In light of the ongoing COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak, Governor Baker issued an emergency Order on March 12, 2020, allowing public bodies greater flexibility in utilizing technology in the conduct of meetings under the Open Meeting Law.  This committee makes a motion to accept this Executive Order for this meeting of the Governance Committee, on April 6, 2021.

Paul Baker provided a recap of the latest Board of Trustees' meeting, highlighting the important topics and discussions had.

This includes, but is not limited to the following:

The group noted that the document distributed needs to be updated with new member Jessica Gelb, also Artie Sullivan's term has be renewed.

Karl Smith provided notice that he will be stepping down his board seat and position on Governance after the scheduled June retreat.

The committee discussed board candidate, Will Rockwell and the overall consensus was to find out if he would be interested in joining Governance.  Peter indicated that based on their relationship, he would ask Elizabeth Burns to talk with Will to see if he would be interested in joining governance.

Some other potential candidates were also briefly discussed.
The team noted it would be beneficial to have some parents of 4th graders become more involved in the school's Board and sub-committees.

The group had some productive discussions about potential updates to charter document.

While COVID has posed challenges, this would be a great time to start considering what needs to be updated.

Elizabeth broke down the charter into sections, and the committee will be looking at the first 2 sections to have a more meaningful discussion at the next meeting.

Paul Baker noted there are some apparent redundancies and heavy focus on Marblehead.  The group would like to consider opening up the committees based on the recent addition of Swampscott and Nahant to the "Communities Served". 

There was some discussion about what may or may not be allowed with regards to updating the actual charter document.  Kay O'Dwyer suggested that we may be able to obtain some advice from DESE - maybe move to an appendix, but should verify.

Peter and Artie have discussed several charter topics with Alyssa - from DESE with regards to the renewal and they will reach out to see what advice she can provide.

Goal for the May meeting - review first 2 section.  30 minutes.

During the next few meetings, the Governance Committee should be performing our self evaluation and establishing some stated goals for the next school year.

It was agreed to include on next month's meeting a section on goals.

May 4th - 7 PM is the proposed time.

Open meeting law - OML is  planned for the June retreat.  We will also include on the agenda for the May meeting a discuss how this will be done.

Provide assignments, etc.

Peter Cohen briefly touched on the Board retreat scheduled in June.

Although difficult to imagine, he is planning for a transition back to in-person meetings.

Either the Governor's executive order will be expiring or the school could decide there will in person meetings held starting before the retreat. 

All of those revisions from the by-laws need to be revised by the group in order to ensure both in-person and remote participation is being properly administered.

It was suggested that Governance create a presentation to Board on what is needed / required, etc.

Board requested certain training and each member of Governance can each address a topic.

Lastly it was suggested the June Governance meeting become a joint meeting with the Board.