School Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I call the order meeting of the school committee of March 23rd, 2026 at 7 p.m. This meeting is taking place in person at Collins Middle School in the school committee chambers and also on Zoom via the link posted in the meeting agenda. Uh we're going to start today's meeting with um special recognition of our high school boys basketball team state champions. Uh before we before we proceed to some recognitions, I want to open it up to any members of the committee that might want to offer any remarks. Member Cornell

love to make. Uh thank you all for coming. That's pretty great. Uh, and you all wore your matching sweatuits, which we all love. They're a big hit. Um, I I went to almost all your games this year. Um, and you are all obviously very talented athletes and really skilled players. Um, and so, but you already know that you have the trophies and the whole thing. So, um, but the thing that sort of has stood out to me every single time I've gone to a game is that no matter who I'm talking to, everybody wants to tell me what great kids you are. Everybody. So, you know, you're great classmates, your great role models, your great students. Um, and ultimately that is the most important thing. Uh, someday, hopefully not too soon, uh, competitive basketball will end. Um, and what you have left is the resilience and the integrity that that taught you. So, I also played in a couple of basketball state championships. Nobody asked for my autographs afterwards. So, you're in a whole different a whole different thing. Um, but something that was I think lost on me during both of those state championships was uh the effect that a championship run has on the community that you live in. So, I took my 76-year-old dad to almost every game. Although, he did want to know why Coach Doyle wasn't wearing a suit at the uh at the state championship game. I was like, I don't think that's good luck. I don't think that's a good idea. Um but at every single game there were teachers, city counselors, retired city counselors, former mayors, this mayor, lots of us, um former players and alums, the whole community turned out as you know because you I saw you shake everybody's hand after Nate in particular after every single game shaking everybody's hands. Um, and that kind of run, like this kind of championship, it really gives everybody in your community a lot of hope and joy and pride. Um, and I mean, thank God for the NCA tournament because I don't even

know what I would do with myself now that you're you guys are all done. So, um, thank you very much for not just, you know, representing Salem really well, but for, uh, just giving a lot of joy to the entire community. Thank you. Any other member of the committee wish to offer anything? Yeah, member Hoffman.

I'm going to say exactly what she said, but I'd like to add as you go on in your career, never forget the people that are behind you someday. I hope that you'll all be coaches or keep playing or encourage some small kid down the line to like take that chance. And um congratulations. A well done game. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. Um, but y'all, you're great. You're just a great bunch of guys and thank you for that.

Any other member of the committee? Yeah, seeing none. Dr. Z, as I almost Yeah, I'm certainly not as athletic as you as I gez.

It's a trip over things. Um, yeah, I just want to say uh you brought tremendous joy to this community over the last few um weeks and months and um we couldn't be more proud of all of you. Uh I I have you know I've had the pleasure of getting to know some of you over the years. Um everybody I was at two schools today and everybody wants to say claim you like witchcraft you know Nate they were talking about you witchcraft today. He's one of ours. Everybody wants to say Collins or Salt and Stall, you know, where people went to school. This community could not be more proud of all of you. And what I respect the most of about sort of what um member Cornell said is the fact that after games I watch so many of you uh take pictures with little kids and so many of you took the time to uh sign autographs, but also to to these kids all look up up to you. And the thing I'm most looking forward to is watching you go to every school in this city with the trophy because there are so many kids that are are going to be this is bigger than seeing the Patriots is seeing no seriously that cuz you're one of them. You're a witch. You went to their schools. You belong to this community. And it made me so proud to see like there weren't a lot of city high schools in these tournaments, right? There a lot of private schools, a lot of suburban schools. and there's Salem, Gateway City, winning a state championship, right? That is a special thing that all of us, it made all of us incredibly proud. Um, and to member Cornell's um point, you're all upstanding young men, while I I wish that some of you would go to the NBA, that's probably not in the cards for at least the majority of you. But, um, the fact is that you're all great people. Um, and you're led by a a great coach and a wonderful person who's dedicated his entire life to the Salem public schools. And so, Tommy, I want to call you out as well. Um, Tommy, from

the day day I got here, he was in my ear about different things, basketball floors and all kinds of things. Um, but it's all because he believed in this city, believed in the young people of Salem, and he's dedicated his life to uh the Salem public schools. So, we could couldn't be more proud of you, coach, and the dedication. You deserve this championship as much as anybody for the the I mean, I saw you hauling tables the day before the state championship so you could raise money for the basketball team. Um, it just shows the commitment that you have uh to this city and to this school system. So, um I want to thank all of you. I I wish we could do more for you than, you know, um buy you new cars, whatever it is, right? like I don't know in the NBA don't they get something for winning state champ I mean uh

it's illegal student and it's illegal probably but um we look forward to the parade and we look forward to having you visit each of our schools so congratulations to all of YOU

uh so we have city seals in recognition in celebration of your achievement uh I'll I'll read the text it's the same on each of them but in celebration of the remarkable achieve achievements of the 2025 26 26 boys basketball team whose dedication, perseverance, and excellence led to a historic state championship victory, ending a 31-year championship drought. Throughout their incredible season, the Witches exemplified the very best of Salem, resilience, teamwork, discipline, and unwavering pride in their community. The Salem Witches boys basketball team concluded their season with an outstanding record, demonstrating both athletic excellence and sportsmanship at the highest level. On behalf of the city of Salem, I extend my sincere congratulations and deepest appreciation for bringing pride and distinction to our community.

Hey, Coach Door, why does that loss from Florida still count against your record? I mean, he technically lost. So, Oh, so it counts even if it's in another state. Yeah.

Okay. Um, thank you all for being here. Um, thank you for representing and uh, recognizing um, our boys basketball program. Uh, for all those that do not know me, uh, my name is Riley Christie. I'm the athletic director and it's been such a, uh, privilege and honor to see these young men grow and how hard they worked. U, you know, it a lot of things up here that were already said, I want to echo. It's extremely, you know, proud to have that all of y'all represent what it means to be a witch and what it means to be a part of the Salem High basketball history. Uh, for those that do not know, in 1926, the very first ever state championship was won in the state of Massachusetts for boys basketball. That state championship was won by Salem. And a hundred years later, these young men went 24 and two and had an unbelievable season and finished as one of the top and I say the best team in the entire state. And that is a credit to all of you guys. And it's also a credit to our amazing coaching staff. uh you know, Coach Doyle, Coach Chico, Coach Sil, Coach, you know, Jack, Coach Ethan, um you know, Coach Alex, you know, our coaches are so unbelievable and have had such unwavering faith in this program and in these kids. I mean, these kids got up at 5 in the morning to get into the gym. These kids were working last year, you know, two days after they lost in the uh playoffs, they were back in the gym working out, getting up shots, and they knew that was not going to be their lasting legacy. They were not going to be out in the second round again. They were going to make a run. And no matter what happened this season, we were going to be extremely proud of these young men. And they just kept saying, you

know, five more, then four more, then three more, then two more, then one more, and then we did it. So, gentlemen, congratulations. So extremely proud. You guys represent what it means to be a witch every single day on the court, in the classroom, and in the community. So, congratulations, and we are so proud of you all. So, as Mayor Pangalo said, we have some uh you know, recognition. So, I'm going to call each of you all up and you're going to grab this and then going to sit back down. Then, we're going to take a team picture. So, first up, it's freshman Joville Just

I love it. I love it. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations, buddy.

Next, we have freshman LJ Gonzalez.

Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Congrats. Congratulations. Congrats. Hi, LJ. Congratulations. Congrats, buddy. Next, we have junior Jaylen Esz.

Congratulations. Congrats. Congrats. Congratulations. Congrats. My god. Next we have junior Jake Listister.

Congratulations. Congratulations. Congrats. Congratulations. Thank you.

Next we have freshman Desmond Adorsy. Blue's like, "What are we doing?" Congratulations. Congrats. Congrats. Congratulations. Next.

Next, we have freshman Jam Jameson Hansen Armstrong. Good. Take a note, Steve. I'm sorry. It's bound to happen. We're retiring this afternoon. Congratulations. Thank you.

Next, we have senior Chris Hansen. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congrats, Chris. Congratulations.

Next, we have senior captain Darren Taku. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congrats. Congratulations.

Next, we have sophomore Shawn Murphy.

Thank you. Congrats. Congratulations. Thank you. Congrats. Congrats. Congratulations. Great job, buddy. Next we have freshman Cleo Deng.

Congratulations. Congrats. Congrats, Cleo. Great season. Congratulations. Congrats. Congratulations. Congrats, Cleo. Next we have junior Matt Kenny.

Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Congrats. Thank you. Congrats. Free throws. Big free throws. Thank you. Thank you. Congrats. Thank you. Congrats. Thank you. Oh, sorry. You're good. Congratulations. Great job. Thank you. Next we have senior Cesar Mesa Castillo.

Congratulations. Great save. Congrats. Thank you. Congrats. Congrats. I don't know if you're a better chef or a better basketball. Congratulations. Congrats. Congratulations. I think we need to move these down. That's right. Yeah. Next we have junior captain Elon Rodriguez.

Thank you. Great season. Thank you. Congrats. Congratulations. One more back to back. And then we have senior captain Nathaniel Lane.

Congrats. Congratulations. I see you won. And now we would like to recognize our coaches and our assistant coaching staff. First up, we have Salem alum Jack Doyle. CONGRATS.

CONGRATULATIONS. Great season. Congratulations. Congrats. Congrats. Congratulations, Jack.

Next, we have assistant coach Steve Chico. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Congrats. Congrats. Thank you. Appreciate it. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Congratulations. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Congratulations. Congrats, Chico. Thank you. Congratulations, Chico.

Next, we have assistant coach Anthony Sylvio. Congrats.

Congrats. Congrats. Thanks. Congratulations. Congratulations.

Next, we have assistant coach, Salem High alum, Ethan Doyle. Congratulations. Get a little dog. Good to see you. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. All the kids. Congrats. Congratulations. You can still pet the dog. There's time. Yeah.

And our head coach, Tom Doyle. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Riley, so I have coach before you sit down,

coach. So, we um this is 2026 is Salem's 400th birthday, and we have a uh created these um 100 of these coins that we are giving out to individuals in our community who represent the best of Salem. And this is the fourth coin that we've given out. And I'd like you to have it. Does he want to say anything? Coach, do you want to say anything? You don't have to.

I know everyone said it, but it was amazing to see the community come out and, you know, everybody come out for this. And it's easy to get behind uh boys that are doing the right thing in and out of the classroom and on the court. And so to see everyone come out and support and so many good things happened this year for this program and uh you know from you know the new floor starting us off these guys working in the off season and it's just so many great things happen undefeated on that new floor by the way um and the support from um everyone from from staff to uh everyone on down it was amazing to see and the support from being at games, from being behind the scenes making decisions to, you know, our administration at the high school to the teachers to just everyone rally together was why I love being from Salem. I I've been born and bred here. I went to school at Salem State. I I think the only time I leave Salem is to go to away games and um I just love it here and I thank you for the recognition I received tonight, which certainly um you know these kids help me achieve and I this is why I love what I do and uh the city of Salem's where I've always been and and love to be and glad you know to be a part of this. So, thank you all for the part we all played together as a city in in achieving this goal and um you know, thanks again. Hopefully, we can get back here again soon.

We're going to do a photo. Yeah. Did you want to say something? Do you want Manny? Do you want to say anything? Do I want to say? No, Cruz. Former school committee member.

Thank you. There's life after school committee. And uh no, in all seriousness, uh good evening, folks. It's good to be with you all. I want to congratulate uh the boys on the well-deserved championship. When we did the ribbon cutting for the floor, I gave y'all one mission, which is new floor would look real great with a brand new banner, and you delivered. the way that you inspired the entire city and I have a four and a two-year-old. We would watch the games at home. They love y'all. They really do. You're role models and we all look up to you for many different reasons. Uh but it is the resilience that you showed on and off the court and um in particular I want to give a special shout out to Elellan because I've been seeing you play since P2P and the way that you've grown has been incredible and the way that you led by example on the court I think inspired your teammates in many different ways. So, I look forward to hosting you uh at the state house once Steve gets his new job. Uh we'll bring them up. Uh and can't wait uh to see you all here again next year because we're doing this again, right? Okay. CONGRATULATIONS.

All right. We'd now like to invite the team coaches up for a picture. Come on. We just stand. Yeah, I think we look taller than all of you. Even with this hard,

let's get Jake and Cleto on the end. Right in front of me and I'm covered up. You need to get in the front. No, I'm okay. This isn't even going to work. It's okay. Like I'm like right in between. Do you want to switch places? cuz then you can be on the end. All right, we'll come around. Thank you. I did it on Saturday. I'm obsessed with Yeah, I did it on Saturday in the middle. It was the like college stress process. I remember those days.

No, we're behind us. That's okay. Yeah, I'm okay with that. I didn't actually play on the team. I'm not I'm not a big fan of pictures. I don't get in the picture. A he should be wearing witches.

Thanks. Thank you. Tell them all they get to go home now. Yeah. Is there a motion for recess? Yeah. Quick recess. Yeah. I'll make a motion to recess for two minutes while the team gets to go home. All right. Two minute recess. Second. All in favor? Second. under discussion. Okay,

we're in recess. Um, returning to our agenda, is there a motion? I'll move to take uh the agenda out of order and address um number one under motions and resolutions. All right, this is um second seconded under discussion. All in favor? Any opposed? Seeing none, uh this is the field trip to Costa Rica for the high school students from April 17th to the 25th of 2027. Oh yes,

you have Costa Rica on the agenda. Oh, it's coming up next year. Oh, sorry. I thought they were were reporting on you. You're the mayor. Sorry. This is approval for next year's track. Got it. We can hear about Biz if you want. Okay. Um, do you would you like to offer is we have any report on it or is there any questions? I didn't know. Did uh did you want to present anything, Miss McCarthy or No, you want me to?

No. I I mean, it's okay. I we wanted to give you the option. We they have a copy of your presentation but we since you we we didn't want you to have to stay for the whole meeting. So um and also we did want to thank you for the trip to BISE which no one will ever forget as long as they um but if if the school committee has questions they can ask questions but you don't have to come up and share because they have the information in their packet. I'll make a motion to approve. Second. Okay. Motion made by member Cornell, seconded by member Miranda. Under discussion, any questions? I'm sorry. I would just like to say one thing. Oh yeah, member.

Um, and just because as you know, my kid was on that BISE trip. I just want to say publicly that the you all were amazing. For anybody who didn't know, the kids got stuck. I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world to get stuck in Bise in Miami, but you know, there are teenagers. They didn't expect to be gone that long. It was a difficult transition. and also all the leaders of that trip have their own families at home and children um and significant others. So I just you know um the trip was wonderful like for all of us who was you know are going to have kids in the high school. I strongly recommend it. The fundraising went really well. Um it's just an extraordinary opportunity and the you know the trip leads. You were all just amazing. So um excited to vote for kids to be able to take a trip like this again. Thank you.

Any further comment or questions? Seeing none on the motion to approve the field trip. All in favor? Any opposed? None opposed. The matter carries unanimous. You're good. Thanks. Returning to our regular agenda. Also under citations and acknowledgements, Superintendent Zich.

Um, so I I will allow members to to to offer any remarks they might want to. Uh, I will just say that um we're going to cover most of my thoughts later in the evaluation and then we'll get through your goal setting for the uh for the next four days. Um I it is hard to imagine this district being able to achieve what it has without the leadership that you've provided. Um you have been just a constant source of support for me in my uh role stepping into this job. um but also a constant cheerleader for our schools and our kids. You have put um their well-being, their educational excellence. Um as as people, as uh as individuals at the forefront of every decision that you've made um every time you've brought something before this committee, it's always been centered in equity and evidence and thoughtfulness and dialogue. And I appreciate that deeply. Um, as a parent of children in these schools, I appreciate that. As the chair of this committee, I appreciate it. Um, it is it is hard to imagine this district without you uh here, but um I know that, you know, you have laid an incredibly strong foundation for us to build on and uh pointed us in the right direction for more successes still to come. Um, I have a city citation

for Dr. Zurich. We need tissues.

The city of Salem proudly honors and recognizes Dr. Steven Zurich Jr. for his years of service as the superintendent of Salem public schools. Dr. Zurich is recognized across Massachusetts as a leader in public education. Dr. Zik's not noteworthy leadership has guided Salem public schools through challenging times including a historic pandemic and he departs with the distinct with the distinction of the district being in a far better position than when we started. During his tenure academic achievement, enrollment, attendance, and engagement have substantially improved as has educator retention and diversity. Dr. Reich helped establish new preK programs, technical and career opportunities and advanced coursework and early college pathways among many other innovations, all centered on equity and educational excellence. Through all his work, Dr. Zurich's northstar has been his unfaltering commitment to Salem students and his steadfast belief and faith in each child to achieve great things. On behalf of the city of Salem and Salem public schools, I extend my very best wishes to Dr. Reich as he moves on to his next chapter. Salem students, families, educators, and the city as a whole owe him a debt of gratitude we can never repay. We are confident that his service to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is sure to result in improved outcomes for students across our state.

Thank you.

And also one of those limited edition Salem 400 coins. Sure. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Open it up to any other members, Cindy.

Um, I just wanted to say I guess in not just for myself, but I guess you know as the student representative, thank you for everything that you've done. Not just for myself, but for everybody in the district, whether that's the kindergarteners, the elementary schoolers, the middle schoolers, the high schoolers. Something about you that I've noticed at least in the last year that we've worked together is how much you care about all of us. Whether it's honestly really every student, you pay attention to everything that we need, to everything that we wish to see in the future that we wish to get implemented. You listen to the criticisms that any of the students might have. I know you've listened to a lot of the ones I have had and you have helped fix them, which I'm very thankful for. I appreciate everything you've done for us in the last however many years it is that you have been here. Um, and I just want to wish you the best of luck in your new job, which I know you're going to do amazing in. And I I'm just again I'm very thankful that you were our superintendent and that you helped better our whole district whether just as Mayor Pangalo said, whether it was through the CTE program or the early college program. You are just an overall one of the best members of this district that I have ever met so far and I'm very thankful to have met you to begin with.

Thank you.

You okay? Member Miranda, I've already said this to Steve um privately, but I will say it publicly as well. There are few leaders that I've seen lead with the level of integrity and compassion and brilliance that you do. And so over the last it's almost been three years for me that I've served on the school committee. But even as a parent in the district, um I I've never seen a leader like you and it's going to be big shoes to fill and also excited for um all of our kids in the state of Massachusetts and excited for you and um this role that you're going to grow into. Thank you so much.

Thank you, member stock. Thank you. I would also like to extend my gratitude and thank you um mostly as a parent. I have I watched the show in 2020 when you started and it was quite a show and appreciate um all of the work and effort and empathy that you put into this district in this city. Um I am grateful that we get to keep you in the sense that you are staying in the state and we know you're going to do great things. Um but definitely want to extend my gratitude, my family's gratitude, the city's gratitude towards everything that you have done for us. Thank you.

Thank you. Amber Hoffman,

I just want to say thank you. Um, you've done so much for the school community that was so broken before you got here and you've given us all hope and you've inspired us. You've inspired my son and um, who is always thrilled to see Dr. Z in the hallway. Um, one of your best qualities is you're the best listener I've ever met aside from myself. Um, and um, I we are so grateful to have had you lead us and now to lead the state and I would just hope that um, keep listening. I've I've never seen a champion champion so many different types of people in my life and it's it's um it's heartfelt and um and uh my phone's always there if you need a call.

Thank you. Absolutely. Member Cornell. Oh, member. You know how I feel about you, Dr. Strike and and I just want to thank you for everything. Member Cornell, I'm going to talk a lot when I summarize your evaluation in a couple minutes, but um I do want to say like I've been a parent in this district for 19 years and straight. And I don't think that my children could have picked out the other superintendents like out of a lineup and um and hopefully we won't see you in a lineup, but the um hopefully not

the you know, you never know. Um but um and and I and I won't unlike your son uh my daughter's not necessarily always psyched to see you because it draws attention to her. But um I will I really love like seeing you in a crowd of kids and they always go my guy cuz who can say strike, right? I don't know how you say my guy in Spanish but I'm sure they say it too. Um, and and also just the absolute bravery of going in and and substituting in elementary school. I mean, I I don't know how you do it. I I do the re I read a book in there and and they're they thought I was 75 years old. So, um, you know, just like being in touch with kids all the time and I I do hope that you're able to keep doing that in this role because I know that's the thing that you love the most even though it seems like the thing you love the most is calling us on the phone all the time. Um, but just as everybody said, thank you so much and uh and good luck and good luck to your your family as you engage in this new gig.

Um, we have anyone in the audience who might want to offer remarks. This is my shortest school committee speech ever. Um, Steve,

pardon me. Um, good evening everybody. Um, I want to take a moment to thank Steve for his service to our students, our educators, and our community. When you started in Salem at the height of COVID, we spent an awful lot of time on the phone and in Zoom meetings. I guess the phone call is not specific to anybody in particular. During one of those conversations, we had each shared our goals for our time here in Salem. And believe it or not, we both had very similar goals. We wanted to leave this district in a far better place than we found it. I am confident in stating that I believe you met that goal and surpassed it. While we did not always see eye to eye, we figured out a way to compromise and move the district forward. There were a lot of hard conversations that took place with both of us always wanting to get the last word in, but I believe we landed in a place of respect. I'm positive that we're going to see the same energy and drive as we watch you embrace this new role as Secretary of Education. I appreciate everything you've done in Salem, and I hope you use Salem as a model for other districts in the Commonwealth that have struggled in the past and want to do better. I'm sure our paths are going to cross again in the future as we both continue to strive towards the best educational experience for kids. Thank you.

Thank you, Ann. Representative Cruz.

Good evening, members of the school committee.

Surely, uh, Superintendent Zich, I too bring greetings from, uh, Beacon Hill. And um I first and foremost want to say Steve, we met 6 years ago uh here in Salem when we were interviewing you for this position and it was at a time in which this district was in a place of transition. Uh we needed someone who could come in and heal, repair trust, communicate, uh but first and foremost put our kids and their needs first. And you did that from day one. And I want to talk about the importance of everyone keeps talking about these mysterious phone calls from Steve. Uh I'll tell you, Steve, you came in from a really difficult situation in receiverhip. Uh and to come to a community like Salem, you embraced every bit of what it means to be a Salemite. You were at every game, every performance, spending time with our littlest learners, our seniors. You were advocating on Beacon Hill on in Washington. Um, and you just built so many relationships in this district. You're the only person that I call more than my wife. We spend uh an inordinate amount of time just talking about uh what's going on in public education, what our students need. And the best calls I get from you are when we talk about the kids and you visit Iivey's classroom and you tell me how much she has grown. she can no longer be distracted by the superintendent, which I didn't know a superintendent was allowed to distract a preschooler until uh I got that report back from you, Steve. Um, but seeing you in action over the last six years, both as a superintendent and then as a statewide leader on the educator diversity coalition um has just been an incredible honor. I've learned from you as much as I hope that you have learned from me. And what I'll tell you as you ascend to your new position on Beacon Hill is that uh you don't go up there alone. You go

up there with a friend who will fight to protect you, to make sure you're taking your vacation and spending time with that beautiful family of yours. And know that when the days get hard on the hill, trust me, I've been there. Um you'll always have a friend that you can lean on to give you good advice. And uh if you want to just have lunch, we can do that, too. But I hope we can find some time for a Celtics game after the Hill. I think you and I are overdue uh for just some good oldfashioned bonding and not trying to solve the world's problems. And I I'm coming today from a Ways and Means hearing in Lawrence where the topic was education and local aid. You you can't believe this, Steve, but there's 351 cities and towns that the formula is not working for. So

haven't heard that yet. You

you and I have our work cut out for us. Uh, but there's truly no better person for this job because I I believe that the same magic that you brought to this job and this role is one that you can bring to the Commonwealth that you can inspire our students, our educators, and our communities to believe that we can do more. Um, that is going to be your defining legacy here, that you believed in a culture of excellence for all of our students. Not for some of our students, for all of our students. And I couldn't be more proud of your service. And tonight I'm not submitting an evaluation. I've retired from the school committee. Uh but I did bring with me one gift from the Hill for you. I prepared a citation and um I know that the senator would also send her regards, but we're planning on welcoming you up there on Beacon Hill. So don't you worry, you'll hear from her, too. And it reads, "The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the House of Representatives, be it hereby known to all that the Massachusetts House of Representatives offers its sincerest congratulations to do Dr. Stevens Reich in recognition of his distinguished service as the superintendent of the Salem public schools upon the occasion of being appointed as the secretary of education. Throughout his tenure, Drs. Reich demonstrated exceptional leadership and a strong commitment to student achievement, educational equity, and community partnership, leaving a lasting impact on the Salem community. Our entire membership extends its very best wishes and expresses the hope for future good fortune and continued success in all of your endeavors given this day on March 23rd 4th um here in Salem. It's signed by the speaker of the house and it's offered by me, your friend Manny Cruz. Congratulations, Steve.

This is the part where I still see you for a photo. It's not like photobombing your photo here. Squeeze in. Can I actually get it with all the school committee members? Can I do it that way? I don't want to speak by myself. My picture taken all the wearing dress socks. Like put it together. Is that what happens? I like the dog's gonna be

There's blue funny one more request. Can y'all just turn around for one second? I've never taken a selfie with Steve. All my ears. Y'all can just squeeze in there. Have you ever seen Steve do a selfie? Not good. It's not good.

First time.

You want to do And as we Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Member Cornell. As we do with everyone who is outgoing, we have some gifts. Um, and it's not a Salem sweatshirt because I know you have a lot of Salem swag. Um, but they are uh one gift is from uh one of our students who has her own shop, Georgia Friend. Um, and another is from a parent, uh, Matt Smith, who also has a shop in Salem. And so, they're just little Salem gifts for you. Should I open it or you may? Okay.

Yeah. Particularly since one of them is our students. So, yeah.

Very nice. This is from our our parents shop, Matt Smith. And beautiful. Wow. Thank you. Love that. Thank you very much. And it says Salem, Massachusetts on it. Perfect. Of course, the red tissue paper. Oh, this is great. Should wear that to your swearing. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Thank you very much. There's one more thing here. I guess you have to get $50. Oh, here we go.

I love it. Thank you very much. Perfect for sale. Thank you.

All right. I have to say something or if you'd like to.

Yeah, I do. I would like to say something. Um, so yeah, I just uh try to keep it together. Um, I I don't like the attention. Many of you know that I hate this. That's why I brought the basketball team here tonight um on purpose because they deserve the attention. Um, I just just a couple things. Um, I'd like to just thank the school committee. Um, you know, I um I took this job two weeks before or three weeks before the world shut down. Well, I signed my contract one week before, right? Um, and um I I remember thinking, I don't know what I just did. Uh, but it was really the best decision I could have ever made. And I want to thank the school committee uh and those that were on then and have um been on since who have uh supported me um throughout. And um it's it's not people don't realize that not every school committee operates like this one. Uh this has this school committee consistently puts children before personal agendas. Uh and they've been very committed. All of you who are here now and those that have come before um have shared values and priorities even when it was really difficult to do so. And that I've never been a part of a school district like that before. And uh I don't think you realize how special um it is to have governance like this one here. And those of us who have worked in other places know it's not like this everywhere. And uh that's what makes this really hard. Um and so I'm proud of um our collective e efforts to make our schools a better place. I know we didn't accomplish everything we set out to achieve, but you never do. Um but um I I want to thank you all for selecting me, supporting me, and always holding a high bar for our children now and for the future. I do want to also thank our staff. I want to thank Amber Burman, Monnique Osgood, um Tracy Capantis, the leaders of our union, but we have an

amazing staff in the Salem public schools. And again, I it's not like this everywhere. Um they're equity driven. They care about kids, and uh over the last six years, um I've they've taught me a lot or all of you have taught me a lot about um what schools can be for kids, especially districts that serve high need students. Um there is a belief here that all kids can thrive. Um and um there are adults in the our schools 99.9% of them who hold a deep unwavering belief that every child can be successful. There's there's only a really small number. Um and through co co when the world challenged our values each day and there were consistent threats there have been consistent threats to public education. Our staff remained steadfast in their commitment to our mission, vision, and values. Um, and that com commitment made the work feel more possible, more rewarding, and more impactful. Um, this is a lonely job being a superintendent, and I wrote this in my message to staff over the weekend. Um, but it's much easier when you're surrounded by selfless people who really dedicate themselves to serving others. Um, and I'm grateful that you gave me a chance. I'm not from Salem. I'm not Tommy Doyle. I wasn't born and raised, but people gave me a chance and they embraced uh embraced uh working together uh to do whatever we thought it was right for kids. And that's uh pretty special. Um again, it's not like this everywhere. Um, folks need to know that and the partnership with our unions is uh I have to say as much as Ann and I um didn't agree on everything or Mon'nique and I didn't agree on everything in the end I think what we always agreed on is we're going to make the best decisions for kids every day. Um and um the agenda was not per there were not personal agendas. was always focused on what kids we may have disagreed exactly how to do

it, how to roll it out, how to implement it, but I've it's much easier when you work with people that share the same values. I think we have outstanding school leaders and we have uh teachers who who make magic every day. I mean, as much as you give me credit for being in a classroom, I wasn't very good at it. And um I think I was okay 25 years ago in a classroom, but teaching is way harder, way harder than it was when I started my career. And what our teachers do every day is um nothing short of miraculous. Um and you're we're all lucky to have the people serving our kids. And just I want to close by saying that I the message is for I want to send a message to students and um the one thing I I wasn't sure what it was going to be like when I found out that my office was in the sixth grade wing of um Collins Middle School. I didn't know that wasn't advertised in the job description. Uh you might want to make sure that that's not in the job description. Um but it turned out to be the best thing I I have to say. Uh and Kate can attest to this. I um there were moments where I had I'm sorry to all the kids when I came out of the my office and I thought I was a teacher or I thought it was the principal of the school. Um and I realized that like no, they weren't going to listen to me. They they didn't know who the guy in the suit was.

But it was the best thing to be around kids every single day. And it's the part I'm most worried about leaving is that I could walk out my door every single day. And yes, the girls bathroom was on one side and the boys' bathroom was on the other, but I could always have a conversation on the darkest days with kids, and that just turned the day um around for for me. Um and so um I want to thank the young people of Salem who give me so much hope for a better future. Many people throw shade and speak ill of today's youth. I hear it all the time. They have never met a Salem public school student. They are dynamic, charismatic, kind, civic-minded, humble, creative. Have to stop there. And brilliant. Promised myself I wasn't going to cry. Um, and they always made me smile, made me laugh, inspired me, and taught me so much about being a better educator, a leader, and a person. over the last six years. Salem kids can and do hard things every day and are capable of more than they even know and think is possible. And my enduring memory of our students will be during this basketball championship run when our diverse student body came together in the most innocent, respectful, and spirited way possible to the envy of every other town and every city we faced. They represented everything that is good, just, and special about Salem, about Massachusetts, and about our country. And so, yeah, I'm just grateful to have been part of this community and proud to have been able to serve Salem over the last six years. I'm done here.

They got them all with tears. Motion for another two-minute recess.

Thanks a lot. We did this at the start of the agenda. We should have done this at the end. Yeah,

we do have business. Kate's pres. Yeah, we've got senior itis. All right. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Second. Motion made by memoranda. Seconded by member Cornell. Under discussion, seeing none. All in favor? Any opposed? The matter carries unanimously.

Public comment. The school committee would like to hear from the public on issues that affect the school district and are within the scope of the committee's responsibilities. Spanish interpretation is available for anyone who needs it. The members of the school committee would like to remind the public that Salem public school students regularly attend school committee meetings. We encourage all meeting participants to model respectful and productive public discourse for our young learners. We have any public comment in the chambers. Seeing none, is there any public comment on Zoom? Please use the raise hand function.

Not the next item is approval of the consent agenda. These are the minutes of the school committee meeting of March 9th. Approval of a field trip to Canoby Lake Park for the Bates fifth grade students of June 12th and approval of the warrants of March 5th and March 12th, 2026. So move. Second. Motion made by member Cornell, seconded by member Miranda. Under discussion, seeing none, all in favor? Any opposed? The matter carries unanimously. Student representatives report.

All right. Um, good evening everybody. Um, tonight I'm going to keep it a little short. I wanted to talk a little bit about what's going on at Salem High School academically, um, extracurricular wise, and obviously, of course, what's going on with the school, the student advisory, sorry. Um, so, um, in 2025, the statistics for the AP exam scores came out. Um, 66.4% 4% of SHS students who took an AP exam scored a three or a higher out of a five on at least one exam. Um, in the 25 to 26 school year, about 41% of Salem High School students are enrolled in at least one AP and more than 88% of juniors and seniors are enrolled in what DESIE considers advanced coursework. Um there is also a very big shift in practice over the last four years um with what Mr. Burns has also been saying considering the amount of difficulty and coursework that students have been picking. Um uh something else that I also noticed was the number of AP courses that are being um held at Salem High, which is 27, which is also the highest number in all of the surrounding schools around us. Higher than Peodyy, Marblehead, Danverse, Beverly, Bishop Fenwick, and I could keep going. There's a lot of schools. Um, something else that I really wanted to highlight as well was the Shell podcast that's being hosted by two of the coaches at Salem High School. Um, some of the best student leaders, um, sports captains, and really just some of the brightest students at the high school are being hosted on the podcast to talk about their experiences in high school and overall in the community and what makes them

the students that they are and how special they are. not just to the school but like I said to the community and the district. Um and then moving on to the um student advisory, we also hit off the project with the welcoming um the incoming students. We did send out the survey. Now we're working to connect um some of the mentor to assign mentors and to connect mentors with new incoming students and we hope for this project to fully be implemented by the start of next year as well. We are also hosting elections very very soon. Um yeah and yeah that's pretty much it. Sorry I'm still a little bit emotional after all the doctor's rake goodbyes.

Thank you so much. Thanks. Any questions from committee members for student representative? Superintendent report. All right. You good?

Back to business. Okay. Um, I'm a little uh my first comments are uh if I don't say this, I know I'm going to be in big trouble with Ben Chertok because he told me I had to say this and he gave me my instructions. Uh, tomorrow night is the all city concert um which very excited about. 6:30 is the chorus concert, 7:30 is the jazz concert. Um, it is always a uh a banner affair. Uh and then Thursday at 6:30 is the band concert and 7:30 is the orchestra concert at Salem High School. So, hope to see uh folks there and looking forward to seeing our students perform and share their talents with us um tomorrow evening and on Thursday. Um I also do want to thank all the members of um the innovation committee that were part of a great event. Um I guess it was a week and a half ago now. uh the design day um and uh you know um school committee member Miranda's part of the team and all those um that uh made it uh we had teachers there we had parents um students um and I think in the end we had about 100 people who showed up for design day and shared input on the future of the Salem public schools and how we can continue to make the school system uh more innovative, more student centered um and um and uh set the course for the strategic plan that we hope uh to be able to hand to the next superintendent. Um so, um thank you for all those that participated. Um I the only I I want to be quick tonight because um it's going to be hard for me to stay composed, but I um I did want to just um if we could start with the um school choice recommendations for SY 2627. Um, I wanted to put this forward a little earlier than usual because um, I wanted to make sure that the school committee had a chance to review this

and hopefully support this before I transition. Um, you have in your um, in your packet the school choice recommendation for the upcoming school year. It is very similar and this is uh, not inner district choice. This is intra uh, no, this is um, yeah, it's inner inner district. Is that the right word? inner district cross district choice.

Um so this is choice from outside of Salem into Salem. Um and every year the school committee is asked to vote um to uh you you really only have to vote to not participate but I still bring it forward for the committee to support uh our um practice for the upcoming school year. Um a couple of changes from this year to uh next year that I'm recommending um that I want to call out is that um we would we are recommending to continue Salem's participation in the inter district non-resident school choice program with some limitations. Uh we will continue to admit students in grades uh 9 to 12 um which we have at Salem High School only. We do not accept students to New Liberty or to Salem Prep. Salem Prep um you have to have a specialized education plan to enter. And at New Liberty, uh we want stu students to enter through Salem High School first and then uh decide whether New Liberty is the right placement for them. Um so we'll continue our practice uh for high school. In K to 5, we will continue to re we recommending that we continue to admit 10 students per grade except in kindergarten. We were reducing that number to five because we are a little worried about enrollment uh at kindergarten. We have had some tight classes in the last few years. So the discussion amongst the leadership team was to limit it to five students for kindergarten. And then um although we do not accept school choice for uh prek and um preschool programs uh we are recommending excluding Sarah Parker Raman school uh given that we are trying to better understand what the enrollment will be and so we're I'm recommending that they do not accept students for uh from outside of the district for just

next year. Uh that can be revisited uh a year from now. Um, in talking to the principal at um at uh Collins, uh the recommendation is also to not accept school choice into Collins. We have um very tight class sizes at the middle school level. We obviously just welcome Salt and Stall students to uh the middle school and we feel like we could use at least another year before revisiting opening school choice at Collins Middle School. Um and we're again we our class sizes are close to capacity uh if not at capacity in some places. And so that was uh that's behind that decision. Uh the only other change we're making um and and uh Laura had Assad had to leave but in consultation with Laura is that we are going to close school choice earlier this year in August at the beginning of August not September. And the reason behind that is we think that waiting uh it's schools um it's hard for schools to um prepare for receiving students late in the process. Obviously we can't avoid that when there are students who are moving into Salem. But we add more complexity to schools and challenges when we have students enrolling uh late in the process or like as you know the week before or the week of school starting. So, by giving schools at least a month to really know who what their um uh what their uh class or their student enrollment will look like, it gives them a lot better of a chance to prepare for the upcoming school year. So, we're um we're closing um there's still a deadline of June 12th in order to qualify for the priority round of a lottery and then we will admit uh and then we can students can admit on a first come first serve basis or they can apply uh before August 2nd. Um and then

we will close school choice for the year. Um and so we had a discussion as a leadership team about that and felt that that would give our schools a better chance to be prepared for the start of the upcoming school year. Um and so the but the rest of the language is exactly the same as what we've had in the past. We've vetted this with our attorneys. Uh so it complies with Mass Massachusetts general law or uh Massachusetts laws around school choice. Um, I will just point out that if you look at the chart on the last page that uh even with the middle school not accepting students this year, we had more stu school choice students enter the Salem public schools and we are at I think a five-year high at least since we've been uh actually when I first got here we only accepted choice at the high school level and then we opened it up. Um but our numbers we have 94 total students. Didn't mean we didn't accept 94 students last year. That's a total of 94 students who are with us who are from other communities. Um and remember once you accept a student they have to stay with you through the duration of their time unless they choose to leave but we can't ask them to leave. Once you accept them you own that student for the duration of their uh time in um in school. And so we are expected to receive almost $800,000 of non-resident school choice revenue and FY27, which as you know goes a long way towards funding our prek programming. And that was a decision we made a or the school committee made a few years ago with our budget as we were trying to to sustain our programming beyond our ESSER funding and our COVID funding. Um and so I'm going to stop there and see if there's any questions from the committee. Uh and I will be asking for a vote tonight to accept this. so we can post it for families that may be interested in school choice.

Questions the committee member Scott thank you. Um just from my understanding I'm trying to understand that that last statement that you made about we we have the student for the their extend does that include so middle school we don't accept new but it does it include them going to the middle school? It does include them going to middle school. Yes. So if they were accepted as a first grader, they can stay all the way through. And even though we may not be accepting new students in middle school, if they're going to middle school, they automatically have a slot in our middle school. So each year, this number 94, was that those accepted that year or the total number of students? Total number of students.

So when we say 10 per grade, that's 10 total, including the ones that move to the next year. So like if we have a fifth grader moving to six, there are 10 of them. Does that fill that 10 bucket already? No. No, it's 10 new students. 10 new each year. We don't ever really get to that number the the the number every, you know, not every year. There were a couple grades last year if you look. Yeah, I just see that now.

Um like kindergarten we had 10 last year. Um but we don't um typically get 10 per grade, but we leave room for at least 10 students to come in. We accepted, if you look at the last page, we accepted 41 choice students across all grades last year. uh obviously not 6 to 8 but K to 5 and then 9 to 12. We accepted 41 which is the most we've accepted um I think ever. Thanks. Any other questions from committee members on this?

All right. Um, thank you. And we'll ask for a vote on that later on. Um, next on the agenda, we have, let's see, um, yeah, the merger update. I'm going to turn it over to Deputy Superintendent Carboni, who uh, is going to share an update on the Carlton and Salt Install merger, soon to be the Sarah Parker Raman School.

Great, Mark. Okay, Mark's going to put the slides up. Great. So, I'm happy to uh continue to um share information about the merger and I think we're in a really good shape um districtwide. I feel like all aspects of the planning are on track. Uh a lot has happened over the last couple of weeks since uh we gave a committee an update. So, I'm happy to have the opportunity to do that. Where do I point this Mark? It works.

There we go. Okay. So this is a slide that uh the committee has seen before. We always want to ground the updates in the goals that we have for the merger. First and foremost, we aim to elevate student learning by coordinating resources at the merge school. Um we also see the merger as an opportunity to empower our um teachers and our staff as many of them are playing important roles in the process by participating both on the innovation working group and the transition planning team. In terms of culture, both schools have, I think you all know, tremendous legacies and traditions that we expect to come together in a really meaningful and powerful way um through merging the two uh school communities. And then finally, um some important upgrades are planned for the school that are going to help us take steps towards uh operational excellence at the Syra Parker Raman school site. and I'll be talking a bit later about those improvements that we hope to be able to make. There we go. Uh so I'll start with some highle updates. Um we have prioritized transparent and timely communication with staff and to that end all staff affected by the merger have uh have been verbally notified of their placement or displacement and or likely non-renewal. and Jill Conrad, our um director of uh human resources, is now working with the principles to develop written notifications which will be issued in uh April, midappril, right before the break so that they'll also have uh written um confirmation. Uh Mark and his IT team have assessed all things related to technology. we've um toured both of the the Sarah Parker Raman School and the Carlton um to make decisions about technology

um and the need to move the interactive screens in particular so that all educators who need one um will have that to support instruction um and access to the device and the space in which they they will be working. So he's working um on the classroom assignments or the office assignments um with the principles. Now um he is also con working with the librarians to conduct conduct um an assessment of the library collections at both Salt and Stall and Carlton. Um and we are planning to invest significantly to upgrade the merged collection um and also the furniture at the Salt and Stall Library. If you've ever been sat in a chair at the Salt and Stole Library, you know that um that is uh uh gravely needed. So, we're we're working on that. From a technical standpoint, um steps have been taken to update Adessie about the school merger. Uh the new name for the school and the address um change for both New Liberty and Salem Prep High School. Those are small things, but they matter. Um so, just to assure you that those things have been taken place. And finally, Chris O'Donnell is working on merging the two schools um website um the web pages to be ready for the opening of school. And this is a pretty significant undertaking. So, he's focusing on the pages that get the most traffic. He has backend information about that. Um so, we are planning on that being ready um this summer. Uh oops. Oops. Goodness, I'm not good at this. There we go. All right. The transition team um continues to meet and they are deep into planning events that will facilitate uh the two school communities coming together and Ellen Wingard is on that team with um Laura Lauren um Weaver, the principal at Carlton is uh running that and I believe member Sto is also on that

committee. Uh they are planning a joint field day toward the end of the school year. This will happen at the Salt and Stall location and so we'll um bus kids over from Carlton so that the kids can enjoy that together. Um we're also going to uh support buses for the Carlton students to be shuttled to Salts for School tours at some point in the spring. This will be an important opportunity for the kids to kind of mix and mingle and get to know each other um and to start getting familiar with their new school. Um and the team is also planning a staff pottery night so that staff can um also get to know each other. Um they may be, you know, just getting acquainted and or reacquainted because some of them may have worked um together in different schools um prior to that. Um but they're excited to to do that as a joint uh school community. Uh there's a yet to be yet to be determined uh family event that they're are hoping to host in May. And then um we are also committing to allocating funds in the new school year to support the continuing access of the farm school um at the Sarah Parker Ramond uh school. So that's an important uh thing to for the kids and the staff. I did want to offer this slide as a reminder um to the committee members about what is involved in building an innovation plan. That's the other team that's meeting is working on um taking the Carlton plan and updating it for the merged school. So step one in the process is to submit a prospectus which is a brief plan proposal and statement of intent to develop a full plan um and a more defined plan. uh the applicant who is um principal jellison um will submit that to uh a steering committee that is comprised of the superintendent

uh the union president and the school committee chair. Um two out of the three must approve the plan uh the prospectus for it to move forward. Um and we expect that she will be doing that tomorrow. Um so we're in good shape with that. Um following that a committee is to be formed but the committee has already been formed. We've been meeting with the committee um and they've helped us develop the perspectives perspectives. So we'll continue to meet with that committee to develop the full plan. Um and uh that team includes faculty and family members from both schools. Um and um we have plans to meet throughout the spring as we continue to uh refine and um develop the plan from the perspectus which is kind of like the seed ideas but we need to build that out into a full plan. If the plan does end up including autonomies that will change working conditions those will need to be negotiated um with the union and then taken to a vote of the teachers and staff. So um more to come on that and then the last steps are that the plan must be presented to the school committee and then followed by a hearing and a vote taken to approve the plan. So tenatively we're sort of looking at school committee dates and backward mapping from there. We're hoping to present the plan at the May 26th meeting um and then uh potentially have a special meeting for the hearing on June 8th before the regular meeting where a vote could be taken hopefully. So the something for you all to think about. Um but that's um what seems to make sense. Oh, come on. Maybe it's being slow.

Wait, wait. Oh, see now you you just have to be patient, I guess.

Oh, boy. Okay, so the innovation um working group on Thursday of last week um information about the emerging innovation plan was shared with families and staff at both schools and I also forwarded the materials to the committee members so that you had those to look at as well. Uh principles Jellison and Weaver are hosting three coffee hours uh for families who may have questions or are seeking clarification about the uh emerging plan. And so uh those are listed on the slide. Um there's one in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one scheduled for the evening. And those um have been shared with both uh communities. They are also ho hosting a joint staff meeting on Wednesday to remove uh to review the uh emerging design with teachers and staff and we'll build in time for questions and discussion. So we're trying to socialize the the emerging plan and also get uh input and feedback. So one of the things that needs to be figured out is what the curriculum for the merge school will be for the coming year. uh they currently use different materials uh so some change in what materials educators will be using is inevitable but the goal is to minimize the change. So to that end the team has decided to continue using my view in um English language arts for kindergarten through grade three which is what both schools use currently. Um in grades four to five the plan is to use benchmark which is uh will be a change for the salt install grade four and five teachers um and not a change for uh the teachers at Carlton. Um we'll make sure that they have these materials ahead of time um and some opportunities um in at the retreat that

I'll talk about in a little bit to engage with these materials and start um to use them to plan for the upcoming school year. For math, the general consensus is that new materials are desired. Uh so a curriculum review team has been formed uh that includes teachers from both schools, math specialists, the math coach um and uh other and school leaders from both schools. Uh there the team is being convened by um Sonia Lowe, our executive director of academics and they are doing um some research on highly rated um materials um from different vendors um and they plan to select a couple to kind of do a deep dive with um before making a selection. Um, so, uh, I know there's probably lots of questions about sort of the moving plan, um, and that there has been a team that's been meeting to draft a weekby- week moving plan that will be shared with the union later this week. The plan uh will include directions for staff when the boxes will will arrive and details about the time and compensation the district is putting in place to support our educators with packing and unpacking. I'm not going to say more because um we'll want to review that with the union leadership first to make sure that we're on the same page um before speaking about it publicly, but the plan is in process and we feel like we're um in good shape and ahead of time with that. Um we did talked during this that we don't want the packing to take place until later in the year. We don't want kids learning in spaces where there are, you know, emits boxes and whatnot. So, we're sensitive to pushing that off a little bit toward um the end of the year. Um and unfortunately, we're going

to be in school through June, so we've got plenty of time. Um there is need to do some deep cleaning at Salt and Stall to make space for new educators that are going to be moving in, and we are planning to do that over April break. Um, we're likely to need to bring some requests to sunset materials um and furniture to the curriculum subcommittee because we have a policy that says we need to do that unless of course it's like damaged and broken and we'll just get rid of that stuff. But other things we want to bring to the um curriculum subcommittee. So I'll be connecting with um member Miranda um to coordinate that. Um uh I want to point out that there are several capital requests that have been put forth um that are intended to make improvements to the physical plant. Um, these are contingent on funding of those requests. Um, and include a new rug, um, an upgraded sound system and projector in the auditorium, as well as, um, the hope to do some work on the grounds and landscaping outside, repave the parking lot, and to do some interior painting, um, to spruce up the inside of the building. Again, I just want to make sure everyone understands that those are um contingent upon funding and we're hopeful uh for that. And then finally, um the team, um both the principles working together, um with some members of um their staff are planning a 4-day summer retreat that they feel is really important um to bring the staff together to do some team building activities. um to dig deep into the instructional model and plan for early imple implementation of the the new innovation plan to get familiarized with any new curriculum and to plan for welcoming students in the fall. So we are in the process of finding the financial resources to support stipens

to pay teachers to uh participate and attend the summer retreat. Um, and um, we want to be able to support things like, you know, as I said, stipens, t-shirts, refreshments, and other um, they they want to do a ropes course at I think there's a rope course at Salem State that they want to do as a team building um, opportunity as well. So, we're looking forward to that. And that's the end. All right. Thank you, Deputy Superintendent. Any questions from committee members? Okay, thank you. You seeing it now?

We're still in your report.

Okay. Uh moving along, we have a presentation about um uh strengthening belonging in the Salem public schools, addressing inequities and discipline practices. Uh this was something that we had discussed uh that the school committee wanted to see an update on school discipline um and discipline rates across the district especially as it pertains to our strategic plan of the risk ratio um numbers that we've set out for um and looking at our uh students of color, our students with disabilities um our high need students and we're going to uh Ellen's going to present you know a comprehensive information to you. uh there may be a need for further discussion at maybe a committee of the whole in the future, but at least this will get the conversation started. I think um I'll just say this uh while I think we've done a lot of work as a school system in this area um like any most school districts um there's a lot there's still a lot of work to be done and disparities are exist in systems that are inherently um you know have structural uh racism that have um structural inequities that exist. Um, while we've seen some improvements, there's also areas that we uh continue to be stuck around. And I think it's important that we continue to um that the committee and the school district continue to look at this data um and um continue to try to improve uh so that we do not have the disparities that we've seen historically um in school systems everywhere around the country. Um, and so, uh, while I'm proud of the efforts of Allen and her team, our staff, our schools, uh, there are still, um, there is still places where I we don't think that, uh, students are, uh, getting the, um, the supports they need to be successful because discipline is is is not is not a student issue. It's a systemic issue and it's something that

we need to continue to, you know, to to uh improve on as as a as a school system moving forward. But I think it's important that we launch this conversation and um again, I think there there there's merit to further dialogue um around this uh this work. So, I'm going to turn it over to Alan um you have a copy of the presentation in your packets and there may be some other data you want to you you'd like to request that we can share with you in the future. Thanks, Steve. Um, yes, I think this is the beginning of a conversation. I think, um, this is a really big topic for 10 slides in 10 minutes. Um, but we're committed to that. So, this is this is the beginning. Um, so to double down on what Steve already mentioned, we're looking to strengthen belonging for all students. Um, and part of that is really looking at some of the inequities that still exist um, among some of our subgroups. So, you know, we're going to take a a deep honest look at where they exist and um think about how we're attempting to dismantle some of those systems. Um so, as you know, we measure belonging in lots of different ways, but one of them is through looking at discip discipline disparities and the gaps between students of color, students with disabilities, and their um non-disabled and uh white students. And so this is really an extension of the work in our strategic plan around central belonging. Um we were lofty in setting a goal of reducing our risk ratio to less than 1.2 by the end of our strategic plan which is this June. We're close. Um we're going to go over risk ratio in just a bit but um we're not there yet. I think I showed this slide last year when we started to talk about risk ratio, but I want to sort of center the work in our core beliefs about behavior and about what we think exists. Um, you

hear us talk a lot about how behavior is a form of communication. And typically, um, it's an expression of an unmet need, sometimes an underdeveloped skill. But when we think about how behavior communicates, that helps us understand how we impact our environments. And so we really do believe that every single student can thrive in school if they're provided with the right environment and the right support. And so our goals are really to disrupt exclusionary practices where kids are removed either from the classroom or from the school from their peers. We know that this exclusion these exclusionary practices harm kids physical and mental health. Um it creates the school to prison pipeline and you know the disproportionality that I spoke of earlier and the overall goal is obviously to improve belonging for all. We want to improve student mental health. Obviously we're here for academic achievement and so that's the end goal. Um but we also want to make sure that our kids after high school are successful in their uh postsecary careers. So, I want to talk a little bit about um some of the data that you're going to see in a moment. Um I want to talk about discipline referrals or incidents. So, just give you a general understanding of what the data that you're going to be looking at is. So, we ask educators to record in Aspen in our student information system when there is a behavior that requires office assistance. So, there are lots of things that happen in a classroom on a daily basis that teachers are expected to be able to help work with students around. And then there's a set of um behaviors that we, you know, they're pretty typical across the district that we expect are more administrator managed or administrator supported. And those are the behaviors that we ask educators to record in Aspen in our conduct workflow. And so that's what we're measuring in risk ratio. And again, I'll talk a little bit about that when you see the

data. There is a variety of different incidences that teachers can record from um skipping class, which you'll see, to bullying to insubordination. And and these codes align with Desi codes, so they're they're clinical in nature. Um but we do it on purpose so that we're not doubly duplicating data, which could then, you know, lead to mistakes. Um, I just want to sort of recognize that some schools are more accurate with data recording than others. And I think that probably happens whenever we ask schools to to do a thing. Um, we know that some schools are are really religious about uh documenting discipline referrals and others we need to attend to and provide technical assistance around and we've done that. Some of our special education programs, and I've invited um Jen to help chime in with this a little bit, are using our Aspen conduct referral system to record behaviors even though those behaviors might be a manifestation of a student's disability and they might be in a specialized program. So, we may see some disproportionality and that really is um I'm glad that that those behaviors are being recorded because then we can track things and we can help shape what might happen programmatically for the student. Um, but it may skew the data a bit for our general population. You'll see that in a moment. So, here's just sort of a snapshot, an overview of some of those incidences that I just talked about. So, you're going to see that big number 3299. I pulled this data on, I think March 16th. That was the total number of referrals that have been recorded thus far this year. The highest disparity that we see, and you're going to see that in the in the middle lower part of the slide, is that 2,3001 of those instances were for male identifying students. 1,33 of those instances were female. So,

we already seeing a a pretty big difference in boys versus girls receiving behavior incident referrals. We also have over a third of our instances coming from Salem High School, which actually isn't a surprising. They're our largest school. They are also one of our schools that um records instances to a tea. They are very accurate, which I applaud them for. You're also going to see that the most um frequently documented incident is around skipping class. And again, we're talking about middle and high school. Um, and conduct, disorderly conduct is the second one. Do you notice how dis disorderly conduct is? It's not a very kid-friendly word. That's a desi code. The bottom left corner shows a little bit about risk ratio that I'm going to expand out and show you over time what that's looked like. This next slide speaks to date the amount of suspensions that we have um issued this year across the district. So on the lefth hand side you'll see that we've had 17 singular suspensions. That doesn't include days. That's just how many times a kid has been suspended. One ch one student may be represented three times in there but that's 17 counts of suspension. Our out of school suspensions are at 85 and we've had 60 emergency removals. And for those who are unfamiliar with that term, that is um a pr a principal's um uh of his their ability their ability to remove a student who is in the way of learning and unsafe for the community in the moment given due process given um you know parents and students have rights around understanding what's going on. When kids are emergency removed, they

are often suspended, but that requires a hearing and it's a timing issue. Kind of going slowly so people can ingest the information. Just to give you an idea of what kids are suspended for most frequently, physical altercation um is at the top followed by disorderly conduct and then fighting. Again, these are these are Department of Ed codes. The bottom will show you some of the subgroup information. So, let me just break down what you see in terms of suspension. You can just see by the bar graph that we have a significantly higher suspension counts for Hispanic students than non-Hispanic. That's the right-hand chart. The lefth hand chart speaks to um our sub subgroups with kids with active IEPs, multilingual learners, or duly identified. So that gives you some subgroup data as well. And then the middle is suspensions by race and ethnicity. And so you'll notice African-American Hispanic students are at about 26 suspensions. African-American, four suspensions. Caucasian, Hispanic, 15, Caucasian, 23, and the other category, which is um Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, is five. So, you can see that our students of color are being suspended at a higher rate than our white students.

Yeah. Is it a higher rate or is it I'm just a little confused. A higher number. Yeah, a higher number. We did not we um we don't I think this is something to dig into because um we are not um measuring risk ratio with suspensions. We're measuring risk ratio with um incidences. So the likelihood we're not able to predict likelihood um with race and ethnicity just yet. Is is that what you were asking?

No ma'am. Um, I'm just think I'm just trying to like picture I, you know, I'm not good at math, so it's like I'm trying to picture in my mind what our student populations look like and whether or not those bar graphs are representative of our student populations, which would be easier to see by percentages. Y as opposed to numbers. Yep. So, so I think that there's probably subsequent data that we'll need to get for you and that's one of them. We're um better able to tell you that answer when it comes to instances than suspensions right now. Yep.

I would I would just say I I do think the suspensions mirror the incidents as a as a whole. The reason we looked at incidents uh for risk ratio that that that was part of the strate the strategic plan decision is because we would have we knew we were going to have much more data to collect um because there's many more incidents than that generally and so we wanted to see directionally like how many uh how it broke down by the different subgroups but I do think and just quick math I'm not a you're you know I'm not an expert on this but it is it does mirror some of the risk ratio that we see for incident uh that that Alan's going to talk about um that the suspension percentages are similar to what we're seeing with incidents which there is a disparity

based on uh race, there's a disparity based on I IEP status and there's a dis disparity based on high needs which you'll get into in a second. Yeah. Yep. The other reason that we are looking at incidents for risk ratio is that um often times kids begin to get in trouble quote and which lead to suspensions. And so we wanted to be able to look at that early earlier than waiting until it gets to a suspension.

Yeah. Sorry, I just one more thing on that. I I got you know um it is al for K to2 suspending the state law is pretty prescriptive around suspending kids under grade three and so you have to get permission from the superintendent or their designate and so we don't have as you can imagine as many suspensions for younger students but we do have incidents and so that does help us begin to look at the data not just for uh middle schoolers and high schoolers where we tend to see the majority of the suspensions because Uh the state law is pretty clear like and our schools have done generally a pretty good job of trying not to suspend um students under grade three um because of um the guid you know the state law is is very prohibitive against that. I mean it doesn't mean that we don't suspend kids in the young grads but it doesn't have happen as frequently and that's why looking at the incidents does help us see where the patterns because the patterns begin for kids from the moment they enter it. it it starts when they're three and four years old. You start to see certain kids who are getting disciplined more than others. Um and so this the incidents count for every kid including for three and four year olds are in there as well.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Um there's something I was going to say with that. Oh, for all all suspensions, principles must consider other other ways of disciplining prior to suspending. That's just part of the law that law that went into effect a couple years ago. And um and so when we actually our suspension numbers are not very high comparative to other districts.

I think if we if we put this up against other districts of our size and of our demographic, um they're still too high for me, but they're they're um pretty low can and you know that's other data that we can probably compare um for you. So as a reminder, risk ratio is the measure that we use to predict likelihood um of a specific educational outcome. So in this case, whether certain subgroups are being disciplined more um more than others. And so a risk ratio of 1.0 indicates equal representation. Over one is over representation, under one is under representation.

Okay? So that it comes out of um the medical field, but um education's been using risk ratio now for a couple years. So let me show you some of the raw data and then the trend lines above. So we started tracking risk ratio in 2022 when we launched um right after right before we launched the strategic plan. And what you can see is that um for our for our students who are considered low income, while it's still the highest at 2.14, so our our students who are low income are twice as likely to be disciplined. It's dropped significantly from 3.29 in 2022. Our students with disabilities, it's unfortunately sort of ticked back up to 1.86. 86 currently this year. When I looked at the data this time last year, it also was a little bumped up a little bit. You know, data es and flows over the year. I anticipate the this number will come down a bit by the end of the school year, but it is up a bit from where we were last year. We have seen a steady increase in our multilingual learners and um discipline rates. So we were under reppresented the kids the multilingual learners were underrepresented in the discipline um incident referrals from 0.93 and now we're at 1.54. Our students of color has remained fairly stable. Um right now we're at 1.42. We started at 1.56 I think. So it's been fairly stable. Again, I um th those numbers, while they're too high for me, are generally um I think probably better than what you may see in if you looked at other districts.

So, let's talk about what we try and do to prevent discipline referrals because I think that that is important. Um, we anchor our social emotional learning work in Castle's 10 indicators of schoolwide seal and I have been in front of the committee before to talk about all of the different things that we are doing to help support kids both in and out of school. Um, we talk a lot about this year explicit seal, our youth voice work, which I know I spoke last um last committee meeting about. I know you've heard about our strong start playbooks and our supportive school and classroom climates, our house systems, um our assemblies, our town halls, our restorative practices. I don't think you can walk into any one of our schools at this point without seeing circles in action either with adults or students or both. That is one of the biggest ways that we're able to help kids feel a sense of belonging in our schools and adults. Um we for we focus on adult seal. We have required deescalation training at the beginning of the school year. We've done a lot of work around and mental health PD, restorative justice PD. Our DT last year focused squarely on social emotional learning and help leaders lead this work in their schools. We've talked about alternatives to suspension. So instead of keeping kids at home, thinking about ways that they can engage with us in school in different ways, having restorative conversations when there's harm that's done. You've heard a lot about our continuum of supports both in and out of school with organizations, youth development organizations, um, mental health organizations. We have looked at data over and over around and thought about how our SEAL data really informs our school interventions. And so if you looked at the 10 indicators of schoolwide, there is one

that we have not necessarily dug into. And I think this might be part of the key to how we can help move this work forward in the next year to two. Um, and that is integrated into academics. So what happens in the classroom um the interaction between curriculum and engagement and student learning and so that is the one sort of indicator that we haven't sort of thrown our weight behind um but have really squarely done a lot of work across the district and the other nine. So I think we should be proud of that work. Um and it's given us some ideas about moving forward. When we look at the data, we have student support teams that look at this data pretty consistently. And those student support teams are often uh school adjustment counselors, city connects coordinators, an assistant principal or a principal, sometimes a school psychologist, family engagement folks, um behavior specialists, BCBAS. really they look at it through the student lens and so what can we do to put interventions in place? First of all, they look at root causes. They think about what's going on for the student. They try and make sure that they're precise about that before they prescribe interventions. Those student support folks might support educators and teachers with trauma-informed practices in in the classroom. Um, we think about partnering with families around um, services and just in general helping families understand what their child is going through at school. And really, I think the next step in taking a look at the data is being able to identify trends schoolwide and helping our principles really disagregate it based on what is this what is the environmental changes that need to occur beyond the student lens. We have to make sure that we're getting that feedback to educators um in a

timely way. I think there's more professional development to do with educators around how you integrate SEAL into the classroom environment. And then I think we also need to be thinking about setting even more specific school improvement plan goals. So, I know we were looking at risk ratio, but I think we can probably drill down into the data even deeper and be looking at what what is it really we want to be focused in on. Um, is it a grade level? Is it a certain subgroup? Um, how are we do how are we setting really targeted goals and then supporting educators to meet those goals. I want to invite Jen up just to talk a little bit about the work she's been doing with special education and the special educators to help address the uh disparity with special ed students.

Thank you. I'm going to talk a little bit of how we support our educators and our staff that work with our high incident students and those would be our high incident programs um and our students that have frequent um behavior referrals. So some of the things that we are doing, we break it out into proactive and responsive measures for staff and supporting them. Um we have targeted support. We provide monthly professional development focus on behavior management specifically for high incident students. We do peer facilitated PD which would um include BCBAS run ran by BCBAS our subsparate teachers and our teacher leaders um around behavior management in the classroom. Uh we also have systemwide access to PD's uh PD for all staff. Uh both asynchronous and synchronous PD around behavior management. Uh this includes safety care for synchronous and for asynchronous we do um provide asynchronous modules that are tailored towards the population that our staff are working with. We have about a 100% of participation rate from our pair professionals on our asynchronous modules and we are uh and we do see a high uh level of participation for us separate teachers. Um we also do training for around specialized topics. So for populations that are working with maybe with autism or behavior programs um we also do that as well. We also for our responsive measures uh we do through our specialists and case review. We have direct intervention. We've added behavior specialists to programs with high incidents and high frequency um incidents. We also do clinical uh clinical uh oversight uh that utilize clinical case reviews uh to support students in crisis. That is where a an internal team will review high incident behavior um and provide recommendations around behavior improvement plans um and different ways that we can support students in the programs. We also have

um staff engagement. These are responsive strategies involving both specialists and the broader staff to ensure a broad support system. So if a student needs some temporary one-on-one help or they are in crisis, we're able to provide that. One thing we did see through the data is a higher level of reporting of what we call disability related behavior more so than we have in years past. This is great data to capture, but we are working on should it be considered an incident or should that be considered a program managed behavior. So, we're working on aggregating that data to be more clear of when and where we're seeing that. I think we're at the questions mark.

Any questions for members? Member.

Thanks. Um so the professional development that was named um I think it was named um by you uh Jen just wondering who is that who runs that. So we have several we have vertical alignment um professional development that's run by teacher leaders. We also have a monthly um high incident behavior management uh PD for um for special ed teachers for um pair of professionals that work in programs. So the programs that we see high levels of uh behaviors they do attend this um PD with that is run by BCBA and behavior specialists.

Okay. Thank you. Um, I'm curious, and I think this this may be more for um, Ellen, but I'm curious about the trends um, schoolwide trends when it comes to certain educators. Um, I I know that we've talked about collecting some of that data at different points. So, I'm I'm a little bit confused around like, do we have do we have that data? Um, and are we able to um kind of assess that or do we not have that data?

We do. We have incident data. We do have incident data. Um, school school by school, demographic by demographic, classroom by classroom, classroom by classroom, classroom by classroom. I'm looking at Mark because he's my partner in the data world. Um so yes I think what is currently an opportunity is for principles assistant principles to be looking at that data more consistently and more towards an eye of um coaching and feedback.

Okay. So is that data not is it are we like acknowledging it but it there it's not really being touched in terms of um like creating a solution. Um it sounds like not much is being done with the data. Go ahead.

Yeah. I mean I'll say we do look at that data uh school by school. Uh we I mean we can share that we could share that with the school committee for instance by school. I'd be I'd be less I'd be more uh cautious about sharing by educator. But um in terms of by school we can we do use it in conversation with schools. They set goals because risk ratio was a goal they had to set for their school improvement plans. So we did, you know, when Kate and I meet with each of the schools at the beginning of the year and then at the midyear point, we do look at risk ratios and we have conversations with schools about trends that they've seen. Like for instance, Bates is always, you know, Bates has we're always working to support Bates with the therapeutic program because there's suspically been more suspensions and incidents coming out of the that program. And so what we want to see with them for instance is setting goals around just improving the the numbers so we have less incidents of of kids that are in the tides program for instance. So we do sit with schools and help set goals. In terms of specific educators I do know that principles do have conversations with um educators where there are high numbers of incidents. It's either a sign that like more support is necessary or uh well it's always a sign that more support is necessary when you see patterns um and it's also a sign it could be a sign that there are some real concerns about classroom management about relationships with kids and so um that data I know in in my conversations and Kate's conversations we do pull the data to see like the number of incidents uh when we have a concern or when a concern is raised about a particular educator in a school. So it is regularly used and we have a dashboard that allows principles to see that data um and uh in real time because it updates every night. So you can see again um there

have been situations where we've seen an educator f have like you know an incident every day you know for a span of a week. Well that's that's data that should drive action on our part. Um so I I think we can certainly get you the data by school. I I again I wouldn't share it with about for educator but I know that we do use that data and principles do um and if they're not they should be uh in order to have conversations with Seph.

I appreciate that. I I'm less interested in seeing the um the data myself and more interested like that answer was exactly um what I was what I was looking for there just to make sure that some things are

are being done to address um to address all of this. And then also just wanted to um highlight for the public, for other for people who are here, for other members of the committee um that adultification is real. And um so adultification, I'll just give you like a short um definition. Perceiving a child as older and more mature and anger bias. Perceiving anger where it does not exist. the phenomena disproportionately impo is disproportionately imposed on black children often um compared to white children and and so um those are are some of the things that I know that we're all thinking about um and I know these conversations are difficult conversations to have and I also know that um most people don't become teachers because they want um you know to discipline kids um or to uh unfairly discipline kids or or any of that. So, just highlighting appreciate that we're having this conversation. I know it's a start. Um I I know myself I'm very interested in digging into this um some more as time goes on. Um and appreciate everybody's um efforts uh to correct some of the dis um disproportionality. other committee members with questions. Okay, member Cornell,

I just have I just have a process thing to propose to the committee just because this is I really appreciate the fact that you have all this data exists. It makes me really happy with the district that we can ask for it and it appears um but it is a lot to process

in a short period of time. So, I was just sort of looking at our schedule and we when we voted on how we would lay out the calendar for the year, we did vote that we could amend that at any time. And so, sort of looking at the calendar the way that we have it. Um, I would I would propose, you know, our next meeting on the 6th is pretty much devoted to the budget, but the meeting after that, um, I would propose moving a discussion about college, the college application process to May 11th. Um, because May 11th, we actually don't have a specific agenda item that day. and then have a follow-up conversation on the 27th of April to so in the meantime we can send some of our questions uh their way and and maybe have just you know this it's a late night but like tonight but we'd have a lot more time to kind of process and and and get some follow-up questions answered if we scheduled that for the 27th Any further comments or questions? Yep. Member Miranda,

to your knowledge, have we ever had an audit of some type where somebody from outside the district comes in and kind of does an assessment around um like discipline and racial disparities. Um, we did have an audit that was I will say I don't think was a very strong audit um that that we brought in to look at our policies and practices and they did look at our some our data, but I don't think it was um I was disappointed with the audit. Some of you may remember we had

um a um an equity audit that was done. Um I I thought you were on the committee for that, but I it was maybe early on uh that Laura had worked with an organization. I think we were all disappointed by the audit. And so while they did look at that um and there weren't I mean there were the predictable Yeah, there's disparity. It wasn't to the depth that we wanted. So I I would say while we did do one, I wouldn't say it was a very good one. So that is something that could be looked at. uh you know that the committee could ask for uh in the future for sure. What do you mean by not not a very good one? Like not

it wasn't Yeah, it wasn't in depth. It wasn't the quality was poor. Yeah. Yeah. No, the findings they even were just very generic. Even weigh in on it. What's that? I don't think I Yeah, it was not um Yeah, it was very disappointing in and in the lack of depth that it provided us. So Okay. Thank you. Great. All right. Thank you very much. Well, Cindy, go ahead.

Um, it was really just a really quick concern I think that I have in general. Um, especially considering the times that we are currently living in. I think a very important um concern should be brought up considering immigrant students as well and how we can better support them considering a lot of immigrants have been displaced from their home countries or you know they've come here maybe their country is in a time of war or especially also considering the situation with the politics in the United States right now as an immigrant myself I do feel very afraid sometimes um and I know I'm not alone there's There's hundreds of students in the Salem school district that are immigrants. They come maybe not from the same situation as myself who might need even more support that I needed. And I think that that might even show in your data as well. When you see like dual identifying students or like ESL students, those might be immigrants as well who need that additional support, maybe that additional conversation. And I really do think that in these times they need to be a very special concern for the educators and for the staff that works to support them.

Agreed. Yeah. I I I just want to

You're spot on. That's all I can say. I mean that is true. I mean, you you're a a real life example of it, but I think what you're saying is absolutely accurate. And I think that's part of the context that we have to think about. Um, you know, we don't want to be perpetuating a school to prison pipeline and that for kids um who are immigrants is especially even more acute um now. And so, and and those are the conversations we're having. You know, I'm very pleased that the teachers union is interested in having conversations with us right now about how to support our immigrant students because um I think this is again one of the reasons I loved working in Salem is like there is a real belief and commitment to making sure that we protect our kids and part of it is right is the discipline how we impose discipline in our schools every day. Um, and what again I while I think we, as Ellen said, I think we there's a lot of real positive in the work we do, you can see in these numbers that there is uh disproportionality that needs to continue to be looked at. And we we have this is part of dismantling the history of how schools are designed, right? That supports some kids and not all kids around everything from academics to discipline. And um thankfully we have a school system that's trying to continue to get better on that. But that perspective is real, right? And like that's what we need to hear on a school committee is from a student who says like this actually does have an impact on us as young people. So thank you for raising that.

Great. Thanks.

Um thank you Ellen and Jen. Um just uh quickly on the MSBA update you have uh in your folder um or in your packet. Um the school building committee met uh Thursday, March 19th, which was last week, reviewed the milestone schedule, uh discussion about mass safe funding. We had a quick update from the finance working committee uh working group and then u discussion about uh the debt exclusion vote. Um, and then, uh, did want to highlight that this weekend on March 29th, there's an opportunity for the community to see Salem High School. It's an open house to learn about the current conditions of Salem High School. I think the mayor will be doing a presentation. There'll be tours with students, with staff. Um, and um, and then obviously May 5th is the local debt exclusion vote. Um, and the next meeting is on April 16th of the building committee. And I know there's a resolution later on in this um meeting that I'll let the mayor discuss and member Scott. Um so with that uh what is left on the agenda? Can I just just add on to that? So the um the the uh Sunday of open house will be a presentation the the road show presentation. uh Rick Jones from the building committee, the co-chair, myself will be leading that from 12:00 to 1:00 in the library. And then from 1:00 to 4:00, there'll be tours, opportunities for people to come and see the building for themselves, talk with the project team and the designers, see some boards uh and models of the school and get their questions answered. I want to thank the League of Women Voters for uh co-hosting the presentation at noon. And I I think we're also going to have some light catering from the culinary students and CTE program at Selm High. So, should be a fun opportunity. I hope folks took out for it.

I have a just a brief report. Since we last met, um we have um met with the finance subcommittee to brief them on the ongoing development of the FY27 budget proposal. We last week had a third of three meetings with principles and department heads to review the budget proposal as we were finalizing it. And we spent time talking about how to create uh an equitable funding formula for non-personnel expenses at the elementary level. We talked about how to um plan for our substitute costs and our substitute coverage in FY27. And so we are really coming down to the final details um of the FY27 budget. This week we anticipate finalizing the Q&A of the questions that have been asked and the responses that were given at public forums and posting those. Uh then next week we will finalize the budget book. And when we see you again on April 6th, we will present the preliminary budget proposal. I just want to remind the public that on April 13th, we do have a budget um hearing at which we hope um families and community members will come out to share their feedback on that initial budget proposal. So that will be here um in the chambers and that is my report. Thank you.

All right. Subcommittee reports. Member Hoffman. I have um an ad hoc update. We um we had our first meeting last Thursday and we it was a good meeting. We met everyone and talked about our um what our next steps are. We had um we discussed the process and timeline discussion of positions and posting for the superintendent's um job. Um, and I'm bringing forward the um posting for you all to um I guess approve. Um, the only thing you might want to discuss would be um the salary. We we put down a sliding scale based on what Dr. Reich is making now plus the 3% he would make with next year. So, it would be between 2:30 and 255. Um, but we didn't want to put that on without the full body's um consent.

I don't know what the word is. So, any any questions? That's on the agenda for a motion later. But has the subcommittee had any discussion around the screening committee? So, we are um having a meeting on Wednesday for the setting up of the screening committee and how we're going to go about working that. Oh, sorry, not me. Member Miranda,

I just wanted to add um if it's okay, Member Hoffman, um that that meeting is Wednesday, 3:25 at 5:00 pm uh on Zoom for anybody who's curious and wants to attend. Any other subcommittee reports? Yep. Members,

um I'm not sure how this works here because we the policy committee did meet um last week or the week before. We went over actions taken last year and reviewed additional policies. This this year, we do have motions in the motions and resolutions section. It's a little complicated. I can get into it during that part or I I'll probably do that because it's a little a little in the weeds. We'll save it for that. No other reports. Okay. Uh section nine of the agenda, motions and resolutions. Uh we've completed one. Uh item two is the superintendent's evaluation.

The superintendent's evaluation actually does not require uh a motion because uh he's leaving. So, I uh am going to No, no, no, no. We're going to do

uh I I am going to instead ask that we uh enter uh my summary uh my summary into the public record. And uh Representative Cruz isn't here, so I can say I'm going to try to be shorter than Representative Cruz when he does this. Um so, just for the public, I'll just outline sort of the process. We uh we have the sort of statemandated process. uh from uh uh how to evaluate the superintendent. We look at his uh learning goals uh or his goals for the year and we kind of assess his uh his uh performance over the past year based on uh what he has proposed and a set uh bunch of guidelines from the state. Uh so just to reiterate for the committee and and the public, I'm just going to do this quickly. Uh in terms of student learning goals, uh the superintendent uh wanted to make strong progress toward uh early literacy strategies in K to8 uh which uh he did oversee including on the ground observation of teaching and learning and guided collaboration among elementary school leaders um and uh developing specific materials for dual language programs. uh he had his professional growth goal which which is to as we've all been talk we talk about all the time continuing to work on attracting growing and developing excellent and committed educators and so we had the uh registered teacher apprenticeship apprenticeship program which is a job embedded pathway uh to an initial license in Massachusetts uh through which we can help to diversify our our uh teaching staff And while Dr. Zich has set really high strategic goals that the district continues to work toward uh even though it's very difficult, we've

made substantial progress um in terms of hiring. So in 2021 2020 and 2021 school year, 10.8% of our overall staff were people of color and today 22.7% of our staff of people of color. Uh and in 20 the 2020 and 2021 school year 5.7% of our teachers were people of color and today that number is 17.1. Uh but I know that we are still working on that goal. I think that's something that you know Dr. Drake says the work is never done. Um I know he would have liked to have achieved that but we're going to keep working on that under interim superintendent uh Carboni and um and going forward. And then last that last uh goal is a district goal which was to fully implement and report on the district's pro progress towards strategic priorities, initiatives and goals. And so as uh Dr. Z noted in his uh performance summary, he spent a lot of time in the last year engaging the community around the strategic plan uh around the high school build and around reconfiguration. So, uh, he has taken the show on the road everywhere as I think we all know. PTO's, school faculty, neighborhood groups, the city council, the Latino Leadership Coalition, Salem State Church groups, the Salem Partnership, the Senior Center, uh, you name it. He is he is everywhere. Uh, and just hosting forums all over the place. Uh, so in you that's the sort of very short version of Dr. Reich's work over the past year. Um and members of the committee recognized that all of that work has has led to a lot of progress in the district. So uh just a brief commentary after kind of synthesizing everybody's uh evaluations.

I will say as I said I was I've been a parent in the district for for 19 years and I personally have never felt more hopeful about Salem public schools or more confident in the strength of the education that our students are receiving uh particularly our traditionally disenfranchised families and students. So through Dr. Z's leadership. Salem has helped to create a culture of high expectations. Developed a leaders leadership pathways for committed educators at every level. Improved communication both within the district and with the broader community. Engaged our Spanish speaking and immigrant families through regular group and one-on-one meetings. Improved teacher teacher principal and student retention. Improved learning outcomes dis districtwide. Elevated students voices and perspectives. and created a district culture rooted in open communication and respect for all. Um, and of course I know what Dr. Reich would say is that he does not do any of that by himself. Uh, but it does take a strong leader in order to facilitate all of that. Um, and this is the part that I always like that uh, Representative Cruz does, which he just takes some quotes out from people's evaluations so that Steve can squirm having to listen to all of the nice things about him even more. Uh so these are just some of the things our colleagues had to had to say in their evaluations. Uh he is approachable and thoughtful with care and understanding. He goes above and beyond expectations with a lens toward making sure a uh a strong inclusion of team players are at the table. Uh the next one is the superintendent has demonstrated strong leadership during a complex and challenging year for Salem public schools during a particularly challenging political climate that created fear and uncertainty for many families. The superintendent led with courage, integrity, and immense compassion. My experience working with the superintendent has been nothing short of exceptional. His ability to navigate

everchanging challenges while remaining grounded in clear values and having an ability to adjust based on constructive feedback is truly remarkable. He is one of the most kind dedicated leaders I have encountered. Next, Superintendent Zich has been an exemplary lead exemplary leader exemplary leader for our district and is leaving Salem public schools in a position of incredible strength and success. His commitment to students and our community has left a lasting positive impression on Salem. We are grateful for his leadership and his passion for public education. Dr. Zre's ability to be a visionary in education with a balanced organized approach has left a mark on Salem public schools and the community. Last one. Uh by emphasizing collaboration, professional learning, and shared accountability, Drs. right creates a conditions that support continuous improvement among educators and school leaders. His focus on strategic planning and expanding early learning opportunities demonstrates a commitment to strengthening instructional practice and ensuring equitable opportunities for all students in Salem public schools. So based on school committee evaluations, I would like to enter into the record that Superintendent Zich has achieved an overall rating of exemplary for his performance in all three categories. instructional leadership, management and operations, professional culture, family and community engagement. There are a few proficients in there, but we can't hold you accountable for any of that. So, we're going to just just going to lean toward the positive and go exceptional. Uh, for folks watching at home, this is a really rare honor, which Dr. Zich has now achieved twice in a row, uh, earning uh, an exceptional uh, review from the school committee. So again, I just want to say thank you for your partnership. Um and again, I will miss our regular phone calls and texts, but uh my calendar is

really going to open up. So thank you. Exemplary. So we'll extend the contract. Thank you. Um there is no vote on on that. It's just entered to the record. So can I just say one thing?

No. Okay. Go ahead. No, I just uh the last thing I just want to say is like um I do want to thank all the people that are sitting over there and the team that's on my left. Uh none of this is accomplished by I thanked teachers earlier and the rest of the district, but I do um I one thing I will say is this district's in excellent hands with um Deputy Superintendent Carboni, Assistant Superintendent Paulie, and the executive leadership team who will steer this district forward. Um, I have no doubt this is an exceptional group of people who are um who really do share the values that you see on the wall. Uh, and I have um, you know, I I leave with I've never left the district with more confidence that uh, in in who's leading moving forward. Obviously, we have excellent principles, great teachers, but the leadership team deserves a lot of credit. And a lot of what's in my evaluation, I didn't do that work. I I really didn't do the work. I mean, it's people I'm just telling you. I mean, I I want to be clear like I don't do early I don't do early literacy in classrooms and there's people that have this uh all this work as part of their not to mention the teachers who actually deliver instruction to kids every day. So, I just want to be clear about that. Um but, uh there isn't a stronger leadership team in all of the Commonwealth than this group of people here. um you know on top of the student staff and families that we I spoke about earlier. So just to end it with that I I don't deserve an exemplary but I'm not going to quibble with you. I'll take it um on to my next role. I don't I don't know that I I I I you know can you tell my new boss that I'm exemplary because I um

but um I I appreciate it. I'm humbled by it. But um but I I I know there's a lot of unfinished work to do and this team's position to take the district to the next level. So thank you. Uh next item is resolution in support of the high school building project and the debt exclusion ballot question on May 5th. Sto should I read it? Okay. I don't know if you have to read it. It's it's posted in in the meeting materials. But yeah, if you would like to Would you like me to? Okay. If I knew that I would have made a choice. I'm not going to lose my voice. You do it.

This is a resolution in support of the Salem High School building project in the May 5th, 2026 debt exclusion ballot question. Whereas Salem Public Schools is a diverse and welcoming community that promotes the academic, social, emotional, and physical development of each student through the equitable delivery of challenging, relevant, and joyful learning experiences. We empower all students to chart a personalized path to success that includes a commitment to the common good. end. Whereas Salem Public Schools is a top performing Gateway City School District in Massachusetts with academic achievement and attendance rates exceeding prepandemic levels and a growing enrollment. And whereas Salem Public Schools has established new programs for career education, communitywide prek and middle school learning that have become models across Massachusetts and has made strong progress in educator diversity and retention as well as high school graduation rates. And whereas Salem High School is committed to equipping students with transferable skills by providing a student- centered education grounded in a culture of high expectations, equity, and access for all. And whereas Salem High School was constructed in 1976 and due to aging infrastructure and outdated systems, no longer meets many current building and safety codes or educational standards. And whereas major systems within the building, including HVAC, electrical, building envelope, and life safety systems are failing or no longer functioning as intended, and the building's infrastructure is unable to adequately support modern learning environments. And whereas classrooms and learning spaces in the current facility are undersized by today's state standards and do not adequately support the needs of contemporary instruction, including the glowing growing career and technical education programs that prepare students for high demand careers. And whereas the Salem High School Building Committee, working in partnership with the Massachusetts School Building Authority, conducted an extensive review of options, including addition and renovation, full renovation, code only renovation, and new construction, ultimately determining

that a new high school facility is the most effective long-term solution for the city and its students. And whereas the proposed project will create a safe, equitable, inclusive, and modern learning environment that prepares Salem students for college, careers, and lifelong success while supporting innovative teaching and learning aligned with Salem Public Schools District's master plan. And whereas the new facility will include modern academic spaces, improved career and technical education facilities, and large public spaces designed to serve as a community resource for meetings, athletics, performing arts, and civic activities. And whereas the project incorporates sustainable design and energy efficient systems that will reduce emissions, lower operating costs, and help Salem meet its community climate goals. And whereas the total project cost is estimated not to exceed 447 million including construction, design, technology, furniture, and contingencies. And whereas the Massachusetts School Building Authority is expected to provide approximately 28 million in grant funding towards the project, representing a significant investment from the Commonwealth and reducing the taxpayer share. And whereas without approval of the proposed project, Salem will need to undertake a phase code renovation of the existing building that could cost taxpayers significantly more over time while delivering fewer educational and community benefits. And whereas the city of Salem will hold a special election on May 5th, 2026 at which voters will consider a debt exclusion ballot question allowing the city to finance the construction of the new Salem High School through a 30-year bond as permitted under Massachusetts law. And now therefore, it be resolved that the Salem School Committee expresses their strong support for their Salem High School building project and the opportunity it provides to invest in Salem students, educators, and community. And be it further resolved that the Salem School Committee support the passage of the debt exclusion ballot question to appear before voters at the May 5th, 2026 special election. And be it further resolved that the Salem School Committee encourage Salem residents to participate in the

democratic process by voting in the May 5th special election and hopefully supporting the investment of a new Salem High School for current and future generations of Salem students. Thank you. Um, if I may add to that. Make a motion. A motion to pass the resolution. Yep. Second. Motion made by member Scott, seconded by member Miranda. Under discussion. Thank you. Yeah. Member Scott.

Thank you. Um, I wanted to uh draft this and submit this to committee for their review and consideration knowing that this project has been um a long time coming um and there are a lot of details and information behind it that uh can be confusing and I don't believe you know I know the conversation has been in front of this body multiple times. There have been votes in the past prior to me joining this body. For example, the possible moving of the junior high onto the site, different programmatic um aspects at the high school, but I don't think in general the show of support as a unified body has been in front of us before. So, I wanted to provide an avenue for that um to show that even though the debt exclusion and the ballot question was something that was in front of city council to show our support hopefully for the passage of this um for the support of the new school um and that it is, you know, a special election coming up on May 5th, so another avenue as well to get information out via this resolution. Um I'd like to thank the high school building committee um and everybody that has been involved with this process. There is a a lot of work and effort that have has gone into this over the years. Um I know myself I on council I was on the high school building committee when it was first formed. I was able to nominate myself actually. I'm grateful that I did. Um but I feel being involved in it so much I am able to really understand the details and the weeds of it. So to have another way to get that information out to the community um and know that questions can be answered. Um you can send them over. This is a uh the open house was already mentioned that's going to be on Sunday as well. Another opportunity um but I'm just trying to take every possible avenue to to get information out.

Member Miranda. Uh yes, I just wanted to add um that super appreciate you member and also uh member Cornell for doing so much of that interaction um with people in different places around this subject and sharing um the little details that I know for myself like I do not have. So just wanted to um to give my my thanks and appreciation because I know it takes a lot of time. Thank you. Right. No further comment or discussion on the motion. All in favor? Any opposed? Matter carries unanimous. Uh school choice recommendation for the 2026 2027 school year.

Motion to approve. Second. Right. Motion made by member Cornell, seconded by member Miranda. Under discussion, seeing no discussion, all in favor of approval of the policy as presented by the superintendent. Any opposed? None. The matter carries unanimous. Our next item is a motion to reconsider the immediate adoption of policies AAC, ACR, ACA, ACE, and ADC and hold the implementation of the policies until completion with a full policy manual review. So moved. Second.

Moved by member Scott, seconded by member Cornell. Under discussion, member Miranda. Um, I just wanted to ask about one of the policies here. Let me make sure to reference it correctly. Um, it's listed under section A number seven, the people in their school district. Um, this one says policy subcommittee does not recommend adoption of that policy. And I've seen this policy before in different um school districts and I thought it was um a beautiful one. So just wondering if we could get some context behind uh the policy subcommittee's choice there.

Member Sto.

Um so that that's actually the second motion. This is extremely confusing right now. So the first motion that we have on the table is to reconsider the adoption of the um policies that was taken up last year um for policies AA acra ACC and ACD and hold the implementation of those policies until we do the full policy manual review which will be the next motion. Um which will be that one which will have th those policy items in there. at this first one. Um, so and for the public to understand this complicated process right now, MASC was brought on to help us review our policies and get them in line with state policy or MASC recommended state policies and have consistency there which will provide us support um when changes at state law happen and and guidance there. Um last year part of that section their policies are in section. Uh and last year part of one section was reviewed. The policies were passed by school committee. There were three readings. Um but nothing there was nothing to replace with those policies or update. So actually what MASC recommends is that we take back that approval, do the section entirely at once, but with the note that um it's on hold until we review the entire um MASC policy book, I'll call it. It has sections A through K. So we're reviewing and looking at the policies that we do have, matching them up with the MASC policies and having those in line. Um and then we can essentially go back and do a deeper dive on each of those policies. But the specific question that you have would be related to the second motion. Um

all set. No, that's right. just you might be I just want to add one thing to that which is that if a policy is being reviewed that that is clearly something that we want to implement immediately and we don't want to wait for the wholesale switch over into the MSBA website which is going to host all these policies for what did I say MSBA

that's all I talk about is MSBA you know what I mean uh uh then we can do that and just implement it into our own you know that terrible word document that we have. So, it doesn't prohibit us from updating policies that we think are important or policies that, you know, the interim superintendent tells us we have to we have to change prior to the whole thing getting changed. Mhm. Member Scott.

And and if I may add to that, this is just so complic. So we have our current policy book that essentially is not changing right now um until we review the entire policies of MASC all at once and um or in finality. Then we'll switch over from that fabulous word document that we have with the numbers to the MASC policies. But essentially, we're just kind of putting them all like in a holding pattern right now. and then we'll do one final review and adoption of everything at once and like a big move over because there's really logistically no way to handle those two. But a good example of one that um I think there was one that like has to be updated about administration of medications or there might be other ones and if we do we're going to go into like our normal numbering policy updating as needed. Um yeah, so again this motion is to undo what you did last year and then put it kind of in the bucket with the second motion. Any further discussion on the first motion from the policy subcommittee? All right, voting on the motion as recommended and moved. All in favor? Any opposed? None opposed. The matter carries unanimously. Item six is a motion to approve the recommendation of the policy subcommittee for section A of the policy manual and hold implementation of the policies until the completion of the full policy manual review for first reading.

So moved. Second. Motion made by member Miranda, seconded by member Cornell. Under discussion, member Sant. Thank you. Um the and a lot of that conversation may have been from last year with the ones that were recommended not to approve. Again, this was kind of some cleanup there. So, I don't know if if member Cornell would have anything to add, but that is also to something that we can um bring back up when we do the whole section as a whole at the end of this. Um point point well taken. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank um Shirley for her help in unraveling all of this. It's quite complicated. Yep. Member Cornell

and um to your point um member I was going to call you Mayor Miranda. Member Miranda. Um the the MASC recommends that when we have questions about particular policies that they have that we take that to council and they said their recommendation is if your legal counsel um has a different opinion, go with them. So that that's their general advice is go with your with your legal counsel. But we can we can follow up and ask for more clarity because I that conversation was long and difficult so I don't entirely remember that one specifically. Um but um Shirley does have the the recommendation from MASC versus the notes from council. So we can we can provide those to you. Any further discussion or questions on the motion to approve the recommendation? Uh all in favor? Any opposed? None opposed. The matter carries unanimously. Item seven under motions and resolutions. Superintendent position profile.

Motion to approve the profile. Motion made by member Cornell, seconded by member Hoffman. under discussion. Yep. Member Miranda.

I guess I just want to ask the members um in terms of the salary range, does this seem appropriate for you? I know that uh member Hoffman kind of went through this in their subcommittee report. Um, but I think one of the things that I wrote down in my notes, um, is that I wanted to make sure this body and that the public knew that the Colin Center, um, gave us this range, um, as a recommendation. Uh, so I don't I don't know if that's helpful for this body. Um, but just wanted to make sure to state it. All right. discussion for members. Um I'll I'll offer as a point of discussion. I I think on the compensation I think is phase framing it as anticipated. Starting salary is probably the right approach and I don't have a problem. I think understanding what the approximate salary range for Gateway City, you know, urban schools district superintendents are right now and to be competitive that that seems appropriate. Um, you know, I, you know, the the profile calls out the strategic plan that is ending, but I think it's still worth including that because it's the the framework that the new superintendent is going to be working from. U, but overall, I just want to thank the members of the ad hoc committee for the work that went into this and really appreciate uh the thoughtfulness in developing the profile. Um, if there's any other questions or discussion on it, all right, seeing none on the motion to approve the position profile. All in favor?

Any opposed? None opposed. The matter carries unanimously. Uh, I newsletter items. I keep forgetting this new thing. Okay. Uh, member Cornell. Sorry. I have uh I just I'll just review some of the ones that I I have them all together from the last meeting and today. So I'll put the newsletter together for the 1st of April. No.

Yes. March, April. 1 of April. Uh so improvements to graduation and dropout rates, which we talked about last time. Um a follow-up update on process timeline interim superintendent and deputy superintendent. I'll note uh the commendation for the for the basketball team uh Dr. Zich's uh final meeting and evaluation. I'll note that the upcoming meetings are initial budget presentation and then I'll also note the budget hearing. Um I'll also note the change in the agenda topic calendar so that we can have a follow-up on uh discipline important votes. I'm not putting every vote in the newsletter. So, I'm just putting ones that I think are most interesting to or you know what folks are probably concern most concerned about is uh New Liberty and Salem Prep moving the resolution to support the high school building and the job position uh profile if anybody has any additions to that.

Great. Any announcement? Oh, member Miranda. Um did you state the timeline as well? Sorry if I missed that. You did. Okay. Thank you. All right. Next item. Any announcements? Seeing none. Motion to adjurnn. A second. Motion made by member Cornell. Second by member Miranda. Under discussion. Seeing none, we are adjourned.