001H or and VH plus you have the agenda that is on the shelf there to take and the letter to Commissioner Riley that the school committee sent off last week. So I am going to Time the time limit is going to be a half hour for the citizens forum and three minutes for each speaker so Who would like to come up first? Come up introduce yourself and the town that you're from Mr. Matthews going to time, and when you hear the buzzer, that means try to wrap it up, okay? And so you'll have the buzzer loud enough so they can hear it, okay? Timothy Paquette, Dudley-Southbridge Road. For the record, 42 days ago, school started and so did the forced masking of our kids again. I oppose critical race theory. I oppose comprehensive sex education.
002I oppose forced masking of our kids. I oppose mandatory COVID injections. I do support term limits for this committee. Having said that, as a free American, there's a chance former Vice President Joe Biden and Merrick Garland will come after me using the Patriot Act, which I guess would be fitting since I consider myself a patriot. Last week I read a news article online that I found to be very disturbing. It was of a Twitter account belonging to one of the principals that work in this school district. Our policy is we can't bring up any personalities, okay? It was a person that works in this school district. No, we can't do that according to our policy, and it's not just my policy. It's the school committee's. Even though it's being posted to this Dudley-Charlton School District's
003website? Right. You have to give us statements that we can handle, and no personalities at all. How about examples? Can I give you examples? No. The tweets. retweets addressing the overwhelming whiteness of Massachusetts superintendents pro comprehensive sex education pro critical race theory pro forced masking of the population and pro mandatory Matt Covan injections for our children I would also I also understand that this person would not allow students to wear any political attire at a school We just said. I didn't mention anybody. I know, but this isn't an issue. Okay, fine. Here's my question. For clarification, what is the policy and remedy for employees at our schools that are in positions of power and influence with regards to posting highly political material on the social media platform and more pointly, retweets that seem to try
004to intimidate and discourage parents from objecting to and speaking out against the progressive agenda. All this is being done using Twitter under the screen name Chappy8611. listen i have a motion to reset this is all on your website it doesn't matter that is not our policy yes okay okay i'm done i'm not that was the last thing i had to say so yes yes yes yes yes yes yes okay this is all on your website wait Okay. We're going to resume our meeting, and before anyone speaks, Mr. LaMarche, you can address. personalities okay for our citizens for personnel personnel and personalities Madam Chair and school committee and Mr. Paquette the policy clearly says you can't talk about personnel matters you can only talk about things that are within school committee's purview if you have concerns
005with personnel there is a policy I don't have the call numbers out on the top of my head if it's building based you can go to the teacher or the principal if it's principal base you can come to the superintendent okay Am I allowed to ask you what the policy is on employees commenting on political matters on social media without identifying? Like, what's the policy? There is a policy. It's on our website. But this is not supposed to be an exchange either, going back and forth. Well, it was a question that I was asking that I figured you'd answer later. Yeah, I understand. So that's my question. What's the policy? I understand the question. OK, sorry. Continuing. I must say it's not a good look for this committee or our district. In fact, it's very
006telling of this school committee's agenda. If anyone wants to know what fascism actually looks like, read Merrick Garland's open letter aimed at the parents of this nation. Recently, this school committee voted to potentially renew Superintendent LaMarche's employment contract while using words describing his past performances as proficient, showing improvement, benefit of the doubt. So you can imagine that the parents of this district are losing hope in this elected body. If these members can't even find the intestinal fortitude required to defy DESE and vote to create a mask optional policy, what are the odds that this committee won't kowtow when mandatory COVID injections come from Jeff Riley or Charlie Baker? It's only a matter of time. I am asking this committee again, please put forth a motion tonight and unmask our kids. Lastly, never forget, we as
007parents fight politically, not because we hate what's in front of us, but because we love what's behind us. Thank you. Okay, who else would like to come up to speak? Do we have anyone else? Jamie Publico, Dudley. I want to start by saying that I just re-enrolled my daughter back into Dudley Middle School because she missed her friends. But I want to also make it clear that I don't trust the school committee, Department of Education, or any part of the government with my kids. You've shown that you will ignore what parents want and don't want for our children, which boils down to our freedom of choice. And you won't stand up for that for us. You won't stand up for them. We're now labeled domestic terrorists for standing up for that freedom. I was going
008to second what Tim was going to talk about, the Twitter and the open. agenda but obviously I'll bypass that under the circumstance but I think you get what we're getting at you've made it clear that funding is more important than our children if you don't mind I do have questions for you guys I don't know if that exchange is part of the policy or not am I able to do that ask us your questions but we're not going to debate them this evening okay We'd like to know if students need to be citizens of Massachusetts and either a Dudley or Charlton resident. If a motion was put in by Mrs. Kabala on the floor April 29th, 2020 to approve Mr. LaMarche's request to allow his children to be enrolled in this district despite their residency
009in Connecticut. If Mr. LaFayette seconded this motion. Mr. LaMarche, did you recently attend a Charlton town meeting seeking an override to balance this district's budget? Did this district receive an ESSER I and ESSER II and an estimate of ESSER III 2020 to present, approximately $2 billion? Did this district also receive additional grant monies to include governor emergency funds? If this district is receiving all of these funds from the state via the federal government and taxpayers in the district, why is this district unable to balance a budget and yet Mr. LaMarche seeks more money through an override? And do you have an accounting sheet of all this money coming in and what it is used for? That's all. I just want to ask a question. I'm hoping I get your name right. I'm sorry. Ms. Poblico?
010Poblico. Can you email us those questions so that we can have them in writing? Absolutely. Thank you. My name is Shauna. I'm from Charlton. So I prepared something, but I also didn't have a chance to read your letter yet. I'm assuming it's positiveness in trying to, I guess, unmask. and whether it's vaccinated or non-vaccinated. So I'm quite nervous. I usually don't. Okay. I usually keep my opinions to myself. So I know this might not be the right time, but I don't know when the right time will be. My statement is simple. I'm a proud mother of two. I want to make it known that I am vaccinated and that my children will be vaccinated. But it won't be because of the government, the state of Massachusetts, or the Dudley Charlton school system to tell me
011that I have to do so. I will do so because it is my right as a parent that I feel I can make the proper decision for my children. Please know that the decision to vaccinate my children does come with fears, but I will do what's right in my opinion. There are fears, my fears are the reports from the CDC in regards to myocarditis and pericarditis in young males. And that is real, though only a couple of thousands have been reported in a country of millions. It seems small, but it's still very scary to a mother. I am aware there are any risks. There are multiple risks with all vaccines, but it doesn't make any decisions any easier. I will continue to educate myself and my Children to the best of my ability, but I
012will never voice my decision onto others. I will stand by and support the unvaccinated. I know all of us in this room. including our committee members know of individuals who are not vaccinated. Their decisions are made for reasons we may never know and that may be none of our business. We owe all our community members here in the Dudley Charlton Schools District the respect and the understanding of their medical freedom and their decisions. They that feel the best for themselves and their families. I am speaking to all of you today with my concerns as these mandates are becoming part of our daily lives and possibly our future with vaccine mandates on the horizon and communities in Massachusetts. I'm asking you to not allow this in the Dudley Charlton. Please, if you all can just hold
013meetings, talk to parents, talk to the Board of Health, and make a sound decision on what's best for our children, I would truly appreciate that. I thank you all for this time. Good evening. My name is Carla Cohen, and I'm here. I didn't prepare anything tonight because I didn't know I was going to make it this evening here. But I would like to address an email I sent to you all in regards changing the place or the location of where the meetings are held. I sent an email with an article about the Abington School District that they moved the meetings to... Either the police station, the town hall, to give parents and caregivers the chance to either wear a mask or not. So one of the school committee members replied to me a flat no.
014Just that person wouldn't even consider, put a thought on it. And then Mr. Lamar replied to me saying that. It was stated on the policies that the meetings had to be held in school. But when you read the policy, it also says the superintendent could also change the location. I suggested to do the meeting in the Daxter Hall at the Charlton Public Library because I feel it has enough space for everyone to social distance if people are... concerned about that and I was told that there were very few issues about the AV sound support for the meetings so my question is that the selectmen or the town the town meetings are held in the town hall and they also record those record those meetings so what is the issue that you guys can be a
015little bit flexible because we're asking you to have a choice. And you have told multiple times that you are against, you know, all these mandates. Why can't you just like give us a little bit of hope that you're not going to keep going with all these things? You know, my daughter is in first grade with a mask on all day. And I just hope that you can just reconsider it because I've lost hope in trying to communicate with all of you. Like, I don't have a place where I can be and say and express my concerns just because I don't get an answer or I get a copy-paste from all of you. Like, where do we go from here? My daughter is only six years old and I I'm trusting you I'm trusting Her education
016with you so I just want to understand why You guys don't want to make the change to just change the location Thank you Anyone else would like to address us so in the email Mr. Lamar said that the Abington School District had a special situation for accommodating those emails. And when I went back to the article, I kept reading and reading and reading. English is not my first language, and it's very hard for me sometimes to understand. All of you must. If you don't want to consider that, you know, like maybe there are people here that have some hearing problems and are also affected by it. So don't think that because these people are not speaking up about the mask, it's because everyone is very happy about wearing it. So sometimes I have to interrupt
017some of my friends here and say, what did they say? Because I can understand and at least I can read the lips if the masks are not on. Thank you. Marsha Wagner Dudley the policy we were given says keeping open communication with public is clear critical to the proper functioning of the school committee but the policies that are written feel so stifling to us and in conflict Constricting three minutes is not enough and shouldn't taxpaying public have a say in the policy procedures? We feel like the FBI is here already to some degree. It just doesn't feel like there's a give and take. To me communication is give and take. Now you say go to the specific principal or superintendent but that's not transparency for the rest of the public. Anyone else would like to
018address us? Okay. Seeing none, we'll go on to our next item on the agenda, communications. Mr. Lamont. Madam Chair and School Committee, I have two items for communication this evening. One is that included in the handout this evening was the letter that the School Committee uh put together and sent to the commissioner riley i am in uh please keep in mind that that was modeled after the sandwich public schools which was handed to me last time but i'd already seen it before i'm in contact with the superintendent for sandwich public schools and they have not received a response yet from commissioner riley or his office but i did want to at least give provide an update for you as a committee regarding that letter because i know that was part of the part of the
019conversation. The other is I did receive a communication. Excuse me. You received a communication from the Massachusetts Nurses Association. This was sent out to all Massachusetts cities and towns and school committees, and I handed it this evening to you. It is a letter of Mass Nurses Association saying that they are looking for health care professionals to work within our school systems, public health, acute care hospitals. They're seeking support for improvements and believe essential to ensuring a safe return to in person learning during the critical phase. of the pandemic response they're looking for us to increase nurses as well as other support personnel i am proud to say as a district we were way ahead of this letter dated september 22nd and we've hired we've added additional nurses to our district and addition additional school adjustment
020counselors but i did need to share that correspondence with you as a committee okay and that includes communications for me yes okay uh members anyone have any communications this evening Jamie? I just wanted to say that I am in complete appreciation of our schools offering after school sports and activities for our kids again. It is so apparent how much my children needed it and even watching their friends they need it and it's amazing to see the life. back in our district in our after-school activities so i appreciate all the efforts that went into that specifically i'm talking about the middle school i was at the dudley middle school too and they they had the same kind of life breathed in and i know the high school i won't take any of the uh of mr
021wallace's um next part away but i know the high school has seen some wonderful ability for the kids to be back and I just wanted to go on record for how much that really is obvious that they appreciate it and this evening I did receive a communication thank you note from our executive retired executive secretary Sandra Sullivan and I did start it around the table okay so everyone can see it and That will conclude our communications this evening. Student representative report, Mr. Trevor Wallace. Hello, everybody. Shepherd Hill is back in the full swing of things as we approach our homecoming weekend. Beginning this Friday with our homecoming dance, which will be held in the Shepherd Hill parking lot from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. It has a midnight theme. This Saturday is our homecoming day
022celebration from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., ending with the homecoming football game at 7 p.m. There will be clubs, groups, and athletic games all afternoon, so please be sure to come check that out. Tickets will be $5 for all adults, $3 for all students 10 years and older, and free for senior citizens. These will be general admission and will be good for all of the homecoming game contests. There have been two changes at Shepherd Hill in recent days. First, our cafeteria has been rearranged to eliminate desks and reinstate lunch tables. Students can sit with their friends as normal, but must sign in at their table in case contact tracing is necessary. Second, seventh period will be unlocked from the schedule next Monday, October 18th, and we will return to a fully rotating schedule. For our
023athletic programs, it's hard to believe that we are more than three-quarters of the way through our fall season, and many of our programs are in the final week and a half of the regular season. Football sits at 3-2 after a close game against a tough opponent in Algonquin last Friday night. Boys and girls soccer each tied Hudson 1-1 on Tuesday night, where the girls celebrated senior night. Volleyball has competed well and will be hosting their annual Dig Pink night this Thursday at 5-15 against Sutton. Field hockey celebrated their senior night last week after a close game with Pauuben. They are looking forward to welcoming the Charlton Middle School Field Hockey Club for joint practice on the turf on October 20th. Golf and cross country have both had several contests to approach the end of their
024seasons. The Golf League tournament is being held this Friday at the Northern Spy Golf Club in Townsend, and cross country will be heading to the MSTCA Bob McIntyre Twilight Invitational Race on Cape Cod this Saturday, where they race at 6 p.m. at the Barnstable Fairgrounds. Cheer has been working hard on their game day and competitive routines. and has been asked to host the league championship meet later in November. This weekend, field hockey will kick off our homecoming celebrations by hosting Groton Dunstable on Friday at 4 p.m. The festivities can carry over into Saturday the 16th, where JV Volleyball plays at 2 p.m. and Varsity Volleyball plays at 3.15 p.m. against Grafton. Girls Varsity Soccer will play against North Middlesex at 2 p.m. on the turf, while JV and Varsity Boys Soccer will take on North
025Middlesex at 4.30 p.m. Homecoming will conclude with the varsity football game Saturday night at 7, under the lights against Wachusett, on what will also be senior night for football, cheer, marching band, and color guard. Tickets will be available at the gate all day long. Finally, as an extension of the regular season, most Central Mass teams will be participating in the CMASS tournament for each sport. Seatings will take place on Monday the 18th. I also wanted to echo what Ms. Terry said from a high school perspective because it's truly wonderful to finally have sports back in the high school. Our marching band held its first home show in two years this past Saturday, taking home five stars in Micah competition. The band also took home first place at a competition in North Andover last last Saturday.
026We have four more shows left this season, concluding with the New England Championship on Halloween night. Coming up on Friday, October 29th at 6 p.m. is the National Honor Society's Haunting on the Hill, which is a kid-friendly drive-thru Halloween experience that was a tremendous success last year. Admission will be $2 per car, and children of all ages are encouraged to dress up in their best Halloween costume. The rain date for this event is Saturday, October 30th. The National Honor Society is looking for monetary and candy donations as well as loaned Halloween decorations to help make this event a success. Proceeds from the event will go towards our Thanksgiving food drive. Please consider donating. Items can be dropped off in sealed labeled bags at the Shepherd Hill main office or feel free to reach out to
027me or Mr. Corey Stefan or advisor with any questions. And with that, I believe I've covered everything. Thank you all for your time and I hope to see you at homecoming this Saturday. Thank you. Any questions? Okay, good job. Thank you. Superintendent's report, Mr. Lamarche. Madam Chair and School Committee, excellent job. Trevor, I see you getting a little bit more comfortable because your cadence was just slightly slower tonight. But you do cover a lot in a very short period of time, so I greatly appreciate your report this evening of all the happenings that are going on within Shepherd Hill, and it's replicated across our schools, which is fantastic. This evening I have a couple of items to report in my report. October, excuse me, September 29th, we had a very successful in-person dinner for First
028Honors Night. It was a great evening. We were excited to continue to build back evenings and celebrate who we are. And as Principal Chaplin shared that evening, we need to celebrate our academic scholars. And that was a great event to do that. I thought our guest speaker in Shepherd Hill Regional High School alumni, Major Chelsea Scott, was excellent in her message and relatability to the students that evening. It was a great evening. We have four Shepparton Regional High School students who have been commended for their outstanding performance on the preliminary SAT National Scholarship Qualifying Test in 2020. Gabe Roach, Bronson Duby, Abigail Lepper, and Mr. Trevor Wallace was recognized as well. I also want to compliment the Charlton PTO for holding three great social events at Charlton Elementary School, Heritage School, and Charlton Middle School.
029I was only able to make one of the events at Heritage, but a huge thank you to Charlton PTO Board and President Michelle Goudreau for supporting all children through these fun events. I have to say, Ms. Goudreau certainly knows how to run a very well-organized kickball game with students against staff. No question about that. But thank you for the Charlton PTO. As the school committee has seen, and this is reflected, this will be reflected in my update for the self-evaluation document this evening as well, the educator evaluation systems, all of them within our district, are re-engaged for this school year after we put a hold on some of them through some of the extremely tough times within our district. Not that tough times are over, but they are reengaged. While everyone is responsible for all
030aspects of their evaluation systems, for teachers, we identified areas considered look-fors, things that we're looking for collectively as an administrative team, within standards and indicators to collectively develop a better understanding of effective practices within our school district and identify credible approaches for everybody to support teachers. The standards and indicators are as follows. Standard 1, under Curriculum Planning and Assessment, to really take a look at subject matter. matter knowledge and how that looks across our district. Standard two teaching all students we're going to look at student engagement across our entire district we're also going to look at safe learning environments for our students very important for the Dudley Child Regional School District. Under standard three family and community engagement we're looking for curriculum support and what that means is that our educators within our district support
031families and understanding the curriculum which is in place within our school district. And then professional culture, we need to continue to work on reflective practice. I think this is extremely important during our last 19, 20 months through COVID and moving forward. But reflective practice is a key to all of our success. Lastly, keys to this re-engagement of all evaluation systems is open communication, collaboration, and flexibility. I think flexibility is really a key. We have a systematic opportunity to be on the same page, which we are doing administratively and with our educators and teachers, and build these processes in invaluable dialogue for continuous improvement together as a school district. An outreach email was sent out to DCRSD family specific to COVID testing and open lines of communication. I did receive some feedback and agree that I
032did not completely close the loop on close contacts. This was an email where I identified that we did have at least six individuals who were testing and it wasn't shared with us. The loop I did not close, which I appreciate the feedback on that email, is that all contacts are contacted within that school day. So more specifically, and to give our nurses credit because they are working extremely hard, especially with our COVID coordinator, is that all close contacts within the same day of learning of a positive case. If you were not contacted, the information gathered did not include your child as a close contact in accordance with the charts that we attached to that email. So that's the loop. I didn't close in that communication and I apologize for that, but I appreciate the feedback
033that I received on that. We did receive a number of correspondence and asking if they were a close contact. And I just wanted to reassure everybody that if you are a close contact, you were contacted that day if you're identified. If you, as a family member or a parent or guardian or caregiver, have a question and believe your child is a close contact, please contact the school nurse the next day. Again, our daily efforts are to contact all close contacts in the same day of learning of a positive COVID case. As always, if you have questions regarding COVID, please feel free to contact Ms. Brittany Stolberg, our COVID coordinator. The next item I have is that the Policy Subcommittee has embarked on a new feedback loop with Dudley-Charlton Regional School District families. As school committee
034policies are reviewed, updated, or created, and after the school committee first read, the draft redline versions will be sent out to all DCRSD families via our district communication system. The Policy Subcommittee will take all feedback under consideration in the policy adoption process. I received some feedback after sending out that email as well. to all families. One point that was made, and I appreciate it, was the connection to the alphabet soup associated with the title of the policy. More specifically, are the capital letters a representative acronym for that particular policy? This was a great question, and I hope to shed some light on that in the lettering of policies this evening. The lettering of policies, for example, the first reads we had at our last meeting, ACAB, JIC, BBAA, follow a National School Boards Association classification
035system. The lettering system provides an efficient means of coding, filing, and finding policies across districts, but also across states. There are 12 major classifications. Each is signed in alphabetical code or first letter. So A is for foundations and basic commitments. B is for school board governance. C is for general school administration. D is for fiscal management. E is support services. F is facilities development. G is personnel. H, negotiations. I, instructional program. J, students. K, school community relations. L, education agency relation. From there, though, I want to be clear that it's not an exact science or exact system out there. The first letter will always be for the category, but the following letters may not always line up with some other district or some other state. I have learned that some districts adopt policies with a
036different four-letter or five-letter or six-letter or a dash within those letters, but the first letter will always be the same. I certainly hope this helps and adds some light to the alphabet soup of policies that is on the top of the pages. I know at the last meeting it was asked for us to set up a link for the community on our website. We're not there yet, but we're still working. on it to do that but we did manage the first step of sending it out to all dcrsd families for communication at this point in time and that concludes the superintendent's report this evening any questions jamie sorry i just have a couple quick quick questions um One question that came up in the district that I work in is, or the health district, school
037district that I work with, the test and stay program that we have in place, it became obvious that if a parent wanted to pre-sign up for that in case their child were to be exposed, it really helps the nurse a lot the day of an exposure. Is that something that our district is asking of parents as well? And if so, I didn't know that, so maybe we need to message that out to parents. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We've sent that out several times in emails to everybody with a link for signing up to CIC Health Portal. So I do get those, but I looked at that as this is what you would be asked, not this is what you should do now. Do you know what I mean by that? Sure. So people have clicked
038on that. People have asked questions because the reason why I recall it so easily is because one of the questions in that form is it's a consent for all forms of testing. And a lot of... I received a lot of feedback that are we doing pool testing because that's one of the things on the consent form that they're signing up for. And then I had to reiterate in a subsequent email that we're not doing pool testing, but if you want to sign up for it. So I have no problem sending that out again as a proactive approach. So to be clear, if you are okay with your child ever test and stay, if they were to be exposed, it's something that would be helpful to the nurses to do ahead of time now. always but
039we don't we don't want to pressure somebody into doing it agreed it's their it's their choice as to whether they want to participate in test and say which has been communicated several times yeah okay to be proactive I could certainly send it out again okay as a parent I'm gonna go home and sign up for it because I think it's a fantastic program to keep our kids in school if they were to be exposed and I've seen it work wonderfully in districts that are using it I think it's one of the best programs that our country has come up with and it's Massachusetts is the first state to move forward with it so Okay, thank you. If I could, we've had very good success of it as well for close contacts. And it is a
040communication that the nurse has with the parent if they are considered a close contact. And it has worked out extremely well, as you said. Yeah, great. Okay, and my second, that kind of prompted me, my second question here. Anybody that has... I agree with Ms. Peel. I don't know where she is, but I agree with what she said about the vaccination being something that my family has opted for for my family, but I think it is a decision that needs to be made for each family. I've never been asked to submit that to the nurse. Is that something that we should do in order to start seeing where our numbers fall for this 80%? Or is that something that we're not there yet? I'm wondering if I should be submitting that to the nurse. Thank
041you, Mr. Terry. Again, a really good question. We've tried to stay away from the vaccination game as a school district, so we've not been asking for people for records of vaccination. It really is, as I've indicated since May of last year, it is not something that I would ever recommend to the school committee to enter into. vaccinations and mandates of vaccinations. It does come up in independent conversations with school nurses and those that are considered close contacts because there is, as I sent out with the communication, there are different bubbles or avenues for people to go with vaccination. But at this point in time, I'm still I would still not recommend that we seek out vaccination records of individuals. Okay, and I want to be clear. I'm not suggesting that we mandate that. Please know
042that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying if we wanted to see how close our district met that 80%, we need a stick in the ground. You know, we need to know where people are at. Ms. Terry, my understanding, and I've seen several reports periodically, is that state MassDPH sends out a report. on vaccination rates for school-aged children for us to be able to see where our communities are sure and i can give you the feedback that i know about that that includes students that go to all private schools that include students that that may have school choice in a different district and so what i've understand from the department of public health from the health side is that when you submit that form as a district about the 80 percent you have to look at
043only your school data and it was clarified on our call on Tuesday that it also It has to be a whole school. Another district that I know was looking at a middle school breaking it in half because that's who's eligible currently to be vaccinated. And they said, no, it needs to be a whole school. So it would need to be 80% of staff and students put together as numbers to get to that. So it just made me wonder where we really were at in our district. So I understand that we may not be there, but I wanted to at least kind of have clarity on that. And my last thing is unrelated to COVID. This lettering policy that you put forth, this was so helpful to me this week. I had to look up a
044policy to reply to Mrs. Kavala, and reading this communication gave me a better understanding of where we were and how I could find it easily. And I wonder if just this little paragraph that you have here that you explained it could be the beginning of our website to explain it for people. So anybody that goes to look for a policy. could utilize that to find it faster thank you any other questions okay seeing none We'll go to new business. Appointment of school committee secretary and records access officer. Thank you. Madam chair and school committee, this evening we have to go through the formal process of appointing Ms. Erin Glenn as the school committee secretary and also the records access officer. I would respectfully ask the committee to appoint in two different motions both of those
045positions. So we'll take the first. school committee secretary i'll entertain a motion uh to appoint um aaron glenn i'll move i got a second any discussion seeing none all in favor motion carries it's unanimous and i'll entertain a motion to appoint aaron glenn records access officer Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Motion carries. It's unanimous. Congratulations, Eric. Madam Chair, just to be clear, it doesn't come with a raise or anything like that, does it? I think Aaron knows that, so. I'll save that for next meeting. Yes, wishes. Thank you. Report of the Director of Finance and Operations and the Budget and Finance Subcommittee. Director, Mr. Matthew. And Chair LaFerriere. Thank you very much. If it's all right with the school committee, I'd like to invite up our auditor, Mr. Frank Ceretti from Powers &
046Sullivan. Mr. Ceretti is going to review the FY20 audit. Thank you very much for having me here tonight. I appreciate the opportunity to present the results of the 2020 audit to you. I'd also like to start off by thanking the superintendent, the director of finance, the treasurer, the rest of the finance team for all the cooperation and assistance that we received. For your school, as well as many of the other schools and cities and towns that we deal with, this has been a very challenging time, a challenging time to get the audits done. We've had to adapt. Many of the audits have become remote, and this is one of them. Our staff, your staff, a decision was made to conduct the audit remotely again this year. And that works out fine. I mean, we have
047a secure portal. We're able to transmit the information back and forth. We take advantage of the technology with Zoom. We had meetings, several meetings with Mr. Matho and with Carol, the treasurer, just for planning purposes and then to go over questions that might have come up. So we had a number of meetings that way, and it worked out well. It did definitely add an extra burden to your team and their staff to scan and get the information uploaded to the portal where normally we'd come out and we'd go through the files and they wouldn't have to do that work. So there was some extra work there that we appreciate all their time and effort to do that, and it really allowed us to do what we needed to do pretty efficiently and to be able
048to get through everything. From a timing standpoint, the audit was delayed a little bit. We ended up, we still were able to do some of our preliminary work, which we had scheduled back in May and July. And at that time, we were able to test transactions and test some of the data that supports the OPEB liability. That's the other post-employment benefits liability. It's basically health insurance for retirees mainly. And there's a lot of testing that goes into that. We were able to do that, which was great. And then the year-end work really kind of happened between March and July of 21. So it was a little bit later just because of all the things that were going on around here with getting the kids back to school, getting the construction projects and the HVAC systems
049and the ventilation and all that stuff up and going. Once all that stuff was squared away and... The books were in the right kind of shape to be able to conduct the audit. Everything was sent to us. We ended up getting a great package at that time, and we were able to go through everything. We didn't have to propose any adjustments to the district's records. We didn't find errors in the accounting records, so the records were in very good shape. We tested transactions. We didn't find issues with the transactions that we tested. There's proper supporting documentation. The transactions are charged where they should be and are going through the proper controls that you have set in place. So we didn't have any issues with any of that work that we did. We were able to...
050issue drafts in July of 21 and the final reports were then issued in August of 21 after that so those are the reports that you should have in front of you and I'd like to go through just give you some financial highlights on it pretty quickly if you wanted to turn to page 14 you can see some of the numbers that I'm going to talk about here that's yes thank you rich and Yeah, it's page 14 of the actual report. And I was just going to talk a little bit about your fund balance levels. Your general fund fund balance is kind of the important one that the Department of Revenue looks at for your E&D to make sure that you don't have, you know, excess funds that you would need to return back to the
051member towns. Your fund balance totaled $2.6 million. You can see that towards the bottom of the page there. 1.1 million dollars of that was considered to be assigned its E&D that was voted to fund your next year's budget and so that gets set aside and Out of your total and it leaves you with your unassigned fund balance and your unassigned fund balance with 1.5 million dollars And that's about 3% to your budget And the maximum that you're allowed to carry is 5% of your next year's budget. So at 3% of your current, you seem to be under that level. So no issues with having to turn any money back. Your actual E&D that was certified was $1.5 million, almost exactly what your unassigned fund balance was. And then I want to talk a little bit
052about your budgetary results. And you can see those on page 47 if you care to flip to that page. And so if you look in the actual column and you go down towards the bottom, you can see your net change in fund balance was $101,000. So you had $101,000 of excess funds. So that was managed pretty well just from a break-even standpoint. And then if you look at your budget to actual, your expenditures came in $1.4 million under budget. And that was mainly due to... You had $518,000 of unspent funds in district administration, and that was mainly related to contingency line items for textbooks, facilities, and stipends. You also were $778,000 under for transportation, and that's just due to the fact that you weren't transporting kids in that year. And your other school services were
053$114,000 over, and that was mainly related to athletic stipends. So you had a big increase from your unexpended funds, and then that big increase was offset by a shortfall in your revenues. Your revenues were $163,000 under budget, and that's mainly because intergovernmental revenues were under by $354,000. And that's because you put $400,000 of your transportation revenue into your transportation revolving fund. And that gives you some flexibility, you know, having that money in there just for allows you to better budget your transportation costs and kind of have a known amount sitting there. And that's not uncommon at all. Many, many of the regional school districts that we deal with have adopted that section of the law that allows you to set that money aside like that. The decrease in the intergovernmental was offset by some surpluses
054in investment income of $54,000 and miscellaneous income of $127,000. And looking at the budget and the fact that you came in with a $100,000 surplus, you were a little under in the revenue, but there's a good explanation for that because you set money aside in your revolving fund and then you're under probably more than you would normally be because of COVID. You weren't spending the money that you would have expected to. that the budget appears to be well managed and well thought out and that you have good budgetary controls in place. That's what we see when we're looking at it from the outside. The other thing is your health insurance trust. Effective July 1-19, your self-insured health insurance plan ceased to exist and you joined the Mass Strategic Health Group. The reason for that was
055to achieve economies of scale and also benefit from joint negotiation and joint purchases. The money that you're collecting for health insurance and paying out to the strategic health group is still going through the internal service fund. The fund balance totaled $3.2 million, so you have a good healthy balance in there. It was a decrease of $300,000 from the prior year. The current year revenues totaled $7.9 million and the current year payments were $8.2 million. A couple other things that I wanted to mention related to the financials, the OPEB liability. The district is not currently funding the OPEB liability. What we're seeing is that more and more school districts seem to be getting the trust funds set up and starting to at least put in a nominal amount to try to start funding it. And one
056of the biggest things related to this liability and getting it down is getting a higher discount rate. And if you look at, like, the pension system, Worcester Regional Retirement System or some of those other mass pension systems, they've got discount rates that are up around 7%, 6.5%. And it just makes a huge difference in your liability, like really brings it down. But for you to get that discount rate up, you need to start funding because the actuaries... take a look at how much money you've set aside and then they project that out to see how long that would cover your benefits for and whatever that period is they can use the higher discount rate of like six or seven percent depending on how you have your funds invested you know what your funds are invested
057to achieve if they're invested to achieve a six and a half seven percent rate they can use that for that period but then when the trust runs out of money they have to go down to the double a municipal bond rate which right now is about 2.2 percent and There's one other thing I'd like to show you related to that. If we flip to page 41 in the financial statements, there's a chart there called a sensitivity analysis. And what it does is it shows you what a 1% change in the discount rate would mean to your liability. And so it's in the middle of the page, and you'll see current discount rate of 3.5%, and that's what your discount rate currently is. And so if that discount rate... increased by 1%, your liability would go
058down by almost $4 million. And so if you were able to go from 3.5% up to 6.5%, you would really be knocking that down, and it would really make funding it a lot more manageable. And when you're funding it, you also are earning investment income, too, which is going, in addition to what you're putting in, you start compounding that interest that you're earning on the funds that you invest. So it's just something to think about. More and more of the school districts are starting to do it. From an accounting standpoint, it's a prudent thing to do to fund the liabilities, especially while you're earning the benefits of being earned. The net pension liability, that really just relates to any employees that don't qualify to be in the Mass Teachers Retirement System. So that's with the
059Worcester Regional Retirement System. The liability totaled $15 million at the end of the year. It was a decrease of about $100 million from the prior year. And that system was in total 47% funded. And that was an increase of 4% from the prior year. So they made some progress. They had good investment income. And like I said, they're using a 7.65% discount rate. So those are really the things that I wanted to highlight in the financial statements. And just to summarize all of that, we were able to issue an unmodified opinion on the financial statements. That's a clean opinion. It's the best opinion you can get. It means your financial statements are fairly stated in all material respects in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Reporting deadlines were met. The information that we received was
060accurate, and we didn't find any internal control deficiencies or any issues like that that if we did, we would have already brought those to your attention. And all of our interactions were professional and courteous, which we always appreciate. There are two other reports. I can cover the report on federal awards in about two minutes, if you want me to run through that real quick. That's required for any entity that expends more than $750,000 in a year in federal funds. The district spent $2.1 million. $747,000 of that was on school lunch, and another $1.3 million was on educational grants. The special education cluster, those are your special education grants, qualified as a major program, so that's what we had to test. They're like 43% of the total. Based on that testing, we had no findings, no
061question costs. We didn't see any deficiencies in internal controls, so again, that was another clean report. Couldn't get better results than that. And then the last thing is the management letter. I always like to say that the management letter is critical in nature. It doesn't highlight all the things that your team does well, and there are a lot of things that they do well, but it's just not the nature of the report. There is one new comment in there that talks about controls over cash, and it's really just geared around making sure that the monthly reconciliations are being completed on a timely basis every month. The monthly reconciliations were done and certain reconciliations were completed. The majority of it was done, but there were two accounts, probably the two most important ones, payroll and accounts
062payable, that there were a few months where... There was some variance between the bank and the book that needed further investigation to identify, you know, all the reconciling items. Otherwise, all of the accounts, including those two, were reconciled between the treasurer's book balances and the general ledger balances, and all the other accounts were reconciled between bank and book. And so this was something that we, you know, talked about, and then very soon after we talked about it, a very strong effort was made to get everything caught up and brought up to date. By the time we were getting ready to wrap things up, all the reconciliations were done. We were completely satisfied with the reconciliations that were made. There were no adjustments that needed to be made to the general ledger as a result of
063completing those reconciliations. So it really was just identifying what all those reconciling items were and basically putting them in their right place. So that was good to see, and it's my understanding that that's happening now on a go-forward basis every month that this is all being done. The other part of it was just that we noticed that there are transfers being done between banks that it's kind of an old-fashioned process where you cut a check out of one bank and you deposit that check into another bank. And, you know, it can create timing differences at the end of a period if you have, you know, if you write a check and it doesn't cash until the next period. It's just not the most efficient way to do it. Just from a best practice, we recommend
064that you start doing those with wire transfers instead of writing checks to make those transfers. Part of it is a result of our software and the mechanisms that we need to use to make that work. But yes, we've certainly talked about those things and we'll make that happen. There were two other prior year comments. One was related to fraud risk assessment, and I know that was delayed due to COVID. And the plan, as I understand it, is that you're looking to hire an outside consultant to come in and do that. And that's very common. That's what we find that a lot of our clients do. And the last one was a cyber risk assessment, and that was really documenting the different controls that you have in place to protect against the cyber security risks and
065ransomware. payroll hijacking and all that stuff that they'd like to do. That documentation, it's my understanding that that was completed after year end, so I expect that that comment will be fully resolved and out of the management letter next year. And so that was everything. To add a comment about the risk assessment, we're looking to contract with Eric Kishner, Kinsher, Kinsheff, to perform that for us. He does a lot of those, like that's a name that we see out there a lot, so I think that's probably a good choice. Mr. Matthew? Am I right to assume that when they talked about the reconciliation, the monthly reconciliations, that it was the same timing as when we brought in the new treasurer? The confluence of events of the old treasurer leaving, leaving a gap. The new charger
066coming in, having to get caught up, hiring an outside consultant to help with the final reconciliation, and then having COVID hit almost immediately after that. It really just blew the entire year. It really did. I just want to make sure that that was the question. That was the cause, yes, absolutely. Everything's caught up and satisfied. Any other questions? Okay, thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you. Great to see everybody in person. You joined us last year via Zoom, I believe, correct? Yep. I'd just like to make a motion that we send the right to the office and all the workers are there for the hard work they've done for this every year. They come across for us. I'd like to make that motion. Do I have a second? Second. Discussion? Seeing none, all in
067favor? Motion carries. It's unanimous. I sent Mr. Lamarche to turn down the air conditioning, and I didn't realize he had to go. I thought he just had to do something in here. Sorry. No, that's fine. I was fully trained on how to do it. You made a motion to have you send a notice to the whole business department. What a good job. The death and the passing. Passed unanimously. Thank you. Okay. Yep. So I think we're in good shape with our audit. We didn't get too many merits against us either. So Mr. Matthew will do the donations next. Or is it? No, it's Chair LaFerria. No, Mr. Matthews is coming back in. No, it is. It is? I think he took that first, the audit. Now, do you have anything else before Chair LaFerri speaks
068on vote? No, no, I do. Okay. Thank you, Mrs. O'Coin. We're going to turn it back to him after the break up. Thank you, Mrs. O'Coin. So Budget and Finance Subcommittee met on September 28th at 3.30 virtually on video conference. That was our first meeting we reorganized. And I was the last one not to be chair of a policy subcommittee. So I was determined, not that I was an expert at it, just because I was the last. I'm chair of the subcommittee. Mrs. Kamanyani and Mrs. Cavallo are joining me on that subcommittee. We discussed and Mr. Matthew brought forward a draft schedule for the year as far as our meeting schedule, and that will continue to be tweaked and finalized at a future meeting. We did schedule an October meeting. Our next meeting is Wednesday,
069October 20th at 3 p.m. via video conference. And it was actually quite a brief meeting, but there was some... brief discussion on having the administration continue to start discussions with the towns for the planning of budget and getting ready for the budget season. But there wasn't much else that we discussed. I leave it open to Mrs. Caballa, Mrs. Carignani, if they wanted to add something that I may have missed. No. That was it. So that's our report. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? Go ahead, please. Did you talk about how we discussed just making sure that we have communication with the towns? Yes, absolutely. We have communication with the towns, and we're going to let Mr. Matthew and Mr. Lamache lead the efforts to meet with the towns. I think the goal was to really
070start the process early, to really have those conversations and leave it to our administration to get the ball rolling on collaborating with the two towns. And if Mr. Matthew, Mr. Lamarche want to comment, feel free. Thank you. Thank you. Back to Mr. Matthew. Thank you. A couple of items for the committee. First is donations. You have two memos from Principal Chaplin for donations to the Athletic Department and for the first honors dinner held on 9-29-2021. Additionally, Heritage received a donation from the Sonic Angels at Overlook of $225 to be used to help sponsor students in the After the Bell program at Heritage School. I recommend we accept these donations. okay i'll entertain a motion to accept the donations that mr matthew set forth to us so do i have a second second discussion seeing none
071all in favor motion carries it's unanimous thank you uh next is the medicare plan renewal um the mass strategic health group uh medicaid plan for uh retired members over the age of 65. yet the Medicare advantage renews on January 1, 2022. For the upcoming year, there was a capped maximum rate increase of $15. This was going to be the last year of our initial rate caps. However, based on our experience rating, the rate increase came in at $10.84. So the rates for next year on this plan are $286.68. As a reminder, this rate in 2019 was $309.07. In reviewing usage of the plan, there do remain benefits that appear to be underutilized by members, such as the free transportation for medical benefits, free meals, and the silver sneaker gym memberships. Retiree First is going to
072do outreach to members to remind them of the benefits so that everyone's aware and can take advantage of them. uh additionally mass strategic health group has voted to offer the city of fall river membership for its retiree only its retiree population into the satnav medicare advantage plan the arrangement means that they will have their own experience history and their plans will be priced separately from ours so whatever happens with their plans will not have an impact on ours or webster's or douglas's however as a result of fall river's inclusion into the group the district's rate for 2022 has been guaranteed for 2023 and a capped maximum rate increase of $10 for 2024 and 2025. So the bottom line is this means that the district will be paying less in 2025 than it was in 2019
073for a plan with richer benefits. So I think it was a good move to go to the Mass Strategic Health Group. I don't know if there are any questions on that. Mr. Matthew, this is great news, and I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but You never see rates go like 2019 was 309 and now it's 286. I mean, I'm not trying to be rude, but how did that happen? You have a good finance director. Oh, oh, oh, okay. No, by combining the towns together and going out there and doing bidding and going through and making sure that we really took advantage of whatever savings were on the table, that's where the rates came in. Obviously, there were some rotations that came in higher than that, but we went with what
074appeared to be the best plan for the best rate. and again the working relationship has been very strong and as master strategic health group continues to do solicitations for for communities to to join uh both the the uh regular plans as well as the medicare advantage plans we can expect to see you know additional benefits like this so and every town has their own experience right in their own rates as you said, Fall River, but the other towns that are in the group also. We have a very unique setup in this particular where we share those common expenses and utilize those common shared numbers to achieve savings. But again, all of our plans are individual Dudley Charlton plans. The Webster plans are Webster plans. The Douglas plans are Douglas plans. And do you ever see
075it all? Going together and having one rate. I think there may be an opportunity to create common plans Okay, but you know I the difference between our plan and Douglas's plan is significant enough that I don't know that we're ever going to meet in the middle Okay to be able to combine everybody into one set of plans But that is the way that many other joint purchase groups do do it. So do we have to vote on the renewal? That's actually handled through Mass Strategic Health Group, so you don't need to vote on that particular issue. Do you want to give Chris McNally a plug too? Chris Nunnally has been fantastic to work with. He took the germ of an idea of, hey, why can't we create one here, ran with it, and we've ended
076up here. He's been a very solid addition to the overall Dudley Charlton team and to the Gallagher team in Auburn. And as he says, he lives the municipal health care. dream on a daily basis. Uh, but he is a guy that really does care about health insurance and has always done right by us so far. And how rates on the stop loss that's shared by everyone, right? That's one of the benefits that we get. Yep. And how is it going? That's been consistent since we joined the group. There hasn't been no increases there. And through the chair, just one comment. I've talked to some of the people, the retirees in the plan, and I know folks in the beginning were very concerned, and we had those meetings. But everybody I've talked to are blown away
077by the benefits. They're so pleased with it. They're very glad from who I've talked to. So it's good to hear that the benefits, I think, got better as opposed to some concerns that they had. So, no, I think it's great that we did it. Not to put you on the spot, Mr. Matthew, what was the general, I mean, maybe it's hard to calculate, but the general savings that we're seeing here in Dudley-Charlton by being a part of this? And I know that's a tough number. I want to say it was around $400,000 or so on the regular insurance. Unfortunately, we didn't actually save that. We just reallocated it, but. But meaning we saved it, but used it somewhere else. We used it somewhere else. No, I'm just saying, but we had it to use somewhere
078else. That's exactly right. Yeah, no, thank you very much, Mr. Matthew. There are no other questions. The life insurance and our life insurance carrier. The district has been with Boston Mutual Group Life for life insurance coverage for many, many years. Over the past eight years, we have not received any price increases, which is normally pretty good news, except we found out recently that it was not due to the business model, but rather because our account seemed to have slipped between the cracks. So even though people were getting coverage, we were enrolling people, people receiving their benefits, nobody was coming to us and asking us for a rate increase. And we weren't going to go ask them either. So we took it for as long as we could. However, Boston Mutual is claiming that they have
079experienced 136% loss on our plan and demanded immediate rate increases once this was discovered. This coverage is something that the district pays 50% of for the basic plans and employees can choose higher coverage for which they pay 100%. From my perspective, and I think everyone's perspective, it would be unfair to force a dramatic rate increase onto folks if we did not have to. So we pursued other avenues here and it turns out that we can have exactly the same coverage through a different carrier, Symmetra. They have guaranteed the same rate for the rest of this year and for next year. In order to make the transfer from one plan to another, we plan to renew with Boston Mutual through the end of December and switch over effective January. The only impact on employees will be
080that they have to fill out a new form. The rates are locked in for two years. Boston Mutual, actually being a good partner, has not demanded the rate increase for the last two months and have held the rates constant for the next two months through the end of December. So we're in as good a shape as we can be given the circumstances. We'll end up paying the same rates for- nine straight years uh and then uh at the end of that term we'll go back out to bid and uh my guess is we might very well be back right back with boston mutual at that point in time uh but this is something that i would ask the committee to vote to uh to vote to approve to obtain a motion um to approve this
081change of our insurance carriers do i have a motion so moved second any more discussion through the chair go ahead mr matthew um I totally am in support of switching vendors. I just am curious, not to speak ill of Boston Mutual, but what was their reason why they made a mistake? It was their error, but it's still our responsibility, so now we have to switch. It just didn't make sense to me. No, we actually deal with Brookings Insurance, I believe, as the middleman, and that's where it appears to have fallen down. Oh, in between. Yeah, the mailman. Understood. Okay. Because if we go back to them later, it's just weird that they wouldn't work with us now. You know what I mean? But I understand. Thank you. Thank you. Any other discussion? Seeing none, all
082in favor? Motion carries. It's unanimous. Thank you very much. And just a brief update on the general ledger software. I'm just finishing the chart of accounts conversion and formal training will begin near the end of October. Actually, we'll have sat through three days worth of review prior to the next school committee meeting. but uh you know it's on track uh for july one implementation and uh we all look forward to uh the learning of the new system the implementation of the new system the inevitable uh bumps and and uh travails that we'll go through um as we learn the new system uh but it will be a effort well worth it and i think we'll have a long-term solution for software for the district The most exciting part of it is the employee self-service portal
083where we don't have to run direct deposit reports anymore or anything like that. Employees can go right on and print them themselves. That's all I had for this evening. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. Mr. Greenberg is here as well. I was going to just say it. Thank you. Looking at one page, not the other. Hi, how are you? I just want to read a statement on the state of what we're going through in the food service department. Dear families, the Dudley Charlton Regional Food and Nutrition Department is asking for your patience and support as we navigate new challenges. As you may be aware, we are currently faced with unprecedented shortages of food and packaging materials, massive delays or cancellations of deliveries, and labor shortages. Nationwide shortages and delays have affected availability of certain food items,
084leading to to substitutions of menu items we've been able to offer regularly in the past. These supply issues are occurring throughout the country and are especially challenging for food systems due to the quantity of meals we serve and the nutrition standards we must follow. All of this means that we may need to make quick substitutions to our menus based upon what we are able to acquire. We know that this affects students, parents, and families and we are doing our best to provide updates about menu changes when possible as soon as we can identify an issue. I can't see. Please know that our number one priority continues to be providing healthy, nutritious, and appetizing meals for your children. We love seeing them every day and appreciate your support and patience as we continue to offer meals
085at no charge for all students. The good news is that free breakfast and lunch will continue throughout the school year, and we just ask for your patience while you stick with us as we face yet another challenge. Your participation helps our program stay strong, and we look forward to serving you. Any questions for Mr. Greenberg? I did hear the food is very good. Thank you. It's excellent. A lot of compliments. That's all my staff. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I do have a quick question. I understand that we may not be able to get a calendar for the month of what your food might be, but is your website? The website is accurate. We do have to change things daily is what we're running into. So we're doing our best to forecast what we're not
086going to get. We usually find out the morning of when our delivery is supposed to come in, whether we're getting it or not. And that's where we're running into some problems. So you would not know? The night before. Unfortunately, we go into the next day, the night before, thinking that that's what we're going to make. And we post as much as we can. Lately, it's just had to have been pizza on Fridays at certain schools. We've gotten French bread pizza instead of the dough that we used to make the pizza. The vegetables, we try to keep the same. We're using all available vendors to us. So we are trying to keep it as accurate as the website says. Okay. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Go ahead, Ken. I was just going to comment. This
087is clearly a national issue given the fact that there was action at the federal level on this. So hopefully these sorts of roadblocks will start to disappear as that kicks in. Even at the stores, they don't have the products, some of the products you're looking for because of the transportation problem. Anyone else? Thank you, Mr. Greenberg, for your report. I'm glad to get an update. Just regarding that, and I know Mr. Matthew probably just commented on it, this outage is affecting everyone, as we just shared, but it's not related to the fact that the lunch is free? No. That's what I'm saying, because right now it's a federal grant, and I didn't know if they were tied. No, this is just supply chain. I understood and then a general question I don't know for you
088Mr. Greenberger Mr. Matthew do we have any sense about this USDA program continuing into next school year do we have any news So what I have read in passing is that the Massachusetts State House is considering a bill that would put free student meals on the table going forward, but it has not passed. So it's still in the crafting, the drawing up mode, stage mode. And nothing from the federal government? Nothing from the federal government. As at this time. Don't we like to see that bill passed? Me too. It makes everyone's job a little bit easier, and it definitely gives the kids and families food security when they need it the most. And I would say that's been a mission of Mrs. O'Coin, to have lunch for every child. You're welcome. Anybody else? Thank you,
089Mr. Green. You're welcome. Thank you so much. Report of the Assistant Superintendent, Dr. Ackerman. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, members of the committee. And good evening. I just want to note before I start the report that this report is going to look slightly different. I've made a few additions to this report based upon the feedback that we've received from PD this past Friday. So you'll notice what you have in your folders may look slightly different. This past Friday, October 8th, was a professional development day for all staff members, including instructional assistants. This was a half-day offering and served a variety of priorities and also provided all staff members with timely and valuable information to help support student growth and achievement. As the adoption of the CKLA model for instructional materials is a central goal
090for our elementary educators, Amplify, our vendor for CKLA, provided all staff that instruct reading with two and one-half hours of a strengthening session. designed to check our progress approximately five weeks into the instructional cycle. Each grade level was brought together via a video conference to discuss the status of implementation and to work through any issues encountered during the onboarding process. Prior to this session, a pre-session questionnaire was sent to all staff members as a means of providing the most relevant support. These sessions are an invaluable asset to the Dudley-Charlton Regional School District. While much of this feedback was positive there was a significant amount of cool feedback from our grade 2 team More specifically the grade 2 educators felt the follow-up sessions on Friday were too similar to the initial PD offered this past summer
091in addition there were specific questions generated by the aforementioned survey by the teachers that went unanswered To address these concerns, I had a follow-up session this morning with Amplify, and Amplify has agreed to schedule a brief follow-up session with a different Amplify facilitator sometime in the near future. I'll be checking in with Principal Olson and Principal True to delineate those specific times so they don't conflict with other building events. We do have Amplify scheduled for a full district in-person return. on the January 26 PD Day. This session will be a full day offering and conducted in person. Our year will be dedicated to a continuous cycle of feedback regarding CKLA implementation with regular professional development offerings and across the district communication. Elementary Unified Arts teachers were provided with the opportunity to review skills, standards, and
092goals for students. with an emphasis on determining the most essential skills required during the transitions from grade 1 to grade 2 and grade 4 to grade 5. In addition, there was a select group of educators from the elementary level, and these educators were provided with the opportunity to learn more about Project Lead the Way, or it's known as PLTW, a robust STEM offering already in place at the middle and secondary level. Educators in the middle and secondary level were afforded the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues across the district based upon either content or department. These teams were able to review data and develop goals to align instructional practices and curriculum. Our work will continue to focus upon expansive practices, linking our outstanding educators across the district to align our goals and expectations, making data-driven decisions
093when instructing our students. Feedback from the middle and secondary sessions was significantly positive. Post-professional development survey results indicate a desire to meet, analyze, and plan across grades, departments, and the district as a whole. All district instructional assistants were included in district-wide professional development for the first time. And these folks met at Charlton Middle School for a presentation and interactive workshop regarding disability awareness. I wanted to extend a special thank you to Courtney Galicia, Gina Galano, and Jennifer Grant for facilitating this session. This workshop had participants experiencing the feelings and experiences of students with disabilities through role playing and discussion. An essential component of our professional development is to build the capacity of our organization using the current expertise of our staff, something our providers did exceptionally well. And again, I'd like to thank Mrs. Galicia,
094Ms. Zolano, and Ms. Grant for their commitment to staff development. Feedback from this disability awareness presentation was very positive from the IA staff expressing that the time was well spent. Please note that all of these data points, along with our earlier district level professional development survey, will be reviewed and discussed by the Dudley-Charlton Regional School District Professional Development Committee at our next meeting Tuesday, November 9th. We always seek to take the feedback provided to shape future offerings that will deliver maximum value to our teachers for the benefit of our students. Thank you. Any questions? I was just going to mention that when those second grade teachers thought that they weren't covering, I'm glad that you followed up with that immediately because obviously there was something wrong if they expressed that opinion. So how long away
095would there be before that comes? I mean, time's flying. The next meeting's not until January 26th. Oh, it'll be well before that. I'm looking to do something next week, but I also know that there's a faculty meeting someday next week, and I also know that folks have other commitments, so I'm going to work with the principals. to try and find the least disruptive time so that we can have something timely and specific for those folks. I think that probably is the most likely scenario. But again, if we come that a different solution needs to happen, then we can make that work. That's good. Thanks. I'm just going to piggyback on what Mrs. Caballa said I wrote down maybe there could be a written question and answer that is provided by Amplify regarding the questions it
096sounds like if you say there's a significant number that were unanswered then I think that it would fall to our vendor to really satisfy our contract and if they could put in the writing to our teachers some answers or educators some answers that might might make it a little bit easier and i know i've shared this personally with you but i did hear positive feedback from the from some of the third grade team in the charlton district i've since heard that the writing component is pretty needs some more effort there. And so positive and... cool as you call it it's definitely dense and it definitely is going to because it's such a meaty thick program it's going to take some time to unpack it all um you know in talking this morning with emily she
097said that this is a fairly common experience for newly adopting districts in that there's a number of components that have to coalesce over time but that to your earlier point and i made this clear to emily this morning that we need to have those questions answered that we've made a significant commitment to the program to the providers and that we need to make sure that we have the right fit in terms of presenter but also getting people answers in real time that they can use in the classroom thank you because i think our educators are embracing this program and trying to teach it to fidelity and we owe them this i completely agree The significant majority across the other grade levels was positive. Grade two when I went through the data and the responses it
098stuck it did stick out like a sore thumb. The only other feedback that may not help our district but could help amplify for future districts is the suggestion that when districts look at this, it is rolled in at a kindergarten level and then the second year, you know, a second year going into a kindergarten, first grade, because apparently, I don't know the program, but apparently there's content that carries over. And so if you're, we're our third graders now. are missing the pieces of it before and so it would be a better suggestion from the company to do it as a roll-in program thank you that has been one of the the challenge has been that because of just delays that we've had in two consecutive years of interrupted schooling. There have been presumptions about a
099typical learning progression for many students that just haven't been actualized because they haven't had the content as typically expected. But that's part of what I spoke of this morning with the Amplify folks and what we're going to continue to work diligently through. But you may have mentioned it and I missed it was it feedback on the second grade in both towns? Yes, that's all I wanted to know. Thank you any other questions Thank you Next is the middle school math principal start esky Hello, good evening. Thank you Chairman O'Coin, members of the committee, Superintendent Lamache, Assistant Superintendent Ackerman, it's my pleasure to be here tonight to talk to you and update you on the work that we're undertaking to review the mathematics curriculum at the middle level, grades five through eight. The end goal, of
100course, of our review and activities is to really provide students with an increased and enriched, improved student learning experience. and we are involved with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Partnership and sort of consortium of like districts from around the state who are reviewing various curricula. We are focusing on math at this time and it's being referred to as the acronym, and we'll throw some alphabet soup at you, HQIM, High Quality Instructional Materials. This team is again working with DESE. and we are collaborating on learning a lot about appropriate training, professional development, and consistent practices to identify, review, and potentially adopt high-quality instructional materials for our educators to use and our students to learn through. These materials that we're going to be reviewing are all research-based and have been vetted to some degree by
101classroom educators in the state of Massachusetts, so they're familiar with the standards, they're familiar with the expectations. of the standards in our state members of the dcr middle level hqim mathematics team are dr ackerman myself mathematics teachers from dms mr manske mrs coble mr bougan mathematics teachers from charlton middle school christy d'arcangelo and sydney sydney markley and special educators miranda scoriglia from dms and gina graves from cms i'd like to just thank this team for the work that they undertook last week in our first session with DESE. It was about a three-hour webinar that was interactive with breakout rooms, and we were able to talk to colleagues from around the state during our time, talking about challenges related to curriculum adoption, talking about mindsets and, in some ways, belief systems about curriculum adoption. It was
102an interesting experience. Um, a couple of elements related to identifying high quality instructional materials are two resources. One is ed reports, which is sort of a national clearinghouse of research based materials where publishers have gone through ed reports and had them vet their materials. Um, The local version of Ed Reports is homegrown by DESE. It's referred to as CURATE, which stands for Curriculum Ratings by Teachers. A CURATE panel. of educators from around the state reviews materials submitted by publishers to the Department of Secondary and Elementary Education for review. DESE gathers evidence by examining alignments to college and career readiness standards through ed reports and feedback from Massachusetts educators who have either piloted or are currently utilizing that curricula. It's very helpful to have perspective as opposed to just a publisher coming in and showing all
103the bells and whistles of products. They can be shiny, they can be nice, but when they're actually on the ground running, we're able to learn a lot more. Curate fellows are current mathematics teachers in the state of Massachusetts who debate the evidence of the ratings and really rate various indicators on a rubric. Draft a report, receive feedback from the publisher, and ultimately finalize the report on the Curate website. The rubric that is utilized assesses standards alignment with content standards, organization and grade appropriate practices. classroom application with accessibility for students usability for teachers and ultimately an impact on student learning so those ratings on the rubric are published on curate and educators who are looking to adopt curriculum or find supplemental materials in some cases can go to that site open up the report look at
104the various elements on the rubric and have some really solid information provided to them by job alike partners from around the state. This is not just for mathematics, but we are focused on mathematics. There's also curate reports for English language arts and history and social sciences. That's coming along, but there's also science and technology that's out there. The process for the DCRSD HQIM mathematics team is going to go through multiple tiers. The first, of course, is training in the examination of a curriculum and review adoption process, really identifying key research-based tried and true standards for how to go about a curriculum adoption process, networking with other districts from around the state so that way we can have good connections with folks of experience with adopting similar curricula or facing similar challenges identifying goals needs and
105wants for our mathematics curriculum including gathering stakeholder feedback educators parents business owners and of course our students Reviewing current materials and reviewing current curriculum maps to identify what the needs are within our next curriculum or next layer of professional development. Reviewing the curate and ed reports for potential materials for the grade spans identified. Reviewing texts and materials from publishers if we do identify something that is appropriate for DCRSD. and ultimately determining next steps for piloting, review, and adoption if we do elect to go with new curriculum materials. The immediate next steps for DCRSD are going to be determined on October 26th when the HQIM mathematics team will come together and really set a roadmap for our work through the remainder of the year. We do have a number of obligations to attend DESE's webinar series.
106uh with again job-alike educators from around the state to go through this process and learn deeply what we need to learn the ultimate goals of the district team will be meeting with the statewide collaboration several times throughout the year and we'll meet as a district team regularly to identify potential curriculum materials to bring the mathematics department at the middle schools bring that to the mathematics departments at the middle schools to review and ultimately take action on in examining The team professional development work is really going to lead the curriculum review of and adoption potentially of materials, engage in cross district curriculum conversations, mapping and planning for addressing needs sort of ongoing work. We started that several years ago and it's relatively rich at this point. Also, we're going to be reviewing curriculum materials, make recommendations
107for next steps with materials. And of course, outside of the high quality instructional materials mathematics team. All the mathematics educators will be engaging in an ongoing process of curriculum mapping, common assessment bank creation, data review of student performance, and continued use of the IXL benchmarking and data review related to that. So again, thank you to the participants of the DMS and CMS team, to Dr. Ackerman for leading the charge, and for you to allow me to present our work this evening. Thank you. Any questions? thank you Chris that brings us to the report of the capital outlay outlay safety subcommittee chair terry thank you our committee met the capital and safety subcommittee met on september 24th via zoom at 11 a.m and members of our committee are myself and mr laferriere from the committee. I'm
108sorry, Mr. Matthew is there. And we welcomed a new facilities director, and I'm going to try to say his last name, Mr. David. Cinescalchi? How about that? I practiced. So I just want to say, I want to start by saying I'm so glad to be part of this subcommittee, and I feel like we have done some fantastic work on the subcommittee. I feel like we have a plan in place, or we have a draft plan in place, that actually outlines... future needs, future safety concerns. And it's a plan that runs multiple years. It will be a living and breathing document, and it will be a document that we hope will continue to. I guess open our communications with our town leaders as we go through the budgeting process and I know that was talked about
109in budget and finance already but really that's what the goal of this document was to put down in writing an assessment of the needs of our schools the top of which probably will come to no surprise to any of you any of you here the roofs at both CMS and DMS are really are top priorities and they need to be addressed. Additionally the bleachers at Shepherd Hill, I don't know if any of you have heard, but there was There was a actually mr. Wallace spoke about earlier. There was a an event over the weekend with our band I'm not calling it the right thing. But anyway, um, they there was a faulty board and it and it broke so since then we've had our Mars Scaffolding is the company that we work with. That crew
110came out today. They've been out multiple times throughout the year. There's been an evaluation of those bleachers, but because there was an area of concern, they came out today, and they actually fixed multiple areas or worked on areas that maybe didn't need to be fixed immediately, but they definitely needed to be addressed. So that's fantastic. They actually were out in July, and there was... they fixed 11 areas of concern that they had found and put about 50 boards wooden boards in place they came back in september and they were painting the bleachers and they brought 15 boards that day and fixed and repaired those and in discussions with our facilities director The high school staff will make an evaluation or a walkthrough of those bleachers every Monday. Now it will just be something that's part
111of their routine. So that's our high school facilities team. This is just kind of a preview. This is what we talked about at our meeting. And it's a preview to what's going to happen at our next meeting. This is going to be our draft plan will be rolled out in more detail to all of you so that you can be part of understanding of this great plan that we're talking about. And our new facilities director will come in and go through this in more detail for you if anybody has any questions. But I'm happy to take any of this little brief overview now. I have a question. Since we're renting those bleachers, do we have to pay three pairs, or does that come with the rental? No, it comes with the rental. So it doesn't
112cost us anything to fix it. That's good. Now, there was a little mishap. Did anyone get hurt? Luckily, there was not a serious injury. Yeah, one of the judges at the band show kind of fell. So it's a little embarrassing. So I'm glad we're fixing this. We're incredibly fortunate that there was not a more severe injury. Good job, Chair Terry. I really am super geared up about this subcommittee, and I feel like we have done a tremendous amount of work, and Mr. Matthew has put together a great draft plan, and I feel like this will really inform our communities well about the needs that we have as a district and our schools. The only comment I would add is, sorry, Mrs. Cabal, the capital safety will work really in tandem with budget and finance. And
113then it will come to the full committee just for budgeting purposes on the plans. Just wanted to bring that up. I just wanted to add with the buildings, the facility director, that's a new eye to see these things. So, again, from a different perspective, it reinforces what Jeff said all along and probably will find other things that we want to know. It's good that he's on board. Yes, it is. And he has a very solid background and has been able to already use his expertise to help us. And I think Mr. Matthews will be less stressed. Well, the needs are still there. I believe the correct term is stressed in different ways. There you go. Any other questions? Okay, seeing none, we will go on to the MASC report of the Resolution Committee, and everyone
114knows that the annual meeting will be November 6th. And I didn't read this, but Kathy said that it's all full, the convention. I think I'm on. Did you say it's in person? I'm sorry to do it. So in person is full, but they're doing it on Zoom. So you can do both. Either one. So we should have a delegate to do it virtually. I'm attending in person this year. Oh, you are? I am going this year. I also secured the spot. Oh, good. Good. So I didn't- Well, Ms. Costello should be the delegate because she's the newest member. That's been the policy. I think that has been the informal policy. You can still be Kevin. Let's put that in our policy. Yeah, we should put it in the policy. So I wasn't aware, and I
115don't think Steve, you were aware of that. So good, you've got a spot and you're going to the meeting. I think I registered, I assume you did too, before they filled up. They're keeping the numbers low because of the situation. But one thing I read on the website was a lot of members were really excited about it because when you go, you can only go to certain sessions. You miss the other session, well now they're all recorded. So if you want to watch all of them, you can, which is a benefit. So I appoint. No, no. I make a motion we appoint Ms. Costello as our delegate to MASC. Do I have a second? I'll second that. Okay. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? We don't have a choice. Congratulations. Congratulations, Dave. Thanks. Okay.
116And Steve? Madam Chair, and through the school committee, as the Dudley-Shelton Regional School District delegate, the school committee, we're going to go through the resolutions of MASC. and for the delegate to represent the school committee in their position on each one of these resolutions there are a total of nine resolutions i will read the title of the resolution and i will read the therefore be it resolved meaning what the position of masc is if there's a need for more clarification i could certainly go up and and read other things i know that most of you have had all of these uh for for some time but school committee will um i believe as we've done in the past school committee will take action on each resolution uh so that miss uh Costello knows what to
117represent the district on. Okay? Okay, resolution number one, dedicated funding for school-based clinics and services. Therefore, be it resolved that MASC support proposals that would establish dedicated funding for school-based physical health and mental health clinics and services. rationale maintaining physical social and emotional wellness and students translates into establishing an optimal learning environment and sets students up for future excellent health standards in addition to decreasing absences and school discipline school discipline referrals reduction in medicaid expenditures reduced inappropriate emergency room use decreased pregnancies and increased overall physical and mental health do you want me to end by saying what say you school committee no So that's the therefore. So the school committee can take action. I'm going to agree with the MASC. I'll entertain a motion. We'll make a motion for discussion to be agreed with Resolution
1181. Okay. And do I have a second? Second. All right. Any discussion? All in favor? Motion carries. It's unanimous. Resolution number two, homework gap in Wi-Fi Internet access. Be it resolved that the Massachusetts Association of School Committees file for and support legislation which seeks to provide free broadband internet to all K-12 students in Massachusetts. Be it further resolved that MASC support federal initiatives and legislation to improve national high-speed broadband internet infrastructure expansion Expansion the FCC's E-rate program to include homes of K-12 students or any other steps to expand free access to reliable high-speed broadband to students of our nation. Resolution two. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Okay. So we have two supported. Resolution number three, IDEA Full Funding Act. Therefore, be it resolved that the Massachusetts Association of School Committees calls upon the
119Massachusetts Congressional Delegation to reintroduce and promote the passage of the IDEA Full Funding Act. Do I have a motion to agree in the affirmative? I make a motion to agree with Resolution 3. Okay. Do I have a second? I just have a question. What does IDEA stand for? It never says in the whole thing. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Okay. Thank you. Do I have a second? Yes, second. Okay. And discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Motion carries. Let's see the amendments. Resolution number four, recess. Therefore, be it resolved that the Massachusetts Association of School Committees support legislation, current bill S... 383h meaning senate 383 house 695 calling for at least 20 minutes of uninterrupted supervised safe and unstructured free play recess per day which cannot be excluded from structured learning time requirements and may
120not increase the total number of hours required in the school year for massachusetts elementary school students i'll make a motion that we support president number four okay do i have a second second discussion I'm just curious, what is the time of the school? 20 minutes? No, I mean our school system. I think it's 20 minutes. Is it just 20? Apparently it's around 20 minutes. So this is the only difference. Now it would count towards time on learning as opposed to not. In the past it didn't count. That was the issue, wasn't it? That recess was considered not time on learning? I think that was the issue. I think it's more to have recess. No, but if you want to include it, you can make it longer because it will count towards your hours. I think
121that's what I got, the gist of that. The way I read it is it's not excluded from structured learning time, but it will not increase the total number of hours required. So there's a distinction without a difference there, or a difference without a distinction. I thought it meant like if you give them 40 minutes of recess, we don't have to make up that time somewhere else because it's considered part of the learning day. That's what they're arguing, that in the past, if you went over 20 minutes or whatever, you had to count that as not your hours. Right. It's a total of 900 hours for elementary schools. So the way I'm reading this is it will not be excluded from that time. It will be counted in that time. It will only add to that
122time. And it's at least 20 minutes, so they could go longer. They can go longer. Yeah. Before it would penalize you almost to go longer. Yep. Any more discussion? Okay. Seeing none, all in favor? Motion carries. It's unanimous. Resolution number five, zero tolerance policies. Therefore, be it resolved that the Massachusetts Association of School Committees call upon the legislator to enact or amend legislation, current Bill Senate 344, House 664, to encourage the use of restorative, therapeutic, and educational approaches to incidents whenever possible over the use of zero-tolerance policies in order to provide students the best chance to remain in the public school systems of the Commonwealth. Second. Any discussion? Go ahead, Jamie. What would be restorative therapeutic or educational approaches? Is there examples of that? If I had a student that had a cyberbullying incident, instead
123of if I had to do a suspension, I could do something in lieu of where maybe they went through a kind of like a... Like an educational program instead that you know, hopefully they're gonna learn from it rather than having certain Thank you any other discussion Seeing none all in favor motion carries Resolution number six alternative to MCAS therefore be it resolved that the Massachusetts Association of School Committees call upon the legislator 2. Establish a commission to research and analyze alternative means for students to demonstrate academic achievement which can be used to satisfy graduation requirements for individual students and accountability standards for Massachusetts public schools and school districts. Discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Motion carries. It's unanimous. Resolution number 7. School committees and receivership. Therefore, be it resolved that the Massachusetts Association of School
124Committees file for and support legislation which seeks to preserve the authority of the elected body, the school committee, as provided in MGL, Mass. General Law, Chapter 69, Section 1K, by deleting the words and school committee as noted and by inserting the following. Nothing in this section shall permit the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education or the Commissioner to remove the authority of the school committee. Be it further resolved that MASC, Mass Association of School Committees, support local initiatives and legislation to restore school committee oversight of the superintendent and or receiver, including but not limited to goal setting, performance review, and the evaluation process. Does rationale... Do I have a... Motion for agreement. Do you want to do the rationale? I didn't on previous ones, but if you want me to, I certainly can. Rationale. Receivership
125is an equity issue which can be seen in the types of districts that are taken into receivership. High population Latino communities and economically disadvantaged. And receivership strips away the voices of the community that elected school committee members in their communities. This resolution gives the power back to the board. There are no clearly set guidelines on the measures which need to be taken for districts to get back local control with no clear time frame on the expectation that DESE will turn around a district. Do I have a motion? No, no, no. No? I make a motion to support Resolution 7. I second. Discussion. This really doesn't probably have a bearing on our district. So can we move to take no action? Well, you have a first and a second now. I know. I understand that. I'm
126just wondering. I would say. You know, Southbridge is in receivership and has been for five years, and I really think that the people of Southbridge would like to have the ability to have their voice back in their school committee and in their school, their public education. So they'd like a little support from others. Okay, fair. And I think there's three communities in Massachusetts, I believe, Lawrence, Holyoke, and Southbridge, as far as I know, that are in receivership. Any other discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Motion carries. It's unanimous. Resolution number eight, electric school buses. Therefore, be it resolved that Massachusetts Association of School Committees petition Congress to appropriate $30 billion for improving the electrical supply infrastructure and provide electric buses and charging stations. Motion. I make a motion to support resolution eight. Okay. Do I
127have a second? Second. Discussion? Okay. Go ahead. Why do you want to support it? I did it to get it on the floor. Part of me says it's a good move to be environmentally conscious, but then a part of me is the money could be better spent on other initiatives. So I just put it on there so we could have the discussion. Although I am in favor of protecting our environment, I don't believe we're in the time in our nation to be able to spend $30 billion for this type of critical infrastructure. Even though I really do would like this initiative, but I don't think it's the right time, especially with all the bus driver shortages. I mean, we're lucky we're not impacted, but... We kind of are. The money could be spent better in
128other ways right now. Just because you said that, I'll say we are definitely impacted for our after-school sports. You and I pick our kids up at wherever the first country meet is. And Mrs. Terry, to be clear, I think it's more of a no action, I think, doesn't send a message, where if we put it on the floor and vote it down, I think in our minutes it sends more of a higher note, in my opinion. Okay. I just put it on just for the point. Any other discussion before we take a vote? Okay. All in favor? Opposed? Okay. Motion defeated. And zero to seven no's. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see that. One abstention. Six no's. Resolution number nine, prohibiting the use of Native American mascots. Therefore, be it resolved that the Massachusetts Association
129of School Committees support legislation calling for regulations prohibiting public schools from using an athletic team name, logo, or mascot which names, refers to, represents, or is associated with Native Americans, including aspects of Native American cultures and specific Native American tribes. There is a current bill, Senate 294, which states regulations would not prohibit A Native American tribe, as identified by the Commission on Indian Affairs, located within the boundaries of the Commonwealth, from choosing to use a Native-related name or logo for a sports team comprised of its tribal members, including a tribal school or intramural league, or from the tribal nation giving explicit consent for a school to use their particular tribal name. Okay, do I have a motion for agreement with this resolution? Okay, discussion. Go ahead, Catherine. I think that should be an individual town
130or district's decision and not from the state legislature. Through the chair, I agree. And I agree, too. Anyone else? Discussion before we take a vote? Okay, all in favor? Opposed? Okay. 2-5. So motion is defeated. And that ends the resolutions, Madam Chair. Okay. The only thing I wanted to comment, Mrs. O'Coin, just for clarity, and we're supporting these resolutions for MASC to lobby on behalf of the state. It doesn't mean it's a done deal, and Ms. Costello being the delegate, if she gets there and there's other discussion, she doesn't necessarily have to go by what we decided tonight. We've always said that. Yeah, I just wanted to put it out there for the public to understand it. If you decide otherwise because you listen to all the discussions, that's your choice. Okay? Okay. And last
131on the agenda, update superintendent self-evaluation. Madam Chair and School Committee, I know that this last year we went through an evaluation cycle that we've had some different components to it and pieces. The first step is for me to provide you with a self-assessment to the evaluation. So I use the rubric, the standard rubric in all the categories and I identified a self-assessment. What I shared with you in the report to you is that I identified a number of areas for this school year as needs improvement that are really associated with pre-COVID, getting back to pre-COVID times in the work that's in front of us. of us because of it. It's really critical and important for us to move forward, but there are some things that I identified as needs improvement. Ten categories out of a
132total of... 42 indicators. There's 42 indicators. I identified 10 of them as needs improvement. So briefly, and I also identified four look-fors, as I shared earlier, that we have for educators. These are look-fors that I would respectfully ask the school community to support or as focus indicators during the evaluation cycle. But the areas in which I picked were around instructional practices. This is because we are implementing CKLA in other areas within our system in mathematics. We're looking at mathematics. This is an area that I want to pay particular attention to and ensure that it moves beyond a needs improvement category. Within here a variety of assessments. That's another area which I've selected We need to get back to the assessments that we use to monitor our students and conduct data analysis So that was identified
133as well educator goals You'll see that a couple of these are within the educator evaluation system because we haven't done it for two years now So I listed these improvement because as I indicated earlier in my report this gives us an opportunity as a district to come together and really calibrate and synchronize ourselves, but I just want to make sure that again these are areas in which I pay particular attention to as the superintendent. which includes also the ratings, what educators are rated on. Improvement of performance, effectiveness, and learning. Again, all around instruction. Student safety, health, and social and emotional needs. We've identified that SEL, school adjustment counselors, the support our students need to get back to pre-COVID is extremely important. So that was identified as a needs improvement category as well. Standard 3, community
134and business engagement, really engaging with the community. Keep in mind that the last 20 months has been a particularly challenging time, but this is an area which I know is extremely important. Coming off of my evaluation at the end of August is to engage with the community in businesses and communication skills to continue to work on my communication skills, not only with the committee but with staff and with the community. and shared vision development. Again, this goes back to that calibration piece that we have an opportunity here to work in the vision for the Dudley-Charlton Regional School District moving forward. So therefore, it's identified as a needs improvement category so that I can pay very close attention to it moving forward for this evaluation cycle. So the four indicators in which I've identified for school
135committee for support is observation feedback, which is specific to evaluation systems in standard one. In standard two, student safety, health, and social and emotional needs. And standard three, community and business engagement. And standard four, communication skills. Okay, any questions for Mr. LaMarche? So at the next meeting, I'll bring in my goals, and they'll be tied to the focus, the look-fors, but there'll be four goals coming forward for each standard. Okay? Okay. So our next meeting dates? Oh, Mr. Chair, I just had one thing to bring up regarding, ties a little bit into the superintendent's goals. And this is a request for a future agenda item. I don't know if it's best for next meeting. I think we as a school committee should look at goals for what we want to achieve as a school committee
136for the year and set a vision, like long-term vision as far as what we see is what we want to look at for instructional, for the future of Dudley-Charlton. And I think the goals, vision, can be a directive of what we see for the district and cascade or tie into. the superintendent's goals as far as like he talked about shared vision development i think that's a good opportunity for us to make goals that we see for the district so i just thought it would be not for tonight because we can't discuss it because it's not on the agenda but to think about what people want to see for dudley charlton that's just my true sense anyone else okay thank you thank you um next meeting date school School committee meeting Wednesday, October 27th. That'll be
137at the Charlton Middle School. Budget and finance subcommittee Wednesday, October 20th. That'll be at 3 p.m. And that's video conference. Policy Review Subcommittee Thursday, October 14th, 9 a.m., video conference. Curriculum Subcommittee for Teaching and Learning, Monday, October 25th, 3 p.m., video conference. Capital Outlay Safety Subcommittee Friday, October 22nd, 11 a.m., and that's video conferencing. Our future agenda items, superintendent's goals, that'll be in October 27th. Dudley-Charlton Regional District Strategic Plan Progress Report, that'll be in November. Update Sheppard Hill Global Studies Trip, October slash November. DCLC, December. superintendent slash shepherd hill regional high school principal awards december student achievement report january 2022 2023 calendar and that will be in february um how about our members catherine you may have some policy for first and second reads because we have a meeting tomorrow okay Can you just say
138what DCLC is so that the public knows? I can say what DCLC is. Mr. LaMarche's Student Advisory Committee, basically it's a group of kids from all different grades across Shepherd Hill that have established ourselves as leaders within the school where we meet with Mr. LaMarche once every two weeks or so during fourth lunch just to discuss things that we believe need to change in the school. We have a few projects underway right now. The big ones include we're looking to implement a work-study program for students at Shepherd Hill, which I know that's a thing at Oxford and another school nearby. We're in communication with... Some the people that run out of those schools were looking to implement that at Shepherd Hill We think it's important that students are getting to apply the knowledge that they're
139learning in the classroom We're also working on an initiative to put EpiPens throughout the hallways of the school, similar to the way the defibrillators are within the hallways, like emergency medical kits in that regard for students with allergies. And we also have a website that we're looking to promote more to the student body that basically just helps people adjust to the Shepherd Hill lifestyle, the classes there, the teachers, all the opportunities that we have. so that's something that we're going to try and push that website out to mostly eighth graders coming to the school but also just kids that are at the school because there's a lot of resources there for them to use great thank you very much and thank you for your great work it sounds uh like it's very ambitious the ball
140is rolling mr wallace um i think also it's the acronym dudley charlton leadership i was going to make him answer that and answer it Any other additions to our agenda? Jean? For the next October 27th meeting, can we have an executive session to continue discussing contract negotiations for the superintendent? That should have been on it because we did say we were going to put it on it for October 27th meeting. So that'll be the executive session for the negotiations. Any... do we have the dates of the november and december meeting on on there we can do we have those we haven't decided All right. Isn't it normally the second Wednesday normally? Yes. Normally it's the second Wednesday of those months. It doesn't have to be. If everyone can make it, but normally it is. Right,
141right. And we switched November will be child and December will be child. Right. Because of the concert. Because of the concert. Are they having the concert? I assume they will. The Christmas concert, they usually come in to sing for us. Yeah, we're still working on those plans. Okay. We want to know now. Madam Chair, the only other agenda item to put on for next meeting is an update on CPAC. Okay. Okay. And I think that was Gene's request, right? Yeah. Okay. I think it's CPAC's request, which is Gene. Anything else? all right and we're not going i have one thing i actually wanted to get the next meeting i was originally planning to speak at this meeting but now i'm planning to speak at the next meeting about the implementation and promotion of a civics
142elective at shepherd hill which is i put together a document i'm going to adjust it i'm going to speak to mr stowe and mr chaplin uh to get that ball rolling on that that is something okay and we will put that on the agenda trevor thank you that should be a special agenda item separate from his report yeah yeah yeah that's what it's going to be yeah um anyone else before i go on well we're not going to have to go into executive session this evening everything is sweet yeah i have a motion to adjourn do i have a second all in favor we're adjourned