School Committee - August 28, 2024
School Committee, 8/28/24 - Meeting Summary
Date: 8/28/2024
Type: School Committee
Generated: September 13, 2025 at 06:15 PM
AI Model: Perplexity
- Meeting Metadata
- Date: August 28, 2024
- Participants: School Committee members Avi Shemtov (Chair), Dan Newman (Vice Chair), Allan Motenko (Secretary), plus Jeremy Kay, Georgeann Lewis, Julie Rowe, Adam Shain.
- Location: Sharon Public Schools meeting (likely virtual or in-person as per regular scheduling).
- Chair: Avi Shemtov presided, announced intention to resign as chair effective post-reorganization, endorsing Julie Rowe as successor.
- Vice Chair: Dan Newman
- Secretary: Allan Motenko
- Agenda Overview
- Public concerns on bullying, student survey content, and handbook voting delay requests
- Correspondence summary on various educational and operational topics
- Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent updates
- Calendar subcommittee report and graduation date decision
- Review of student handbooks at all levels (Early Childhood to High School)
- Vote on graduation date and other routine matters
- Discussion of METCO racial equity grant for restorative practices training
- Chair resignation announcement and transition plans
- Move to executive session for collective bargaining and legal matters
- Major Discussions (Committee Members’ Stances)
| Topic | Avi (Chair) | Alan | Julie | Jeremy | Georgeann | Adam | Dan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bullying & Retaliation Petition | Recognized & facilitated discussion | Asked for specific follow-ups | No comments recorded | Asked clarifications | No remarks recorded | Concern for policy clarity | Advocated transparency |
| Start of School Surveys on Gender | Managed concerns raised | Questioned survey scope | Supported clear policies | Supported clearer communication | No remarks recorded | Requested policy clarity | Raised need for parental awareness |
| Delay on Student Handbook Voting | Allowed discussion | Raised questions about policy language | Advocated for public review | Supported with reservations | No remarks recorded | Supported review with concerns | Reluctant approval without revisions |
| Calendar Subcommittee – Graduation Date | Led straw poll, supported process | Asked logistics questions | Supported pragmatic decision, public input | Clarified survey results | No remarks recorded | Raised student/family accessibility concerns | Participated in discussions |
| Graduation Date Vote | Moved motion for Sunday June 8, 2025 | Voted for June 8 | Supported June 8 | Supported June 8 | No remarks recorded | Opposed June 8, moved June 4 | Voted for June 8 |
| Student Handbooks Review (Various Levels) | Led meeting flow, sought consensus | Questioned bullying language, attendance, phone policies | Advocated clearer communication, revisions | Asked clarifying questions, supported with reservations | No remarks recorded | Raised concerns on homework, Title IX | Criticized homework inconsistencies, attendance policies |
| METCO Racial Equity Grant | Facilitated discussion, requested clarity | Requested clearer examples | Supported grant | Engaged in discussion | No remarks recorded | Supported understanding grant | Supported with call for clarity |
| Chair Resignation Announcement | Announced resignation, endorsed Julie Roe as next chair | Supported transition | Supported leadership change | Supported transition | No remarks recorded | No remarks recorded | Supported leadership change |
- Votes
- Graduation Date: Approved Sunday, June 8, 2025, with 6-1 vote (Adam opposed)
- Routine motions (minutes approval, grant acceptance, activity funds): Passed unanimously 6-0
- Executive session motion: Passed unanimously 6-0 (members voting yes: Adam, Dan, Jeremy, Alan, Julie, Chair)
- Presentations
- Superintendent Dr. Botello: Summer prep success, new staff orientation, enrollment data update, facility maintenance
- Assistant Superintendent Dr. Jocelyn: Introduction, positive engagement with principals, PD planning
- Calendar Subcommittee (Julie Rowe): Graduation date survey and recommendation report
- Principals and coordinators presented student handbook updates at all levels: Early Childhood (Stasia), Elementary (Dr. Reynolds), Middle School (Mr. O’Rourke), High School (Kristen Keenan)
- Action Items
- Implement graduation date as Sunday, June 8, 2025
- Provide further detailed communications on updated student handbooks, addressing homework policies and bullying investigation protocols
- Clarify survey contents and develop clear policies or teacher reminders about student surveys and parent transparency
- Further explanation and examples requested for METCO restorative practices grant materials
- Prepare for leadership transition post next reorganization meeting with Julie Rowe assuming chair role
- Enter executive session for collective bargaining strategy and student litigation discussions as approved
- Deferred Items
- Public review and further vote on updated student handbooks, especially high school policies, to allow community input
- Finalization of specific details on graduation logistics, bus schedules, and calendar adjustments pending further data
- Refinement of bullying investigation communication protocol and handbook language consistency postponed for next meetings
- Appendices
- Verbatim quote from Chair regarding leadership transition: “I think the time for new leadership is now.”
- Complete graduation date vote record:
- Aye: Avi, Alan, Julie, Jeremy, Georgeann (no remarks), Dan
- Nay: Adam
- Quote on executive session necessity: “Open discussion could be detrimental to the school committee’s legal position.”
- Noted correspondence summary: 27 letters on DESE calendar, bullying, DEI concerns, tech use, sports feedback, budget schedules
- Superintendent’s key upcoming dates summary: Sept 3-4 staff prep; Sept 5 Grades 1-12 start; Sept 6 Kindergarten; Sept 9 Pre-K; mid-Sept to mid-Oct open houses
- METCO Grant amount: $15,000 for racial equity and restorative practice training via Suffolk University Restorative Justice Center
This comprehensive summary draws directly from the detailed section inputs, preserving all key member positions, motions, verbal quotations, and vote records for thorough meeting documentation.
Document Metadata
- Original Transcript Length: 116,402 characters
- Summary Word Count: 891 words
- Compression Ratio: 16.4:1
- Transcript File:
School-Committee_8-28-2024_b1db0d13.wav
Transcript and Video
All right, it's seven o'clock.
Welcome to the, what is today, the 28th, August 28th, 2024, meeting of the Sharon School Committee.
This meeting will be conducted remotely over Zoom. Attendance by board and commission 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.
First up, as always, we have public comments.
Reminder that public comments can be really anything members of the public feel like sharing at that moment.
It is, we do ask that you limit your comments to two minutes.
Is there anybody on the committee who's willing to keep time? I know that's been Adam recently, but I don't see him on here.
Super helpful, I see.
Was that a hand from Alan?
No?
Sure, I'll do it.
Okay, appreciate it, Alan.
All right, great.
So without further ado, anybody whose full name is not showing, just please start with your full name.
I see Mrs. Frost.
Thank you.
I just wanted to say to the public that DESE has ruled that the district has been noncompliant over adult to child retaliation and bullying issues.
These issues have occurred for five years. All school committee members are aware of the issue.
However, the situation continues despite many suffering families.
I have a petition with over 170 signatures that show support.
However, Dr. Botello, we have urged you to stop this situation and take immediate action to remedy it before the 2024 to 2025 school year.
You still have not. Children are unsafe and we need you to take immediate action to create a safe environment for our students and families.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mira Balinky.
Hi.
Thank you, members of the school committee. So I'm also here calling in about a safety issue and I'm really concerned that parents have to start the school year calling in about concern about safety.
So my concern is I am really worried about the start of school surveys that teachers give out.
It seems like a great idea. They don't get to know the kids.
But instead of asking kids like, hey, what books have you read? What are you excited about school? They start asking, what's your gender identity? Basically saying, do you want to have a secret gender identity at school, which is separate than one at home?
And we've talked about this before.
And we've gotten a commitment from the administration that the school will not be keeping secrets from parents.
But what I didn't see is any action to control these surveys to tell teachers that this is not appropriate. Because let's face it, if a teacher is asking a kid at school when the parents aren't present, hey, what is your pronouns?
It's not about being nice. It's about establishing a secret between the school and the child, which is cutting the parents out.
You know, the school wouldn't be asking, hey, are you concerned about your weight?
Do you have an eating disorder?
Do you need special accommodations for your learning disability?
These are all things that should be discussed with the parents. And I hope that parents of kids who do have these issues are coming to the school and discussing it.
But it really bothers me that I have to tell my kids, instead of, you know, listen to your teachers, they're a trusted adult. I have to say, this is an untrusted adult that could ask you probing questions, which are inappropriate.
So don't answer the surveys.
Tell your mom if your teacher is behaving inappropriately.
This is not how I want to start the school year, especially with my elementary school age kids.
I don't want to have my kids, you know, especially middle school and high school, class after class being given these probing questions.
So I would love to see some actual policies or reminders, because it's too close to the start of the year, that maybe the principals or the superintendent will remind the teachers that you can't just ask questions which are probing like this.
I don't want to have to start to file PPRA complaints with the federal government, because actually you're not supposed to be asking about mental health issues without my permission. You're a ton.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Judy Crogby. Thanks, Avi.
So first, a quick request for the school committee, which is you have the handbooks on the agenda tonight.
You also have them on as a possible vote.
Given potential policy changes, particularly with the high school handbook and the fact that this is the first time the public is going to hear about them, I would request that you do not vote them tonight, that you discuss and then allow the public a chance to see the proposed policies and comment on them.
There's no screaming rush that says that they have to be voted tonight.
Secondly, I'd like to reiterate what Mrs. Frost talked about.
I am familiar with the case.
I'm very concerned with what I have seen and heard, and that is not a good situation, and it requires immediate attention.
Lastly, when you talk about the calendar tonight, I'm hoping that we can all avoid the type of conversation that took place at the calendar subcommittee meeting where essentially the district made a recommendation to engage in fraud.
We can do better than that.
You know, saying you're going to add two days back, but you're pretty certain they'll have to be canceled because there won't be sufficient staff.
That's bad faith.
That's fraud.
Let's try not to have that discussion and to find a different solution.
Thank you. Thank you.
All right. Seeing those further comments, I'm going to throw it over to Shauna Blinky.
Oh, I saw Shauna enter.
Now she's entering again.
I think we have Shauna with us for correspondence.
Otherwise, I could read correspondence.
Hi.
Sorry.
It's all right. Are you good with correspondence, or do you want me to take it? I am.
30 seconds.
I was just dealing with a minor flood.
It's always something.
Correspondence, correspondence.
All right.
So, August 28, 2024.
The school committee has received 27 pieces of correspondence between June 26, 2024, and August 28, 2024.
Several community members wrote to request that the school committee assure that DESE has provided written information of their approval of the 24-25 school year calendar, with specific focus on the graduation date.
A community member wrote to inquire about a meeting with a school committee member or members regarding the Sharon Public Schools special education program.
A community member wrote to express their concerns about the new town and school committee members and the extent to which some new members are committed to the goals of DEI and belonging, advocacy, and representation of all students.
The school committee received several letters concerning information that had been shared within the Sharon community regarding bullying and outstanding issues that needed to be addressed at East Elementary School.
This included a public records request for information on matters related to issues at East Elementary School.
A community member shared an article with the Sharon with the school committee related to gender-affirming care for children. A parent wrote to request an investigation into bullying at Sharon High School.
A parent of a former SHS student wrote to inquire about matters related to the cross-country team and specifically related postings made in coaches' insights on the cross-country and track and field website.
A parent wrote to share information related to Title IX regulations.
A community member wrote to express their dissatisfaction with a committee member's recent reaction to a hate incident in the town of Sharon.
A parent wrote to inquire about the condition of the playground at Cottage Elementary School in preparation for the school opening in September.
These inquiries included a suggested list of quote-unquote band-aid fixes to be made before students return to school.
A parent wrote to offer suggestions on the use of smartphones, watches, and earpods in the middle and high school. A parent wrote to share their feedback on the Sharon High School sports night that was held on August 22, 2024.
We received several pieces of correspondence from Fred Turkington, town administrator, to provide a schedule of the FY26 budget calendar and to share information on the tri-board meeting of August 29, 2024.
That's it.
All right.
Thanks, Jonna.
I was given a heads up by Ms. Jollica over at the high school that the student reps were tied up with some school-related stuff actually tonight.
And so we're not going to have a student rep update.
I'm sure we will at our next meeting. I will throw it over to Superintendent Dr. Patello for his updates.
Great.
Thank you.
Yeah.
So it's been an incredibly busy summer, kind of preparing for the beginning of the school year. We're people, you know, both administrators, teachers, hard at work.
We just earlier this week had an awesome new teacher orientation with approximately 35 new staff members.
They were energetic and excited to join the Sharon public schools community.
This event is held, you know, in collaboration with administrators, both at central office and building level, as well as tons of teacher leaders, especially our mentor leaders.
Kathy Turner being, you know, one that really works with all of us to kind of have this event be awesome. We have opening days coming up next third and fourth for staff with a district-wide day in the morning and then a day and a half of building-based preparation.
First day of school, we know for grade one through 12 is next Thursday, September 5th, and then September 6th for kindergartners.
And then pre-K starts the next week on September 9th. So we're really excited.
I've seen kids around, and they're excited.
My kiddos started this morning, so I know our Sharon kids will be ready to get back.
We have open houses coming up, so please check your newsletters from your schools.
For elementary, it's going to be on September 26th for the middle school, September 11th and 12th.
High school, September 19th. And the ECC will hold theirs at the middle of October and October 15th.
These are really important ways to kind of get to know about the programs and curriculum at your classes prior to the school year.
So I'm just getting prepared for this school.
We've got some new schedules going on at Sharon High that our high school kids will be utilizing Please be patient for the first few days with bus twists and timing.
We'll make adjustments, as we always do, as we learn from those first few days.
And also, hopefully, we'll be hitting fall weather pretty soon. But until then, please, you know, dress for warm weather and have students, especially in, you know, the elementary and middle school places that are not air conditioned.
Your handbooks will be coming home after their approval.
So please review those carefully before signing off.
And also, the middle school and high school open up their power school on August 29th.
Got some feedback.
In the future, we will make that communication about, so typically, it's going to be the week before school starts where it's where we have, you know, full understanding of all our enrollment except for a couple kiddos.
So we'll make sure that that in the future people know at the beginning of the summer and throughout the summer when exactly the middle school and high school power school portal will be open and elementary open last week.
And we have a final facility walkthrough occurring this week.
We're working hard on making sure our facilities, our buildings are really ready. We're also working with DPW as far as the outside of buildings and weeding.
You know, there's been a little bit of a challenge in some of the buildings to get that outdoor stuff done.
And the DPW has been helping us and we'll also be working hard to get that done prior to school.
As far as enrollment, we'll get some more detailed numbers after the first few days where we have we'll have some kiddos that we expected who don't, who have moved over the summer but have not informed us and also have some, you know, kids who are enrolling at the very last minute.
So we'll give you particular numbers at our next meeting.
But right now we have class sizes within our ranges and enrollment similar to last year, a little bit up from last year.
But we'll share exactly where that is at our next meeting.
And then we have our central office group, including Ellen Whittemore, Dr. Joel Jocelyn, Jessica Murphy, Hina Trivedi, and Carla Hands, as well as Molly and Fran, who are other point people that parents as well as staff members interact with.
And I want to give Dr. Jocelyn an opportunity to just introduce himself a little bit as our kind of newest member of the group.
It's been great working with him.
He's been working incredibly hard and thoughtfully throughout the summer.
So I just want to give, we'll finish this slide, but then I'll turn it over to him to just say hi and tell a little bit about himself.
Is there any more slides?
Okay, yes. And then we have our building-based leadership, our both principals and assistant principals, again, who took some time off but worked, you know, a good amount of the summer getting things ready and definitely are excited, have greeted their new staff members, and also have tons of teachers this week have been in throughout all the buildings, really getting prepared.
We appreciate that, you know, a bunch we're in during the summer, but especially this week, people have been hard at work getting ready for the school year.
All right, good evening, everyone.
As Dr. Botello mentioned, my name is, I'm really, I started over the, on July 15th, and it's been running, and it's been truly fun working with Dr. Botello, Alan Woodlemore, and the rest of the team. I've had a chance to visit every school, meet with every principal.
I've had meetings with the curriculum coordinators, getting to know, and we're also working on some, doing some good work, planning the professional development landscape for the, for all the early release days. So that was a good, easy win to make sure that we build capacity for all our educators.
So it's an absolute pleasure for me to be part of the Sharon Public School.
I've also had the privilege to meet with, I would say, most of the school community members, and they've been very supportive, very welcoming.
So I'm really looking forward to a wonderful, productive, and fruitful tenure with the Sharon Public Schools.
Great.
Oh, you got more slides. Yeah, so then we had, again, at that new teacher, new staff orientation, which included teachers, but also other positions, IAs and other positions.
We had 34 staff in various capacities.
We're still completing the hiring process for 14 staff where they're in the midst of it, and then have a number of positions that were still open, predominantly instructional aid, school assistants, cafeteria and transportation workers. So we're working really, really hard to get all those filled for next week. And we just, again, when you work in schools, if people don't work in schools, don't kind of get this same full feeling.
They get it a little bit because they're feeling the excitement of their kids. But we certainly get excited about this time of year to have a new start.
Our Sharon Public Schools team, in collaboration with our families, we're really trying to make sure that we can provide the very best educational experience that we can for each student.
It's a complex job.
We've got kiddos who have all different needs, but they're all awesome.
And so we thank you for trusting us with your children as we try to teach them, get to know them, care for them, and nurture their development.
And so we look forward to a partnership with all of our families and look forward to a great year. All right.
Thank you, Dr. Botello.
Does anybody have any questions at the table?
All right.
Seeing no questions, I will move to our discussion items.
First up, we've got our 2024-2025 calendar updates.
We've got a discussion and a policy. We'll vote to approve.
I'll turn it over to Julie Rowe, the chair of our calendar subcommittee, to discuss how the calendar subcommittee meeting went, make a recommendation, and then I'll take the floor back for the discussion.
Go ahead, Julie.
Okay. The calendar subcommittee.
The calendar subcommittee met last week.
And I think we had a really great discussion.
I think that we heard from a lot of teachers, which was really great.
And I think that the consensus of the group was that the right thing to do is to move the date of graduation by at least two days to accommodate for those extra two days that were missed in the original version of the calendar.
And that would be the simplest and probably least intrusive.
I'm sure it will be intrusive and unproductive for some people, but every option that we have is a problem for somebody.
So, unfortunately, we have to kind of look at the least bad option.
So, there was a question as to which night or day would be the most appropriate.
So, Peter, can I cold call you to talk about your survey?
Go ahead and ask about our survey.
Throughout the commentary in the survey, the most preferable date when making a change would be to change it a week until June 8th.
I think a lot of families had greater concern about the ability for some of their family members as well as them to attend on a weekday.
And also, we got some feedback from administration at the high school.
There's really an all-hands-on-deck approach when you go towards MCAS testing, and those are dates designated by the states for MCASing.
But so, 44% of respondents, we had 170 who responded preferred Sunday, June 8th.
25% preferred Wednesday, June 4th.
14% improved other.
And some of those actually were calling out for June 8th because initially I did not have that in the survey.
But when I saw several comments asking for it, I put it into it. So, about half of that 14% is also part of the June 8th. So, that's more of a, like a 51% now that I think about it as far as the June 8th. And then 16% Thursday, June 5th.
Thank you.
Thank you, Peter. Yeah.
Thank you.
that if you weren't able to see it, we had a student representative, I can't remember what his position is on the high school board, but he seemed to think that moving the date of the graduation was something that they could work with in terms of prom and senior week and other activities.
I do believe, so if we're okay with that idea, then the next decision is, should it be Wednesday, Thursday, or the following Sunday?
So the Monday and Tuesday are, I think Shavuot, if I'm not mistaken, a Jewish holiday, so we can't have it on those days.
I appreciate hearing this information that about half of the respondents are happy with moving it to the Sunday.
And I think that it would be, I would be interested to hear from the committee, if I hand it back to Avi, I would be interested in what people think about moving the graduation dates, and then what date they would like to move it to. And if I may just add my personal opinion, my personal opinion is this is the easiest.
I just learned about what the admins have said, and I would need to think about it, but I would actually be in favor of it as early as possible.
So Wednesday or Thursday, to me, seem the most reasonable, but I'm not stuck on that.
So back to Avi.
All right, thanks, Julie. So real quick, before I start going around the table and asking folks for their stance, I just want to hear if Kristen Keenan, our high school principal, wants to weigh in, I think it's appropriate for us to hear from the person that plans graduation.
Kristen, if you've got anything, Ms. Keenan.
Thank you, Avi. I appreciate that. Thank you all. I know you spent a lot of time on this, and it's important to all of you. It's important to us as well. I think that if you were able to participate and see the graduation that we had outside last year, you get a sense of how much time and effort goes into planning that event. It's a beautiful, beautiful event. One of the big issues with having it in the middle of the week this year is that MCAS testing is taking place on that Wednesday and Thursday.
So you'd essentially be asking us, our custodial staff who have students in the building with lunches and cleaning the building to also set up an enormous amount of, you know, 900 chairs outside a stage, all of Sharon TV and all the work we do with them to make this happen, the radio club, as well as, you know, making sure we have graduation rehearsal and that we can pronounce every student's name accurately.
I mean, there's so much work that goes into it that, in all honesty, we really would prefer this on the 8th. That is a collective decision by almost every person at the high school that takes part in helping us out. And I know that's not necessarily convenient for everybody.
Ideally, we wish that it could have been held on the original set day. But if we had our preference, it certainly would be the 8th. Thank you.
Thank you. All right. So just in an effort to do this in the most efficient way possible, and also to respect the process of having had a subcommittee that undertook this, had a meeting, had a lot of comments from the public, as well as our educators.
I think the first, the most appropriate thing to do is go around the table and sort of a straw poll on who's open to accepting the recommendation of the subcommittee.
There will be a discussion after that before there is a vote, for sure. I just would, I'd like to sort of create the parameters of that discussion ahead of time. If accepting that recommendation isn't on the table, then I think we start from what all our options are. If accepting that recommendation is going to be met by a majority, then I think we can have a discussion more focused on what that day would be and where we're moving it to. So let me just, by a call of names, let me just hear if you'd be open to accepting the recommendation of the subcommittee or not. I'll start with you, Dan. Yeah. So I'm understanding correctly.
This is the general recommendation to move the graduation date, right? But we're not talking about specific dates yet. Okay. Correct.
I would like to accept the recommendation.
Okay. Adam. Okay.
Jeremy?
Yes.
Alan?
Yes.
Shauna?
Yes.
Okay.
And not that my opinion, I mean, we have a very clear majority, but it seems, I also felt like the subcommittee was managed to get the community sort of coalescing around this as the best bad option.
All right.
So then let me open the floor to discussion around when that date would be moved to. And Adam, I saw your hand up first.
Actually, I was just curious, Dr. Patel, if you could give us a little more information about the survey and the survey responses.
In particular, student attendance, do we have any information about whether students will or will not be able to attend on any of the dates, the kind of Wednesday, Thursday, Thursday, or Sunday?
Because I would hate to move graduation.
I know it's an imposition regardless of what we do, but I would hate for a student not to be able to walk and kind of celebrate the culmination of their high school career.
I do not believe, I would need to double check.
I do not believe we had any written narratives that a student would not be able to attend.
I think we had, you know, a couple specifics that a parent or a family member would have hard time attending.
And we had lots of that on the weekday options.
But there was nothing that said, a student would be unable to attend on June 8th.
Okay. I asked only because a parent had told me that their students would not be able to attend on the 8th, but I didn't know if there were students who wouldn't be able to attend on the Wednesday or Thursday.
I don't know if that was reflected in the survey or not. I do not believe that was reflected in the survey.
No.
Alan? Oh, sorry, Adam. Are you done?
Yeah, I guess I'll say my preference, I guess, is for the earliest date. I know it's less convenient for administration, but it was what the students expressed a clear preference for. And like I said, I personally had families reach out to me saying that their student would not be able to walk in graduation or attend on Sunday the 8th.
And I would say, as I'm looking at this over more, there was two comments together and they might have been related.
One was, I will not be able to attend my child's graduation.
And right after that, please do not put graduation on June 8th. If graduation on June 8th, I will not be able to attend my own graduation.
So there was one person who, and I think they were back to back, I think it was a parent and then the child.
So there was one of those.
Chuck Allen?
I asked a similar question, I guess, to Adam.
Can you share more about the population that you surveyed, just so everyone's on the same page? Who did this go to? And I think you said there's about 170 responses.
What was the total universe of potential responses versus what you got?
Please?
Chris, did you know our total high school seniors?
We have approximately 260 or 70 students.
Yeah, so we had 177 responses.
It was sent out to all senior students and all senior parents.
And 80% of the respondents were parent guardians and 20% were students.
And I have the floor, I guess, in the collective memory of those on the call.
Have we encountered a situation in the past when graduation held on the day which was normally scheduled, where we've had students who've been unable to attend for reasons unrelated, let's say, to academic or disciplinary reasons?
I mean, I think, Alan, from a historical perspective, yes.
I mean, there are certain things that come up that families have planned trips where people haven't gone and they've chosen not to attend.
You know, they've gotten their diploma after.
So that is certainly something that has happened in the past in my experience.
Thank you.
All right. Thanks, Alan. Jeremy?
I just wanted to clarify.
The results of the survey, did they favor the Wednesday or the Sunday?
I was a little confused by Adam's comment. 50% preferred the Sunday.
Okay. Then the second choice was 25% for the Wednesday and 16% for the Thursday.
And aside from a handful of potentially a couple parents or students not being able to attend then, which might be the case on Wednesday as well, are there any cons or what are the cons to Sunday beyond that?
I think that's the only con is, you know, with all these choices is the potential of a student or a family member not being able to attend.
And there was only, you know, there was only a handful of people who gave, you know, kind of specific reasons.
Except for, again, the weekdays, there was a lot of rationale about, you know, people who, family members who work and such. And, you know, especially not necessarily parents, though, in some cases it was them, but other extended family members who want to celebrate with the kids having difficulty attending on a weekday.
Traveling and working.
All right. Thank you, Peter.
Yep.
All right. Julie? Thanks, Avi.
So I just wanted to say that I think that some of this might be reflected in the comments, but there's conflicts every night.
So there's Norfolk Aggie, I think, has graduation on Wednesday.
And I know that affects at least one family.
And I heard Southeastern is Thursday.
So I think that, you know, we're dealing with a situation where someone.
So I just think we have to pick the overall best situation for the most people because somebody is going to be really angry.
And I feel really bad about that.
But, you know, we have to move forward.
So that's just my two cents. And also I respect what the administration and Kristen have said.
So if the committee is if the committee thinks that Sunday is the best day, then that makes sense to me.
So let me ask this. Does anybody on the committee want to make a motion and take the first shot at a day? We can certainly vote it and we can have more discussion.
It feels to me like what I'm hearing is Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday are all on the table.
There's good reasons for.
And again, I want to be clear that the language I think we're using, I don't want anybody to hear good.
I mean it within the context of where we're at right now. It very clearly these are all bad solutions.
It's just a question of what's the least bad solution.
For me, it sounds like it's just a question for the committee of which of those three days is the day that makes the most people the least inconvenienced.
I'm hearing that admin is interested in Sunday and for lots of good reasons. I think the survey, although, you know, again, I think we can probably know no disrespect or fault to admin question how important a survey that has 100 and something responses when 1100 people, it sounds like, give or take, could have responded.
I don't know what to do necessarily with that. But if somebody on the committee wants to make time, wants to take a shot at a day and we can vote it.
Julie, is your hand up meaning you'd like to take a shot at a day? Oh, I just wanted to say that I think Peter said he sent the survey out to 200 people.
Is that 200 and change like just the seniors?
I said all seniors and all senior parent guardians.
Okay. So and then we got about 170.
So that is probably about, I think it's 270.
It's like way more than half of that.
That's like a really good. That's a lot.
How many seniors are there?
There's 270. Is that what you said?
Oh, 260.
Yeah.
260. All right. Sorry. I thought it was 360.
So yeah, give or take 780.
I mean, I'm sure that it's a little bit less than that, but give or take.
And we got 170 of that.
So I'd say I don't want to quibble over percentages.
My math says it's something like 23% is who we heard from.
Either way, if somebody wants to take a shot at a day, I think we can go from there.
Adam. Adam. I'll move to change the date of graduation to Wednesday.
I can find the right date on my calendar.
Oh, this is a Wednesday, June 4th at night.
Is there anybody that wants to second that?
All right. Seems like we're not going to get a second on that, Adam.
Valiant effort.
Go ahead, Alan.
I'm not going to make a motion. I did have one additional question for Dr. But I hope it's instructive.
Dr. Botella, do you know or do you recall that anybody who selected a weeknight graduation give an explanation as to why they were selecting that over, let's say, a week end date?
Did they say that they were anxious to see an evening graduation?
Did they say that they thought it would be easiest for parents to attend? Was there any themes that emerged among those that wanted a weeknight graduation?
I'm taking another look.
I mean, there were some just comments of don't change it.
So those were some of those were lined up with the weekdays.
One person said either Wednesday or Thursday, doesn't matter at this point, should be June 1st. Some said preferring to keep the original date.
So there wasn't a lot of specifics on why they wanted a weekday.
And while Julie said, I believe she said that she is aware of a student that has a conflict with one of the other regional schools.
You're not aware of anybody that wrote? Yeah, someone wrote about Norfolk Aggie on the evening of June 5th. Yes.
And that that would conflict.
Are we not aware of this point of any conflicts for Thursday, June 6th?
Well, I think Julie just mentioned Southeastern.
I don't I do not believe Southeastern is mentioned in the survey, but she believes that there's a conflict there.
And we definitely have a couple of students at Southeastern, I believe.
OK, thanks.
Sean.
Go ahead, Alan. Would you like to not make a motion and ask more questions?
I'm going to make a motion, but I'll let Sean to go.
I was going to make a motion.
Alan, go for it. I'd like to make a motion to reschedule graduation to Sunday, June 8th, 2025.
A second.
All right, Julie.
You're muted.
Yes.
Jeremy.
Yes.
Alan.
Yes.
Adam.
No.
Dan.
Yes.
Shauna. Well, I made the motion.
Yes.
I hear you. I have to call the name, though.
I think in the end, and I hate that it's that there's a person who told us they can't make. I think it's the least bad of all the options.
I am a yes.
Motion carries six one.
Thank you guys for a discussion.
And again, I think we owe the public yet again another apology or certainly a handful of us that were here through the whole process do.
I know that doesn't help.
All right.
Next up, review and possible vote to approve student handbooks.
Elementary, middle, high school, and early childhood.
Dr. Botello, you can certainly pick the order.
Why don't we start with the early childhood?
I'm so excited to go first.
You want to highlight the changes in the handbook, Stasia?
Sure.
I don't see it up there, but.
Stasia, I wasn't planning on sharing all the graphs, but the school committee has seen them.
Okay. They've seen them all. If you'd like me to, I can. No, no, no. It's okay. The biggest change that we have is we've updated our health information to accommodate the immediate need and rules based on the mass CDC.
We have also changed our early dismissal time for early release days to 1045.
We have added new staff.
All new staff is updated.
We have added the option for families to receive their students to receive free breakfast on a daily basis that will be delivered to the classrooms at 9 a.m.
What else have we updated?
Dates of specific things.
Our open house is now in the middle of October to give students and teachers time to actually build relationships.
And so we as a staff can better inform the parents for open house for what needs and what procedures will be best to suit the students.
And that's basically all the updates that we've had.
Any questions?
Any questions from the table?
Jeremy? Jeremy? What was the prior early release time?
It was 1130.
But 1045 because our half day release time is 1115.
So our early release time was later than our half day, than our regular day release time.
And we couldn't go to 11 or 1115 because the middle school has to be released then.
And because of nap and lunch for those little ones, it was really confusing and disruptive to their routines to dismiss them later than they usually go home.
And it kind of contradicts the term early.
Anything else?
All right. No other questions?
All right.
Dr. Patel, next.
We'll go next to elementary and Darren Reynolds.
Dr. Reynolds, thank you for representing the elementary group today. We appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you. We really had a few technical, just updating some language to reflect whether it's school committee policies and reflecting change in leadership in a few places, whether it's school committee or at heights.
And then we had just making sure there was some question around the Chromebook agreement.
And there's language in the middle high school handbook that differs from what we would have because we're not really sending kids home with Chromebooks where at the middle high school they are sending kids home with the Chromebook.
So that would be some changes, but for us really updating some language to be more reflective of whether it's school committee policies or just some names and whatnot for us at the elementary level. I can take any questions that you may have.
I see Dan's hand first.
Hi, this is a little awkward because I know Dr. Reynolds is here on behalf of all the principals, if I'm understanding correctly.
I know some of the changes that you made this year may be minor or technical or just kind of updates, but I did read through this handbook.
There's much of it I really appreciate and I appreciate all the work that goes into it.
One section in particular I did want to ask about and that section is called homework.
It's on page 13 of the elementary handbook.
And I want to say I really like what I saw in there.
Something I have discussed with different members of the administration at different levels is what our philosophy around homework is as a district.
And if we have clear guidelines around roughly on average how much homework people can expect to have by grade level.
And if that and making how can we make sure that's a consistent experience, you know, across teachers, across schools, across grades.
So this is something I'm really interested in. And I when I read this, I was really heartened that this does contain a detailed breakdown of what you might call guidelines or what people can expect or what we encourage from teachers to assign in terms of like number of minutes per homework by grade.
So this is exactly what I was looking for.
I also loved that these seem to be high expectations.
You know, it starts off low in kindergarten and first grade, informal 10 minutes, two times per week in first grade.
And then it builds up in a logical way to grade four and grade five, 40 where you're talking about some serious homework.
40 minutes, four times a week for grade four, 50 minutes, four times a week for grade five.
So that all looks great for me. Where I'm really struggling, though, is I'm not sure that's accurately reflecting the experience on the ground for most of our families.
That certainly has not been my family's experience.
I've heard from many other parents that experience really varies.
There's a lot of variation between teachers, between schools in terms of homework specifically.
And I know for a fact that some teachers just don't give any homework at all, even in fourth grade or fifth grade.
So the number could be zero depending on what teacher you get.
And my understanding is that the schools allow that. So where I'm really struggling is we're putting this handbook out here, out there.
And these are what we're holding out as guidelines or what we encourage.
But then the reality, at least as I understand it, is very different in what people are actually experiencing.
Do you have any take on that or perspective?
Why? First, if you agree, but or why that might be the case and maybe how we can resolve this discrepancy.
I mean, for me, if that's the case, we could either amend this so that it's more reflective of what's actually going on.
Or we could double down and make a commitment to actually live up to what we're putting out there. So I don't know if Dr. Reynolds wants to speak to this or Dr. Patelow or if this is something, you know, the other principles should be involved in. But I'm just struggling with to reconcile.
That's a fantastic question, actually.
And you actually had the answer in some of your question there that when you're talking about that it's differentiated and it should be.
We never want to dictate to give your child 50 minutes of homework for the sake of giving 50 minutes of homework.
Well, that's not being authentic.
Right. And we want the homework to be connected to the learning experience.
So that should fluctuate during the year.
And you'll have teachers who are given a little bit more, a little bit less. You know, that will fluctuate as well.
The one thing that we do need, though, is everybody reading at home and parents.
That's partly on you as well. We want you reading or listen to your child read.
So that is certainly part of the homework every night should be. You know, we want our kids reading regularly and really enjoying their reading.
So when we get prescriptive and that guidance came from, I believe, before my time.
So about eight, nine years ago, we actually had a homework committee and people looked at that and came up with that guidance that you'll see laid out in the handbook.
And those are pretty general guidance that you'll see that are really about age appropriate, you know, developmentally appropriate.
So when it goes up 10 minutes for each grade or so, you know, I think that that's spot on. But what that homework might look like should be different all the time.
It shouldn't be a strict.
You have this amount of math or you have this amount because that's not connected to the learning that comes in school. So we want to make sure it's more reflective of that. So it will be it will vary and it should vary.
Matt?
I can comment a little bit, too.
I think, yeah, I think the wording, you know, there is kind of some particulars in the wording that are kind of making it a little, you know, less prescriptive.
Things like the guidelines.
These should not be seen as expectations.
I think one thing that we can commit to do is to, you know, really do some analysis of, you know, kind of both the purpose of homework and in what homework, you know, looks like, you know, at different grade levels across schools.
And, you know, continue to, you know, make this language, you know, as accurate as possible while providing opportunity for flexibility that makes sense for kids.
So we don't want to be too prescriptive.
But I understand, Dan, your point that, yeah, we want, you know, if these are guidelines, even if they're not seen to be, you know, too strict and prescriptive, they still should mean something.
And so I think the analysis of homework, I think, again, in, you know, so a big chunk of homework we know, as Darren spoke, is around at the elementary level is consistent reading, either child reading, a parent reading to a child, a child reading to a parent or a sibling, a child listening to a book on tape. Those types of things are really consistent.
So, you know, what we can spell out more what of that takes into that chunk of 40 minutes in fourth grade or whatever it might be.
And then in addition to that, what does it look like, you know, as far as homework across the read? So we can really kind of, again, both engage teachers in what is the purpose of homework and what is it looking like now, but also kind of spell out what it really looks like in reality and how closely it follows.
So, again, these guidelines that, again, are stated as not seen as, like, strict expectations, but still should mean something when they're sitting in the handbook as well. Dan, do you have another question before I add on and then move on to Adam?
No, you're good. All right. So I do just want to add on. So first of all, Dan, I just want to say I appreciate that question a lot.
And, you know, I think we certainly all hear exactly about that in our community all the time.
Dr. Reynolds, I really appreciated your answer. And I want my pushback here to hopefully be very respectful.
They're just I assume that you as the principal of one of the elementary schools are aware of this.
If not, then I guess we would want you to be aware of this.
There are teachers in this district.
And by the way, I'm not sure that they're wrong. They're the educated.
Like, they know more about teaching kids than I do or Dan does or any or most of the parents.
But there are there are grade levels in this district at elementary schools where there are kids learning the same thing in both classes.
If these classes are differentiated, that's unbeknownst to any of us, not just parents, but school committee members.
We're not aware that Heights or East or Cottage is differentiating by class section.
That's something that should certainly come to this table.
And yet there are teachers who everyone knows.
By the way, before the kids are even assigned them, everyone, including those kids, know, do not assign homework.
And then other teachers who everyone knows assign the most homework in that grade level. So I hear you on their differentiating.
But the reality is that they are there is a massive discrepancy at times between the actual workload and the educational philosophy between teachers.
And we see it. And the truth is, I even hear from teachers, as I'm sure you do when they're advocating to you as their boss, that there is a philosophy right now in education that homework is not seen as beneficial.
And there's data that I've been told by educators that supports that.
If that is true and that is the pursuit of our superintendent and our building leaders, then I think it's something that the committee and the community should be aware is being pursued and that should get discussed.
I don't think it's something that should get decided on a on a on a classroom by classroom basis. We talk about equity a lot in this district.
It matters to us.
I know it matters to you. I know it matters to our superintendent.
It isn't equitable that we have kids that, depending on who they get assigned to, have a totally different course of action.
And if the reason is that some kids need homework and some kids don't need homework, then I think we obviously need a very robust system that somehow figures out who those kids are and puts them with the teachers that do or do not assign what they need. But at this moment, it seems indiscriminate whether or not your child is going to get a teacher that assigns a lot of homework or no homework at all. And we may never know down the line how that affected those kids.
So I think it was a really important question that Dan brought up. And and I don't think that there's a solution to that tonight or that you are yourself stopping that solution.
But I want to make sure we don't sort of glaze past that with the answer being that, like, this is some kind of well thought out differentiation happening throughout the year in a thoughtful way. The reality is that we have teachers not assigning homework and we have teachers signing a lot of homework.
And I'm sure they have a good reason, but it is different. I will just add to this committee because obviously budget will come back around at some point this year that Dr. Vitello, one thing that you said to me, and I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, was that one of the values of our coordinators, which is a position many of us don't understand and I didn't fully understand, wasn't trying to sort of work through a consistency at all grade levels. And to me, when you said that to me this past year, the first thing I thought of was homework and because I know this is a thing that matters to parents.
So I just wanted to make sure that I said that piece.
And again, thank Dan for the question.
And I appreciate your answer, Dr. Williams.
Yeah. And I'll just make one just little kind of correct that we should be working towards, you know, with our coordinators, an appropriate level of consistency.
I think it's really important that there is some latitude for whether it's for individual kids or even for teachers, but there is also the need. And I think I would say our philosophy at the elementary level and we need to get more consistent with it is that we believe a modest, reasonable amount of homework at the elementary level is appropriate.
And that especially that should include some consistent reading beyond the school day. And so, you know, we can kind of dig into that and strive for enough flexibility that makes sense for kids and teachers, but also a greater sense of consistency so we don't get these greater disparities that exist.
As well as continue to look at the research and scrutinize, you know, our current thinking and continue to evolve. So if parents, if there are parents who have a student who's in a classroom where there's no homework assigned, would you recommend that they reach out to building leadership and have that conversation?
It sounds to me like that might be a way at least for the conversation to be had.
Yeah.
Okay. Adam?
Thanks, Avi, and thank you, Mr. Reynolds.
I just have a couple kind of housekeeping-ish, I think, issues that I wanted to bring up.
So I know in the...
If any of them are typos and things like that, could you send them?
But if otherwise, please speak.
But if there are more typos or links, just send them and we'll make sure that those get corrected.
We'll respond right back to you just so we save time at the table as far as... Because you were very helpful with those things. We appreciate it. Totally, yes.
And I think that the typos looked like they were totally addressed.
A few things that weren't that I just wanted to kind of ask about or kind of learn more.
I know in the kind of bullying, discrimination, harassment section in the High School Handbook, we have language about Title IX. And we note explicitly kind of that Ellen is our Title IX officer.
I thought that was great language.
And wanted to know if we could add that to the elementary handbook as well. So that if kind of students or parents really, in this case, want to know or understand who to reach out to, they should.
Is that something that we can do? Yes, definitely.
Awesome.
Awesome.
I also noted that the...
I think what's listed in the draft that we saw was an older COVID policy.
Is that something we can make sure that we update or kind of incorporate now that that's part of our infectious disease policy? Yep.
We'll make sure we have the most up-to-date policy.
Yes. Thank you. Awesome.
And the last question was really just about...
I know there's a section on page seven around dropout prevention.
And while I think this is district-wide probably a very important topic, I just didn't know the relevance kind of within the elementary handbook as opposed to...
It actually doesn't really appear in the middle or high school handbooks. So I didn't know if that was something that we felt strongly should be there or if that's something that we should move into a different handbook.
I don't think the elementary team is feeling like we are desperate to have that in there or anything like that. You know, I think that could be moved elsewhere. Yeah, what we will check is to make sure. Some of the stuff that has historically been in the handbook was advised by counsel, so we'll have to check that. But if not, either we could get rid of that section or, you know, revise it to be, you know, elementary, more targeted elementary, which would probably be a lot shorter.
Awesome.
Thanks so much. I appreciate it.
Alan?
Dr. Patelos, to Dan and Avi's point, Since you and Dr. Reynolds use similar language about sort of a minimum expectation about a classroom reading, is there language that could be added that sort of just expresses your general expectation, as you described it here, that for all students, there should be some level of out of the classroom reading on a weekly basis?
Is that inappropriate to add? I would say so, Darren, Dr.
Reynolds?
Yeah, we'd be comfortable with that. And one of the things, too, that's important is that when the teachers, you know, whether it's at open house or whether they're sharing their newsletters with families, is to reiterate that consistently.
Because, you know, parents, you know, we look at handbooks at the beginning of the year, do we really look at them throughout the year? I think that's something, though, a really great point for us to continue to hammer away at and reiterate with families the importance of that.
So, you know, I think that'd be a good piece.
Yeah. And we would iterate what was said before about, you know, the lower levels or even at the upper levels. Again, it's great for parents to, you know, I read to my son as a fifth grader as well, to read to their kids or have a sibling read to a kid or have, you know, kids reading on their own or to their parents and things.
So all of those are really valuable reading processes.
But that some level of reading should be assigned.
Yep.
Yep. We could definitely add that.
We agree. Thank you.
All right.
Dan again.
Yeah, I appreciate the extra context in the discussion.
I do want to note that in the handbook, it says, in addition to regular reading.
So in a sense, it's already in there.
There is in the handbook, whatever you want to call it, a recommendation that in addition to regular reading, you're getting 40 or 50 minutes of homework, four times a week. So that's pretty significant.
You know, just to close the conversation out for me, I can't vote a handbook that contains a chart that I think is wildly out of sync with the reality that's going on in our schools.
I think the reality, it sounds like there's agreement that the reality is that if a teacher doesn't want to assign any homework, the schools allow that. And that's fine right now. So that, to me, is very different from what I read as a parent or what have you in the handbook.
So I can't approve a handbook that I think is just not reflective of the reality.
But if the district wanted to rework it, I would be glad to read it again and approve.
But as it stands now, I can't approve.
I guess one element that I would suggest, and this doesn't, I'm not saying that this would fully satisfy, but I would think that should read including regular reading instead of in addition.
I think, you know, I think that's a core part of those, you know, kind of guideline minutes is the reading itself.
But we will certainly, I think this is something we can, yeah, we can bring back to the elementary principals and bring a revised version of that homework portion for our next meeting.
Thank you.
All right.
Next up.
Thank you, Dr. Reynolds.
Next up.
Is the middle school.
Mr. O'Rourke.
Hi. Good evening, everyone.
I appreciate your time on this.
For the middle school, there's really no major changes.
Some annual things updated as always.
We did mirror our attendance language to match the high school language and a few other minor things.
But overall, mostly just the annual updates.
So, Mr. O'Rourke, before I take any questions from the table, I just want to make sure that I thank you. And recognize the language around sign in at the building with the same emphasis that I chastised the language in the past. I think it's a very well worded, very inclusive and still secure wording in there.
And I appreciate all the work that all of you put into that wording there, which I see updated.
So, thank you.
Sure.
Are there any questions?
It seems pretty straightforward here. Go ahead, Adam.
Adam, you're muted. Sorry about that.
So, a few similar, I think, more kind of housekeeping-y items.
So, I sent a couple notes.
I don't know if they had a chance to be incorporated.
I think there was a link not working or something of that nature.
But I think the two things I wanted to call out was I don't think we have a reference in our cheating examples to kind of using generative AI or chat GPT. I know the high school handbook did have some nice language around that, but I think that's something that I'd like to see incorporated.
So, as students are starting to really develop, particularly on their writing skills over the course of middle school, they understand kind of where AI can and can't be used.
And then I had similar feedback to the elementary handbook in terms of just really including language about the Title IX and the Title IX officer.
And, again, kind of the high school had some nice language there that we could reuse.
So, I think those are the two most substantive.
And then the other question I had was there was a note about celebratory food.
And among the food that it called out was casseroles, but not cakes.
And so, I was just curious if we tend to have a lot of celebratory casseroles that are being brought in.
So, I did see your notes.
I just actually was doing a college drop-off for one of my daughters today. So, I haven't gotten a chance to make a change of those updates.
But we will make sure that link works and take care of those other notes you've updated for us.
And no distinction between cakes and casseroles.
We will treat them all the same.
Thank you.
I don't think that eggplant parm is technically a casserole.
If you've never had Gouley Rose eggplant parm, you are missing out.
Jeremy Kay. I had a quick question on the cell phone policy, just from my own understanding.
It says that students must power down their devices before entering the school and secure them safely for the entire day. I was just wondering what the securing kind of looks like.
So, the kids, some leave them in their pockets.
Some put them in their lockers.
It's really, you know, up to the child.
Some kids do have a hard time if they're in their pocket not pulling them out and being on them or trying to repower them up.
But, frankly, we're not in the business of trying to determine who's got one on their person or not.
But we do work with kids and families.
But there should be off and away is basically the policy for their cell phones throughout the day.
Thank you.
Sure.
Thanks.
Julie? Thank you, Avi.
And thanks for everything that's happened so far.
I have a question.
So, in the – I don't know if this is for you, Mr. O'Rourke, or for you, Ms. Keenan, but in the high school handbook, there's a section that talks about the process of investigating.
In this case, it was specific to bullying claims.
And in the high school handbook, it says something to the effect that, you know, the person who lodged the claim will receive a communication about, you know, kind of how it was resolved or something to that effect.
So, I had more questions from Ms. Keenan on this when we discussed the other – when we discussed the high school handbook.
But I was wondering if you had thought about putting a little description in about what happens after the investigation.
I think that, you know, even when, you know, there's different bullying or other investigations and people feel like they lodged the complaint and then it just disappears, they don't know all of the, you know, what's happened.
Did anything happen?
Were things completed?
Did anything.
And I know that we've been careful because of, like, how much information we're allowed to reveal.
But it looks like in the handbook, high school handbook, that we are allowed to reveal some information.
So, I was wondering if – and I don't know if, Ms. Keenan, you want to talk about this now or later – but can we put something in there that says, you know, the parents of the, you know, the person who brought the claim, what kind of communications they can expect to receive and what kind of information they can expect to receive.
That's my thoughts.
I can share in general.
We always do communicate with those that bring forth a claim and they get a report.
Of course, we are dealing with children and there are some elements of an investigation that can be deemed confidential where they can't receive notice of what consequences another child receives.
But they certainly can receive results and findings of an investigation.
Absolutely.
And we can note that in the handbook. That's fine.
Great. I think that would be – it would just be a good, like, follow-up so that people didn't think it just disappeared.
Right. So, thank you. Thank you. SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Thank you. SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: All right. Thank you, Mr. Rework. Dr. Patel, next up. Next up is Kristen Keenan at the High School. Hi there.
I don't know if Jane has the slideshow or not, but if not, I can just speak to it.
That's fine. There it is.
All righty.
Okay.
So, essentially, we have made some changes to the handbook regarding new people in terms of administration and contact information like all of the schools.
But the major changes deal with, if you can go back, one, with attendance and phones.
So, if we can go – to give you a little context, if we go to the next slide.
I'm seeing if I can do that. Okay. I wanted to show you some data over the past number of years in terms of attendance at Sharon High School.
And you can see that pre-COVID, if you look at that bottom piece of data, the attendance rate for the 17-18 school year was 96%.
And the chronic absenteeism rate, which is 10% of the school year or more, meaning 18 days or more absent.
And that is excused or unexcused based on DESE definitions.
You can see that that was pretty good. And then, as we went into 18-19, we see that the attendance rate goes down a little bit and the chronically absent goes up a little bit. And then, the 19-20 year, it kind of stays a little bit stagnant.
But then, you can certainly see on the next slide – and I don't know if I have access to do that.
Okay, great.
Thank you, Jane. You can see on the next slide that there starts to be a pretty significant dip in terms of chronically absent students at Sharon High School.
So, when you look at the – the 2021 year is not a great year for data with the state and DESE because it was that hybrid year. And so, the data is not terrific in any school district, I would say, in terms of attendance.
But I think that the 21-22 school year is pretty telling.
We dropped significantly to 93.4%
in attendance rate and an 18% chronically absent rate.
And the following year, somewhat similar.
Last year, I was very pleased we have the data up through March. Then, last year, we jumped a whole percentage point in terms of our attendance rate.
We were working really hard on that.
And if you can see, our chronically absent rate, 10% more, dropped significantly to 11.4%.
Now, again, that's only data that's released through March.
So far, they haven't released the full year of data.
But traditionally, it's pretty similar.
So, we want to continue on that trend.
In terms of what we want for administration here at the high school, we want to go back to those 17-18 numbers.
Sharon High School should have 96% attendance rate. We should have an under 10% chronically absent rate.
So, that being said, we're doing a couple of things to either streamline how we report absences or changing, hopefully, some of the procedures.
So, the first thing that we're doing is we're going to use a Google form to kind of streamline the process as opposed to phone calls, which oftentimes take an undue amount of time for Ms. Levitz to have to handle, especially when there are really high-volume days. And there are days where you're having 70, 80, 90 students absent.
So, we did a pilot of it one day last year to see how it worked.
It actually worked really well. And it gives us some really good data right from the beginning because we can filter through that. So, we're going to be sending that out.
And obviously, if there are emergencies, we'd accept phone calls.
But we'd like to try to streamline it through that process. And that gives us more data to analyze and see what students and families we can help support a little more in terms of attendance.
And then on the next slide, in terms of tardies, one of the things that we really noticed was how many students were coming in late and then participating in extracurricular activities after school.
And these were unexcused absences.
You know, these were not orthodontist appointments or their driving test or doctor's appointment.
These were students kind of strolling in with Dunkin' Donuts.
And so, we really felt it was important collectively, both teachers and administrators, that we tighten that up.
I gave a survey last spring to teachers to kind of get the essence of what things they felt still needed quite a bit of improvement.
And this was a big one for them. And it is really disruptive when kids are walking into a class late, one after another after another.
So, this is one thing that we'd like to add into the handbook.
And then, obviously, if you have an excuse tardy, you can still participate in after-school activities.
But we're trying to curb the students that are coming in habitually tardy, you know, many days a week.
For dismissals, we kind of mirrored what the middle school does. We noticed that there were tremendous amount of traffic issues and families trying to dismiss students at the end of the day, vying for space out in the parking lot with buses and so on and so forth.
We also have moved in our schedule our ACES period to the end of the day. So, it's from 2.20 to 2.40. And we are trying to curb students trying to request to leave every day during ACES and getting dismissed.
So, I think that there's a safety component to this in terms of the traffic and the campus as well.
So, DESE defines chronic absenteeism as 10% or more of a student's days in membership in the school.
And that's whether it's excused or unexcused. So, we really wanted to target some things regarding that.
So, if you look at the next slide, you can see that one of the things that we are interested in doing is being very kind of methodical in what we determine to be excused absences.
So, we want to make very clear to families that there are many things that we allow for excused absences.
And we will certainly allow that to happen.
And that will not affect students in terms of any sort of credit situation.
But one of the things that we did over the past year, the school council met for the entire year. Our sole focus was working on an attendance policy.
There really wasn't one in the high school handbook when I took over a year ago.
There was information about tardies, but not on absences.
So, when we started to do research on other schools and surrounding communities, many of them had a reduction of credit policy.
So, by establishing this policy, right, we aim to foster supportive and accountable environment that values the importance of consistent attendance, right? So, to emphasize this, we kind of created this credit reduction system.
And again, we looked at many, many schools around us.
And this is actually pretty tame compared to some other schools.
But we thought that, you know, we'd like to try it at this and try to, you know, have good conversations with families and students about what this means.
And also, give them some ability for some restorative stuff.
So, in terms of this, this is what we're proposing.
So, if you're taking a full-year course, it's a five-credit class.
If you have 10 unexcused absences, this is not absences when you've gone to the doctor, the dentist.
This is not religious observances.
This is not bereavement or college visits.
This is unexcused.
A reduction of one credit for the respective course.
And 20 unexcused absences, a reduction of two.
For semester courses, it would be a 0.5 credit for the respective course or one credit for the respective course for either five or 10 unexcused absences.
Now, can we just go back for a sec? The restorative piece to this is that if students attend a term, the next term, and they have no unexcused absences, they earn that credit back.
If they don't, and over the course of their high school career, they find themselves not meeting our overall credit policy, then they may have to take an elective to bring back some of that.
They may need to, we'll have, we're talking about having some Saturday school times.
There will be online classes available to them to make up those elective credits so that they hit their mark of credits that they need to graduate locally.
So we feel that this is something that is really necessary.
When you look at DESE and you look at the data from Sharon High School, there is so, so much to be proud of.
It is an amazing school.
But one place that we need to come back to center on a little bit is our attendance.
And so this is why we're proposing this. In addition to that, this is not too different, the phone policy on the next slide, but we're kind of just enforcing it a little more.
So students are going to be prohibited from using their cell phones in class.
They must be silenced and they're going to have to be in the phone caddy.
So midway through last year, you know, I said last year, we're going to listen and we're going to learn.
And staff said, please do something about the phones. And the most emails I received last year from parents were about phones and actually asking for us to do something about limiting them in the classroom.
So we purchased phone caddies for all the classrooms.
Teachers initially wanted to give students the option to either put them in their bag or in the caddy.
And by the end of the year, that was a big bone of contention with teachers in the survey that kids weren't, you know, kids were getting, had burner phones. They had two phones. They had three phones.
And so it wasn't working to the extent we wanted it to.
So they have asked and I concur and I fully believe in this, that students should be dropping their phones in the caddies when they get into class, that teaching time, that instructional time should be sang percent.
And I also want to mention that we are going to give kids the opportunity to use phones.
They are high school students. They are becoming young adults.
Many of them have jobs. So in passing between classes and also in the cafeteria, they will be able to use them, but not during instructional time.
And I actually linked Julie, had sent a nice little article from the New York Times about it. So I actually linked that in the bottom in case anybody want to read. It was a really good article. So if you have any questions, go right ahead.
All right.
Does anybody have any questions?
Before I call on you, Julie, I do want to say, Ms. Keenan, I think, I know you were there.
I was there.
Adam, I think, was there. Maybe there was another school community member.
We had the opportunity to see some of the high school kids last year do presentations on projects that they had done about how to better the school community themselves.
And there was a young man who talked about his project, which was specifically around these phone caddies.
Phone use presented a lot of data to his fellow students who were all in universal agreement in this room. I was really impressed by these young people who all seemed to recognize a need for themselves, even though they admitted they struggled with this. They admitted that this was something they were getting in the way. And I was blown away by the data he was presenting about the outcomes that students see, not just in education, but actually in their careers, mental health.
It was a really powerful presentation.
And he actually talked about the survey data. He'd taken a step to put this out to students in his class last year. So I thought that that presentation coming from students that were, you know, accustomed to using their phones was pretty powerful in that it aligns with the vision that you have as well.
Julie?
Thank you, Avi.
I wanted to just start with an anecdote.
And I think, Ms. Keenan, you remember this from last year. But I did a presentation to the junior class with some other members of the PTSO.
And it was really disheartening because, you know, we were there.
And I know it's kind of boring listening to boring adults talk about something boring.
But, I mean, it was very blatant.
And I believe you had been walking around in the back telling us that people were, like, shopping during, you know. So I can only imagine how demoralizing it must be to be a teacher that, you know, is trying to communicate and the kids are out of there.
So that actually brings me to my next question, which is, why not do a complete ban?
In the handbook, like right after the cell phone policy, they talk about vaping, talk about hazing, substance abuse.
And there are zero tolerance policies for that.
And so I'm wondering, is it possible or, you know, what you kind of indicated, you thought about it a little bit. But it seems to me that the problem is these, like, oh, you can whip it out during the three minutes you're passing.
But then, you know, like, are you really going to turn it off and turn it on like that quickly? Yeah.
I also wonder if students were not on their phones during lunch, maybe it would, you know, encourage, you know, normal socialization.
I think there's, like, a whole bunch of us who grew up with no phones in school.
Thankfully.
Managed to survive this long. I think, you know, if you're trying to set a time for pickup, then do the, you know, old-fashioned way, which is arrange it in the morning before you go to school.
I think every phone, every classroom has a telephone that dials out.
So if there's an emergency in the classroom, there would be no problem with the teacher dialing out. And I assume the teachers would also have their phones. And I think that, you know, all the other policies you have about coming down to the nurse and all those things, I say, why not make it a total ban and see how that works?
So that was my first thing.
And then my second thing was, are we just talking about cell phones or are we talking about the whole handbook?
You can talk about the whole handbook. Okay. So the second question, I have a couple of one-offs, but the second question is basically what I asked Mr. O'Rourke about, like, kind of keeping families apprised of when their child lodges a complaint, just looping around and saying, okay, you know, it's been investigated.
We took steps.
I just don't know how much, I was under the impression we really weren't allowed to give much more than there was an investigation and appropriate punishments were given. But I think that would be a great thing to implement in these cases, because I think a lot of people's stress comes from, like, kind of just not knowing what happened.
So that's one thing.
And then I had two more questions.
One is, why is the tardy through 845?
Like, why is, like, I guess I don't understand the 845 time.
And then finally, with the absences on religious holidays, I think one thing that would be great to be able to do is make sure teachers were aware when, at the beginning of the year, but then when they're scheduling something, to double check dates that, you know, they're given that they're not conflicting with an important holiday.
So if you have any plans for that.
Okay.
Thank you. Yep.
So let me take those one at a time.
That was a discussion with leadership and teachers regarding a total ban on phones.
But, you know, we had our grade nine orientation tonight, and there were students on their phones.
And I made it very clear to them that that's not how this is going to go in school.
However, we are teaching them to grow into their young adulthood, right? And so we're also wanting to teach them to utilize these things responsibly.
So one of the things, one of the caveats that I didn't mention is that if a student goes to use the restroom, they cannot take that device with them as well.
It would only be during passing and during lunch. And I think that for lunch, there are many students that I agree with you, you know, the socialization part is really important.
But there's also students that need that 30 minutes of kind of just chilling out time.
And I want to teach them that to use things responsibly and when they can.
So we didn't want to go with a full ban because we didn't think, one, it was realistic.
We think that there are kids in the school that have situations like work, like planning their drivers, you know, drivers ed courses, things like that. We wanted to give them the opportunity to communicate when they could, but we wanted to make sure that instructional time and passing time, you know, when kids, I'm sorry, not passing time, restroom time, when kids go to the restroom, that's where we find a lot of the situations you were talking about, bullying, where things are going back on the phone and then kids are meeting somewhere and there's an issue. So we wanted to halt it from the places that were either instructional or it could be a safety issue.
But at the same time, give students the ability to learn some responsibility in using that phone appropriately.
There is the other side of it at the high school level where there are very specialized classes that at times do utilize, you know, phones for things like cahoots.
They're like kind of quizzes where you get like instant feedback, but also in places like an art class, you know, so if they're doing something on Van Gogh and the teacher asks them to look that up in order to draw something.
And I want to give teachers that sort of flexibility.
But I do agree with you. It is an issue.
I think a total ban for kids the age they are at the high school, I don't think it's teaching them to use it appropriately in, say, a workplace or at university.
So, you know, this is why we kind of went a middle of the road with it. But instructional time has to be really, really the real place.
And also going to the restroom, because what happens is a kid says they have to go to the restroom.
They take a phone.
Now they're gone 20, 25 minutes.
They don't even realize they're gone that long because they're texting with someone from the restroom.
So, you know, I take what you say very seriously.
I think that we would prefer to do that, you know, for the students in the way that we want to to kind of give them that responsibility to learn it wisely. In terms of the bullying, I agree with you.
You know, very often we cannot relay.
We can't relay, right?
There are privacy issues with students.
But I think we should always strive to do our best to come full circle with students that come to us with this and say, something has been done about this.
We want you to know that we cannot reveal exactly what's been done. But give that student opportunities for support or give them advice in terms of if something happens again with that student.
So I agree with you there.
And I don't think we're always perfect with that, sometimes because of the volume. But I think that that's something that we strive to do and should be doing. So I totally agree with you on that. I think we can formalize that we will send a, you know, some kind of letter with the information that's able to be provided so that they know that the investigation is concluded and that the situation was addressed.
And we'll share what's appropriate.
Okay.
In terms of the tardies, it wasn't really an arbitrary.
We didn't just pull it out of a half. But so the new scheduled classes are about 50 minutes.
And typically what you see with students that there's either students that are chronically tardy or there are students that are selectively tardy depending on what they have their first period class and when they have a quiz and when they have a test and things like that. So one of the things that we wanted to kind of do is if a student was going to be late to school, they had to at least show up before the end of the first period.
Because if they were missing a test or a quiz, they need to make arrangements with that teacher to make that up.
And that teacher needs to see their face.
I don't want students going, I'm going to miss this day at this time because I have this quiz. They still need to show up and go, you know, I overslept, but can I please make the arrangements?
And so we felt that 845 was reasonable.
It gives students 40 minutes to get to school prior to losing the ability to do extracurricular activities after school.
It teaches them responsibility, especially in their first period class where they have to see that teacher's face if they want to participate.
And, you know, quite frankly, you know, the state essentially says you have to be there for a half day, you know, to be considered present.
But I think that it's our obligation to teach students to get in this building earlier than that and build really strong, good habits for their adulthood.
And so that's why we chose that time.
And then finally, the absences in religious holidays.
We can certainly do that. We are going to be giving out like a one pager to teachers about kind of important things and any changes.
And we can certainly talk about that and the importance of religious observances.
And I'll piggyback on that. District-wide, we'll send something to all staff.
We talked about that at the end of last year so that, you know, we look at that calendar that supplements, the regular calendar.
We'll send out reminders district-wise and then principals can follow up with, you know, you know, specific expectations around that.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Julie.
My turn, Adam.
Adam, my turn to start talking to you on mute, but go ahead.
All good.
Thank you. And thank you, Ms. Keenan.
So I have a number of items that I'd like to go through.
Segwaying from what you just discussed, actually, in terms of the holidays, I would actually love if we could actually send out on a monthly basis just kind of an update of, hey, here are some upcoming holidays across different religions, cultures, ethnicities, et cetera.
Just to always keep that kind of front and center as teachers are planning tests and things of that nature.
Sure.
I wanted to jump back, Ms. Keenan, to where you started actually at the attendance form.
And not for you, actually, but I know we didn't discuss this, but if Mr. O'Rourke's on the line, I think that's also something that was implemented in the middle school handbook this year as well. And so just wanted to call out really the consistency across implementing this from an attendance perspective across both middle and high school so that parents are aware.
Yeah.
I think that we actually met the administration at the high school met with the middle school administration, and we've had a couple of conversations over the past two weeks.
And one of the things we wanted to do was to start to create more consistency between our handbooks and what they look like and what's added in them. So when parents and students are coming into the ninth grade from the middle school, it doesn't seem overwhelming and so vastly different.
And so we did meet and talk about the things that we wanted to try to make consistent.
Yeah. And I love that. And I think it's great.
I have a question about the kind of excused absences.
I know for kind of illness or medical appointments, it makes reference kind of if you have a doctor's note.
So what, and I ask really as a parent as well, you know, if my son or daughter wakes up, they have a fever, it's not something I'm going to necessarily go to the doctor's for or get a doctor's note. But does that count as an unexcused absence or as a parent note kind of saying here's the situation?
Yeah. It would be unexcused under this rule because we've given quite a bit of leeway to get to that point where you'd lose a credit, right?
So you would have to miss, you'd have to have 10 of those days, right, where to lose one credit in a year long class.
So I think that we've created, we've given enough leeway knowing that those sorts of things happen, that families are going to keep their children home sometimes and not bring them to the doctor. But you have that, you know, you have that buffer, if you will, prior to having any sort of consequence.
And if something is extended longer, you know, if your child had a fever for multiple days, most likely you would end up bringing them to the doctor and then those would get excused.
So we try to be fair and recognize that families are going to keep their children home some days.
But we try to give that buffer to allow for that to happen prior to any sort of credit being lost.
I think that's helpful.
And I think it's good for parents to know whether it's fever or I know some students suffer from migraines that can kind of hit.
And those are, it sounds like the type of thing that, if not in the moment, but if it is a kind of a medical issue that persists, kind of a doctor's note can almost be retroactive to some of those dates or I guess they can work with the administration as necessary.
Absolutely. Thank you.
So I have a couple kind of small items.
I know there was the, so we're moving to a new schedule, which I think is very exciting.
And so there was the kind of full day schedule and then a half day schedule.
And it seemed like there was some misalignment just in terms of kind of where the day was starting and when, whether it was with a homeroom, whether it was in your first period, whether there was four minutes of passing time, whether there was three minutes of passing time. And so I was just hoping that we could align those so that it's kind of clear to students and really the same, I would imagine.
And I would imagine it is in practice the same. So just making sure that's reflected in the handbook.
Yeah, I'm just, I'm scrolling to that right now.
So because the half day is so truncated, in order to fit in classes, we do change the passing time and the time in a homeroom.
There technically isn't a homeroom. The homeroom is embedded within the first period class, but because the half days are so truncated in order to make that fit, we shift the times just slightly.
But certainly in terms of the classes starting time, they start at 8.05.
And so that's clear across both schedules, I believe, that 8.05
for the full day schedule is first period.
And even at the early release schedule, the first block starts at 8.05.
We kind of embed four minutes or so from 8 o'clock to 8.04 for students to get into class.
So a lot of times what happens is students will be hanging about, milling about, or sometimes they're going to meetings in the morning for some of their groups that they're involved in.
So that 8 o'clock bell is, hey, it's time to move and get to class prior to being late.
So how I see it right here, I see for the early release, 8 to 8.04 is kind of that homeroom time, if you will. And 8.05 is when the late bell rings and the 8.05 is the bell for the full day schedule as well.
Yeah, I guess as a parent, seeing one day start at 8.05, kind of with the first period at 8.05, and another on the early release, the day starting at 8 in homeroom is confusing to me as a parent.
So I can, I can, I see what you're saying now. So I can certainly add that at the top of the full day schedule that we kind of embed these four minutes for students to get into that classroom for ease of understanding for parents.
That makes sense to me. Okay. We can do that, certainly.
Thank you.
Okay. And I apologize, I have just three more.
So I know we had, or I kind of noted in advance about kind of the dates for finals, because I think the handbook says, you know, these are the dates and please reserve these, make sure that there's no travel or things of that nature.
But then also that those dates can shift.
And so as a, I guess, as we're talking to families who are making sure, hey, from the, I think it's June 16th to 20th, you know, there is nothing that would get in the way of a student taking finals.
Um, but then potentially later having made plans.
And, and I know personally speaking, you know, my son's camp schedule came out today, actually.
Um, and my son who's in kind of the, the oldest age group, um, has to be a camp on the following Monday.
And so if there are snow days that extend the school year, there's potentially a conflict there.
Knowing when kind of finals are taking place, um, or understanding the flexibility of how we deal with those situations, um, would be very helpful for me as a parent.
And I would imagine others kind of throughout the district, especially as this year, the school year is, um, you know, is starting later and ending later. I can speak to that quickly.
I think that operational aspect is a very customary thing.
That's the reason why, um, you know, the, the, the department kind of notes those five additional days for snow, um, really operationally, there needs to be an expectation that the end of the school year might end, including when finals will be, um, you know, to have finals, you know, much earlier than, um, the end of the school.
Because the snow days is really kind of operationally does not work and not something I've seen in any, any district.
So that's why we have that caveat.
We know it's not perfect for people.
We have all experiences as families and it's really a necessity as far as, um, you know, kind of the, you know, the flexibility that's needed when snow days are ended. So certainly, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll keep on updating when those days shift based upon snow days as early as possible.
So people begin to be aware, but, um, there should be, you know, people should plan that there, you know, likely will be a couple of snow days and maybe even, you know, five so that, um, they can have that flexibility.
Unfortunately.
Yeah. I think the extent to which we can incorporate flexibility into finals for those kind of unexpected dates would be helpful.
And I know there have been cases in the past where, um, teachers have said, Hey, I'd be happy to, to give you this final early.
Um, but I'm not allowed to, it's, it's against policy. And so how do we enable the most flexibility, um, without putting any undue additional stress or burden onto teachers or administration to say, we'll try to work with students when things do fall outside of the expected scheduled range of dates.
Um, I would say that, uh, I understand what you're saying.
I know that our, our procedures this year were that they could, students could take exams early if they fell within the window, the exam window.
Um, but we really discouraged taking exams a week early.
I mean, we, we've had, we had family, you know, we're going away for three weeks and, and wanting to do that. And the integrity of the exams is, you know, in our minds really important.
Um, and so we do, we did allow flexibility during the exam window.
And certainly, you know, we had students coming in all summer, uh, taking exams for families who did go away on vacations, you know, for a week or two weeks or a month or something like that. So, um, and we're, and we're certainly amenable to that. I think the taking them early, uh, sets a tone that we really don't want to, um, we don't want to set that precedent in our minds because of the sanctity of that, those exams and, and what they mean.
Um, but I, I do agree we can have some flexibility within those tests that the test dates.
Absolutely.
So you might have a family, right?
Like you said, your child's going to camp. Um, so we have three days of testing.
They might take their, their tests from the third day on that first day. We're certainly amenable to that.
Um, I think we got to be careful if we try to move it more, you know, um, move it even further, you know, due to instruction, due to test security, um, constraints on teachers and what they need to do. Um, but I, we certainly can have flexibility within that test window.
Thank you.
Um, in the program of studies, um, to, to change pace a little bit, um, there are several definitions, um, largely related to kind of bullying, harassment, um, et cetera.
Um, one of those was, was an egger, um, which I take to mean like an, an egger on, um, so to speak.
Um, and it jumped out at me because it, of all the definitions, most of them are just kind of very factual.
Here is a person who does a thing.
Um, and, and in that case, there was also kind of a judgment made about the, um, character or self-esteem, uh, of, of the egger in this case, um, that felt very out of place.
Um, so I, I know this may be utilized in kind of some other DESE, um, definition someplace, but it felt weird that we would want to impose that, um, or, or utilize that within our handbook.
Yeah.
I mean, it is part of some of the DESE guidelines.
It also comes from the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center out of Bridgewater State, which is, uh, uh, a nationally renowned, um, uh, does research on bullying.
And so the, the definition comes from, you know, though imperfect comes from, um, you know, well-respected, uh, both departments statewide and, uh, research and is based upon, you know, kind of some of the research that's been found around that situation.
That in studies of investigation around bullying, someone who's, um, kind of exhibiting that egger often has that, that quality that's described as far as self-esteem.
Um, it's not perfect, but it's, uh, it, that's where it comes from. Um, I think in, in none of the other definitions do we kind of ascribe, uh, anything to, to someone's self-esteem, mental health, et cetera.
Um, so like I said that I think being descriptive about kind of here is what someone is or what they are doing, it makes a lot of sense. Um, but as soon as we start jumping into, uh, our assessment of somebody's, you know, uh, mental health, um, that feels very dangerous to me.
Um, and then the, the last note I had is, um, just similar to, uh, kind of the other handbooks.
Um, I think that the COVID policies are still reflective of, um, last year and would just love to see those updated. Sure.
That makes sense.
All right. Thank you for bearing with me. I know there was a lot there.
No worries.
Jeremy.
Uh, I had three questions.
Um, one, I'm glad that we're focusing on issues that we're seeing across the country.
So thank you for making these updates.
Um, paired with the stricter kind of guidelines on tardiness, I was wondering what type of initiatives or programs we had to, like interventions to help. We'll prevent and what type of, if we're rolling out any new programs, so kids wouldn't be caught kind of up in these penalties.
Right. I think one is increasing our communication with families.
And I think that by streamlining some of the work that we do with Ms. Levitz, um, in the main office who oversees attendance for the most part, including that Google form, kind of will, uh, create more time to work more closely with the assistant principals in terms of getting out communications to families.
Like, Hey, your child's now at five unexcused absences.
This is something that could lead to. So I think communication plays a big role.
And I think also we are going to utilize, we currently have like a case conference that we do once for cycle, where we focus on, uh, students that might be struggling in one way, shape or form. And, uh, my goal is to use one of those per month to focus on attendance and students that are, and what sort of supports we can put in place for them.
Obviously we want to utilize, um, the good work that GORSRO does in terms of attendance and building relationships with students and families to get, um, students into, you know, school as well. Um, so there's a variety of things that we've talked about trying to plan out and help support families to get students here when, you know, they're really struggling because we know it's a thing. And we, you know, I have children myself. I know what it's like to try to get my daughter out of bed. So, um, you know, we, that's kind of a universal thing.
And I think if we all work together to support students and make them realize what an important thing this is for their life after high school, um, you know, I, I think we can do it, but those are some of the things that, that we've currently planned out. I think another one that builds on that Jeremy is typically when we put forth a procedure like this, um, a large group of kids are able to improve their attendance by the, by the consequence.
So it's, this allows us to focus on those kids that are struggling with it and really dig deep onto what's getting in the way from them.
So it narrows down the number of kids that you're really trying to attend to. So that's part of the theory too.
Got it.
And then I was a little concerned about the requirement for doctor's notes.
Um, but I can also see how this could be misused.
I was wondering, you know, do we have any data into how much that feeds into chronic absenteeism?
Like, is that in terms of, um, just on, you know, absence due to illness, um, without the doctor's note, like, is that the key driver?
Cause it does seem like as a parent, it can be difficult to go get a doctor's note for an illness.
And I think, yeah, I think that's why we built in the amount of unexcused absences we did before any sort of credit reduction, knowing that, that, that would happen.
Um, but I mean, in my experience, you know, this is my 30th year in education.
Um, many of it in administration, you know, I've had, I've, you know, had families try to retroactively get 30 doctor's notes for 30 different days, not consecutive days for things.
Um, I think this is more a commitment that we're making together, the adults, the adults in this community that we know we have a buffer.
And so we're going to use those days wisely when our children say, I want to stay home.
Okay. Do you have a fever?
Do you have a sore throat? Is this actual, we're checking on it? Or, or are parents starting to see patterns with their children about requesting to stay home? And how do we put some guardrails in place for them so they can learn that showing up in life is, you know, 95% of the battle.
So I think that creating that buffer of 10, I think is pretty reasonable.
Um, and also all of the restorative pieces we've put in that they can earn that credit back just by having another, a good term where they don't have unexcused absences.
Um, I think it creates a good conversation piece at home between families and students and why attendance is important.
Okay.
Okay.
And then, um, finally echoing, uh, Julie's point on cell phone usage.
Um, a lot of data out there shows just limiting usage during class period is relatively ineffective, but between classes is more effective.
Um, so just something to think about.
I mean, we can roll this out over time and I'd be curious to hear from the broader community more about cell phone usage, but.
Me too.
Yeah, me too. And obviously if the, if as a school committee and district, you decide to go in a certain direction, you know, that would be fine.
We're just trying to balance, you know, um, showing these kids that are close to adulthood, you know, giving them some sense of responsibility on it, but simultaneously curbing things.
Um, it's definitely an issue.
I've, I've seen it, you know, for many years with my own eyes. So I'd like to see how it goes this year, you know, or for some period of time in that if we need to kind of reassess it, we get together and have those conversations.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
Alan.
Uh, principal, can you, thank you. Uh, two comments and, and, uh, to be honest, four questions and we can take them over what are you like.
SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Okay. Very quickly. My comments are, I agree with Adam, uh, that comment about the editorial comment about an egger was troubling to me.
Um, I also think that the same editorial comment could be applied to the bully themselves.
And I would want to think about whether, uh, if we feel strongly that using that comment with respect to the egger is important, um, whether we want to, want to use it for the bully.
And I'd ask you to, to give that some thought.
Absolutely. Well, the second is, is that I want to just, um, endorse the plan that you propose with regard to cell phones as somebody who believes that they are detrimental to the educational environment.
I also close the idea of locking them up entirely for the entire day. And so I just want you to know, and want my fellow committee members to know that I, I appreciate the plan you've put forth and I'm hopeful that it will be sufficient to meet the needs of students, parents, and the district.
Um, two questions about the attendance policy, one about, um, the cell phone policy and one about the vaping policy.
So the first about the attendance policy, just so that everyone in the community is clear.
You know, we have a tradition going back to when I was in school.
You know, sometimes our parents pulled us out of school a day or two early because the airfare was cheaper, or we came back to school a day or two later because the airfare was cheaper.
In that case, under the policy that you're proposing, those would be unexcused absences, correct? Correct.
Okay.
Um, and this may be a typo.
I think it's page 25.
You talked about, um, early dismissals.
Mm-hmm. And when there's a pattern of excessive early dismissals, that there's going to be a meeting with the student to discuss why that's the case. And, and if that was the intent, I'm just curious why that's not a meeting with the parent, as opposed to the student.
Because if, if the student is being dismissed by the parent on an excessive basis, I would think you would want to meet with the parent. Okay.
Um, and you're saying this is on, Alan, on page 25? Page 25.
I don't have it in front of me anymore, but that's the note I took when I looked at it earlier.
Yeah.
Yeah. And I, I think it's a, it, then it goes on to say, um, and if it persists, the administrator will also contact parent guardians to inform them of the concerns.
so i mean and and so we will we certainly try to do that i i am always in favor of having face-to-face meeting with parents and students in rooms um so that things don't get lost in translation um and so that is something we would certainly do okay appreciate that i'll come back to that in a second because i want to ask you about saving policy as well um the mention in this the cell phone policy about if someone takes another student's cell phone it will be considered theft which i i support as a concept can you just talk a bit about how you think that will be addressed or investigated if that were to happen sure i mean that's not that existed prior to me being here um but it's common in most school handbooks um so how are you asking like how the investigative process would work yeah i mean i think i think it is theft right but but to the point of like how are we gonna because we're asking the student to put the phone in the caddy if it's stolen what are we able to do to assist that student in getting it back in a timely way gotcha um well there's a couple of things one is the phone caddies are all numbered um and they will be assigned student will be assigned a number okay and it will those caddies are typically behind the teacher's desk or near the teacher's desk so that students should be shouldn't be going up um they're frequently to do that but in my experience in terms of cell phones being taken i mean one of the first things we do is try to have students let us know right away and um i can't tell you how many times i've done phone location uh phones within schools you know and found them in another area of the building so we would try to work with the student immediately to try to work on finding that you know um but you would be surprised how how really great many kids are about turning in phones it happens almost every day here here in high school when a kid will leave it in the cafeteria or something like that um kids are pretty great and respectful about other people's property in that way um obviously in those cases where they're not it's a very expensive device and as such i think it's appropriate to to discipline a student we need students and adults together know that it's not okay to take other people's property so um but i those are the first steps i would take you know i would want the student to report it immediately then we would try to find it if we could electronically um and then obviously it might come down to you know interviewing kids in the class and try to get some perspective in that way okay that's great i'm relieved here too to to hear that it will be assigned uh a caddy that will help hopefully um last question about the vaping policy um i don't believe the way it's written right now that parents are necessarily you know invoked when the vaping policy is violated i'm just wondering your opinion on the idea that if a student is found to be vaping in the building let's say particularly in the bathroom would you be opposed to a policy that says a student found vaping in the bathroom has to have their parent called and uh dismissed to the parent as opposed to uh or in addition to other types of discipline oh yeah i mean if if a student is caught vaping their their family is contacted there's never there's never a time if we find a vape on a student or you know you know we see a student walking out of the bathroom and there's smoke coming out you know out of their face like we we are contacting families absolutely as parents you should know that that has happened um and you know the the vaping situation is a serious one it actually kind of makes me really sad um coming from you know my mom having been a smoker and and suffering the health consequences of it it makes me really sad what um vaping has done to young kids i've seen it here at this school i've seen at my previous school where kids are truly addicted these vapes are far more addictive than the cigarettes that teenagers smoked you know 20 or 30 years ago um they're flavored different ways and it gets out of hand for the kid um quite frankly and then they find themselves in a difficult position so i think one of the things that we've tried to do is if a student is found vaping whether that be nicotine or thc we try to do a restorative piece here where we give them an opportunity for kind of a lesser punishment if they agree to work with on a cessation program with our adjustment counselor and i think that's really important to give those students those opportunities because i really think it it they are highly highly addictive and it's very easy for a kid to try it they're so small the kids are in the bathroom they think they're being cool they're trying to impress their friends and then all of a sudden things kind of go sideways for them so we definitely want to give those opportunities for kids to work with adults to try to break those habits as well okay thank you yep jeremy is your hand back up no forgot to put it down okay no worries all right i think that brings us to the end i just want to add quickly not a question but just so my position is known certainly to my other committee members i would support um a policy or i would support this handbook with uh the understanding in there that if parents want to take their kids out to go on vacation or whatnot that is an unexcused absence i think the point that's trying to be driven home is that school matters um and that if you're you know we all make decisions and priority decisions but i think that personally for me that falls in line with losing uh or with going towards losing credit i wouldn't support unexcused absences um for health reasons if a parent note does come my main reason being just looking at it through an equity lens we don't know what everybody's insurance situation is or what the expenses that they can and can't afford are and there are lots of i can imagine situations where some of us would bring our kids to a doctor and others wouldn't so i know that that does open us up to parents writing notes in cases where perhaps that's not totally accurate but for me just knowing how close just a couple years ago we were to a situation where we're telling everybody if you're sick stay home i don't want us in a situation where students and or families are making decisions about sending kids to school when maybe they they shouldn't be around our student population simply because the other option would be an unexcused absence or going to a doctor's appointment that may or may not be affordable so i just wanted my stances out there on that um i'm gonna assume unless anybody from the committee disagrees with this that we were not planning to vote this tonight and that we would vote these handbooks in the next meeting does that feel like where we're at committee yeah all right thank you dr patella thank you uh ms keenan thank you all of the administrators um for all of your hard work it feels like ms keenan you did you did an especially large amount of the heavy lifting here tonight uh i think that went just about an hour in your section so thank you for entertaining us um all right moving to the next agenda item um we are on to decision items um i would entertain a motion to approve the minutes of june 26 2024 2024 so moved i'll second all right adam yes dan yes jeremy yes alan yes julie yes all right unless i see her i think we i think shauna had an emergency and dropped off i am a yes motion carries 6-0 all right next up i would entertain a motion to approve the student activity fund clubs for 2024 2025 so moved second all right dan yes jeremy yes adam yes alan yes julie yes julie yes and i am a yes motion carries 6-0 i would entertain a motion to accept metco's rei grant of 15 000 i would entertain a motion to accept the annual marijuana mitigation fund payment of 10 000 so moved second second dan yes jeremy yes jeremy yes adam yes alan yes julie uh yes i am a yes motion carries 6-0 second dan yes julie yes i am a yes motion to accept metco's rei grant of 15 000 i'll move the motion but i have a question okay um why don't we wait for the motion and if you have a question might open discussion go ahead uh i moved i moved that way does anybody want a second motion okay okay now go ahead julie oh hi um so this is for dr botello so i um so i i was reading the the part where it says you know like the what what the macro grant is um and it says it's you know we received the maximum amount allotted 15 000 um dollar racial equity and integration grant through meco these implementation grants are earmarked to further the racial equity work in your districts and must demonstrate clear alignment with the blueprint for meco and or address gaps of service revealed by the impact of meco longitudinal research study so there were links to the blueprint for meco and also for the impact of meco longitudinal research study and so i read through both of those i have some thoughts but um i am wondering um if you can tell me whether we will be doing the blueprint for meco direction as it seems to sound or are we going to be addressing um the gaps in service revealed by the impact of meco longitudinal research study what i can tell you is this grant specifically is being used for uh training in restorative practices and restorative circles that allow for safe places for students to um to kind of um develop community um understand uh each other's each other and and develop skills in um you know relating to one another especially others with difference in in positive ways he can jump in if you want to you know explain any further sure so julie within um the way the grant um application worked is um so you read the blueprint and i don't have it in front of me but it's broken down into various sections i think it's 13 core points and then if you look into each point there are you know areas that you can um extract and say this is the area we're going to focus our the grant money on and this is how we're going to do it and so we picked the section i think it's five i'm sorry i don't have the grant in front of me but five points okay it says um and it says restorative practices for school but you also have to show how it's going to be implemented so i wrote that when we wrote the grant we wrote that we would train um teachers in restorative practices and they will be implementing them in like morning circle time and it's teaching so they're being trained on how to have restorative circles and um they'll be have have robust coaching and they have a curriculum and then they'll be implementing that um helping kids really um problem solve work with each other when conflict occurs in the classrooms um and so we we we and uh so that's that's kind of what we're doing with it and so it's not the it's part of the one of the blueprint points um for the record i think what you're saying is um 5.3 staff trained and healing centered perspectives of student behavior to enable restorative rather is that what you're yes sort of rather than harmful okay so um okay i guess um i i would love at some point in the future to like have kind of an example of of some of these things just so when when i read restorative practices trauma-informed care and like all of these phrases that are are kind of on the jargony side so those of us who who aren't familiar with the jargon maybe we can maybe we can do something sometime where we all explain that or give an example so sure and i can um i can put together um the the program of training and the the curriculum that they're using and um send that over so you just have a better idea of how it's being implemented um and it's it's a pilot we're kind of piloting it you can only the way that these courses are offered it's a small group course so we're piloting it with i think we have um 16 educators that are starting out and um we have um and we're doing it at the elementary school level so it's fifth grade um fifth grade teachers and some principals and the principals because they're going to be there to help facilitate the programming as well it's voluntary for the teachers if they would like to do participate in something like this so it's not a mandatory thing but it's just an opportunity to you know implement something different within the classrooms and it's being run by a center at suffolk correct yeah yeah so suffolk university has a restorative justice center that specializes in this type of training and coaching and so um that's who we've caught we're contracting with to do um the training and coaching with okay so the basically we're getting 15 000 and then we're using some portion of that to uh purchase training from suffolk yeah that's okay okay um yeah no i would really any any information that would sort of translate this into um english would be great so i would really appreciate it like they have a whole thing about how restorative circles work and things like that so i can put all that together and um get it out to you then send it to the whole committee i think sure absolutely we all we would all like to know i'm sure i'll speak for everyone thank you very much appreciate it all right thank you guys for that uh dan calling the vote sorry not calling on you speak dan yes jeremy yes alan yes adam yes julie yes and i'm a yes motion carries six oh all right before i move us into executive session i will open it up for announcements and updates and i do want to kick off announcements um with my own announcements um we obviously talked about this just after the election when we reorganized uh i just wanted to announce that i've decided the time is good uh for me to resign as chair uh effective after we were able to reorganize i didn't want to have a situation where the the reorganization appeared on an agenda um and the community had to sort of wonder what was leading to this reorganization what this organization was looking like just as i talked about when i accepted the position as chair after the election it's my hope that the committee will when we reorganize support julie roe uh becoming chair and i'll stay in leadership um to continue working to support our administration our educators uh the parents and students of this district i've appreciated my time as chair it's been a long time um i'm open in the future possibly you never know what what the future holds to taking this seat again but i think the time for new leadership is now and i'd like to see uh this committee transition towards that before we get into sort of the meat and potatoes of things like budget um and things like that so i thought this was an appropriate time to make that announcement and uh there's that uh do we have any other announcements not as big as that but i was going to say that the high school ptso is um hoping to get more volunteers in the high school this year for all the fun things that they're doing and um you can find out more on the high school ptso page um there's going to be a lunch for the teachers and on uh september 4th and they're looking for donations both um cash and also uh you know soda or or food or stuff like that so i highly encourage parents especially parents of incoming ninth graders to get involved um it's it we we're doing really cool stuff in the high school so uh and it's different than the middle school or even elementary schools so that was my that's my announcement great all right i will move us into executive session uh pursuant to mgl c30a s21a3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation with the sta ia unit if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect in the bargaining or litigation position of the sharon school committee and the chair so declares uh and to discuss strategy and follow up from february 28 2024 with respect to potential threatened litigation by resident regarding allegations concerning a student conduct matter where an open discussion may have detrimental effect on the litigation position of the school committee not to return to open session i'll entertain a motion to move into executive session so moved okay adam yes dan yes jeremy yes alan yes julie yes why does it feels like i'm missing somebody but um i am a yes is that six motion carries six oh i'll see you in executive SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: action SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: six