Any questions about that one? The next one is 5:250, and I promise we're getting there. Um this one is leaves of absence. So on the this one on the first page, they in terms of who you could take a leave of absence for family bereavement, they added spouse. I'm kind of surprised that wasn't in there previously. On page three, there is a leave that has been added called family neonatal intensive care leave, which allows unpaid leave for a staff member whose child is a patient in a neo in a NICU, basically. And then on page four, we have another question. Um and this one is a pretty easy one. How many employees are employed at the district including part-time workers? And the answer is 50 or fewer or 51 or more, and we are definitely at the 51 or more. The next one is 5:330, sick days, uh vacation, holidays, and leaves.
I think you could do that. Okay, at this time I will ask for a motion from the board to remove item A2 on there as as completed and adopt the change. I need a second. I second. I have a motion and a second.
Looks like they're going to win the Western Mass title. Good job by the start the Spartans to win. And Everett, thank you very much Bo for having a great night. >> Great to be here for the three-peat. No no better place to be. So, glad I got to see it. Glad I got to be on the mic. Great job for the girls and you know what, Bo? More than anything important, good luck next year at Tufts. >> Thank you. Thank you. Have a good night, everyone. Will the school representatives from each team head to the field at the conclusion of the game for the award presentation. >> [cheering] >> At the conclusion of the handshake line with each team line up on their respective 45-yard lines. >> [applause] [cheering] [applause] >> Please line up on your 45-yard lines, please. This is Dwayne Early will present the awards to each team.
So, we it which is online um and I think Miss Bridges can talk a little bit more about that, but what it is is uh one-on-one counseling with a counselor and they also offer family counseling and they can do it outside of school. So, if a student is referred to Cartwheel, they need that um extra counseling outside of school, we we will do that. We have a contract with them. Um we also, as Bill said, we've implemented eye to side. So any student that has been caught uh smoking tobacco or THC automatically gets referred to I decide. It's an 8-week program that they work through with Jamie. Jamie runs the classes. They do it during wind block. Um and one of our goals was that implementing this would um you know cut down on second, third, fourth offenses. And out of all the students that we referred, we only had four repeat offenders which was which was really good.
Okay, so for sorry. Oh, for we did hear um not touching paras. So, for the staff members, I would urge this board to make sure that we're also not looking at paras and maybe since we were given and the public is given um ease that it will not be teachers, I'd also like to potentially make that paras. Yeah, so those two things that we're going to have to evaluate. Some of those are based upon IEPs and based upon student need. So, that that's something that can change tomorrow. As someone has said, we can have a a student special education tomorrow who out that has a parent. So, those are all things that Mrs. McLean has also met with each administrator to and this is why I say this is something that we've been talking about. She's met with each administrator to discuss how we could do things possibly different with providing a paraprofessional support and then Mr.
And you use the term uh the SALT committee. Could you uh explain what that acronym is? Yeah, so we have a group of we put out Colleen does a good job of recruiting previous things out there. So, thank you Colleen. Uh Colleen's a uh the co-chair of CAC and CAC puts out a charter. So, the charter says we want to work on this subject area. So, in this case ELA and we're looking for this number of people. So, CAC creates all of that, kind of gives a description of the work that they'll be doing for that particular year. We put that out to all staff um to volunteer to not volunteer, but they become a part of a committee, a paid committee that they're a part of. And we have really tried to make them empowered to make decisions on how to move forward with all of this.
Uh this adds on page two and number five. This is related to the leave for a neonatal intensive care. So, that adds a number eight on the list on page two. The next one is 665, student social and emotional development. These are minor changes basically on page one, changing from Uh they literally like capitalized social emotional learning. And then uh made a little bit of a change on number two down there at the bottom. Again, it it doesn't change anything in what we're doing or how we're doing it. So, 6:145, migrant students. And uh they changed the word children to students. Um and that's really about it. >> I don't want to get controversial here, but I I've noticed that they are changing a lot of the language of just children over to student or students. >> Mhm. So, I just want to make a suggestion to the board for consideration that we also change in the first and last sentence of this policy children to students.
Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed? Motion passes. Thanks, Lori. foreign exchange? Item H 4 is permission to apply for and accept the 2026-2027 state and federal grants. This is actually a number this is an annual obligation that we have every year. The pre-application for our federal army federal land grants kind of 1 2 3 and 4 has just been published. So, I know that Nathan is looking at that right now. We've been looking at that a little bit. But, each year we do need to seek board permission to not only apply for federal grants and other grants as well. I like to talk about formative assessment grant and higher ability grant and and there's a list that um we just like to have the board's blessing on and then also to approve receiving that funding. And um so, that's what I'm here tonight to do is to ask for permission to apply and then of course collect the 2026.
First, we will honor Minnechaug with the Class A Western Mass Finalist Trophy for the 2026 season. >> [cheering and applause] >> Okay. Sorry, Mr. Early will be here in just a minute. >> First we will honor Minnechaug with the Class A Western Mass Finalist trophy for the 2016 season. >> [applause and cheering] >> Next we will honor East Longmeadow with the Class A Western Mass Championship trophy for the 2016 season. >> [cheering] [applause] >> Defense! >> [applause] >> Defense! Defense! >> [cheering] >> Defense! Defense! >> [cheering] >> Defense! Defense! >> [applause] >> Defense! Defense! Hey guys. Tell her I take that personally. Both of both of us are sisters. I know. the other guy. First one all right. All right. I know I got that. Sorry. What the hell?
Uh we also have bright which is part of our guidance department. It is a bridge um when students come back after a long term being out has nothing to do with discipline. It more has to do with mental health or hospitalization. They've been out for a really long time and the worst thing to do for a student is to come in throw them in in their English or math class and say okay catch up from the last six weeks. It's not going to help their anxiety. It's not going to help their mental health. So, we have this uh great program in um guidance, which is bright, which is run by one of our alums. Um and she does a really good job bridging that gap and getting them used to coming back to school and catching up on their work. So, when they're fully implemented back into their classrooms, they are at the same level as everybody else.
Kushner has also met with each principal and I appreciate the the line of people saying innovative and creativity and looking at how our model is actually a tech chair work with tutoring and how we do tutoring and tech chair work. So, it's time and and I appreciate what you guys said to look at that and the administrative team that has already been Okay. I one last comment slash question. Um with the overwhelming results at the referendum, do we as a board, are we able to make further cuts? And do we feel I think the this board really has to think, do we think this is going to pass? So, I'm that's really to my fellow board members. Uh is this enough after we're hearing from the public, we saw the referendum, and what potentially will we have to do down the line? Um something that came to mind for me and I don't know if this is something that we'd want to do is instead of potentially looking at um the non or the two staff members is potentially expanding our um early retirement from five for this year to potentially seven or eight.
So, the members, the teaching members of the SALT team along with the the leveled administrators that are a part of the SALT team as well, we try and empower them for decision making, which means like I keep my mouth shut most of the time and let the team kind of process through and own that. When they're debriefing with the team, we're really listening to what they're saying, what are the struggle points, where do they need support. Uh but we're trying to have these SALT teams really make a lot of these decisions. And what we've seen is there's a lot of buy-in when that happens, right? So, our elementary staff is really bought into a big curriculum change that's coming next year with CKLA. Our middle school staff has jumped on board with that as well. Um we'd love to see more people participate in the the subject area leadership team process, but the people who are there are really committed to it.
On 6145, migrant student. So, the first sentence Yep. I got and I got the last one, too. So, first and last sentences will change. Just for consistency. That's fine. Thank you. Mhm. Thank you for that. Uh 6:170 title one programs. The vast majority of this, all it is doing is changing the word compact to plan. That's it. And it happens a whole bunch of times on both pages. So, it's no different. It's just instead of it being called a family and a parent and family compact, it's a parent and family plan. Under under district level parent and family engagement plan on this 6 there's the number three in parentheses and I would just say change that children um or was it number two? Oh, it's number two. Change Oh, it's It's already student. Under number two. Dang. Okay. My notes say children. Change children to student.
This time I'll ask the board for a motion to apply and accept the state and federal grants. I'll make a motion. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, Mrs. Okay. Up next is item H5 is the Calhoun High School block wall agreement. Great. I'm going to I'm going to stick to the script on this one because this is out of my my wheelhouse. I I have to say I have learned so much about the manufacturing world and just equipment and and robots thanks to John Klingon and his program. I I've learned a lot. And um so, this evening um I need to let you know that the BAM program is in the process of purchasing an Auto 600 AMR and related equipment as part of a recent Don Wood Foundation grant.
Uh we also have a bunch of community resources. Um and we also have parents coming in for meetings to um educate them on mental health. Um, as parents ourselves, we don't Mental Health is new to us. It was always kind of a secret. It wasn't really talked about. It was taboo. We talk about it all the time. And it's really important to talk about it all the time because our students need us. Our kids need us to understand what they're going through. Being a teenager now with cell phones, with social media, with the news, with everything that's going on in the world, they have everything at their fingertips. And for a lot of them, it's very overwhelming. Um, they don't know how to deal with it. So, we're not only are we teaching them about academics, about careers, we're teaching them about life and how to take care of themselves mentally because if they can't take care of themselves mentally, they're not going to be successful in the classroom.
We saw great savings for that in the budget. Um and I'd like to give the opportunity to staff members who would like to elect that opposed to a forced decision. Yeah, so there there's a couple of things. Let me let me answer that. Uh I agree with you that the the teacher retirement really helped in just the the public. If we didn't do that, we would approximately $250,000 more. So, it it actually benefited us to do that. Uh behind the scenes if we're dealing with uh Mrs. Saminy, if we had six people it was the first five Yeah. that was written in the MOU. If we had six or seven we would have done that. Okay, so you don't think that the teachers talked to each other and said, "Oh, I already know there's five. I'm not going to go for it." >> cuz they wouldn't even know that >> Okay.
They do a good job of going back to department meetings and communicating the progress along the way as well. Which is very helpful. Thank you. I initially was a little concerned about them not reading full novels, so I came and looked at the materials on display and I was actually impressed with some of the things I saw there. Like they had it was included the letter from Birmingham jail a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, a JFK speech, an essay essay by Neil Gaiman, an interview [clears throat] with a North Korean refugee, caged bird by Maya Maya Angelou writings by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, David Thoreau, an excerpt from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin. So it was like very extensive and even though um it wasn't you know full you know novels, I feel like there was such a wide range of text that the students would be experiencing.
Oh, you know where it is, Catherine? Down lower on number three on the last full paragraph. It'll uh yeah, school level parent family plan. Thank you. Do you think the rest of them say all say student except that one and I'm just thinking we should change it to as well. Okay, the next one is an exhibit. Uh this is 6:280-E. Um and this one came up during negotiations quite a bit and actually this is the class size and class size considerations for the board. And And is one we definitely wanted to move back into policy. And to clarify on the class size, that is um that is determined by the legislature, right? Or the Or No, these are just recommended ranges that our board has set. That our board. Okay. [clears throat] Thank you. But they're they're not um they're recommended, but not Not required.
Auto and Rockwell Automation along with Fanuc America are actually those big yellow robots that we have. Right, Ken? I'm trying to show off a little bit. >> [laughter] >> They're Fanuc America are collaborating with the school on cutting-edge systems integration application and education initiative. As part of this partnership, the manufacturer will provide proprietary design documentation, technical information, and intellectual property necessary for equipment implementation, operation, and educational use. To receive this information, the school is required to enter into a non-disclosure agreement, NDA. The purpose of the NDA is to ensure that confidential and proprietary information provided by the company is not shared, distributed, or disclosed outside of authorized school personnel and approved educational use. Execution of the NDA will allow the school to access the necessary technical documentation while protecting the company's intellectual property rights and supporting ongoing collaboration in advanced automation and robotics integration. So, this evening we're respectfully asking the board to approve the Cal High School Baron Advanced Manufacturing program to sign the non-disclosure agreement for the Auto 600 AMR.
They're not going to be successful um on the, you know, the workforce. So pretty much our summary is what our team is. Our safe, you know, the safe office touches every single aspect of the building. I want to bring up Kate as well um at this time. She is a big big huge part of our team as well working with our freshmen. It's really important to have a very strong um person there to help our freshmen. They understand what our core values are. They understand what expectations are. Kate holds them to it. Um, she does a great job working with them, working with uh the teachers, the freshman team teachers as well as the parents. So when they're passed off to us, they know what is expected and the parents know what is expected. So um, thank you Kate for everything that you do for our office and really um, getting our freshmen kind of whipped into shape for for the rest of the years to come.