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good evening and welcome to tonight's work study session and brief board business meeting today is tuesday september 14th and we'll call this work study session to order where item two is presentation and discussion of topic 2.01 allocation of esser 3 money dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members let me uh connect here real quick voila okay thank you again tonight uh we just want to follow up on a conversation we had with you a little while ago about sr3 funds and how we're going to be allocating those [Music] sorry about that you're good that's a good little twist to the meeting i like it um and so what we'll be doing is we'll just be uh going through and give you a little background and then get to the areas of allocation and if there's any questions we'll we'll have them for you uh barbara newman dr newman will be up here with us to help answer some questions when we get to that point again this shouldn't take a a long time just so you know again uh just a review of the esser funds stakeholder input meetings learning loss allocations and discretionary allocations that's how those funds can be broken up uh moving forward and we'll talk more about that when we get there esser for those that don't know what that acronym stands for elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds and this is the program details again are there grants for k-12 schools that provide school districts and charter schools with emergency relief funds to address the impact of coven 19 on schools nationwide the guidance requires that lease us school districts engage in meaningful consultation with stakeholders provide input and discuss its plans for the s or three spending and we had those conversations what we did uh in june on june 10th we had a good government meeting uh held by the chamber and we got their input we broke up into small groups and received input on how and thoughts from them about how to spend this money then again we had conversations with you as a governing board june 15th and then at the beginning of the school year on august 18th we met with all of our superintendent councils we have a parent council a support staff council a teacher council and we also have an admin council as well but we had conversations with them for a period of time leading up to this point and so through those discussions again we broke them we presented what we presented to you on the 15th as just thoughts and ideas nothing in concrete and they broke up into small groups provided feedback related to those areas and each group did a phenomenal job and they came up with some some very thoughtful ideas some that were reflected in the in the esser funds in terms of how we're going to spend them and also some that were phenomenal ideas but for example adding a lot of paraprofessionals to our campuses to help with small groups with our kids and that's that's a great idea but we're having a hard time finding ones now with what we've already allocated with our m o so moving forward we might be able to do that this plan can be revised as we move forward if we find something that we think is is more important than something we've already submitted or something comes up we're able to resubmit and and revise the plan as as we go forward so if we do anything like that we'll make sure that we keep you informed of that and just a a little history esther program state of arizona allocation for sr1 was received 277 million gps received 2.3 million of that and those spend then lights for that is september 30th of 2022.

the time frame on that is up to two years and that's 1.2 million this spend provides direct support to students when they need it outside of the school day represents one and a half years some budgeted under the discretionary pot which you'll see on the next slide and um this is something again like i said we talked with all three of our areas uh parent council support staff council teacher council and it received some good feedback there is always concern on how they utilize it or if they'll utilize something like this and so we believe it's our job to make sure that it's promoted extremely well with our families and and a lot of directions on how to access it and how to utilize moving forward and can you just give a description of what that might look like choice outside school hours we're looking at access for our students 24 7 so whenever it is best for them whether it be in the evening early in the morning on the weekends or otherwise we want a platform where our students are able to engage in real time with individuals rather than reviewing a video to find an answer so more of a socratic approach to it so that they understand the problem-solving process to get the answer so that they can apply it at a different time and we're also looking for data analytics so analytics so that our teachers might know at the beginning of a day what which students accessed and for what reason so that will inform their instruction for that very next day as well so that's something that we're looking at that would make a difference compared to maybe some of the other products that are out there so this might be an outside vendor that does this because of the 24 7 access it will for sure be an outside vendor we know that our teachers are already taxed and are doing a lot of tutoring whether it be at lunchtime or immediately before school or immediately after school but we also know that students sometimes can't always engage at that time so we would want to support kids whenever they are then that provides that access for them okay thank you is this primarily online or will we actually have teachers working with students one-on-one so um there's two that there's two parts that we like to utilize it for it would be more of an online chat almost type of format we don't want live video you know with um individuals there they would not be employed by us we don't have the manpower to do that so they would be employed by the company and vetted and trained in that way so for sure it would be something in that respect okay when would we hope to start this so we are going to initiate an rfp process we're actually engaged in this work with other districts too because we want to get first of all the best price and the best product so we would hope to bring something to you in october as far as purchasing a platform for this purpose thank you and that's also pending the approval of the sr3 application right but yeah next k-12 assessment platform to include universal screeners and course assessment creation that's an ongoing um project and and what how we utilize it so about 450 thousand dollars this spend will allow teachers and leaders to better assess student status and progress and so basically it's it's what we use throughout the year to check for understanding and get a good gauge of where our students are of course when you're addressing learning loss that's one of the first things you have to do is discover where is the loss and this platform will help us moving forward does this is this a different platform or does this add on to the platform that we already have that does assessment we just initiated work last year with a new platform so it will be like it's new because we are engaging in a different way this year first of all but it does it adds the additional um course assessment piece so besides universal screeners which we did not have before k 312 it will also allow us to do some course assessments and creation with the new um science and social studies standards we don't have courses that are aligned to those or assessments that are aligned to that we have courses that are aligned not assessments so this will help and that will pay for that creation of those okay but it adds into the assessment current plan that we already have yeah okay thank you and there will be things that that we've already taken part in that this will come back and help pay for uh things that align with the sr3 guidelines and so as barbara said this is something we've engaged in at the end of last year and so this will help pay for that and at the end of the day it it frees up more money in our other budgets so uh k-12 program uh support for students up to three years and that's 700 000 this program extends learning opportunities outside the school day to include after school intersessions summer and includes the offer of transportation basically these are the programs that we will have and be able to pay for for summer school intercession coming up next year at our new calendar because we'll have the two two two two in the fall two in the winter two in the in the spring and um help out with creating programs to be able to help students catch up in any of those areas would that include credit recovery yes sir thank you every year we we implement a summer school at the secondary level as well as k-6 and it's generally tuition-based and so if there's ways that we can offer some classes for free we will but we can't promise that just yet dr newman we did something along these lines this past summer can you uh offer any anecdotal information on what you consider to be the relative success of what we did this past summer sure i have some anecdotal for sure i was just talking to a high school principal and so remember this summer programming that we did was specifically we targeted students that were as we were doing some of our screeners that were deficit in particular areas and we provided english language arts math and then additional support so for example at the high school those were our incoming ninth graders and so they were able to be on this on the campus where they're going to be they developed a place and a belonging already for that and then what they've done is they've cohorted those students whether it mean that they cohort the students and they're all in the same class depending on the campus or they have that same teacher so we have students that were we would engage and look perhaps that they are at risk now they already have their english and math teacher who had worked with them in the summer that are now able to work with them this year and already they're seeing some really great work with them very good i just didn't want to pass up the opportunity to speak to that because i know that your department spent a lot of time and energy in in structuring that program so and this goes part and parcel to that particular topic right our department and a lot of others but yes yes for sure going along with that how do we intend to to evaluate and make sure that what we're doing is meeting the needs that we're hoping to and you said it's anecdotal but what about you know what kinds of uh stats and other things are we going to look at to make sure that we actually are meeting the needs or if we need to adjust it or change or you know so it can be effective so we um we are starting to even even though we they're considered optional what our secondary administrators have said as far as the universal screeners and other we want to be using them because we wanted to help inform instruction and see what we're doing so looking at what is the focus of the program see where the kids were and then when they come in in the spring in the fall where are they at have they been able to see that they've demonstrated some growth in there and then with those screeners we look at them in the beginning the middle and the end so we're able to track the students in that way and we'll also have to look at some of the program review and see we we would like to expand it more we want mo every single administrator said we want more kids we want them to be able to participate um and that would help us to evaluate as well because we'll have a bigger pool of individuals for the data too okay i think that sounds good i think so it will be a school by school evaluation or will there be a district looking at it or this the screeners um are all within our platform so we're able to look at it by school and by district both so we'll be able to see in in two different ways okay i'd love to get continued feedback to see if that's effective okay so thanks and last on this is the campus learning infinite campus it's ongoing it's fifty thousand dollars and i'll let barbara talk to this a little bit more just because go ahead okay so um because we don't not have a learning management system in lms sometimes our students or parents are looking in different places for things so what this will do is it's almost like a one-stop shop or access so it integrates with our google classroom so that's what a lot of our teachers are using with our students it integrates the gradebook so our students will be able to go to the portal and go to this one place and have all of it so that would then in turn be the same for our parents so we think that this will be easier often our students are doing something in google classroom or elsewhere in our teachers and are having to transfer those grades over to a different place so they're not looking in different places so this will put it all in one spot so this will transfer the grades to infinite campus we'll continue using yesterday campus infinite campus is still our student information system it will just all be integrated together okay that sounds great because i mean making it simpler and making it easier for everybody to find the information that they're looking for would be really great right so one question follow up on that so this will this add anything to our teachers then to have to one time transfer it over or you know to get it started or learn something new to get it going or what will that look like so john is john castell hanno is the guru for this so i'm i'm speaking so i may not but my understanding is it it's the integration which is the tech integration so when um automatically sometimes as teachers are doing something in google classroom they might be providing feedback or otherwise in google classroom but then they're having to put the grade in the gradebook it will all seamlessly integrate they won't have to be doing some of that so will they have to learn something about it yes probably just to see how it works but it's supposed to make to eliminate some of that absolutely that sounds great yeah and again like i think like jill said is that uh it's a one-stop shop the hardest thing about maneuvering through web pages is trying to find your information if we can narrow that down a little bit more for our parents and our students and our staff then we're in better shape all right next discretionary allocation um first line fiscal year 2022 which is this year um three percent one-time pay we talked about this in the spring as we move forward that's a 7 million dollars and that's again to maintain the competitiveness in the east valley for fiscal year 2022 coveted mitigation stipend this is a one-time 4.37 million this is using the s or 3 monies will pay for a stipend for certified teachers regardless of the teacher salary funding and this is something that we'll be talking about in action items in in a little bit and so those are two separate things but understanding that sr3 will be able to help pay for that ela 7-9 curriculum adoption again one time at a 1.6 million dollars update the curriculum for improved alignment to arizona standards barbara anything on that so our 7-9 curriculum right now springboard was adopted in 2011 so we're 10 years already old in regard to that the other thing is it allows us to look at a 712 so as we're going out for a call for resources we're looking at a 7-12 we think that that would be better too as students are engaging in junior high work than as they're moving to the new curriculum it's a similar curriculum as they get to the 10th 11th and 12th grade next is the psat administration for 10th graders this is for a two-year time frame three hundred thousand dollars uh it will increase the access to all students assisting with high school class choices in college opportunities and so this is something we've been doing for a while but we want to continue with it and we want to give make sure our 10th graders have that opportunity as a precursor for them going to college now is that this is the one where we just have those kids on campus and they take the test right is it more of a saturday item so act we've been doing when the kids are on campus and we usually have a late start for our individual our teachers our students that take that psat has been one where our students pay and then often they're coming on a saturday and so this allows october 26 will be our administration date and so any of our students who wanted it and have already paid we've refunded them that money because we want to provide access to every single student regardless of their ability to pay okay that's great thank you and then juniors can pay for it and take it again as well so why why are we only doing i guess we get we do the act for juniors in the spring right because the time when it actually matters and results in monetary opportunities and different things is for juniors they don't look at the sophomore so what is our reasoning that way so we already know that we're engaging in the act because that's one of our menu of assessments that we are doing so this provides opportunity for us to get data early in the fall of their sophomore year so that we can even help to guide their to their choice of classes and other coursework so that perhaps they'd be even more ready when they're as a junior and wanting to take it so how do we intend to guide it i like the idea i'm just wondering like how is that actually going to happen when will when will my kids see that because we probably won't get the when will we get the um the scores back in the fall in the spring we'll get them early in if because we're doing the fall administration we will get them in time for them to register for the courses that they need in this in spring registration for the following school year so will our counselors will be actively looking at it and really guiding and helping rather than right i would like that i don't know that i've i don't know if that's been happening it hasn't so i would really like to see that and encourage that there's been um conversations with administrators with testing coordinators with counselors and and looking so there's a lot of okay which i know they need they need feedback in order to actually go through that so i'm not i hope we're setting up a like you're saying a multi-level process that would actually use the data from this right because kids might not even know right or we might see the potential in a student and so that's what as adults that's what we're trying to do is help guide them and encourage them and let them know that they can be successful and we have data right there to show them that they can okay thanks what are some of the items that give what is some of the data that we receive from psat that can help guide those class choices so the psat will provide us information in guiding students for advanced coursework um to be able to see that it will also help to identify if there are like khan academy or other kinds of resources that they can utilize to get themselves prepared for some of that advanced coursework too okay and it's i mean i know act is like math and language arts what about psat it's been a while since somebody in my family took a psat so is it the same math and similar okay similar there are some other pieces to it but it's very similar in regard and because it's a national assessment it provides us data that is outside even of within our state okay i think too another piece that seldom is ever spoken to and that is just familiarity with a format any student who has seen something more than once is more likely to be a little more comfortable with it and so just the exposure to the instrument and working through that gives our students a bit of an advantage that way scholarship opportunities come their junior year so this is what will help prepare them um yes absolutely national merit scholarship which and those things will come their junior year yes one last thing too i guess i hope we'll also use it to look at one of the other um data points and and things that we can see are we as freshman teachers as you know as eighth grade freshman teachers are we filling in cracks or do we need to change maybe what we're doing so that they actually are prepared for that right absolutely and because of the menu of assessments and we're no longer doing end of course assessments at the state level then this provides us absolutely the data in fall or in fall yeah of their um sophomore year to help guide some of the coursework as we move along absolutely thank you i think that's a big piece of it too lori i i really do if we see a large area that everybody seems to be lacking in then we have to address it next elementary ke through six student devices this is a three-year process at 2.9 million dollars beginning the uh elementary refresh advice is recalled that the one-to-one initiative was for seven through twelve and so this will help bring about some change at the elementary level for some newer equipment for elementary students what will we do with the you know at present we've been rolling down those devices to elementary school what will we do with those devices if we're not needing them in the elementary school they they've they've lived their life they're done their lifespan would probably be done we'll we'll we'll give back to what we can in terms of what we're allowed to as a school district in terms of what we can sell and and uh or donate but um their life expectancy isn't a long time and so i think we've come to the end of that okay dr mccord yeah they're phones with them you know will will that case six piece get us closer to the one-to-one uh accessibility for the elementary it will um we'll be able to provide many more than what we have in the past for our elementary but as you know as numbers ebb and flow we'll be able to utilize some of the ones that actually still come down from the 712 as a refresh but i think we'll be able to to get as close to one to one as possible we'll get a little closer all right uh instructional coach for mesquite high this is a three year hundred thousand dollars um provide planning support preparation for possible title one designation uh barbara you want to talk to that one sure currently um we do not have or we have not made the decision ever to designate a high school as a title one school lease have the opportunity and they have the ability to make decisions about how the title one funds would be used so it's always historically in gilbert bin elementary just recently we have added on mesquite junior high so we have students that have received additional support throughout their k-8 and then we want to be sure that we're providing that for students and for teachers as well so by providing an instructional coach it provides extra support for teachers as they're making plans for what their instructional decisions will be and how they would utilize their data the coach will be able to do that for them so that then we can make the decision about do we want to move forward with a title one designation for the high school or not we're not sure yet but it does take the planning and the process to do that so that's why we want to utilize that also as you remember our strategic operating plan for this year was to be that we are going to add on secondary coaches um seven through 12 and we were not able to do so so that has already been moved to next year so um this is something that we know is important we want to get through that process so that we can then make full-time coach decisions for our elementary so this is just one step for a particular school because our their students and their teachers have been receiving support to help the kids along the way we just want to make sure that we don't just stop at eighth grade and we provide that for nine through twelfth yes yes based on free and reduced lunches we've been given free lunches anyway right so i assume that we have some method encouraging our families to continue with the applications you know that's it it's an advantage anyways to always of course we want the free food for everybody right now but then that sometimes people don't see the need to provide or submit the applications and you're right high school is one of the harder ones to provide because students don't necessarily have their parents spell an application for lunch or otherwise so there will be a need to push definitely for that so that we can do that well i think one of the things i like about this is that um an instructional coach is really giving professional development to the teacher in the classroom and helping them um you know better able to teach their lesson and giving them new methods to use and i think that's really exciting i know it's really helped in the elementary schools and i think this is really um i look forward to what this will do for mesquite high school and helping kids that's really important thank you next is k-12 science resources up to two years at 650 000 this increases the hands-on learning and provide supplemental resources kits and consumables consistent with the science standards that is something that again is ongoing in gilbert public schools but this will help us enhance us as well as bring about making sure that there are resources for those as we move forward and then enrollment and extended campus administrator up to three years that's at 120 000 uh add enrollment push to already existing specialist position and increase uh to administrator salary organize and complete strategic outreach to families who have not returned to gps not graduated etc extend extended credit recovery programs also to be developed at each of our high schools accounts for pay and benefit increases going into the fiscal year and then the overflow cost associated with the 712 on-demand tutoring this is going back to the other slide this is the four hundred thousand dollars that will address learning loss related to the um online tutoring as well and that ladies and gentlemen is that are there any further questions as we move forward so let me help you uh our application has been submitted it has been accepted but not approved yet don't know what the timeline is on that hopefully it'll come sooner rather than later and and if there's an issue with our application of any sort and that's always a possibility we'll go back and revise it the way they request it to be but hopefully we'll get this process done as soon as possible well i just want to say i think there's lots and lots of good things in there that will really benefit our kids and i really appreciate the the hard work and the input that's been given by you know quite a few people on this so it's exciting i do thank you guys board members anything else seeing that there is no additional comment or question then we will go to item 3 and adjourn this work study session item 3.01 we will stand adjourned on the work study we'll move to our brief board business meeting again just repeating that it's tuesday september 14th and we are opening a brief board business meeting calling this portion of our agenda to order miss wilson would you please call the roll dr charles santa cruz here miss laurie wood here michela eugetti here miss jill humphreys here mr bill parker here mr president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you miss wilson we'll move to item well actually before we move to item five i would like to attach and request a motion to approve the agenda so moved thank you miss humphries second thank you mrs eugetti is there any discussion seeing no discussion will vote on approving tonight's agenda all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those oppose the same motion carries five zero we're at item five consent agenda items and we are open for emotion i move that we approve the consent agenda items as presented so thank you mrs humphries thank you mr parker dr santa cruz can can i just ask a question i don't want to pull anything i just have a question to ask about sure the 506 507 and 508 that has to do with the shortages of food correct that is correct and so that's our ability to do an emergency procurement so we can make sure that our students have food there is an issue with the supply chain related food not just for gilbert public schools but nationwide and so this will help us not solve the problem but help us get through it a little bit easier thank you thank you for bringing that to our attention mr jetty that does provide food services opportunity to look for alternate sources and secure some appropriate alternates any additional discussion seeing there's no additional discussion will vote on the consent agenda items all those in favor of the motion to approve the consent agenda item as presented please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero we're item six item six point 6.01 and action items dr mccord i'll defer to you thank you dr santa cruz on item 6.01 we recommend the ongoing hourly wage increase for all current hourly staff members and a one-time salary supplemental increase for all current exempt staff in order to maintain competitiveness for the district's hourly wage earners and retain existing hourly staff it has recommended the governing board approve an increase of a dollar fifty an hour for all current hourly employees in addition in order to attract new personnel but minimize wage co compression associated with beginning hourly wages a 70 cent per hour inflationary increase is recommended to the base rates for all hourly support staff positions in order to offset the impact of inflation is recommended that all exempt positions receive a dollar one-time supplemental pay prorated by full-time equivalency for the 2021-22 school year these increases and supplements will be effective uh september 19 2021.

call please and brown is here this is galbert here dr hall here mr sawalis here mrs walters here vice president rule here president albrecht here please rise and join me with the pledge allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and roop would you please recite our mission statement sure it's to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future thank you okay first tonight we have the public hearing on the 2021 22 2022 tennessee budget can i have a motion to open the public hearing for the 2021 2022 tentative budget moved okay second all right okay one second by root roll call brown is an eye dr hall all right mr swallows hi mrs galbraith hi mrs walters aye vice president rupert aye president albrecht aye motion carries and with that i'll turn it over to ken cerma thank you president albrecht good evening board good evening dr cara and good evening to the public this is our public hearing on the 2021-22 tentative budget that we are mandated to have by law so i'm going to review this with you i will tell the public that we have published this online it isn't part of board book it is also published on our website so um i won't be presenting because i've given the board hard copies and again online you can follow it um if you wish to do so and that um as i take the board through this if you have some questions any questions please feel free to ask as i go through it um it is uh pretty familiar with what we presented before i will share with the board that in the last budget that i shared with you back in august none of these figures have changed they're all the same figures everything is really the same nothing has changed but i will kind of walk you through that so let me go to page two you will see on page two both an introduction and a budget development just to let the board know and the public know that we have met all the statutory requirements uh for the budget including the public location of putting that in the newspaper uh publishing on our website having it available for the public to come in and view we've done all of that the budget itself needs to be approved by the board of education by the 30th of this month i am going to be recommending to the board that that budget be approved at the regular meeting on the 21st which is a week from today you will also see that there's some budget development information there of how the budget was developed using different methods of budgeting you'll see all of that we have utilized those methods in developing the budget on page three you will also see some terms and some definitions that i have included normally within the budget just so everyone has kind of the same understanding of what certain terms mean so those are all listed there and i'm going to direct your attention to page four so this is a little different format that i know you've seen in the past but it aligns also with our financial statements now and so what uh i've begun using along with brian johnson our assistant business managers we're utilizing forecast five to put all of our information in that's what kind of brings out all of our financial uh statements and reports and so now all of our budget information is in there too so that's where these reports are generated from so on page 4 you're looking at both the historical summary and the tentative budget and i'm just going to kind of walk you through this so you can see this and this is for all funds and you'll see that at the top of the page you'll see the funds listed the third line down you'll see all funds historical summary so the green column is the final numbers from our afr or annual financial report audited financial report so those are all there those are listed then you'll see the blue column which is the annual financial report from fiscal year 2020 which is the 1920 year and you'll see that in about the middle of the page you'll see a line that says surplus deficit and so for fiscal year 2019 for all funds there was a deficit of 3.3 million for fiscal year 20 there was a surplus of 40 000 are amended when it says amended there that's our amended budget but that aligns with what we have as our ledgers right now is a surplus of 1.8 million dollars from last year in all funds and you you will also see the tentative budget that we are i am presenting tonight has a deficit of three million 75 forty four thousand dollars now that aligns with the number that i shared before i'm gonna be going in a little bit more detail to that to tell you where that is and what what's that all about but again that's all funds um and that now the one difficult thing i will share uh with the board is the fact that when you look at the afr numbers the green and the blue column those are based on a modified accrual system and the numbers that are the amended fiscal year 21 column kind of the beige column is a cash basis so those numbers will change a little bit based on what the auditor does and when they do their modified accrual system but for the most part you'll see that surplus of 1.8 million dollars most of that is coming from the transportation the lack of having transportation during the 21 school year at least for 50 percent of the year half of the year and then the second then the next page page five is a breakdown of the revenue analysis when you look at all funds and where our revenue is coming from so you'll see that i'll just kind of give you a minute to kind of look through that but you'll see again the columns are all the same the columns were made the same the tentative budget is the yellow column there that you'll see but just kind of see the breakdown of our property taxes other local sources evidence-based funding which is our state aid along with other state revenue and federal revenue so you'll see where all of our money is coming from hey ken real quick on page four yes when they do our audit at the end of the year they're going to show our fund balance in numbers it's 7.3 which will be good when they do the financial profile yes so that bottom let me let me just pick up on that so that bottom line there you'll see is the fund balance number of months of expenditures that we have so what mr walsh is referring to is that for right now for fiscal year 2021 we have 7.3 million dollars 7.3 months of expenditures in the bank right now for our fund down so now in the tentative budget you have 5.6 right so at the end of the year when everything's cleaned up at the end of 2022 that number could come up that number because because when they go to do their audit the idea is to have six yes that would be ideal to help perform that's going to be the goal yes okay all right now the thing that you also have to remember is now and again let's let's turn if you can turn to page seven if you would please instead of let's go and we're going to kind of compare if you want to rip that apart we're going to compare page 4 and page 7.

i've included that table that we talked about in our last meeting concerning the impact of transportation on our budget and so the money that we get in this year on our claim is based on last year's expenditures so since last year's expenditures were less we're going to get less money in and that's where we have that operating deficit of 566 000. so is it fair to say absent the timing for buses were effectively balancing this year's budget yes and you will strive very hard to get that 566 to zero by the end of the year i will try very hard to do that that's the goal yes okay so as we're talking about goals let's look at i can share on page 10 some of our business department goals business and operation department goals um you will see that our plan as always is to complete the fiscal audit by december 15 2021.

you're good okay all right good evening everyone i will call this meeting of the pellet school committee to order at 6 30 and we'll start with roll call attendance ron ron here brenda barlow present and hall present okay i am a little rusty and we're using a new system so bear with me i'm going to do my best tonight first up we will approve the minutes um sarah best was on the ball and pointed out that the july first minutes they have the right date but the actual content of the minutes is not correct so i let sasha know so when we get those tracked down we can do that those at the next meeting so the only ones um that are ready to be approved tonight are those from june 22nd so any questions comments edits to those going once okay um all right i well i'll make a motion so i move to approve the minutes of june 22nd 2021 is there a second second all right thank you brenda um okay we'll do a roll call vote uh run menino why margaret stands her eye sarah best kenny i brenda farlow i and hall i um okay next up is public comment and i will remember how to share my screen sorry i'm getting a message um okay i'm gonna try this yes okay um i'm gonna make this this is probably really small right can people see this if there is a way to zoom in a little bit i can see it but i think if someone was was viewing from a different device they might have a harder time okay um i think it's um in the yep there you go okay thank you yeah that's perfect that's better okay all right so this is what i emailed to folks earlier and for those watching um there this is also posted on the board doc site okay it was just that one and you know as i was going through this again i just realized it does reference some charts i will send those separately and i can post them to the board doc site um so it there wouldn't have been enough time to go through this in three minutes but i can send you the charts referenced um okay next up is superintendents update sure uh i'll be very brief um kind of try to promote a brief meeting tonight thinking that yom kippur starts in in not that long so uh both for myself but also for viewers um so i think i'll just uh want to acknowledge mickey darling who's here and justin artesia is not who have taken on the additional responsibility of being leaders in the building during a pandemic so uh you know really really appreciate them and their love of pelham is what brought them to do that and uh you know i think it's been really important that for the palm community that they have known uh good people leaving the school so i just want to start by acknowledging that um you know they're being supported uh with mentorship and both from you know people in the district but also outside the district because we want to give both mickey and jess the tools to be successful this year uh in their roles so uh share deep appreciation for them stepping in uh at uncertain times uh and things keep on changing uh i've been a pelham i think three times since the school year started i believe that's right you know do appreciate all the time that students are spending outside a really creative idea to put some of the cafeteria tables under the 10 and i saw those used when i was there last week this week last week one of those two um really well and you know really appreciate that focus on outdoor education that certainly was involved last spring uh and we're seeing continued in the fall it's also nice having all the students back you know pelham was pretty high in terms of uh in-person instruction last spring but um we're even higher now so really uh all that work has been critical we've welcomed a tremendous number of new students not just the kindergartners but a lot of new school choice students as well as students who moved into pelham uh who have joined our school this year so that's been really nice to see and kudos to the staff for trying to balance all the things and i think you know maybe one one note on that is just um making sure that we're acknowledging all the staff in different ways um because it's not easy to do what they're doing right now one staff member were able to honor yesterday as i was able to come up to pelham and for all the nurses and all the districts that i served we had flowers and chocolate that we brought because the nurses are really carrying so much of the stress and anxiety of everybody of this of the staff of families of students um and that's not an easy role to be in so you know i just really wanted to note that and you know we put it on our social media and i don't think we've ever had a facebook post with more likes and shares um and all the time i've been here than that acknowledgement of the the nursing staff so for nurse katie we really do appreciate all the work she's doing um we have unfortunately had two cases this week um positive cases at pelham school that'll be reported on the public dashboard from destie um tomorrow the second case may have actually missed the timeline the deadline of getting that i checked with davis moreland on that um this is sadly consistent with other schools in our area you know neighboring district i've talked to their superintendent today she told me that they have had three cases so far this year in a similarly small school um you know and and that's a real challenge you know our mitigation measures uh it's why we reinforce those mitigation measures and charlie and i talked a lot today actually um about just kind of reminding folks of those measures because i think you know to be blunt as adults have gotten vaccinated it's gotten a little easier to relax those measures if you looked at the public data today from massachusetts there's 2 700 new cases which is the the most in a very very long time and you know fortunately the cases we've had in the district for the most part the districts have been relatively mild in terms of symptoms um but you know we want to reduce the cases we can and i'll be putting out a message on friday and the daily uh in the weekly update really encouraging folks of any vaccination status to limit their time in indoor spaces that are unmasked um what we're finding more generally not because of compelling is a lot of the cases when the contract tracer does their work uh both us as well as neighboring districts and across the state it comes from social settings inside and i don't mean like umass parties like that's not what i'm experiencing our staff our students being connected to our parents being connected to it's much more like oh my you know aunt came over we were all vaccinated so we decided to you could fill in the blank and and you know so it's not that people are engaging in poor behavior but i think the delta variant is forcing us to really rethink a lot of what you know felt safe in the spring for vaccinated folks and maybe the summer and uh and think a little bit differently about that so that's really where we are um uh oh the last thing i'll mention and ms darling may also touch on this is we do have an open house date uh we are planning to do that virtually for some of the reasons i just mentioned and we'll do it as opposed to last year we'll do it in a synchronous way so that people are able to interact and there's two-way communication between the teachers and staff members before we transition to the principles update i don't know if there was any questions for me yeah wrong good what is the current enrollment of the pelham school the current enrollment ms darling i think will be closer to than me so i think that's a unless or other question it's a perfect segue ron we planted you to ask that question thank you so much uh to transition to ms darling with the principals update go ahead mickey okay so um the current enrollment is 117 kiddos there are 53 percent pelham residents and 47 school choice which is about what um miss lee presented as a possibility for this year um we did get some more school choice right at the last minute so that was excluding um in kindergarten um as far as updates um so the i'll start with the kindergarten which was super fun the kindergarten screening we had outdoors all the teachers were in different spots mr laurie had the great idea of what's having the kindergarten olympics so we had t-shirts made by miss katherine we had masks made by miss leanne that all had olympic themes and the kids got medals at each teacher station where they did their kindergarten screening and it was a huge success um the parents seemed really happy we got to interact with the parents as well and everything was outside and the kindergarteners look super happy uh i've been in there a bunch it's really fun for me to be in the kindergarten because i've been in third and fourth and fifth grade for a long time so um they're really adorable and green trouble opening their milks and lunches and it's really fun to go in there and help um we have incorporated some of what ms lee brought last year with the morning announcements having the kids do the mornings announcements and they're loving it we've got mantra monday tricky tuesday with the riddle word of the day wednesday thankful thursday and um fun friday with a joke so they've really been enjoying the students have really been enjoying doing that um as mike mentioned most of our eating is outside of tables out there under the tent and then teachers have brought tarps and students have brought tables and each class has a different spot that they eat their lunch or their snack um and if if we have to eat inside we ask that kids kind of pull up their mask while they're chewing as much as possible and i think the kids have been doing a really great job with that i walk around and all the classroom all the kids have their masks on and that's really you know no one's complaining which is great the kids are really rising to the occasion um and it and it feels it's not normal but it feels sort of normal to have all the kids back in there they seem happy and knock on wood i haven't had a lot of like you know calls for unhappy kids so um the kids do seem really happy i'm gonna knock on wood um we are planning miss giselle and i are planning the latin heritage month reading for september 29th and we're having some latino heritage adults virtually or outside join us to read a book to the students so we're excited for our first annual event of that um we have a all school read aloud with the latino heritage theme and um so that's kind of the overview of the students the staff at our professional days we engaged in looking at our mission statement and really deciding whether or not it covers what we do at pelham and who we are and we decided we needed to change it we are much more focused as a staff just by our personalities on students mental health their social emotional social emotional learning and um equity so we're in the process of really tweaking that and making it our own to reflect what we're doing um we have a lot of new staff members that have joined us we have brene jackson our new executive assistant um she's here for the year as an interim secretary we have deandre henson who is our part-time counselor to fill the position because jess nardisi is doing part-time assistant principal of work and everybody has loved deandre he's been a great addition to our school and we have a new ot um chavez peters white we have a new psychologist peter um peter shea and we have a counseling intern abigail and i'm i'm didn't figure out how to pronounce this tartaran who's been working with jess as a interim i mean as a intern so that's really exciting we have a lot of people to support the mental health of our students which was a huge focus and it will be our our main focus this year because of covid we also have uh bright which is also working with the district to help out with trauma-informed teaching so we are looking forward to working with bright as far as families the back to school picnic was was a huge success lots of families came everyone looked really happy to see each other they were running around and the school bus pulled up with frozen treats for everyone which was really fun instead of ice cream truck it was ice cream school bus we have a trunk or treat scheduled um for in october i can't remember the exact date and um we're gonna have that outdoors we're not gonna be serving any food we will allow families to pass out candy but we're going to try and keep it as safe as possible and have everyone masked but that's a fan favorite so we want to keep that and i'm happy to say that the before and after school programs are up and running which is a very nice um you know addition to this year we didn't have them last year it's a huge equity piece that we're glad to bring back to pelham and almost i think over 50 students are enrolled in the after school program which the awesome ashley fuller is running and um it's just it they look happy they're outside most of the time and um yeah the kids love going there we might have 117 kids going there soon it's such a fan favorite so that is my update and any questions all right thank you so much mickey any any questions or comments for mickey all right thank you i mean i would just say you know from the parent perspective the return to school has been remarkably easy and seamless everything from like bus pickup to through the end of the day so i know it takes for for things to seem seamless like that it takes an enormous amount of work did i just share my screen accidentally um so thank you for all for everything you and everyone on the staff is doing to make that happen that's huge um okay next up is the sr3 presentation and there were some documents on board docs for folks to refer to so mike i'll go back to you on this one yep and i'll try to brief briefly do an overview and then i'll display the document that had the specific planned uses so we did a number of engagements including one specifically for pelham families that was not inclusive of the rest of the schools in the district because pelham is different um so that was a request that came in and mr ws moreland was able to accommodate it um and we summer she summarized the feedback uh and a four-page document i won't display but it was you know on the onboard docs on the public site um but i would i would like to display and go over um see if i can make that bigger i know i can um is what we plan to spend it on this year um so i just i'm gonna do the highlights some of the smaller ones i probably won't focus as much on the smaller dollar amounts but in general this would still leave a healthy balance for the next two years because we do have this these funds for three years we do have some of the sr2 funds the grant and it's noted at the top um remaining sr2 and sr3 but we know that needs will change obviously we're finding out that we're not done with covid by any stretch of the imagination um hopefully with the five to 11 year old vaccine on pace to get um approved sometime later this fall from what dr fauci and cdc director and fda directors have said hopefully that will help us in terms of some safety measures but the reality is right now than teachers being vaccinated we're still seeing high levels of spread within massachusetts and particularly in western massachusetts much more than eastern mass right now so going down the list we do have a certified nurse's assistant so we do have a medical waiting room that is staffed so if students or staff members display symptoms that are consistent with potential cove symptoms they have a place to go outside [Music] where students would be and staff would be typically located before they're picked up or leave the building i want to note that our cnas and pelham as well as all of our schools are incredibly helpful throughout the school day this is not certainly not the only thing they do and it's been a really valuable resource for us uh within pelham school to have the extra pair of hands when i was there last time i think the person was working in kindergarten helping out you know some of our youngest students and um they're not you know it's a medical waiting room that they go to when they're called to be there but um they're just they've been a great resource for us uh we are um there's a number of things on here that um are shared between the amber school so economy at scale means they end up being pretty small in pelham but around health and safety um so um when we talk about um you know individual desks because we're not using tables right now uh sanitizing supplies there are mind apps so just ways to communicate with families we are supporting staff you know beyond our employee assistant program because we know how challenging as i mentioned earlier this is but staff uh we have added some receptionist central office so that's a small portion as a small part of that's a portion to pelham uh we have added some aids power in the process right now of adding some hvac staffing because we know that ventilation is so critical for us here um you can see there's a large purchase a large amount for outdoor seating so we ordered a large number of tents last monday uh they will be here making i think is finding this out live but that's okay i think a week from today uh they'll be arriving but they're they're not the big tent because that involves lots of approvals and uh these are relatively small either 10 by 10 or 12x10 1210s i cannot remember which one we went with but they're they're available for small group and it really expands some of our outdoor use and because they are smaller uh we can be a little more flexible with where they go to make sure we're not taking up too much space in the field or where kids play which is going to be a really large advantage so those will be here soon and also looking at benches and other things that ms darling is working with our facilities department and our finance department on and then also just some early literacy and math curriculum that we know that students had a very very different experience last year and so we were working with a number of different tools much like the amherst elementary schools to support students along the academic dimension so that's sort of the plan as it is i think the thing i said in the other two districts is we we expect this to be a plan that's revisited probably a couple times a year both by the committee and the community because we know needs will evolve and we want to make sure that we are aware of that one thing we're looking into and um was talking today just just right before this meeting actually was adding some contact tracer support that's specific to the district um so we do rely on our nurses as well as in many cases we get supported by the the lead nurse for the district robin supernod and the amherst health department even though it's pelham they help us out uh when we call them but you know i think with the number of cases rising we're recognizing how stressful that is for our nursing staff uh so you know that may be an additional cost or a small additional cost and there may be other things that miss darling mr desi and other staff members at pelham notice throughout the year that we want to make sure we're supporting so this is not a fixed list this is our plan for where we are right now uh what we believe will need in the future um so that's a kind of broad summary of the spending plan for year one but i want to stop and see if this question is from the committee mike would you mind not sharing anymore just oh yeah sorry about that no that's okay i'll do that right now okay um questions for mike i have a i have a couple so well and first of all actually i do just want to thank debbie for adding on a pelham specific one that was a request that came through me and at the last minute she added that and so the requester was grateful and it was i think it was a good opportunity to have a pelvic specific one so i think in her in the write-up she had hosted i think seven separate sessions um which is a lot of sessions so i appreciate that work um so i know i understand that this is a dynamic list and it will change and the guidance from desi was to like to spread it out right was that the initially what they had said so what is the i guess mechanically i mean when are the funds out the door is this like is the district spending money and then it's reimbursed with these funds or these funds that we have in hand now yeah so that's a great question so this is actually funds we have in hand now so it's not the fema reimbursement okay we're still female reimbursement continues um so even the contract tracer that i mentioned before when i was working with doug on this this afternoon that may end up just being a fema reimbursement so we may have to fund the funds but these have these funds like when when principal darling you know says i want pence there's a budget line attached that the money's here from the grant and we can spend so we're not in the reimbursement place that we were beginning of uh the pandemic where fema was reimbursing we had to pay money upfront and then you know frankly we got a number of things rejected up front and then when the president changed this isn't a political comment it's just factual that the rules change and what could be reimbursed and we ended up with across our three districts many hundreds of thousands of dollars of reimbursed funds that we weren't banking on um so when we get to fourth quarter budget uh which we'll do at our next meeting in october you'll see that the fiscal year ended in a remarkably strong place in pelham and there's multiple reasons but one is the reimbursements that happened either right at the end directly after the fiscal year ended but we still get the money and it's still attributed to the fiscal year that already ended so it ends up being a sort of strange fiscal phenomenon of getting money reimbursed after a fiscal year ends but you have to apply it to that fiscal year that's already over so we'll get into the weeds on that next month but um that's uh you know uh we still have access to that but this is really cash in hand okay so as long as the district is within the box what's allowed within that it's entirely discretionary correct and we we did apply for with these themes in mind since some of you may have met um which i'm not sure that was an amber specific meeting i believe she came to our grants manager um she does all the leg work on applying for the grant because even though the money's in hand you do have to apply not on each individual point with broad themes uh consistent with the deci guidance and and that was approved so at this point we're in pretty good shape they will audit us and make sure that we spent it in the way that we intended but um the the birth is the the birth is pretty wide uh on a lot of these items so you know we don't have to worry so much about whether things will be reimbursed or whether they'll be funded you know we feel pretty good about that okay and then in terms of i mean obviously there's not enough money to fund everything that everyone you know teachers administrators families want to fund and so once all of the feedback was in there was just it was it like some triage work to be like what's absolutely necessary and was there work was it also like what's directly related to covid stuff too it is we the orientation is on those two dimensions exactly again you're all like plants tonight you're doing a lot of the work for me so i appreciate it but really that's it is it you know do we need to do it and is it related to copenhagen enough where it's justifiable you know and okay the other thing to note is that over time if the tide hopefully turns and we're not having the same challenges with covet spread uh statewide or hopefully beyond statewide when we get to year two and three that's where we have a little more discretionary ability to to uh using existing funds and maybe ways that would be more connected some of the direct feedback that we thought was great ideas but we couldn't necessarily prioritize them when we're comparing against health and safety items got it okay yeah and part of that i have received some communications from a group of parents and teachers at pelham trying to raise some money for a new playground and figure that stuff out and that was one of the suggestions which understandably is not going to be quite as urgent as some of these like other hvac or you know nursing items right and there also is the community preservation act process that oftentimes playgrounds get funded through it's a different funding source from the from municipalities that many municipalities utilize that when they're looking for playground improvements um and it's not coming from the school's budget um or the typical capital budget and i don't want to do a whole thing on community i'm actually doug's going to be here next time and that might be a very reasonable topic for him to go over i know in one of my other districts we are looking to apply for community preservation act funds to support renovation or improvement of playground spaces and that may be something the school committee wants to take a look at okay all right thank you sorry i just asked a lot of questions in a row any other questions from other committee members okay great all right well thank you for that um okay next up is vaccine mandates yeah so i want to just keep the pelham committee abreast these are these are all regional items um so certainly uh margaret or sarah bess can jump in if you'd prefer or i can just try to roll through where we are but just i'm trying to keep the other the full committees uh abreast of the conversations of the region guessing that silence means that people are comfortable with me rolling i will continue keep your mic on just go yeah so a week from um tomorrow night there's a regional school committee meeting um there'll be two items on the agenda one is um was discussed actually both were discussed last week at the regional meeting one is amanda a potential vaccine mandate for staff and so that is an item that may actually get voted by the school committee next thursday uh be or at least up for a vote um next thursday i want to note that pelham school we have uh surveyed staff and over 90 of pelham school staff is fully vaccinated um and that number will go slightly up uh very shortly actually with people who are you know going through their second shots and they're waiting two weeks after the second shot so uh you know i think you know just bluntly i think the impact on pelham is relatively low um and i think we have the data to support that if you look at a lot of public employers who have put vaccine mandates they're not much different they're no different than where pelham is because there are religious and um health exemptions or medical exemptions so pelham's in really good shape with that um i'm not trying to sway votes either way from her sarah best by any stretch but i think it's important to note that if we were home school was at 50 vaccination rate i might feel really differently about in potential impact either way as it is i think there there's little to no impact for me um and so um that's where we are with the staff vaccine potential mandate and before i go on i see a hand up so maybe i'll pause yeah ron go ahead uh when do we as a committee discuss the mandate for the school of pelham so that when i we could stop now or i could talk about the student one but this is an opportunity for you to do exactly that's one of the reasons on the agenda tonight is that sarah besson excuse me ms canyon we're going to be informal tonight sarah bess and margaret will hear any feedback from the rest of the committee and bring it back to the region next week well when it comes to the vote i support a mandate that's it yeah i mean i i can't say it any better i strongly support a vaccine mandate i also strongly support a vaccine mandate and there you go you got the feedback from the non-regional members of pelham process works right um and you know and i think what i you know miss cunningham and i were on the phone this afternoon with um our the attorney the counsel for the district and you know we are trying to figure out how to do the legal exemptions and do them with fidelity because there are people with legitimate reasons for exemptions and one of the things that's worth noting is for people who are not fully vaccinated now we've asked them s is not probably the right verb uh we've mandated that they wear can 95 masks when they're in the school and that when they're eating or have their masks off in the school that they'd be 10 feet away from anybody else so i do feel like we have the health and safety measures for staff members who eventually will not get you know we'll have reasons to receive exemptions that keeps themselves and other people safe and i think it's just an important note that um no one's at a hundred percent right um those exemptions are there for a reason um i talked to one such staff member in one of my districts i won't be as specific to mention which one uh confidentiality this person uh would love to get vaccinated feels really uh unsafe that they're not vaccinated and yet medically would have to i won't go into details out of confidentiality medically it's very very difficult for this person to get vaccinated um and um you know is really unhappy about the current situation and we want to respect an honor that um for some folks this isn't a possibility and therefore we're putting in place you know controls uh and supports to keep themselves safe as well as everybody around them so i think it's important to note the mandate it's also important to note that there is no 100 or that i haven't seen a public employer get to 100 because of exemptions that are legally required um and we want to make sure we're also supporting the health of everybody that ways too sorry can i ask one in terms of how like the definition of staff so it would be all teachers and para educators all administrators in a school like is it how far out does it go like what a contractor who comes into the school for some reason for a role but they need to also so we had a lot of conversation about that these topics at the last regional meeting the draft policy would say anyone who works in our building school buildings inside the school buildings we did try to work out something exempting some contractors because there was a feeling like if someone a contractor is coming in to fix a ventilation problem for instance and they themselves aren't vaccinated what's how is that keeping anyone safe if they're not interacting around staff or students um yeah and then sorry i meant more like someone on a contact contract basis who was working with children oh yes yeah not yet so okay yeah i mean we had a we had an outside contractor not working with kids but working in around the building conversation with the region my apologies okay all right thank you any other questions on that one brenda just want to check in about bus drivers so uh that's a complicated conversation we also had at the regional level um [Music] we have some bus drivers who work for our district and they both are bus drivers as well as work in the schools on doing facilities maintenance work throughout the day and uh we also have contracted bus drivers who never come in contact with or never come into our buildings so there's two different sets of bus drivers that we have that work for the district the buses in general and we're reminding our contractors of that um as well as our own are almost pretty good but with the windows open it's estimated that the air change rate and this is from joseph allen at harvard is between 25 and 40.

12 and i think it is a topic that we will have to discuss it's a really strange um governance challenge because while the regional schools are located in the town of amherst obviously pelham school is not uh and the pelham board of health has not weighed in on this question so it puts us in a sort of logistical uh governance log jam which we're all familiar with working in the multiple districts that we have here i think the the difference with this one is it's i've never done anything where i got two calls from different globe reporters and a call from the boston herald reporter on the same day so the exposure and uh interest in this and it got picked up by the associated press with my tweet i'm so unpopular on social media and my tweet was in associated presses bizarre moment all i did was literally tweet out what the voter health voted just to clarify because i was getting a lot of questions as to what happened at this meeting and it was i did not express an opinion in the tweet but it became very popular so i think there is a lot of attention and focus on this so i do probably think that uh as the regional committee sorts out its timeline it may be worth it a few people meeting the palm school committee you know perhaps having a formal check-in with the pillar board of health to see where they sit on this question um you know los angeles for instance uh approved uh voted last week to approve the vaccine for 12 plus which is different than what the amherst border health did puerto rico has had this approved since july for 12 plus they have the highest 12 to 18 vaccination rate in the country as a result um so i think it's it's it's certainly a hot button issue for many people it's nothing that the pelham school committee i think thankfully has to manage at the moment or the fellow board of health but i i think we may get a month from now and we may be in different territory based on how quickly the fda completes its full review of the 12 to 15 vaccine and whether that receives full fda approval so it's just something to be aware of you know whether pelham chooses to be aligned with the regional schools in the amherst elementary schools is obviously up to the town town pelham and the board of health and you all um but i thought it was important before we get to that place for this committee to hear the full explanation and and how you all are situated in this okay and what was the response in amherst just generally aaron are there i've only gotten positive responses but it also hasn't gone into effect yet so it's uh i mean the reality is in amherst uh 82 percent of our 12th amherst and pelham i'm sorry um they're that is different from lebanon shoots very but in emerson pelham 82 of our 12 to 15 year olds are already fully vaccinated it's a fabulous number way above the state average of 69 yeah there's a big difference between 82 and 90 something right i don't want to minimize that and and what i said at the region got me in a little trouble but i'm going to say again because i think it's actually true is what we're experiencing is not adult in schools more generally not our school but in schools in general we're not seeing much adult to kid spread right we have that you know kind of cdc case study in california that showed it but in general this is out of school spread indoor settings uh where people are people who go to the movies together who are unmasked um and you know at the high school level people who carpool together right the kids are driving that's where we're seeing a lot of close contacts we're not seeing as many close contacts that's adult student and so i do worry more about the student-to-student transmission than adult-to-student transmission because you know when our adults go home at the end of the day they go home at the end of the day when our kids go home at the end of the day they do things together right and that's wonderful we want them to do things together that's not a complete um so so i uh you know my experience last year as well as this year is that the students who student close contact often not in the school setting is is a higher concern to me than the person in front of the room teaching a group of students than going home at the end of the day you know all while mastering the day so it is something i feel strongly about as a concern about student student transmission i think it's going to be a very very long time that's a not a good way to say it i think it's going to be quite a quite a while before the 5 to 11 vaccine once approved for emergency use is fully approved so i do think you know for most of pelham school it's quite a long time before we have to have this conversation it's really about whether helen wants to do anything with 12 year olds uh the sixth graders um in this area um because i do think that is likely to happen relatively soon um not soon where i think any actions are required tonight uh but it may be something that people want to come back to after the region sets its timeline okay that's helpful thank you sorry for a lot of you know it's just something obviously people like ms darling and i think about all the time you know and staff and families think about our time you know and i will say just anecdotally um and then we can drop and move on it's very different at the middle school in high school in terms of the comfort level of staff and comfort level of students people are still really good about following the protocols but when you have environment where more than 80 percent of the people in total are vaccinated there is there is a level of comfort that is not in any of the elementary schools in amsterdam that i see um it's not that things aren't going really well in those schools but it's very very different you know and i think like many of us who are vaccinated i still am very conservative with my personal life and what risks i take i've been inside anywhere in 18 months that was never my thing anyway so that's okay i'm not saying good bad whatever but there's a different comfort level for me personally being vaccinated than there is i wasn't vaccinated and i think that's terrible phrasing but that's contagious right you have an environment where most people are vaccinated and you know you wonder about getting too comfortable but there's there's a level of um kind of uh bringing down some of the intensity uh that that i found to be very different just even convocation felt very different for the secondary elementary staff because they're working in such different environments now where one's working environment where most people are vaccinated adults and kids and and obviously they'll immediately level uh just the adults so sorry for being long-winded but i think it's just it experiencing what i'm experiencing right now is it's um it's always like three districts right but most of the time i don't think about it that way except when i'm with you all and we're going budget or things like that right now i have two really different districts and um i've never experienced anything like this that way so yeah no i think that context is really important right like the the feel the vibe the anxiety that people have and how that impacts the district i think that's actually really important for this community to know about in an unfiltered way so i appreciate that um okay anything else on vaccine mandates before we move on okay uh next up has to do with our meetings and um continuing to do them remotely or moving to in person i we have i believe we have until april 2022 was that the date yes so we could we could be in compliance and continue remotely through april 2022 um with the option of going in person um so i mean for now i guess i'll start by just or mike do you want to tee anything else up yeah i want to share something because i've done a lot of thinking about this at all the districts so here's what i would say i'm not going to weigh in on an opinion other than say i'm fine either way i'm in person in schools every single day it's not something that uh i have particular feelings about the thing i would say is i would really recommend if you want to do in person we use the gym because uh when we have you never know when there's gonna be a lot of people coming for public comment my concern personally is that if we end up in the community room that uh if we ever have lots of people meeting which happens from time to time that both they and we would be distanced we also haven't um you know the gym has been tested for ventilation the ventilation as we talked about last year is particularly good in that space um and i i don't think we'd have enough people at a meeting that couldn't be distanced in the gym you know if we do then we've got a different problem on our hands right um and so um whatever you this group wants to do is 100 fine with me but i think we're going to do in person we really would need the full gym space i know most of the time there'll be very few people here like right now i think there's two or three people watching this virtual meeting um and i know it feels like you know large volume space for that many people but we just you never know you can't predict how many people are going to come and i think from a safety perspective we want to have the most most available space uh for people who came uh from a health and safety perspective yes agreed um all right well so i guess i'd like to give community members a chance to weigh in on how they feel about this margaret um i would be in favor of continuing with our virtual meetings i think they work just fine so that's my opinion okay thank you ron i like the virtual meeting format because it invites community participation more people through the meeting hello yes thank you brenda go ahead i mean i could go either way but until my kids can get vaccinated i like the comfort of being able to you know be virtual although you know i know we can't extend that comfort to everyone so i'm also mindful of that yep sarah best no pressure you do not have to weigh them but i just make sure you can be heard i i don't really have any feelings either way i think uh i guess i would lean slightly more towards virtual just because that's what we decided at the regional level and additionally there's no visitors allowed in the school building right now so just to be have the continuity of that but i'm i'm perfectly comfortable meeting in person if that's at some point what we would like to do okay great yeah i mean i i think i i like ron's point about the public participation for sure as someone who's been gathering public comment um for the past 18 months i've had a dramatic increase in people who have shared public comments since it went remote um and the fact that it's up on the screen and then posted publicly i have received communications from people indicating that like they've gone back and looked at meetings that were posted on youtube to see what the deliberation was on a particular issue and have then shared public comment um so and i i think it does seem like the deliberation that we can have in terms of like quality of discussion doesn't suffer virtually um i miss you guys don't get me wrong it would be great to see everyone in person when i feel safe and people are all vaccinated as their kids are um but yeah i mean i think that the the engagement level does seem really really different and so i would want to stick with virtual for as long as we could and then would want to maybe you know talk about ways that we could encourage the same level of participation even when we're back in person um because i think that part's really important mike just one thing to acknowledge the points that were raised i mean i think what's unique about pelham meetings compared to the amherst in the region since they were referenced by uh other committee members is that they weren't televised right if you wanted to go to tell a meeting it meant you came to the fellow meeting and if you had something else to do than that that night you're reading minutes which melee is awesome we'll have great minutes but it's not the same as watching the deliberation to your point so i think that is a unique aspect and benefit to pelham staying remote is that it does provide more authentic access for the public uh because of the video component yep i agree um so sorry i should know this do we need to vote on this like affirmatively or if i mean it does seem like the consensus is stick with the status quo yeah it doesn't require a formal vote um unless there was real disagreement and i'm not hearing unless i'm hearing the group wrong i think everybody okay really good word okay all right so next month i'll see you all in your home offices and obviously and i guess that the last thing i would say on this to committee members is to the extent that something changes or you feel like this needs to be different tell me and we'll put it back on the agenda and discuss it again um okay possible sixth grade oh sorry brenda go ahead all right just a quick thing when we do go to talk about it maybe in april when it comes up maybe would it be possible for us to consider a way that we could televise it or make it accessible to other parents that i'd hate to lose although that family engagement right i yes i'm gonna let i mean because i don't know but i share i share your interest in that might go ahead and yeah and the way it works with amherst in the region uh which is going to be comparable in pelham is that we have a relationship and a contract actually with the town of amherst hammers community television which is amherst media that requires them to videotape our meetings we don't we support them to videotape it but really really they do the work of doing that and then set up within the high school which some of you have been to the high school library where there's cameras that are built in so it makes it much easier that way we don't have any similar setup in pelham with cameras built in either the gym or the community room so i think it's a good copy to come back to maybe in the winter to see you know what's possible i don't know if there's an interest in the town of pelham some of the other public meetings being televised or you know um because you're not right you're not the only game in town in terms of public boards and pelham that have you know weighty decisions and um so you know i think it is worth coming back to because i know in pelham like i mentioned it is it's particularly valuable to have these videos in the youtube and i can go in and see how many views and you'd be surprised how many views tell them school community meetings that had over and i'm not talking about the joint ones i mean just purely pelham school committee meetings people really do go back and watch um i make no judgement about that i'm just reporting the facts um of what i see so i think there really is a lot of value to your point brenda yeah and i think i mean it maybe it's worth even as a starting point like i'm not sure what the select board is doing now but i mean this might be something that they've thought of and if they're you know we could pull resources across the various boards and committees in pelham so that's yeah i think that's a good idea brenda um okay sixth grade move to the middle school um can we mike do you want to start with an update on where things stand in amherst in the region i'm actually ready to do an update and a recommendation if that's okay to make a recommendation meaning okay let's hear it no no i'll do the update first because the context matters so next tuesday night amherst is having its second forum um and so um the uh around sixth grade to the middle school the three factors that i presented in amherst that are really critical as well as i've shared at the region uh for the amherst elementary schools are one because they have this problem an acute space problem in the amherst elementary schools uh two is that they have a building project is uh there's aspects of it that are contingent on this decision so it is you know i'm encouraging them to make a decision in a very timely manner they're planning to vote on october 5th one way or the other and the third is that there are some educational benefits you know there's a reason why uh most of our com pure institutions both are minority student achievement network schools our peer institutions uh in districts in massachusetts like northampton which we visited but also uh cambridge you know if you look at where we could compare ourselves to or almost all are all eight to five six to eight with the exception of brookline i believe which is um k-8 um it's it's organization and that's what having a two-year middle school is is a real challenge you know adolescents go in and by the time they go in and get comfortable they're already thinking about high school and so i think those are the three reasons that were shared that i shared with the committee there's a public posting of a recommendation i have for that committee because i have a presentation to it we'll see where they go with that recommendation um but i do my recommendation for pelham is given everything that pelham is managing right now in terms of the pandemic um you know fantastic leadership you know team that's coming in but is in an interim role uh and we'll see how what how that develops over time this is not something i would recommend the pelham school committee take up at this time i think if it is the case that amherst chooses to go forward i think waiting to see what the program is and then making the determination of whether pelham would want to join in that would be my recommendation i don't have any sense that levert and shootsberry are going to be engaging in in real discussions about this change anytime soon so it's not like just pelham would be having a k-6 model um i think if we weren't in a pandemic perhaps i'd feel slightly differently but i do feel like there's enough going on in pelham to focus on that we can you know engage in this conversation a year or two from now when we get a real sense of what the deliverables are what the program is um but at the current time i don't think it's um it's gonna take a lot of energy and attention and to me i don't think the benefit right now is there right out of those three elements i mentioned at amherst acute space needs um a building project and then the educational model only one applies to pella and i think there's some benefits and and having a rich discussion about the educational model but what's pushing things in amherst is number one and number two the fact that we don't have cafeterias where kids are eating in music i mean kids are learning and you know we've converted cafeterias music room and art rooms into classrooms we have a hard time finding pullout spaces none of those variables are truman pelham and they have a building project where a decision needs to be made in the next couple months and what direction they're heading in it's not that i think it's a bad idea or a good idea for pelham six pages ago i'm i'm right now i don't have a strong opinion either way they could see benefits and drawbacks i just don't think this is the focus that we need to have in pelham right now and i think when if amherst decides to send it six grades and the programs developed i think that would be the right time for pelham to engage about is this something we want to do because right now it's very theoretical right um you know we're very clear that if the amherst school committee votes to move forward in the region supports that will then develop the program not the other way around um and you know that's not true in pelham so you know i think with all the things going on right now my feeling is don't rush things that don't need to be rushed uh an amherst i don't feel rushed because we've been talking about it for a long time uh in pelham we haven't had that many conversations it would feel rushed for me to to think that we would be making a decision or you would be making decisions soon uh you you don't have those factors um and so you know without you know becoming a broken record my recommendation is keep abreast of the situation keep updated you know whether it's me or sarah bess or margaret at the regional level how that's going but uh i would i would push on this one until we have a better sense of what amherst is planning to do and then more specifically what the program is it might be really attractive you might say oh we think our sixth graders would really benefit from having this world language program and this maker space but we don't really know exactly what that program is going to look like right now and so you know really my advice is not that we commit to never having sixth grade go up i think that would be uh too early to say that but that wait till more knowns uh more variables are known and then re-engage the conversation perhaps literally a year from now so if that's where i am in terms of recommendations you all you can tell me to you know that's not consistent with where you want me to do but that's just where i'm sitting at the moment okay questions for mike or comments on this ron go ahead well it seems like we've been discussing this on and off for the past three years my only point is that i'd like to hear from them parents what they think about you that's all i want to hear from them if they support it i support it if they don't support it i don't support it that's all mike can i comment on that i see so i think i'm totally aligned with what you said ron and my feeling is right now we don't even have enough content to share with pelham parents and i think that's really where i was at like you know when a program if a program if and when a program's developed then we can say do you like a option a which is what we're doing now or option b this fully flushed out program of studies but right now we would really be not able to have that second option so clear and because there are there isn't the pressure that there is in amherst because of those other factors um i think you're right i should be more explicit to say when we engage in it engaging all stakeholders but i want to have more content with which to engage the stakeholders that we have at the moment thank you other than amherst is doing it or not i don't think that's good enough you know could i ask a question so we and maybe this is something that's still up for debate and amherst in the region it in terms of timing i mean is it possible that in fall of 2022 there could be amherst sixth graders in the middle school like could it happen that quickly uh it could my recommendation which is now online so there's no surprise is that um is to move the sixth grade um of ambers for the fall of three now you all been mostly been around long enough that my job is to recommend right that's where my job begins and ends sometimes so i can't predict what the amherst school committee whether they will want to move sixth grade and what their timeline is but uh my recommendation is to move it for a whole bunch of reasons i'll get into and that with that committee but the timeline that um and this is on the on our website on the uh on the school committee website on the board docs um where we post our meetings is to uh have that transition happen for the fall frankly so what the this committee decides to do is they'll decide on october 5th um yeah i mean i guess because then i mean at that point in order for us if we were going to engage in this we would have to do it on this somewhat speculative basis if if there was going to be some decision made in time to get pelham kids into the middle school in the fall right yeah i mean could could pelham sixth graders choice into the amherst middle school if that was an option for them who had families i mean i just knowing the like choice numbers and these like how our enrollment numbers can really shift our budget like it does have an impact and if there were like groups of families who were like i want to do one drop-off this year i'm going to choice my pelham 6th grader into the middle school i mean that could have an impact it could so here's what i'd say we'll see what the amherst school committee does uh if they do go with my recommendation i think if we engage a year from now in this conversation that would still be enough time to make that transition for fall of 23.

[Music] all right i'll call the order um first i just want to thank uh rebecca holmes for live streaming us tonight instead we haven't volunteered for that job and to our thanks to paul o'nara and uh sean paul point and joel lay who all contributed to his technical arrangement and set up for tonight's meeting so thank you uh we have a reminder to those in attendance that your human voice may be broadcast as part of these proceedings and uh all attendees at tonight's meeting must adhere to the mass department of ed's mass mandate for school buildings that means that we're all talking from behind masks so i asked if we could have some microphones because i've heard especially if you're sitting far away it can be hard to hear so we're going to try that out that means we're going to be all of us be experimenting with how close to earth is can you tell me because i know we can't is that good to make any difference um [Music] we will be runners and bring these around to you when we do your reports uh so that you can cut this one too okay so i guess we should start with the pledge of [Music] allegiance to the republic of which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] oh [Music] uh so we have started circulating the payroll and payable warrants already the right folders to make their way around everybody should and we have let's move on to the consent agenda we have two items in there two sets of minutes of school committee minutes on august 31st and the september 7th policy subcommittee minutes so i need a motion to accept the consensus of them so adam um made motion second okay glory second uh so we have a motion to accept the consent agenda two sets of minutes any discussion about those okay um no sorry did you say that i don't know i praise that well okay unanimous acceptance of the consent agenda and then communications does anybody does anybody receive any communications since the last meeting you should be aware of can i ask you for when we do the pledges is that possible yes one is on order okay yeah yes put the mask up please thank you um [Music] i'm gonna cut this as some announcements also um jeff there's a vaccination planning tomorrow is that right um out in the front of the building and the uh parking spaces will be the coach bus that will be coming and so that's where the vaccination clinic will be right now they are accepting walk-ins and there's more information on the webpage on the district's webpage members of the school committee are invited to tour [Music] the three schools that at the end of september you'll be getting information from september 27th 28th and 29th first thing in the morning i bought uh one for a day and we hope you can make it to those so watch for the email from christy and thank you for everybody who's welcoming us into your schools the school committee myself and lori uh will be going to two selectmen's meetings we want to let you know this we have communications from the boylston selectmen inviting us to come and talk with them and just check in and give a report on how things are going established some communications with them and um then i reached out to the berlin selectmen and asked them if they would like the same and basically both groups were very excited about having uh re-establishing some connection with the school between the regionalization and covet the lines of communication are kind of just separated and so i think we're all interested in getting some communication flow going again between the two towns and the school committee so i wanted to let you know that those meetings were scheduled toward the end of october and closer to mid-november and uh we'll let you know about those i know that we'll be talking about the school committee election and introducing uh the what i think of as the new school committee um so that we'll also entertain any requests from them for information that they'd like to be hearing about we hope to do that several times during the year at least and we will invite them to come here if they ever want to or they have administrators if they ever want to attend the school community so next on the agenda is the election election update which we will have on the agenda every meeting i and since we last met i've met with both town clerks i visited the state election division website and documents there consulting the legal counsel trying to build and understanding of what a regional school election process looks like and what the timeline uh and i adapted a preliminary timeline from here to november 2022 beginning to map out my understanding of this i'm still clarifying parts of this but um and i'll share that with you at the october meeting but i wanted you to know that based on the conversations i've had and the review i've done so far i will recommend to you tonight that we withdraw our homeworld petition that we submitted last spring sometime for a special election we have plenty to do to get ready for november which i can detail for you more in october but one of the one of the main uh tasks that we have to do is to prepare our communities for this election because it's different it's the first time we've done the regional election it's different we will have all six seats open at the same time berlin residents will be voting for berlin seats and boylston seats and vice versa if you run for office for a school committee you need to take out nomination papers in berlin and in boils both you need to collect signatures in berlin and boylston and hopefully you'll participate in candidate forums and so on in both communities also this is an opportunity for us to make clear to people in the towns what the school committee does and why these seats are important in particular these these this next election will have some two-year terms and some four-year terms in both towns after that all terms are four years but they broke this up so that seats will stagger and undo different schedules so that only half of the school committee has to run for office in any given year but that means two and four years out this district those people sitting on those seats may be able to participate in selecting the next superintendent and they definitely will be able to participate in contributing to the next five-year district improvement plan and helping to set the direction and the priorities of the district so those seats are important and we have some education to do in the community to help people understand what's important and how they can get involved and we all know it takes multiple passes multiple times for people to see and hear this information before it starts to make sense that they know the questions they want to ask and so on so that's why i'm recommending that we stick with the regular regional election on the state ballot in november 2022 we have plenty to do there and we can go into it more next month i'm recommending that you go that path tonight we're going to give you time to think about that and we'll ask you to vote on that direction in october anybody have any questions at this time i use nobody built this um [Music] that has already done the work you're doing myself but i'm sure somebody when they were planning that agreement probably did talk about that but i was not there yeah so it wasn't written into the big role no no because this is a this is a state process so it gets dictated by the state in the town floor we're seeing the nomination papers all that stuff uh in the election domain um so we need to agree that the two towns decided to go regionalization this never came up well i don't know that it never came up that's what i'm saying i wasn't at our table was anybody here at that table whose responsibility [Music] i'm happy to learn about it because then [Music] and as should the rest of us because then we can teach others about it more easily we know it ourselves um i i don't pretend to know all the details but i think the motivation for selecting that that they did was to have representation from three from each town representation from what three boylston members and three berlin town members and i don't know the method you're proposing results in that yes but i think that was the motivation for picking them up that they did and it's a more complicated scenario but i think that's why they ended up developing legally yeah so they maintain equal representation from the two towns on the schools sure so so they took the time to figure that out and that's i think that's fair but like nobody knows the process those are the sources i'm consulting town courts documents and the sc and i have to pull from a lot of sources here yeah and because of that because we're building our own understanding of this process and we know we have to keep our eye on the ball with this i am proposing a there will be an election subcommittee this year who really helps us stay on track with this and works uh thinks about how to get the word out to our two communities okay so mark to sub committees approving some committees at this point and um i have since we last our last meeting i met individually with team members to offer startup support and to get to know about their interests and their skills and thinking about these committees opportunities might um help with my first priority is really to help strengthen the knowledge and capacity of this committee to work well together and with the administration because we have so many good methods we need to all wrap up together and what i've seen so far is a terrific willingness on the part of all the new members to really dive in and learn more about their roles and all the ways they could be helping which is very encouraging exciting it's good energy [Music] and um committee members really need to devote a lot of energy in the fall to thinking about their governance role in the school committee and learning about their roles and responsibilities so i'm proposing um four subcommittees and two liaison positions and i'm i'm not including a community engagement or outreach subcommittee which i might do in another year but for this year i feel like i want to tackle those topics together in our usual committee structure of times and in our governance workshops so i'd like to have debuted a handout in the shared drive that describes the charge of the policy committee the superintendent evaluation subcommittee those are both continuing committees that we've had before a negotiation subcommittee because this is year before contract negotiations teachers union an election subcommittee a new member orientation liaison and a scholarships and awards so those are described in i'm not going to take them apart they were describing what you read for the meeting tonight so so first i wanted to see if there are any questions or presentations about those descriptions okay so i i will ask for a motion to accept that some committees proposed for as described in the sheriff exactly julie i'm in motion to accept the subcommittee descriptions uh join the second laurie ii any discussion on favor and again we have unanimous approval of the subcommittee thank you i appreciate that so now i'd like to appoint people to those committees so a service policy committee that's a continuing committee and i will continue to chair that committee and mike will continue to be my top and will continue the service work on that committee particularly for the first half of the year i'd like to reserve the option to make adjustments to that committee mid-year if it's needed or if warranted to either expand the committee or change our rules to start with we'll just continue with me as chair of life and support for the fall semester the superintendent evaluation committee i'd like to appoint glory heart as the lead and julie lee to be her brave patriot see lori uh worked with me on the superintendent evaluation symphony last year she's very tuned into what needs to be done she's familiar with the format and everything and i'm here to support them as needed and this is a good opportunity for julie kit to learn that process and i believe the two of them will lead a transparent and fair evaluation process the negotiations committee we'll need to work collaboratively with the superintendent with the legal counsel with the teachers union to negotiate the next teacher's contract i'll serve as the lead for this committee i'll appoint magnet grill to serve on this pig and i would like to request that atoms serve as an alternate in case either one of us is not able to stay with the committee or pay certain meetings the election subcommittee i'd like to appoint mike cotman and adam wilder to that committee and again i will lead that committee until this election timeline is finalized and approved by legal counsel and the two boards of selectmen and once that timeline is everybody's on the same page with that and that's all approved by everybody then mike and adam will co-lead that committee new member orientation liaison i'd like to appoint lori to that lori has done that before and she's recently not so long ago and remember herself so she draws on that experience of other people that's terrific and that means people now finally who are appointed to to assist with new member orientation for the short term and the last meeting no longer need to fill that role but like in particular people complimented your welcome email that you sent to them and i appreciate that thank you and then finally the scholarships and awards liaison i'd like to appoint julie lee to take on that as well because she's a berlin member and those scholarships and awards are situated at berlin the moses retire scholarship and the very impossible hotman award for both uh affordable recipients uh again that material is all organized and ready for julie and i will support huli with that as keep the school committee informed in what's going on is it their input have them uh a proven proposals you want to put forward that kind of thing so you should plan to have a slot to report out if you want to use it um so let me take pause there and just check with anybody to see if there's any questions or clarifications around committee appointments i'm reading the subcommittee to the school committee section that says the chair of the person will appoint the committee members by the you've never done that before so i don't know number two the community care person subject to the approval by the committee will appoint the subcommittee chairperson candidate members i read that to me that would be emotion [Music] we can certainly you can certainly so would all in um and part during part of jeff's reports he will reference the district improvement plan that christie prepared for you this is the finder here and um i just want to thank christie for preparing me at my request and i encourage you all to bring these to everybody because every all the work you do in committee kings should be uh tied in you should be seeing this district improvement plan move [Music] thank you so the first thing i'm going to do is just take a quick look the only thing i really want to say about it is that the trends the moments look fairly stable berlin looks like an increase in that was really due to uh from last year to this year an increase in preschool i will tell you that i've asked the principals to come tonight to answer any questions that you might have about those these numbers and to also tell you that i do an enrollment report big one in i'll probably do it in december this year and it encompasses five-year trends ten-year trends building permits birth rates real estate sales all things that would that would influence the enrollment in the district and um i didn't do it last year because it was sort of off here but we usually get some projections from from state agencies yeah so i put together a report like that so that's really that's really more more global we can get a feel for where these trends are going and we'll also be able to see how covert has impacted these trends so far but other than that these numbers look fairly stable are there any questions for the principal in terms of things that catch your eye off the numbers it seems like last year's kindergarten class in town no but you know there's a little bit of a movement back here with the apartments there but not really significant if there's more just uh one of those years um [Music] check while i do this enrollment report in december but one of the things from 2019 i remember is they projected zero students coming out of that and we know that that's not true we already we're already starting to see students out of this right that's something we're going to have to look at [Music] thank you the next grade of question number of garland children correct because they don't assist 43 books and only nine for braille [Music] that appears to be last year i see another file called 2122 but i don't see that i can access that the 2020 wasn't correct but just mislabeled so i have a couple questions too um and i know you'll probably be able to answer this better from december because that will show five years but looking from grade eight to grade nine um [Applause] so that's 16 kids have left is that right yeah so um that is due significantly to the agreement that berlin has with with assad versus boylston as with assad so they are accepting more berlin students from assad so that's why you see that discrepancy i'll talk a little bit about that when we talk about the district improvement plan let's come up that question okay a lot of districts yeah you know that's that sort of that transition year whether it be um you know vocational schools don't start until ninth grade um and then you also see the the transition um to private high schools all right thank you and i can't confirm that it is only nine eleventh graders any other questions again this isn't the end of it i'll come back with some more in-depth um [Music] are we going back again yes [Music] all right next up is gloria pierce who's the last second edition we're really really fortunate together she's a new school adjustment counselor um she's working with students three days a week she gets years of experiences adjustment counseling flashstone and china uh there's also been a clinician consultant with community health uh she has a bachelor's from smith college and masters in counseling from boston college nurse jenny i don't know here i had a chance to talk to her yet but she's been everywhere danny lois is a native of canada he graduated from the university of alberta she's many years of nursing experience including being in school nursing connecticut before moving up here during her time and she also has experiences of pediatric and neonatal ironman she's been fantastic all right laura rainsford uh is a new teacher this year in second grade she had a bachelor's degree in master's degree from wesleyan university and comes to us from acton-boxborough where she was a special education assistant teacher and a grade one consistent teacher all right i wasn't sure which one was to do sherry train uh will be working in both elementary schools but i get to introduce circles i'm the better one as a new special education coordinator at the building level she's taken over for the recently retired leading balance before she's many years of experience a special ed team chair worked in leadership in seven hills charter school she has both her bachelor's and master's degrees from fitchburg state university she's already shown herself to be an asset all right old school this is i don't know i'm high memorial school after spending many years in the acton-boxborough system as a special education and general education classroom assistant she's also done private remote tutoring she owns a bachelor's degree from umass amherst thank you jeremy horn is actually returning to the school district she spent 10 years as a paraprofessional at boyle's elementary school before escaping to take a position in hudson where she was in paris since 19 or 2017.

um the web maps that we don't need is always to keep our websites updated and so we're doing that with parent camps that's something that we've been doing for the last few years it's really just a way to bring parents and to to introduce them to the school we do tool home we do a preschool preschool decay which again many of those young parents are free you know they're just afraid of schools they haven't been in schools before last time they were in schools when they they attended and so it's a good way to get them in we'll be doing that we will have one in the spring and the other one we do is the step up from elementary school from five to six and again we take we take advice from the parents we take input from them we do surveyed at the end i'll give you an example um one of the suggestions was for two of them why did you give tourism to school we just do right out here once you get tours of the school and um you know how about sports signing silence it's a big deal parents don't know you know it's their first time in high school in middle school and they don't know how to sign up for sports and things so we had um we had some of the students give tours and we had a map macaron here along with a group of people from we had our guidance department so we had more staff parents to interact with after-school buses you know previously this school once school's out it's shut down and really these are community schools they should stay open um so but but the problem is there's not a lot of sidewalks around here if you notice but you can't walk home uh so we started running out the school buses uh i believe we started that i get messed up with the code yeah i think it was 2019 we did a pilot and so those buses are up and running it allows kids to stay in to go again and just to play it allows them to go up and do things up in the locker room that allows you to get extra help it allows them just to have time to just sort of hang up before the buses come and that's that's important you know they're going all day long so so that's that teaching and learning those are the kind of highlights and again we'll go more into those i think it's the blue section now which has the personnel um karen has done an amazing job and very good with this we reinstated the full-time elementary special education coordinator we just saw up there we had a part-time person who we painted that just the just the um just the workload has increased so much just the amount of paperwork yeah it just just keeps on going up so we did do that karen did a great job of doing some research to keep some of our students who have what have we severe challenges in the district where they should be to have an exclusive education so we developed a uh called the bridges programs that started pes and that's been very very successful keeping our students in the district um it's also a big money saver too um the equity work we're doing [Music] yeah this is again this is going to be one of my goals the principles of all having an equity goal as with all of this rectus carol we all have an estimated goal and it's just kind of done at different levels it was a big push you know a lot of people think they look at our district and they say well you know it's it's really homogenous mostly uh white students but there's still memories that happen and uh you know we we really committed to this and each school this year we'll have an equity project that they do that's something they're going to take a look at at the school level and um for the last year has been just the leadership team who's been involved with the professional development we've hired two consultants to help us with that again for teachers 21 which is a massachusetts professional development group we're going to expand that out to the school and get teachers involved this year and some of our guidance personnel to help with the project in school so i'll talk more about that when i talk about my goals [Music] which is technology um i gotta hand it to paul you know last year was a tough year but we were able to work on getting one-to-one devices and you know these things like zoom which we've never done before which a lot of districts haven't done something like second nature to us we are working on digital policy and computer science skills we find a new teacher this year in the library the media meeting goals many of the digital literacy goals are inside next year no next month if you want to move on though to the the section four which is the operation management [Music] so a couple of things here that are important the first is um when we developed this there were a lot of district improvement plans out there but when we developed this what what the thing that was important for us is that we can actually pay for and we could show the community how it was going to be paid for there's some great plans out there and you think we're like how are you how much does everything cost so what we did is went through and said we want all of this stuff and then we gave it to bob and his department and said how much is all this gonna cost so he spent uh he spent time going through it and what we did is we said well you know we know typically what expects in terms of spending and we just paid it back so aesthetic given is a plan you know it's grandiose and it can't be done we think we could do something and as we start going through this document we realize that you know to expand this department one of the things we're doing for example as we continue to benchmark salaries and to report has not been done in a long time um our cows positions has changed [Music] and so we continue to look at those those things also as we expand it requires more staff and so we try to put most of our staffing needs in the buildings but there are times when we have to expand within the central so if you haven't done um over five years we actually cut some positions but one of the things you're going to see from me is a recommendation to now for example has a clot time first i think it's 0.25 a person an assistant to help her so they have christy equivalent not nothing if you look at this plant a good portion of it is teaching and learning so and any any of that expansion um really falls under carol's domain so you'll be seeing that the other thing i want to do the final thing i want to do is i need to turn to page um i have 37 i hope you have 37 that's the plan that um yeah that's the payment plan and again bob will be going over this [Music] but every single item there on the left is in that plan some place um and we continue to update it this one this is about bottom needs to do some updating on it i'm going to keep saying you're getting very careful about going through and making match um some of them like the red is something we just couldn't do we knew that on the outside well let's keep it in we'll just read it so you know you know we can go back to what we will um but it's all right here now i think i think it's probably you know really the whole market's plan is that we have a you know payment plan so we have a way to pay for it and we've been again i think since we've been very very close on our numbers um you know what we saved the cost and what we've actually spent to uh to expand teaching and learning in the district so that's basically the highlights of it again next and if you have any in-depth questions of any of these things just struggle directly will be going over a little more and um certainly if they don't go over something answered then please bring it up again [Music] this is the document that we um you know all our goals come from the school john john [Music] you know big picture um and we'll save uh specific questions for october or departments um right exactly departments in this level are there any kind of questions you want to be asking tonight about this this as a tool in the history jeff what is it it's not a high-level question what would the numbers stand for is that the signage of the thousands is um yeah most of these most of them um serves as a tool when you meet with them right and i think they appreciate the fact that we you know we we stay with them you know we stay pretty close to what we said we'll be able to do this again something's been added but it's a living document so you further information at this point thank this month's report really highlights the summer learning activities for our students our staff and our administrators i wanted to bring these to your attention we had a couple of activities for our students this summer that are key to questions we received last year about student learning gaps because or coming into highways so we attempted to address that in two ways one was through an online practice program through online instructional school we've been using in the schools called freckle it's math mathematics and ela and we ran that program and invited all of our students in the district to participate in the activity we had coordinators who were in the program and they gave students some incentives to get on and just practice skills that they would be using for their grade level related to their standards and so that they would practice or improve preparation for coming back to school this fall kind of staying on top of it keeping them keeping them fresh keeping them continuing to think about those subject areas so we ran that program we also received an unexpected grant from the department of ed and that was our acceleration academy grant for 26 thousand dollars and that grant afforded us an opportunity to target students who made me that little extra dose of instruction who would probably have noticed through some data that we had collaborated some extra support um so we invited those students into the acceleration academy called jumpstart um but we also said well let's see about our kindergartners well we didn't have that kind of data on those students because let's see you know what are we going to get we got an amazing amount of kindergartners 39 out of our how many we have like 50 or kindergarten students they didn't participated we were overwhelmed in fact we had to add on extra teachers up beyond the grant and pay for that through some funding additional funding we had we never thought that parents who may not have had the experience in preschool um with their children going in last year or feeling some students have no experience at all any preschool experience and they came to us without anything just really needed to come in their anxiety about sending their children in the following weeks the first day into kindergarten so this group came in and really notice from the feedback we got from parents and we did do a survey from the parents how supportive they were of running this program particularly feedback from kindergarten parents who don't believe to be able to have their children settled in an informal setting all the teachers were involved were highly qualified teachers and we also offered a little special each day which was art and and they seemed in the half day program so the students did this in the morning we were still able to go home and enjoy some of their summer afternoons so we didn't know how it was going to go this first year but we were pleasantly surprised about the success we felt and we enriched the students we needed to kind of got our eyes on those students so we could talk about possible possible supports and advance for those children as they came in at the beginning of the year and also certainly for any of the kindergarten students who participated who just benefited from the social emotional piece which is a lot of what those teachers focused on so that was the acceleration academy we called jumpstarter i asked the question carolina sure on two things how were those kids identified was that through teachers that needed those kids that needed to jump start them oh good question so we used basically the we've heard a number of times about games but we've looked at it and also some of our channel one students that we had had serviced uh i think those were mostly for grades because we had data from grades one up to five the grant read that we could only use literacy for grades um k through two you know so i came to three and then four and five had to be mentioned so that's how we ended up focusing on after the upper grade the funding wasn't didn't enable to do the kind of medical services so i think perhaps because the department really saw department that really saw they need more literacy than mathematics and then was there a certain number of kids that have masked out that we had to keep it to between well we tried to the department asked us to keep it between 10 and 12 but we exceeded that by a couple of students in each of those cases oh did you grade or each class 10 to 12 was in 10 to 12 per class or per grade per per grade book it was per class so kindergarten three classes the first second and third we had one class we only could afford to have one class because the brand is so small and then five is between four and five through 175 okay so we could only have one class for each level we'd love to do more i mean we also didn't know through any of the teachers this summer i mean the teachers were really fatigued um but the incentive for them was also strong to be able to participate um i think if we had finances to be able to a large number of teachers the opportunity um and we also knew about this sooner had more time to plan and he literally just got the grant in july we were writing this in august which seems like well it's a month but there's a lot of logistics to making sure that everybody's safe we had to get uh offer transportation to students because it wouldn't be fair students couldn't come um because they couldn't get blessing to the schools if their parents couldn't drive into we had to think about transportation feeding students while they were here even if it was snacks safety issues we had the program over here in san francisco to kind of afford people access from both school districts it wasn't planning to become the other so um a lot of things had to be put in place i think there's materials for the teachers too if they needed to order to bring over here for that particular purpose because otherwise we were draining their materials particularly the specialist the art teacher from her supplies during the media so lots to think about in a short time so all of that being said it ran smoothly i mean the buses were on time the kids came in happy home happy we had the data from those students who participated in the class to be able to look at um utilized so the first year i mean we'd love to be able to run it again and we're thinking about that already we're looking for the great funding cap professor three is the possibility we talked about the survey last night we sent out we're looking at the whole community because we have to use 20 of that brand needs to go toward teaching and learning opportunities [Music] and then the other areas i mentioned the staff orientation we have that every year but i think what was particularly important about that opportunity was the fact that we did have two police officers one from rural and boylston who donated their time to come in and provide alice or active shooter training for the new staff members we take the safety very seriously of all of our students and our staff in the past we've run those those drills here with the population but we recognize with so many new staff this year that we need to have that more in-person type of training with all of these folks each year the teachers train and reactivate their certification in that area online with these teachers we're getting the first time brand new it's just great to have a partnership with these police and fire departments and i also mentioned in the report about the presidency and the chance that we have to get together with the fire police departments and chiefs and the officers each year twice a year to review what we've been doing in the schools concerns that we have concerns that they have and workout plans and this was the first time we had a chance to have a tabletop that was offered by the berlin fire chief and he provided the tabletop opportunity and that was one of many we'd like to do and we can you know get that in one of their articles in the paper um thank you for doing um so we were very pleased to have that and we're always grateful this one in particular um we're not going to share what they are but it really was around them an accident that occurred not something around active shooting because we felt that what might what might really happen like is is something like that that occurs outside of one of the buildings where student buses needs to get rewarded um it could be anything that happens so that was the scenario and then we walked through it step by step what are you doing next and then what happens next who's responsible for doing that what do you you know you might they might say to one of the principals okay this is your building who are you going to call first who gets the information to relay to the community to look at who takes over that who's going to be on the scene so tabletops are like in the moment kinds of experiences where you have to think through the problem as it unfolds and you don't know what's going to happen next the tabletop coordinator which is the fire chief might throw in something to you that kind of changes the scene and you'll have to respond to it what to do and then we talk about each step along the way afterwards you know what went well what didn't what do you need to improve on so i think the principles in particular took away some things to think about for their own buildings that they needed to to work on as a result good thank you so so that's what we were doing this summer in addition to getting ready for the year ahead and we were writing some grants um you'll see on the next page i put this information in the letter memo to all of you going forward we want to be able to present each year an opportunity to do to approve receipt of our grants that we received which is what the school committee should be doing so this is new to us but this year we're starting this fall and as we move through the year we receive any additional funding we'll do this maybe once or twice a year i think we could probably do a mid-year a lot of times we get more private grants mid-year but our federal and state grants really occur um anytime between july and september so the only difference this year is we were getting the esser grants throughout the year and unfolding in fact right now that's what the survey is about bob and i are going to focus on the sr-3 grant that's due october 4th i believe and so we are um actively working on that but we really because of the requirements of the background to the community and actually the great hours continue to kind of get a sense of what when the public in general is looking for us to improve them so we get some foreigners around that in the survey focus on so we have a total support 834 695 dollars worth of state federal grants and that includes the general grants title potential brands the essa brands we call them and the grants that karen does as well for special education they're all listed with the amounts that's the second item in the business section okay well that's a phenomenal amount of money that just came into programs but [Music] so does anybody have any questions before we move on uh one question for these grants these uh are there any stipulations with them uh the timeline they need to be used by is it a use at all are you gonna pay that situation there are absolutely stipulations on these grants they do have deadlines that they need to be used by some are multi-year for example the essa grants the title one one and two grants and four mostly title one can be used multi-year it depends on the year sometimes even especially because the calls of last year they gave us some extensions on these grants but there is definitely deadlines to use them we do use them all i mean we because we're a small [Music] instructional online tools all of those things are expensive really costly items so they go very quickly karen uses them for many other special education powers when they can [Music] typically it's because some activities a teacher wasn't able to attend professional development or some activity was cancelled so that karen and carol and anybody who's involved in grants do a great job um kind of staying on top of it and then we have regular meetings to look at what's left to spend and find alternative uses when we can we talk about what we're going to really need to their market the money for between bob jeff himself karen we're all looking at that ahead of time so we have to we have to tell the state within each grant where we're spending that money specifically thank you well sorry i just want to just add to this safety piece twice a year and um we just talked about things going on in the district they gave us advice they can save the advice from schools if you notice a lot of glass and um and so it's like like that little windows out there so the kid like smashes into them that's a lot of glass coming down on them not only that but anybody trying to so a couple years ago one of one of the uh first responders you know brought brought us this technology is very inexpensive to support that as well as you don't even know it's there but they won't shatter like that whether someone's trying to bash their way in or whether kids are flowing around and then someone goes through it we won't have that shatter in fact you know it's interesting we have a we have a parent in the district who's an architect he designs these buildings he works a local architect and then we get a call from them and he said you know i never realized until my child was in that class i'll borrow about some of these buildings that were all over that glass and that's not really what got us started making sure that the program was was secure so and that film was on all of the all of the windows [Music] and that's all stuff that we like [Music] um a little longer this time i'm sorry for that but um a couple of things i wanted to share with you the first was extended school year program which is something we run every year for special needs students who will regress if we aren't able to provide some services for them over the summer um this year it was much bigger we ran it for 50 students that it was considerably bigger some students that we felt hadn't had enough access to technology and has been able because family circumstances sometimes to really access an education we included them in the summer program to give them hopefully a better start this year so we had a fairly large program this year um i also included the staffing updates as you can see i usually have three or four a year um unfortunately we have a lot of requirements this year and so um we hired some really incredible people and i have a lot of um hope for where we're going with all of these new folks really skilled people um but we've been very busy getting them settled making sure paul's been making sure they get computers and getting them all of the impression that they need so it's been very busy the first few weeks but quite a change in the department the other thing that i wanted to share with you is about the mental health supports we talked a lot in with families last year about mental health supports that were needed not just for students but for families as well there's we did an awful lot of family support last year because people just couldn't find the support in the community so one of the things that we dedicated some of our grant money to this year was um the family success partnership which i put a brochure in your folder so for some of our naviest families who really can't access all of the services out there needs some help sometimes through the language barrier sometimes it's just they need somebody to kind of hold their hand and help them figure out how to get through it so for a very small number of families we have this service that we can use so when it becomes too much for our counselors to kind of support them that we have a place we you know we can refer them and get some extra help so that we can get them hopefully signed up with community agencies we had in the past and it was very successful for the families that really needed it so we're excited to be having that back again and we also added a part-time adjustment counselor at fullestone berlin has done okay through the past years that she's been able to support our psychologist who's been able to support families there boylston got had a lot more need last year and it was getting sort of the gen ed students work getting as much of her time because she has to work with special ed students so we added this position through some of our grant funding to kind of support those gen ed families as well you may remember a couple of years ago we added a adjustment counselor to the high school so they already had another coffee in place so we're feeling better about some of the mental health supports that we have in place for the families and then the last thing i just wanted to kind of share with you um i don't think everybody realizes that we have some students that aren't are unable to access an online education so when we were remote they had some significant health needs they were on home tutoring excuse me right and so i just wanted to share with you our incredible staff that they were in gowns and masks and shields and going into the homes to work with some of these young children really above and beyond never once said no we're not going so that's what we need to do and they did a wonderful job and these students really made some progress last year so i wanted to share that with you and that's it any questions for karen just one of the i'm the adjustment counselor at bes and there's also a school psychologist i've understood there as well help me understand the difference between those two roles and kind of what does the day-to-day look like for the investment council what is the typical day so the school psychologist is a special ed physician they are responsible for doing the testing that had things for all of special ed students and they work with students and families on a regular basis on an iep so there's services online any other time she has she works with agenda students as needed and helps families get connected to outside counseling her primary role is to support the special agent student so she's always had time for those channels last year there was a lot more janet families that really needed some support and it got to the point where she was you know making contact with them but couldn't really follow through she just didn't have enough time in her day so the adjustment counselor is more like a guidance counselor who will come in and talk to the families and help all our families again her primary role is for janet but she'll also work with specialized students all right thank you karen um go to fall we skip paul did we skip off pause now oh wow yeah please thank you i'm so sorry so um i my report uh is funding on the drive c um it's a it's a proposal incentive for drivers um attendance for every assigned shift before i talk about proposal i'm gonna talk about why there's no spare drivers at all right now there's a shortage across the state energy i think specifically has 300 300 drivers short some districts don't have regular auto regular ship staff fortunately we have all of our regulation of staff um the uh so what happened on the third day the driver called in sick um there's some boils then there's 500 boils and buses one of the buses didn't have a driver four of the buses finished the route so four buses were on time the bus that finished first went back and circled back and pick up that one's a hundred bus which then arrives at the school about 35 minutes late then when you go to the elementary school which is the next tier that driver that is filling in on a shift there's two buses now boylston elementary that are late both 30 to 35 minutes so when we have one driver calling sick that's going to happen um now there's lots of questions about existing you know there's there's there's some potential concerns and you know you know does this mean should we be paying more for this or contract they should just show up well then drivers do have this you know they can take six days in the contract that they're not prevented from taking sick days um if you have a couple personal days um i talked to another district that uses enmity that implemented a driver incentive program and where i think we you know hoping this this will happen here is you know two drivers who have planned days off um later during the month of september in algonquin center program those drivers reschedule their appointments so that they were not during the work day [Music] it doesn't mean that people aren't going to call in sick they're just not going to get an incentive if that happens it doesn't mean we're not going to have any delays i would imagine we're still going to have some delays over the next three to four months since it's going to go on throughout the fall every day i see an email from other business managers other districts about transportation issues you've probably seen articles about it if you've been received following the news the question is what can we do and i think it's worth doing this it's a small amount if every driver obtained the incentive from september through december it costs just twenty eight hundred dollars at which point i think we anticipate being in a better place um the talking of the bus company anticipate that um with the expiration of unemployment benefits there might be more drivers they have a pool of people who want to get certified um one of the principals asked about it but i don't think it was serious so anyway so that's the reason we're proposing this and the specific proposal is there a hundred dollars a month to make every assigned shift both elementary and the top to ship in the morning and then both again in the afternoon and if they miss one there's no partial there's there's no incentive pay down my only concern about that is if somebody is a little sick and goes into work anyway i know they're all masked on a bus but given that we're in the middle of a pandemic and sometimes people get coped mildly and all the kids on the bus or at least for the elementary school are investigated have there been any discussion about um you know somebody kind of saying oh i kind of don't really want that hundred dollars this month i really use that so i don't want to go in anyway it's just a couple hours of driving so the drivers aren't supposed now i can't guarantee that that would happen but i don't think they're not supposed to go in when they're sick um if they're asymptomatic they're not sick yeah they wouldn't know anyways um i can also tell you that if they're on the bus um further guidelines from uh department of elementary secretary ed nobody on the bus is considered a close contact um that's not to say there's some there's maybe some risks but they're walking by the driver typically for a brief period of time um you know we're as part of this we can also include um something that says if you're sick you can't report to work you could put that right um if we're going to create an agreement what they have the policies nobody should be working when they're sick but if we're going to create an agreement that talks about an incentive we can explicitly stay at the state within the agreement even if it isn't listed somewhere else i think the cdc diagnose takes that into consideration when they say everybody must wear masks no [Music] um [Music] experience that says that that 100 is actually going to serve as an incentive for people um we we have anecdotal from another district it's just being just contemplated by a lot of districts right now based on their compensation 100 a month is significant um they have a 500 a year incentive from nrt i've been told and for for attendance and for every date and this is deducted so this potentially is 400 or four months some of these people don't earn aren't benefits eligible they're working you know shift in the morning and afternoon um so i've been told um you know i've talked to the bus company too that their feedback don't share this with the drivers this is just for something we're considering but do you think this would make a difference yes it definitely would okay thank you okay any other questions it's interesting to hear that there's an incentive in place already related to attendance because that some of the ways of practicing there will be similar prevention statement around whether someone can report to work when they're when they're able to combat the heal so if we're basically boosting that subject in a way i i become more comfortable with it i still do think that as you suggested potentially putting some language in there around explicitly stating or not to report [Music] is why is it so different this year versus last year i think last year was more of a fear or about people coming into the world you mentioned the the unemployment ending when does that end as many issues last year um is there any expectation that this will be solved after december that's when you're talking about ending this program there's an expectation but it's not a guarantee i wouldn't necessarily propose this beyond december but they expect that they'll be global drivers they have people going through a testing program [Music] yeah yeah but like that's that's a few drivers they're short of state lines 300.

[Music] so this is our um reorganizational meeting in um in our policy each school committee at our first regular meeting following the town's annual elections elects from its membership hr advice chair and the secretary all of whom will hold their offices for a term of one year or until a successor is elected in the case of the regional school committee because the town of sherborne moved their election to a date that was after our last meeting in the spring in june we were unable to do our organizational meeting so that is the first order of business now on our agenda it has community comments first followed by organization and i would like to take a motion that we switch those two items and reorganize and then continue with community comments do i have a motion removed motion by lynn collins we have a second second second kate potter all in favor i i all opposed motion passes so we will do our reorganization first and then we will move forward from there um i would like to invite nominations for the office of chair of the school committee i'm madam chair i think i set the role of the superintendent it is the role of superintendent i sorry like to turn this over to mr smith who will start this process okay thank you madam chair so i'm going to open the floor for nominations for the chair of the region school committee are there any nominations i would like to nominate kate potter uh kate i'm going to ask you for your consent do you consent to be the chair of so elected i do thank you are there any other nominations okay i'm going to declare that the nominations are closed may i have a second a motion to nominate k potter as the new chair of the regional school committee one call in second any discussion then i will do a role called vote um kate potter okay yes maggie sharon maggie sharon yes lynn collins lynn collins yeah tracy mannion tracy manning yes okay then the motion carries uh on a four uh nothing vote i'm going to turn this over to you madam chair congratulations congratulations thank you i'm honored and proud and scared uh but i know i'm joining a team of amazing people who care deeply for students staff and our communities we have big tasks ahead of us and i'm looking forward to really focusing on the exciting work that we've been elected to do and working all together so thank you and now we need a place chair so i would like to call for a nomination for a vice chair [Music] i would like to nominate lynn collins should i go through the questions that you went through [Music] um do you accept this role if voted in yes i do uh wonderful are there any other nominations for vice chair thank you okay uh if no other nominations the nominations are closed may i have a second nomination any discussion okay and then the roll call vote uh mike and sharon hi lynn collins yes tracy mannion tracy man yes and kate potter yes hey thank you lynn look forward to working together thank you i'm very excited um and i would like to make another motion to nominate a secretary and i'm happy to nominate judy miller who is not able to be with us tonight but has um given her consent i promise um are there any other nominations for secretary okay um may i have a second then maggie sharon second any discussion okay um then we'll call tracy mannion tracy mandy yes lynn collins yes maggie sharon maggie sharon yes and kate potter yes great forward to a good year congratulations everyone um okay so now we're going to move to our sec time for community comments and i would like to just read our public comment preamble to remind people community comments are an opportunity for members of the community to be heard we respectfully request that you please make your comments brief no more than three minutes and that you move the discussion forward by adding new information please try to avoid repeating points that have already been made for community comments please raise your hand and wait to be called on when you speak please begin by stating your name and whether you live in dover sherburne or boston or rds faculty member community comments are an opportunity for the school committee to listen to members of the community it is not a form for answering questions or engaging in a debate once the public comments section of the meeting has been concluded we will move on to other business and unsolicited comments from the community will no longer be permitted this is standard operating procedure in school committee meetings across our three districts um tonight in order to allow time for school committee to conduct your business and out of respect for our invited guests community comments will be heard for a maximum of 10 minutes do we have any community comments okay thank you hearing none then um superintendent smith thank you very much chair um this is my first as superintendent um in-person meeting um i had the zoom meeting in august so i have to say although there there are some restrictions it is so good to see everybody in person and i also want to make the statement that going forward um i think there are going to be some decisions that we're going to make whether in person or zoom really depending on the large group anyway so i want to start by doing something a little bit different so we shared presentation to all of you so first of all i'm going to start by talking about i think just like we are excited to be here in person tonight staff many of them haven't seen each other and certainly all of our teachers our administrators for adhering to the restrictions the masking all of the things on board to open up that morning and talked about your special thanks to the mudge foundation for a new stage curtains until they are ir effort for your many performances you're very fortunate to have the type of donations foundations and support i want to thank them for for being present or members from each of the school committees i should say um and i started out by telling people a little bit about where i grew up born and how beautiful it is i told him i was very accepting of excitement that you feel like your your couple left but i've met with just a district things they wanted to share with me your priorities about in education this being the start of my 44th year from the student opportunity act for equity in funding for all students across the commonwealth and one of the things i shared could get and i mean as a group not just personally and one of the things i always talked about over sherborne commonwealth you were one of i'm going to guess probably very few at that time you also by october had faith are into my palace evening it was put together by your own when you know we truly had to pivot and i guess i'm not going after that video there's no way i'm going to open the district my husband kiddingly said to me i said to my sister all of you at least want to make sure just keeping my notes here for 15 year members 20 25 thirds knowing a long time i'm up in a little bit here you have the errors here people that attained the things that was said to me was you know you're meeting those new members you know welcoming mentioned i can tell that already there's a relationship in people the governor bringing in the national guard for i think four obviously you know some of it people that peter buss's role admitting to every school on opening day so it was great that was your yeah that was your earlier start with your elementaries and right away you know i did one of the pictures that you will see is we finally had a whole group of young kids that they can't wait to see her for school uh also with elaborating they were taking part in their lessons they were paying if they were doing of our attention i have to take into account a year and a half so in our state it is required they they're coming back full-time in person students hear about the cares act your sr1 2 and 3 there is funding administrators having conversation is that we will continue to again talk about engineering counselors if that needs to be paid attention to i also want to uh talk about districts all over one over here at 8 46 because there was a moment of silence and come with middle school students there was a moment of silence our elementary students did appropriate injury um okay i think at this point we've got the pictures i'm just going to take a look at before we do the video i'm sure i have the right schools with the elementary um utilizing at lunch we're making sure that we're with each other in desks this uh jill the door and all the little kids that crowded into the nurse's office things are happening my favorite were your high school students to have opportunities for lunches with your student always one of the best things i did i meet with them alone without other administrators and we're able to hopefully have some some open conflict as we do opening day [Applause] my [Music] is [Music] [Applause] why i am [Music] [Applause] country [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay [Music] [Applause] i've thank you so much fred i hope you did not think i was kidding when i said it's on another note uh one of the things when i came here from telling my editors at w b u r which is the uh productions and they had reached out to ask me to be part of a year from the raymond public schools so i recently had a call about bringing bat director uh kerry jung to invite beth in october so we will be featured along the center of that but obviously bethany can speak to thank you sorry just let me students uh returning to full in-person learning environment for all local distancing isn't required you know but we are looking at certainly on the 19th our buildings um you know our students so one of the things that we're doing and when you look at and they turn 12 you know just you know happy birthday and other families if they need any outrage on where to go so our goal is to get a sit and have discussions with your health and hygiene committees cereborn uh pediatricians working in some of the best hospitals in boston so that we're facing here each and every day and that truly has been something that so we continually i also want to tell parents thank you parents i know you continued this or you know i'm i'm not trying to pivot but things change we're doing everything we can to put strategies in place to keep your kids safe in advisory committee state health experts key decision makers using timely data and metrics that are available for department of public health in your boards of health so again and you know we certainly welcome finish learning that is going on in your classes right now as students come back to really assess where they are structures put in place um many opportunities so we're looking at your accelerated learning for your students also for those just like oh my god the roar of a crowd you know honestly i kind of looked out peaked around the corner i believe it was your girl's soccer it was yeah tonight's field hockey so upper elementary to your middle school so those are obviously um our priorities i will tell you and um this is information for our staff members the other day we were having a conversation i think earlier this week and i had said to joe um she was talking about being able being a newbie she said yes you know superintendent you're in there and when we went to look at my vaccination status it wasn't in there so i immediately had sent the document right to her so again the staff members our custodians our food service anybody that is an employee of the dover-sherborn school districts and we have overall in your district um in the region itself we think it's about a 99 vaccination rate when you look at the district as a whole we still had some with the elementary we would still get at least 97 maybe higher so your percentages are very high with your staff with your vaccination for your staff um and i think let me just just priorities so again i guess in summary i'm going to say that schools have successfully opened students are in person working collaborative learning environments and i want to make sure everybody understands we remain cautious testing forms have been distributed for coping 19 testing in schools for symptomatic testing test and stay pooled surveillance testing i believe kate mccarthy is going to talk a little bit about for your students to take part in a number of those programs and i know okay you're going to go into it a little bit deeper but we want to say this wasn't an easy process there were parents sometimes that had concerns wanted to pick two of the programs when you're talking elementary and not a third and one of the third the concerning ones was the pool testing the surveillance testing and we ended up you know making phone calls and i'm not encouraging this at all but there is an opportunity if the parent chooses to opt out i think when we see and then the numbers are getting up there we want them there has been concern i've had mem letters from members in the community and we clearly understand when you talk about pool testing for our older students and i can't tell you that that's not something on the horizon so as parents are signing those consents it's important even if it doesn't exist at the middle school yet we have two of the test and stay program um the symptomatic testing program so because of that we are asking for you to sign so if you do have to pivot if we go into using it for secondary students we already uh have those consents uh and i'm going to also remind everybody this week on september 16th we have yom kippur there is no school that day um i know that's what i'll tell you i am so pleased to have had the opportunity to meet and start to work with your school committee all 16 members i'm not sure there's a larger three three separate school committees in the state and that takes some effort and i don't mean what i'm saying about that is we have committed and i think i have along with the superintendent and my leadership team talking about two retreats coming up those are going to be publicly posted meetings so the retreats will be on for the locals first which would be ten members two five member committees on september 23rd um it's going to be i believe five to eight in the evening uh the region uh will have their retreat on september 27th uh that also is a publicly posted meeting it'll be the same five to eight o'clock and some of the agenda items are going to be overviewing the roles and responsibilities of what school committee members do and superintendent to make sure we have a clear process we're going to develop operating protocols for school committee how do we operate we're going to share that widely with our community so they understand we want to be transparent we want to pay attention to their concerns and come up with our protocols that we commit to doing on all three committees setting goals and priorities with the superintendent i want to be clear when you have an interim it's a very different process so with an interim superintendent that's here for a year one of the things that we can talk about are the so-called priorities the so-called big rocks that the superintendent will lead not only in the district with their leadership team that doesn't need anything everything is addressed but these are the things the big walks you want the superintendent to pay attention to i think it's important to note that when you get your new superintendent training is important for all your school committee because you're evaluating that superintendent based on the massachusetts at a val system and it's very different as far as the standards and i know you've done the process before we have a lot of new members and um so that dorothy trusser who's wonderful she's a field representative from for masc mass association for school committees she was a former school uh committee woman i believe chair in linfield and i know she's been here in the past i've worked with her before um again i think she will share very valuable information for you for your community um we'll also talk about communication between the superintendent and the school committee um you know communication that works we're going to share that with the public so the public public understands how you receive information and how we're able to communicate with each other and then the other thing and this is not these are not publicly posted meetings when you become a new school committee member one of the things by law that you have to take part in is what's called charting the course and as you can imagine with the pandemic this has not really been held in person and i had members when i met with renewal members tell me how frustrated they thought it was disjointed you know they struggled with it so we have the opportunity first of all i know we're going to be working with our attorneys to talk about open meeting law public records requests you know how we can make sure that we're within legal guidelines there that'll be professional development for any of our members that want to take part in that and also masc is willing to come to the district and not only um do it in-house because of how many members we have if we have additional seats available you can invite some of the members that are other school committee members in your locale so i'm really excited about that we'll talk about that at the retreats we'll come up with some dates so you'll be able to take part in that that's going to be the end of my presentation and i'll answer any questions before i go on to my team thank you so much i just wanted to take a moment um it's not a question exactly but just a comment um to say thank you i mean for to all of the team for all of the work that went into starting the year you know the retrospective i have had the opportunity to see it already so i've already been through the ugly crying um but it is really important i think that we do pause to take stock of all the body of work that's gone into this past 18 months and and moving on from here and taking away the silver linings and so thank you to all of you specifically with regard to the upcoming retreats and the professional development offerings i just wanted to say thank you for your leadership on helping us to organize to do that i think that has been um both with new members coming and going at the region and also with the locals in the context of a pandemic with a lot of things and other pressures on people's plate it's definitely something that has been a need that we collectively have and um i'm appreciative of your leadership in organizing these these opportunities for us because i think that moving forward it's going to be really important that all 16 of us understand how we're organized what our roles are how we communicate with one another um and specifically the unique situation of a regional school committee because i think it became clear to me in the last few months that that that's you know not commonly totally understood situation and i think it's really important for our whole community that we're all on the same page so thank you and i'm really looking forward to taking advantage of these opportunities [Music] agreed i i wanted to say um to what maggie said that um it's so exciting to hear these sounds outside i i had a meeting um outside a couple weeks ago outside the middle school and kids were coming in and out to audition for the play um my own boys at the middle of high school are happily back doing their things and it's it's looks seamless but it it's been a huge amount of work and i i can't thank you enough and that's the third time i've seen that video and i still cried so i mean that just goes to show it to maggie's point it's so important to stop and reflect on what everyone has been through you know parents students staff leaders everybody so um thank you again for that thank you and can we get a copy of the slide deck kathy oh absolutely you can put it in your communications but i know is it it's up also up on the web we'll i will add it to the packet on the website yeah i know your video is yeah but inspiring absolutely thank you anybody have any other thoughts or questions okay then i'm going to turn it over to assistant superintendent of beth mccoy all right again i'll be brief um thank you for watching the video and well it became a mccoy family project and brought the four of us together in various capacities um it really was you know the goal was to capture all of the work of the entire team and all the hard work that went into those 18 months and um i'm excited that we i haven't done my children's baby books yet but we have a time capsule so we'll have that to look back on in 10 years um so just a couple updates about teaching and learning um so we launched our school year actually in mid-august by bringing all the leaders together uh superintendent smith was mentioning how she always looked to deal with sherburne for the opportunities and the resources so needless to say you can imagine her face when we brought her to hail reservation for the leadership retreat she had to use the port-a-potty but we had we had a great time um thanks the silver lining of the pandemic is we have the wi-fi hotspot so we brought wi-fi to hail reservation which was exciting as well as some fans um the first day we talked a lot about the equity audit the how and the what of the equity audit um and the second day we spent a lot about the supports that we're offering for students around academics behavior social emotional support especially coming off of a pandemic highlights again i think the port-a-potty team-building activities including rock paper scissors with steve goodwin if you ever ever have an opportunity to play steve in that game um he is our champion so i wish him all the best we also had a number of opportunities that we provided to our teachers over the summer for professional development uh some of them were listed here i know it's hard to say um but all in line with the silver linings and our coaching of the graduates so professional development around authentic projects learning in the brain design thinking project-based learning the flipped classroom model and then after the leadership retreat we actually had three workshop days here with teachers one was the instructional leaders k-12 so our curriculum leaders our team leaders our department chairs talking about the equity audit and how we're going to be looking at our curriculum um as a school then we have another workshop day that kate helps lead for student support and how we're going to make sure that we're providing all that we can for our students moving forward so we have our guidance counselors again our team leaders coming together and then lastly we had world savvy come and work with our middle school and some of our high school teachers around using case studies to bring together cultural competence sustainability and bringing the maps um and the stories that we read in textbooks and social studies to light so that's that's super exciting so very busy summer [Music] so that said um launching into this school year we have a couple of instructional goals that i wanted to bring to your attention all of them are in support of the four school improvement plans and the overall districts improvement plan and these three goals have been made options for the educators to adopt as part of the evaluation process so again you have that that thread that goes all the way through with the entire district moving in the same direction on the silver linings i think one of the takeaways from the silver linings that we tried to tie into many other initiatives that we have going on between the rds and challenge success and innovation and portraiture graduate kind of the common denominator of all of these things is student engagement so we have a big goal around student engagement and we'll be looking at that through observation sharing best practices providing professional development for teachers we've heard me talk about student support you see our frog reaping here so the commissioner and jesse has talked about learning leaps for our students this year across the commonwealth um so instead of going back and reteaching what students might have missed last year we are progressing them to the next grade or the next course and then as experts and support personnel figuring out where there might be gaps or needs for support and then filling them in so it's kind of like each frog has their own path across the lily pads to the other shore and as you see we brought our teachers together our leaders did the same thing a team building activity where they had to make their way on the lily paths lily pads across the river and there was a lot of takeaways about both equity and student support in that everybody needs to cross the river that the people who cross first need to go back and help the others so lots of analogies with equity in mtss in support of that thanks to our cares money we are piloting panorama which is a data dashboard that will allow us to take all of the data that we have in aspen the literacy benchmarks the math benchmarks that we have k through 8 and have them all in one place and we can look at student profiles class profiles school profiles across all three domains academics behavior including discipline and attendance and their social emotional wellness thanks to the surveys that we're now doing with kids so we'll be able to identify kids through universal screening a few times a year to talk about the kids who in by data need support in addition to the ones that we see you know anecdotally or observationally in person and make sure that we have the supports in place lastly i'll mention um again a pilot as you know we've had literacy specialists added to both elementary schools pine hill and tickering this year we're piloting an academic specialist at the middle school who is supporting the mtss work supporting teachers making sure that the practices they do in the classroom are differentiated that it's not one lesson for all the kids but the kids get what they need and then helping identify the kids who might need small group or individualized support and how are we going to do that through small group classes or age block and those sorts of things and lastly the equity audit kathy and i in frequent communication with nyu um they met with our leadership team during the retreat they're coming to all four faculties for their october faculty meetings to talk about the what and how of the equity audit um and the next step is for us as a district to name a 10-person advisory committee who is going to advise them in their work in collecting data making sense of the data and then communicating the findings to the community so this is not caffeine me on the advisory committee this is representative of all the stakeholders there's like three students a parent a community member an alumni a teacher an administrator so once you fill all those slots that makes 10 but then we want to make sure that we're representative of diverse perspectives diverse backgrounds and identities and bringing together people who you know are not only invested in kids and supporting all kids but are also willing to listen to other perspectives um some might have been part of dsa but we want to make sure that at least half of them have not to get some new voices and thoughts in the room so next week will be an email and a short application process to apply to be on the advisory committee and nyu is going to be doing this election to make sure the puzzle comes together well without any input from those of us who live and work here and love our stakeholders so that's that i'm happy to answer any questions you said i don't have any questions you're remarkably thorough yeah thank you thank you okay okay so i'm going to be wearing two hats tonight the first hat will be some special education updates at the region and then we'll be jill and i will be talking about the testing so this was special education i think i talked about this a year ago when we were hopeful that the middle school program that we have running in its third year now the grit program would be starting at the high school last year but with everything that happened we just put a pin in it um and so we did roll out the grit program at the high school and we have really mirrored a lot of what has we have done at the middle school in the grip program and the other piece we did this summer was we brought in a group from newton north that has had a similar program in existence for about five plus years so the staff that i had worked with they came and met with the middle school and high school program to just talk about their systems their structures and just to collaborate and have that professional development so that was very nice um so we've actually this year been able to begin the program with existing resources so teacher a teacher that we already had on staff and also the school psychologist is splitting her role between this program and her evaluation duties so so that's been nice this year i'm not sure if that's going to be sustainable long term as the program grows but that's been a nice piece this year that it's gotten off the ground so it has similar elements where it supports students with social emotional challenges um that just show up in very different ways there's not kind of one student that this program works for it's very flexible and unique for each learner so we do have students uh through all grades nine through twelve at the moment uh so that and we will be collecting you know we're working between the 6 through 12 program for data collection so as it's been in existence even though it's been a funky kind of um 15 16 months within some of the time where the middle school program began we have been collecting data we have been reflecting on that and will continue to do so and be able to really think about if what we're hoping the program would support really is making an impact i'm gonna put my other hand on unless anyone wants to ask any questions right now but i just want to clarify so this is happening in parallel with the bridge program yes and so it's a separate program with a slightly separate profile of students yes all students in this program are on ieps yes and it's not necessarily a short term bridge shouldn't really be more than 45 days that's the model of the bright program so there might be students who kind of may go to both like maybe you know we're not sure how that will interact but that program also is in frequent communication together about clarifying criteria and things like that but this program is solely special education bridge would support either student online or not thanks any other new questions you may bring you actual hats to change and the thing that i've been doing with most of my time so we have been able to launch testing and really this week all test um formats are available throughout the district i know i've probably everyone seen all my emails but uh we do have i think a higher participation rate than we had first thought at the region than we would have because of how many vaccinated students we we have and so i've tried to provide some clarification i know kathy had mentioned this too this testing is open to everyone vaccinated students at the moment because of the protocols symptomatic testing would be the the main test format that they'd be able to access but we also don't know how long that's going to be the case so that's um so those are the percentages and we also at the region for students who are unvaccinated they would be able to participate in the test and stay program and the symptomatic testing and vaccinated students would be able to participate in symptomatic testing and she'll jump in if i'm missing anything um so i know kathy talked about our vaccination rates we're still working on all the student data we know the communication the community in itself has a strong percentage it's just kind of desegregating the the data we haven't been able to give you a solid number right now but we know we're in a really good place with comparison to other communities but just don't know the exact number um and we are um happy to report that the high rate of staff and faculty for vaccination rates and just the last i know that you know this is the region but um this week we were able to kick off pool testing at both chickering and pine hill and um we have had around 70 um consent rate which is much higher than last year at the elementaries it was around 30 last year so so that's been nice and we've been managing that with the help of our vendor as well as adam henry who's back helping us to um coordinate the testing let me say did i miss anything no that was great yes i think other people questions i've been over talking okay i have two questions um is it is there value or is it worth or is it a headache for you guys to just voluntarily ask 12 and older families to produce vaccine records if they want like i'd be happy to scan my kids vaccine to the nurse if that would make it easier i think we have the capability to find out that information but i know that you want to talk a little bit about the holds up there or sure so there's two there's two ways that we can gather the information it's by parents emailing us um actually there's probably three ways parents emailing us or when families need to submit an updated physical exam for say 10th grade students sometimes the vaccine is captured on that physical exam update and then there's a way for the nurses to link directly to the miis which is the immunization database with the state now unfortunately our electronic health record has a bug in their system right now so none of the districts in massachusetts can sync with the massachusetts immunization registry at the moment none who use our the electronic health record that we use which is called snap snap they are working on it and they say it's going to be done by september but we all know we're at september 14th and um we'll we'll see what happens so we've kind of held off on asking for paper records in the hopes that the bug would get fixed this month and we can just pull that information automatically as you can imagine like a stack of 600 records to go in and manually enter is just time consuming so we're hopeful that snap gets the bug identified and fixed and that it will be fast for early october and plan number four which is hot off the press is that um just like we have to go in and validate our students health and contact information every year in aspen we found out that aspen is uh hipaa compliant so we are working on a survey that will go out to families that we can collect the information of which vaccine brand the data the first dose treated in the second job so that's kind of cool plan d yeah the other ones don't work out um and then my second question is for students who are vaccinated who we i believe this was an open question from our last meeting if a student's vaccine is determined to be a close contact they don't i believe need to quarantine or anything but a would they be notified by the school and b would they be eligible to participate in testing state if they wanted to only because my knowledge of kids who've been positive for it at the high school is that they are vaccines so the question um about notifying yeah all close contacts will be notified regardless of vaccination status so if your child is vaccinated uh you'll receive an email if your child is unvaccinated and determined to be a close contact the nurse is going to call you and go through the steps of what needs to happen next it's just a it's just a faster method for us who are trying to cover all of the closed contacts in one school day and get the information out as soon as possible so vaccinated students will be notified of being a close contact by email because no action is needed for those students as long as they remain asymptomatic um and then the question about reminding maggie what the second part of the question can vaccinated students just in testing so that's a really good question we haven't been asked that before and i don't know the answer off the top of my head to be honest i would want to say yes like that seems reasonable to me um if somebody wants to participate in that i do know that the state is warning us that supply for the antigen kits is very limited and so they are being very um careful with what they are telling us to do with those kids so i think that would be something that i would have to bring back to my my nurse leader colleagues at the at the health unit at the state to ask them okay so then however that works out my follow-up last question is would you as a medical professional advise on these things advise a family who gets an email that their vaccinated teenager has been exposed to quoted to go the beacon and get a pcr test for you yeah probably always it's always a great i mean this is what we want to promote is testing whether it's whether it's us doing the testing because we are allowed to when we have the supply or please go and follow up regardless if you have symptoms on day five that step should be the messaging and um and that's something that we can easily kind of ultimately and students who are vaccinated yeah go to the beacon don't have to stay out of school until they get the results if they don't have something no so our so our rules have changed a little bit since last year remember last year any person that had a pending pcr test for any reason whatsoever wasn't allowed to blink until the test result come back and came back we don't have that this year okay so if you're vaccinated and you're asymptomatic but you choose to go get a test on day five because you you are close contact you can still come to school um and then if that test result comes back positive then we go from there but it's not that rule has gone by the wayside from last year that's just a lot of the questions i have had yeah that's great that's good those questions haven't come to me yet so i appreciate it i have one similar one um a lot of the you know a lot of children obviously get their immunizations of their pediatrician and then it's really easy to send it in i'm assuming those are all send them to miis yeah but now in code it's a little bit different i see people taking their children to cvs and walgreens and foxborough and all over the place to get these shots are they hooked in to the ad so every single dose that's given yeah in massachusetts is in the system okay great now that being said the same issue that i had when i went to sync superintendent smith's um immunization record with the state database for some reason it didn't sync and i couldn't find her or my system didn't see it the same way the state does so we've had those issues but again that's those are few and far between sometimes it's with the i noticed with staff their uh record is listed under their maiden name we have them listed in our system with their married name so we're figuring it out as we go around but everybody should be in the system okay thank you even the flu shot records like some staff members that i've done and oh my goodness that about them every flu shot for the past 10 years has come up in their record so okay thank you thank you any more questions yeah one just what has been what what are the concerns um that have caused the slow sort of rate of participation in the in the pool testing i will say the question so i'm i send most of the communications and some of the things that i got back are the questions about if my child vaccinated so specifically the at the region they say well why why do it and if my child's sick i will just take them to their doctor to be tested which is actually what we want to hear the symptomatic testing format we're hoping isn't very frequently used because it means someone's sick in school and really what happened all last year and why we were in such a great position that we were was that people kept their kids home and when they were sick so i think it's why why go through this if my child can't really do any of the three tests so i do think that my answer back is everyone's welcome to consent because you really never know um when we could pivot and then you don't have to do like another blast of emails going out and all of that so i would say at the region that was kind of the main hesitation and we're and we're definitely growing at the elementary level and things really i think the frequency of communication kind of bumps it up and the fact that we could opt out i think that was another part where we weren't seeing it at first and then we did see a burst because people said i want to do test and stay that's a big one for us because it disrupts learning so little like you can stay in the building and so that was a big push for consenting but people really were saying i want to do that but my child gets bloody nose so i don't really want to do the pool testing so so that was a lot of the emails i was getting so i think it was just a little bit more of education of what actually does this program mean for my child and i think it just knowing that maybe we could shift and maybe you know that piece might be what's happening what's the hesitation of even not getting to 70 at the region yeah okay all right thanks can i just make one more clarifying point about the test and stay program because i can't message this enough the test and stay program is only for in-school close contacts and so if you have an exposure that happened at a family reunion over the weekend your child cannot come to school on monday and participate in the testament's day again i think it's a little bit of a supply chain issue with the tests and they're reserving it to preserve in-person learning and so just if we can continue to relay that message to the community too as we start to see kids coming back and participation in maybe some club activities or some youth sports that are happening and there may be exposures there um the rules will be different in those instances and i think that was the same criteria we used for the afc testing it had to be testing that we recommended last year when we had those spots so it's similar messaging it's just i think the test and stay has a quite an impact [Music] great thank you okay thank you so much for your dual rolls thank you jill for jumping in there and now we're going to go to our middle school and scott i hope you're going to introduce dr frank tiana absolutely i as you are aware i will be departing in a few weeks i just i want to thank the school committee most present and past the support it's been a fantastic opportunity for me the retirement system is set up in a way that it doesn't make sense for me to continue working here i do plan on continuing working and my wife certainly insists and i try to do what she wishes but this is a fabulous place uh you know the leadership team again both past and present has been incredible to work with and um parents the superintendents i think i counted six superintendents i've worked with and the district both was a teacher and administrator most importantly the students we have incredible students you know it's just it's it it is enjoyable to come to work every day this past year despite all the challenges has been incredible wow that's silver lining video sums it up i mean there were some great things that happened here and that's a credit to her and for me the past 15 16 months would not have been doable without anna and she's she's a rock and i'm trying to embarrass her but yeah and you know it's just a great place to work so thank you having said that we have very capable hands to take over and that's dr kiana welcome thank you so much mr keller this is a very great place to work and i'm grateful to be here and i'm also grateful for the opportunity to be able to transition with mr keller uh for a month and and that is unique um a lot of districts uh don't have the forethought to do that particularly coming off a pandemic with a lot of changes to be able to have the coherence and the consistency for our staff for our students and our families has just been a wonderful opportunity as you know mr keller he's been gracious he's been um he embodies the school we had a positive meeting this morning and just uh how the parents felt about him and some of the reactions that you folks here are watching the direct students staff and it really is um you're going to be leaving a hole here mr kellett and i agree with you on it as a rock and together you folks have established a great working culture and again i'm grateful to be here and to be a part of that and so um thank you scott truly appreciate it and at the middle school this is not the only change that is happening as you've seen the initiatives that are coming to bear um it's great work it's the work that needs to be happening but it's a lot and as if you have students in the middle school you know that we've also changed schedules and we have also changed rooms for the better so the work that was done over the summer was truly yeoman's work and allows this school community to mirror the district and focus on making connections as we start the school year and we felt that that would you know through pictures be able to develop the community connection over content re-engage with students understand their stories where they have been so we can better serve them and [Music] that's our first goal for our school improvement plan [Music] and what's interesting just coming here to do for sure very quickly is the location of the high school in the central administration it really is a community and the connection with the high school administration john mann has been great in our central administrators but also the high school students in the picture to the right you really can't see them that's mia and miranda who are project 351 uh representatives from the middle school that we invited down to be part of our ceremony on friday and um and that is skyler in the middle with that mural and that was part of your uh update from the middle school and quite proudly um coming back and just watching our staff interact with their former students and the fact that this students want to come back is just a testament to how things operate here and so again that's that's an amazing foundation on which to build and move forward just in the next slide please what you see here it and this is in your report it echoes the changes that are happening uh in in the building um and and across the district so as a staff we're working to implement these changes uh to develop the literacies around that build the capacity of the staff as well as build the capacity of the parents as we move forward so that we can provide students not only with the appropriate curriculum and instruction but gives us tools to better analyze where our students are to assess them to be able to diagnose and prescribe and put interventions in place so that we can best meet their needs the work is happening right now in school and it's hard work uh but the teams have been put in place that that foundation's been laid and we're we're going after it and moving forward so um we're grateful to have the leadership from the district in this particular area a couple of quick footnotes um open house will be all virtual and i believe that's uh the occasion last year through padlet and we will have that information of the folks very soon and anna had put out a survey to parents regarding parent-teacher conferences um whether to be virtual and or in person and providing options for our our parents uh my understanding last year parents did enjoy the opportunity to do it virtually for convenience sake number one and be able to have that close one-on-one time with their teacher but also to be able to provide the option to invite our parents into the building um because they too would like to be here against it as well um i'll leave it there be happy to take it scott will be happy to take anybody and go uh past my well welcome dr tiana thank you any questions or comments i i really enjoyed reading the report i appreciate all the details and i love the pictures in the slideshow i i just want to specifically point out that i very much appreciated the um tying of the update to the school improvement goals i know that's something that we talk about every year you know that having the school improvement plans in the spring and it really was helpful to kind of see how the things that are happening you know it kind of creates a cycle so thank you for the efforts to do that and for linking it to the plan okay thank you that's cool all right thank you miss potter and superintendent smith i am now entering my ninth year as the principal here at dover-sherborn it's truly a privilege and an honor to be the principal here um similar to what beth had talked about i'm really really proud of the work that we did do these past 15 months in keeping education going and keeping a focus on students some things that you'll see that are new at the high school we have shifted to yet another new schedule this is a schedule that we had actually put a lot of time and effort into just prior to the pandemic that we work with the middle school and high school teachers with and one of the big pieces of this new schedule is something called the flex block and the flex block at the end of the school day enables us to do a lot of different things it gives us hence the flexibility that flexibility is you can receive extra help from a teacher you can also participate in banned in course and as you know through the herculean efforts of jeff herman and janice barry we have been able to increase our numbers in chorus from 16 to 40.

i have a group miss keegan has a group our athletic director has a group it's it's really everybody's included which is great and we even have some coaches who are talking about how they can get invested in this too and they'll meet with the students uh for 30 minutes each day and there'll be days in which we have specific advisory type activities and there'll be other days where they can go get extra help they can go see their teacher they can go to guidance they can participate in their music programs and then in some cases because we are really only one of two schools for now that has moved to a later start it also allows for athletic dismissals for our student athletes so they are not missing instructional time to me that was a key component we knew that when we made the shift to a later start which really has been incredibly beneficial for our kids for their sleep for their well-being the part we needed to focus on was what are we going to do at the end of the school day because not all of our school opponents have also moved to this an interesting silver lining to the transportation issue that is now being discussed with a lot of schools however is these contests are being forced to start later anyways because the transportation companies don't have enough buses or drivers really to get them there at that time so who you know who knows that that may end up panning out and may end up being something that benefits us um so the flex block is is underway um we've seen some you know some early successes to it already and it's something that you know we'll continue to get feedback from kids feedback from parents feedback from teachers on we are asking parents and guardians to not dismiss their kids during the flex block unless you need to sometimes those appointments are unavoidable and you can't because we do feel this is really critical time for our kids to be able to access all these different opportunities we did give our seniors the opportunity to be dismissed they are one step away from that more independent life anyways um i think the seniors appreciated that in this way it helps us to really focus and develop core relationships with the younger students as they're transitioning into high school so that's really kind of the big change you know kate had talked about um finally developing or you know rolling out grit uh which has been fantastic i've had the pleasure to hire some new teachers we have a new department chair in the mathematics department which we're really excited about and there's just a really positive buzz in the building having kids back kids are pretty happy they're excited to be back you know we we have never had an issue with kids in their mass you know if it's down it's an accident sorry about that they put it up we have such good kids as mr kellet has said they're just really happy that they're able to have their clubs and activities in person to play their sports to have that their drama program going so it's a more normal opportunity and because we have a culture where our kids go outside to change classes because we essentially have four buildings because technically the high school gym is separate you have to go outside our kids are already having those built-in opportunities to remove their mask and get a break so the kids have been fantastic one of the things that we're doing a little bit differently from the middle school is for now we are having our open house in person we are also providing an opportunity for families who would still rather have the virtual option to have a screen castify of an overview just like we did last year but we do want to have that opportunity now you know we'll be flexible and if we have to pivot based on what we see happening with our community numbers we will but as another way to get things back to normal and to get our parents and guardians back into our building we are going to have at this point an in-person open house we also do not have the traditional parent teacher conferences so that's partly why ours is just a little bit different from the middle school and then finally i'll just say i also want to say congratulations to scott and what an honor and a pleasure it has been to work with you scott and i've had a great relationship we've worked through some challenging issues these last few years for sure scott has always done it with professionalism he truly loves the kids and they truly come first uh in addition he's got a fantastic sense of humor and is always able to give me a good laugh even more out directing traffic as you've become quite adept at that traffic traffic guards i know i know i have i have they're in your contract so we've shared a lot of good laughs about uh sometimes you know what these roles uh sort of roll into uh but nevertheless uh they are being done in the best interest of the kids we're keeping kids safe out in the parking lots and ultimately it is about our kids uh so scott i wish you nothing but the very best it's been a pleasure to get to know frank as well and uh frank and honor will make a fantastic team but scott you will be really missed so thank you thank you thank you spider thank you you happy to answer any questions high school related frank will answer that's right he doesn't know that yet i actually did have a question mr smith um thank you for that presentation and it may not be you that needs to answer it but you have brought it up so if anybody else can answer it i did have um a parent come to me and we're talking about transportation issues which we're hearing all over the state and we it seems that we do or we did when she spoke about this last week have transportation issues in dover and sherburne with a handful of kids i think you can count them on two hands or so some are from boston and some were from here um it had come out that there was possibly two people here that could drive and help out with those situations but then that never came through and i was wondering if we're talking about making sure those kids have transportation you know especially obviously the boston kids if that's the case yeah absolutely and i know that we work specifically to address uh some transportation issues for some of our boston kids but then also our dover and sherborne kids we this year also extended our late buses back to four buses so yeah we are absolutely focused on that and if at any time these come to your attention and you have a question the members of the school committee know that they can always reach out to kathleen kathy will absolutely let me know and i will get back to you immediately um because it's it's critical that those things are put into place so kids can focus on what they need to focus on and not have the stress and anxiety around transportation and things that really shouldn't be their problem right and i think the parents are stressed too just you know because everyone's actually having to drive them and i feel terrible so as of yesterday transportation's in place excellent thank you okay great so we have a hybrid program this week and i think we have found a transportation company who's going to take us um for monday through friday for the rest of the year excellent thank you but they did start transporting um our boston students as of yesterday with one of our employees who's going to continue this week and hopefully we transport something that starts on monday great perfect thank you that's been a project in itself i can imagine i can't actually actually i can't imagine i wouldn't um are there and this might not be i mean a frank i'm sure it's a question for you sure um are we going to be doing anything to collect data on the benefits or the impacts of the later start because i know that was a controversial decision that you know those of us who are around for that decision at the region you know are pretty enthusiastic about it my sample of one child is really excited about his current schedule which gives him one day in the cycle where he starts school at 11.

[Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] wow [Music] no no no no [Music] hello [Music] [Applause] [Music] medium [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the board of trustees will reconvene now into open session we will have the pledge of allegiance and the moment of silence and i will have the pleasure of leading them please everyone stand with your hand on your heart i pledge allegiance to the fire of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice now for a moment of silence i would like to refer to saturday which was 9 11 which we solemnly remembered here in our nation with the attacks that occurred on that day 20 years ago our students in anaheim right now were not yet born and they may not fully understand the impact that this had on our nation and how we came together then as we had in wartime nor how it has changed us but they now understand and are feeling the impact of a new war that has befallen us it's the coveted pandemic that attacked us and keeps attacking us in new forms let us all now think of what part that we individually can play to help win this war and then follow it with that action please think about this okay thank you and i hope we all work toward this okay we will move on to our closed session report and our clerk of the board will report actions that were taken during that session 4.1 no reportable action taken regarding public employee performance evaluation superintendent 4.2 no reportable action taken regarding negotiations 4.3 no reportable action taken regarding anticipated litigation 4.4 no reportable action taken regarding personnel 4.5 the board of trustees unanimously voted to accept the agreement with employee hr-2021-22-02 4.6 no reportable action taken regarding personnel 4.7 the board of trustees unanimously approved the settlement agreement with student providing reimbursement for tuition and mileage thank you mr smith now i would like to take this opportunity to recognize our community stakeholders for for their interest i'd like to recognize them and at and congratulate them for their interest in the anaheim union high school district and for attending our board meeting we thank you so much to each of you for your participation and contribution as we create an educational environment that graduates socially aware civic-minded students who are college and career ready for the 21st century and today we have the honor of having senator tom umberg from senate district 34.

and this work gets done behind the scenes and it often doesn't get recognized but we don't have the district that we do unless we have people willing to to work on that together speaking of our benefits this is my fourth year as as the president and for the second time in four years our health costs per employee in this district are going to be less next year than they were this year that's phenomenal when the average industry rate increases are 5 to 10 percent a year we have over the last four years held our costs completely flat that's an incredible accomplishment and we've done this while we have extended benefits i am incredibly proud of all of the work done by our associations and the district to provide the best health benefits package that that we have in the county um i would also like to call on everyone sitting across the dais and out in this room to intentionally take the time this week to evaluate all that we are individually doing to support teachers nurses slps and every other employee group that supports our students i encourage all of us to find a teacher a student a parent a bus driver any other person from the district community that we don't know that we haven't gotten input from and understand what it is that they need to find success within our district we often get caught inside of a bubble that we get used to of people that we talk to and interact with and go to for advice or go to to to learn what's going on on a campus and in that comfort sometimes we miss other folks that aren't as vocal or don't step up to to make demands and i think it's incumbent upon me as a leader in my association to go find those members and find out what i can do to support them and the rest of us doing the same thing throughout the district we have accomplished so much as a district over the last year and a half and we are so close to coming out of this pandemic with a district that supports its students and creates opportunities even better than before let's continue to innovate together for our students for our employees and for our community that concludes my report thank you [Applause] okay do we have anyone here from the ptsa okay we have hilda vasquez well from alta [Applause] eyebrow western squad right here [Applause] [Laughter] they're gonna go next so uh thank you madame present board of trustees superintendent matsuda executive board and guest here and on youtube it's my pleasure to give you the report from alta wanted to let you know that we are still doing our back to school activities i've seen many of our social media posts all the wonderful sites and what they're doing to keep everyone safe while at the same time connecting and building community we're also starting our instructional practices and coming together just yesterday all of our principals attended an all department chair meeting and so first time all of us on zoom doing breakouts meeting with our sites talking about capstone projects and our experiences here for students in aohsd and coming together and that was a phenomenal meeting and also taking advantage of what we learned from the past and using technology also we're getting ready for our college and career fair which i'm sure you're going to hear a little bit more about so a lot of work going into putting systems and structures in place so that we secure all of our pledge commitments our school sites and for all grade levels so intentional planning reaching out to students making sure that they're doing the strengths assessment career exploration and also attending our college and career fair which will be online it's going to be phenomenal we're also continuing to connect with community and parents and we are holding our coffee with the principals although we're looking to possibly change because since indoors we can't really eat indoors we can't do the coffee so we're getting a little creative and maybe doing some eating outside and then coming together and so we're also trying to do it hybrid just like we're doing here to provide access to our families and parents so many of us have been doing it by feeder patterns also we've been doing them on site but also we've been doing it with a swivel so that we could be online and in person together and so um trying that as well it has been working really well we're also implementing our ready set go parent curriculum um and our faces have done a phenomenal job in making sure that our parents are informed and they're ready and they're attending the workshop series also they started a saturday academy which is a way to re-engage students and do some fun exciting projects uh some of them are are working with science teachers for example i know on our school sites doing hydroponics and they are pairing up with our gear up partners and again another opportunity for students to come to school re-engage have fun and do some of the things that they love to do whether it's athletics or whether science whatever robotics and then additionally we're still continuing to partner with our community um in many ways we're still continuing some of the services such as food distribution and outreach and so we're continuing to that um to do that work even though we're back at the site and with that i conclude my report it's great seeing you thank you yoga okay and just to make sure do we have anyone here from afscme or cse i don't want to overlook our other associations okay apga okay there we are good evening board of trustees executive cabinet auhsd students families and community members my name is natalie saldivar and i am the apga co-president and it is my honor and pleasure to be here tonight representing apga i want to start by saying how excited and grateful i am to see everyone in person i want to briefly take this opportunity to highlight all the great things that our school counselors have been accomplishing currently at the school sites school counselors are actively reconnecting and building rapport with their students sites have been collecting data on their students needs via a student's via needs assessment and identify targeted goals all school sites have begun or will start going into the classrooms to do core curriculum on college and career planning reviewing thrively strengths assessment registering students for the auhsd career fair reviewing auhd pledge transcript reviews self-care providing resources and ensuring we integrate the five c's and all that we do in addition as we are balancing all of our job duties we have seen an increased number of social emotional and behavioral concerns within our students we are addressing these concerns connecting them to resources and collaborating with our social workers i want to personally thank jaren manuel and carlos for listening to apga and our counseling concerns when sylvia and i met with them last week we expressed that counselors are having a rise of social emotional and behavior concerns and need grace in attending additional meetings or supporting other programs they not only listen but exercise compassion and as a result thanks to ed staff they temporarily suspended some meetings that school counselors are actively involved in to ease our calendars as well as other staff i would also like to thank thank the board and cabinet for our temporary school school counselors and for hiring our college and career specialists we are extremely grateful as they are supporting our sites in many ways and providing relief so that school counselors can focus more on their caseload and build rapport with their students in order to address their academic career or social emotional needs furthermore tonight western will highlight all the wonderful things they are doing don't worry we will be brief i have the honor to introduce my team being represented by miss corey kretz fun fact about our team we are all proud graduates of auhsd i graduated from savannah high school ms kretz from western high school ms labra from magnolia high school mr hera from kennedy high school and mr promo from catella high school and we'll just leave out the year we each graduated and now miss kretz and my wonderful team fun i have a former student who's in the audience today as well for his teaching credential that he's going for so so much fun um hello everyone and good evening i want to start by saying how amazing it is to see everyone in person again it's been a while i am so excited to have this opportunity to highlight the great things that our western counseling team has accomplished i know everyone went through so much last year but our team remained positive and used it as an opportunity to learn new techniques with technology to connect with our families and students in different ways we created a needs assessment to identify how students were doing and what support they needed focusing on mental health and wellness with administration's leadership the great amiquan we developed many lessons for every well wellness wednesday we started off with how staff members can help and how to connect with us then we worked on topics such as time management confidence staying organized self-care reducing stress and resiliency to name a few the heavy lift was done by our fifth council counselor which has provided much needed extra support for our students and given the grade level counselors at the high school level the ability to focus on their caseload and less on the special programs also allowing our special programs to receive needed attention we work through our slt meeting to request teachers buy-in to push out wellness wednesday to our students and our awesome teachers they were the front line last year and did so much to help keep our students engaged we also found teachers and other staff members were actually completing the mini lessons on wellness wednesday we pushed out 17 optional mini lessons and had over 2500 students complete the lessons western wishes was another positive intervention we wanted to continue during these trying times last year western's asb first started winter wishes and spring surprises but with the restrictions and students and teachers not on campus it was too much for them to continue last year in our cabinet meeting we decided this was something we really needed to continue so counseling sent out the google form and 68 students responded 28 wishes were granted and over 3 500 was spent granting wishes by western staff and community members who through social media requested information on how they could support shout out to dr bryant who was a huge contributor to granting student wishes i seriously think she spent the whole time at western in the store last year we also did home visits dropped off chromebooks and hot spots school supplies food art supplies games to occupy younger siblings and checked in on students who were not attending school last year we also used real-time student data to meet with students teachers and parents to discuss great improvement and support during using tutoring opportunities administration requested teachers add to a google form what was the must do's to pass the classes for counselors and admin to share along with teachers to families when um having at promise meetings we don't like that at-risk term western staff and counseling knew everyone's situation was unique and many families were seriously struggling with so much more than their academics our priority was to focus on reducing the need for summer school and to reduce the student's stress and anxiety the other extremely important part was supporting our teachers who often times were on zoom google meets etc talking to a dark screen with small circles we shared our family stories and provided additional insight on what was going on in our community our amazing teachers leaned in and did everything possible to support students and help them pass their classes boy does it take a village almost done jordan our graduation rates and a through g company continues to rise counseling with guidance and data collection with ms quan has learned sorry counseling with the guidance and data collection for mrs kwan has learned to follow the cohort from ninth grade we continue to call and monitor calpeds for student enrollment we reach out to friends and all contacts to find where students are and continue to do outreach to find what their needs are and how to get them back into our schools even if it's in another program my team's biggest and best quality is that we love building relationships with our students and families we attend as many school events as possible we support all supports and have social media accounts to post updates along with the remind app to send important updates we use our google phone numbers which were created last year in order to remain connected to our families even during covid this year we are again using all of our tech tools on top of having so much fun seeing our students live and in person and enjoying the activities we have new administration and the excitement holder brings so much fun on our campus you should be there for the morning announcements also thank you mr nava for coming out to support we are pushing in for our first core curriculum as we had so many new students this year we had to make some changes to our master schedule by adding another teacher so we're a month behind in closing everyone should continue to watch western thank you and have a great night [Applause] okay thank you did i have anyone enter the room that i didn't see okay that should cover the reports of our associations and now i would like to move on to 9.1 which is our presentation at the introduction of the 20 um our student 2021-22 student representative to the board of trustees now the position of student representative to the board of trustees was created along with the student ambassador program 20 years ago the student representative to the board of trustees represents the 30 000 students of anaheim union high school district and they report upon student activities throughout the district at all regular board meetings the responsibilities of the student rep to the board include the following leading monthly leadership meetings with student ambassadors at a district site creating reports from the student ambassador findings to present to the district leadership and to the board of trustees at regular board meetings for greater awareness of activities and student achievement now the board of trustees is what requested to welcome and confirm abdullah fatiha pataha he patahi i'm sorry oxford academy is a student representative to the board abdullah please congratulations you can introduce yourself at the podium sorry good evening board president piercy and board members ms randall trejo mr o'neal mr smith mrs smith sorry and mr jabbar superintendent matsuda and the cabinet members my name is abdullah fattahi and i am serving as this year's student representative to the board of trustees i'm here today with my fellow ambassadors to introduce ourselves and the story behind our program as it is now the 21st birthday of our ambassador program we wanted to show the power and impact that we hope to make we are honored to not only serve the students but also represent them on 16 different district task forces as the voices of the students not only that but as we are working with the presidents at all the school sites to implement mindfulness along with the illumination institute more closely than we ever have before and with that being said i will now have the ambassadors introduce themselves before we start our speech hello my name is suvan ravi i'm proudly representing oxford academy it's a pleasure to be here hi my name is mari mesa i am the representative for the ambassador for gilbert high school and i'm happy to be here good evening ward my name is sebastian mata and i proudly represent anaheim high school i'm proud to be here good evening my name is esmeralda ferragrino and i'm this year's catella student ambassador it's a pleasure to be here good evening everyone my name is ryan patel and i'm proud to represent magnolia high school and it's super amazing to see you all hi everyone my name is eunice kim i'm proud to be representing cyprus high school this year and it's a pleasure to be here thank you hello good night good evening everybody this year have the pleasure of representing kennedy high school and walker junior high school it's a pleasure to be here in your guys's presence today evening everyone my name is daniel bulum and i proudly represent savannah high school in brookes junior high school it's a pleasure to meet you all good evening good evening everyone my name is nicholas din and i proudly serve as western student ambassador it's a pleasure to be here thank you hello everyone my name is cynthia felix i'm laura high school student ambassador and it's a pleasure to be here hello everybody my name is catherine carota and i'm here representing cambridge virtual academy it's nice to meet you guys all right thank you what a fine looking group of ambassadors honestly all look great i'm so proud to be working with them all great team um no one could have expected the events that took place these past couple of years but what i find more surprising is the reaction that our community had to a problem with no clear solution the students of our district proved to be more resilient and adaptable than anyone had expected them or even needed them to be as my fellow ambassadors and i begin to turn the to turn the final chapter of our high school career we all understand that it is now our turn to give back to the community of students now as we transition to a new phase of this pandemic we as student leaders must ask ourselves what do the students of my district need to succeed the beauty of the ambassador program is that we are giving every student from every school site a connection to the district as a whole a whole six years ago before starting seventh grade i was an average kid i went to school did my homework read books and played with my cousin but when i entered seventh grade at oxford academy i was agreed with an enormous amount of opportunities of course i didn't take advantage of many of them in seventh grade but as i went on i experienced different sports i joined the orchestra program and i was able to be part of the robotics team and meet several jpo and bowling mentors and it was awesome but now that i'm a senior i cannot ignore the fact about how lucky i am to get these amazing opportunities and i joined the ambassador program so that i could help students all across the district not only just have these unlimited opportunities but have the ability to take advantage of them for i i wish to pursue the fact of unlimited launch pad where students can launch their career as projects or whatever they're passionate about for all students that walk into oxford academy or any agency fat campus for that matter should be equipped with experiences to change the world for everyone for everyone the last 18 months have forced us to deal with a new reality and a new world not until recently has the opportunity to return to normalcy presented itself to our community many have encountered loss poor health and isolation with this in mind my main objective as gilbert high school student ambassador is to rebuild sense of community and help foster a sense of belonging for all students and staff already i am witnessing our students help each other it brings me a great sense of pride and joy it starts with a simple hello or a smile giving each other directions to class or even helping students with notes when they're absent as both student ambassador and a member of asb planning cultural building activities will par be a part of my daily routine i look forward to the challenges and seeing smiles returned to every ahus campus and school school school is much more than education when a student steps foot onto one of the 10 high schools in the anaheim union high school district they are stepping foot onto a campus that supports a positive learning environment and culture they are stepping foot onto a campus that allows students to become leaders to clubs their asb their sports or many of the clubs found on each side at anaheim high school many students form brotherhoods and sisterhoods through organizations like key club the anaheim bros anaheim crown and also the band theater and dance program as well as the different sports available to every single student at anaheim high school we are anaheim and through unlimited u we are ready to change the world as one one of the things i value most as a person is inclusion and not just adding someone in i believe that inclusion goes beyond that i have a little sister a seventh grader who has unfortunately had to face many educational barriers and on occasions has felt left out from other students i have witnessed firsthand what it's like to eat alone at lunch and i'll participate on activities because there isn't a student to say hey come join us at lunch today hey there's a football game today we should go together hey let's be friends as inclusion is about supporting our athletes encouraging students to make sure that other students with disabilities know they are any different from us that we are able to support our performing arts students as a student ambassador i hope to continue to work to bridge this gap that exists on our campuses to continue to create equity and give students the support they need i'm only one person but i know that together we can do this after all we are a family and our goal is unity unity continues to be a value i uphold especially as a very outgoing student on campus from working closely with many administrators to networking with students i started to become more exposed to the opportunities that truly interested me now as magnolia student ambassador having the ability to create unlimited launch pads for students to grasp upon that ability provides a brighter future for our auhsd students for example the student ambassador program was an unlimited launch pad that i took advantage of that allows me to be integrated into my school culture and advocate for student voice on campus as a true sentinel that continues to value student voice on campus it's time to not just be unlimited you but unlimited us we as ambassadors have our own story my own motivation to become an ambassador comes from my experiences as a kid back in 2013 i moved from koreatown los angeles to cyprus orange county and as a shy reserved kid i had a really difficult time finding my community and people i really was the first to reach out and it's because i understand the fear and anxiousness of being a new student especially as a young adult that i strive to foster unity at aohsd a sense of belonging and purpose is essential in a student's integration so from simple conversations and compliments to bonding through shared interests in clubs and programs my goal is to help every new student foreign exchange student and underclassmen feel like a part of the centurion and auhsd family my family amidst the various health and financial troubles we experience during the pandemic face of persistent struggle my mom a moroccan immigrant struggled to offer me support and guidance in an already unfamiliar country made a hundred times more difficult online luckily i had established connections within my school the year before we went online so i was able to stay in touch with the structures and programs we have in place to give opportunities to students such as the ambassador program but that leaves the question what about the other first generation families who do not have decades of experience insurance for guidance at home what about the other first generation families who have been isolated and cut off from the opportunities and support systems we have in place to enable student success i always lead to serve student at sorry i of our ueb lead to represent and build potential among underrepresented first generation families through the aohc ambassador program the aohsd ambassador program a phrase i now use almost daily but just a year ago i never considered becoming one honestly i thought they were silly embellished puppets who existed just for show but as a cloven 19 pandemic worsened more and more did i witness another kind of pandemic ensue the faltering mental health crisis and consequential frustration that lay within the students teachers and myself and i reflected and reflected on what i could do to combat such an issue so on a monotonous february morning i sought out the opportunity to become the voice for my student side and my heart gradually recognized the two opportunities that being a student ambassador would provide not only for me but for my entire student body and beyond so for everyone in the district who has struggled with their mental health i will be the microphone to echo their sentiments for amber sentiments and i will utilize these feelings to ensure that this crisis is thoroughly combatted not only in my home school of savannah but throughout anaheim union as a whole as a whole laura and the anaheim union high school district received me with open arms about three years ago i lived most of my life outside the country i spoke very little english thankfully i came across such a strong and loving community where i'm given so many opportunities and i feel welcomed and valued and that this is why i decided to step up and advocate not only for the saxons but for our community our friends our neighbors and our loved ones and all the people who have shaped the person that i am today and i must admit i am fascinated by the ambassador program because it puts into practice all of my good intentions while doing what i love the most spreading kindness and inspiration inspiration to understand who we are as young adults is hard to find preparing for a new world full of new adventures and journeys social acceptance and open mindfulness are the keys to which we will open unlock a new generation filled with unity school is a stepping stone where many students such as myself find it available where we find the things we grow passionate for it is essential for all of us to learn one another's perspectives and not block out what we don't want to hear but understand why they are being said in school we may learn that our opinions may matter but some don't as a student i have experience along with others situations in classrooms where we may have felt uncomfortable voicing our opinions because of the current social tension and the consequences we may endure but it's because we differ which is why we converse and discuss without without without i'm sorry without the absence of someone who disagrees leads the mind to only seek to agree and to not speak it is my vision as student ambassador to see that in every classroom that all beliefs are accepted and respected that those who are brave enough to speak in isolation can walk out together together we all understand how covet impacted our lives the past year although it was such a difficult time we were able to rise and create such an amazing community of many empowering students with their own stories cambridge virtual academy is completely virtual and although it is all online we are more connected to one another we are still able to do things a regular in-person school does such as clubs and events and we have already created a few clubs and are already finding more ways for students to be more connected every day it is so inspiring to see that we never lost touch which is one of the main reasons why i became an ambassador i want to continue to spread the positivity and love i want to continue to have each other lean on together as a group and to spread more positivity unlimited you pay such a big contribution to this growing community as they have taught us the most important qualities such as the five c's we are never alone we are unlimited you unlimited you is what we are here to support however our role as student ambassadors is not about any of us or what our own opinions are and don't get me wrong they've got great opinions that's not why we're here instead it is our duty to represent those students who don't have the same opportunities that we were granted it is our role to amplify the voices of our fellow peers who need that extra push it is our responsibility to ensure that we are representing the students to the best of our abilities no matter what our own thoughts are up on the screen you'll see a list of our names and what school sites we represent however the truth is each and every one of the my peers standing with me today are representing all 28 542 students of the anaheim union school district thank you again everyone for giving us the opportunity to introduce ourselves and why we are all serving as the student ambassadors thank you okay i want to say welcome aboard all of you and i hope you find this year rewarding and enriching and i think you should enjoy it tremendously because it is an opportunity and it appears that you are all ready to embrace it so now we've met you all and it is time for abdullah to come up and take a seat at the diocese and be a part of the board [Applause] you're now official see you're on the board okay um okay do you have a report yeah all right let's have it all right from one mic to the next uh all right uh good evening everyone uh i'm gonna report on a few of the schools and what's happening individually and then i'm gonna gonna gonna kind of go over what's happening across the district uh first up the anaheim high school bros are gonna be hosting a coven 19 vaccine clinic on saturday september 25th for anyone 12 and older stop by it'll be fun seniors at cypress high school uh aiden cuachocho and george elomey is green project print greens print project designing handbags and clothing using upcycled and sustainable materials were honored at a collaborative event between hammett los angeles and the dragon kim foundation brookhurst brookhurst junior high school has implemented a mini student ambassador program where they're leading students and parents on tours kind of modeling the ambassador program that we have so i thought that was really interesting oxford academy held a river cleanup on september 11th as a collaborative event between oxford academy robotics eco club solar boat and the ap environmental sciences um c cambridge virtual academy held both the spirit week and club rush to have students feel connected uh to the school community even though they're online both oxford academy and kennedy have received state-of-the-art esports equipment from the district including brand new computers that's giving students the chance to play esports and start esports clubs at almost every school site ambassadors were having staff students and parents fill out a form asking two questions one of them being what their thoughts were on the transition back to school and the second asking what their hopes are and goals for the upcoming school year overwhelmingly we found that students across the district mentioned that they want to improve their grades and get a solid education and they also mentioned that they want to be prepared for college and the next chapter of their lives both students across the district have come together to voice their concerns about the dress code policies they feel are being harshly enforced at some school sites protests and discussions have gone around with many students not feeling heard with what is being reported as dress codes that have been designed to oppress certain groups many are calling for systemic change at the district level kennedy high school's tension re even reached a peak as protesters and members of the football team led the administration to end lunch early because of some violence this represents the heated discourse that may lead to discus that we believe is or that they believe is some outdated policies that our dress code uh that they intend uh to kind of speak about and kind of lead a discussion on we're trying to implement processing circles uh in hopes of creating civil discourse and coming to consensus that works for everyone similarly students have been explaining uh their inability to eat to get a lunch during their lunch time because of a lack of time with many school sites limiting parents to drop off food for their children and lunch lines often not ending until lunch ends students have no choice but to skip lunches in many cases so we're also working on trying to fix that and promote a different way with different solutions that students are presenting to us and then in terms of coven 19 on campuses in terms of what students feel there's a few a little bit of mixed opinions from the information that we've collected on our back to school nights the majority of students feel ecstatic to be back on school which is really good because they're interacting with their friends unlike they were before however many are also addressing that they don't feel safe at certain situations but thankfully we've noticed a strong enforcement of covert 19 protocols at school sites and we're also trying to address these concerns and make sure that we're giving out the correct information about what we are doing as a district and spreading the right information students at katella high school put together a video of testimonies for some parents letting them know that they feel both safe and happy to be back on campus and then some quotes from western high school on their thoughts about kova 19.

good evening everyone everyone watching at home everyone here in our uh boardroom um welcome back everyone and today is september 14th 2021 it is 5 31. and um i would like to call this meeting order i do want to start off with our mission and this is our mission the asus unified school district equips every student with the knowledge and skills for college and career readiness to fulfill their purpose and positively impact society the board of education will our our meetings are here at the district office and the public may also attend in personnel and by a teleconference by zoom today is we have our study session which will will be beginning with our study session that will be the whole meeting the board of education encourages public input when the public wishes to address the board of education on an agenda item if you're in person you can fill out a blue card stand at the podium or raise your hand if you're in the zoom attendant the board of education will take the blue card request first followed in order by speakers at the podium and then those in the zoom attendant board members are not permitted to respond to public comment a member of the staff will contact you if information if additional information is needed thank you for your participation individual speakers may be allowed up to three minutes to address the board of education translation services are available to the public thank you so much and your cooperation is appreciated and your attendance thank you so much we will go ahead and move on to item number 2.1 which is our flag go ahead and stand up we will go ahead and move to item number 2.2 row call we can go ahead and get started with board member career here remember bo board member rodriguez pena here on zoom on zoom and we do have a board member who's on her way and she will be here thank you moving on to the next item on our agenda 2.3 approval of our agenda can i please get a motion to approve 2.3 seconds we have a first five board member career and we have a second by board member bo at this time we are moving on to our public comment on agenda or non-agenda items item three point i'm sorry yes and we're going to go ahead and do a hand vote if we could have board member uh rodriguez pena thank you yes board member career yeah member beau yes and myself yes we have four yes one this one please and we have one um we're approving the agenda yes yes so we have five yeses thank you now moving on to item 3.1 public comment on agenda or non-agenda items like do we have anybody on zoom if you are in attendance and would like to make a public comment please use the raise your hand button it does not look like we have any hands raised thank you we have none in the plan so at this time we'll be moving on to our study session item number 4.1 study sessions full rate organization and i will be turning it over to our cabinet starting with uh superintendent arturo ortega good evening board president vice president members of the board staff and attendees tonight's study session is around the topic of school reorganization tonight the objective is for us to provide you with information about school reorganization tonight is also about creating a space and time for you to soak in this information and understand the various components and moving parts that go into a school reorganization decision although it is definitely not against any rules uh tonight we would also like to uh create for the board uh the space to not discuss pros cons likes dislikes this i want this model i want that model and instead reserve that conversation for our next board meeting and tonight really just focus on studying and learning the parts we want to create this environment for you because we know that eventually uh as we as we think at the next board meeting we start to have that that conversation tonight obviously we can ask questions for clarification uh and for understanding and we're gonna try to answer those to the best of our ability um i do want to point out that sometimes questions can be masqueraded as comments and so for instance if i were to ask um don't you think that model burger king is better than model mcdonald's that's a question that might give input or insight i'm sorry into what uh our thinkings uh are um at the end of tonight's board study session we would have accomplished our goal if you feel that you have the information you need and no one tonight understands where you might stand on this topic along the way please feel free to stop us to ask any questions uh to get started we want to begin with why why why are we doing this why are we talking about thinking about contemplating school reorganization and the reason that we are doing this is because um we need to be able to maximize the programs and the facilities that we offer our students that we offer our staff and that we offer our community this is why this is the why that has been driving that has been driving them so as you know we launched a school reorganization team in 2020 for the purposes of looking at this topic of school reorganization so that they make that so that they may make a recommendation or recommendations to the board um as you know the team was comprised 50 percent of parents and 50 percent of staff with the breakdown being six parents who have kids in elementary six parents who have kids in secondary on the staff side four aea members four cse members and four site administrators the team began meeting in november of and through their process along the way they were able to decide on specific models and then that we kept going then they were able to decide on specific sites for those models and then we kept going and tonight we're going to be unveiling the recommendation to the board of education we want to take uh time out to show our gratitude um for the commitment of this team um as you might assume this is not an easy topic has not been an easy topic uh but their work uh their objectivity as as as best as we humanly could is to be commended and so i just want to publicly thank the team for this journey that they have taken so number one uh this is one of the models that the school reorganization team uh came up with uh we refer this uh as model three um and you have seen this in a different way but this is the one of the models that they came up with we'll come back to this in a second this is model 4 this is the second model that the team came up with the model 3 and model 4.

thank you for that anyone else okay i'm sorry i have a question you asked um can you just be super duper clear this is this is uh the different capacity percentages the thresholds that we see here they're based on the 22-23 projected enrollment that is correct and are we in our projection enrollment are we anticipating that that our enrollment continues to decrease uh that is another part of today's meeting uh but to answer your question right now yes so therefore it would mean that the percentages across the board we would anticipate that the capacity to decrease over that is correct we're getting an echo over here okay we're good all right so now we would like to share the outcome of the school reorganization team um first of all we would like to share that the team decided to not make a or one recommendation to the board of education what they decided instead was to send both models three and four to the board for consideration but they wanted the board to know how the team viewed the two models so they didn't want to make a recommendation say the school reorganization team recommends model three they didn't want to do that instead they wanted both models to come forward but they wanted the board to understand how they they looked at and favored these models as a team so as you can see here at the top as a team 42.1 percent of the team favored model 3.

knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals thank you very much so where he will now go through the roll call and missy will administer the roll call but as we do so um i'd like to have our three new commissioners um jonathan overpeck also known as peck uh uh judith uh or edie uh or smitty edith sorry or edie um juno and nicholas cole stevenson introduce themselves as well as each one of the other or uh the former commissioners all of us presence commissioners also to give a very brief um introduction of yourself to each of our three new commissioners and to welcome them so missy if you would uh go through the roll call and as you go through the roll call um or each one of us as we respond to the roll call please also give the location where you're joining the meeting from thank you very much thank you commissioner hukham um good afternoon chuck hook i'm from my office in ann arbor today um brief background i have about 42 years experience in the energy industry ranging from design construction commissioning operation of generating plants transmission distribution building energy systems pretty much an energy group worked on a lot of renewable energy battery storage infrastructure as well try to support the city on a lot of policy statements i work with the state of michigan michigan public service commission a lot as a consultant and in various other fashions and i have my own consulting practice so i use that quite a bit as well so uh welcome to the new commissioners look forward to working with you all thanks michelle commissioner mccomber hi um i'm uh calling from my home in ann arbor and um i've been on the energy commission uh what i think going on five or six years previous to that i was on parks commission for two three year terms i my day job is finance director at a local nonprofit that also does work in the area of energy renewable energy eb's et cetera and i'll leave it there thank you commissioner commissioner fleeby first of all welcome to the energy commission it's good to have some new blood um my name is mark cleavy i've been doing my first solar project 1975 worked for the as manager of the energy office uh and at the state level work for a number of cities and counties and businesses and renewable energy and spend i'm currently representing the uh vice president of the great lakes renewable energy association which is an industry association representing solar interests in michigan um and uh look forward to hearing your thoughts on solar energy commissioner levin i believe is not with us thank you i'm john mursky i'm an ann arbor native uh went to the university of michigan i'm left for graduate school and moved back in 2015 i worked my entire career for robert bosch the german conglomerate where i had a number of different positions in regional and global business unit management and then also was responsible for north american corporate functions technical and engineering functions i've been on the energy commission since and have been chair for a little over a year and i'm married um my wife and i will have our 39th anniversary this uh thursday and um we have two grown children that both live outside of the area and welcome to our three new commissioners thanks jim mursky vice chair colvin garcia my name is carleen colvin garcia and i'm joining you this evening from my home in ann arbor and um i um the background in clean transportation and i currently am focused focusing on electric vehicle charging and i uh come to the energy commission i've been on the energy commission since and uh i was very interested in figuring out how the city and the school district were together to bring solar power to the district so that really was a great opportunity to learn about uh all the activity the energy commission was was involved in and um fortunately i was able to help get a grant for the local steam school they had they were the first school in the district to get solar power installed on their roof and um i just continued to attend energy commission meetings and then i became a commissioner and i've been active since then my most recent significant result that i helped to deliver was co-authoring with the great group here in the commission the the ev readiness ordinance that went into effect early this year and welcome to all three of you and during our orientation my my microphone on my computer wasn't working so now at least you get to hear my voice you very much commissioner mccoy hi everyone um my name is ember i'm a phd student at the university of michigan in school for environment and sustainability um i've been i'm trying to figure out how long i've been a commissioner somewhere between two and three years um i moved to ann arbor in 2015 and have either been a student or a staff member at seas um that entire time and a lot of i've done and continued to do a lot of energy related organizing um outside of that in the state and in other states um yeah i think i first came to that an energy commission meeting when i was also coming as a resident um working on trying to get dte to stop building new natural gas plants um unfortunately that plant was built um but that was my first introduction to the ec and yeah i'm calling from ann arbor thank you thank you commissioner mccoy mr george uh thank you missy uh robert george uh calling in from ann arbor uh i am a recent uh resident of an auburn i've been on the commission going on year two i work for the laborers union i'm a member of local 499 i do policy work primarily with cities and counties across the state our members do a lot of energy projects ranging from renewable to nuclear uh to gas across the state so um involved in that way with energy as well as being active with the parks commission and serving as a commissioner at the county level uh in that capacity uh thank you um uh missy thank you very much commissioner kerber yes i'm larry kerber i'm calling from here in ann arbor i guess i started out life as an engineer and came to ann arbor to do my mba at the university of michigan basically never left so i'm a long term ann arbor resident i've been on the energy commission for about a year my background is i've been in various corporate positions but i've spent the last five years working for a local solar developer developing primarily around washington county and welcome new commissioners thank you commissioner kerber councilmember briggs thank you i'm here in ann arbor i represent city council for the fifth ward which is on the west side and my day job is running an organization called scenic michigan so a lot of work on scenic conservation issues and then i have a background in a lot of sort of transportation alternative transportation issues as well as land use serving on the planning commission before it was on council welcome to our new commissioners and to everybody else who's serving as well thank you councilmember councilmember radina hey um i'm charles tredina and i represent ward three of city councils since november and have been on the energy commission for that full time as well um i live in the arbor oaks bryant neighborhood um and uh honestly i have to say i am often incredibly impressed at just the breadth of experience and knowledge that we have on this commission and so i really enjoy learning from folks here um prior to getting involved actually this week i've been very engaged in energy commission work at council but prior to joining the energy commission in my previous experience i was um president of the jim toy community center which is the lgbtq center here but before moving back to ann arbor i worked for state representative kate siegel in lansing and uh one of the primary things that kind of got me interested and passionate about energy work is um that her district was ground zero for the enbridge oil spill and so we dealt with a lot of that um and and the cleanup and the repercussions from that and so that's really what got me interested in this work to begin with so thanks to the new commissioners for joining thank you and to our new commissioners let's start with commissioner over peck hello everyone uh yes as missy knows i enjoy going by the name of peck i am um i've returned to michigan four years ago i grew up in jackson in the metro area until i went to middle school then i was uh east and then i migrated after a bunch of schooling out west where i've been a climate scientist for about um 40 years yikes and uh doing all sorts of more natural climate science but i work a lot with social scientists as well as i noted i came back to michigan four years ago i've actually married into a michigan family so i've been coming here for about 35 years in the summers but i came back to be serve as the inaugural dean of the school for environment and sustainability seas i'm really happy to have a current phd student on the same commission ember good to see you as well as at least one alum i believe uh edie um and uh nope two we got missy too missy and i speaking of uh are also serving together on the governor's no you're not on that we served on the president's commission on carbon neutrality so we came up with a plan for michigan university of michigan to go carbon neutral uh we're the largest university in the country research university to have such a plan and also to decarbonize our endowment let me start that process in a pretty aggressive way i am on the governor's climate solutions council as well and uh it's terrific that i've been invited to be on this commission after serving for a couple years on the or maybe it was just one year i've seen uh with covid every all time has been lost on the environmental commission i'm much more focused in my career now on climate action on energy solutions as well as ensuring a transition to a sustainable and just uh world so very happy to join you all and i applaud what you've been doing and look forward to doing more with you thanks pat commissioner juno hello everyone i'm edie juno um i moved to ann arbor from traverse city in 2017 for graduate school at seas where i focus on conservation and also environmental policy um since then i've been working as a professional in a non-profit focusing on both kind of forest policy and and climate policy kind of at that intersection of energy and natural climate solutions um yeah and really excited to meet everyone and to be here thank you commissioner stevenson uh yeah i'm a senior statistics student at michigan right now calling from ann arbor on campus i'm part of the susan's climate lobby we advocate for a carbon fee and dividend bill i'm also was an editor for the michigan foreign policy council i did most of my research uh on environmental issues in that space so you'd be using state-owned energy i could live in florida and i've worked for a lot of climate surveying uh down there for a non-profit called volo foundation um and we just did a lot of stuff on uh hurricane impacts and heat injects and things like that and uh happy to meet everyone and good to be here to have you and i do believe that commissioner 11 joined us yes i'm here i'm having some internet issues so i can't use a video at the moment hopefully i won't get disconnected do you mind just telling us where you are connecting from oh okay sorry yes i am still at my house in ann arbor great uh you have a quorum and actually 100 um thank you thanks and noah can you introduce yourself real quickly in your background and then missy we're not going to let you get away from saying a few words about yourself too uh yes hopefully you can hear me okay um i am also i guess sort of a seas alumni i don't know it wasn't c's at the time so i don't know what to call myself anymore um but that was my first introduction to ann arbor and i eventually went on to uh law school uh with a specialty in environmental law at uh lewis and clark and uh i have haven't done stuff directly on energy but more with uh clean air issues um with stationary sources as uh my background that's most related to the energy commission and uh currently live on the west side of ann arbor and i have two kids that go to steam and uh good to be working with you all thanks noah hi everyone i'm missy stoltz i know i think everyone on the line in some way shape or form i'm really lucky to be the first official head of the office of sustainability and innovations for the city of ann arbor we view ourselves as the caretaker varsity's audacious ambitious but essential goal to reach decarbonization by 2030 and my background is working i've worked for work around now closer to 20 years now uh with local populations indigenous populations around the nation on climate efforts including resilience climate mitigation as well as equity programs so excited to be here and to work with you thank you everyone and i'm also incredibly honored to serve with all of you i learned a lot from you not just in these meetings but in a lot of the emails that we also exchange behind the scenes and in conversations things like that so it's really great and i think our three new commissioners are going to add a lot of new diversity and experience and knowledge to the group so it's great um i just so you uh just to acknowledge them we have two of missy's staff that are going to be presenting later and they can introduce themselves later in the meeting um so having completed the roll call uh let's move on to approval of the agenda hopefully everybody has had a chance to look at the agenda and we can have a motion to approve the agenda along with a second motion to approve the agenda thank you and a second second second from bridget thank you commissioner mccumber and commissioner george all those in favor of approving the agenda as posted say i or raise your hand hi that passes unanimously thank you very much uh next order of business is approval of the minutes so we are approving the minutes of the july 13th meeting if that's by memory i think that's the right date they are posted in legistar and hopefully we've had a chance to review them as i have and can i get someone to make a motion to approve the minutes council member briggs and a second from commissioner hook um all those in favor again say aye or raise your hands i again those are approved unanimously so we knew now move on to uh new business and um first point on the agenda um prior to public input is going to be election of officers and um before i turn it over to missy to administer that she agreed to do so i just wanted to say a few things article six of our bylaws ask or state that we are to elect a chair and a vice chair every year in addition we also have on the agenda to elect a liaison to the environmental commission i currently serve um in that role as well as obviously as chair the official date for uh commissioners is um start date of 6 1 to may 31st and elections are supposed to take place no later than december we got a little bit out of whack with covet and so we're holding that election now it still is before december um and what i'd like to mention is that um there are also term limits of three years for chair and vice chair both carlene and i are serving in our first let's say year year and a half but i have served for three years as um environmental commission uh liaison so that officially does not um fall under the bylaws um in the requirement um but i want you to take that into consideration um when um nominating and voting for people uh to represent us or a person to represent us on the environmental commission so missy will you please um take over under mister this first taking any nominations and then any uh comments and statements and then administer the vote happy to you chimerski so at this point i think we should start with chair uh we i would certainly entertain if anyone wants to nominate or self-nominate someone to be chair of the energy commission would anyone like to nominate hey missy i'd like to nominate john mursky to retain his chair position if he's so willing thank you so much um and uh will go commissioner mursky are you willing to consider that i i am willing to do so great do i have any other nominations hearing that i would entertain uh a formal motion to appoint john mercury as chair of the energy commission for a one-year term sounds like it sounds like my duty since i nominated him so i i now formally nominate him each year commissioner george would you like to second i would sorry about that chuck that's great all right uh i'd like to take a vote at this point all those in favor of chair mursky retaining his chair for one more year please say i or him all this opposed congratulations sharomerski i think at this point i can hand this back over to you to facilitate thank you thanks missy thanks for the vote of confidence uh so um the next position is uh vice chair and i would like to entertain nominations for the vice chair position so i'll do the same i think carlene if you're willing to be our vice chair you did a great job last year so we'd like to i'd like to propose carleen continue in that role if she's willing are you willing charlene yes i'm willing to serve again as vice chair together with chair mursky thank you are there any other nominations okay uh do we need to actually do a formal uh nominee or a movement okay we need to move to nominate uh carlink uh karen garcia for vice chair do we have someone um that will move to nominate her and then a second i move that we nominate carlene colin garcia to serve as vice chair thank you commissioner do we have a second second commissioner so all those in favor of uh electing colin garcia for our vice commissioner please raise your hand or say aye all right hi congratulations carlene i look forward to working with you again we've been um i think very um both compatible but also complementary uh carlene has experience and uh approaches that are different than mine and she helps me a lot behind the scenes so thanks thank you everyone so the next position is um environmental uh liaison to the environmental commission and um i'd like to just before i um open it up for nominations would just like to say that i'm i hope somebody else steps forward i'm more than willing to do it again but what i would ask is that if someone does so that they obviously be a regular participant in meetings but also in working groups there's a lot of really good work that the environmental commission does and so we i think be best served if we have somebody who is going to play an active role not only in those meetings but also in the behind the scenes activities of working groups and things like that so do we have someone that's interested in doing that yes chuck do you i'd like to nominate ember mccoy if she's willing to serve as our environmental commission lazy amber i appreciate that but i do not think i have the capacity to take it on but thank you so john i'd like to ask a question um we're not going to wait until you retire to accept that fight me go ahead chuck oh is that mark go ahead i'd like to ask a question do any of our yeah our three new commission um great background and a combination of environmental and energy issues and i think the you know the the opportunity to bring the environmental commission and the energy commission into closer uh synchronicity going forward in behalf of the ann arbor's uh climate plan is is the real challenge um and we have three new people with exquisite uh background in all those two areas so would any of the three of you be willing to do it and if so i'd more than happy to nominate you jonathan you want to be nominated you know i don't think i have the capacity i'm like ember i mean okay i i have been serving on it and uh i don't think there's any way i could do two of these uh because i think you really need to do you just it takes time and as john mentioned uh they do have the working groups i was able to be on that committee without being on a working group and you know i mean it didn't make me feel like i was shirking duty because you have some really dedicated people but on the other hand there's a wide range of issues that you want to stay up on and so it's at least a pretty busy one long night a month and uh with with some reading in separation all right that's that leaves edie and uh robert or excuse me not you moved cole either are you two interested i would be willing to do it well then how about you call i'd be willing to join a working group but if he wants to go ahead and do the liaison i'm happy to live okay then i'd like to nominate e for the environmental commission liaison position great uh commissioner our council member radina if you had something you wanted to say i think no no i think i think if he wants to do that that's great i i was uh i didn't see them jump at it initially so i was worried they weren't excited but but if eating is not i think i think having a fresh perspective in both roles could be really helpful yeah i would be happy so uh do we have any other nominations uh could we have a formal motion then to nominate edie and a psychic mode from commissioner clevy and commissioner peck over pick so i think this is a great nomination and uh by the way edu shouldn't feel bad at all i will continue to stay active in the working groups and i think it's great that you're willing to step up and serve on both commissions that's uh that's huge so um all those in favor of uh e juno representing us on the environmental commission say i or raise your hands congratulations edie that's a that's an auspicious first first night on the energy commission okay so we can now move on to the next point in the agenda which is public comment or public input and i'll read my standard statement here uh this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes if you are watching on ctn please call nine 888-788-0099 four eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven and enter meeting id nine one three five seven three this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement and that the host assuming that the host is willing or allowing you to speak and when speaking please move to a quiet area to mute any background noise so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and by the way i think i need to say you also need to press star nine to or personally star six to actually speak to unmute your phone so missy do we have anybody that's interested in speaking yeah caller ending in two two eight hello hello can you hear me yes we do hi my name is greg woodring i'm with ann arbor for public power i'm a frequent caller and i'm excited to see all of the new energy commissioners my group has been working for the last year now to push for this idea of a municipal utility in ann arbor we think it's a good idea because we have seen what other municipal utilities in the state do they have cheaper power lower they have lower rates on their power they have more reliable power their power goes down less often which in the face of these recent storms seems very relevant dte's infrastructure is extremely out of date and as climate change gets worse these storms are only going to get more powerful and it's only going to get more important that we have strong resilient infrastructure which we can do on our own terms if we take control of the utility but as i think is most important to all of us we really care about meeting our 2030 climate neutrality goals and we do not believe that there is any way to do this without moving towards a municipal utility cte has said that they will not be phasing out coal until 2040 and they will not ever phase out natural gas that is unacceptable and out of turn line with the goals that ann arbor has set and the goals that the ipcc tells us is needed in order for the planet to survive so i was very excited to see conversation on this topic in the city council earlier this week i was disappointed that the vote was moved back but i hope that that will allow you all to have some healthy discussion about this but please i really hope that you move forward with a feasibility study soon so that we can get moving on this very important project because we at ann arbor for public power believe it's a good idea jeff irwin and yusuf robbie who spoke at our recent fundraiser i think it's a good idea and a lot of the people in the community think it'll a great idea uh based on of all of the support we've gotten while going out canvassing door-to-door so really hope that you make some good progress on that issue really going to be listening closely to hear that discussion um we really really hope that we can get some solid answers on what this would cost the city to do and what kind of revenue it could bring back to the city what is uh the logistics of setting this up and what can the citizens expect if they go down this route thank you all for your time bye and thank you for your comments you see anyone else no cher mursky oh here we go we have a caller ending in one three four yes thank you dr saltz and chair mursky i'm ken garber 28 haverhill court by the way the zoom meeting idea on the published agenda does not work commissioner mccoy just now provided me with the correct meeting id and the previous caller got it also um anyway i also favor exploring the muni option but because community solar is on your agenda i'm going to talk about the landfill solar project this won't be true community solar because dte will own it the electricity will flow into dte's regional grid not to subscribers the city's website says there is no guarantee that the city and township would receive the physical electrons that are being generated at the solar energy facility instead we have a pilot project where the city will be the anchor tenant to presumably distribute wrecks or other credits to subscribers to allow them to claim renewable electricity i hesitated to speak tonight since everyone on console likes this deal and probably i'm not well enough informed to understand it and city staff has put a lot of work into it over years when i asked back in june the reason for dte ownership staff answered that there's a liability associated with a cap landfill and if panels broke and damaged the landfill individual subscribers would be legally liable for repairs and that wasn't the best way to come into community solar fair enough i wouldn't have guessed that subscribers would be individually liable but couldn't the city purchase some kind of group insurance coverage and is the liability risk great enough to justify turning it over to dte this will be a very valuable asset in terms of both power and money 24 megawatts are about six percent of our city's total power need and it's by far our biggest community solar opportunity any others discussed tonight will pale in comparison michael rivet dte's manager of product development told city council last year that the project will cost 40 to 50 million dollars plus or minus 30 percent while we don't yet know the true cost it's in the tens of millions of dollars of course we should make this investment but must we then give it away if the city owned the project i'm guessing that state law restricts local power distribution mr kinch may very well address that tonight but if we established a parallel utility to compete with dte as paul fenn advised back in march the city could legally distribute that electricity same goes for the full muni option so it's not an asset to be surrendered lightly again i may be missing something obvious and i'm very happy to be set straight about why this is a good deal for this city but right now i just don't see it thank you oh the meeting id on the calendar invite is 937-6751-6819 so it's the same phone number but it's that the calendar invite meeting id changed i'll look into that i'm not sure what actually happened there but uh caller ending in one two zero or i'm sorry one two one color ending in one two one press star six to unmute your phone hello yes okay sorry about that this is my first time doing it my name is alex nettle i'm a student in the area um i recently heard about the municipalization campaign and i just wanted to call in and voice my support for it um it really excites me because you know the climate is i mean we've all looked at the news right we all see the storms where i'll see the hurricanes we all see what's happening right now and i really hope that you guys move quickly on recommending a feasibility study um specifically because i um i'm sure we all remember what happened in detroit over the summer with the flooding i experienced it firsthand i got stuck in the city and it was very dangerous and i was one of the lucky ones to you know make it out pretty much unscathed other than you know actually witnessing that trauma firsthand but you know point being there's gonna be a lot more people who are going to get a lot more property damage a lot more lives lost if we don't move on climate change so like i said i'm very excited to hear about this feasibility study recommendation and i hope you that you guys uh move quickly on it thank you for your and time you for your comments anyone else calling to see that's all cheering okay thank you so we'll wait ten more seconds and if not then we will close that and move on to our first presentation okay let's move on so um we have a number of presentations tonight on community solar and that is timely i think also given the comments so missy do you want to introduce our first presenter and um we'll go from there yeah absolutely let me just move jenny over so our first presenter we are lucky enough to have jenny heater from the national renewable energy laboratory who's going to talk to us a little bit about community solar across the nation and then that'll be followed by a presentation looking at a community solar program that we have here in michigan and i believe jenny are you with us now i am here awesome okay let me make you a presenter okay create and share your screen i think i can do it now right can you see it okay uh no it says host disabled participant screenshot you are getting it now okay there we go great take it away awesome well thank you guys for having me today um it's a pleasure to learn about all of your backgrounds and what's going on in ann arbor um i was asked to present about national trends in community solar we have looked at this area in terms of deployment trends and also subscription trends and energy burden reduction potential for community solar this is a subset of data that nrel collects for the third annual time this year and it's part of an ongoing project to inform community solar creation across the country so i'm going to run through some slides and then yeah happy to take a q a after that so the first piece that we look at is just where and how large projects are across the country this map shows in the bubbles individual projects with project sizes from small to large and then we also see just total capacity and the state shading so you'll notice states like florida minnesota new york tend to have large amounts of installed capacity for community solar also massachusetts which is a little bit buried in the pink circles there as well some of the trends that i like to highlight on this slide are just differences in state policies and how that impacts deployment so some states have decided to cap their project sizes and you'll see in minnesota that projects there are typically around 5 megawatts or going down to 2 megawatts because of provisions in their policy however we see in states that have not have a not had a blanket wide say policy like arkansas and florida utilities there are developing projects that are much larger in size so going up to 80 megawatts in size that are still a subscription-based and credit-based model but not the smaller size projects like under five megawatts that some folks tend to think about when they think about community solar so overall across the country um as of the end of last year there were about 3.2 gigawatts of capacity and more than 1 600 projects across the country we have 39 states in washington dc covered but you will obviously notice that and we'll talk about this later the the deployment is pretty heavily concentrated in about 10 states as i mentioned ederell does gather data on projects from across the country and we work actually with the university of minnesota on this project to scan for announcements of new projects looking at utility websites for new projects that i've posted as well as in our states with a lot of deployment there frequently interconnection queues or other publicly available lists of community solar projects so i wanted to pull the list of projects that we have for michigan as you guys probably know there's not enabling legislation in michigan um so these are projects that have been voluntarily um uh developed by the utilities um so as of december of last year there were 11 projects that we found in michigan installed between 2013 and 2019 about seven megawatts of capacity overall um and a pretty diverse set of utilities um developing these projects so um we do typically in states with enabling policies see that that enabling policy covers the investor-owned utilities and see a lot of deployment there but our you know municipal utilities as well as cooperative utilities also tend to develop projects in some states that are typically smaller in size to serve their customers when we look at trends over time um this is a market that continues to grow year to year um cumulatively capacity has grown by more than 120 percent year-over-year since 2010 we do you know see this growth as basically a doubling on average year over year um i recently presented this and somebody asked me if we expect those trends to continue um nrl has not done a pure forecast of expected deployment but i do have a slide later on that talks about state queues of interconnect and interconnection queues for projects we expect to come online in 2011 or sorry 2020 and we had about 1100 megawatts come online so a lot of capacity coming online year to year still overall a small chunk of the overall solar market one of the trends we see in this space is that projects have become larger over time this is not really captured in the visualizations here but we are starting to see some of these very large 50 megawatt or larger community solar projects in recent years that is happening in florida and arizona previous projects in arkansas as well as georgia has some quite large projects so that is pulling some of our capacity numbers up on a year-to-year basis when we look at average project capacities though across the country they still are in that kind of two megawatt range um in terms of project size and some states have a size cap other states might just have provisions saying that the project has to be connected to the distribution system um instead of the transmission system or something like that so um consideration for just how um how folks define community solar i spoke a little bit about enabling legislation but this is a high-level summary of across the country which states have this enabling legislation this can take different forms some states are mandating community solar be offered by their regulated utilities other states have an approach that requires virtual net metering so it may not require a certain megawatt of community solar capacity be installed in the state but there is that enabling framework of virtual net metering that allows customers to receive bill credits from their community solar subscriptions um i don't think i put a slide in on this but we also tend to see that most of these states i think around 17 of these states have some type of provision for low and moderate income access to community solar whether that is a a carve out where they're saying a certain percentage of a project or a certain percentage of the overall portfolio has to serve lmi customers or some states have had targeted financial incentives for projects that include lmi subscribers or in some cases there are states who have a selection process for community solar projects and if there is an lmi component that is weighted um we're given more given more points in that weighting criteria um so that is an area that that we see a lot of interest in at the state level when we think about deployment in states that have supportive policies or enabling legislation versus those that don't the figure on the right there shows the voluntary participation states at about i think it's about 1200 megawatts and then our seats with enabling legislation total over 2 000 megawatts um there's a there's a lot of nuance here this is kind of the high level summary but the voluntary states are really driven on a capacity basis by those large projects in florida arkansas georgia and texas those four states cover about 80 of that voluntary participation bucket so if you think about you know michigan would fall into that voluntary participation column at 7 megawatts so pretty small compared to even those other voluntary states so when we look at this market going forward it's obviously very heavily driven by enabling frameworks and those large utility voluntary programs so this data here shows from states where there are projects that have been approved in some way or another um that could be either through a mandated framework or as the case of florida approval by the regulatory commission for florida power and light and duke energy to move forward with their projects we're looking at in the dark blue the operational projects and then the light blue the planned projects so um take away here is that we're definitely continuing to see growth in this market it still is pretty heavily um focused on a handful of states um the largest growth on a megawatt basis we expect to be in florida and new york florida as those utility programs roll out and new york as a lot of projects that have been approved for incentives are starting to be interconnected um that's not to say that other states are not active in this space and like we've seen a lot of activity in oregon as they work through their rules and regulatory process it's just a smaller program overall than we see in states like new york and irena minnesota okay so um the last piece i want to cover in my presentation is the value that folks receive when they subscribe to community solar projects this is something that nrl started to track for a lot of reasons but one is to really get a grounding in is community solar market that can save people money by subscribing and we have seen in the past a lot of utility programs that are um you know often called green pricing programs or adder programs where customers are you know paying one or two cents per kilowatt hour extra on their bill and a certain number of customers are willing and wanting to do that but we know that when products can save people money there will be greater adoption and greater support for deploying um renewable energy assets so we have a lot of detail behind this what we do is gather data on the subscription contracts that developers are using or utilities are using if they are the ones subscribing customers we can pull their rate tariff for each tariff or subscriber contract that we have we look at things like how many how many years the contract is for how much and how the customer pays so are they paying monthly are they paying annually and then are there any escalation rates or things like that included and then the last main piece is just how the customer is compensated for their generation so in most cases that's the retail rate that customers are compensated at but in some cases it may be more like a value of solar rate or some kind of custom rate that the utility has developed so we use all that information to calculate the net present value of a residential subscription to community solar and track that over time so this figure is showing in the dark blue um the average not present value of a residential subscription and we've also done a lot of scenario analysis so that's shown in the lighter blue there to vary things like discount rate utility escalation rates other things that maybe are a little bit more unknown just to explore how sensitive these net present values are to those external factors or more things that are more unknown um so what you see here is that there's obviously a trend towards having a positive net present value for residential subscribers in the earlier years we did see a lot a lot more projects that were not providing a positive net present value some of these were smaller projects so they're they're higher cost and these are projects that were developed before some of the big virtual net metering programs began to roll out in colorado minnesota massachusetts and new york so we do see those states as having value for customers and as those states deploy more we are starting to see that npv come up for residential subscribers so the next couple of slides are some of our new work focused on energy burden and we wanted to really answer the question of how can community solar reduce the energy burden of low and moderate income consumers we know that low and moderate income consumers spend more of their annual income on energy than other income groups we have a lot of data at doe and nrel to help us understand that framing there's a department of energy lead tool it's called where you can explore energy burden by income group by location it's really cool tool with a lot of data sounded like there were some data folks in this group so if you haven't seen that it is a pretty cool tool um but we wanted to layer into that essentially not just understanding how much people are currently paying and what their current energy burden is but then layering on what would that look like if a consumer in a different energy or sorry in a different income bracket were to subscribe to community solar and also subscribe to community solar with a low income adder as is the case in massachusetts and then we'll also talk about washington d.c so there's a lot on this figure but the key takeaways are in the blue bars that's where customers are at now what their energy burden percentages are now and then in the orange you're looking at how much lower does that get if you add community solar and then in the green it is um how much um you would be at with community solar with that low income matter so a couple key takeaways for me for this is that energy burden is more than just electricity so there are certain things that a community solar subscription will not address which means it's really important to think about uh for community solar subscribers what else could they be doing to address their energy consumption whether that's weatherization or efficiency to lower that heating load typically and then also if you focus on your lowest income brackets so the zero to 30 percent income bracket your reduction on a percentage basis is just going to be much greater because uh just pure math of expenditures over income so there really are you know some a lot of data layers underneath this but really allows us to illustrate the point of um our lowest income consumers need help the most and thinking about ways to target programs or policies to reduce their energy burden not just from community solar but other energy needs um so i think actually yeah two more slides um so this is looking at the same data but in a different framework we wanted to really frame out how much an example uh lowest income person or household might be spending on energy including electricity gas and fuel and then looking at what are the reductions in those yellow bars that come from community solar and then from that low income adder so you can see that overall for this modeled energy consumer this person is paying about 1100 a year and then if you look at what their reduction is it's about 400 a year so purely just on an electricity basis if we just look at electricity and not gas and fuel there is quite a large reduction in terms of the the amount of electricity bills that this consumer would have last example is one from washington d.c washington dc implemented a solar for all program which offers free community solar subscriptions to households below 80 of area median income the subscriptions are designed to offset approximately 50 percent of electricity bills for those consumers um so when we look at this program again in the blue we see the energy burden kind of business as usual and then adding in the solar for all subscription and green similar trend just based on economics and what what customers tend to pay but that zero to 30 percent income bracket sees the largest reduction i'm down to about 8.8 percent um but everybody is saving money if they are 80 or lower of area median income so that is the end of what i have today and happy to answer questions on this or what else is happening with community solar across the country thank you thank you jenny commissioners like to open things up for any questions that you might have commissioner over pick and then commissioner thanks that was a great presentation really appreciate it um uh what i'm interested in is the low income adder it it sounds like you're saying or implying implicitly that there might be better savings if the money is put into energy efficiency is there a comparison between giving uh you know essentially the low income adder uh for energy purchase or putting it into energy efficiency in the house or the dwelling yeah we have not done a comparison as part of this study you certainly could do that and look at the cost of installing efficiency measures versus providing a community solar subscription a lot of that will depend on like which which energy efficiency measures you install and are there existing state programs um that that provide money to do that or things like that um my my main point was that like let's not do these things in isolation so if you are offering a low income community solar program um don't just do that like make sure that the house is efficient and weatherized so that you can really target deep energy burden reductions thanks thanks mr cleavy then commissioner yeah um i was interested and what you thought um of all these models which ones are um at least most interesting for for michigan and what we're we're facing i appreciate washington dc models one of the few things i've seen them able to come together on in washington dc um i've been in meetings in lansing where dte energy has actually suggested that people who do energy efficiency on their house be charged more for their money because they are quote free riders so it's hard for me to see a way where our investor owned utilities are going to offer solar at below market rate retail rate um to anybody in in in this state um so we have an uphill battle here where where should michigan of all these different models um which ones you really work well with investor owned utilities um and and have have any of those investor-owned utilities actually done real community solar where subscribers are they're actually customers as opposed to you know blue chip stockholders um and are they actually uh passing on those dividends to those subscribers i.e ratepayers in the form of lower below market retail rates for fossil fuels is that actually happening or not so it is happening um and it can happen in a couple different ways um so you have the minnesota kind of model where as also happening in colorado with excel energy they are legislatively mandated to offer community solar and compensate customers for the wrecks associated with those projects so when you do the math customers in those states are saving money compared to just staying on their regular rate that's that's kind of the legislatively mandated model and you guys know more about michigan context and what dte or other utilities might push back against in terms of whether that is you know a feasible pathway the other model that we see is investor owned utilities who are offering these voluntary offering these programs voluntarily um so i mentioned florida power and light a couple times their model is slightly different in that they are very large solar projects and they're nearly 80 megawatts in size but they did work through a i would say pretty lengthy negotiation process with stakeholders to craft their program so that it does have a low income component to it i think there's like 30 or 35 megawatts that are dedicated to low-income consumers um i believe those consumers can never see their bill go up their provisions in there like that and then for the rest of the capacity i want to say customers are expected to save money after like seven or eight years so it is a a longer term investment from the customer perspective but you know if you think about the life of that subscription being 20 years and you start saving money you're seven um you will save money overall but there is that investment that customers need to make um so yeah i would say those are the the two models that we tend to see um uh there are variations particularly with like municipal and co-op utilities where they tend to you know have smaller projects and kind of want to pilot something out and see if their customers like it and some of those projects were developed really before solar was more cost effective so those customers may not be saving as much money or saving money at all but the co-op is kind of or muni has you know wanted to test out that approach commissioner i think you have raised your hand is that correct yep thanks john and thanks jenny for your presentation and to enroll for all the things you do for us to help us understand renewables and integration and so forth um the state of michigan is working on distributed energy in terms of um making it more accessible and i suspect that we're going to see some rules changing in that favor um if a if a city municipality had a say a 24 megawatt solar project they were looking at and wanted to go community um solar base from a concept point of view um could you just speak briefly on on how that's being facilitated financially are is it municipal bonds being used have you seen anything creative in terms of keeping the debt service and cost of those kinds of projects down so that the community solar subscription fees can also be lowered um that is a great question and not one that we have analyzed um so you're saying this 24 megawatt project would be owned by the city or yeah okay um so yeah i definitely not i'm not a municipal finance expert but we do have folks like that and hell um so if you want to send me a follow-up i'd be happy to connect you with some other folks my understanding is that there are ways to uh that cities have to finance projects in a more cost effective way but the challenge is with getting the investment solar investment tax credit and finding a way to um you know essentially that's like the price to be right um so that's kind of my high level understanding but i don't know if there are things beyond bonds or kind of a standard set of mechanisms for cities to use yep fair enough the tax credits really critical and if the city could find a way to structure that so that it would be financiable in a community solar environment i think there's projects out there that could be worked that way i think one of our other public speakers had a question on that so thank you for your comments appreciate them commissioner overpick you got a question again uh well just a point about this i mean there are um when the university of michigan was looking into this we have a couple economists in the school who did a study and they worked closely with folks at mit who were already doing this buying power purchase agreements and of course that's a way to fund a uh for-profit uh power developer um solar developer who can then take advantage of tax credits that a university its non-profit can't so that's an advantage of course you have to pay something to that developer and then you have to pay the debt unless you have some magical way to grow money on a tree or something like that um so that's a possibility the thing that they also uncovered however is that the cost of generating solar up here in michigan it's a lot more expensive than doing it in florida or texas or tennessee or anywhere down you know further south just because we don't get enough sunshine and when we do get sunshine in the winter it's you know it is a the sun's at a lower angle and that cuts it down too um what you're asking i think chuck is figure you can figure it out um and then you could do an rfp and see what you get then the other thing that got became an obstacle uh was that um unless you own the transmission you're going to pay for the transmission too and so uh dte in this case would have us uh you know have a choke point on our ability to get that energy from the uh landfill or whatever it was to the customer all this adds up and my guess is it adds up too much and that's probably why and if you have a funny feeling missy is thought it's all through um that's probably why we're thinking of your own municipal power and then we own the lines we own you know everything but then still is solar cheap enough to generate a good deal for us at this high latitude and i don't know the answer that's why i'm here i'm sure we could get the answer right missy mr cleavy did you have another question or yeah i just i just have a comment at chuck's point and although johnson's also i mean the the purple rates for third party fine are embarrassing low and every rate case that i see that comes out of lansing they're asking for it to go lower so you know generating to the utilities at somewhere between three and five cents a kilowatt hour as opposed to building it and using ourselves and offsetting electricity at 15 cents a kilowatt hour is a is a totally different situation so municipals that do this you know they're they're replacing expensive energy with this and 15 cents a kilowatt hour but you know for us to go float bounce and and be get in the game of building power and selling it on the open market to dte for you know under purple rules um you know i i i defy any economist even a university of michigan economist to figure out where the sweet spot is in that kind of a deal even with a 25-year life span on the on the power so um yeah i mean we're kind of stuck where either we convince you dte energy to sell us green power uh at a reasonable rate or we subsidize that power and give it to lower income people or we figure out another alternative municipalization has been posted as one alternative hopefully we can find others that uh work work even better but um you know we're stuck being rocking a hard place right now it seems to me on this this whole issue so i'm looking forward to figuring it out mark anyone else we have another presenter on the topic and so we might i mean i think missy also is going to make some comments too possibly um so i think maybe we'll move on to the next presentation which is i think more michigan-centric um jenny you're certainly welcome to stan and maybe there's some follow-up questions that relate to the material that you presented that come up later in the evening missy do you want to present our next presenter i see that john is waiting in the wings yeah hi um bye john thank you for joining us today next we have john john finch who actually carlene uh gets credit for really identifying jon as the speaker to talk to us a little bit about what's happening locally here in michigan with some community solar and so i'm going to attempt probably poorly if anyone can help me make sure you get audio when i play this video for john does anyone know the secret of zoom audio playing through youtube i'm gonna assume you don't hearing that okay so this may not work if not i will drop it here we go we're going to try can you see it okay you can't hear it or see it we can't okay missy when you shared did you select um share system audio when you shared your screen that is yeah yes i knew that was the thing to do you are the best this is now let me try again ready [Music] so [Music] thank you missy [Music] i'm going to give you a b-plus on the on the av stuff okay okay a minus b plus somewhere in there so thanks i was going to say um hello to jenny we are a part of the national community solar partnership and we've been the recipients of a couple technical support grants and it's been a great experience working with jenny and others across the nation uh with this with this opportunity with nrel and the doe and so forth uh i think one of my takeaways jenny from this and you probably have the same one is that uh no two community solar projects are the same uh they're all very different and they're all peculiar for a number of reasons and i see some experts on this call that i recognize chuck holcomb and mark levy uh among them and that we have all kinds of different situations within our communities as to what the regulations are and the policies are regarding energy whether it's um where it comes from the utilities whether or not you yourself can generate self-generate where you can locate it on and on and on and on so community solar is really about threading a pretty pretty tight needle to get that to get that right and i'll just tell you a little bit about our own experience doing this um and and then we can have a little bit of conversation about it i think a couple of my major takeaways from this and you saw that our hard work eventually paid off the project is in the ground it's producing electrons it's um working working pretty well we were recognized by a large trade association the state is having um the project of the year in 2019 we actually built um beat out a large wind farm project so it was a little bit of a david and goliath story our project is modest in its size it's only 345 kilo kilowatts but we got this going five six seven years ago now and at that time that was a relatively good sized project and moreover it was a project that could fit on the particular site where we're located you saw how green that site is it even looks prettier today because as part of our on building out the solar project we included habit habitat restoration we have pollinators and native grasses that we planted there and it's taken us a couple few years to get ahead of the invasives and the weeds and now i'm proud to say if you go out there today you're going to see black eyed susans and milkweed and all kinds of forbs and grasses it's quite it's quite beautiful and we're we're very pleased about that and there's actually an upside to planting this kind of vegetation around solar panels and that upside is that we don't have to mow that site we don't have to get in there and cut grass because these these plants go to a certain height they're not affecting at all the panel's productions and they take care of themselves so it has a kind of a twofer to it and then i would add a three-fer to it if i might the site we're located in east lansing and some of you may be from east lansing or know it um i i guess there's a university there somewhere as well i actually went there my son went to university of michigan i worked at university of michigan so we're all one happy family um that's actually a capped landfill it's a closed landfill that we located the project on so it's a site that's never going to have any redevelopment use you're never going to put in tim hortons on that site you're never going to put a daycare center on that site and and it happens to be wonderfully proximate to distribution lines of the board of water and light they were an important partner of ours actually chuck so you know right in that corridor on our side of the street bwl has distribution line on the other side of the street consumers energy has a distribution line so locating community solar i think is an interesting exercise in that i think that we can identify among all of our communities in the state of michigan legacy industrial sites legacy mining sites legacy dumps that could be good candidates for community solar because community solar is like i said ours is 345 kilo kilowatts which is small um one to five megawatts i think is a good guesstimate to say in terms of what a community solar project might be how big that would be and roughly speaking if it's a relatively intact site you can get about a megawatt on five acres six acres of property so in our case we're taking up a couple acres out of a 24 acre site that is kind of lightly used by the community for hiking and walking your dog and doing things like that and like i said we're right there on the distribution line um so we're local and that helps to supply some good services as well um that happens to be a distribution line a circuit that has capacity so one of the challenges of locating solar especially the big stuff and again chuck knows this is where you put it because the transmission and the distribution grid might look the same from standing on the street looking up at it but it isn't the same in terms of how it's functioning there's capacity in places and there's congestion in other places you don't necessarily know where the best places to hook a project up to so we had all kinds of those technical hurdles to get through like any solar project does identifying the securing the site identifying the site working with the local utility if they'll be willing to let us put those electrons on the grid do an interconnection study in our case because we're on a landfill doing all kinds of environmental impact studies storm water studies on and on and on and on and then you have another conundrum with community solar that's the community so we have 150 participants in this project that's 150 subscriptions participation i have to keep track of and make sure that people are getting their money back out of the project getting the credits on their on their bill so there's a lot of churn there there's a lot of things to take care of and pay attention to and it isn't something that you do lightly we did it lightly we just kind of said hell yes we can whoop the british and we went in there and took us five years but we actually were able to pull it off but it is it is a learned skill and there's a number of other community solar projects around the state as well and each one of those i think informs the next one in terms of what you've learned works and what you've learned doesn't particularly work i know that ann arbor has the project that you've queued up with dte and the idea that it'll be some community solar there as i understand it and some of it will be just generation that goes to the utility but i can't emphasize enough that if you're going to be thinking about doing true community solar you have to do three things really well and really early you have to line up your conversations with the incumbent utility because like it or not you're gonna have to put the power on their wires although there is a model and jenny knows about this work we've been doing about there might be an alternative model to doing that but i won't go into that right now so you need to work with a local utility you need to figure out who's got the land i think the best candidates for land are local units of government they have brown fields that are sitting there underutilized we can put solar on those sites thirdly then you have to work with your community and figure out what they want and what they don't want we spent a lot of time in front of community forums and i was naive enough to think community solar it's like a warm puppy who's going to be against community solar right um but we took some shots in these community meetings we listened to people who were not happy about the idea who were questioning the wisdom of doing this we're concerned about the city getting involved with this and perhaps 10 20 years from now being stuck with a mess that they have to clean up on city property so those are real three important pieces you have to get right now we did this without the benefit of any kind of statute to back us up or provide any kind of blocking other states and jenny's uh slide presentation showed you that other states are going gangbusters minnesota i think has something like 450 last time i looked megawatts of community solar 450 megawatts of community solar we have and this is a generous guess two megawatts maybe four megawatts somewhere in there we've got marquette we've got lots has got a small project cherryland consumers has a couple we've got one and then you're about done so if people ask you does enabling legislation make a difference in energy policy i would say hell yes it does it makes a big difference and so right now there's a coalition called my community solar alliance and i can drop the url in the chat although i don't see the chat here but nonetheless this is a group of a number of organizations and and folks that are pushing the adoption of a couple bills that right now are within our state legislature that would do just that they would make community solar carve out among this kind of crazy energy world so it's not rooftop it's not utility scale it's something else and this carve out would provide some definitions and some parameters and some expectations of the utilities so that more of this can be adopted and i just would encourage you i know um certainly one of your representatives robbie i know him pretty well i'm sure he's on board with this but you may have others where you are or have contacts with those folks who encourage them to take a look at these bills and support these bills i think they're pretty good and what's nice about being michigan is that we're we're almost never first in when it comes to energy innovation type stuff we kind of hang back as good middle westerners and wait for somebody else to make the mistakes and do the hard work and that bill is based on a lot of good community solar bills that are elsewhere in the country colorado minnesota new york illinois and i think we've got a pretty tight argument right there with our bill so i'm going to pause missy and um you tell me what i whiffed on that i should have mentioned or what folks might be most interested in hearing more about i don't think you have done anything i think chairmanship should we just go to questions yes can we open things up for questions then for john kennedy um go ahead chuck uh john great presentation is normal love working with you you guys are great um probably if i were to say one thing missing the only thing really would be the alignment of community solar and its scalability relative to carbon reduction right i mean it you could put a lot of solar on people's roofs across our community and and not that that's there's anything wrong with that but when you start getting reductions in in carbon remissions you really start looking at scalability and the more you can build a scalable community infrastructure that can be taken advantage of by you know lmis all the way through people who can't build solar on their property because the shading whatever it might be now you're starting to build that um mindset that we can do some some differentiating with respect to greenhouse gases and i know you're you and i are working on larger scale stuff together but that's the one potential additional additionality maybe you call it for community solar that's a benefit maybe you could comment on that brief yeah that's a great observation chuck what this makes me think is this we have a lot of cities around the country but let's pick on michigan in which councils mayors others have put forward ambitious goals whether it's 100 percent renewables to power the city or it's a net zero goal of some kind of or you know um becoming carbon neutral by a certain date and that's great because that does set a goal that doesn't push us to figure out ways to make these kinds of things happen i think the challenge with those is oftentimes with people is like well what do we do then do we buy s-rex from texas to get ourselves there and i think what's nice about something like community solar is that it's you know kind of like a goldilocks situation it's not too big it's not too little it's kind of just right that a community can figure out how to do those kinds of projects together it can be a tangible action on their part to reduce carbon to green up the grid do any number of things like that and you can be really hands-on with it i mean it takes it takes a village it takes a community to make this kind of thing happen because we had to get all kinds of things passed within city government to even make this happen right we had to change we had to change the way things were done within government to make this kind of thing happen and that you know if you're just relying on some go-getting smallish kind of non-profits to make this happen you're probably hanging back too much a conversation i've had a lot with utilities around the state and they tended not to be the industrial utilities they tended to be more the municipalities or the cooperatives the smaller guys if you will where i've come to them and presented to them hey let's do a community solar park in your neck of the woods i won't name any cities holland and what they say to me holland is they say well that's a good idea holland but nobody from my community is coming to me to say they want you're saying it's a good idea but i'm not hearing from my community so commissions like you guys what you can be doing is like hey community i know this has already happened in ann arbor but you got to make noise you got to have conversations with your utility and your civic leaders because if it's not coming from the community it probably isn't going to get done mr herbert yes i was going to say john that you know i uh as a solar developer i have so many people quite regularly come to me with property that they would like to develop some form of revenue stream if you will or in the case of community solar and of course they're all in my case all in dte territory and i have to tell them that because of the monopoly control over energy in southeast michigan that dt will show no interest in that solar being developed and being available for other people so they're and they're always disappointed and they're always scratching their heads in disbelief but am i wrong oh you're you are right and again i'll track back to those house bills that are currently in committee and um i can always follow up with you mr later on and give folks the link to all that so they can see them themselves those bills for force the hand of the investment utilities to make community solar happen period they give they give the requirements of it they define it and they make it a thing and one of the one of the one of the ways i think that we can you know make it happen is is to try to kind of level set if you will some of the the costs around all this um chuck mentioned lmi um i think it's great work that nrel is pushing in terms of looking at adders when it comes to lmi or when you get to a certain point in your plateauing with the energy efficiency that you're driving within your community and then if you can add solar to that then you've got even more potential for savings for those customers you certainly have a hedge against the future so if you can provide a solar price point for somebody that's good for the next 10 15 years against rate increases over the next 10 15 years that's building community wealth in my estimation and a good thing to do but you're absolutely right one of the one of the foibles of of michigan for the most part is that your destiny is determined by your incumbent utility if you're in dte's territory you live by dte's rules you're in consumers territory you live by their rules if you're an immunity or a cooperative different set of rules there as well you know we only have in our state 10 percent of electric choice so to speak and that queue is around the block and then down the street across the state for entities lining up wanting to take advantage of that so we really don't have choice uh john welcome uh john serves with me on uh glrglrea's board directors and we're really happy to have him on board and be part of that john i wonder if you could speak for a minute about you you raised the question of choice and i guess what i see is the you know if there's a potential confluence between community choice aggregation or electric choice and community solar if if we merge these two things together uh could bypass the you know the until the intransigence on this stuff and create a market for community solar that is beyond just the municipals where it's being put in um do you do you see a it's such a confluence is a possibility i mean community choice 2.2 is you know might just crack that electric choice law open yeah and i know that you missy mark and we've certainly talked about this in glra as well about community choice aggregation um i mean ohio has something like it right something along those lines i it's a legislative fix as i see it i mean i don't know what can be done within the puc within the michigan public service commission in terms of rule making to make something like happen i don't see what a local government can do to make that happen maybe there's some moves that local government can do it certainly seems that that's in statute and in order to fix it we would need to amend the statute could the utilities agree to that on their own and and let it happen is part is a part of their irp for example maybe will they i don't know but you're right i mean i think some of these i mean i guess what i would just step back and say is is that the the change in the the utility industry and chuck knows this better than i do because he's been in there for a long time you do too much the the change in the last couple years in utility industry to my mind is equivalent to what happened in the previous 20 in terms of what's going on you know with batteries coming on and thinking about ders and thinking about the utility shifting this business model to perhaps be more providing a bunch of services and other kinds of supports to the grid and making it all kind of work because somebody's got to make it work because it's complicated unless thinking about selling commodity to you and i just think whatever was true two years ago isn't going to be true two years from now but i'm not sure what that two years from now looks like but it's going to be more change listener george uh thank you mr chairman um firstly i want to thank you john for your presentation you know it was nice to bring it down to more of a michigan-focused approach um so i my question um you know i feel uh just a quick aside um you know we we do a lot of conversation in in this commission about policy and policies that we would like to do um and then we have the issue that we run into there's a party that controls our legislature that is very uh difficult to work with and is going to prevent us from doing a lot of these policies so you mentioned those bills um that are in committee right now um and more broadly speaking you know my question is both narrow and broad um you know firstly do those bills in committee have any chance of being you know i don't know if you've been following them uh being enacted this legislative session or if anybody else has an answer to that uh and two more broadly um if those bills are not enacted what is the path forward under current law for community solar okay um second one first so um roughly every eight years or so we open up our energy law and do something with it so 2008 and then we had it up to 2 000 well was whenever the one or 16 whatever was 2016 maybe perhaps 2016 and yeah so 2008 2016 so we're kind of due again you know and and that's going to be a thing and there'll be all kinds of wrangling and all kinds of you know discussions and things will go on and i'm just going to bet that that if that law is opened up again that we're going to see some really dramatic changes in what the legislation legislation is going to is going to say about what our energy policy should be i mean to give you know credit i mean consumers where chuck is you know those guys are blasting through this 20 goal of having renewables as part of their portfolio they're gunning for 40 50 i mean i think at least 40 maybe even beyond that i mean they're and every time i i tune into the news about consumers they go from saying we're gonna put in four gigawatts to five giga loss to six gigawatts to eight gigawatts and that is an amazing you know exponential growth and solar alone that consumers is intending so i think keeping an eye on that is an important thing and i'm just going to say about the community solar bill itself um i've been involved with the back end of that um i helped provide some of the technical language and you know reviewing some of what was put into it like i said i worked with a group of good people that learned from other states and most recently and again this is a modest contribution i hope it makes a difference we've had state legislators out at our east lansing community solar park because we're not too far from the capitol and i've walked people around and pointed things out and explained to two of them and showed them the black-eyed susans and we even had deer one day running around the site and um in terms of acceptance interest and seemingly being positive it was bipartisan so it wasn't just the dems that were getting their heads around this and thinking it seemed like it was an okay thing now what happens when the rubber meets the pavement i don't know but at least i think that we're helping people get their heads around what it is i think you know if you don't see something you can't see it touch it taste it walk around it it's pretty abstract and community solar like i said it sounds like a warm puppy but it's really not a warm puppy it's something much more serious and much more complex than that so i hope that you know we're going to continue this push coming into the fall and that we may see something come out of that committee that's positive and fingers crossed um just a couple of quick uh follow-ups there uh mr chairman if you don't mind um so uh on the reopening of the energy code that you mentioned i'm a little familiar with what happened in 2016 um so you're expecting that to happen 2022 2023 well i mean if if any if looking backwards can provide any trends then maybe there may be there may be an appetite again for opening it up and taking a look at it and and there were some substantial changes from the 2008 to the 2016.

um obviously um go ahead john did you want to say something no go ahead obviously i think um you know everything that john said is right um but um you know um it's it's a big question mark as far as changing in the legislation i mean that could happen in a matter of months and that could also be dragged out into a matter of years and obviously a lot of different parties potentially even ourselves included will have influence on that process including also through political contributions and lots of other things so i think it's pretty hard to to put any kind of timeline on enabling legislation what i'd like to do is bridget has a question or comment and then i'd like to move on to missy um and um hear a little bit about projects locally um so bridget i'll let you go first and then of course we can go back and rehash anything that jenny or john said after also missy talks so go ahead bridgette um thanks i so um john you were talking about the two bills which i'm assuming are about enabling community solar as well as it sounds like other things um do does anybody know where dte stands on those if they if anybody's approached them to find out if they support them oppose them has anybody tried working with them [Music] well one these carve outs for community solar are pretty specific to that so they're not about a lot of other kind of renewable energy issues so they're pretty specific to that um two from what i've heard from the alliance and i that that's not my day-to-day job so we're part of this alliance and we've helped out with them but i'm not you know i'm not government relations i'm not in the state house i don't spend all my time with this particular issue or paying attention to it but i i think probably the assumption is that you they're probably going to be resistant to it um there for any number of reasons one of the potential issues is that um they're suggesting that at least half of whatever gets built that's called community solar is built by third parties not the utilities themselves now in the case of consumers they're already kind of doing that themselves based upon their own irp but i'm not sure we can say that about the other ious in the state i think the expectation is that the utilities are probably not going to be real excited about this or supportive of it that may change but i think that's kind of the word on the street i see um can we head things over to you you have uh i think some um certainly comments and maybe slides prepared to talk about what what's happening locally and um i would at least personally appreciate you addressing some of the questions um that ken garber uh addressed and um also i'm at least personally also interested in um all these things are interesting from my perspective about what's going on locally and in the state of michigan but without enabling legislation what it seems to me it comes down to is the negotiation between whoever wants to put in a consult a community solar project and um the investor owned utility and of course there are a lot of other elements as john talked about talking to the community and everything else but uh you know the eye of the needle that the project has to get through is um negotiations with the ilu and so i'd be interested in you commenting on the status of the project and what some of the peculiarities are and limitations um in terms of um negotiating positions we've encountered so i'll turn it over to you thanks chair merski and i don't have slides i'm happy to put them together and to circulate for folk but i thought i would actually just walk through the project one more time it's evolving very fast so if i put together slides and even change today in good ways as we're moving forward so to kind of ground the conversation first and foremost i want to say that the city is in support of community solar legislation it's something that we've asked our city lobbyists to work on it's something that once um you know once it's reintroduced and once we can get movement we're working we plan to testify to the extent that we can and coordinating with other municipalities that also want that and i think that gets to what jenny was sharing about our state right now is is really a voluntary state right because we don't have requirements around community solar so acknowledging that we're a voluntary state we as you know intervened in the voluntary green pricing program and saw that as a mechanism to do a lot of things one of which was get movement on community solar and in the settlement that we received we did get that and so um i don't know if folks caught this when jenny was talking about the different types of community solar uh there are direct off-take where you're taking the energy but that actually doesn't happen a whole lot um in most of these cases it is a community asset in which that energy is going onto the grid and then it's being distributed and you get a credit like virtual net metering for that system itself it's not behind the meter like the solar that's on my roof right now you know flowing flowing in and then access goes elsewhere so we wanted to afford with this project for numerous reasons one transferability right we wanted to demonstrate the community solar as possible we wanted to get it through the vgp program because we want it and we know that our public has asked for it a number of times and we knew that we couldn't require dt to do this and so the voluntary pricing program was the mechanism by which we did it and what we did was uh we had kind of been looking at the landfill solar or the landfill for a long time saying what are we going to do with this asset and we're not going to develop it and forgive me there is a storm moving through as many of you i think now so sorry for any background noise we looked at that asset we said this would be a good place uh we're really interested in seeing what is potential here uh for a solar asset we don't have behind the meter solar on site uh to take that off so we would have to inject that energy into the grid and so we started kind of inquiring about this and in preliminary discussions before we intervened in the bgp program we talked to dte about it and realized that there's actually two lines running there's dt's line um their transmission line and then they also have the miso line not far away so that's good news because that meant there were two possible points of interjecting that power into the system and we had done some preliminary analysis and you know we saw this to be a pretty decent sized uh project and we brought it to dt and the first time there wasn't a lot of interest the second time we brought it through the regulatory process and there was a lot of interest in that uh happening the price point and what we ended up doing was an interconnection study to dte system because that is number one a lot cheaper and a lot faster and shop can talk about the myso grid connection and how long of a delay it is to get onto iso so we'd have to get in the queue right because you first in line is who's going to interject into that system first so we wanted to understand if dt's lines that were there had any capacity and if so would we need to do any updates to those grids uh to that grid itself to be able to take the power that we projected and we have done a preliminary study showing about somewhere between 20 and 24 megawatts kind of depending candidly on floating solar and its viability on the project that's a lot of power to interject at a site and what we found through the very first interconnection study that we did which anyone would have to do any developer has to do an interconnection study was that dt's grid could take it with some upgrades uh not massive upgrades but some notable upgrades that's good news number one that the project was viable and we didn't have to wait three years plus in the mysoq so good news and step one then we began to analyze okay how are we going to get this this project actually moving forward so i recognize we're having a conversation around municipalization but let's start with where we are right now we don't own polls and wires so i can build a system and i can't move the power i can't use it on site so that's not a super viable project for us to invest 30 million dollars to not be able to off take that energy so we negotiated with dt and said we want to do this as a community solar project in which the city of ann arbor is the anchor tenant by that i mean we are last in line so we want to open this up for subscriptions and we're negotiating and right now we have uh agreement we're looking at the details the agreement that what would happen is people can subscribe to this in one of two ways you can subscribe just for a certain dollar amount because i just want like 10 equivalent offset from that system or you could subscribe and say i want 100 of my usage to be from this and then you would pay a levelized cost of energy which is basically the cost to build the system your percentage would be what you build and then you get the credit based on how that energy sells on the market right so you do get the credit on your bill so this was important because it is kind of that is a model of community solar that exists within the system so you're getting the benefit but maybe you just can't have it on your roof right you subscribe in that way we also asked for an lmi program offering so we're still designing what that would look like so that we will have a carve out for low and moderate income households to be able to subscribe at a discounted rate for that program and then the city of ann arbor agrees to take whatever is not subscribed for so one of the nice things about the size of this project if it does come in at that 20 to 24 megawatts municipal operations today is about 24 megawatts so we could subscribe and technically have that match city load we don't expect that to be the case though we expect that we'll actually not get a lot of the project and i want that to be true excuse me i actually want us to subscribe the whole thing and then to use the city's demand to go and send the next build out of a program in an asset so just a last few things to kind of share broadly about this uh the timeline is really important we are hoping to get an rfp out in weeks and i mean that in like three weeks um hitting the street so we can actually have developers bid on this project and know what cost to come back to council this is really important one with our climate goals we need to get assets online fast and this is one way to do that number two we're gonna safe harbor assets which means we're going to secure the 26 federal tax incentive and that's going to make this project that much cheaper and more viable to move forward and if we are talking we don't have a final cost so any number we throw around really is just that um but you know if you're talking anything in a million a 26 reduction in that is really significant so that'll help make the asset that much more viable and useful for other people to subscribe there will be a third party that builds hence why we're going out to rfp so it's not that we're going to build this or dte is going to build this um and i'm trying to think what else [Music] i think those are sort of the main points so we can't do a ppa in the traditional sense like i can't have someone else just go build this asset they would have to use dt's infrastructure anyway and we'd have to work with dt on this project we just cut out the middle folk we just went directly to the source to make this happen so um dt is now required for our regulators the michigan public service commission to move this project forward in good faith we have the option of walking away if the price tag comes back too high and it's something that we don't want to develop but this has to move forward in good faith is that helpful thanks missy i'd like to open things up for commenting questions again not just for missy but for anyone else um including for each other uh peck i miss you i don't know if i got it and i don't know if you have the answer um but how does this compare how will the cost compare to dte's uh green power migraine power plan yeah so to be determined for two reasons one is in that uh settlement the that we intervened in we also negotiated a lower rate for the migraine power program so dt still has to file with the michigan public service commission what their new rates will be based on some merging of different asset classes which douglas jester gets all the credit for figuring this out for those in this landscape you know douglas he's brilliant uh so to be determined what is different in this is you're not just paying a premium for an asset you're also getting the credit of that asset and that credit will be real-time miso markets so whatever that energy sells for it'll be i bel we're still negotiating this likely a monthly average cost because the energy sells on the market whatever it sells for on the market you get the credit back on your bill the premium will be the subscription subtracting what that energy sells for on the market for the renewable portions but do you really think people will subscribe i mean because it's it's almost um i have a phd and i can't figure out what you're saying i do think people will subscribe to this we already have a number of uh tenants or folks who are ready to come in uh and subscribe for a certain offset this is pretty common in kind of businesses especially those with clean energy goals we've been talking to folks like aaps the university of michigan um pittsfield township and others who have have these goals and objectives and this is a local generation project that allows them to have the security to know a certain percentage of their emissions are offset okay but still they don't know how much they're going to pay for it we'll know as soon as we get the bids back like that will be determined it's just we don't have costing right people haven't bid to build the project okay then we'll know okay yeah then we'll know all right so i'll just wait i support it if i can add to what you just said if the new energy code with the xero code appendix is adopted by the state of michigan there would be the possibility of ann arbor adopting the zero code and with the zero code you have to offset energy use through a number of different means and i believe missy correct me if i'm wrong that um that would um be most likely a source of demand for community solar from the site correct could be a demand certainly from that site i think our initial eyes are on big bigger users that are you know again like us and pittsfield township other municipalities in the region those are those are kind of google maybe you know others who have the goals and would like to be giving dollars to the local economy right mr cleavy the new york uh george i should say and then um so just a couple points one is a i my home in harbor springs i have 100 uh solar from the voluntary green pricing program up there and it it works incredibly smoothly um it was and uh because we were 100 but they actually took some other things off the bill and it's worked out to be essentially a wash so um once it gets moving it's it's fairly fairly good but there was a glitch and i don't know if you've how you guys plan to deal with this glitch or not some people have solar on their buildings and theirs their grandfather did not full net metering and it's not clear to me if if i went or someone went and signed up for the voluntary green power pricing program and they had solar on their building what how that relationship would work out um would i have would they have to give up the fullnet metering and then you know get money back based on what they put into the grid at the rate of the negotiated vgp rate or would they have two separate rates or it's not clear to me how that would work um and you can answer me offline on this issue but it's it's definitely something that's that's going to come up in ann arbor and the other issue is if you're going to be issuing an rfp we had a wonderful uh presentation this week at glrea and low carbon solar and it's kind of disturbing that chinese solar you get a seven year payback on finances but it's a 45 year payback on emissions reduction because they use coal to make the make the solar and so uh you know whether or not low carbon solar is a required in your rfp or not it's worth thinking about thank you just to the first question quickly would say that people have the option of subscribing in different ways at least that's how we have two journeys so if you had like i'll use my house right most of our energy use is offset through the system that we have but i could subscribe for five percent because i know that roughly five percent of mine is still pulling from the grid so i could i could subscribe to just a percentage i don't think we would be capable and i don't think we'd want to get into like a really conflated billing system acknowledging that might get tricky so the meter would what we put into the meter under net metering would still go back to dte but we're buying volunteer green power i guess from dte it's it'll be interesting to see how it's worked out i'm happy to take that offline too to more fully understand yeah mr george thank you mr chairman uh missy uh so i i've got a couple of questions for you um you know as someone that has not uh had the ability to study intensively like mark and chuck and some of the others on this some of what you said uh kind of went over my head so i just wanted a couple of quick clarifying questions um so you mentioned obviously uh the city is pursuing this uh the solar project and the main reason that the city can't uh do it on its own in the context of you know you know some folks have mentioned municipalization is because uh you mentioned i believe the wires right and the transmission and the battery storage is that a correct understand understanding of that yeah if we generate that power we have to move that power to a place that could use it and so we would need the polls and the wires to to be able to do that to transmit it to ourself and then if we ever had to interject it into dd's grid we'd have to have their agreement to put it on to their grid we can't just generate and put it on their system okay um and i i guess you know within that uh you know you mentioned that this solar grid would power i believe uh you would provide all the city's needs on paper uh would meet that that number that you mentioned has there been any conversation about um uh you know trying to use that power uh and and just channel it and almost like a scaled-down municipalization as the city is the primary purchaser of the power and using and purchasing lines directly for city use kind of going around bt in that instance you could imagine a scenario in which that's possible but work with me on this that most the only real site that we have next to this is the public work center so you're gonna have to run poles and wires everywhere across town to use it on the municipal sites right so you're gonna have to run pulls and wires all the way to city hall and then you're gonna have to run poles and wires all the way to the fire stations across town um and to the water treatment plant into the wastewater treatment plant and so you're basically acquiring all of that infrastructure all of that debt that antiquatedness to run that utility i think we're going to talk about this a little bit later too that staff have been working on some kind of more non-traditional non-pools and wires ways to think about municipalization and we're kind of working on some ideas to present to the commission in november on that too but no we'd have to you base like it's not simple enough just to put them across the street because it matches load we'd have to go across gotcha and uh my last question um as a just a regular consumer that you know pays my dte bill um is this uh will i have the opportunity with the public have the opportunity and what you know if you could just briefly summarize like if i want to get all of my electricity that i use in my apartment uh from community solar and from this project way maybe just briefly describe what that would look like for a consumer yeah absolutely so it's going to be posted on the my green power website as a subscription alternative where people can apply uh modify they can sign up for this and then receive the credit as well so that's going to go on the website everyone who gets information about my green power will know this is a project that they can subscribe to and then the city is going to do additional marketing and outreach okay thank you so you can yes there's so much information here and i think i missed part of what you had said missy so if you wouldn't mind clarifying you said that the city will use the end but the 26 investment tax credit can you describe how if um and also there's an rfp that's going out for the installation of it but did you say though that dte was going to be installing i i i kind of got a little bit confused there yeah fair point so dt is dt in the city are running the rfp to build so we'd have a third party developer we're gonna have third parties bid to actually build the site itself and then if well assuming that goes forward right like we'll have to see the bids and we'll have to do the pricing we'll have to determine that this is financially viable so let's say that it is when it comes back in then what will happen is it will be built by that third-party developer taking taking they will take the federal tax incentive into account so they will depreciate the asset over time they will go into vte's books but we will all get the benefit of that 26 going into kind of the cost of that asset okay thank you for the question oh thanks thanks appreciate that anyone else if not missy i'd like to return to ken garber's question so um amber go ahead yeah i have a quick follow-up question from um robert's question like theoretically the city could own it if dte you know out of their goodness of their hearts wanted to let us use the transmission line right it's just that like we have to have this like part of the negotiation with dte is that they wanted to get something out of it too right and then also because dge owns it we get the tax credit and we wouldn't if the city owned it that's those are components as well right the last part is i'm not sure i have to think a little bit your question is a good one i want to think about what we would own would we own the panels because we own the land so is that that the thing that we would own and then dt would still own the transmission and distribution lines yeah i don't know that that's kind of my question okay yeah i mean i think theoretically anything would be possible in that space we would still have to that's i need to i need to unpack that a little bit because none of those things work independently right so it's the the music comes when the orchestra plays when all of them interconnect and work together so i guess your the answer is probably theoretically yes but devil in the details on that one i'd love to follow up and kind of hear what you're thinking commissioner cleavy go ahead yeah just a comment amber interesting eraser the goodness of their heart i actually didn't realize that dte had a heart but given the fact that you think they do perhaps we should ask the dte foundation to put up this um because that seems to be where their heart is and so if they put up you know 50 hundred million dollars and put built the array and plugged it into their grid and then sold it back to us at below retail rates like some places are doing in around the country that would just be stellar that'd be wonderful and they could they could even talk about that in their annual reports i think that's a fabulous idea that that we should pursue let's ask them to do that pretty confident that the ddt foundation cannot be uh investing in the things that the corporation makes money from but with that the one thing to consider is we could buy back the asset right like over time being depreciated so that is something we could consider um if folks will bear with me for one second we've been working on this for a while in almost two years like seeding the idea too and so we have an opportunity to put 24 megawatts of solar on the ground next year is the development timeline and so there is there is definitely discussion starting to happen which would be if we move forward you know in some way shape or form with a traditional utility or a sustainable version of a utility or whatever we're going to move forward with if we do that asset could be on the books and could be something that we could price out for taking over to so there's a little bit of there's a lot of a dance that's happening right now no those are those investors they're when they don't want to cash out in seven years or six seven years so you're right there's a real window of an opportunity there bring that back yeah you bet so you know as you know missy uh university of arizona of michigan which one i'm still saying that uh university of michigan university arizona did something a lot cheaper but university of michigan bought wind and it's all from it gte and we ended up paying extra for our energy because we did that everyone feels good because we're lowering our carbon footprint substantially in other words we're well ahead of our 2025 goal because we've done that uh you know hit it like this year um and so but nonetheless we're paying more for it and what i i'm guessing here is that there's a chance that we'll be in the same boat with what you're talking you're describing is in ann arbor and your subscribers will pay more than they're currently paying for their electricity but they will have the um the bonus of being able to say they've cut their carbon footprint by a substantial amount so there there's a chance right we need to see what the numbers come back in and we'll be able to answer that the market the the solar market this last year did not cost folks money in michigan which is unique because we didn't have enough generation and so solar was at kind of a premium for green product yeah it's a it's a weird thing how they bid into the market and i'm going to go outside of my expertise if i go much further i can get someone in to talk to the group about kind of the might the market will have chuck you probably know this was like a this was a gang gangbuster year for for solar and renewables period so there's a possibility on both sides and honestly each year could change you know one year you might pay a premium the next year you might actually make money on this asset that's one of the the things that we're going to be really transparent about when we have costing for people to be able to see and also on their bill c here's what it costs for the levelized cost to build this asset and here's the credit you got on the market you're in the red or you're in the black but what you're doing is you're assuming you know and i'm just trying to understand it yeah not trying to criticize or anything because i do think the carbon uh reduction is worth it but uh who is there any guarantee in terms of how large the downside could be probably not well we'll know that guarantee when we get there's no there's no requirement that we move forward when we get the bids we'll have that guarantee like that's that's when we start the negotiation on the pricing and we understand the ultimate downside and the ultimate upside we don't know like that's what we won't be able to understand but we will be negotiating an ultimate downside because you know when we talked about university you know when we made that the bid here to get university of michigan to do a ppa somewhere south where it will almost for sure be a lot cheaper um to build um and dispatch it's it's possible that there would be enough uh alternative energy on the grid uh that was also really cheap that all of a sudden we could um you know the energy would not fetch uh what we wanted in others the downside wasn't really protected um and that was that's a concern welcome to our our grid is different right from a grid like in texas or in oklahoma where you've got wind pushing wind off the grid itself because it's such a cheap form of generation here you know we're talking about natural gas and when that the well and coal like those peaker plants are coming online so we have a i think a different scenario and i probably should stop and let chuck respond to this because i know he knows better but let me say um last kind of framing especially for our new commissioners is when the city adopted the energy criteria and principles this was one thing that we talked a lot about too was the importance of local we don't have big pieces of land locally this is kind of it if we're going to have a local demonstration project you know we can do rooftop we'll do we're exploring community centers and other places but nothing like this and so this was the project that really sort of spoke to people is like the iconic draw that we have that's place based other things other bigger projects if we move forward we'll likely have to be outside i mean not likely we'll have to be outside if we're doing a large install chuck i feel like i just want to say did i mess up anything horrifically we'll be here all night if i start talking so i'll i'll not they'll not support you missy but i will say that that additionality that locality of of generating is exactly what compelled lansing to build delta solar that we own we sell power back to lansing um for that same very reason at a reasonable price in their community it's additive the ups and downs of tying off to the market micelle market is a speculative business i'll just say that there's no caps you're pretty exposed unless you can work out a rate structure that maybe has some caps to it but it'll be capped both sides you won't get the benefit then either somebody else will um so i'll just stop there but more more on that later if we have time thanks everyone um anyone else i have a question and a comment if i may but anybody else i want to go first and by the way i appreciate everybody's time investment in this and frankly um i would anticipate our next couple of meetings being longer ones because we're going to be dealing with some really significant topics that are going to have real importance to the 820 plan and to residents and costs and things like that so thanks for sticking with this i i want to bring up a point um that our former chair uh going back a couple wayne appleyard would say if um he was here and as wayne always pointed out um what we need to always be thinking about is the area under the emissions over time curve and i think one of the things that um missy is trying to do here is she's looking at and i want to put words in your mouth missing you can comment on on my on my words later is we're looking at what can we do that's additional and that reduces emissions as soon as possible and you know there are other things um as uh ken garber mentioned earlier that you know this is this is a potential asset um but what is that potential um asset of value um and under what time frame and if we and one other thing that we have to think about um in terms of what missy is doing she's also operating under a climate action plan that council approved and that is basically her marching orders and um we also approved as did council as missy mentioned or someone else i think was missy we have the renewable energy um criterion principles and those are also um things that should be guiding us in in these actions so um my i guess my question is missy if you would comment on this um if we were to look at this in the time in the framework or in the context of reducing emissions over time and looking this at it as um in terms of additionality we could include this asset as a part of a second franchise we could do it a part of cca we could do it a part of municipalization but as my understanding is certainly the last two have very long time frames um it's my understanding that senator irwin and representative robbie um feel that cca may never pass um obviously we have it in our plan um i it's my understanding they think municipalization could take 10 years so waiting for something like that to happen um as opposed to doing what the city is doing right now is really violating in a sense what we're trying to do is minimize the area under the emissions over time curve and the only question at least from my side is if there is a second franchise a different way of creating a municipality that might be different because it may not run up the same way against some of dte's primary interests but even there the time frame may be significant and so i'm wondering if i characterize this correctly and if you have any points or counter points to what i just said or anybody else for that i i mean i think that that's right this project is also explicitly called out in a20 as a project to have move move forward so it we're moving it forward until we find it's not viable yeah right so if if for example we were to say well we think that's the wrong thing then that is a major revision to the eight to zero plan and that would have to go back through council and council would have to revise the plan and say no don't proceed with this project um as it was framed in the plan and as approved by council is that correct that's correct and just to share the viability is like what we've been testing right the technical viability the environmental environment and viabilities we've been doing through the environmental assessment now we're at the final phase which is financial viability and so that is something we'll bring back to you and to council i think that that's real we have to test that viability any other comments questions closing thoughts if not we have one more major topic and then some other just clean up kinds of things at the end of our agenda right so just pivoting over i think um zac got pulled into a planning commission meeting so i think thea is with us thank you thea for staying with us as some of you know in a20 we have disclosures so we talked previously about the benchmarking commercial bench trucking multi-family benchmarking which actually should be before council uh first meeting in october we're just finally finalizing where it goes in the ordinance for weed so thank you for your support of that the next um ordinance was home energy labeling program and so zach and thea have been working on this uh in parallel and they're excited to do kind of a presentation overview of that and the first introduction of the resolution potentially in support of that so with that video would you like to take over i will could you allow me to share my screen please okay thank you sweet um can you all see that okay yes okay um well thank you um good evening kind of almost good night um but thank you for having me uh for those who i don't know my name is thea jaeger letter i am an energy analyst with the office of sustainability and innovations um like missy said i'm here tonight to provide an overview of one initiative that our office has been working on um which is a single family home energy labeling program uh just of note previously the energy commission worked on this program and at the time i think it was referred to as time of marketing so i just wanted to clarify it's the same project moving forward we're just um starting with a title that better reflects the actions of the project um so i apologize for any confusion um but just clearing that up um so tonight i'll run through what we hope to achieve with the program how it'll work and then our anticipated impacts um and so we looked to create a program that will encourage and create an incentive to to improve the energy efficiency of our buildings so we know that energy efficient efficient homes are more comfortable healthier safer safer sorry and more affordable to live in um this program specifically has the goals of clearly communicating information on the energy efficiency of buildings to prospective home buyers and by doing that allow energy performance and expected energy costs to be included in their decision making in addition the program has a goal of recommending cost-effective home energy improvements and connecting home buyers and owners to resources at an opportune time which is when they're buying their house as i think all on the line are aware the city of ann arbor adopted the a20 plan that lays out seven strategies to reach community-wide carbon neutrality by 2030 one of these strategies is to significantly improve energy efficiency of our buildings and under the strategy the a2c area plan also includes an action to benchmark and disclose the energy performance of our buildings um this represents an entire suite of programs with the goal of improving energy efficiency across our community the energy commission previously had me in to present on uh the commercial multi-family um and public buildings commercial benchmarking so you're well familiar with that one um and so this program is another tier that three three tier suite um aiming to create an incentive for energy efficiency improvements in single-family housing um so we're talking about this now we have a lot of work to do we're not moving fast enough we need to move faster um residential buildings represent one-fifth of our total community-wide emissions so it's a significant piece of our pride that we're looking at um so we know the city is looking to improve the energy efficiency of our buildings but why and how should we support single-family housing so when the national association of realtors released the results of their 201 2021 survey of their agents it was clear that the majority of realtors saw the value of energy efficiency and utility costs in buying and selling homes however less than half of realtors were comfortable discussing energy performance with their clients which is a big gap so and it's understandable between needing to understand green features how they're evaluated and how to explain them to clients it's a lot to become familiar with in addition at the time of buying a home it's a really key opportunity to incorporate energy efficient improvements one you haven't moved in that in yet and it might be easier to add insulation or other more project-based improvements and it's also a great time to pursue green mortgages and wrap in that financing when you have that opportunity every home has green features but we need to find a way to clearly communicate those um that and that information to home buyers so the home energy labeling program looks to leverage the does home energy score to provide that consistent information to our community both on the energy performance of our homes and then also to clearly communicate cost-effective opportunities energy efficiency improvements those that aren't aware the home energy score provides information that helps homeowners understand their homes energy efficiency and how to improve it so after a one hour assessment homeowners will receive a score that uses a simple 1-10 scale and that scale is based off of percentiles so as you can see in the u.s the distribution of energy performance is not perfectly normal so there's a bit of a skew going up but it's just on a simple one to ten scale to make it simple for the you don't need a degree in uh building science to understand how your home is performing um so after that one hour assessment homeowners receive that one to ten scale um i wanted to also point out um not only will it show your scale or the um score at that point in time it'll also recommend cost-effective improvements so improvements within a certain number of payback years and then it'll show what your anticipated score is after doing those improvements um this runs through other information that'll be included as well and so when selling a home uh your home entry score would be included in your home is listing and then your home is you would need to provide your home energy score report to the buyer at the time of sale um so i said the home energy score requires a one hour energy assessment um that does require assessors trained in a home energy score for those already carrying certifications in residential building and energy professionals it's pretty easy to get the home energy score typically a training that's provided for free the due has made this process really simple you work with a home energy score partner they take you through the training you work with a mentor to do one home in real life just to make sure that you actually know what you're doing and then you incorporate that home energy score into your business model um so it's pretty streamlined is well developed and it leverages these partner organizations that help folks get trained for free in terms of when we're planning to implement this program earlier this year we leveraged the energy commission's previous work we looked at results from cities that had implemented this program and were brand new when we were just looking at it and now we actually have results from so places like portland oregon um we've taken that refined the policy of it and then we started some stakeholder engagement this summer and we'll continue to that stakeholder engagement and some policy refinement based on their feedback and then with the end of this year we have to take that refined policy into legal review final public input and then kick off the ordinance approval process and then finally that last block should be folded with all the fun of implementation um so i showed this chart previously before with commercial benchmarking because i know it's a little complicated and i hope this breaks it down a little bit the buildings that are specifically covered under the home energy auto disclosure or the home energy labeling program are residential units so there's no crossover with other programs looking at commercial buildings and multi-family buildings these are really buildings that aren't being covered by any other energy efficiency program that is in that suite that we have but specifically only certain single-family homes would be covered um this is based off of the capabilities of the home energy score itself and it's all the only buildings that are eligible for home energy score are single dwelling units on their own lots or those that are connected uh horizontally but not stacked vertically so that's the definition of the covered homes and the ordinance um so who benefits from help it's a bit of a trick question because everyone benefits um for the home buyer it's an easily communicated energy performance and costs information so they're better informed and making one of the biggest decisions of their life and also the information they get on cost-effective energy improvements results in more affordable comfortable healthier and safer homes to live in for the homeowner that's selling their home it's an opportunity to showcase the green features that all homes have it's also an incentive for premiums for energy efficiency homes so we do see that homes that score that are highly energy performing can sell at a premium there's also no evidence that low scoring homes are devalued in the same way that high scoring homes see an increased value so it's a win-win and the science behind that is that appraisals assume the bare minimum of energy performance and so any improvement to that increases the home score for um for real estate agents we see that homes with an energy score regardless of that score sell faster we also see that the home energy score provides easy talking points and a clear easily understandable tool to communicate those green features of the home um in a way that they can be more comfortable talking about it without requiring extensive research or training but the community at large will also see progress towards our goals through our increased reduction of carbon emissions from buildings and a bit of our tagline but healthier safer more comfortable more efficient and more affordable homes to live in so also see an improvement to our housing stock overall now that i've covered how the home energy score communicates energy performance information clearly to home buyers sellers and real estate agents i'd like to talk about what impacts we'll see from doing that um so when the home energy score assessment provides these cost-effective energy efficiency improvements it's also an opportunity to link up those uh opportunities with existing rebates and programs um it's something that i think that we could do we can improve how we do that and it's a great touch point um for folks who we may not our office may never get in contact with otherwise um and that all results in higher participation and energy efficiency programs and lower energy use and energy costs for those occupying those homes we see real results from other cities as well and portland over 60 of respondents that use the home energy score report um they use that to inform what projects they would invest in um i think before portland we saw about a seven to thirty seven percent um implementation of energy efficiency improvements using the home energy score um in chicago we saw that homes with the home energy score um spent 20 days less on the market than those that didn't have it and austin saw also saw an increase in energy efficiency improvements of buyers that um bought a home with the home energy store so we see the market improving positively and creating an incentive for energy efficient homes energy efficient improvements um we also see benefits to those living in those homes uh the ac triple e just released a report that reveals that moderately and severely energy-burdened residents increased dramatically in 2020.

esser 2 was 1.14 billion dollars gps received 9.7 million of that and the spend on that is september 30th of 2023 and for sr-3 the allocation of state arizona is 2.6 billion and of that we received 22 million and breaking that up in in terms of percentage 20 was supposed to go towards or close to 20 percent for learning loss and discretionary money was 17.6 million and again learning loss was 4.4 million and we have until 2024 september 30th 2024 to spend that money and this is the money we're going to be speaking of this evening dr santa cruz if i can ask dr mccord so we have already spent the esther one in sr2 correct that's there's no it's we spent it to keep us afloat during the last year and the beginning of this year correct okay yeah thanks thank you for pointing that out like you said it they have long dates but most people have spent their money already but i'm glad that they give us time if we need it here's how we're breaking down the allocations moving forward in the areas what our goals are for sr3 is implement academic recovery strategies focus on classroom instruction and promote the retention of a strong workforce and aligning those our strategic operating plan looking at safe and supportive schools employee excellence and student success and here are some of the areas under addressing learning loss again 4.4 million we have a 10th 10th grade 2 through 12th grade ela adoption that's a one-time spend the amount of 2 million dollars currently our resources for ela 10th through 12th grade are outdated for how many years barbara 20 years 20 years and so this will help us uh update those curriculum uh needs when it comes to ela are there any questions about that one just could you go through the eld ela adoption process and timing as you see it yeah sure um we are we have already done our call for resources that's the first step after we do the call for resources there's a particular date then that any of the publishers would submit to us a curriculum team has already been working on that from there we'll have a full committee which will be represented by members from district office members from each of the campuses administrators teachers and then also parents and community and then that will continue and then once we come down to um one to two resources we'll have some vendor presentations after that in the spring we'll do a um review of the materials and so that will be a 60-day public review that members of campuses and our community can provide input to us before we make our final decision so the end of the timeline would be that it towards maybe spring break time we would be looking at moving forward with providing a plan for professional development and otherwise so that we can use it the next school year thank you i have a question as well when we look at those resources i assume we're not going to have just a textbook are we going to have a textbook will there be more digital resources what does curriculum look like now so for our 712 students we are one to one district so we we ask for a variety of resources and then we look to see what they bring but often that does include both whether it be one-on-one digital access consumables often is part of it it will depend on what they submit but that would be some as well that we would look at um sometimes our trade books or other um novels or things that that we might look at as well that would be included i just want people to be aware that it's no longer that hard textbook that's yes that's pretty much gone all right thank you good the next is the on-demand tutoring i think we talked about this last time as well for secondary students 7 through 12.

thank you dr mccord and board members before we move uh call for a motion uh we have all had an opportunity to engage with staff related to this item uh is there a motion i move that we um recommend the ongoing hourly wage increase for all current hourly staff members and a one-time salary supplemental increase for all current at current exempt staff which would be a 1.50 hourly and then a seventy cent to the base pay for the hourly people and fifteen hundred dollars type in for the exempt thank you mr eugetti is there a second second thank you mr parker it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion i i do have a question um just because it just came up about when you submitting the the um paperwork and you might have to make some changes because it hasn't been approved are we okay if something should happen and they say fed's sick yes okay we if for some reason that wasn't accepted um we would still be okay but we're very confident right i mean you wouldn't be doing it if you weren't confident mr mcintosh would you for he snuck up here did you see that yes i did i like it just for information to the public could you just kind of review why it is that this is being proposed at this time absolutely good evening um this spring proposed some of our surrounding districts are doing similar types of increases for their employees this is a way for us to remain competitive and to continue to attract new employees it's also a way for us to show appreciation for the past year with our current employees and all the changes and difficulties they may have had over the course of that year so thank you dr mccord and mr macintosh just a comment from me and that is i appreciate you keeping employees and opportunities front of mind so that when this opportunity comes in front of us we're able to address it so thank you board members anything else um i just want to ask one question because um i'm sorry i don't remember if this is coming out of the essers which is one-time funds or coming out of our regular maintenance and operation budget so if there is an amount i think it's 4.37 out of s or 3 for teachers only okay for this and so that's where we are allowed to be able to utilize us for funds then we would have our fund balance that we have that we'll be able to supplement the rest of that as well as the dollar fifty in our raise and that's ongoing and so we're making a commitment as well for future budgets to make sure that our hourly employees are taking care of the best way possible that's what i wanted to be sure of so thank you appreciate it the classified is sustainable correct yes my discussion and conversation with business services is that over the long run however that long run will last that we have opportunity and we can sustain this any other discussion ms wood yes thank you i i was thinking as you go around and look and see there's a need for employees and good employees everywhere you go and the prices just keep going up of hourly pay so i think this is necessary and i also think you know our business as a school district is educating students and the key to that is teachers and staff who are qualified who come every day who show up and the best teachers and staff that we can have directly impacts our students and so i'm i'm thankful for each of them and i this is an opportunity to use some of this esser funds that we have to directly impact them and let them know that we appreciate them what they do each day and we appreciate their work with our students and ask for their continued efforts as as we keep going through this so i just i'm i think this is a good idea and i'm glad that you brought this forward thank you miss wood anyone else well just the comment i made when i saw this was this is just the right thing to do for for the people in this district they've sacrificed a lot and put a lot of work in so i agree with it completely thank you guys well stated board members appreciate the commentary we will vote on item 6.01 seeing that there is no additional discussion all of those in favor of the motion please signify by saying aye hi all those posed the same motion carries 5-0 item 6.02 paid sick leave benefits dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members item 6.02 is paid sick leave benefits to the covet 19 pandemic it is recommended that the board approve the sick leave benefits as presented right now the district administration is recommending that the governing board approve sick leave benefits due to the covet 19 pandemic given we are still contending with cobin 19 and new delta variant the administration is recommending that the governing board consider this benefit because federal benefits under the family's first coronavirus recovery act ffcra have expired in january of 2021 approval of the benefit will provide the district with increased ability to manage outbreaks and will assist in maintaining the district's workforce to meet student needs the following conditions will apply district will pay up pay for up to eight work days of paid sick leave provided the employee provides a positive covet test result from a recognized testing site the paid sick leave benefit of up to eight day work days are only available to employees of the district not to care for family member who may have coveted employees would still have to utilize their own accrued sick time for a child or family member who becomes ill the district will reinstate any personal or sick days that an employee has used if an application for this leave benefit is approved if a state or federal authority enacts legislation extending the benefits granted under the fcra the district's proposed paid leave entitlement benefit is void this benefit of employment will apply from and will be retroactive to july 1st through december 31st 2021 and may be extended at the direction of the governing board thank you dr mccord you've heard the rationale is there a motion for item 6.01 so moved 6.02 excuse me thank you miss humphreys we are moving item 6.02 is there a second second thank you mr eugenie discussion ms wood thank you my question is where where are we planning to do we have an estimate of how much this might cost based on i don't know what you're supposed to base it on so the answer is no and um what where are we going to take the funds from then this would be coming from our fund balance as well we've also had some cost savings related to um positions that haven't been hired so we'll be able to utilize those funds that we've budgeted for something like this um again retroacting it back to july 1st i think shows good faith in in us making sure that we want to maintain our workforce as well as if you have let's say we have 200 new teachers this year and they get copied well they haven't acquired all the sick leave yet and so this will not hit them in the pocketbook at that point in time and so being able to utilize some of the funds that we're able to acquire through again vacancy savings as well as fund balance we'll be able to make this benefit uh affordable and remind me again who does this apply to who is correct mr mcintosh that is correct just the employees all employees okay and then it's through as of this time it's through december 31st 2021 correct just the end of this semester okay thank you you're welcome well i i would certainly encourage everyone to go get their vaccination and their flu shot and just avoid as much as possible having to use sick days so i just hope everyone will do that i'm assuming that we probably can get some idea of the retroactive numbers we will i think we were looking at numbers the other day it's probably around between 65 and 70 certified in support staff additional comments questions seeing none and we will move to vote on item 6.02 all those in favor please signify by saying aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero we're at item seven just like that we'll be sending out a letter to all staff tomorrow morning uh at some point in time uh letting them know uh the things that you've approved for them uh this evening and again thanking them for all the work they've done for us uh up to this point dr mccourt can i add one thank you this will be on the october 12th payday yes this will this will be reflected in the october 12th payday is that correct and the 19th is when it goes into effect for classified and the salary schedule correct okay okay of september yeah so just in summary dr mccord's office out of the district will share a memo tomorrow with staff the first pay period or the pay period october 12th is when the payout will occur and miss eugetti your comment was classified would be the 19th classified employees will see that on the 19th they'll see they'll they won't see a check they'll they'll start accruing they'll start accruing it on the 19th okay everyone on the same page then i am assuming that with that in mind then we will vote all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed same motion carries i think we just voted twice on that item yeah and that's right you reaffirmed it we reaffirmed stone now so item seven is adjournment i was in a hurry to adjourn a while ago so i delayed us by another motion so 7.01 for adjournment a motion so moved thank you please thank you mr parker and if you'd like to discuss we'll sit here for about three hours thank you for those of you who showed up here in the boardroom and those of you who are we still need to vote for german we still need to vote and we are going to vote okay humphreys thank you okay sorry all those in favor of adjournment please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries we are adjourned thank you

page 7 is our operating funds and that's what the financial score and profile is based on so according to that you'll see at the end of fiscal year which is the end of this current fiscal year we'll have 6.18 months of cash in there and that's what the financial score goes up by not all funds they just go by your operating funds okay so just to kind of you kind of keep that in mind so i appreciate that question too all right so that's where it kind of gets a little bit confusing when we talk about operating versus all funds but i wanted to share both with you and the community you know both scenarios there okay so again going back to page five you'll see a breakdown of our uh our revenues for all funds and where that's coming from and how that's distributed and then again if you look at on page six you'll see the same breakdown will be for expenditures and how those are broken down both in salaries and benefits purchase services supplies and the rest of the categories and those again are standard categories that we have uh based on our annual financial report and how things are broken down and then again moving to page six you'll see our operating funds and again following those pages are breakdowns of both the revenue and expenditures only in our operating funds and the two main funds that are not in there are our debt service and our capital projects those are the two that are not in operating funds all right the last one is is actually life safety but that's minimal right now okay so i'm just going to give you a couple minutes to kind of look over that and see if you have any questions about those again the numbers haven't changed from before they're the same they're just in kind of a little bit different format and again the last thing i will share with you is that again if you look at page seven the surplus deficit is going to be in the operating funds 566 versus when i talked about all funds being a little over four million dollars and that's really because of as i've shared the capital projects that are going on that we have within the budget and ken just to be clear so the capital projects that we have are not being paid out of the revenue that we're collecting this year that's already money that's been borrowed and and set aside for those projects yes that was the money that was borrowed in the bond sale that we had in december of so that money was put in the bank and that was calculated in under other revenue other other revenue sources on your afr and you'll see that listed under um you know the amended fiscal year 2021 you'll see that 17.6 million dollars there but the expenditure for paying that out is actually happening this fiscal year so that's why it's recorded here right yeah and then and then on page seven so if i look at that projected deficit of 566 000 that's impacted by the largely by the timing of the transportation reimbursement it is it's it's mostly well it's impacted uh yes i should say that yes you're right it is impacted by the timing of the transportation reimbursement because our reimbursement is paid based on last year's expenditures and i share that and i have that in here on the table if you look at page 10.

i will tell you that we are probably 30 to 45 days ahead of schedule on that right now things are going really well ryan has brian is here in case you have any questions but we have given everything to the auditors they have everything right now we're just waiting for them on testing and all of that they've already been out to meet with us on a couple occasions um so that is going very well um so um i'm i'm real happy with the way things have gone and real happy with the work brian has done on that so we're ahead of schedule on that again our goal is december 15th and but we're hoping to have that done sooner we are transitioning our business suite platform from skyward sms to skyward cumulative is a new system that they have and so we're transitioning over to that system um this year which will make us even more efficient than we are already so that transition will take place in february of 22.

uh air means an hour which i mean it's not quite outside but it's pretty close um so by that reason we're not doing the advice we've got is not to contract trace the bus uh because everyone's wearing a mask and the air exchange rate is so high um so the other practical conundrum that we find ourselves in and plus is a is an acute example but there are other ones is uh if our bus drivers for instance if we lost bus drivers there's not a we don't have enough now right and i think everyone's seeing them who's struggling and if we for some reason we lost a couple bus drivers then we would be adding and over packing buses to get kids to school uh bus drivers are never close contacts are never extended you know within three feet of anyone on our buses and so from a safety perspective you have to write as a cost benefit and you know just very honestly i'd rather have more bus drivers and fewer kids on buses we're not experiencing you know transmission uh if honestly if transmission on buses was a real problem after the last 18 months we would have we would know that not just locally but beyond um so at this point it's talking about people who enter the buildings um not people on buses which is um at dph wise is considered a really separate setting from being in buildings but that was a you know people felt differently about that uh at the school committee meeting at the region and so i think it remains to be seen how that all lands thank you for that explanation yeah no problem really good question and certainly one that we regional school committee uh colleagues uh will have to sort through uh whether it's you know next thursday or a future meeting for not getting to resolution at that point any other vaccine mandate questions so if i can go on to student uh this doesn't apply right now to pelham but i think it is worth mentioning um so uh what happened because this is actually an interesting the unique amherst pelham situation so at the regional meeting last week uh the regional school committee encouraged uh or agreed to send an email to the amber board of health inquiring this is now remember it's a regional meeting so all the regional school buildings are located in the town of amherst uh whether the amherst board of health as per regional school committee policy they defer all decisions on immunization and requirements to the board of health the board of health to my surprise i think from a timeline perspective considered it the next night as a topic not reasonably anticipated in 48 hours and felt really strongly on the topic and voted to add the a vaccine requirement for the code vaccines that were fully approved by the fda which at the current time is only 16 plus the regional school committee next week with a lot of press watching probably more people than right now um i'm confident of that uh we'll be considering the amherst board of health push the timeline question and implementation questions to the school committee but they voted 4-0 unanimously obviously affirmatively to add the fully approved fda vaccine to the student immunization requirements for students at the regional level at this point there are no students in pelham who are 16 plus so it doesn't apply to students at pelham i think it is worth noting that anticipated the next month or two that the 12 plus vaccine will be starting to it's expected that the emergency use authorization will go away and that the pfizer vaccine will receive full approval for 12 plus at that point this may become a live issue for us in pelham because we will have a number of sixth graders who have already turned 12.

it doesn't it does in other words it doesn't preclude things can happen a lot quicker in pelham than they can in amherst that's a loaded statement but i'll just leave it there can you say that at your next first meeting too that would be awesome because the scale is different right um oh yeah i get myself in trouble um but um but i i don't i don't i don't think waiting a bit precludes pelham from making a similar decision and frankly probably on a similar timeline because it's such a small number of students i just think giving it some time to play out uh was only going to benefit the conversation and then when pelham families and staff engage in it they'll be they'll be responding to something that feels very real um instead of something that feels more in theory because you know then you know it doesn't you know my experience is uh people will engage better when they know exactly what the program is and what the choices are right yes yeah because there's not this other urgent piece around space and a building project that is pushing uh for a decision need to be made sooner sure right okay brenda go ahead i just want to sort of piggyback on what you were saying though because i think it's it's really critical that we also do a thorough analysis of how it would impact our budget you know we always are having pretty extreme budget issues thinking about our school choice and so definitely i definitely support having more information before we bring that to the parents but i think we would need to maybe at that time really think about the the overall sort of budgetary implications yes true thank you okay so wait and see for now and you know when amherst makes decisions and we have more information we can go from there can i just make one uh just comment i do notice that there's some people putting on the chat you know much like public comment um school committees can't respond to it's not a public forum right now um so i just want to note that i am seeing the comments uh in the chat but based on policy we wouldn't be uh responding to comments that are made publicly but if people do have feedback for the committee they can email uh with a note this is for the palm school committee schoolcommittee.arts.org i'll put it in the chat uh that i see people commenting or they can email me which is morris m arps.org if it's a comment more from me so um i don't want people to feel like they're being ignored um but when we do have public you know town hall events we do respond to chat but uh as meetings are happening um certainly any feedback's welcome but uh based on school committee policy we don't um we're not able to take uh unless it's listed as such public comments throughout the meeting okay oh this is in the okay yes okay well i would echo that yes for sure uh email me as well or in my you can also comment to the school committee on our website um okay um all right next up is technology at the middle school um but actually there was a request to remove this item so i'm happy to do that if anyone would like to continue with it we can but unless anyone has anything to say we'll just move on okay um okay warrants i have a whole bunch um mickey and mike i don't you know if you want to leave for this part that's fine it's it's me like facing sideways and reading for a little while so bear with me um okay they did not okay um i authorized by my signature to payables in the um or sorry to payroll in the amount of fifty five thousand nine sixty five um and that was dated june 30th 2021 and i signed that on uh july 1st 2021.

she has a bachelor's degree consumption college and a master's in education from maria college that's leslie diggins leslie was hired actually last year during the pandemic uh to help us with some remote work she is this year a 0.5 math tutor at berlin she uh has a bachelor's degree from holy cross and many years of experience working with school-aged children so then swept out i don't know how to get to the bottom she's at the top of my list senator kapoor is a paraprofessional who comes to us from the acting-boxborough system where she has several years of teaching experience she holds a bachelor's degree from osmania university in her native india where she also worked for seven years as a teaching assistant all right so first up we have amanda jonery who is our um school counseling secretary no she has them she's hold manager in our banking program okay now that this is amanda um amanda mcdonald in counseling she's a native of ohio uh she's our new counseling office administrative assistant and she um comes to us from clark university she worked as the academic records coordinator we have emily mccarthy emily comes to us from assabet um she is got holding for bachelors and masters from simmons college and has experience in team teaching in native littleton and chelsea okay emily sequeira um emily is not new to tahanto she has been a paraprofessional for years at tahonta and she is now a our middle school math teacher she has a bachelor's from snhu and i'm very excited to welcome eric sheehan eric is um comes to us as a modern special needs teacher for the middle school comes across from worcester public schools and eric has worked at the central mass collaborative u inc as well as millbury public schools hannah dakota um hannah is a paraprofessional at tahanto she's a recent graduate with her bachelor's from bridgewater state in teaching and she is currently pursuing her master's degree she was working in my school i think so we took jennifer from um berlin memorial [Music] and she is uh new to our honda cafeteria staff jocelyn charpentier uh jocelyn um is our new library media specialist um she has a bachelor's from uri and a master's in library of science from simmons college she was most recently the library media specialist on in acton-boxborough this is kelly ergins um kelly is our new school nurse she's a graduate of both quincy college and university of south florida um most recently been a school on nurse in framingham she has experience as an rn at beverly hospital north shore hospital and mass general this is kelsey green uh kelsey is a is our modern special needs teacher she has a bachelor's from arizona state and a master's at grand canyon university and has experience teaching uh in both arizona and more recently in sharing mass megan logan megan comes to us from connecticut with a bachelor's and master's from penn state and most recently she was a special education teacher and from connecticut [Music] yeah um thank you for those introductions it's great to hear the backgrounds of these people and we have a lot of new stuff um thank you okay [Music] we have so many members that do this in two pieces that i'll do a high-level piece and talk about the origins of this district improvement plan and touch on a few highlights and then next month these directors will go into more depth and charity and give you uh you know sort of a better overcomes of the digital improvement plan let me just check um so i started in january 2018 and one of the first conversations that we had at the leadership team we want to look at some high impact areas over the next five years that you could focus on and so the report when you look at it isn't all encompassing by any stretch but if there is you know there's also the big areas that we thought we can tackle there are some things that obviously we were not able to do and things that we certainly wouldn't be able to do and not over here and so this gets updated you might listen to living documents and we really developed it so that we could have something internally we could use but also make it public so that anybody in the community could take a look at it and say we you know we have an idea um where you go so so basically so if you look in the front so the color coded you can see we've been adding colors as we go along things partially accomplished not accomplished new things that we had i will say that out of that list of leadership on the newest one so and that's a good sign that you know the principles stay and the directors are here because that stability is important it's important in any district on page four is a little introduction and it really touches on the thought of four high impact areas it's kind of written in the text we look at curriculum we look at equitable access technology and innovation and fiscal planning and responsibility those four high impact years became our four goals and um also a lot of the coincide with the four departments we have so curriculum side of the teaching and learning department and global access as puberty personnel technology innovation that's all is technology department and fiscal planning and responsibility is from the business department if you look on page five and six you sort of break out those kind of big ticket items that we wanted to look at um performing arts well stem first of all we did a lot of research on this before we looked at it conferences kyle and i attended men conferences heard students who were college-age students speak about it we went to conferences in which industry people talked about the importance of stem and i don't think anybody really argues the importance of that performing arts you know one of the things i've noticed is the sixth district i've been in and everybody uh leadership team would agree with this is that you can have a good district with a mediocre performance you can't have a great one and so you know extracurricular activities are important we look at performing arts as something that really is an extracurricular i know a lot of districts too but so we thought we'd make some improvements it was a new building it's got lots of technology built in and we felt it wasn't really being used um to its full potential equity is a big is a big piece of the plan um we started out everybody worked sort of in earnest with consultants from consulting teachers21 located in massachusetts we started our work really last year with them and you know originally we thought it was going to be maybe a one year maybe one and a half but i can see this being at least three years out as we start to involve more people in that family and community engagement i think most people will agree that you really can't do you can't do enough of that stuff it's a that's sort of an ongoing and ongoing piece so um let's look at some of the highlights here [Music] so so that first goal will strengthen student achievement by advancing curriculum opportunities not being alignment that's a goal out of the teaching and learning department you see the first thing there is uh stem science technology engineering that we've really made a big uh push here one of the things we wanted to do is um on page 7 you could see we wanted to build a shadow and internship experience and the reason for that is this it goes back to the explain what that means goes back to the question and julie answered um which is and this is this came up along the first meetings i was at was like why don't we lose so many students to remove students from the vocational english students to the science academy in marlborough and the reality is you know we can't be everything to any we can't be everything to everybody but we still think thought there was a place we can improve so we can't offer carpentry we can't offer electrical if you want that stuff you have to go to a vocational school and and we also can offer some of the depth and science that the science academies offer but we do a pretty good job with the academics so we thought well what is it that we're we're missing here and and we and again doing some research i did a lot of work with the central mass stem pipeline carol followed up with some work with them i'll be getting more involved with them this year and we thought one of the things we don't offer yet is any kind of shadowing experience where our students have the opportunity to go and follow a professional and see what they're doing and then an internship where students have the opportunity to actually go and work with those professionals and over the last couple of years we've had a lot of contact as you might guess with the physicians and the healthcare providers and the community who all work pretty close to us and many of them have volunteered to actually help us with this and so um we were thinking in terms of you know an 11th grade you could do a shadow you'd be eligible for shadowing experience so if you're interested in microbiology we actually have someone in this district who is a microbiologist and and works in the field that they could they could um shadow that person or one of the labs and and in that facility and then in their senior year they could actually go into an internship and sort of do some unpaid work with that with those people and so we thought that that would be something that would help us keep more students is one of the things that a lot not a lot of academic schools offer right now but we are small enough that we should be flexible enough to offer those experiences one of the things we did is um we had an old um sort of outdated list of contacts and so we put something on this year just just sort of works from home and worked with us before who's going through that list and building the database that we're going to need when we hire somebody full time or at least a part-time person who acts as the coordinator for that program the last thing you want to do is say you're offering these experiences when you're like a co-op like northeastern a co-op and then a student wants something and they can't go anywhere so the first step was to build the database which we were gonna i started working on a couple years ago um it's kind of you know kind of fell by the wayside last year and now we sort of picked it up again so that's one of the that's one of the things that's one of the things you can see on page 7 you can see that that progression of what we're trying to do here if you look on oh if you look on page eight one of the other big things we try to do is we try to create a vertical pathway in computer science the one always in the elementary school up through the high school we offer a often now a advanced placement computer science course it was a little spotty it still needs to work but just by chance um the department of ed or another group offered some some grant money in a company that would help company they did some consulting work and they wanted to find schools that would want to put a computer science program in place in the middle school and it's what we did have one so we've been working with them you know carol and her group meets with them on a regular basis to try to complete that to try to complete that that vertical pathway um and again i think you know one of the things kevin and i went to a conference the superintendent's conferences a couple years ago and there was a it was a boy there from he was a sophomore at harvard i think if i remember correctly and one of the things he was saying was that the the computer the basic computer science course they offered argument so powerful that they had to stop offering it online and so many kids took it because they needed it that they actually now made it a requirement and that was kind of the last goal we thought you know we really need to have a pathway so students have exposure to some some forms of computer science from the time they're in elementary school to the time they're in high school so we've been working on that we've got a good pathway still needs some work but again if you look at page eight you'll see you'll see that um and that's one of the big things and kyle will talk a little bit more about that and what she's doing with her um virtual reality you know one of the things we're having in school is we have a lot of we have computer labs and those at one time used to be innovative you know you'd have to go in and be all the stations the kids don't learn like that anymore i mean they do stuff on their phones and but they do play a lot of games and they do seem to learn that way and so we wanted to we thought well maybe those spaces that's not the best use of that that space anymore that we're going to one-to-one paul's department has done a great job due to a little question covered but a great job of going one to one like a lot of districts have uh and so those even though those computer rooms are used it's not like it used to be and so we explored um we explored through a company's z space some virtual reality i actually have a bus that they brought and uh you let the kids go in and things and but one of the things the kids said to us this is kind of it's kind of like old school you know they're used to the headset so carol got some about a dozen of these headsets [Music] and they've been sitting there for a year because we couldn't use them last year so um that's another thing we're going to be working on to say okay is this done but we think we think it might be something we're going to pilot out of the program and see if if this is going to work and one of the other things we found is that these companies are starting to build a lot of curriculum through this virtual reality learning so they're starting to build curriculum we can actually use that's aligned with our standards that could be could be worked through the virtual reality so um it's one of the experiments we're doing you know again we're about to get behind that now because we don't touch anything but yeah the question that's about this step if we explored opportunities in some of the universities in worcester area to see how we might be able to leverage their presence in a way that could help our students we've looked through we've looked at wpi to the central mass this central mass stem pipeline um i've been involved with it for probably the last 20 years and different evolutions again carol has been involved so we haven't looked at the wpi they have some they have some curriculum we're open to other you know that's that's certainly something we're open to um but again wpi but not no other school so far if you have any ideas on any connections or anything like that we've been more than happy to take a look at it um let's see i'm not going to go over the curriculum alignment piece i'm going to say over the last since 2018 to update curriculum to do curriculum mapping to bring in the software we need to to get all of our units online so uh let's see on page 15 i didn't want to address something um [Music] yeah just that's the performing arts piece there and i didn't we did hire some new teachers in that area at the elementary school and um you know the teachers here were very involved in developing this was keith lewis who who did a lot of work on this and helped consult with this um so and he was actually in he was in the process to hire the processing i will say that school community members are usually not involved with hiring anymore you know but when you get someone who's got that specific uh skill set that it's crazy not to say well maybe we should at least be in there and just kind of listen to what's going on and give us some advice so um again coverage is sort of focus sort of pushed us back up a little bit on that but you know we did have a five-year goal when we did this one big production about the high school the development band about the elementary schools high school middle school and we're still hoping to do that i'm convinced we've done a lot of great one-act plays in school so i think we're on track there let's see family family community outreach which is on page 19.

i can tell you that people are going through this program and they're doing it at the hudson area they can pick and say like i am applying here hudson so hudson services and surrounding communities so there are drivers going through the program who are in our area the region um the statewide storage 300 includes you know north shore and other parts of the state but they do have people in the pipeline but they need more so the governor just activated the national guard to help the situation in some areas okay so that's not consideration that's like dealing with the help plastic um 200 is they have more than 200 bus drivers in some of the cities yeah just checking if you have other questions okay so we're going to limit the time on this so why don't you pick out the one or two that are most uh important to you and then they'll pull that out i mean i have the i just have the same concerns about you know if someone sees this doubling of their annual bonus what risks are they going to be willing to take to get it if they were sick i know you say they're not supposed to come in and get sick but what we write for policies you're not supposed to communicate yeah they're not close contact by definition that somebody made up somewhere is one thing but what happens everybody is a different thing if they are safe and they decide they they need to get this bonus and they take an anvil below their temperature or whatever they do they hold their coffin and pick up the kids in front of the parents or whatever it is i just i wonder how a lot of parents in the community will think about this and what fears they will have versus you know i don't know i suppose we can't hire ubers or anything like that on short notice i don't know i just extra money in a contract that they're asking for that they're not willing maybe we could ask them to kick in 50 or something have asked them to pay for the payroll tax social security but they've said that they do that but beyond that you know they have their environmental illness they're paying for they're paying incentives for drivers to go through training and bring people on board but they weren't willing to pay more than this so was this a surprise to them come september you know it's going to be an issue i think they potentially could have communicated a little bit better and more proactively but we knew we were fully staffed um you know i would have liked to have noticed earlier we also didn't necessarily want to you know welcome to the school year watch out in westminster she didn't necessarily want to do that if it wasn't definitely going to be a concern with holy staff so kind of tried to balance and want his best to to communicate it um but yeah it's it's i mean we were relatively okay at the end of the school year compared to most districts and now we're still relatively better and better shaped at most districts it's an unusual phenomenon the unemployment benefits expiring the bodies that it will become less of an issue but i think i would like to keep in mind here the please see guidelines [Music] and because they like our roots they like is that so i mean i think they'd just be less likely to jeopardize that bubbles okay [Music] are there clauses in that contract that harm them if a plus is late to that extent like do they have an incentive as a company to make sure they've lost a long time i don't know if there's a financial penalty [Music] okay all right we're going to thank you very much and we'll move on to paul thank you um good evening um i again like looking forward to fairly brief just two items um ecf the emergency connectivity fund i just wanted to make you all aware that we did apply for funds we'll be hearing we expect mid-october those funds will be used to replace our oldest chromebooks as well as provide some internet connectivity for families that um struggle to provide um connectivity in the home so last year again we put that out because of cobit we still have um i believe five families utilizing it this year again if they don't have connectivity in the home um that really keeps kids from being able to do some of the research and items that their teachers expect of them when they leave the building so that'll allow us to continue that as well and then the second part again as you are aware there is a big worldwide trip shortage um the good news is i think we've stayed ahead of it for the most part so um again between grants and e-ray and just you know being prepared ahead of time um as far as chromebooks and devices we've kind of stayed ahead of the game um on the one place again and again i want to point out you'll hear me a little bit more next month when we talk about the district improvement plan um but the one place we are seeing some issues is our um interactive boards um we ordered things in may that are now not due still until mid-october for the most part it has not affected our classrooms um because these were replacements so it was existing boards or projectors in those rooms already it is impacting this building in particular right now we used to have two rooms that we have to have you know temporary solutions and so it's not an interactive board it's just a projector on a card so the teacher has access to something to protect to the kids but it's not that full experience that they haven't noticed in the classroom any questions for me all right thank you um um there's a slightly new adjustment as you can see in the drive there mostly senator the fact that the policy is now more in line to have a an education focus versus a population focus of overcrowding focus on facilities so that was in there it was uh last week there are several financial policies out there for first reading there's also a comparison that susan brought up with the existing policy the uh proposed policy and actual changes so that's up here for the first week thank you um does anybody have any questions first on the policy that success creating design but accounting clarifications they want to ask about what the financial policies are up for forced to read all right thank you very much mike okay so we're ready to move on to the uh business items section of the agenda which is uh where our votes take place uh so the first vote that i have a motion to accept the divisions proposed for policy fa facilities development goals so don't worry move in a second sorry second by mine any discussion but i have a motion to approve the receipt of fiscal year 2022 federal and state grants adam makes promotion a second july seconds and discussion on accepting the grants um [Music] approving the receipt of the 2022 federal state grants the handbooks the toronto handbooks and the staff handbook we are tabling until october because there are still some updates to make those particularly into the policies in those documents there are some outdated policies so those will come back to the table in october so on to we could i have a motion to approve the amended school committee meeting dates um to accept those so adam makes a motion on second glorious second um these uh updates were made to add the governance meetings and to move a couple of millions of students i do have one question about the final meeting of the year which is slated for june 21st and that is after week after potentially the last day of school that's a very important meeting because it centers on the superintendent's summative evaluation and we have to have quorum for that meeting so i want to ask the group if you feel you can commit to the 21st a week after the last day of school or whether you think we should move that back to have a meeting on the last day of school here i'm finally told where's that night i don't know okay julie i'm okay so it looks like we have forms so please hold that date i'm sorry but uh to prevent you from flying off to some beautiful place it would be appreciated it's a very important thing thank you all right uh so we have a motion on the table to accept the um dates as shown in the file here school cleaning meeting dates 2021-22 um all in favor of questions oh the governor's workshops can you just discuss a little bit about uh those typically every september and october not necessarily it's not unusual to have one in one in the fall and one in the spring we often have done that um this year i've added more okay they will some of them september in particular looks pretty heavy first few times there yes uh it's a segment of the charting and course sessions however most people so far have not are not able to attend the september october the charter of course sessions being offered and also i would like to have discussion of those topics as a whole committee so we're all in sync on that information that's why i put it as a governance workshop they're not online anymore either i noticed that there's been like a full day working out i know so it's not like we were looking yeah i just i wonder if you could commit to a time frame please because i know you do kind of run late yes um yes uh i would expect them to be two hours and not long we're going to plan for that and we will any approval of the school cleaning meeting dates for 2021-22 i appreciate it if you would make sure those dates are on your calendar and if you are ever not able to attend a meeting please let me know directly so that i can determine whether we have a form or meeting okay um we have a motion to approve the updated school committee planning calendar this is a this is the yearly planning calendar that we use to kind of look ahead and see what needs to be taken care of during the year when we plan our school communities so thank you lori second by adam any uh questions or clarifications needed on that plan okay all in favor say aye courses and i wonder if maybe first jeff you want to just explain that a little bit or carol if somebody else planning the limited enrollment process what that means and why we really hope you approve those why we have to requested is um an advanced class something like that and some in many instances they're fun at the same time the same teacher and do they does the administration ever turn down classes that are long-term i don't know yeah not non-typically i mean they do try to make the classes run particularly with their specialty specialized classes maybe because i think what happens in small schools like ours we can't offer as many of those particular courses about larger schools to do that before okay thank you do you understand the question i yeah i'm wondering about that too i don't know why there's a vote on this i'm not familiar it's not about having not enough all the course i think it's above and beyond tightest of courses that they're offering i think i think it's more way to say that it's more of those kind of above and beyond type of courses those are very outlying courses but typically wouldn't be offered i think that some students who want to take foreign languages for example um or a student who is interested you know is interested in an advanced mathematics course that you can do like you just said in the classroom at the same time she's doing another shoot years teaching another course so i guess who came up with these courses the students just decided hey i want this subject or that's part of the normal experience so i i probably have a little more just because i've been here i guess typically they would be courses that were in the um the course descriptions and whatever they were part of the course selection in the spring yeah so it wasn't just like they came in in the summer and said hey we'd really like to have band seven um it's it's is existing courses for the most part and it's just they happen to be in a year that it's low enrollment so okay i would say typically it does happen a lot in the languages especially in the upper level languages um some of the upper level amounts but thank you so it's typically awkward if you just don't have a lot of interest this particular year and is that what qualifies for the vote yeah my guess is there's a policy we should look you and i think we should hold up on a vote today we do it every year it is for five or less students five eleven yes so there's more than five yeah okay i like that you still want to run these classes because we were just talking about ninth grade and losing students and you know we have very small districts so i like that we're offering you know those that want to continue with spanish three or the ap options that makes us competitive and it really helps the school up so i appreciate that we also offer and we also offer them through learning platforms like agency vhs vhs classes as well also opportunities oh yeah actually i know a student is taking that which is always a wonderful opportunity because there's no other class that she gets to do so it's great i appreciate that thank you all right and the last item uh for a vote is to create a motion to provide the superintendent and or director of finance operations with the authority to amend the contract with nrt or add an addendum for the purpose of making the noted incentive payments for september to december 2021 in the amount with no other changes to the contract so until then you know if we're going to be providing a double bonus perfect attendance if they are if they end up in a situation like they did on the third day of school which would have been financial and thank you for penalty yeah you're proposing an amendment to the language yeah yeah and maybe we should put some i think bob mentioned language about uh you know don't mess around with the if you're sick stay home situation yeah i agree about uh if you are sick and somebody reports you sick or not or something like that so we need an actual uh emotion so uh a movement adam do you want to put the language out of you i mean to this language to say um [Music] before i do just a question on on the process here so we're giving authority to the superintendent for director of finance to amend the contract i assume that once that amendment is drafted did that come back to us at the end of doesn't necessarily have to come back i have no problem sharing it can tell [Music] i don't know that it's beneficial to get too specific in the language you want here i think if i understand the spirit of your intentions intentions i'll be able to do that i think you're voting on the way so what happened [Music] to remove the final section there after the comma where it says no other changes to the contract strike that from this motion and to instead state in the amount noted language in it stating we'll for that motion julie seconds the motion to change that language i mean i just want to ask the question is that i don't see a date because i trust bob but you know when the only change to the project does saying that he can only change the contract with the nature of making a comment stating you cannot come to work for yourself right now you could say with no change contract other than restrictions related to the incentive program and decide whether we're going with atoms whether we agree with adam's men first [Music] say with additional language specifying that drivers should not report to work if they are ill and i will make sure we get that with additional language the specifying should not report to work if they are illegal and if they do well this is adam's amendment he said with additional language specifying that drivers should not report to work okay we have a second to that second example for adam's [Music] what or there's a financial penalty to nrp or there is no bonus or is there but we need to be specifically my point is more just reiterating their policy they already have in place from what bobcats yeah bus drivers should not report to work material as a policy the company already has in place i think it's just reinforcing that policy as we continue we well that's because i'm shortage let me tell my drivers yeah i think it's new i think it has to do with the fact that a lot of people didn't use buses last year and now there's a demand on the buses and there's less people because of unemployment actually like worcester was mostly remotely no no there was no there was no incentive to stay home for unemployment so i think it's like the perfect storm you have all these schools coming back in that sentence right it just ended up so end of august yeah so is it i guess do they have drivers from the past who aren't currently working because they work unemployment [Music] to add language to the end here this that replace language at the end that says with that you're deleting after the comment and adding with additional language specifying that drivers should not report to them if sick [Music] all in favor of adam's revision just that statement adding that statement say aye opposed say name okay adam's motion passes uh we have uh do we have a motion to accept this um original proposal with adam's point of order i think that's already going to give you that would be to discuss the we're back to the entire statement of adam's motion we have a movement a motion to accept the amendment we have them okay sorry thank you for helping me out accepting the original amended the invented statement here we have a second for that is there further discussion about it so does it be clear we do not have a motion about a financial penalty okay all in favor of the amended uh statement here say aye should we discuss not voting on this until we have that workup yeah until we add some additional i don't know when we say what i'm saying is they're looking for more money from the district without offering anything that isn't already contracted okay all in favor of the amended statement here that that was put forward amended as out of his before say hi statement and one post and so that motion passes the thank you um items iqr are all the first three policies um and so i believe uh now if i'm allowed to make this motion for executive session i'm going to move to go into executive session discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the rural boys and education association the executive session as necessary to protect the committee's bargaining in an position session to uh have a second shot worry laurie for a second any discussion about that okay uh we need to have a roll call vote on this so um laurie hi mike julie i am all right and i say i as well okay so we will move into executive session and we will not recommend an open session [Music] all in favor say hi um okay now we'll close this session [Music]

band is now up to 62. when i first came here chorus had eight so that's something that we're really proud of we're solely invested in making sure that all of our courses including our electives receive the attention and students have the opportunities to participate in those flexblock also allows students to go down and make an appointment with a guidance counselor where they're not missing academic class it also will allow them to develop closer relationships one of the things that we've seen as a result of the pandemic but then also some of our child success survey results and really even looking at other youth risk survey results and that has been the importance of student teacher connections and relationships so this flex block the way that ms keegan and i set it up is we have three teachers assigned to 24 students in grades 9 through 11.

which is really fantastic for him spark planning on his part somebody was somebody was planning ahead um but i do want to be responsive to our families who are like is this a real thing and what is the impact on our younger students and what should we do is there any like what's i see lots of nodding heads in the morning great but we've identified some data points uh at the school start task force meeting like way back so we talked this morning about going back there and visiting those data points knowing that a lot of them are captured anyway it's just them pulling them out and looking at them right um so we'll definitely um have that on our radar knowing that our base year keeps shifting a little bit because now we don't really have a good year to compare it to um because of the 18 months we've just had so there'll be a little creative maneuvering as far as looking at assessments right so we'd hoped we thought we'd see better so it's hard it's going to be a little hard to measure that when we've come out of a happier remote and then hybrid last year um but we'll take that all into consideration and i think there's some data points that have come out of beth mentioned panorama that we're doing now in the sel surveys for at least the mental health benefits of what students are seeing we talked about capturing tardy's absences because that could play into this so we talked it immensely about this um now we just rolled out so we'll just go back and revisit and pull out and pick it up where we left it off um and probably just to have to adjust what bases were comparing it to terrific um and then the flexblock which i know has a ton of dynamic opportunities um with regard to seniors in particular while they are not assigned to a flex block so they're sort of freed up move about the country when um they're done their class are they able to access the extra help the meeting with guidance the you know obviously they do participate in the chorus yes absolutely and there actually are times in which they are assigned to their flex block 2 in which we so we held a senior class meeting they were required to stay so at any point i have the authority to say we're not going to have senior release today so absolutely and that's actually when they're doing a lot of their senior seminars for the college application processes during flex we really wanted to focus on you know making sure that we're providing the social emotional support but also providing the access to strong rigorous instruction and by taking away any sort of distractions and to focus on that academic time keeping that really sacred and then developing something where we could take care of all those other important things and those seminars are important those assemblies are important but it's critical too that we're not interrupting a math class six or eight times a year right so yes absolutely seniors uh can and will take advantage of that you know in this first couple of weeks i think for sometimes for seniors they have this newfound freedom this is great this is great but then assessments start coming in their seasons start building up drama program they know they have practice right up they're going to start staying more and we actually have set locations where they can go in the lobbies that's fantastic thank you so much for that information and the reason i was trying to figure out how to formulate my question the band and the ability to participate in band and chorus the flex block has made has enabled that because it could banned often conflicted with other other academics and electives yeah so a lot of times unfortunately um then students who were you know highly invested in their music programs but also said but i want to make sure i get ap physics so i want to make sure i get marine biology or i want to make sure i'm taking that fourth year of a language because we are a small school and we have singletons this enables them to do you know to janice barry's credit music and um so that's that's why and and really the the band and chorus teachers have done a fantastic job with this um you know taking advantage of the time uh obviously if we could give them even more time we would you know but some of that then becomes contractual with the teachers association of having an even longer day which i'm not opposed to but i don't know necessarily if there are others in my camp right right that's really great yeah i just have to add to that so um my daughter who's now in college was a abandoned chorus kid and um got exactly we were talking about got to senior year and because she took french she her junior year she couldn't do chorus and her senior year she did online ap french so that she could be in chorus because that's how much she loved it so i love hearing the numbers have gone up so high and that we've been able to do that for the kids but also um for years now we've been talking about and i think through maybe the um the student health survey about having how important it is for kids to have at least one person in the building who they can go to and you know that's different for each kid and sometimes it comes up organically but i love the model of allowing them to to build over time these relationships with teachers so i think it's great yeah and i love the three teachers assigned to a group because i think to your point about building a relationship you know sometimes kids have an advisor you know i work at a school has an advisory program but you might not jive with your advisor and this gives you some options and also like if a person has to take a leave or a process to come or go it does provide that overarching continuity absolutely that was the the research that ann and i looked at we looked at you know where were some programs successful and they kept saying to be as flexible with advisories you can because if you try to say student a and teacher b are going to be together it might not just be the greatest connection they both may be very respectful of one another but when push comes to shove they may not lean on one another or the student towards the teacher for you know that close relationship there might be somebody they respect but maybe not necessarily they'd go to whereas having that flexibility of the three we felt obviously gives them more choice within that and it also helps our teachers too because for the first week when we did all those advisories all three of us were in there and we talked together about ideas of how to get to know this group and you know we did some icebreaking activities with our group so we sort of learned from each other some things that we can do and i think that that really helps too because sometimes teachers may be highly skilled in teaching biology but establishing strong relationships might not come natural to them right they they might if somebody's passionate about biology and we've made this connection but other teachers have maybe said i'm able to really connect with kids and here's something i've tried what do you think you know and we've done that so uh it's definitely a focus of ours and we think it's really important and just another piece there are i think almost no trios all from the same department so i think just that other level of feeling like special education sometimes could feel like an island but they're in the mix with the english and spanish you know and i think so just getting to know people and being part of a team outside of your department just more like collegiality pizza's been big yeah very intentional yeah i'm with a biology teacher and a french teacher that's great thank you any other questions or thoughts okay thank you so much mr smith everyone and that's our report this evening i also just want to chime in and also mention when i talked about standing ovation at the opening day when it was announced that scott kellet was leaving as you could tell genuinely whether it was his own staff members people in the district um yeah again round of applause you know just uh it just serves to show what kind of uh you know colleague he's been a leader in soccer so i think he would understand the whistling the european style of cheering him so i whistled i always kidding when i came in the first day for my interview it was raining i came in the wrong way and he was very gentle with me and he didn't know who i was out in there is there is lots of work out there yeah um all right moving on to the character so in your package you have the words to close out fiscal year 21 and we'll start off with the fiscal year 22 warrants um next month i um whoever will have a new signer now i don't know who's assigned to sign whoever is going to be a signer if they want to come in and give them a mini training um i do have a little staff here um to be signed so let me know we can uh you know set up a short appointment and get you going on that and again these are any questions you have about the warrants or wanted to see them in detail they're always at central office available for review for you guys okay thank you any questions on that before it's still you but okay okay perfect so um maybe i'll get some standing ovations i think we have a pretty good financial report so um luckily um you know we we ended june at our last june meeting pretty much the number stayed where they were um just to give you a recap you have your general fund revenue statement your state status of appropriations with your expenditures am i into the roll forward so you can understand how that'll shook out after the operations were closed for the year and then again your quarterly report for your special revenue revolving fund so we'll walk through each of those just briefly if you have any questions just stop me on the revenues as you remember in june of 2020 dussey was recommending that all school committees be extra cautious about what was going to happen with the state budget and so you did take that vote to reduce your chapter 70 revenues by 200 000 and use an extra 200 000 of emd in its place well luckily the budget did finally turn out to be a little rosier than we all anticipated so that additional revenue we really didn't need to account for and so that's going to make up some of the surplus that we'll talk about as we roll through all the numbers the same thing happened on chapter 71 reimbursement transportation and if you remember we took your excess of regional transportation reimbursement and put it into your reserve fund just to cover any shortfalls that we might see in chapter 71 revenues for fiscal year 21.

and we also have luis andres perez his representative from the office of tom umber [Music] and a little after note luis is an anaheim high school alumni and also in our audience today is grant schuster the asta president [Applause] hilda vasquez the alta president and i don't did i miss anyone i hope not who do we have apj corey kretz not only zaldivar natalie saldbar natalie saldabar okay [Music] okay thank you now the next thing is an individual recognition it's a civic learning recognition that by senator tom umberg and senator will you come up to the podium and say a few words and present the recognition well thank you thank you so much for giving me a few moments and thankful thank you for all you've done to earn this recognition this is actually recognition by the courts the state of california to recognize the good work of the school board the good work the administration the good work of the principles of a variety of schools here in the school district and in particular superintendent matsuda superintendent matsuda was probably as you probably know was designated as an educator of the year by the courts because of his commitment to civic education congratulations superintendent there were six particular schools that were both nominated and received the award the six schools were cyprus catella and savannah high school and lexington junior high south junior high and walker junior high i can't think of anything that's more important right now in terms of our democracy than civic education you can see what's going on right across the way with the election being today you can see what's happened over the course of the last year and making sure that our young people understand how government works the relationship between for example local school board and the city council and state government making sure that all those things are understood and how they work together and their responsibility their responsibility to participate in that government is absolutely critical to our democracy in our rule of law so i want to thank you but one last final thing i i recognize that many people think that this award by the courts is because of the wonderful work the school board does or the superintendent of principles i actually think it's because the state center that represents the area that is determinative um so if i might uh president piercy and superintendent suta if i could present to you and the rest of the school board a this is a california state senate resolution recognizing anaheim union high school district and all of you uh for the fine work that you've done and how important it is particularly in this era so thank you if i might all right on behalf of the california state senate come on up everybody even though i said it's really the state senator that is some recognition that's the folks here too so thank you all right thank you very much is that that's one resolution for six schools and the superintendent so i'm not sure how you're gonna do that i would expect it would you mind wearing it superintendent for a while just all right thank you thank you [Applause] i'm going to drop it right here mr matsuda are we able to make a uh through our graphic arts make a photocopy of that to hang in each of the schools that earn that sort of replica i think we can request that from the senator's office to give us a couple okay moving on now to another item of business this is through educational services item number seven is the naming of facility phyllis fukumoto science wing and [Applause] and i have a request for the public to speak on this item from and i would like to call forward vishal krishan and come up to the podium and you have a comment you'd like to make that's a public comment i think pardon that's a public comment yes not for this i thought this was for that no no oh i'm sorry i thought it was i thought because yeah all right i got the wrong indication from the secretary okay so let's go back to naming the facility okay [Laughter] i'd like to call phyllis to the podium i thought i was going to have somebody speak about her first but phyllis will you please come up to the podium and you have quite a few people here in support of you and very very supportive of this whole idea um first of all um i thank you to everybody um i i feel like um there's not enough words to say thank you um to everybody here who supported me and everything thank you thank you um and um the idea that um i'm still getting used to it i'm in shock still because i just found out so um but i i wrote down a couple things you know um because i don't think i could like i said thank enough people for everything for this honor and it's like i said i'm still in shock about it but i am in total i'm very humbled by it and i would like to express my gratitude to everybody for that but i wrote just a couple things down um because teaching at dale for 35 years i realized that when i first started it was just how do i survive my classroom but then over the years i started talking about like my role as a teacher is to provide opportunity for students and to also to give back to the community by the time i finished i realized it wasn't about only giving back to the community it was about building community and so i hopefully i can still be part of that but i'd like to i've always learned a lot from my students and so one of the lessons i've learned from my students over the years i'll just put it very simply is that teaching is not about perfection it's about connection it's about making those connections with students so um i i hope that i am very deserving of the honor i'm still humbled by it but thank you very much and i will forever be grateful thank you okay i kind of failed to read this thing about phyllis but not she mentioned the fact that she has taught for 35 years and during that tenure mrs fukumoto has initiated the vision for the district's district's girls engineering day it was developed the saturday science it's developed saturday science buddies where eighth grade students mentor first grade students from the district's feeder elementary schools and she was named the dale teacher of the year four different times that's pretty expensive now the request to name this facility after her went through a process that the district has and okay it evaluated the request it developed a report and then it made a recommendation to the board for our consideration and we therefore you know it's the recommendation that the trustees are going to approve this request so this is an action item i kind of went in this way in the back door but it's going to end up the same because the board is going to decide whether we're naming that facility after phyllis or not so do i have a promotion would you mind would like us mrs fukamoto if you'd like to introduce the lady whether it might be a mother okay phyllis would you like to introduce the people with you [Applause] and i might note there are a number of dale uh faculty here and the principals here as well so all here to support you as well as our ask the president from dale okay why don't we have everybody that came here to support phyllis you know and from dale and friends stand up so you can see how many we have here that took the time out to come all right so on that note i'm going to make the motion okay do i have a second second all right so we have a motion and a second to name that facility at dale and i would just like to say uh it was it's very apropos that you said building a community when you created this uh engineering um uh you know the the the engineering for the the girls um every year i try to make every year there was a couple years i didn't i didn't make it but just the the pure joy of the students the enthusiasm and this was a whole day event and i know it took a lot of work and a lot of team building um a lot of you know those connections in the community to get those folks to come and do it and every year they tell me that they had so much fun um but just really the um what you've built at dale your legacy that um you have left behind i'm really sad you're not with us anymore but um i hope are you gonna come back on the saturdays on the engineering girls engineering all right good we got that commitment but that was apropos that you you made that statement and i love the the fact that um you know that they rallied to do this for you most times we net we don't really know the impact that we make um on people on uh you know students until years years years later and sometimes a lot of us end up you know in the ground before we actually know how many people you know that we've made an impact on so congratulations to the committee on this nomination while you're here while you're enjoying it well you can bask in it because you definitely deserve it thank you any other board member have a comment i'll just say that my first interaction with you was regarding the girls engineering day when i came on board as a trustee that was my first one of my first events and since i've always admired the way that you've kept that passion on and actually grown that entire project to have like i think it was that the last time i attended was full of a junior high gym so that's how much it's grown so thank you for that and your commitment i know that i came during before school started to uh visit dale and you were right there rolling up your sleeves helping the library to be all set up so thank you for your passion thank you for your service appreciate it i did what my colleagues have said but also just recently she continues to volunteer her time running into her back to school night at dale so she shows her passion for being around the kids and just the whole educational process so thank you and please continue to volunteer as you have phyllis when i came on the board many years ago and took a tour of each school i remember you specifically in your classroom and how touched i was because not everybody loves science but it just seemed to me you had the touch for young people to lend a science or to love a subject that they had never been had really experienced if i had my way tonight i would rename the school phyllis and i said this to mr maxouda uh some time ago because we have a former supervisor that has a school named after her and i think you warranted i want to thank your mother i'm very touched that you raised this wonderful woman and you have been given a gift to us and this community and so the generations have gone on in such a beautiful manner and i'm so grateful your brother is here and i just from the bottom of my heart i want to thank you for being an exemplar human being and professional and i want to just say i want to thank you for 35 years of junior high and you kept up i think you know i believe firmly that there are some people who just love that age great group and work with them and enjoy them and i i want to thank anyone who would spend that long in junior high you know they're great but it but it's not everyone that can do it and especially that puts forth so much extra effort and does so much with them you have really had a tremendous impact not only on dale but on the whole school district with your work with the girls engineering that is phenomenal so thank you very much phyllis you certainly can so i just want to echo what the board just said but also what our board president did uh mentioned in our moment of silence and how important it is to uh double down against this battle that we're fighting now and the way to do it phyllis is through modeling as you say connections not only with your peers but with the students and all the teachers that are here too and the good work that you're doing to reconnect with our kids during this most important time so thank you okay so we have a motion and a second to approve the naming of that facility so i can we all vote those in favor waiting for it we're waiting for it yeah okay all in favor aye opposed passes unanimously so [Applause] wow that's awesome neat phenomenal very neat okay okay what's that we're done not right yeah right done with that right now on to the next okay we will have our reports of our associations and we will begin with ask the president grant schuster good evening board of trustees cabinet and to those of you out on youtube and a room full of people here kind of for the first time that i've seen um i have a few things to update the board about this evening first five weeks into the school year we continue to see the joy of teachers and students being back in person we see this extended to parents at various back to school night and other events across the district from football games to community events from vapa practices to civic engagement activities students parents and district employees are enjoying so much of what our district has to offer it is of the utmost importance to remember that continuing all of this progress that has been made and we want to extend these positive experiences of our students and communities this is dependent upon us keeping our campuses safe and providing nurses slps teachers and all the other staff members with all of the support they need during this still uncertain time covet has been on the rise for weeks had been on the rise for weeks before a very recent peak the cases and exposures that we have dealt with in our district were just a reflection since august of what's out there in the community and we have done our best to keep anything from spreading on our campuses we must continue to follow all of the safety protocols and hold each other to account to make sure that they're being instituted on every site the stakes are far too high to let non-compliance go unaddressed i want to thank again nancy neen and leanne williams for moving mountains to create our protocols and contact tracing system i'm not sure if the rest of our district employees or community understand how difficult or complex the creation of this system was school districts were asked to create a medical bureaucracy from scratch in the middle of a pandemic and as folks who work in schools often do they just jumped right in with both feet and went to work i also want to thank the the benefits department along with hr for the support and onboarding hundreds of employees in the last couple of months the new employees in a very short period of time were put in the proper steps and columns they were brought in to the health care system the health benefits system that we have and this was not an easy thing to do i got phone calls from the benefits department the night before the deadline to sign people up and we reduced the number of teachers who had not signed up yet from 30 down to 5.

one student mentioned that cases at schools are starting to rise and if something isn't done then virtual learning might be an option so he wanted he wanted to kind of talk about that another student said that i was doing really bad online because i could not focus due to priorities and other responsibilities i had at home while doing school work i hope we can continue in person because i think it would be even more difficult for me to focus now if we cannot be at school and then finally a student said thanks to our teachers and staff the transition wasn't so hard they answered any questions we had about our schedules classes mask regulations etc and it was really fun and teachers were nice and did a great job with speaking or explaining what they were doing in class and thank you all that is my report [Applause] i have to say that is phenomenal for a first report when you're just basically been okay seated for the first time you have been busy all of you have been busy and um it's interesting some of the things you're bringing up and i hope to you know there will be discussions on the campus levels and then you'll get together and kind of fared it out and then maybe let us know a little bit more um it's interesting some of the problems and and one of them i hear heard is about the lunch time well part of the problem i think this year is you know lunches are free so a lot of kids are standing in line to get the lunches and not bringing a lunch so it's made it a little bit more difficult plus who knows what else maybe it's fewer cafeteria workers to get it out there so we have problems you know along with good things come some difficulties and so well but let us know you know what you're coming up with and what you're finding and and it'll be interesting i want to i look forward to hear what the ambassadors and you work out and come together with after surveying at each of your campuses so excellent job though that was very very good board oh i agree very good job thank you can i can i say something of course i just wanted to um first of all i just want to commend the entire group of ambassadors every year we actually you know build the momentum and the bar really high and you guys set that by even more higher this year so all the stories you guys are not focused on yourselves but you're focused on others and i think that's a key for our district and you guys are just basically mentioned it in every single speech that you had i had the greater honor of meeting esmeralda at uh south junior high i'm so glad that you actually shared your story because i think i mentioned it to you and i want to mention it to everyone if you get an opportunity ask her why she became an ambassador really gave me goosebumps and i went home and i had a story to tell my 11 year old it was great to hear your passion for why you became an ambassador and this is solely for your sister and show her the path and also to fight for her rights so thank you very much for sharing that story with me i know uh sebastian you know with anaheim bros you're not only being out there in the public doing work with your team so i know that you guys are all every single one of you loira and savannah it's like amazing the stories that you guys are sharing because i think we we picked uh whoever the committee was including anna we should commend the committee for actually really picking students who represent our district so thank you very much i'm looking forward to meeting each one of you individually so hopefully we get to get a picture with all of them yeah we'll have to do that okay after we all speak and say something then we'll gather them all and take a picture how's about that so thank you thank you i'll i'll take credit uh i was on the committee and so uh i really got to uh hear uh um the stories that they had and they were all incredible it was very difficult this year but as you said it they raised the bar even higher than i think we've ever seen before and i've seen them out um i haven't gotten to all the back to school nights that i would have liked but they're at the junior high school back to school nights as well as their own they have represented themselves they're working junior high school yeah and it's amazing and and i had the pleasure of uh visiting with you i crashed their meeting and they didn't mind and and they're just all remarkable and i wanted to thank you personally for my thank you uh that was really special um i will come and visit you anytime you don't have to give me thanks i learned so much from you and tonight was just phenomenal the the rest of the auhsd community got to see just how wonderful you are and i just cannot wait to see what you're going to do in the coming year sign me up and i'll be there with you thank you so much for all your hard work and dedication and you don't have to stay for the whole meeting we always like to tell our students you don't have to stay for the whole meeting but really appreciate seeing you all together and look forward to the coming year thank you so much all of you were so well spoken when you came up here to the microphone i i was sort of blowing away at how well you did some you know we're looking down some had totally uh remember i wouldn't say memorize but remember everything you wanted to say and but you came across so well and this is your what about the fourth week of school now and pardon me fifth i'm sorry i wouldn't want to teach out of a week oh sixth week there you go okay all right i can't count um but i can hardly wait until the end of your your senior year if you're at this point now where are you going to be at that point in time so i i commend you i i run into i shouldn't say run into you i have uh seen many of you at open houses and esmeralda um she came and she got her siblings over to me and introduced me to her siblings and then we had a picture taken so that was so nice i appreciate all of you all that you do and the district appreciates it too so good luck for this next year and i'd just like to congratulate all of you your diligence and hard work is paying off look what you see yourselves doing today tonight it's an experience that you'll never forget in years to come you'll look back and you'll tell younger people what you did and we're proud of you i know how pleased your families are for you and how much pride you bring for all of them so i wish you a wonderful school year absolutely definitely and i'd like to also acknowledge the advisors for the ambassadors would you stand up you're standing up there in the back and let the audience know hilda vasquez and jennifer brown and someone not here tonight who spends an awful lot of time with the ambassadors one of our distinguished retirees who you wouldn't know he's retired because he sticks around and helps us out all the time ron hoshi has been working with the ambassadors and he spends a lot of time and effort and he is phenomenal and i and he's watching right now i hope he's watching right but we overrun a debt of gratitude for working with this team and doing such a great job with them and we really really appreciate that everybody does i'd just like to add braun i didn't know that you were watching and you are such a jewel and i remember the first time i ever met you over at kennedy high school you were leading a a your group of chorus and you've just flowered all over your this district wonderful qualities and skills that you have and thank you so much okay let's uh go take a picture with our ambassadors and student reps just wish we could take our pictures [Music] where are we wave to your family [Music] [Applause] i wish i could hug each one [Music] amazon very great thank you so much yes like i don't know into the problems because like it's not problems but it's just like it takes student advocacy [Music] we're taking a break go back thank you i need to go to the restaurant pictures 20 years from now they'll show their kids yep yeah why are people having their pictures taken with me miss masks that needs to go home and get their homework done what student is that for public comment okay we just had a little informal break there now we will move on to item 9.3 this is our covert 19 reopening of schools madam president before we go we have a student that needs to do a public comment can we do that really quickly before with the board mine um he he he's got to go home and get some homework done too all right with the rest of the board okay okay i'm sorry okay now we'll have you come forward michelle okay sorry but you know we let the ambassadors go so we got to let you speak so you can go and do that thank you hi i'd like to first thank the board for giving me the opportunity to speak my name is vishal kashan and i'm a sophomore at beckman high school i've been doing debate for five years now and have experienced first hand the multitude of benefits it provides to its participants some of these benefits include increased public speaking skills and knowledge of current events higher school subject test scores and sat slash act scores improved writing and overall academic skills and improved personal behavior these all lead to better student performance which results in higher school and district rankings while some students have the ability to join debate in high school it is often too late with the number activities of activities that most are doing it is unlikely that they would pick up debates so late starting debate in middle school allows for students to reap such benefits earlier and puts them on the track towards success at a younger age additionally giving students the opportunity to begin debating in middle school will expose them to debate early so that if their high school lacks a program they have the ability to start one themselves so in an effort to help kids achieve their full potential i founded debate for all last year our goal is to increase student engagement by implementing debate programs in middle schools that currently lack one our program is entirely free and we provide curriculum beginning instruction and assist in starting the program up we are supported by the public debate program a worldwide established non-profit organization based in claremont mckenna university at accredited university we would love to board support in order for us to begin these programs we have reached out to the most administrators and ptsd of auhsd junior high schools but have not received any large response the auhsd junior high schools that do not currently have a debate program or orangeview junior high ball junior high south junior high sycamore junior high and walker junior high so if the board could assist us in obtaining meetings with administrators of these middle schools so that we can introduce our programs to them we would truly appreciate it any additional ways that the board could support would be most welcome you can learn more about the our program through our website which is on the flyer that i will hand out right now our contact details are also included if there's someone i can follow up with that would be great as well thank you for your time and if you have any questions please let me know i'm sorry what high school did you say you were from i go to beckman high school um in urban california yes okay so get the information okay if you do have some printout okay thank you very much thank you that's a great idea i think uh thank you sir sorry about the time frame thank you so much just tough sometimes trying to get a sponsor to to spend the hours that are you know devoted to it but possibly this program will help us because i know that the kiwanis club in cyprus is the one that sponsored the the uh speech and debate it at lexington and has worked with them on that so and then it kind of grew over to cyprus high so thank you very much thank you so much yes thank you of course thank you so much i appreciate it have a great day okay take care okay now we will go back to the covet 19 and uh reopening of schools and that will be under dr freed all right well note to self don't ever schedule a presentation that follows the student ambassadors so good evening board president piercy members of board my colleagues on cabinet and to our family and friends in the audience and those who are watching on our live stream uh it is my great pleasure to be here tonight with uh our director of risk management leanna williams who will do a brief presentation with some updates as it connects to kova 19 our reopening schools and our protocols and updates that we've been putting in place i wanted to share with you real quickly before i turn over to our director of risk management who's just done a fantastic job by the way in her first month with us on the job just really hit the ground running one of the things that we did a couple weeks ago with feedback from our unions as we did a district-wide late start where we put the protocols and all the different things that we have in place around covid19 the state order that we're going to be talking about in a moment we did a late start to communicate all the things that we have in place to all of our staff across the district we want to make sure that every one of our staff are getting the same message on the same day so that continuity and expectations were really clear across our district as we roll these different measures out leann is going to talk in a moment about some of those specifics that we talked about on that late start day uh across our district so you can see exactly what we talked about with our staff so that mature to lyanna thank you jaren good evening president piercy members of the board of trustees superintendent matt stewart and cabinet talk to you briefly on some of the things that we continue to communicate to schools staff members and students and so as jaren mentioned we did ask principals to deliver during their alert late start on thursday some of the protocols that we're going through so as as you can imagine we're still all wearing our masks and so everyone is still required to wear their masks and doors we are still continuing to take the health screenings using the qr codes for all staff and district or district staff and we're also making sure that the students are entering the campus with masks we are continuing to provide proper disinfectant first for teachers to go ahead and disinfect their their classrooms and conference rooms we continue to bright provide sanitizers all of those good things that we have been implementing back when this pandemic started we continue to provide to the districts and to the school sites contact tracing is is a big issue as you guys well know we have really beefed up our contact tracing efforts and i have to say a great thank you to human resources to brandon teats and his group and to carlos hernandez and arisely for lending us some resources we went from seven contact tracers two weeks ago actually a week ago to a total of 19 just this week and we have now got in place a process that will help the schools return their students a lot quicker that is our goal we're going to continue monitoring the process um and make any necessary changes as as needed and so this is a work in proc progress we've made great strides and we will continue to to do our best to bring those students back we know that that is important to the district uh we continue to work with the district staff on contact racing as well we we've got a really good system in place it works really well so well that we only have one person assigned to the staff contact racing so it's going very good and nancy's been great cabinet's been great so i just want to thank everybody for the continued support we know that back in august there was a california department of public health order that came out that mandated all unvaccinated public school private school employees to be tested weekly the order has a deadline of october 15th the district is on task to meet that that deadline we are partnering with the state to offer an end-to-end program for vaccination or excuse me for testing of the unvaccinated we are currently gathering information on the number of unvaccinated staff that exist and then we will work with the partners mobile ed to strategize how we are going to make available the testing for those unvaccinated staff that concludes my update are there any questions can you briefly um just uh describe uh how hard how difficult it is to do the contact tracing for for those who do not understand that absolutely so the contact tracing our processes that we have in place is this for students they're separate they're a little different but they're similar in nature so with students any staff member who knows that a student is missing class because of covid like symptoms we don't get specific we can't necessarily ask if it is covid so they ask if it's coveted like symptoms they input the information into a qualtrex system and that system automatically sends a survey email to the student and the parents that is where we see the difficulty because it relies on the student and the parent to submit and complete that survey because that survey is what triggers the contact tracer to reach out to the parents to understand what happened and to give them an estimated data return back to school so the process can sometimes take long because we are dependent upon that um that survey back from the parents so that's where it's difficult there are also times though where we've reached out to parents trying to get in contact with them to discuss the situation and we've less just left countless messages so a lot of the messages go unreturned from parents so those are some of the challenges that were dealing with we also run into the classic where people just don't read emails they ignore the emails and so what i'm trying to do is get less dependent upon waiting for those surveys to come through and to really reach out and call somebody that's what we need to start doing and so as soon as we can get the system in a good place and we got the numbers manageable we are going to start reaching out to those families and we are going to just go ahead and ask the questions and get them and clear them on the spot if we can that's the goal thank you you're welcome any other questions okay you you briefly touched on the safety protocols at school and you said about teachers being able to sanitize beyond that what else are we doing on a daily basis at the school for students what are school sites doing for the safety and health of the students and the staff and the staff so we do have we have custodians or our custodial services will go around twice a day to the high-touch areas multi-use rooms and they will disinfect with an appropriate epa approved disinfectant again the masks if if staff identify students who are exhibiting covet-like symptoms they will refer them to the health office so that they can do a quick assessment and send them home if necessary again the you know the masks the the screenings the disinfectants the hand sanitizers we've got air purifiers in rooms we've got multiple in rooms that are larger areas we are now putting up signs for gyms because of recent cdph guidelines for extracurricular activities so we're taking those those measures what about the food lines the food lines i'm going to be honest with you i've not heard any issues with the food lines uh physical dissing is no longer being mandated by cdph and so there are there are no physical distancing guidelines in place at the moment um but the the food lines is something that we can take a look at especially after hearing um the ambassador's concerns so i don't if we can have any control over that we will definitely look at that there used to we used to have shared tables where a student didn't want part of their lunch they could put it on a table and someone could take it that couldn't afford or couldn't didn't have a lunch enough lunch is that still in in existence i don't think it is no they're not they're not at this time it's not um because of obviously the the kova 19 pandemic going back to your question though i do know i spoke with orlando a couple days ago as you know with the instructional aide and just classified staff shortage what they have done because there are some schools that um because more kids are taking advantage of the free lunch that they've been given the schools have been really strategic and trying to get more student volunteers because unlike the processing of an employee one there's a shortage of employees who are willing and wanting to do that work but then the time it takes to process paperwork they've been getting student volunteers who can also work and earn community service hours et cetera and doing that work so i know that orlando's been working with schools to get more students volunteering to help the speed of line since more students are taking advantage of the the free lunch that's being provided yeah okay thank you i have a question the presentation that was given to all the teachers and all the campuses on our last late start date was that a half hour presentation or was it it was about an hour about an hour yes is that something that is on a line that we could see i mean i would be curious to see what was presented to the teachers we can definitely share it it's not online on the district website but we can definitely share it with the um the board the board okay absolutely i don't know about anybody else but i would like to see what was told to the teachers because i know by sitting on in on these opening of schools task force there was still a lot of questions even after they had that presentation so i'd like to see what was covered in that one of the things we did as a result of that presentation is we've got an active google document where principals or aps can take the concerns and questions of the staff and put it in that document and have either myself dr nian veronica or the another appropriate person respond to those questions okay and it's it the list is growing unfortunately yes yes so we're trying to really communicate all the changes everything we're trying to do to to help protect the staff and the students and be very open and honest about those things but there's just still a lot of questions because i just i'm amazed i was listening to all of them on the meeting the other day so and and cdph is not helping us by constantly changing their decision trees when it comes to when they can quarantine how long they can quarantine and so it's just a non-stop evolutionary of information are we utilizing a modified quarantine we are for students yes all right thank you you're welcome and i just wanted to commend you uh for coming on board so quickly you heard from the students now that the students feel safe on campus so congratulations that's good to hear thank you right all right very good thank you yeah i have a few questions um first of all thank you manuel for taking my call and going through a series of questions from me to kind of address some of the concerns that i had so let me just go by first of all in terms of being transparent what are our code numbers right now on campus so our coveted numbers right now on campus between staff or par are you looking for positive confirmations right so we've got roughly eight nine ten sixty seven eighteen twenty one two two three two four twenty five twenty five to twenty to thirty right now and that's throughout the district all the way from kennedy all the way to those are all the stuff the sites correct all the school sites and the district office right so i know you talked about the protocol just to be make sure that people who are watching know what our process is what is the protocol when we have a student who comes on campus and we figure that hey you know what you're exhibiting symptoms now go home so the protocol at that point is whatever staff is receiving that information should be submitting the student's name into the into the qualtrex system there is a link for staff to use to fill out various information and again that put that link once that's completed it pushes out an email to the student and the staff or excuse me the student and the parent asking them to complete the questionnaire at which point once that's done we can get a contact tracer back onto that student to identify the circumstances behind that and then give them an expected date to return to school and again that's dependent upon them completing that survey so if they don't complete the survey we are using contract tracers to call them right we're starting to implement that and that's where i think i i got a concern today from a parent um usually she attends the meetings too so the concern was that we are pulling people from uh let's say you know community liaison positions and actually using them to do contract traces and i actually had answered saying that the reason was because we are trying we are short staffed so we're trying to pull staff from uh different areas to make sure that we you know do this right because this is one of the priorities we got to make sure that our you know we trace them back to whoever it is and make sure that those kids don't come back to come back on campus now the second question i think this is a gerund question and manuel answered this for me pretty well is that when a student actually is sent home [Music] then what do they do at home in terms of i know we give them a packet to work on at home right if you can explain that yeah so as you know with e-cadence we've been talking with our staff about making sure they upload student work any cadence because they do that then students have access to all their content and coursework while they're at home the other thing too is is is if a student doesn't have a device or a hotspot we've developed a process and protocol for any student who needs that device or hotspot to be able to check one out so they can do their work from home also for students who desire there is a way for them to get traditional work brought up to the office the way they would normally do it before the pandemic where they can do the work at home as well we're also waiting the final guidance on the state in terms of what even short-term independent study might look like so when a student is forced into quarantine because of their circumstance there's a process that we'll have in place to support students with their work while they're out so that way they don't they don't miss a beat when they're at home right so there you we're sending them for 10 days quarantine right that includes the weekend uh yes i believe so yes yes okay yes so my question is because this is a question that a parent asked me if there is an overachieving student right who gets done everything all the work that's been given to them is there a possibility that that student or the parent could actually request for more work to be done while they're at home yeah sure they could request more work to be done it would just be working with the site admin and their that students teachers to be able to collect that work all right so mike the reason that i asked yes they can do that but have we actually communicated that to our teachers to make sure that we follow up because in this particular case student asked uh you know obviously there was not a system established in order to give that extra work so that student i mean for them obviously they're idling at home of course we're sending them thinking that they're you know covered positive but they're going through the process of quarantining themselves and if they're not they're still staying home at you know idling which means they're losing instruction hours uh every single day that they're not on campus right so that's a concern that i have is that are we communicating that and i think manoa you addressed that to me but i want to make sure that in public i ask this is that are we communicating that to our teachers so that we have a system in place when we send students home and are we monitoring those kids and if they are requesting for more work to be added because they're done with their work are we able to have a process of doing that yeah and i don't know if it was discussed at the last teacher input i wasn't at that meeting but yes if if we are developing that process where that communication should be happening where students who want additional work should be able to get it through that through the system with the admin and the teachers that they were that they have you know mr dubai i think our parents need to address this as if uh it was a regular absence like you know a 10-day flu or something like that during you know prior to cobit of course our if there was extra work that was uh needed the teacher would supply that extra work so i mean you know i don't think i think we need to approach it that same way but to uh dr fred's point too and this is important that our public know this that we uh there's there's a new law coming in regarding independent study to allow uh districts to collect ada because that's really really going to be important going forward as we deal with the number of these quarantine so short answer is yes i think that through e-cadence we can upload the teachers who are uploading a lot of their lessons and they can get ahead of it too as well very easily in terms of uploading future lessons or extra credit type of things but also too i think because of this new law affecting all of the districts throughout the state of california regarding independent study so districts can collect ada as well so um that's all that's all coming all right and then the other question that i had was in terms of our um the the the process of contact tracing i know it's very arduous is there anything that else that we could do in order to figure it out because i i mean there are certain weeks that i've monitored on the list that we get right where at the beginning it was high but then now i see the numbers have gone down and probably because of the fact that you know everybody's following protocols they know what it is and they go through that but i want to make sure that if you're having issues with staffing how do we mitigate that right i mean obviously short term we can go ahead and pull people from different departments to do that but do we have a plan for that or are we thinking well maybe you know look for hopefully get everybody vaccinated when the vaccine vaccines are available for kids under uh that we could do more so we actually do have three more contact tracers in queue and ready to start and the three contact tracer's ready to start and the goal is mr jabar as as we pull in some additional folks we understand that the community liaisons we are not their primary job we know that they're there to serve their school and their community and we do want to return them as soon as possible so we just want to thank them for loaning them loaning them to us but as we bring people in and train them we're going to release those community liaisons back to their schools the hope is no more than four weeks so we've got three people right now that we can bring on board we'll get them the training and then we can release three three more folks there are currently 80 applications and speaking with hr earlier today there are about 80 applications that are are pending review for additional contact tracers so there is a plan in place obviously we're just one of many departments who are in need of additional uh staffing and so while they're helping us they are helping others but they understand our need all right perfect and then finally i just want to mention i want our i know i heard uh i think bros is having their vaccine clinic on the 25th but i would like to see if any if we offer that opportunity for other student organizations to actually conduct vaccines clinics in their schools because it is a sort of a fundraiser for these organizations as well for every person that uh the organization signs up and completes the vaccine they get twenty dollars so it's a it's a good opportunity for the schools especially i think when i had that conversation sebastian he jumped on it to have that conversation with carlos and i think it was arranged so if there are other schools interested it might be an opportunity for us to really bring the community along and because the students are going to reach out and get the people who are not being vaccinated to come and get vaccinated so yeah we can definitely work with abdullah and possibly carlos to get other schools on board to host a similar event perfect thank you that's it thank you oh yeah just real quick too the other update is we now have a dashboard i know the camera we now have a dashboard that we're going to be putting on the website so our test positive numbers will be public not just for for all of you but for our community at large uh so that started i think last friday but then it's and it's going to be divvied up based on schools and yep yes full sites right okay yeah because it's a little bit that's a question that i've been having with uh healthcare agency because it's a little bit tough to navigate their website and finding out how the schools are having right i mean it just says uh i think they've color coded it saying i the threshold is like if you're 100 and above a different certain color 50 and above a certain color but i think it'll be better for us as an organization to put it up so we're transparent with the public and they know and the parents knowing their school sites thank you okay thank you good all right thank you thank you thank you good job okay so we are on to what comments item 10 10 10 public comments and are there any other public comment requests okay eleven okay seeing none we'll go on to item 11 items of business 11.1 resolution number 2021-22-b-03 recalculation of the 20 21 appropriations limit and establishing the 20 21 22 estimated appropriations limit calculations so moved second i have a motion and a second do i have any questions comments this is a roll call vote seeing none mrs trejo aye mr o'neal aye mr jabbar aye mr smith i and i vote aye resolution passes item 11.2 resolution number 2021-22-b-04 adjustments to income and expenditures general fund resolution number 2021 slash 22-b 0-5 adjustments to income and expenditures of various funds and 20 21 20 20 20 20 to 21 unaudited actual financial statements so moved second i have a motion and a second this again is a roll call vote any questions or comments seeing none mrs trejo aye mr o'brien and mr o'neal she did it because of me ryan she must have it's contagious hi mr javar hi i was just expecting another name but no come on i want to do it to brian i'm jimmy smith hi and i voted i apologize come on okay 11.3 resolution number 2021-22-b-06 requests for proposals for e-rate year data communications equipment software and other related electronic equipment apparatus and services so moved second i have a motion and a second do i have any questions or comments seeing none roll call vote mrs trejo aye mr o'neal aye mr jabbar aye mrs smith aye and i vote i 11.4 resolution number 2021-22-b-07 authorization to sign applications and associated documents i have a motion in a second any questions comments seeing none it's a roll call vote mrs trejo aye mr o'neal aye mr jabbar mrs smith i and i vote i eleven point five resolution number twenty twenty one slash twenty two dash b dash zero eight california public entity pension stabilization trust second i have a motion in a second do i have any questions or comments nancy were you yes so we do have um the representative um carrie ellison from morgan stanley as well as um jeff from keenan as well to be here to answer any questions that you may have okay so this was um we presented this at the upward workshop last month so just want to make sure that uh any questions that you may have i think you covered it pretty well and they brought the guarantee and writing of how much we're going to get yeah yeah that thumbs up says yes well we have um you know with their support um you know we um the experience has been very very good and um that the district id helped previously did extremely well and so given this kind of time and so i just want to make sure that um they're here to answer any questions and we i already did a conference call with them to include more questions just to make sure you know how the different ways to deposit as well as which type of investment as well and so the fund that they helped us look at is a fund i'm very comfortable with as well what's the timeline we are go um our goal is to make the deposit um hopefully within two weeks it does take some time to set up with the county treasury they do wear the money uh that way so it's go through ocd so that the goal will be to set up four different deposits um about kind of every um every every couple weeks um and then have all the money in there by the holidays so usually the holidays um generate better uh return but uh here we can add anything more if there's any questions but our goal is yes okay uh any other questions no i think i asked all the questions that i had last time so murray i'm good okay now we had a very good presentation and i'm just looking forward to us making some money yes yes thank you so much okay seeing no additional questions or comments uh this is um just a roll call vote as well so mrs trejo aye mr o'neal aye mr jabbar aye mrs smith hi and i vote eye 11.6 this is a public hearing sufficiency of textbooks and instructional materials open the public hearing does anyone wish to speak seeing none i will close the public hearing item 11.7 resolution number 2021 slash 22-e dash textbooks and instructional materials compliance for 2021-22 so moved second i have a motion in a second do i have any questions or comments let me just say that this is our annual public hearing basically to determine if each pupil in the district has sufficient textbooks or instructional materials in history social science mathematics reading english language arts science health world languages and visual and performing arts so any comments or questions seeing none it's a roll call vote mrs trejo aye mr o'neal aye mr jabbar aye mr smith aye and i vote i 11.8 resolution number 2021 slash 22-e-03 national hispanic heritage month exactly i have a motion in a second and i think this speaks for itself and this again is an action item any questions comments okay seeing none mrs trejo hi vodai mr o'neal aye mr jabbar aye mr smith aye and i vote i alright we will be celebrating that month then item 11.9 this is a resolution number 2021 slash 22-e-04 attendance awareness month second i have a motion in a second attendance awareness month acknowledges that good attendance matters and is essential for student achievement and graduation it raises public responsib you know this month will raise public responsiveness to the detrimental effects of chronic absenteeism it's important to be there okay any other questions or comments all right we had we had a roll call i mean we had a motion didn't we yeah all right this is a roll call vote mrs trejok aye mr o'neal aye mr jabbar aye mr smith aye and i vote i okay resolution number 2021 slash 22 dash e-05 red ribbon week removed second second i have a motion and a second and of course this is the national week of activism that empowers our youth and any concerned group to stand out speak up and seize control against drugs all right any questions or other comments seeing none mrs trejo i voted mr o'neal aye mr jabbar aye mrs smith i and i vote i item 11 11 resolution number 2021 slash 22 dash e-06 international translation date all right i have a motion in a second international translation day is an international day celebrated every year on september 30th this is an opportunity to to display pride in a profession that is becoming increasingly essential in the era of globalization and an act to recognize the role of professional translation in connecting our district with our families and our communities any other comments questions seeing none roll call vote mrs trejo hi mr o'neill aye mr javar mrs smith aye and i vote i eleven point twelve resolution number twenty twenty one slash twenty two dash e dash zero seven covid19 effects on participation in extracurricular and co-curricular activities along with minimum academic standards second i have a motion in a second now the covet 19 pandemic has had an immense immeasurable impact on our student health and well-being and for many students extracurricular activities are the glue that connects them to and engages them in school this resolution is going to suspend for the first quarter of 2021-22 year only the academic probation restriction in board policy 711.

at this point in time i'm going to take out my phone so that i may turn on my timer um what we'd like what we would like to do is offer the board of education uh two minutes of uninterrupted time where you are uh you have this in print by the way if uh if that is easier uh for you to do but we're going to take models 3 and model 4. and we're going to give you two minutes just to look at these models compare and contrast what do you see similar in the models what do you see different in the models um and after the two minutes you don't have to but we'll ask the board if there's anything that they want to share in terms of their observations comparing and contrasting model three and model four at for this particular exercise we're going to ask that you do not pay attention to the sites that have been chosen that's a later conversation but just really about the models and how they're built and what they mean okay so yes ma'am yes absolutely can we ask for clarification on the format of tonight and if there are time suggestions and how we're moving through that so so one of the guests for that i i think it's very important that that you stress um where we're going with this the two minutes the questions that okay so we're going to give you two minutes of uninterrupted time to look at model 3 and model 4 as you're studying right we're just looking at these two models and for yourself you're looking at again uh differences similarities as you're comparing contrasting um and then after the two minutes again we would turn it over to the board if there's anything that they would like to share something they saw or something they noticed yeah i mean for the entire and how long are we projecting two hours and kind of how are we yeah i guess i'd like a little preview of what we're doing and how we're chunking our time sure um we are uh we are thinking that this is going to be two hours under two hours of course that will depend on uh questions and comments and conversations uh we're going to be showing you the school reorganization team um their decision we're gonna be going over survey data um and then we're gonna be going over uh enrollment capacity uh we're gonna be going over uh projected cost we're gonna be going over projected or possible programs and we're going to be going over potential staffing along the way there will be checkpoints again where we stop we'll give you time to think to analyze to look and then to to be able to share uh some some things out also to be clear process-wise uh you're you're asking us to look at model 3 and model 4 and simply share out our observations and not ask questions oh you can ask questions sure that's fine just clarifying yeah absolutely oh i can answer more questions if you want to talk about it but it's two minutes looking at model 3 similarities differences if a question were to come up absolutely we can address the question and we're not looking at the sites we're just looking at the models for how they're built okay two minutes starts now okay those are two minutes again i don't need to but would any any board member like to share something that they noticed about the two models maybe something that they have in common or something that they have different i i just have a question not a question but just a comment you got what i've noticed in my room three and model four um i noticed that model three and model four that there was uh elementary middle and high school all supposedly um being close that are on the um beyond the 210 freeway in the south side i noticed that on model 3 and 4.

57.9 of the team favored model 4. and so that pie graph there represents the team if we break this up by parents and staff on the parent side you will notice that 71.4 percent of the parents favored model 3 28.6 favored model 4 and on the staff side favored model 3 and 75 percent model a favor uh model 4. uh one thing to keep in mind this is a uh we're talking about mathematics this is a relatively small number so one person voting one way or the other can sway these percentages in a big way so this serves as the official results and official recommendation of the school reorganization team and we're going to come back to these numbers uh in a little bit yes ma'am so this light is not in our slide it is right here oh i would like to ask the clarifying questions absolutely so for for this survey were the students not surveyed this is the school reorganization team and how they felt about models three and four so the team only the team only so yes ma'am um so just point of clarification so it looks like there are more staff that voted than parents so do you have the breakdown on how many parents were in the city that voted off the top of my head no i do not so going back to your question did everybody vote everybody that was at this meeting voted there were 19 there were 19 members present and 19 people voted yes so three people were missing how many people no more uh five people were missing board member cruz gonzalez's um question i think it's important that we do that we do see the percentage how many parents and i'm sure staff because that that will kind of yeah off the top of my head i'm gonna say uh i i don't know but we can find out lika if you can on the side if you can pull that up um and we can share that with you but again 19 people small group right i have a question um so regarding so if you're saying that model 3 and model 4 are the recommended models presented by the school reorg team correct did the team also recommend the site listed in this slide deck for model 3 and model 4.

one of the important changes was that the municipals that previously were obligated to have energy efficiency as part of their utility mix and part of their power mix you know treating energy efficiency as a source of power megawatt if you will the 2016 law allows them for um at the end of this calendar year to opt out of having any obligation to do energy efficiency programs anymore for their customers so and a number of those utilities may in fact just do that so those incentives those rebates those kinds of things that they're having place for residents in commercial they simply go away because that utility has decided they don't want to do it anymore and they're not under the aegis anymore of the michigan public service commission and that's not obligated to do that gotcha gotcha so i'll take that um to my question you know earliest that that might be complete you know maybe sometime late next year just so that the commission is aware of this broader timeline that we need to work with as we're considering other options and and so far as the second part uh about you know the current legislation that's in in committee saying everything goes well and swimmingly uh and things move out of the house and they get into the senate um you know that probably wouldn't be enacted until probably what mid of next year at assuming everything goes well i think that's probably a decent timeline to provide to put on this yeah i would i wouldn't disagree with that i just would say in terms of you know opening up the energy legislation let's not forget the legislators are elected to office to legislate to to write bills and to write policy and do those kinds of things so maybe they're just going to get itchy fingers in a couple more years and want to get back into that and do something substantial thank you two brief comments from my side maybe just one actually um there was a webinar today uh sponsored by the 2030 district about the energy code updates um that's actually an administrative process it's been already initiated um the dates um for all the steps past the one that we have completed so far are all tbd but the projection is that that process would likely be completed by the end of 2022.

um coven really hit people hard and now more than ever it's really important that our homes are affordable to live in um jenny who presented earlier also touched on the importance of those living in homes with high energy burdens um experienced by lower income households it's super important or energy efficiency is an important piece to reduce their energy burdens so we see um energy and cost savings and that's really really meaningful um especially for those in our city that are struggling to afford to stay here we also see that energy efficient homes are healthy and safe safe to live in i know we all know this i'm sorry for going through it again but you know when we remove um things in our home that are burning fossil fuels in our home we're much healthier and safer and these improvements support our local economy um we also with the support of rmi were able to more specifically estimate um the projected impacts of the first year of implementing implementing the home energy labeling program they asked that we would need roughly four assessors to rate the 4 thousand over four thousand homes that would be sold in a year we would see roughly 900 of those become retrofitted and then those are associated energy savings cost savings and co2 just of our first year um an increased real estate value so we anticipate a true change coming from this program um i know it's late i want to thank you so much for your time and open up to any questions thank you very much for the excellent presentation and for your leadership on this project uh we already have a couple people lined up robert thank you mr chairman um so i just uh thank you for your presentation uh thea it's very good to know as part of the roughly 50 of the folks that rent in the city i was wondering how something like this could be applied for renters totally ann arbor is unique one we have so many renters but we also see that we're calling the single family homes but a lot of them are rented um so when they are sold they would still be under this ordinance we are also working on developing um we'll just sorry for one second the um commercial multi-family benchmarking ordinance would cover multi-family homes that are over 20 000 square feet so more um larger buildings and homes i guess at that point um and then we're also working on developing a green rental program to also specifically address rentals since we know that you know half of our city rents and they're also more likely to experience energy and efficient homes and have a harder time paying to stay there i i just would just add briefly to that it would be great uh for folks uh that are looking at a potential rental lease to have that as a piece of information that's included about the property when they're considering whether they're going to rent in one location versus another i you know i think that would be very beneficial hey thanks so much thea um question so it states that the score will be presented um on the mls and then the details a detailed report will be given at the time of purchase um like how how far before the final purchase will the details that the report be presented because it seems like it would be beneficial for the the pending purchaser or the person considering purchasing the property to know you know the the potential expenses of you know improvements um that that would be made or could be made yeah and i want to apologize i um i'm picking up this presentation and i think i misinterpreted how that slide was written um the way the ordinance is written um as the house is being listed we would require that the home energy score and the report be listed in any um marketing for the home um the way that works out is usually you can't literally include the report in the mls you include a link so it does require this like extra step and initiative to really check out that information but it's there for those that are definitely interested um and then the report itself would also have to be available included in the package at time of sale that was a question but i apologize for that that was on that was my error councilman remember breaks thanks um three questions um so the first is i think you said it takes an hour to complete one of these assessments and i was just curious how that gets stunts briefly how that gets done so quickly because having done an energy assessment and things sometimes they take a lot longer than that so that's one question um the other one is just if you've thought about how this applies to accessory dwelling units um would that be two scores or you know is that like would that be covered by the the rental program you know just that sort of interface and then any how kind of realtor's been responding to this type of work in other communities or in our room sure um so how does the score only take one hour um the home energy score is not like a home energy audit and it's not as technically detailed um as what you would probably need to do some really intense energy efficiency improvements but it's an easy first step that gets kind of like the brunt of the information out that you just need for an overall assessment um so they've really pared down the information that you need to make that initial assessment so they just you know they look at what equipment is there they've really or the doe has really filed down you know the streamlined um set of information that you need for that initial assessment um and that's defined by the home energy score that's not us making that up um i think also with kovid they used to be exclusively in-house assessments i think when kobe picked up they also figured out how to do them virtually um and then in other cities like portland they've also found that um accessories that provide the home energy score we're also able to do a same-day turnaround so it seems like magic but it's been proven that it doesn't take very long um and people that find that it's their business model and what they provide they've you know successfully really made it a streamlined process um how does it apply to accessory drawing units that is specifically in the ordinance i would have to check if it's a separate um energy score or rolled into the um score for the whole building but i believe the adus are covered but i will have to follow up with you on that um and then how have real estate agents um kind of like perceived this um one i think it's a new thing and it's an extra step so initially i think people tend to have a little bit of hesitation around it however we found that really once we ex or once other cities explained um and kind of like took away this level of being scared of something unknown and new but we're able to present um information and results from other cities and kind of just understand what people's concerns were see if those were legitimate or if they hadn't really um arose in other cities so we've really seen that um a lot of pushback from realtors were actually from either fears that never happened or or fears that would would never happen um for example uh there was a lot of pushback that having a home energy score would take a lot of time to sell a home either getting home ready to sell or having a home on the market and we found that one same-day turnaround test or home energy scores are available and two that homes of the home energy score regardless of the score sell faster than homes with that one so we've really been able to see that um there hasn't been much impact on the real estate um process of selling a house did i answer all of your questions you did i thought of more but i'm going to let others go thank you welcome it's a little bit late in the evening to be talking energy efficiency i think but i'll try my best here um the key is going to be adoption right so i think we need to test this a little bit before we start adopting it in my mind i know other communities have adopted it it sounds fairly simple you get to an energy efficiency score and you can kind of correlate the two how it directly impacts greenhouse gas emissions could be quite different i think we need to understand the correlation better obviously i know a lot about this subject but um how this translates into actually being effective i think we need to kick around a little bit so i would suggest we look at it a little bit longer but i i think this may be something that could be adopted the real estate agents are going to have to really buy into it or else it will not survive but um i'm hopeful so anything we can do to help let us know great thank you i'm going to comment real briefly on what just talked about chuck knows this because he's on a working group that is working on this topic and that is there is a group under fungus leadership working on energy concierge services and um we have a real opportunity um to be able to link this ordinance with contier services so that if someone gets a home energy score and a list of potential improvements um that that individual then could go to the concierge service and we're looking at an online resource as well as a essential essentially a consulting service um that's obviously going to depend on funding availability and things like that but by connecting these two to chuck's point this would have the potential of greatly increasing the adoption rate of some of these suggested improvements so the two fit nicely um together council member regina thank you trimerski um i hope this will be a relatively quick question because i think i know the answer already but i just want to make sure that i know um so so i know i think i saw an earlier version of this that kind of tied a home energy score to action and it kind of at some point it might require there was a proposal at least being discussed that would require a homeowner to potentially make energy improvements prior to selling the home that is not included in this proposed ordinance correct correct that is not included okay all right i just wanted to make i wanted to make sure on that because i think while it's important for i think information to be out there i think it's also important to kind of allow that negotiation to take place between buyers and sellers and obviously there might be give and take um in you know what what is important to some home buyers versus others and and while i think it's important from a community standpoint to have more energy efficient homes i i wouldn't want us to get into the business of kind of negotiating those terms in that as well so i thought so and i just wanted to thank you for confirming hello uh yes uh thanks for the presentation um do we have any estimate of how much uh one of these would cost to do um a home energy score yeah yeah i'd have to pull up the estimates i think portland saw um their costs settle at around 150 dollars per score so very low cost um i think people thinking of like the more technical home energy audits or home or her scores tend to be a bit pricier but this is really um you know a low cost low time intensive um solution okay and one other quick things i'm as i understand it this is really just about efficiency changes you could make to the house i just had a thought that uh probably this isn't part of it but has there been any thought of also maybe analyzing doing a quick analyzation for how feasible it would be to add solar or as well as how easy based on the utility hookups you already have for i'm not saying this right but for ev charging basically like how easy it would be to add a level two charging to the existing setup in the house has that been thought about at all yeah yeah i also just want to quickly go back to your previous question um just as clarification the home energy score the price of one isn't set it's these um assessors that are certified by the partners and it becomes this like competitive business so they set their own score so the price i quoted may not be the same price everywhere it's unofficially set price um we have thought about that it's not in the ordinance right now um but the home energy score report that you get the score is set by the doe but the information that you include in that report is up to the um the partner or the city that's requiring it so if we wanted to include information on other initiatives that we're promoting such as getting solar and including a solar estimate um or recommending electrification improvements rather than fossil fuel efficiency improvements there's flexibility there for information that we'd want to include thanks bridgette thanks um would this be mandatory or voluntary and if mandatory there would need to be some sort of an enforcement um uh procedure and i'm wondering if that's been thought through yeah so we homeosquare exists and we're not seeing very many in ann arbor so this is this would be a mandatory um policy that when when you sell your home and market your home this is information that you have to include um the enforcement mechanism would be uh at time of sale requiring that the information is included um it's already an existing process that we have existing mechanisms to enforce on whether or not you include information or excluded information that's required so i think we're looking to rely on that existing process as this place for enforcement so would a sale be held up if this hadn't been done um you know i would have to look more into if it wouldn't go through or if it would just um result in um pursuing until the information is provided i'm gonna jump into support theo too i don't know if you caught this zach was actually tagged to be the lead presenter on this but he got pulled into the planning commission so apologies for that and sorry thea um i can see if he's free and bring him back in so i'll check bridget did you have any other questions otherwise mark but mark yeah just uh quickly when uh i ran the better buildings program for michigan um a while back ann arbor was one of the participants in that program anyway um to know his point we gave a rebate on the uh price of the energy assessment to homeowners that um went got with a contractor and actually had the work done so if they move forward on the recommendations um they got a rebate for the cost of the audit maybe worth throwing in there it may it wasn't a lot of money but it seemed to make a a difference to people yeah and i'm sorry you broke up a little bit on my end that was a rebate for doing improvements after having the audit we the better building program we rebated the cost of the audit back to homeowners who implemented the the recommendations so typically they want got a michigan saves loan or or whatever but um when they move forward there were a whole bunch of rebates that came along with it including refrigerator rebates from the utilities and hot water things and da da da and just one of the rebates that they got was the better buildings program covered the cost of the audit and rebated that back to them great thank you did you have another question okay uh the i have a question hopefully you can answer it tonight if not you could provide it because i think we will approve the resolution of support tonight i think it's just a first reading and that is i'm wondering if you can uh go over the timeline a little bit of when this is done in all the steps and when it's disclosed and things like that so um let's say i'm a homeowner and i approach an agent and we decide that we're going to list and we know that the market is very hot here in ann arbor i recall a slide saying that the home energy score will be included on the listing is it a precondition for being included on the listing or is only a precondition that it be available at the time of sale and how do we incent the homeowner the agent everybody involved so that we really truly have the kind of disclosure that when you walk into an auto dealership and there is um the label on the car and it says 26 miles a gallon that you would have the same kind of at least ability to do that at the time of interest as opposed to the time of sitting down and signing and finding out oh my house is a 2 or my house is a 10.

the time frame on that is up to two years and that's 1.2 million this spend provides direct support to students when they need it outside of the school day represents one and a half years some budgeted under the discretionary pot which you'll see on the next slide and um this is something again like i said we talked with all three of our areas uh parent council support staff council teacher council and it received some good feedback there is always concern on how they utilize it or if they'll utilize something like this and so we believe it's our job to make sure that it's promoted extremely well with our families and and a lot of directions on how to access it and how to utilize moving forward and can you just give a description of what that might look like choice outside school hours we're looking at access for our students 24 7 so whenever it is best for them whether it be in the evening early in the morning on the weekends or otherwise we want a platform where our students are able to engage in real time with individuals rather than reviewing a video to find an answer so more of a socratic approach to it so that they understand the problem-solving process to get the answer so that they can apply it at a different time and we're also looking for data analytics so analytics so that our teachers might know at the beginning of a day what which students accessed and for what reason so that will inform their instruction for that very next day as well so that's something that we're looking at that would make a difference compared to maybe some of the other products that are out there so this might be an outside vendor that does this because of the 24 7 access it will for sure be an outside vendor we know that our teachers are already taxed and are doing a lot of tutoring whether it be at lunchtime or immediately before school or immediately after school but we also know that students sometimes can't always engage at that time so we would want to support kids whenever they are then that provides that access for them okay thank you is this primarily online or will we actually have teachers working with students one-on-one so um there's two that there's two parts that we like to utilize it for it would be more of an online chat almost type of format we don't want live video you know with um individuals there they would not be employed by us we don't have the manpower to do that so they would be employed by the company and vetted and trained in that way so for sure it would be something in that respect okay when would we hope to start this so we are going to initiate an rfp process we're actually engaged in this work with other districts too because we want to get first of all the best price and the best product so we would hope to bring something to you in october as far as purchasing a platform for this purpose thank you and that's also pending the approval of the sr3 application right but yeah next k-12 assessment platform to include universal screeners and course assessment creation that's an ongoing um project and and what how we utilize it so about 450 thousand dollars this spend will allow teachers and leaders to better assess student status and progress and so basically it's it's what we use throughout the year to check for understanding and get a good gauge of where our students are of course when you're addressing learning loss that's one of the first things you have to do is discover where is the loss and this platform will help us moving forward does this is this a different platform or does this add on to the platform that we already have that does assessment we just initiated work last year with a new platform so it will be like it's new because we are engaging in a different way this year first of all but it does it adds the additional um course assessment piece so besides universal screeners which we did not have before k 312 it will also allow us to do some course assessments and creation with the new um science and social studies standards we don't have courses that are aligned to those or assessments that are aligned to that we have courses that are aligned not assessments so this will help and that will pay for that creation of those okay but it adds into the assessment current plan that we already have yeah okay thank you and there will be things that that we've already taken part in that this will come back and help pay for uh things that align with the sr3 guidelines and so as barbara said this is something we've engaged in at the end of last year and so this will help pay for that and at the end of the day it it frees up more money in our other budgets so uh k-12 program uh support for students up to three years and that's 700 000 this program extends learning opportunities outside the school day to include after school intersessions summer and includes the offer of transportation basically these are the programs that we will have and be able to pay for for summer school intercession coming up next year at our new calendar because we'll have the two two two two in the fall two in the winter two in the in the spring and um help out with creating programs to be able to help students catch up in any of those areas would that include credit recovery yes sir thank you every year we we implement a summer school at the secondary level as well as k-6 and it's generally tuition-based and so if there's ways that we can offer some classes for free we will but we can't promise that just yet dr newman we did something along these lines this past summer can you uh offer any anecdotal information on what you consider to be the relative success of what we did this past summer sure i have some anecdotal for sure i was just talking to a high school principal and so remember this summer programming that we did was specifically we targeted students that were as we were doing some of our screeners that were deficit in particular areas and we provided english language arts math and then additional support so for example at the high school those were our incoming ninth graders and so they were able to be on this on the campus where they're going to be they developed a place and a belonging already for that and then what they've done is they've cohorted those students whether it mean that they cohort the students and they're all in the same class depending on the campus or they have that same teacher so we have students that were we would engage and look perhaps that they are at risk now they already have their english and math teacher who had worked with them in the summer that are now able to work with them this year and already they're seeing some really great work with them very good i just didn't want to pass up the opportunity to speak to that because i know that your department spent a lot of time and energy in in structuring that program so and this goes part and parcel to that particular topic right our department and a lot of others but yes yes for sure going along with that how do we intend to to evaluate and make sure that what we're doing is meeting the needs that we're hoping to and you said it's anecdotal but what about you know what kinds of uh stats and other things are we going to look at to make sure that we actually are meeting the needs or if we need to adjust it or change or you know so it can be effective so we um we are starting to even even though we they're considered optional what our secondary administrators have said as far as the universal screeners and other we want to be using them because we wanted to help inform instruction and see what we're doing so looking at what is the focus of the program see where the kids were and then when they come in in the spring in the fall where are they at have they been able to see that they've demonstrated some growth in there and then with those screeners we look at them in the beginning the middle and the end so we're able to track the students in that way and we'll also have to look at some of the program review and see we we would like to expand it more we want mo every single administrator said we want more kids we want them to be able to participate um and that would help us to evaluate as well because we'll have a bigger pool of individuals for the data too okay i think that sounds good i think so it will be a school by school evaluation or will there be a district looking at it or this the screeners um are all within our platform so we're able to look at it by school and by district both so we'll be able to see in in two different ways okay i'd love to get continued feedback to see if that's effective okay so thanks and last on this is the campus learning infinite campus it's ongoing it's fifty thousand dollars and i'll let barbara talk to this a little bit more just because go ahead okay so um because we don't not have a learning management system in lms sometimes our students or parents are looking in different places for things so what this will do is it's almost like a one-stop shop or access so it integrates with our google classroom so that's what a lot of our teachers are using with our students it integrates the gradebook so our students will be able to go to the portal and go to this one place and have all of it so that would then in turn be the same for our parents so we think that this will be easier often our students are doing something in google classroom or elsewhere in our teachers and are having to transfer those grades over to a different place so they're not looking in different places so this will put it all in one spot so this will transfer the grades to infinite campus we'll continue using yesterday campus infinite campus is still our student information system it will just all be integrated together okay that sounds great because i mean making it simpler and making it easier for everybody to find the information that they're looking for would be really great right so one question follow up on that so this will this add anything to our teachers then to have to one time transfer it over or you know to get it started or learn something new to get it going or what will that look like so john is john castell hanno is the guru for this so i'm i'm speaking so i may not but my understanding is it it's the integration which is the tech integration so when um automatically sometimes as teachers are doing something in google classroom they might be providing feedback or otherwise in google classroom but then they're having to put the grade in the gradebook it will all seamlessly integrate they won't have to be doing some of that so will they have to learn something about it yes probably just to see how it works but it's supposed to make to eliminate some of that absolutely that sounds great yeah and again like i think like jill said is that uh it's a one-stop shop the hardest thing about maneuvering through web pages is trying to find your information if we can narrow that down a little bit more for our parents and our students and our staff then we're in better shape all right next discretionary allocation um first line fiscal year 2022 which is this year um three percent one-time pay we talked about this in the spring as we move forward that's a 7 million dollars and that's again to maintain the competitiveness in the east valley for fiscal year 2022 coveted mitigation stipend this is a one-time 4.37 million this is using the s or 3 monies will pay for a stipend for certified teachers regardless of the teacher salary funding and this is something that we'll be talking about in action items in in a little bit and so those are two separate things but understanding that sr3 will be able to help pay for that ela 7-9 curriculum adoption again one time at a 1.6 million dollars update the curriculum for improved alignment to arizona standards barbara anything on that so our 7-9 curriculum right now springboard was adopted in 2011 so we're 10 years already old in regard to that the other thing is it allows us to look at a 712 so as we're going out for a call for resources we're looking at a 7-12 we think that that would be better too as students are engaging in junior high work than as they're moving to the new curriculum it's a similar curriculum as they get to the 10th 11th and 12th grade next is the psat administration for 10th graders this is for a two-year time frame three hundred thousand dollars uh it will increase the access to all students assisting with high school class choices in college opportunities and so this is something we've been doing for a while but we want to continue with it and we want to give make sure our 10th graders have that opportunity as a precursor for them going to college now is that this is the one where we just have those kids on campus and they take the test right is it more of a saturday item so act we've been doing when the kids are on campus and we usually have a late start for our individual our teachers our students that take that psat has been one where our students pay and then often they're coming on a saturday and so this allows october 26 will be our administration date and so any of our students who wanted it and have already paid we've refunded them that money because we want to provide access to every single student regardless of their ability to pay okay that's great thank you and then juniors can pay for it and take it again as well so why why are we only doing i guess we get we do the act for juniors in the spring right because the time when it actually matters and results in monetary opportunities and different things is for juniors they don't look at the sophomore so what is our reasoning that way so we already know that we're engaging in the act because that's one of our menu of assessments that we are doing so this provides opportunity for us to get data early in the fall of their sophomore year so that we can even help to guide their to their choice of classes and other coursework so that perhaps they'd be even more ready when they're as a junior and wanting to take it so how do we intend to guide it i like the idea i'm just wondering like how is that actually going to happen when will when will my kids see that because we probably won't get the when will we get the um the scores back in the fall in the spring we'll get them early in if because we're doing the fall administration we will get them in time for them to register for the courses that they need in this in spring registration for the following school year so will our counselors will be actively looking at it and really guiding and helping rather than right i would like that i don't know that i've i don't know if that's been happening it hasn't so i would really like to see that and encourage that there's been um conversations with administrators with testing coordinators with counselors and and looking so there's a lot of okay which i know they need they need feedback in order to actually go through that so i'm not i hope we're setting up a like you're saying a multi-level process that would actually use the data from this right because kids might not even know right or we might see the potential in a student and so that's what as adults that's what we're trying to do is help guide them and encourage them and let them know that they can be successful and we have data right there to show them that they can okay thanks what are some of the items that give what is some of the data that we receive from psat that can help guide those class choices so the psat will provide us information in guiding students for advanced coursework um to be able to see that it will also help to identify if there are like khan academy or other kinds of resources that they can utilize to get themselves prepared for some of that advanced coursework too okay and it's i mean i know act is like math and language arts what about psat it's been a while since somebody in my family took a psat so is it the same math and similar okay similar there are some other pieces to it but it's very similar in regard and because it's a national assessment it provides us data that is outside even of within our state okay i think too another piece that seldom is ever spoken to and that is just familiarity with a format any student who has seen something more than once is more likely to be a little more comfortable with it and so just the exposure to the instrument and working through that gives our students a bit of an advantage that way scholarship opportunities come their junior year so this is what will help prepare them um yes absolutely national merit scholarship which and those things will come their junior year yes one last thing too i guess i hope we'll also use it to look at one of the other um data points and and things that we can see are we as freshman teachers as you know as eighth grade freshman teachers are we filling in cracks or do we need to change maybe what we're doing so that they actually are prepared for that right absolutely and because of the menu of assessments and we're no longer doing end of course assessments at the state level then this provides us absolutely the data in fall or in fall yeah of their um sophomore year to help guide some of the coursework as we move along absolutely thank you i think that's a big piece of it too lori i i really do if we see a large area that everybody seems to be lacking in then we have to address it next elementary ke through six student devices this is a three-year process at 2.9 million dollars beginning the uh elementary refresh advice is recalled that the one-to-one initiative was for seven through twelve and so this will help bring about some change at the elementary level for some newer equipment for elementary students what will we do with the you know at present we've been rolling down those devices to elementary school what will we do with those devices if we're not needing them in the elementary school they they've they've lived their life they're done their lifespan would probably be done we'll we'll we'll give back to what we can in terms of what we're allowed to as a school district in terms of what we can sell and and uh or donate but um their life expectancy isn't a long time and so i think we've come to the end of that okay dr mccord yeah they're phones with them you know will will that case six piece get us closer to the one-to-one uh accessibility for the elementary it will um we'll be able to provide many more than what we have in the past for our elementary but as you know as numbers ebb and flow we'll be able to utilize some of the ones that actually still come down from the 712 as a refresh but i think we'll be able to to get as close to one to one as possible we'll get a little closer all right uh instructional coach for mesquite high this is a three year hundred thousand dollars um provide planning support preparation for possible title one designation uh barbara you want to talk to that one sure currently um we do not have or we have not made the decision ever to designate a high school as a title one school lease have the opportunity and they have the ability to make decisions about how the title one funds would be used so it's always historically in gilbert bin elementary just recently we have added on mesquite junior high so we have students that have received additional support throughout their k-8 and then we want to be sure that we're providing that for students and for teachers as well so by providing an instructional coach it provides extra support for teachers as they're making plans for what their instructional decisions will be and how they would utilize their data the coach will be able to do that for them so that then we can make the decision about do we want to move forward with a title one designation for the high school or not we're not sure yet but it does take the planning and the process to do that so that's why we want to utilize that also as you remember our strategic operating plan for this year was to be that we are going to add on secondary coaches um seven through 12 and we were not able to do so so that has already been moved to next year so um this is something that we know is important we want to get through that process so that we can then make full-time coach decisions for our elementary so this is just one step for a particular school because our their students and their teachers have been receiving support to help the kids along the way we just want to make sure that we don't just stop at eighth grade and we provide that for nine through twelfth yes yes based on free and reduced lunches we've been given free lunches anyway right so i assume that we have some method encouraging our families to continue with the applications you know that's it it's an advantage anyways to always of course we want the free food for everybody right now but then that sometimes people don't see the need to provide or submit the applications and you're right high school is one of the harder ones to provide because students don't necessarily have their parents spell an application for lunch or otherwise so there will be a need to push definitely for that so that we can do that well i think one of the things i like about this is that um an instructional coach is really giving professional development to the teacher in the classroom and helping them um you know better able to teach their lesson and giving them new methods to use and i think that's really exciting i know it's really helped in the elementary schools and i think this is really um i look forward to what this will do for mesquite high school and helping kids that's really important thank you next is k-12 science resources up to two years at 650 000 this increases the hands-on learning and provide supplemental resources kits and consumables consistent with the science standards that is something that again is ongoing in gilbert public schools but this will help us enhance us as well as bring about making sure that there are resources for those as we move forward and then enrollment and extended campus administrator up to three years that's at 120 000 uh add enrollment push to already existing specialist position and increase uh to administrator salary organize and complete strategic outreach to families who have not returned to gps not graduated etc extend extended credit recovery programs also to be developed at each of our high schools accounts for pay and benefit increases going into the fiscal year and then the overflow cost associated with the 712 on-demand tutoring this is going back to the other slide this is the four hundred thousand dollars that will address learning loss related to the um online tutoring as well and that ladies and gentlemen is that are there any further questions as we move forward so let me help you uh our application has been submitted it has been accepted but not approved yet don't know what the timeline is on that hopefully it'll come sooner rather than later and and if there's an issue with our application of any sort and that's always a possibility we'll go back and revise it the way they request it to be but hopefully we'll get this process done as soon as possible well i just want to say i think there's lots and lots of good things in there that will really benefit our kids and i really appreciate the the hard work and the input that's been given by you know quite a few people on this so it's exciting i do thank you guys board members anything else seeing that there is no additional comment or question then we will go to item 3 and adjourn this work study session item 3.01 we will stand adjourned on the work study we'll move to our brief board business meeting again just repeating that it's tuesday september 14th and we are opening a brief board business meeting calling this portion of our agenda to order miss wilson would you please call the roll dr charles santa cruz here miss laurie wood here michela eugetti here miss jill humphreys here mr bill parker here mr president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you miss wilson we'll move to item well actually before we move to item five i would like to attach and request a motion to approve the agenda so moved thank you miss humphries second thank you mrs eugetti is there any discussion seeing no discussion will vote on approving tonight's agenda all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those oppose the same motion carries five zero we're at item five consent agenda items and we are open for emotion i move that we approve the consent agenda items as presented so thank you mrs humphries thank you mr parker dr santa cruz can can i just ask a question i don't want to pull anything i just have a question to ask about sure the 506 507 and 508 that has to do with the shortages of food correct that is correct and so that's our ability to do an emergency procurement so we can make sure that our students have food there is an issue with the supply chain related food not just for gilbert public schools but nationwide and so this will help us not solve the problem but help us get through it a little bit easier thank you thank you for bringing that to our attention mr jetty that does provide food services opportunity to look for alternate sources and secure some appropriate alternates any additional discussion seeing there's no additional discussion will vote on the consent agenda items all those in favor of the motion to approve the consent agenda item as presented please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero we're item six item six point 6.01 and action items dr mccord i'll defer to you thank you dr santa cruz on item 6.01 we recommend the ongoing hourly wage increase for all current hourly staff members and a one-time salary supplemental increase for all current exempt staff in order to maintain competitiveness for the district's hourly wage earners and retain existing hourly staff it has recommended the governing board approve an increase of a dollar fifty an hour for all current hourly employees in addition in order to attract new personnel but minimize wage co compression associated with beginning hourly wages a 70 cent per hour inflationary increase is recommended to the base rates for all hourly support staff positions in order to offset the impact of inflation is recommended that all exempt positions receive a dollar one-time supplemental pay prorated by full-time equivalency for the 2021-22 school year these increases and supplements will be effective uh september 19 2021.

i've included that table that we talked about in our last meeting concerning the impact of transportation on our budget and so the money that we get in this year on our claim is based on last year's expenditures so since last year's expenditures were less we're going to get less money in and that's where we have that operating deficit of 566 000. so is it fair to say absent the timing for buses were effectively balancing this year's budget yes and you will strive very hard to get that 566 to zero by the end of the year i will try very hard to do that that's the goal yes okay so as we're talking about goals let's look at i can share on page 10 some of our business department goals business and operation department goals um you will see that our plan as always is to complete the fiscal audit by december 15 2021.

we're prepping for that right now getting training on that and working with the various departments it will include um both hr and the business office and changing and also all the employees and how you enter invoices and all of those things payroll and all of that so well will that result in any cost efficiencies it probably will i think it will because the systems will be more efficient so it may even look at personnel efficiencies also okay yes we continue to develop end of the month closing procedures those are always ongoing in case we need to add any again as you have seen that we are producing our monthly financial reports in a timely manner for the board meeting we already actually have them ready already this month by usually the third of the month all of our accounts are reconciled so that is continue to go but i leave that on there just in case we need to add anything you know as we start moving forward for the end of the months and that um analyze and restructure the district's amazon business account this is something that we took on this year as you won't know amazon is a big player out there we do order a lot of things so brian and i sat down and we restructured with that so that we can put best practices into play so now all orders have a primary and a secondary approval process that goes through also we have been able to put our budgets right into amazon so people can overspend in certain areas too so we have structured that that's actually been done already we're all all set and then facility planning and capital projects um we'll present a short-term facility plan tonight where i'm going to be talking about that a little bit later especially concentrating on our non-air conditioned building and also life safety issues so i'm going to presenting and sharing that tonight also and then finally the last page you will see just a few things about the budgets and just some comments and recommendations that the budget you know again is is pretty well is complete from what i presented here um it will be part of uh presenting it tonight and then the approval will come on the 21st i'm going to recommend the approval that take place i did talk about capital projects and what's included in here you will see those capital projects here the life safety projects and asbestos abatement at elc in talala about 2.7 million dollars is in this budget some of that we paid out in last year's budget so that will remain there the gym floor refinishing of 35 000 that is in here that'll be paid out this year it is complete it is done it came out gorgeous i will tell you that if you haven't seen it yet you should uh it looks great football field light replacement 315 000 that is complete and done if you're at the football game it's a lot brighter coach kaneki uh is immensely grateful for that i don't know if dr hall is but i know coach connect is you know i had to say that i'm just waiting to see with the price for the turf field that we need oh okay there you go i agree and then uh the the other thing i will tell you is we we are still continuing to work with our insurance company to get reimbursement on a fourth of that project so that's going through the process but uh it looks like we'll be getting that and then uh the cooling tower maintenance of so is the 315 the full cost before insurance that's full cost before insurance okay so about 80 thousand dollars a poll about 80 000 yes okay and again once you know once dr hall dedicates the turf to our field then uh we'll be able to move those poles anywhere we want okay good deal you know sounds good i'm just saying all right um and then again lastly again on the short-term facility improvement plan i'll be talking about that a little bit later tonight and my plan also that that includes from june of 21 through august 24 and then uh in the future i'll be looking at a long-term facility planned five to seven years and i'll be presenting that to you so that was my presentation i will entertain any questions i have a i have a couple questions here sure ken uh first of all i believe it was page four you were talking about i guess you don't have to it's probably in multiple places but under the operating fund page four you were talking about cash method under using that cash method under the amended section on the page four and you use the modify method and go back to the page here modify account method under the tenant of budget so the cash basis under the amended uh actually that's under yeah that is page four yeah page four and i capture that so the cash basis under the amended modify accrue method under the tenant of budget so what method are we using in general is this standard on the gas speed you know under the standards that we use cash modify and accrue yeah so what's what's driving these sure so let me clarify that mr brown so on page four which is all of our funds the green column and the blue column come off of our annual financial report yes which is uh a modified accrual basis okay okay or or accrual because that comes directly from the audit the auditor's doing an accrual basis in order to complete their afr all right okay the crew accrue not modified accrual basis okay the amended fiscal 2021 is a modified accrual basis because there are some expenses there that have been accrued back such as salaries because we pay our salaries over 12 over 12 months into july and august from the previous year so that is mostly a modified accrual basis that takes place which is the amended fiscal year 2021 those are our actual ledgers that we have uploaded now they have not been modified they have not been audited so they are not a true accrual basis but they are modified approval basis right now okay okay and that's um the standard for us here huh that that's standard that's normal that's standard for any school district that's the way they are and then the tentative budget again is a really a modified it's on a cash basis it's really a modified accrual basis too because again mostly the salaries and benefits even though they're paid over 12 months july and august they're recorded here in that year so those salaries that are there if you look on the expenditure side under salaries let's just say there's 46 million dollars there and i'm looking at page six 46 million dollars in salaries those are paid actually over two fiscal years they're actually paid but we account for them in the current fiscal year which is a modified approval basis so if i understand it correctly then salaries are paid from the beginning of one school year they're budgeted or paid from the beginning of one school year to the beginning of the next school year but our fiscal year ends starts and ends july 1st and july 30th so we're paying kind of two months of salaries in the in the budget we've got out there for fiscal year 2023 that are incorporated into this budget is that um close okay so yes so let's say the teachers contract starts in september the first pay that they get is the first first week of september let's just say september 1.

12 and i think it is a topic that we will have to discuss it's a really strange um governance challenge because while the regional schools are located in the town of amherst obviously pelham school is not uh and the pelham board of health has not weighed in on this question so it puts us in a sort of logistical uh governance log jam which we're all familiar with working in the multiple districts that we have here i think the the difference with this one is it's i've never done anything where i got two calls from different globe reporters and a call from the boston herald reporter on the same day so the exposure and uh interest in this and it got picked up by the associated press with my tweet i'm so unpopular on social media and my tweet was in associated presses bizarre moment all i did was literally tweet out what the voter health voted just to clarify because i was getting a lot of questions as to what happened at this meeting and it was i did not express an opinion in the tweet but it became very popular so i think there is a lot of attention and focus on this so i do probably think that uh as the regional committee sorts out its timeline it may be worth it a few people meeting the palm school committee you know perhaps having a formal check-in with the pillar board of health to see where they sit on this question um you know los angeles for instance uh approved uh voted last week to approve the vaccine for 12 plus which is different than what the amherst border health did puerto rico has had this approved since july for 12 plus they have the highest 12 to 18 vaccination rate in the country as a result um so i think it's it's it's certainly a hot button issue for many people it's nothing that the pelham school committee i think thankfully has to manage at the moment or the fellow board of health but i i think we may get a month from now and we may be in different territory based on how quickly the fda completes its full review of the 12 to 15 vaccine and whether that receives full fda approval so it's just something to be aware of you know whether pelham chooses to be aligned with the regional schools in the amherst elementary schools is obviously up to the town town pelham and the board of health and you all um but i thought it was important before we get to that place for this committee to hear the full explanation and and how you all are situated in this okay and what was the response in amherst just generally aaron are there i've only gotten positive responses but it also hasn't gone into effect yet so it's uh i mean the reality is in amherst uh 82 percent of our 12th amherst and pelham i'm sorry um they're that is different from lebanon shoots very but in emerson pelham 82 of our 12 to 15 year olds are already fully vaccinated it's a fabulous number way above the state average of 69 yeah there's a big difference between 82 and 90 something right i don't want to minimize that and and what i said at the region got me in a little trouble but i'm going to say again because i think it's actually true is what we're experiencing is not adult in schools more generally not our school but in schools in general we're not seeing much adult to kid spread right we have that you know kind of cdc case study in california that showed it but in general this is out of school spread indoor settings uh where people are people who go to the movies together who are unmasked um and you know at the high school level people who carpool together right the kids are driving that's where we're seeing a lot of close contacts we're not seeing as many close contacts that's adult student and so i do worry more about the student-to-student transmission than adult-to-student transmission because you know when our adults go home at the end of the day they go home at the end of the day when our kids go home at the end of the day they do things together right and that's wonderful we want them to do things together that's not a complete um so so i uh you know my experience last year as well as this year is that the students who student close contact often not in the school setting is is a higher concern to me than the person in front of the room teaching a group of students than going home at the end of the day you know all while mastering the day so it is something i feel strongly about as a concern about student student transmission i think it's going to be a very very long time that's a not a good way to say it i think it's going to be quite a quite a while before the 5 to 11 vaccine once approved for emergency use is fully approved so i do think you know for most of pelham school it's quite a long time before we have to have this conversation it's really about whether helen wants to do anything with 12 year olds uh the sixth graders um in this area um because i do think that is likely to happen relatively soon um not soon where i think any actions are required tonight uh but it may be something that people want to come back to after the region sets its timeline okay that's helpful thank you sorry for a lot of you know it's just something obviously people like ms darling and i think about all the time you know and staff and families think about our time you know and i will say just anecdotally um and then we can drop and move on it's very different at the middle school in high school in terms of the comfort level of staff and comfort level of students people are still really good about following the protocols but when you have environment where more than 80 percent of the people in total are vaccinated there is there is a level of comfort that is not in any of the elementary schools in amsterdam that i see um it's not that things aren't going really well in those schools but it's very very different you know and i think like many of us who are vaccinated i still am very conservative with my personal life and what risks i take i've been inside anywhere in 18 months that was never my thing anyway so that's okay i'm not saying good bad whatever but there's a different comfort level for me personally being vaccinated than there is i wasn't vaccinated and i think that's terrible phrasing but that's contagious right you have an environment where most people are vaccinated and you know you wonder about getting too comfortable but there's there's a level of um kind of uh bringing down some of the intensity uh that that i found to be very different just even convocation felt very different for the secondary elementary staff because they're working in such different environments now where one's working environment where most people are vaccinated adults and kids and and obviously they'll immediately level uh just the adults so sorry for being long-winded but i think it's just it experiencing what i'm experiencing right now is it's um it's always like three districts right but most of the time i don't think about it that way except when i'm with you all and we're going budget or things like that right now i have two really different districts and um i've never experienced anything like this that way so yeah no i think that context is really important right like the the feel the vibe the anxiety that people have and how that impacts the district i think that's actually really important for this community to know about in an unfiltered way so i appreciate that um okay anything else on vaccine mandates before we move on okay uh next up has to do with our meetings and um continuing to do them remotely or moving to in person i we have i believe we have until april 2022 was that the date yes so we could we could be in compliance and continue remotely through april 2022 um with the option of going in person um so i mean for now i guess i'll start by just or mike do you want to tee anything else up yeah i want to share something because i've done a lot of thinking about this at all the districts so here's what i would say i'm not going to weigh in on an opinion other than say i'm fine either way i'm in person in schools every single day it's not something that uh i have particular feelings about the thing i would say is i would really recommend if you want to do in person we use the gym because uh when we have you never know when there's gonna be a lot of people coming for public comment my concern personally is that if we end up in the community room that uh if we ever have lots of people meeting which happens from time to time that both they and we would be distanced we also haven't um you know the gym has been tested for ventilation the ventilation as we talked about last year is particularly good in that space um and i i don't think we'd have enough people at a meeting that couldn't be distanced in the gym you know if we do then we've got a different problem on our hands right um and so um whatever you this group wants to do is 100 fine with me but i think we're going to do in person we really would need the full gym space i know most of the time there'll be very few people here like right now i think there's two or three people watching this virtual meeting um and i know it feels like you know large volume space for that many people but we just you never know you can't predict how many people are going to come and i think from a safety perspective we want to have the most most available space uh for people who came uh from a health and safety perspective yes agreed um all right well so i guess i'd like to give community members a chance to weigh in on how they feel about this margaret um i would be in favor of continuing with our virtual meetings i think they work just fine so that's my opinion okay thank you ron i like the virtual meeting format because it invites community participation more people through the meeting hello yes thank you brenda go ahead i mean i could go either way but until my kids can get vaccinated i like the comfort of being able to you know be virtual although you know i know we can't extend that comfort to everyone so i'm also mindful of that yep sarah best no pressure you do not have to weigh them but i just make sure you can be heard i i don't really have any feelings either way i think uh i guess i would lean slightly more towards virtual just because that's what we decided at the regional level and additionally there's no visitors allowed in the school building right now so just to be have the continuity of that but i'm i'm perfectly comfortable meeting in person if that's at some point what we would like to do okay great yeah i mean i i think i i like ron's point about the public participation for sure as someone who's been gathering public comment um for the past 18 months i've had a dramatic increase in people who have shared public comments since it went remote um and the fact that it's up on the screen and then posted publicly i have received communications from people indicating that like they've gone back and looked at meetings that were posted on youtube to see what the deliberation was on a particular issue and have then shared public comment um so and i i think it does seem like the deliberation that we can have in terms of like quality of discussion doesn't suffer virtually um i miss you guys don't get me wrong it would be great to see everyone in person when i feel safe and people are all vaccinated as their kids are um but yeah i mean i think that the the engagement level does seem really really different and so i would want to stick with virtual for as long as we could and then would want to maybe you know talk about ways that we could encourage the same level of participation even when we're back in person um because i think that part's really important mike just one thing to acknowledge the points that were raised i mean i think what's unique about pelham meetings compared to the amherst in the region since they were referenced by uh other committee members is that they weren't televised right if you wanted to go to tell a meeting it meant you came to the fellow meeting and if you had something else to do than that that night you're reading minutes which melee is awesome we'll have great minutes but it's not the same as watching the deliberation to your point so i think that is a unique aspect and benefit to pelham staying remote is that it does provide more authentic access for the public uh because of the video component yep i agree um so sorry i should know this do we need to vote on this like affirmatively or if i mean it does seem like the consensus is stick with the status quo yeah it doesn't require a formal vote um unless there was real disagreement and i'm not hearing unless i'm hearing the group wrong i think everybody okay really good word okay all right so next month i'll see you all in your home offices and obviously and i guess that the last thing i would say on this to committee members is to the extent that something changes or you feel like this needs to be different tell me and we'll put it back on the agenda and discuss it again um okay possible sixth grade oh sorry brenda go ahead all right just a quick thing when we do go to talk about it maybe in april when it comes up maybe would it be possible for us to consider a way that we could televise it or make it accessible to other parents that i'd hate to lose although that family engagement right i yes i'm gonna let i mean because i don't know but i share i share your interest in that might go ahead and yeah and the way it works with amherst in the region uh which is going to be comparable in pelham is that we have a relationship and a contract actually with the town of amherst hammers community television which is amherst media that requires them to videotape our meetings we don't we support them to videotape it but really really they do the work of doing that and then set up within the high school which some of you have been to the high school library where there's cameras that are built in so it makes it much easier that way we don't have any similar setup in pelham with cameras built in either the gym or the community room so i think it's a good copy to come back to maybe in the winter to see you know what's possible i don't know if there's an interest in the town of pelham some of the other public meetings being televised or you know um because you're not right you're not the only game in town in terms of public boards and pelham that have you know weighty decisions and um so you know i think it is worth coming back to because i know in pelham like i mentioned it is it's particularly valuable to have these videos in the youtube and i can go in and see how many views and you'd be surprised how many views tell them school community meetings that had over and i'm not talking about the joint ones i mean just purely pelham school committee meetings people really do go back and watch um i make no judgement about that i'm just reporting the facts um of what i see so i think there really is a lot of value to your point brenda yeah and i think i mean it maybe it's worth even as a starting point like i'm not sure what the select board is doing now but i mean this might be something that they've thought of and if they're you know we could pull resources across the various boards and committees in pelham so that's yeah i think that's a good idea brenda um okay sixth grade move to the middle school um can we mike do you want to start with an update on where things stand in amherst in the region i'm actually ready to do an update and a recommendation if that's okay to make a recommendation meaning okay let's hear it no no i'll do the update first because the context matters so next tuesday night amherst is having its second forum um and so um the uh around sixth grade to the middle school the three factors that i presented in amherst that are really critical as well as i've shared at the region uh for the amherst elementary schools are one because they have this problem an acute space problem in the amherst elementary schools uh two is that they have a building project is uh there's aspects of it that are contingent on this decision so it is you know i'm encouraging them to make a decision in a very timely manner they're planning to vote on october 5th one way or the other and the third is that there are some educational benefits you know there's a reason why uh most of our com pure institutions both are minority student achievement network schools our peer institutions uh in districts in massachusetts like northampton which we visited but also uh cambridge you know if you look at where we could compare ourselves to or almost all are all eight to five six to eight with the exception of brookline i believe which is um k-8 um it's it's organization and that's what having a two-year middle school is is a real challenge you know adolescents go in and by the time they go in and get comfortable they're already thinking about high school and so i think those are the three reasons that were shared that i shared with the committee there's a public posting of a recommendation i have for that committee because i have a presentation to it we'll see where they go with that recommendation um but i do my recommendation for pelham is given everything that pelham is managing right now in terms of the pandemic um you know fantastic leadership you know team that's coming in but is in an interim role uh and we'll see how what how that develops over time this is not something i would recommend the pelham school committee take up at this time i think if it is the case that amherst chooses to go forward i think waiting to see what the program is and then making the determination of whether pelham would want to join in that would be my recommendation i don't have any sense that levert and shootsberry are going to be engaging in in real discussions about this change anytime soon so it's not like just pelham would be having a k-6 model um i think if we weren't in a pandemic perhaps i'd feel slightly differently but i do feel like there's enough going on in pelham to focus on that we can you know engage in this conversation a year or two from now when we get a real sense of what the deliverables are what the program is um but at the current time i don't think it's um it's gonna take a lot of energy and attention and to me i don't think the benefit right now is there right out of those three elements i mentioned at amherst acute space needs um a building project and then the educational model only one applies to pella and i think there's some benefits and and having a rich discussion about the educational model but what's pushing things in amherst is number one and number two the fact that we don't have cafeterias where kids are eating in music i mean kids are learning and you know we've converted cafeterias music room and art rooms into classrooms we have a hard time finding pullout spaces none of those variables are truman pelham and they have a building project where a decision needs to be made in the next couple months and what direction they're heading in it's not that i think it's a bad idea or a good idea for pelham six pages ago i'm i'm right now i don't have a strong opinion either way they could see benefits and drawbacks i just don't think this is the focus that we need to have in pelham right now and i think when if amherst decides to send it six grades and the programs developed i think that would be the right time for pelham to engage about is this something we want to do because right now it's very theoretical right um you know we're very clear that if the amherst school committee votes to move forward in the region supports that will then develop the program not the other way around um and you know that's not true in pelham so you know i think with all the things going on right now my feeling is don't rush things that don't need to be rushed uh an amherst i don't feel rushed because we've been talking about it for a long time uh in pelham we haven't had that many conversations it would feel rushed for me to to think that we would be making a decision or you would be making decisions soon uh you you don't have those factors um and so you know without you know becoming a broken record my recommendation is keep abreast of the situation keep updated you know whether it's me or sarah bess or margaret at the regional level how that's going but uh i would i would push on this one until we have a better sense of what amherst is planning to do and then more specifically what the program is it might be really attractive you might say oh we think our sixth graders would really benefit from having this world language program and this maker space but we don't really know exactly what that program is going to look like right now and so you know really my advice is not that we commit to never having sixth grade go up i think that would be uh too early to say that but that wait till more knowns uh more variables are known and then re-engage the conversation perhaps literally a year from now so if that's where i am in terms of recommendations you all you can tell me to you know that's not consistent with where you want me to do but that's just where i'm sitting at the moment okay questions for mike or comments on this ron go ahead well it seems like we've been discussing this on and off for the past three years my only point is that i'd like to hear from them parents what they think about you that's all i want to hear from them if they support it i support it if they don't support it i don't support it that's all mike can i comment on that i see so i think i'm totally aligned with what you said ron and my feeling is right now we don't even have enough content to share with pelham parents and i think that's really where i was at like you know when a program if a program if and when a program's developed then we can say do you like a option a which is what we're doing now or option b this fully flushed out program of studies but right now we would really be not able to have that second option so clear and because there are there isn't the pressure that there is in amherst because of those other factors um i think you're right i should be more explicit to say when we engage in it engaging all stakeholders but i want to have more content with which to engage the stakeholders that we have at the moment thank you other than amherst is doing it or not i don't think that's good enough you know could i ask a question so we and maybe this is something that's still up for debate and amherst in the region it in terms of timing i mean is it possible that in fall of 2022 there could be amherst sixth graders in the middle school like could it happen that quickly uh it could my recommendation which is now online so there's no surprise is that um is to move the sixth grade um of ambers for the fall of three now you all been mostly been around long enough that my job is to recommend right that's where my job begins and ends sometimes so i can't predict what the amherst school committee whether they will want to move sixth grade and what their timeline is but uh my recommendation is to move it for a whole bunch of reasons i'll get into and that with that committee but the timeline that um and this is on the on our website on the uh on the school committee website on the board docs um where we post our meetings is to uh have that transition happen for the fall frankly so what the this committee decides to do is they'll decide on october 5th um yeah i mean i guess because then i mean at that point in order for us if we were going to engage in this we would have to do it on this somewhat speculative basis if if there was going to be some decision made in time to get pelham kids into the middle school in the fall right yeah i mean could could pelham sixth graders choice into the amherst middle school if that was an option for them who had families i mean i just knowing the like choice numbers and these like how our enrollment numbers can really shift our budget like it does have an impact and if there were like groups of families who were like i want to do one drop-off this year i'm going to choice my pelham 6th grader into the middle school i mean that could have an impact it could so here's what i'd say we'll see what the amherst school committee does uh if they do go with my recommendation i think if we engage a year from now in this conversation that would still be enough time to make that transition for fall of 23.

um i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of 69 557.95 for the warrant dated june 25th this included general fund expenses of 718.13 grant fund expenses of eleven thousand three hundred and thirty six dollars and eight cents and fiscal 21 articles um of one thousand five hundred three dollars and seventy four cents and i signed that on july 18th i authorized by my signature to payables and the amount of uh oh okay no this is a different one fifty one thousand nine thirty three thirty four for the warrant dated june 29th 2021 that included general fund expenses of fifty one thousand nine thirty three thirty four and i signed that on july thirtieth twenty twenty one i authorized by my signature uh payroll in the amount of forty seven thousand one ninety two and 83 cents uh for a warrant dated july 28 2021 and i signed that on august 4th 2021 i authorized by my signature payroll in the amount of dollars and 54 cents that was a warrant dated july 14 2021 and i signed that on august august 4th 2021 i authorized by my signature payroll in the amount of 47 249.18 was for a warrant dated august 11 2021 and i signed it on august 6th 6th i i authorized by my signature to payables and the amount of 44 dollars and eighty two cents for the warrant dated august 19 2021 that included general fund expenses of thirty eight thousand one ninety seven thirty two and grant fund expenses of six thousand one hundred forty three dollars and fifty cents and i signed that on august 21st and then finally um i authorized my signature to payroll in the amount of sixty two thousand one hundred eighty seven dollars and two cents that was for a warrant dated september 1821 and i signed that on september 7th 2021 any questions now you know why people watch our meetings and they go back that's why um okay and then so our last item is to accept gifts and we have two gifts one of them from our own committee member ron menino for mr laurie's kindergarten classroom for one thousand dollars so just before we vote on that a huge thank you for such a generous gift that i am certain will go to good use um so i am thrilled about that and then stop and shop a plus rewards of 416.93 to the pelham principal at your discretion so any questions or comments on these gifts before we vote on them okay all right i will take a moment can we approve both at the same time can there be a single motion for both yes okay all right i will take a motion i move that we accept the gift i second that you can have a second all right any further discussion okay we'll do a roll call vote okay wrong menina why margaret stands her eye sarah best kenny i brenda barlow i and hall line all right well thank you this is great i know that um this will be this will make a lot of kids and teachers happy um okay is there a motion to adjourn [Music] i move to adjourn second all right ron monito i margaret stan sir i sarah best kenny i brenda barlow i and hall i all right we are adjourned thank you everyone thank you meline and we will see everyone in a month all right take care have a good night

um the web maps that we don't need is always to keep our websites updated and so we're doing that with parent camps that's something that we've been doing for the last few years it's really just a way to bring parents and to to introduce them to the school we do tool home we do a preschool preschool decay which again many of those young parents are free you know they're just afraid of schools they haven't been in schools before last time they were in schools when they they attended and so it's a good way to get them in we'll be doing that we will have one in the spring and the other one we do is the step up from elementary school from five to six and again we take we take advice from the parents we take input from them we do surveyed at the end i'll give you an example um one of the suggestions was for two of them why did you give tourism to school we just do right out here once you get tours of the school and um you know how about sports signing silence it's a big deal parents don't know you know it's their first time in high school in middle school and they don't know how to sign up for sports and things so we had um we had some of the students give tours and we had a map macaron here along with a group of people from we had our guidance department so we had more staff parents to interact with after-school buses you know previously this school once school's out it's shut down and really these are community schools they should stay open um so but but the problem is there's not a lot of sidewalks around here if you notice but you can't walk home uh so we started running out the school buses uh i believe we started that i get messed up with the code yeah i think it was 2019 we did a pilot and so those buses are up and running it allows kids to stay in to go again and just to play it allows them to go up and do things up in the locker room that allows you to get extra help it allows them just to have time to just sort of hang up before the buses come and that's that's important you know they're going all day long so so that's that teaching and learning those are the kind of highlights and again we'll go more into those i think it's the blue section now which has the personnel um karen has done an amazing job and very good with this we reinstated the full-time elementary special education coordinator we just saw up there we had a part-time person who we painted that just the just the um just the workload has increased so much just the amount of paperwork yeah it just just keeps on going up so we did do that karen did a great job of doing some research to keep some of our students who have what have we severe challenges in the district where they should be to have an exclusive education so we developed a uh called the bridges programs that started pes and that's been very very successful keeping our students in the district um it's also a big money saver too um the equity work we're doing [Music] yeah this is again this is going to be one of my goals the principles of all having an equity goal as with all of this rectus carol we all have an estimated goal and it's just kind of done at different levels it was a big push you know a lot of people think they look at our district and they say well you know it's it's really homogenous mostly uh white students but there's still memories that happen and uh you know we we really committed to this and each school this year we'll have an equity project that they do that's something they're going to take a look at at the school level and um for the last year has been just the leadership team who's been involved with the professional development we've hired two consultants to help us with that again for teachers 21 which is a massachusetts professional development group we're going to expand that out to the school and get teachers involved this year and some of our guidance personnel to help with the project in school so i'll talk more about that when i talk about my goals [Music] which is technology um i gotta hand it to paul you know last year was a tough year but we were able to work on getting one-to-one devices and you know these things like zoom which we've never done before which a lot of districts haven't done something like second nature to us we are working on digital policy and computer science skills we find a new teacher this year in the library the media meeting goals many of the digital literacy goals are inside next year no next month if you want to move on though to the the section four which is the operation management [Music] so a couple of things here that are important the first is um when we developed this there were a lot of district improvement plans out there but when we developed this what what the thing that was important for us is that we can actually pay for and we could show the community how it was going to be paid for there's some great plans out there and you think we're like how are you how much does everything cost so what we did is went through and said we want all of this stuff and then we gave it to bob and his department and said how much is all this gonna cost so he spent uh he spent time going through it and what we did is we said well you know we know typically what expects in terms of spending and we just paid it back so aesthetic given is a plan you know it's grandiose and it can't be done we think we could do something and as we start going through this document we realize that you know to expand this department one of the things we're doing for example as we continue to benchmark salaries and to report has not been done in a long time um our cows positions has changed [Music] and so we continue to look at those those things also as we expand it requires more staff and so we try to put most of our staffing needs in the buildings but there are times when we have to expand within the central so if you haven't done um over five years we actually cut some positions but one of the things you're going to see from me is a recommendation to now for example has a clot time first i think it's 0.25 a person an assistant to help her so they have christy equivalent not nothing if you look at this plant a good portion of it is teaching and learning so and any any of that expansion um really falls under carol's domain so you'll be seeing that the other thing i want to do the final thing i want to do is i need to turn to page um i have 37 i hope you have 37 that's the plan that um yeah that's the payment plan and again bob will be going over this [Music] but every single item there on the left is in that plan some place um and we continue to update it this one this is about bottom needs to do some updating on it i'm going to keep saying you're getting very careful about going through and making match um some of them like the red is something we just couldn't do we knew that on the outside well let's keep it in we'll just read it so you know you know we can go back to what we will um but it's all right here now i think i think it's probably you know really the whole market's plan is that we have a you know payment plan so we have a way to pay for it and we've been again i think since we've been very very close on our numbers um you know what we saved the cost and what we've actually spent to uh to expand teaching and learning in the district so that's basically the highlights of it again next and if you have any in-depth questions of any of these things just struggle directly will be going over a little more and um certainly if they don't go over something answered then please bring it up again [Music] this is the document that we um you know all our goals come from the school john john [Music] you know big picture um and we'll save uh specific questions for october or departments um right exactly departments in this level are there any kind of questions you want to be asking tonight about this this as a tool in the history jeff what is it it's not a high-level question what would the numbers stand for is that the signage of the thousands is um yeah most of these most of them um serves as a tool when you meet with them right and i think they appreciate the fact that we you know we we stay with them you know we stay pretty close to what we said we'll be able to do this again something's been added but it's a living document so you further information at this point thank this month's report really highlights the summer learning activities for our students our staff and our administrators i wanted to bring these to your attention we had a couple of activities for our students this summer that are key to questions we received last year about student learning gaps because or coming into highways so we attempted to address that in two ways one was through an online practice program through online instructional school we've been using in the schools called freckle it's math mathematics and ela and we ran that program and invited all of our students in the district to participate in the activity we had coordinators who were in the program and they gave students some incentives to get on and just practice skills that they would be using for their grade level related to their standards and so that they would practice or improve preparation for coming back to school this fall kind of staying on top of it keeping them keeping them fresh keeping them continuing to think about those subject areas so we ran that program we also received an unexpected grant from the department of ed and that was our acceleration academy grant for 26 thousand dollars and that grant afforded us an opportunity to target students who made me that little extra dose of instruction who would probably have noticed through some data that we had collaborated some extra support um so we invited those students into the acceleration academy called jumpstart um but we also said well let's see about our kindergartners well we didn't have that kind of data on those students because let's see you know what are we going to get we got an amazing amount of kindergartners 39 out of our how many we have like 50 or kindergarten students they didn't participated we were overwhelmed in fact we had to add on extra teachers up beyond the grant and pay for that through some funding additional funding we had we never thought that parents who may not have had the experience in preschool um with their children going in last year or feeling some students have no experience at all any preschool experience and they came to us without anything just really needed to come in their anxiety about sending their children in the following weeks the first day into kindergarten so this group came in and really notice from the feedback we got from parents and we did do a survey from the parents how supportive they were of running this program particularly feedback from kindergarten parents who don't believe to be able to have their children settled in an informal setting all the teachers were involved were highly qualified teachers and we also offered a little special each day which was art and and they seemed in the half day program so the students did this in the morning we were still able to go home and enjoy some of their summer afternoons so we didn't know how it was going to go this first year but we were pleasantly surprised about the success we felt and we enriched the students we needed to kind of got our eyes on those students so we could talk about possible possible supports and advance for those children as they came in at the beginning of the year and also certainly for any of the kindergarten students who participated who just benefited from the social emotional piece which is a lot of what those teachers focused on so that was the acceleration academy we called jumpstarter i asked the question carolina sure on two things how were those kids identified was that through teachers that needed those kids that needed to jump start them oh good question so we used basically the we've heard a number of times about games but we've looked at it and also some of our channel one students that we had had serviced uh i think those were mostly for grades because we had data from grades one up to five the grant read that we could only use literacy for grades um k through two you know so i came to three and then four and five had to be mentioned so that's how we ended up focusing on after the upper grade the funding wasn't didn't enable to do the kind of medical services so i think perhaps because the department really saw department that really saw they need more literacy than mathematics and then was there a certain number of kids that have masked out that we had to keep it to between well we tried to the department asked us to keep it between 10 and 12 but we exceeded that by a couple of students in each of those cases oh did you grade or each class 10 to 12 was in 10 to 12 per class or per grade per per grade book it was per class so kindergarten three classes the first second and third we had one class we only could afford to have one class because the brand is so small and then five is between four and five through 175 okay so we could only have one class for each level we'd love to do more i mean we also didn't know through any of the teachers this summer i mean the teachers were really fatigued um but the incentive for them was also strong to be able to participate um i think if we had finances to be able to a large number of teachers the opportunity um and we also knew about this sooner had more time to plan and he literally just got the grant in july we were writing this in august which seems like well it's a month but there's a lot of logistics to making sure that everybody's safe we had to get uh offer transportation to students because it wouldn't be fair students couldn't come um because they couldn't get blessing to the schools if their parents couldn't drive into we had to think about transportation feeding students while they were here even if it was snacks safety issues we had the program over here in san francisco to kind of afford people access from both school districts it wasn't planning to become the other so um a lot of things had to be put in place i think there's materials for the teachers too if they needed to order to bring over here for that particular purpose because otherwise we were draining their materials particularly the specialist the art teacher from her supplies during the media so lots to think about in a short time so all of that being said it ran smoothly i mean the buses were on time the kids came in happy home happy we had the data from those students who participated in the class to be able to look at um utilized so the first year i mean we'd love to be able to run it again and we're thinking about that already we're looking for the great funding cap professor three is the possibility we talked about the survey last night we sent out we're looking at the whole community because we have to use 20 of that brand needs to go toward teaching and learning opportunities [Music] and then the other areas i mentioned the staff orientation we have that every year but i think what was particularly important about that opportunity was the fact that we did have two police officers one from rural and boylston who donated their time to come in and provide alice or active shooter training for the new staff members we take the safety very seriously of all of our students and our staff in the past we've run those those drills here with the population but we recognize with so many new staff this year that we need to have that more in-person type of training with all of these folks each year the teachers train and reactivate their certification in that area online with these teachers we're getting the first time brand new it's just great to have a partnership with these police and fire departments and i also mentioned in the report about the presidency and the chance that we have to get together with the fire police departments and chiefs and the officers each year twice a year to review what we've been doing in the schools concerns that we have concerns that they have and workout plans and this was the first time we had a chance to have a tabletop that was offered by the berlin fire chief and he provided the tabletop opportunity and that was one of many we'd like to do and we can you know get that in one of their articles in the paper um thank you for doing um so we were very pleased to have that and we're always grateful this one in particular um we're not going to share what they are but it really was around them an accident that occurred not something around active shooting because we felt that what might what might really happen like is is something like that that occurs outside of one of the buildings where student buses needs to get rewarded um it could be anything that happens so that was the scenario and then we walked through it step by step what are you doing next and then what happens next who's responsible for doing that what do you you know you might they might say to one of the principals okay this is your building who are you going to call first who gets the information to relay to the community to look at who takes over that who's going to be on the scene so tabletops are like in the moment kinds of experiences where you have to think through the problem as it unfolds and you don't know what's going to happen next the tabletop coordinator which is the fire chief might throw in something to you that kind of changes the scene and you'll have to respond to it what to do and then we talk about each step along the way afterwards you know what went well what didn't what do you need to improve on so i think the principles in particular took away some things to think about for their own buildings that they needed to to work on as a result good thank you so so that's what we were doing this summer in addition to getting ready for the year ahead and we were writing some grants um you'll see on the next page i put this information in the letter memo to all of you going forward we want to be able to present each year an opportunity to do to approve receipt of our grants that we received which is what the school committee should be doing so this is new to us but this year we're starting this fall and as we move through the year we receive any additional funding we'll do this maybe once or twice a year i think we could probably do a mid-year a lot of times we get more private grants mid-year but our federal and state grants really occur um anytime between july and september so the only difference this year is we were getting the esser grants throughout the year and unfolding in fact right now that's what the survey is about bob and i are going to focus on the sr-3 grant that's due october 4th i believe and so we are um actively working on that but we really because of the requirements of the background to the community and actually the great hours continue to kind of get a sense of what when the public in general is looking for us to improve them so we get some foreigners around that in the survey focus on so we have a total support 834 695 dollars worth of state federal grants and that includes the general grants title potential brands the essa brands we call them and the grants that karen does as well for special education they're all listed with the amounts that's the second item in the business section okay well that's a phenomenal amount of money that just came into programs but [Music] so does anybody have any questions before we move on uh one question for these grants these uh are there any stipulations with them uh the timeline they need to be used by is it a use at all are you gonna pay that situation there are absolutely stipulations on these grants they do have deadlines that they need to be used by some are multi-year for example the essa grants the title one one and two grants and four mostly title one can be used multi-year it depends on the year sometimes even especially because the calls of last year they gave us some extensions on these grants but there is definitely deadlines to use them we do use them all i mean we because we're a small [Music] instructional online tools all of those things are expensive really costly items so they go very quickly karen uses them for many other special education powers when they can [Music] typically it's because some activities a teacher wasn't able to attend professional development or some activity was cancelled so that karen and carol and anybody who's involved in grants do a great job um kind of staying on top of it and then we have regular meetings to look at what's left to spend and find alternative uses when we can we talk about what we're going to really need to their market the money for between bob jeff himself karen we're all looking at that ahead of time so we have to we have to tell the state within each grant where we're spending that money specifically thank you well sorry i just want to just add to this safety piece twice a year and um we just talked about things going on in the district they gave us advice they can save the advice from schools if you notice a lot of glass and um and so it's like like that little windows out there so the kid like smashes into them that's a lot of glass coming down on them not only that but anybody trying to so a couple years ago one of one of the uh first responders you know brought brought us this technology is very inexpensive to support that as well as you don't even know it's there but they won't shatter like that whether someone's trying to bash their way in or whether kids are flowing around and then someone goes through it we won't have that shatter in fact you know it's interesting we have a we have a parent in the district who's an architect he designs these buildings he works a local architect and then we get a call from them and he said you know i never realized until my child was in that class i'll borrow about some of these buildings that were all over that glass and that's not really what got us started making sure that the program was was secure so and that film was on all of the all of the windows [Music] and that's all stuff that we like [Music] um a little longer this time i'm sorry for that but um a couple of things i wanted to share with you the first was extended school year program which is something we run every year for special needs students who will regress if we aren't able to provide some services for them over the summer um this year it was much bigger we ran it for 50 students that it was considerably bigger some students that we felt hadn't had enough access to technology and has been able because family circumstances sometimes to really access an education we included them in the summer program to give them hopefully a better start this year so we had a fairly large program this year um i also included the staffing updates as you can see i usually have three or four a year um unfortunately we have a lot of requirements this year and so um we hired some really incredible people and i have a lot of um hope for where we're going with all of these new folks really skilled people um but we've been very busy getting them settled making sure paul's been making sure they get computers and getting them all of the impression that they need so it's been very busy the first few weeks but quite a change in the department the other thing that i wanted to share with you is about the mental health supports we talked a lot in with families last year about mental health supports that were needed not just for students but for families as well there's we did an awful lot of family support last year because people just couldn't find the support in the community so one of the things that we dedicated some of our grant money to this year was um the family success partnership which i put a brochure in your folder so for some of our naviest families who really can't access all of the services out there needs some help sometimes through the language barrier sometimes it's just they need somebody to kind of hold their hand and help them figure out how to get through it so for a very small number of families we have this service that we can use so when it becomes too much for our counselors to kind of support them that we have a place we you know we can refer them and get some extra help so that we can get them hopefully signed up with community agencies we had in the past and it was very successful for the families that really needed it so we're excited to be having that back again and we also added a part-time adjustment counselor at fullestone berlin has done okay through the past years that she's been able to support our psychologist who's been able to support families there boylston got had a lot more need last year and it was getting sort of the gen ed students work getting as much of her time because she has to work with special ed students so we added this position through some of our grant funding to kind of support those gen ed families as well you may remember a couple of years ago we added a adjustment counselor to the high school so they already had another coffee in place so we're feeling better about some of the mental health supports that we have in place for the families and then the last thing i just wanted to kind of share with you um i don't think everybody realizes that we have some students that aren't are unable to access an online education so when we were remote they had some significant health needs they were on home tutoring excuse me right and so i just wanted to share with you our incredible staff that they were in gowns and masks and shields and going into the homes to work with some of these young children really above and beyond never once said no we're not going so that's what we need to do and they did a wonderful job and these students really made some progress last year so i wanted to share that with you and that's it any questions for karen just one of the i'm the adjustment counselor at bes and there's also a school psychologist i've understood there as well help me understand the difference between those two roles and kind of what does the day-to-day look like for the investment council what is the typical day so the school psychologist is a special ed physician they are responsible for doing the testing that had things for all of special ed students and they work with students and families on a regular basis on an iep so there's services online any other time she has she works with agenda students as needed and helps families get connected to outside counseling her primary role is to support the special agent student so she's always had time for those channels last year there was a lot more janet families that really needed some support and it got to the point where she was you know making contact with them but couldn't really follow through she just didn't have enough time in her day so the adjustment counselor is more like a guidance counselor who will come in and talk to the families and help all our families again her primary role is for janet but she'll also work with specialized students all right thank you karen um go to fall we skip paul did we skip off pause now oh wow yeah please thank you i'm so sorry so um i my report uh is funding on the drive c um it's a it's a proposal incentive for drivers um attendance for every assigned shift before i talk about proposal i'm gonna talk about why there's no spare drivers at all right now there's a shortage across the state energy i think specifically has 300 300 drivers short some districts don't have regular auto regular ship staff fortunately we have all of our regulation of staff um the uh so what happened on the third day the driver called in sick um there's some boils then there's 500 boils and buses one of the buses didn't have a driver four of the buses finished the route so four buses were on time the bus that finished first went back and circled back and pick up that one's a hundred bus which then arrives at the school about 35 minutes late then when you go to the elementary school which is the next tier that driver that is filling in on a shift there's two buses now boylston elementary that are late both 30 to 35 minutes so when we have one driver calling sick that's going to happen um now there's lots of questions about existing you know there's there's there's some potential concerns and you know you know does this mean should we be paying more for this or contract they should just show up well then drivers do have this you know they can take six days in the contract that they're not prevented from taking sick days um if you have a couple personal days um i talked to another district that uses enmity that implemented a driver incentive program and where i think we you know hoping this this will happen here is you know two drivers who have planned days off um later during the month of september in algonquin center program those drivers reschedule their appointments so that they were not during the work day [Music] it doesn't mean that people aren't going to call in sick they're just not going to get an incentive if that happens it doesn't mean we're not going to have any delays i would imagine we're still going to have some delays over the next three to four months since it's going to go on throughout the fall every day i see an email from other business managers other districts about transportation issues you've probably seen articles about it if you've been received following the news the question is what can we do and i think it's worth doing this it's a small amount if every driver obtained the incentive from september through december it costs just twenty eight hundred dollars at which point i think we anticipate being in a better place um the talking of the bus company anticipate that um with the expiration of unemployment benefits there might be more drivers they have a pool of people who want to get certified um one of the principals asked about it but i don't think it was serious so anyway so that's the reason we're proposing this and the specific proposal is there a hundred dollars a month to make every assigned shift both elementary and the top to ship in the morning and then both again in the afternoon and if they miss one there's no partial there's there's no incentive pay down my only concern about that is if somebody is a little sick and goes into work anyway i know they're all masked on a bus but given that we're in the middle of a pandemic and sometimes people get coped mildly and all the kids on the bus or at least for the elementary school are investigated have there been any discussion about um you know somebody kind of saying oh i kind of don't really want that hundred dollars this month i really use that so i don't want to go in anyway it's just a couple hours of driving so the drivers aren't supposed now i can't guarantee that that would happen but i don't think they're not supposed to go in when they're sick um if they're asymptomatic they're not sick yeah they wouldn't know anyways um i can also tell you that if they're on the bus um further guidelines from uh department of elementary secretary ed nobody on the bus is considered a close contact um that's not to say there's some there's maybe some risks but they're walking by the driver typically for a brief period of time um you know we're as part of this we can also include um something that says if you're sick you can't report to work you could put that right um if we're going to create an agreement what they have the policies nobody should be working when they're sick but if we're going to create an agreement that talks about an incentive we can explicitly stay at the state within the agreement even if it isn't listed somewhere else i think the cdc diagnose takes that into consideration when they say everybody must wear masks no [Music] um [Music] experience that says that that 100 is actually going to serve as an incentive for people um we we have anecdotal from another district it's just being just contemplated by a lot of districts right now based on their compensation 100 a month is significant um they have a 500 a year incentive from nrt i've been told and for for attendance and for every date and this is deducted so this potentially is 400 or four months some of these people don't earn aren't benefits eligible they're working you know shift in the morning and afternoon um so i've been told um you know i've talked to the bus company too that their feedback don't share this with the drivers this is just for something we're considering but do you think this would make a difference yes it definitely would okay thank you okay any other questions it's interesting to hear that there's an incentive in place already related to attendance because that some of the ways of practicing there will be similar prevention statement around whether someone can report to work when they're when they're able to combat the heal so if we're basically boosting that subject in a way i i become more comfortable with it i still do think that as you suggested potentially putting some language in there around explicitly stating or not to report [Music] is why is it so different this year versus last year i think last year was more of a fear or about people coming into the world you mentioned the the unemployment ending when does that end as many issues last year um is there any expectation that this will be solved after december that's when you're talking about ending this program there's an expectation but it's not a guarantee i wouldn't necessarily propose this beyond december but they expect that they'll be global drivers they have people going through a testing program [Music] yeah yeah but like that's that's a few drivers they're short of state lines 300.