Any discussion? Mr. Shepard, we have guarantees from Anusos that this will this work will be done before the start of school next year that it won't impact the opening of Raggate. Is that correct? That is correct. In the bid documents, we specified, I believe, that they needed to be done by early August to give us a little bit of a buffer. Great. Was it August 11? Wow. Okay. Thank you. Missed that part. I again, um, like to thank Dr. White and Mr. Shepard for answering my questions during the week. Um, I know there was some concern by staff that um of the some of the areas being made into for storage, but I do think every building needs a certain amount of storage. You just can't be packrats and, you know, be saving stuff from 20 years like a lot of our basements. Um, but when Dr.
So, Mr. O'Brien and Miss Arowwood. We're going to be super fast because I know you all have been here for forever. Um I'm going to explain what they are and then Mr. O'Brien's going to tell you um the positive feedback that we've gotten. So, instructional rounds are just for teachers, created by teachers. Um the four of them have nothing to do with it. Um all we do is ask for subs and Mr. Lawhead always says yes. Um but we are the ones who are organizing everything and planning it and um putting it all together. So we went to professional development um a few months ago and Dr. Warick who works like with Marzano and a bunch of really other incredible people on creating high reliability schools. He said one of the best things you can do to make your school better is to make your teachers better, which makes a lot of sense.
So I really my hats off to all of you all the way from Pitway up through the high school. Um you know it starts it starts there and um there's a lot of work and that's the reason we don't have to hammer out details of how many teachers do we need here or there because you told us and you laid it out for everyone tonight. So, I don't want to get lost in all the important talks about capital without acknowledging the amount of work that's gone on to, you know, come forth with a really solid operating budget that's super thoughtful and um and we're blessed to have like on from the school, I'll tell you because uh I do this on the daily and it's really easy to follow if you're a numbers person and you're not a numbers is actually really easy to follow.
And that for me means that I would support the proposal that is currently on the table to leave status quo except for the redrawing of uh transportation boundaries for kindergarten. So that's yeah thank you. Other questions or comments? Uh, I'll just make a comment um that as soon as you get that number in the mayor's budget, you know, you're headed for really devastating times for our educational community. Um, and I know that the the mayor didn't necessarily want to make um devastating cuts to the to our educational system. she's in a situation with insurance rates that can just go up by, you know, double digits, um, with no transparency and I think from my own perspective fueled by a pharmaceutical industry that's making a fortune. Um but um so so then if we're looking at basically devastating cuts of which way we go if we keep if we pause on redistricting do the geographic redistricting and take a look at this basically brand new environment that we're in.
So, we wanted to bring the expert in to support us with that learning. So, we're going to have district and campus leaders as well as teacher leaders um for that day on May 27th. And then in next year, we're going to continue our focus on PLC with that 15-day challenge, still focusing on standards, proficiency scales, planning for assessment, and then for student engagement. So, that was just a quick snapshot of our fabulous day with our teacher leaders on that PD day. What questions might you have? A lot of people did wear green. Lots of lucky and Irish. And I was actually quite excited to see all the green. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, [Applause] Madame President. Uh members of the board, Dr. Wyman, thank you for the opportunity to um share with you a little bit of an update on our mock interviews that um Miss Horn had mentioned earlier.
And then if it does end up with identification, whether it be through those benchmarks or whether it be through special education evaluation, those may be opportunities. But what we don't want to make, we want to be clear about is MTSS is not a pathway for special education identification or gifted education. MTSS is a pathway to get you the supports and services that you may need. We I used the terms um differentiation and specially designed instruction earlier and I just wanted to give a clear understanding that when we talk about specially designed instruction you may also hear it called SDI that is really something that is mandated by IDA. IDA is the individuals with discipline disabilities education act. So that is the federal law that requires and dictates what we do around special education services. That means that the instruction that those students receive is individualized goal driven and it modifies the content or the way in which we provide instruction.
um just in answer our questions just about the project like well I don't think that's what this is saying that they're going to tell you about discuss the responsibility and scope of their services not their plans that they drew up of their services okay so you know you could have an architectural company come out and say uh we you know we have so many different types of architects We have so many civil engineers. We all this is the scope of their services that you know and what I'm hearing from you is like you wanted Mr. Staller here to answer questions about a specific plan that had been drawn up. I think it's two different things and you know Mr. Staller has been with us for years. So, we kind of know the scope of his services and but when he was originally put on retainer, he did make a presentation to the board.
White explained what this was going to be used for, I I I thought, okay, that makes that's makes pretty good sense. So, I'm on board with this uh this renovation bid. And I do appreciate the answers during the week. I know you're busy on other things. Any other questions or discussion?
Um, and one of the ways he said you can do that and not really have to put in a lot of effort or time or money is by letting teachers observe teachers. um putting teachers in each other's rooms so that they can see all of the really incredible things that their colleagues are doing and then steal those incredible things and do them in their own classroom. Um so that's what it is. Um Mr. O'Brien and I just ask for volunteers basically and we have volunteers of teachers who let us come in and observe and teachers who want to go and do the observing. Um, and then we schedule it all and get it organized and he'll tell you the positive effects we've seen. So, I've been lucky enough to uh lead two groups through this so far. One of them was a group of was a group of veteran teachers.
So, because you laid it out so well. So, just um I have to give a shout out to It's true. I agree with all of that and I I won't take up more of your time like regurgitating it. Um you know, there's the micro and it's all the work that's been discussed here tonight. And thank you. Also, by the way, like a budget is a is a a document that represents our values. And I know you all started with our our goals and our vision for the district, which we also worked hard on and that you everything that you built is around that and made sure that you could trace everything that you recommended back to that and we're really proud of all the work you do. And and that's to me that's that's kind of the micro, but then is there was the macro of having these conversations with the other boards in town um on the uh the two Saturdays.
I I think both in terms of enrollment and in terms of budget, I don't think it would be responsible for us just to continue as though 26 27 we're going to have we're definitely going to have the same number of schools and that is what the all the two and a half years that I was here for doing that plan. It would all assuming that we would have five schools available. Um so uh this one hurts. I don't like making this motion. I appreciate the members for for um making the motion and seconding it and discussing it. Um and um I hope that as a nation we can uh pivot to being a country that prioritizes educational funding so that district after district doesn't have to be making these heartbreaking choices. So with that, I guess I would uh like to hear the vote. So just to repeat, the motion is to continue with uh on a redistricting to continue with redrawn geographic lines with a hold on moving any grades out of their current buildings for the 202526 school year.
We uh we did increase our our attendance at the event. Um as most of you know, as we've reported in the past, we typically have this event for our second and third year CTE students, which is close to about 200 students on a on a usual year. I'm not touching. Um, uh, Miss Loftess, uh, gave us a little bit of a challenge and she said, "Mr. Scrogum, can you do it for all my seniors?" And I looked at her and and what I said on the inside, I did not say on the outside. Um, because that was quite an undertaking, but we probably doubled. We had uh 4 and about 470 students scheduled to interview. Uh, which means we had to increase the number of volunteers from the community. And I will tell you that um that was not a problem. It was it was a pleasant surprise to have so many members of the community step up and and want to help.
Um and it is typically implemented by our special education teachers or very highly trained staff. Differentiation on the other hand is what every kid should get. My goal is when you walk into a classroom, whether it be my learning modality, my interest, my strengths, my weaknesses, that we have enough data and we can triangulate it that we're giving teachers the tools that they understand what I need as a student. That means a student with no identification, the student who receives it serves um who he or she may receive special education services or I've been identified as gifted or I'm just really advanced in some areas. We as a public school, that is my goal is that all kids get what they need when they come to school. But when we look at both of those, so we have this thing that is mandated by the federal government.
Um, and I think now we're next week um the the representative from the janitorial company will come in and we can ask him scope of his services. But every year when we renew the contract or something, we don't have to have them come in. That's kind of where Julie's at in my interpretation of it. I feel like it could be costly if we are um bringing them in often. I feel like we are one part of the process and for me it's always been of course we are you know we're the oversight but I'm I have confidence that Mr. Shepard is going to bring in the right people if they're going to come and present which we have had presentations on um the plans. It seems like to me we kind of already satisfy that. The scope of services makes me nervous. It sounds like in a way it's an interview in its effect.
Hearing none. If we could take a vote, please. Mindy Hartman, yes. Ann Sanucci, yes. Stacy Salt, yes. Jason Jansik, yes. Julie Jetty, yes. Darling, yes. Motion is approved. 8.8 Eight is the approval of the audio enhancement proposals for Briargate, Three Oaks, and Oak Null. Dr. White. Sure. I don't know why I got this one. Mr. Shepherd, Mr. Shepard could have done this one, too, but I will take over and give him a break. So, um, when we began looking at the projects that we wanted to complete this summer, we knew that Briergate had an aging intercom system. We experienced some major issues with the Deer Path system and by the grace of God, it started working again. We don't know how it started working but it started working. What we what we noticed though during that time also is that the company that u manufactured our current intercom systems in our buildings um no longer are in that line or that sector of work.
Another one was a group of completely new teachers to our district. Uh, when I led the completely new teachers through the through the process, one of the things that they picked up on when we were in the classroom was engagement. and they we instantly had a discussion on engagement and then they can now go to two teachers that they know in order to find out more on how they keep their classes engaged. Uh in terms of the veteran teachers, I followed up with one of them and they've already mentioned that they've had a couple collaboration lessons with the teacher across the hall, something that they've never really ever done. So we're already seeing that positive impact of collaboration and um teaching strategies as well. So thank you. Thank you. So I'm going to talk about the um select the alternative learning program. What is select?
And I think that one thing one way that that's helpful for us and I think it's part of what's happening in this conversation tonight about some of the greater capital needs is that we don't necessarily understand some things until we sit down with other people that aren't in our little silo here. And that probably goes in the other direction as well. like we're pretty clear on everything that we need because of all the hard work that we do and we're so sure that it needs to happen. But then we sit down with other people in town who by the way we're all one community. I mean, we've been elected to represent schools and other people have been elected to represent the greater town, but we're all one community and we have to make sure everything we do fits into a a vision for our entire community and we have to understand um you know how what we're asking necessarily affects what uh somebody else is asking when just like in your own little micro family, you can't please everybody all the time.
Secretary Den, will you call the vote? Chair Johnson Massad, yes. Vice Chair Ston, yes. Secretary Denm, yes. Member Goodwin, yes. Member Childs, yes. Mayor Disorger, yes. Member Martini, yes. It's unanimous. Thank you. Um so as I mentioned um the redistricting and reorganizing ad hoc committee uh doesn't meet unless the school committee uh or the superintendent uh has a need for them to meet. And um clearly with this vote tonight, we do need uh you all to to to meet to address how the loss of 30,000 students from public schools across the state continues to affect Greenfield's enrollment numbers and how we plan for the future to accommodate future potential reductions in the school budget and to maintain the geographic redistricting GPS has already done while minimizing disruptions to families. If the committee agrees, the reinvisioning our school's ad hoc committee, which includes school committee members and mayor disorder, will work alongside the superintendent to identify the most sustainable and efficient path forward for our schools in light of our current challenges.
Um so we ended up at the end of the day we interviewed 410 students. So we had some students that were absent, maybe some students that missed their appointment, but the majority made it there. And and for me that was the most impressive part. Uh the day before the event they were given an interview appointment card. They had to hold on to that card for a whole day, bring it back the next day. It told them where to be, uh, what time to be there and so forth. And I would say probably 98% of them showed up with their card at the right time in the right place. Um, many of them dressed up for the occasion, which is is usually the bigger challenge. Um, but they were very comfortable coming in and uh the gentlemen wore uh ties and dress shirts and the ladies wore uh dresses and skirts or or suits and it was it was really neat to see.
We have differentiated instruction that we know is true and what we should believe in as public schools. When you look at that overlap, that's just good teaching. Tailor instruction to meet student needs. Use various strategies to enhance learning. Flexible grouping and scaffolding. and then supporting struggling learners. I think we all can get behind those those four bullets and have that expectation that all our educators are striving to achieve those four areas. So, I'm going to turn it over to um Dr. Thomas before we wrap up just to go a little deeper because I believe I can't remember who was asking, but there are some kind of finite pieces regarding special education that I want her to just touch upon quickly and then we'll go into the final findings of the report. Um Dr. Thomas. So these components that you see uh on the screen are the actual components that are directly in the IEP.