Vote: Protect Act Policy

Transcript (~7 min @ 1:25:40)

▶ 1:25:43 Which again, is taking up our time. And we have a responsibility to our students, so we're going to learn more about how we are complying with state law here and also setting up protections for our students and our educators as they work in the buildings to do what their job is, which is to educate our students. Okay. You want to start? You want me to start? Sure. I can just kick it off that, as you'll see in the policy, that on August 5th, Governor Maura Healey signed into law this PROTECT Act, and it's now law in Massachusetts that we need to adhere to. It came down the pipeline fairly quickly, and I think because of our summer meetings, I think it was like we were supposed to have this voted and accepted on,

▶ 1:26:31 I want to say September 1st, without looking at all of the things. So, thank you to Attorney Linquist, who we did receive a model policy, and some procedures that we have developed because the procedures need to be part of this as it's written. So we wanted to make sure we give it to you in its entirety, in hopes that you could skip potentially that one step of review and then voting. And that's up to you guys to adjust our bylaws, I believe. Again, this is why I have Attorney Linquist here at the table. But certainly it is modeled after what was provided to us. We made it fit for Melrose. I would say the model policy was definitely for a much, much bigger district, so we had to pare it down a little bit.

▶ 1:27:20 And so I will kick it off to Attorney Linquist. Yes. So these model policies came down August 21st, and we didn't have a meeting since then, hence the little bit of delay in getting it in place. I will say that starting with last year, maybe even the year before, we started training on a very similar process for all of our administrators, so this is not going to be new to our administrative team in that whenever a civil law enforcement officer came to school, they were supposed to immediately contact central administration to see what was next, and training just on our confidentiality, student confidentiality. So this just kind of codifies it and puts it in writing and makes it a school committee policy. But what is before you today that you'll be voting on

▶ 1:28:09 is the policy, and then the policy requires procedures, and it sets forth in the policy what those procedures need to contain. And then what you'll see attached just for your information are the procedures that the superintendent is in charge of and can change as needed depending on the needs of the district. So basically what this does is that there has to be a judicial warrant or court order before they can have access to any student or to any piece of our property. And again, we've been doing this since the beginning because there is a difference between a civil enforcement order and a judicial order. And under Massachusetts law has always protected students in that way. So, I'm happy to answer any questions

▶ 1:29:07 that you may have. Thank you, Ms. Linquist. Ms. Leo. Just a clarifying question based on what you were just describing. So it sounds like these procedures were already in place, essentially, but this law just codifies them again. Am I hearing that? So we put in place once we started to hear that federal officers were coming onto school property. We put in place our own procedure following- Local ... Yes, just in Melrose. And what this does is just the governor came down and said she wants all districts in the Commonwealth to do this. So we feel like we were ahead of the game a little bit because we were already kind of doing this. But this is just very clear. We're going to train all of our staff and administrators on exactly, again, exactly

▶ 1:29:57 what they should do if someone were to come in. I can say we haven't had this in our schools in Melrose during the school day. But we are ready if it does happen. Thank you. Yes, Ms. Rosie Thomas. I just want to say that in extraordinary times, i.e. the pandemic, we can totally get rid of our usual protocol of reviewing policies two or three times before we vote on them. So it's perfectly fine given the need to act quickly to suspend the usual rules and just go to a vote, which I would be happy to propose. Comments from members before we have a motion? Yes, Ms. Driscoll. Just a notation that this did come to us also from MASC and their policy update in August. So that was very helpful to get a pre-read, and so I don't think this is a

▶ 1:30:55 surprise to anyone. And I know I did, I'm sure others did, have every faith that you folks were taking care of this and protecting our students as you always do, and I'm really grateful for that. Thank you. Yes, I agree with members as well. I appreciate how much time has gone into drafting this policy as well to make sure it's compliant. But also knowing that we've already had these practices in place is reassuring, to know that we've had that forethought and just certainly want to express that this is not a pressure that we should be feeling, but it is a pressure that we are feeling. And I think what we see continuously is our teams putting our students at the front, and doing what's right for them.

▶ 1:31:43 So with that, I think if there is a motion, we'd have to consider two motions, one to suspend our rules, if that's the will of the committee, on adopting policy, and then a second vote we would have to have to adopt the policy. So let me take up that first one first, if there is a motion. Motion to suspend the usual rules around policy votes. Ms. Rossi Thomas moves, seconded by Ms. Leo. All those in favor, or discussion? Unanimous approval of suspending the rules. So now we would move to adopting the policy, if that's the will of the committee, if there's a motion. Mr. Kelley moves. Motion to approve. Seconded by Ms. Holleran. All those in favor, any discussion? All right. Unanimously approves the policy enforcing on the PROTECT Act.