Gloucester School Committee, Oct. 14, 2026

Good evening, everyone. This is a meeting of the Gloucester School Committee. We are meeting, it is October 14th, 2026. We are meeting at the Gloucester High School Library. The public is welcome to attend meetings in person, or alternatively, through the Zoom link provided on the agenda. The meeting notice will reflect that the meeting is via Zoom only. As open meeting law allows, the school committee may continue to hold meetings remotely. Please note the in-person meeting will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the remote connection. I will call the, the meeting to order and state that the mission for all, students is to be successful, engaged, lifelong learners, and I ask that you join me in listening to that.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, so we will do introductions of who has. Around the table tonight? Let's start with Kevin. Good evening, Cathy Tucker, Assistant Superintendent. Gabby Pasquarello, Superintendent. Andrea Liacas, School Committee. Laura Wiesen, School Committee. Melissa Prince, School Committee. Cathy Clancy, School Committee. William Melvin, School Committee. Heather Nagel, School Committee. Paul Lundberg, School Committee. Stephanie Delisi, Recording Secretary.

Thank you. And… The next sort of business is oral communications, and I will read the, statement. The public shall have the opportunity at every regular school committee meeting to be heard under oral communications. Oral communications shall allow any resident who has a request compliment, or complaint of any nature relative to the School Committee business, appear before the School Committee, state their problem without debate, and the matter may be referred to the proper subcommittee. For items that are on the agenda, members of the public may address the committee with the permission of the chair. Persons speaking under oral communication shall be limited to 3 minutes each and shall submit a copy of their prepared communication to the recording secretary. If we have anybody online, or…

And do, you know where to find me. And, there will not be a pop quiz on the dang Navy and Marine Corps stuff, because some of this stuff is dance-going. But it has been rather intriguing work. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, no other attendees in person. And I see no hands online. Next item of business is recognitions. Does anybody have anything they would like to recognize this evening? Just want to recognize the high school band and Cole Munquist and all those that participated in the recent, home football games. They really raised the level of enthusiasm down there, and they've done a great job, so… Thank you. Director Lundquist, all the kids involved in the band, and…

The teams have been pretty good years so far. I like that they're on the track as well, like, towards the crack. It's just… They're much more part of making everything exciting. Laura? So I want to recognize — I don't know if many people know about this, but there's a number of parent volunteers working to help the Maley Library become operational again. And led by Samantha Goddess, and there's a whole… every… all the books have to be re-scanned into the system, there's a whole system in order to have the books be available for kids, and there's a group of parents who are all doing that, and I want to recognize them for that work.

Can I ask a question about that? How are they, how do they know to get involved with that? If there were other people that were like, I have time. Kate Robertson is sort of spearheading it. It's what's, how it's worked has been parents who've worked at the elementary libraries. Who know the library world system. Yep. But it's open. It's open to everyone. It's not, it's not yet a block where students can be there, but the goal is that students would be able to come in and take out books. I'm not there yet. Is my understanding. I'd like to recognize Rosa Bullard now. She is running the Mental Health Ambassadors and they spoke at City Hall last week and did a really great job. So I just think it's such an important club.

Let's see. Pretty comfortable. Okay. Thank you all. We have busy student advisors this evening, so no one is with us tonight. Next item is the consent agenda. Did anybody have any items they would like to read them? I move that we approve the consent agenda as presented. Second. Okay, moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Great. Next, deliberation on education issues and the superintendent's report. Turning over to Superintendent Squirrell. Okay, thank you very much. A lot happening in the school now. We're definitely in full swing. I have started my classroom visits. I don't love to show a picture from behind of me, but Dr. Jewett thought it was nice to take pictures while I was interacting with kids.

But I loved seeing in the top left, that was a math lesson. And it was very interesting. The student was doing very well next to me. And then the bottom middle is a wit and wisdom lesson. And then, another math lesson in 5th grade in the top right, so I was very excited that happens to be, happened to be a visit to Plum Cove. Umm. We also had a half-day recently in professional learning happening. This is an example of what was happening at West Parish. We have Adrian Ricky Monn, one of our literacy coaches, leading up in this top left, and teachers working together, collaborating. Everybody learns. At Beeman, there's a traveling science workshop for grades K-2 to inspire students to have fun with hands-on STEM activities. So always nice to see them having their hands-on learning and really exploring. It's wonderful.

Back to Plum Cove, there was a spirit day. You can see all the students wearing their their Plum Cove gear, and one more for Plum Cove this week. I happened to be there, for their walkathon, which I had never been there before for that, and, in one day, the PTO raised $21,032.32 in one day. It was amazing. Can I just comment to that? Sure. I want to go back to recognitions and recognize Leo Francis for helping out with that. What an amazing amount of money they raised. Yes, they had a DJ. I meant to recognize him earlier, and that made me reminded. Yep, and Open Door was there, giving out healthy snacks to students.

Really tremendous event. These little girls in the middle here, you see all their bracelets? Every time they did a lap, they got a bracelet. So then they went back into the class and got to count how many laps they made, and did some math activities with that as well. So, what a great fundraising event for that school. Some fun preschool happenings. We have backyard growers come actually today. That was this morning. Feels like a long time ago. And then reading and working with the therapy dog here. Some cute preschool pictures. Gloucester High had a Spirit Week recently. What you're seeing is mostly the, fraternity versus sorority dress-up, and they had other events, along the week, and I believe, the seniors won the Spirit Week.

They often do. We're hot off the presses, I just added this before the, bless you, before the meeting started this afternoon, Assistant Superintendent Tucker led a professional development for all of our administrators, on evaluations, and with a focus on calibrating, so we are having consistent expectations for our evaluations across the district. So, here's some pictures of our leaders learning. And I have an update from the Fisherman Athletic update. Brian Lafata has provided this. Just want to take a moment and note that nearly 280 student athletes are competing this fall.

And that is the most student athletes Gloucester High has had in over a decade. So the teams are thriving. And that's wonderful to hear. We have some fall standings we'll hear about, power rankings and championships. It's like a third of our students. It is a lot of our students, yes. We have two teams that are top-ranked contenders. Our field hockey team is undefeated. Wow. They, I believe, are in Marblehead this evening and had a little, bus switch out. There was a lot of bus challenge on, on the highway, and, our transportation department did a wonderful job of getting a second bus there, and moving the girls onto the new bus, and, I don't think the game was delayed too much, if at all, but they got, we got them there.

So hopefully that will… their season will continue to be undefeated. And our football team is doing very well with 4-1. Our fall standings overall, here's our boys soccer, girls soccer, volleyball, and golf. So we're doing pretty well across the conference. And our cheerleading competition season, the Northeast Conference Cheer Championship will be November 7th, 2 o'clock, right here at Gloucester Fieldhouse. Really, we welcome everybody to come out and support our fishermen, cheer as they go on to their competitive season. Will their uniforms be in? We hope so. Okay. I was talking to, Brian Lafata earlier today. It's kind of a nice problem to have. They have so many participants, which we want our, our sports teams to grow and be large, that, they outgrew the stock of, of,

Of uniforms. So they have ordered them. We're hopeful that they'll be in. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed is right. Okay? That's it for my report. Can I ask a quick question about, so that this is the most in 10 years, does he have anything to, like, attribute that to? Is there anything that he can point to and say, like, this is… Really driving this success, or… I didn't ask him that question. I'm curious. But, I can find that out. That would be interesting. We have one new sport. Yeah, we do. Volleyball is a new sport. That's true, that's true, I didn't think about that. And I think they have a trade union policy. program, which is probably at least 20, 22 players. And doesn't that program begin at O'Malley? Kids are able to…

No. No, I don't think so. So we have volleyball as a new sport, the addition of some JV, and then even cheer, who's been around for a long time, is exceeding at very big squads. I think it's a lot of contributing factors, it's awesome. Okay, anything else? I'll go on to my next one. So, shoulders. As I presented to the committee, and many people Around to the town or whatever, anybody that will listen to me is, part of my entry plan is, starting with listen and learn. I'm still in the listen and learn space. But, I do feel like it's an appropriate time, and I'll explain why, to share some of the changes that we are making as a district, and some of the results. This is most certainly not complete of the results of my Listen and Learn. In fact, I still have office hours open to the community, through the end of the month.

I do have, I'm still visiting schools for open office hours for staff as well until the end of October. And I have closed the survey. That's one thing that did end on October 5th. And there's many other things I'll still be doing, so this is a part, and I'll explain why I want to. Share this card. Okay? So, I want to talk for a minute about technical changes and adaptive changes. And there's, there are different things and I want to, the committee to understand, the public to understand, there are technical changes that we'll be making and then there are adaptive changes and they are different in The impacts they'll have in the district, they're different on the amount of time it will take to make those changes, and so forth.

So this is not clear, this is not Gloucester specific, this is just explaining the difference between technical changes and adaptive changes. So, an example of a technical change for a problem definition, that problem's usually clear, it's well-defined, it's easily diagnosed. An example in Gloucester might be, it was a long, it took a long time to get a response for a personal day request. It's a very little thing, but it's a big thing in somebody's world, right? That's a technical change, because there's a clearly defined problem, and we can come up with a clearly defined solution. I don't need a committee to come up with deciding how to fix that, we can come up with a problem. So the solution for a technical change, I'm saying in this column here, already exists, requires known expertise or tools.

Who does the work? The experts or district leaders, specialized staff? The primary resistance, it might be a logistical resistance, it might be budgetary, time, scheduling, training, and the time frame, you can make those changes fairly quick, or medium-term implementation, okay? Versus adaptive changes. Those are different kind of changes. So, on this right-hand column here, a problem definition of adaptive change is much more complex. It's ambiguous, and it could be systematic. The solution is unknown, and it requires learning, experimentation, and mind shifts. So part of my listen and learn is to identify those technical changes, but also look for those adaptive changes and try to find root cause analysis for those kind of things.

Who does the work? That's… oops, sorry… stakeholders themselves. Teachers, parents, students, leaders, this isn't something that I just decide we're gonna implement something and we're gonna go, right? This is something that takes a lot of stakeholders, a lot of time, a lot of input. The primary resistance could be cultural, it could be emotional, sometimes there's a loss of identity, or habits, values, or power dynamics. A lot of those can get in the way of an adaptive change. And the timeframe is as long-term as a continuous process. So there'll be changes that are long-term and continuously to grow. So, just a few more examples of what that might look in school, a technical change. Again, it's existing knowledge, hiring experts, buying resources, or updating procedures, or something we could do. An example might be making sure that we have Chromebooks for every student, or installing a high-speed internet to make sure they can connect. That's something we can just do.

Another example might be adopting state-aligned curriculum. Right? As we know, just to adopt the curriculum is step one. The cultural change of how to implement that is the larger adaptive, right? We've done step one at Globster. We're working on step two, for the most part. Umm. Updating district attendance logging, that might be another example. These are technical changes that districts could do. Adaptive changes require people to change their assumptions, their values, priorities, or daily behaviors. That's obviously much harder to do, right? And so, examples of that is moving teachers from using devices as a digital worksheet to fundamentally alerting, changing their instructional practices, to using it more in an interactive way.

Another example might be shifting mindsets, from a fixed view of student achievement to a growth mindset. That's a more adaptive change. And the final example I'll give for here is transitioning a school culture from a punitive discipline, suspensions, to more restorative practices. That takes much larger mind shift. Yeah. So those are examples of adaptive changes. When I'm talking about my entry plan, I am looking at the data and everything that I'm learning with two different lenses. One, with a technical baseline. I'm doing MCAS audits and MCAS scores, attendance logs, budgetary balances. I'm looking at policies, agreements, safety protocols. I'm looking at our Tier 1 instruction and our pacing charts. That's technical changes that we might.

Make recommendations to change. I'm also looking at relational trust across the district. Tuning into staff morale and vulnerabilities, belonging and equity, amplifying student and family voices, shared ownership, making sure that we all are in this together, we're all working towards the same goal, fostering a readiness for open classroom and professional practices, those are more adaptive inquiries that I'm looking into. Tonight I'm going to talk mostly about technical changes and Start to lead into some adaptive changes that I might be recommending. Okay. Any questions on that so far? And I always will bring it back to our district priorities. So, when I look at priority one for our plan for ongoing improvement, belonging and culture, my technical inquiry is I'm looking at climate survey scores, discipline logs.

And for the same priority, I'm looking at examining adult attitudes, biases, and how students feel welcomed. That would be the adaptive change. For deepening learning and Tier 1 instruction, my technical inquiry of this. is inventorying curriculum adoptions, pacing charts, but I'm going deeper for a possible adaptive inquiry in fostering collaborative risk-taking and high expectations. What are the… are our expectations consistent across the district? Are we have… do we have high enough rigorous expectations for all of our students? For Priority 3, SEL and Mental Health. Technical inquiry is I'm looking at MTSS tiers for support, universal screeners. With the more adaptive inquiry, I'm looking at shifting discipline culture from punitive to restorative.

Improving our special education services, I'm auditing, of course, the programs, see how we are there. But more of an adaptive inquiry, I'm looking at how we can shift instructional practices to include more inclusive practices, like UDL, Universal Design for Learning. And so we're starting with the technical changes tonight. One came out really quick as we started the school year, communication. That was… I was hearing that communication was really good in pockets, and not in others. I was hearing that elementaries with Class Dojo was very strong, but that wasn't really working for middle and high. And I was hearing different parts of that. And so we made a technical change of having one communication system for the whole district. And that was the change to ParentSquare.

It has instant two-way translation, high contactability rates. It breaks down the barriers to access communication with families. It's one communication tool for your child from pre-K all the way through high school. Superintendent's updates are… is part of the change. We may come in more regular. I haven't committed to saying it's every once a month or every two weeks, but the cadence so far has been about every two weeks, and I would like to keep that, but I'm going to adjust it as I'm getting… hearing feedback if there needs to be more or less. There's school-based updates from ParentSquare that are more regular than mine. classroom newsletters, posts, direct messaging, and alerts. So this is a technical change that we made to make communication more consistent across the district.

Go ahead. So, I think this has been a great change. I do want to say that, I had an experience today, not the one from earlier, but trying to get a calendar from ParentSquare that was sent out, and, like, you do have to log in. There is no… to go back to your old… to think past posts. No! Something came out with a calendar, and to see the calendar. it doesn't appear. You have to log in to get… It didn't come through an email? I had a similar issue, I know what you're talking about. Yes. And it gave me pause for a second, I wasn't expecting that. Right. Okay. So it was like, it was an attachment. It was a note from a teacher, saying, I'm sending this out, it's right here. And then you press it.

And it's not right there, so it required a login. So we'll check into what that… Yeah, it was something about the attachment, I think. Laura, is it just through your email, or is it through the app, too, you have to log in? No, no, that was through the email, but what we're saying here is that people can get in without an app. Right, and for… well, we can message you without the app, whether attachments go through or not. We're still learning that, and we'll check in. This I checked via email, so not via the app. Right. And just pressed on the… The link didn't take you to it. Didn't take me there. Okay. So we'll, we'll… We are still implementing it. Yeah. Our coaches are not all up on, in writing on it yet, because we're doing training, and we're, you know, but we're moving towards that, and these are good things to hear from people for feedback. Just, yeah, just a bit of feedback. It's working well in many ways, it's just…

That is because of the attachment, yeah. Thank you. I have a question. I'm curious who worked on this so that you know who helped pick this particular product? So over the summer we, well actually in the spring we had our administrative team look at some ClassDojo going, expanding to K-12, Pre-K-12. We looked at a couple others, we looked into other parts of Kinvo, if we could make it more user-friendly, or, and then we had a demo of this over the summer, there's some other leadership, yeah. It procedures and safeguards. This sounds very exciting, but it actually is! So part of the budget cuts last year, we went down one person in our IT department, so that caused us to not just say we're down one person and we're gonna be, oh well. We restructured the whole

Department. And we gave people, we shifted the duties so that, we could. manage that. But since then, we have implemented multi-factor authentication to all staff. We have developed a shields up protocol, which we have had several phishing campaigns, particularly over the summer and into the fall. And we've developed a protocol for when that happens, how to isolate it really quick. We have shifted, our one-to-one model for carts, two carts in grades 3 through 5, so we are slowing down on being on the computer as much in the lower grades, and they're not going home. And we have brought our Wi-Fi up to more of a modern standard with the bring your own device.

Umm. We also have continued AI access rollout for all staff. Not students, all staff. We've completed staff and student access audits, so just making sure that we're updated where we need to be for safety and security. Purposes. We've increased our tool set to detect and remedy issues when happened and I think the biggest one is we've we are at. I'm going to say 100%. There's literally one person that has in the district who has not completed our cybersecurity training in the — and that's the highest rate we've had, I think, in many, many years. And that one person will be getting it done very soon. We are nearly there. And the idea that security is a shared responsibility, we all need to do that, and that's a technical change, but it will keep our system safe. Can I ask a question? Yes. Continued AI access rollout, what does that mean?

So, we utilize Gemini, it's a Google product, and it is not, it's a contained AI, it's… we're not getting any… giving it out data, we're protecting student data, we're protecting that, but we're using it in a way where, Staff can use it effectively to help differentiate their lessons or planning. What's that? Is it like locked? So it's it's within our Google platform, I would say. Grant would be able to describe this much better than I can, but yeah. So it's access to Gemini, that's what you consider the AI role? Yes. Okay. And Notebook LM. And Notebook, yes, which is also part of you. What is it, Notebook LM? Yeah. Is that part of Google as well? Yeah. Yes, and it helps, build presentations and those kind of things. Yep.

For the carts in 3rd through 5th grade, is it a cart per classroom, or is it a cart per grade? Right now, it's a cart per classroom. And as long as budgetary. pulled out, we'll be able to maintain it. But we're not sending them home, and we're saving money on the insurance, because you don't have to pay as much insurance if they're not going home. It also is… Getting kids off to screens a little more, which is a benefit in and of itself. We've done that both our whole, yes, we've gone all the way up, so homework is. Should be paid, yes. Okay. I'd rather than reading a book. That's not happening in the middle school though, they're still doing it. Not yet. The idea is to possibly do sixth grade next year, but we're gonna see how three, four and five go this year. Sure. So there's a potential of going into next week.

Another really exciting thing for you to hear about, but position control. Our employee system of record had hundreds of discrepancies. Which is a problem. Security-wise, all kinds… all of those things. We were not paying anybody that was not working there, don't worry about that, but we… that was the first thing we checked. But there was a lot of discrepancies. Our IT and HR department and business department have worked tirelessly, and it is now a clean system. Great. And what… the benefit of that is when we are hiring or terminating anybody, as long as we create the system to maintain it, our employee record system will be very accurate, and, Another part that you'll hear about in a minute is within a position control.

We can identify the direct reports. So when, I'm gonna say, like, a phishing campaign happened, and so-and-so's teacher X Clicked on a malicious link. And brought something in. IT doesn't necessarily know who to contact about that one thing. So, but if they can look in this Position control and say that person works at this school and reports to this person. They can right away contain it and get in touch with the person. So it's not an exciting thing, but it will make our district run more efficiently. So we've done a full audit and cleaned that up, we've identified the discrepancies. There was also data in there that was old data from when we switched from the old system to Munis from 2018, and it was just sitting there. So we've cleaned that up, and we've been collaborating with the city IT to try to create protocols so that we can do more periodic reviews.

And to keep this more, consistent and accurate. We will be creating, identified a clear and consistent process for onboarding and offboarding, that's hiring and terminating. When that process is clear, teachers and staff will be onboarded faster, because right now there's, as what I'm hearing and listening, there's Possible long delays of when somebody gets an offer and then they're actually onboarded, so we're trying to clean that system up, we don't want to lose. qualified teachers, because we gave them an offer, and they're not hearing for a couple weeks, or not going through, and then they take a job somewhere else. So this is… this will have impact on student learning, so we get the most qualified people in here.

We're going to document the process, have periodic reviews, monitor for accountability. And the other thing that I've been doing is reviewing exit interviews for the last few years and wondering why people are leaving, right? And that's gonna be part of my that's my adaptive inquiry because that's gonna guide on where I will ask more questions, I might change more things. So that's been very interesting as well. Do we do exit interviews for? We started doing exit interviews about 2 years ago consistently. We've done some periodically before that. The problem in the past was sometimes we don't get to it until after the person had left, and they don't want to come back to talk to you. What, 2 years ago, a change that Ben made is that when somebody announces they're leaving, that information is given directly to Nate Pomeroy in HR, and he schedules a meeting with them.

And we're… not everybody comes in, some people don't want to talk, but we're getting a much higher rate of completed exit interviews, and, I'm able to look for trends, which is very interesting. And that might be something that comes out later, but not ready to report on that one right now. Okay? And we are focusing on systems, systems, and more systems because that's what we need. The personal day request, I re-mentioned that earlier. The technical change was that we created a Google form. It's on the staff intranet, they put it in, it goes to, myself and Nate Pomeroy look at it. Nate and I meet once a week. Right now, I believe everybody who's requested has had an answer within the week of the request. It's much more efficient, and we have a better record of

Of what it is. where people are, so that's good. Mandatory training, as I said, we are nearly at 100% for all mandatory training, not just cyber training. Our psychological evaluation assignments, we are developing a system on that. We are currently down, one and two, possibly two, school psychologists, so we need to spread the caseload a little bit, because it's posted, we're looking, but in the meantime, so we're reevaluating how to make sure that it's a balanced caseload for everybody. But that's a system we're gonna create, not just make, just… Add more work to people who want to do it in a systematic way. The MCAS Family Portal is a system that now you all should have got your MCAS if you're parents out there, delivered right to your email. And, we also tightened up the tuition reimbursement.

Process. Next up, we're going to be looking at the hiring process now that we have a clean employee record system, the registration process for our new students. including lane changes, that's just gonna make it efficient for educators, and evaluations beyond teachers. So, I mentioned that employee of record to know who the direct supervisors are. Without that, I can't track who's being evaluated and who's not. And, it's very important that if we're going to move the district forward, that we all have a common goal and a common purpose, and are being evaluated as such. And when I say beyond teachers, I'm saying Assistant principals, principals, directors. all of them, everyone. And so, to have a clearer chain of command to know who would be evaluating whom, that's gonna help us move the district.

Yeah you can go ahead. Well I have two things so you can go ahead. Okay Cathy so. In a sort of overall way, what this feels like to me is adaptive in the sense that this is like professionalizing the district. That's what I'm seeing here, right? Systems. You know, evaluations, protocols, like, for me, that's taking our district To a professional level, so the goal, the goal of some of, most of these technical changes is to create adaptive assist system, adaptive changes. But as I'll tell you later, it… I want to caution us not to think that a technical change creates an adaptive change. No, I'm not saying that. I'm just sort of noting that, to me, like, these…

systems and these technical are leading towards adaptive change. That's… That is the goal, yes. That's how I see it. I'm glad you picked that up. And also, I wanted to say, up next to review, in the registration process, and I'm assuming that's for student registration… Yes. I think communicating that, and also communicating when people are leaving the district, when students are leaving the district, there's a dearth of information on how one does that, there's no one asking why, none of that, there's no system for that. There's… We have so many systems to… Right, but I'm just saying, as I see registration, I also see, you know, the alternative to that as well. This is not exhaustive. No, no, no. I'm tackling them one at a time. Right, no, and I'm not… So that's good, I appreciate that. I just, yeah, I'm not trying to… I know it's not exhaustive. I cannot do everything in one minute. I get that, but thank you.

Perfect. Yep. I mean, I look at it as quality control and seeing the integrity, you know, those things that just… There's a process, therefore you can count on the information you're looking at. It's informative when it's complete. Yes, and if one person is in charge of something, it's not a system, because if they get sick, then all of a sudden we can't do something. It needs to be documented in Green, the way Gloucester does things. I have just a couple questions. What… It sort of came up about the personal day request form and how it's a Google form. What is the attendance tracking system? Do people call? Do they actually have to phone call out? No, it's through Frontline. Okay. And so we use Frontline where I work.

And I can request a personal day through Frontline. Do we not have that capability here? So we can do that. Okay. Thank you for the clarity. This is for some… if a teacher or paraprofessional asks for, and it's different in each contract. For a teacher, if it's consecutive days or extends a holiday or long weekend, so for the exceptional ones that they need superintendent permission for, and for a para, for. For GATE, I think it's just consecutive days. But they have to ask Superintendent permission. Before, it was an email. That would just go to the superintendent and no one else. Which, I am finding, my email is monstrous.

And I could see that that one email could get missed. And, like I said, a one-person thing is not a system, right? And so, if I missed an email, that… Educator could wait 2, 3 weeks and not have a response. And it's very frustrating. Instead, it's a form they fill out, there's at least two people that know it is done, and then we have a weekly check to look at the form. So that's more of a system where I might not see it today, but within… I'm gonna meet with every Tuesday, I'm gonna look at it. And so we are more effective. And then you can export it into a spreadsheet, and you can see all your data in one place. I have it, it goes directly in the spreadsheet, we have the spreadsheet. And all my responses, if they're approved or not approved, and why. My other question is about lane changes, and this might be something that's already in the contract, I just, I'm not familiar, is how frequently can lane changes take place?

In the district for educators. Just once a year. Yes, but what happens is they need to And so this is where this, this involves 3 departments for a land change. So, in November, before November, I'm not remembering the exact date. It's the 1st or the 15th, I don't remember. a staff… a teacher has to let us know they're intending to switch lanes by the next school year. That way we can budget for it. Then they have the whole year to complete theirs. They have to complete their coursework by June 30th. And they have to hand everything in by July 1. we do… the superintendent can make… say, your coursework was done June 30th, but sometimes you don't have your transcript yet, right? And so we'll give till August, not to complete the coursework, but to get the documentation. Right.

And so, it's in the fall that that happens. So, the request for… this is more information they asked for. No, I think this is important. Yeah, the request to be on the list for a possible lane change happens in November, and that goes to HR. The curriculum, if you took the course and the coursework is approved, that goes through The assistant superintendent's office. Then the assistant superintendent's office needs to approve that that coursework is satisfactory, needs to let HR know that it was done, and then HR has to let the business office know that the lane changed. That's a lot of moving parts. Yes. It's up on our list to take a look at, because there may be a way to simplify that. Okay.

Right? And so that's something we're looking at. We need a system. We need a system. I like the city's permitting system. several different departments look at what's going on with one action. Yes. So you just need a system. Yeah. And so those are things to make that more professional and streamlined. My final question has to do with, evaluations of not just educators. Am I understanding correctly that principals and assistant principals have not been evaluated? Yes and no. Okay. So… Can I show you the next thing? Because that's coming up. Okay, great. Is that good? Yes. Then ask me if I don't answer. Okay. Okay. Anything else?

Okay. So this is exactly, it's like you cued me up. So right now, I could not find an organizational chart for Gloucester Public Schools. So, I kind of created this as what I walked into. And, so this level here is what the superintendent oversees. I do want to point out that this last bucket here is 7 people. It's 6 principals and a preschool director. So that's a lot. That can get in the way of moving a district forward. And so I am going to restructure this. And this is what I'm looking to do. So the school committee obviously oversees me.

And then we have the assistant superintendent is going to take over anything that touches teaching and learning. Because that's where her focus needs to be. We're going to move the district by focusing on teaching and learning, and not get bogged down in other operational things, right? So this is where Cathy, Dr. Tucker, is going to focus her time, okay? Special education will remain with me. key position, and, you know, I need to make sure I'm overseeing that Director of Special Education. Principals will remain with me. That's how I'm going to move the district, by holding principals accountable, and setting goals, and leaning in there. And then our Chief Financial Officer, Cody Marshall, will be overseeing anything that really touches money and operations.

So our transportation, our food service, human resources, and the business office. I am… I am… I have seen in the past, and I don't want to have the superintendent stuck in hours and hours and hours of a transportation issue when I should be asking about how is O'Malley's 6th grade math doing? Or whatever, right? So, I need to be able to delegate that to somebody that can handle that, and if it goes wrong or awry, always I can come in. I oversee all of it, actually, still. It's just delegating the first response, first person you go to. As I was explaining this to one of the principals, And he said,

that I can't be the first go-to person for everybody. I am the eventual go-to person for everybody, but I can't be the first stop for everybody. That's not effectively running the district. Yes? Have you been looking at other districts and how they organize to, you know, in ways that you find effective? Yes, and I've modeled this out after that. I'll say this is excellent. I work with a lot of org charts. I want to point out two more things on the org chart, if I may. There is one title change, and it's on… in your packet to approve tonight. It is not an addition to the budget. It is not a new position. I just want to express this is not adding anything to the budget. Rachel Clemenzi has been, her title was K-5 Special Education Coordinator. She was originally hired to oversee K-5.

That was several years ago. She has most recently been our out-of-district coordinator. I have not found any documentation that that was official on paper, but she's been acting as our out-of-district coordinator. And she does a tremendous job. She has brought us from over 70 out-of-district students down to 50 in a safe and wonderful way. I feel that she can do more for us. And I think the special education department will be better off with an assistant director for special education, where she can touch more parts of just, kind of, district. She can work with our programs. She can work with our inclusion program. She can work with high-level, difficult cases. She can sit in on those meetings. And…

I'm going to explain more about that in a minute, but I just wanted to point out that that's the one title change right here on this org chart. And I… It says Assistant Director of Special Education. That's the one title change. It's not a new position. I can go into more detail of why I want to do that. on the next slide, but I also can pause if you have questions or comments on the org chart first. Anybody? I was going to ask a question about that specifically. Okay. So would she, would her role be directly under Mike Jarvis's? Yes. So he would be her direct supervisor? Yes. And her, it's so funny, I thought it was recently that she, that that position was added as K-5, but I guess it was a couple years ago, because that was a new position.

Would she then have a broader reach over middle and high as well? Yes. Okay. The whole district. The whole district. And you mentioned evaluate. This shows who evaluates who. This Brown, the attendance supervisor, the director of SEL and mental health evaluates her. Who evaluates the director of mental health? The assistant superintendent. Who evaluates the assistant superintendent? The superintendent. Who evaluates me? Us. So this is like a clear line of who Who reports to whom? For the district. I didn't go beyond that yet. Right. Sure. The person in the new… position.

Is she qualified to do… She's extremely qualified. She has all the certifications, she's very talented, and I believe she's been underutilized. We're going to talk more about that position when we approve the thing. Okay. Answering the question. Maybe you'll answer this. On another slide, So this is — it's just a — it's a change of title. You said it's not a new position. There's no additional financial compensation that goes along with this. So my other question is — because a lot of times, like, if I was going for a new job, how does this title reflect my new salary? I would be thinking about it. Are we removing any responsibility from her plate to accommodate for this new title? Is there, has there been any shifting around of… Not too promptly.

Yeah, let's hold the details on it. Yeah, we'll do the details. The whole job description's next, coming up. Yeah. Okay. I have a question. Where do program leaders fall? In terms of? So program leaders, so it depends where we're talking about. So like Megan Baldassano, who is an administrative special education person, she would be right here under principals. Trina Sutera or Brooke Gray who are teachers would fall under the principals as well and then I guess they all fall under principals because I was thinking of Dee at West Parish. She's an assistant principal and program leader, so they fall under principals. However, special education department certainly has a say and collaborates, almost like a secondary evaluator, but they fall within the building that they work in.

Are they evaluated? Is information gathered in terms of how much time and effectiveness? And are they, you know what I mean, are they doing… Who's directing their work, and are we… Is it clear enough? How it moves our district forward. Is there something? Specific in the description of what they do. For the program leader? That articulates. Hopefully, you know, so the two that are teachers fall under the teacher rubric. Those that are administrators would fall under administrative rubric. And part of lining up this allows us to. Encourages us to be more.

thoughtful and consistent about those evaluations. So, all of this is to get to the point that we're evaluating everybody moving forward. Are we current on our evaluations? Except for teachers, yes. Not beyond that. That's part of the technical change. I just want to make sure the teachers are covered. Yeah, my question was more to make sure that thought goes into. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Okay, good. Anything else? Okay, so why an assistant director of special education? Well, adding the assistant director shifts the department to a high-capacity model optimizing efficiency and compliance, so it gives two two eyes on the department, and it's not all falling on one person, so they can spread out if there's a need at multiple schools, and they can follow that. It gives us additional layer of legal protection and compliance, which is always good.

It gives hands-on support for schools and teachers. Mike Jarvis cannot be in every school all the time and give support for teachers and get into classrooms and do all of those things. With an assistant director, his department can. Okay? And this would give, in short, it would keep the… it would… the director would be the big per… big focus, big picture person, right? He's gonna oversee the budget and the policies and the district strategy. That's not gonna change. While the assistant director is going to be able to be more boots on the ground, and be within the schools, and help implement all of that. They'll both be in the… our district's too small for anybody not to be boots on the ground, but it gives an extra person to do that. So that's the thought process of this.

So. I just, but… To Andrea's question then. So now she's getting this new title, and very often people assume. Yes, so I just want to. So I want to be careful not to negotiate on public. For this year, there is no change, and she's well aware of that. She's looking to learn and grow, and this title helps her in many ways. When the… we go into next year, and I look at, if any… there would be any adjustments to salary at that point, I would take a look at that, but again, I don't want to share that… No, no, no. …right here. It would sort of be enough. And she went out of different class. And she's an administrator. Right. She's already an administrator. Right. So she's not a member. OK. Yeah.

Okay. And… Okay. Okay. I just want to say, this is a quote from, you know, Leadership on the Line, a book that I follow, but the single most common failure of leadership is to treat adaptive changes as if they are technical problems. So I've just presented you with a lot of technical changes. I am not thinking that that's going to make the adaptive changes happen. It's setting us up for adaptive changes. But the single most failure is to just say, I'm done. I'm not. I'm all in getting started. And so from technical change to adaptive change. We have… we are building the modern technology, the infrastructure… structure… my accent's coming up. It's getting late. Next up is we need to focus on… make sure we're more student-centered and have an inclusive culture. That's going to take time, but it's not going to happen if we don't have the infrastructure in place.

We have a lot of new curriculum, we've been working on that, I've been working on that for years. Assistant Superintendent Tucker's working with the math department at the elementaries to update their curriculum, like, we have… getting those in place. But we need to shift our instructional practices so that they're more effective. To have the curriculum is one thing, to have our inclusive and instructional practices that make them effective, that's how we're going to move the district. Our facilities and learning spaces, we work on those all the time, but we also need to make sure that we have collaboration and community engagement throughout our schools. professional development. I've been working on that for many, many years. Cathy's been working on it

so hard for November in particular, but we need to make sure that we have a growth mindset and some agility across the district. And we have it, we have pockets of this, of excellence, but we need to make sure it's more widespread. So that's what we're trying to set the district up to make that next shift. Sometimes they're both. I think you mentioned that, Laura. So opening day was a little bit of both. There was a technical change because I added students to the day. There was a technical change because we recognized more teachers during that day and the impact that they had. That was meant to make an adaptive change of focusing us all on students. Why we're here. And to emphasize the important work that we do every single day.

So that was a technical change that doesn't make the opt-out for change, but it signals it and it shows us the direction we're going. And adaptive change will happen over time when effective strategies and expectations are in place. And so moving forward, some strategies that I'm putting in place, we're putting in place to move towards adaptive changes, I have… I will be starting a Superintendent's Student Advisory Council. Right now, I only have 7 students signed up, so anybody who knows high school students, please encourage them to come join me. We will meet during homeroom once a month, starting November 4th. Because I want student voice, and I want to hear how they want to have our district grow. Any grade? Right now it's just at the high school. Any grade at the high school. Any grade at the high school. Any grade at the high school, and the more diverse, the better. So, if you could encourage people to sign up. The posting went out twice on Google Classroom.

Our joint working group on student achievement, that is something that's going… that is intended to cause adaptive change, to look at… we've done a root cause analysis, and then we're gonna keep doing it, right? I have had office hours for staff. It's… some staff just come by and say, I'm so glad you're just offering it. I don't have much to say, but it just makes them feel that they have a voice, right? I have office hours for communities. This is all intended to make more of those adaptive change Visiting schools, I'll be looking at things, that will lean towards me having more growth mindset, having more inclusive practices, when I, that will, those will be my focus of my visits. My updates to the community, that is to make an adaptive change to make community members more aware of what's happening within our schools. As Principal Titus told me, he appreciated the messaging. For example, my last one was on attendance.

he can follow up on that on his, and it's not just this guy at the middle school says I have to be here. No, this is a Gloucester adaptive change that it's important to be in school every day. And so for me to signal it, and the principals to pick up on it and go with it, that will help make an adaptive change. Even something as simple as our leadership agendas, that when we meet, we always have a connecting activity, because everybody belongs. Top of mind, because if anybody's been an administrator or a leader, they always have something on their mind, and they're not going to listen to you until they have some… they've got… at least put it on the table so we can get to it. We do nuts and bolts because we always have to talk about the basic things.

But every time we meet, we will talk about instructional work and student achievement. That will be a standing agenda item at every meeting. Today's meeting, it was on evaluations, and how do we move… how do we build… help teachers build strong student learning goals. That's going to directly affect instruction and student achievement. Creating evaluations and holding evaluations for all. This morning, we worked with our district office staff to make goals for them. I don't, not sure the HR department or the business department or ever had, like, they have goals, and they are, they are linked to our plan for ongoing improvement. Umm. Another thing you're going to look at tonight is the school committee's operating protocols. That's all about how you treat each other. That's an adaptive change.

Right? So all of these things are happening to make more adaptive change across the district. I'm almost done, though. This is long, sorry. I just want to bring it back to the, plan for ongoing improvement. So, in aligning adaptive changes with our district priorities for our belonging and culture, I'll be examining adult attitudes, biases, and foster a welcoming environment. I'll do that through… My superintendent's student advisory council, community and staff office hours, and your protocols I put on there as well as a strategy. Promoting deep learning and Tier 1 instruction, we're going to, I'm going to focus on fostering collaborative risk-taking, high expectations, and teacher impact. We're doing that through the joint working group, leadership agendas, and we focus on instruction every time, and my visits to schools.

SEL and mental health, shifting our discipline culture from punitive to more restorative, norms of collaboration across the schools we're going to be using as strategies, relational trust and connection and leadership, evaluations that align to the support. I keep saying evaluations, but accountability is how we're going to move forward. Improving special education services, implementing inclusive practices like UDL. We're going to use strategies like learning walks, professional development, and our joint learning group as well. And that brings us to questions or discussion. Bradley. Can you just go back to that previous slide? Absolutely. So, this may be… Too in the weeds, or too…

This you may not be there yet, but there are certain staff members who are great, phenomenal at the belonging and culture piece and that the. You know, at the growth and the, And then there are others who are not. And are we… is there a way to use… to learn from those people? To learn from those people who… Bill and I always talk about this, the push-pull of school and attendance. The teachers who are consistently pulling in students to want to come. have something to teach to all of… to all staff, and I'm just wondering if there is a way, moving into this. Were those people with that gift? Can share it, right, and so that will go come through how we talk about what do we want Gloucester educators to look like and be like and sound like and all of the things.

We want to amplify teachers that have that big pull factor. We want to amplify teachers that have, high expectations for our students. We want to amplify our teachers that have high engagement and rigor. And we have a lot of mental officers in our schools. We need more, and we need it to be more consistent, and we need it to be more expected. And that's part of, the evaluation process of building strong goals. When we were looking at goals today, some were like, well, we could raise that bar a little more, right? And we could take a little risk, or we could focus more on the student versus… student, inquiry versus just compliance. We can make those changes. But having those conversations as district leadership saying, how would you coach this teacher to try something new?

How would you coach this teacher to go next door and look at the wonderful teaching happening right next door? How… the learning loss… And relationship building. And relationship… all of it. That's the thing that I see certain staff able to do better than others. And that's an adaptive change, and it's gonna take time. If I could just add, November 3rd is also an opportunity for staff, and we've asked certain staff as well, that those who have volunteered to showcase their areas of expertise and share them with colleagues. I would say 90%, certainly 80% of what we're offering is Gloucester run and it's a real opportunity for people to showcase their strengths. Okay. So in terms of key strategies under deep learning in Tier 1, should you put, should you list key strategies, evaluations?

Or, it just seems like, To have further reach. Yeah. These are all, important, obviously. But I, I don't… the joint working group is coming up with strategies and things, and they'll come forward with recommendations, but that's not an every-week kind of focus of elevating Tier 1 instruction. Absolutely. Thank you for that. Can I ask a question? Sure. That might sound ridiculous, but it's just… I've been thinking about it since the first time you said valuations. Coming into your position, do you feel. The evaluation process needed to improve. Because I'm getting that sense, and I hope the answer's yes, to be honest with you, because we can all improve on evaluation.

I'm just, it just seems like there's a lot of emphasis on evaluations, which is good. Brings in accountability. But it just, I'm getting that sense, and I just wanted to understand that. I believe having consistent evaluations across the district is how we're going to hold people accountable, but it's also how we're going to set the standard of what Gloucester expects of our educators. And our leaders. And that's how we say this is what Gloucester stands for. I do feel it's important. I worked on evaluations a lot in my previous role. I worked with teachers, so we worked, I worked with teachers. Now that I'm at, in this role, I, I believe it's, the evaluation system is important for everyone to go through. I go through it, and

for the first time publicly, so that's an interesting part of it, too, right? Everybody else gets to do it not publicly, but that's fine. It's still, it's important, because if we're really moving from every student learns to everybody learns. We need to have a reflective, be reflective of our own practice. And that's an adaptive change. And have an evaluation of I intended at the beginning of the school year to move my school from X to Y, At the end of the year, to have a real discussion, how did we do? Maybe you didn't get there, but why? What happened? Let's reflect on that. Well, you know, if it didn't work, how can we go better, do better next year? I, I, this is a way of adding more reflective practice to, across the board. No, I, I understand that, and I appreciate it. I'm just, I mean, haven't been on this committee for 19 years, and I think the new evaluation came in

14 years, 12 years ago. It just seems to me like this should be happening already, and I'm sensing that it hasn't, and that's where I'm sitting here, absorbing… It's been happening for teachers. And it's been happening for others in pockets, like when you said you're, sitting down, the teachers are working with each other to develop strong goals, well. why haven't they had strong goals in the past? The teachers have. The teachers have. What we did today is we had the… and we've done this in the past as principals, too, but we did… I had more… we had more than principals in the room. We had assistant principals in the room. We had the dean of students in the room. We had, Curriculum coordinator in the room, anybody that evaluates, we had in the room.

To calibrate it because my idea of a strong goal. might be different than your idea of a strong goal, might be different than Phil's idea of a strong goal, right? But if we can calibrate that and say, no, in Gloucester, a strong goal, that's how you raise the bar, the strong goal is this, and we need to have that conversation. Cathy opened the presentation with a practice of disagreeing. And it was something light. It was a sandwich soup or salad. And it was the administrators practicing, I don't agree that that is. That classifies as a suit. I think it classifies… and… but to practice, like, we don't have to agree, but we can talk it out and come to a consensus.

And you could… I could change my mind, because you have a good point, right? And to calibrate The evaluation, I think we have lacked the calibration of evaluations, and we've lacked evaluations as a whole, we've lacked the calibration of. what does good teaching look like at Beeman, and what does it look like at West Parish? And they should be pretty similar. Right. And the goals, the goal-setting process as well, so that they're all calibrated toward the district goals, ensures that each school each principal and each department is headed in the same direction under Amy's leadership for improve… district improvement, so each goal, even the business department today, had to tie their goal to the district… Okay. …the district plan for improvement, so it's building cohesion toward

No, it makes sense. I'm just surprised that this hasn't been happening all along, to be honest with you. But we're there, right? Well, and streamline bringing everything back to the district plan, the priorities. Everything comes back to belonging. Everything comes back to Tier 1 instruction and and, deep learning. Everything comes back to mental health and SEL. Everything comes back to improving special education, which I'm gonna say, eventually, that goal shouldn't be there, because our special education department should be just embedded in all the other three goals. And we're getting better, we're making strides, it's doing… it's wonderful. But… Eventually, I'm going to come, hopefully come to you and say, we've got it running pretty well and we're going to maintain it through the other goals.

Are we going to get a report? on evaluations from you. We never… the school committee never hears about evaluations. Not individual evaluations, right? I understand the confidentiality of that, but the school committee should have some sort of pulse of how evaluations are going in this district, and we have never had a report or a conversation from the administration on that. And that's so important to evaluate goals and reaching goals. So that's tricky because it is a personnel, it's operational, and it's you know… Not individual. Right, not individual. Like, where are we? But I can give an overarching something, I think, at some point, yes. I think we should. Hopefully it will reflect in the community, the surveys that you're doing as well. Yeah.

That's right. So, and I'm going to follow up on Melissa with evaluation because when I hear evaluation as a parent. It also says to me, like, then what happens when people are not meeting, are not meeting the goals, and we should know that because that is happening, and so. And again, we can't know that because of personnel issues, but, like, I just… I want to say that as we do this evaluation in this… and calibrate goals, and I think that's all incredibly important, and I'm really impressed by this presentation, you should know. But the flip side of evaluating is also saying, who shouldn't be in this building anymore? And that's not an easy conversation, and it's not a conversation we're gonna have publicly, but it's one that has to happen in our buildings. And so…

I'm just putting that out there, because there are some people who will not meet the goals. And. Who are not going to lead us to the goals of belonging and good instruction. So, I'm going to say two things for that, if that's alright. I'm actually okay if teachers don't meet their goals. If they, I would prefer a teacher to say, to set a high goal and come close. Or make progress. Then to say, I'm gonna move 10% of my students ahead. I would prefer for them to have a very high goal and reach for it, and do all the things to get them there. And if they don't get there, I would prefer to have the conversation, not necessarily with me, but with their evaluator, of what worked.

What didn't work? How can we tweak it going forward? How can we reflect on what happened? And, you know, maybe your goal was to get to 80%. Proficiency and whatever and you were only at 40. But you got to 60. Like, let's celebrate that. That's a movement. Like, I… I… I would not punish it… not punish, I would not… hold a teacher… you know, negative, because they didn't reach the exact goal. I want them to set high goals, and I want them to strive for it. However, if there are teachers that aren't doing well. and are not being coached or supported or sent to training or held accountable, that's where our evaluators have to be also valued at. Right?

And I'm not only talking about teachers. I understand. Yes, that's why I'm saying, everyone needs to be done right. I just want to say one thing, since it's directly. You also, in those conversations, can talk about what are the barriers, right? Because that's information you need. And, and it could be… it could be operational, it could be, my curriculum isn't Just isn't, you know, isn't working for me. I need coaching on this part or it could be you just cut 17 positions and one of them really helped me. do a better job. It could be to be all those things. Yes, it could be, and our class sizes are larger this year than they were last year. Exactly. And the support that I'm having last year is no longer there. And I'm not trying to give excuses, I'm just saying it's information, it's conversation that

Both people can reflect on. And as Dr. Tucker said today in the training, the most valuable part is the conversation about it, right? Like, the reflection between the evaluator and the teacher. Like, what worked, what didn't work, what were the barriers? Well, how can we eliminate those barriers in the future? That's where we're going to learn and grow. Go ahead. I just want to say something from, as a teacher who's regularly evaluated, I feel like maybe I'm coming from a little bit of a defensive, posture right now, a little bit defensive. I don't… evaluation right now, the tone around the conversation feels like it's very negative. Evaluation is an opportunity for a conversation about what you're doing really well, and an opportunity… or not, or you're, like, you have… you get to show your growth mindset. I'm doing this, I'm hitting my head against the wall, it's not working. Can you give me some feedback? Because I'm not seeing it. And those conversations are really great.

It's awful if it feels punitive or if it feels antagonistic. So this leads into my next question. I feel like evaluation is really the most meaningful if someone is in your classroom seeing you do what you do on a fairly regular basis. As opposed to just once or twice a year, right? Because once or twice a year, I can put on one heck of a dog and pony show. So my question is, how frequently are people that are doing the evaluations in the classroom, or is there an expectation around X percentage of your day, with some flexibility, give or take, depending on what the day brings, should an administrator or an evaluator be in the classroom.

And to give a little bit of a personal perspective, last year we had a new administrator in my building who was in the classrooms constantly. And mostly focused on math and science, and those teachers grew to resent it because they felt like they were being scrutinized. But then it sort of was revealed at the end of the year that mainly her presence in the classroom was because she just wanted to know what they did, and that information wasn't communicated, and so she was trying to learn, and they felt attacked. So I'm curious… are people in the classrooms regularly, so that if a parent calls and says, I'm having a concern, or I love this teacher, that administrator is saying. I know exactly what you're talking about because I've been in that classroom so many times, so I'm just curious what, what is the expectation about evaluators being in

So that's part of what we're collaborating, calibrating. Okay. It's different in different places, for many reasons. If you go to Beeman, there's one evaluator for the entire school. That's a really heavy caseload of evaluations, right? Yeah. If you go to Miller High, there's multiple evaluators, and they can have a smaller group, right? So, we're looking at that as well, to see if there's a way we can make that. So we're not there yet to be able to say it's consistent. I do very much appreciate. the point you made, none of this is meant to be punitive, it's meant to be that reflective learning growth. And I'll go back to what I said at the beginning of the year, is everybody learns. We're all learning, too. And I think that's how I'm meaning it to be, and I'm hoping that's the way it's going to be.

If I could just add, at a leadership team meeting previous, not today's, the previous one, Amy led an exercise with the principals around helping them think about where they can, what they can shift to spend more time in Standard 1 of the Admin Evaluation Rubric, which is all around instruction and getting into classrooms. And we talked a lot about, like, how can we support them? What are their obstacles? Preventing them from getting into classrooms more and really just talking collectively about how we can help support them because they want to be but there are. you know, in any given day, there are challenges and obstacles. We just, we had an open dialogue. That was really great. I have one follow-up, if that's okay. Is there an opportunity for, like, I love going into my colleague's classroom, I like seeing an ELA class, I like seeing a math class. I don't teach those subjects, but good teaching is good teaching, and you can see it.

And they like coming into mine, so is there, are there opportunities, those are not formal evaluations, but they are opportunities for someone else to look and see and comment. Yeah. And, and… So we have learning walks at the elementary and middle school currently. We're going to be expanding it to the high school. And they're going in, it's not evaluative. They're going in to see their colleagues teach in different subjects and looking at in the past. the focus might be different this year, but in the past, elementary focused on engagement and rigor, and engagement can… it doesn't matter what the subject is, you can tell if a student's engaged, right? So there's that. Our mentoring program requires observations, right? So that's part of it as well.

Could there be more? Of course. Coverage is always an issue. You know that as an educator. But yeah, that's something that we do do. And could we expand it? Sure. Okay. Sorry, hmm. There's a quote on the reel up there, something about systems. I'm not fast enough to read it and write it down. It's an interesting quote on the value of systems. I just want to say a couple things. One is that it's difficult, you know, kind of rolling this out tonight. It's difficult. It's a work in progress. Absolutely. You know, it's not to hold you. to something that is still kind of fluid, doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. I mean, there are some parts of it that are fairly concrete, and that would need to be concrete, but…

But… overall, it's a work in progress. I'm good at taking the 10,000-foot view and saying, yeah, it looks like it's going in the right direction. We'll probably be okay with this. The other thing that I think is important to recognize is The mayor, Cathy and I read an article this morning on the Globe, and the mayor sent it to everybody. It's on two school systems that are kind of their scores are going in different directions. And it had very little to do with the curriculum. It had to do with the exact same things that you talked about, which are high-quality staff, developing staff culture. High expectations, high standards, high quality wine, all things that the article kind of pulled out and

That you've kind of highlighted tonight of, hey, this is the direction we're going in. I think just sitting here tonight is. Just about the member of the school committee, it's easy for me to say. That's the right track. My only concern after listening to everything is… The Improved Student Learning Team With this, sometimes schools get repetitive, or they do the same thing, just different groups do it, and it's ridiculous, but, Do you think that there's too much of this kind of adaptive change going on. Does that cover the group, I guess is what I'm asking? Like, is there a need for the group? I think right now the group is helping with the adaptive change. It's helping, Okay.

I'm not coming in and saying this is what we have to do and you're on the group. I don't think I said that at all during the whole times we've met. The group has decided the direction we need to go in and it needs to be, it's important that we're not making these changes because Amy came in and said we need to do it. Right. We need to make these changes because, as we said, the adaptive changes takes a group, a collective, and that is one of the groups and collectives that are saying we need to focus in this area. And I prefer that it's not my voice, just I don't know all the answers. I just, I need to lead the groups to identify where we should go. So I think it's critical that we keep it. I do too, and I think it augments what you're trying to do here very well.

Once again, I leave tonight's meeting knowing this. Yeah, we're probably going, it sounds like we're going in the right direction. And that's thanks to your work, so appreciate it. Mayor. So I just wanted to follow up on that comment, but also Melissa's comment about the next step. I mean, this is so encouraging that we have this, outlook, because I think that's the path to success. For us, the next step is how do we… how do you inform us as to the achievement of goals, and it doesn't have to be going through teacher evaluations, it can be something else, it can be whatever you want. It would be really, really super to have, you know, a little Tutorials for us on how the goals are going and what things you see that are important that are succeeding and ones that may be not succeeding and that's that would be.

Fantastic, yeah, and overall as a district our goals remain that everybody belongs, every day matters, everybody belongs, and everybody learns, right, and if you look at our core priorities, they actually line up. Belonging, it goes right along with attendance and everybody learns, goes along with good instruction. And belonging is the other one. So they all do line up and I'll be reporting on that. all the time. But, yes, I definitely can give more updates. This is just the beginning of, like I said, my Listen and Learn's not over yet, but these are… I also, once at one point, you said, when are we going to see some changes? So, here are some changes.

They're happening every year, yeah, they're happening, and I want to keep you updated on the changes along the way. And probably around January, I'll give a larger report of, like, where I think we might, if we want to change goals, that's when that would come out. And yeah, so absolutely I'll keep you. I'll just make one other quick comment because it it's not directly related, but it really is related. We had harassment training down at City Hall this week for all the managers. In other words, how do you be a manager and don't harass your employees, or how do you keep one employee from harassing another in the workplace? One of the interesting comments that came out was the relationship between

the evaluator and the evaluatee, you know, a supervisor and somebody who's being supervised, and I think, you know, you were mentioning, Andrea, about, you know, feeling judged or, negative, and what came out of that conversation was, was quite Enlightening along those lines, the relationship between an evaluator and a, someone who's getting evaluated should be. coaching and encouraging, and the person who's getting evaluated shouldn't feel like, you're being judged. That's what we're doing, we're judging you. No, what we're doing is coaching, and a really good leader Hears that and also learns from the process of coaching the person they're coaching because. even the evaluator has things to learn. Absolutely. And so, you know, that was a, that's the, we were, we were, you know, from an HR standpoint, we were being coached not to harass our, our supervisors. Don't, don't be mean! But it was really, but it, the next step was use that whole

you know, interpersonal relationship as a coaching and teaching thing, then these goals start to become something that people can embrace, because then they can evaluate themselves as to their going along. So, this is a really good conversation. Thank you for raising it like that. Okay. There I am. Okay. So. With… I would… objection. I would like to take up that job description, since we're following… The presentation that it just came into, so… I think that probably makes better flow. Okay.

So this is the personnel subcommittee meeting of October 8th, 2026. Yep. And we met myself and Cathy and Heather to talk about, Amy presented to us a new job description for what is now titled the Assistant Director of Special Education. I have the value, and I don't know if everybody else has it, but I have the old… Pre-K through 5 Special Education Program Coordinator in front of me, so… I didn't make copies of that for everybody, but I have one with you if you want to see it. Can I get it? So you can kind of see the difference between the two. Angela went to the library.

And the one thing that I want to offer, because Melissa prompted it, and I think it's important, is… The qualifications and requirements of the original compared to what it is now, and… And the same questions that were asked tonight were asked during the meeting. You know, is there a change in Is there a salary change? Is there, you know, because… budget constraints. That was a main, that was one of our main concerns. And is she qualified, you know, is the person qualified? Be as a physician, so… Outside of that, I mean, maybe, if you would. Superintendent, maybe talk about the, I think you've already done it, but maybe just kind of highlight the.

Yes. A couple of the key points on… Again, kind of reemphasize why we want to make this change and what the value that you see in it. Right. The other thing I just want to say about it is. I mentioned this morning we were meeting with the district office to create goals. We broke into groups, the HR department, the business department, and the special ed department was now Dr. Jarvis, Rachel Clemenzi, and Becky Lee. No problem. Not a problem. Yeah, well, sorry. And Becky made a comment, she goes, now we're really a team. Like, they, it felt like not just two people trying to move the district. It felt, they, they, she had, because Rachel kind of was on the side with, at a district court, and there was a real feeling of, now we're a department, we're a team.

And I think that's important. So back to this, the position would shift her responsibility to be — it would broaden it so that she could have a higher capacity across the district, not just in the original job description, pre-K to 5. And not just out of district. She would help with compliance and legal oversight. Instructional leadership and supervision. We want to improve our instructional practices and more experts. helping push that initiative, or drive that initiative, is helpful. She'll help with programs. I really think somebody that is so knowledgeable about our out-of-district programs and the needs of our students out-of-district to have them have a full knowledge and active participate, to have her part of our in-district programs, because that's where students are going to go between. Very rarely do students go from general ed to out-of-district. So.

the in-district programs and the out-of-district programs need to be linked in a way that there's a through-line, that we can handle… we can appropriately educate… I can't… that was the wrong word… appropriately educate a child here in-district, and when we cannot. which program they, out of district, would go to. It would streamline that whole process. So that would be an added benefit. Umm. Fiscal and grant administration, she would assist with. Dr. Jarvis, of course, would be in charge of all of that still. Community and family engagement, she can interact more with CPAC if needed, or other opportunities. And the high impact, kind of like those difficult meetings,

Dr. Jarvis can't be the only one that can help schools with those difficult needs. She's able to go in and do those things. So this would give us a stronger… more capacity in the special education realm, which, as we said, is priority four. We need to improve that. We've done a ton of work, over recent years building programs Now let's make sure they're running, and as efficiently as possible. And one of the questions that came up during our meeting was, and I think it was brought up again tonight by Eagleville. Maybe Melissa, does she, is this lessening the responsibility she currently has and She's really more than the pre-K special ed program coordinator. She's the out-of-district coordinator. Right, and she hasn't been acting as that, really, in the last year or two. Exactly. Our out-of-districts were very high, as you all have heard. We were over 70 several years ago, and that's very high for our district.

And. 50, I would like it to be lower, but it feels as a comfortable position right now for Gloucester. Whether we can build more programs and get our programs stronger and bring more kids back, that would be wonderful, but this is a time where she can work on those programs to make them stronger, right? We have the programs, we have the staffing, because you've done A nice job of committing to that, but now let's make sure the instruction and all of those things in those programs are adequate, are appropriate. and do it moving the needle. Sorry. And just to make sure that we don't have any blind spots in this new position, I think it's important to note that coordinate… part of her responsibilities under Program and Operations Management, coordinate out-of-district placements, tuition agreements, and transportation, which is basically a lot of what she's doing now. Yeah, that she's doing that now. Yeah, exactly, so… She's doing all of that now. Yeah, exactly. I mean, with Dr. Jarvis's oversight.

So you recommended this to be brought to the full committee? We did, yeah. So I make a motion that we approve the new Assistant Director of Special Education position as presented tonight. Second. I had a couple questions for us. I wanted to ask questions before we got to the motion. Off the top of your head, how many students would you say are touched by special education? We're about 27% of our student body, I think. I was gonna say 20. I was gonna say 28. 28, it might be 28. Which is higher than the state. Yeah. Right. And our population is 2, 2,800.

So I just need to do the math to get me there. Hold on. Okay. So we have a lot of kids. And we've been depending on Mike Jowders to do the bulk of the responsibility. And when he came here, we… at least I know, I've had a lot of expectations from him. I've had many conversations with him, and him wanting to develop a team, and create the teamwork to address special education, because we've never really had that in the district. It's always been one One director and one administrative. Person to help him or her, with the work so there's no doubt in my mind that.

There needs to be more assistance and more eyes on special education, especially as students become more high needs. And it's a growing. growing, I don't want to say issue, but it's growing. I don't see us going backwards. Because we're getting more specialized in education, we're identifying, More behaviors, and I just think that… the trajectory is not going backwards, it's going to keep going forward, so I truly support more assistance with special education, because it's going to impact the district as a whole. So, I just wanted to find… ask more about the time. So, the work year, you have 12 months, 205 days. Where the other work year, and the previous job description was 32.5 hours, is there a difference?

I was trying to figure that out. Her current contract is what is in here. So that job description is several years old. Her current contract, which uses that title, has these days on it. Okay, so she's working, she's currently working… So I'm not changing her year. So not adding time. Nope. Not working the same amount of days. And she's able to, evaluate? Yes. I think we covered that. And what would you say is the biggest increase in responsibilities going from I can't even look at the job description, because we know she's not working that. It's very different. What she was doing to what… The expectations are now. I think she's going to have a broader impact on the district because she'll be pre-K through 12. So it's the full grade. Actually, beyond 12, the transition is. And she'll be — yeah.

She'll be working with all schools and, being able to follow students that go through programs throughout their, you know, when you go to, if you're in a program at East Veterans and go to O'Malley, to make sure that the program at East Veterans is the appropriate feeder program for the one at O'Malley, so that the students should be able to help. with Dr. Jarvis and all of them. And are there any responsibilities that she's currently doing that she won't be able to fulfill by taking on additional responsibilities? In other words, are we going to lack in another area? I do not believe so. She'll still be overseeing the… on the district, transportation, and all of that, yeah. So we are only increasing her responsibilities, not relieving any responsibilities from the board? Yep. Are we relieving any responsibilities from Dr. Jarvis?

the two of them will divide the work up, the work in a way that's manageable, is what I can say. They're becoming a department where they can work together. Whether he, he oversees the department, so if he has her lean more in for programs versus inclusive, inclusive practices or not, that's a dis… they're both on this, this job description, so it won't limit her. Okay. I don't think she's not going to do all of that, right, so Dr. Jarvis will have to make the managerial decision on is he going to have her spend her time. building up programs, or is he going to have her spend her time working, on inclusive strategies, or is it going to go back and forth as they tag-team? It's… he's going to run the department, right? Okay, that's perfect. And I'm just curious, do you know what her salary is now?

Not that I know. I don't want to say it on and I'll say it publicly. Yeah. It's public information. Oh, all right. Here it is. I know. I know. Is it? I don't know the exact number, to be honest. Okay. But… Yeah. And it's not, there'll be no, she's under the understanding that there's no change. She's under contract right now. Right, but that's just… I mean, we're doing budget next month, right? So… I would imagine I would recommend her for a higher raise than The basic rate, because of this. But I don't want to negotiate. No, no, no, no, and I'm not trying to go there, and believe me, I support this position. I'm not trying to do anything other than…

A giant event. It's my understanding she's kind of already evolved out of this other position into this position. She's actually already done some of, like she's already overseeing the school psychologist. It's an opportunity for growth for her. It is an opportunity for growth for her, thank you. No, I understand that, I just wanted… hear it now. So that I know when it comes. I've heard it already, that's all. Okay, thank you for answering that. And she has presented to the school committee and been very impressive. Yeah, I have no doubt that this is a much needed job description in that district. All right. I have a couple comments.

I want to. You know, back to, are we taking anything away from her? I would think in the past couple of years, different processes have been improved, so therefore they're more efficient. Yes. And, you know, relationships and everything have probably become Not what they were when she took them on, that they have improved. So I'll say that. So, and we also have added special education. I can't remember what we call them, at the individual schools, right? Like, we have an assistant principal at West Parish who also is involved. So instead of a program leader at West Parish, it's an assistant principal who is also the program leader.

Right. So, that's my point, is we have added capacity also within the department Through some of those changes that have been organizationally driven so that there was more. At O'Malley, we had a program leader that was now an administrator position. And it's worked out phenomenally. She's doing the mission. Right. Yeah, so, I mean, as the department I need to remember, it's not just… It's not just three districts. It's not just the main office, it's the people that are within our schools. also doing important work. The district office is there to support the schools. We've made it very clear at the district office meetings that our purpose is not just to run a district office. Our purpose is to support schools and student learning.

So this is more support for the schools. She was an administrator before, correct? So we are not adding an administrator position. Not adding a position, I'm just changing the position. No, but she was an administrator before, and she's remaining it. So it's not like we are changing the position to an administrator. She's not coming out of the GTA. I just wanted to comment that when we have, over the months that I've been on the school committee, when we have discussed special ed and And what, you know, how do we manage it and make it better and Dr. Jarvis. you know, it's no… we have… we do not have a lack of understanding about what we have to do. It's… but it's… it's overwhelming in terms of the volume of it. This seems to me to be something that goes directly to helping with that

You know, grasping what we need to do, I think we. You know, the talented people we have know what to do, it's just Do they have the time to do it and do they have the resources and I think this would be a real positive addition to that. That's the intent. Okay, any more questions? Okay, vote. I'm sorry. All in favor? Aye. Okay, Next is program subcommittee meeting of September 30, 2026. So Heather and Andrea and I met to go over our Foster School Committee operating protocols. And we were all very happy to see that we were in better shape than we thought.

So… This, you know, what you have here is what we came up with. The only place that we're still… We're just wordsmithing. Is this top line, which is in pink. That Gloucester Public School students will demonstrate growth in integrity, foundational knowledge. and build the skills necessary for problem-solving, communication, and collaboration to become productive citizens. So that sentence isn't so good. But is that new language? That is new language. I don't like it. Yeah, well, this… All right. Well, the previous… Do you like the color? Well, let me just say, what we were changing it from was something that said Gloucester High School graduates, and we…

Don't, I mean, we as a pro, this is the old one that we've been also working on. That's a working copy, but, that was. that was in between. Right. The old… I don't like that either. I think we should take it all out. Well… Go ahead, sorry. All I'm saying is that that's not the original language. That's not the original, right. It's the progression of the things they've been trying to do. We… well, what the goal of that, who we represent, is to say. what we hope to see in the students who come through our system. So that's… I think, guys, if you agree, that's sort of our goal, is to say, who… who do we want? What do we want to be achieving through our schools, in some very broad way? Okay, let me… let me put that aside.

Then we have, as you see, how we govern, how we treat each other. There's some formatting issues here. how we communicate, How we will improve our limits of power. So that's what we felt were the important sort of issues to. Touch, our previous operating protocols did not have, Especially the ideas of how we treat each other, and… So we wanted to improve that and how we will hold ourselves accountable. We also were using this document You know, to express in the how we govern piece, that we are, you know, we are, as others have said, we are, I think they say this when the MASC comes in, we are conducting our business in public, but it is not a public meeting.

So in how we govern, we tried to give some highlights of how this works. And then the rest is how we, you know. How we treat each other, how we communicate, how we will improve, and our limits of power. I have a question. Isn't this our, isn't this our job killer? Yeah, but I think… I don't see any of these things. We had added all of these. Oh, maybe Kelly didn't see it. I don't see what we're looking at here. Oh, maybe Kelly didn't see it. There's an extensive amount of information here that's not on the table right now. Okay, I'm looking. Because I was just looking for presuming positive intentions, and we don't have it, so… Okay, so we may have to, table this. Table this, because this is not our entire document, is true. Yeah. Okay, and, I know you guys are super bummed out that we have to table this. Can I ask also that we have the original, and then a red line?

Sure, the original… Going from the original to the… to what you're proposing. Yes, okay, we can do that. And can we talk about the first paragraph before you go back and do more work on it? Sure. So I. I'm struggling with this language and then reading what the language was there because this seems like a goal. It doesn't seem who we represent. I'm trying to understand what you said, Laura, when you said… what their expectations are, but what does that have to do with operating protocols? We're talking about how we govern ourselves and work amongst ourselves. Okay. So I understand that you want a nice statement in there to say something great about students, but

What you're saying sounds like a goal, and that has nothing to do with how we operate, and this is not a school committee goal document. That would be something separate. I'm just, this is the original, I just want to read what the original said, so you can't, I know it's hard to read, but. who we represent was first, and it said the primary responsibility of the Gloucester School Committee is to meet the educational needs of all children enrolled in the Gloucester Public Schools. Right, and we do that through budget, we do that through contract, and we do that through hiring the superintendent, so that makes sense. This language about talking about students will demonstrate growth and integrity, foundational growth, and build the skills necessary.

Okay, so what if someone says they're not doing that, and we have them in our protocols? Okay, but those are who we represent. These are the… that's the portrait of the student that we represent. I think that would be the argument. But is that something that should be in operating protocols? I'm not saying that's not a good… Statement to have somewhere, but we're talking about how we operate as a group and our expectations. to the community. Not about the roles of the students. That to me is a school committee goal document. Okay. That's just my… Yeah, no, I hear that. It throws me off from even reading the rest of the document, because I'm like, what are we doing with our operating protocols, which are supposed to be norms and behaviors?

I'm just trying to figure out why this happened. But I understand the need for having school committee goals, but just not in our operating protocol. Sure. I mean, I just shared the Google Doc with Kelly. Would you like me to bring this to the next meeting, and I'll bring the red line for you? So they can see the changes. Yes. And we'll keep that sentence in pink, and you can decide to work with it, keep it in, or take it out. Oh, and I wanted to say one other thing about that sentence before we… one of the things… As I recall now that I'm looking at it, is we didn't… Is that our primary responsibility is to meet the educational needs, but it's also We also said and support the emotional well-being. That was the initial intention was to say and write that it's beyond the emotion, that it's beyond the educational needs.

There's also to support the emotional well-being. So this is… Where you ended up. No, not at all. There's some bullet points missing, and I don't know why. I understand that statement being adjusted. No, well, that's… Oh, I don't know where that… It's not on this version. No, that's what I'm saying. Okay, so there's some… mess up here. Well, we have a meeting the 21st, and then our next school committee meeting is the 28th, so I think maybe we should just… Well, the meeting on the 21st was a placeholder. We don't have to have it as long as that. I'll bring this one back on the 21st. We're not making a change to what we're doing. We're just trying to modernize the document. So it's not a rush to have it. No, 100%. 100%. It's an adaptive change. We can take it. Exactly. All the time we need it. Yeah, I wasn't sure whether it was going to happen. Any technical changes you need to make? No, I don't. But I don't…

Maybe a shift in our mindset. Let me just ask if we should bring this back with the completed, with the document that we do have to the committee. I want to see both. I want to see what the change is. No, okay, but I'm saying before we meet again. Oh. Before, does, does, does programs need to meet again on this, or do we just come back and discuss it? I think we had a good, we had it in a good space. I don't know why this… We just don't have the document that we discussed. Right, so we'll bring it back on the 28th, with your permission. Yes, of course. With your permission, and we'll… have it highlighted. That's fine. And what I would like to do, I will check that document again. I did check it, but… I see it here. You see it here. I don't know why it doesn't look… I see it on my computer. Okay. I don't know why it doesn't look like that. Alright, because I did check it before I shared it.

But I will make sure that it reflects what I believe we had, and then we can discuss it then. Okay, does that make sense to everyone? And I don't think we need to meet on that before we do that. Okay, good. All right. Next subcommittee report is Building and Finance Subcommittee of October 7th. Chairperson, Santa Cruz. Okay, so we met on October 7th. It was Cathy, Bill, and I. The first topic was student activity accounts, and we do have a vote for that tonight. The committee approved recommending the establishment of a new student activity account for the Gloucester High School Drama Theater Club. We discussed reviewing, inactive accounts that are currently on the books with, with money in the accounts, particularly

Those with no financial activity for the past 24 months. And also potentially consolidate consolidating balances in accordance with the statute guidance that Cody presented to us. There are some unclaimed class funds. Some… one has a substantial balance in it. The district is gonna explore clearer procedures and timelines for graduating classes to transfer funds into their own accounts, or donate them to properly distribute them, as opposed to them sitting on the books like they are now. And the vote was to recommend to the full committee, to establish a new student activity account for the Gloucester High School Theater Drama Club pursuant to Mass General Law Chapter 71, Section 47, and NYSOMOLF.

Second. Okay, move to second. Does anybody have questions, comments? I have a question. They don't have this, they don't have an account already? The Gloucester High School Theater? No. They do not have a student activity account that is governed under business practices, the way that it should be. Have they been receiving money? Right, because they've been having that boosters, they've been selling water, they've been… But boosters are separate from ticket sales? Right. Okay, so this is ticket sales, expenses that, would go through the department and things like is it's right because if you have so like a football ticket that money goes through the athletics department So the ticket sales for Rome should have been going through the system and it's going through the boosters. So we're just righting the ship. Got it.

Technical technical change systems. Can I ask a small question about that? Now, if I am running a program, if I'm the advisor of a program, and there's money in the account, and I need to purchase something, how long does it take for me to push that purchase through? Because I think sometimes a booster club is ready and willing and able to pay the money sitting there, so that would be one concern that I… that I typically have, like, about… Because a lot of times, like, in my own school, like, sometimes I'm fronting the money and waiting for reimbursement. I don't believe this, this is not eliminating the boosters. Okay. This is… the money that's the boosters will be there, the money that would be in ticket sales and other things that need to be appropriately accounted for by…

common laws or whatever, regulations, we're, we're creating that. Great. But, because, because by law, we have to. Yes. And we haven't. Yes. And we need to. This really isn't an option. Yeah. I thought, I thought there was an account already, but, yeah, okay. We, we have that account for athletics, we have that account for other things. We didn't have it for that. There's different regulations for how a booster's Well, a booster's account works versus… a student activity account, and we're audited on student activity accounts. We don't have control over boosted accounts, which has been a problem in the past. I don't… I haven't heard anything in the past 5 years, like, that it's much of an issue now. But by law, we have to have this account if there's gonna be

the collection of money in the way that they're doing. Okay. So, we just want to be legal. Yeah, good idea. Nice idea. All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay, then we talked about special education funding, like we do at every meeting, and we talked about the circuit breaker reimbursement. The district is expecting $4.1 million in the fiscal 2027 circuit breaker. Don't get excited, that's not a lot of money, even though it sounds like a lot of money. With the state reimbursement at 75% for eligible tuition services and transportation costs. Approximately $3 million is projected for tuition, and just over $800,000 for transportation, leaving… I'm gonna say this word only…

$348,382 to carry over to fiscal year 2028. And I say that because this is the lowest amount we have ever carried over. We used more circuit breaker money this year, we used more circuit money last year, we used to carry over $1.1 million and had that buffer, we are down to $348,382. But it… be positive, it's money that we're carrying over. This is a substantial reduction from previous carryover balances, reflecting the district's need to use reimbursement funds to cover current expenses amid budget constraints. Which is why we ask about salaries and things like that, because every dollar counts.

Can I add also, I think Cody said two or three years ago we had a carryover in Circuit Breaker of 2.2 million dollars. So we have been… feeding into the last three years of them that have been bad. FY25 was 2.141. FY26 was 1.5 for circuit breaker. Fy27 was one point. What we're using We're using more of it this year. And so next year, we're projecting only 348,000. We discussed advocating for increased state funding, reviewing Medicaid reimbursements. It's something we used to do in this district years ago. It's my understanding we're not doing that currently. Where the district can

charge Medicaid for certain student services. There was a time that we were doing that and the money was went to the city, I don't know the exact process, but it showed up on the city side, and evidently that, process of getting those reimbursements hasn't been happening over the past couple years. It's been happening for the administrative costs, not for the Daily service. So the daily services. And there is, time and… work to be done to get those reimbursements, and that might be part of the issue. But we just discussed that, maybe, trying to pursue that going forward. It could be a potential. A little bit of money extra for the district.

Out-of-district placements and transportation costs. The district has increased its in-district programming capacity and returned eight students from out-of-district placements over the past two years. That's awesome. Despite these efforts, costs continue to rise to high tuition rates. More intensive student needs and residential placements. The North Shore Education Consortium costs were reported to have increased by approximately 11% this year. That's a high number. 53 students received transportation through the regional out of district transportation contract. officials hope improved coordination will produce greater savings this year. So, as you… as a reminder, we joined a little collaborative where we're sharing transportation with other districts.

The first year, we didn't see any savings. We're hoping that this year, now that they're more organized and the program is, flowing more fluidly, that we hope to see some savings in that agreement that we entered into. He also did some budget transfers, which you already approved in your consent agenda. $20,000 shifted. From equipment to food and supply expenses to meet district-wide food service needs, $75,000 shifted from transportation lease funds to contracted services to support increased speech therapy needs. In the business office, $16,000 shifted from office supplies to contracted services to cover the YMCA new supervisor contract.

We also discussed the importance of communicating financial realities to district managers early in the budget cycle, which will be starting About 2 weeks. And we had a small conversation about bus safety. and future meetings, I had asked the administration to look into, pursuant to a conversation we had last year, those arms that come down on the opposite side of the bus, knowing that Not all our drivers in Gloucester acknowledge the red lights. Just to get a cost estimate, I don't expect us to make any big purchases, but if it's something that we can maybe slowly add to our buses, it might be something to consider for the safety of our students.

And then we also talked about, furthered our conversation about potential future meetings at the, East Veterans School. The district is going to review, the location, room configuration, and audio. And tonight we brought up a video also, and we have to look into the issue of whether we need a, Custodian in the building because we know they're here. Yeah, and then it's going to be important to, if we do move our meetings there, we would have to just really communicate to the community. They have meetings. They have meetings. Yeah, I just need to check how late they're there. How late they're there, yeah. So it might be meetings over at 9 o'clock.

Yeah. Look at that. I wasn't that big. You can talk to my Gail about that. So I don't believe we had another vote. For some reason, I'm thinking there was another vote, but I think it was just… There were two. One was… Stephanie, do you have that? That the Building and Finance Committee vote to recommend that the full school committee approve the student activities, their objectives and balances as presented. Did they do that one already? Those two votes. And the other one is the creation of the, I have the wording. Okay. Okay. To approve the student activities, their objectives and balances as presented pursuant to National Law 7147. Something like that, maybe? You're gonna move that? I'll move that. I'm just trying to find out the difference. They're in my minutes, if you look under… in the packet.

So we're establishing a new activity account, and then we're approving… oh, okay, so… Cody and the business office are… office are, Establishing objectives for the balances so that they can have, like, a policy type thing of these accounts. So that when, accounts go inactive for a while, they have protocols to fall back on. So they didn't bring those forward to us specifically, but they said they were going to do them, and we just authorized them. to make those protocols and put them in place. So that is the second motion. Look at the minutes. No, no, no. The motion was to approve the list of balances he presented. The Building and Finance Committee vote to recommend that the full school committee approve the student activities, their objectives, and balances as presented pursuant to Mass General Law 7140. Which is exactly what I said.

Second. Yeah. So it's not that, it's… it's… Letting them establish the protocols of how the activity is. It's agreeing to the protocols. Yeah. Right. Agreeing to the objectives, not the, yeah. Yeah, but didn't you say we had to vote on the balances? Yes. That's part of it. Like, you gave us the list, and so that's part of the rationale of the wording, is so we know what they are at a certain point in time, and the school committee votes on that, probably annually. Yes. But that's part of the procedures that we're allowing them to develop. I don't think the motion was to allow them to develop. I think the motion was to for each. for each account, the name and the objective, meaning GHS Arts, the objective is High School Arts, and the balance, so vote on that. And our next steps, I remember, is that we were going to take a look at the inactive accounts. Right.

For a 24-month total. And decide what to do with it. And then come up… the procedure would be what we do for that. But right now, it was to approve the accounts as is, knowing that there are a couple accounts there that have been dormant. Yes. For a while. He showed us a chart. Yes. And our next step is to… look at the dormant ones, and we'll come back to you with a vote to what to do with those ones. The motion was to approve the student activities, their objectives and balances, which were listed, so you said the type of account, what their objective was, and what the balance was, as presented. So you're voting that that was in place. And we reviewed each one, and that's what the balances were.

And we'll come back with the dormant ones and the procedure for that. at the next… Okay. Any questions? All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay, great. Okay. Yeah, that's it. Okay. That was the action. I just want to make one more comment on the meeting, Melissa, that, and either you can correct me if I'm wrong, I think we asked you to make sure that You know, you take it to your manager's meeting with the city that there's an understanding about the circuit breaker or not. And the fact that it's going to be an issue. Cody and I met with Kelly Dolan and Kenny last week. We presented several slides from the BNF.

To them, and talked about Circuit Breaker, so… Yes, we went forward, and we've already done that. We'll consider that conversation. And just to add to that, it's really important, because over the years, it's been known, and it's been… expected that we did have a bit of a buffer for if something really went wrong and more students moved into the district that required assistance in special education. We had more of a buffer. That is no longer there. It's very small, but 300,000 in circuit breaker, that's two kids moving in. It could be one residential student. Or one residential student, exactly. So the buffer that… That many have relied on when we talk about our budget and the final decisions on the budget.

Extremely small and it may be non-existent by the time we finish the school year out. And I know it's important to the mayor that, and he has expressed it, that there be more transparency with regards to our budget, the city budget. That's going to be a major. Stumbling block. Just, I'm just… That's why we're starting early. Yeah. Right, so we can get all that in the light of day. Yep. Yes. Good. Is there new business? Oh, any new business anybody want to bring up? I just have one request. Is there a way that we can get all of the important dates added to the agenda? We had them last year, so, like, graduation, prom, all of those things. I don't see them anymore,

And I usually get put on once a year to have that. I would love a year to have that. Folks are in one place. If you want to go to bed. And I, I just wanted to add 1 thing, I. do a decent amount of socializing in town, and I have spoken to a number of teachers in the district, and the comment that they made They've repeatedly made is that they are feeling inspired, so I think that's important to know that, you know, that's a inspired is a big word, so. The first day of school was a big hit. They felt welcome back. And some of the teachers using that word have been critical in the past. So to hear that sort of mindset shift is really important.

I hope it continues to grow. I hope it continues to grow, too. That's our intent. Chef Austin, first opening day. That's gonna be a tough one. Motion to adjourn. Second. Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you everybody that joined our meeting. Oops. Good night. Good night.