Welcome to the March 20th meeting of the Sharon School Committee.

This meeting will be conducted remotely over Zoom.

Attendance by board members will be remote and remote attendance shall count towards a quorum.

The meeting will be broadcast live and recorded by Sharon TV. If you elect to enable your webcam, your image and background, maybe broadcast with or without sound.

As always, the meeting will begin with public comments.

A few ground rules.

Timer will be set at two minutes.

Do I have anybody from the committee who's going to keep time for me?

If not, I can.

I can set time. And then I did just want to touch on a few quick things before I go ahead and take public comment.

Two things that I recognize we haven't met since.

And I want to touch on just for the sake of the community and folks that I've been talking to, hearing from the public. The first is the cancellation of Autumn Allen speak engagement.

I do just want to say that I've been hearing from a lot of members of the community who feel different ways.

But ultimately, the one thing that I hear about consensus in our community around is the need for there to be representation for all the students in our district.

And I believe that after speaking to the administration and hearing their strong view, which has been shared by email by our superintendent, for me, I do want to be clear that although I, along with other members, spoke in frustration at the last meeting, I support, as I believe our committee would, the bringing in of a speaker regularly.

Regularly, in keeping with the idea of representing all of our students, including our hijab wearing Muslim students.

And so I do hope that there's an opportunity for parents in our district, including the parents who were organizing that speaker, to organize, work together collaboratively and try to bring in a speaker who would accomplish the same goals as Autumn Allen had hopefully been intended to in a way that makes everybody feel comfortable.

So I do feel like it's important.

I want students, all of our students in our district to know that they're welcome here and that they're supported and that it is important for us that we've heard your voices and we know that a speaker should be brought in to replace that speaking engagement.

I also want to touch on frustrations I've heard about the calendar, mostly around the process.

So certainly the calendar that we voted is the calendar that we voted. I do want to apologize, at least as the chair here who really dictated parts of the process, at least in the end and asking for a vote, that it was never intended to feel rushed.

It was never intended to make people feel as though we had tuned out the voices that we had heard, the logistical issues that we faced, especially in conflict with our committee's desire to try to find a inclusive calendar option.

With really the driving force.

And I don't believe that this committee is done in the future, at least in trying to look for inclusive ways to have everybody's celebrations, holidays recognized.

So I understand that there's a lot of frustration around those things. And I'm sure that we're going to hear about some of that tonight, as is people's right to do. I just want to make sure that those two things are stated.

And now I'll go to Nadia Ahmad.

Avi.

Avi.

Yes. Avi. Sorry, Nadia. Oh, go. Sorry.

Julie. Yeah.

I apologize.

Julie, you wrote your...

Go ahead, Julie. Yeah.

I just want...

I'm very sorry, Nadia.

I asked Avi if I could speak at the top of the meeting because, as you know, I've been, you know, very involved with the calendar as the chair of the calendar subcommittee.

And I saw there were a lot of questions on Facebook.

And so this weekend, I prepared a response that I felt like encapsulated a lot of the questions.

And I tried to outline the process and, you know, mentioned the different meetings where this was discussed and the different types of work I did. So I posted a summary of that on Facebook.

And I posted a couple of documents. Since people who had...

Since there had been a public records request for data, as well as, like, people asking on Facebook for data.

So I posted a couple of documents.

One of them was the survey data analysis.

It was a big spreadsheet.

I prepared that document for the public record request, but it was not...

I'm not sure it was the document actually sent out with the public records request because I don't know to what extent it was vetted by our council.

So when I posted a public records request document, I discovered that in the large spreadsheet where I had, like, done different tabs, I thought I had redacted all of the email addresses that were in there.

We did not have people's names.

We never collected people's names, but we did ask for email addresses.

So I used the email addresses to deduplicate the responses so that we had unique responses because I didn't want to double count people who forgot they took it and then retook it again.

So I had copied and pasted some of this throughout the spreadsheet.

So inadvertently, I did not get rid of the emails on one of the pages of the spreadsheets.

So my efforts were incomplete.

And when I linked the spreadsheet on Saturday, it was brought to my attention that I, in fact, did not delete those emails.

So I took the spreadsheet down and, you know, as soon as the error was brought to my attention.

But I felt like, you know, I didn't want to do this on Facebook.

I think the best place to do this is, you know, in a public meeting. So I just wanted to offer my apology for everyone, to anyone who felt that I harmed them.

And I, you know, I apologize for the oversight.

It was completely unintentional.

I was just trying to get the information out and I should have looked more carefully.

So, but I hope moving forward, people understand that, you know, there was a lot of analysis and work done in this.

And maybe there exists a version that maybe we can give to the public so they can see for themselves.

So I just want to apologize.

I hope nobody was too harmed by this. And Avi, thank you.

Nadia, thank you for your time.

And I'll sign off now.

Thank you.

I also just wanted to add that another effort to try to find ways for students in our district to feel more included than they do. Our food service is exploring ways.

And it seems like there are some solid ways to bring in both halal and kosher options for our students.

So, again, I think the more that our community communicates with us about ways in which we're not being as inclusive as we'd like to.

I think the more that we hopefully will find solutions to make every kid that attends all sharing public schools feel welcome and include here.

Nadia Ahmad. Thank you.

Thank you.

for those who want to learn about the history of the decades-long Palestinian struggle for freedom.

Since the situation in the Middle East is affecting our schools so much, it's imperative that we all educate ourselves on the issue.

The cancellation of the hijab event twice has sparked curiosity among people in Sharon as well as the neighboring townships.

Many people have reached out to learn about Palestine and especially Gaza. For curious minds who want to discern facts from fiction, I would highly recommend the Israeli historian Ilan Pape's book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

One of the endorsements for Ilan Pape's book reads, This is a major intervention in an argument that will and must continue.

There is no hope of a lasting Middle East peace while the ghosts of 1948 still walk. Another trustworthy source is Dr. Norman Finkelstein's book, Gaza and inquest into its martyrdom.

The Intercept has endorsed it by saying, No one who ventures an opinion on Gaza is entitled to do so without taking into account the evidence in this book. I hope that SPS will consider placing these books in the library for young readers to benefit from.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nadia.

Ikra Javeed.

Thank you.

My name is Ikra Javeed.

Thank you for giving me a chance to speak.

As many of you may be aware, we're in the holy month of Ramadan.

And at this very moment is the time to break our fast. And this is something all Muslims look forward to all day long because we haven't eaten or drank for over 13 hours.

Yet here we are in the school committee meeting at 7 p.m. instead of being at our dinner tables.

And we're here to make sure our voices are not silenced once again.

The Muslim community of Sharon is in tremendous pain right now because this school committee has made it very clear in the last few months that our voices and concerns don't matter as much as some other people.

A Muslim African-American hijab-wearing woman was ridiculed all over town and social media because she supports an end to the killing of innocent lives in Palestine, even though her talk was not about politics at all.

And yet the same people who criticized Ms. Allen were completely silent when a member of the school committee who holds much more power and has more control over Sharon's schools openly shared his political views on social media, which were threatening and deeply concerning to the Sharon Muslim community. Our concerns were completely ignored by the members of this committee, and we were told his political views have no impact on his job at all.

I hope you also realize that your kids are well aware of what is happening in this town, especially those of you who are planning to protest and bully Ms. Allen during her talk and shield your kids from it.

These same kids see your hypocrisy and your double standards.

Think about how your actions are impacting them and how they view you. And truthfully, I have a lot more hope from the next generation than many of you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Judy Crosby.

Thank you.

While I appreciate Julie's remarks, I'd like to note this is not the first time that she's engaged in a data dump that disclosed confidential survey information.

This time, she posted it in two Sharon Facebook groups that have over 16,000 people in them.

And it remained up for over 90 minutes.

It was downloaded by many people and has, in fact, been passed around amongst candidates and provides detailed information that people can use for purposes that were clearly not intended.

While I'm sure her apology was well intended, it's long past time to get the school committee and especially Ms. Rowe out of the business of having any protected data on their computers.

It's just wrong.

There needs to be a data securitization policy.

I'm asking Adam Shane, as chair of the policy subcommittee, to please convene and work with the IT folks, including hopefully Prisnell will weigh in on this because he clearly has background on data security.

And ensure that this never happens again. That is 858 people's email addresses connected to who they are, which school they're at, and how they voted in a survey that they thought was confidential.

Shame on all of you.

None of you need that connected info.

It could have been handled by a person in central office who anonymized it before letting any of you see it.

And it's the second time.

We got to do better, guys.

It's just not okay. Secondly, I send my love to the Muslim community that is on this call.

The hatred that has been expressed towards all of you on social media has been horrifying to watch.

I've reached out privately to several of you.

I'm really sorry that this is what's happening in a town that you trust to educate your kids. There's much time, but I'll let you finish that. Thank you so much.

Hala Mustafa.

Hi, I'm Dr. Hala Mustafa, and I'm here today to address a grave injustice that has occurred in our Sharon schools.

The cancellation of the hijab event and silencing the Muslim voices clearly showed that discrimination is still prevalent in 2024.

A Muslim African-American speaker was rejected by the school committee due to her personal political beliefs.

This is not the first shameful incident at Sharon Public School, as a Hispanic speaker faced similar discriminations three years ago.

I had the privilege to read both authors' novels.

Jennifer DeLeon's book provided me with a valuable perspective on the experience of medical students, while Autumn Allen's book offered me a profound look at the ongoing struggle for civil rights within the Black community.

Esteemed school committee members, did you read the book before pressuring the school administration to cancel the speaker not once, but twice?

Do you scan every statement Sharon public teachers and leaders share online?

No, you don't.

You only treat Muslims and people of color this way.

This behavior demonstrates a double standard toward people based on their backgrounds, color, and beliefs.

Fair standards should apply to everyone equally, including you, esteemed school committee members.

If the same cancellation criterion was applied to all leaders and teachers at Sharon School, I'm sure many would be fired immediately, including the school committee members themselves.

This intolerance and racism risk tearing the school apart, all Sharon School apart, and all the town apart.

What message do you, esteemed school committee members, are sending to our students and to the future leaders?

The message to my community was loud and clear.

Regardless of your character and achievements, you still have to fight for your civil rights and against discrimination in 2024. We all deserve a place in this town and should not be bullied or brushed aside.

Please do your jobs with fairness, equity, and uphold to the principles that you committed to.

Diversity, equity, inclusion, freedom of speech, freedom of speech, freedom of speech, and justice.

Thank you. Thank you.

Amara Hamoud.

Hello, my name is Amara Hamoud.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk today.

I'm a former student in the Sharon Public School System, and I just wanted to discuss a few of my recent findings.

Although I have graduated, I do have younger siblings of varying ages in the Sharon Public School System. I chose to start wearing hijab when I was in middle school, and it was tough dealing with the negative comments from students and stuff alike.

I have been mistreated and bullied, of course.

The day before I started wearing hijab, I was treated perfectly fine, but the following day I was ignored and brushed aside, and it's not something that I'd ever wish on anybody else.

Yeah, I kept to myself.

I didn't really tell anybody about my issues because I didn't feel safe trusting anybody in that school.

There was nobody who I felt could relate to my issue or would know how to handle this type of issue, so I kept it to myself, and unfortunately, it spiraled and caused my hijab to be pulled off.

I'm not the only one this has happened to. I have heard stories from my siblings that this has been happening recently to other students as well, and this is not acceptable.

It's kind of like getting pantsed in the middle of school.

It is embarrassing, and you're in shock.

You don't know what to do. You don't know who to talk to because who are you going to talk to about that? It is hard.

This is why we need representation in the school.

Having Autumn Allen come in and speak would have made us all feel so much safer and seen.

Me, personally, when I was in school, I would have loved to have a hijabi speaker, a Muslim speaker of sorts to come and talk to us and not just talk about her book, but just her presence is enough to make me feel safe and seen and heard because I feel like nobody else will be able to do that unless we have representation in the school.

So thank you for your time.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate you.

Thank you. Colin Aiza.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you, yes.

Well, first of all, I'd like to thank you, Avi, for the comments.

I think it makes a great deal to hear this from you. Thank you.

I don't have intention to bring politics into the school, but we're way beyond this point right now.

Our advocacy to stop the killing of innocent Palestinians in the town has been portrayed as anti-Semitic and an attack on our neighbors in the town, which has nothing to do with it. We have seen hate comments and prejudice from town residents in social media and in town meetings.

I wish you would see some of the stuff we've seen online from other town residents.

For years, many students like the previous speaker have reported bullying, isolation, alienation.

That's why the hijab events started happening.

Many of them actually don't speak because they're afraid of the intimidation from other town residents and other students.

Ms. Allen agreed to do this in August 2023 to share her story and book with our students.

The event had nothing to do with politics. She never advocated for hate towards any group unless, again, you equate advocating for Palestinian lives and rights as a hate speech.

Her social media posts were twisted, manipulated to make it look as if it's anti-Semitic and targeting hate for certain groups.

Then some of our town residents unfortunately use fear and intimidation to pressure the cancellation of the event.

In my opinion and many others, Ms. Allen was attacked because she's a Muslim. It was a manifestation of our Islamophobic racism and bigotry, such as we did to others in the recent past for their skin color, race, and other reasons.

Let's admit, yes, we are diverse, but we're not inclusive and we don't treat everyone equally.

It was a warning to minorities.

Step out of the line and you'll be silenced.

I was shocked during the last meeting to see some of the school committee members who championed diversity and equality.

Your comments had nothing to do with diversity and equality.

Comments were inflammatory and divisive.

I would like to remind you, thank you, Avi, again.

You, every member, represent every one of us, not just one group of a time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Colin.

Ahmed Mohamed. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak.

I just want to express my frustration with the administration for canceling Alan Odom's speech.

Especially after the first time it was canceled, we met with the superintendent and he expressed his apology and he mentioned how sorry he is. He did not know it's going to cause much damage to some member of the community.

And he actually said it's a matter of scheduling and promised another date and we got another date but got canceled again.

And he mentioned there was no pressure on him. But I think there's some kind of pressure because he had no reason to cancel the event the second time.

Also, I want to also express my frustration with the process of the calendar.

Because I believe when the calendar was discussed in the school committee meeting, actually there was some statistics that was collected from a resident of Sharon and tried to see how important some holidays are to some people, a member of the community.

And after all these discussions, the calendar did not really take any of this feedback from the community.

So I hope the process in the future can be better and we really respect the resident's opinion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ramasa Faisal.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Ramasa Faisal and currently I'm a freshman at Sharon High School. I'm coming to you with a student point of view about the Hijab Day event that was supposed to happen in the previous days.

I would like to discuss how the Hijab Day event being canceled not once but twice has affected myself as well as many other students within the Sharon public schools.

The hijab is not something that should be considered controversial.

It is just a scarf that Muslim women wear. How is that an issue?

The Hijab Day event at the middle school was supposed to show that hijabi women are capable of achieving many great things and be involved in many different fields of work like everyone else.

This day was supposed to be empowering for young Muslim students and show them that they will be able to do anything that they put their minds into.

But the meaning of the event was lost when people decided to put politics into the event.

This not only upset myself but many others as well.

The point of this event was for an author who happens to wear a hijab to come in and speak about her novel, All You Have to Do, not her political point of view. I also want and feel the need to put a lot of emphasis on the fact that representation matters.

When you see someone on stage at your own school who is similar to you in any way, it feels good.

I know I felt that way when I was a middle schooler last year attending the Hijab Day event.

Even though the speaker was not discussing the hijab, the similarity I had with the speaker, rather speaking about climate change, I felt very inspired to see someone who wears hijab like myself being successful in her field of work. The same way current Muslim middle schoolers would have felt if Autumn Allen were to come and discuss her novel.

Due to all the comments made on the Facebook group, Sharon What's Up, I feel that the meaning and representation of this event has been lost, and that is not all right.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Georgian Lewis?

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So first, I'm just going to say something real brief, and then I want to circle back to everyone who's speaking here. So Julie, thank you for your apology.

Thank you. Thank you. It is appreciated.

I think it's helpful. We all make mistakes when we own them.

That's how we learn. So I do appreciate that.

I did just want to say you spoke about disruption to anyone.

I think for me, because I did see it, and I was one of the emails that were shared, the disturbing piece for me is seeing people's stance on social media, and then seeing the polar opposite in their response in the survey, and having to be subject to that when I'm trying to choose school committee candidates.

And then to sit here, and I want to preface this by saying thank you so much to all the community members whose faith I'm not a part of and I'm not well versed on it. I appreciate your really heartfelt and open sharing of how everything that's going on in this town is making me feel.

It's helping me to understand, and it makes that data piece even more upsetting for me because a lot of it is focused around this issue, and people are saying hurtful things on social media or are not, and then said contrary in that survey.

So I'm having a very hard time with that right now as I listen to all of you, and I can't thank you enough for taking time out of your holiday, especially when you get to eat.

Half of my family is Jewish, so I know fasting is not a fun thing, but it is essential for your faith and for half of my family's faith.

So I really do, that I can recognize is an important thing that you're doing, and I'm sorry that you have to do that to be heard and seen tonight. But I just want to let you know that I do hear you and I see you and I appreciate that you took the time to let others and myself see that.

And, you know, again, to echo Judy, I'm horrified that you have to feel this way.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you.

Nada Hashmi.

Thank you. I just want to say a couple words.

If nothing, then at least what you've heard from both the students, former student and the recent student, and how they felt really moved me, especially Amar, the fact that she has been bullied and is continuing to bully, I think speaks volumes in terms of what's happening actually in the schools and why it is so important to have had that event. My main concern, and I'm going to add on to what everybody has said, the part that I had really a hard time acknowledging or understanding was the fact that they cited security as a reason to cancel, and I just was really appalled.

The school is not able to offer a safe environment for a speaker.

Was the police ever called up and said, hey, we're expecting protests, can you come and monitor? If there were going to be people who were going to disrupt her speech, then should the police have been inside and should those people have been, perhaps, as a good example to all the students, arrested and taken out or moved?

There are many, many options a school could have taken to ensure the event could have moved forward.

Instead, they kind of said cited security, which to me is a very weak and almost sort of a frightening reason to cancel any event. And I just want to point that out, that this is something going forward, what is going to be different.

Avi, you have said that you're going to go ahead and you encourage hijabi speakers.

Guess what? Many of us have very, very strong views on these things that are sort of bipolar in this political environment.

How are you going to ensure, how is anybody in the school going to ensure the next hijabi speaker, or even Autumn, if you were to be invited back, is not going to be subject to the same kind of double standards, the same kind of scrutiny that she went through? Or if it is somebody who we go through with, how are we going to ensure her safety?

And what is going to be happening different going forward is what I'm really interested to hear.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mohammed Masoud.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay, good.

Happy to know that. So I have one concern.

Relative to the speaker, Adam Holland.

I think it's the same thing.

It feels like the school committee has no leadership.

They just follow the mob.

If there are people who are threatening to come over and the risk threat, I think the previous speaker was talking about that one. And the school committee cannot take the leadership, cannot take the stand.

So leadership is not just following the mobs, like what this mob is saying.

If it is right, if it is right. If it is wrong, it is wrong.

They have to talk to them. They have to explain to them. I understand that there are trauma in the Shalom town residents who have families in Israel.

They lost. They have traumas.

Same thing for Palestine.

There are traumas and loss in their family members as well. But the school committee should not just react and embolden this environment where right now a hijab-wearing speaker cannot come because she is being treated as a terrorist.

Nowadays, if I post anything on the Facebook group, people see the name.

And they say, oh, this is a Muslim-sounding name. This is a hijab-wearing woman.

Must be a terrorist.

Why are you helping to sustain that environment?

I think as a leadership, you have to take a stand.

If it is right, say it is right. If it is wrong, it is wrong. Say, like, this is the reason this person should not come.

But, you know, please do not, you know, help to, you know, maintain this.

I say it's a terrorized environment in the other way. Like, you know, you are saying the speaker cannot come because of this, you know, security risk.

Is Sharon becoming a tough town?

Like, you know, it's like, you know, she should not feel safe here.

But where are the messages going?

So I would like to, you know, ask our leadership to, you know, show this leadership and help to, you know, change the town towards positive direction.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Mohamed.

Johanna, can you please state your person's last name? Or I guess your last name.

Johanna Rothenberg.

So I kind of hopped on this a little while ago, but midway through the conversation.

But I was hearing a lot about, obviously, Miss Allen, who we're discussing, about how her views on the topic, so to speak, or why she was canceled.

And a lot of parents have expressed that their students are being, I could be misrepresenting it, but bullied, students wearing hijabs.

But what I wanted to also highlight that I think a lot of parents and town members were very afraid to have Miss Allen speak is because there were many middle school students that had reported to their parents who were Jewish.

And their peers were telling them that if they didn't go to Miss Allen's speech and they opted out, that they were racist. And those were very powerful words coming from middle schoolers to their fellow peers already calling their friends, even some of them were friends, their friends and their peers racist.

Not because, and it's not like these students were saying, oh, I'm not going because of X, Y, Z. They're just trying to quietly opt out. And that was very alarming.

And that really frightened me. I don't have a student in the middle school here, but that, sorry, I lost my train of thought there, that I think there is bullying on both sides happening.

And I think that we as a town and we as parents need to look at this as an entire situation, both sides, the students wearing hijabs, the Jewish students.

And that's the only way we can come to a conclusion.

And I think that's the only way we can come to a conclusion, the gentleman before discussed, he mentioned the word terrorist several times.

I really think that we have to take a step back and as a community that is diverse.

And I know many people were saying this is not diverse, but we are diverse and we have to embrace that. And how can we move forward to make everybody in this community comfortable, all students in the school comfortable and empowered?

Thank you.

Thank you. All right. I'm going to throw it to correspondence.

I think Adam Shane is going to handle that just really quickly before that, Adam. Can I just ask Dr. Pitello, can you speak, if you're prepared to, can you speak to security and what you meant by security risk? I feel at least so far as I was aware, I guess I would like to know that feels like something that we shouldn't let sit in the air here. The idea that either A, members of our community who felt strongly one way were going to be violent or that a police presence was necessary, unless again, that's how you feel. I would love a clarification on that. I think we were concerned about the numbers and really concerned about the numbers would have been very large as we had heard that there were perhaps even people beyond our community.

And we were concerned really about the psychological safety for, especially for our students, as well as for the speaker, that the setting of, you know, outside the school, like there is, there are free speech requirements where people can stand on school property, but not in front of the entrance.

And so with the potential number of people that we were hearing and, you know, some of the comments that were being made as far as protests, we were concerned, you know, mostly for the psychological safety of our kids, not, not, not the physical safety.

Though with people potentially outside of the community, that would be, that would be, not knowing them, that would be somewhat of a concern as well.

Understood.

I appreciate the clarification.

Monica, I see your hand.

Yeah, thank you, Avi. And I just want to say how sorry I am to hear the hurt that has been expressed tonight by so many of our community members, our Muslim neighbors, and in particular to the young women in our schools who spoke tonight.

I first want to say how sorry I am for their experiences of being marginalized and bullied and traumatized at school.

this is unacceptable.

And I want to thank them for their bravery to come forward to speak and that we must, must, must address these issues.

And I feel very committed to that and going forward to do something that is positive.

At this stage, obviously, the situation with Ms. Allen coming devolved to a place where our administration felt they had to make a difficult decision, which was painful.

But I want to, I want people to understand that we have heard that we have taken that on board, and recognize that we must, we must move forward in a positive way and do something to repair this situation.

And I want to say, I've made I will make a commitment to that as a as a member of this committee.

And again, thank you, particularly to the young ladies who stepped forward tonight to speak. I appreciate your bravery.

Thank you.

I guess on that, I, I, I'm speaking to lots of different groups, both, you know, community and students.

I was invited today to speak with the Muslim Student Organization at the high school, who are an incredible group of kids who really helped, you know, me to learn both of their experience, especially with these recent events, as well as just in general.

They're one group I've, I'm, I'm willing to meet with any group as frequently as they'll have me and they've already invited me to come back in a couple weeks, which I appreciate.

And they're also, you know, greatly interested in, you know, teaming up with other groups in the school, because there's a strong feeling that the students in the school really have an ability to be really close and, you know, disagree, but do so, you know, respectfully and, and, and wanting to be part of that, you know, that effort to make sure that we can continue to work to progress as a, as a school community.

So I appreciate that group, and as well as looking forward to meeting with other groups, both, especially kids, but also community members as well.

Thanks, Dr. Mattel.

I do see hands that the public forum portion of our meeting is concluded Adam Shane correspondence.

Thank you, Avi. So that the school committees received 52 pieces of correspondence between March 6, 2024 at 9 a.m. and March 20, 2024 at 9 a.m. We continued to receive correspondence regarding the FY25 budget development with themes that expressed support for the assistant principal at the elementary level, highlighted the importance of all positions within the counseling department at the Sharon High School, advocated for the critical priority of maintaining two assistant principals at the high school, focused on the need to maintain the dean of academic affairs at the high school, outlined the role of the curriculum coordinators and the impact their reduction would have on students at the high school, expressed disappointment in the proposed cut of the assistant superintendent of equity and engagement, supported the decision to focus on maintaining as many frontline staff as possible, appreciated the approach to the difficult decisions that were made regarding the budget, and that asked the school committee to advocate for an increased level of financial support from the finance committee.

The school committee received direct emails and were copied on emails that expressed concerns about the Sharon Middle School guest speaker, Autumn Allen. These letters offered various perspectives as evidence for the opposition of Ms. Allen's presentation at SMS and asked the district to reconsider their decision to host Ms. Allen. The school committee received several inquiries regarding the process used to vet speakers who are invited to the district.

A community member wrote to suggest a unity gathering.

We received a letter that expressed sadness with the reaction of the community to a potential speaker at SMS. A member of the community asked that the school committee investigate the superintendent and the DEI director for the decision made to host Autumn Allen. The Sharon Jewish Action Committee copied the school committee on a letter sent to Dr. Botello that requested a meeting to discuss various topics related to the recent matter regarding Autumn Allen. The Sharon High School journalism class requested input from the school committee on the vote and decision regarding the 2024-2025 school calendar.

Community members and students wrote to express opinions about the 2024-2025 school calendar.

There were a variety of perspectives offered.

Support, or among them, support for the new calendar and thanks to the school committee for the decision to introduce a calendar that included only federal holidays.

Request to add the Jewish holidays and good Friday to the school calendar.

Concerns for the Jewish community and the removal of their holidays from the calendar.

Request for the school committee to reconsider and vote the calendar for 2024-2025.

Suggestion to amend or add policy to address school work around religious holidays.

We received a records request for information regarding the development of the 2024-2025 school year calendar.

And we received two editions of Millie's Metco Monday newsletter that highlighted the Living the Legacy of Metco event, scheduled for May 10, 2024, and various other professional development workshops and opportunities.

And thank you again to Jane Martin for your work summarizing all of the correspondence that the school committee receives.

Nice work, Adam.

Thank you, Jane.

All right, next up, do we have a student rep update?

If so, raise your hand. All right, Alicia Mehta.

Hi, my name is Alicia.

I'm a senior at Sharon High School and I'll be sharing some of the student updates with Omar. So I think I would like Omar to start off. Hello, my name is Omar.

I'm another one of the student representatives and I'll be giving some of the school updates today.

So first off, in music, in music and theater, the theater department made it to the state tournament.

And there will be a send-off pep rally most likely next week to celebrate all of their amazing accomplishments this year.

And additionally, the Allstate Music Festival is this Saturday and Sunday, and we have upwards of 10 students participating in this highly prestigious festival.

Additionally, a senior, Ayaan Ahmad, will play as a concertmaster of the festival.

And this week is also a musicianship week at Sharon High School.

And there's a number of events and speakers that were brought to the high school. And this was all organized by the Tri-Am Music Honor Society.

And moving on to sports, I'm sure we all know this, but the Sharon basketball team had a fantastic season and got to the state finals.

And several other Sharon student athletes were also recognized for their amazing accomplishments and the numerous records that they have broken and accolades that they have won this year. Moving on to academic clubs, 28 debate kids have made it to states, and at least two of those debaters are going to nationals.

Three members of the speech team are going to states, and one is going to nationals.

The Sharon High School math team is going to the state tournament in April.

Several DECA members placed at their state conference, and 15 of which will attend the international conference in April. Sharon High School is hosting its second blood drive of the year this Friday at the Sharon High School.

And we expect about 50 students to be donating blood.

Several parents of students have also reached out to donate their blood. And there's plenty of room if any school committee members or anyone else would like to come donate.

The times would be during the regular school hours, so between 8 a.m. and 2.40 p.m. The planning boards have also been very hard at work, and each of the respective grades have their big dances planned up, including prom and sophomore semi and the rest of them, throughout April and May. The hackathon was hosted last week and brought over 28 middle schoolers and 20 high schoolers to participate in it. And the 10th annual Sharon Math and Science Tournament, or SMST, is happening on April 6th, and we'll be hosting middle schoolers from across the state.

And just to close off our updates, the members of the school community representatives board at the high school, so that includes me, Alicia, New, and a few others, we all met with Ms. Wiseman recently, and we have begun to meet regularly with the school administration to help foster a community of communication and transparency when it comes to policy regarding specifically the high school.

And, I mean, I'm sure that we all understand this, but it's been a very busy few months for the high school, and there's a lot happening. And so if you want to keep up to date by the day, please follow our Instagram at Sharon.hi.eagles,

where we are now regularly updating and posting the news about what's happening at the high school.

And thank you so much.

Nice job, both of you. That was a very full update, and that's very cool.

We will make sure, at least I will make sure to follow that, I'm sure, much of our community will. Very nice work. I'll throw it to Dr. Botello for superintendent update.

Great.

Thank you, Gene.

Yeah, before I start, I want to build on one of the comments that one of our student speakers made. Our drama theater group is competing tomorrow night in Boston in the finals of the state drama festival, presenting or performing Middletown.

So thanks to that amazing group of students.

If you've ever seen the festival, the students who are helping with the sets and all of the behind-the-scenes works are just as important as the actors.

It's an incredible feat because they have these time competitions where they need to get the set set up within five minutes. If it gets set up in five minutes and one second, they are ruled out. Then they have a certain amount of time to perform their performance.

And if it goes one second over, they're out. So thank you to the students and Dr. Duceau for their awesomeness and their ability to make the finals.

And we'll root for them. I'm looking forward to going tomorrow night. Okay.

SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Okay. With respect to kindergarten registration, with the budget process and the change, we'll be updating the online registration portal to reflect full-day tuition charge.