Minutes – September 27, 2018

BERKSHIRE HILLS REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Great Barrington          Stockbridge             West Stockbridge

SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Regular Meeting

Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School – Library

September 27, 2018 – 7:00 p.m.

Present:

School Committee:      S. Bannon, A. Hutchinson,  J. St. Peter, B. Fields, K. Piasecki, D. Singer, D. Weston, R. Dohoney

Administration:                      P. Dillon, S. Harrison

Staff/Public:                           B. Doren, T. Lee, D. Wine, K. Farina

Absent:                                   A. Potter, S. Stephen

List of Documents Distributed:

September 6, 2018 School Committee Meeting Minutes

RECORDER NOTE:  Meeting attended by recorder and minutes transcribed during the meeting and after the fact from live recording provided by CTSB.  Length of meeting:    hr, 58 minutes.

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Steve Bannon called the meeting to order immediately at 7pm.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

The listing of agenda items are those reasonably anticipated by the chair, which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed, and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. This meeting is being recorded by CTSB, Committee Recorder, members of the public with prior Chair permission and will be broadcast at a later date. Minutes will be transcribed and made public, as well as added to our website, www.bhrsd.org once approved.

MINUTES:

September 6, 2018 School Committee Meeting Minutes

MOTION TO APPROVE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES OF MEETING OF SEPTEMBER 6, 2018 – J. St. PETER                 SECONDED:  B. FIELDS           ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS 

TREASURER’S REPORT:

SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT:

• Good News (See Below) – We are back on track in terms of sharing written good news in advance. We are not going to go into much specific detail.  Tim mentioned the stuff at Muddy Brook and that is a real testament to the faculty and Mary and Nan’s work there so I am appreciative of that.  One other thing, when we moved Sean into the CVTE coordinator position, that freed up a vacancy for a guidance person.  We did a big search; got a lot of applications and today I met with someone who is going to start on Monday.  The interviews happened at the school level then I approve it.  Her name is Libby Belfast Gray and she comes to us with a Master in Psychology from Springfield College; a bachelors in Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University.  She worked in the Hartford schools last year and before that she had worked as a social worker for 20 years for the State of Connecticut Department of Children and Families.  I had a great conversation with her today.  She is very interesting and excited about these opportunities and bring some really strong work around college, college placement, etc.  She is a nice addition to our staff.
• Superintendent’s Evaluation – You should have a copy of this in front of you. As you probably know, we did the evaluation jointly with the representatives from Berkshire Hills and a representative from each of the Shaker Mountain groups so from Richmond, Hancock and New Ashford.  Folks, for the first time, completed a rating individually in electronic survey form and from a process perspective, most of that went well.  The one thing that was a little hard was when we transcribed the state form to the electronic form, we should have additionally added a not applicable column because New Ashford doesn’t have a school; they are a non-operating district so some of the things they couldn’t check because they don’t do it because there is no reason to do it.  Even Hancock felt a little bit that way.  I got good feedback in it and it will help me set thoughtful goals for next year.  We will schedule a meeting soon to look at those goals.  Weston – Dr. Dillon received very strong marks from everybody.  If you look through, you will see it is either meets or exceeds throughout the entire evaluation.  On the second page, you will see step three which is an overall rating.  That came out to exemplary and the impact on learning is moderate although maybe next year you can include the Muddy Brook success and that will look different.  The process is a little cumbersome because we do have four school districts that participate in it.  It is a good process.  The challenge is that there are demands on him from us and Shaker Mountain Union in balancing those demands is challenging and finding ways for him to meet all that is being asked of him will be the challenge moving forward.  Certainly it is something for this committee to consider and what is reasonable to ask one person to do.  I think that is something to consider.  P. Dillon – My failures are my own but my successes are tied closely to Sharon and Steve and the principals and all the staff I am lucky to work with.  B. Fields – I am concerned about something.  There are three phases to the evaluation that the state has.  The third phase says something about a third phase has feedback from students and from administrative staff.  I was wondering; I didn’t see any reference except in a small area.  How was the staff surveyed in regard to input to this evaluation.  D. Weston – the other document you are reading from is something the state put out when?  B. Fields – it says 2012 and it says it will be updated in 2013 and when I continued it was revised in February of 2016.  D. Weston – the one thing they kept promising on that and they never delivered on was the mechanism to secure that data.  B. Weston – they have the survey online.  There is a standard form and a short form.  The standard form has like 45 questions and it would take forever.  I was wondering if there is a mechanism where the staff….the reason I bring this up is I am at the high school and a number of people have come to me and have asked about are they ever asked about evaluation of the superintendent.  I told them I have no idea so I went home and I went to the DOE website.  There was a model staff feedback survey and then it has a standard form and short form.  I looked for the date and it was revised in February 2016.  P. Dillon – we have not fully implemented it nor has the state.  In addition to me getting feedback….it is like a 360 degree review.  In addition to me doing that, teachers are also supposed to do that.  The state was really pushing hard to do this six or seven years ago and then they really dropped the ball on implementation.  We are going to do it this year for me and I am going to model it for everybody in hopes to doing it in the future for staff.  The high school is piloting the tripod survey which is tied to some work at Harvard.  That is non evaluative; the tripod one.  The one that I am going to do is evaluative and then the one the teachers should do is meant to be evaluative. I welcome the feedback and hopefully we will do it this year once we iron out the kinks in the system.  B. Fields – that was on that form; the teacher one but then there was an administrative one.  The administrative form had …if you wanted to do the long form it would have taken you about an hour.  P. Dillon – we will do it this year and hopefully we iron out the kinks in the system but in the future we do it with teachers as well.  B. Fields – that is the third phase.  There is three phases and from where I was looking at this I didn’t see the third phase.  I see phases one and two which are in here but I don’t see what you said phase from the staff.  D. Weston – you will notice on the state form, there is no place for that input.  On this document, the official form, there is no place for that input.  P. Dillon – what I think happened Bill is they had a grand plan like the state often does …. B. Fields – this cover letter takes 14 pages.  P. Dillon – right; so the grand plan they never fully implemented it nor conveyed it and I think other stuff got in the way and they started arguing and they dropped the ball.  D. Weston – the question that needs to be resolved from my lens before we move forward on that all the way is because of open meeting law, if every one of those…all that input becomes public record and we did discuss this with the association and neither us nor them were sure about how to move forward.  It gets complicated to say the least.  That is the one issue that we are going to try to resolve.  Peter is bound to seek that input whether it goes into the official evaluation or not.  Once you put it into the official evaluation or not, it is public record.  I don’t know how we are going to move forward with that.  B. Fields – but you have a talked to the association about this as well?  D. Weston – we have.  They brought it up and we responded the same way as we did about teacher evaluations and getting that data.  P. Dillon – it is in all our interest to gather feedback to improve our practices and we need to do it in a way that is …. B. Fields – it doesn’t detract from your evaluation, I was just kind of taken aback and as a teacher, I don’t think I ever had a survey where I was asked to evaluate the superintendent.  I am kind of concerned that the staff is left out of all of this.  R. Dohoney – how does that flow in the chain of command though?  The only person we should supervise is Peter.  Despite what the public thinks always calling to complain about teachers and principals; we only supervise Peter.  And Sharon.  Peter really only supervises the principals.  B. Fields – I think he supervises the district which includes all of the staff.  R. Dohoney – but the teachers don’t report to him; they report to their principal.  B. Fields – I am glad and I wasn’t aware the occiation and you are talking.  There are evaluations that you can create yourself.  D. Weston – everybody agrees that input should be included but finding the correct mechanism to get it there isn’t easy.  P. Dillon – the offer to pilot it on me can be pretty good or for better or worse.  I will be the guinea pig.
• Learning & Teaching Initiatives – K. Farina – We heard from the state on safe and supportive schools grant where we created the action plan that we are eligible for continuation funding. I did complete the grant so we can hopefully get $10, 000 to actually work on implementation of the action plans.  That is really good news.  In terms of professional development, our big initiative that you heard about is around our new instructional leads and the work we are doing with Dan Liebert who is our coach from Great School Partnership.  He is pretty remarkable.  He was here with us this summer working with the admin team.  He worked the week before school started with the group of 15 instructional leads.  He has been back with us in district yesterday.  Our instructional leads are meeting weekly for an hour and a half with their building administrators.  They have monthly meeting with instructional learning groups.  The goal of all of this work is to improve professional culture and to build places with teachers can work together to discuss some of the professional development initiatives over time.  Dan is very eloquent about this.  He really encourages the entire group, the whole admin team and the instructional leads who are engaged in this, to think about this as not a one year initiative but as a way to change the culture of our school system over the next five to ten years so that when we bring professional development to staff, it is not a one shot deal.  Building these instructional learning groups is to provide a goal for our staff to actually work through challenges they have when they are implements new curriculum or if they are having issues with assessments and need a group of the others teachers to talk through it.  We are hopeful that it will change the culture within the schools.  In addition to that work, this past Friday was our first half day and we had two speakers from the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention.  That was supported by the Erikson Institute and Austin Riggs.  They were at the high school and they did a presentation for staff and paraprofessionals on suicide awareness and prevention.  That is specifically connected to the Out of the Darkness Walk that is happening at the high school this Saturday from 10-12.  If you are around and you would like to join that walk, there is still an opportunity to do that.  Finally, we are engaging with the collaborative to better support our paraprofessionals.  The collaborative is developing a program for paraprofessional certification and we offered a module to our paraprofessionals this past Friday and it is our intention to offer more.
• Updates:
  • Security & Safety – P. Dillon – Steve continues to meet and check in with the police and we have some scheduled drills.

Good News:

2018. Lee, Principal; Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School – In the past weeks, we have become aware of our school’s MCAS performance for the spring of 2018. There was significant improvement from 2017 and last year’s testing for both ELA and Math.  ELA was the most notable because of the schools growth and improvement in the previous year, the school has been recognized by the Department and Elementary and Secondary Education as a recognition school for 2018.  P. Dillon – there are two schools in Berkshire County.  We are the only elementary school.  The other one is our neighbor, Lenox Middle and High School.  T. Lee – being new and in the position I am this year, I can only reflect on some possible changes that took place last year that might have brought about this improvement.  The school did adopt a phonics program last year at the beginning of the year affecting grades K, 1, 2 and 3.  One of the areas we noticed significant improvement was in grade 3 reading.  I think we are at least noticing the beginning of a big positive impact due to that change in curriculum in the past year.  There was also quite a bit of work and some advanced work last year in the school’s ability to identify struggling students with their basic needs and to provide interventions and remediations to those identified students.  From what I understand, last year there was quite a step forward in both the organizations components of that, the assessments but also in the quality of the interventions that the learning specialists and the teachers were providing.  I am very happy for our faculty and staff with this accomplishment.

1. Doren, Principal: Du Bois Regional Middle School – We had an amazing turnout for our open house last week; larger than in past years. Parents come and get to hear from the 5th and 6th grade teams.  This year with team orange and team green which are our two new 7 and 8 teams and our exploratory teachers are available for discussions as well.  I got a lot of positive feedback from families.  Folks show up and I don’t give a dog and pony show any more; they want to talk to the teachers.  We send them right to the teams; they give a really great presentation then it is a Q&A with them in the neighborhoods.  The presentations are longer these years.  That is really not because of my leadership; I would say it is because the teams are doing such a great job of working together.  They give a really great presentation.  People really appreciate the information and the way the teams present themselves.  There is a Q&A at the end with me which nobody showed up to because the teams did such a great job.  I am very impressed with our faculty and the way they come together, work as a team, communicate with parents and make themselves accessible.

1. Dillon on behalf of D. Wine, Principal: Monument Mountain Regional High School – P. Dillon – Doug is out of town but I will mention one thing.  Weather permitting, the high school pep rally will be tomorrow.  It was going to be earlier in the week.  It may rain again tomorrow and if it does, we will postpone it.  One other thing that we wrote about that is interesting is the work with Shakespeare & Co., has begun and the play will be announced shortly.

Sub-Committee Reports:

• Policy Sub Committee: N/A
• Building and Grounds Subcommittee: N/A
• Superintendent’s Evaluation Subcommittee: See above
• Technology Subcommittee: N/A
• Finance Subcommittee: Dohoney – we met earlier today and went though our preliminary analysis of the middle school budget which was very good and very thorough.  We used the same format as last year.  We all received the breakouts of the various classes.  Everyone will get it in your December packet but if you wanted to see it earlier see Sharon.  There were not any major red flags.  You all received in your packet that went out that confirms the schedule of our meetings for the budget process.  We started with the middle school then the elementary school.  S. Bannon – we have done technology and SPED already.  And facilities.
• District Consolidation and Sharing Subcommittee: Dillon – our next meeting is Wednesday the 10th at 4:30 in Stockbridge.  We just posted the agenda today or sent it around to the various school districts to post.  The one thing on that will be the draft RFP to bring in a consultant or facilitator to work with the group and then hopefully after that a concrete discussion about actions we can take going forward.    There will also be a little part in that being on safety that is going to be at Lee High School on the 24th of October.  We know about the collaborative care model that we were working under last year and we were trying to continue forward with that.  Both Ben and I and Tim and a number of other people have been in various meeting around that.  A couple of things have happened; the two monitors that let us do telepractice with health care providers, doctors and psychologists around the county are here.  It looks like a big iMac and it has a little camera in it.  We are excited about those.  The Rural Health Network has taken on the collaborative care work as one of their important priorities.  That group has met three times.  Those discussions continue.  Mary Berle, Deb Buccino are presenting on the collaborative at a conference at Austen Riggs with folks from the Yale Child Study team at the end of the month.  The Rural Health Network, and many of us are looking at ways to generate additional resources to cover some of that work; the work originally started with Deb then there was a very supportive person, Adriane Conklin, and the time was funded by the hospital.  In conversations, this is in the air as a successful model, and more groups of pediatricians are getting involved and even at Macony where Deb works, it is getting bigger than simply just her.  That is the promising side of it.  The ask is how to sustain that position that Adriene had.  A. Hutchinson – is anyone doing that position now?  P. Dillon – no.  We are doing the best we can in the context of where we are at but the timing of it was such that with the way our budget cycle works, they weren’t successful in getting private funding and they didn’t come to us earlier enough to incorporate it into our budget process.  There is also the whole debate whether it is a school district expense or a community expense or some other entity’s expense.  We are building on our existing relationship and we hope we can hobble along for a few months as we secure additional funding.  S. Bannon – Great Barrington Rotary Club was asked to make a donation.  They have pledged $5,000 but it is contingent on that position being fully funded by enough donations.  That is a start.  D. Weston – now we just need $70,000 more.  I am going to say again, this seems like a good way to collaborate with a neighboring school district or more than one that share some of the expenses to push this forward.  A. Hutchinson – I think making it more public and it is too bad to cobble lots of small donations together but it is still a way and hopefully the community will step forward.  Hopefully this can be funded out of the next budget and with other schools.  S. Bannon – we need to figure out who is doing the heavy lifting.  I am not sure we should fund 100% of it.  The health system has funded it and there is a lot of groups involved so maybe we can come to some agreement.
• Next Steps Sub-Committee: Next meeting will be October 2nd.  We will meet twice in October.  Dillon – I met with Bill and Paul who are the co-chairs of the group and we talked about scheduling a meeting or coming up with a syllabus for what the next group is going to be.  I sent them a draft version of that recommending 11 meetings, each on a particular topic and they will look at that and presumably we will run a slightly edited version of that by the whole group at that meeting and then nail that down and move ahead.  One of the opportunities are that to get our work done or the charge the school committee gave that whole group, we need somewhere in the range of 10-11 meetings and I didn’t attach dates to the meeting because there are two paths we could take.  We could take the slow train or the express.  The express would be to cram those 10 meetings into four or five months and the slow train would be to do it over 10 months.  Depending on what is happening with the MSBA, it may make more sense to do one over the other.

Personnel Report:

• Long-Term Substitute Appointment(s)
• Non-Certified Appointment(s)
• Reassignment(s)
• Retirement(s)
• Extra-Curricular Appointment(s)

Business Operation: 

Education News: 

Old Business: 

New Business:

• Public Comment – P. Dillon – this whole week has been spirit week at the high school and one of the days was American day and one student chose to wear a confederate flag. Very early in the morning, a number of other students noticed that and said and I’m paraphrasing, “hey, what’s the deal.  Why are your wearing that flag?  It’s not a good idea.”  That student agreed to stop wearing it.  Within minutes, the assistant principal was there are asked for the flag and the student him the flag.  Later in the day, another student was able to get the flag and ran around with it for awhile.  The press was here, etc.  I don’t talk about specific incidents about a student in a discipline perspective because it is not appropriate to the student but a couple of things I will highlight.  I very much appreciate and some folks have picked up on this, students themselves said hey that’s not ok and stood up and took some action.  That I think is a shift in behavior and I don’t think students might have done that three years ago.  I am happy about that.  On the other hand, schools are a reflection of the society and community we exist in.  Our community has work to do and our school has work to do around how we present ourselves.  Some people think that flag is a great thing and some people that flag has all sorts of baggage and issues connected to it.  I am feeling a little beaten up in the social media around this and I talked to our attorney.  Obviously I am not an attorney myself or a legal scholar but a big case around the first amendment is Tinker v. Des Moines and that was around students wearing black armbands in school and the context of that.  Free speech is free speech and that is great and typically schools wouldn’t get involved in things that limits free speech but when something causes a disruption and most of you remember the threat of a lynching a few years ago, it really raises the bar in our school.  The behavior of the student around the flag and what was being said was seen by the staff on scene as a disruption and that is why the flag was confiscated.  The Northampton ACLU representative thinks we crossed a line.  Our attorney thinks we were appropriate with our response to that and that is something we will work through.  The other thing that I think is important to mention is in this age of social media, everybody knows about everything in seconds.  One of the comments was “why didn’t you use this as a learning opportunity?”  Because it happened a half an hour ago.  How are we going to start a learning opportunity that started half an hour ago?  Obviously the high school and all the schools are in ongoing debate around all of this.  Freedom and speech and the constitution and civil rights, diversity, privilege.  It is an ongoing conversation.  There are student-led groups at the high school at work on this.  It is brought up in classes constantly and it is not just the high school; it is talked about in the middle school and in a different way in terms of community in the elementary school.  We are working on this and I think our challenge is how do we be our best selves in a national context that is super complicated?  People will continue to vent and react on Facebook and I previce myself by saying I am not a lawyer.  Many people on Facebook think they are lawyers.  I think before people rush to decisions, they should engage in dialogue.  Last night after I read the article, I sent an email to the ACLU saying let’s have a conversation and as reporters often say I have not yet received a comment for my request.  I will at some point and then we will see if there is an opportunity to do something there.  Dohoney – I totally have confidence in what you are doing and how you are handling this unfortunate situation but I think this has kind of highlighted an ongoing problem of the social media and the media, real media, covering incidents inside our schools.  One of the most important reforms we have seen in the justice system in the past ten years in Governor Patrick’s legislation regarding CORI information, criminal information and how juveniles are protected not just how they are treated in this system but how they are shielded from the outside to prevent their lives from being destroyed, their self image, their view of themselves in the world being destroyed by making sure professionals are taking care of kids.  That is the criminal justice system where real crimes are happening.  Hate crimes and other crimes; terrible other things but the background is at the end of the day, is the kids need to be protected and dealt with by professionals.  The idea that actual media is ripping pictures off of social media of kids inside our school and publishing them as news is incredibly troubling to me; more troubling than whatever message this kids was trying to set.  That is a real concern for us going forward.  I have no idea what was going on there.  I may never know because the school committee never gets involved in these things.  If we think news is going to be attention seeking teenagers, the media is in trouble but our schools are in trouble too so I don’t know how you protect that type of thing in our schools but it is not good and I think the administration has to keep an eye on that.  Whatever social media policies we have out, how we educate our kids, how we educate our teachers, but it is not healthy for the kids.  This a real extreme piece of clip bait that was thrown out there and these people love being on Facebook and doing all that stuff that is fine but if it is an ongoing thing, it is going to be a problem for our kids and how we educate them.  B. Fields – I totally agree with you Rich.  I was thinking about a school I heard about on NPR last year, all the cell phone are put into a basket at the beginning of the day and the kids can pick them up at the end of the day.  Kids taking pictures of kids in the classroom; it is interesting that the states what teachers to videotape their lessons but what is forgotten in that is there are pictures of your kids in class.  I remember many years ago, I wanted to do that and the principal said no.  You have to ask every kids’ parent in that class for permission.  I didn’t think this was a big deal but now I do.  The picture in the paper was of the kid’s back but still somebody took that picture on a cell phone and then it goes all over.  It is about time that maybe the district and the policy committee start talking about what is going to be the policy for cell phones.  I know the parents are going to say our kid needs a cell phone.  He needs to know where I am.  If there is an emergency at 2pm, I want to know.  There are limits to what you should be able to carry in school and maybe cell phone use should be looked at. K. Piasecki – you will have a hard time with school security issues these days and will get a lot of push back.  P. Dillon – There were 3” binders of policies when I worked in New York.  There were six of them.  The complexities of having all that is terrible because the minutes you say you can’t have a cell phone, then somebody has a cool watch that is also a camera; then the pen camera.  R. Dohoney – I think Ben you have done a real good job at the middle school in educating kids and giving them life skills and how to deal with this stuff and what is appropriate.  You can’t and don’t print information that goes out in the juvenile court but should we be printing educational issues that go on in the school about specific kids regardless of what they are?  We look at the poison that goes on at the national level in politics, today being an example to that.  The one thing that is always respected is what these politician’s kids do, first daughter, second daughters, is never reported.  It is the one line media won’t cross.  I don’t think it is a policy.  I think it is an ethics issue.  B. Fields – having taught in the high school for 40 years, I was happy and since the press is here, the students reacted to this in a positive manner.  I used to talk about positive peer pressure and I was glad to see that.  That should have been the headline.  The students positively reacted to it which as Peter said last year or two years ago we had this incident and you didn’t hear much about what students were doing.  I think the high school has come a long way in regards to that.  I think what Ben is doing in the middle school has a lot to do with it.  There is a new awareness.  We have a new assistant principal who has a new look at things.  I was very pleased to see that the students intervened first.  That is monument I used to know.  I was glad to see that and I hope the press pushes that too.  There are good things going on.  P. Dillon – rather than making prescriptive announcements around particular things, I would like us to explore as a group or a policy committee and maybe look at what some of the goals are in each of the building; some overarching value statements that if we collectively in two or three things then we can form our decision making about everything as opposed to write specific rules about things.  Maybe it should be support your classmates and don’t do any harm.  B. Fields – this was adolescence and they love attention and you are always going to get somebody that are going to say I’m going to do this just to show people.  It is a decision that is made in a minute and maybe the person regrets it now.  There is one in every class.  S. Bannon – while I disagree with you as a policy, I do think that our learning experience is the correct use of cell phones, the ethical, moral high ground because policies tend to get reaction and whereas high school students and middle school students are not stupid.  Talking to them, reasoning with them and explaining to them and having good discussions with them instead of implementing policies.  B. Fields – you will always get a reaction.  S. Bannon – if we do a policy, it is a good way to get a protest.
• Written Communication
  • Letter from Senator Adam Hinds
  • Letter from Office of the Attorney General

MOTION TO ADJOURN – R. DOHONEY               SECONDED:  J. ST. PETER                       ACCEPTED:  UNANIMOUS

The next school committee meeting will be held on October 11, 2018 – Meet and Confer, District Offices, Stockbridge, 7pm

Meeting Adjourned at 7:58pm

Submitted by:  Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________   Christine M. Kelly, Recorder

______________________________   School Committee Secretary