This is a lightly edited transcript of the regular meeting of the Chelsea School Committee on Thursday, November 5, 2026, made from the Chelsea Community Cable recording. Speech recognition software produced the text and separated the voices; we labeled speakers from context and the agenda and corrected names and misheard words. Otherwise the words are as spoken, including false starts. Where software could not tell committee members apart, the speaker is labeled “Committee member.” We left out the names of members of the public, students and the award nominator, and did not transcribe the nomination letter. Timestamps count from the start of the livestream; the meeting begins about 10 minutes in. For anything you plan to quote or rely on, check the video.
Our report on this meeting: Chelsea School Committee votes 9-0 against Pioneer Charter’s bid to add 440 seats and pre-K.
Agenda: Call to order and roll call · Introduction of student representatives · Name, Strength and Story award · Minutes · Public comment · Presentation: District Management Group staffing analysis · Committee questions on the staffing analysis · Superintendent report: indicators of success · Student representative updates · Personnel and enrollment reports · New business: gifts, grant and head lice policy · Resolution opposing the Pioneer Charter School of Science expansion · Announcements and adjournment
Call to order and roll call
[0:09:49] Clerk Veronica Dyer-Medina: Mr. Small. Present. Ms. Covas Caraballo. Ms. Henriquez. Mr. O'Regan. Present. Ms. Balderas. Present. Dr. Neville. Present. Ms. Cabral. Present. Ms. Hernandez. Present. And Mr. Gomez-Pereira. That's eight present and one absent.
Introduction of student representatives
[0:10:09] Chair Ana Hernandez: Thank you. The next item is we're going to introduce our new student representatives. And we're very happy to present this year having the three high schools with us, which makes us all very happy. First, we'll start with our student representative from COA. If you could stand so that everybody can see who you are. Good
[0:11:13] Student representative, Chelsea Opportunity Academy: [Greets the superintendent and the committee.] Dr. Hernandez, I'm member of the school committee. I am proudly a student at COA. I'm from the Dominican Republic Kings. I got here on May 15th. Four months ago. I moved to Chelsea with my brother. Very curious things on me. I like animals and I like to take pictures. I will be studying medical medicines. This is my first. My first in Vienna, my first winter here in Boston. I started this project because it got my attention and I see like an opportunity. So I can acquire the knowledge that COA has and the one that can offer. And as I acquire, I can share with my fellow friends. Thank you so much for your attention. Good night.
[0:13:17] Chair Ana Hernandez: Our next student rep is from CVLA. You can just turn the mic on and start talking. Curiously, I've known her since she was a little baby.
[0:13:35] Student representative, Chelsea Virtual Learning Academy: Good evening, Dr. Abeyta, madam chairwoman Hernandez and members of the school committee. I'm a senior at Chelsea Virtual Learning Academy. I joined CVLA during my freshman year because of health issues that made it difficult for me to attend and concentrate in a traditional school setting. My experience at CVLA has taught me many valuable lessons, especially independence and responsibility. As I prepare to graduate, I am already thinking about college and my future career. I'm interested in studying law because I have always wanted to help others and make a positive difference in people's lives. I am currently taking a criminal justice course at Bunker Hill Community College which has helped me explore that interest Outside of school. I enjoy working at my parents store, meeting new people and challenging myself to try new things. One fun fact about me is that I will be the first person in my family to graduate from high school. That makes this accomplishment especially meaningful. As we all know, we stand on the shoulders of those people who who came before us. My dad is here tonight and I wanted to thank him for having such good strong shoulders. Thank you all for your time.
[0:15:23] Chair Ana Hernandez: Thank you very much. Our next reps are both from Chelsea High School.
[0:15:38] Student representative, Chelsea High School: Good evening, Superintendent Dr. Abeyta, Chairwoman Hernandez and school committee members. I'm one of the student representatives for Chelsea High. I am a graduating senior currently and some of my hobbies are dancing, singing, reading and playing with my cats. My intended field of study is psychology. With the hopes of attaining my doctorate. I've just submitted my early decision application to the College of the Holy Cross. Some of the things I am involved in are La Vida Scholars, the Chelsea High Reimagination Project, volunteer work at St. Luke's Soup Kitchen, and early college courses at Bunker Hill and Salem State. One fun fact about me is that my mom and three older siblings have graduated at Chelsea High and I'm the last to attend. It is a privilege to be a student representative and I am eager to start this role on behalf of my fellow representative, who is currently volunteering for the Chelsea High football team and could not make it tonight. She is a graduating senior as well and is one of my fellow student representatives. Some of her interests consist of art, in which she is one of the few students taking classes at Chelsea High's new MassArt pathway. She hopes to get her bachelor's in Fine arts. my fellow representative also enjoys being active in thrifting. Currently at Chelsea High, my fellow representative is a captain of the girls softball team, is involved in trio, is a member of the Chelsea Youth Commission and helping out her sister with their market based Tobin takeover, and is a member of the Boys and Girls Club in Chelsea. my fellow representative expresses her honor that she feels to be a student representative this school year. Thank you for listening.
[0:17:37] Chair Ana Hernandez: Thank you and welcome all of you. Hopefully you will enjoy being a part of this group. I think you will. And I'm sure that you'll share lots with us which we thoroughly enjoy listening to all the reports from all the different high schools. So welcome. We will now move on to special recognitions and I will hand it off over to Dr. Abeyta.
Name, Strength and Story award
[0:18:02] Superintendent Almi Abeyta: Great. Tonight I am going to turn over our Name, Strength and story award. And for everyone that's new, every school committee, we give out a couple or one. It just depends on a name, strength and story award. Name, Strength and Story awards example are for educators. And educators could mean people who work in buildings and grounds because we're all educators, people who work in schools, teachers, clerks, paraprofessionals. And so tonight we do have one educator that we're going to honor with our name, Strength, and story award because we are committed to knowing our students by name, strength, and story. And this educator does that. A former student nominated tonight's awardee and will share why.
[0:19:40] A former Chelsea High student: [Reads a nomination letter describing how a Chelsea High guidance counselor sought the student out, guided them through college applications and kept in touch after graduation. We have not transcribed the letter in full to protect the speaker’s privacy.]
Minutes
[0:27:58] Chair Ana Hernandez: That was truly an amazing story. After that, we move on to our school committee minutes. I motion to approve the approval of the minutes of the Regular meeting on October 1, 2026, and the special meeting on October 7,
[0:28:18] Committee member: 2026. Motion to approve the minutes. Second.
Public comment
[0:28:25] Chair Ana Hernandez: Thank you. We'll move on to public comment. Is there anyone in the public here that would like to speak? If you do, please sign in if you haven't already and make your way up.
[0:28:44] Clerk Veronica Dyer-Medina: [Calls the next speaker.] Good evening.
[0:29:01] Public comment speaker 1: Chelsea is my home. For many years, I have given my heart to the children of this community. I have seen them walk into kindergarten scale and walk out into the world strong the resolution on the charter school expansion affect my school, the ELC and my job. When we lose funding, children pay the price. I stand with PCSS resolution and I asked you to vote for our children, public for our school, for our church, police students. Thank you. [Calls the next speaker.]
[0:30:13] Public comment speaker 2, parent: Good evening. I am a resident of Chelsea and I have two children in the school system. I'm here to first off, I want to say please, you know, adopt this resolution tonight. Losing more funding in a year, we're already looking at triple the deficit of last year. Other people are going to speak to it, but I wholeheartedly support it. I would also like to say thank you to the committee or the school board, excuse me. And members of the school department. We've been seeing you show up at our schools, school site towns weeks you're seeing. We appreciate that. You know, I hope you're going to other school site councils, families notice that and it helps drive involvement in the community. Turning to the community. The reason I'm here, and I've said this at other meetings was because I asked a question last year at this time, hey, when ICE finally comes, what are we going to do? And the response I got was, it's a city problem. And I restated my question and I got again, that's a city problem. How do we get the kids to school? It's a school problem, It's a school department problem. So my question is here, they're in town, we've gotten some notifications that they're around. I would love to know what the absentee rate was over the past few days. If there was a noticeable drop. That's something that would interest me because people are sharing, they're in the community. My next question is how do we get the kids to school? You know, in that meeting last year I said, you know, as a city thought about, you know, walking buses, people walking in neighborhoods, you know, there was no discussion of that. Who do we have to get quarter checked? You know, there are members in this community that want to make sure that their kids and their friends get to school. What can we do? So is that my timer? Is that me? Okay, so I'm here again. I'm asking the question I was last year, what are we going to do? And another response I got was, you know, we did training. The training that happened when the current administration came in is, you know, we're almost two and a half. We are two and a half years away from that. Let's do that training again. Let's tell people what the rights are. Let's get those red cards out. Let's tell people what they need to do. Because I am really confident that the teachers and the teachers union and parents will do what they can. I want to hear it from the school committee as well. I want to hear what you guys are going to do. I don't want to hear it's a city problem. It's not. We're here to ask you for help. We can go to the city and I can talk to them, too. But you have access to the schools. You have access to ways to do this. This isn't Covid. This isn't, you know, hey, we did it during COVID We can pivot now. Who has the computers? Are there Internet? Is there funding? None of that is really there right now. You know, I heard last year, the computers, you know, we have to get new computers and other things. The infrastructure is not there. I'm just looking for a plan. I'm just looking for something that's written. So when I ask somebody, what's the plan? They go, well, it's supposed to be what's the plan? You know, and again, we've been showing up, and we're going to continue to show up. We're here. Lean on us. We lean on you. Lean on us. We're a community. Let's work together. Let's make sure the kids are getting to school. Let's make sure the schools are funded. Let's make sure that we're not losing those, you know, those funds to charter schools. Let's lean into it. So that's all I have to say this week. Thank you.
[0:33:50] Clerk Veronica Dyer-Medina: [Calls the next speaker.] Hi,
[0:34:04] Public comment speaker 3, Early Learning Center teacher: I'm a teacher at the ELC. I sent Dr. Abeyta email yesterday, but I wanted to thank her and everyone else in person for responding so quickly to ensure the safety of all of our students. Yesterday, after the increase of immigration enforcement in the community, we do have more to do, but that was like, an amazing step in keeping our students safe. I also want the community to know that school staff are here to keep our students safe. That's something we are very dedicated to. As you saw with the Name, Strength and Story Award, we are here for everyone. Thank you. [Calls the next speaker.] Hi, everybody.
[0:34:50] Public comment speaker 4, Chelsea Teachers Union president Catherine Anderson: Catherine Anderson. I'm a special education teacher at the Brown Middle School and president of the Chelsea Teachers Union, (home address left out). I'm going to try to speak quickly to three different things tonight. There's so much going on in our district right now. And I know we are all working really, really hard, fighting on every front, it feels like right now. I really want to echo what the previous speaker said. And I know that not every district is being as public with the response to the racist attacks that our community is experiencing right now. And I'm glad that we're in a district where we're brave enough to do that. Every single one of my students was in school today, and I think that's because we are willing to say we are here and we are here for you. And we also definitely have more work that we're going to need to do in order to get through the next couple of months and next couple of years. And we really look forward to planning all the stuff that's going to need to happen. The other thing I wanted to speak to quickly was the budget. I'm really excited to see the presentation tonight and kind of hear what this perspective is that the consultant is bringing. I also am assuming that I know I will probably have lots of follow up questions that I'm sure many community members will, too. And so I'm wondering how we can collect those and respond to them as a, as a community and really help to bring people into that process. We're doing so much to open it up earlier this year, and I think that will help continue moving that forward. The last thing I want to speak to is the PCSS resolution. I'm really excited to see it on the school committee's agenda for tonight. And again, taking a step to really make a bold statement. A couple of numbers I want to share really quickly. Chelsea public schools, the percent of students with disabilities is over 22%. About 23%. At PCSS, that percent is only 11%. The number of ELLs in Chelsea Public Schools is 46%. In PCSS, it's 23%. The percent of students of color in Chelsea Public Schools is 95%. In PCSS, it's 62%. If this goes through, Chelsea could lose up to $8 million per year. And we really want to make sure that those funds are staying here and staying with our kids. We've seen now more than ever how much we need every single person in this polling for our kids. And so I really hope that this passes tonight and we can keep working together to keep getting our kids the resources they deserve. Thank you so much.
[0:37:18] Clerk Veronica Dyer-Medina: I do have one comment that was submitted. I can read.
[0:37:21] Chair Ana Hernandez: Okay, thank you.
[0:37:23] Clerk Veronica Dyer-Medina: Anyone else, Anyone else would like to speak? Okay. This comment is from a parent, whose name we left out. First, I'd like. I want to apologize to my fellow parents and community members for not being physically present today. I made a commitment to myself to be present at every meeting, but unfortunately I'm recovering from surgery and significantly underestimated how long the recovery process would take. That said, I did not want to miss the opportunity to voice my support for the Pioneer Charter School of Science Resolution. I believe adopting this resolution is a necessary public stance. It sends a message to our students, teachers and parents that Chelsea has their best interests at heart. Given the financial challenges CPS is already facing and PCSS would incredible would be incredibly detrimental to our district and to the students we serve. I also think it's important to recognize who this conversation impacts the most. Chelsea Public Schools serves as a significantly higher percentage of English Language learners, students with disabilities and low income families than PCSS. These are students who require additional resources, individualized support, and educators who understand the unique challenges they and their families face. CPS has made a commitment to educate all students and that commitment comes with a responsibility to make sure the resources are there to support them. We cannot continue to talk about equity in providing every child with a quality education while allowing the resources needed to fulfill that promise to be pulled away from the students who depend on them. It is not secret that the decline in student enrollment across our city is connected to increased ICE activity. Just this week, we have seen a surge of ICE arrests and sightings along with concerns about violations of the PROTECT Act. These are real concerns affecting families in our community and they have a direct impact on our schools. We cannot look at declining enrollment without acknowledging what is happening to the families behind those numbers. These aren't just statistics. They are children and families experiencing fear and uncertainty. One thing I can always count on when ICE is in our city is our CPS teachers and the CTU to mobilize to do everything they can to support, protect and advocate for our students. They show up for our children in ways to go that go far beyond the classroom. They understand our community, they understand our families, and they recognize that sometimes supporting a student means supporting the entire family. Given the community PCSS serves, I cannot say with the same confidence that those same protections and proactive efforts would be there for our children. I also think we need to recognize that this is about protecting the people and resources that make our public schools work. Our teachers and paraprofessionals deserve fair treatment, proper support, and the protections that come with their collective bargaining rights. When we talk about protecting public education, we also have to talk about protecting the educators who dedicate themselves to our children every Single day. This resolution is about more than enrollment numbers or competition between schools. It is about sending a united message to DESE that our community stands together on this, on the issues that matter most. Our children's safety, the quality of their education, their protection, the resources available to them and the people who show up for them every single day. Chelsea Public schools has a responsibility to educate every child who walks through its doors. And we need to make sure it is it has resources to do that. Our children should never have to compete with resources, support, and protection they deserve. At the end of the day, our children deserve to know that the adults and institutions responsible for the education have their backs. I believe this resolution is an important step in standing up for our students, our educators, and our entire community. And I strongly support its adoption.
Presentation: District Management Group staffing analysis
[0:41:21] Chair Ana Hernandez: Thank you, Veronica. I will now move this over to Dr. Abeyta for the presentations.
[0:41:35] Superintendent Almi Abeyta: Thank you for coming. Great. I'm going to turn it over to Simone. She's from the district management group. In this, I want to say, spring of last year, we commissioned the district management group to come in and look at our resources, look at our data and our staffing and analyze it in a way that we could not. What district management group? They have data from nation nationwide data and data in Massachusetts, so statewide data as well. And then they're able to analyze it through comparable gateway districts as well. And so what you'll see is a lot of data, a lot of information. And yes, there will probably be a lot of questions. And so we will need. What we're planning on, we'll need to do is plan some time for some. I'm sure our school committee will have questions. And then I'm sure our parents and families and educators will have questions. And we'll have to figure out how we take this on the road and have some Q and a. So. But anyways, I'm gonna go ahead. Let. Go ahead and let Simone get started. She has worked with us now for the last seven months, nine months, pulling this data together because it's not. It's. It's. It's a lot. And so I'm just gonna go ahead and let you take it from here. And I will do my best to help answer questions at the end, too. Perfect. Thank
[0:43:36] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: you. Good evening, members of the board and Dr. Abeyta and everyone here. It's great to be here this evening. My name's Simone Carpenter. I'm a director with district management group. As Dr. Abeyta just said, I've had the absolute pleasure of partnering with the team here in Chelsea Public schools over the last seven months or so on this work. And I'm here this evening to share some of the findings from our staffing analysis. Is this better? Our staffing analysis and our benchmark staffing and a couple things I want to say just before I jump in is you're going to see a lot of data this evening. Data is one piece of the puzzle, it is not the whole puzzle. And so I don't want anyone to take away from this presentation that this data should speak alone and not be combined with the perspectives and experiences of folks throughout the organization. So with that I'm going to get into it. If you need me to slow down at any point, just like wave your hands any of the above. And then I believe proper protocol is waiting for questions until the end or asking through waiting till the end. Okay. But if folks have something clarifying, I'm very flexible. So just to give a quick introduction to our organization, District Management Group. We've been around for the last 22 years partnering with public school districts across the country on our mission to achieve systemic improvement in public education by combining management techniques and educational best practices. So really what that means is we combine what's worked in the field with what's worked in research and say, how do school districts drive change? And you can see our logo on the right hand side of the slide here. This is just many interests and things that school districts have to manage. You have to manage first and foremost how do you maximize student outcomes and to do that in a sustainable and lasting way, you also have to think about how you do that in a way that's best for staff and best for the budget. And the other thing to know about us is we've worked with a lot of different schools and a lot of different places. We are Boston based. So as Dr. Abeyta said, how can we, you know, make sure this answer questions are answered and things like that. I'm right around the corner and happy to, happy to help and we do a lot of work. That's really what I'm going to say here. We do a lot of different things, but a lot of our work does partner with districts on thinking through how do we align our resources to our strategy. I'm not the only one who did this work. I have an incredible team who's worked alongside me. It includes our CEO and founder, Don Kim. He in addition to his role at District Management Group is also a professor at Harvard Business School where he co leads the Public Education Leadership Project. And then I have two senior associates that have been partnering with me, Lucy and Max, and they've done a lot of the data behind this. Okay, let's dig into our partnership with Chelsea. So over the last six months or so, we have worked to build a shared picture of staffing across the organization with three real goals. First, building a common and accurate understanding of current staffing levels and practices across schools, programs, and positions. Second is with that common and accurate understanding of staffing levels, benchmarking those levels across schools, so internally and externally against comparable districts nationwide and state, the state of Massachusetts as a whole, to identify where staffing aligns with district priorities and diverges from it. So when we look at data that's benchmarking, we are not saying you should aim to be at the benchmark. We are saying is your difference from the benchmark a strategy or a way that things have just kind of happened to flow? And what I have noticed in Chelsea's data is there's a lot of strategy behind the data here. And then third, translate those findings into actionable opportunities to shift staffing, professional development, and support practices that strengthen resource allocation over time. As I said, we've been working over the last six or seven months. We did a lot of work. But essentially, what's most important to note here is we collected both internal and external data, benchmark that, and then are sharing our findings for prioritization moving forward. And other things to just note, findings are meant to highlight variations. They are not meant to say, you should always align with the state norm or with other district norms. And the unique context of each school, each building in each district has to be taken into account here that comparison districts are that we selected are based on matches in demographics and wealth. You're actually going to see size is not a perfect match for you all. But that doesn't mean that any district is identified. No district is identical to CPS in programming or service delivery. And when we talk about benchmarking, we mean three different things. So first is internal benchmarking. That's school to school. How do things compare to each other? Second is peer districts. How does Chelsea compare to districts match in Massachusetts and then to state and national norms? So how does Chelsea compare to both Massachusetts averages, professional services recommendations, and national norms? And this data is imperfect, but it's the best that we could collect both internally and externally. That's really what to know here. All right, just a little bit of context behind Chelsea. So these are the five comparison districts that we or four comparison districts that we had with Chelsea. And you can see something really glaring here, which is that Chelsea is significantly smaller than the four other gateway cities that we compared you all to. And that's because when we looked at do we want to compare you to districts similar in size or demographic, we felt demographic was a better representation of where resources sources should be allocated. And that's why your comparison districts include Lawrence, Lynn, Brockton and Lowell, which are all significantly larger in size than Chelsea. When we do benchmarking, we norm down to the size of the district. So it's not if you have more or less, it's not because you have more fewer students, but a strategic move. One other thing I just want to note here is when we look at you compared to the state average, there's a really big difference between the school district of Chelsea and the state of Massachusetts. Notably, the percentage of students who are English learners, it's 46% here compared to 13.4% across the state. And that there's a lot of other differences in terms of poverty and other areas. Just a little bit of contextual data, and this is a reality that you all know well. But over the last five years or so, there's been a 12% decline in enrollment across the district. And that enrollment has been has changed demographics a little bit in terms of race over time. And I'm just going to skip this and come back to it. But what has changed significantly over that same time as well, overall enrollment has declined in the district. The needs of students has increased, and this is in raw numbers. So when I go back two slides ago, you see that there's a loss of about 600 or 700 students. But when we look at this slide here, you can see that there's an increase in about 4 or 300 ISH students with disabilities, an increase in about 200 students who are considered low income, and an increase in about 500 English language learners. So while the overall pie has shrunk, the needs of students have risen over that same time. And the only thing to note about the slide I skipped is that you have schools across elementary, middle and high. There's some variation school to school, but not a ton. In terms of performance, Chelsea in both ELA and math performs lower than the state average. But in math, that has trended upwards and continues to trend upwards. I didn't add this most recent year, but you all know your data continued to increase in math. In ela, it's stated about flat, and that continues to hold true in the current year. Per pupil expenditures have risen over time, and this is over over five years Per pupil data, expenditure data is a little delayed in how it's reported. So that's why this data is a little bit outdated. But it has increased over time and this is largely because the number of students has decreased. So those two things are very tightly aligned to one another. Okay, that's a little bit of context behind this data. And now we're going to get into district wide staffing. So we have six key findings from our review of district wide staffing allocations. First is while overall enrollment has declined over the last five years, the total number of staff has increased across Chelsea Public Schools and the highest volume has been in instruction and instructional support positions. While Chelsea's overall teacher workforce is aligned with the state average. So teachers per 100 students is really close to the state average. You employ more special education and English language learner certified teachers than state averages. And then comparison districts in gateway cities and fewer general education teachers. What this really told me is that you've made a strategic decision to have more of your staff be more highly qualified to support your most needy students, which is a really good strategic decision from my perspective. The third is that Chelsea has more non instructional staff than expected based on enrollment and demographics. And we'll talk about what that means in a little bit. And fourth, you have 50% more clerical staff per 100 students than the state average. And then most comparison districts in the gateways in gateway cities and has nearly double the national average of student support professionals, social workers and counselors, especially at the secondary level. Again, this is a strategic decision. And then finally the central office staff is in line, if not a little bit lower than this, than comparison districts and gateway cities. So we're going to go into the data behind each of these six findings. The first one is enrollment and fte. So what you can see here is the light blue line is overall enrollment over the last five years and that has declined by 3%. And you know, we know if we looked at that over. Sorry, over the last six years, over the last five, it kind of peaked five years ago, so decreased by 3% since 2021. FTE has increased by 31% in that same time. So the number of staff has increased. And when we looked at where that increase is happening, you can see on this table here, you have categories of different staffing, the number of fte. And sorry, I want to be really clear, I'm using jargon here. FTE is full time equivalent. So if I'm a full time teacher, I'm one FTE. But if I'm two days a week, then I'd be at 0.4 FTE. So when we talk about full time equivalent, there's, there's partials in there. You see FY21, which is the 2020-21 school year and then FY26, the 202526 school year and the growth in that FTE and the percentage of the 202526 school year budget or total FTE. So administrators have grown over that time. The largest volume of growth has been in school based instructional and support staff. So instruct grown by about 100 full time equivalent folks and is about 56% of the pie. Paraprofessionals have grown by 44 FTE. Instructional support and special education shared staff by 20 specialists including speech, occupational therapy and physical therapy have grown by eight FTE and medical and health by three and then clerical staff by 33 full time equivalents. So big picture here is not to get at the nitty gritty numbers, but is knowing that in every category the number of full time equivalent staff members has grown over time and the largest volume is in school based instructional staff. So this is just taking that far right column and turning into a pie chart. So how do your staff, if you make a whole pie, how do they, your full time equivalents break out? And we're going to start by talking about instructional staff and paraprofessionals. So as I shared earlier, your overall teacher workforce is in line with the state average and in line with comparison districts. So this is teachers per 100 students. So again we shrunk everything down to being teachers per 100 students to be using apples to apples comparisons. And the state of Massachusetts on average has 8.4 teachers for every 100 students. Chelsea has 8.8 which is right in line, kind of within the normal standard of deviation. And you are also right in line with eight way cities. However, what we see is that your breakdown of teachers looks really different from other districts. So this is not. I want to be really clear about what we are looking at and aren't looking at. We are not looking at classroom assigned general education and classroom assigned special education. Meaning someone who's in the special education teacher bar here is not necessarily a full time special education teacher, but they have their special education certification. And a good example of this is my own mom. She is special education certified. When she was a teacher she taught general education classes, but in this data set she would count as a special education teacher. So as I said before, your overall teacher workforce is right in line with the State, but your breakdown of your staff looks a little bit different than other districts. So how to read this chart is if you took the entire state of Massachusetts, those 900,000 students and however many FTE, and you shrunk that down to the 5,000 students of Chelsea, the dotted line in the middle is exactly what we would expect to see. So meaning that we would expect to see exactly that dotted line. And then anything in the red is less teachers than we would expect to see and in the green is more teachers than we would expect to see. And what you can see is that while you're right in line with the state, your distribution of teachers, you have more teachers who are English language learner certified and more teachers who are special education certified and and fewer that are general education only. This, from what I heard and saw and am seeing here, is probably a strategic decision of the school district to say we want more specialized teachers to support our specialized students. Paraprofessionals, you are lower than the state average in terms of your number of paraprofessionals. And that brings me to the next slide, which is that you are slightly lower than the state's average, but you are right in line with Gateway Cities in terms of your number of paraprofessionals. So again, this is another per hundred students. So as a state, we would expect to see about three paraprofessionals for every 100 students. Chelsea is 2.8, which is lower. But then right in line with the Gateway Cities, right in the middle of the Gateway Cities. Now you might be saying paraprofessionals, they spend most of their time working with students with disabilities, so this might not be a fair number. And we thought the same thing. So we have the same slide, but it's 100 students with a disability. And the same exact trend held true here, where you are slightly lower than the state average. Actually, you're a little bit further lower than the state average, but you are right smack dab in the middle of comparison Gateway cities. So moving from instructional staff to non instructional staff, approximately one in four of Chelsea's full time equivalent staff members are administrative or support staff. And this is the same chart that we took for teachers but put in for some of these other roles. So again, if you take the whole state of Massachusetts and shrunk it down to the size of Chelsea, what we would expect to see for staffing is that blue dotted line in the middle. And what you can see is that you have more than what we would expect to see in all five of these different roles. In school leaders, two more. In social workers, four more counselors, two more. But the largest is in the bottom two categories, clerical staff and instructional support staff, which is coaches and tutors. Digging into that. So clerical staff, you have about 50% more clerical staff per 100 students than the state average and are the highest of the four gateway cities. We compared you to instructional coaches. This is one where we have both the state average and then we also have an evidence based guideline. This evidence based guideline is from a set of researchers that they have a statewide finance guideline that says how many staff should you in the most ideal state be allocating based on different positions? And they say one instructional coach for every 200 students. So what you have is more instructional coaching than what is typical, both in the evidence based guideline and significantly more than the state average. And you have about twice as many as other gateway comparison districts. This next set of charts are all going to look really similar. So I want to orient you to them. And these are a few different roles. So counselors, social work and social workers per 100 students. And the larger the bar here means the more counselors you have per 100 students. There is a national guideline that's put out by the American School Counselor association which is one counselor to every 250 students. It's kind of the industry standard. What we see is that a lot of districts aren't able to actually meet that industry standard. And so Chelsea is slightly lower than that industry standard, but is higher than the national average, both high schools and middle schools. So what you can see is the light dotted gray line is the national average. And you have significantly more counselors than the national average. And then that national guideline, at the middle school you have more than the national average and are approaching that national guideline. And then at the elementary schools you have actually less school counselors per 100 students than the national average. And this is the same slide, but repeated for social workers. So the national association for School Social Workers also has a guideline. It is 250 students per every one social worker. This is where we see districts struggle even more to meet that guideline. So what's in the guideline versus what the reality is in many school districts? Districts has a much bigger variation here and you can see that in this data. So the national guideline of 250 students who are right at that essentially for your high school and your middle school and your overall district average and below that at the elementary school that you are above other districts nationally in terms of your social workers per 100 students. And then this last one is a combination of them. So social workers and counselors, I will note one thing here is that the national data is not perfect on this one. So it includes psychologists as well. So. But you across the board have more social emotional staff per 100 students then other schools nationally at the elementary, middle and high school level. And yeah, that's kind of the big takeaway of this chart here. And then this is the same comparison of social emotional staff to other gateway cities which might be a better comparison for Chelsea than the national average. And what you can see is your closely aligned with gateway cities who are also operating above the state average of social emotional staff. So as counselors and social workers. So you're on the higher end but right in line with other gateway cities. I think this is my last data slide of the night before I ask for your questions and go back to data slides that you might have. And the last piece we looked at is the size of the central office. So Chelsea allocates about 7% of its full time equivalent employees at the central office. And this is right in line, kind of right in the middle of other gateway cities. So the size of your central office, which is most largely driven by the size of your district is right in line with what we would expect from other districts with similar needs. All right, I feel like I moved quickly. So these are the six key findings so I'm going to repeat them now. While overall enrollment has declined over the last five years, the total FTE or total number of staff has increased across Chelsea. Highest volume in instructional and instructional support positions. Your teacher workforce is overall aligned with state averages, but you employ more special education and English language learner teachers than state averages and thin comparison districts. You have more non instructional staff than expected based on enrollment and student demographics, particularly in clerical staff which you have 50% more than the state average. And most comparison districts, you have nearly double the national average of student support professionals that social workers and counselors at the secondary level. And your central office is right in line with comparison districts and gateway cities. So a lot of information, but the key question is what do you do with this information? Because it's, it's just information. And so our recommendation is establishing a set of clear district wide rules for staffing across roles and schools that's grounded in data and student needs. So being really clear about how many instructional coaches do we need based on what data in what schools and then having a way of allocating those FTEs based on that and Then giving flexibility to principals, to school leaders to make decisions over some positions, but not all positions. So deciding on a set of non negotiables and then allocating some flexibility for the folks who know their students best at the school level and then sequencing changes over time. And so I know the last time we met some of you asked about, you know, do we have sample staffing roles. We've shared some of those with Dr. Abeyta, but every district is different. So no, there's no one size fits all set of staffing rules. But we do have some that have been used in other districts successfully, other districts like you successfully. And so we share those as well. All right, that's the end of my formal presentation here for any questions.
Committee questions on the staffing analysis
[1:08:52] Chair Ana Hernandez: Committee. Who has the questions, who would like to start? You want to be first?
[1:09:08] Committee member: I just have a question. Do you have any suggestions if, if are we able to cut any of the central office? If that's something that we do or like, you know, we, we are there or it's any strategic that that we can do in there or I don't know what is the best suggestions to, to really cut in any of all those positions? Yeah, it's a good question. And I would say it's attractive to want to start with the central office, but it's often unrealistic because the central office is a lot of support for schools. And what we saw in your allocation of FTS is you're right in line with other districts in terms of the size of your central office. And the second thing I'll share is that your Central office is 7% of your overall budget. So if you're really looking for making strategic moves that free up funds, if that's what you really need to do, the central office is going to be a low bang for your buck there because it's only 7% of your total FTE. I wouldn't say that there's a simple, you know, hey, you should always align to the state average in this position or that position. But what I would say is starting with saying what's our non negotiables for each of these different positions. So for instructional coaches, for example, example, seeing a lot of the districts say it's non negotiable that every school has one instructional coach, but the principal has flexibility over if they want that coach to be a reading coach or a math coach or a, you know, student support coach or something else. And so starting with those kind of grounding rules and then seeing how that plays out in your budget instead of starting with where can we cut start with what do we want to have be true at every single one of our schools and then having that derive your best budget decisions. Thank you. All right, Simone, I think we. I asked the bulk of my questions at our. At our retreat. Our retreat. So I should be a little bit. No problem. Gentler. But for the most part I, I know just remind me. I know that it was pretty straightforward in most of the slide. It looks like we have more instructional support than other districts, but it seems like we also have more needs. Y. Having said that and I. And I know I was I. You know. And you also mentioned that the district has made, you know, strategic moves when it comes to certain, you know, like we mentioned that this is a benchmark. It's just recommendations and that you know, even with higher clerical staffing, which Dr. Abeyta also mentioned in the last time, you know, sometimes it's. It's strategic in the sense that one salary cost might be more effective to have. You know, so it might look like yes, there's more but over time and longevity wise it's. There's a reason why leader is in leadership. Right. We have to also trust the guidance within the numbers. Right. So while there's recommendations for said districts or that aligns, it's not going to be perfect as you mentioned. And we do have to look at what our non negotiables are going to be. So my question is I think what stuck out for me the most was seeing that within our teachers with and within our staff, like for example our deans. I would have expected them to be with an administration in our system that you said it was. They were placed. A lot of our members would have been placed with, you know, our teachers and that the general ed, you know, that breakdown. So I really hope that when we do get to meet with, you know, parents and the general public, we could really have those teachers and that that key really or the legend, however we want to really classify it so that members can really know exactly the distinction. Because I think that would really be helpful. Not because one unit is different, but you know, you hear special ed and you think oh my gosh, our students are going to really be underserved or how is this going to really affect our communities in. In the bigger scope of things. Right. And it's not, it's not just cost factors. It's not just the general classroom. Right. We really want to give our children the best education possible and we really want to make sure that whatever we are moving around, we're Doing it with the best information possible. I know that a lot of these positions were added when we had additional funding and that has a lot to do with this. So I guess the best question to ask is what makes the most sense in re pivoting and what services would be of most dire need. And if that's going to be very clearly Are we going to be just doing. I don't want it to be per position. It's. I want it to look be very clear. This serves per need and level of. You know when Dr. Abeyta gives us and the principals I know that they have like a need, a want and if I could have type of thing and level of priority. So I really want that to be able to be presented as well to the general public and easily access accessible so that it's. People have asked for transparency but broken down I'm accustomed to the graphs by now so I can digest it better than I could expect. You know, explain it. So I really want it to be able to be understood.
[1:15:47] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: Yeah, I appreciate your question and comment. One thing I should just. I should have noticed noted this really explicitly. But to benchmark you all we have to use use standard codings of positions. And so what that means because we want to be able to say apples to apples, how do you compare to other districts? It means we have to use how the state codes positions. And that isn't perfect. And so we, we for this example total teachers. There's a lot of staff members that are coded as teaching positions even if they aren't in a classroom classroom in front of 30 students teaching. And so you know, you might see these some of these numbers and say what is that driving that? And it might be more, it might be other positions than teachers for example that that might be driving that. So these kind of categories of positions are based on how the state and then our national data sets how they code different positions. And then we went through and recoded all of your positions based on the those. The other thing that I just want to respond to to your other point which we've seen a lot of districts take different approaches to how they build their staffing kind of allocations moving forward. And there's a lot of ways that you can think about how does need drive that there's ways you can do that with giving flexibility to schools to make those decisions. There's also ways that you can say hey, we're going to have interventionists or tutors be based on the number of students who are requiring intervention in the school for Example, rather than saying every school is going to have X number. And so those are some different ways that you could kind of think about that challenge of aligning staffing really to student need and to data behind it.
[1:17:39] Jake Small: Yes. Small. Hi, Simone. Jake Small. Nice to meet you. Thanks for your report today, also for your team's work over the last seven months. I'll try to keep my question, like, really specific just in light of our time. This is a process question in the presentation that you've led today. Obviously, it's very quantitative, very numbers heavy. Curious if this was an audit purely of our quantitative data or if there were any qualitative pursuits that were led interviews or conversations. And also curious just because I didn't see it. So I have an assumption here, here, what in all of this report is missed? What gaps exist through qualitative interviews or competitions not being had.
[1:18:24] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: Yeah, great question. By nature, this is a quantitative, focused process and benchmarking study. We looked at tons of data, but it was data. And that's why I shared at the start that this is meant to be a reflection of what the numbers say and not necessarily why. What the. You know, that should be coupled with qualitative data collection and insights from your staff, your leaders, your students and your families. We did, in this process, talk to principals, but that was mostly to really understand their data and make sure we are reflective, accurately and reflectively coding that in our work. But this work was by nature and by design really meant to be. What does your data say about how do you benchmark against state, national and within the district norms? With that being said, I would agree with you that there are things that are missing when you only look at the quantitative data. And so I would say, you know, some of the things that might be missing from this is how does this actually feel in schools? Like, is the increase in FTEs felt in different ways? And how does that increase? And I would say that especially in light of this slide here, where the needs have risen dramatically over the last five years, so while the overall number of students has declined, I can say this as someone who was in the classroom. I know I experienced, you know, one or two students moving in or out of my classroom and a really big difference in the environment of that classroom, and not based on any demographic indicator, but just based on my experience as a, as a classroom leader. And so I will say that the experience of how this is felt in schools is probably the biggest thing that's missing from this work. And, and then to the point that was made earlier, how you drive. Your staffing rules should be a combination of what your data says and also what folks really feel is needed. And that should be driven by that qualitative evidence. Oh,
[1:20:30] Superintendent Almi Abeyta: sorry, go ahead. No, I was going to help answer that question from our, my perspective. So we do have a strategic plan. And one thing we committed to with our SOA dollars and our ESSER funds was one we were concerned about when our students came back from the pandemic about their mental health. So that's why we really use our ESSER dollars and our SOA to support mental health. And we've been able to hold on to a lot of our staff because it was important to us. And then as far as, another something that was important to me was early childhood and making sure that our first grades had paraprofessionals because there's still a lot of needs in first grade. So we added paraprofessionals to first grade classrooms. Strategically, there was decisions that we made as a result of listening to our community. And that is reflected in our data. We added more special education positions. We added more supports for English and language learners. That was all driven by listening and by need. And so we were very strategic. And what we use our student opportunity dollars for, and I will say with a budget shortfall looming over our heads of 22 million, that's 220 positions, that's the entire amount of, of Student Opportunity act dollars that we've received. So all these wonderful supports that we've added over the last five years, six years, will be obliterated.
[1:22:32] Jake Small: Can I just ask a quick follow up question? And thank you, Dr. Abeyta, for that recent but still historical contacts that should be shaping our conversation. Simone, to your point around sort of missing the qualitative piece of how a classroom or school or district feels, given that we don't have a perfect peer district, no one does, but we really don't. We look at our numbers and our data. This might be beyond the scope of you all's contract with the district, but how would you recommend sort of filling some of those gaps? And how would we best hear from the community? And maybe it's a shared response to understand how our students experience our classrooms, our teachers experience teaching in the classrooms and so forth. It's a great
[1:23:20] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: question and I'll, I'll have Dr. Abeyta to also answer, but I would say that the work that is done through a strategic planning process, we also do a lot of that. So that's why I know what that work looks like is a perfect way to capture that experience is, you know, I would say sharing this data and saying how does this feel in your classrooms? Isn't always the most productive conversation. But what do you feel is really needed? What do you feel is, you know, you currently have that you don't need? What do you want to see in the future? Where do you want to see the district go? Those types of questions and conversations through, you know, it can be focus groups, it could be interviews, it could be surveys, it could be any of the above. But those types of questions that tend to be asked in a strategic planning process. I would say if you're going to make rules for your staffing, it should be driven by what your strategy really is and what your district says your strategy really is. And so that would be through that strategic planning. I don't know. Dr. If
[1:24:18] Superintendent Almi Abeyta: you have other thoughts, everything goes back to our strategic plan. And then during the budget season we historically we have listened and you know, everything that you see here tells story and it shows you where your money is basically is what you've prioritized. And so you can vary. You can see the priority for Chelsea Public Schools is in the FTE and where they. Where the f FTE land. And that's been very intentional on our part again with a looming budget shortfall. And I know we're not the only district. We have to make difficult decisions that nobody wants to make. And so it's good to have, it's good to start here. But at the same time is it's going to be devastating. And I'm just upset that we've come so far. And I know again, we're not the only district that. I was just talking to a colleague in Springfield and he was telling me that they couldn't believe what their budget shortfall is looking at. So again, everything is intentional. This is again a data point. Many data points. They tell a story. But do they tell the whole story? Absolutely not. And so that's where during a budget season and I really grappled with this, we will have to put some guardrails. But again, listening to all of our administrators, they. They really want the autonomy to make the decisions at school based level. And I shared with them, well, I'm leaning towards saying yes, you have that autonomy, but there will be some guardrails. And then with that autonomy comes responsibility. And so that's, that's the conversation that I'm having with our building leaders right now.
[1:26:47] Jake Small: Sure. And there's one last question before I thank you so much. I know I'm taking up a Lot of space. So I appreciate the committee for allowing me to ask a couple questions. Dr. Abeyta Key finding number four stood out to me. Sure, we'll talk about all of these over the next several months and maybe even years. But I think the work in front of us will be to, like, dispel a lot of the assumptions, or rather clarify a lot of the assumptions on school and district leadership. And I just wanted to talk about this key finding for a second. Could you connect the work of clerical staff to student learning and student outcomes more broadly? So if someone is looking at this word clerical staff, and I'm not sure exactly how it's coded, but how does that then connect to students having school experience with high expectations and good learning, etc. Yeah,
[1:27:39] Superintendent Almi Abeyta: I looked into that, and at the retreat, I shared that the clerical staff are really not a large number. So even if you add three to a small number, it looks huge. What we found in looking at our data is that we did add special education clerks because we have more special education, more students. Our special education clerks do a lot of paperwork that is required. That is, it's required, it's maintenance. It's a must. And so with the increase in special education students, the way we staff, we have special education clerks in our schools. And so that was the increase that made us look like we were astronomical. But it's a small data point, actually, because it's actually a small number.
[1:28:45] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: The pie is small. Yeah. And I'll just share two other things related to that, because we do this work a lot. And one is that investment in special education clerks or clerical support. It should free up time so that your teachers can spend time doing what they do best, and that's supporting students. And you can often think about this like a balloon. And when you squeeze one place, the air pops out somewhere else. And so. So, you know, if you were to say, hey, let's just reduce by 50% there in clerical staff, that's one of the areas that probably more than anywhere else, that error will pop out, because those are jobs that have to be done. Things like the paperwork that goes along, the clerical work that goes along with supporting students with disabilities, it's legally required that you have to do it. And so that's one of those ones that can easily dump out at you. That it's saying, we've made the investment in these staff so that our teachers can spend more time with students, and if we didn't have them, then the air would pop out and that the teachers would have to be spending a Lot more of their time doing that paperwork. So I just wanted to clarify that as well as adding to Dr. Abeyta's point. Thank you
[1:29:59] Jake Small: Dr. Abeyta. Thank you, Simone.
[1:30:02] Chair Ana Hernandez: Thank you. Are there any other questions?
[1:30:07] Jonathan Gomez-Pereira: Thank you so much, Simone. My name is Johnny. I'm sorry. Presentation the first time. This is super comprehensive and I really appreciated getting the VI presentation today. I have a couple of questions. Some of them might be directed towards you. Some of them are better suited for Dr. Abeyta. I'm just curious now how long is the length of this engagement with district management group?
[1:30:34] Superintendent Almi Abeyta: They are pretty much done with all the data collection but then there's the support. So this is part of the support is coming here and sharing and then if we haven't done a presentation with district management group to our administrators, so they're going to share with our administrators and then it might be that we have some community conversations for community to ask questions because that does not happen in the school committee meeting. So that's. Am I correct? So
[1:31:11] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: we'll just keep you forever. Tactically we're done with the nuts and bolts of the work. But as I said, I'm local, I live about 20 minutes from here. I'm happy to come help support and want to make sure that this plane is landed in a way that's actually really helpful for you all moving forward. So while the like formal engagement is, is nearing its end, I'm here to make sure that, that you all are able to take this work and and continue to move forward. That's really
[1:31:40] Jonathan Gomez-Pereira: helpful. I that leads into my next question about district management group supporting with the first recommendation which is establishing a document, establish a document to clear district wide rules for staffing across roles in schools, et cetera, et cetera. Beyond. I'm wondering if there's any sort of support with like crafting that document or is it just a matter of sharing resources?
[1:32:03] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: I think I recalled, yeah, I have shared some resources. We do that work. It would be a different contract than the current one. We do that work with a lot of school districts, but that's why we have a lot of those sample rules and so we can share those with no additional cost. Happy to kind of talk through them and walk through them. Every district is unique and has a different culture context. So what might have worked in either even another similar size district, similar demographic district in Massachusetts or in another state, it might not work here. So you know, really that's like the work of Dr. Abeyta and her team is to decide what are those set of rules and then Also, what is the level of flexibility and autonomy which she already talked about as well.
[1:32:49] Jonathan Gomez-Pereira: And then my next question is related to methods in terms of like analysis. So I'm looking at page 34 and 33 and in those two slides we're comparing Chelsea and its peer districts to different, like administrative standards. So what I mean by that is like the national level and the state level. What is the sort of reason reasoning behind that? I feel like, I mean, just looking at this, right. If you're including, you know, national data, like the. The sample is much larger. Right. And that tells a completely different story than looking at. Yes, hyper
[1:33:26] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: local stuff at the state level. Absolutely. And so we did try to do both here. So we have the national level and then the state level we compare to the national guideline here because that's kind of the gold standard of what districts strive to achieve. And. But the reason we put the national average in here is just to show that very few districts are able to actually align their staffing to that national standard. And so that's why we use the national averages here. The national average, you know, if you think about like, what's a good comparison? Gateway districts are probably the most good comparison. The state of Massachusetts is probably next and then the entire country is next because you're getting further and further from, from the kind of experience and reality and rules and regulations that exist here in Chelsea. So this would probably be the least of like, how should we align ourselves to the national average? But more just information on how big the gap is for a lot of districts between what they're striving for with that national association and what the reality is. But we did also compare you to Gateway districts in those same positions and see that you are more closely aligned to those Gateway districts districts, especially in those social emotional
[1:34:36] Jonathan Gomez-Pereira: positions. Thank you for that. My last question is for you, Dr. Abeyta. We've been hearing a lot about transparency and I know teachers and parents have been asking about like, what does this line item for consultants mean? I'm just wondering if you could clarify what the cost was for this engagement with District Management
[1:34:58] Superintendent Almi Abeyta: Group. I don't have it offhand, but I can get it to you. You.
[1:35:03] Jonathan Gomez-Pereira: Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you
[1:35:05] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: for your work. Of course. Thank you so much.
[1:35:10] Chair Ana Hernandez: Thank you. Were there any questions? Any other questions?
[1:35:15] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: None. Thank you so much for your time this evening. Sorry. Oh, sorry. I apologize. No, I
[1:35:23] Jake Small: was late to raise my hand there. I'm still having trouble and maybe I just need to read this at 10:00 clock in the Morning. That's when I'm my brightest. On the difference between the definitions. I forget what slide it was. But between general educators, special educators. I know. You know the slide. That's awesome. I got you. Yeah. Because if you just gave that those definitions one last time, take some notes that are
[1:35:46] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: helpful for me. Absolutely. So when you look at this, the takeaway is not, we have less teachers in classrooms than the state. In fact, you're right in line. General education teacher, or let me start with the other two. Special education and English learner teachers are teachers with the certification, the state certification to teach in those subject areas. So I gave the example of my mother. She was a teacher for many, many years. She is special education certified. She spent most of her career in a general education classroom. She would actually live in that special education line because she had her certification by the state definition. EL teachers similarly have English learner certification. This is not classroom assigned teachers. This is teachers with that certification. And then anyone else who has the teaching certification but doesn't also have that special education or English learner certification on top of that would fall into that top line. So overall, you have a similar number of teachers to other districts into the state, but you have more teachers who have more specialization, so who have more training to support students with disabilities. And English language learners in your classrooms is essentially the
[1:37:04] Jake Small: big takeaway here. That's helpful. So is it correct to say that it's not that we have the way this is
[1:37:09] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: outlined? It's not that you have more teachers who are supporting students with disabilities than you have general education teachers? No, it's that you have more teachers who have the training and the certification to support students with disabilities. And many of
[1:37:23] Jake Small: the special education teachers and EL educators might not be teaching those classes. They
[1:37:29] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: just have the certification. Yes, many of them. And I think a really good example of this is at your schools that have the dual language program. Almost every teacher at those schools is English language learner certified. So they fall into that line there, that third line. But a lot of them are teaching general education math and ELA and science and social studies or even art or any other subject. So this is not classroom assigned. This is based on the state certifications.
[1:38:03] Committee member: So based on that, what we can gather is that perhaps that same teacher could be counted twice, potentially, if.
[1:38:13] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: If that teacher certification, if they have
[1:38:15] Committee member: full certifications, could that teacher be. Because I know in the past, like, if. If we're cutting a position or if we're moving a position, we've been told because this position was added or created for because we had additional funding and now that position is no longer available, then this educator can, based on their certifications apply and be moved. So the educator itself, you know, can stay, remain within the district and based on their qualifications and the time within the district can, you know, potentially shift in an open position or some or something along
[1:38:57] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: those lines. Is that correct? It's a great question and in theory yes, but in practice this is a mutually exclusive. So it's not that you have 60 and 59 more or like 120 more and that means that you might actually only have 80 more. But 30 of those, 40 of those 80 have dual have tri certifications. I don't have the business rules off the top of my head, but there are a set of business rules that the state follows for where folks fall into these. Based on the certifications of someone certified in both EL and special education, they based on the business rules that the state defines, they would fall into only one of these two lines. I just don't know this off the top of my head. So I don't want to make any promises about where they fall.
[1:39:44] Committee member: Thank you very much. Thank
[1:39:45] Chair Ana Hernandez: you. Thank you so much. Thank you
[1:39:47] Simone Carpenter, District Management Group: for your time this evening. It was great to meet all of you. Thank
Superintendent report: indicators of success
[1:39:49] Chair Ana Hernandez: you. We will now move on to the reports from the superintendent.
[1:40:04] Superintendent Almi Abeyta: So our next report is our Indicators of success. So Mr. [name unclear] is filling in for Dr. [name unclear]. Welcome. Welcome back to Indicators of Success.
[1:40:32] District administrator (indicators report): Thank you, Dr. Abeyta. Putting on an old pair of shoes. This one's quick tonight. First off we have the district wide daily attendance rate. The one thing of Note is grades 1 through 8 all showed an improvement from September to October, even though slight improvement. But there's also an improvement from September to October. Unfortunately kindergarten and 9 through 12 all showed a slight decline from September to October. But we're all on the same rough pattern as we were last year at this time for the dropout rate. At this point in the year we have 33 dropouts. As you look back, and I think this is a confusing piece with this top part of the chart, but as you look at the previous years, those are at this point in the year total dropouts, not total dropouts for the year. So in the 22, 23 at this point in the year we had 32. In the 23, 24 year at this point in the year we have 55, 33. Last year at this point in the year we had 20. And this year we're up to 33. What's different is the, the percent because we have a lower enrollment, we have a smaller denominator, so the percent is a little bit higher. It's the highest since 2023, 2024. So going back a couple of years, it's up to 2.13%. And then the programmatic breakdown, actually that's, that's from last year. So that, that's. You've already shared that information. But the bottom, as you break down the, the dropouts. Eleven of those dropouts are non identified general education students, 16 were multilingual learners, two were special education students, and four were duly identified. And lastly, our in out data. This is a good thing, although it's starting to happen after October 1st, but we're starting to see small upticks in the enrollment. At the ELC, we had four in and four out. At the elementary, we had 13 and 12 out. At the middle school, we had 14 in and five out. And for those that are new to this, it means we had 14 newly registered students and five students who withdrew. At the high school, we had 13 in and 10 out, for a total of 44 in and 31 out. So so far, after the first two months of school are complete, we've had 176 newly registered students and 99 students leave the district. So we're at a positive of 77 students, which is, I think, a substantial number to starting to gain back our numbers, of course, early in the year to tell these patterns. But it's certainly moving in the right direction. And that is it for tonight's indicators for success. I'll take any questions if you have them.
[1:43:31] Chair Ana Hernandez: Any questions from the committee? Yeah, I have a question about
[1:43:36] Dr. Sarah Neville: attendance. I was actually planning on asking this anyway, but I was wondering if, if the district has noticed, you know, this week any drops in attendance from what's going with, with ice and things. And just more broadly, since 2025, what has the district noticed in attendance rates as. As it relates to immigration enforcement? Yeah, I mean, I
[1:44:02] District administrator (indicators report): think attendance has dropped from COVID and we haven't come back up to it. I will say that as I was looking, I looked particularly at Clark Ave. For some reason these past two weeks, their attendance has been outstanding. I don't count the number. I look at it every single day. And so basically it's usually one page worth of names. And if it goes over a page, I know it's a little bit more. And for the past two weeks they've been like half a page. So I Don't know if they're due doing some fun stuff at that school every day, but their attendance has been outstanding. I look at the high schools on a daily basis as well, and it really wasn't anything different than in the past. I will say what we are doing, though, as part of our work with our overall, we're calling it like 360 case management for the attendance. We're looking at tiered supports for all the different areas. Academic outcomes, student behavior, social, emotional and attendance. And I think the work now is really being like, looking at the different tiers of support for attendance and saying, like, there are different reasons why kids have trouble coming to school. Sometimes it's because of academic patterns of not having success academically. So why am I. Why am I going to bother going to class when I don't understand what's going on? Sometimes it's transportation. Sometimes I have a really hard time getting there. Sometimes it's simply I don't have an alarm clock. Right. And other times it has to do with not having a connection to the school, whether it's an extracurricular activity or whether it's a trusted adult that you really don't want to let down. So now as we're diving into that data, we're not just lumping all the attendance into one category. We're trying to declassify and disaggregate kind of what is the right support for the right student. That makes sense.
[1:45:52] Superintendent Almi Abeyta: Yeah. And I can chime in, in speaking to elementary principals today, their attendance yesterday and today was. Was the same. I know. I got a text from Ms. Lineweaver and she's like, oh, we only had a certain amount of kids out today, so there wasn't an impact. I can also share that our attendance overall last year for the district was 89%, which was the highest that we've had since 2021.
[1:46:28] Dr. Sarah Neville: Thank you. That's great. It's a question I get all the time. You know, how is the immigration enforcement affecting attendance? And I wonder if it's. I wonder if it's something that people are just wondering and it's not coming out in the data or if it's seen in other districts. Districts and not ours for some reason. And I'm. We did when
[1:46:47] Superintendent Almi Abeyta: we sent communication out yesterday and Sully. We. We get a lot of communication back through Parent Square. And so we got a lot of positive communication. People saying thank you. So we've been. We. People trust this school. And so there is a lot of trust. And so. And that. That It a tribute to the work that we've done as a team with our union, with our community that our parents for the most part are continuing to send children to school. I can, I'd be curious to see like in a couple of weeks how, how what the patterns are and I'll be watching the attendance. So. Any other
[1:47:39] District administrator (indicators report): questions? Thank you very much. Thank you.
Student representative updates
[1:47:55] Superintendent Almi Abeyta: Now we are finally to the point that our where our students are going. Finally our student representative of updates. So I guess I'll start with Chelsea High School COA and then CVLA. Perfect. Thank
[1:48:13] Student representative, Chelsea High School: you so much. Dr. Abeyta. Good evening again. Just as a reminder, I'm one of the student representatives for Chelsea high school. On Aug. 24, the Class of 2027 held its first senior tradition called Senior Sunrise. We went to Revere beach and we had lots of games, food, laughs and taking pictures. It was a great way to start off our senior year. This year, Chelsea High has implemented a new waterfall schedule where we drop a class, drop every class, once a week. Students and faculty are still trying their best to adapt to this new and confusing schedule. We had our first spirit week of the year. From October 5th to the 9th, students had fun dressing up as senior citizens. For example, Monday the 5th I dressed up as Tebow from iCarly so I was walking around with a stick of bagels. On the 9th, we had our pep rally where students and teachers had fun with games like Hungry Hippos. Our soccer, girls volleyball, football and cross country teams have been having a great season and memorable senior nights. Currently, seniors have submitted or are going to submit their early action and early decision applications for college. Due dates range from about November 1st to the 15th. Please make sure you wish our seniors good luck with their life after high school journey. On October 27, the New England Patriots quarterback Drake May visited the Chelsea High football team to give words of advice and to see the potential that our football team has. On October 29, Chelsea held its first free SAT testing for all seniors so that students could take the test without having to travel far away. The class of 2030 have campaigned and voted for their class officers and winners were announced at the start of this month. At Chelsea High, our drama club is preparing for their performance of Arsenic and Old lace from Thursday, November 12th to the 14th in the CHS Auditorium at 7pm and is $10 right now and $12 at the door. Please make sure you buy your tickets to support the drama club so that they can have funds to do their musical in the spring. Thank you for listening to my Chelsea High update states. Thank you.
[1:51:04] Student representative, Chelsea Opportunity Academy: Hi everyone. Good evening everyone. Again. Tonight we're going to talk about how COA work. COA have a different learning process than other school. In COA you have the opportunity to work and study at the same time. In regard to classes, We have a group of teachers very experimental in each area. They can help you in your fulfillment and progress. We also talk about the experience we have Newfoundland. See, I have an experience outside. That help students to experiment within nature and difference area. A group of students have the opportunity to go can you repeat that again? A group of student Group of students had the opportunity to go hiking team. Thank you. To enjoy the beautiful view of that place. In other hand, another group of students. I had the opportunity to go. I had. Another hand. A group of students have the opportunity to go to four rumble. Where they have camping, they have fire and they also ride, you know, and they enjoy the beautiful view. We also have very important celebrations. The next November 24th we will be celebrating Thanksgiving. Everyone, teacher, graduate students and everyone in general and people present, You are invited to the celebration we will have from Thanksgiving. Okay, to finish. I would like to give thanks to my super, my director and my show director. We would like to say thank you to Director G. For giving me the opportunity to participate in this project. For me, for all it's giving me his support. Thank you to Director Cohen to open the door like it was my house. Thank you very much for your attention. Buenas noches. Good night.
[1:55:42] Student representative, Chelsea Virtual Learning Academy: Good evening, Madam Chairwoman Hernandez, Superintendent Abeyta, school committee members and everyone here tonight. Tonight I would like to highlight three things currently happening at Chelsea Virtual Learning Academy that support our students, especially those preparing for life after high school. Postgraduate planning sessions, college and career visits and advisory postgraduate plannings. At least once a month, Students in grade 11 and 12 meet in person with CVLA staff at 77 Webster Avenue for postgraduate planning along with time to eat and socialize. During these sessions, we receive individual support with college essays and applications, resumes, cover letters and financial aids. We also explore different options for our future, including college careers and military research during our weekly check ins. Some seniors have already recently been studying to take driver's permit test. On November 20th, we will attend an 11th and 12th grade retreat at the Boston Foundation. We will work on our future plans, eat good food, create vision boards and tor GBH radio. These opportunities are important because planning for our life after high school can feel very overwhelming. Having teachers and staff who take the time to support us individually makes a big difference. College and university Visits each month, CVLA students have the opportunity to visit colleges, attend career fairs and explore options for life after graduation. So far this year we have visited Suffolk University. College visit allows us to experience different college environments firsthand. We get to explore campus life, see dorms, learn about students resources, and even try noodle food. During our recent visit to Suffolk University, I learned something particularly interesting. Suffolk was founded in 1906 to provide educational opportunities for immigrants who wanted to study law but who could not afford to attend law school. I found that in that history especially interesting and meaningful. We also enjoy the lunch in the cafeteria and the beautiful view of Boston from the 19th floor of Miller Hall, a student residence. These visits help help make college feel more real and allow us to picture ourselves as students on a college campus. Advisory finally, all CVLA students participate in a weekly advisory class. Advisory helps us offer helps us have opportunities to build relationships, develop life skills, participate in team building activities and hear our guest speakers. For example, last week we had a school wide advisory focus on Healthy Relationships. We focused and discussed relationships with family, friends and romantic partners and how to recognize healthy and unhealthy relationships. We also realized recently welcomed Daisy Gutierrez from Partners in Democracy who taught us about voting and the importance of participating in democracy, how to be involved in a democratic process regarding our citizenship status. These experiences find us and remind us that school isn't more than completing assignments, but and earning credits. CVLA also prepares us to become responsible, informed and engaged members of our community. In closing, I am grateful that CVLA provides us with opportunities to explore our futures, receive individual support, and build connections with our school community. Whether we are preparing for college, exploring careers, or figuring out what comes next, these experiences help us all see possibilities for ourselves that we might not have considered before. Thank you for listening. Have a good evening.
Personnel and enrollment reports
[2:01:21] Superintendent Almi Abeyta: Thank you. It's nice to hear from the different schools. Okay, so I'll continue on to our personnel updates. And. So for hiring, we have hired 33% Caucasian, 47% Hispanic, 13% black and 7% Asian Pacific Islander. And then for our Chelsea Public School enrollment, Our number is 5463. I would like to commend these two reports for the record. That completes my report. Thank you, Dr. Abeyta.
[2:02:18] Chair Ana Hernandez: We move on to the committee reports. I'd like to get a motion to amend these reports to the record. Motion
[2:02:31] Committee member: to command it to the records. Thank
New business: gifts, grant and head lice policy
[2:02:37] Chair Ana Hernandez: you. We'll move on now to new business. I'd like to make a motion to accept a consent agenda for the items that we have today.
[2:02:56] Dr. Sarah Neville: Madam Chair can We pull the charter resolution out
[2:03:00] Chair Ana Hernandez: of the consent agenda. Yes. No, I'm not going to include that one. Oh, sorry. We're going to do those last two separately. Oh, the last two. Okay.
[2:03:11] Committee member: Do we need a motion for that?
[2:03:12] Chair Ana Hernandez: Yes, A motion to. To go. To do this as a consent agenda. Correct.
[2:03:19] Clerk Veronica Dyer-Medina: So motions for consent agendas for item 26SC62 through
[2:03:27] Chair Ana Hernandez: 26SC65, as Madam Chair has stated. Second. Thank you. First item is consideration and action to accept 100 backpacks valued at $5,000 from Voya Financial. Next item, Consideration in action to accept 1,000 pairs of Bombas socks valued at $4,000 from Bombas giving team. Next item is consideration. Action to accept 1200 child's books valued at $10,740 from Reader to Reader Incorporated, based in Amherst, Mass. And the last item is consideration. Action to accept $14,000 from Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for the MyCAP planning and implementation Grant. Can I get a roll
[2:04:28] Clerk Veronica Dyer-Medina: call, Veronica? Roll call for items 26SC62 through 26SC65. Mr. Small? Yes. Ms. Covas Caraballo. Yes. Ms. Henriquez. Mr. O'Regan. Yes. Ms. Balderas? Yes. Dr. Neville. Yes. Ms. Cabral. Yes. Ms. Hernandez. Yes. And Mr. Gomez-Pereira. Yes. That's nine in the affirmative. Nine in the affirmative.
[2:04:57] Chair Ana Hernandez: Motion carries. We move on now to the next item which. Which is consideration and action to adopt the revised Chelsea Public Schools head lice policy. And I had a roll call.
[2:05:13] Clerk Veronica Dyer-Medina: Mr. Small? Yes. Ms. Covas Caraballo? Yes. Ms. Henriquez. Mr. O'Regan. Yes. Ms. Balderas. Yes. Dr. Neville. Yes. Ms. Cabral. Yes. Ms. Hernandez. Yes. And Mr. Gomez-Pereira. Yes. That's nine
Resolution opposing the Pioneer Charter School of Science expansion
[2:05:30] Chair Ana Hernandez: in the affirmative. Our next item is nine. Affirmative. Motion carries. Our next item is consideration and action to adopt the Chelsea School Committee resolution on the opposition of Pioneer Charter School of Science expansion.
[2:05:49] Dr. Sarah Neville: Did I get a roll call? I
[2:05:51] Chair Ana Hernandez: speak to you? By all means, Dr.
[2:05:54] Dr. Sarah Neville: Neville. Yeah. Thank you so much. We introduced this resolution because I think maybe two months ago we heard that Pioneer Charter School, which I believe is in Everett, has submitted a request to DESE. To expand to add over 440 seats to their school. Pioneer Charter draws from a number of municipalities, including Chelsea. One of the things that they want to do is to add pre K to their. To their school. Personally, I'm very against this expansion because I believe that honestly, charter schools weaken public education in our state and in our country. I. I'm against the. I don't think that charter schools are generally a value add to our education system. Except in, you know, unique situations when they're really doing something different or filling a new need, like perhaps Phoenix Charter or something, which could just be a public school, you know, but generally, I think that what charter schools end up doing to public school districts is they market themselves as being academically more rigorous and they have different requirements on them. So one thing is that most usually their teachers aren't unionized, so they might actually be paid less than public school teachers. They might also have less requirements for certifications and credentials, so they don't have to spend as much on their staffing. So that's one reason that they might have more resources for other things. They also don't necessarily have to accept every student who applies to them. And they also have the option to either, I mean, push students out or not so gently suggest that the school might not be the best fit for them. Help. Public schools, by contrast, by design, are for educating every single student, no matter how difficult their needs are, no matter how much what their special needs are, the trauma that they come with, their medical needs, their learning disabilities, and we even have to shoulder the cost of out of district special education placements because it's our responsibility as a public school district to educate every single student. And that's why I love our motto so much that we are a gateway public school district that educates and welcome. Welcomes and educates all. And so what happens with charter schools is you. When a district is required to welcome and educate all, you also have to welcome and educate students that are difficult to educate. And if your students have, you know, special needs and baggage and are coming from, you know, families with poverty, it can make your school district look like it's not performing well. And then the school district has a reputation, it becomes stigmatized. And when there's an alternative parents saying, hey, if I send my student over there, or they have, you know, really nice uniform and they seem to take academics a lot more seriously than the students who already have parents who are perhaps, you know, really looking for that environment and maybe were a little bit more likely to get higher standardized testing scores anyway, leave the district and go to these other schools where they are not with other students who are having, you know, maybe more challenging backgrounds. And then if a student isn't performing well or if they have special needs or learning disabilities that this school can't provide for because they don't have to spend their money on those services, then they just send them back to the public schools. And so this creates this really vicious cycle where our public taxpayer Money is going towards schools that don't have a responsibility to educate everyone. And it leaves us with less resources. And so that's why I'm really against any expansion by any charter school that's trying to take more of our students out of our district. Because I don't blame any family that would ever choose to send their kids to a charter school or a private school or an alternative, because we all just want what's best for our kids. But on a systemic level, it creates inequity and injustice. And you can see it in the numbers in the data, which thank you so much to CTU and AFT MAS for helping with this resolution and pulling together this data and for driving so much the advocacy behind us. You can see in the numbers we serve double the special ed kids that Pioneer does, double the ells and more. A lot more children of color and low income children. And that's why, you know, Pioneer shouldn't be allowed to try and siphon away more of our students. Students. So I urge everyone, it would be great to have a unanimous vote on this resolution to send a strong message to DESE. And I also want to invite, invite the public to join this advocacy as well. I know that CTU has set up an action network link where you can very easily send a message to DESE, you know, like signing your name to a petition. But if you want to end there, I think there might be flyers over there with QR CO codes as well. But if you also want to send your own letter, if you want to write your own letter, you can email it to pedro martinez, mass.gov and charter schools mass.gov and if you email it, the sooner the better. But by December, and the Board of Education is going to be in January to decide whether to grant Pioneer these extra seats. So
[2:12:09] Chair Ana Hernandez: thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Neville. And just as a minor comment, I think our schools get our children ready for the world. We expose everyone to all the different folks that they will be meeting in their lifetime, not just set types. So with that being
[2:12:31] Committee member: said, yes, and I echo the sentiment of Dr. Neville, I, I believe in the past we have as a district opposed expansion of not just Pioneer expanding on seats, but I believe other charter schools have tried to expand, generally speaking here. And we've sent out letters of opposition and said flat out no. I believe that parents should have choices. That's amazing. We as parents, we have a right to choose what we want. I also believe that our school systems are amazing and that's why my children do and are Products of Chelsea Public Schools. I believe in the district that we have. Having said that, I, I am in favor of this resolution. I do wholeheartedly support especially our littles. I think if anything should be expanding it should be our pre K and our kindergarten. That's just my personal. If we're going to be expanding seats, it should be here. The only thing that maybe the charter school have on us at that point is that they can have children from, you know, other, other districts. And if that was the case then you know, that's not something that we can do here because otherwise, you know, everybody would be trying to get into our. But that into our district. But that's a whole other issue that we have. Chelsea is beyond capacity and now we're going to be going into council territory and we can fight housing crisis in our next, you know, city council meeting or something along those lines because that's the mobility rate. Right. But as far as that's concerned, there's definitely not a need for those 440 seats. Our teachers are far more qualified. The inequity and the lack of transparency I still cannot get. We know what happens within our school systems if there's something going on. We know with our money goals. We know what happens with our budget. And I'm not saying, I'm not saying this to, to be unjust. I'm just. I know what the process is and it's very. There's a wide array even within the different charter schools. Again, I echo the sentiment. The only different one would be Phoenix because it does have a different group and it serves a very unique purpose. However, this is not. This is not. This is not it. So that's all for me.
[2:15:30] Chair Ana Hernandez: Thank you. Are we all set? Okay. A roll call. Yeah. Yes please. And read
[2:15:41] Clerk Veronica Dyer-Medina: the resolution. Whereas the Chelsea Public Schools is a gateway school system that was welcomes and educates all students. Whereas the vision of Chelsea Public Schools is to provide every student with a high quality education in a system that is devoted to equity, diversity and social justice. Whereas charter schools already siphoning off over 23 million from Chelsea Public Schools this year alone with the total cost coming out to 20 million after reimbursements from the state. Whereas due to inflation, inflation cuts to the federal education funding and immigration related enrollment disruptions. Chelsea Public Schools are already facing fiscal constraints as the system looks to maintain services and supports for the district special need and English language learner populations. Whereas funding required to establish and or expand charter schools in Chelsea would detrimentally impact the entire district especially over 5,500 students served by our 11 public schools whereas the latest expansion request from Pioneer Charter School of Science PCSS would add over 440 PCSS seats and could result in an additional drain over 7 million from the Chelsea Public Schools, reaching a total of more than 8.7 million in charter tuition payments from the Chelsea Public School schools to PCSS once the desired expansion is fully phased in. Whereas the PCSS proposal calls for expanding the scope of ages served From k through 12 to pre k through 12 without demonstrating a need for seats or why adding pre kindergarten opportunities would necessitate the 57% increase of in overall enrollment PCSS the CDC speaking Whereas Chelsea is a has a substantial population of students who are currently underserved by charter schools like PCSS, including English language learners, students with special needs and low income students. Whereas the percentage of critical student populations served by PCSS do not reflect the makeup of the largest student populations of the municipalities they currently draw from, especially childhood. Whereas the percentage of students with disabilities served by Chelsea public schools is 22.9 is more than twice that of PCSS 11.3% whereas the percentage of English language learners served by Chelsea public schools is 46.1% is more than twice that of PCSS 22.9% whereas students of color represent over 95% of Chelsea Public school students while PCSS they represent only 62% of the student body whereas 75% of students in Chelsea are low income compared to 47% of students in PCSS. Whereas since PCSS is a regional Commonwealth Charter School, it is impossible to calculate the exact impact their requested expansion will have on each each of the three sending districts overburdening districts during a time of already grave fiscal uncertainty. Whereas the teachers and paraprofessionals of Chelsea must meet certain standards for certification and licensure not required by charter schools. Whereas the teachers and paraprofessionals of Chelsea Public Schools enjoy collective bargaining rights and benefits which aim to ensure fair treatment that would be sorely missed in charter school setting. Therefore, be it resolved that the Chelsea School Committee opposes the establishment or expansion of charter charter schools in the City of Chelsea and especially PCSS's proposed expansion be it further resolved that the Chelsea School Committee respectfully urges the Massachusetts Department of elementary and Secondary Education to not only consider whether the applicant has met the necessary educational, fiscal and operational justification for expansion, but also this resolution here and upon review of PCSS's application to expand than Mr. Small yes Ms. Covas Caraballo? Yes Ms. Henriquez? Yes Mr. O'Regan yes Ms. Balderas? Yes. Dr. Neville? Yes. Ms. Cabral? Yes. Ms. Hernandez? Yes. And Mr. Gomez-Pereira. Yes. That's nine
Announcements and adjournment
[2:20:02] Chair Ana Hernandez: in the affirmative. Nine in the affirmative. Motion passes. Thank you very much. At this moment we'll move on to any announcements that need to want to be made. Dr. Neville.
[2:20:26] Dr. Sarah Neville: I have been asked by Councilor Roberto Jimenez to please announce that the joint meeting of the school committee and City Council will be on Monday, November 23rd at 6:30pm and this will be a meeting about the Chelsea Public Schools budget with the City Council so that we can discuss what the city's role might be in the current budget deficit that
[2:20:55] Chair Ana Hernandez: we have. Thank you.
[2:20:58] Committee member: Yeah, I just want to invite you to celebrate with us November 11th event for veterans Day. I think it's a great time to say thank you to all those people who give the lives for us and protect us when it's war. And it's going to be in a Clark School at 11 to 1pm so we invite all Chelsea community to come and enjoy with us and celebrate Veterans Day. Thank you. Thank you, madam. Just one
[2:21:31] Another committee member: brief reflection. I had the opportunity to visit my first CHS school site council and it was really amazing to hear about the expansion of the Caminos program. As a former Caminos student at the Kelley School, it's wonderful to see not only that our students get the opportunity to engage in Caminos programming from kindergarten all the way through school, high, high school. It's affirming especially I know we've discussed a lot about ICE presence and I think that the Caminos program is something that's really affirming for our students to see them be able to obtain the seal of Biliteracy through this programming and also the district to be able to offer additional professional development for our teachers to provide general education classes in two languages. So really appreciate this and I just want to thank the parents staff that were present during the school site council. Thank you. So
[2:22:40] Committee member: two things my the Berkowitz did the MCAS recognition and. And again to go back to the fact that so many of the students were of immigrant families and seeing so many of the students receiving the meeting meaning or exceeding that recognition both in mass and know ela. Right. It was. It was amazing. What more can I say? Like we see our littles all the time and it's just. It's one of those things where it's heartwarming. I got a lot of text messages from families over at the ELC thanking the staff, thanking the district for putting out the memo regarding the increased Presence, the, you know, just the added vigilance. Well within the past two days, the general outpouring information, be it from the family targeted activities that the district has tried to create collectively from across all ages. I don't think that we realize the magnitude of the work that is done all across so that families can really have core memories with their children. And over time, just like we saw today, it makes a huge impact. Impact because sometimes we don't really know as parents how to create a lasting bond or how to really do something. And the kids will remember that they got to, you know, the parents showed up to an actual class activity or that the school took the time to create, you know, a costume event or. And the parents got to really experience that because, you know, know the parents are also healing from their, you know, our monthly sel, you know, pamphlets and our, you know, targeted goals. These are all things that did not exist, at least not for me. But I get to experience it with my kids, you know, so it's nice to see the social, emotional learning that my kids are like coming and like the journey jokes that we tend to share. I had my. The Bibels assessments and I had an early parent teacher conference today. So it's, it's. There's such great work and there's such great leadership going on collectively across our district. The Clark Ave attendance information that school was in our need improvement two years ago. So it's just amazing progress and it's such a, it's such a good positive feedback to hear. I don't think that we, we get enough time to just see the work that we've done. So I'm just so thankful that amongst all the chaos there's still a little glimpse of sunshine. You're right. Anyone else?
[2:26:19] Jake Small: Hi again to our student representatives. Welcome to the committee. I'm so excited for what we'll learn during your year of service. So welcome. All set?
[2:26:31] Chair Ana Hernandez: I just wanted to make one closing comment and then I promise I'll let you go. I just want to get the message across that we have acknowledged the presence of ICE in the city. We are very aware of the it. Our superintendent has made sure to get communication out not just yesterday, but today as well. And there was a. There's more presence of administrators and staff at the end of school and when school is letting out. So we are aware and we are taking steps to make sure that we secure our kids. And I want to thank a whole district, district for all of our staff at the schools for cooperating and working together for this. And thank you very much. I want to ask for a motion to adjourn. Can I get a motion?
[2:27:23] Committee member: Motion to adjourn. Second. Thank you.