Edgar is a member of the National Honor Society as as a result of his outstanding academic career Edgar has enrolled in concurrent enrollment classes with Middlesex Community College and will graduate from high school with nine undergraduate credits Edgar was awarded the St Michael's high school with night awarded the St Michael's College book award as a junior due to his outstanding academic and community service record Edgar was selected this year to be our school's nominee and state finalists for the United States presidential scholar program Edgar has been accepted into the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy Northeastern University St Michael's College Merrimack College University of Detroit Mercy Curry College University of Massachusetts Boston University of New England Fitchburg State University in Worcester State University Edgar has made contributions to our school Community outside of the classroom at senior class president for the class of 2023 providing leadership for the student body Edgar has been a ready leader MIAA student ambassador big future Ambassador Rising leader mentor and a four-year member of our cheerleading team and team captain as a senior Edgar has been a member of the Upward Bound in our schools chapter a genius sexuality sexuality Alliance these experiences have allowed him to develop and to use his communication skills and Leadership skills which will help him into college Edgar Martinez [Applause] oh I have it yeah I do need to sign it though I'm sorry I moved it I didn't want to spill any soup on it 17.
in preparation for a possible project we have hired Friar Architects out of Farmington who are beginning their study um Mr Bishop has been working in close contact with them and they'll be coming out to do a tour of all the buildings within the next two weeks so that study is well underway and we're really stepping on the gas with this to get as much accurate information and options for uh the town and the Board of Ed to choose from as we determine how to add additional space to our schools and if I could just add we've done a good job case Mr Bishop and uh in in prepping both the board of selectman and board of Finance so this is not a shock to anybody they've been brought along right right right from the start and they're very much helping us accelerate through the process because we are under a Time crime so uh the town the community or the town side is very much on board with us more moving forward to bring forth this study thank you does anyone have any questions of course we'll keep you updated as the process moves along in your packet tonight and for those board members who are virtual tonight we'll make sure we send this electronically to you um I gave you the presentation that Mr depipo our high school principal presented to our high school students on the uh the rebranding of the warrior and the process for selecting uh the new image that would go along with the warrior so this is very well laid out I wanted you to know what was communicated to our students the deadline for this uh for the submission of images was March 24th but we've decided to extend the deadline due to just a few submissions being made so um so Mr pimpo is really going to put out the call for more submissions and um Bella and Simone could use your help too to continue to get the word out because I know there are many great ideas out there the goal would be to select our new image by the end of May so we're hoping to do that this year but I wanted you to see what communication had been sent out so when when was this communicated executive to the school that's a student a few weeks ago so like I regret it but not like you know yeah I don't think it was there was because I think just very recently yeah yeah I was just curious what the method of communication was because it was just you know yeah it was like they had it very not able to reference it and like take part so there was a school-wide assembly and um a reminder may have just gone out recently because of the deadline I think Mr him students great thank you to her okay so anyone listening out there please um we want our students to submit their great ideas I want to let you know that after a a very long uh search process we have hired our student and family engagement director um her name is Sarah Jones and she will begin on April 17th right after the April break so as you know we've had this vacancy all year long uh searching for the right candidate and as I said after a lengthy process and an interview process that Mr Bishop coordinated we've certainly found the right person so I look forward to introducing her to you at our April board meeting at our last meeting we talked about the choice program and how many seats we were going to offer for next year um at that time I told you I would go back and check on kindergarten enrollment numbers so I want to let you know that I misspoke at our last meeting currently as of today we have 94 students registered which is just where I thought we would be at because a year ago we had 95 at this time I moved ahead with the choice declaration and stated that we will open six seats up four kindergartners so with the 94 and six Choice students if all those slots are filled we'll have 100 students um and I believe I rejected for 108 allowing for students who may move in over the summer so we're right where we anticipated we'd be right now with um six projected kindergarten classrooms in your packet I provided um copies of the letters I sent out today regarding the tragic tragedy yesterday in Nashville one to the entire community and and one to staff that you can take a look at and also in your packets you will find a draft letter related to a bill in the state legislator right now bill number house bill number five zero zero three So It Begins um Canton Board of Education endorses an act concerning education education funding in Connecticut so many of you um were able to participate in the uh going to Avon Board of Education Canton Board of Education um meeting with representative Jeff Curry who is the chair of the education committee and our own state legislator representative Fellaini um Elaine DeGraw was also present and we discussed the proposed House Bill and in this letter it highlights um if this bill passed uh what would happen what the objectives are so basically the bill accelerates the educational cost brand adjustments by several years to fully fund the grants in two years in fiscal year 2025 2026.
um uh and fun fact my theme song was The Dope Show by Marilyn Manson accompanied with this voice so I'm sure it was fantastic um but um so anyway it's great to see all that and I just I'm sure that and you guys would probably agree like you already said that the teachers and staff and the parents are just amazing it looks like and at the same time I really hope that um we can get other schools in our district to the same position and and have people feeling like they're all on equal Playing Fields so and that's coming from me who wasn't an original tiger I'm also a Blue Devil so um yeah thank you um other board members any comments questions for lovely guests no questions but just really enjoy the presentation I know it takes courage to get up and stand present to a bunch of adults or adults that get nervous doing it so you three did an amazing amazing job and you should be very proud of yourselves thank you any other comments um thanks for being great role models for your school great job today um and congratulations on the a plus thank you awesome thank you guys so much don't sit down yet because at this time we'd like to invite our team from Biltmore prep up to take a photograph with the board and with the award from the Arizona Education Foundation it's a big banner we're gonna have to squish okay thank you guys so much thank you guys so much and that brings us to 10A this would be the discussion and prioritization and propos of proposed audits on the following topics the Creighton Academy construction project forensic curriculum management and special education Ms mcshapri I will open it up to you since this is your agenda item first thank you thank you have been on future agenda items for time we have heard you know a couple presentations about these which really was not what I had asked for um I don't know if we have the future agenda item uh okay the list you can see just what I wrote out requesting them so um so oh no I Hilda's got the hard times those are just what I requested so you all can just see what I requested and and what we've received um I'd like to prioritize them um and I think we need to get started on doing these thank you um as soon as possible for me the special education audit um is really takes a priority because I feel like our kids need this right now um and then secondarily the Creighton Academy um audit is important because we're going to be building lck um I'll start with um the special ed audit um I'm hearing we have a culture of pushing out students and staff in the department students not being serviced the services they're entitled to students not being evaluated allegations recently of cheating on standardized testing by providing accommodations that are not in sync with state law and this is not being made transparent to the board not following evidence-based practices medical billing prioritization and question just to name a few things that are of great concern to me we are the governing board these are our responsibilities um Creighton Academy audit we know we went over budget and we had to find money from many other resources during that time adjacent ways is an example the playground is another example that we know of um I want to know what overages we that occurred that we incurred and what change items we um incurred um we have lck coming up it's my understanding there's I mean there's a rumor that um that project is already over budget and we haven't even started building yet and so we're looking to Esther funds to pull money out of Esther funds to um basically help um it would provide more money to to the construction company they would be over budget already so I want to make sure we are not in the same situation and that it's we have more transparency on a massive construction project that is 22 million dollars that you know our community trusts us to do correctly um so I am not 100 sure what the next steps are but I believe that Miss Korea doll and myself should work with procurement procurement and purchasing to determine the next steps to determine what vendors um and what questions um they would have for us as a board so I would like to know if if we are in sync on that if if from a prioritization standpoint if there are other opinions on the board or if you feel like or if you have questions for me um I'm going to open it up to questions or discussion Ms Gibson McLean do you have any questions comments or anything about these um items um so I'll just go through them in this order I guess um so as far as the audit of the Creighton Academy construction project I think it's a good idea I think that to be transparent and think looking back to what we did there to see what we can learn from moving forward um additionally I agree with the comment you made about the community and trusting us you know I went to school here at a time when we never got bonds or overrides passed and so I would hate to lose the community's trust in the future by by by foregoing transparency and if it's not going to be a huge burden I don't see why this would be something that we couldn't do and and we learn from it at the same time um as far as the curriculum audit I and I don't have any I think obviously audits from time to time we've heard before that people seem to be in at least I feel like there's some consensus there I don't know um this out again salary schedule I kind of agree with a statement made earlier I think basically when we're you know as far as I know none of us are Financial professionals on this board unless people are hiding things um but like when we got all that information honestly for me you know I went to law school and so I am not a math person um and so I need things to be a little more consumable I do appreciate the transparency in giving us the raw information but also it'd be helpful for some more consumable information maybe something to go along with it or even like a coding system it didn't even seem like there was like a coding system that could I could pick up on to see like okay all of these things are related all it was just very confusing and a lot to take in at once so maybe I think moving forward if we have a better idea and I think that goes into this request for the I don't know you can tell me if I'm wrong I feel like it's one of the factors at play yes um and so I I would agree with that as far as um special ed situation um I guess I maybe what I'm hearing I wouldn't necessarily call it an audit to me what I'm hearing it sounds like it would need to be called like an investigation I don't know that audit's the right word maybe because because it's a term that's already used within the industry for specific things and so it sounds like the things that you listed off are not things that would be necessarily addressed by traditional special ed audits or clearly aren't addressed by whatever Ade does and it sounds more like to me it sounds like an investigation where interviews would be conducted and information would be gathered and then that would be reported back so um given um given information that has been shared and I know we get into murky territory but again um I've spoken to people who've left this District um after they've left not before who've been willing to talk to me I you know have spoke I speak to teachers and staff on the side you know outside of board meetings and so I would say that I share a level of concern that would rise to the level that I would be in agreement to do some sort of Investigation just to see what's going on or if anything's going on in terms of the consistent um issues I guess or or things that seem to come up in a lot of the conversations that I have with different folks so and just to clarify I think I've been using the word audit just to make it a little more um uh not as scary I think the word investigation is scary to people and all I am looking for here is transparency and trying to get the to the Crux of what's Happening um we did an audit when Dr Lewis came on I mean these things need to happen from time to time when we're hearing grave concerns and we don't know what's happening um so call it an audit investigation I think I think you're right I mean I think it is probably more of an investigation since we keep comparing the audit to what Ade already does and that's not what I'm looking at doing is is another Ade type of audit um Miss Ayers do you have any comments or questions I think there's a big difference between audit and an investigation especially in the way of money so that probably needs to be clarified is that an audit is an investigation if it is an audit I think we need to know what the audit is going to do because many times it seems that um that it's unclear what you're asking for versus what's actually given and so I'm not sure where the breakdown in communication is with that um I just need more information before I want to know how much like things cost like how much is it not only going to cost but I also wonder if this would best be um something that we take our time with and that we wait for maybe our new superintendent um to take over and decide which audits or which problems he foresees that maybe he or she um you know things that we might need at this time so I'm just worried that we're rushing in um especially for I know there's people that um you know have some concerns but does it does it warrant an audit or you know a huge amount of money for maybe a couple things I really do think an investigation maybe on a couple things would be better than an actual audit but so that's my take thank you that's my Caleb um some of my comments have already been addressed um I do caution on like the term audit audits are very specific um whether they're done by Ade or done by private companies um they they give a very specific set of information so um I think with regards to the special education um it would be more of an investigation um with regards to uh budget pieces with the Creighton Academy and salary I think you know it's not necessarily an internal audit I feel that it's let's make sure we have all of that information um and maybe it needs to be presented in a different way so kind of the your comments of like we working together working with Jay or whoever else on being able to iterate what do we want how do we want to see the information because we have a lot of this information and I'm absolutely not against transparency I think we do need to be transparent um I just the word audit if it's coming from an independent company is going to be a lot of money um which I don't think is us being good stewards um if it's something that we already have that information with us um the other thing that I just want us to be aware of as we look at any of these pieces regardless of what you call it is being mindful of the amount of time that it takes staff to put this stuff together so um like I said just making sure we're very clear on what information do we want to see and how do we want to be able to ingest it so that we don't have staff members spending a lot of time um and we still don't have the information we want um I'm currently in my district dealing with audit stuff and it is it's a lot of time for stuff that we know the state already has the information they just wanted it again in a different way and so I wasted four hours yesterday regurgitating information that was already shared and that's really stressful um and I we just need to be mindful of our staff um the other piece is um I think some of this stuff and in general other things are going to be things that are going the staff will be putting together knowing that we're onboarding a new superintendent so maybe if there's ways that knowing you know when a new superintendent is onboarded and them getting to know the district maybe that can kind of be like together somehow so that it's not like hey Steph you have to do this and you're also going to be preparing things for a new superintendent so I'm I don't know I'm thinking about conversations where we can work smarter and not harder and knowing that you know a new person coming in is going to want to know this information as well so how do we kind of kill two birds with one stone all right who are you backing off of that one thing that I understand from our process with asba is that there's going to be support after hiring yeah they might be able to guide you in that way yeah and be able to have some conversations about like what we want to see in terms of onboarding but the other thing that I'll add is you know um I mean it's almost April the hiring is going to happen at the end of next month like I know they don't start but by the time we get to a point where we're like looking at how much something would cost I mean the person's going to be here so I just want to keep that in mind like we're not voting on anything today we're having a discussion about prioritization is what I'm understanding and so it feels like this is going and given how long that maybe some other things have been brought up it doesn't feel like fast to me I I hear that and I want to address all the concerns you brought up uh both brought up and so um I'm interested in having further conversations hearing more information about what costs look would look like what who we would be talking to getting Clarity on what we would be asking for like actual deliverables on these things that sort of stuff sorry go ahead no it's okay uh Miss Caleb Miss Caleb were you done yeah yeah okay so I guess these are some of the questions that I have for each um item first and then those can be given in an aborta update and then that way we can further discuss but when it comes to the internal audit of Korean the first question is is have we ever had an internal audit like this before and if so when was the last audit we've had kind of like the audit that she's requesting it except for the Creighton Academy yeah oh okay or beforehand like if we did I don't believe we ever I mean I don't have to be answered I'll just ask these questions and then you can let us go back so I want to know if we ever have if we did what school was it and because I know that Monte Vista has been at some point remodeled so BPA in Ohio so if we have had a curriculum on it how much was it who did it and when it was done um the other question that I have and it doesn't have to be answered now which I already think I already know the answer to Is is that let's say we do um choose a certain amount for a contract if that much that money goes over we as a board have to approve that exceeded amount right so I would always go if we tell uh somebody it's ten dollars and they want to charge us 50 that 40 would come up to us right as a vote maximum price type project like this construction that would be true if we're talking about we bought notepads and the paper would be my best example you know sometimes we do a paper order and then they come back and go before we shipped it the cost was 50 cents higher on something like that typically it wouldn't come back because the dollar amounts are very small but on a project like construction if the gfp is exceeded then it does have to come back to the board so if we approved a contract for a million dollars and all of a sudden they're saying well now we have to add on some Roofing and it's going to cost another eight hundred thousand dollars would that 800 extra thousand dollars come back to the board as a vote yeah that would definitely come back okay typically the the common rule of thumb is if there's a variance of ten percent or more or if it pushes you over some form of procurement threshold so like the best example I can give of that is there's that hundred thousand dollar board approval individual item so if something was 92 000 and it went up 8 000 even though it didn't go up ten percent it would still come back to the board because now we've exceeded that hundred thousand dollar correction okay so with that being said um also in the information that we get back and I'm not saying I need it at the next board meeting but this is stuff regarding this specific um item that I think would help us as a board make a better decision is if did that did that specific scenario happen in the Creighton Academy where we the board approved you know more money and if we did I would like to know how much that was approved for and for what things they were approved for um I'm guessing what could be included in there or two or are the contractors that were associated with them oh yes and who who had the contract for the Creighton Academy as well um but yeah those are the questions that I would like for us to start off with the specific crane Academy audit let's make a comment too yes go ahead um and the reason that I brought this up initially is because Scottsdale did one for the like I think it was Kiba was their example but um the idea is that the cost savings that you find from an audit pays for the audit itself and we definitely had overages which I voted no for I was out voted on those like I said the the ways and means I'm sorry the adjacent ways and the playground I don't know of ones like if there were that's why I would like to see were there 80 000 here 80 000 here 80 000 here I would never really know about those things so um just a little more information yeah and I think that's why it's important for us to have specifically in the crane Academy if those situations did happen I think as a board we would like to see what over exceeded what they voted on him for what just to give us a better distinction of what's going to be happening with um lck too um moving on from the Creighton Academy audit any other questions or remarks I would just like to thank you for the clarity of the deliverables and the notion of where there might be some uh need for understanding relative to adjacent ways overages and change order items those three things feel very tangible to staff and I think could be easily not easily but with effort gathered and brought to the board if that's sufficient and I think the frustration over the the ambiguity of an audit is in those clarifications so if those three things are sufficient that would be something we could do to provide I just didn't know quite what to do with it from an external perspective it's not sufficient for me yet yeah I I Scottsdale did it as and internal audit which again I will explain an internal audit happens in large companies who can afford an internal audit Department that department reports directly to the board so for us to do an internal audit that reports directly to the board we would have to hire an outside company if that makes sense to everyone so I'm looking for that outside company transparency again the cost most likely will pay for itself if not over in the cost savings that we find in a huge construction project like this so I'm it's not satisfactory to me those three pieces there's more okay yeah and I think those are good starting points because we don't know what we'll find I don't want to be I don't want it to be assumed that that's we're going to be square away with that and I'm like okay moving on to the next thing this is over so I think those are good starting points and depending on what we see we may have other questions we may have other I don't know I just don't know what the information looks like so I think that's a good starting point for us to get that info one other thing I'll add is you know I think watching a lot of school sports and other boards and councils um there's so many uh opportunities our only opportunity to discuss things as a group is here right and so um I I see just like quickly getting through agenda items I think this is right here is doing some work because we're having conversations about something and that's something we can't do off of out of this setting and so I think also sometimes when folks have ideas they're not going to be able to necessarily really hone in on ideas or get um the unknown unknowns if they're just kind of existing in a vacuum or an echo chamber and so I think having these conversations is very important so that we can all kind of um hopefully to some sort of consensus about what we can get done so I just want to put that out there thank you all right moving over to have a quick oh I'm sorry go ahead plated um something to keep in mind too is like like when onboarding a new person like kind of going back to having discussions like maybe when that information is presented to the incoming person putting it in a forum where it's like a study session or something like that where we could also get it too I think you know we've been on the board for two years you've gone longer you just started so I think it almost could become an opportunity for everybody to have that information and make sure everyone's on the same page I think a good idea for that yeah I think that's I mean I won't discuss it further but yes good point we're on it um moving on to the next um agenda item which is the curriculum audit I would like to know when our last curriculum audit was um and who did the curriculum audit last time and how much that was I don't think there's been a curriculum audit it's not a standard practice typically we follow curriculum adoption protocol and the process of community input and then budget capacity for which grade levels are affected by the adoption and then after input follow up with whoever's selected through the procurement process make sure that it's aligned with the strategic planning agenda and then it's um budgeted and then it's the professional development the concerns I heard originally seem to be and I may be wrong so I want to get the essence of what we're after here is is as we think about investigation and I don't know if that means Personnel or just overall effectiveness but could it be that an outside agent comes in and surveys staff on their professional development feeling like they had adequate time to process the new curriculum or was it too much too fast or did they feel that it was ineffectively delivered because there's a design and a delivery to curriculum um I don't mean to Babylon in curricular ease but uh I'm trying to think what are we looking for here because the curriculum management audit is kind of a hybrid of management practices and then this the original concerns that I heard were staff members who were saying I didn't this is going too fast I didn't get the training I needed it was it it wasn't thorough enough and it doesn't really meet my needs or something if that's how I heard the first round of of awareness and concern well I think like like with those concerns like a curriculum audit isn't going to address those pieces and I think a really good starting point for that is simply just serving our staff and we have um like Dr dupin is that something what it is that something maybe that could come out of Hanover or something or even like we just surveyed our staff in my district with a Google form um with very specific questions about professional development and we got a sneak peek at some of the initial responses today and it was very eye-opening to see some just you know very specific areas where we thought we did a better job in training and continuous training or differentiate our our PD um and the teachers had really good ideas on what it should look like so I think it can be as simple as that like that would be where I would start with this kind of issue is you know was your survey anonymous um it wasn't but it's not I guess my concern would be is like if you know people were hesitant to be as forthcoming or honest about their feelings about something if it's not an anonymous survey I don't know I think with this like and the way that we especially if they voiced their frustration yeah in the past and they feel like they haven't been heard then I feel like they may be less food survey and I think it's all about your approach so part of this was like the really good feedback that we got from them was through the open-ended pieces where they got to suggest so some of it was questions like you know would you like additional professional development on this math curriculum and we asked it for like each type of curriculum we have would you like additional professional development on Equity you know in certain topics like that um but there were opportunities for the teachers to say like what you know what's working really well about our professional development what isn't working well where do you feel that you have a lack so those kind of questions they were even without being anonymous and I guess you could do it either way I think for us we didn't because it helped us we're also going to get data from it as far as like if there's one school that feels less supported if there's certain grade levels that feel less supported um you could do that Anonymous and have just the demographic questions so you could tie those pieces but I mean if you asked to like teachers want the opportunity to say like my needs aren't being met um I think what's really important though is if we do a survey like this then the curriculum Department takes that to heart because I've also seen our you know my staff he surveyed before and and nobody looked at the feedback so I'm feeling I'm feeling better about this but I think that would be a place to start for these kinds of complaints how do we currently measure um Effectiveness I know we I know we've adopted as a district a bunch of curriculum in the last um in the last few years even just a few different types of curriculum um I guess I'm curious what how do we measure the effectiveness how do we know and this answers I wrote These down before you talk how do we know that teachers feel comfortable even if they have had some PD I mean there's nothing worse and I'm preaching to the choir about like just getting something shoved down your throat and not feeling supported or not having buy-in into it you know it's then going to really lead into my next question which is how do we know it's being implemented with Fidelity or people are just trying to check a box so that they can get through their day like that's my concern and I would hate for people to be in that position because then you're not happy teaching so when I think one uh another takeaway I just remembered too is um some of the feedback and I don't know if this is the case with ours but um sometimes when we hear teachers say like I want more training on this and we bring the vendors back out well we've had some vendors who like part of why they didn't feel great was because the vendor training was not great versus taking a teacher who's really who's here who's really knows that curriculum and having them lead so I would also you know if survey is kind of the starting point for this I would take that into consideration of asking them like do you know do you want it provided by because the vendors like don't get me wrong we have some great ones too but they have a very canned like this is for everybody when different districts you know Implement things in different ways and so sometimes they they talk about things that don't apply you know um and things like that so I would also take that into consideration because what we don't want to do is spend more money too when we might have in-house experts um and we don't want to be spending money on trainings that still don't give our teachers the support that they need so thank you I'm wondering if a study session regarding our curriculum would be the best bet just because we can bring different voices to the table and actually have a discussion with our teachers and our curriculum Department because it would also be nice who's sitting at a leadership you know administrative level in that department I don't think I know everybody there so by name at least so I'm I'm wondering if you would feel comfortable with that since this is your agenda item as so here's here's my question I guess this was requested two years ago okay it was presented in September 2021 and Dr Lewis you said your curriculum management expert that's what you do on the side you understood what I wanted and you said okay we'll do that it's a year and a half later it's never come back to us never discussed again this is why I want to go outside it's not happening it's not happening and I don't see it happening in the next two three months you know that's that's my concern okay it's lower on but it's I would say number three on my priorities but I think it is important and I think it directly relates to our student achievement the fact that our we do not have all of our teachers using wonders we hear that complaint all the time um you know I don't know how math is going that's fairly new but you know I have heard that you know they may not be here anymore but principal saying go you go get teach a teacher or whatever which you have to pay for whatever that's called go online and find something off teach a teacher you know that's what that's what we're using to teach our kids those who don't want to use one for whatever reason so um yeah I mean these all sound like great ideas it's just not happening no great can I ask what the purp like what do you want from do you want like what teachers are feeling about using the curriculum because I totally understand that because we had a curriculum a few years ago that I like never used because it was it was bad and I did my own thing but is that what you want to see like if wonders is not like is not working or people aren't using that like you want to know like from the teacher's perspective or the leader's perspective like do we need a new curriculum or what do we need to support why is it that we're not using wonders I mean that's I hear that complaint constantly I mean I can tell you as a teacher we're probably not using it because I mean personally for me I just like it it I haven't used wonders but I've used one similar to that and they they usually don't emulate anything that that looks like the test or anything that um Garner's like deep discussions which is kind of like our practice like now right it's not like surface so I guess I'm just wondering like the best way to go about this is is it doing the surveys um because I'm not sure that that an audit like this is going to tell us that I think it's more listening to our people and how they feel about it and letting them tell us why they don't like it okay I just wonder why for two years we have done nothing when I requested it this I'm just getting tired of it yeah I I'm not I'm not saying anything I'm just trying to understand like what we want and how we can solve it [Music] um if so I have a question I I guess the main concern that I keep hearing from the curriculum is the Wonders so is there a way that we can initiate at least a survey to our teachers and figure out how it's working what's going on and actually really get input from our teachers on that specific program because instead of going through a full blown out curriculum if that's one of the first things that we can tackle first and really get a look a glance at that maybe that's how we can start this but actually um if we agree this and weary we give the um advice of doing this I actually want this to be pushed through and done not just that it's going to get done so yeah studiesync is the Middle School Ela curriculum wonders is the K5 Eli okay so study scene so maybe just on a survey about the ELA curriculum in general which is getting to the point of a natural like you know like seven years we're getting to that point where we need to start getting input because in a few years we're going to be looking at do we continue or do we yeah look at something else so our middle schoolers should definitely be reading an entire book and not just excerpts from a book and having deep discussions and inquiry into the book themes all the things that go into obviously we all know so I I just it's concerning that we could be promoting kids who've never actually read an entire novel that's terrifying unfortunately most Middle School Ela curriculum like that's what they are in that conversation like I'm having to like would we rather buy novels for our kids and spend a quarter on a novel you know and I think that's a bigger like just ask the teachers you know well and that was the concern I had when we like either adopted it or very early on we were hearing those complaints and I was promised of course they're going to read novels and maybe in some classes they do I'm I would imagine but if that's not a district-wide thing that they have access to um I mean yeah that's I it's so I just okay yeah I I understand so I from what I'm hearing and I just want to make sure that this is okay because I don't want any of us up here ever feeling like our voices aren't being heard for one two three years so if we started off with um a survey on our Ela curriculum would that would you be would that make you feel comfortable as a beginning start yes and I think the idea of it being possibly Anonymous would be helpful too I mean I think we could have an option in there would you like your principal or whomever is the appropriate person to contact you for follow-up or some more support you know give them that option to share their name but if people are afraid because I hear that too like I don't I'm not going to speak up because it'll affect my evaluation okay so if we can have some kind of a Ela survey and have an anonymous option so we can really hear the voices of the district on what's working what's not and hey it might be a blessing in disguise and we might find a great awesome curriculum that we need to change forward to anyways so I I think that's a good start for that if we could also maybe see the survey oh yeah of course I mean once it's done and completed if yeah if we can all like this all the survey questions okay yeah yeah right and I think this is the the timing of this is really important because this obviously takes time and we do have a new leader coming on I do not want to wait until July to say let's do a survey oh sorry we gotta wait until August now well now school's starting we gotta wait you know right it's we we have work to do this board you know now yes I I agree especially because it's been an agenda item for so long so I think that it is um somewhat of a priority um any further discussion on that one okay so the last one comes to our special education audit and um yeah that one I don't know how I guess the the first advice that I would give is um I know that the audit that has been done is not gonna you know the stuff that I think the concerns that we're hearing and that you have it's not going to bring it up because you know that audit has it's very simple and it's more like policy and procedures I feel like a lot of that stuff is more internally so I'm not I don't know if a study session regarding this education department and having the education department present so we can actually ask direct questions I'm not sure what the best solution to that would be um so maybe we can direct Dr Lewis to maybe see if you've hear of any other districts that have done uh audit not an audit but like some kind of internal investigation or other people's that do internal investigations on those kind of procedures versus more our versus are we federally meeting the requirements because I don't think that's what the question is that I so I have talked to other school board members about this and I have three School Board colleagues that are ready to give me vendors to conduct an investigation if that's something that we're um you know interested in doing so and I think our procurement you know working with them obviously you know to do that would you be able to give the names of those three districts so Dr Lewis can touch base with that school district on how the procedures are what it is that they exactly did and those districts what districts are they do you know so it's not just oh okay I see I see um and I'd rather again I rather work directly with procurement because I want this to be um this one's especially reported right to the board okay because it's a very small town um I don't want to use the same people we've used in the past um or acquaintances and Friends of Dr Lewis um that they get mixed into the otherwise it gets it gets um monkey okay let's do this how about you give that information that you have to um Dr Lewis and then I would like for you Dr Lewis to find out from each of those people what services they actually would provide and if we can have like they report to me I mean she would tell them that's what I mean I'm not gonna say hey they're not my employees so I don't want to sound demanding like it needs to come from Super um Dr Lewis so you have three vendors that you think that would be good to look at for an investigation and one is you know of out of state it's in yeah so a cube colleague so and then for those three specifically you can just get a rundown of what that vendor exactly would do and maybe give that information to us so we have a better sense and I just want to make sure that if those services will meet what you're looking for and if we think that that's the step that we would go then we can go into further discussion of that but just so we can get a little bit they're likely to ask me for the scope of work so they understand the size of the job and I would want some clarity on that as well okay so you can maybe follow up okay great thank you any other questions or comments which I'll add to mine is you know I'm not an employment lawyer but from the conversations I've had I'm very concerned moving forward into our future um the risk that we have right now and our exposure to employment lawsuits given some of the information that I've had shared with me with people who have nothing else to lose or gain from telling me this because they don't work here anymore and so I'm very concerned about the risk that we have given issues with Personnel not just maybe not just in Special Ed but in other areas as well and I think we need to do our best to figure out before we have a really big problem on our hands what's going on agreed I got lost on the point um sorry so it goes along with the fact that this isn't really an audit which is what I was explaining earlier it's like an investigation and it's a Personnel investigation I mean everything is Personnel if you really think about it people's actions and not I mean there's a whole bunch this is like an intertwined issue thing so I think part of it I would want legal advice for that no I totally got it I'm just giving my opinion right now I'm not saying that I I just preface that I'm not an employment lawyer I am telling you what I've heard and as a general lawyer it sounds risky and scary and exposure risky to the district yes I mean if if consistently things are happening and it's like the same thing issues consistent issues over and over again that I keep hearing I think we're on a road to like we're bound to eventually Hit the Target and somebody's gonna sue us so like it's important that I get the content of those consistent concerns already the the with legal advice we did the fear of retaliation across the district specifically blackballing I mean that's a legal matter um there are accusations happening push out of both staff and students we've shared this I have been sharing this and sharing this and I get it the lead advice I get it it's my understanding that we can't base a lot of decisions on anecdotes I understand that my concern is when things are consistent from people who have nothing to gain from telling this information to me they're not going to make any money off of it they're not asking for their job back it's concerning when there's consistent information the problem with that information problem with your retaliation is there's a fear of retaliation they don't want their names being shared so that is a problem you know it's a conundrum but it is yeah but hopefully with taking these steps um I'm hoping we can help mitigate some of those and I know it's it's rough but we're gonna take the necessary steps to make sure that our employees are feeling 100 valued and not just thrown around as some objects that need to get the job done so thank you for bringing up all these audits I really appreciate it because it is something that we need to do any further comments okay um that brings us to our legislative political report um I'm just going to touch on one specific [Music] um sorry and I'm looking at my phone because I have my notes down on my phone it is HB 2800 um basically what HB 2800 will do is give teachers a ten thousand dollar raise over two years while simultaneously giving them more work and leaving less money for other essential staff at the district to help them do their jobs um what HB 2800 also does is that ten thousand dollar raise over the two years the district would be left to cover the 50 cost of that budget increase coming from who knows where you know so the legislator once again is making decisions and putting the burden of the district to come up with these fabulous ideas with no money no budget and leaving it as to basically figure it out it did pass the house it's going down to the Senate the only good thing that we do have is that we actually have a governor that probably would be against this but I would like to direct superintendent as well to write a letter how we oppose this because it leaves the district fending out for our own money and I can give you the information and if we can just send a letter to um okay um already I don't know that a letter won't be anything I know but his son's a president that the governing board that's basically I mean the district yeah I mean alignment of sending out um we could do yours and the board if that's okay I think it really sends a president I I believe again I'm going to say this again this is House Bill 2800 yes okay it's coming up tomorrow oh okay sending it to the governor's office when the decision is made we want to do it later with the governor I think we can work on it now so that way because I'm pretty sure it's going to pass in it so if it passes Senate to make sure that we have a letter addressed to the governor um throw iron in there too is it 23.55 was a bill that got thrown into 2800 as part of the mitigation and it was a very split biparty line so we've got an interesting 29 30 vote going on 29-30 vote going on by party line when in fact there's disagreement in the discussion so they're Amy I know you've talked with one of our folks um about that so we we've got some it's layered is is what the lobbyists that are working on it right now are saying is they're trying to split out 23.55 with 2 800.
this represents the 2019 Authority given to us by the um the taxpayer in November of 2019. I wanted to share with you that 15 about 15.4 million dollars is left that's unencumbered and unspent to date I also wanted to point out on the next slide this has been the spend annually since 2021 when we first began spending the 2019 Authority so note that the 21 actual was 9.3 million dollars on top of on top of 16 million that came out of the 2015 Authority so about 24 million dollars was spent in 2021 using the same concept of adding the two funds together so 23 million dollars out of this Authority plus about six million dollars out of the 2015 Authority resulted us in a spend of just under 30 million dollars and then finally the 2003 encumbrance plus the actual represents just over 33 million dollars projected to spend totally to include the 2015 Authority a total of nearly 38 million dollars so this is reflective of the needs out in our school systems as well in the needs of our schools in our school system um as well as the the fact that at this point in time we have not sold the full 100 million dollars of authority that sale is expected to close in mid to late May that provides us an additional 18 million dollars available to complete our summer projects into next fall so if there are any questions regarding any of that information okay and if there aren't any questions about this report that concludes my report thank you Miss betz seeing no questions we will move to the consent agenda 8.01 approval of consent agenda items board members is their emotion I move that we approve the consent agenda items as presented thank you Miss Humphries it's been moved is there a second I second thank you miss Page it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda items as presented all those in favor please vote by saying aye aye any opposed with me thank you it passes five zero that will take us to our action items for tonight beginning with 9.01 the approval of possible action on Direction given to the governing board's legal counsel during the executive session listed as item 1.01 that was pursuant to ARS 38-431.03 a3n4 for discussion or consultation for legal advice with the board's attorney and or to consider its position and instruct its attorney regarding its position regarded regarding contemplated actions to avoid litigation and collections matter board members is their emotion I moved sorry go ahead I move that we approve the direction given to the governing boards legal counsel during the executive session listed above thank you it's been moved is our second second thank you it's been moved and seconded that we approve the possible action on Direction given to the governing board's legal counsel during the executive session listed as above all those in favor please vote by saying aye any opposed with knee thank you that takes us to 9.02 acceptance of FY 2022 single audit reporting package with a roll call vote is required Dr McCord thank you madam president governing board members uh tonight we present to you the single audit reporting package Miss betz and her team if need be or is it just you tonight so I'm very happy to delegate the responsibility of this presentation to the Director of Finance Ms Jackie Matten and Jackie you are on the floor thank you I'm just happy it's not me [Music] I don't think so if okay all right thank you thank you Miss betz Dr McCord Madam president members of the governing board I am actually quite excited to be here this evening to share with you the FY 2022 single audit report and the usfr compliance questionnaire today's report will include the FY 2022 single audit report the FY 2022 uniform system of financial records or usfr compliance questionnaire and then we'll talk about some best practices that we have implemented so I wanted to talk a little bit before we go on about these reports in December you were presented with the act for or the annual comprehensive financial report and that is kind of an overarching report of our financial statements as an audited report tonight we are asking for roll call acceptance for our FY 22 single audit report that is a deeper dive into our federal funds specifically and some of our financial statements and then finally the uniform system of financial records I kind of refer to that as our Playbook if you will that is presented to us by the auditor general and the Arizona Department of Education it kind of gets into the nitty-gritty of our of our daily work so I wanted to kind of give some of you a background if you're um this is your first audit cycle so FY 22 single audit report this report is required for districts that spend more than 750 thousand dollars in federal funds you can see at the bottom the note regarding GPS Federal spend in 22 was 41.36 Million versus FY 19 pre-covered Federal spend of 19.9 and that's due to our cares act funding each year the Auditors select two large federal funds to audit in great detail in FY 22 they selected the nutrition services cluster and the educational stabilization Grant they found no significant deficiencies nor material weaknesses in our financial statements or federal awards that is a celebration any questions on the single audit before we move into the usfr compliance questionnaire I just had one quick question did you say this was yearly it is an annual report and it's required year okay it is thank you so moving on to the FY 2022 uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire again like I said this is kind of our Playbook this really helps us do our work and changes every year um so in 22 the report included 170 yes or no questions there's no maybe there's no but there's no yes kind of it's either yes or no out of 170 questions or statements there were 15 areas of non-compliance including accounting records cash and revenue student attendance school district employee report technology so there there some of them are are coding errors some of them are deposit errors the attendance records we see every year those are very common so moving on to our best practices we do consistently review and update our financial processes expenditures and accounting account coding compliance is reviewed monthly actually it's reviewed daily pretty much we have a series of checks and balances throughout the throughout the system and then student attendance trainings are offered numerous times throughout the year that's it any questions can you go back two slides please sure so these areas of non-compliance those are areas that we're out of compliance for like you said coding errors and things like that correct do we get an opportunity to to correct those and resubmit this or is it just we have 15 no's and then we can hopefully through Best Practices that are implemented after this we can get yes on yeses on on most if not all of those yes that is correct so our opportunity to to correct these is the next 12 months I guess you know the next uh the next fiscal year so they really they look at repeated no answers or repeated areas of non-compliance that could rise to something more serious we did not did not get that from the Auditors this year these were all pretty pretty common and do is there is there a threshold where if you get so many no's then you get penalized in some way not with this report no um if there there's a financial threshold that then kind of goes back to the single audit and becomes a significant deficiency or a material weakness but not in this report no and do some of these 170 questions carry more weight than the others for example errors I mean errors in I don't say errors areas of non-compliance in accounting records employee reports cash and revenue I mean those sound pretty serious are there are these are these areas that that would cause the reviewers of these questions to would it would they raise any red flags not necessarily from this report no again if there if there were cause for concern or red flags they would probably Elevate to the level of a single audit finding which we haven't had in a few years thankfully not for these however they all they all are carry a heavy weight for us you know we take these very seriously so we've already implemented some corrective action to make sure that these are these some of these particular findings are not repeated okay thank you I I mean depending on how how weighty the the questions are that the no's are are the responses for I think 15 out of 170 seems seems pretty good is that is that how does this compare to other districts maybe other districts that you've you've served in that you've done these reports in before how does Gilbert GPS stand it's interesting I've asked our Auditors that in the past and they for some reason have been unable to share with me how many no fight how many no answers other districts have but now that these are public I can certainly provide that information for you but um we're down we're up a little bit this year from last year but consistently over the last five years we've decreased the number of no answers so I um in the research that we did last year we are pretty pretty on par with districts our size okay thank you but I would like fewer if I could just give one specific example in the consent agenda you approved the um the uh account account bank accounts so that was one of those issues that appeared on our accounting records finding because we changed the account codes before we actually submitted it to the governing board however this this one on consent was a correction to what we had already submitted to you gosh when was the first time that we submitted it was it back in October so we actually corrected it right away but the findings Still Still is recorded so I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of that example and then in addition I think when it related to cash in Revenue it was just an error of posting a revenue to the wrong fund and One Fund was 455 and the other was 456.
wow I have to reckon if you pick the school uh kind of I'm still waiting to hear from Australia I know but I mean it's not I did not I didn't ask him anything terrible I'm going to hear from uh so the University of Pennsylvania and New York University my gosh [Music] of course smile if anyone else wants to join in congratulations thank you thank you hold on one second I'm sorry sorry sure come on WOW [Laughter] I'm so sure ready well Edward make us all look short thank you you make us proud no doubt about that thanks Jimmy okay very good um kill except a motion to accept the minutes from March 7th please discussion all those in favor and you want to post okay moving on uh chairlas at this time to uh for a motion to adjust the agenda to student report please all those in favor up all right thank you um good afternoon everyone it's good to see you all here today we're going to be discussing the club Sport and Student Activities for the month of March um unfortunately we don't have it projected so some videos that were in the packet you won't be able to see um but everything else is in there okay starting off [Music] thank you for House of Affleck athletic for an amazing three weeks of conditioning they helped to they help our Reggie's progress for their spring Sports and did an amazing job students gain speed power strength and Mobility as well as mindfulness and nutrition just in time for the spring season right um and our spring sports tryouts and practices have started um upcoming this week tomorrow we have a Merrimack baseball game and a girls softball game versus Andover High Thursday it's going to be a busy day with boys basketball versus Dracut High girls softball versus Manchester Essex Regional High School varsity girls track outdoor versus Lawrence High and lastly varsity's boys track outdoor versus Lawrence High there's nothing on the schedule for Friday but on Saturday there will be a game for varsity girls softball against Phillips Academy actually and we did have um an NHS candle lighting induction ceremony um that was very very beautiful um there was a big amount of support from students current members of NHS the staff and the families nine Juniors and 44 sophomores were inducted on March 16th a special thank you to everyone on the NHS faculty Council who scored 102 applications each so thank you for your hard work on that um I wish we could show the video but we can because of course it's not projective our Regis have talent um our let's get loud talent show was um a big hit thanks to our singers dancers and musicians and the support students staff included the stage and the show was absolutely amazing foreign [Music] and on that um the next page there was a video hopefully we'll be able to show it at the end of the presentation um but um on the next piece of paper um we've had many Banquets for our winter sports and there's some photos of our veggies celebrating all their hard work this past season there are photos from girls basketball winter track and hockey but a big thank you and congratulations to all the students who have participated thank you we had door decorating for Black History Month um we have a good healthy competition so we held a door decorating contest for Black History Month and our Regis were very creative students voted on their favorite and the top three were first place um biotechnology second place cosmetology third place um Health assisting hmm [Music] um we had National um African-American um reading um launches one and three in the library at the beginning of the month during launched one through three win there was a special poetry event honoring Black History Month that took place in the library students and staff could help or listen to poetry written by black authors they also enjoyed cookies made by our culinary students all right um and that concludes the end of our presentation thank you all for your time and attention hopefully we could take a look at those videos now [Music] thank you [Music] it was just a short clip I'm sorry um yeah this one's also short as well it's only like six or seven seconds [Music] unfortunately they're only short videos because I was having a great time at that talent show um it was definitely a lot of fun and if you want to see more hopefully there's another one next year we would love to see you there but that concludes our presentation thank you very much do we have any questions for our students reps Mr Hayden Maureen I don't know if he did but I didn't catch the young man's name can he introduce himself please um Jason more nice to meet you all this is for Joe I would I was wondering if our most talented Reggie faculty participated namely was Mr Middleton there this year all right thank you anything else you have any questions for us thank you very much a very nice report as always okay you're going back to the regular order of business uh Mr DiStefano a cash balance report please sure cash balance report as of March 21st 2023 count balance on February 27 2023 was 4 million three seventy 080 spot 58 we had deposits from February 28th to March 21st one million 415 77.
it eliminates the requirement that the local school districts pay Magnet School tuition for those residents that choose to send their child to a magnet school so if this bill passed the educational cost share that the town receives would increase and that's based upon a very complicated formula which um it's based upon the number of students in the poverty level the number of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch the number of students who are English language Learners the number of students who require special ed services and so forth so based upon all of that information Canton Public Schools I'm sorry the town of Canton is expected to receive additional dollars we would not have to pay 99 000 in Magnet School tuition which we budget for out of our open Choice Grant allocation so we would receive approximately a hundred thousand dollars more because we wouldn't have to pay that out and related to the choice program for every choice student who's enrolled in our district we would get the perm pupil expenditure cost that um that the the students attending the Hartford Public Schools would receive so that's an additional five thousand dollars per student which would increase the amount of grant funding for the choice program if you take all of that into account Canton would receive an additional 1.2 million dollars in fiscal year 25-26 so um I'm presenting this letter to you uh if the board agrees um each board member could sign this and we can send this to our state legislators for their review and I don't want to assume that you'll agree to this I just present this to you for your consideration tonight several other boards of Education in Connecticut are sending letters just like this to their state legislators and I'll stop there for your your comments question it just remembers did point out this is uh two years down the road and a lot can happen it's like the New England weather so you know it was great you were all on the phone and you had the chance to hear from representative Curry but um you know you've been hearing a lot of things out in the state so we'll see what happens but um if you're so inclined to sign a letter that's great I'm almost I almost think um unless we have a unanimous corporate letter because that he believe any blank um well let's see so are you suggesting this be a vote at the end of the meeting part of the uh I would suggest that we do um a vote as a recommended action okay good all right thank you very much okay next yes so the next item is related to fiscal year 2023 2024 budget so as you know we're deeply involved in the budget process at this point so as a board of education we presented our budget proposal to the town Board of Finance on March 15th on Monday March 20th the board of Finance held their Board of Finance Workshop where they considered our budget and after a lengthy discussion among border Finance members they requested that the Board of Education reduced our budget by 165 000 and they requested that the board of Select and reduce their budget by 115 000.
so that there's and nobody's putting funding on the table so maybe the simple message is fund it past 2025. the other bill is yeah there's oh I just want us to make sure because like I said before intersectionality is important these legislators make decisions over school districts without having zero competency of what it is to run a budget on this school at the school district letter uh level so I think it's important that we as a district especially if the board is aligned that we're sending these letters to Governors to our legislators so they know that they can't just come over here and make decisions for us when they're already defunding a public education as it is well because it's so close it really matters if you phone call like I know Amy you've been in contact with one in particular and a fence sitter in a way ready to be yeah he's not yeah um um what's being said is that I would never vote no on a teacher raise and I can understand that sentiment yeah um but that's what's being used so that's going to be the pressure on Governor Hobbs why would you veto a teacher raise for people who don't understand what's happening so I think it is important that school boards do um are vocal about why and since we're on the topic in this particular legislative conversation Mr Mann and I were talking about the costs for the district past 2025 somewhere in the neighborhood of 750 000.
so those errors are going to occur when you're dealing with over 50 different funds and hundreds of millions of dollars on a daily basis well thank you for your hard work for to you and your your staff sorry thank you thank you answers were there any repeats this year because you talked about repeats we did have um there are a lot of nuances to student attendance so those are typically a repeat finding sometimes it's just having to do with a half day or a withdrawal that didn't get the paperwork submitted in time other than that I don't believe there are any other repeat findings okay thank you student attendance isn't that bad to repeat so right yes thank you anything further thank you very much we appreciate all that you and your department do for each day thank you very much all right board members may I have a motion on 9.02 acceptance of FY 2022 single audit reporting package SARP and a roll call vote will be required I move that we accept the FY 2022 single audit reporting package thank you Mr Jetty it's been moved as our second second thank you Miss Humphreys it's been moved and seconded that we accept the FY 2022 single audit reporting package is there any discussion I would like to just to State especially for our new members that you're going to have mistakes no matter what when you have like they're like um saying how many people we have working in you know student attendance I think that this is a really really good reflection of the good work that we do in this district and our transparency [Music] I appreciate the attention to correcting it and seeing it as something that okay then we need to address this and let's move forward and we want to have we want to keep improving and be better every time so I've appreciated that too anything any other further discussion thank you I will ask then Miss Wilson to have a real call vote please miss you jetty how do you vote Yes Miss Jill Humphries yes Miss Laurie wood yes Miss Rhonda page yes Mr Chad Thompson yes thank you all five are yes thank you Miss Wilson that will take us to 9.03 the acceptance of FY 2022 usfr compliance questionnaire as was also presented uh board members is there a motion I move that we accept the FY 2022 usfr compliance questionnaires presented thank you Miss Humphries it's been moved is there a second a second thank you miss Page it's been moved and seconded board members is there any discussion seeing none I will ask Miss Wilson for the real call vote please miss you jetty how do you vote Yes Miss Humphries yes Miss Wood yes Miss Rhonda page yes Mr Chad Thompson yes Madam president you have five Ace thank you very much I appreciate that that will take us to our requests for future agenda items 10.01 board members is there a request for future agenda item if you have one please let myself or Dr McCord known we can work that into the schedule thank you and then board committee reports 11.01 city of Mesa liaison I I have no further report this month 11.02 town of Gilbert liaison Mr Rhonda page no further to report this month either thank you 11.03 Gilbert Education Foundation and audit committee Mrs Jill Humphries the Gilbert Education Foundation has the scholarship applications have closed during the process of reading those and awarding those those will happen soon um in the next few weeks so that's all I have to report thank you 11.04 Insurance trust representative Mrs Sheila eugetti I don't have anything this month thank you and 11.05 legislative representative Mr Thompson so just something to maybe make you aware of there's a house bill that I we is it's anticipated that it's going to be presented on the house floor soon House Bill 2800 um which uh uses State funds to increase teacher pay pretty significantly um across districts all across the state and I'll just mention some of the reasons for its support obviously it raises teacher pay so across the board regardless of where where your starting point is as a district right now um some reasons against it uh are that it increases government spending by a billion dollars when there are potentially other areas of concern like the aggregate expenditure limit and things like that that that people feel need to be addressed um and so those are just a couple of things that reason for and reasons somebody might be against so I just wanted to make you aware thank you that concludes our board committee reports thank you board members Dr McCord could you please give us our future meeting dates 12.01 thank you madam president governing board members on April 4th we have a board work study to brief board business meeting on April 18th we have a board policy committee meeting and on April 25th we have a regular board business meeting [Music] thank you very much to adjournment board members is there a motion I moved to adjourn thank you Miss Humphries it's been moved is there a second thank you Mr Jetty it's been moved and seconded that we adjourn all those in favor please vote by saying aye aye any opposed with nay 5-0 adjournment thank you for your attendance and those who are watching online as well we appreciate it good night thank you everybody for coming [Music]
you had transfer out to mmdt of 2 million less payroll on March 2nd of 1 million 103.054 27 pay small payroll on March 10th 23 58 51. payroll on March 16th of 1 million 23 898.77 warrant number 34 on February 28th of 664 716.50 warrant number 35 on March 7th 203 761 15 leaves us with a book balance on March 21st of 851 707.15 and a corresponding bank balance on the same date of one million 880 237.21 in our mmdt account as of February 27th um the balance is nine million three Thirty One three seventy two forty three year-to-date interest was 172 131.79 we had the transfer of 2 million from the Eastern Maine account interest for February was 34 million 664.22 and an overall mmdt balance on March 21st of 11 million 538 168 44 and a total operating cash balance of 12 million 389 875.59 chill except the motion as presented discussion all those in favor anyone oppose thank you very much uh handout is a Consolidated cash Reconciliation Report revolving fund report the packet budget report the packet and uh Mrs martells you handed out the budget books do we need to uh elaborate on that at all no a bunch of books you already have a question Mrs Fitzgerald yes I had a question about one of the warrant um not warrant articles but one of the things in the warrant oh okay all right it's all right Tim sure okay um I did have a question about an 11 670 payment to Elena Stafford um if I could have an explanation of uh who she is or what she does and um for how long of service is that eleven thousand John to who's the best to answer that yeah Eleanor uh Mike please oops has been working with us since the beginning of the school year she was hired as a support um coach she's a coach uh we have three coaches she's one of our curriculum coaches and also does she's the one that writes our uh does the uh bi-weekly newsletter School newsletter she's the one that does the writing for that she's also rewriting doing all the writing for our new web um page um and uh I'm not sure what the actual she also is doing in Grant for she works also with all our new teachers and helping them pass the uh detail any of the staff members who are working on that helps them also with their licensure work she does work there so she also coaches teachers on curriculum and instruction um she I'm trying to think what else she does oh she's also overseeing working with me closely on the Strategic plan that's one of her projects this year she's basically helping me facilitate that uh getting a lot of the Committees organized that kind of work she's doing a lot of that as well and she has been doing she's got a grant I don't know if the 11 000 foot was to work for the grant uh was that the workflow do you know what that exact po was formal assigned I don't remember I don't have it in front of me here letters out oh that's her two her oh yeah so that's probably what her uh she's making approximately around 80 000 a year so that might have been her monthly salary part of her monthly salary which is the show yes I I guess I would follow that up I just don't remember um the position when it was either posted or um was it a contract so is they it's more than a one-year contract it's a two-year contract three-year contract an issue with a company or is she her own coaching consultant her own consultant consultant yep okay thank you you're welcome anything further you sure a part of her paying also comes from a grant that she's uh the money Frank had gotten us a grant last year for about 40 000 of that money she's been uh that's what we've been using for her work that she's been doing tutoring and coaching uh new staff to help them get past the veto and work on helping them get their licensure okay we all set to move on okay donations uh we have a 2003 Chevy Trailblazer valued at 4 375 donated by Alexander Ames from Methuen Mass see no articles no public participation the great student report we already got admission report uh superintendent please so you have in front of you uh the admissions report based on each community and each School how many students were applicants we had have had so if you look at Lawrence it was 959 students from Lawrence 290 students from Methuen 29 from North Andover and [Music] I missed Andover it was 24 for Andover for a total of 1 300.
as you know um our budget proposal this year that I um proposed to you and that you endorsed represented a 7.9 increase fixed costs are at 7.5 percent so to get the budget to you at 7.9 I reduce the budget by approximately eight hundred thousand dollars to bring it to that look it was very very difficult to come up with an additional 165 000 more in reductions uh the finance the Board of Education finance committee met this morning and um discussed the reductions that I recommended to the committee and you have a sheet in your packet tonight the line delineating those reductions that total 165 thousand dollars I'm going to turn it over now to um to Russell who is chair of our finance committee Russell I don't know Brussels back yet Kevin he had to step out for okay so maybe you wanted all right so I'm happy to go I'm happy to go through these it's very important uh it was very important to us to um to implement the Thrive program so as you'll recall we're proposing a new program that would support our behavioral and social and emotional um and the social emotional aspect of our learners so we know a post-pandemic we're seeing more students not only with academic needs but with behavioral needs in an effort to support these students within our schools we're recommending a program entitled thrive as you know this would cost close to three hundred thousand dollars it is eventually going to be a cost savings measure because we would hope that we would not have to outplace as many students and we might even be able to hopefully bring back students we've outplaced with the appropriate staff in our buildings this is very important to us we're recommending that we implement this program at CIS our intermediate school and middle school high school and delay the implementation at Cherry Brook the reason for this is that most of our outplacements are at the intermediate school and the middle school high school at this time so we'll get more bang for our buck if we have to implement this program in phases this would be the first phase phase um this is what um this is McLean our director of people Personnel Services is recommending so we would eliminate the need for one certified special ed teacher we're also recommending and these are not easy reductions we're recommending that we not hire two special ed para educators that would save 44 000 so while every student would be supported some creative scheduling would need to happen with certain students that Mrs McLean and the staff wouldn't discuss professional development for two special education teachers would need to be delayed at a cost of five thousand dollars we're recommending reducing the homebound tutoring line item by five thousand dollars this is a line item where we never know how many students will need homebound tutoring students may become ill in the middle of the year or be injured where they can't attend school and that's where we would need to send tutors to their home or another location um we wouldn't increase it by 5000 which we projected we have money in that line item to cover the tutoring services that we know of so we would reduce that line item by five thousand dollars we increased this year the special education legal fund account um we had budgeted twenty five thousand this year we're spending a little over 50 000 because of various um situations um within the district that caught that where we need the legal advice we were going to increase the budget by 000 in that line Adam I'm recommending we increase it by only five thousand and take that Force reduction out of special and legal again it's a risk but it's the hope that we will need less legal services and special education next year in special ed contracted services with the implementation of the Thrive program it's hope that we will save approximately twelve thousand dollars in the number of hours that our behavioral specialists will be contracted to work and then we took a close look um Donna John and I and all of our supply accounts throughout the district and we're saying let's reduce are all of our supply accounts by twenty thousand dollars which represents uh six percent of our supply accounts this wasn't easy because we already cut these we already reduced these Supply accounts um but needing to come up with a recommended 165 thousand dollars those were the items that we recommended to the finance committee this morning after a great deal of discussion uh the finance committee is recommending these reductions to you tonight which we will ask you to approve under recommended actions but I'll stop there and see Lou if you have any comments or members of the finance committee still questions Felicia yeah I have a question so um you're stating so item one and item three are completely eliminated the other ones are just force reduction but I think what would be helpful and you know it's something that I can look up but what that number is Regions items that's staying within the district as far as the budgeting one of those like I know you mentioned like the um twenty thousand dollar course reduction is but what what about with staying there I guess thank you 30.
the past 2025 the the entire burden is on the district the way the bill is currently written but even for the first two years it would be somewhere between like I guess the first year if it's half it would be like 375 the second year would be 750. we apparently do math differently than the legislature because if you look at the bill and I know there's new math textbooks we just did an adoption but when I went to school if to do a five thousand dollar raise for you know it's like a word problem if they do a five thousand dollar raise for teachers costs four hundred thousand dollars then to do a ten thousand or sorry if four hundred thousand dollars than to do a ten thousand dollar raise would cost eight hundred thousand but they show it as seven hundred thousand it's probably in the millions in the budget but the example is still true it's like not quite double which is also confusing how do you double the amount the second year and yet they're not procuring double the dollar amounts I think I think that they're yeah and I agree and I think that the reasoning that any person is giving um like that especially someone who's been to medical school that can't give a nuanced explanation is a little weird given that the Educators in the Senate and the house have all come out against this bill the people that actually have been in the classroom or currently are and so someone who is presumably as intelligent as that should not have that basic of an explanation for why they're voting for somebody well I think it's I mean like you said like it's the rhetoric it's the misinformation and that's going to be the pressure and and you know with that like I think I would be in favor of us sending something on behalf of us and and being very clear like we of course would love for teachers to get raises it's called a 20 by 20 by 20 like it happened in 2018.
and 16. um this was as of three to 23. and then the next page shows one second on side Mrs Fitzgerald had a question yes I have another question I realized that not all of these schools are within our district and for instance um Saint Augustine's which is in Andover but you can live anywhere and go to that school so I know that when the records come they come from the sending school but some of these are also out of state and how do we know that that person is moving into a district in order to be accepted into our school or if they are in fact already living in the district but they for whatever reason go out of state to school so anyone that's out of that in their application they have to identify where they live and if they're moving into the district they have to provide proof of that um what are the different ways we ask them to provide proof Brenda oh yeah foreign thank you I just thought just to make sure everyone knows Brenda Richardson who is director of admissions and guidance for those who might have forgotten who she was she's here I'll sort of talk a little bit about another issue that's going to come up thank you so um when we do receive an application for a student and they're attending a school in another District we always make sure that they are actually living in one of our four sending communities so um you know there was actually a higher number I think than usual this year of both out of state and you know just outside of the district mostly Haverhill so we always look into those situations before we actually accept the application so in some situations it could be that a student has two parents one parent lives in New Hampshire they're currently living in that school but the other parent is living in our district so then you know we ask for their proof of address if that's the case and also in some situations it might even be their legal you know custody paperwork because it is supposed to be a student who has or a family that has split custody we've had you know situations with students who are homeless who are temporarily housed outside of the district and according to McKinney vento they actually have a right to stay in the district and the the sending community and they can actually apply to both so it say if it's a student who's living in Haverhill they actually have a right if they're originally from our community to apply here or to to Whittier so we do sort of dig into that just to make sure that they are actually you know living in the district okay listen I said continue down please if you look at the next page it lists uh the total applicants we've had up to this year at this point for 2027 class of 1467 applicants and it's broken down by Community if you look down at the bottom of the page you can see how it's broken down by Community different community uh Brenda I've been noticing in to my extreme pleasure an increase in the certain body of um from Methuen is there are we doing anything different that we haven't done before or is it what has sparked the more um applications from method so I am not entirely sure we definitely have tried more Outreach we did have a parent Zoom meeting in addition to going out to all of the schools we did receive some email addresses this year from the the districts including Methuen which we have not in the past and I think having access to that information has made a big difference so you know we want to try to continue to get the email addresses so just having that contact information and typically we do get to present to all of the students in the eighth grade and some seventh grade as well so I think that that really helps and I also think you know students students who are involved in local organizations like Spartan football and you know those other connections I think that that's also had an impact [Music] and that that completes that report any other questions for the superintendent over Brenda thank you very much are you saying uh yet another issue that um the enrollment process oh okay all right sorry I think that the committee had last week some questions on the enrollment process so uh it's included again in this this week's report so you're open for questions open for questions on the enrollment package questions either Mr superintendent or for Brenda you received all the letters and communication that we have with the parents uh when we accept students so when we deny students that we shared with you I didn't know if anyone had any questions regarding those Communications yeah so questions on the letters and we spoke about the dates that were shown in the letters so um the letter sent to the applicant to the applicants that are put in the waiting list which is the first one right on the packet yeah yes um so it says you know that they were going to be sent second round of admissions in the news and acceptance in the near future so I believe that needs to we spoke about this already um that should be a date there when they are expected to receive another round because near future could be anything or they probably never gonna get any um any any communication so that's one um on the at the end of that sentence it also say says that um okay can you answer that first and then we'll continue sure we we don't have once we send out that initial round of acceptances we don't have a specific date that we're sending out the second round because it really depends on the response that we get from the applicants that we do except so I know that there was a concern previously about our the language where we said you know we want people to respond within 10 days we are trying to encourage people to respond as soon as possible exactly for this reason because we know people are anxious to get off of the waiting list but even once so we send out the letters we send out the information and we wait well after 10 days well after two weeks more like three and then anybody that we don't hear from we then start calling and emailing and trying to get a response so as of this time I can tell you that we have three out of the 514 students that we accepted we have 366 who have committed 75 who withdrew after they were accepted and we're still waiting for 73.
we we have budgeted 30 000 for special ed legal for next year okay an increase of 5 000 over the 25 000 we have had budgeted this year and then on those other I mean if you don't know the numbers I'm just curious about like each item I know because item one and item three are completely eliminated correct and the other ones are just reduced that's correct that's correct from the original so I'm just looking for that original amount that it wasn't just about sure so the second line from the bottom special ed contracted services what we currently have budgeted um Donna I believe it's twenty thousand you know I'm thinking of a different number all right Donna Donna will get that number for you and I believe that's the only one the only other code I think the others are pretty quite our page 213.
the state needs to fund it as well and by putting something in place like this that sounds great teacher raises well not if it results in teacher riffs because the district can only afford to pay so much without additional funding yeah and that's the only reason why I brought it up because I think it's important that our school districts start having visibility with them when especially when it's going to impact us in a negative way and this is definitely going to impact us in a negative way so we need to make sure that where I and I know it's tedious and I know sometimes you say that it it doesn't make a difference but I think it it does because it's showing our community that you know we're advocating on the best interest of our district 2 not only here locally but at a state level federally or whatever the case is so and you're not testifying to the legislators right now you're speaking to whoever I know their name but whoever is Governor Hobbs is uh advisor for this right so that's who you're talking to that's who's going to make these decisions on these bills it's a and I don't want to be like pessimist but it's a lost cause to think that Folks at the committee level or on the floor are going to change their mind differently it's all for Katie cops yeah so it's it's just important for us to have a presence and that she knows that districts and the more districts that are unified in this I think it's a great way for not only current and School District to lead the way in that but to jump for other districts to jump on board to and make a clear statement that this is crap there's a magnified impact because we're all declining districts so that means our budgets are dwindling as this additional pressure to pay the unfunded portion is coming upon us if we were in the Far West Valley where you're growing and so your your budget's increasing every year they they have the resources so there's it's not just that it's an unfunded mandate it's an unfunded mandate with a disproportional impact on the districts in the central core of Phoenix which are the districts who are already disproportionately impacted by all of this correct perpetuating the same systemic issues that we are asked selling Mr Mann mentioned too is like if we can like when you're talking with superintendents and the other Phoenix Union feeders if we can get some alignment from their boards as well so that we are more unified because I think that will help remove that pressure from hubs and surrounding people if they know like you're not going to get the districts aren't going to come back and like be mad at you for vetoing this yes okay any further discussion on that one specific thing do we have any other political legislative reports yeah I have a couple from the day that I spent at the Capitol um just point out a couple so SB 1001 which is um forcing Educators to use the wrong pronouns when addressing trans use [Music] it won't allow teacher if a child said I identify and want you to call me a he the teacher wouldn't be allowed to this would not be allowed oh yeah yep thank you um the other one I wanted to talk about was SB 1331 which it Blocks school boards from limiting guns on campus which um I will never agree with guns on campus um and then uh the other ones which are for public education that we should be supporting um is SB 1576 and SB 1708 which talks about repealing the universal vouchers and then increasing accountability for those vouchers and then HB 2661 along the same line that it increases accountability for charter school which I think is what everyone really does want if you're going to take public money then you should be held accountable for it just like we are here can you repeat those pieces thank you so much for that update any other political updates legislative updates all right awesome and that brings us to Future agenda items does anybody have something to put on the future agenda I want to talk about coming up with an employee handbook for all staff and then the second one that I want to talk about is I would really love to see the district-wide behavior plan committee move up and have it um I would prefer that it start almost immediately I know we're in the middle of testing but um we're looking at a couple months away from starting school again and I think that needs to be in place before school starts agreed on previously no it was just put on as a future gender item any other future agenda items all right thank you so much that brings us to our last item I move the governing board adjourn second all those in favor aye thank you so much to everybody for being with us tonight have a great night
so we try to wait for as many of those as we can so that we can send out another you know larger round of acceptances sure did you need me to repeat any of that 360 security yes yes right right and and possibly more we still have 73 that we're waiting to hear from so that's why we don't provide an exact date because we just don't know how long it will take us to get to all of those families I got you there but then that you have in the acceptance letter there's a date where um the ninth graders are going to take it exam which is maybe six so you already had dates where you had commitment I believe you need to have a date there and actually I'm not asking for I'm asking for a date to be put there because you guys have a guideline of when things need to happen so a day there should be put in and I understand what you're saying I'm waiting a little longer than you should factor that into the dates to add in there because I'm it's just this is I feel this is a whole and people are not going to get response when they they're supposed to be getting response again um and actually this letter says that they are going to get a notification when everything is all set that doesn't have a date either but again I'm sure that they probably don't even get anything um yes just to respond to the uh their second round that we do a second round I don't believe we notify parents when we're starting that second round of uh acceptances they could yes we don't in the letter we're not telling them they'll hear from us we'll do a second round but they don't hear from us when we're doing that second round the only way they're going to know there was a second round if we notified them that they were now taking off the wait list and been accepted other than that they're not going to know any specific time frame right and if I could just speak to that so I think the only way that we could really do that and come up with a date and stick to that date would be to have an absolute cut-off so if somebody doesn't respond by a particular date that we set if we don't hear from them by then then we would move on on the list but unfortunately I know that we would have lots of families who were still interested who just for whatever reason hadn't responded yet and we do worry about that being sort of an equity and act access issue in some ways um for you know for a variety of reasons but I feel like if we were to set a date for that second round we would really have to set a final uh date on that first round and we do try to reach out to families as much as possible like I said We call we email and then ultimately we send a letter because we're trying to give everybody every opportunity to respond but if that's a a decision moving forward we can certainly consider that I think we just have to be prepared for the impact on the other side with somebody who missed that deadline and we would just have to be prepared to respond to that have a way so we have um it's almost 17 100 applications for 400 and some seats we should have a specific days when um response are coming back to us so that we can place those people that are waiting and again it's just no having dates there it's not going to give you that so unfortunately I understand that people take longer to respond but that is their problem there is a waiting list of people that are waiting to hear from us and they deserve that opportunity as well so if you don't have dates you're waiting for what um that's my position and I believe that day it's necessary there just because of what I just said um again we are a committee there's a decision made um in like Mr chair said he has to be four four friends or more right but I believe we need to have that um set and because we have commitment days and we have too many people waiting we just had too many people waiting superintendent wanted to say something but I just want to address that so I would be happy to sit down with uh Brenda uh the uh director to look at this particular situation and uh you know we could pick a date might be a lot further out than people might like us so you know if we anticipate usually let's say we say Well it usually takes us three weeks we may put out that all right we're gonna look at we may hold off and put it out there five weeks and not and not look at them and for at least five weeks but we'll look at it and see what makes sense in terms of trying to come up with a second date maybe there's another approach where when we do start the second round we could advertise it in the website on our website or uh in our school newsletter or something like that to notify everyone out there that we are going to be looking at a second round of acceptances uh if you're uh if you accepted you'll hear from us within the next week or two weeks or something like that just so they're not waiting forever we can look at that and see if we can come out with something that makes sense that you feel that you would be comfortable with um so so I know that there's many applicants that are put on the waiting list that have no clue whether they need some type of documentation or anything I know here is a paragraph that says that if there are documents that that they need to provide that they need to request an appeal within 30 days I mean again I'm hoping and I want to see or I want to know if you have a process where the people that the applicants that actually need some type of documentation that they are they are being told what do they need because this letter again is too big and it doesn't say anything for example I have a student that call I mean a pattern concern pattern that called me the other day because um you know their kids were devastated because they couldn't get into the school having two two sisters already here which are one of them is already um [Music] ah it says you're not right you thank you um in the kit it has high honor just like there's his sisters um and the only problem that he has is some attendance because of Kobe and all that so I'm sure they didn't know that because this letter doesn't say anything um um hopefully they already helped because ideas spoke to somebody in the um office but that's a concern that I have and I still had a concern because this letter doesn't say anything for those particular application applicants that are put on the waiting list so um situations like you're talking about there Zoila um what the fir that's why we have a a an appeals process so there are lots of situations like because of mental health or covet or something like that that impacted their attendance that uh you know shows that they had a lot of absenteeism and that hurt them in getting in they lost a lot of points so in an appeal process we would have a conversation with the parents and talk about what it is going forward that they would need to do in order to get accepted so you know we try to work with the parents if they had great grades and everything else looked great but the issue was attendance that hurt them a lot that really impacted their opportunity to be accepted that's why we'd have an appeal we bring in a lot of we do accept students who have those exceptions after we've had a conversation and sit down with the parents I'm question in the process that we're doing because I believe we are helping those people but that's when they already know but my point is how do they know what I'm missing or what they lacking off because unless they they have patterns that are actually on top of their students and they want to know and they look and call people like they call me they call us they will not get answers that's what I'm saying I'm not I'm not saying that you don't have a process for it if people come and ask but it's before they come and ask how do they how do they know so I would say well first you know I can understand why they would call you but the answer really for them is that they should always the answer that you should always give them is to contact the school because we really can't give information to anybody other than the parents um so I would I would ask that everybody encourage the parents to call the school to ask for an appeal because that's when they find out so we don't give out every single student the information of why they may not that they're put on the wait list and so if they feel as though there was an acceptance and we do but we do say if there's an exception something exceptional that we should be considering that they should request an appeal so they can come in and have a conversation with us I believe the letter articulates that mine's going to be a two-part question um Brenda if we put a hard day how would that affect people that want to appeal so we don't want to be filling all of the spots while we're still dealing with ongoing appeals because you know you're potentially holding up spots for for families that do want to appeal so it's also you know that's where you have that balance you're kind of you know estimating um and realistically it truly should be a very small number of people who appeal um because it's you know those extenuating circumstances that sort of go beyond and it's it's more than you know typically just a few absences or a week or something due to to covet or something like that we're also very clear with the middle schools and the records that they submit so there's a spot on the The Counselor recommendation form where if there is a known extenuating circumstance that impacted that student they'll fill it out right there on the application so what happens is anybody can call to find out where they lost points and then try to find some way some Avenue to make up for those last points that more often than not do not constitute an extenuating circumstance um so if if somebody wants to um even look at their you know their score if they understand if they're looking at their grades and looking at the attendance any parent can can request their students records from the middle school and they can see for themselves how many excused and unexcused absences there are but if somebody does call we'll certainly give them that information but but the the appeals process does um sort of hold up us being able to go and turn around and fill every spot and send out more acceptances because we don't want to over accept so it's sort of that balance so thank you um so come with a close-up again one the word extreme circumstances even if they do have it that automatically they don't know if they don't they have that so they it turns them off from trying to appeal the other biggest complaint I've been getting is um failure response from the sending school and the school is not sending the records the parents can get a hold of them um and they've they've talked to them or they try to set meetings and it's become difficult for them to get the records sent over to the school um so to me I mean and if they could have a certain extremely circumstance um but they don't know that and it's hard for them to find sometimes it's hard for them to get their information they need um to appeal because they also don't know what what is what is they should be appealing um or they should be appealing so I mean to me the same circumstance I don't know maybe is looking at what kind of words we could use different but besides them flooding your your office with with millions of questions because I'm pretty sure we all get millions of questions from people all the time right so in the letter we did try to give examples of what an extenuating circumstance is and and I think these are really this typically does capture so special education referrals so if there's a student who was referred for special education and they hadn't previously been receiving services medical and mental health issues homelessness and Foster Care those are typically the most common extenuating circumstances so we did try to add that language so it wasn't just completely vague but I'm certainly open to you know any other suggestions in terms of the language that we could use yes um do we do we have a specific number of special education applicants that get accepted or it's it's just the part of the whole number yeah it's a blinded missions process so students can voluntarily identify if they're a special ed student or an English learner but that that does not come into the admissions formula yeah there's not a certain percentage um so back to the question that Mr cerullo asked if I got it correctly so this letter says the 30 days appeal yeah they had 30 days for appealand um the um the ones that were asset that they had 10 days to get back right to receive the acceptance package package I'm not sure if that I don't know how that relates 10 days versus terria I'm not sure can you help me figure that out so I don't I'm not sure if I can answer this in a way that makes it so there's really not a direct connection between the two it's just really with the 10 days we're just really trying to encourage families to respond as soon as possible so we can continue to go down and access students from the wait list um you know we thought that we could say 10 days you know you have 10 days to appeal but we thought that 30 days was more generous and you know as as we know that some some people have questions about that they're not sure that they understand so I think it gives families a greater opportunity than saying you have 10 days to respond you have 10 days to appeal you know if we did 10 days to appeal people would probably be very upset about that when they're there because the 10 days is it's just not enough some people don't read their mail unto who knows 15 days after so this is going to be late uh 10 days for me is not not enough but again we need to move on on the waiting list so it has two two-way here um again it's just the dates again I mean I do have a concern on the dates um it says that like I mentioned before the night grader are going to have a placement test on May 6 2023 which is very clear then um they're going to get additional information and let it later date we should have a date when they're gonna get information because they need to get ready right so I have a problem with the dates if you can work on that and fix it or get it to a better understanding um I I still going to express my concern because I done done it before and I wanted I want to do it again we have an opened receiving application concert and it we so many applicants and so little seats available I think we are we're setting ourselves for failing in that respect and I'm concerned there so I think we should have and again I'm just saying something that I already mentioned before we should have um due dates when we're not taking more applications and days going forward to when we're going to start when we're going to end and all all that um set because it's just too we don't we're not I mean I know um we are working towards getting more um space and more programs and more of to accommodate so many applicants but we're not there yet we're not going to get there anytime soon so we should at least um take care of how we get applications in because we can know we cannot accommodate everybody that wants to come in that's a problem and we need to figure out how to fix it now and then when we are able to and we can take all 1600 1700 2000 applicants then we'll get back to that whole you know year-round receiving applications Brenda you said there was a small number of appeals what's a small number so I said there should be a small number of appeals last year I would say probably 50 maybe requests the year before that or the pandemic here I remember we had that just kind of kept going we had close to a hundred you know that was just a crazier but you know I would say 50 60 and that's a lot that's right so just hearing those numbers to me it's a it just further highlights that that the issue stems from the initial application process so if the appeal process should be uh a loan number you know if you should only be receiving a low number then that just tells me that had we have a deadline from the onset of the application process we wouldn't be seeing ourselves in an issue with um so many appeals but because we leave it as an open enrollment all year round accepting applications then you're more than likely going to receive a lot more appeals because we are putting a lot more students on the waiting list and because of the letters and I'm going to be um I'm going to be referencing uh probably the letters that we were sending out a year ago because I'm assuming the letters that we're seeing right now adjustments were made um especially in kind of giving an example of what extenuating circumstances mean but that's probably why uh the years prior these letters being sent out to parents it's vague and it would it just continuously would further um validate why parents are going to appeal because they don't they don't know everybody's gonna appeal because they think that they they have a chance to either convince the school the department there's something some information that was missing in order to get their child accepted so I'm gonna have to agree with Zoila in the sense of at least during the initial application process like that the first application being submitted there needs to be a deadline um because just accepting applications all year round you're just going to see yourself in a pickle in terms of high numbers of of Appeals um first of all Brenda I know when I reach out to the office yours responsible I gotta say thank you for that um and a lot of the appeals is because a lot of kids in the eighth grade hear about the vote it don't realize that what they did in the seventh grade affects their grades coming in um and it does um so that's one of the things that we could eliminate is if we could start having a conversation with a lot of kids in the sixth grade level to let them know that if they're thinking of coming to glts what does what happens in this in the seventh grade year is going to affect the process coming in um in in a lot of the kids that I've seen have had that issue where in the seventh grade they've had absences or or whatever it was that then all of a sudden they hear about glts in the eighth grade now they've turned it around but the eighth grade doesn't count as much as the seventh grade level does um do I agree with with close dates um no because there's then we're eliminating a lot of kids that can imply but we do have a waitlist problem and looking to expand and soil is right it's not going to happen in the next six months it's going to take a lot of work and not just from us but from our ascending communities because we're going to have to have conversations with them about in legislation that needs to be changed in order for that to start happening which will affect a lot of things moving forward but I think just a little just if we start at the sixth grade level compared to the eighth grade and seventh grade that could that start alleviating some of that that issue no I would agree with that and would love to get into the middle schools and start you know speaking with students towards the end of the sixth grade I think if we went too early you know for when they're talking about ninth grade that's a lifetime away for them in their young lives but yes certainly um you know we want the seventh graders early on to know you know how important that year is and some schools do give access to 7th and 8th graders which is great and I think the commissioner said that all superintendents had to give of access for for um for vocational schools to um go into the schools and if they're not then they could be a violation don't quote me on that but I'll ask you in the next um meeting Vivian um I'm I'm for educating um the students as early as sixth seventh to fifth grade for all that for for all that matter but it does not alleviate the issue the numbers are not going to change as to the amount of applications that we receive whether they are getting straight A's as of sixth grade going forward we're still going to continuously receive high number of applications every year especially with the new programs that we have coming in best believe we're going to have even more students wanting to apply to to attend this school so it does not alleviate the amount of seats that we could only offer and we're going to continue to see this issue because we allow for this for a non-deadline um applications are just going to come in and parents are going to continue to appeal because they as parents as any parent they're going to fight for their students to have a seat at the school so we need to figure out like we need to definitely figure out how to resolve the issue or at least alleviate until we can come up with certain initiatives to expand in the near future everything further okay I heard a lot of good things going on both sides of the table but where do we stand uh what are we going to do are we going to ask the administration to come back with us with a revised letter with dates or what do you think John I've been a lot of good things were said but I would I would uh say that uh if you forward it to myself and the admissions director we'll sit down look at the dates and we'll come back and make some final recommendations to you whether what we're doing is the appropriate way but we'll engage some of our sending communities as well in the conversation to get some input from them in terms of where they sit with the uh with the some of the dates and the issues and the challenges that are out there so we'll reach out to some data collection and then we'll come back to the school committee with some answers or things that we found out in reaching out to our community leaders our principals that are out there and our superintendent I do me with the superintendents every year when we first start this process to talk about to ensure that we're able to see all of their students and they've all been actually very accommodating uh in fact they've been I think improving commissioner has put out a Department of Ed and the board of education has stated that all students should have access to hearing about opportunities in the vocational school so and since that has happened we've seen a better response from some of our schools so we're encouraged by but I would agree with Frank in particular with regards to at least having a opportunity to talk to all seventh graders early in the process can make a difference for some kids and maybe we could look at commute sending out some communication to parents of seventh graders as well if we had if we could get their email addresses of 7th and 8th graders then we can communicate with those parents at an earlier date so we can talk and look at that as well because that would we can only reach out to the in many cases to the parents and students that we have for eighth graders we get their addresses and their emails in order to invite them to open house and other Communications for 8th graders so if we could receive early seventh graders then we could start that process sooner too so in my communication with the superintendents and principals as we continue to look at this process I'll request that as well is the second week second meeting in April yeah second meeting in April too soon or do you think you can get back to us by then uh like five weeks away I think sure I can at least come back with some uh where we're at in that process okay thank you good next week yeah we're going to have to yes the special meeting but Vivian okay out of curiosity have uh have we've always operated um in terms of enrollment it was there ever a deadline at one point and we changed the policy on that and if so why we did we we did have uh we did uh not always have everybody on the waitlist we did deny uh but it was encouraged by the department of Ed not to do that deny um in like application process was there a deadline at one point and yes there was deadlines at one point but we used to always continue to get applications after the fact and we would accept them so uh in Rome and then it became very difficult to um um work with the the issue of having a specific deadline and then getting another 200 applications after that uh and so in order to give people more time uh we found that and also there were opportunities kids sometimes will make a decision until later in their eighth grade and they say oh I want to go to Great Lawrence Tech so we're always we feel like it's Equitable it's more Equitable to leave the door open to all for students and so I think and that was always encouraged as a equity uh issue so that's one of the reasons why we opened it up to uh row uh role enrollment continual enrollment you know I know I'm a genius this idea just came up to you know just came to me I don't know if it will work but what if what if we had a deadline and then still allow for applications after the deadline and kind of have a separate letter letting those parents know that this application has been received after the deadline however if any open seats have become available that they would be taken into consideration or be put in the pool but those parents that did the due diligence of submitting the applications and the documentation within the deadline those are the ones that we should kind of be focusing on and probably alleviates a lot of the headaches that your department has and it will be a lot less Appeals and if we have more open seats available then that's when we'll open the doors for applications that were submitted after the fact if that works I want my ten percent I can say I do know one school that uh did that in the past I don't know if that's still their practice so regardless of their score even if if they applied late even if they had a perfect score they would go to the bottom of the list so that's certainly you know that's something that would be discussed as part of the admissions policy that this committee approves the only thing that I just wanted to add about having that cut off date and again it's up to the committee to approve the policy but one of the the biggest things that the Department of Education is looking looking to do is to open up access so if we were to have a hard cut off say you know late fall early winter then we would be that would be a disadvantage to anybody who would be potentially a newcomer and they're you know looking they're looking at our number of English Learners and you know access for English Learners and newcomers so that would be a disadvantage to those applicants so I'm just putting that out there as a point of um you know just discussion in terms of the um looking at the policy and making sure that it is equitable Frank thank you Brenda he just reminded me of that conversation um yeah if we put a hard deadline we could be in violation of Department as rules um putting a hard deadline on the application process and I know the commission is looking for make sure that we make it Equitable and I know another other schools in the in the Commonwealth of the vocational schools are in trouble for that same thing okay anything uh Zoila I have a last comment um I do have another family that call and that's why I asked a question about the special education number um this um third student um all of their their the students that are with him um a classmate they were accepted but he was not accepted he has good grades and good attendance and everything so do they need to just call for an appeal is that what I need to tell them they could certainly call I don't I don't know if it's somebody that we've spoken to or not yet but they can certainly call and ask you know what the score was what the breakdown was and where the student lost points and we can talk about whether there is um you know some basis for an appeal just a student being on an IEP that in itself is not a basis for an appeal but there could be something else that's that is relevant to that so they could certainly call and we could talk to them I know they haven't called because they waiting for me to get back anything further okay so second week in April will tackle it again thank you very much brother oh I'm sorry whoops here for this next issue Next Issue oh I'm sorry I didn't realize the concussion policy that I don't know I'm just I think that's what I was on the policy committee but I was not planning to speak to the concussion policy this evening that was Mary I'll try to answer any questions if I can yeah it should be oh should be all set though oh okay we're all set thank you very much we're gonna blame you for that policy pretty soon we'll have you packing cars okay concession policy superintendent so uh you received the concussion concussion receive the concussion policy last week pardon me but felt it's all you needed more time to review it before voting on it so we still need to committee to vote on that concussion policy that was a motion please students going to have it on the table of matters no I said I don't have it on the table of matters I'm not saying it was just in case I have a question on this because you were sorry I don't have another table now it was table before yeah last we discussed it last meeting yeah it doesn't mean it was table but okay we'll put it off for now then oh you want to put it off right we're not down to table matters in the agenda though matters in the agenda classroom space for new programs thanks Mrs Fitzgerald sorry in terms of the concussion I thought that it was removed from a vote last time so just so that we would have more time to study it and that it was supposed to be on the agenda for our vote tonight that was mine we'll vote on it on the table matters if they I don't have a here in the table of matters myself I have it on my um as part of my report right I understand that but they're saying that has to legally it has to come off the table to be oh okay thanks okay let's move down here uh classroom space for new programs please okay so uh in terms of classroom space in the program so we have three new programs um and then we also need space for for uh academic teachers as well uh because bringing in having three new programs will allow us to bring in uh somewhere between approximately 45 new students which will have an impact on our academic uh scheduling but in terms of the space for the new programs the aviation so right now we're in the process of hiring a architect to to do the final design work on the three spaces that we initially gave the architect uh to look at um which is a shop space for the aviation program for four years for the four years and then a shop space for programming for four years and of course Child Care early childhood education which we have that space already um but in the interim we need to have a space for ninth graders next year in order to get the final approval for the program so the program today we got word from the Department of Education that those three programs have been accepted to move forward for next year pending a visit to look at the Freshman space which they will do in the early May so um so it's been approved to move forward and actually the only thing left to do really is have them come and inspect the space for safety so we're we're all set with those three programs to move forward and plan for them for next year um so in terms of the space for Aviation ninth grade we are going to put the aviation ninth grade if uh in where carpentry 1112 is now which is next to the Horticulture program down below the in the construction area on the corner of the as you make the turn to come up the hill under the tunnel there's a corner shop there which is the carpentry 11th and 12th graders they are moving in with the 10th graders who has excess space they are rarely in their space because they do outside projects so for instance this year they're working in three different projects outside of here next year we have a request to build three different houses so we're trying to do one next year and one the following and won the third year working with different uh committee organizations for that so they'll be building a house next year so in terms of 11th and 12th grade we can put them there as a home for when they first come in in the morning that's where they meet and organize whether their work for the day and then that'll open up the 9th the 11th and 12th grade carpentry shop we will be where we've already started actually preparing it for the aviation ninth grade shop until we build a new edition which we hope to have done a year from September so that gives us about a year and almost a half to get the four-year program space built and in place um so that takes care of the aviation program we were also still continuing to try to either purchase or lease or have access to the um the um hanger out at the Lawrence airport we've come to a few roadblocks on that but we're working on getting that result um so and then we're also putting up a building here for that on-site uh shop as well then the next program which is programming we are going to for the ninth grade program we're going to put the ninth grade I'm probably 9th 10th and 10th grade program up in the mezzanine area which is up on the third floor so that'll be a shop space we did use it for a while for a science Pro for science but the problem with having science up there is that we had continue student uh going up to the third floor uh which was a problem so rather than have ongoing students going up and down once they get up in the shop they stay there so it's not a problem of having kids going up to the third floor there we meet all the regulations in terms of safety uh alarms security everything so it is an acceptable space for programming Department Aid we'll also come and inspect that it's also been inspected by the building inspector and all that uh in the years past to use it for educational space and will be and has ought we've also gotten a letter of acceptance from the building inspector which we had to provide Department of Ed to use that space as well and as well as Aviation we had to send that in with our application I have a question does the elevator access that yes there's an elevator so that provides uh handicap access yep thank you uh yeah it's been a while since I've been up there and then our Child Care Program obviously is brand new and has already ready to go so it built so then it the question remains where would we get some more classroom space so we're looking at I think we put in the budget I believe we put in the budget but there's some so wasn't sure if we did or not maybe unless I remember if we didn't we will revisit anyways some three new academic teachers one for History Science and Math yeah I think we put the I'm almost positive with you but anyways we'll need three more classrooms for that space and there are three possible classrooms down in the construction area there's one classroom space over by the cafeteria and there's also another classroom space near I.T so that's five different possibilities for classroom space that um that we're working on preparing and getting ready for classrooms next year um down in the construction area so you say all right where where are those three spaces down in the construction area so where we where the 11th and 12th grade carpentry students were we're putting Aviation but there's also enough space to put two classrooms down there we have to take a wall down that has storage for electrical but we're moving Electro across the way to another space so that'll allow us to build two classrooms down there in the future and then there's also another space that used to house low low voltage electrical we can put another classroom space there then up by the cafeteria there's another space up there which uh used to be we had in there the um mail room in in uh so we're gonna expand that space to be able to have another classroom up there and then it has um there's a classroom down by it also that will be available next year so they would give us up to five classrooms bases one of them small but can have a small classroom and there's still a couple other spaces we're looking at that we can make changes and adjustments to excuse me John Mr solo yeah thank you though um we're in the budget that we process put in four to three extra teachers for the what for three extra teachers you just said that's one question we're in the budget Zone and we need three I could so did we not talk about the three academic we didn't put three academic in there all right so we'll revisit it we'll find we'll we'll be able to make adjustments we'll we'll add them just to make sure they're in there I thought we did put them in there we talked about it but if we miss it that's my fault so I'll go back and revisit it again with you Melissa and the other question John can you give me give us like a little floor plan or something where all these classes are going to be um I'm more of a visual person I'll bring that I'll bring the school blueprint with me next meeting so I can point them out on the blue on the blueprint uh I have a full set of the school print and I can I can highlight the I'll uh highlight those exact spots for you so you can see it you keep talking about this third floor and I know Leo's knows where it is Sue knows where it is but I can't even picture where a third floor in this building is okay you don't want to this is uh Fitzgerald yes I I guess my concern is that we're trying to play catch-up and last summer we got ourselves in a real Mess by taking on so many projects that included construction that they were not completed when they were supposed to be and we're still working on some of them so are we looking to do this in-house or are we looking to bring contractors in to do this so it can all be done at one time I I don't know what the answer is and I don't think it's where it is in the budget I don't know but I'm just concerned again that school will open and kids aren't in the spaces they're supposed to be in so I think the floor plan that we asked about at the or I had asked about at the last meeting where these were going to go I I just don't want us to be in the mess we were in this September with the products we needed not here and the space is not completed I I think that would be unfair two years in a row to our students to have that happen so the aviation for ninth grade has to be ready by the second week of May so we're already started that that will be ready the space for programming has to be ready for the second week of May and that'll be ready uh we've already started that but those are not major jobs they're basically for the aviation for the Aviation Space it's a matter of moving some staging that's in that space and putting up a wall and then splitting the space in half and then we have two classrooms so we'll have two classrooms with a matter of putting up some walls doing some electrical work it's all minor construction nothing major once we put up the walls we have to do some wiring electrical wiring because they're already learned they're already educational space it's just splitting up the space in a different in a different way by adding some some partitions uh end up in the mezzanine area the same thing it's a matter of adding a partition and then of course ordering computers which we've uh Furniture which we've already ordered Furniture either went into there is going in tomorrow I know that Lance uh has touched space with Melissa on that already uh so that that's in the works we have to order all the computers we had a conversation today up in the mezzanine looking at the space with uh Jason was up there with Lance and myself looking at how we're going to wire the space for all the technology we need up there so it will be working on that the custodians today moved a lot of equipment out out of there to open up the space so we're already in progress and getting all that space ready and prepared the classroom space those are all minimal it's really just a partition and doing some painting and moving some doorways and those will be done before the end of the school year as well so all of these spaces will be done before the end of the school year they're not big construction projects so they won't impact any of our bigger projects that we're looking at that will be long-term projects the bigger projects we're looking at not doing anything in-house but putting out an RFP we're in the process of trying gonna put up uh select a engineer and architect for the do the final design work and then once that's done we can put it out on the streets those are projects that will be put on the street and then hiring contractors for the most part some of us a little some will be subcontracting some of it but we won't be doing the work itself until the structures are totally up and then we may do a little bit of the electrical or something like that I know in the um in one area we might be doing a little bit of heac but most of the work can be done by contractors not by us as we did on the other projects and then those none of those projects that we need for September but we don't need it for until a year from September the only ones we really need for upcoming school year is the three new shops for the ninth grade and the three or four classrooms that we need for the new academic teachers we may have we we're not totally convinced whether we need three two or four we're still uh we're just doing uh Isabelle's working on the schedule now to make that final decision on whether we need another Ella teacher another math teacher and another science teacher so once she completes that then we'll know for sure but I but it looks like we're going to need one for each of those content areas our preliminary data shows yeah okay y'all set my own okay yeah last final thing so the very last thing you were talking about with outside contractors and putting together an RFP so we can go out to a bit eventually what what project or building is that those are the three buildings that I had given uh when we went out for a we went went out to hire a contract I mean we hired a uh architect to do some preliminary work and they provided us a drawing for the aviation I think I gave you the drawings there was three buildings there was the aviation and John I thought you were dreaming of something else so it's okay I understand now Mr Hayden Mr Lavoy you said you were going to relocate electrical for one of those classrooms downstairs what are we going to do with electrical no we're not moving the shop just a storage area that they have yeah just some of the they have three storage areas so we're gonna get them to organize a little better uh well not that they're not organized but we're going to consolidate even more and move some they have some uh electrical boxes and some conduit and some of that but we do have another smaller space that we can move that to so we can utilize that for the classroom anything else I met with all the I met with different I met with the carpentry the construction guys were impacted by it we met with them um earlier this week to talk about what we've been having ongoing conversations but we did a final meeting to make sure everybody was on the same page on the changes in the moves and how it's going to impact people and if they thought it wasn't going to work for them I wanted them to express that and so we could kind of try to problem solve it and so we resolved all that this week robotics grandchild so um we got an anonymous anonymous Anonymous uh is it easy for you to say yeah uh Grant we've got so we've got the mysterious person who has uh given us a 250 000 Grant which they'd like us to use to purchase robotic equipment so we're I wanted to inform the community that we're in the process of identifying uh how we would spend that Grant and once we determine how we're going to spend that Grant they said they hey they would have another 500 000 that they would like to give us to but we have to determine how we would spend that and we Susan Amano when we met with the uh the CT staff to determine what are some possibilities for five hundred thousand dollars and so we sent them another Proposal with bullet points uh part of it was they wanted us to look at internships and other things to help get young people started in the job market so we sent them another proposal this week for another five hundred thousand dollars so that was the second one we got this year because we had gotten the 500 000 from Fidelity earlier this year from another Corporation so we've been very fortunate this year to get some support for our programs very good um legislative breakfast superintendent so as you all know we had our legislative breakfast last Friday opportunity to kind of show off the 90 done four wins but we also I had the opportunity to uh talk to our legislators about where we are as a school today where we hoped some of our plans and future thinking for moving forward and also getting some legislative support for some of the legislative bills that are out there we're also going to be looking for some legislative we may be looking to put out a a bill to help us purchase the uh um the airport Hangar that may take some legislation in order to look at our Charter because it may not be possible we're not sure yet the attorneys are looking at it but we may need some legislation so I've had some conversations with our legislators about that also after the event but they I thought the event went very well had a lot of feedback from people who were there and like a lot of new legislators who were looking to do a tour of the school because they've never been in the building so that really worked out well in establishing some new relationships and getting new any support we may be looking to get from our legislators moving forward so I thought it was successful and it was great to have our many of our school committee members at the at the event and be able to connect with our legislators as well okay excuse me moving on um marketing updates John so I really haven't done a lot with marketing in terms of strategies yet although um we are doing a few things um as you know we do our bi-weekly newsletter we're trying to expand that right now goes out to parents uh faculty we are looking to send it out to our advisory committee on a regular regular basis and one of the other things is to ascend to our uh our news outlets copies of that every time we put one together so the rumble the Eagle Tribune so we're reaching out to them to see if they would be willing to accept it and see if there's anything newsworthy they'd put in the Tribune for us we we do have our marketing company but we're looking uh talk thinking about putting out a new RFP to look for a new marketing agent haven't made any final decisions about that next step at this point is I'd like to put a marketing committee together so that I have a team of people that can work and uh try to determine I I wasn't at this point looking to hire anybody full-time for marketing but try to utilize who we have on staff now and maybe somebody that can do some uh specialty work as we do that we have now when we have a special article or as we do with the company we have doing some of that work now I think the challenge for us has not been that they're not willing to do certain things but for us being so busy with so many things not staying focused on just marketing as much as we should although we've tried to do a little better this year we still have Cassandra doing a lot of work on it and Eleanor the lady that we were talking about earlier is working on marketing material as well we're in the process of hiring a new company to re do our our website I think Susan's in an interview Thursday I think is a Thursday a meeting with a company Friday the meeting Friday with a company to looking to hire a company to redo our we've done some work already preparing for that both in a lot of the writings completed already Eleanor has Rewritten a lot of the material that's on our website as well and um so and uh Cassandra's putting some material together but we're meeting with a company that we feel will be can do some uh exceptional because we feel like that would be it's important to upgrade our website and do a better job than we've done in the past so new policies and procedures and using it and staying on top of everything we put on the website we're putting in place as well Mrs Fitzgerald yes if you do put together a marketing committee at some point I'm volunteering myself but far more important than that is there any way that we could bring together marketing and alumni relations so that it's under one umbrella I feel there are two areas that we feel miserably at and perhaps we could copy some of the other schools that do it very well at use Central Catholic as a prime example where their alumni know every single thing that's happening and if you know I use our golf thing as an example every Reggie alumni should be fighting for a place on that golf course but we just don't seem to have the vehicle so I guess I'm I'm asking that we look at the possibility of combining the effort or tying the effort in together thank you Mr Hayden it's lovely we know what the marketing our in-house people are doing and that's fantastic my question was and I think Frank backed me up on this was what is the marketing company that we're paying doing for us now I understand you're going to get rid of them so I guess they haven't been doing too much I I don't think it's so much that they have um we haven't reached out to them they do one article a month for they're supposed to do one article a month for us that goes into Tribune and they also do special projects if we have special projects but we haven't given them enough like we haven't brought them in until we link an article on this or like they have done some but we haven't ourselves put enough enough effort specifically to communicate and work with them it's not so much that they're not willing it's more I think it's more on us that we haven't brought them in to have the conversations and do the work that we needed to do to get more articles out there so I think you know trying to put a little more effort in that it's probably something that we can look at but of course um and it's just really been a matter of time with people focus on so many other things that we haven't you know set specifically we do you know the athletic stuff and I mean we do do some some stuff um and I think we've done more we're doing more than we ever did before but that outside communication we need to do a bit more of okay connecting more with the uh um the agencies that are out there the news agencies that are out there uh better job connecting with them and and doing a better job with that so that's it's hard when you don't have someone that's specifically that's their job although Cassandra does some of that but we also have it doing 15 other things as well sometimes so she supports the staff on a lot of educational stuff as well so it's just not been our major Focus foreign I just wanted to add that recently um there's a there's like a group it's actually a New England school public relations Association it's a there's a New England chapter and it's publicly relations specifically targeted for schools and so um we just became a member of it it was very short money and they're having um an event on in April and we have um uh several we have a couple people from the staff Cassandra being one of them attending that and part of what they do is um they've already shared a folder which has some materials and it's about marketing but it's also about Communications and they even gave us a shell of like a Communications plan so like a plan for the year and I know that it is a lot but I would I would agree with the superintendent we've had Cassandra and she's really done some more targeting but in terms of getting ahead of it it's like when we have an event or we have plan it is it's it's a lot for one person we have other members of our Administration like our student information officer Isabel Joya she has she also has a responsibility to reach out to um families in a different way so we're looking to find out if it's not one position can we harness the this organization and kind of get some professional development and what I really like about it is it's partic it's specifically for schools so um you know I'll be updating the superintendent once some members of our school attends and then we can report out on what we learn Mr Cirillo I I want to thank you for that of the um I think that's something very important and I'm gonna Echo what time in Maryland you break a very interesting um point about combining the two together with the alumni because we're there's a lot of alumni that come to the school that came to the school that have no idea or how to join the Alumni Association um weird a beautiful gem but we're only a gym in our own house because nobody on the outside really knows what's going on and when we're looking at looking to expand this is this is the reason why this is more so important because we have to show the communities what we're doing um and why it's important for them to partner with us into EX in helping us expand but in order to do that we have to do a better job of the marketing it might it might be putting bringing another person part-time to work with with um staff that we already have here um I don't know what the solution is it's something that would have to be looked um and we work at Maryland who's definitely on board on jumping on the committee anything further Vivian well I'll call the same thing that Francisco and Marilyn mentioned um and I even have talked with um the superintendent in creating a tour that is specifically for alumni you know we tend to do tours for elected officials and I think it would be nice that a lot of the graduates like myself and the only reason why I'm I'm even aware as to the amazing changes that we have going on is because I'm a Committee Member but had it not been for that um there's so many graduates who have not stepped foot in the school and I think it would be an amazing opportunity for them to get involved um if they come and visit and just kind of reminisce and and get to experience um the amazing things that we have going on in the school and I think if we start creating events like that it would potentially bring in more foot traffic and alumni to sign up if if that's a way to attract and I know that that was also a good pointer to hire higher graduates you know as potential teachers or shop teachers which I know that that was something that we were struggling with at one point um and I definitely wanted to touch on the whole marketing thing I feel like we've we've touched on this before when I've expressed uh my interest in us going a little bit harder in social media considering that that is one of the main methods of communication um and for us not to take advantage um of that it's it you know it's it's sad on our part um so I definitely think that hiring maybe someone part-time to help us revamp I I do honestly agree you know I love everything we do but I I believe that we need to revamp our the way we Market ourselves but then also like the communication that we're giving out once so like when we're posting something it just needs to come across a little bit more streamlined more cohesive more modern and I think we're falling short in that so if if it takes by hiring I'm not sure if when you say no RFP to hire a new company is this just solely for they're in charge of like the news like the ego Tribune or like what other so it might be what are what are the responsibilities would this marketing company have yeah so doing exactly what you said what kind of social media uh should we should be utilizing social media more what should that look like and how and how should that come together all of that so it may not necessarily be a a company that like we've had companies that came before come in before they have talked about that in terms of doing more work with social media and and uh using platforms that we don't use now to do a lot of of marketing that we could start to utilize and it's not so much just for admissions but to also when we need support for if we want to put an addition on the school when we need to get Community Support how do we use those Avenues in order to get the right kind of support So if you're in that world all the time people are looking for what's coming out all the time at glts so so having someone has an expertise and that might be the way to go so putting out an RFP looking for that kind of an expertise as well as standard type media work as well so you know that's why I thought of if we had other voices beside myself besides ourselves we had committee people in the school that are interested there may be people out in our building it's amazing like we had staff that were at the talent show who knew they had all that Talent might have you know might have the same thing going on with uh you know some expertise when it comes to working out marketing ideas and moving forward okay Mr sister I would suggest that right now Sue got me all excited when she told me about this new group format that we are now members of um seeing what they have um using Cassandra as a Channel of vehicle to get all this information and maybe by the end of June we could come up if a committee is being formed we could come up with the best way to go forward whether it's combining two things whether it's doing it in-house with Talent we might not even know we have with a stipend type position uh whatever but instead of just saying oh we should do this we should do that I really do believe we need to figure it out separate from sitting here and throwing out ideas and I think starting with this new um group would be fabulous anything further okay uh principles report please I'll make this quick I know that um the report may look a little dated because it was a report that was deferred from February so it's kind of a combination um but I did want to just share our Quarter Two update which soon I will be able to compare it to quarter three um also we've talked a little bit about elective surveys I wanted to just briefly share the results and let you know what the next steps are in terms of that process um I won't go through the whole thing but I did share with you our school Improvement mid-cycle assessment so the school Improvement plan that you all approve every year we had the um we had our faculty Council go through it we asked for staff input and also the school council and the administrative team it's almost kind of like a my own our own formative assessment on where we are in our school Improvement plan so far and again that's we always want to try to get the most and then I just want to give a brief update in Spring MCAS testing which was today um so again quarter to your results they're there for you to say see we start off with the honor roll and then we have all of the numbers for our students that are failing with one or more failing grades um sometimes it can look pretty Stark with a q1 comparison compared to Q2 quarters are fairly short uh time frames when you look at a vocational one week on one week off a lot of the times quarter one is uh students getting into four or two is really when they get into the curriculum so I did include a comparison one thing that is notable is our grade 10 students they have um a sick you know a fairly low failure rate we look at grade nine and ten are those are the students that we've been working with the bar building assets reducing risks and we're really trying to continue and looking for ways next year to continue those um what we refer to as cohort meetings where groups of academic content teachers counselors other Specialists meet together to talk about kids which is really the way you can get some results we've had some challenges this year with a new schedule but you can still see that some of those 910 results are still looking good so again these numbers have already probably changed because we're within quarter three now we also know some of the students that came off the failure list some students are are still failing the same course and 183 students were added to the failure list I know that superintendent Lavoy also spoke to you about the Student Success plans last time and how it was important so you can see that referenced here in in terms of our action plan so when you look at the the next slide is actually we did a year over year because we want to kind of see what that what's that looking like and kind of look at the trends to find out if we can determine exactly what's going on is it an academic content is it within students coming back like what's really going on so we're looking at all that behind the data I also want to share this is all already all happening and actually pretty soon we'll have results but you know we were concerned with the uh the number of failures that went up we had a whole plan where teachers really work to develop success plans guidance worked and we have added an academic support session on Monday that we weren't offering and we targeted specifically those students on these failure lists we also ensured that all families that had a student on this list got a particular message from the superintendent I outlining this plan of action and asking them to contact us should they have questions we've been following up quarter three what we'll do is um when quarter three results come out we'll be looking again and all the administrators in terms on the academic side have also been working individually with teachers to support them and answer any questions we also have been meeting with students regularly just to kind of make sure that they support them so even though Quarter Two is beyond us it was in the report and I still wanted to share it because I like to make sure we share that um elective surveys I mentioned earlier that we were going to as part of our schedule change we were going to be looking at a way to provide some electives for our students where we believe that they could benefit from especially in the 11th and 12th grade we have a multi-year plan for this the first stage this year was to have the seminar courses which you know about we surveyed our students and I believe I discussed this a little bit you can see that um the the survey which I kind of not interested interested some of the things that students are very interested in are things like criminal justice they're also understand they're interested in personal finance we so sorry um and um you know also psychology was another one so we have those potential elective offerings and what we did um is we actually surveyed them for the next year because again as I said this is a multi-phase plan and some of the things that we surveyed students about that will take longer because it has budget implications space implications you can see that students did express interest in having a foreign Spanish also Fine Arts music appreciation and even Spanish too so that's just this is kind of our for our planning purposes but I wanted to share really what our students are expressing interest in the third phase of this is something that the superintendent has talked about and we believe is a part is in terms of offering electives to look at how we can do some integration with the shops so are there some electives that are specific aligned with some of the disciplines blueprint reading could be an example of that the superintendent gave me a list of about 100 other ones that he'd like to see in terms of electives but we wanted to phase this in slowly but one thing that we're hearing from our students is even within the academics for the 11th and 12th graders they are looking for a little bit of choice we are going to keep electives out of Grade 9 and 10 for now because we're still monitoring all of our students coming back from the pandemic experience learning loss and we want to make sure that we have an a solid foundation for them so right now we've identified the electives from the surveys we can't offer all of them but we've identified the electives that we're going to offer Additionally you don't want to call them electives because they're not there will be additional courses that will run simultaneously with these in terms of other courses that students might need in terms of literacy or math support and those aren't we didn't surveys to the students on if they wanted those so I will not go through this for sake of time but if you want to go through and if you have any questions or feedback the superintendent I'd be happy to answer any again this is just our this is our school Improvement plan and I went through every single goal and action step and um you know still the teacher in me I highlight I stop light highlighted where we are and so you can see whether or not we're still in the attempt planning um or achieving um our school Improvement plan as you know is always a pretty lofty goal so we may not get all we might not get to all of it and we'll probably continue a lot of things on it but we're making slow and steady progress um and finally I just wanted to share that we are in the MCAS season so to speak our students started off today we had our 10th graders we had a delayed opening for the 9th 11th and 12th graders we had our 10th graders um participate in the first day of ela and I will say it was pretty amazing we had all students but five we only had five student missing which is pretty incredible there was a few a few glitches on Pearson's end but it is a huge logistical task that gets even more complicated as we change schedules and we have room so the administrative team has been working really really hard to make sure that we have the most supportive environment for the test that we can have we did have a grade 10 staff the ELA staff and other staff we did have a short we call it a student information I like to refer to as pep rally no one really likes an MCAS pep rally except me but we did meet with all the grade 10 students yesterday afternoon part of it was um you know just letting them know Logistics what they should expect for the test but the other part was really sending them a message a clear message that we believe in them and so we also encourage them to believe in themselves so it was great to have that back we haven't done that because of the pandemic in the last couple years um but we wanted all of the grade 10 students to know that we believe in them and we wanted also to recognize all the grade 10 staff because even though it's an English test an ELA test it really is a test that um it's every class every shop every experience you're You're Reading Writing listening and speaking and you're getting prepared for that test so we feel pretty good for uh tomorrow day two and that's my report Mr sorell thank you your reports are always very visual um I'm curious on in the electives um yeah I know you said you they're not gonna be they're gonna be part of the curriculum um you know seeing the high ones some of them that I probably would never have thought of um what is the curriculum for World mythology and I'm kind of I mean we got 60 of people that students that were interested in that can you um elaborate yeah so what we did is we took our current seminar courses and we asked our teachers if they could align enough to the standards to expand it so that class would come out of the English Department and the curriculum would be built it's not built yet so if we choose that one we would be building a curriculum directly aligned to the standards anything further thank you very much oh I'm sorry Mrs Patel yes I should have known okay um I just want to compliment sue for the she said it brings out the teacher in her on her um mid-season assessment of the whole of the Improvement plan I just think it's great by showing the status and where it is so keep that teacher in you alive thank you there's a lot of red still anything else okay moving on um District committee priorities see none policies this will require a vote uh chair will accept a motion on uh accepting section B bdh Consultants to the school committee second discussion all those in favor anyone opposed new business nothing here at this time table matters to chill except a motion to remove concession a concussion concussion that's the third time concussion policy from the table of matters oh I'm sorry oh I oh I'm sorry new business go ahead sorry sorry um sure this is where we add stuff for the next agenda right if you'd like to yes okay so I would like to see uh exit interviews as an interview for those um that we have done for the last year or two foreign [Applause] how much is it John how much of those can we legally share though probably no names right I don't know much information we could probably get some you probably for all information right I don't know I don't know if we can give names some of the concerns that we've received that's what I want to see I want to see it concerns um you know whether we are working towards some of those concerns and and exit interview that we are getting yeah I can ask Janice to put something together on an overview of some departments over the last year or something right I just don't think we can use names okay no anything further yes one more oh sure go ahead sorry so back into the failures for the the Mr Lincoln reported and the conversation we have on the last meeting um I actually read a article in the um Eagle trivia talking about a pass on the Supreme Court where parents can now sue the schools for the school passing students students that are only learning middle middle um Middle School grades yes so it brought me back to the conversation we have and last meeting which you just brought up and I can see the failure rates like in ninth grade there's 70 70 students so again I know you both mentioned that as a as by law we cannot um spell students for not um which we we talk about students that we give help all the help that we can and I know you're working on that and that you mentioned that you reported that and you're working with the teachers but the students that don't want to be helped and there are a problem and that's the reality So based on this um this article that just came into into the um the world I guess um I want to see that law that you mentioned where we can now spell students and um I don't know we if there's any potential that we make changes on that it's regulation more than a lot right yeah a lot of us say we can't fail we says if we if if we fail I mean if we expel a student then we are responsible they're very strict regulations on why you can what you can expel student for but if you do expel a student then we're liable to for their education I'm sure that if we give them all the need the help that they need and we still haven't I'm not able to get them to where we need them we should do something different that's what I think so I understand a lot I mean I would like to see the law more um in detail um and then what can we do about that because I mean we don't want to be sued [Music] yeah so I would agree 100 with you that if students are continuing to fail then we need to do something different and that is part of the process that we're doing so particularly this last term when we had conversation we had actually had full faculty conversation about this that when a student does fail the starting point is understanding what the what the reason what's the reason for that student feeling understanding getting to the root cause of why that student is failing so that when we then know how to proceed so we are in that process of trying to figure that out and we're trying to address it in different ways and new ways because uh obviously in some cases it's not working the way we hoped it would work so we will never you know give up on trying to figure out if this isn't working how can we do it differently so you're absolutely right about that what's up we offset okay now back to the concussion policy she'll accept the motion to take it off the table now discussion all those in favor aye any other polls jail accept a motion to accept the concussion policy so move discussion questions comments John you have anything to add to it no no bring all those in favor I know well not intentionally not intentionally there must be something though oh my God it's under a report of superintendent oh okay it was Optimus yeah that's why I'm getting lost um so at the beginning of the whole procedure it says that if there's an accident or injury call the nurse so my question is and I I hope the answer is what I'm thinking do we have a first 18 in the school that's one question and I'll continue after that there's something the principal would answer first aid team can you share a little bit more um so I mean if we start call the north right it's the first after the session one so it says if if there's an accidental injury call the nurse and uh already then or to bring them to the scene my question is do we have a first 18.
page 213 is that where it is um we know well let's do this yeah I will say this that we were fortunate Barbara McLean at the meeting this morning and uh the cuts that we were making into the special education components of this and into Thrive she felt very comfortable with and uh we asked her uh why not start a Cherry Brook and work our way up and she said because the greatest need tends to be into middle school and in CIS so we start there it's a phase in and she was comfortable with that with that phase and but we'll get you those uh those other numbers I know I think uh Mr scheidler asked about the um supplies and uh that 20 000 reduction was I think we said a six percent in the uh it's a significant cut but we felt there was um the uh your administrative team thought that we can get by with that and it's over the poor schools so it is and Athletics right and the contracted Services we were budgeting 93 000 for special ed contracted services thank you so this is a difficult cut 165 but you know as we talked about this morning we went in with a 7.9 increase 7.5 percent of that is fixed the 165 um while it hurts um as I talk to other talents it could have been a lot worse so um we should be able to make do with that I want to go to the folks up um on the screen any questions for Mr case I don't want to leave you uh leave you out on that Ryan you good Kim K and Erica you're all right okay okay so uh you'll be asked to approve these and then we have a board of Finance meeting on April 3rd it's Monday night we'll be promoting these to the uh to the board of Finance here's where I have a little bit of a problem because uh our CIP budget is tied to the selectman's budget so we we approve a CIP budget which are the improvements they are the things long-term Investments things that we need there's a sheet in your your budget packing here and when the board of Finance cut um made their cuts to the budget they are instructed the board of selector to make cuts of CIP were kind of held a little bit hostage because then they are responsible for the capital Improvement plan and um I I don't and and so they tell us what we're going to get cut um for another discussion at a later time I'm not comfortable with some of the cuts where that came from but that's a debate with them there's nothing we can do about it it's not in my control right now but I'd like to make it in our control in the future so just remember that's something that we're going to talk about down the road okay Mr case anything further nothing for me thank you I'm sorry Cindy and Peggy do you have any at us you're good Felicia you're good until you were there okay okay all right that that takes you to the chair report which would be very very uh quick and I know I know Mr Bishop was going to mention our Canton Public Schools our first edition but a lot of credit has to go to this young lady right here Kira for putting this together this is a lot of work and we are very proud of the Prairie publication I know Felicia had a hand in it uh also but uh very proud that this is coming out and we like to do this more often and this is the um this is the advantage of the value of having someone like yourself to be able to do this so thank you very much it mentions uh and I had the opportunity to go to Cherry for Primary School the other day uh on Monday yesterday uh yesterday and I'll be there next Monday for Sam cards uh chorus program that she has and to see these smiling second graders all excited and the program that she has and the excitement that we saw on the teachers and the Paris faces watching I was watching their face as much as I was watching the children's faces because there's such great um excitement that goes on with this so um it was a wonderful program and this is something a little bit new that Sam started and uh we appreciate what she's doing there so that's all in that uh in there um and I did want to just mention Michelle Nook and uh Diane blogger did I say that right last name correct okay it's my American accent um anyways uh Michelle and Diana just did a wonderful job to it as I mentioned Bella and Simone how they did um I I do want the board to recognize Michelle and Diana for their efforts and the cast of hundreds that you know between parents and staff and stage crew and all the things that are running around back there was quite the production so I have to tell you I'm getting my season tickets for next fall pretty quick I expect to see you I know we won't see Bella but okay so that's that's really all I had which leads us into a public forum and uh I see a lot of some familiar faces and we haven't met everybody but I'm I'm glad that you're here and I know you have some things you'd like to talk to me Lord about tonight the only thing I'd ask you is that we keep these because we can go all night uh we keep our conversation at three minutes of course we keep it respectful and the board is not going to respond to each of the comments we take it all in it's recorded for us we we talk about it and we see which what's the best way to respond on it um I may have a comment or two afterwards when you do make your comment you can stand at your seat just mention who you are and what your address is okay because that's that's what we need for the record uh even if you're out of town we understand you may want to say you're a a teacher or a parent at a certain school that's fine to do too but for the record we require those things okay so with that said who'd like to go first for public forum no you go ahead and read your statement I think we can uh if that's where we are that's I think the floor is fine with that thank you um so my name is Claire Clark my address is by Maple Avenue um I work at Cherry Brook as an srbi tutor um and I'm here with many of my colleagues as you know um first of all I just want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to be heard um we know busy agenda we appreciate it um so we'll just get right into it I fear that we're on the Precedence about crisis without them in our schools if we're not already there are not nearly enough non-certified staff visually service students who need additional support the vacancies of non-certified positions have increased since the beginning of the school year there are currently 12 non-certified vacancies at Cherry Brook Primary School alone we're in a district in an economically thriving Community our schools themselves are beautiful we only hire the best certified teachers and staff we take pride in being a lighthouse School District in almost every way so why can't we retain non-certified staff and more importantly why are we failing those students who need that extra support these aren't open-ended questions that I'm just going to ask in the lead uh honestly the answers are quite simple we need to pay our non-certified staff more money time and time again I've heard from both my current colleagues and those who've had to leave their positions at share a book about how they love their job but can't continue doing it because they can't pay their bills there have been seemingly endless rumors about opening the para contract for revision for rumors of yielded waiting waiting and more waiting there's a quote by Warren Buffett that prices what you pay and value is what you get we as a school district have seen the tremendous value that our non-certified staff gives to our children on a day-to-day basis anybody who's ever set foot in a school knows the difficulty of the jobs which people do and do day to day with smiles on their faces we know their value but we haven't paid the price for this value and should be told we'll never be able to there's no way to assign a numerical value to the amazing job which they do enthusiasm with which they work and the love and support which they give to our children with this being said it is starting it is clear from the starting Lehigh turnover rate amongst non-certified positions that the current numbers are not high enough not retaining staff creates efficiencies in school's ability to service all the children which it has the obligation for service the constant need to scramble and Shuffle staff around the building constantly disrupts any sense of the normalcy for children and causes a sense of Chaos simply put it's harmful to both the staff and more importantly the students and that alone should be motivational change as it is the non-certified staff which we currently have and stretch as far as it can possibly go coming to Cherry Brook and you'll see the tutors work in a cafeteria when it isn't being used and plan out lessons in a hot noisy crowded hallway parents who are supposed to be one-on-one supporters students are doubled and tripled up with kids at times having to rotate from classroom to classroom many of my colleagues and I are doubled up on monitor duties due to a lack of our ability to recruit and retain monitors tutors are constantly pulled in order to sub in classrooms every time that happens those students in our tutoring program simply don't get the service that they need there have been times when our students have gone two to three weeks without being tutored two to three weeks without being tuned out of the 130 something school days this year many of us have subbed over a third of those days I have students of mine coming up to me on a daily basis and asking Mr Clark do we have tutoring today this is not a question which they should have to ask me you should not be a constant uncertainty for a child about whether he or she is going to get the opportunity to win there is no sufficient excuse for this if I were the parent of one of these children I would be enraged then again I might not even be aware this problem's happening bullying tutors to sub May save the school district money but it's our duty and responsibility to serve all children not to Simply serve children when it's convenient and cost effective these are fixable issues I'm here tonight because my number one priority is our children and I can say the same for my colleagues and confidence presumably you serve on this board because you have the same priority I don't share these issues with you in an attempt to assign blame to anyone complacency can sneak up on the best of us but if we don't strive to address these issues with a certain urgency then we must understand that we'll continue to lose quality non-certified staff and our children will be the ones who ultimately suffer for it we plead that you do not let that happen thank you okay thank you for that statement does anybody else want to follow up before I make a couple comments would you like to say something sure good evening some of you already know who I am but I'm Denise black I am a special ed here at Cherry Brook and I'm also the building in Europe I live at 109 Wellington Heights Road in Avon and to kind of piggyback off the Tanner since our copying conversation with I believe it was in February I've had six non non-certified staff come demand to say the pay is not fixed I will not be back in August we cannot afford to lose any more backbone of our community we just can't and we can't lose any more of the great people that are here tonight and on the camera because we love our students we love this community and we want them to continue to grow but we can't do that when we're being pulled three thousand dollars thanks thank you for that statement would anybody else like to add to that you know make a couple comments for you okay first of all thank you for speaking uh tonight uh number one number two I think you've heard from since I've come on the board and from others that our parents are Mr Case mentioned it in the beginning that you are the backbone of our education system we know that you don't do it for the money but we know you have to be paid fairly for the value that you provide but we understand that this board has had numerous conversations about the fact that we have a problem we understand that and we are trying to address it within confines of a budget within the confines of the difficulty in hiring and we understand that some of the the issues are are because of financial uh when it comes to the hiring we get all that and I will tell you that we've set up a meeting because your union rabbit has come to us again and said as you had just said how are we going to fix this we do have a meeting set for next week we're going to sit down and I can promise you we're going to try to put some underpinnings to this to try to fix the problem within what we can do as much as we can to as a board um so I'll leave you with that I I'll have to say more to come I know you hate to hear that because you've heard that before but as this board sits here today I can tell you that we're going to try to get our arms around the problem and fix it so I I thank you for your comments I thank you for how hard you work with our children every one of these board members has a child or grandchild that's in this that's in our district and we are so proud of it we want to see it function and and operate correctly so um the board hears you loud and clear okay so thank you for coming tonight yes answer your comments and um having spent quite a bit of time at Cherry Brook this year I've come to know many of you and I see firsthand um how hard you work and I just want to say I appreciate your flexibility because uh Tanner as you said we're all here to support our children and there's no doubt in my mind that every one of you in this room is here for that purpose and I appreciate it I've heard some things tonight that I did not know before so um Tanner I'll be reaching out to you just to get some more information as we continue to try to solve these these issues so thank you okay uh anybody else for public forum anyone online that would like to speak so if you're joining us online tonight you can go ahead and use the race hand feature at zoom and I will call on you by your Zoom name and you'll be allowed to talk I I've raised hand from Jamie Neiman I'm gonna allow Jamie to talk hi Jamie you might be on mute there you go you have a few minutes go ahead hi I'm just calling because um I did not send in my PTO report and I don't know if you want me to speak on that or if you want me to send it to you electronically what would you like to do you want to give us a quick report Jamie sure I mean I'm here I can if you would like okay so um so uh Cherry Brook PTO we just had our book fair which was well received from both parents and students um this was the first time that those third graders experienced a book fair and you could see in their eyes that they were very excited so it was really nice to bring that back some normalcy back to Cherry Brook we had um we supplied along with our families teacher meals for the staff at Cherry Brook during conferences we finished up our Munson's Chocolate fundraiser um last week and we have our Panera night scheduled for next Thursday that was it yeah that was it excellent uh you're doing uh Jerry Brook is doing such a great job you know um along with the um with the book fair is there still is is that is there still a children's fair that happens at Cherry Brooker no longer oh we are knee-deep in planning the children's Fair um that will be June 2nd uh first Friday in June great thank you thanks for hanging on the phone you're welcome anybody else Kira if anybody else would make like to make public comment go ahead and raise your hand and I will call on you okay thank you then closing out public forum thank you everybody for your comments thank you for being with us tonight we'll now move on forward with the rest of the uh information reports we start with assistant superintendent Bishop thank you chair Daniels I appreciate the opportunity to be able to address everyone tonight I'm going to give you some information in a couple different buckets as far as operations for us um I wanted to share with you uh in the effort to be able to continue to reach out into our community and be able to find support and resources for us I had a conversation with our Yvonne Canton Rotary Club uh to be able to discuss some some partnership and opportunities for um cooperation we discussed the opportunity to be able to work toward a grander vision of course on Outdoor Learning spaces that they were very interested in being able to work with us on and also being able to support um in some of our academic areas coming to the coming to the need of some of the time-based and resource-based scenarios that we have within our schools to provide support particularly right now looking at our summer program to be able to provide some reading and additional support with that as well so we're going to connect with our Leo and rotary interact Club as well for our students to have an opportunity is right um but I'll have some additional information coming forward for that as well but grateful for a Community Partnership um and the the vein of continuing to move the the academic program forward for us one of the things coming up is our state testing um this is a required element from our our uh our state of Connecticut we have our smarter balanced assessment uh which is our English language arts and our math assessment and we also have an ngss assessment that's the Next Generation science standards so that typically begins in our late April time so our windows are really the 26th and 27th and then moving on into the early part of of May for those assessments um we we do find Value from them because they provide a sense uh holistically of the the health of our instruction in our program and we also understand that they're only a momentary litmus test of the individual performance of students and we want to always be looking at the continuous data points throughout the year to be able to see how our kids are growing but it is one of the important elements that come up in our in our school year that we're required to be able to do um and then I also wanted to be able to provide a highlight we had a professional professional learning day today for our staff which really focused on um culture climate and wellness and so we had a connecting in Collinsville um where we had an opportunity to do a small service project uh be able to support um one another with uh a staff service project and then had some treats that were provided by LaSalle market so music provided provided by one of our teachers Ben gowett and then also the historical society was open for some some conversations there to to lead tours we had some work with our search Club to be able to leave some environmental walks and we had opportunity for our staff to be able to connect and collaborate with one another around some a list of educational subjects topics for um to be able to reconnect and recenter ourselves begin to just try to provide the opportunity to Share value that we have for our staff so we are thrilled to be able to see how that went for us for today and then I also wanted to be able to share that I've been working on Gathering the information on our field trips and experiential learning and I'll be providing an update and uh providing an update at our upcoming curriculum community meeting on on the 5th we'll also provide some guidance around how we will structure the the um the development of those experiences going forward just wanted to be able to provide those for you any questions any questions for Mr Bishop anybody online questions from Mr Bishop anybody on the floor okay John your report then very concise appreciate that well Don I've always worked with you tonight so explains even more concise and I appreciate that okay um so we go to recommended actions we go to the consent agenda Mr case thank you Lou one thing I wanted to mention before we get to this I didn't mention in my report I just want to thank Judy who the ptos for all of your hard work is just unbelievable how you support our students and the teachers and um Jamie a shout out to you for organizing the book fair and and the meals at Cherry Brook I know you've spent all day every day uh last week uh helping out and I'm sure it was the same with our other PTO volunteer so thank you all as part of the consent agenda tonight we have um minutes to approve so we have the approval of minutes for the regular meeting of March 14th and the special meeting on March 21st so I would ask that you approve the consent agenda approving those sets of minutes so can I get a first on the consent agenda please thank you Peggy can I get a second thank you Joe any discussion on the consent agenda hearing none all those in favor I opposed we are unanimous and that's 80 80.
so I think um in terms of who would respond when you call the nurse we communicate regularly so typically say for example there was an accident you would not only you would have a nurse you would probably have two nurses you would also have officer Milligan so officer Milligan is our police officer in the building so he is traveling we have a member of administration depending on what the accident or the injury is we would know like they would triage but if it's a we do have kind of that team the other thing I would say is that part of our crisis response protocols which we are working on is to to build that but it say for example if it was a mental health crisis if the nurses would respond this resource officers respond members of the administrative team would respond and we would have like a social worker so depending so I would say yes we have kind of that first aid team if that makes sense the answer part of the question because that's what I'm looking for do we have a group of people in the building that are first aid set of five and CPR obviously because some cases will need CPR before the ambulance come in we need to figure out how to get somebody um try to to keep and keep them alive because it could happen you never know so my question back it goes into that do we have a first first a team in house that will respond that collectively will respond to any emergency that we have answering but what you're saying is that there are people through the building that have the ability to um give help because they are I mean a police officer is that if I I suppose they are the or nurses are certified um but do we have a team that we say okay if something happens we're going to call a number you know how we call 9-1-1 there's always an internal number and or on in organizations that are large large number of people we have a number that we call and then you know that group of people will go and see what's going on 18 verse 18.
okay thank you um you want to go into the public schools calendar or you want to what would you like to do next yeah so I would like to um on the agenda is approval of the 2023-2024 school calendar two weeks ago at your last meeting you voted on this calendar as a first reading and tonight it's coming before you um for a vote um are there any board members who may not have had an opportunity to ask questions or make comments about the calendar would you like to do that information um I don't know if they may have been discussed before I know isn't at the last meeting but I know we have 183 calendar days versus 180 that most other districts have and I'm just curious to know why it was already asked it may have been but it's a great question Alicia so um several years ago when the teacher contract was negotiated there was an effort to increase students instructional time which in my opinion is a great thing and so that's when it was decided there would be 186 days overall for teachers 183 student days so there are three full day professional development days for teachers in the 183 student ends the state of Connecticut says that schools need to be in session for a minimum of 180 days so we have continued with the 183 days I may have had a couple parents asked me as well the surrounding District they're closed up there at the 180 years and this also gives us additional flexibility if there were emergency closings if there were many emergency closings that had us end later in June we could stop our school year after 180 days right and the second part to that question is since there's 183 days if we were to have three snow days why would we have to go three additional days if we're already going three days over the state requirement s the board um has not discussed that okay yeah I have uh I mean sure more of a common building on what Felicia said but I actually have been approached by a couple of teachers from the district about the 180 even three words that they know I understand because that's true I'm a teacher but um uh so I I the the question was from the teachers is you know how we used to have a February break that was like a week-long break you know I don't know if that would ever be reinstated I know that a lot of other schools also cut that February break unfortunately um so I was just wondering about that I guess it's more of a comment because I don't think that that's a possibility that that would ever be reinstated but just thought I'd throw it out there Cindy that's a great comment a great question um several years exactly several years ago um it was decided to call the schools in parkford County yeah in the correct region would follow the same calendar and so Canton is a rule follower I'd like to follow the rules yeah and we are following the calendar for Harper County so we are all that makes sense we are all supposedly supposed to be on the same schedule all the schools in the correct region and so that is that is when it may have been when the full vacation was eliminated or maybe Canton did that before but who eliminated the the who did that so the Board of Ed did that I was on board all that time so so we we did that in in concert that um you know we were getting out like around the 15th 18th sometimes the 20th of the month and people wanted to get out earlier June seemed to be a hotter month there was less learning that was going on so we peeled it back in February and it seemed like everybody else followed suit just like when we decided to reinstate Veterans Day is a learning day as opposed to a day off we were the first and everybody seen the fall suit so we've been leaders in that um it's it's not anything that can't be discussed again I mean we can't do it now right have a calendar but if that's something listen we can always we were trying to set once we could do it again it's something we can always look at down the road and if you want to bring that up as a something to be studying for the next school year we can do that thank you just a quick commentary today's winning two and three were negotiated with the teachers that's right and paid for as part of a contract settlement and that goes back I'm going to say it in the 80s it goes way back teachers got more money it was actually exactly tonight right so if um if it was ever decided to reduce the number of student days um teachers would still need to be required to work before 186 days that's just important to keep in mind okay all right um any other questions from board members about the calendar or any feedback you received over the last two weeks you know so I received feedback from a few teachers at Hanson Intermediate School that they would prefer the school year to start on a Wednesday and not a Monday so according to uh this proposed calendar teachers would return for two professional development days on August 24th and August 25th to Thursday and Friday and then students would return on Monday the 28th um because we know it's a long week for our students that's why uh we proposed the half days the early release days on Monday and Tuesday to ease the students back into the week but I did want you to know that some teachers spoke to me and they said please consider having us start on Wednesday as it would be a shorter week for students and um [Music] that kind of came in at the 11th hour and we have to get this calendar done so um my recommendation is to proceed with this current calendar however uh the teachers I spoke to also had some great ideas about scheduling professional development days in certain ways and I've already shared that with Mr Bishop for consideration for the 24-25 calendar so my recommendation is that uh if you were all good with this that we adopt this for 23 24 and then take a look at some of these creative ideas beginning in the year of 25 26 with uh Mr Bishop and Dr Rosenberg so that would be my recommendation okay so if the hearing needs superintendent's recommendation can I have a motion to adopt the calendar is presented in our packets please thank you thank you Erica and we'll take Ryan we'll take them off the screen all right we have a person in second a further discussion on the calendar hearing none all those in favor I one two three it's like that's that's 80 70.
a crisis is at first 18. because it could be a minor thing but you don't know that until you go to the to where the problem is you know I I wouldn't call them first aid he might come First Responders so we have protocols and procedures if there's an incident or their accident in the building uh calls made and then we all all administrators also have walkie-talkies and we communicate immediately through the phone through walkie-talkies and so we do have procedures and protocols if something happens in the shop might the first call may go out to the nurse and then the nurse gets may also uh our security often is involved and they and they reach out to what other other assistance is needed once is to determine what the situation is sometimes it's an ambulance that's called right away uh you know um even at times um it could be anybody that has CPR experience if they're in the area if we needed that but people are trained in CPR all of our athletic team is is trained in CPR but its First Responders and it's prestigious protocols that everybody is taught the first day of school we go through all our procedures and protocols at the beginning of the year so everybody remembers they also have a document in their classroom that identifies what the protocols and procedures are depending on the on the emergency what needs to happen so but it's not for I wouldn't call it a first aid team I would I would call it our our uh first responder protocols and and procedures that we utilize so there are people that have the background experience in first aid in CPR Beyond even the nurses background and we do can we do collect that information so we have a list of who is CPR certified so we we collect that and um I know that um um the athletic director Mr Nelson and I were talking about even this year expanding it because he always has coaching training but even having some time during professional development opening it up for any other staff member that would want to get trained but we do have that listing I would like to see that protocol if you can bring it sure I I mean hopefully we'll maybe have a major incident but when we do we want to make sure that we have the right group of people to make sure that that student or that person in emergency is taken care of immediately before um help arrives you know the actual professional helper rights thank you Mr Cirillo in along those lines in in Bright Light of the recent shootings um yeah I know that a lot of there's a lot of talks about amping up um the emergency protocol and and for um for um active Shooters to make sure that students and staff are are more aware and becomes almost like second nature so um for that it's called um yeah let's plan um that way we're making sure that we we communicate with the town and have a couple of incidents make sure that also that they're being that if our system goes off that their that the communication is going from the school to to bless you um to the um property departments within the city um because I know we have an officer here but if the officers and the other side of thing I will make sure that the alarm system is working students know if they need to be evacuated where they evacuated to or they need to um secure in place what the process is as well for the teachers and the staff and I know that wasn't a news party yesterday or even this morning of how we should be um do a little bit more frequently yep I think we had a motion on the table right if I'm correct in a second it that can I know they can concession yeah the concussion yeah all those in favor anyone opposed okay thank you very much uh personal considerations resignations I see none leave of absence retirement so Mr Victor Martinez social studies teacher effective 6 30 24 Mr Tim Cusack guidance counselor effective 2-9 of 24 appointments uh Ms uh Mariani uh and cancion career tradition Specialists the evening program effective uh March 20th 23 and Ms Courtney Moran gator in an assessment The Specialist effective 320 of 23.
okay all right so the calendar passes alignments okay we're gonna add um consideration right so um Mr case provided us with the uh the letter right this is the letter so the letter uh on um House Bill 5003 um I'd like to either all sign it or if there's some uh controversy to it then uh then the board would approve it just was the case and I would sign it so I need I need a unanimous on this so um okay so you're moving okay well let's just take a a struggle Ryan are you in favor of 503 okay Erica okay okay Joe sure okay so I think I I think I know Russell would be innocent uh and uh Kim so then I would ask you then to approve people all sign uh the letters provided by the superintendent can I have a motion in that regard Joe uh on her first and Felicia on a second any further conversation on it so whoever's here tonight can sign in whoever not Claudia will just have him come stop down to your office and sign him so no further discussion all those in favor aye opposed okay so um is this the letter so we can start right here what do you have do you have extras yeah which one can we start with the one chair Daniels house okay please don't leave without signing it okay and then um as far as the cuts go do we have a motion okay can I have a motion that we are going to prove the 165 000 Cuts as presented by our finance committee and approved by our finance committee kind of motion on that thank you Peggy thank you Cindy okay first of the second uh any further discussion on the cuts okay hearing none all those in favor aye Ryan you with me post okay 7-0 okay thank you very much okay anything else for tonight okay any board comments we miss anything tonight anybody have anything to say just quickly assure the policy committee met before this meeting uh and we agreed to meet again for just a half hour on Tuesday April 4th at 7 30.