Agenda Preview: December 18 School Committee Meeting
Changing Subcommittees and School Committee Rules, Discipline Data
December 18 School Committee Meeting
The next school committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, December 18 at 5:30 p.m. There is no Executive Session. See the agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom.
Here’s what’s on the agenda:
Proposed Subcommittee Changes.
Tonight at the Finance, Governance and Operations standing committee meeting is a proposed change to the subcommittee structure, which if approved, will be voted on at Thursday’s school committee meeting. The rationale for the change is “To spread responsibility out amongst administrators and committees and to create a format where there are no tie votes” because as it stands right now, there are four people on each subcommittee, which has led to an occasional tie, leaving items stuck in committee.
The proposed change is essentially going back to three committees instead of two, like it was before 2024. The key difference this time is that Governance and Operations would be in one subcommittee, and Finance would be its own subcommittee (previously Finance and Operations were together). Also, pre-2024, there were six members of the school committee (minus the mayor, who does not serve on subcommittees), which meant everyone served on two committees of three members each. Now there are eight school committee members, which means that everyone would serve on one subcommittee, except one school committee member who would need to serve on two subcommittees. The mayor still chooses who serves on what subcommittee.
The change also moves all policy considerations into the Governance and Finance Committee, whereas right now, policies having to do with teaching and learning go through that standing committee.
Proposed Rule Changes.
Also tonight at the FOG standing committee is an item with a slew of proposed changes to the school committee rules, which if approved would also be up for vote at Thursday’s school committee meeting. Here are the current rules and here are the proposed changes. My quick overview:
Adding the “Friday letter” as a way that items can be referred by the committee (the other three are to a standing committee, to a special committee, or to the administration). The “Friday letter” is a weekly email sent from the Superintendent to school committee members, and under then-Superintendent Dr. Monárrez it became more and more common for reports or data that the school committee requested at school committee meetings to be sent in a “Friday letter.” (This also meant if the public wanted the information, it had to be requested by a public records request, which I had to do almost every week for many months until the district started putting the updates online.)
Allowing anything that has been inactive in a standing committee for two years to be automatically filed, with notice.
School committee members must submit items by using a provided google form by 12 p.m, on the Wednesday a full week before the next meeting.
Public petitions must also be submitted by noon on the Wednesday a full week before the meeting, and petitioners would have up to three minutes to speak instead of two minutes.
Eliminating a line that school committee members “should notify the Superintendent or Executive Directors of any other visits to individual schools that have been coordinated with school-based leadership.”
Meetings would start at 5:30 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. during the school year, and during June, July and August they would start at 4 p.m.
The vice-chair will always be seated at the desk next to the superintendent.
Report of the Superintendent.
This meeting’s Report of the Superintendent is on discipline data. Here is a press release from the district about the data, which shows the staff assaults increase that got the most attention during the FOG subcommittee meeting was from students in grades K-3.
That’s it. Have a good week! If you have feedback you can always get in touch: aislinn.doyle@me.com