Chances are we'll have to add certain things as time goes by. So So that's why I'm think we can't put device. That's too encumbent. This one instead of glasses. Um I want us I want to be clear about the glasses because that's really emerging and popular. If We do say not limited to if we wanted to do something that was also more generic. Um I'm okay with that too, but I I really would like to call out the glasses specifically because I could see us getting challenged on that. I mean powered glasses devices. No, it's under the person device category. So yeah, any device process, store, transmitter, access information independently. I don't even know if it has to say independently. This is one. Yeah, I'm sure. The annual reading of playing catchup. I think there's some value to the fact that we're not banning anything banning cell phon that's just we are K through eight basically.
Um, and really as part of the National School Lunch Program, all of our schools are required to have a specific meal pattern um when we're planning and and coordinating our menus. Um, for high school that includes in um having 2 ounces of grain. And so while we said in our records that it was 2 oz grain requirement, we were actually using 3 ounces of grain. So even though it was above the requirement, it was still not in line with what we had stated it should be. And so we have now gone back and um corrected that. And so our records have been updated to show the proper green crediting. Um and then the final finding was related to a discrepancy in the sponsor application letter that we used. While we are able to use a customized form, we had um inadvertently stated we were using the standard template.
Um, and your second one again, could you give me that? um as we are moving um with and in deeply leaning into our master's facility plan and we are able to tackle some of those like you said for our older buildings, updating our HVAC units, updating our roofs, updating, you know, uh security systems and so forth, which is more Mr. Bell's area. But do we see some of these ticket items go down because we are bringing in and updating our systems? We we will with our utilities, right? When we replace a roof, we're we're getting different R ratings to where it's keeping that cold air in or that hot air in. With the equipment that we're buying, yes, because it's it it's better. Everything it gets better with time. And some of these high energy efficiency um equipment is is lowering the the bills. Yes.
I mean, because it's it's a lose-lose situation because there there's no there's no plan. I my first 100 days, I'd close the Healy hotels. I would start fixing the infrastructure in Massachusetts and I would start, you know, really looking at the schools now that, you know, the uh Trump administration has uh, you know, shut down the Department of Education. I would make Massachusetts, you know, Massachusetts has always hung its hat on that we have good education and and we do. Massachusetts has had quality education. I will tell you in the last 10 years that quality has eroded and it's not as good as it as it it used to be. And we have to return to quality education and supporting small businesses in Massachusetts because as Mike mentioned earlier about the millionaires tax, why would why would a big business ever come to Massachusetts? Exactly.
Yeah, but that's ridiculous. 9 through 12. That's just going to be ridiculous as I mean these are just part of our lives now. Like you say them appropriate use. It's really hard to catch 22 in some respects. Like I think I told you guys height say it's just got to be banned everywhere all the time. That's not what our parents and students and staff are really looking for. I guess we could um but you know we also for practical reality you know families want to get in touch with their kids at the high school. something to happen which I don't think is really a great rationale because it would might do more harm than good in terms of being able to respond to an issue to be honest but um it's something that parents feel pretty strongly about um and you know let's pick our battles here and I really think that well it's going to be changing so much we'll have time to come back and look at that I'm sure I think I'm I'm looking at F right here.
We've now gone back and updated that um information on AD. So that was just a brief overview, but obviously as you can see these programs that we receive funding for, we they go through extensive reviews constantly being monitored. In fact, we're still undergoing other ones here within the district. But I really did want to highlight we have Ally Alli Gear here. She's our director of of nutrition services. And so her team does an outstanding job of making sure that we are fiscally responsible, federally compliant. And so just definitely wanted to um give her a shout out for all the hard work that that they do.
In that sense. Thank you. But the work's not getting any cheaper. No, certainly isn't with tariffs either. No. Yeah. So, I don't have a question, but I am going to piggyback on something that Miss John, Mrs. Johnson said, and it was on slide number nine because uh you all didn't actually go over it, but I just want to spend two minutes in order to give context because I appreciate the professional development that you all talked about. And we are all well, many of us in the community are homeowners andor we live in a home. So we understand contextually that if you have 58 heaters or boilers, 16 chillers, 97 HVAC, 609 bathrooms, that's a lot of clogged toilets. Yeah. And I can I can continue and to go on and on. 389 light poles. And we rely on your department and your teams to keep our schools functioning.
Why? If you're going to be It's too expensive to do business in Massachusetts. We've lost our competitive edge and we're and we're still lucky that there are so many Fortune 500 companies in Massachusetts, but as times contract, you're going to see more and more of them sneak out of the state because it's too expensive to to do business in Massachusetts. Two things about the hotel crisis that we went through. First of all, uh we have a housing crisis is what we have here in Massachusetts now, which has been, you know, uh made worse, substantially worse by the influx of all these new visitors. I call them guests. Um, but those hotels themselves, the actual physical buildings, you the one in Malboro for sure and some of the ones I've been to, they're not ever going to be the same. They have to be kind of like raised and rebuilt because they're just a mess.
Um, when we're talking about taking pictures and moving pictures that use while on school property, is that under the profane decent of seen threatening or is that overall? Because that that'll be a hard one to enforce. Um, so your question Can you can I do this off school ground? Well, no. Can Can you know, say the kids are at a at a game and they're taking a video of a big play or something? Yeah, that's that's a that's a public event at that point, I would. But it's also school sponsored activity. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but also what if they're doing something for a school project? Well, and and you know, they're celebrating their friends, they're celebrating, you know, something good. I just, you know, because it starts out indecent and bullying and then we transition to pictures. So is that are the photographs and moving pictures intended to be part of the I see what you're asking now it just says here shall not be used for such purposes for under the bullying concept.
And with that, I'll answer any questions. I have a question. And I just want to understand on the resource management finding um the meals for adults, why do they care if we charge less than what they well evidently they require it so of course they care but um what impact is that? I guess I'm asking. Sorry. A little bit more on that. And actually well I'm going to have our our our expert here provide a little bit of information. Sure. Don't mind. Madame President, members of the board. Um, the reason for that is we can technically charge less than. So, we can keep it the $2 and the $4, but basically we have to pull non-federal funds from somewhere else to cover those costs. So, basically they are saying that with labor, food costs, paper costs, literally everything that goes into um that meal, it's not covering that 2 that 284 and that 484 should be what is actually feasible for the district to cover those costs.
And a lot of times what happens is that we take for granted that the heats work, that the lights come on, that the parking lot is smooth, I'm not tripping. Um that those are things that we take that we're not getting sick because the the building buildings are kept disinfected and safe. And so I don't want to take it for granted because over the la especially I'll say the last four years since I've been sitting here I have been on the teams and know how much money that it takes in order to maintain all of this and to know that we didn't have it but you all did it anyway. Yes. And so I don't want that to go unnoticed is that many of you went above and beyond to ensure that our students were safe, that our buildings were open. Um, and so I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you for everything you did in order to ensure that this is happening.
Is that not true, John? Oh, you're I I can just speak from experience of being in some of these that you're just going to have to tear them all down and redo them. And here's the thing. I mean, you know, if Bill's thing, you know, if I was the governor, I tear them down. And you you know, you you hear the Healey administration right now talk about, you know, they're they're champions of affordable housing. Name me one affordable housing unit that's been built. You know, there hasn't been it's it's all, you know, fluff and, you know, posturing. If you're really going to invest in, you know, affordable housing, and affordable housing has different connotations that a lot of people don't understand. you know the not all affordable housing is section 8. Not all you know affordable housing is is you know homeless people. A lot of it can be made for you know teachers and you know police officers and people who work in the government and stuff like that.
You can't you guess. Okay. So you can't use your cell phone for those purposes. Okay. That's fine. That a school sponsor. Okay. Okay. Like you can't use it. I think there's an opportunity here to say, you know, um that we also prohibit the use of using recorded video to create deep fakes or, you know, something like we could probably put a sentence in here. It seems to be a good place to add some sort of prohibition against deep fakes. Um because use in a matter that's profane, indecent, obscene, threatening, [Music] discrimination of deep fakes. Yeah. I'm just going to highlight people the same way we piece up here. So, I wanted to add something for consideration perhaps. Is that the ban be extended through sophomore year? That way only upper classmen have access to their cell phones because at that point you're working probably driving you're acting more of a responsible adult where at the sophomore freshman level you're more of a kid than an adult yet.
And it's only at those C sites. And and Madam President, members, just also we want to be consistent. So really, even though they identify those C sites, we really wanted to have that consistent pricing across the district. And so I think we will be looking at implementing that really that same standard pricing across all of our schools, both um those that are universally free and non um just to ensure that just to kind of keep it standardized for for all the adult pricing. Thank you. Welcome. Go ahead. So, I have a question with regards to the training. Is this a oneandone or is it something that you have to go back every five years and reertify or anything like that? Madame President, members of the board, yes, it is um it's a oneandone as long as we do not hire a new nutrition liaison. So, anytime a new nutrition liaison would come in, then they would have to um do that training again.
However, I also want the community to understand that it costs money. Money that we have to continue to figure out. Dr. Omei in order to not only keep these over to I know doctor sorry mister to keep these up to date. We're giving you an honorary degree. Exactly. Honorary to not only keep these functioning but as you all just talked about but there's many of them that need to be updated andor replaced. And so I just wanted to say thank you for the professional development that you continue to provide to your staff to make sure that many of these things are being fixed by your staff as opposed to us even contracting out work. And I just don't want that to go unnoticed by us andor the community. So thank you so much from the bottom line. Welcome. And who said a picture is worth a thousand words?
But until there is a true investment in building housing in building inventory stock I mean there's there's where there's a will there's a way to get affordable housing done and everybody talks about it. Republican, Democrat, you know, uh, Libertarians, they all talk about it. Nobody ever does it. There hasn't been an affordable housing complex, you know, a grand scale built in Massachusetts in more than 30 years, right? And that and that's totally unacceptable. Well, if you do somehow someway, you know, I mean, those the housing topic is one we could do an entire all politics is local broadcast about, but Bill Smith and I are sitting here with, you know, I mean, we're a couple of handsome old guys. If you do become governor, can I could you make me the commission the cannabis commissioner? We could do a whole show about how dysfunctional the cannabis is.
You know I think I I don't disagree with the principle of it. I think where actually I like the principle of it. Um, I think the enforcement gets to be super hard. You know, kids got a cell phone in the hallway. I'm walking down I don't know if you're Well, see what So, the the second part would be So, so how does it work now? Is it is it at the high school the pension is it's more don't have your phone out in class, right? And then the teacher has to enforce that, right? Essentially. Yeah. And then if you're in the hallway or something, what we've seen is I can tell you firsthand the band like being much much stricter on the band in the classrooms has translated into a lot less use in the hallway in the library. I used to walk down the hallway, everybody have the earbuds in like a you know, nobody would say hi to you.
Thank you. Just to clarify that on that question. So that that's why this audit review was um appropriate this time was because we had a new liaison. Madam President, no as mentioned we do have to go through the audit at least once every five years. I I think in that time we've actually had the new nutrition liaison. So we just didn't have that. Um our previous one had been had gone through the training. So just in those five years she's actually started in this position. So, she just hadn't completed the training at that during that time. Got it. Got it. Um, okay. That was the only question I had. Thank you. Thank you. Right. All right. Next up, we have item F3. Dr. Croto. Thank you, Madam President. Uh, tonight, uh, continuing our information discussion, uh, we will have an update on our bond override committee.
Because this is a beautiful thing. like this is our second year receiving this, right? And for me, when I think about where we were and where we are now, I'm so appreciative of like the the data analysis of the systems because in the past it just felt like we were shooting in the dark that we were trying to figure out, you know, how many boilers and chillers and when we were going to repair them and all this, but this makes it so much more real for what we need to do and how we need to get it done. So that long range facilities plan um we're continuing to look forward to to what um you know how it comes to be and how we work it out. So I'm very appreciative of the work that you all are doing and um Mr. Obi um for your guidance and your leadership and for Dr.
So I think we would want to bring in a smart, intelligent guy like yourself and talk about that and we'll make Bill Smith the the chancellor of common sense because he's a ve like you, John, very common sense guy. Brilliant, but doesn't talk about it. He doesn't brag about how smart he is. I'm I'm just glad that Bill could join us and he's Bill is going to be joining us on a permanent basis here on All Politics is Local. I think it's a great quality addition. Let's do it. We're going to be signing autographs one of these days. There you go. We'll have an autograph signing, you know. And then, uh, Mike, I do think we have to get Bill Lee on the podcast here soon, too. Oh, yeah. You want to talk about the other viewpoint of the world? You know, he's a he's uh he's just a little bit left of She Guavara.