001Okay. I'm going to call the meeting to order for the Dudley Charlton Regional School District. The time is 6.31, and we are meeting at Shepherd Hill Regional High School Library. We are live streaming on Vimeo. And if anyone is recording the meeting, that they please notify the chair. Seeing none, we'll move on to the next order of business, which is the Pledge of Allegiance. And a moment of silence. And then moving on to the consent agenda items, we have approval of the warrant going around and the approval of minutes of the regular meeting of July 10, 2025. Can I have a motion? Any discussion? I just have one thing on the minutes, sorry, is on the first page, just kind of out of order, on the last two bullets, it should be kind of like
002what the first two bullets were. So these two should be these two? No, right there. So there was a motion and then a sub-motion? There was a motion and a motion. That was the nominations, and then it was the votes. Okay. Yes, please. Sorry. So I'll make a motion to make the following amendment of swapping those two so that they are in the correct orders according to our meeting. I know I know it's a consent yeah so we don't even need to make the amendment motion because it's these two are together anyway right yeah so we have a motion and a second all those in favor okay and then on to communications just just a communication for the for the DCRSD summer eats program I've heard lots of amazing just feedback from parents and families
003and Just what a great job they did and you know I I went through the line one time and they were so just happy and and It was a hot day that day. So Just thank you to them and thank you for giving that availability for our families So being new to the committee, I've been doing a listening tour through the district. I've met with every principal at their building. I've met with the custodial staff. I want to extend my sincere gratitude because it was a time-consuming process, and I know they were very busy, but I think it was very valuable. It gave me a lot of boots on the ground in perspectives and insight. I got to hear their thoughts, concerns, those gratifying moments of... triumph so I just wanted to extend my gratitude
004for that for their time Madam Chair and school committee, this is our last meeting before school opens next Monday. I just wanted to express that our principals have done an incredible job preparing their schools for this school year. We are in kind of a crunch time right now. Our offices are very busy, from very small items to very large items, but we are processing that, and we will be ready no matter what. When it comes Monday morning for the opening day and for Tuesday, when the students arrive, we will have very shining, smiling faces. We are fully prepared for them in every way. Our principals have done a fantastic job this summer. Fantastic. Okay. Moving on to public comment. Is there anybody here for public comment this evening? No? All right. Moving on to new
005business, which would be the Shepherd Hill Regional High School Cheerleaders 5K Tackle the Stigma from Coach Andre. Well, good evening, everybody. My name is Loretta Andre. I've been the cheerleading coach here at Shepherd Hill for 35 years. And I just turned 25. Yes, me too then. Thank you. Right? First, I would like to take this time to thank Superintendent Lamache and the DCRSD School Committee for allowing us to take part in tonight's meeting. I am proud to introduce two of our senior varsity cheerleading captains, Paige Wanner and also Lucy Treba. These young women are strong leaders both on and off the field and tonight they are here to share about an exciting community service event. The idea of this event was first brought to me by Paige and I am grateful to both Superintendent Lamasch
006and Principal Elwell for their support in making it possible. Together we are working to bring the Tackle the Stigma 5k to Dudley-Chelton community. This event will take place here at Shepherd Hill Regional High School on Sunday, September 14th, beginning on the football field here at Shepherd Hill. It is an opportunity for our community to come together, raise awareness, and support a meaningful cause. And at this time, I would like to turn the mic over to Paige, who's going to talk a little bit more about tackling the stigma. A little bit of comedy for tonight, ma'am. Hi, I'm Paige Warner. I'm a senior here at Shepherd Hill. And the idea for a 5K came to me during a moment of reflection about how to create an event that not only unites people, but also raises awareness
007for such an important cause, especially after seeing my peers, my fellow peers mourning, and even those on the cheer team. So we have support from Break the Silence and Jackal for this 5K. Break the Silence will have a booth and providing water and bracelets while Jackal is helping with funding and all the proceeds will go to those two groups. At the 5K we will have booths to help support mental health awareness and help anybody who needs it provide resources. We'll have a DJ awards for winners of the 5K. and a student band playing the national anthem. We have flyers. It is $35 to sign up. And we would like the community, support from the community to promote the event and have more interest in it. Does anyone have any questions for these lovely ladies? Yes.
008I actually don't have a question. I just want to make sure that I emphasize that it's a walk-run. That is correct. Physical ability walking is a nice thing too. So it's a walk run event. I will be walking. Yes But like Paige was mentioning all the proceeds are going to be going back to Jackal and also to break the silence which i find it's very important as page was saying to bring back to our community so we are coming together to put this together for our community and we are looking for just more support from our delhi and charlton families and hopefully for those that are watching tonight will be able to sign up mr lamache has this beautiful look at this gorgeous flyer that's up on the screen and it's 35 dollars to register
009They get a t-shirt with the registration. We also have Race Wire that's going to be joining us that actually will help us set up. They're going to be giving us the bibs. We're going to have some runners that are going to use this as a competition. We will be getting awards for the top three placement in age groups. So once this becomes finalized towards September, which is on September 14th, we'll be able to announce a little bit more in regards to how the awards will be issued. And those who are going to be walking like... i am i'll be last place which is fine and um but the thought is that all of this proceeds will be just going back to a good cause and i feel like that's the most important part especially in
010our districts after suffering some losses that we've had so and again if you have any questions certainly please we will be more than happy to answer anything it starts as young as those that are in a car carriage too all the way it is Oh, I think you should do it. I think so. How far is 5K? 5K is 3.1 miles. And it's going to be right here. We're going to start right here in the parking lot, and then we have a little bit of side roads. We also will be in touch with the police department that will be helping us out for safety reasons to make sure the cars are stopping as the people are running. And then the finish line will be right up at the football field. We have a DJ that's
011coming. He's going to be donating his time. We also are looking at a person that should do morning. exercising, stretching with everybody that's going to be participating. And again, she's donating her time to participate in this as well. I feel like this event is going to become very successful, and we're looking to do this annually. That's our hope, is to do this in September. I think this is very important, and I love how these girls came up with this. I'd just like to say I also think it's a wonderful thing to be doing, definitely raising awareness. Yes. And I know Break the Silence, since you are raising funds for them, is doing a motorcycle run as well this weekend, this Saturday, which I guess I could have mentioned at the VO Club. So if you
012ride a motorcycle or anybody in here would like to go and volunteer or donate to that, that's also this weekend too. Perfect. Some more support. But thank you. Thank you. Yes. Any more volunteers for that day? The more volunteers we have, the better. Because even at the stations, we wanted to see about having volunteers at all of the mile markings, just handing out water, yelling and saying, good job, you're doing great. But yes, anyone that wants to volunteer, we would love to have you. Perfect. Great job, Rose. Thank you. Good luck. Sorry, Madam Chair, I don't have another question for clarification, but I just want to say because of their leadership, this started at the end of the last school year. was when we started talking about this but it's really strengthened our relationship with
013break the silence and Jackal and we're really partnering with them moving forward but it's really because it was really started by the students with Loretta helping them out but it's really going to help us put some things in place that will really help our school and our school community not only for this year but for the future as well so I really appreciate their their leadership and their desire to see this through so it's really gone well for people that may be not able to You know if they have a family and they want to come and support but maybe not be able to handle the price point Of that is there a way that they can also become involved? For the event. Yeah, absolutely, you know and I could probably put this on the
014flyer if I don't know how to word that I want to say if you can't afford it We could certainly you we could I could put down like we're looking for volunteers That would be able to help us because yeah, we're gonna need a lot of help the more the better. Yeah Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Have a great night. Thank you. And moving on to the introduction, Director of Facilities and the new CMS Principal. Madam Chair, Mr. DeSantis is going to introduce the new Director of Facilities, and then I'll introduce the next Charlton Middle School Principal. So at this time, I'd like to invite Mr. Stephen Pusateri to... come have a seat up front so we can just quickly introduce him to everybody so they can see his his face and ask
015questions and hear nice and close and you know so he can make sure he hears us as well so i'm very happy to welcome mr pusateri to our team As our new director of public facilities, Mr. Pusateri officially started, not this past Monday, but the Monday prior to that, and he's already hit the ground running. He's very deeply involved. You've probably seen him in any one of the seven schools over the last two weeks. So he's been getting out there, taking a look at the facilities, getting accustomed with them, getting accustomed to our staff, and doing a really good job so far. He brings more than 25 years of experience in both the private and public sectors with a strong set of skills and facilities leadership. Most recently he served as the interim facilities director
016for Hope Dale Public Schools. We're confident that Mr. Pusateri will provide strong leadership for our distinguished maintenance and custodial staff, which is already very highly regarded. We look forward to his expertise coming into this critical role. So again, welcome Mr. Pusateri and any questions you may have specific to him. All right. They ain't over yet. welcome aboard thank you thank you pleasure be here excited about the opportunity and also kudos to the maintenance staff and custodial staff they're doing a great job and you know I've only not even been here three weeks and the amount of work that they've been doing and the quality work that they've been putting forth is just it's phenomenal I have not seen that and I've been in several school districts so you guys get a great crew I'll turn
017it back over to superintendent LaMarche to introduce our next outstanding leader so I welcome up the next principal for the Chalton Middle School miss Christina Bogosh to come to the table and be prepared for a thousand questions we'll take blood samples after so I know I sent out a communication and much of this was in that communication to the community but I just wanted really Ms. Christina Bogosh is the next Charlton Middle School principal here. We did have an extensive expedited search process this summer because of timing. Ms. Bogosh has served as a teacher, department leader, assistant principal, director of curriculum and instruction, and most recently principal of Overlook Middle School in Ashburnham, Westminster Regional School District. She is recognized as a collaborative student-centered leader who values open communication, strong community partnerships, and innovative approaches
018to teaching and learning. Her leadership accomplishments include implementing programs that promote student social emotional well-being, fostering healthy peer relationships, and supporting families and educators in navigating the impact of technology and social media. Very easy to do, right? She has also championed professional learning opportunities for educators and worked to ensure every student has the tools to succeed both academically and socially, which is extremely important at the middle school level. As a Charlton resident, Ms. Bogosh brings both professional expertise and personal commitment to our community. She did reach out to introduce herself. I also want to thank the Charlton Middle School parents because we did put out a survey, and staff identified three areas to really work in for Ms. Bogosh to hit the ground running. Building positive relationships with students and families, strong communication and listening
019skills, being approachable and visible within the school community. All three of which I am very confident in. principal bogosh can meet and exceed in every way we also had input from her staff as well but in the end we're very excited to have miss bogosh here principal bogosh and she is going to add to our leadership and she's going to teach us as well we're going to learn from her too because she's an experienced educator so welcome and i we appreciate you taking on this this role here in the dudley-shelton regional school district thank you i'm excited to be here so great thank you Any questions from the committee for Ms. Bogoch? I did let her know that school committee does meet in her building too, so she can prepare for that too. She gets
020to see what it's like here and then just replicate it over there. Good, good. Thank you. Yeah, we're busy over there. Lots of hours, which is typical, but ready or not, here they come. So we'll be ready. Congratulations and thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so speaking of opening schools, right? Update for the Dudley-Charlton Regional School District student transportation, first student and vanpool representatives. Thank you, Madam Chair. At this point, I would like to invite from first student Denise Bales, who is the operations supervisor for first student. She is going to give us just a brief update and status report on how the previous school year went and look ahead to this upcoming school year. Thank you for coming, Denise. Thank you. So previous school year was not ideal. We're all aware
021of that. We did try our best with what we had. Good news is we have three new licensed drivers, four new in various stages of training right now, and more coming. I've done countless interviews. Some fit, some don't, but that's how it goes. We will be starting the school year with 42 drivers for the district here you guys have 39 routes we have 42 drivers which includes One driver out on a medical leave Thank you for coming tonight. I think this is vitally important to get on a good footing for the school year. And I would concur that we've had some good moments and some bumpier moments during the year. And so I would invite your insight on what we can do in terms of looking at analytics. from the beginning of the year starting
022now to the end of the year. And with those projections, maybe next year we can revisit to see where the spikes are and where the lulls are and maybe appropriate some of our functions a little better to accommodate those lulls. So for example, what comes to mind is if we were able to move around, say, when we do field trip destinations, and if it's lining up with those big peaks, if we can move them to some of those lulls. But that has to be driven by data. So I'd be interested for your input on looking at a week-to-week analytics that we could look at through the year when it comes to routes that are delivered, routes that might have to be doubled up, and routes that might be unfortunately missed. Hopefully not to a very
023big extent, but I think all that data is really relevant in that context. So I'd really like to hear some of your thoughts. Absolutely agree completely. I hate making that phone call and email saying, hey, I don't have a driver for your route. That's a nightmare situation for me. And that is usually also me running out the door to drive a route. People get sick. Of course. Last, I think it was January. I had 17 people call in one day because there was some violent stomach virus going through. Stuff like that hits me at 5.30 in the morning, and I had no foresight as to that that that was coming. Of course. We had some crazy things happen with some people this year with medical. Somebody got thrown by a bull. I mean like that
024doesn't happen every day. No, so I totally agree there's patterns of yeah, these are times of people get sick because of the nature of the industry you're in right I mean we're with all the kids to the germs they go but if we start seeing the analytics that show these are our normal spikes and we Plan for those right and we don't double up on the needs on those areas But we only know that if we have the analytical data. That's where I'm going. Absolutely. Field trips, do you count sport? Well, I think that should be in the mix, too, yes. Okay, because sports is like all year long. Field trips tend to be heavy toward the end of the school year. we're healthy then, you know, for some reason. And I'd rather, I would
025make a guess that probably September and maybe early October, you are too. Yes. And so if we were able to shift some stuff towards the fringes, that might benefit. But again, I think it has to be data-driven. Yeah. Making guesses, I think, won't be appropriate for anybody. No. But having the analytical data, if we track it week by week, starting now for this whole year, will give us something to plan for. Yeah, I have implemented a spreadsheet for myself tracking who's out what AM only, PM only, the whole day, all that kind of stuff. I think it's a collaborative effort if we go in this approach. Yeah, I agree. I'm all about communication. Let's talk it out. I do have... Four spare drivers currently on the books and those are drivers that if somebody's out
026hey, you're doing 28 You're doing 33 you're doing whatever And then like I said, we have seven new so three will pick up some open routes and then four of them will wind up being spares until as need arises so I'm Optimistic hopefully I have hope that this year we are going to be a thousand percent better. But I mean our pay is competitive like there's no reason why people shouldn't be lining up really for the job quite honestly. So they get raises and all over every year. I'm a little jealous quite honestly. So, Mr. DeSantis, would this be useful data in your eyes for collaborative planning in terms of delivering quality transportation for our students? Yeah, so just to catch everybody up at the end of last school year, we had requested data from
027First Student that had... just a general graph charting the missed routes and the reasoning for the missed routes. So this was our first time collecting that information as a district. So what we plan on doing is utilizing that as our starting comparison point. receiving the data on a monthly basis throughout the year from first student and then coupling and utilizing that information together to hopefully come up with some tangible action plans moving forward on how we can close any type of gap between open missed routes and amount of drivers. And correct me if I'm wrong, Denise didn't. Wasn't there a decision this summer that said high school drivers could potentially cover the routes for elementary and middle school run which I don't believe was the case well high school and middle school go together I'm
028sorry I meant elementary separated from high school some of the high school only routes they are what they're called that because they come to dudley and then deliver students to charlton and some will end out um you know on the fringes of charlton and getting back to a dudley elementary school it might be 340. i mean we'll get those kids home but it's like but if that's what i have to do then that's what i have to do so they in fact we had our kickoff meeting today And that was on the bid sheet for high school only. You will have to cover elementary routes in the Dudley-Charlton district as needed. So they'll get home, but it might be late. I always tell the kids, you'll get home. You will sleep in your own bed
029tonight. They're like, what? Sleep? And I appreciate the efforts because, you know, I think. transportation is the first most critical part of their education because it's getting them there and getting home safe well we tell the drivers greet them every morning big smile you have no idea what they're leaving behind you know or what they're going into big smile it's great to see you today good morning have a good night I'll see you tomorrow like that the tone for the bus ride absolutely I'm trying to think there's something you said that kind of triggered my brain and I'm trying to remember what it was but So my apologies, but no totally good I think it's I think it's exciting that we are coming up with some new ideas of how we can tackle Those those
030challenges from time to time and of course you guys have a very daunting position as well Because it it can be organized chaos on a bus sometimes I are you aware that you are implementing first acts this year for behavior? communication so I can either speak to that or if you'd like to make an update to what first acts is and let the community basically I don't have all the information on it It you're my first district that's utilizing first acts first acts is the application on our tablets as drivers with Communication to the school regards in regards to behaviors that are experienced on bus by that needs to be reported I believe an email gets sent out to yes So what we're saying essentially is we are replacing the manual discipline, right? No more
031write-ups each one of the buses with an automated version based on a tablet so if i understand this correctly the driver would input the issue student information within the tablet which then links directly to first student and the building itself and i think that this is a it's a more streamlined effort not only does it take away the paper portion but it keeps and tracks that information and any updates that may subsequently come to that come from that a two-pronged communication exactly I remember the question I was gonna ask you had alluded to those unfortunate days where we're trying to get those kids home and it might be late but there may be either delay or what have you Could you walk me through how a communication is delivered to a family when those unfortunate
032events happen and what the lead time is? We do not have individual personal information for any of the parents, any of the home phone numbers or text messaging capabilities. We reach out to the school. This route is going to be covered by a high school-only route. They will be arriving hopefully at 3.30 and then... consequently the route will be delayed by that many minutes so and then at that point the school I believe you have like a email tree or whatever does a blast and then that's how the communication is sent okay thank you Now, how much time do you usually have as lead time for delivering that message? So I'll give you a hypothetical. Not many families are fortunate to work close to home these days. There's a lot of telecommuters. There's a lot
033of far commuters. And they may be 30, 40, 50 minutes away from school and their child. And so if they receive a message 30 minutes before, they're expected to pick up and deliver it. drop off time that's not going to be sufficient especially if it's collaborated in conjunction with weather so my question is typically how much lead time do you give that school to turn around and message parents and families i let them know as soon as i know and unfortunately i i literally i get a driver i might i just threw up Okay. You know, like stuff like that. I mean, I've dispatched from the bus before. Nancy's dispatched from the bus before. We do everything we possibly can to stay on schedule because we are a very time-oriented thing. To project how much
034time and headway I can give you is... Okay. I mean, if I know in the morning, then you can know in the morning. You know, we have a couple of spare, what they call part-time spares, which means they come in at the seat of their, you know, they fly by the seat of their pants. If we need somebody, I need you now 20 minutes ago, you know, that kind of thing. We have two of those. It's not ideal. The union doesn't like it, all that kind of good stuff. I'm just trying to understand from your perspective how that unfolds and the difficulties and complexities to the situation. Sometimes we can double up, as you said. We can do that more easily in Dudley. because of the roads. We double back, we cross over. I can
035have someone fly through that route really fast and we can get back. That driver can go do a second one. I've put two routes on a bus before. That is not ideal, but we do what we have to do. Charlton's different. It's a different beast, really. Those routes... splitting them up doesn't work I mean there's very few there's like two in Charlton where I can say okay I need you to take these roads from this route and you can take these roads from this route and then we can do it that way but it doesn't lend itself as easily it's not as easy as Dudley it's just not and with if God forbid something happens on the Mass Pike then 20 turns into its own parking lot and that then things get hairy because then
036everybody wants to know where the kid is. And everybody has our phone number, but we don't have theirs. You know, where's my kid? I'm like, uh, what school do they go to? You know, I have to start from the beginning because what district? What school? What grade? Where do you live? You know, and they just think I'm only there for them, so they immediately, well, John's not home yet. Well, who's John? You know, let's start there So it's I mean it's we are by the seat of our pants every time because those phones ring They just do I have one last question if you could kind of explain Let us know in the and the people at home know a little bit about how the bus drills and safety goes Okay, so we do two
037bus evacuations the kids Usually you're told beforehand so they can wear appropriate clothing and such but we park in front of the schools they Are told the deal this is a drill that means we're practicing don't be alarmed It's not an emergency But you need to know what's going to happen or what needs to happen should an emergency arrive So we point out the emergency windows, doors, hatches. We try to find a responsible student that we can say if something happens to the driver this is the radio you know and you try to explain that just just say I'm bus number whatever and we do have the first view we can track it that we can find it. Then they exit the bus through the front Wait where they're told you know this is how
038you do this step so many feet away Everybody try to be quiet we need to hear directions all that kind of good stuff and then they get on and they go out the back and Learn how to evacuate out go out the back emergency exit They're never to go out the windows or the hatches unless it's an actual real emergency and the bus is on its side or such There's first aid kit. There's body fluid cleanup kit. There's an extent fire extinguisher All those things are on the buses. There's a seatbelt cutter for the driver to get out And we do like I said, we do that twice a year beginning the school year end of school year And that's the entire student body, not just bus riders? That is, oh, you know. Because they
039do go on field trips. They should, yeah. So the whole school should be doing the evacuation process. So I have not been in the morning, and we've never done them in the morning. So I'm assuming that all kids are brought out to the buses. Are they not? Yeah, go ahead. What's happening? All right, I can fill you in. Thank you. As a former principal, I can let you know, we do do the bus evacuation, as stated, but all students, whether they're bus riders or not, go on the buses and are filtered through the buses, just to make sure, because they could be on a bus to a field trip, they could be on a bus, you know, even if they're not a bus rider during the day. So all students are filtered through. Thank you.
040I don't know, I just show up and start opening doors. I don't know. Thank you for all those. I know it was a lot of questions. Thank you. I have one quick question for you. The first acts, since there's no longer a bus card, the student must be notified of their behavior before this message is sent to them? I'm assuming, but I mean depending. Usually the driver tries to correct it. You can't drive when someone is flipping over seats. You just can't. I have pulled over and said, yo, you need to sit. Or you're up here, you're my new best friend, let's talk about how your day at school went. I'm a big fan of distraction. So if you're flipping over a seat or making fun of somebody or something, I've now brought you up
041here and we're going to talk and I'm going to distract you from flipping over a seat and talking about somebody else or whatever the problem is that you're being at that point. Usually, we tell that kid, hey bud. It's his last chance. I have to write you up if this behavior continues. I drove for four years before I had to write a kid up and I told him, don't be my first bus car. I really didn't want him to be written up. That was not what I wanted to do, but hands off is absolutely a rule and he didn't follow the rule. Sure. I'm sorry. No, you're good. I feel like you're being interrogated. But the First View is an app for parents to actually track? How does that work? You guys have a version
042and we have a version. We know where our buses are. The parents, it's also called First View for the parents. They can track. It's odd because you can't know where other people live also. So it's... It's tricky They can track where the bus is it doesn't let them know where it stops It just shows them from home like they they can see it as it approaches their stop and then from there to the school Once it's at the school. They no longer have access to that bus So a high school parent cannot watch where an elementary student is being delivered even though they're on that same bus It also tells you approximately how far from your house. It does. It's not perfect, and that's just because the satellites are what they are. So sometimes a
043bus will be like, why? Or a parent will call and say, your bus is in Spencer. And I'm like, what? You know, why? No. And I radio out, and they're like, no, I'm on Lincoln Point. I'm like, okay. And then, you know, they'll be at your house in four minutes, you know, so it's tricky. Yeah, I think it's a nice thing to offer. My children grew up without Life 360. Well, not a lot, but they were older, but not like the bus thing, especially as a parent who might be trying to get home to make sure that I'm home for the bus. Or at that time, it would be like, oh, they usually come at this time, but, you know, I'm running a minute, you know. So it would be nice for, you know, other
044families to at least kind of. as it's approaching or at least kind of know if the bus is getting close. So I just think it's a nice feature for families to have. It truly is. Yeah. Thank you. I can actually speak a little more to that. It's one of my agenda items, so I figure while it's a relevant topic, I might as well just speak a little more to it. We were notified of the, it's First View 1.0 is the new version that's going to be launched. We were made aware of that close to the end of last school year. The district sent out a notification in June to families letting them know about the change. We've also posted it on our website. So there's more relevant information there if anybody needs to learn more
045about the app itself. It is meant to link students and families with what their route is going to be. We expect that information to be accurate. Obviously, we know information technology isn't going to be 100% reliable, so there is lag. you know, assumed lag here and there between, you know, where it actually shows for a GPS position and what the app will actually show and where the bus really is. So, you know, we... curious to see how the initial launch goes at the start of next week to see what type of feedback we're receiving from families from first student we're hoping for a positive outcome but again we're going to watch this very closely roots for this upcoming school year being finalized this week we also sent out a notification about that on the website
046so starting this week families should be able to see their students' information linked within the FirstView app. We ask that if there's any discrepancies that they may see, to feel free to reach out to First Student and ourselves, Dudley, Charlotte, just to ensure that we're aware of the issue as well so that we can have any issues corrected. But we're hoping for a smooth launch next week. Yes. Yep, sorry. No, that's okay. So I just, one, have a question about that. So if I... School brains has our bus routes on there if our bus routes are not accurate on school brains We should be contacting our school office to let them know that If the bus routes are not accurate, okay So just so parents understand that. I think my, I have a couple of
047questions. When you have the training with your drivers, are you, you know, are you taking them through de-escalation techniques? Yes. You are? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We also have safety meetings monthly. So drivers are required. The state of Massachusetts. requires only five hours for a student, requires eight hours of safety training. So they have to come monthly to an hour safety meeting and stuff like that is discussed. We actually are implementing, we don't have special needs in that we have the shorter buses. That's a van pool thing, but we do have special needs children on our buses. So that's actually coming in, special needs training is coming in also for those situations as well. Yeah. I think it would be important to have those connections with the school principals because I think that, you know, I
048listen to my children and I don't understand some of the words that they're saying and the connotations that are behind them sometimes. They've taught me a lot. And I think it's important for the bus drivers to understand those words and those connotations because I think they're being said. Sometimes and people wouldn't even understand that that's an issue these teens and middle schoolers and all of them really they have a language of their own I have to do to get to myself daughter's turning 18 on Saturday stroking out a little bit about that But I have a 15 year old you know and they use these words and I'm like that is not a sentence Where any of those words that you just put together? make anything that makes sense. But I was driving a bus
049one day and the kids were like, I was parked actually out here, and the kids, oh, we got to wait for Justin. We got to wait for Justin. And I'm like, I go when the bus is going. You know, I don't hold it up. I have to go. And they were, you know, just panicking about it. And I looked at them and I said. Justin's cooked, which in the kid lingo means he's out, he's in trouble, he's gone, we're leaving and he doesn't have a ride home. And they were just like, oh, you know, because the bus driver spoke their language. But in fact, the trainer said today in the meeting. We hear everything. Well, we don't, but we try. Listen for everything. Some of these things, these kids are saying something, and you're sitting
050there, and like when we were in school, that was an absolutely horrific thing to say to someone. But today, it has a completely different meaning, and it doesn't mean what it did. So you kind of listen, and you watch your mirror to see expressions. Like if someone is, you know, not... aghast at what was just said to him and then they're like, okay, that must be a chill thing to say. You know, like, it's just crazy how they talk these days. And I don't use profanity. On my bus, that's also the rule, but they do. And I'm like, no, those are not words that we use. You're smarter than that. You can come up with something better. So I struggle with that. I think it's really important to remind people that there are fifth graders,
051like 10, 11-year-olds that are on these buses with older kids. With the high school. You have an 18-year-old with an 11-year-old. And from what I hear, it's not the high schoolers are not typically the issues. No, I'll be honest with you. And we have wonderful students who do the right things a lot on those buses, so I don't want people to think that it's chaos. Absolutely. No, it's not always bad. It's really not always bad. So I guess my other question, too, is cameras. Yes. You do have cameras. Three on each bus. Three on each bus. They pick up sound. Yes. Are they when the bus driver has the app? there something on the app where she's pressing about she or he is pressing a button so it immediately tracks the time there that the
052school will know the time to look back at the record there is a button on the bus that will create an alert great on there so when I'm viewing a tape I can pull down that alert tab and find out when they push that button and hopefully it will lead me to the correct time It's not always perfect. May I also interject here? I'm sorry. When we get the tapes as principals from the hard drives, it's a running, you can actually see the actual timeline on it. So we have a toggle that will let us fast forward until we see the kids that we're looking for, the scene of the crime. And it will give us the running times of exactly when it was. So it already has its own time stamp the whole way
053through the video. I just think it's good for... like an assistant principal to understand where the alert happened because it'll make it quicker oh yes yes so i've also last year i started doing this i don't know if the word got out um i have been clipping like if the driver will tell me hey it happened at oh you know 747 and until you know 803 i will clip that to a jump drive or whatever they call it nowadays thumb drive usb external whatever and I've brought them here, I've brought them to the school, here you go. So you don't have to deal with that cartridge. So that's always an option. You can just email me and I will make it a little easier. And as far as when you need to double up and
054things like that, have you already set the double up routes so that you can say, okay, guys, we're going to an A-B system today? We haven't, generally because we don't want to be doubling up. But that would require us for it to be like the same bus every day that is having the issue. You know, if it's Dudley 4, who's not in that one day, we do know that that's one that can't be doubled. It's a full bus, and it goes to the, you know, outreaches of town. Dudley 3, Dudley 8, yeah, they can cover each other, that kind of thing. In Dudley, again, Charlton's a different beast. But in Dudley, we kind of know, but... What if Dudley 8 is out and now I've got, it's just, I wish I had a crystal ball.
055That's okay. Yeah, I guess my last question is how can we, you know, as a school committee, what can we do to support the bus company? Honestly, you've been great, really. Communication is always, like I said earlier, communication is key. If I let you know we're having trouble here. Please understand that I have this is my absolute last resort to tell you I don't have a driver for your route, but that is Never ever my go-to that is I have exhausted all other Opportunities to fulfill the route that's honestly I mean I have cried. I have done all the things, begged someone to come in. You know, like, it's, I'm sending that email to say, I don't have a driver is not my best day. Yeah, and I don't think that would be something, like,
056I don't know. Because I don't know how I would get my kid to school if I've left. No, I mean, I completely get it. I get it. Thank you. Thank you for coming. No problem. want to collaborate very strongly with for student do and looking at the analytics may prove nothing but it may prove more than we think right we won't know until we see it I mean we can guess like six months December January February you know that kind of thing that's when people that's when we guess what happens yeah but again we're hoping we look good on paper we look great for this year I want to thank you and please thank all your drivers because they're transporting our most important asset. Madam Chair, I just have a couple of points. One is
057to really clarify what School Committee Member Carmen Yarny was stating. If you have a question with your bus crew, contact the district office in Cheryl Kosov at extension 146. District office, Cheryl Kosov at 146. The principal or the administrative assistant in the school can probably help you a little bit, but they're going to reach out to Cheryl. Just skip the middleman and go right to Cheryl Kosov in her office. If your bus route is wrong on school brings. If you have any question on transportation at all. Okay, perfect. With the exception of the airport, contact Cheryl Koza at extension 146. Okay. I just want to say, this is the start of my seventh year. For a student, you've had challenges over the years. The communication has improved year over year and has gone extremely well.
058I know you've had some change in leadership as well. We've had some challenges through the years. But you have really addressed all of our concerns and we've been working very well together You know every challenge that comes up is new unique in its own way But we've definitely been collaborating your communication to our building principals who provide the communication out to their school community Around changes has been has been going extremely well as well That's where that happens as well if a bus route is changing as something comes out of the building But I want to thank for a student because we've had some challenges we work together. We're not perfect You're not perfect, but we're going to continue to work together to try to get there as best we possibly can. Communication has been
059good. We've been getting weekly reports on drivers and stuff from Trevor. We really appreciate that. That really goes a long way for us. It does add to the data question that school committee member Avi was asking about. And I just want to keep this going because, and I know I see you driving. Quite often. So I wish we had a deep well, a deep pool for drivers. It's not, and we're not alone. You go across any state, you go to any state, especially those of you who have children who participate in sports at other school districts, you'll see big posters and signs for drivers, drivers, drivers. But I think for a student who has done the best that they possibly can, and again, we're going to work together to get better every year. Thank you.
060Appreciate that. All good? Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. We're here if you need us. I don't believe our vanpool representative is here. Oh, she is. Oh, Sarah. Thank you. Sarah Larico is our senior operations manager for vanpool. So she's going to come in and give a similar update and status report as Ms. Bale. So welcome. Hello, everyone. So my name is Sarah Larico. I'm the senior operations manager for vanpool transportation. And thank you very much for having me today. I wanted to give you an update and provide an update on Van Poole's transportation services. I'm pleased to share that our long-standing partnership with the district, now spanning over 15 years, continues to thrive. I'm happy to report that the operational changes that we made last fall in 2024 have successfully carried over through last school
061year, as well as our extended summer school. We experienced minimum service issues during the fall and summer operations. We had standing weekly calls with the special education department regarding those. As we prepare for the upcoming school year, we have several key enhancements that we have made. We have implemented an increase in driver pay last year and an additional increase again this school year. Each route is now staffed with a driver and monitor where need be and we have five spare drivers for your school district. We also have our contact Kathy Nussie who does all of your routing who is doing all the routing again this year and will be the day-to-day contact. I'm excited to also say that we have secured a spot in Dudley with one of our current drivers and a spot in
062Charlton where we will keep a spare vehicle as well as all the equipment needed, which is car seats, booster seats, buckle buddies, all the good stuff. We also have a new position that we have implemented this school year for the district and that is a driver who is going to be going around to our schools to ensure at pick up and drop off time that we are doing all the correct things. That students are buckled, that they're using their lights, that they're getting out of their vehicle to greet our students. As we've already heard today, it's so important. It is where our students start and end their day is with transportation. Also, we have, last year, we have implemented something called LIDEX, and LIDEX is a live... camera that we can see inside the vehicle
063as well as outside of the vehicle. So if there are any questions while a route is happening we can tap into those cameras live which have proven to be very valuable for us in the instance if there is a student behavior or goodness an accident we're able to see everything live. We also have a new tool that we're using which is called Beacon Connect. Beacon Connect is similar to what First Student is using and it's an incident report. For our company, we have the driver that will fill out an incident report if they feel as though something needs to be reported. It will come to our office. It's vetted through our transportation coordinators and then sent over to the school district. And that is all... through the app. We also have a way to be
064able to share all videos now if videos are requested for anything and that is also shared through the app. So no longer do we have to send 10 different clips of something. It's large enough that it will hold an entire ride within the app. Also would like to just state that we are Very grateful and we are also very committed to delivering reliable and high quality transportation services We're confident in the changes that have been made and confident through last year in the summer that we will continue to grow strong together collaboratively and We wish for a successful and smooth start for the schools as well as our students any questions could ask a few a very similar question to first student I guess being an engineer it's all about data so what kind of
065reporting data do you provide the district for those same same kind of routes that might have been delayed or had to be doubled up or changed or missed or such looking at it from beginning of the year to end of the year analytics, I think it's important to see where those busy times and lulls are. So if you could speak to that, I would really appreciate it. Sure. So we have something called Routing Box, which is a tablet in all of our vehicles. And when a driver goes to pick up a student, they will click off that they're in route, that they've arrived at the student's home, and that they've dropped the student off at the school and or at home in the reverse way. we're able to pull all of that information for a
066specific student, for any school specific, or any time frame. So we can give all of that data to you with whatever you're requesting. Again, not to be a broken record, but for parity and equality. All of our students, from one side to the other of the district, is our focus. We can't leave anyone behind. And I want to make sure that we are doing our due diligence and looking at the data to make sure that we can, in concert with... with Vanpool and for a student that we're accommodating for all those students. My understanding is things have gotten better this year, this past year with Vanpool. There's always challenges. There is no perfection. My wife will tell you all the time that I'm very imperfect. But I think it's important to always strive for the
067next level of excellence. How have we been with the pre-k program deliveries because I know that I look at that as Those are half-day programs So their time there is very limited and it's even more critical that we get them there on time and then bring them home appropriately So how has that looked in this previous year and are you doing any modifications for the year coming? Sure. So last year things looked good This year I've reviewed all of the routes. We have put your, so when you're looking at the pre-K, unfortunately it is the third tier or sometimes the fourth tier of a route. High school, middle school, elementary, pre-K. So if there is any delay in any one of those, it always ends with the pre-Ks running behind. So this year what we've
068done is we've tried to put your pre-K students on a van itself. So that van will be down in the area. It'll be on standby for the high school, middle school, elementary portion, but will run on time for the pre-K programs. So that's what we've done to try and fix that problem. Retour. A little bit, yes. Can you speak to training? Yeah. I'd love to learn a little bit about Vanpool's training aspect for their drivers and what that looks like. Sure. So as a new employee, they go through a week-long training. That week-long training is student management, special education training, student behavior, CPR, first aid, defensive driving. all about post-trip, pre-trip, and they also go through a ride-along every single day. So they will go out with a coach, and they will do ride-alongs. And
069then during the school year, after somebody has been onboarded, there is a monthly meeting. So every month they come in. It's a one-hour meeting. And in those meetings, we talk everything from student management to emergency situations. We partner with our local school districts. Today we actually had a meeting with our drivers and it was an eight-hour meeting and we had a representative come in and go over our student management de-escalation, the importance of trigger words, as well as autism and what to say, what not to say, and where to look for support. And one final question, very much in parity with our last discussions, was do you do bus evacuation training, and what does that look like for the students? Sure. So for special education, we don't do full bus evacuation training. So our vehicles
070will hold up to seven students. We do discuss that in training, and we do discuss that throughout the school year. We discussed it again today in an emergency. that we have to, students obviously come out first, anybody in a car seat, booster seat, buckle buddy, harness will come out first and then everybody else. We talk about the importance of the, if you have a child who is autistic or a child that is nonverbal and getting out of the vehicle, that is a very scary thing. That would be a transition and ways to be able to help keep a student calm in a situation like that. Thank you. That was some of the things that came to my mind is that might be a little There might be other factors in that next step. There is
071always another factor always Thank you. You're welcome I don't know if it's common knowledge. I know it is for me with vanpool And you're so lucky you get the nice version of me today. You know first this a couple of years ago because I really do appreciate a lot of the improvements for the student experience and What you guys have done over the past year and a half which has been really great But it's also not just about like first student is talking about Charlton and Dudley and their travels but with vanpool They're also going out to Worcester to Hudson to you know to other other areas. So you're talking about some of your most Some of your most fragile students going further away that you know, so it's like having that understanding about how
072the students You know what best practices on how to work with them and especially in those emergency situations and to keep the communication up with the parents Especially when those wonderful traffic delays always seem to happen on 290 they always Yeah, so our standard that we have set in the office There are times that our drivers sometimes will not realize the time or can't get through on the radio or something But the standard is is if we're running more than five minutes late They call us and we will call families if we're anything more than ten than ten minutes late We've really tried to stick to that the last school year and over the summer. Yes, sir. I'm sure it's cool I just, Sarah, this is not directed to you personally, but two years ago
073we were all very frustrated. We were all losing our minds. Van Poole was not a favorite word for us to say. We have really been working with you, and I want to say that this past year was a marketable improvement from two years ago. We still have some more room to grow and improve, but you have, I want to give Van Poole credit because two years ago we felt like you became too big too fast and you didn't have anything in place for us. and part of that was communication i think communication has increased immensely um i think you've come a long way for as vanpool again this is not directed to sarah specifically but this is directed towards vanpool so we appreciate working with you we've also worked on our end for to to
074um funnel communication if anyone has a question about vanpool or a question about the route for w chelton they have to contact the district office as well and speak with chelsea jetty in our office her extension is 270. if you have a question about vanpool but we do we we put a lot of things in place vanpool obviously that bears most of what's been put in place but we have expectations that you're meeting as a district and we really appreciate that from vanpool i think the summer was a good indication of how well things have become because summer can also be a very tricky transportation season for you but we look forward to continuing to work with you and have it will be the supplier of transportation for some of our most vulnerable students and
075that communication piece that timing piece that all of that has been working so much better from the last year we look forward to it this year as well so thank you thank you sir I think you've been cool and say hi to Franco for us as well thank you very much all right so moving on to director of finance and operations mr desantis at this point i would like to invite mr dave bison to come up from select energy he's going to provide an update on where the district is within our solar paneling options specifically related to the two new roofs that are built on charlin middle school and dudley middle school and also to address shepherd hill high school within that study as well under the assumption that a new roof would already be
076in place for the high school the updates that mr bison is going to provide are twofold number one is national grids interconnectivity study update dudley and charlton are in two different study groups these studies are slow painfully slow but these studies need to be done and complete before we find out the feasibility on whether or not putting solar on these new roofs is something that we can move forward with additionally There is potential federal guidance coming out over the next week that may or may not impact the ability for the district to be able to retain the credits that we were anticipated to receive based on our original solar projections, which is up to a 40% federal tax rebate. So essentially we're looking for a, an update on How we can safe harbor these credits
077and be where we are within those interconnectivity studies. So I'll let Mr. Besson speak further to it. Great. Thanks for having me again. I think last time was, I think, October of 2023 when we first talked about these projects. And I think at the time, you know, we thought it could be almost, you know, four years before we would really be able to build them because of these national grid, what they call the group studies, utility engineering studies. So, you know, it has been not quite two years, but, you know. We know the buildings are still great solar candidates, the two middle schools having new roofs. And as Joe mentioned, the high school needing one, but the timeframes that we're looking at, it very well could have a new roof by the time the solar
078can be installed on it. So we're kind of taking that into account. Really, the reason that we're coming back together now is that the federal government has decided to essentially sunset or phase out the federal investment tax credit in the next few years. And that currently stands at 30% as a base amount. but you know it would be essentially going away and The safe harbor maneuver that was mentioned is you know because these are power purchase agreements select energy our company Would be you know basically putting all the capital forward to buy the materials and do the entire installation and finance it and so we have the ability, you know and sort of the the inventory of solar panels to basically meet criteria for having started construction even though we wouldn't actually physically be starting
079construction but we would be setting aside a certain number of solar panels that Sort of equate to a certain percentage It's at least 5% of the what the predicted total value of the project would be in that in the eyes of the federal government the IRS Effectively starts a project in construction and allows that safe harboring or like, you know Sort of putting on ice if you will the safe the federal tax credit so that's kind of what we were looking to do in order to preserve really some I would say kind of historically beneficial financials for these projects that they're probably not going to ever look better. One little note the 30% tax credit is the base, but you're actually in Worcester County right now You're eligible for something called the energy communities bonus,
080which is another 10% federal investment tax credit So it actually brings it to a 40% total Which you know we would receive but in turn we offer even a lower purchase agreement rate But we would sell the energy to the district for Per the terms of the the power options solar program where we've kind of put pricing forward in a Formula, you know that we're agreeing to hit a certain rate of return So if we get more tax credit or more state incentive We have to you know pass along the savings to the district in the form of a lower power purchase agreement rate. So The other thing that came up fairly recently in June was that we know now that the state incentive program, what's called SMART incentive, they're releasing a new iteration of
081it. It's called SMART 3.0 because I guess we're on 2.0 now. But October 15th is a date when we would be applying for the new incentive, which is better than the current one that we had already locked in two years ago. things are really looking up on the state side and that helps even more reduce your rate that we'd be able to offer the power at. So we're in kind of a golden era here, but to really lock in the federal rate and that tax credit does require action. And so we've put together the contracts sort of at the size system sizes that we are trying to get through the interconnection process with National Grid I don't have a very definitive update on the National Grid process other than to say every month they release,
082National Grid puts a, there's a spreadsheet I have open here actually, of where does each study stand. And there are studies all over the state. In National Grid territory in particular, every source has their own. But as Joe mentioned, there's two different studies. The Spencer-Rutland one is the one the Charlton Middle School is in. It just has to do with which feeder line of the grid that each school is connected to. And that one is potentially going to start late this year, the one that your Charlton Middle project would be in. And that would likely last about two years. So again, we're probably looking at realistically getting sort of a green light from the utility here in 2027, I think would be a reasonable expectation. And the other two, the Dudley Middle. is part of
083the Webster Southbridge Charlton group study even though it's in Dudley I'm not sure you know exactly how that but again it has to do with where the lines are and so is this building the Shepherd Hill so those you know it's expected to be begin sometime in 2026 I would say that might be a little bit of a slower move moving study We've seen in other areas surprises, good surprises in terms of things moving faster than originally anticipated. I just don't want to set false expectations. We really don't know is the bottom line. But it does have to do just big picture with the fact that a lot of solar was developed in this area, I think, several years ago. You've got some of it right on the lawn there. I don't know if it's
084yours or not, but you know, essentially that used a lot of the capacity that the grid had to absorb what they call distributed generation, the solar generation that happens when the sun's out. And so they're really looking carefully about how much more can we accommodate on the grid without doing big substation upgrades and things like that. So it's a time consuming process. and we don't have a ton of control really any other than we play our role in putting these into the queue and we have a regulatory team that keeps an eye on things so that if anything is asked of us as the developer of the project or if we need to ask you anything that we're on it and don't miss deadlines. But other than that, it's sort of a wait and see.
085You know, just to go through the proposal again, these are just a refresher. These are 20-year power purchase agreements. So once we can actually build it and once it gets turned on, the term would be 20 years from that point going forward, which aligns with the SMART incentive. So the SMART incentive, the state incentive, pays for 20 years on a monthly basis. So it kind of helps us know we're going to get revenue from you. You're going to pay us for the electricity, but we're also getting the state revenue. it's all within a 20-year window but we would own the assets we would maintain them on the roof we would be really responsible for removing them at the end of the 20 years unless we mutually agree to extend for five years or you wanted
086to buy it which is unusual but you know you would have the option to do that but essentially it's yeah it's designed to be very kind of low guess you know work for for the district itself once it's up there we're really you know in charge of maintaining it and you're just in charge of you know receiving the bill and receiving the savings kind of by avoiding your electric costs from the utility so let's see so you know the designs are in there they really I don't think they've changed too much since last time we talked you know we would you know potentially be upgrading sort of the equipment so you know as time passes something else comes out we have different modules but we can kind of handle all that in-house when the time
087comes but yeah the you know I think the opportunity like I mentioned it's We did a comparison, you know, if we don't have the tax credit, right, the 0% sort of scenario, that's, yeah, that slide right there. Again, these, you know, you still save money, but you save like less than half of what you could if we can really lock this historic kind of tax credit down with the contract and then build it when we are able to. I think what, you know, I can come certainly answer any questions that folks have, but the ask, you know, tonight is to, you know, to authorize Superintendent LaMarche to enter into the power purchase agreements first, which would allow us to go ahead and... basically, you know, allocate solar modules in our warehouse to these projects, which
088meets that sort of start of construction definition to the IRS. The leases that go along with these are just, you might call zero dollar leases, but they essentially just allow our company to, you know, have that solar system on a building that you own, and it's recorded in the registry of deeds. But those are still being put together just based on a title report. We're not... anticipating anything strange unusual they just kind of have to get put together and it was a little bit of uh you know a short notice uh to put them put them together but we're working on it but the vote you know what we could do tonight is to have um superintendent authorized to sign the ppa now the lease within 90 days is kind of the expectation that we
089set within the document but it should be ready a lot sooner than that but then you could just enter into both within the next few weeks just to be clear correct me if I'm wrong Dave by signing these PPAs we're not locking ourselves into an obligation to perform the projects themselves correct So yeah, we definitely have to first get the interconnection. So there's no known timeline yet other than once we have interconnection, you know, we would certainly be, you know, reaching out. and letting you know we're ready to construct if you're ready. The roof on the Shepherd Hill is the one where we're not going to install until you have a new roof, and that's a difference in that PPA is it talks about a solar-ready roof, which is not anything super specific other than
090you've got a new membrane and a new warranty. We don't want you having a... an older roof that you're going to need to replace in two or three years, and then we put solar on it. That causes a lot of trouble, and we don't want that. So you would have a new roof. That's sort of the obligation of the district there. We're real flexible in terms of the timing. I think I set it up to say we had to put a number of days, and it's essentially three years from today until kind of the end of September of 2028. by then we would hope you can do it we've seen we i've done agreements like that where the district was not able to fund the roof you know by that sort of timeline we might
091not even have interconnection approval by that point it's more of just sort of like uh it gives us an out so if you don't have a new roof by you know the end of september 2028 we might say look if things have really changed we can't we can't come do it right now we probably would just sort of maintain our path and hopefully do it in the next year but we do have a fairly long runway on the tax credit if we can act this year and you know soon we would you know potentially be able to do it even after that 2028. I just I know the roof you know does need to be replaced eventually so it's likely we're kind of in the in the ballpark there if we can do it sooner
092that's great too. In terms of obligation, the idea is that we're certainly not spending large amounts of money that we can't recoup somehow. We are allocating panels, so there's a finite supply of those that we have. They do need to be allocated to your project and stay that way in order to maintain the tax credit status. We are hoping that once we have... Interconnection approval that we would you know fairly quickly get get started on the projects and at these rates obviously these savings are Ones I'm sure the district would be you know eager to sort of start generating Sooner than later as soon as we can get that interconnection I know you've seen the numbers. They're pretty they're pretty impressive in terms of what we've you know seen over the last you know five
093years it's like these are You know very like I said with the federal and the state support very attractive but Yeah, I think just the short answer on obligation is you know there this is like the contract right we'd last time was an LOI it was very that was not an obligation it was more of a an understanding and allowed us to apply for some Connection for the incentives. This is it is more of a commitment. So I don't want to sort of you know I'd step that it's just we have some flexibility in terms of the timeline especially on the Shepherd Hill because of the situation So we're looking for a motion. Yes, Jess. Madam Chair, just keep in mind there are three different PPAs. Yes. We're looking for a motion for what? For
094the approval of the solar power purchase agreements for Charlton Middle, Dudley Middle, and Shepherd Hill. Yes, correct. Do we need to take them as three different? Do we need to take them as three different? No, it's important to identify the three separate. Okay. I'll make a motion to approve the Charlton Middle School, Dudley Middle School, and Shepherd Hill Regional School PPAs for discussion. Do we have a second? Yeah, second. Kelly. All right, so since... Madam Chair, can I ask a few questions? I was looking over the PPAs for each one of them and there's a lot of material to read in a very short time but I do have some questions on the project. So first by what I was looking at you are proposing central inverters and not micro inverters and can you speak
095to the reasoning and rationale for that? Sure. So micro inverters, if you know folks, they're very common on residential systems. I actually have one in my house, but it's an inverter for every solar panel and it sits right below it. Whereas these systems are designed. We wouldn't necessarily call them central inverters. There are optimizers on the panels that allow each panel, as it's receiving different amounts of sunlight than the one next to it. There's sort of you know panel level optimization so that if you know one area gets shaded sort of back in the old days of string inverters which we don't typically use on rooftops if one area was shaded it would sort of like cause the large section of the array not to produce but that's not the case in this arrangement. The
096inverters that we're using have optimizers. It also has a rapid shutdown. which is required by code for building mounted solar. But yeah, it is the standard for commercial rooftops. We've never really seen, and we don't use microinverters on systems like this. Because I don't recall seeing anything about the optimizers and the PPA. So they're they kind of go hand in hand with the inverters, but I just didn't see it earmarked. Yep. It's um, it's definitely part of the system like we can't even get the the electrical permit for For it without the optimizers because it needs that rapid shutdown component, but it's sort of like Comes with the package with the inverter. So it's a solar edge 100k inverter with there's a certain type of optimizer that has to go with it each panel Yeah,
097so it's panel level. Because otherwise it would be, if it was in series, one goes down, you lose the whole line, and you don't want that. Yeah, that's a string inverter setup that we don't use. And so I guess you could say it's between string and sort of parallel series. Yeah, yeah. So another question I have, and this would not be in a PPA, but if you could. kind of enlighten us a little bit about your turnaround time and repair and call to site and do you stock in the warehouse or be stock and can you highlight a little bit about what that process looks like so you know you hear maybe not as diligent companies as yourself take an extreme amount of time to do a turnaround on a repair and that's last of
098production. Yeah, great question. So we do select has an operations team that does all of our services and we have we own probably I want to say Three or four hundred power purchase agreements around Massachusetts. We maintain all those we also maintain customer on systems, but we're at a Hopkins in Mass so we you know, this is a system we would own all three of them and You know revenue wise, you know if it's not producing We're not making anything on the state revenue side because it's, you know, that's only generated as you're generating clean energy. And we're not making revenue from the power purchase agreement. So it's really like a, you know, it's imperative, you know, that we get it back up and running for our sake and for yours. You have, you know,
099savings. There is a production guarantee built into the PPA so that if, you know, if we were to, you know, fall below 85% of sort of the predicted production that you would be, um it would trigger sort of that basically a reimbursement to the district for what savings you weren't able to earn because we underperformed by that you know below that threshold but i think you know typically if we see an inverter you know fault or something that needs to be addressed electrically that's the most common thing um we're an optimizer yeah it's in it so on a system that we own I'm not sure there's a guaranteed time, but it's typically probably a day to three days that we would be able to get somebody out because we have crews constantly all over the
100state. Most of our business is in Massachusetts, and all of it's in New England, the core business. It's typically something that can be addressed within a couple of days. A solar panel goes out. Again, that's something that we would... Handle all the warranty on that but we have a lot of stock in Massachusetts in warehouse so we probably could swap it out before a warranty claim is even sort of fully processed just so we have stuff on hand, but Yeah, our vans are fully stocked with the most, you know common things so that we're not doing multiple calls Just to fix something common. So Another question I have is, so Shepherd Hill is in fact an aged building and probably not running at its optimal potential if we were to do renovations. So your modeling
101is off of its current consumption today, correct? Yes. So let's say in a hypothetical, as time moves on, because this is a 20-year contract, we do capital project improvements that lowers our consumption, so then we start building an excess production. What happens to that excess production? Do we get to get a credit to transfer to another property? Do you get to pocket it and go out for steak? What do we do? Definitely no steaks. But, yeah, it's a great question. I can talk about what would happen to the credit in just a second, but I was, you know, what kind of heating does the building have right now? I assume it's fossil oil. Yeah, so oil is probably the prime target for state programs to get rid of and replace with either air source or
102geothermal heat pumps, which is electric, right? So you're going to actually, we're electrifying. everything that's kind of the idea as we go forward you know the next couple of decades so you're more likely to increase your electricity consumption which is Always like a good thing from the standpoint of you have solar, you know, it's you know You you know, you can't go wrong having more electricity production if we're we've got solar on your roof You don't want to go in the opposite direction as much because if you were to vastly reduce your electricity consumption You would just generate more credit. So we'll talk about that the Chris I think you could you could get some savings if you haven't already done, you know LED bulbs or installation or stuff. Yeah You've probably done all that
103easy stuff that saves money right off the bat. So you're more likely heading in a higher electricity, lower fossil fuel kind of direction, which is where you want to go for solar and decarbonization and everything. But if you have credits generated on the bill, essentially these are all behind the meter system. So that means that the first place the energy goes is to power your own loads in the building, reduce your consumption of electricity so you're not paying national grid or your competitive supply constellation for it. But then if credits get generated if you produce more during a given month than the building used. So it would be... rolling over to the next bill as a dollar amount but since you have you have other charges on your electric bill that we don't necessarily directly
104reduce which are primarily the demand charges so getting a little bit into the weeds but a demand charge is not something you see on a household electric bill but it has for a larger facility like this has to do with like a very time specific maximum draw of power during the month and that's what the utility is assessing the demand charge on We typically aren't reducing that with a lot of certainty with solar because it could happen when it's like Dark in the afternoon and in the winter or it could happen when there's a cloud Going over it in the summer or something So we're only projecting savings based on kilowatt hours like the volume of electricity being used and or avoided But just to say, yeah, you could transfer those credits off to other
105bills. It could be any bill that the district pays. You could send them really to any National Grid bill that you want. They can't go outside of National Grid, but you're not outside of National Grid, so it shouldn't be an issue. But, yeah, we're anticipating you'd be able to use the vast majority of it on bill. If you did need to shuffle it around, you would have the flexibility to do that through something called a Schedule Z with National Grid, which is pretty common, just to send things to where they need to be. But it would all be in dollars, you know, those credits. And last question, force majeure and act of God, let's say we have a hailstorm or what have you, and we do in fact have damaged panels, one, where does the
106responsibility lie? And two, if it's at year 10, 12, 15, 20, they're not going to be making those panels anymore. Are you securing replacements that are going to be on hand, or how would you address that? Sure. So basically, yeah, we're owning the assets, so all of the risk of loss is on us from an active nature like that. So we have to insure it. It doesn't increase your insurance policy. So, yeah, if we lose a section of the array due to some extreme weather, we're going to do a risk or a damage assessment with the insurer of the system. That we work with and then replace replace it as soon as possible with you know, you we do a lot of our services team does a lot of repowering of systems that are owned
107by others like if they're older and they you know something like that where it happened or they just Maybe they want to invest money and like upgrading their equipment. But so You can still mix and match to a degree. I'm not the electrician, but there are limits in terms of on a particular string, you have to have some matching. But we do have the ability to move newer modules in place of older ones if they're not really on hand anymore. It doesn't have to be totally like for like. Typically, the goal would be to always stay within. what the utility gave us authorization to do. So because they had a ceiling. Yeah, we wouldn't be massively increasing the size of the system in terms of its, because, you know, if panels are more dense in
108the future and produce more energy, there would probably be some constraints there. But we would definitely be able to manage it on our end. And it's sort of anticipated. We've been in business 15 years. We are. the leader in Northeast, we're owned by Pattern Energy, which is one of the largest developers of renewables in North America, Western Hemisphere, really. So we've got a lot of staying power, and we plan to be here for the entire term, dealing with it and maintaining it. Madam Chair, I just want to reinforce a couple of things that Mr. Besson had mentioned. I've been part of several new construction schools and all that. Electricity goes sky high, the cost of running it, because you do lower use of fossil fuels. And air conditioning. And air conditioning. displacement systems. It's not
109necessarily air conditioning, but the energy, the electricity to run those definitely increases. The other thing is, too, with the Schedule Z, I have worked in communities where we do work with the communities. Sometimes the communities, let's say, for example, we have a number of ball fields that are lit up during the summer. We're using less electricity during the summer. They're using more. You can kind of work out that type of an agreement. So that has worked well in the past as well through the Schedule Z, but I just wanted to reinforce a couple of things with that. And we, just to be clear, we have received grants and we've gone through... think all of our buildings at this point in time and changed all of our lightings and everything across all the schools several hundred
110thousand dollars worth of or at least a hundred thousand dollars worth of work and that's within the past year we I think we completed the project in the past year completed last year yeah I just like to Say that you know Dave and I have had multiple conversations, and he's you know really highlighted You know the importance of locking into these PPAs to make sure that we don't lose those 40% tax credits I think that slide is an excellent simplistic illustration of the dollar value over that course of time and how necessary it really is for a district like ours who you know it's no it's no secret that we struggle year over year to maintain our budget and facilities at an appropriate level so it would definitely be my recommendation for school committee to
111authorize a superintendent to execute the PPAs for CMS DMS and Shepherd Hill so I just wanted to make sure that was out there in the open as well Anybody else have any more comments or questions? No, you sure, Anthony? No, I just think it's important that we cover those areas. All right, so we have a motion and a second. So all those in favor? I have a question. Oh, I'm sorry. Are you taking them separately? Because don't we have to vote on each one independently? No. No. We can take them all. No, we talked about that. Yeah. Okay. I have one. Did you want to also include the authorization to sign the lease at a later time? Because we will have the leases hopefully in the next two to four weeks, I would say, maybe
112less. But they're not ready for signing now. But if you're authorized. Personally my on that is I don't like to approve anything. I haven't seen sure Okay, okay, well we can we can submit them when they're gonna be great yeah Depending on this vote right now, so all those in favor Okay, it's you know So I guess we'll see you in September, okay? All right, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You still have the floor All right, I will continue with my finance director's update with just a couple of quick updates. The first being the fiscal year 2024 audit. Our audit partner, CBIS, completed their free work and follow-up on all aspects of the 2024 fiscal audit, which you're all aware of. There's been a delay in CBIS issuing the final financial statements as they
113have found themselves in... position to be the primary audit firm in the state of Massachusetts for the majority of school districts so they're a little backlogged issuing the final financial statements the delay is solely a byproduct of volume which is hitting other districts as well as us so we're not the only ones who is feeling the delay I've been assured that the final financial statements will be issued next week but the delay is Definitely not a reflection of our financial standing so I just want to stress that as well Moving on to our energy contract update DCRSD locked in rates for both natural gas and electricity suppliers using our third-party vendor, Competitive Energy, who we've had a relationship with for several years. We locked in with Sprague Energy our natural gas rate of 0.6789. cents
114dollars per therm locked in for 18 months. Next Terra Energy Services will provide our electricity at a rate of a little over 12 cents per kilowatt hour locked in for 24 months. The simple math based on last year's usage levels will save the district approximately $30,000 over the course of these two contracts. getting those negotiated now will be a win to the district and the cost of both our natural gas and electricity contracts. Sorry, go ahead. I think that requires the school community vote to enter into those contracts. It does. Oh, it does. Okay. I'll make a notation. Should I put that up for a vote now? Okay. I'll make a motion for, sorry, I recommend that school committee make a motion to, yeah, big step up. I recommend that school committee make a motion
115to accept our natural gas rate through Sprague Energy and competitive energy at $.6789 per therm and to enter with NextEra. energy service an electricity rate of 0.11827 dollars per kilowatt hour for the respective contract lengths of 18 and 24 months so moved against gm11 any discussion no all those in favor it's unanimous thank you thanks I am NOT going to speak to the first view 1.0 launch app since we had that discussion while Denise was here if there are any further questions feel free to let me know and I'm happy to answer it otherwise I will provide a subsequent update on how the start of the year went and how the app is received at a subsequent school committee meeting in September Moving on to my final agenda item. It's just an update on the
116trial and fire substation. Tower Construction Corporation is the company that's leading the construction of the Charlton Fire Department substation right now. Since the previous school year was completed, we've allowed tower construction, the latitude, to shut down one of the three entrances in front of Heritage and Charlton Middle School. They were able to utilize that shut down area for... A lot of their logistics needs to push forward with the project during the summer as much as they could. We know it's going to be a little bit of time before they're able to finish the project completely, but allowing them this dexterity made their production levels increase, so we were happy about that. They did ask that we keep... road that is currently closed down closed into the beginning of the season to begin of the school
117year the logistical setup of that was too difficult on short-term notice we think that keeping That third entrance open is only going to alleviate traffic concerns, safety concerns. So we did come to an agreement with Tower that they will, and they started today, have a temporary road paved so that we have full access to all three entrances at the start of the year. Like I said, that started today. I got a picture of it this afternoon. It's looking really good. They're going to fence it off on... the 25th of August and should be finalized and ready prior to the start of school on the 26th. So we don't anticipate any barriers to our operational functionality. So I'm happy to answer any questions related to any of those items now. i just wanted to highlight that
118before mr desantis didn't give himself credit and the custodial staff admitted that they were able to relocate 94 desk to charlton elementary school and retire some much needed tired furniture by doing some some very logistical shuffling but to their credit and that they pulled that off and there's a lot of very happy Faculty and there's gonna be some really happy students come next week. So my my congratulations to that that that effort That was really great Thank you and I give credit to our head custodians and our new facilities director Steve Pusateri for putting it together on short notice And making sure all of those desks got delivered to the right rooms set up correctly. So pretty excited about that Thank you All right, so 2025-2026 student handbook updates. Madam Chair, I guess we'll start
119with elementary. If elementary would like to come up to the table, and this has been in your packet, you have a sheet that has kind of a maroonish bar across it. What we try to do is try to provide you with just the changes that are in the handbook that the administrators have worked on. And so they will present those to you, and obviously they are open for questions. Hello. We've only got two of us tonight, so. Here we go. We represent both sides. That's good. We're excited to be here. Yes, and we were able to work together this summer to kind of revise this and revamp this as a team. So we wanted to focus on clarity, consistency, and making it user-friendly and accessible for families and staff. So we're going to go over.
120You all have a copy of this. So we're just going to go over the proposed changes that we made and the rationale. So we added our logo to the front page of our handbook, which we thought was important. We also did a general update for our principal's message, which was also important for all of us to have in there. The table of contents, we included one. There wasn't one in the previous handbook, which we thought was... It didn't include a table of contents, so we wanted to make sure everything was delineated so that it was more user-friendly. We adjusted just the flow of the handbook, so topics were kind of scattered throughout, so we made it more consistent. and the district residency requirements. This was to include mostly kindergarten and first grade students and them
121in kindergarten being five years old before September 1st. And then, oh, sorry. I don't mean to interrupt. I'm sorry. I didn't catch this when I looked at it. It's actually, that policy is not residency. That is admission. Oh, thank you. Residency is JF. Yep. Okay. So just, I'm sorry I didn't catch that before. We'll correct that because we had the JV. Okay. Sorry about that. That's okay. That's okay. So it talks about kindergarten students being five before September 1st and first graders being six before September 1st and clarifying that with expectations when they enter. The next three, the homeschool partnership, the homeschool communication and contacting schools, we just did a general update and adjusted the language. The next three, so most of our changes were small, as you can see, like we did some language
122adjustments. The last three were a bit more substantive, but they just reflect changes and clarifications that we felt were necessary for a strong start to the school year. One is just to give parents some clarity about the evolving nature of the school psychologist role. Last year, out of necessity, because we didn't have enough school psychologists to start the year, the role shifted to just testing. But this year we're able to add more to the role that's traditionally been there, so we're happy to see those things coming back. In terms of bus safety regulations, we just clarified some procedures that happen when there's no one there to receive a child at the elementary level. Past practice has always been that the child is brought back to the school. But we didn't have that in writing in
123the student handbook. So we just wanted to make sure that our past practice reflected our written policy. And finally, we adjusted some of the language around actions in defiance of the role and authority of a teacher, just to give some examples of some real things that happen in the elementary world, to give some specific examples. And we want to continue to sort of... some of that language at the end to clean that up. So that was like the beginning of a process that we think is longer that we want to return to. So those are our proposed changes at this time as we start this new school year. We're happy to answer any questions about any of that. For your bus safety regulations? Yes. When you talk about if someone other than a parent or
124legal caregiver will be picking up a student at a bus stop, do you have an age requirement on that? No, it's all children in our elementary setting. No, I mean the age of who can receive the student. Oh, the age of who can receive them. Like can a middle schooler receive their elementary student? Yeah, that is, yes. So older siblings. All right. occasionally designated to meet their siblings. We just like to know, especially with our littles, we like to know what the arrangements are so we're all on the same page. But yeah, we can accommodate families. Perfect. I think that's just good to know. I just want to thank you guys for putting a table of contents. I think that'll make the... Oh, sure. easier to jump to the section that you're looking for because
125everyone always goes, yeah, I don't care about half of this, but what was this? It's a work in progress, but that was an important step. I think it was, and I really appreciate it. I think families will too. Can I ask a question? I noticed that the handbook is in PDF form, so do you have it? I was trying to find it on the website, which I couldn't. Do you have it available in a form that is translatable for our families? We do. Yes. Yes, we do. We are able to translate it, and we can give translations to families as needed. I think the version you're seeing is a PDF, but we have... Is the one online in Google Docs so that a family could go in and just hit Translate to Polish? It's in
126Word. It's in Word? Yep. And is that translatable for a family? Yes. Okay. Okay, thank you. I don't want to be part of the party. Okay. let's just do it one at a time then so looking for a motion to approve the proposed elementary school handbook for Charlton Elementary School Heritage School Mason Road School Dudley Elementary School for the 2025-2026 school year so moved second okay any discussion hearing none all those in favor Madam Chair and school committee, I will now welcome up the Dudley Middle School and Charlton Middle School representatives, principals, educator extraordinaire. That's more Charlton than rising star. We think so, yes. Good evening, everybody. I'm sorry I have to wear these now. Like my colleagues said before, we have some changes that are proposed that are mostly clean-up type of items or
127to bring us in line with things that are actually happening in our world now. Things that are going to substantially affect the day-to-day operations except for a few things towards the end And I'll try to put those into the best context that I can for you Mrs. Bogosh wasn't here when all of this was done yet. This was a collaboration between myself Dr. Monette and our assistant principals and our school councils before that so I'll answer any questions you have after and I have gone over with her though. Okay, so just beginning with We, since COVID, have experienced a tremendous, like everywhere, just attendance is not just, to say it in plain English, is not what it used to be. And the expectation that people are going to come to school every day has sort
128of lightened in a lot of families. And so we want to change meeting with parent guardian under the attendance policy after 10 absences instead of five, because if we do it after five, we will be meeting multiple times every day. We do stay in touch with these families when kids are regularly absent, but we'd like to change the wording to 10 absences instead of 5 for that. Under makeup work, it was a very confusing section in the handbook. There have been some changes over the years without making them replace other things, and so we just ended up with layers of confusion. What we'd like to have now under makeup work is that work will be due upon the student's return to school, change that, which also I didn't put in here, but had a thing
129about receiving a zero. We'd like to change that to... more teacher discretion, to give the teacher more flexibility, to give the kid more time. A good illustration would be a student goes to Florida for a week. We don't encourage that, but if it happens, that's the family's decision. The teacher can give the kid the work in advance, or the kid can go and enjoy the trip, and the teacher can give him work when he gets back, and she can give him a week to do it, or something like that. It's a better, I think, we think, left up to the teacher's discretion. Page 14 under grading, we simply want to change exploratory to wind block because we made that big change in the teacher's contract where we no longer do exploratory. It's now a wind
130block. That's just for what we do. And moving Spanish from what it's currently listed under core subjects, changing that to the unified arts category, which is where it meets in the school day. Under electronic devices, we would like to remove, it says currently and or on their person, that it can be in their locker, in their backpack, or on their person. We'd like to remove on their person because currently we require cell phones to be stored in the lockers for the entire day. this is a good one here under under gamble we had a section under gambling we'd like to remove that I remember when we put that in in like 2000 and it was like dude is there a game like a kids playing poker at lunch or something yeah in 25 years I
131have not seen that be a problem so I would like to remove that we actually saw a really nice trend developed last year where kids would bring like board games to lunch, kids playing chess at lunch while they're eating. It was really cool and I was really glad to see that, but we have yet to see a large poker ring develop. And so we would like to please remove that. On page 19, where it addresses smoking, we should have done this many years ago, add vapes and e-cigarettes to bring us up to date with recent trends. And then on page 21, where it's listed detention, that's simply to say detentions will be communicated to parents and students. It had previously just said students, and it's just not what we do. We always notify parents, too.
132So that's just bringing us in line with what we do. Now, towards the end of the handbook, last year we included a discipline matrix, which from this side to this side is... lighter to harsh. So this would be like a classroom response where the teacher handles it. Just the easier. And then at the end is like expulsion. Okay? So that progression. And we would like to make a couple of changes to this for your consideration. First of all, to reorganize the matrix from least to most serious offense. Another thing that should have been done from the beginning in my opinion. We would like to remove the in-school suspension options for distribution. of alcohol and or controlled illegal substances simply because if a kid is distributing on school grounds, it's automatically going to be some kind
133of an out-of-school suspension, short-term, long-term, depending on the circumstances. And then we would like to add, based on experiences in recent years, being in a new category for being in an unauthorized area. new category for cutting class those are kind of low level they don't lead up to suspension but and then also an in-school suspension option for multiple phone or technology use violations let me give more clarification on that in a minute and finally to simply separate the categories for assault of staff and assault of a fellow student Assault of a staff member is actually mentioned in the law as something for which you have to do an expulsion hearing and an out-of-school suspension, whereas assault of a student isn't listed, but everything depends upon the severity and the circumstances. Just to give a little
134more clarification after talking with Mrs. Bogosh and just thinking about this more, about in-school suspension option for multiple phone. This doesn't mean that if a kid has their phone on them, we're going to throw them in in-school suspension. It's simply not that. Everything is a huge buildup. And there was a situation, I'll give you an example. where, so it's supposed to be turned off and in the locker and so if we see a student with their phone in their pocket or they're going down the hall or whatever it's always like, let's put that in your locker. Or you go put it in your locker. It's a very easy first step. From there, once in a while, somebody will just absolutely refuse because there's this incredibly strong connection between some young people and their phone, maybe
135grown-ups too, and they just can't be without it. And so we ended up with a situation where fourth, fifth time of trying to be reasonable, a student was just in the middle of class just texting and refusing to give the phone, refusing to stop, you know, and it was really a bad, like a bad thing, example for the other students if we didn't do anything. So in a case like that, my thought process was, well, our thought process was that we would be able to remove that student to in-school suspension until the parent could arrive. to work through it with us. Upon thinking about it more, maybe it changes from a phone issue to an insubordination issue at that point. And so maybe the phone issue is like moot at that point. And I'm very
136comfortable with, you know, keeping... the phone, if it's just a better look, keeping us just as a classroom and a school-based response for the phone issues, and then just knowing when it crosses over the line into some other kind of a behavioral challenge that we could do what we needed to do. Does that make sense? Yeah. Mrs. Carmel. Oh, Mrs. Carmel. And I didn't say it before. I'm sorry. You already have in your handbook from last year that... Refusal to turn in an electronic device will result in disciplinary action including but not limited to office detention and or an in-house That's like in a separate issue, right? That's not in the matrix. It's a So you already kind of have yourself. Yeah, okay. It seems to me that you've built in appropriate Avenues based on
137the severity of how high it rises to the education Yeah, absolutely. We feel like we're incredibly reasonable, and I want to make sure everybody understands that we, maybe you don't know yet, but you're going to find out. We honestly, I honestly believe there's no better kids in the world than the kids in this district. I truly believe that. They just don't make them any better, but that doesn't mean they're perfect. They're 10 to 14 years old, and that's an age where if a family is really lenient with phone use, it can really. lend itself to some very big challenges with how that spills over into school. And we're the first ones saying, you've got to go seven hours now without that. Which we think we're doing them a favor by doing that, by giving them
138that seven hours they can focus on interacting with their peers, their education. But some kids really struggle to break that. So we have to be. reasonable about it and it it's progressive but you know we need to have the tools to be able to help that child to be able to break that addiction and be in a position to learn so I forgot to ask these questions and I definitely had people at home telling me to ask the question one was about the hats in school and that they felt that sometimes there were teachers that Went beyond what went contrary to what the handbook had said. Yes, that's probably true actually. Yeah, and that the other one was You know some kids possibly my own have a hard time navigating all of the things they
139have to carry yeah, and Wanted to explore the option of if you're uncomfortable with backpacks could they have a clear backpack or things like that at night? I did tell them they should talk to you about it. Thank you. I think that's something that the kids are looking for. Yeah. I'm open for that. Personally, I haven't talked with Mrs. Bogosh about it yet, but I'm open for that discussion. We allowed the backpacks in Auburn because we didn't until COVID, and then with COVID we saw that maybe it wasn't that bad, so we let it continue. So then I went from that the very next year to Dudley Middle where they had been established already, no backpacks. If I had to pick today, I would pick no backpacks because I think it just takes away another
140distraction from the students and another possible opportunity to carry something that you shouldn't have with you in school. Most of our kids would never even think to do that, but there's always somebody. And I realize they could carry that in their pants too or somewhere else, and so it's not the solution, but it maybe reduces the percentage chance a little bit. But I am open for that discussion with the students and if they can come up with something that we're all comfortable with, I totally get that you don't want to have to go to your locker and, oh, I forgot something, but my next locker time's not for two hours. I can see that being frustrating. So I'm definitely open for that discussion. As far as hats are concerned, I think right now we still
141have in the handbook that hats are allowed as long as they're school appropriate, and we will continue with that. I have to be honest with you, Mr. LaMarche knows, at first I was like, no, we can't wear hats to school. No, absolutely not. Why do we have that? And it turned out not to be as big a deal as I thought it was going to be. So we're going to continue with that for now, and we'll see how it goes. But as long as it's school appropriate. One of the other questions, I'm sorry. When you talked about electronic devices and getting rid of the and or on person, do you also mean that for smart watches? Yes. So you don't want smart watches in the school? No, we would like for those to be also
142in the locker. Wish us luck with that, but I think that's the best way to go. Yeah, I think if you can communicate that to families as soon as possible, that we can support you in that by not even just sending them to school with them. Thank you. That's fine. In the newsletter it will go. Yeah, yeah. And we always send a thing early in the year with what's new in the handbook, just because a lot of times people don't read through the whole thing. There's a lot going on at the beginning, right? There are, yeah. I got a couple of questions. The first is the first category of change meeting with parents after five to ten hours. What do you define a meeting as? Is that in person? Is that on the phone? What
143level? Well, it could be. It really and truly ends up being whatever works for that family. I mean, ideally, yes, you get a face-to-face. Sometimes it's a Zoom, but more often than not, a family is working, two parents working or whatever, then we have to do a phone call. But we have guidance counselors reaching out much more frequently than after 10. That's where I was going to go with the next question. 10, you're already at two weeks absence. Right. 10 could be, it's all perspective, right? So is it 10 absences in the first two months, or is it 10 and we're at May? Yeah. So it is perspective. Yeah. So that's where I was going to ask is if it's early intervention with... attendance, does it start with the guidance counselor or the homeroom teacher?
144What's that progression? Yeah, it most frequently would start with the guidance counselor reaching out, developing a relationship with the family, making sure that we know if there's anything we can do to help, if there's a situation that's difficult for the family, getting the kid to school or something like that. We try to establish a plan to be able to help the family. One of the examples you had mentioned earlier was if there was a planned expected absence of duration so you used the example of a vacation could be something else could be a Family member getting married in the military. What have you whatever the circumstance? obviously the student doesn't have a say so in it and I think it is appropriate that they could ask for work before after it Is it appropriate to
145ask the teachers for the work ahead of time and at what, how much lead time? So if a student was trying to prepare to do as much of that work prior to the trip, what's your thoughts on that situation? So we do, they have to, there's a form. We ask the families to. As far in advance as possible to let us know that. And sometimes things come up, but usually it's something that's planned. So that form goes to the guidance counselor, to the teachers, and then finally it's signed off on by the principal. So by the time I get it, everyone already knows that this absence is going to happen. What we were having difficulty with was, so if there's enough lead time, teachers can get the kids ahead a little bit, but what they
146usually aren't able to do. is that what they miss in that week that they're out sure it's impossible to replace uh what the teacher can do right which is another reason why we want to make this more about teacher discretion and i'm going to say something that might not be popular but sometimes i've learned over the over the years of having my own family now which i did not have when this thing was first written that sometimes a week with your family somewhere is far more memorable and positive than even what you might have experienced in school. That doesn't mean I'm okay with people leaving during school time. I'd much rather they didn't. But it would be nice if they could also enjoy that time with their family, make some good memories, and then come
147back and still get caught up. You know, and that's the way we would like to do it. Can I just say something about that? Like, I do, I think our teachers are kind. to be able to provide material for people ahead of time, but I don't feel that that's a reasonable expectation to put on staff to expect that if I'm going to take my kids away, I'm going to expect that work's delivered to me ahead of time, nor do I think it's reasonable to expect that my teachers would teach material afterwards to someone who was out. But they do it and they are kind to do that. It's just Well, I think to both your points so if a family files the paperwork say a month ahead and then a week the week before their
148Material to be taught and they're leaving I would presume that it would be in their lesson plan and prepared for by that point now a week out You can't guarantee that. You can, but they really do. And we're asking, like, if we're asking teachers to be thoughtful about how kids are learning and to look at data and change things accordingly. Yeah, formative assessment every day should be changing their instruction the next day based on how the kids did. Yeah, you could give a rough estimate of, hey, this is what we might be doing next week. It may not be exact. Understood. I'm just trying to, again, I'm going to come back to it's not the student's decision. And so I'm just trying to be mindful of that aspect. That's all. And Madam Chair, when we
149look at, this is probably universal, but we look at three days of planning. We don't look at a full week. We try to put things within three days to understand what that continuum is. But mastery could happen on the third day. It could happen on the fourth day. Just one more point about that, if I may, is that it's gotten a little bit better with technology to where they can at least go into the, if they wanted to. I'm away for a week. I can go into my Google Classroom. I can see what at least a little, to some degree, what's going on. So that opportunity is there, but it is a very, like, sort of fluid process. Right. And the last thing I was going to say, you made a great example of the
150backpack situation. there's pluses and minuses and you'd be open to the discussion. I don't personally have a preference. I don't have enough information. I'm not an educator. It's been a long time since I've been in school. But is that something that... Would have any benefit to have that discussion with school council or the student government? Yes, definitely. I think with school council, I'm going to have teachers and I'm going to have families who have heard from their kids about it. I think the discussion that I would like to have is with the students. I want to hear more, like how bad is this? If I could just put it in plain language. Or challenging. Right. How much better do you think it would be? Are they not worried about what possibilities could exist if you
151see kids going into the bathroom with their backpacks? That kind of stuff used to worry me. But I think for me, largely the kids is the conversation I want to have. Just on that too, in my experience, we didn't have bags. And the fire department, because of the egress situation and emergency, if there were bags on the floor, they preferred that we didn't have them for an emergency situation. If people had to get out quickly, they weren't stumbling over. And I have had... It was actually two instances where staff members have tripped over a bag one actually fell and hit her and broke her cheekbones So that was another it's heart middle school. They're they're not very organized There are some but not all so to that question so they Is the format they go
152to their locker before homeroom, grab the materials that they're going to need up until lunch, and then they kind of get to the locker to get to the rest of their stuff for the final of the day? It depends on the grade level schedule, but that's probably the most common. Okay. So they may be carrying... Couple folders a couple of books a pencil case and where do they store it under their chair during class? So I'm just wondering is it any more detrimental to have a backpack hanging on the back of the chair versus things that might be kicked around and tripped over in an emergency situation? Because that's not going to happen. Well, and then I love how you guys think that middle school is going to put their cell phone in their locker.
153Like, you know, I mean, we can extrapolate that out, you know. I'm sorry to interrupt. I just, I thought, I should say this publicly. I was so proud of our students last year for how they handled the cell phone thing. It was, I've expressed a couple of situations that went sideways, but for the most part, and I mean better than 95% of the time, it was really good. And I was really proud of them. And I think they were happy with it. I think deep down they won't admit it, but I think they really, they liked it, I really believe. We got great kids. We have amazing kids. Thank you guys. How about with what you said for what happened last year with the cell phone in the lockers the whole day, but also wanting
154to speak to the students. I mean, you can always speak to the students, you know, from all different levels, you know, five through eight, different rooms, different abilities, and come back at the end of the year and give us an idea of what could possibly be in the next student handbook on what kind of answers they might have come up with or out-of-the-box thinking to kind of meet in the middle somewhere. I'm talking about like backpacks and stuff. I know the cell phones will probably stay in the locker. They might verify every single thing you guys say and they go, yeah, it works great. Maybe. Probably not. Maybe. You never know. I mean, you'll definitely get more conversation than them. What did my daughter say when Mr. Olson became principal of heritage and he was
155like what can I do to make this better and all the kids answered more pizza Definitely gonna get more answers. Yes Any other comments questions handbooks for 25-26. For what, the middle school? Because it's one handbook for both middle schools. Awesome. All right, all those in favor? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all. I guess we'll invite Principal Alwell up. Very well. Only once, only twice. Good evening. So on behalf of the mothership this evening I have three proposals for consideration the first relates to Our cell phone policy that we implemented last year after this first year of implementation We have obviously reviewed the efficacy of the policy but also some of the things that we felt required a little bit of fine-tuning and one of the questions that came up routinely was
156when students asked to go to the bathroom are they allowed to take their phones out of the holder and take the phone with them to the bathroom? Good question. So for obvious reasons I did feel that it was important to add the highlighted language to clarify. Obviously, we today had a meeting with all of my department coordinators. We had a leadership summit, and one of the things we talked about was the direction of our cell phone policy. I submitted this language a month ago, and at that time the governor had just issued a statement in support of the cell phone ban. Since then the legislature has taken steps. I think the Senate has voted already on a cell phone ban in Massachusetts, which would take effect next school year. Each district would have to submit
157there. policies and so I explored a full out cell phone ban, not allowing cell phones to be used in class at any time and I had a very spirited discussion. We also put out a survey to staff and at the end of the day I think that it will work best for us to continue with the universal check-in procedure in every class but I do respect teachers autonomy and what I heard loud and clear from lot of my staff that they do wish to reserve the right to allow students to access their phones during class and so I am proposing that we continue with that policy but simply add the language around prohibiting phones from being taken to the bathroom by and large last year the objective was to minimize the disruption to teaching and
158learning that cell phones cause and I think overwhelmingly we were successful not only in the classroom, but also the instances of alleged cyberbullying or things that are shared on social media during school time those situations drop dramatically and the students that that we've interacted with have also indicated that it is nice to just Put the phone on ice for a few minutes not focus on maintaining text threads and just focus on what's in front of you in class. So that would be my recommendation for that policy. The second relates to artificial intelligence, which I like to think we're being proactive, even though I know we're not. We're probably really far behind. But the good news is... We are not alone. Mr. LaMarche, Mrs. Harriman, and I met last week with Vice President Nichols, who was
159sharing some of the challenges at the college level in terms of AI. So in any sector, there are certainly challenges. But I felt that this language reflected a sensible approach. It put some parameters in place. We recognize that... We want to be incorporating AI in a thoughtful manner. We want to encourage our staff to incorporate AI and to provide some instruction around that. But as is typically the case, we have to be explicit about the what, the when, where, how, et cetera. This language that you see, I am crediting to an MASC-MASS joint conference that occurred in November of 24. This was language that they promoted, including the Wilmington language, which I felt was, in the meantime, before the state really comes out with solid recommendations, just good guidelines to maybe have something in place.
160And so I am also presenting this language to put the first flag in the ground with regard to AI for our school. I have to say, last year we really did not have too many occasions where Teachers were concerned about academic dishonesty. but I do anticipate the more that we incorporate it into our routines that is going to be something that we have to pay closer attention to. And finally, the last proposal relates to alternative consequences. Purpose of any consequence is to address the behavior and change the behavior. And we've seen with a number of our students that detention, suspension, parent conference, short-term suspension, long-term suspension, internal suspension. doesn't change the behavior. And so we have to do something different to change that behavior. But also, we know that any suspension removes the student from
161the classroom. They're not receiving instruction. So we start to dig that hole deeper and deeper. And anything beyond 10 days, we, the school district, have to pay for tutoring. So there's an added cost to that all the more reason to make sure that we're trying to pull back on our external suspensions and so We had a thoughtful proposal from several members of our staff Especially in response to some of the vandalism and issues of property damage Mainly the bathrooms, but every so often if there is a Chromebook that's damaged or otherwise We want to be thinking about how to maybe implement some alternative consequences for that so obviously there would need to be parameters that would need to be some parental consent that would need to be Adequate supervision if for example, there's an instance
162of property damage and an alternative remedies agreed that picking up litter for an hour is agreeable to parents, to administration. We would likely have some form of a permission slip. We would likely provide, we would provide the personal protective gear, the gloves, and we would make sure that we have appropriate supervision. We're also trying to think outside of the box in terms of when this would happen. perhaps during a study hall would be better for us because obviously we have our maintenance staff we have people during the school day who could oversee that in addition to after school if it occurred before the late bus that would still allow students to go home or take the bus if they needed to so we're trying to identify different ways to avoid suspension and hopefully create opportunities
163where students understand that they've damaged their learning community and through their actions they are making themselves and their learning community whole again through something that gives back that restores what's been lost again this would be with likely some form of a permission slip with parental consent and I would imagine if we implement this practice for about a year we will establish sort of our list of for X infraction you receive X number of hours or you can perform this task, this task, or this task. I think we would get to that menu of options, but in this first year I think we need to assess exactly what will work best for us. So I'm asking for the committee's consideration of these three different proposals. Just a couple questions for you. On the first one with
164electronic devices, I didn't know if you wanted to put on that last statement their phone, parenthesis S, will remain in the cell phone holder as to eliminate the fake phone being left in the cell phone holder. You know what I mean? I should just say their phones. I would say phones, yeah, their possible phones. Agreed. Yes, Jermaine and Berner and whoever else's phone. Or just any electronic device is not allowed to leave the room. The one with, for the AI, on the first bullet, it says additionally students should only use programs that have signed data privacy agreements in place. That probably came from a district that has... Like the data privacy agreement, like we have a consortium that we just grab data privacy agreements from people. I don't know if we're consistently collecting data privacy
165agreements here. So I did run that bullet by Director D'Arcangelo. Okay, good. What do you say? I thought I had consent on that, that this was a good idea. But I can revisit that subject with him. Yeah, I don't. Regarding some of the specific agreements that we have regarding data. Okay, and are you specifically limiting it to AI programs or any program? So you're making a bigger statement, like now you're, I don't know, if you're limiting it to AI programs. With regard to the data privacy agreement? Yeah. So, sorry if I'm saying the wrong thing, I apologize, but we're talking about accessing through our systems. Right. Right. So that's why I thought, principal, I will work with Mr. D'Arcangelo to make sure that there's data privacy with our systems. That's called, there's a cert for
166that. But it matches the child protective thing and all that kind of stuff. Right. Right. So that covers any program that we provide through our system. I will follow up with Mr. D'Arcangelo. I'm admittedly swimming over my head. The only thing I would caution is that if you have a teacher. that's pulling other programs in that they need to vet that through Mr. D'Arcangelo. And then on the last thing with the discipline guidelines, I'm just wondering when you have the alternative consequence will be served during directed studies and or you have after school, I would suggest you might want to put or outside the school day because this definitely works really well. And I've definitely used instances where I had kids do things over a school vacation week. Or they got out of things by
167coming in at night to set up for graduation the next day. That's great. We will make that change. Yes. Thank you. And I have language if you need language and how. Like I used to give this. Or you can choose the two days of suspension. Thank you for that. Yep. Anyone else? One more thing on that one. It talks about that the parent needs to agree to it. I'm wondering if you need to add that the student needs to agree to it. Mutually agreed upon by a parent or guardian prior to implementation because you do have some that are over 18. Well, I can't physically force the student into this either, so there does need to be student consent. So, yes. i think though i found like typically when the student realizes that that's not
168something that's being reported to a college or to a work after school ends they typically tend to want to do this any other comments questions hearing none i entertain a motion to approve the shepherd hill regional high school proposed 2025-2026 student handbook all those in favor thank you very much Thank you, Principal. The only thing I would like to say on this, actually, on the student handbooks, which gave me a really hard time trying to read it, was I missed the red line version. Yes. Because... Going back and then it's like oh well we proposed these updates and I had to go look at 20 You know the and what was in the folder was last year's not proposed And so it was kind of difficult to make sure like I was actually understanding the
169language changes So is there any way like moving forward we could kind of consistently do more that redline version that we had done in the past Steve you know I'm talking about right Because we've moved away from that over the years, but we can go back to it. Because we're just presenting you the actual changes in the handbook. And the handbooks are on our website, but we can definitely bring you in anything you want. Would it be helpful to add a column that has the previous language? That's what it used to be. It used to be the previous language, that red line. Previous language, new language, and just that. Like the previous, the new rationale. The rationale is awesome, by the way. I appreciate that, but yeah. Because otherwise you're you're hunting all over the
170place and and just maybe even so that we're not hunting like have a link to the old handbook on the top Oh, it's time for Mr. LaMarche with the 2025-2026 staff resource handbook updates. Madam Chairman and school committee, I do have a couple of changes for the handbook for this year. They are very specific to policies that were adopted throughout the school year, with the exception of on page 30 would be JRA-R, which is on the table this evening for approval, so that's not in there. And also update areas of emphasis. That was traditionally put in the staff resource handbook after working with principals on this this week and identifying them and working with the DCTA and coming up with the new observation form. We felt it was better to not just place it in
171isolation there, to actually communicate it out in a different way. So we're actually recommending to take it out of the staff resource handbook. So it doesn't number one it doesn't have to be updated every year but also there has to be a little bit more communication around that and a little bit back and forth on that so that's not on the table this evening as well and then the only other addition to the staff resource handbook for under the parents rights section is to add consistent with Massachusetts regulations 603 CMR 26.05-1 the Dudley-Chelton Regional Schools Through its curricular and materials encourages respect for the human and civil rights of individuals regardless of race, color, sex, gender, identity, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation. Families may request information from the building principal on available accommodations related
172to curriculum content. Now this is coming out of a Supreme Court case from 2025. I'll put in the 2025. Mohammed versus Mahmoud versus Taylor. And this was a recommendation from MASC as well to put this in. But we've already, in Massachusetts, we've already had a regulation that permitted this. We're just making sure that we explicitly say it within our staff resource handbook as well. So the policies that school committee had passed during this past year was AC non-discrimination and access to equal education opportunity, AC-R non-discrimination policy including harassment and retaliation, ACA non-discrimination on the basis of sex, ACA-R non-discrimination on the basis of sex under Title IX including sex-based harassment, and also updated harassment policy ACAB, and also updated the bullying policy JICFB. And also updated the policies JRA and JRA-R, but JRA-R is up
173for another vote this evening before it gets incorporated in here. And those are the only changes that are recommended for the staff resource sample. Basically, we're updating the policies that we put in here, especially around harassment and that because those are very important policies that go in the Staff Resource Handbook. But I think most times we look at things like Section 2 of the Staff Resource Handbook around functions within the school. There are no recommendations for changes on those at this time. And I'm sorry that I forgot to ask this during the other handbooks. Should that information about parents' rights also be in the regular handbooks? We collectively talked about this at this time, no, because it's already at regulation in our state. Again, Massachusetts was ahead of the Supreme Court case. Parents have always
174had a right to come in and question and ask questions about the curricular and anything that's being taught. But we thought it would be good to make sure that we do put it in the staff resource handbook in case it does reach a level of confliction that needs to be addressed. Perfect. Thank you. Any other questions? Comments? Okay. Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion for the approval of the 2025-2026 staff resource handbook. Second by Kelly. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so all those in favor? So unanimous. There's a trend going on today. All right, and you're still on, Stephen. Yes, Madam Chair and School Committee. Policy Sub did meet last Friday to review some policies. It's a great working group. We went over a number of policies to bring forward this evening. In hindsight, I don't
175know where I lost it a little bit, but I started using the word update versus amend. Chair Costello reminded me during the meeting, I don't know if she knew this implicitly, but she reminded me that it should say amend versus update. So I apologize for the term update in here. But we do have a number of policies that are in front of you. We did distribute these out to the... to the school committee at the June meeting. I think May and June meeting were a couple of these and then we distributed out to the community at the end of the month of July. We did receive feedback from a number of individuals. And we did try to incorporate as much of that feedback as possible as always and then for Specifically for policy JJE if
176you recall MASC just came out with their recommendation for that without going through policy sub I took the liberty of adding in one statement that they had For this policy, but obviously if school committee doesn't Support that statement. That's perfectly fine. But these policies are in front of you and we'll go one at a time So the first policy is JJE. This is student fundraising So this would be a new a new policy because it's newly located We already have a fundraising policy, but this is a new new policy and it's located in the student section of your policy handbook now So what I want to point out is the new statement from Masc which makes sense, and you already kind of approved, you've already heard a little bit about this through the middle school
177handbook. Students and student groups are barred by state law and regulation from organizing raffles or games of chance, participation in sales of or purchasing tickets of such games. So in essence, what that's saying is that students were not, we really shouldn't be asking our students to participate in a gambling activity, and that's really what it's basically saying to sellers, or gambling of chance. From a previous user we did just to clarify this way as a middle school principal we did do the calendar raffle and was very successful but we did go to the Mass Gambling Commission and we got approval from them we got approved from the town we got we had to go through all those steps but I guess at this point in time there's really a solid statement that says state law
178and regulations don't allow that. type of activity moving forward for student fundraising in our schools and then the other feedback and adjustments that we received is items one and two two was unfinished so we just combined those two and and just tried to fix that and then it changes the numbering in there but that's that's what's up that's what's on the table for JJE I would recommend school committee to pass JJE fund student fundraising Can we have a motion first and then we can have a discussion? Yes. I'll make the motion to accept the policy as written. For JJE? For JJE. All right, I'll second. Number two says all money is collected through and brought to the finance director by the following week and an authorized staff member using a revolving report form. So is
179there ever a time that... whether it's a class advisor, yearbook advisor, what have you, when dealing with cash has to make change. And if they're turning over all monies within a week's time frame, how do they make that change for a student paying for that item or activity? So if the item costs $10 and they bring in $20 and they have no way to change that, what is the process there? You can go ahead. So I do know with a lot of the money collection events, there's a certain amount of petty cash that's kept on hand to begin with for purposes of making change and ensuring that exact change only isn't necessarily required. Okay, so... I'm sorry. So for clarity, we start with a certain value, like change money. Sure. So all money raised after
180that, not the change money that started it, all money raised has to be turned in through a revenue sheet. Okay. Thank you for the clarity. We want the cash to come in as soon as possible and be reconciled as soon as possible. You don't want something sitting on a bank. Correct. But I just wanted to make sure that we're not putting a roadblock of some type where a student's trying to buy something and then we can't accommodate that transaction because of... We flushed everything up. Right. Agreed. That's the only question I have. Any other comments, questions? Hearing none, I have a motion and a second. So all those in favor? It's unanimous. We talked about this at Policy 7. I apologize, Madam Chair, that it wasn't on here. But we talked about once this policy
181was passed by the school committee, we would retire the old or existing fundraising policy, which is KHB and KHB-A. I don't know if you want to wait until the next meeting to do that. You'll have conflicting policies for at least a couple weeks. Or if we could move that up to be done this evening. The next meeting? I don't think it's good practice to have conflicting. Table JJE? No, KHA. Table, so for the next agenda. I'm sorry. No, no, no. It's conflicting. JJE is the conflicting policy. Oh. Oh, I see. See, student fundraising, we took the tactic of now putting it in action with students. Right. There is a community relations policy, KHB, that is now going to be conflicting. It's not in your packet or anything like that. I see. There could be some
182confliction there, so what we'll do is we'll wait until the next meeting to bring that forward for retirement. okay I think I don't think we're running to a big issue but if we do we'll we'll iron it out until in two weeks first week school is open like it's just gonna be a rush on fundraising you can see him knocking all our doors down right now no we don't go to door to door I said our doors not door to door all right so thank you So the next policy up is KHA, public solicitation in schools. This is a very important policy because we have, years past, there was a lot of this going on in public schools, but we've come a long way. We did receive some very strong feedback on this policy, but
183this is really basically to say that we don't really, there's very limited opportunities for any commercial or any type of... commercial public solicitations in our schools to sell us things by have us buy things for companies and stuff like that so that's why this policy is in place the feedback was incorporated in here but there is there was there was nothing really substantial changes to this policy from from the get-go i'll make a motion to accept jay as printed second okay any questions discussion I have a question. And maybe like a case scenario, like how does it work? Because when Jostens wants to sell the yearbook, part of it, like they're going to go out, like it's kind of an outside company, but we're getting, the student group is getting a partial kickback to that,
184correct? So how do we do that? The difference is that you're entering into an agreement with Jocelyn's to do that. That's not a straight solicitation just to sell Coca-Cola products or Pepsi products. Got it. But this does allow some limits on that, some opportunity in that, but it has to come to school committee for approval. Any other questions, comments? No? Hearing none, all those in favor? Madam Chair, the next policy is KF. This is use of school facilities. This is something that required a little bit more work and updating because it was last looked at or reviewed in 2013. So there were some changes. We did receive a little bit of feedback on this, and we did incorporate some of that feedback. One of them was... that for the purposes of this policy, local PTA
185and PTO groups may apply for use of facilities provided they maintain active 501c3 status, have no outstanding balances and debts owed to the district, and comply with all applicable laws, bylaws, and district policies. And then we talked about, there was some questions about, the first two paragraphs. Unfortunately, what you have in front of you is you have the original red line version and then we the second red line version I did not save for this particular document. So we did rework paragraph one and two as well Based off of the feedback use of school buildings and other facilities by organizations will be printed only when an educational civic or charitable purpose consists Consistent with the district's mission will be served or when a substantial group of citizens from the community will benefit determinations will make
186will be made by the superintendent or their designee. And then we also reworked the first paragraph, the desire to maximize the use of the school property by property being enjoyed by the community. We originally had townspeople, but we changed that to community use of our school facilities. We did change, if you look on the second page, which is not numbered, but if you look down in the middle where it says non-profit charitable organizations. But then when you go to the next paragraph, we did rework this outside of the red. Approved uses are to provide proper liability insurance where applicable with coverage limits of not less than $1 million per occurrence and shall name the Dudley Child Regional School District as an additional insured on the policy. Approval of insurance must be submitted to the district
187prior to facility use. This is our practice. We're just putting it into policy. And that's very common practice. Yes. Yes. And that's for as if, like, our, like, the Dudley soccer is allowed to use our field? Yes. In that case. Okay. Entertain a motion to, which one is it now? KF, right? KF, yeah. Entertain a motion for KF. Anthony, would you like to? No, Maureen did. Maureen did? All right. Any more comments, questions, discussion? All right. Hearing none, all those in favor? Thank you next policy is Jf school admission residency as I presented this to the school committee one of the adjustments we did want to make was the time frame to be consistent so that is I Apologize that there's no red versions in this at all But we wanted to have consistent timelines
188of 90 days across all of the opportunities for moving in. And then the only thing that we did receive feedback on was the third paragraph on the first page. For those situations where properties straddle the town lines, a fact-specific review and analysis will be completed on a case-by-case basis at a minimum. Factors in the analysis and review will include plot plan of the dwelling, detailing the location of major rooms, and inclusion in the town census as an occupant, and payment of property taxes to the town, and a valid postal street address within the town, not a P.O. box. That's the feedback we received for a major edit on this particular policy. I apologize that it's not in red. You want to make a motion so we can discuss it? Sure. I make a motion to
189approve policy JF as updated. Second. Okay, Kathy. I definitely had people reach out to me about the 3A, the dwellings that are intersected by town lines, and they felt definitely that if people are not paying property tax to the town, then it should not be reasonable to accept a student in the town. I agree. I like that persons residing there in May some property attacks I would think it's the majority of the property taxes assessed to that town Is there are there's definitely cases where you may stretch over two towns and you? Have it say majority so that would be an emboldened there wasn't a motion was there a motion the other was yes, that would be an amendment to the motion Kathy would you mind repeating your amendment? For part, let's see, part three,
190section 2a subsection 3a, change some property tax to majority of property tax upon which the majority of property tax is assessed. How do we verify that? It would be up to the person trying to register their child. It's the same thing I said for policy sub in a way where I just, when somebody's straddling on that line, I always just remember going back to when I lived up in a more rural area and when I was trying to call for services, they were like, oh, we don't go there, call these people, and these people, and then I'd call those people, and they'd be like, no, we don't go there. You know, I mean, we're talking about a kid who could, you know, they're part of the town, even if it's, you know, their living room
191and bedroom, you know, that it would be great if a school system could step up just in case of, like, they're caught in that weird moment. where like You know, they're the tap one, you know, like if they're on the line and their houses in two towns It's like I didn't look up on every all the other districts policies next to Charlton and Dudley to see exactly how they write there is to see where there's us and whether or not they actually have a policy on the line on the town line I get what you're saying, like, you know, but I think if, you know, they're being assessed in any way by Charlton or Dudley as part of their primary residence and it happens to Straddle the Line, I think having some is fine and
192doesn't need to be a majority. So if you have a person being assessed 5% in Charlton or Dudley and the other 95% in a different town, you're going to accept? the student in the school? We're also talking about a very small amount, you know, and we always end up having, what, we have school choice, right? And we always end up doing, like, 200 to 220 openings for school choice, and we have 180 school choice kids. So it's, I'm just saying, like, right now I don't see it as being a major impacting issue to quibble over that. That's probably not very common. Through the chair, I have not had one of these cases since I've been here of a property straddling a line and somebody asking to register the kid or not. I have not done
193my own. I have not reviewed every single house that may be near a line, but this has not come up once in the six years I've been here. So I could go with either or. It's incumbent upon the family to produce whatever we ask them to register their child. I'm just speaking for what would people have come to me with that they had concerns. It's a valid concern. You know, what if you have someone that's, if you have a student that is outplaced that lives, that is a lot of, that could potentially become more. If they had a lot of property and part of it, just a piece of the property was, a dwelling has to be on and a piece of the dwelling, not the property. It did cross my mind, you know, depending
194on whether the... Dwelling is on the property would also dictate where that that family can vote there It's dictated by the bedroom of the prop of the dwelling the bedroom the bedroom because they face the idea in master laws That's where they spend the most amount of time within their dwelling and that's where they made it in Yep, so that's why they made the determination. That's if you're better if your house is on the line and your bedroom is I learned that from the assessors. Through the chair, that's why in the front we did make sure it says major rooms of the dwelling. But again, Member Kamiany, I don't disagree with you. It's a school committee decision to edit that. I mean, should we table it to figure out what other districts are doing about
195that? I don't know. I mean, I don't see anything. wrong with passing it and then double checking what other others are doing. I mean, especially since we're talking about, you know, that it hasn't been an issue for at least, you know, five, ten years. through the chair. And I just want to confirm that our town members do a very good job of policing each other as to who may be. So that's why when I say I haven't heard anything in six years, it's not because of lack of information coming to our office. It's just it's not something that's come to our office. But people will certainly call us for anything around. property, who's living where and who's not living where and all that kind of stuff. But the most important part of this policy for
196me, and I've explained this at the last meeting and also with Policy Sub, is being consistent with the 90 days. We are being very discriminatory against anyone who rents by saying you need to tell us in 60 days, but everyone else gets 90 days if you're buying a house. discriminatory so I would respectfully ask that the committee pass it but send it back to policy sub to put on the agenda again to review again on that specific item of ground dwellings on straddling town town lines if I may I think that's reasonable I'd be I'd be amenable to that but I don't feel that we need to ask for an amendment at this point Like I wouldn't push for the majority amendment right now if we're going to take it back. But I mean. But
197we could request that subcommittee take another look at that, another pass at that section. Yeah, that particular section. Okay. So do we have a second on the amendment? As a renter, I appreciate that. Do we have a second on the amendment? Yeah. So we'd have to rescind the second and the amendment. No, there was no amendment made. There was no motion to amend. Yeah. Oh, I got you. No, it was just discussion. Because that's what I was asking, like, what's the word? It was still discussion. We're still on the original. All you got to do is vote. All right. Yeah. You want to do that? All those in favor? Thank you. The next policy, JFABB, Admission of Foreign Exchange Students. This came up because we have Principal Alwell has worked extensively to provide a pathway
198for foreign exchange students to attend Sheppard Hill. As a committee, you know you do vote to approve these. There have not been any this year, but this is a policy that's a common policy because there is the opportunity beyond those that go through specific programs to actually charge tuition for some that may want to attend Sheppard Hill Regional High School. The feedback we received on this particular policy from the community was to add a comma with a conjunction, and that's it. So this is forward for a school committee action. Move the JFAVB as printed. Second. Any discussion? Question? All those in favor? It's unanimous. Thank you. And the last policy is coming back to you. The reason why this is coming back to you, this is JRA-R. This was a new policy when you were
199originally passed. That's why it says new in the top. This was around records requests and one of the main reasons I just came forward is for a non-custodial parent, if you recall when I presented this originally. We did submit it to the state for a review. The state did come back and say that we needed to add one statement, one sentence. So if you look on page three, this one does have red print. So if you look, there's one statement in here that, number one, the one statement starts with the second sentence, a reasonable fee not to exceed the cost of reproduction may be charged. However, a fee may not be charged if to do so would effectively prevent the parents or eligible student from exercising their right under federal law to inspect and review
200the records. That was the one statement that the state gave us. feedback to incorporate in here. There was no simple place to put that and it wasn't easy to put it in its own category. So going into the regulation, this was the section in which that's in. So therefore, working with Policy Sub, we recommended putting this entire section in, access of eligible students and families. And that would cover not only what the state gave us for feedback, but it covers and puts it in context as to where it should be versus a random statement between log of access and access of third parties. So that's why it's coming forward to you again this evening for approval. We accept JRA-R as printed. Just a quick question on the red line that we have. Number two, any
201student regardless of age, they have the right to receive a copy of his or her transcript. Do we want first to put their transcript to be consistent with what we've been doing recently? And then the other one is do we... Is that an unofficial copy of the transcript? Because don't we charge for the transcript? I don't know if we charge for transcripts. And it was... Well, that falls into number one, a reasonable fee. Does it? Well, it's a copy of something in the student's record. So we may charge like $2 for that. I forget what. Okay. I forget what. There is a, we do invest, Sheppard Hill does have the system for transcript requests. I forget, you know, like higher ed institutes have it as well. Common transcript, I forget what it's called, something like
202that. Okay. I call it common app, but it's not common app. I remember getting mine again like 10 years ago, and I think it was like still like $5 or less from here. It could be $2 to $4 if you were in there. Okay. Because it's electronic now, it's not. It was the cheapest transcript I had to hunt down. So it's a reasonable amount. I would say nominal. I'm okay with the, we'll call it Scrivener change of his and her to their. I don't know if the school committee wants to do anything with that or not. It means if somebody needs to, it's up to the chair, but if somebody needs to put that in a motion as an amendment to it, I don't. It's number two, to receive a copy of their transcript. Yeah,
203I I move that we amend his her a number two to be there to Be consistent with With other policies. So it was a motion by Jean and the second by Anthony mm-hmm to amend does so is it was it so So the original motion was by Anthony and the second was by Kelly. So Kelly has to say whether she's okay with that Any more discussion So voting on the amendment that we can change his her to their all those in favor Look, it's unanimous. So hopefully y'all are gonna say yes to the whole policy in the end, right? alright, so going back to the policy part of accepting it with the amendment for The update of JRA-R. All those in favor? Oh, good. It's unanimous. That would really suck if you voted yes or
204no. Thank you, everybody. It does happen. I know it does happen. Okay. We are on our, what, third hour? 630 to 930? And then now we get to go to us, school committee. All right. So continuing the reorg. First, subcommittee assignments. As we did last school committee meeting, policy sub is myself, Maureen, and Jamie, because we had such a fun time last year, we decided to keep it going, right? So we're all set with that. Budget and finance. Subcommittee does anybody have any interest for that? Do we do we do Caitlin's interests? That's right because she was chair of budget. I know we can always follow right, you know What did she serve on the shirt was budget and finance? She did the nursing no the nursing this year teaching learning with us And you
205know, she'd want to be on nursing this year Yes, this is the year for this is year for M&A We don't get a year off from any of those. I would almost say I'd almost keep her on budget and finance, and then if she doesn't want it, maybe just replace her with someone else. I don't know. I just don't want to take her out of something she might have wanted. I will volunteer, Caitlin, for M&A and budget and finance. Wasn't she on capital outlay and safety the year before? Okay. All right, so for budget and finance, if we have it with Caitlin, two other people. And I know Anthony and Kelly? Yeah. Anybody else? I know we can only have three, but I'm just wondering about interest. All right, so right now it's Kelly, Caitlin,
206and Anthony. Great. I would say, like, if Caitlin says she doesn't want to do it, I don't mind popping in. Yeah, we can just, that'll be a quick thing for next, yeah. Capital outlay and safety. Anybody have any interest in that? Anthony, Kelly, Maureen, I'm seeing a few. All right. So who had an interest? Let's see. So far that's Kelly, Maureen, and Anthony had an interest in it. Does anybody else? all right sorry are you okay not being on it then jamie there's always like one committee you're like i want that one you know so you'll see it see the teeth come out when that one shows up um teaching and learning okay who did you pick on that oh that one's kelly maureen and anthony again anybody else up for teaching and learning i
207feel like that's my softest area anything else yeah i mean if there's a need i'll do it but i definitely feel like Probably everyone at the table's got a stronger sense than I do. All right, so right now it's Kathy and Jamie. Okay, I'll add myself. And then, well, if Caitlin wants it, I'll kick myself off. All right. Executive sessions, minutes. Review. Review. Yes, I figured we all understood it was review. I mean, I can do that. All right. I was going to actually ask for that one. Ask myself, you know. Anybody else? That's really cool. Only two people. Do you want me to do that one? Yeah, you have that okay the responsibilities review all executive session minutes that have not been released yet to see if they can be released Yes Maureen all
208right All right, so M&A what I can't always be in person. I know you guys like no, I know it's okay. You're okay with that. Okay. Yeah, it's We work it out. We end up going to the office, and then we'll see you on the big screen. Can I ask a question about M&A? And I certainly am not taking that away from you, because you guys are doing such a nice job on that. What is the time commitment for M&A? Is there a certain, like, what has it been in the past? Was it two years ago? I mean, it was. I don't feel like it was that taxing. Most of the meetings were an hour. I don't think the longest one might have been two. I mean, they weren't long. Is it during the school
209day? Or is it like after? No, it was after school. Okay. Okay. I just didn't. Pretty much, it was, I think, around four o'clock. Oh, okay. So that it would capture all the nurses getting out of school. So it was directly after the school day. That makes sense. I don't mind offering help on that because I've never done a negotiation, so I think that would be interesting. But I certainly don't want to take away from anyone that's our killer negotiation people. Well, I'm sure Caitlin and Jamie want to be on that one. Do you need two or three? You can't have any more than three. Where do you want it to? I was on paraprofessional. Oh, it was DCPA. We've got three, so three works. Who's our three? We got Caitlin, Jamie, Kathy. Oh, Kathy,
210yeah. I was kind of waiting for a real link. All right, and then everybody's favorite, the liaison to CPAC. I promise I don't bite during the CPAC meetings, okay? Heather bakes. Heather bakes, that's right. She bites the baked goods. Heather brings baked goods. Maureen, you're going to do it for a second year? All right. All right. And then Kathy Carmagnani's favorite, favorite one of all time. It's got to be calendar. The one that I would love to abolish is school calendar review. Can you do it early? But Kathy loves it so much. No, I just think there's some equity issues that we like need to always keep in mind on the school calendar. So I've already like I should have already put a check mark on it. All right, you know what? I'll do school
211calendar review this time just so I can see how awesome it is. Okay. Anybody want to join Kathy and I on school calendar review? I don't know. I think you guys can handle it. Sure, it's necessary, yeah. Can you take me off of executive session minutes then? Sure. Unless you don't really want school calendar, but I know it's your favorite. That's right. It's a meeting. I mean, I'll do it if you need three people. That's fine. Which one? Calendar. School calendar? Yeah. What did we put Caitlin on? We have her. Caitlin is on M&A and budget and finance. Okay. I mean, we can always, like, show her, and then we can step off if we need to step off. Yeah. Let's see. I mean, we all know which ones we have, like, a little favorite
212to, so, you know. If she has a favorite, she can let us know next meeting, too. All right, so continuing on, the ones that are not part of policy but were things that have been added was for Charlton Select Board liaison. So that would be one of the Charlton people. I don't want to take your spot. No, by all means. I'll take the beating. You spend your time now. Yeah, go for it. All right. I'm glad none of you have called me out on the fact that I live across the street. So thank you. Yeah, way to go. All right, and then, of course, the Dudley. I will say that I talked to Selectman Sullivan about it, and while he couldn't speak for Selectperson Duchesne, He was saying that he thought maybe it would be
213good for the like once a month for the committee school committee person to provide like an update So whoever might want to do the Dudley one be prepared that you might have to just give an update You know in person at the meeting. Yeah, I did also talk I talked to I talked to Karen spewak in Charlton for like what would what were you guys be you know thinking about for a liaison and it was pretty much like you know come to a meeting maybe one you know a month or every other month and just have like a quick public comment which they have open forum instead of public comment but it's the same thing just keep in mind there are student reps for each yeah there as well yeah from Shepparton Hill yep but
214they also don't normally talk about the budget Leave it leave it open just to see if Caitlin's gonna do it. All right All right, I have child care issue and then one last Idea that was floated to me is from Anthony I think we need to tie in the school councils in more harmony with the school committee. And so I was discussing with Mr. LaMarche, and then I discussed with Gene what the best format would that be. And it might work best if we did liaisons. So we have seven schools in the CPAC, and so if each one of us was a liaison to each school council, then we could start bridging. collaboration between each school and the school committee a little better and also you know I don't know about the rest of you
215but I don't want to be here forever so building that bench and having them understand our role and understanding their role would be a good relationship to build so consideration Can we ask if we can bring that to MASC and ask them their thoughts on that because I wonder for like almost overstepping the bounds of our position by having a liaison to a school council. I don't know. I'm down on my suggestions for roles to be more involved. It's probably no different than a liaison to the select board. I mean, I would chalk it up under like community involvement, increasing transparency. I mean, does that mean like you're an ex-officio member? Right. You would be a non-voting member. I just don't, I don't want it to change the tone of a school council meeting when
216a school committee member's there. And I don't want the principal to feel, like I don't want to overstep on a principal. And get into their like in the way. So for starters that the principal is a co-chair so there's right and their mandate is is outlined under MGL with very very regimented goals and objectives but You know we've also a lot of us have served on school councils and one of the things that comes up time and time again is how do we know our stuffs getting up the ladder and they don't feel like They feel that during the silo so by having an occasional person that represents this body in the room to be ears to their voice I think could really empower them in some of their decision-making and their deliberation Through the
217chair and to the committee this this model is out there Yes, including I've seen as far as going because what? Remember I'll be mentioned as well I've seen liaisons for PTOS as well to make sure that that communication is is all in place But this this model's been out there and it is ex officio whatever because you are a school committee member. You're not a member But I've seen this model in several districts We could table it. No, I didn't. It's good to hear that it's in other districts. I just want to be careful that we don't overstep. It's an open meeting as well. So even if we were not a liaison by definition, any member of the public can attend because it is a public meeting. Okay. I'm just wondering if the liaison puts
218more like, so the expectation is going to be to go to every meeting? No. School committee goal for us to maybe attend some more of these things that are going on rather than have a liaison at all of them all the time. Well, and I think one of the frameworks could be we could contact the chair and the co-chair and say is there a particular meeting that you would prefer us to be in attendance because maybe you've been working on something you'd like to present some ideas or some updates that we could be in the room listening to. That happens frequently with boards and committees at the municipal level because you have planning boards and ZBA and select board and FinCom and they'll often send liaisons to make sure that they're all on the same
219page. I think it's a stride to try to improve our communication and widen our net of input. I know that I would appreciate something that wasn't so regimented either because in my job I don't have a 7 to 3. It's hard enough for me to get to meetings that we already have. And to add on an additional one, so something that would be a little bit more fluid or just pop in on one that they could make would make it kind of easier for me. And some of the councils do a virtual as well. You're even like a school council like contact so we need like kind of buddy each one of us up to a school council chair or something Yeah, something like that. Yeah But I agree with you like I would just
220hate for like if I'm I'm with one certain school in My schedule doesn't allow me to get to the meetings like I don't want to put that school at a disadvantage but if I knew I was just communicating with the chair and could go as I could. Well, and that's the beauty of being a liaison. There's varying capacities of how that dialogue can matriculate. And being the first year, there's going to be a trial and error of what works best for us. But dipping our toe in the water and trying to expand our communication and getting more input is never a bad thing. Do you want us to pick which school? I mean there's seven of us there's seven schools. Great. I'll take Sherbrooke Hill. I'll call dibs. I think that's fine. I'm open to
221anything. And over time we can always rotate. Yeah. I think the Charlton people should go to the Dudley school. I'm fine with that too. I'm fine with that. I mean there's always going to be a Charlton person going to a Charlton school. Let's see. All right. So, Jamie, you said the Hill, right? Sure. All right. I'm just going to go down the line here. Kathy. Is it okay to be at Dudley? She's just giving a hard time. I would go to DMS. I know that Caitlin's son, oh, did he graduate? He's still at Dudley L? Dudley L? Yep. I would leave you at Mason Road. Would that be okay? With the little ones? Yeah, I can take them kids on. I'm twice his size. Wow. All right, Kelly? My preference, I guess, would be CMS,
222but it doesn't really matter. I like all the schools. So CMS? Sure. All right, Anthony? I can do CES. I can do any of them. There's only two left pick one. Yeah, what's left? heritage and child and now Why don't I take care of it because I was on the school council last year for CES just change it up a little bit and Mr. Marsh can give Peter the bad news You can give Laura the bad news she's in walking distance to my house We also had a liaison for the DCEF the years past, and that has been me. And I could just say that we probably could table that because, unfortunately, I would seek out the information and give it. Other than that, the connection was minimal. So it's probably something that doesn't need
223to continue. It might not even have been on your list, but it is something that we have. I did not put it on my list. I suggest that we table that and we pick it up in the next meeting. Yeah, I don't think it's, yeah, I'm just saying, yeah, it probably doesn't even need to. They come to us with what they want to support. They already have a pretty good communication towards us. Do we think that we, you guys have talked about the PTOs. Is that something that you feel like we should be doing, the PTOs? I go anyways to them sometimes. I know that's what I'm trying to like get to like one last thing I'm gonna move goals in meeting plan like table goals in a meeting plan to the next meeting Okay,
224and then if I could just quickly say for MASC, MASS, the November conference, is anybody going other than me? No? I would have to look at my, I have to get permission from work. Okay. I'd have to take my mother along. She might like it. It might be a vacation. I don't know. I want the kids at Masonry to watch her. Can you just tell me what our next meeting date is? That would be the second and the fourth Wednesday next month. Thank you. So it is September 10th. Yeah. Yeah, sorry. And you wanted us to reserve 24th? Please, just in case, because that'll be our goals and Mr. LaMarche's goals, and that can sometimes stretch. I mean, if we can do a power session and get it all done, awesome, but. So where's the
22510th? The 10th would be Charlton Middle School because we're here. All right, so if you're looking, just remember September is the end of early bird pricing for the MASA. September 15th. Yeah. Yes? Madam Chair, school committee, sorry, I forgot about this earlier, but our opening day is Monday, and school committee is always invited. I just want to make sure you know that. We reverse the day, so we don't start with everybody in the morning. We start with them after lunch. as a district. So you're welcome to attend. So that would be 1 o'clock? I was trying to look it up. What time does the assembly? 1230. 1230? 1230. 1230 p.m., yeah. But you're welcome to come for lunch at 1130, too. Lunch is at 1130. Well, it's pretty good, but I don't think it's our
226time. Chicken piccata or anything? So the rest of it's just clean up, Kelly. We don't need a quorum to, you know, so it's okay. What are our next meeting dates, right? So, oh wow, yeah, we did do that. So next school committee meeting date, Wednesday, September 10th at CMS. Let's see everything else is to be determined since they were just formed except for policy review subcommittee Which is also September 10th That'll have to be a Charlton middle school For what that'd be like a goal of ours to like for your subcommittees to meet in September well at least I have have something in place for a date so it's not to be determined. And thankfully we're now at my favorite part of the meeting in which I'm looking for a motion to adjourn. Second. Second.
227Great. All those in favor? It's unanimous.