Woohoo. Motion carries 5. We'd like to thank K's Chicken, Bridges PTO, and Baseball Boosters Club for their generous donations to the district and all its students as well as Mr. Glover. You said you had something you wanted at this point or did I? >> Yes, I thank you. Um, I just uh just want to point out and thank the we had track and field. did some overnight and uh out of state travel. So, track and field softball and I think the color guard percussion. >> May 27 employee contracts. May 27 employee contracts. >> President Wade, members of the board, uh tonight information item 6.1 is our annual review of the first read of our employee contracts for the 2627 school year.
If there's been an error on a contract, >> we've corrected contracts even after the fact, have them resign. >> But again, it's a it's a process here. Yeah, >> we try to be as as transparent and open with those as possible, >> but there is language in there obviously we need to have those back back in a timely manner, >> but there's an opportunity for them to move. >> And they shortened that last year, right? They shortened the date. The contracts can't go out for teaching up until Okay, thank you. >> Yeah, we'll be issuing those on the 16th of March. >> And that's in spring break. >> It is. >> So, we're giving them to when? Return them? They'll have 10 10 work days at that point in time. So, >> we we'll be communicating that very very clearly to staff. So, they they should be anticipating those those coming.
Uh we wanted to come back because we did receive some public feedback and feedback from our staff. So we wanted to public publicly share with you uh where we were with those uh results. So again, um, as always, I want to thank the 15 or so committee members, um, that, you know, dedicate themselves to, uh, putting together their ideas and bringing about the best calendar, um, options for the school district. So, thank you to those committee members. We did have four committee meetings this year. Uh again, quickly, we kind of went over um having flexible days uh with the the holiday selection. We received feedback from the staff, parents, um and put all of those considerations um into our conversations, including our efficiency plan and uh Chromebooks not going home with um our early learners from K to 5 next year on a daily basis.
Um and and the other thing that I shared with them is um you know in in 10 years if if I'm fortunate enough and the Lord blesses me enough I'll be retired in fishing. Um and and you know at the end of the day um I will lay my head down at night and and say man nothing happened on my watch to children. and if they learn something, added bonus. Um, but I'm probably not going to be in my retirement age worried about what SAT scores or I read or I learn or things like that, right? And so, um, I I certainly appreciate, um, the 850ish children that come to school every day here and and we hope to return them safely to their parents every single day, just like I hope that for my children. Um, and so, you know, I I wanted to share that with you guys, but also the community.
That experience is a big part of why I wanted my own children to have similar opportunities. Honestly, I thought my husband and I would both end up in Hudson as a lot of my family have, but hearing about the strength of the schools in Boilston was a major factor in our decision to move here, like many families who've chosen this community over the past decade. It's why I care so deeply about supporting strong public schools and contributing thoughtfully to their future. Uh, a bit about my professional life, I work in corporate finance and business operations with a strong focus on budgeting, planning, and managing priorities. A big part of my work is asking good questions, collaborating with different stakeholders, and making thoughtful decisions when there are real trade-offs, skills that I think translate well to the work of the school committee. I'm putting my name forward because I care deeply about our students, our educators, and the long-term strength of our district.
Um another recommendation from the NIS audit was uh migrating our sensitive information off of GLTS property and into secure cloud platforms. uh that enables us also to enable multiffactor authentication to access these files um and it eliminates the need for a VPN um at GLTS which was one of the main contributing factors to the breach. So that risk is now eliminated as well. Um another recommendation was uh regarding IT governance and policy. Um, so you can have the best hardware in the world. If you don't have the right policies and procedures to keep it up to date, to maintain it, to keep it up to best practices, it's not going to matter and you could still um get breached. Uh, so working with Arctic Wolf, working with industry professionals, we were able to completely reimagine our IT governance and policy um, and rewrite a lot of those policies so that we're safe now and we can stay safe 5, 10 years in the future as long as we follow the proper procedures.
You know, behind every budget, you really have to have a really good business official and and trusting your business manager and making sure that what you're presenting it is correct and accurate in what we need. And and I'm fortunate enough that this is now I I think the seventh budget that I've done with with Mrs. Robbins for in our previous district and I think this is our third uh together and just knowing that I have Anna there to really solidify where we are is something that is truly special. So I thank her for that. And you know, you really need somebody to make you look good. And Claudia certainly makes me look good. Um, she puts all this together. Um, this has nothing to do with my typing skills, her presentation skills. Um, she really has had to learn of who I am over the past three years.
Many um every school has a different look because what they work on the climate and what is focusing on that school site. Each school site is different but Victor Hodgej had a great um everything they kind of did was really great that they were very impressed. People from the other districts are very impressed asking many great questions. And we also had um students, fifth grade students that did a fantastic job speaking about their role as being peer mediators. And I want to thank Mrs. U D. Rosa and Jenny Weebi and also Dr. Erica Torres, the deputy superintendent of public education. She was also there to visit this and and people did ask many questions and um I was very proud to be there. Thank you, >> Bo Clerk Ramos. I just want to again congratulate um our students and our student athletes for uh the recognition that they received this this evening and congratulations to them their and all the staff that that supported them.
So, thank you. Uh, you've been here four times. I think I've been here two or three. Um we are with a company called Performance Services Inc. We've got a full service of architectural mechanical estimating engineering construction. Uh Russell on behalf of Russell and myself. Thank you again. We've worked together for 25 30 years and uh he's built projects all around uh Arizona. So maybe um and we don't want to be presumptuous. You may have seen the status of the schools or some but this just makes it a whole bunch easier. Do you want to walk through uh some of the drone footage and pictures? >> Yeah, sure. I don't know if this one's working. Yeah. So, if you go ahead and go on to the next slide. So, what I want to show you and I I will be brief because I do know you have transportation and technology that needs to come up and go through.
So the majority of our open enrollment kids are coming from the district. So um I can show that at our next meeting. >> Is that because I don't read it as a smart. >> Yeah, it knows the district by zip code. I can send it to you, but there >> zip code isn't it overlaps, >> right? So, they have the zip codes and the number of kids from each zip code that generate our enrollment. So, it's it's pretty amazing report that they put together. So why do they get eight grand to be bought? >> They don't get eight grand. They get five whatever it is 5,000 if they're using ESA. They get half of the funds. >> Okay. >> So they get like 2500 and the district keeps the other half, >> right? >> Uh I've never seen anything about that ever getting extra money for kids in school.
So, it's almost like we've taken a true PLC process, which is what we ask our teachers to do with their teaching and um evaluate their student learning and we have adapted that to a district continuous improvement plan that allows us to do that. And then from each of our areas, if there is a campus that tends to show uh a decline in an area or maybe isn't performing at that level, we go and have those individual conversations with them and address that. And I think because we um it's never been a gotcha. Sometimes there's valuable reasoning behind why something looks like that and it helps us to understand like the chemistry is a perfect example. We were giving all students the same final when half of them were not even taught all those same units and until we heard their reasoning why we were able to pivot a little bit.
Do we have any questions or comments from any of the board members before we move on? >> You have one. >> I do have a quick question. >> Can you hear me? >> Yes. Go ahead, Miss Van Hook. >> Okay. Um, I'm just curious if these contracts are reviewed by legal at all. Um for board member President Wade, members of the board, uh yes, the contracts are submitted to legal annually to be reviewed. >> Okay. I just there was just so many errors in in them as far as titles. So I'm just curious if um they reviewed them before tonight or they review them after. Thank you. [clears throat] With these contracts, President Wade, sorry. With these contracts, um how often do we update kind of the language? Is it just uh when things pass through the state, stuff like that? Is >> um >> board member President Wade, board member German.
>> Any more questions? >> Um, so Mr. Harmon said in his presentation about the budget >> that we're adding $1,000 basically to the new hire contract. Right. So, in these contracts, are we adding to the base on up the line as well? >> As soon as we get to this next agenda item, I can talk Yeah. >> quite clearly to that, but yeah. Yes. Uh, the contracts will reflect new amounts for new employees and existing employees will receive that 3% raise that we're looking to give to them pending board approval, which I believe is going to be coming next next meeting on the 25th. And the the percentage is that considered cost of living? Um looking at what others are doing and then making decisions from there like what drove the the actual percentage. >> Yes. I'm just cost of living is is hard to to factor.
Uh we took into consideration um Wednesdays and having a balanced calendar uh for the trimesters and semesters since the high school is on semester. Um any construction concerns um which we did not have this year. Uh we will start school on time. Uh new hire orientation uh ELC has a separate calendar for us but we uh get their input as well. uh as well as the start days, our professional development days, and again um consideration for both middle school and high school. We have our uh state holidays in session. And the um one thing that we may have and it is pending um is if we go into 2026 and there is a midterm election day, November 3rd, uh we will have to add a day to um our calendar. Uh no one has um uh put that into motion yet, but just in case uh Isby has asked that we be aware that that could be an option um that comes up, a law that comes up.
Um, that is not something I take lightly. It's not something the 160ish employees here take lightly. Um, we have a lot of kids come in here every day to our schools and and we're entrusted with their safety and and I believe we do that every day. I certainly appreciate all of our 160 employees and they're they're diligent um to ensuring the safety of our students. Um certainly would be happy to meet with anybody that has questions or concerns or wants to share um you know their perspective. As parents, we all bring a different perspective to everything in life, right? Um, you know, I I love to to hunt and fish. Um, and I and I certainly bring a perspective to that when I look at the outdoors. I see it as a potential place to go hunting and fishing when I'm driving down the road.
As a parent who's attended many BBRSD school committee meetings, I've seen firsthand how the decisions made here directly affect classrooms, staff, and families. And I take that responsibility seriously. Over the past year, I've been very intentional about preparing myself for this role. I've met with district leadership to better understand what's going well and what the challenges are. Spent time digging into the district's budget and long-term financial picture, and I've been actively supportive of our school budgets because I believe strong, well-resourced schools are the foundation to a strong community. I also serve on town school council and the district strategic planning committee where I've had the chance to work alongside administrators, educators, parents, and students and really learn how the system functions as a whole. All of that has reinforced me for the school committee's role as one of governance and stewardship, setting the direction, ensuring fiscal responsibility, and supporting the superintendent and administration so they can focus on teaching and learning.
Um along the same line there's also professional development. It is always changing very rapidly. Um so professional development is super important so we can stay on top of the emerging IT landscape. Um so in the past year Jason and myself has completed the CompTIA network plus certification course um covering industry standard network fundamentals. Um, and we're also scheduled to complete the come see a security plus certification course which focuses more on the cyber security side. Um, also we've became members of META which stands for the Massachusetts Educational Technology Administrators Association. Um, this is great because it's more focused on education. It's all um IT professionals that work for school systems. Um, so we can really bounce ideas off people that work in the same exact role as us, um, and network with them. They also offer mentorship programs that Jason and I are, uh, enrolled in, so we can learn from these, uh, very experienced IT professionals that have worked in school systems.
And now it's just clockwork that it's just sitting on my desk done. And I I do got to thank you for for doing that. And without all those people in the administrative team um and the teachers, I wouldn't be standing here today presenting. So, it's an honor to present to you and I do want to remind you that this budget is grounded in the vision of the graduate and the vision of the can public schools to be a creative thinker, communicator, collaborator, critical thinker, and a compassionate citizen. This budget is grounded in the board of education goals that are within the strategic plan that was designed from 25 to 2030, which is exciting. This budget is grounded in board of education goal number one, student growth and achievement. Board of Education goal, partnership and community engagement. Board of Education goal, financial stab sustainability and efficient operations.
Thank you. >> Board member Grier, >> no comments this evening. >> Board member Ariana, >> happy New Year's again. Happy Valentine's and have a great rest of your eight days in February. days. >> Moving on to item 9.1, comments and reports. Reports by student board members, superintendent, and cabinet. >> Thank you, board president. Um, I'd like to turn it over to uh Mr. uh Jesse Pena Fernandez uh to give his student board member report from Isuza High School. Good evening board president, board members, superintendent, cabinet, and community. I'd like to first start with congratulating the robotics team, the Mont View League MVPs, and the girls volleyball and flag football. Their work is impressive, and not only managing their schoolwork, but being highly accomplished in their hobbies and extracurricular activities is impressive. Their hard work deserves the recognition they received today. I'm also happy to announce several positive updates of Isuza High.
So, what we did is we assembled just some of the pictures that we've gathered while we were here. This is your cooling towers on building 8. um that uh your fill and your media is beyond useful life. Um you're going to need to replace these towers. There are pictures up on the inside. I don't think I have those on this slide, but when we got here, even to take some of this off, and you can see in that center picture there in the center media, you can see the big hole in it. That's just because this has become old and brittle and just it's it's beyond useful life. We go ahead and go to the next one. >> Next slide. >> The next slide. Yeah. And this is another angle and view of those those towers to fully accentuate that as well. Um, and go on to the next one, please.