hires that are minority staff? And then it would, I think, you know, the ultimate goal here is that we have diversity at all levels of our organization. So when we look at our staff, you know, what's the sort of the percent minority staff or whatever groups that make sense to put that in. I'm not the expert there. At the different levels of the organization, so paraprofessionals. We have this pathways program, because we know we have a larger diverse pool at Paras than we do at teachers. And I imagine that's, you know, similar funnel to administration is probably less. So that if we tracked those, you know, over many years, we should be seeing improvement. And then we know we're doing a good job or that our policies and our procedures and our best practices are supporting our goals. So that would be something I'd be looking for in that coming timeframe. And certainly I'm not the expert in what the right groupings are and what the right licensure groups are. But I think that that allows us to have some accountability, not on your day-to-day decisions. I don't want to know what your day-to-day decisions are. But that overall year over year that we're growing in the right direction. Do you have any, and there may not be any immediate response to that? So I'll just say to me that makes sense. And I think perhaps we can talk at a future meeting about the timings and logistic of that. And even I think to have agreement of the committee and the two of us on what the groupings are. Because I think we can do that work ourselves and that might be inconsistent with what committee members might be wondering about. So to me, that actually would be a great future agenda item to dig into, not in terms of the data, but actually about what data we wanna do, we wanna pull and what's a reasonable timeline or an annual report and Ms. Cunningham could share also about the hiring cycle and when she would be able to report back out on some of those variables. No, I just, the only thing I wanna say is that I would like to remind the school committee that during the November 28th meeting, I did mention about the licensing and retention of teachers and such. So the timeframe would be about the same like late fall where we would be able to report on the same thing. So I have right now Ms. Erdogan, yes, then Ms. Pitzer. And please raise your hand if you wanna talk to you. So I just have a couple of questions, partly I think coming from myself and then also partly coming from just questions that have arisen from the community that I think just are important to help us understand some of the changes that you've been talking about that are gonna be implemented moving forward, right? So one of the questions that I have is is there a protocol in place to keep track of when licenses expire, right? And so what I mean by that is, do managers keep track during annual reviews or is there some other mechanism that kicks into place to help administrators keep track of those license expirations? And then the other question, I'll just say them both now so that you guys can decide how you wanna answer these. What I've gathered from conversations that I've had both with the superintendent, with the assistant superintendent is that Dusty does not notify district of applications, right? So that means that if an educator or administrator's license is about to expire and they are doing what they're supposed to be doing, which is applying for a license renewal, that Dusty doesn't let you know about that, right? And so I'm wondering if educators and administrators are required to notify the district. So are your own staff required to let you know when they apply for license renewals? So to answer the first part, when I came in July, I wasn't told of any protocols or any procedures or a process for what you're asking to occur. I spoke recently to the director of, or the assistant director of information systems to find a way to get this information included in the My Learning Plan so that when an educator is completing their annual goal, they're also reporting on their licensing status. The other part about Dusty, Dusty sent me this letter today and I just took some excerpts from it because as mentioned previously, the license is the individual's responsibility. So they copied it or they sent me this email to say that when an educator gets their license, the quote is listed in the email or sent to them, letting them know that it's their responsibility to remain informed and current. They also want us to know as a district that we are also responsible for making sure that we have licensed individuals, right? So. Bless you. Moving forward, we will continue to work with Dusty to just make sure that we're following every process, every procedure, every licensing update and ask, we will ask and work with our staff to inform us of whatever applications they've sent in via that My Learning Plan new page or new question that they have to respond to. Miss Pitzer? So my question was very similar. I'm wondering how we could institutionalize a process of finding out when administrators are at risk of being unlicensed because I think we're doing a good job of communicating clearly how we're making sure that people were hiring a license, but it seems like a lot of the issues we've had have actually been folks who were licensed at one point in time. And yet we're not licensed, we're not keeping their licenses active. So it sounds like you just responded to that question. And I think I would also just like to echo that I have also been listening to and reading all of the emails from everybody. And it's been really frustrating not to be able to have as much of a two-way dialogue as I'd like to have in this role due to open meeting law concerns and also just being in this public role has been frustrating sometimes because we can't go back and forth as much as we like. But I like to say that I'm listening to everybody and reading all of your emails. So thank you and that was it. Hi, Don. Can I see someone in principle? I don't know if it's in the room. Could I get you to jump in after the column? Thanks. So the beauty of going last is that everybody else has already asked my questions. So I had the same questions that Ms. Ordonas did. And similar to Ms. Spitzer and Kazanski, sorry. I also have been reading everything. I've been also doing my own research and asking questions of you both. And so one, I want to thank you for updating us in this really thorough and detailed update, not just tonight, but also at every step along the way and answering my questions and everybody's questions throughout the process. Your candor and detailed, thorough responses have been really appreciative. And while this last couple months have been maybe uncomfortable going through this process, I am appreciative that this was brought up and sort of elevated for a focus and conversation. Because I think it is important. And knowing you were on it already since August, both of you, and I think now the community is aware of the hard work that you've been doing and the work that you're putting in place going forward. And I think this whole process has brought that to everybody's attention, started the conversation, and also pointed in ways and directions that we can continue to improve and strengthen that process overall. So thank you. So I don't have questions, because you are already out there. Ms. Bushel, I don't know. Just come on up to the microphone then, please. So I was just hoping that I could be a tad selfish and greedy for a second. I can go back to Mike's comment or Mr. Dr. Morris's comment earlier, but the possibility of taking a little bit of a look at how we go forward with the role of slashing it and this isn't principal or something else. So I think the thing that I try and listen to when I'm in the back and come to the meetings in the weeks, we don't have enough time to do this recently because we're obviously get some challenging conversations taking place. But what's the purpose of coming to school, right? What is the role of coming to school, right? And so I've said this at these meetings before. For me, it's all about social mobility, right? It's something like myself, working class person can actually maybe have some good teachers, some people in my life, some family members, a little bit of luck along the way, and then you get to do something different in your life, right? And you can get out of the situation you're in, a little bit of choice, right? So for me, that's what school's all about. So how does that connect to what we're talking about with the assistant principal piece, right? So I'm definitely in with Mike in terms of this perhaps sort of contemplation or to take a look at how we could actually set something up. But what I'm not interested in is some sort of abolition of a role because it takes a very large number of people, and this is where the greed and the selfishness comes in, right? To actually do the work that we're trying to do so as that we can sort of promote this idea that kids can come to school and have that possibility of moving beyond what your situation is, right? So, you know, and one thing I do like about working with Mike, he's fine for someone like me, fires in a comment that's maybe not exactly gone, and this maybe keeps me around sometimes, right? Because I'm willing to just jump in and say, not the party line all the time. So I don't think I heard this up here, but I think I heard a bit long whether in other places, we can't abolish the leadership role like an assistant principal does, right? Whether we modify it and change it and do something different, I'm all up for thinking about that, but it takes important leaders other than myself to make sure that our schools are trying to do what we are having them try to do, right? And so, I just want to make sure that we, and I don't think I heard that up here, but I was just a little bit nervous in the back. It's not like a should we or shouldn't we have that person? We need that person, right? It's imperative, and I'm happy you sit down with any of you at any point and explain why. The modified role are a different role, sure, but there has to be additional leadership people in the school if we want to do the job that we're trying to do, right? Thank you. So, I have a couple comments and I think I have a question. On that note there, I was just sort of elaborating because I was sort of picking on you earlier, Mike, on this question of how you were going to identify or how the team was going to identify any additional roles beyond the principal in terms of leadership and what I was picking on, and I'm probably at a couple of points in this conversation going to speak very bluntly because I always say that every meeting, and usually I'm blunt, but sometimes I'm not because I'm naturally kind of polite, but the reason I'm saying I'm being blunt is just because the public has seen or received some level of the criticisms that are being put at the feet of the superintendent, this isn't superintendent and the school committee and then others leaders in the district, but the reality is there's a whole host of things that have been put out as accusations around what the motivations are of the district and it's an interesting challenge because when you sort of sort out the different facts and things in different statements that you have, you have a combination of some things that may be true. So you have some lapped licenses, you have other people who were on waved licenses and things like that. And so as we look at this so-called desi letter that was reported and received by the district, desi identified a number of things that they viewed as being practices that clearly needed to be improved and outcomes that needed to be changed in terms of how we were managing that process, right? The challenge is what we also have largely in the discussion, either that's occurring publicly or that is being received voluminously by the school district is also a lot of other things that may in fact have no basis in fact whatsoever. And so one of the ones I was picking on was the idea that if the district is thinking about how it should best organize its elementary schools and what's the best way to meet the needs of children and support staff in those schools that somehow that was gonna be reverse engineered or gamed because there was some effort to get around licensure rules or laws. And the message, and so I was asking that question and you could have answered it any way you wanted if you'd wanted to say, that's exactly what we're doing. Erica, how clever are you to figure that out? You could have said that, but what I was really trying to do was have as much clarity and blunt talk as we can around some of these decisions and approaches. Knowing also by the way that I think our district is in a challenging moment right now because overall is best I can ascertain from what I've heard and similarly, I read all the letters we get and all the outreach we get. We're at a point in which there's a real crisis in terms of morale in the district and there are a lot of people who are deeply concerned. They're deeply concerned about whether they're valued, they're deeply concerned about whether they're gonna be in a position in which every decision they make and a reaction they take is going to be publicly discussed and publicly debated in a way that most people would never put up with their jobs. There's a public dimension to this work that naturally requires it to be more public than it would otherwise, but the reality is our district is made up of human beings.  The entire point of the enterprise of this organization is try to enable childhood development and support children and families who are trying to nurture a pathway for their kids. And so in that kind of environment, I'm just sort of calling out the fact that we have to be both have fidelity to the law, fidelity to what we would consider best prudential practice, but we also have to have fidelity to each other and to the community that we love and that we're dedicated to. And in fact, I would argue that while we're having fidelity to the law and fidelity to the best practice and being developmental in that way, I would actually argue that if you lose the spark in the thread of understanding, I think echoing something Principal Shea said a moment ago, the core mission you have and the fact that this is an entity made up of human beings who all have to be able to center themselves, come to work and provide an environment for each other for the students and for the public in general, knowing that it's public and knowing that it's challenging that we have to take care with that. We have to take tremendous care with that. And I'm saying that out loud now, just simply because I don't wanna walk down a path. I know we're talking about licensure right now, I'm gonna focus in on that. I am amazingly uninterested in having this school committee in this district and this public conversation go down a profoundly destructive path. And so the question is, what are the alternatives that lead us out of that destructive path, but also adhere to core principles and core ideas or values that we have as a society we're at large legally, also within the community that we're working and the community that we're serving. And so to me, a couple of things. One, I was calling out this question of how you're structuring it because I really wanted to be incredibly blunt that if you're making decisions around the structure and leadership and the role of individuals within the elementary school, that you've already thought through the fact that this is in fact an intentional act around what's gonna serve the best structure for the staff and for the kids and that within that course, it goes without saying, it doesn't go without saying in the context of this conversation, but it goes without saying, which is why I was calling it out, that you're gonna have fidelity to whatever the appropriate licensure rules as well as other professional development, other experiences that individuals bring to a job that make them outstanding leaders, outstanding contributors to the communities. That's why I was calling that out. Backing up for a second here. So we recently have a letter from DESI. There's been an engagement with them around licensure. You're responding to that letter. That letter is gonna include a bunch of information in it, including the licensure status of all the administrators who would need to be licensed. It's gonna clarify that. It's gonna clarify, as mentioned earlier, by Susan Superintendent Cunningham what happened with school spring. And then, as Mr. Demling pointed out, we're essentially gonna be, along with whatever dialogue you have around them, what our practices are going forward, you're gonna get a response from them back that is presumably gonna lay out whether their concurrence with both the underlying facts as well as also, and I'm not saying it's an investigation, but I'm saying they're gonna acknowledge what you tell them. So if they say, you see Mark Jackson's license, well, they told you Mark Jackson's license, probably gonna nod their heads and say Mark Jackson's license, right? So that's what I'm talking about, the letter to that. And then two, whatever pathway they're gonna identify going forward, that would be a good practice for us to adhere to going forward that the administration, the district's gonna do, they're gonna sort of validate and ratify that. And that that's gonna give us a framework, as mentioned earlier, about how we're gonna be able to proceed. In addition, people may or may not recall, there was, we hear an Office of Civil Rights complaint that was filed with the Department of Education. We, in fact, have not been notified about that or heard back from it. But I could say this later in the chairs update, but I'll say it now, that the responsibility of the committee is clearly to follow whatever path of follow up oversight and due diligence that falls to us in our role on the school committee. So for example, as Ms. Kacensky said a moment ago, we have to, I mean, I would argue, I mean, I guess I'm agreeing with her. Hey, I'm agreeing with you. We as the committee owe it to the public and owe it to ourselves and owe it to you to follow up sometime this fall, as we did last November, and hear a thorough presentation about where we are and review that. And I think that's important. Clearly, if we get back something from OCR or other kinds of investigatory responses or whatever they are, as we learn what we learn, the committee is gonna have a responsibility to follow up based on what is sent to us and what is provided to us. That would be true of any situation in which if there were a complaint filed or some other sort of issue going on, the committee would engage in that. I bring that up and mention it because again, there's sort of a fine point to put on the fact. And again, I say this publicly because everything's been so public. There are lots of things that have been thrown around as accusations. I'm gonna just say speaking for myself, I actually concur with the opinions that were said earlier, but I haven't seen any evidence in my interactions with the leadership to suggest that there is any validity to claims that there was any direct bias or other motivation in terms of decisions that were made that would warrant a review of the decisions that have been made. If anything to the contrary comes forward, we would deal with it as we need to. But I say this just because I think one of the challenges the committee has when we're getting so many things over the transom as the old expression goes over the email inbox as it is currently today, is that no one has transoms.  But anyways, that you can't respond to every statement that's made if there's no in fact any appropriate channel or avenue to review it appropriately under the law. That was why I would make a distinction that when I get in credit, the assistant superintendent is superintendent, not only have you been working on the licensure issue since last fall, but on top of that, you got a letter from DESI, you're responding to letter from DESI, where there are things in it, you think you need to improve your doing so, that's responding appropriately. And the committee itself is also engaging appropriately in looking at that and asking questions and wanting to follow up later on. So I think the committee is exercising its appropriate role and judgment in this process. You were doing so as well. I'll call out just the fact that in my mind, going on for a while, but the thing is also our next meeting is gonna be about evaluation, this probably won't be on the agenda, and then all of a sudden we're in the summer. And so I'm really, I'm extraordinarily uncomfortable with the idea that we have this meeting, and then all of a sudden it's like, September, October, and people are like where did this conversation go? So I'm laying it out, I'm welcoming the members of the committee wanna do it further in a second as well, that one of the challenges of the way in which I think you did handle the professional development, special licensure and practice work that was initiated last summer is I think it's really appropriate. In the context that we discussed earlier about staff morale and the overall morale of the district, that if you have questions around individuals who work in the district, I think it's entirely appropriate to handle it in the way in which you're directly engaging with those individuals and trying to resolve whatever you're finding that you need to deal with. In some cases there are actually strict rules governing how you do that, but in this case, the idea that this is being handled in a way that I recognized for the public was not as public a discussion as it could be. My guess is, and you can answer the question if you wanted, but my guess is this was done this way precisely because you're talking about staff who are in the district and trying to find ways developmentally and appropriately to get them on course. Having said that, now that it is public, I think this is again an example of something where when I look at where we're going and what we're doing, the fact that you've engaged well, not just last July, but I'm saying right now, you're engaging well and appropriately around how you're doing the work should give people some confidence. But it also argues that the extent that we've been able to be transparent and we're also gonna enable and facilitate future conversations where there's also transparency around these things, that's the only path forward we have. The only path forward we have is to do these things together and to be transparent, to identify best practices and laws where we can, to conduct our roles in ways in which there is appropriate oversight, but there's also I think an understanding of the organic nature of the enterprise that we're in, the human centered nature of the enterprise that we're in. And so as we go forward, I encourage, especially we have retreats and retreat planning, I would encourage the committee to think about anything we can do that follows on from the licensure topic, but also the sort of spin off of other things in which we think about how can we structure and facilitate conversations that can enable us to have confidence in the public, have confidence that we're head of these conversations as well as we can in the future. But I thank you for your work. We look forward to responding and following up. And I really sincerely want us to do exactly what has been asked of us is infidelity with these rules, these laws, these best practices. I wanna get back to focusing on what we have been doing quite a bit over the last, please, while I've done, before too, to be fair, other committee members, I don't mean it that way. At least I'm seeing my direct personal knowledge of focusing a lot on a multitude of ways in which we can enhance the student experience and family engagement. That's my two cents. We're five cents. Is there anything else on the committee? Okay. Hiring process committee update. That was better. So we had a committee of many individuals, the staff at the Arps District and the community who joined together to review our current practices and to make recommendations for future practices. These are some of the members and I'd like the current members who are here to stand up and join in because they are the ones who will be presenting this work or this information. So we have LaMica McGee, we have DeAndre Henson, and we have Andrea Battle. And they are going to present the rest of the slides. I need a microphone. Make sure you stand before our microphone, please. So the purpose of the committee, as mentioned, was to basically review our practices and to just make recommendations as to where we could do things better as a district. So I just need a visual cue if you want me to fast up for the slide. Yeah, I have a particular mic, but I don't know what to do right after this. He's first. So our goal was to create a stand committee with core membership with a diverse group that we focused on throughout our entire process and diverse not only in the skin color and race and all those things is that also roles as well. So our thought process was having a core membership and for different hiring processes, request members for each school, teachers, parents, clerical, food service, custodial, which is also represented into our monthly process, and that the membership of who those folks are are made public at the beginning of the year and that individual hiring, hiring is those are made more transparent, but having the broader group made public we felt we'd ensure more trust. Also providing training for that broader group, on implicit bias, social justice, other topics of that nature, and then also discuss going forward throughout the year as hiring process to go and have resources or smaller trainings and some sort just to make sure everybody's together and especially in the long year where hiring may happen in different parts of the year that everyone's up to date about what we need to do. Also, in our discussion of the Standing Committee, we also thought about our big topics were how many should be in there, who should be included, confidentiality, and we thought we tackled it all throughout our month into it. So one of the big difference when you look at this slide is the creation of the Standing Committee. Currently we do not have a committee who is all ready to go out there and do the hiring or the screening and they are not, we don't have people who are trained. So we didn't offer any training previous as to implicit bias or any of the things that DeAndre mentioned. So this committee is going to be important to have because one of the questions earlier, not in this meeting but in a previous meeting, people were saying that or comment was that they felt that there was a lack of transparency as to who was on the committee. When we have this now and we're going to articulate to each school, each principal, everyone in the district who the membership is. So let's say we're at Pelham School and we have let's say five people, they will know from the beginning who those five people are so that if there's a posting ever for that building then they will know who may comprise the committee. So that's a big difference, a big change that'll occur. So we also took a look at the search process and how we can find qualified applicants of color. And I would like to say that, we had quite a bit of conversation around qualified. There is a narrative out there that you need a person of color and that sometimes means looking for someone who may not have the qualifications. And oftentimes, let me just be frank, we're overqualified. And so the idea that we cannot find applicants of color that narrative, we just have to get rid of it. So I just want to say that. But we need to think outside of the box. We need to look at some of these EPP programs. If you go on Desi, some of the information is right there. We know which EPPs are putting out most educators of color. And so we need to look at those and say, hey, what have you got? So there's opportunity out there. We want to look at six state candidates to be invited for interviews. Principles should typically be part of this election committee for their respective school and the superintendent should be involved early in all principal searches. So that's one thing that we discussed. In advance, all candidates that are deemed a capable of the position. And then typically two or three move forward. And this is one thing that we looked at if all finalists are rejected after a superintendent interview that the committee is reconvened. Obviously it's the superintendent's decision what he ultimately decides to do. But I think that reconvening will kind of help the search committee get an understanding, okay, how do we need to move forward? And so we thought that should be part of the process. So. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I misregarded you. I got too far. Yeah, just the other one, go back. So a change that this process brings up is that as mentioned typically two to three people are moved forward. And now with this process, anyone who is capable that the committee is saying is capable and qualified to do the job will be advanced. So we're not saying two or three will go for the next round or for the next forum but whoever, whatever number. So if we have six candidates and we say four of them are qualified then four of them will move forward to meet with the superintendent and to meet with the community forums that take place. And also the early involvement of the superintendent in any of these searches for a principal or director is also a big change. Whereas typically, currently the superintendent comes in at the end. Now he's way in the beginning. He's also in the middle and he'll be at the end. Can I ask a question? Is that appropriate time? I just wanna make sure I understood the last comment which was if we have a failed search and we reconvene the committee, is that intended to be like a feedback mechanism to the committee and maybe that's a forum where we didn't, the search committee maybe didn't understand the particular skills or the particular something that was being looked for in the candidates so that the next search that's asked about earlier or thought about is that intended to be a feedback mechanism or did I read that into that comment and it's just a regrouping? Before I answer that I'll ask Ms. McGee to answer. And then I'll just answer again or respond. Yes, in a sense it's meant to be a feedback mechanism but honestly from what I've seen with our search committees they're highly competent and so I think that it gives the opportunity for each side to kinda say okay, this is my position on this and these are the reasons why I made my decision and for the search committee, whatever points that they need to bring forward to bring those points forward and come to some type of agreement. Even if they don't necessarily like the decision they're in agreement that we're gonna move forward with this decision or we're gonna move forward. And so it gives the opportunity for the search committee and the superintendent to kind of have a conversation and then the superintendent ultimately makes a decision. Thank you. So with our current practice the superintendent does not have to reconvene the committee to explain his decision. His decision is just what it is and it stands. So this gives that opportunity as Ms. McGee mentioned for that conversation to take place. So there's a lot more that we talked about such as criterias and many other things but we also looked at how we're going to assess this process, right? So we're putting these things into place. We're saying we're trying to be consistent or we're working at being consistent across all the schools in the district and we wanna make sure that we are doing what we say we're doing. So at the end of each interview session or search there will be evaluations that will go out to the committee members to just ask them for feedback on the process. Also our committee, you saw the membership, when we have searches there will be one person at least from that membership who will sit as a silent observer to then go back and say, okay, I noticed that we have been doing this or I noticed that this did not take place in this search. So let's make sure that we are being consistent in doing what we say. And then once again, we're going to always have places where we have to revise and change things and where right now we're thinking that this may make sense but once it's in practice we realize that it can't happen or needs to be tweaked a bit. So we're going to always look for those revisions to take place. During admin week I will be working with our committee members who will hopefully self select to join me to train administrators and directors so that they know what we're looking for. And the good thing about the committee members is that they're one individual at least from every school except the high school but we can always go back and train the high school members so that when there's a search in each school there's a committee member who can look and say yes this is taking place correctly or excuse me principal, whomever, this is how it should look according to the process that we've put in place. And also communication is going to be sent out to all the staff so that those who are observing the process will know exactly what they should be seeing. So this is just a summary. At the beginning of the school year a survey will be sent to all staff members just to find out for your building what are you looking for in individuals who join your staff. Once that survey is sent out if a position occurs or opens up in that building we can use some of the information from that survey to then create the job description or tweak the current job description to basically put in the unique characteristics of the school and what the staff is looking for for the school. Then when that position is posted the committee members are called to action basically. They come together, they do any kind of retraining any kind of conversations that need to take place they will come together and have those conversations. As mentioned this is a continual process so we will consistently have conversations and there will be lots of communication around the process whether it's with the search committee or with the community as to what we're looking for to happen with our district. Also as mentioned the superintendent will be earlier in the process especially for the hiring of a principal or director and then the other thing is that there's some positions that when we hire we don't have them currently undertake a task. I know teachers go in and they do mock lessons but now we're saying that every position that we hire for there is a possibility of a task that that person will undertake. So let's say it's in food service whether it's a general worker creating a menu or let's say it's a paraprofessional working with a group of students they're in that room working with the students as part of their task. So that we can get an idea of how they will do in their possible role or future role if they're hired. So that's also new that every position will have a task. And then finally I don't want us to lose sight of this but you know at the end of the day the superintendent according to Desi is the one who makes all the final decision. Any questions? Yeah so thank you for this very informative. I like the emphasis on increasing the search committee superintendent communication. A couple I want to take implementation questions I don't think I quite understood. So the standing committee you're talking about having one search committee for all positions that would be the same members. Is that right? Is that what a standing committee is? You want me to answer? The committee's standing in each school in each school and people will volunteer to be in them. And we're gonna try to use a lot of you know the what is it called? It's the lottery. It's like it comes out that way. And there's a training for them. And what happens is people the more people know the better off they ask questions. And that's the whole idea. And also the more transparency because they're on the staff of the school in which they're going to hire. So that was the whole idea of the standing committee. So you don't have to grab people at the last minute but you have people who are trained. And you know trained by the superintendent the assistant superintendent trained so that they know what they're looking for. They know what they're looking at. You know and then and the people who have certain requirements basic requirements. You know only one of them is licensed to everything else. You know what you know degree whatever what experience and that kind of thing. So that it's clear at the end of the process. So in the middle of it. Thank you. And there are also core members of the standing committee. So it may be someone from HR. It would be the director of family engagement. It would be the student services person. So the core members are listed there. And then people from the other schools. So I'm still not quite getting it. I'm sorry. So you have the core members that are maybe members of all the school standing committees and you have staff say at Pelham that are on the Pelham standing committee. Does this also include community members? And if so, is it the same community member for every position for a year? Is that I'm trying to understand where community members come in. And one of my concerns is that sometimes you get great community members and they're awesome. Sometimes they're not so great. And I'm not going to talk about why because I've been in a number of search committees and I totally respect the confidentiality of that process. But that can affect a number of positions. So I'm trying to understand the logistics of how the community gets on those because they seem like pretty influential committees to be on. So we're not asking for one community member from each school. So let's say we'll use Pelham again. Let's say we send out the request for whomever is interested in joining the committee and we get five or 10 community members. Those community members, all 10 of them if they're recommended and approved of, right? All 10 of them will be trained. And so let's say Pelham is hiring a teacher. One or two of them. Because typically there's a number that the group has mentioned as to who would constitute a membership in each search process. So let's say there's one community member. So we have 10 to choose from, right? That list of 10 will go out to let everyone know who the possible 10 members would be. And then we'll choose one for this search today for the teacher. Let's say next week we need to hire a food service worker. We still have 10 to choose from. So we can go back to that group of 10 and say, okay, one of you community members because your schedule might change, right? As a community member. So we'll have one, another one maybe, could be the same one. We have 10 to choose from who are trained. Thank you. Other questions? Hold on to you. Yeah, before questions, I would like to just point out we say a new process and I would say evolve for the best work for it. I think that the staff that we have in this community, I think either being here a long time or brand new, I think though I guess the previous process, like a better term, has from those search processes and interviews have given us great staff. However, I do think this is an evolution of what maybe should have been going on, ongoing over and over throughout the years to arrive at this point. And so especially many of the ideas that we did have throughout the time we looked over it were derivative of the old process. And we're just using those foundations and saying, where can we improve on this? Where can we improve on that? Does that still make sense here for the current environment? So I think this is probably more of an evolution of the process is for those maybe concerned that we're taking everything away and throwing it out the window. It's more of an evolution of what we already do. So I think let's just put it out there. There's more of an evolution. I appreciate the, I guess, creativity and dedication that's gone into this entire process of developing. I think a lot of these are really great ideas. I have similar, I guess, concerns to the ones that Mr. Demling raised just in terms of the logistics, but I'm sure you'll figure it out. I mean, I think that it's a good enough idea that you'll come up with what you need to. The only thing I would ask is probably just because I recently went through several rounds of union negotiations with our union staff and we arrived at different places with the contracts, which are all great places, but it strikes me that now, if we're proposing a standing committee that consists of educators and others who will be regularly involved in additional work, just we wanna make sure that it's not somehow adding an extra burden of time to their schedules. So, and trying to be conscious of the fact that we heard back from a lot of educators about how stretched their times are. So it's just something to consider. Maybe there's another creative solution that gets put on top of it, or maybe it's a simple conversation with the unions, I'm not sure, but I just wanna make sure that we're sort of going into this eyes wide open considering that we have made some staff cuts and that there have been some changes that have taken place because of budget reasons that we're not adding another layer of burden on folks. It's one thing to have volunteers that come together every once in a while. It's another to have somebody, a group of people that are constantly being called on. And I'm hoping that it's not constant because I'm hoping that our staff are retained and that they're happy and that we're not constantly hiring, right? But just again, something to just think about as we're moving forward. And I just wanted to note that I really like the idea of having a silent observer. In meetings, I had come from a background when I was working in graduate school on sort of conflict resolution. And the idea of having what they called the dove in the room is a really important concept of just somebody who observes and doesn't participate in any of the negotiations or any of the back and forth, but just someone who is quietly observing what's happening and able to provide some comments is just a really, I think, mature and important role for people to play because you're taking that person out from the milieu of where they would normally be when they're doing something like this and hopefully capturing some really important data and sharing that back with the group. So I really like that idea. I also just wanna say that I really like the idea of having the superintendent involved throughout the process and for a reconvening to happen afterwards, right? Because I feel like communication, again, is so critically important. Understanding for the community as well as the staff where everyone is at every step of the way is also really important, right? And so when this Cunningham provides that leadership of this is where we wanna be, this is the kind of position that we're hiring and then we have the search process that gets put into place and then the superintendent is sort of at the tail end of all of that, it becomes really difficult to share that process with everybody and to make sense to everyone, right? And without there being any sort of feelings or frustration or all of those different things. So hopefully something like that, involving the superintendent more frequently and having people or person who can kind of sit on the periphery and watch what's going on and provide some feedback to everybody will be really beneficial to this search process for all of our staff moving forward. Oh, and one last thing that I just wanted to say, I'm sorry, just to, I think there was such great care taken in putting together this search process committee that I'm hopeful that if we were to create other committees or one standing committee or whatever the iteration ends up being that the same amount of care gets put into that as well, right? And that we're selecting people based on diversity of perspectives and opinions and experience within the district so that we're not having sort of the same usual suspects making the same kinds of decisions. So this is the superintendent who didn't want her to respond but then after that, Ms. Betsy. Oh, I just wanted to make a comment on something that you said where one of the things that we talked about was that when we have the superintendent join at the end then it's our candidate that, well, yeah, our candidate that we're sending to the superintendent. But once he is there throughout the process then it is collectively our candidate that we're moving forward through each step. So that was something that the committee mentioned that we'd like to see that happen more often than us presenting someone to the superintendent. And just very briefly, Ms. Cunningham has set that up for the current middle school interim principal search process. That, I mean, all these things are happening to a certain extent concurrently but that has been that aspect as well as others but that one in particular because I can speak to it has been set up already for the current process. Well, I'd first just like to thank you all for putting in the time, especially at this really busy time of the school year. I know it's a big, big group of you and I just, for those who aren't here as well, thank you very much. My question is just trying to get clarity on when certain pieces of this process come into play. So I understand the standing committee is going to be responsible for all of the potential hires that a school could have, is that correct? So, because you mentioned the food director, the teachers, paras, and then the piece about having the tasks involved, that's for all of the hiring but obviously I don't think the superintendent is involved in every single hiring so that's just going to be assistant principals, directors. And so the other thing I was wanting is the bit about bringing in everyone capable of doing a job to go on to, as a finalist, could I get some clarity on that? So I guess my question is, is that only again for the assistant principal positions, the kind of more administrator, higher up administrative positions or is that also going to be true for positions where I'd assume there'd be a much bigger potential pool of candidates just because there are more people licensed as teachers out there than assistant principals, for example. So I'll answer part of it by saying that this is evolving as DeAndre mentioned, process, right? The superintendent involvement would mostly be for the directors and the principals. The principals are usually the ones who hire the assistant principals, deans, teachers and such. So the superintendent involvement in the hiring of a teacher is just when the principal makes the recommendation and the teacher is brought forward. Now to say that we would hire everyone brought forward or everyone's going to move forward, not at the teacher level, no, so. That's all I wanted to make sure that we're not opening the door to just a huge amount of. No, no, that's more at the, when we talk about, we looked at some of the failed searches and we said there was one search where there was only one person left in the candidate pool that the committee wanted to bring forward. But then it was considered a failed search because there was only one person. Therefore, we're saying if there is one person then it doesn't need to be a failed search. I see. So we can look at hiring or the superintendent appointing that one person and we talked about a whole lot of other things to go with the possible hiring of that one person such as surveys after a year to see how that person is doing. But we're looking at ways to reduce the possibility of having a failed search. Okay, thank you. Ms. Castinson, Ms. McDonald. I just have a quick question. So I agree with Ms. Ordonia, it's like there's so many wonderful ideas in here and I guess I do have a couple of questions about like the screening committee composition and everything, but I trust I'll look that out. So what happens from here? Do we look at this again or is this going to be implemented right now or how does this process work from here on? So there are parts that will be implemented as early as tomorrow? Okay, great. Because we have a search taking place tomorrow and then we will come back and discuss what took place. Maybe find places where we didn't think about something happening that took place, right? And then the training will take place in August. So there are people who were on the committees who have mentioned to their principals, oh, when you're doing your search now, these are the things you need to do. But to make sure it's consistent, we're training everyone in August and then we're articulating that information to all staff at the beginning of the school year so that it's moving forward we're making sure that this is happening. Wonderful, so just a constant process of organic learning and development. Thank you. Yeah, so yeah, I feel like I'm just a lot better after all the clarifying questions, so thank you. One thing I think to think about as you kind of evolved the details, this notion of advancing all the capable candidates, I think there are some situations that could be a little problematic logistically. I'm just thinking of a couple of principal searches that I was involved in just as a member of the public in which an assistant principal searches where the finalists are brought out to the community and they have a night where they can meet the people at the school and they do a Q and A. And I remember it was a lot to get out to those events, especially when you have kids, but you want the community engagement. I remember we had one search with two and that felt like a lot, like two nights that we're sitting inside everything and going and meeting. We had one with three, that felt like too much. I can't imagine what five or six or seven, they're just capable so we advanced them this finalist candidates would be for those types of positions. So just something to think about in terms of like the logistics, it's not every position requires that level of public engagement at the very end, but what some do. And I just wanted to comment briefly because it was brought up. I'm glad that this committee has focused on and will continue to focus on how to increase the diversity of our workforce and being proactive about it. I see one of the core problems, because this theme of trying to diversify our workforce proactively touches a lot of things we're talking about tonight as one of, I think of as an opportunity gap, that income inequality disproportionately affects people of color, therefore educational opportunity disproportionately affects people of color, therefore the number of graduates that we have from our institutions is disproportionate in that respect and so it requires us not just saying, oh, we'd like a diverse workforce, we'll see whoever applies to us, we have to be proactive about recruitment. That's why recruitment is such a big point of that. So I know you're already on top of that, you understand those themes and I just want to say I appreciate that being a core value of the search process community. So, one quick comment is I think we mentioned it last time too, I appreciate the amount of time the committee members put into this and I just want to take the opportunity to at least think a few of you in person. So I think it was very valuable work and I appreciate that for what you guys put in. Yeah, and I think it's great and one of the things I'll highlight that has been discussed earlier, I like the fact that by setting certain processes in place and doing them in a uniform way, by the uniform way that's backed by sort of a logic model of why you would set something up a certain way, like having identified core members of a team for a standing committee doing that by building, having it by function as well as other kind of stakeholders, then also having training involved in it. I mean, so there's an expectation, I think that, and then obviously built in continuous improvement and sort of learning from it. But I just think that even if previously in previous practices, there has been a general uniformity across search committees in the district and my guess is there probably has been, there's been more in common, but how the search committees have been set up than not. I think calling out these features and then setting, instituting both sort of policies around it, but also then working in sort of functional practices like the Dove as you were commenting it, into that work stream, into the work that's being done, I think will hopefully not only improve the quality of it, which I think should certainly happen and it would for anything, right? I think anything we do, if we start building and institutionalizing it, doing continuous learning and training and stuff like that, you're gonna prove anything somebody does by doing that. But also I think you're gonna build lots of confidence both within the district mirrors of the professionals, the staff, and then also publicly as well. And well, how does that work anyways? How did the decision happen? Who does this stuff anyways? So I just think there's a lot in it that's really good and I think it shows the quality of the work that the process committee, all of you did and everyone else who was involved in that did. There are other comments before we move on? Please do one more point. Oh, sure. So you had mentioned at the end of your discussion about what you liked and had thoughts about the, just not having the usual suspects in the room a lot. I think that phrase or iteration of that phrase were brought many times throughout. And I do think that the reason why, not just the skeleton of the process, but also the process itself was to reduce a lot of what we discussed things. We hear a lot of, well, why did this happen in this one compared to what just happened? Or why was that person that, again, that person? Or a lot of us trust in the internal group. A lot of trust in the grouping itself. I think that one of our core things we got out of it was that we were gonna have a process. It's a working document. It's a working thing that we hope is, as we've mentioned, strong results, but we are in no way, think this is infallible in any way as any process is. But also more involvement as if it's in Europe because people talk a lot and that if we have an example, a lower membership of teachers one year who are volunteering because they may have seen a different process before and say maybe not this year, they see it happen, the next year may have different pool of teachers who volunteer or different pool of paraeducators who volunteer just because of the confidence level and the invitation itself to the involvement may go up. And so my thought about this is that I think as it goes on, that as year by year by year, may have similar people who have volunteered, but I don't think the usual suspect lines would be thrown out so easily without someone else saying, well, I was on the process or I did the process or this person's the process and it really wasn't the usual suspects or someone knew this person. Even this committee, I would say this committee, for those of you who aren't here, this committee we made a suit, food service people, pairs from different schools, teachers, former teachers, facilitated by the former administration. And so we had a lot of voices, perspectives and experiences that were brought out in the time that we had, but also I think just from their involvement in the committee was a good snapshot of what I feel the confidence level will be as people start to see more and more in this committee. So just to point your point out for the usual suspects. And also training I think will ensure a lot of the trust as well. We do safety training for a lot of the staff here, and part of that is so everyone's on board and trusts the next person beside them that they're gonna do a logical and good job of what they're doing. And so I think for staff trust, knowing that the people who are in the room are trained and not just picked or the person that they had never heard of before or the person who thought they couldn't do this is trained also gives us a sense of trust with the staff. So just wanna put that up to your point. Thank you very much. For further questions we will move on. Thank you. So approve clerical words of the next item? Yes? No, no, I'm sorry. I was gonna introduce but not today. I'm trying to look for my paper on this. Do you have paper on this? Yeah, it's in the packet. So are you looking, that's fine. Okay, thanks. My hand went up. That's why I thought you were gonna tell me where the paper was. I could have done that as well. It's in your packet, the answer. You're introducing me now or? Yeah, so it's two separate votes, one for the region and one for Amherst. Every year, as per contract, we have clerical media awards. There's a recommendations come from anyone in the organization and then when proposed, I guess, recommendations. And they're reviewed by Wiss, Westmoreland and one school committee member. I'm trying to think who, thank you Mr. Sullivan, for the regional level. And I'll speak to it in superintendent update, but these were actually celebrated and awarded last night at an employee recognition event. But I think I can maybe just because there's still some people who are here for an agenda item. I'll wait till they're perhaps done with their agenda item and give it a little more longer description than I would now. But there's one motion just to be clear because it's a joint meeting right now. I've already figured this out. Yes. That's why I put the gavel between me and Anastasia Ardonias. Collaboration. For Chair Ardonias is the most important point in there. So the first item is a regional motion which I would entertain now. I move to approve annual clerical awards in the amount of $500 each for Marianne Jean-Yock. And, sorry? Gig-nick. Gig-nick, okay. And Linda Kirkpatrick. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion is read.  Carries unanimously. Thank you. And for Amherst, I'll take a motion. I move to approve annual clerical awards in the amount of $500 each for Karen Bono and Beverly Jenks. Great, is there a second? Thank you, Mr. Nakajima. Any discussion? All those in favor? Great, thank you. That was good. Okay, Mr. Sullivan, you guys found it. That was so in favor that I got to walk around and... Congratulations. Thank you very much. So I think that concludes the business for the Amherst School Committee and I will take another motion. Mr. Demling. I move to adjourn the Amherst School Committee. And second. Second. Thank you, all those in favor? Okay, thank you very much. Meeting is adjourned. Great, so now we are on to approval of the minutes of May 22nd, 2018. Yes. So I was wondering with the chair and the committee's permission if we could advance their regional library updates since there's three staff members who are here to speak to that and the hour is late and their next morning hour is quite early. That's cool with me. But let's in the future, let's you and I work harder to not keep doing this at meetings. Sorry. And actually think about when staff are gonna be presenting. Yeah. And just presumptively move them up the agenda. I tried to cue you, but we're not doing it all with cue. No, no, I don't wanna cue it. I wanna just actually move them up the agenda when it's gonna be like this. Otherwise, I always feel like I'm a jerk or something like I'm trying to make them stay late or something as chair and I'm not. I don't think anyone feels that way. I'm happy to work with you to move them up the agenda. Without any, no, anybody. No objection. I was gonna say no objection, without objection. So ordered regional library update, right?  It was on your, it was on the table. Oh, where would I know something? It has black and red writing on the front. And just make sure obviously I'm sure you will but just introduce yourselves when you come to the microphone to speak. And yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for your patience, too. It's also field day tomorrow and I'm on the staff and it might be free. So as we have introduction, my name is Lanny Blackman, Lanny Rimes with Danny and I am finishing up my first year as the librarian at Fort River Elementary School. And I'm here to kind of update you and celebrate all of us on the leadership that our libraries take and your leadership on supporting our school libraries across the region and the Amherst public schools. And I have with me here Leslie Lomsen who has been the librarian here at the high school and is unfortunately retiring. But the good news is that we have Ella Stocker here. Also who is our final candidate for the position here. So we just wanted to, the packets that we gave to you ahead of time