001i'll call the meeting to order uh the first order of businesses pledge of allegiance please stand if you're able and join me i pledge states of allegiance and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everybody next item our agenda is public comment does anyone have anything not on tonight's agenda hi pam caffrey um do i give my address no just that cam caffrey i think some of you have heard from me before um but i'm here tonight because i have been going through this issue with the transportation department since beginning of july of last year and recently i have gone to great lengths i have gone through protocol of the chain of command and speaking about this but i'm being ignored and
002issues aren't being covered but laws are being broken and i don't see where there's a need and i'm talking specifically for anybody that doesn't know or hasn't heard that in my complaints and issues about the specialized transportation department not doing on bus emergency evacuation drills for over two years we're talking special needs students some can't walk some most when they're they start this they start at three and a half years old they're in car seats some are non-verbal some are depending on what their disabilities are which the way that's another issue that these aren't even being relayed to the bus drivers and monitors so that they're being trained and supported in ways to know how to deal with these children and just recently which is why i'm here and have spurred this argument again when
003i really should be focusing my attention on my own son with special needs and what his future will be as he graduates and has the next two years that i have to that he's qualifies for services i can't keep looking back but i'm here because i'm going to speak for every single student that takes the minibus and is not being given the decency of good transportation you you as a district decided to have an in-house transportation system personally i'd prefer to deal with somebody who has a contract because that would have been negotiated and standards would have been outlined but here i can't get a straight answer from anyone but yet you're breaking state laws you receive state and federal funds transportation it's in the superintendent's checklist it's in your own school committee policy that
004it specifically says you are to do twice a year on bus emergency evacuations perhaps we should just start telling kids when fire drills are done once a month don't get up sit down we're just going to go through the go through it with you here here's a little outline but you know what you don't have to leave the school in case of an emergency it'll never happen should we start doing that because that's basically what you're saying to the students and kids that need the most guidance the most help extra help and what you're you're disrespecting the students and the parents that need this service that you chose to provide in district and it is not just emergency evacuation drills it's the whole and you know it because the parents are inundating me with complaints
005about the transportation department and now an incident in the mary kay good school just happened to happen where an emergency evacuation had to be done and have that emergency not been done in the parking lot of the mary kay good school what would have happened where would you and i challenge any one of you to ride a mini bus because the way that i hear that oh many bus drivers and they got it easy it's so easy i don't know what they're complaining about i challenge you to to drive a route to work with these kids to know what their disability has know what their triggers are how do you even know because you haven't done it in two over two years since 2019 what would happen or how each one of those students from
006kindergarten up through the high school react in the event of an emergency and when one actually happens you were lucky as a school district that it happened in the parking lot of a school and then come april vacation a transportation specialized transportation department meeting was held and i believe the topic was emergency evacuations and they they were told that massachusetts doesn't require that on bus evacuations have to happen that it's that it's we just have to read through it so that the bus drivers and the monitors know what to do and that tells you what lack of training and experience the supervisor of the transportation department has dealing with special ed i'm not going to going to negate the fact that she's been a bus driver forever she will tell you a million times but
007she is not experienced in special ed and you as a school committee you as a school district have literally broken the law and you're stonewalling me i asked a month ago to be put on this agenda because this is a district problem this is not a school related incident one school one child this is every single special ed and kindergarten child in this district and the fact that you don't want to talk about it you don't want to solve it blows me away and honestly i have never had a problem with special anything anything in this district special ed program spectacular absolutely love every single one of dean's teachers and administrators up until now since 2019 i have had an issue with this person with this department in the way it's run i want to
008be heard there's no reason to investigate there's no reason to research it's right here in your own policy you voted on it and chose to have it as a part of the school committee policy you it's in your checklist you know and it has not been done and why the dot and rmv have not fined this the transportation department is beyond me but i will find out and if i don't get heard and if it doesn't become something that you show you want to solve a problem you want to solve then i will go to the media and i will go to my state representatives and senators because i can't believe that you aren't knocking down the door to get this resolved you are putting children's life special needs children's lives at risk and that's
009because you don't know them you don't know what it's like you don't know all the disabilities that are in this district so this is why i'm here because i'm not i can dean i gotta look to his future but i will not let one child go on that bus until i have done absolutely everything i can do to see that those buses are safe and it's run by a person that's experienced and cares thank you thank you mr chair if i might respond sure uh miss caffrey sent me a detailed mrs gaffrey sent me a detailed email yesterday she was informed by the chair to go through the proper channel she had gone through the director of supervision she of transportation she had gone through the director of business and finance you had not communicated
010with me directly which you did yesterday when you brought this to my attention i'm responding to your concerns you brought this to my attention yesterday i responded back to you saying i'm going to look into all of the matters that you brought to my attention it was it was a very detailed memo lengthy memo and i responded to you saying that i would be back in touch with you after i did some discovery basically which i have done and begun to do i have already directly i have already directed the director of transportation of special ed transportation to hold evacuations bus evacuations by the end of may for all of our buses i have discovered since 2019 thanks to you that we have not been doing those we used to do them all the time
011we used to do them regularly this will begin in earnest once again there will be twice a year just like the school policy says and the rule says that was not something i was aware of and i blame myself for that i should have been aware of that but i was not aware of that and i thank you for bringing that to my attention i appreciate that the school policy does state that all students not absolutely not special ed students and not regular students regular ed students but all students i love all students and i get enough i gotta i gotta fight i totally agree with that i addressed this with the director again of student transportation special ed student transportation today she misinterpreted a rule that was published by the registry of motor vehicles
012which does say that every school bus transporting special needs students has to have a plan for evacuation that's where it stops it does not disagree with that i've met with her but she specifically told me she knew because we asked sarah sarah's been in every single meeting in fact i've never been able to have a meeting with without sarah this this is she told me directly she knew exactly what she was supposed to do because sarah asked oh can we do it with maybe other stand-in students and mary jane was like no absolutely not we need to do it with special ed students the actual students i think mrs caffrey that that was her interpretation of a registered motor vehicle registry of motor vehicles passage that's in the driver manual that says every bus needs
013to have a plan it's in her job description her very own job description and those those those items will be addressed with and you know i you are very well versed in the problems you are having with this department and how it is run she may be very well in budgeting i'm sure she's uh but she has never once driven a minibus she has never once boarded them she will not talk to parents when they call her with concerns bus drivers end up showing up even though they leave messages with dispatch that their child won't be i can't speak to all those individual concerns but i can't tell you if you can because she's the one that's taken all the notes man with all due respect how you characterize the drivers and how people think
014about the drivers i don't think anyone thinks it's an easy job no one's certainly up here no one in the school that's good no one in the school system thinks that we know how difficult the job is we have monitors on board to help the drivers to assist them but look at what you're allowing which you've flagrantly for over two years it was not flagrant i would not characterize this flagrant i would characterize it as me not being aware that we were not doing it so it was dr it was addressed immediately when i found out i thank you for that and it will not happen again it will continue we will go back to bus evacuation starting by the end of may every student will be instructed in bus evacuations and we're going to
015move on in a positive way and i will respond directly to all of your other concerns in your email i just received it yesterday i was in meetings all day i read it about five o'clock last night and i responded immediately back to you when i when i read it i believe i see siege when i emailed on april 13th richard young and he was going to get back to me but you know all i want is for you guys to do the right thing these kids are your responsibility you know the bus evacuations that's one issue and i appreciate the fact that you are going to do your job and hold them i'm sure the kids will appreciate it and the parents will but it's only one issue and you know that and we
016deserve we deserve we have to fight for every freaking thing that we try to get for our kids we have to look in we have to be lawyers ourselves and the fact that i have to stand here with and not trust the school district on transportation you know it's not right it's not right that we have to fight for every single thing because you overlooked something that's everywhere or that you chose to not look at the job or she didn't look at the job description she was hired for she it's not a part-time job you have five schools in this district she should be working like every single one of you hard working five days a week school hours so she's there for us we're not here for her she is here to work for
017the students and parents that take specialized transportation but i appreciate that you're going to get the bus evacuations done thank you any items from school community members yes i just wanted to remind the general public that we are hitting the end of the school year with the middleborough high school adopted senior program so if you have a student who's a senior and you're a parent out there who's watching if you have not filled out that survey i'd really just like to ask you to do that because we really want to make sure that every single senior is honored appropriately so thank you thank you very much anybody else um i will turn it over to the maa co-presidents who will give a come on down oh here comes kate sorry kate i jumped again when
018you're out of the euro there was only one chair she went to find one thank you for having us um basically we don't have a lot to report on today we are in the home stretch now um we're in the middle of ap exams at the high school which is pretty exciting the math mcas is going to be the 17th and 18th of may and then the biomcas is going to be in june so we're we're heading down the road here and seniors last day is coming up fast may 26th i believe so homestretch it is that's right mcas continues we have completed our ela mcas at all schools math is next next week in the following one day each week and science for fifth grade only the week of may 24th and 25th and
019i think we reported last time that we're doing it differently this year and it's working really well all grade levels are testing at the same time a lot less days and a lot less disruption to our schedule which is great uh this is teacher appreciation week we want to thank the parent groups who have reached out to many of the schools and celebrated our teachers and staff with some nice treats and it continues even tomorrow we're here and that's about all we have for this report but we thank you again for having us here thank you very much any questions for kate morson seeing no one thank you guys i appreciate it um natalia is not joining us tonight she's in north carolina at her sister's graduation from college and with that i'll turn it
020over to the superintendent's report thank you mr chair good evening members of the committee members of the audience i want to bring you up to date and some covet 19 cases that we have in our school district if you follow the dashboard we did have a little bit of a spike after april vacation we went to 11 last friday and as of today we are up to 20. so we are definitely seeing a bit of an increase um the press is sort of looking at this as a dominant format of the virus and it's called ba 2.1 2.1 but it's the latest variant of the covet 19 and it is basically responsible for about 40 percent of the cases the current cases in the town of middleborough we are certainly up uh but we are
021still at a point point zero two percent um the report from the health department from the town of middleborough uh basically states that we're at about point zero two percent and we did have a bit of a spike i spoke with her yesterday we had a bit of a spike and hopefully that will go away and we'll not be dealing with that anymore so that's basically the quick covet 19 report that we are up a little bit we're not at zero anymore but we're not at 100 either so we're hopefully we'll go down from 20. any questions on that folks okay up next on my report is a discussion of a mindfulness program that we have in place at the elementary level and i want to sort of introduce lisa white and derek thompson both
022principals at the complex i want to begin by talking a little bit about our school committee policy on instructional programs and curriculum in our policy iha which is called basic instructional program and it starts by saying state law requires that schools shall give instruction and training in orthography which is spelling reading writing the english language in grammar geography arithmetic drawing music the history and constitution of the united states the duties of citizenship health education physical education and good or positive behavior we also have a policy iga curriculum development in that policy school committee policy it says constant adaptation and development of the curriculum is necessary if the district is to meet the needs of the students in its schools to be successful curriculum development must be a collaborative enterprise involving staff and administrators utilizing their
023professional expertise and finally igd is curriculum adoption and finally it says the school committee will rely on its professional staff to design and implement instructional programs and courses of study that will forward the educational goals of the school system the superintendent will have the authority to approve new programs and courses of study after they have been thoroughly studied and found to support our educational goals the committee itself will consider and officially adopt new programs and courses when they constitute an extensive alteration in instructional content or approach and i would argue that this program is basically a supplement to our sel programming that we've had in place to our positive behavior interventions all to all of our management strategies that we've been had in place uh in the history of our school system from the very
024get-go because that's so such an important part of school and schooling uh there's positive behavior and positive behavior strategies on the part of teachers so we welcome mr thompson and and mrs white here this evening and folks you can take it away thank you mr thompson is getting the slideshow ready so um thank you for this evening uh mr lynch chairman members of the school committee before we begin and well mr thompson's getting our slideshow ready um i do speak for mr thompson sometimes i'm going to do it this time we want to thank our staff this is teacher appreciation week and we want to both say thank you to our parents of mary kay good i know parents of hpb ptas of both schools for the overwhelming support for our staffs this week it's
025been amazing they are i i don't it's preaching to to the choir i know you know you all have children in our schools and know the hard work that they do every single day so to the families out there that donated to the families out there that were part of teacher appreciation week we want to say thank you on behalf of our entire staffs and and we greatly appreciate that so thank you so thank you for this opportunity tonight to discuss the mindfulness program are we ready almost so social emotional learning is not something new to middleborough social emotional learning and learning behaviors are embedded in everything we do every single day in our classrooms we have been working with character strong and purposeful people that program for five years or so four or five
026years now we've used superflex as part of our social thinking program and our children use that language every day we've also been discussing for the last few years having a growth mindset in all aspects of learning adding the mindfulness program was not a response to kovid specifically it was um something that we had already talked about prior to um it was timing was certainly in line with providing our students with um i apologize i think i broke he broke the machine although the timing um certainly is in line with you know with providing our students with supports coming out of the pandemic but it's not only that you know it's really about strategies for lifelong you know these lifelong strategies of self-awareness and management that our students are going to need you know now and
027into into their careers here in middleborough and now i'm going to go to the slides maybe [Laughter] a slight pause i'm gonna try and plug this in down there and see if it goes those folks at home perhaps we're having some technical difficulties with a slideshow that we want to present this evening now i have to read up there all right here we go so as i said social emotional learning isn't anything new that we're doing it every single day in our in our classrooms so why do we need a specific mindfulness program then well just some statistics to to look at behind um our our decisions uh nationally the national increase of mental health issues over the past several years um kovid as we know you know resulted in restrictions in socialization took rising
028feelings of loneliness and depression and supercharged them and exacerbated them for many of our students a coalition a coalition of children's hospitals and physicians urged congress to treat this mental health mental health crisis like the emergency it is citing a 45 increase in the number of self-injury and suicide cases from 5 to 17 year olds in the first half of 2021. important support to our sel programming is social thinking and purposeful people and pbis which we have been doing in our schools for more than five years specific data to our schools hbb the 2021 survey data 60 of students reported that school makes them nervous or anxious forty five point seven percent of students reported being worried about next school year sixty nine percent of the parents and forty seven percent of teachers also reported
029being concerned for for their students for next year and each be excuse me an mkg 71 of parents and 52 percent of teachers reported being concerned about their child the next year 31 of our students reported that they are they feel they're unable to remain calm when stressed angry or someone bothers them so the important piece of this is you know the focus right as it looks with kovid yes it's it it is a need but this is definitely before covet definitely you know we were working with our mindfulness and we were working with our growth mindset and we were working with purposeful people and prior to covet and i think because we did those things with with purposeful people prior to kovid our kids had already some resiliency in them and and that's huge
030and this is just another layer added to what we've already been doing um as part of our program so i'm going to take it from here so talk a little bit about what karma choice is what commerce choice isn't um so a mindfulness program i know at hbb and i know my colleagues will attest to this has been something i've been advocating for a long time i really have felt like it was the last excuse me derek could you move the mic over to clearly thank you sorry i'm louder than you a um mindfulness program has been something i've been advocating for for a number of years because as mrs white said we can see an increase in anxiety kids having a hard time focusing settling down i think it's just a constant rush in
031a school day we're trying to get through things and we never stop we never just slow things down and in many ways that's really what mindfulness programs are all about um so just a couple points mindfulness is designed to decrease stress increase self-awareness improve attention and focus that's really what it is it's about metacognition and it's about teaching kids to think about thinking there's a lot of benefits when we are successfully able to get kids to be able to think about thinking to notice that they're noticing things and it's a complement to sel programming it's not sel programming and it's more about an inside out approach versus an outside in approach meaning you know we can sit this is nothing new we've been doing this in morning meeting for the 10 years that i've been
032the principal at the birkeland school and we talk to kids about being respectful and what it means to be a good friend but it's different when a teacher is saying it to a kid and we're actually taking steps to start to have them become more present and aware that maybe they're talking too much and their friends don't like that or they're not focused and they're not paying attention and one of the things we struggle with is our adjustment counselor our school psychologists who service kids they both have caseloads in my building well over 100 kids so if we can't actively teach some of these things in the classroom we're exporting responsibility for the teaching of some of these skills to two people in a building and it's completely overwhelming and we're seeing an increase in
033this i think everybody would agree the amount of screen time kids have their ability to stay focused and paying pay attention in class is decreasing so in many ways we're fighting an uphill battle i think um one of the things i did want to touch on is what comma choice is not because i think we've heard some questions about this it's not a sex ed program it's not religious and it's not a program that really deals at all with social justice diversity equity critical race theory gender identity any of that and i know there's a lot of angst about that one of the things i did just want to say is that is something that eventually as a district we're going to need to talk about i know mrs lyons we've been talking about this
034a lot this is not we're not going to try to approach this topic in some sneaky backdoor way by sneaking in a mindfulness program or some sel program that has some of this embedded somewhere in it we are going to be open be transparent have those conversations but this is in by no means has anything to do with any of that so um we'll go to the questions afterwards let them present and then come back to questions i may address it and i'll come i'll come back and i'll i'll speak to i don't have that many slides so i'll come back to your question um so karma choices a mindfulness program as i said uh before we're ready for the next slide if we can pop onto it um this is really just why we
035chose calmer choice we had a team of folks from both schools and we looked at karma choice mind up center for resilience and mindful schools we looked at four different programs and the i mean there's a lot of research to support mindful the camera choice program so that was one of the main reasons but honestly the biggest reason was that their instructors came to us their instructors were trained and i think we were just a little bit anxious about what it would look like to just give materials on mindfulness to teachers maybe without the same level of training and support to just kind of move forward in the classroom so i think we felt a little bit more comfortable with this program because of the amount of support that they offered in the training that
036the staff had so we're ready for the next slide and so how does it work it's two times a week for 20 minutes it's worked into the morning meeting time that teachers have every day we have our teachers from nine to nine thirty roughly um usually have a morning meeting and that's uh generally when it's worked in unfortunately with karma choice because of the schedule we had to build it in throughout the day for 20 minutes but the the intention is that eventually this is part of something that's worked into their morning meetings so the scheduling during the eight weeks is less than ideal but the intention is that it's something that's worked into the morning meeting not necessarily taking away from learning time and the topics here you can see there's a there's a
037number of them listed like mindful breathing helping kids understand the brain understanding thinking the stress response um you know one of the things i explained to people because the question has come up like is there a place for this in school i think what i hope people understand is there is a set of prerequisite expectations that we have on our students to be successful in schools that we don't talk enough about honestly if we want a kid to and i use this example all the time to be able to understand an author's purpose and understand that an author has feelings and that's why they wrote the book or the characters in the book has feelings but we're talking to a student who doesn't care about the kid who's sitting next to them and has yet
038to develop that empathy it is a it is important that a teacher teaches these skills this is a part of what we've been doing in education for hundreds of years honestly as long as i've been in education we've been doing this it's just not always been explicitly acknowledged and formally taught i guess and we're trying to do a better job explicitly teaching for the expectations that we have for kids not just expecting them to jump right in and meet expectations that they struggle with so mindfulness is an important part of that approach um miss stephanie is one of the instructors on our end and she leaves an envelope for kids i just thought this was a powerful thing to share and this is the last couple slides here where kids could ask questions i have
039so many examples of powerful examples of things that kids are learning but these are some of the examples that second grade kids were asking why can't i focus i know kids are noisy but i can't stop doing things wrong please help how can you listen if there's a lot of noise around you why are we talking about listening why do i always get done with my work first so pretty insightful questions from second graders and then the next slide there's a picture that i thought this is just one of many examples i could show but in this particular picture this girl drew all the students in classroom this is her perception i know this girl and this isn't necessarily accurate but this is her perception where she has all the kids in her class drawn
040and she had all their names above it we blacked it out but she put a check mark next to all of the other kids in class because in her perception all the kids are doing what they're supposed to do but she can't focus and so she wrote dear miss stephanie how do you know to focus on some things that you don't know i always get distracted and this is a big part of what mindfulness is about is just taking a moment to just slow down and relax i do what's called a stop and arrive they um this is something they do with the kids um with my staff and a staff meeting where it's really just you know a minute and a half of quiet time where um you know that we play it's a
041recorded voice and the gentleman and just is just saying to people pay attention to the the sounds in the room just relax take a breath it's a minute and a half and to a t my staff have all said that was the first time all day that i didn't do anything and my question to the staff when we've done that is imagine what it's like to be a kid we're just go going going going going going all day long at some point we just need to slow down and take a breath and that's really what the mindfulness program is about um so i don't think we have any more slides up there i wanted to share we had an event we had an event last night and tonight um at mary kay good and um
042at least four families had spoken to me yesterday regarding that their child's using some of the techniques at home and talking the language you know the calming one specific story that was shared with me i do want to share um a mom had brought her child to a doctor's appointment yesterday a wellness appointment and the child was very anxious and very nervous as most children are going to the doctor and when the doctor came in he was doing his five finger breathing that he had learned during this time during his class and the doctor noticed and asked him about it and he said i'm very this is a first grader i am i'm very nervous to see you and i'm doing my five finger breathing and it's helping me to relax and to and he
043he looked and the doctor was quite impressed a local physician was very impressed that he had the language to speak and was able to use it and you know wasn't asking for help from his parent wasn't getting it was he was very impressed that we were having a program where kids are learning techniques um to be able to you know like you said slow themselves down have you know work on those stressful situations and not having to look outside really looking within to help them and i know you had a question if we bring that slide back up so honestly i don't have a huge problem with mindfulness there's a lot of aspects of it that are good yeah you know sel is a broad umbrella that can cover a lot of different things i
044think programs like this first of all need to be optional like right up front not oh if you have an issue with it when you find out about it you can call and pull your kids yeah we we know we can do that but there should be something that comes home before a program like this is implemented with a curriculum overview so parents can see if there's anything concerning for them specifically in their children because all children develop their coping skills differently there doesn't have to be a specific standard developed that all kids need to abide by because what is that going to lead to in the future and one of the things that were alarming to us when i talked to you lisa about our concerns when we got the letter about calmer choice
045before it already started at mkg which was upsetting to me because i would have liked to review this curriculum before i say my kids can sit in on it and i mean i have an autistic son he does a lot of seo stuff i'm fine with that but there's certain things that i'm not okay with too and when i reviewed the overview from calmer choice they base their curriculum on um let me just five key principles they say this in their own material so if they were chosen out of five different groups and you guys really looked into this group and thought this was the best one you would have seen this in under equity anti-bias efforts efforts and cultural inclusivity one of the bullet points says hold on let me just make sure it's
046creating opportunities for staff to engage in open and honest conversation about issues of marginalized groups and other cultural factors such as privilege and power so what does that mean so so actually that that's not what the program is about they're what they're saying in that part i know the part that you're referencing is that their program is um i don't know the right word i want to say that they they're like sensitive to those issues their staff have been trained in like anti-bias training and um trauma informed practices the reason for that the first question they ask us is can we meet your adjustment counselor and your school psychologist because if these issues come up in a classroom we need to know who to refer them to what's considered an issue though you know what
047i mean like i don't want that critical race theory does not need to be in our schools certainly not in our elementary schools listen so as i said before this is not what that is about what what their this is exactly why we chose their program because their staff are trained to recognize when these issues are coming up if you read through further in that they talk about their mission statement is to make sure that they do not re-traumatize kids because if a student brings up an issue that may be an equity-based issue they are able to identify that it's an issue and can refer it to us to deal with it in the way that we would deal it with it in the building the fear with having a program where we just hand
048resources to teachers who may not be trained is how are they going to navigate that if that issue comes up that's why we didn't select the other programs but how is an issue like that going to be addressed for a white child who feels like they're privileged that those issues that you're talking about those issues that you're talking about are coming up in schools today this has this has not got anything to do with this program they are not teaching this is not what we're getting into and that's why i said to you before we recognize there is a need to have this conversation and absolutely recognize that there's anxiety about this and fear about how we're going to navigate it we are not going to do it in a sneaky way unfortunately we're not
049addressing these issues the way we need to because we haven't had the time to have the conversation that we actually need to have but this is not that but you have to understand as a parent when we request the curriculum for a program like this you guys don't have it so we're referred to calmer choice this is what they send us so if this isn't what they're doing why is this coming to us as part of the curriculum they're supposed to be sending us it's part of the training that they're yeah i did see the response i think there's some misunderstanding on what they were communicating they were trying to make sure that they that you knew their staff are trained in these areas i don't really care you know what means what i want
050to know is what they're doing in my kids classroom specifically i want to see the details about the curriculum i want to see their lesson plans i specifically asked for that and that's not what was sent to me so if you want a parent to trust you and trust these outside organizations there needs to be transparency like true transparency we shouldn't have to request these things they should be coming to us because these are our kids and these are sensitive topics these aren't core academic topics that you expect your kids to learn in school so when every child has a different upbringing different morals ethics beliefs religions whatever that they are taught in their homes stuff like this is highly sensitive and we need to know exactly what's being said i mean they are two
051days a week 20 minutes a day for eight weeks that's a lot of time that they're taking up in our kids you know academic career when they're supposed to be learning other things i get that there's a need for certain kids i'm not saying that it shouldn't exist but for programs like this we need to be aware of every aspect before it's implemented and know that we have the right to either opt in or opt out well i i will challenge you on that because in massachusetts really the legally the only thing parents can opt out of curriculum wise is sex ed curriculum and this isn't sex so you're telling me that if i don't agree with a social emotional learning topic that you guys are implementing on my child to teach them how to
052specifically think about certain things or how they should feel about things or how they should organize their thoughts or think about how they think i don't have a say in that as a parent no i'm not listen i'm not saying that we wouldn't be respectful of having those conversations but i think that you're asking that we should have known like that we should be i don't think have you ever reviewed our entire math correctly well my kids are in first grade so this is just the start of my children's career but yeah if i had a question about it yes i would ask to review it but it's math i mean i would hope that there's i mean i have seen crazy word problems in math but you know yeah i mean i would and
053i think it is that you know it is something we're learning to navigate as as and we've spoken several times you know we're all learning to navigate this together yeah and i think you're right the transparency and we spoke about when i explained to you to my concern and the conversation i had too with time of choice without information um but i think navigating this together is key i i totally agree with that because you know it is it is something that as mr thompson said we are going to be moving forward the world is moving forward with a lot of these topics and having all stakeholders not just families but other members of the community that might not even have children in school because their children do impact living in this in this town
054too and i think everyone needs to have you know a seat at the table in a conversation a hundred percent but that's why this program should be optional yeah that's a conversation we need to have as a i mean that you know i don't set policy yeah and that's a larger conversation for i think the superintendent and school committee as we move forward but um honestly that's most parents biggest thing is transparency you want to have all these programs for all different kids needs great awesome but not all kids have the same needs and not all kids should have to sit through a program like this when they don't need to well i i would disagree and that's where i was saying before there's and you can when it comes to my kid it's my
055choice i understand there we we have always had to teach these things to right so why is it so standardized now this is the thing it's not standard it is because there's certain things that you're teaching certain ways that they need to think and go about things and do things and it's just why can't kids just be kids and cope with things differently like we always have and grow up to be normal functioning adults like we always have what's different about now yeah it's a much bigger conversation but there's a lot that's much different about it no kidding and a lot of it's questionable and a lot of it is concerning to us as parents i i think the part that i wanted to make sure that you understand and other people understand is i
056do recognize there's concern about certain conversations this is not that this is not we're not trying to sneak it in and i i get i hear you like you want things to be more transparent totally totally understand that um maybe maybe allow a parent to come in and sit in on it and report back to parents what is actually being done with their kids with their kids in the classroom he already broke the computer i have extended that offer to parents on my on my end of the building i have no problem like we have nothing to hide i mean i've been here for 10 years we care about kids who are just trying to i'm not doubting that i know that i trust the teachers with my i trust you you know but these
057programs i do not trust i do not trust desi i do not trust any of these new age programs this is a program that's been along for around for a long time i when i worked in mashpee i worked with commerce choice 12 and 13 years ago i have a when i looked on their website i had many issues with their organization and the way that they present themselves and their you know what they consider to be important are things that i find alarming so not everybody feels that way um you know everyone has different opinions i think there's my concern right now is there's a lot of angst about issues that you know commerce choice is not really about but i recognize when you read the materials there's like reference to certain things like
058their staff are trained in anti-bias training but this isn't an anti-bias curriculum and and the pillars that you're talking about there though that's not karma choices they're referencing their alignment with another organization just in terms of their understanding and sensitivity to issues which is important if kids start presenting issues that are in line with some of those issues they need to know where to direct it that's when mistakes happen that's when things happen in public schools that you read about on facebook where you can't believe a teacher said something right it's because they weren't given the training and they were asked to teach something they weren't ready to teach and we're trying to avoid that's not what i have a problem with i'm just saying moving forward especially with things like this there needs to
059be more transparency right up front parents need to know but way before it's implemented and not when it's brought up as part of the school plan for the following year i mean i we come to every single school committee meeting and i don't remember that you know i mean i remember you guys getting up and talking but i don't remember what you said was going to be part of the school plan the next year i'm not thinking about that at the time i'm thinking about the concerns that are going on right then and there so when this came up and i talked to lisa and she told me you know it was said at a school committee meeting this that the other thing whatever you know that's to me that's not enough like that's not
060okay something and when we ask for the curriculum i want to see the curriculum i mean you guys should have that at your fingertips to hand to a parent if they request it i don't think that that's too much to ask i think i don't disagree right and so we can definitely i can certainly forward it to you like i mean yeah i mean that's what i asked for and i reached out to the camera choice and i'm sorry really the questions should be coming to us they should be coming to us i think the curriculum companies and they don't they're not like they're generally we ask them just direct people back to us because it gets muddier the last slide that's up there says please if there's questions just call us because we're not
061that transparency is important and i think one of the things that's changed lately unfortunately things in our society have just gotten so tense and it's like we're here for the kids in middlebury we need to be able to sit and have a conversation a real conversation and listen to both sides everybody's opinion it's good and bad because it's making parents hyper vigilant yeah which is a good thing but it's it can also be a bad thing because it's going to bring up a lot of issues and unfortunately that's too bad like that's the way it's going to be because these are our kids and even though we're all looking out for their best interest we all have different viewpoints and everybody has a different outlook on what they think is important for their kids as
062long as i've been in this town though i think everyone has been really good about ultimately coming to consensus it feels like it's changed a little bit over the last couple years but it's still the same people with the same goals in mind trying to do what's best for the kids the teachers the administrators school committee everybody and i think the more we can just have open honest respectful dialogue the better we're gonna get there and one of the challenges i think is this this issue is completely unpredictable to me like i never would have thought this would be the thing everyone would i was aware of some of the other things but then slowly over the last couple months it seems like some of the sel curriculum and the concerns about the other issues
063like gender identity and critical have gotten wrapped up into the same thing and they're not they're separated this is what i mean they're sliding it into that umbrella of sel okay so then if you guys are responsible for what slides in under sel then if i have questions in the future i know that it's directly you guys that are doing it and i when when we spoke i thought you had gotten it from i thought you would receive because i didn't hear back from you i thought you had gotten the full curriculum from i read that and i was like yeah no i will send it to you because i thought you got it from sarah so that's why i didn't hear back that's all she sent to any of us like i thought when
064i didn't hear back i thought she sent you the whole thing so i will i have my computer i'll send it to you as i go back to my seat and we met with them they weren't trying to not be transparent they were asking us like we don't know what you want shared and not shared just share everything what are you doing share that that's what you share yeah i mean that's not how all those programs right you know that's not how they're trying to make money to try to sell themselves and you know they're not all about just sending everything out but if they don't want to send everything to me then they don't need to be influenced my child that's well we do have it and you can share it yeah i'll take
065care of that like i said i thought sarah sent it to you because when i didn't hear back from you i thought you had gotten it after your email to sarah so i will take care of that okay but ask questions too because some of what you see you know it seems like some of the things are being misunderstood in terms of where they are and that's fine yes thank you all right thank you thank you i'm going to turn it back up here you have a question marcia go ahead first i'd like to say thank you to mrs white and mr thompson for coming and talking about the calmer choice i have received many messages over the last few weeks i've corresponded with mrs white parents concerned over the program i think there were
066two main concerns with the program one was that there was no advance notification of the program that was implemented within the child's classroom for example my own daughter is participating in it and she's in second grade and we received a note home in her tuesday folder about it after the program had already started so there was no advance notice to the parents that this new program was being implemented within the classroom and then the other is that there's no comprehensive detailed curriculum that's been provided regarding what these sessions entail so a few parents did email sarah because her name was on the paper that came home and sarah um wasn't ex exactly helpful to the parents so then they came to mrs white asking for the curriculum when they told me that their questions were
067still not answered i personally reached out to sarah and sarah told me that to contact mrs white and that a detailed comprehensive curriculum was on file at mkg and i could make an appointment to set up to review it so then i emailed mrs white back again and she told me to email mr lynch for the information which i did and i never actually received a response regarding it over that was over a week ago um so to this day i still don't have a curriculum i can't answer anyone's questions and i know like they're directing so back to you guys so we when we get the res we get the questions so we can't just hand it out we have to get their permission to hand it out because it's some of it's copyright
068copyright problems and whatever so i had to check with that so once we got the okay that yes we could send it then i have sent it to parents there are parents that did reach out to me again and i did send it to them okay so they do have it as a matter of fact another parent reached out to me asking for specifically what videos her child had seen and the videos are listed in that so i reached out to them and she's like well i'm not reading 195 pages to find the videos i'd like to know so camera choice was great i i asked she was on a retreat as soon as she got back she sent it to me and i emailed those out the the videos okay so i do have
069a copy of an email version of of the curriculum i'll certainly okay send it over um so i'll we just had to wait we don't know you know with them there's copyright issues so what we can send and what we can't send so we had to make sure and get the clearance from them they've been fine they've said sure share whatever it is that you want to share you can certainly do that like i said the videos yeah i've been relying on my eight-year-old telling me what's going on and i know how bad it is like that's not always and i do i did have an issue with climate choice they didn't give us those papers either so we had i had a conversation with sarah regarding that because that was a problem for me
070too as a principal that something went out and um that won't happen again no because i was i you know i even might the staff knows like things need to come across my desk and when that didn't happen and i was i was also caught off guard that they had sent something home um i was a little taken aback because i want to know what's on it and i don't want to i agree with you the blurb at the bottom to call sap you know email sarah no my families have a relationship with me right i want the questions i want the concern you know not some other person that we don't know i know this other being so that will be different obviously moving forward but if a family is requesting they can certainly
071send you know an email and we can certainly forward um the information that we have okay and then just i know these pr i'm for social emotional learning i think it's great i had a child that benefits from it i i understand the need for it in schools i have no problem with it but i think that these are new programs that for my generation this didn't exist when we were in school so it goes beyond what most of us parents think is the normal scope of school so i think when we do these programs in the future i think it would be helpful if a detailed curriculum is provided to the parents along with maybe a question and answer night to whoever we choose to do it like calmer choice to come in so
072parents aren't having these questions and they think that these things are going on in the classroom that are not going on i think it would alleviate a lot of fears and anxiety with the parents if they just had this information ahead of time and up front right as i said i think this is a new journey for everyone i know right um you know speaking with our new superintendent um who's coming in kind of having that not and i look at it that not just sel i mean it shouldn't be it should be really a night of what are our kids learning in english and language arts and what are our kids learning in math and you know it shouldn't just be this right seo thing that we do you know i look at it
073more as what are all of our kids learning in school and in the different areas so i think that's something we've been talking about doing um you know the beginning of next school year kind of a a panel discussion or a conversation about what is it that we're learning and teaching i know there were questions that had come up about leslie and about the you know our literacy program so those questions have come up you know we're going to be looking at math programs looking at the you know all of that i think being transparent i think is is key because it does avoid a lot of this mis perception of of what's happening so i do think that that is definitely something we are aware of and want to do and look forward to
074doing in the future right great nope that's that's pretty much all i had thank you thank you other questions okay um i just wanted to kind of echo what i missed her name the woman who came to talk about the mini bus drivers in the fact that you basically need to be a lawyer to be able to break down like all the laws that surround your child's education and be able to be a parent who is invested and involved and to know what your rights are as a parent in relation to your child's education it's it's honestly just your head spins really if you're not uh a lawyer or somebody who has studied in like a field of education [Music] i think that sorry trust has just really deteriorated between starting state legislators the commissioner
075of deci dese down to school committee boards down to educators between parents at the lack of communication specifically for this calmer choice with me didn't sit right i didn't appreciate having my son come home and tell me that he was participating in this program only because i would had a flyer in front of my face i didn't appreciate not being able to see a curriculum where else i'm not 100 i did opt my child out he's in second grade it's been brought to my attention that the third graders have already finished the curriculum they had actually finished before the flyer went out so i mean i would can't even imagine how upset i would be if i had a third grader um i'm not in love with the alternative that was provided um as far
076as i understand the teacher in the classroom doesn't have any uh involvement in the commerce choice instruction so i don't know why i don't know i just don't love my child being the only one removed from the room and put to sit in front of a computer when screen time has been attributed to the deterioration of the child's minds and being able to think process their feelings and i don't i don't disagree with the fact that there are absolute benefits to sel and programs like this but when there's no communication the communication that does get sent out has like charged verbiage when you can go on to their website of the company that was chosen and you see the same charged verbiage in the profiles of actual instructors who come out and implement the program
077it just it doesn't sit right so i do think that parents should absolutely have the opportunity to opt their children out or into a program like this and i i don't know i think that leah said a lot of what i wanted to say that's it just tired tired thank you derek and lisa appreciate it yeah thank you both thank you for coming tonight and explaining it i think we heard the message from the public tonight in terms of what we need to do in the future so thank you i don't see ryan sylvia i know he had a baseball game i believe that was going into extra innings so we're going to move right on to mr brannigan who's going to update us on some graduation and senior activities mr branigan thanks for coming
078all right hey everyone i just texted mr sylvia to let him know that um he was up um thanks for letting me come by i just wanted to give some updates that we are weeks away from celebrating the class of 2022 on one of the largest milestones of their lives with graduation and we're really excited to be able to be a part of that i came back i came to you months ago with really the senior calendar and really the approval of all of the final events senior class and so that is still in in good form there's been some minor changes because we wanted to really meet with the senior class officers once we've got ourselves closer i do a meeting with the five officers and the advisors to go over all the facets
079of senior week and assigning who's going to be responsible for what and all of that and i wanted them to make some decisions about certain programs like our senior barbecue last year we had to do things very differently because we didn't have the opportunity to do things inside really everything had to be outside we also was transitioning to the new building and construction we were limited of really spaces we could do things especially with parking so we needed to really be creative in some of those elements so part of the meeting was was to really talk about really well what do we really want to do and do you want to go back to doing some of the things we used to do um especially in the old building or were these some of these
080new experiences or changes and experiences is it something that was attractive so pretty much everything's is staying the same and i'll just do a really quick overview to all members of the school committee you'll be receiving from me the updated calendar of all the events and to all of the families that are watching there'll be an updated letter from me with some details as well as the updated calendar but i thought it was important to share it tonight and then be able to send it out to everybody final exams will be taking place on may 24th and may 25th that we do two days of exams where the senior class and senior class only will come in for the morning they will do their exams and they will leave at 10 15 as they've done
081blocks one and two they will come in the second day do blocks three and four and their official last day academically will be on wednesday may 25th on may 26th they'll come in we have a senior meeting in the morning that is the day that yearbooks will be distributed and then also we've made the decision to move the barbecue back to the morning hours of the school day so it will be that they'll finish the morning meeting with me we'll all go outside to the quad at least that's where we're thinking of doing it um where they will get their yearbooks and they will have a nice barbecue and they'll be on their way as well on friday may 27th we had identified that would be nothing it was really a day that we had
082built in where there would only be a makeup day for any seniors that had a certain makeup they needed to do with the school and what we decided to do is build a senior memory night that last year had to be embedded within the barbecue and this year it's going to be a standalone event and the senior class would like to do that on friday may 27th at 7 o'clock p.m in the student commons so it is just a night just for seniors it's pizza it's an ice cream sundae party it's slide shows and they get to bring their yearbooks and it's just really a final night before the busyness of the week ahead ultimately our senior prom is a grand view in menden so we have had a really great relationship with that facility
083and we're really excited to see that event happen for the senior prom on tuesday may 31st but in the morning it will be the senior breakfast wednesday scholarship night all of our scholarships are pretty much in good form and so now we're just ready to do the final edits and enlisting and then ultimately send it out to all of our invitees of the seniors will be invited to that event thursday june 2nd um senior last assembly um and then of course one of the most exciting events is on friday june 3rd which is the senior walk where our students go back in time they will start they will leave here at the high school at approximately 10 30 in the morning and they'll make their way in their caps and gowns to all five buildings
084they will start at the mec go to the complex the nichols middle school and they'll arrive back here to their home and then of course on saturday june 4th is graduation there has been one change which i want to thank a parent who had emailed me and said what happens if it rains and in full disclosure there was never an option it was going to rain in 2020 and 2021 because if it did you were still going to be outside anyway and we lucked out with outside events so ultimately we needed to now come up with a rain plan and so we made the decision that um this year there would be no tickets to graduation outside because we really don't need to do tickets outside in the stadium so if we are outside that
085will be the case however if we do need to move inside because of rain we'll be making a decision early and on saturday morning if we need to make that move and at that time all of our students ahead of time will be receiving tickets because if we move inside there will be tickets because we just can't have fit everybody that you can fit in the stadium and i'll give more of that information in my in my correspondence to the families but those tickets will only be used if it rains we made the decision not to go to the next day outside because we know the fact that on that sunday june 5th there's an awful lot of plans for graduation parties and to have a graduation in the middle of the midday on that
086stadium turf is not appropriate so it would have to be in the evening as well and it just was becoming too complicated so it would be graduation regardless rain or shine will be on saturday june 4th as well um and just lastly if i just may i just want to thank all the community members and and mrs farley for really all the work in the adopted senior program um really wonderful event that we did in 2020 out of just such a surreal experience and really how it has become really such a major part of their experience as a senior and just to really all of the community members said l 222 seniors have been adopted and really what a wonderful day for them it will be when they get their gifts so thank you to
087the community for that any questions or anything to be honest i just wanted to make sure everyone knew what was going on that week and was aware of it so they put it in their calendars paul does a fantastic job as does his entire staff for that week so thank you very much paul thank you and we certainly encourage school committee members to attend graduation and hand out diplomas so all welcome to attend if you'd like and fma just one thing i forgot friday june may 20th is future signing day so for all of our seniors will take their seat to be able to sign what their next steps are in life and they'll take their pictures on the wall outside the school counseling office so that will be an exciting day for them so
088thank you awesome thanks mr branigan up next is mr ryan sylvia our athletic director who's going to talk about summer athletic programming each year he just comes to the school committee describes it and the school committee generally approves the program um so i would ask that that you listen attentively and and vote to either approve or not approve so ryan welcome how'd the baseball team do uh not sure i haven't got the results yet i've been uh sitting in the uh some interviews uh so sorry for being a little bit late here but um i did send something over in the drop box a little late so hopefully uh school committee members were had a chance to take a look at it but it's really not much change from our summer program that we put
089in place back in 2018 and we've been doing every year since even through through the pandemic so basically we try to offer as many athletic opportunities in the summer as we can for the students in middleborough really starting in grade three for some programs all the way up through grade 12 but it's really dependent on the sport so we'll do a youth basketball clinic and youth may direct clinic and really whatever sport that the the coaches want to offer all these programs are either run as a four-day clinic monday through thursday and the times range from nine to they're three-hour clinics the early time slots are 9-12 and they go all the way to 4 to 7 in all based off the coaches scheduling and i work with the coaches to figure that out so
090we have last year we ran 11 clinics we had about 291 participants it's not used as a as a as a fundraiser or a way to raise money for the athletic department uh it basically it doesn't equal out but it basically covers the cost of paying the coaches an hourly rate for their time some expenses we in the past two years we've done masks prior to the pandemic we did t-shirts which would be the intention for this year every student that participates would get a t-shirt so we're still working on finalizing that schedule but it's going to be anywhere in the range from 11 to probably 15 different athletic programs and that would all be scheduled either on the turf stadium or in the mhs gym working with the facilities director mr jim hutchinson to
091make sure that we have space for each program and coordinating you know if there's basketball in the morning then maybe there's volleyball in the afternoon there's a different some of the sports opt for a different format where they might meet throughout the summer rather than four days straight they would do once a week or twice a week the field hockey program did that the lacrosse program did that last year so it's really just managing the facility making sure that we have everyone in the right spot the rates vary as well with the strength and conditioning program at the lowest level at 75 and all the way up to 200 if we were able to run a golf clinic the strength and conditioning is a little bit different where it runs monday through thursday for the
092entire summer and it has four different time slots so we make sure we space we group the kids accordingly 6 a.m 7 a.m 8 a.m and 9 a.m uh sometimes we'll drop one of those time slots depending on if we have enough students to fill um so that's that's kind of a basic summary of what the summer program looks like that those are the that's the piece that really hasn't changed one new aspect that i've been in discussions with with head coach patrick kingman and our girls basketball coach jeff powers for summer leagues a little bit different as these would be high school only for high school students and what happens is every summer our football team and basketball team will participate in a league at another school where typically eight six to eight to
093ten different schools uh compete all summer long once a week for bet for football it's a it's a seven on seven passing league um and what we'd be looking to do this summer is host that league with eight area schools on the turf they would pay a fee to participate we would oversee we would have our head coach there present as a supervisor of the activity as well as myself and the athletic trainer and kind of a rotation to make sure we have supervision there and we would coordinate with officials and referees one night a week on monday nights so that basically it would keep our students in town rather than heading over to another town to participate in that type of activity the second piece would be the girls basketball summer league similar situation
094in years past we've gone over to upon quit old rochester taunton to run those leagues and this would be we would be bringing in other schools to compete um our students would always be participating on the nights that we have that would be monday and wednesday nights um typically uh both of these programs would run from five to eight pm i did have a conversation with jim hutchinson on making sure facilities would be available we'd have custodial coverage but it would be a situation where there would be potentially spectators watching games and uh both on the turf and in the gym so that would be a change and it was really an opportunity to highlight our facility uh and give our students not a chance to stay in town and not have to travel uh
095to participate in these summer activities any questions from the school committee or from the audience so ryan my only comment is you've done it for the past four summers it's been fantastic so thank you for doing that i appreciate that do you have everybody lined up to do it already pretty much we have the coaches lined up it's really a matter of finalizing the schedule because we need to make sure and once that's done you know we're going to get it out as soon as possible the registration process will be the same as last year i know i didn't mention that but through family id very similar to the athletics registration or the same as the athletics registration fees are paid the same way through unibank or a money order one thing that is important
096to point out and it's come up in the past is that the summer athletic fees are are independent from the athletics user fees so in other words we have a family cap of 450 for athletics user fees that that any fees that are paid for the summer program are not included in that family cap so the family cap for user fees is only for the three athletic seasons fall winter and spring are the questions um ryan i had a couple of questions just about the girls basketball league and the seven on seven is that one team per school or could it be multiple teams per school it would only be one team per school wow there are situations you know some schools running differently for us we like to start it small and and probably
097stick it stick with it that way just all the schools would every school basically would play on every night so we have football would be monday nights there's eight schools they rotate through the reach on half the field there's officials five to eight pm and then we get them home basketball same thing only it's tuesday nights i'm sorry monday nights and wednesday nights got it thank you that was my question thank you ryan appreciate you coming with that chair we're going to take a motion to approve the station summer schedule thank you discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed it's unanimous thank you ryan next on my report is a community event coming up and i would defer to the chair to talk about this a little bit so um what
098we have decided to do i met with mr brannigan and i met with carolyn lyons um on sunday may 15th from one to three there will be a meet the superintendent new superintendent not the old one we've already met him to meet the new superintendent ice cream social here in the cafeteria so families would be invited and the community would be invited to come and mr branigan is going to have some students here who will take families through walk throughs so for those families who haven't weren't able to come the day we rededicated the high school they can also come and take a walk through and see the high school again this is just not for school families it's for the whole community and it gives an opportunity to meet the superintendent and for those
099who haven't had the opportunity to walk through this building yet to do that too so i thank mr branigan and ms lyons for her working with me on that that's what we came up with any questions about that thank you okay if not we'll move on to school choice discussion each year the state of massachusetts department of elementary secondary ed requires the school committee to make a decision on whether or not we are going to be a school choice district and if we are going to be a school choice district what grades or grades and number of students will allow in underscore choice my first year we were not a school choice we added it and it's been a successful program we currently have 42 students here who are in our school choice program what's
100going on now in this town as you know uh if you've tuned into planning board meetings and tuned in to any meetings um we have a building book going on and we've had a building boom going on we currently have and according to the building inspector yesterday morning 58 single-family homes being built and every time i ask them it's usually 55 to 60 going on constantly we have apartments going in um a number a good number of apartments going in we have land that's being bought up for development and houses that are going up if you look around and take a drive around town there's houses going up everywhere so i do think the school committee needs to sort of keep that in mind i would tell you that we have one senior graduating so
101next year if we don't add any students to it we will still have 41 we'll still receive the benefits of having school choice and we have a state put clause that says these kids will stay with us so that's a consideration we also have a consideration where we uh we are bursting at certain seams if you will population-wise we had a design enrollment for a new high school that they studied middleborough and they said that in 10 years and this was seven years ago in 10 years our our school high school would have 678 students and it was 684 students in it we argued that we showed them the growth we showed them the land masses in east middlebury and south middlebury and the potential for build out i would say it fell on deaf
102ears if you will they had their 10 growth models and they said no no no that's not going to happen this is going to happen well instead of 680 students high school opened up last year with or this year with 880 students plus uh so we are we are they're they're all accommodated we're not overbooked we're not over overdone we have room for them uh but i don't think we might not need to invite any more students into the high school and into the district right away it's something we need to consider we currently have 3135 students in the district we are a growing district there are very few districts that are growing a lot of districts are not growing and their population is going down that was recognized by the chapter 70 funding which
103came to us in the form of 2.149 million dollars this year additionally because we had the additional students so that needs to be considered as we move forward with school choice this is not a vote tonight this will be i'll have some more numbers for you at the next meeting and would ask a vote for next meeting because according to state law i have to i have to register the district by june 1st as a school district or not as a school choice district the only thing we could look at is potentially kindergarten which we always have tried to look at uh but even that kindergarten i talked to katie godin who's our supervisor of numbers basically our student information student information management system person for the district and she is predicting right now we're
104at 230 for kindergarten and this year we have just about 230 in kindergarten um 229 exactly in kindergarten as of today so i do think that's something we need to look at uh we sort of are proud that we have low class sizes and i think we can survive with the low class sizes and and i if any more would add to those class sizes so uh it does add to the treasury of the school system there's no doubt about it so there are pros and cons but it is something that uh it needs to be discussed and needs to be voted on at the next meeting if there are any questions about numbers and specific numbers you might want uh for next time please let me know through you mr chair yeah so this
105was initial conversation just to bring up where we're at numbers wise i think the high school is concerning to us as it has been the whole time um i think that there is the other thing i'll say is while we're at 229 for kindergarten right now we also tend to pick up people over the summer months that's a projection right so we have about 200 now but we project that there'll be 30 more so she has paperwork on 30 more but we also have constant building going on in the community and so it just raised for the superintendent and i a concern that we're at a point where i really think we need to stop with choice until a couple things factor in one i think obviously this building is new and attracts more students
106when when plymouth is online as their new technical school i think that will attract some new students too and so that may alter some plans and ideas of what people have so there's various things going on around us so we just have to be wary of it and also i would point out to people that in two cases two high schools have closed that we would traditionally lose kids to that was sacred heart and the catholic school in taunton so those are obviously other choices parents don't have so that's why there's been the turning towards us um yes i think i just have two questions one is obviously it's a year by year decision so if we stopped choice this year we could go back into it next year if we felt that and then
107my second point would be you mentioned the 41 students well there'll be one graduating so we would have 41. so if those 41 students stay in district we receive the funds yes we do until those students leave the day it pays for a number of teachers in the district okay so it is there is a financial advantage to having school choice there's no doubt about it uh if we have the room there's no doubt about that just to give you a sense we have 231 students going from kindergarten to first grade 237 students going from first guard first grade to first grade or second grade second grade to third grade 229 third grade to fourth grade 229 fourth grade to fifth grade fifth grade to sixth grade 237 sixth grade the seventh 223 7 to
1088 240. the big winner here is the 8th grade 264 students going into the high school with only 213 leaving so that is almost a 50 student differential now the question is that 264 does not reflect those students who leave and go to bristol plymouth or anywhere else as far as i know according to mrs latender i believe on monday morning or tuesday morning we had the conversation and at that point there were 42 confirmed going but there were also number students on the waiting list um so we are looking at possibly potentially maybe 50 students right now there are 52 seniors at bristol plymouth there are only 32 freshmen from middlebury bristol plymouth so that is an interesting study in numbers they are they have a high school that was that's older than our
109old high school now but they're building one new and that should be done shortly so those students that get in will experience that school hopefully by halfway through junior or senior year so that may be something that's they're looking forward to that might bring the class numbers up from from bp and it's certainly an appropriate choice for those students who want to learn a trade and god knows we certainly need tradesmen in this world and so and women trades women sorry tradespeople and so moving forward i think this is a discussion and a decision for the school committee and if you'd like any more detailed information i can do that but it's just really about the numbers the large numbers and the population in each school you know mrs lieutenant nichols middle school will go
110down in attendance next year because she has those that's 264 going and 237 coming in so so there are there are shifts and balances every year um and we can go more into detail next next meeting if you'd like but that will be a vote you'll need to take so but the problem is that they moved to the high school in those in those larger numbers than we've seen meg you had a question um can we just get some class sizes numbers for our next meeting yep roughly um somebody had asked a question and what about siblings already school choice child so if there's no school choice opening siblings will not be allowed to come in right if the school committee votes to not have school choice for next year that we would not open
111school choice right and basically the school school committee has to decide whether or not we wholesale do not do school choice or we do do school choice but we do a specific grade or two um if there's room uh but uh those are the decisions you'll see so the other thing to to to remember is that children currently in our district because of school choice can remain they do remain they don't have to leave that doesn't work that way so um if we don't open for school choice that means can we open it for specifically for just siblings or is that not an option it has to be like a specific grade i would have to look into the law on that we can't if i remember correctly because it has to you have to
112open school choice to open school choice okay yeah okay but the specific that's a good question megan the specifics of that maybe in the policy that we revised last year and i can look into that but the other piece is we'd be oh so if the superintendent is right we'd be opening grades not numbers um so it would only apply if siblings were in those grades for example there's no way i see we can open high school right so if somebody was if somebody was an eighth grader moving into ninth they couldn't get in um but if we opened kindergarten like the superintendent said then there was that opportunity i think you had a question yeah uh do we have data on how many students move out of the district i can get that for
113you yeah yep next meeting any other things that you can think of off the top of your head you want or looking for okay those three things so class sizes siblings uh rules and and data on students that are going out for school choice all right we'll do that thank you if that's it for school choice we can move on to uh sarah hickey is going to discuss the contract for student transportation services thank you very much superintendent lynch and school committee members we as a district went out to bid for our student transportation services the laws governing bids are quite clear and um it and i have to start with the date that the bid is going to be opened and then backtrack from there the the law says that there's four types of
114advertisement that have to be done two weeks prior to the bid opening so i selected april for april 15th as the bid opening so that meant i had to have all of my legal notifications out by april 1st so i posted the notification that the bid was going to be opened on march 18th i posted that in the superintendent's office business office building it was posted online at commbuys through the state on the 18th as well it fell i put a legal notice in the brockton enterprise on march 25th and then it was published in the goods and services bulletin on march 28th i did have a um a an optional pre-bid conference on march 29th for anyone that was interested there were a number of vendors that did pick up the bid the bib
115was available on march 25th on our website and in my office we had a number of vendors pick up the bid electronically and then on as i said on mark on april 15th we held the bid opening at 11 a.m middleborough public schools received two bids student transportation of america submitted the lowest bid totaling seven million five hundred forty one thousand two hundred ninety nine dollars over what will be a three year contract term the competing vendor pointed out to two issues raised two issues with the bid from student transportation of america they questioned the location of the repair facility and they questioned the lack of names of repair staff i want you to know and i apologize i didn't bring it tonight but when a company bids they put together a bid binder so
116i have a three inch binder from student transportation of america and the binder clearly indicates in the cover letter the intention to secure a lease of an in-town facility to and i'm going to read the quote to serve as close proximity for the timely delivery of services as well as providing operational administrative safety training and maintenance support so in addition their binder includes the resume of the terminal manager that will serve middleborough as well as job descriptions for future hires for their operation team also the comprehensive maintenance tab in the bid binder outlines their maintenance program starting with information about their mechanics certifications all the way through the standardized forms used by their maintenance staff and the drivers to communicate back and forth massachusetts general law 30 b requires us to award the contract to
117the lowest responsible and responsive bidder defined and that's defined as the bidder who fully complied with all of the bid requirements and whose past performance reputation and financial capability is deemed acceptable and who has offered the most advantageous pricing or cost benefit based on the criteria stipulated in the bid documents the office of inspector general's procurement manual states that in determining the responsiveness of a bid you must waive minor informalities student transportation of america provided the essential information in their bid binder just not where they should have put it we're considering that a minor in formality and recommend the school committee to vote to award the contract for student transportation services from the time period of july 1st 2022 to june 30th 2025 to student transportation of america so to start this discussion the chair
118will entertain a motion to award the contract to student transportation services of america do i hear a second sec so uh as far as discussion goes um there's a couple things i want to say because i think it's important as sarah pointed out there was a couple there was uh first student brought us brought up to us issues with what they perceived as the um bid i will say a couple things having bid lots of contracts in the past you can't put names of people when you don't have the contract to do the work so you can't put out who you're going to put together for individual people working in that area just not going to happen same with there can't be an expectation of an outside company coming in and fulfilling the 15 mile
11930 minute location until they get the contract and put it there otherwise you would have a situation in which the group holding the contract would have an unfair advantage over everyone else bidding the contract i would also add that student transportation services america is significantly lower than first student by i believe a quarter million dollars over the three years so it's not like it's a situation that's close it's not a situation that is monetarily but again we appreciate that they raised those concerns but as sarah said those concerns have to be viewed as minor and insignificant based on what they presented to us especially when they have detailed job descriptions for all their staff so i just wanted to bring that up to the committee because i think it's really important and with that is
120there any other comments or questions i just i just want to clarify because this gets confusing the contract we're awarding is for student transportation services the company we're talking about is student transportation of american this conversation but i do want to say just for the public a thank you to first student because i think that obviously we have to go with this and and that's fine but my my own children have been on the buses for many many years with first student and they've always done a really great job so i just want to personally thank them as a parent in this district absolutely any other discussions yes okay um so i understand that it will be a different busing company is that correct correct and is it possible that the current drivers that we
121have servicing the town can get picked up by this company and then they'll be able to continue to serve the town is that i vaguely remember that from the budgeting meeting so i would say two things one is we don't have anything over that because the the for example first student could retain their bus drivers and move them to another contract sure um or it's up to the um bus company that will be hired if the school committee votes there's a representative from that company here so i'll ask him to come up and just introduce himself after after we vote but um i would say that um again it depends on what's happening as far as the services go right like it's happened in the past it could happen before but not a certainty okay
122thank you i i will say that it's written into the bid that we would like the incoming company to if at all possible higher on board than the current drivers excellent thank you any further conversation hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed it's unanimous and sarah did you want to introduce somebody who's in the audience tonight yes uh with us tonight is tony mergo who is the i'm sorry the vice president of operations for student transportation of america he's here just to answer any questions should you have any questions for him so tony welcome and we appreciate it and tony just so um people understand it's my understanding um that you've worked out a provision with the owner of the lot in middleborough currently that when first student is to leave you
123would take over that lot as a place your buses would retain remain yes that's true um we we intend once the award happens we will sign at least tomorrow uh so it's already happened and we'll we'll be signing a lease tomorrow so we're looking forward to that i can't tell you how excited i am and and getting back into middleborough and we're delighted as a company to be here and to answer the parent question absolutely want those local drivers we we they're the that are most important they know the students they know the roads so it's absolutely essential that we try to hire every single one of the current drivers and we'll begin together with the district probably next week and go over our startup plan thank you any other further questions thank you tony
124we appreciate you coming and welcome to middleborough thank you very much really excited thank you thank you tony have a great day and mr chair that concludes my report this evening thank you uh next item on our agenda is just the building project um which is still ongoing we have a meeting next wednesday so at the next meeting we'll have a little bit more of an update does anyone have any specific questions that they have currently mr chair through you we have robert hour is on site uh fontaine brothers continues to be on site working punch list we have currently we have our fields going in our our final field that's been developed the irrigation has gone in this week they've run into some mud certainly and with the rain but they're going to be
125putting in assad field there they've put up the fence that goes around it's basically designed as a practice lacrosse field in the continuation of the soccer field and then the tennis once those trucks get out of there and the tractors get out of there and off the off the irrigation site and off the turf site then the tennis courts will be in they've engineered all of the the net posts and all of the fence posts uh and the outdoor basketball court that's with that so those will be the final major steps in terms of what needs to be done towards completion outside of a punch list that's lengthy and we'll hear more about that next week and we can we can ask the public to stay tuned to that meeting because those meetings are uh
126are on tv on video thank you sir any other questions about that next time on the agenda is um to appoint our delegate to the mass association school committee's conference which is in um uh november we usually do this now primarily because if you sign up prior to end of june you get a discount always like to save the district money i am planning on going to the conference as i know is the new superintendent because we've already had this conversation so i don't know if anyone else wants to it is generally the first wednesday through saturday in november um and people don't have to make a decision now but if um people aren't sure i'd be more than happy to serve as the district representative as i have in the past through you mr
127chair school committee members can attend if you can only attend one day you're certainly welcome to do this there's there's a convention of delegates there's also workshops for school community members and legal workshops and and and the like so if you can you know spare a day and i know it's it's difficult with with families and with work etc uh it's well worth going well worth attending um so just a little input there i read in discussion is that okay yeah okay so yeah i'm definitely very interested there's no limit on how many of us can attend correct so we all wanted to go if we all want to attend we can all attend all right i think i might go this year too all right cool that's cool good that's fun it's a good
128time it's a nice conversation with different people um at different things so it's very good and i would recommend it with that does anyone know they can go for certain okay what are the dates again um it is the first wednesday in november through the saturday in november and i will check that right now i will not be going because that is my children's birthday okay never mind thank you um yeah i think i would like to at least attend one day possibly two cool i'll attend every day i have no i have no qualms and i believe if i recall last year the delegate conference was on saturday right that i cannot do yeah that you were away last year was um i'll be away next year too yeah yes you will but you
129can still go that's the only thing um with that the chairman entertained a motion for delegate to the convention so i moved a second all right all those in favor all right opposed to anonymous thank you uh consent agenda should entertain a motion to approve consent agenda second second um any discussion and the consent agenda includes three fundraisers and approval minutes and warrants all those in favor say aye aye opposed unanimous mr chair yes to clarify there was a change an amendment made on the agenda where the mary kay good elementary school penny wars is actually nichols middle school so that was added as a separate item under other and that would require a vote this evening because it is a fundraiser thank you joe antonio motion to approve the nichols middle school fundraiser clear
130a second there is a second thank you discussion hearing nonetheless in paper say aye aye opposed it's unanimous just to explain we have very active parent ashley ferrini who works at both schools in both ptas and she had the form from the mkg that was for fundraisers and she just didn't cross off the mkg at the top so and she probably didn't notice it but it came over and had to be crossed off and that's why it had to be added so excuse me so our next meeting will be may 19th um the chair will entertain a motion to go to an executive session for purpose three and purpose seven purpose three is to comply with strategy to respect collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining
131or litigation position of the public body and the chair so declares i do declare under union contracts and purpose seven is to comply with or act under the authority of any general special law or federal grant in aid requirements it pertains to executive meeting minutes for this reason um we will only return to public session to reject uh do i have that motion second second quiz or roll call vote marcie local aye teresa aye thank you i i and the chair votes i thank you very much everybody have a nice day you