001session on three different topics um since we'll return to public session i'll ask if you're able to stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all welcome everybody um next up is public comment does anyone have anything not on tonight's agenda that they wish to talk about see noah i will move on to reports from school committee members is there any school committee member um see go right ahead you can start us off uh so i just wanted to say that there is a student choice uh event at cafe milano's this saturday at 9 to 12. students can come and learn about the importance
002of local government sign their name on a mock nomination paper and once they receive a sticker they can walk into milanos and they can show the sticker and they can get ten percent off at milano's so just want to let everyone be aware of that uh it's open to all students so effectively there's no age limit theresa you ready i just wanted to say uh thank you to mr stevens since this will be his last um public school committee meeting as he's leaving us after tonight and the elections on april 2nd so just i've learned a lot from you over the last couple of years and i appreciate your time and i thank you for your volunteerism rich correct this is probably a great time to do it um yeah i just wanted to thank
003greg for all the time and honestly mentorship over the past few years i've learned an awful lot on how to be a more um uh how to be a committee member that contributes more and how to do things the right way um from you so thank you yeah um and also i mean i should i should respect the fact that um that it's very possible i won't be here um after this week as well because my name is on the the ballot and so i just wanted to thank all the committee for um we worked through some really difficult topics i think over the past couple years and i think i've grown closer to every single one of you as a result of of these past couple years and um so i just wanted to
004thank you all for being good collaborative partners in this this whole thing thanks thank you mike thank you um i just wanted to say thank you to both of you i think rich you've done a really great job at reminding me that people don't live in the teaching world and so we have to you know explain all of our acronyms and you know review all those things and talk about all these things because you just live it and you forget that it's not common knowledge um and i just want to say thank you to greg too he's done a really great job at just helping me understand the laws and everything and he'll um you know make sure that we're doing everything correctly and ask those questions to make sure that we are and that
005we're on track so i just want to say thank you to both of you guys i will finish up with thanking greg not only for his service on the school committee but greg is a very good friend um i've appreciated um over the time that you and i have um hunt out his friends and watched our kids grow and done things together like coach our children it was it was always good to to have you serve with me and sort of ground me at times and um i really appreciate that about you greg and i have been through a lot of things together and and been there and a while ago greg moved away for a little while but came back and um it was just happy to have him back rather than another state
006away so greg you've been fantastic i'm you know happy that you're having some free time now giving all the other stuff that you do um but um really appreciated your time here and we'll continue to appreciate your friendship i'd just like to say zeke wants to say yeah i uh so i i see you every wednesday so i will not miss you but i will miss you here you have been a great teacher and a great mentor toward me but to me so thank you thank you um all right so yeah i'll just say uh ditto no it's okay um that's an old bob new hard trick i really appreciate all the help i mean when i first got was a new person six years ago um certainly rich but the current members who aren't
007here anymore i'd like to thank them because this committee since i've been on it we've worked together we've all we've had some disagreements particularly in my first few years we had a lot of disagreements um but we always work together and i think when we finally come to a decision it's a group that has come to a decision and i really feel that it's a special group that way so i will miss being on it it was a hard decision to decide just to not run again uh but it did i think rich said it best i just needed to step back for a little bit and have some more of my own time um but i i'm sure there's a good race coming up so please uh everybody go out and vote on april
0082nd because it's it's important thank you thank you oh i'd like to also thank uh superintendent lynch and ms hickey they both are just whenever we there's a lot that goes on between meetings and uh both of them have always been right there with answers willing to talk willing to uh sit down with me so uh thank you guys uh particularly but and everybody else so thank you even though tonight's your last night you're still not done you still have two negotiating sessions with me um with that um the mea presidents couldn't make it tonight and the student rep couldn't make it tonight because she's studying for an ap exam and i thought that was really important and so with that i'll turn it over to the superintendent thank you mr chair good evening committee
009members and good evening those folks in the audience who could make it tonight my first report this evening is covert 19 update and i like to as i have in the past sort of track us through uh back in september we were at 25 active cases in the district on january 7th we were up to 139 and then on january 14 76 january 26th down up down to 47 february 3rd down to 22 uh february 17th down to 10. at the last meeting we were down to four and as of today we are at zero uh we have zero active cases in the district which uh is a number we have not seen since the beginning so um which is great and and i congratulate everyone involved and i'm just glad this thing hopefully is
010behind us because we're in a better place without it certainly in the town we did get a report this morning from from jacqueline the nurse jacqueline or as paula calls her nurse jackie and there were 11 positive cases pcr positive cases in the town over the last two weeks and just a reminder those pcr positive cases are the results of official lab proctor testing three of the 11 positive cases in the last two weeks were this is the last two weeks were under age 18. uh one of the three was younger than school age middlebury's positivity rate pcr testing data only remains as low remains at .01 percent for the town and there are no reports of severe illnesses um and basically those numbers that were sent to diese included uh a faculty member who
011had been affected but that faculty member has now cleared and we we move on so those numbers are as of today and happily to report that number zero and hopefully we'll keep it at zero we will maintain the dashboard and continue to maintain the dashboard for the community and we'll continue to update it on friday it's usually updated about about when sean gets to it uh which is usually about 4 30 to 5 o'clock p.m on on uh on friday so that's the latest covet update as far as the school system and the community goes there any questions on that from anyone any questions from anybody seeing them good news i moved on now to the introduction of the new curriculum team for the middlebury public schools and invite them to come on down they
012have chosen this evening to introduce themselves which is great and we welcome them here tonight led by dr terry marculitis who will be the first to speak and they have a small slide presentation for you on what they plan to do and what how they plan to accomplish it and what they're all about so welcome uh good evening thank you for coming and we look forward to hearing what you have to say hi everybody thank you so much for um letting us speak tonight we're very excited to be here i think we're a little nervous as well in front of all these faces but we do appreciate the opportunity just to give you a brief bit about what we're going to do we're going to introduce ourselves we're going to talk a little bit about
013our entry plan that will be ready in about three or four months we hope fingers crossed um and then we're going to just walk you through some of our core beliefs and then we will finish up with some of the priorities that we have identified thus far and hope that you are in accordance and agreement with those and then we'll take some questions and that's it so i will start with myself i am dr terry marculitis i've been in education for about 20 years i have a master's in education i have my doctorate in curriculum leadership and instruction my research was done on professional learning community community professional learning communities i was going to say plc's but i heard the acronym comment earlier so i changed that and i really focused on improving writing instruction
014through those plc's um and if you look at our middleboro data that's going to be a very helpful thing for this district so we're looking forward to that work i have two children who are 26 and 23 so really no longer children i am very excited to start this work and with that i will introduce sam dormity i'm sam um as a former classroom teacher and literacy coach here in middleborough i'm very pleased to be in this new district am i too close um i most recently received my master's from saint leo university for educational leadership my master's before that was from fitchburg university in as a reading specialist and i did my undergrad and elementary ed at boston university i have two college age boys one's at unh and one is at roger williams
015and in my spare time i love riding my horses playing ice hockey and teaching and practicing yoga and this is kelly stukenberg here hero hello and this is kelly stupid hi i'm kelly and very gracious to have me here tonight thank you for that um i am coming from a long history of working in curriculum about 18 years of whether being a department head an associate principal or an assistant director of curriculum for science and now a stem coordinator which stem is science technology engineering and mathematics i'm very excited to come on board here i love to work with teachers and help them to grow and to see that aha moment of inquiry and discovery with all ages of children i received my bachelor's degree of science and biology from st michaels and then a
016masters of arts in teaching from northeastern which is a concentration of education in graduate work in biology i have two children one uh daughter and a son they will be 20 and 18 this year and i am a lifelong learner i play soccer played last night and so if you see me limping about it's just because my brain thinks it's 18 but my body is not so thank you thank you okay so just a brief overview of the entry plan work that we're going to be doing um that's i'm thrilled to lead this team i think we're very fortunate um and the people that are in these positions with the experience that they just spoke to um i think we're going to get a lot accomplished in a very quick time since i started in
017february i have been welcomed into this really proud and thriving community it has been a really truly wonderful experience as a new administrator in this district [Music] i need to learn as much about the community as possible and to do so i have to speak with all of the stakeholders i've been interviewing principals um teachers i've yet to speak with students that's next on my list as well as parents and other members of the community it's a long process there's a lot of people that we need to speak to to go into this entry plan so that everybody has a voice it is something that we really truly believe in we want to make sure that we represent the needs of the whole community so as we start this work those interviews will kind of
018guide our work as soon as we notice some trends in what people are saying and thinking as what they identify as their needs and also as their wants and everybody has different needs and wants so putting those all together does take some time so as i said my goals are to learn from the community build strong and trusting relationships and i think we do that by listening to the community members and making sure that we honor what they're saying in our work the entry plan represents work that will continue for the next six months um and then even beyond that so this is just our initial way in and it really speaks to the work that will come after speaking to that um our core values really drive this entry plan i've been doing a
019lot of talking lately so my voice is a little husky our core educational values there are quite a few i'm just going to touch on them briefly we believe that all students deserve access to the best education that we can provide we also believe that all students can learn and achieve at their highest potential when given the necessary supports challenging curriculum and curriculum and that that curriculum is delivered through research-based strategies we really think that education should focus on the whole child and include opportunities for exploration inquiry creativity communication and reflection all of those pieces don't happen at the same time but they should all happen in a student's educational experience the massachusetts standards are the foundation for our curriculum it is not our curriculum but it is the foundation for which we build our
020curriculum upon teachers are the most important part of this they are the ones responsible for providing the high quality instruction and curriculum they need to be supported by us in this endeavor through their job-embedded job-embedded professional development and this needs to support teachers emotional well-being as well as their personal and professional goals and that is something we will work really hard to do make sure that professional development meets the needs of our teachers as well as supports our district goals educational leaders which is all of us in this room need to promote growth among the teaching staff by providing professional development opportunities that meet their needs but also improve student learning outcomes for all of our students so that is really our driving force it is about the students and what's best for students and
021how can we get each student to receive the best education that they deserve [Music] yeah in agreement okay so moving rather quickly through this list is just a really quick dip into the work that we have started it is an extensive list we are currently in the process of adopting a literacy curriculum for kindergarten through eighth grade it is the fontessen panel curriculum it is not perfect and what we are doing right now is beginning to look at the areas that are working that are effective for our students in those areas where we may need to readjust and reevaluate what we're doing so that students are getting the best opportunity that we can provide next year we will start to look at math curriculum this is a really important process for our community we will
022be inviting stakeholders from the community to be a part of our review teams we want to make sure that parents students teachers principals school committee members if you'd like to join us are a part of the teams as we look at different math programs we're hoping to pilot two programs beginning in january for implementation the following year it's going to be a long process we want to do it right which means it's going to take some time we also need to create vertical articulation teams so that we know that what we're doing has effectiveness all the way through from pre-k to 12. it is not just about improving one area we have to really look at what our students are leaving pre-k with what they're leaving kindergarten with so on and so forth to make
023sure that every student is achieving their potential to do this we need some data analysis excuse me i need some water please um so in order to drive our instruction um as you guys know to um mcas have been either missing due to code of id or um not extremely um valid um from thank you you good yep i got it okay sorry dada now maybe i don't have it um okay data analysis to drive i don't have it this is my voice all right take it take it away do you want to do it are we at downtown to drive instruction so of course we want to make sure that we're looking at a lot of the not only the classroom data and anecdotal data that we're seeing with our students we want teachers
024to also take a look at norm and standard based data we have screeners that we use at all different grade levels and we may be looking at to revise and implement new screeners especially we look at the high school level and so we can make informed decisions about instructional um changes in the classroom and this needs to be a constant cycle because with every change of a unit with every change of a school year and the students in front of you you need to change up what is going to work best for those kids i think i can do this now i'm really sorry like i said i've been talking so much i do want to talk about our dyslexia screener that we are bringing in this is something that um the state has really
025asked us to do and we are going to be working with boston general hospital to bring in early bird screener which is a dyslexia screener but it also looks at at risk to students who are at risk with reading and also others so that we can meet their needs and make sure that they're successful um we have started to look at health curriculum and i have spoken about this quite a bit lately we have a few different things that we are looking at we have a grant that is going to allow us to purchase a curriculum from six through 12. we're going to focus on six through ten um and we're really looking for the social emotional learning piece to be embedded in this and we're going to supplement what we have so that we
026have a really full scope and sequence we are going to be working on teacher induction and mentoring as well we have started our building walkthroughs so that we can actually see what's happening what is being taught and how it's being taught and again as i spoke to you earlier about we are doing stakeholder interviews those are ongoing and they will be ongoing until we deliver our entry plan in its finality and hopefully i will have my voice then do you have any questions for us [Music] a parent had contacted me that um seemed to be very much in the kind of literacy model space and one thing that they brought up was the fontes and pinell um i don't know what system model yeah and um that there were that deci was recommending that people
027move away from fontes and penelo and was providing grant money to adopt a different system and i just wondered if you could help me to understand more um what goes into that yeah i think that's not working that great can you guys hear me for that yeah that's better um okay so that that's a really big question for the time that we have but the the overview of it is flanders and panel is a great program it has its strengths it has its weaknesses just like every other curriculum out there our job is to make sure that what we are doing is working and if it is not working that is where we will supplement so fantastic criticism and they have addressed it in several ways they have created a richer phonics piece which is
028one of the biggest concerns about this program and they have addressed it head on we are working on the implementation of that at um the kindergarten level right on up through we don't traditionally deliver phonics instruction at the middle school level unless it's a special case-by-case scenario and that's students who you know for whatever reason didn't get what they needed when they were in the earlier grades so we are aware of those weaknesses that have been addressed and we are looking into them i think we have to remember that it really is an instruction model and that instruction model is sound desi does not have a problem with that what they do have a problem with is the texts um and so that's our job making sure that the tests that we are giving our
029teachers and our students are robust they are diverse they are complex the vocabulary is rich and they cover a variety of genres we are quite skilled at doing that and i think we are well positioned to handle anything that is not working okay you're welcome thank you um i was gonna ask about that as well because i think the same parent contacted both of us yeah and yeah all right um so it's very nice to meet you i know we've um emailed a couple of times and welcome um can you just speak a little bit more about the plans for the stakeholder interviews as far as parents go so when that is set up or will we like i don't know how that's going to work sure so in the past how i've done it
030is i usually reach out to the building principals and ask them to get in touch with their parent councils and say that i will be holding these interviews usually after school so that parents have an opportunity to kind of drop in with parents that they tend to be more informal than they are with people who are actually involved in the day-to-day business of middleborough education um and you know it's more conversation about how do you think middlebury schools are doing um what more can we do for you what would you like to see added what would you like to see changed what do you think is going well what would you like to see us improve and i will be reaching out pretty shortly and if you guys have a way of contacting groups and
031you would like to do that as well i'm open to anything so you know please let brian know and i'm i'm happy to work through that great thank you you're welcome other questions uh yeah uh if i could ask just to get to know you guys a little bit sure what would you guys say that uh you would specialize in what's your what's your for each one of you sure why don't you start um i've been a science educator for twenty three or four years but i just just i have worked a lot with technology as well as um i've i love co-teaching physics with math teachers so we enjoy doing that quite a bit so i was one of the first literacy coaches to be sent um through leslie and um brought that back
032to hpv at the time and so i will be focusing on literacy and humanities so i've been doing this for quite some time i have been a curriculum director for quite a few years uh my passion is literacy but that is not to say that um history science and math world language phys ed um what am i forgetting art music all of it is so important to the whole child and so i will be working with all of those groups to make sure that they have the resources they need and um you know an under development understanding of all of those different groups when i say that literacy is my passion we can't do anything without it so i will always stand by that but every piece of it matters we've heard a lot about
033what sounds like a great system coming our way in the panorama tool and uh you mentioned you know obviously data analysis and i'm guessing that um your plans will be centered around that tool as well or in some in some way one of the tools we will be using we'll also be using observational data so with panorama we'll be using star 360. we will be using um psats ap scores we'll be looking at um yeah mcas course of course but we have some other pieces that we need to look at which is common assessments particularly at the high school level um we will be looking at writing assessments all the way through from pre-k to 12 to make sure that our students are writing um for a variety of purposes every day um that's an
034area that we know we need to look at and we'll be working on that so panorama is a piece of it and it's a really important piece of it and it's terrific that we have that it's going to make our jobs a lot easier yeah yeah question does anyone have a question thank you for coming i appreciate it thank you for having us appreciate it thank you everybody thank you thank you it's the first time i've seen you without a mask seems true four times this chair as i move on to my report i'm going to invite mr ryan sylvia our athletic department director to come on down our athletic director you know ryan he's been here several times before generally at the end of a sports season he tends to basically sort of report
035out on the season and the progress and any other updates from the athletic department so welcome mr sylvia thank you mr lynch school committee thank you for having me tonight uh yeah so i have a winter sports update maybe a little intro to the spring uh basically this past season we had 336 participants in the winter sports program 11 different sports and 16 different teams one of those teams is a cooperative team with five students participating on the carver high school gymnastics team from november 29th to february 28th we had over 670 individual practices and games over the course of the winter season over three months that's not including our strength and conditioning and intramural programs so a very uh dynamic program a walk going on every single day just even tonight we still have
036our majorettes in the in the middle school cafeteria and and gym so successful year by all means we also applied for a waiver from the miaa to allow for middle school students to participate on high school teams and swimming and diving wrestling an indoor track for swimming and diving the seventh and eighth grade teams seventh and eighth grade students were granted the waiver for wrestling and indoor track was eighth grade only um first season the new athletic center at the high school was a success um we had a lot of help making things run smoothly so a huge thank you to uh jim hutchinson our facilities director the head custodians garrett perry matt tarkanian and really all of the custodial maintenance staff did an awesome job just making sure the buildings were opened and disarmed
037and doing doing everything they do on a daily basis also had a number of hourly employees that work the games and events every single day so just to thank you to them they did a great job um season highlights and individual highlights i kind of like to point out that the successes of the year are of the season um we had teams and individuals qualified for states in all 11 sports this season probably one of the more successful winter seasons we've had in recent years we had three south shore league championship teams girls swimming and diving won the league for the second year in a row and kyra dean set a school record and qualified for the sectional meet in one meter diving boys swimming and diving finished second in the league uh the league
038championship meet and lost by only one point uh the indoor track and field team boys and our track and field team won the league and finished the season undefeated we had two students michael nightlick and likan satonwa both qualify for the national championships which were held in new york city uh in the 400 meter in the in the mile run uh girls indoor track and field won the league for the fifth season in a row uh and finished undefeated as well wrestling uh had an eighth grader who was on that waiver matt patterson placed third at the state tournament becoming the first eighth grader in the in school history to place at states and then ayla goldman placed second at the girls all-state tournament um they actually had a girls-only tournament uh the past two
039years for wrestling and she's now a two-time state finalist unfortunately she lost in the final match uh and that's for every girl in the state so uh huge accomplishment for ayla goldman obviously in her in her own specific weight class gymnastics finish finished third in their league and had another successful season and because we were a co-op they were able to host a meet at the ymca this year they were able to set up over there so most of the meets are at carver high school because the host but we were able to hold one out with the ymca because there are so many middle school girls on the team this year cheerleading qualify for both sectionals and state competitions girls basketball qualified for the state tournament um and and lost in the preliminary round
040at duxbury in a close game boys basketball uh qualified as well won their preliminary round game at home first time since 2009 that we had host hosted a state tournament game and won and then lost at mansfield in the round of 32 and then ice hockey qualified for the state tournament had an away game in the round of 32 at milford hopedale they lost that game but the highlight for that team was definitely that we had one of our stu unified student athletes uh shane hathaway joined the team as a varsity ice hockey player um and he was able to uh go to practice every day improve his skills improve his skating uh and just a huge show of sportsmanship by some of our opponents with when he had the uh opportunity to get on
041the ice actually score a goal in one of the games and just a great experience i think for everyone involved with the ice hockey team in that situation this year so congrats to shane on that and last but not least our majorettes uh finished first place in their first competition are their first two competitions in the open class and they've got three competitions less left this spring so i wanted to make sure tonight that i had a little bit about everybody from the winter season uh the nichols middle school basketball teams probably the only ones i'm forgetting here and and the girls had a very successful season the boys struggled a little bit but by all means it was it was a um a good year for improvement and and they have a lot of
042kids coming back next year so um something that was new this year that i know um the school committee is aware of was the uh mia diversity equity and inclusion pledge an implicit bias course mia is our governing state athletic association so they govern all the rules tournaments and everything that we follow as a as a school district they implemented an initiative to combat some of the recent incidents of racism and hate within school sports this past fall the initiative was set by the game officials committee and the sportsmanship committee at the mia as a member school we were tasked with reviewing a diversity equity and inclusion pledge with our students coaches and administrators prior to the start of the season we also reviewed a required course called implicit bias from the national federation of
043high schools which is the national governing association for high school sports this information was shared with families at the pre-season parent meetings and is now included in our athletics registration our expectation as an athletic department is that everyone involved in our program makes this commitment to inclusion in creating an environment free from hate however families do have the ability to opt out if of this initiative and no student would ever be denied participation for not complying i'm proud to say that in the winter season we had full compliance and no reported incidents of hate or unsportsmanlike behavior initially we had three families reach out with clarifying questions but ultimately they did participate in the program i also want to point out that this was a new initiative that the mia is continually looking at and
044continually looking at this topic and striving to find the best way to educate our students on the importance of making a commitment to celebrating diversity equity and inclusion through athletics so it's something that we're constantly going to be looking at to to do uh you know that the mia is going to be looking at to do pass that on to uh to their member schools so moving right along i have a couple more items my report here spring sports start monday we have a full slate of games majority of them will be on campus we do still have a few teams off campus as we finish the final phase of the construction project jv softball and tennis are both of the two teams that unfortunately are still off campus until we get that last growing
045season and we get those tennis courts in i do want to remind everyone that the facility is not open to the public if school is in session or we have practices and games going on so there will be time on the weekends where that space will be open after the practices are complete but we do want to limit the use while we have school going on in actual athletic events the last piece i have for tonight before i can answer any questions that people might have is uh our middlebury all sports boosters association i'd like to kind of give a little bit update about that um in this winter season we do a big fundraiser or they do a big fundraiser every season uh and in the winter it's a uh this year it was
046a calendar raffle they raised over thirteen thousand dollars we asked student athletes to to sell calendars and then pick the cash winner every day of the the month of january um they also uh took the lead on managing the indoor concession stand we had volunteers from boys and girls basketball families and were able to open the concession stand for every home basketball game we also had student volunteers from the sophomore class work on the concession stand at home are for some of the home basketball games and these groups were able to raise additional funds for the middleboro all-sport boosters association which then helped supplement their end of the season banquets um awards nights and any class initiatives that they had so that the money raised then got um passed off from mazba to those groups
047um this spring maz was bringing back the uh the big raffle uh where they're selling raffle tickets and raffling off some major prizes like 750 gift certificate to amazon uh hannaford's gift cards uh best buy gift cards so there's a number of really big prizes um every student's gonna be asked to sell raffle tickets um and then the raffle uh winners will be pulled at the masba golf tournament which is always the first sunday in may this year it's may 1st and this year the golf tournament is again at squirrel run and it's going to be dedicated to our former physical education teacher and head baseball coach bill lawrence unfortunately it's a really popular event and all of the foursomes are full but we're always looking for sometimes people drop out so there is a
048bit of a waiting list so you can reach out to me if uh you're interested in playing um and we'll get you on that list but then there's always opportunities for sponsorship whether it's through a whole sponsor or a tournament sponsor a business sponsor things like that um so reach out to me if you have any interest in sponsorship or waitlist [Music] i think that's all i have for the athletics update uh i'll take any questions that anyone might have dei and implicit bias training uh so i think some of the concerns that that some people had which i shared was that it was not nobody was notified of it it was just sort of brought into the um winter sports update so in my case in particular it happened before the parent meeting so
049my child went to that after-school meeting and was told he had to would have to sign something so i i'd like to take the opportunity to to ask that we maybe do a little more work as a as a local school committee and and community where we anytime there's a pilot process or a training or anything that would come out that we would have that opportunity to to view it first or to have a conversation about it or perhaps a committee could a subcommittee could could talk about it but i think that for me if we've learned anything in the last two years being told what to do is not not always uh appropriate so basically what i would like to ask is can we as a community in middlebury discuss this a little further
050and come up with something that works for us here i think that you as an athletic director have done a fantastic job of having administrators at every single game every game i've gone to there's been someone there brand's always there there's people are present they're they're doing the right things they're making sure that those students that are watching the games are acting appropriately all those things are happening at middleborough so to be told you know you have to science maybe you agree with part of it but you don't agree with all of it is is a little concerning for me so that's where i'm at i think i think it's a worth a conversation and i don't know where that we go from there but i'd like to to ask that we do that so
051my my response to that is just that um this came from our governing athletic association and that we had conversations with the superintendent and uh principal of the school building and the mindset was that this was something that was positive by all accounts and that was being done across the state if it's something that needs to be further vetted or we need to bring to forward to school committee by all means we're absolutely open to doing that um to say no basically right there's a little bit of an opt-out piece at the beginning um at the when it came out it was it was put out as a required piece from the state association but there is an opt-out um and like i said from the beginning there is an option to opt out um
052and um we would never hold anyone out for not wanting to participate in it i think maybe we make it clear to folks up front whether we do it in required athletic meetings to parents that we say this is part of the process if a student in a family feels like they don't want to do that they they don't have to do it but this is what it's for um because i just think that that's just that little piece that people get upset about is that that piece that if there is an opportunity for that child to opt out or because that's my understanding then people should understand that right yeah and you said three people questioned and and once you had a conversation with them and explained what it was all about that those
053people went ahead and they participated um so that's out of how many athletes uh 336 i mean that's pretty good percentage i think of people that were mr chair i don't dispute that i just i will argue that um not every parent is as involved and sometimes people don't read things and that's not anyone's fault but sometimes they their kids just go and they they do this and they don't they're nothing is communicated or to between the parents um so i i just i i feel like we need to be we could be a little bit more transparent in that process and that make sure that people maybe even parents have apparent an opportunity to view it if they would like and i know that there's you have to sign up for an email account
054or something so it's kind of a process to do it um and again it's just to me it just it just felt like mia told you to do something and you did it and i i'm fine with that i don't think you did anything wrong by any means but it was sort of pushed in kind of quickly at that beginning of that winter sport and everyone has to do this and so no one really had a chance to look at it now we do it's been a few months and we've had more of an opportunity and i recognize that is it all right if i i brought the sportsmanship the diversity equity inclusion pledge with me is it all right if i present what that actually is sure please so what we asked the students
055to to what we reviewed with our students is this there's eight bullet points one is we want to help create and foster a safe environment with within the school which includes the responsible use of social media consistently model respect and tolerance by setting an example of good sportsmanship and positive behavior including language body and spoken gestures signs and overtures not enable my fellow student athletes who use abusive language signs gestures or overtures i will not cover up for them or lie for them if rules are broken hold myself my fellow student athletes in our community responsible and accountable for their actions seek information and assistance in dealing with my own or my fellow student athletes negative behaviors problems or concerns be open and honest with my coach and other school personnel when the best interest
056of myself my fellow student athletes in my school are being jeopardized thrive to create a school without hate support the diversity equity and inclusion sportsmanship and game officials committees policies and programs within the massachusetts interscholastic athletic association so that's the whole thing the other piece is like i said the course training and they're both opt out when you register you can ch uncheck the box or you can check the box if you agree with either of these two things so like i said the expectation the hope is that everyone will check these but it's not required and the difference because this was so new and it came out right at the beginning of november we presented this the same way many or most of the other schools in our league did which was to have
057our coaches do a presentation work with the kids i was involved myself and this spring we put it into the athletics registration so that parents had the choice to opt out of that so that's what it is and i know that i was able to share that with everyone here and you guys were able to take a look at it but i just figured i would go through it that way if anyone's watching at home they know exactly what we're talking about here so so that people can understand the question all right so i just wanted to say that i had a similar experience to teresa so both of my children were given these two things before the presentation at the preseason night for parents so both of my children came home telling me about
058what happened and it was a very busy time it's chaotic it was literally the same day went to the meeting you know a lot of things were going on and i couldn't give it enough attention there was a we had some conversation but like teresa said not everybody's having these conversations with their children so kids were my children told me that this was a required element that they had to do it they weren't told it was optional they were told it was required at the meeting i was told that during the meeting it was said that this was required by miaa for participation and there was a lot of stuff going on at that time i didn't look at it thoroughly in vet at all spring came up i saw it again on the family
059id when i registered my children there was no option to opt out so i want to make that clear because it's being presented that it was an option to opt out it is now an option to opt out so when i saw that again which is when all of you got my email because now i'm looking at it a little bit closer and i'm examining what my children really saw and i examined the implicit bias course and i actually have some concerns about the implicit bias not that people don't have biases i i'm sure we all do ones that we are explicit and implicit i have concerns about how they presented this to our children the content of it and i think we need to have a conversation about it it's a very complicated thing
060implicit bias and explaining it to children and not knowing what they're getting and being able to talk to them about it i think needs to be a bigger conversation not just what happened and then they come home and we don't really know what's going on um also um the i do i i love the idea of a sportsmanship contract and that being a good sport and how you be a good sport be presented to our children i think that's great i think we need to have conversations around diversity and around inclusion and we are coming from a community that because we are new to this school we came from a community last year that experienced that with our athletes we had an incident in hockey in which there was a racist slur against our athletes
061i know that this is happening i'm not not aware so you get into this position where you're like i don't like this what miaa is saying and but i think that there's something good to come out of this the second thing is if we only present it in this family id registration nobody will look at it because you literally go through you click click click i agree i agree i agree and so you've done nothing with this pledge because nobody looked at it the kids don't look at it i'm my kids are supposed to click and write their name i click i click i click nobody's looking at it so i think that this is a really good element but if we really are truly looking at teaching sportsmanship teaching diversity teaching inclusion we can
062do a better job than what mia a did um because i think we can change not i mean some of those things are good but i think we can teach children how to positively role model things we can change the language in this and not for nothing but i'm just going to throw this out here cheer young would you accept responsibility for something one of the other school committee members said did action something they said on social media would you accept responsibility for their behavior no so why are we asking our children to accept responsibility for the behavior of their teammates so i would like to rephrase things and rewrite things so it says that you know maybe a child should you know speak up when they see a teammate behaving in such a way
063i don't like that like that right there is bothersome for me if you're not going to take responsibility which you shouldn't for the actions of your fellow school committee members we shouldn't be asking our children to do that either so i think honestly i understand where mia is coming from but i think we can do a better job so i think we can include this and what mr silvia said to me in the email was that um sorry i just lost my thought was that if we had an incident in our community in which our athlete or our coach was the aggressor we'll just call that um if we don't if we have something showing that we are taking active steps to to curtail this then that this is what it is and i'm like
064but that's kind of an empty thing if you're just putting it in there and i get that if that's what mia wants to see then we can do better and i think that parents can be involved students can be involved this committee can be involved the athletics department i just think we can do better and why not model to the rest of the state that we don't have to just take what the state tells us to do but take it and say all right we understand the essence of this and let's do better because i think we can do better and i don't want my children to not participate in a sportsmanship contract that says that they are not going to act in certain ways i i want to instill that in them i just
065want to teach it in a better way than what mia is doing so that's what i'm asking i would like to maybe work like maybe there's a subcommittee create a better worded contract and really look at implicit bias and really is is this is this appropriate is this understandable for these children i think the bias course is biased and it's like literally they are presenting a biased presentation um but does teaching them about implicit bias and telling them what their bias is because they belong to such and such a group i mean some of their examples are like teachers grade ma male math students better than female math students i go really do all teachers do that i don't know i really didn't feel like that was a really great example so um i really
066really have an issue with teaching them bias in this way and does that change the outcome so if we do this and they learn that they have a bias that they're not aware of how does that change is it effective at all i'm not sure it's effective in changing the outcome of sportsmanship diversity inclusion and all of that teaching i just think we can do better thank you this might go to the chair to mr lynch is this something like it sounds like part of the criticism is that this is a kind of complicated issue that um is this something that we just heard from the new curriculum directors is this something that they would if we're trying to develop a curriculum for what miss uh currents are saying i would say that this is
067probably in the athletic director's realm okay um he's quite capable of looking at this and moving forward but um it's the wish of the committee is foreign i would rather have it come from ryan in the form that he wants to because it's not it's not really the purview of the school community to establish what like a program or something that's not what happens it has to come from right now i think you know i think ryan will admit that this could have been communicated differently um and like you said the check box wasn't working when it first no it wasn't there right didn't exist until i emailed it so you know those type of pieces but as far as how to proceed from here i'd rather have the athletic department have start the conversation
068with us so he has to initiate it with you yeah i just want to clarify a couple things the checkbox was always there it was a required field it was a default setting and we hadn't had anybody that didn't accept it until um miss kearns uh reached out which i appreciate because it was supposed to be an optional field which is what it is um the other piece is excuse me um we there was no there's no part of this of this pledge um that says that you are responsible for somebody else's actions it says hold myself my fellow student athletes in our community responsible and accountable for their actions okay so i'm going to hold them accountable i'm not going to take responsibility for their actions if somebody does something i'm going to hold
069them accountable for it by reporting it to a coach so um so we will uh make sure it's coming and the other piece here is when it's in the family id registration it really opens the door for parents um to see what it is and then choose or not choose to have that conversation with their student if they choose to talk about the pledge that's put out by our state athletic association then that's their choice if they choose to just check the box and check the box then hopefully that's not the case but they can but they can do that and then they also have the implicit bias as a separate piece if they want to explore that with their child they have the option to do that if they don't want to do that
070they don't have to do that that was my question was could separated for people so if i am faced with just signing that pledge i'm fine with that that that's that that's all that's all great but if i if i chose to not include the implicit bias training then i'm not not able to sign that that was my that was my concern there were two i saw two fields so when i originally signed up i don't know what your end looked like but when i signed the children up it was just like every other field like the concussion yes i agree this is that signature box i had to cancel those registrations go back in there's now two fields and it said the red asterisk that said required now there are two boxes one says
071yes i agree one says no i do not agree and it's i i don't want to not agree with the sportsmanship pledge i would like to have a sportsmanship pledge that i actually really value and i do disagree with you it says hold myself accountable for their actions so it does say that you're asking children to hold themselves accountable for somebody else's actions hold myself accountable and responsible for their actions so i think that the miaa is just i think i just think you can do a better job with a sportsmanship contract and it includes all elements of the diversity of the of the pieces that we're we need our kids to understand so i think that we can have a better contract and that if you need feel the need that i think that
072the implicit bias should be really looked at as whether this is a mechanism that's actually really useful um but again embedding it where you want yeah you can opt out and that's great so we can just choose to opt out of it and probably nobody will ever look at it ryan the one kind the one piece i have is do coaches have additional contracts with students um having played sports i can think of you know there were certain things there were certain requirements that coaches would give outside of coaches sometimes issue team expectations okay um a sign off she i don't think we have any currently but there have been coaches in the past that have utilized like a team expectation contract um i know we used one when i was coaching soccer yep soccer
073so but those are more of like team expectations right and do you think you could separate the bias training with the sort of contract so it's a separate it is too separate okay okay and um like i said you know i took responsibility for that that was it was a default setting as a required field that when uh ms kearns reached out to me we made sure that we we made it a uh it was not supposed to be required and the other piece is you have to register to look at the training correct the training um you click the link you create an account and then you and then you take the course okay all right i would say if you know it's on ryan to come back to us and have a conversation
074about what he wants to do moving forward it's not something that we esta we don't set these things for the athletic department we we have the expectation that they like department runs and when we have control over the athletic department is really around budgetary matters okay i i understand what you're saying i do think we can do a better job so i think that middleborough's doing a great job here and i think collectively we could probably put our heads together and work on really you know actually being proactive instead of just you know having a paper that we've checked miaa's box um and so we're compliant but it's not very meaningful so please thank you um i do just want to say that it's been a few years but the one parent night that i
075went to that you presented at i do feel that many of the expectations in this pledge were set up by you for the student athletes to begin with i think we hold our student athletes to very high standards i don't think that many of these things are things that you aren't already incorporating into the athletics program i would recommend that if there are concerns with the mia content that those be brought to miaa it doesn't help the overall process if we create our own without working with them and expressing the concerns to them that have been raised they i looked on their website they have a very highly qualified board that's been part of the process of creating these trainings if there are concerns about the implicit bias training i feel that those should be
076brought to that group so that the process as a whole is looked at not just our town because we all know that they could come out with the next stage in the next round of development and it's better for us as a town if we're not constantly having to play catch-up and if these things are brought to them to start off with that maybe they can make those revisions and that as a town we can be more comfortable with what they're doing um i heard a couple things in the comments in terms of we don't want our kids signing things that we're not aware of i can understand that um but to me that means bringing this more to the forefront and incorporating it as you said you did in some of the intro coach
077sessions so if this is the standard then when you have that first meeting with all the teams present the content um discuss the content as a team have that discussion like it's part of a curriculum for the athletics department so i think um it's a good start i think as with everything there are hurdles under the under implementing any new process i think the process itself while it could have improvements i commend the mia for trying to do something for seeing a need in our state and taking specific motions and i commend you for implementing it as best as possible within the conditions that you were given but i would just recommend that the first step be passing the concerns that you've heard from the parents to the mia and seeing their response rather than
078us rewriting something that should be coming from them potentially thank you thanks two things one and i think ryan will agree with it i think it's fine to bring your concerns forward because ryan's gonna have a lot more contact with the mia than a normal parent would and so that's the piece but i would also say to school community members too that as far as the mia goes there is a school committee member who serves on the mia board there's a school committee member who serves on each and every one of the mia sports boards um and so the way that's done is to be appointed through the mass association of school committees so there is opportunities every single but probably by end of april early may we get in the packet the list of
079boards you can serve on and that's one of the boards that people can serve on so that's another way to process this as a member of school committee um and just raise those things as opportunities that's all i appreciate the feedback from from everybody um we i know that we do have one of the points i made right at the end of my presentation was that this is um something that's being looked at and ongoing and a hot topic it's new uh we have a league athletic director within our league that sits on the sportsmanship committee gives us the updates um they're going through this stuff at every one of their meetings and trying to put the best product out there that they can and we'll roll it out the best way we can with
080and make people sure people are informed ahead of time going forward um again i think i stand by it that i think it's an important thing and um it's an important piece to athletics and and making sure kids understand you know what their their responsibility is as a student athlete so rich okay um so a sports question for you um i was wondering if you gave a really awesome summary of all the accomplishments and everything of our teams this year and i wondered if if there were any areas of stress or strain in terms of resources that you wanted to let us know about um that might help inform next year's well actually we already went through that but might help inform some future budgets no i think um i think we're in a really
081good place you know as a as a program from a financial standpoint we get all the support we need in my opinion from from the school district and the in the school committee uh mainly our our busing that's a big piece and we're able to provide buses for all of our student athletes to away contests the user fees supplement the rest of what we need and we were able to keep our user fees really low compared to other districts because we have the support of our booster club so we're in a good place all around i think i mean do we have you know wants and needs and coaches have wish lists and things like that of course but we have a brand new athletic facility we have you know gyms in every building uh
082that we maintain and make sure if they need a new scoreboard or they need something fixed that it gets done and and we're in great shape so awesome mr chair if i could i know he's not going to admit some other things that are stressing about one is a couple of trees that fell down on the jv backstop which destroyed that which is about a 20 20 to 24 000 replacement it's an insurance claim but nonetheless mr hutchinson is working on that the completion of the final field was supposed to be done as part of this project it was supposed to be done a year ago so now we're a year behind schedule it hasn't been touched yet um they're coming in april to do that and also the five brand new beautiful tennis courts
083that are to be built uh continue to be as sort of an under layer for a partial parking lot behind the school um that we plow occasionally for overrun and things like that but it's not complete yet so that facility up there which is a beautiful facility is probably about 85 percent complete when the high school is basically about 99 if you will uh so i know there's some additional stressors that are going on in the athletic department you know we're we're sending kids to camp a voter to play tennis we appreciate camp avota and their their participation with us over the last four years the fourth year so our seniors have never had a yeah so those kind of scored on campus yeah those seniors have never had and that was the first thing
084to go with at the new high school was those that our set of tennis courts and which was unfortunate so um just a couple of additional stressors that are that are involved in that additional fields needs to be built which is that additional field into that nine acre section of the town bought which will be a practice of lacrosse field practices lacrosse field but lacrosse will actually be playing in the all-purpose field for their games yeah correct so can we i'll just add to that mr lynch thank you for bringing that up too because uh campavota they gave us they're really supportive i mean we just clean the courts and set up the nets and and we get they don't charge us they don't charge us a penny yeah so we do whatever we can
085for them so and um and then the park department we do have a contract with them for these contingency plans uh which is what you know the baseball field for example if it's not it seems like it's going to be ready for practices but maybe for games we may have to go over because the two teams play at the same time we may have to use nichols middle school or the park department or something like that so if there are no other questions from mr silvia well i just want to say one thing which i think it's important that when you ask if there's more people can do in my mind the thing that people can do is really support the boosters because time and time again the way we've always worked it too is
086the boosters have sort of been seed money for starting things especially additional sports here at the eighth grade or or something new at the high school they've always been there to give us additional funds as you can imagine as covet came some of their plans have sort of had to be pushed off or pushed to the side a little bit um but they time and time again and you know whether or not you like raffles or you like some of the threats they're always a football game selling uh merchandise um everything like that they're always around and um you know if people can just reach out to them and help them i think that's the best thing that anyone can do to help our programs you had one more question i did have one last
087one i think the um the timing might not be great to ask this question but i believe that the track became available for public uh you voted on the last time for march 15th yep so 15 so only a couple days ago um so i was just curious maybe this is a maybe more of a hutch question but um how is it going so far have we seen any public usage so so far um we haven't seen any yet i think it's because the word hasn't really got out much yet but also it's important for people to know that once the spring season starts on monday we have scheduled practices until seven o'clock at night at which point it's only open till dusk so that's going to get locked back up during the week it's
088my understanding for because there's no lights that are going to be turned on or anything like that so it's really the weekends for the spring season and then potentially longer more you know more uh time in the summer when the spring season's over it uh basically you know beginning of june uh mid-june but for now it'll be saturdays and sundays all right and the rules are posted in a couple of places but they're very clear as to what you can and can't do for example no dogs unless service dogs and then there's a lot of no's unfortunately but there's a lot of yeses too it's a great opportunity for the community to get under that track area and that turf area so and the other thing too that i want to make clear is you
089know the idea of people not being there when school is in session and stuff like that it also comes from our safety team and comes from the chief of police um you know those those are issues that he raises to us that we set up and so that's why we make it sure that it's done that way yeah mr chair just to wrap up that um i think it's it's an incredible facility and we we um spent an awful lot of money to provide kind of the best possible surfaces and all that for our students so i totally agree with being careful with it and the public does have access to it so i think that's great just within some you know kind of common sense parameters so sounds good thank you thank you thank
090you thank you ryan oh sylvia and our next guest is mr sean oh siciliano on this special st patrick's day version of the school community meeting happy st patrick's day out there to everyone oh alrighty so i just want to say thank you uh for the opportunity to present tonight um we're going to talk a little bit about technology kind of where we where we started in 2020 when covet really hit all the things that we've done up until up until now and then a little bit of future planning um main topics uh talking about our team and also the growth when i say growth in our team i'll talk a little bit more about that but not adding staff growing within and seeing what we can do inside of our team uh what we
091accomplished since 2020 how we drive change and progress in middleborough uh we need procedures some of the procedures that i'm planning on coming up with and then also security within our rit um structure team we have eight people in the in the department including myself um earl curtis cindy moe our our tier one and system support technicians um we have mark smith who's our tier two technician uh mike mills is our network manager katie goodnight and our student information specialist and then myself um we've really made an effort to tier our technicians and that's mainly in levels of support a tier one technician can handle everything for your computers for your classroom for your teacher needs things like that uh when you get into tier two which is what mainly mark's dealing with is more
092pushing down server uh dealing with servers pushing down updates to computers uh dealing with grouping and things like that cindy deals with all of our accounts um mike mills is kind of the the catch-all uh he deals with all of our networks he deals with all of our server upgrades anything technology the technical side of it that's really mike and that really falls under him and he's doing a great job and i thank him for that katie goodines student information specialist she's also a registrar she is the aspen guru she deals with all of that and also our student registration and our single sign-on solution which i'll talk about in a few minutes so what's new uh during covet 19 we distributed all the elementary all the devices that we had for elementary and kindergarten
093students we sent home all the middle school devices which had never been home before we supported all middleware public schools devices remotely while attempting to uh attempting to adapt services and support that was needed while they were not in the building provide remote support for teachers and virtual instruction supported teachers with digital learning and teaching teams we had a great group of teachers that created videos helped us with workshops and creating videos and instruction for teachers how they could better work with their students we implemented a one-to-one device for grades one through five that was the 2000 chromebooks that we purchased that allowed us to do one through five and then also replace our middle school devices which needed to be done for mcas testing increase the district web filtering to move to a hybrid
094cloud beta based filter uh we had a hardware based filter inside the building uh we kind of got caught a little bit with a hybrid we're in the middle of a move when covid hit um so we kind of had some some fill some quick uh quick thinking on on the networking side and got the filter uh done and then over the summer we were allowed to take it able to take another step forward with that um filtering is obviously huge for us under the separate rule we're responsible for filtering anybody that's in our building or is on one of our devices implementing laptops for pre-k through 12 this was all done through covet through covet funding all those teachers received new laptops uh nhs building project i just put a couple bullets down here
095of things that we were able to do with this project uh it was not only to get the high school up to date and to get a new high school but also gave the district a lot of chances to get a lot of redundant systems and put them in the high school building project we had a redundant firewall for failover we previously only had one firewall at the complex if we lost power that firewall went down and it does take time to get that firewall back with the redundant firewall at the high school now we have that secure that secure access and it's also on a generator we doubled the network speed for the district that was one of the things that when we were building the high school we put a temporary internet service
096in to get everything going on the high school and get that system going and with the approval of the superintendent and the business office we were able to keep that second line active which essentially doubles the data for the district which is huge we have a new data center which was created to create redundant systems uh that was actually put in the old high school before we moved because we needed to get it done um so we were able to get that money ahead of time we put it in the old high school and then we made that transition with the hp technicians to get that switch over we installed new flat panels which started the tiered replacement system of the old bright links projectors that are going to go that are across the district
097that are all outdated um those flat panels we've started purchasing through sr3 we actually purchased 20. we're going to put those in the memorial childhood center for our pre-k and k students in their classrooms and then we also have a couple more that are going to go in the complex it's our plan over the next five years to hopefully be able to fund and replace most of those devices throughout the district everything now runs on a network which means everything is now it's problem [Music] so the building management system uh everything is controlled by a computer so when how we can't get into the building management system to control the temperature uh that becomes an i.t problem um so there's a lot of things that have kind of as we move forward with technology have
098become under i.t um it obviously helped us helps us run a lot more effectively when howie can change the heat in the classroom from his living room on a saturday it's definitely a lot easier than having to come to the building and do it so there's definitely a lot of perks but um just adding to the kind of the the beefiness of what it deals with every day implementation of jamf so jamf is a management system which allows us to manage ipads and macintosh computers mainly is what we're using it for right now we currently have a system that we use called mass 360 which does all of our windows devices but apple computers and ipads are always an issue jamf is a very cheap platform that we can use as a mdm as a
099mobile management solution um and it allows us to control what's on every computer it allows us to for special education when we're sending out ipads it allows us to control those ipads we can control what apps go on it we can automatically set the apps for multiple ipads uh kind of almost creating an image for ipads which allows us to quickly uh produce ipads and also be able to monitor and then also be able to take applications back when people move out of district um it also gives us the ability to kind of track where our where our ipads are um this is a lot of the registration stuff we moved to an online registration platform through aspen through the sis system uh that was huge it's created a lot of streamlined efforts for registration
100uh previously we had paper registration people would fill out a paper application they would hand it to the secretary of the building the secretary would then put all that information into the computer i don't know if you've tried to read anyone's handwriting lately but it's not very easy so the data would get uh misconstrued phone numbers would be wrong email addresses would be wrong things like that and that was always data that we were chasing um this all being an aspen allows us to do all of it right there the parents are putting in their information and it's a lot more accurate than if we were to do it on our own it also frees up time for secretaries to not have to enter all that data we moved to digital report cards in digital
101reporting systems which was huge it was kind of one of those things that was forced to us through covid we didn't really have the ability to hand out paper report cards but it's one of those the perks of covid that i think is going to stick around we were able to put it through aspen katie can set a release time parents can log in through aspen and see their students reports class-like implementation which is our single sign-on solution students are going to one webpage to access all of their applications so you no longer have to know your password to all 200 applications that you use on a weekly basis um they're going to one application that's on the district website they log in through their google account and then they click on whatever application they
102want to use it works its magic it says and it logs you in the single sign-on solution allows us to track application usage it allows us to track time on learning in those applications the other thing that it allows us to do is it gives you that one place where everyone knows that that's where they're going for what they need um and it also gives us the ability to create accounts quickly i say quickly it takes one night to create an account it's pulling directly from aspen so what it does is when we enroll a new student at two o'clock in the afternoon aspen updates um classlink pulls that information and creates all the accounts that they need based on their schedule so it's pulling their classroom teacher it's putting them in the classes that
103they need it's giving them the st math account all that stuff school dude tickets school do tickets are how we track our work and how teachers implement or put in problems that they're having throughout the district so these are our school dude tickets from july 1 till the present we have about 1 000 not about we do have 1 826 tickets um you'll see different tickets the the trend is pretty pretty accurate based on the number of students um the middle school there are a lot more tickets uh we mainly see that the middle school teachers are using schooldude more for student abuse and student breakage whereas the high school is mainly all of those problems are directly teacher issues for the most part at the high school the students have the ability to go
104to the technician and get the problem resolved so it doesn't go through the school dude process whereas at the middle school they report it to their teacher their teacher puts in a school dude and then we address the issue and you'll see a couple of the the ongoing tickets or issues that we're working on now some of them are longer issues they might be some of the bright links projectors that we aren't replacing we've put temporary projectors in there but that's obviously an open ticket because we haven't completely resolved that issue yet this is a quote i found uh when i was actually at a conference last week uh the kobit 19 epidemic has showcased the value of i.t and digital transformation and organizations should turn the crisis into an opportunity to accelerate the transition
105um we really we all kind of got on our horse when cove it happened we needed to do it we had to do it fast um and i think we did 95 of those things well um and i i'm trying to to keep the team on that board like let's keep going like let's keep doing new things let's keep trying things let's keep moving forward um i feel like sometimes we we stall out and we kind of get stuck and it's like yep what we're doing is working there's always something better especially in technology there's always something new there's always something to change and there's always something to learn and that's when i talked about growth within our staff we have a very talented group of staff um and the group of staff that we
106have have been with us for three years most of them and they've survived covid with us which is i think is the the hardest time um that they'll have we have two young young technicians um that are very eager to learn uh mike mills our network manager is currently getting licensed in alcatel lucent which is uh huge for us that's all of our switches all of our phones are all alcatel loosen uh him being certified would allow us to kind of do some of that stuff in-house and being able to support our technician to be able to support our staff to get the understanding of what they need every day to be able to help us better understand and better provide for students um time to move forward uh communications with administration staff teachers students
107families in our community i coming from the communication side i try and be as forward as i can with our our teachers and our staff we're going through this thing right now called printer nightmare it's a worldwide problem microsoft made some changes drivers didn't change and it's created a nightmare for our printers um i've been very forward with our our teachers that we're working on it we're doing the best we can we have engineers working on it we have our it staff working on it but just trying to keep that communication line open so that they know we are working on it we understand it's a problem we understand it's a hassle we apologize for it but there's really we're working as hard as we can but the problem with technology is that you fix
108one thing you break three other things and that's really what's happened we think we made a lot of progress today at two o'clock we did an update um so we're hoping that that will that will solve printer nightmare a little bit but i'm sure something else will pop up tomorrow afternoon so um looking at the future uh procedures student device repair uh one of the things that i've i've kind of started looking at and one of the things that i've tasked mike mills with is looking at how we can provide an open and transparent platform for our parents to be able to see where their students device is in the repair process um some students send their device in and they never hear they get they get a replacement device and if the screen breaks
109then we replace that ourselves that's usually a quicker repair uh if it's a hard drive if it's a keyboard mail function something like that these devices are still under warranty so we send it out to warranty and that could take two to three months so we're getting a replacement device to that student but the goal is that student gets their device back that's their device that we gave them at the beginning of the year and we want them to have that device there's many backend reasons for why we want that but being able to create an aspen and we started this process today being able to create an aspen under the technology tab a tracking tool so they can see when the device was turned into a technician what the problem was maybe an estimate
110of when the technician thinks it'll get back where it is if it's in warranty if it's in being repaired things like that internal procedures to create consistency across buildings the student repair process is one of those but also creating internal procedures inside of technology so that we know when something happens exactly what we do what's the procedure what's the protocol in being able to go through go through that and create those byod evaluating byod and how we can improve this for students and evaluate how it affects us during mcas testing we have to carry a lot of computers extra computers uh with byod because we're when we go to mcas testing we can't test on a byod device so this is kind of the first year on how we're seeing that and being able to
111evaluate if we can use the computer for multiple kids or if we need to keep one computer per kid that has a byod device we're very much in the evaluation stage of that creating replacement plans going through and creating for our budget procedure exactly every year if you buy a switch and the switch lasts seven years what does the switch cost divide that out through seven and figure out throughout seven years how much how much do i need every year in order to get exactly what i need to resolve my end of life equipment um there's there's kind of two stages with technology equipment there's the end of support and then there's the end of life um end of support means if i call alcatel lucent they're gonna be like ah sorry you're on your
112own um and then there's end of life which means if you plug anything into it it's not gonna work um so we wanna obviously be ahead of end of life but we don't necessarily need to be ahead of the support we do have that support within our building we want to collaborate with teachers and see how we can better serve them there's a lot of teachers out there that are very smart and have great ideas and we want to really pull that in and see what we can do as a department to better serve our teachers we are in customer service we are representing our teachers and it's our job to make sure that the teachers have the tools that they need every day to teach and our students have the tools that they need
113to learn so what can we do to make it easier for them what can we do to make it better um and be able to balance that collaborate with the new curriculum department to see how technology better fits inside the curriculum and how we can better interweave those when we had the it audit that was one of the big hits was that there was no connection between curriculum and i.t and i think over the last year we've done a little bit better but really diving in using that single sign-on solution to get that data and see really what we're doing putting together the pieces creating reports better tracking for hardware and software costs uh these are all things that i've kind of learned over the last couple months of how we can better track our
114our technology how we can better track our funds and how we can better improve the technology that we have in the district we also need to create a replacement tool uh replacement plan for the 2000 chromebooks that were purchased during coven as an it department we realized that we might not have four hundred thousand dollars in five years to buy two thousand more chromebooks um according to mcas in five years you're probably going to need new chromebooks in order to test mcas so we need to create a plan not for next year's budget cycle but for the year after so that we can make sure that we're ahead of the game with mcas and we have the devices that can handle mcas testing security things are always changing as you've you've seen in the news
115scamming has become huge phishing emails have become huge we're in a pretty good spot in middleborough the security is strong we have a multi-layered security system uh we're ahead of of many other districts in the state we're constantly making updates and patches to stay current we use vendors and consultants to keep this keep this active we do have a very smart team but we do not have the the expertise that these consultants and other companies do it's what they do for a living it's what they do every day so we use those and we rely on those vendors and consultants ongoing fishing and spam training you guys all have middle public schools emails i think you guys all got the training um we're gonna roll that out throughout pd days for all of our district
116um it's the ability to go through and understand what is fishing what is spam and really what are the repercussions of clicking on something like that um we all see that there's an email that's looking for us to put in our phone number or something like that but when you're on a school district computer it's really more than that um you could click on the wrong thing and it could let somebody into our system that we don't want our system we might know we might not know that they're in our system today we might not know that they're in our system tomorrow they can hang there and in two months from now they take everything um so really creating that importance and creating that understanding that things that you do while you're on our network
117directly affect you directly affect your students directly affect our community and could really be really be a hassle in the future mobile app and social uh we're moving to s'more we switched to s'more which was currently used by our administrators uh we switched to a district-wide account anybody can create a smart account with your middleboro k-12 email uh s'more allows for ada compliance it allows for language translation and it's really the the forefront of where we're planning on moving our technology uh in our communication we're presenting tomorrow count lions and i about s'more and presenting it to some of our staff um but it's definitely one of the things we really want to take advantage of in the next year increasing social media presence is always going to be on my list no matter how
118much i post we never post enough creating communication plans to share with administration to create a unified message among the district um we all want to be where one district we want to remain that way and creating that message so that we can come out to the community and say that this is what we are this is our message and being able to create that across platforms uh that's all i have any questions um essentially the same problem and so while the number seems high it could be multiple of the same problem absolutely so there is we we do it kind of gets to a stopping point so when we see an issue uh let's say there's when the printing issue first became a thing the it occurred via windows updates um that's what started
119the whole problem so on monday we had a couple teachers that were like i can't print and like that's weird and then on tuesday everyone went home turned their computer off got back to school turned their computer back on everyone got the windows update and now everyone was on the same same problem as these two teachers were on monday um so the they do come in you'll start to get five six seven eight ten um once that happens i try and get ahead of it and be like hey everybody just so you know there's a major printing issue um it i i know it's hard to believe but that that message does make it around quickly that there's a printer issue and the teacher in third grade will be like i already put a school
120dude in for it like and then the other teachers will be like oh okay i don't need to do it um so there is some of that duplicate the duplicate uh tickets but a lot of these are some of them are simple issues i don't have sound on my bright links some of the teachers there the cord wasn't plugged in or the um hdmi setting wasn't right on their audio hardware so there's little things that that are sometimes quick solutions but then there are some things in there um when you look at some of the ones that are ongoing a lot of those are longer issues that we're currently working on so how quickly your staff is solving problems or again like you said they're going to be some that stay longer right but realizing
121what those problems are so maybe you have to look and invest some more money into those issues yes so so i opened up the the school dude like analytics the other day and uh i was sitting with mike and i was like i'm like there's a thing to see how long tickets are open and he goes i'll be careful with that and i looked at it and some of the things were like 197 days 422 days but then you look at the tickets and they're just they're they were closed they were done but nobody ever closed them so that's when we kind of like reevaluated like oh there's something from four years ago that's open but it's the way school dude aligns them is it's hard to see those things that have been opened so
122long ago um which when you only have 23 open it kind of allows us to stack that but there is a way to do that and i think we need to kind of be able to manipulate the data a little bit better so we can weed out some of those um and it's also looking at the data from from this year um right i think that's more important yeah anything else right i guess the other question i have for you is given the changes and given the turbulence if you will and everything that goes on especially the ideas of security and stuff like that how do you stay aware and how do you make sure that you're getting what you need to stay on top of things yeah absolutely so it's it's always it's always
123an ongoing roller coaster with especially with security um i went to a conference on friday and it was uh i went to two workshops just on security um there's different certifications you can get and as i move forward in my in my professional uh journey i hope to kind of get some of those certifications to be able to take some of that learning um we do rely heavily on our consultants like i said and um being able to kind of put us in the forefront be able to put us ahead uh but there's different email chains that go through the state just like any other department has um that state email list is is huge of knowing what's going on knowing what's coming up uh there's different bulletins that we get from the state that
124say hey this is this is out there just so you know you may have gotten it you may not have um and really staying ahead of it with the state being able to do that fishing campaign is really huge for us um it sends me a report they they actually send i shouldn't tell people this they say they send test emails out to the district uh fake phishing emails and they if a staff member clicks on that email it will send me a report of who clicked on that email it then sends them an email that says hey by the way we sent you a phishing email and you bit um here's an extra training for you to do to better understand why you shouldn't have clicked on that thing um and the the emails
125we recently received a test email um and the emails came to me and said i clicked it by accident i you know i had like my track pad and i clicked it by accident i didn't mean to click it i never click on these things um and i'm sure some of those are true but there's there's also we just need to be more vigilant because all it takes is one fat finger and you're in it you're in a virus um that was one of the quotes was like i fat fingered the email i was like okay but but you clicked and that was the key um but uh i mean it's it's one of those things that we're always we're always battling no matter how much we try and be proactive against it there's always
126going to be there i'd say it in my spanish all the time we think we're smart but hackers are a lot smarter um and it's their one goal and it's to to make our lives miserable um and we are trying to make it harder and harder for them every day thanks sean rich you have a question sure i mean i love all of this the the plan you have for the future um all the improvements it sounds awesome um i think you answered this question for me already or at least you did outline that you had a kind of a future plan of tackling this issue of replacing the the chromebooks and i just wondered based on what you've seen so far for kind of like you know uh damage repair on the the 2000
127chromebooks or i guess we could just say all the chromebooks um what what is the lifespan on one of those and um you know is it two years um it's more it's okay yeah it's yeah we're definitely we're definitely in the five-year span okay um we are like i said we have our tier one technicians are able to repair screens um i'm buying direct hardware i'm not sending everything away for replacement um we crack about i think right about 80 at just the middle school um in crack screens but those are i'm not going to say easy but they're one of the easier things to deal with we deal with them in house i buy bare screens the technicians take the frames off replace the screens and we're able to to get that back to
128them so the the screens aren't as big of an issue it's the keyboards uh kids that pop the keys off those are things now you have to replace the whole keyboard because they always break the little plastic pieces inside of it um so there are little things like that but you're definitely looking at five years um we we bought a the lenovo 100d is the machine that we went with it's been in circulation for a while and there's a reason it's a good machine it's served our students well uh our technicians like it the lenovo computer is a hefty device um it's almost like an aluminum frame or a metal uh casing it's not that cheap plastic that that some of the we had the acer computers that were kind of that cheaper plastic and
129they would crack and break um the lenovo computers are definitely pretty robust and we i should we should have no problem getting five years out of them the problem with chromebooks is that year with a windows device you're limited based on the computer starts to slow down with a chromebook you're limited to the operating system is no longer supported um so you only have between five six seven years in an operating system on a chromebook before they say we're no longer supporting that chromebook um and it it goes from the date you buy the device or the date you not the day you buy device the day you activate the license for that device so that's kind of the limit with with mcas and just making sure that we're staying ahead of it and mr
130chair i just sort of follow up that's a good shot go right here okay thank you um i just wanted to say as a parent i love the online registration piece of it so thank you for switching over to that even though i didn't attach my documents but that's fine put them in the dropbox it's fine that's fine um and then the other piece as a teacher the single sign-on thing is like the best thing ever invented in the history of technology for me um because i don't have to remember all 50 of my kids passwords because every single one has a different password and username so thank you for doing that i'm sure the teachers appreciate that they do and um and this might be more of a question for brian is there any
131kind of pd plan to help teachers with technology so we can cut down on some of those tickets we have a lot of pd associated with with computers and with technology when things come up he mentioned technology tomorrow afternoon they're doing a presentation on s'more that's something we're asking teachers to do more of uh s'more of and that's good thanks i'm here all week but that's that's the whole idea is as these things come in we try to educate our staff we need to educate our staff we're educating them part of professional development for the future we'll be on security and those security emails that you've received will become real when that testing really occurs there's a lot of that stuff that's sort of developing and developmental in terms of things that we buy but
132basic technology there are some also things that sean can do and has done the tech department has put together videos self-help videos and things like that absolutely yeah so we have um we have the videos that we did over covid which some of them are outdated but a lot of them are still still perfectly perfectly suitable um we try and release documentation every time we release something um it's we release documentation based on what we think is suitable and then sometimes the teacher comes back and they're like that didn't help me at all i'm trying to do this it's like all right well we can document that too but being able to kind of stay adaptive and stay ahead of it and be able to get as much information out ahead of it as we
133can um and a lot of it is is teachers helping each other we have a lot of teachers that are very good with technology in this district if you go to every school they'll give you five six seven champion teachers that are champions of technology and when they have a question before they put in a school dude they go and ask that teacher hey i'm having trouble with this can is this something you can fix if it's something they can fix they fix it if it's not they put in a school dude and we get a technician down there to help them but really relying in leaning on our champion teachers and technology to be able to assist these teachers and technology is always there to help but sometimes it's it's not as easy to
134find a technician as it is to find that teacher that's down the hall um but definitely in the future moving forward with pd and things like that i would also just quickly add that when i graduated from college on my resume it had nothing to do with technology there was no reference to technology because there really wasn't any technology now teachers are coming out the young teachers that we're hiring have a piece on their vitae on their curriculum vitae that basically says all the languages all the computer languages they're versus how they excel microsoft everything they can do and what they're versed in and that's sort of part of their education so when they come out they're ready to roll uh which is great and then and so that first last maybe 10 or 12
135years what i've seen has been really great and and we're trying to get that group that's been around a little bit longer maybe that's less more hesitant to adopt and and to work is is work with our other teachers and can sort of put them together and mentor and work and it's not that they haven't been receptive uh it's worked because they realize it's necessary for the day-to-day ops and we have i mean i talked to a teacher today we were talking about the flat panels going the fly panel pc uh tv is going in the classrooms and she was saying that she's a newer teacher within the last five to seven years and she was saying that in their college they had two of these flat panels and they did instruction on them as
136part of their as part of her schooling and i think as you go and as we see newer teachers come in that's going to go higher and higher and higher it's going to become a standard that you're using a flat panel it's going to become a standard using interactive technology that you're using computer-based learning things like that so um but also not forgetting about the the teachers that maybe didn't have that instruction and keeping them on their toes and keeping them in the loop and keeping them involved with the technology is definitely important thank you thank you yep so uh the s'mores app you said was available to families that does that include students as well not just parents the s'mores app so the the s'mores there's two there's two sides of s'more so there's
137the builder side of s'more which is what students don't have access to it it's just for teachers and staff um the visual side of s'more is it pretty much in lamest frames it makes a website okay um it make creates a digital newsletter that anybody can go to they click on the url and it brings them to the newsletter it allows them to make the text bigger make it contrast um translate or anything like that uh but the the building side of s'mores just for teachers and you can embed it in emails and things like that and you'll see the the branding and bulletin and the hpv right newsletters website itself so my apologies the website itself is available to families parents students everyone the website yes the the things that are on the website
138are available yes one more question for you just about the um that whole kind of like cliff that's coming in five years with the mcas saying that we probably need to get new um how do we how do we do that do we like slowly integrate new or is that yeah absolutely so so we've i mean it's when i say we we're looking at it we we've looked at it okay we haven't ironed out this is what we're doing sure sarah this will be a surprise to say but um we have a plan sarah that's good um so we mike and i kind of kicked around some ideas uh you would start it maybe replacing the fifth grade first and then you're replacing fifth grade fourth grade and third grade and then next not next
139year but the three years after that those are your three years of students taking mcas um so you're getting them the devices first you're getting them the better devices uh in the span that they need them then the two years after that you would do the second second grade and then the year after that you would do first grade and then once you do first grade it's time to replace the fifth grade devices again um we're doing that currently at the high school we're replacing replacing devices every four years freshmen always get a brand new device i say that two years ago they didn't because covid slowed everything down but um the replacement creating a plan so that all of our students always have the technology that they need to do state testing to do
140day-to-day computer things um to do lessons on the computer and also looking at replacement for our teachers too we can't forget the we bought 400 laptops for our staff i don't know if the number was 400 but um we need to look at that because we can't necessarily justify all that at one time either so looking at how we're going to replace that and creating a plan so that it's not every year in september or like oh those computers aren't going to work for mcas and like in february and march what are we going to do being ahead of it and having a plan is is definitely needs to happen sounds great thank you thanks sean so um first question is with the implementation of s'more um will that assist teachers using more of a
141consistent communication platform to parents one of the things i've noticed is i love all the teachers that try to communicate but it's like well which teacher is using remind and which is using this and it can just get a little confusing for parents sometimes as to where am i going so fantastic um so just to address that question the the plan is is that over the next year we will create a uniform platform for teachers to communicate home with families we realize that there's different families out there that all need different access they all need different availability and the way to reach families is all different um the tuesday folder sending that home with the 10 pieces of paper in it that have the 10 things that are coming up for the next three weeks
142isn't necessarily always the answer for all of our families so being able to create one platform so that whether you're in pre-k kindergarten or high school you're getting your information the same way um we always looked at electronically delivering newsletters and things like that as this it was almost like a burden and we were it was always it's hard how do we do it um s'more is that solution it makes it super easy from all the accounts that i've heard principals love it um it's easy to use it's great for the user there's multiple ways to share it out you can share out a url link you can share it a pdf um however you want to do it so uh s'mores one of those things that carol and i are presenting on it tomorrow
143and we're gonna we're gonna we're kind of pushing the district and using them into this that this is gonna become the solution um so my second question is in terms of the additional certifications and things that your staff are are doing to stay on top of everything um i'm just curious in terms of do those have a cost and is there kind of like a tuition reimbursement kind of process that the staff can get if they get certified in something specifically to assist with their job so we have a we have a budget inside of the it budget that i can i can uh help staff with that certification and things like that um and we could definitely work with sarah and the business department to figure out what that educational reimbursement looks like um
144our staff is all in and they're excited to be here and they love coming to work every day and they do anything for us and it's really important to me to keep them here you don't realize how much your technicians know until you have to train a new one creating their relationship with teachers creating the relationship with students is so important to us inside of the department it's our job to serve teachers students administration and families and it's our goal that our employees will be able to create that relationship with them um i know that there's a lot of technicians that email back and forth with parents about different things and being able to get the our employees that education so that they can become lenovo certified or become microsoft certified or certified in different
145servers and things like that is is huge and we i'm sure with sarah's uh help we'd be able to find some funds i just think no it it fosters the the environment of learning but i think it also just goes so far to retaining staff to say hey we want to help you stay on top of all the things and that as a school district we commit to getting them the training and not having it necessarily have to be out of pocket or you know i know lots of places have a you have to pass and you have to you know to get all the reimbursement or whatever it is but i would fully back a a specific process for keeping your staff moving forward with anything that can help the school though anything any
146type of training for any individual in the system that brings value back to the district is is something that we should support um you know and i think also conversely if there's a technician that has a particular need that needs to be addressed through an evaluation that says you need to get better at this and here's a professional opportunity that we'll pay for so that you can get better at this because as sean said they're all valuable folks so if there are no further questions for sean we can move on he's going to hang around here in his role of director of coordinator technology to set up the next video i want to take a 30-second commercial to say sean was appointed the beginning of july and i just want to say i think this
147belief is almost universally held in the district that he's doing a heck of a job so and we certainly appreciate everything he does thank you thank you so next up on my report is uh reads collaborative now the reach collaborative as you know is an educational collaborative based here in middleborough um and basically pretty much their offices are here and their schools are here most of them and and uh theresa craig is the executive director of the reach collaborative and most of us may know her from her role in our district as assistant superintendent prior to that she was a teacher in the district including preschool et cetera um the reeds collaborative is amongst 18 school districts sending school districts and 18 superintendents are on the board of directors excuse me and also the special
148ed directors in each school district are on an advisory board and they meet on a regular basis part of what the reach collaborative does is provide a capital plan which is basically a vision for the future and the money they may need and when they have to amend that they have to go back to school districts per massachusetts of mega go to massachusetts regulations 603 and ask member districts if they support um the capital plan as amended so excuse me that's what this is all about tonight we have a video that was prepared by teresa and the reese collaborative to explain this to you and does require a vote i would tell you that i would have a favorable recommendation for this vote i was part of the board that unanimously approved this but this
149is something that the school committee has to approve so if you don't mind sean excuse me [Music] hello i'm dr theresa craig executive director of reads collaborative i have been the executive director for the past 11 years and this is hi i'm lindsey albarnez i'm the business manager for reed's collaborative and i've been there about three years i want to thank you the school committee chair the members of the school committee the superintendent and the community for the opportunity to present this information via video as we come to you with this request regarding our capital plan i would like to provide a brief overview of reed's programs services and locations reads collaborative was established in 1974. your district is one of 18 member districts that form reads collaborative as a member district your superintendent is
150annually appointed as a member of the reed's board of directors the board of directors meet six times per year or more various subcommittees meet throughout the year the special education administrators from member districts meet three to four times per year as an advisory group and engaged in work as specific program subcommittees reese is one of 25 collaboratives across the state of massachusetts reads provides many services to our 18 member districts and provides services to an additional 45 districts in southeastern mass and beyond reed's programs include reads academy which serves students with disabilities that impact their social emotional wellness reads deaf and hard of hearing program which serves students ages 3 to 22 who are deaf or hard of hearing we also provide teachers of the deaf educational audiology and speech language consultative services to students
151within their districts the deaf and hard of hearing program contracts with early intervention for specialized services for infants and toddlers with reduced hearing up to age three reads clinic provides comprehensive diagnostic and evaluation services including psycho eds neurosites risks and personality assessments by our clinical psychologists caps and educational audiology evaluations by our audiologist speech and language evaluations and other assessments by our licensed professionals reads district services provides a variety of specialized personnel within districts such as speech language pathologists ots pt's apes school psychologists school counselors all for short and long term solutions and also our newest family success partnership counselors reads provides professional development such as mentoring educator evaluation for administrators mental health and trauma and other specific topics on request we have eight classroom locations in norton one classroom at bristol plymouth regional vocational
152technical high school one classroom at west bridgewater middle senior high school and the two academy schools located in middleborough which we will refer to in this presentation as you can see we are very proud of the services we provide to the students families and staff of our member districts reid's collaborative is seeking to formally establish the reason and limit for the reeds capital reserve fund through approval of member school committees reads collaborative is requesting that each member school committee vote to approve first the reasons for the capital reserve and second the limit on the balance the reasons for the reserve as approved by the board of directors are maintenance and improvement of reid's properties and leased properties to provide funding for payment of the lease for reads academy public day school location during periods of
153time when enrollment is below expectations and to prepare to purchase the location of the academy public day school to eliminate the expense of a lease beyond 10 years the limit on the balance as approved by the reid's board of directors is four million dollars for the reasons identified above please refer to the capital fund reserve regulations which are included in your handouts on page one and turn it over to lindsay reed's collaborative currently has two capital fund accounts the capital maintenance fund was established by the board on january 24 2013. the intent of the fund is to provide small annual funding to be used for larger capital maintenance projects to maintain our current facilities the second is the capital building project fund this fund was established by the board on june 7 2018. the intent
154of the fund is to provide for a new or renovated facility for the reads academy program k-6 and 7-12 a feasibility study indicated that the existing facility would be costly to renovate and expand as needed after discussions with various financial institutions the financing for construction of a new building on site was not feasible i would like to note that collaboratives in the state of massachusetts are not entitled to building project funds through the massachusetts school building authority the current combined balance held in these two funds is approximately one million one hundred and eighty thousand dollars the two reads academy schools pre-k through grade six and seven through twelve opened for students in a newly renovated location on september 7 2021 this relocation provided an opportunity to expand available placements to include a desi approved preschool
155classroom which is already enrolled with students the new schools have a shared wellness center slash gym a cafeteria and kitchen designated classrooms for art music vocational programming and maker space libraries there are outdoor spaces for field sports and basketball there is playground equipment that is appropriate for elementary students this space is welcoming in an equitable learning environment for students with disabilities who are referred for placement at reads academy in planning specifically for the next five years reid's collaborative board of directors has approved a five-year capital improvement plan that encompasses both the existing capital maintenance fund and the capital building project fund the five-year capital improvement plan on page one of your handout prioritizes improvements to existing facilities while also allocating funds to provide financial support to purchase or continue to lease 44 bedford street for
156students in reeds academy the details of this plan over the next five years do not require school committee approval but are provided on page two of your handout to support the reason for the capital reserve fund and the limit on the balance this approval requires action by you as the school committee members of reads collaborative and a signature of the school committee chair reads collaborative is seeking to formally establish the reason and limit for reid's capital reserve fund through approval of our member school committees just as a reminder reid's collaborative is requesting that each member school committee vote to approve first the reasons for the capital reserve and second the limit on the balance the reasons for the reserve as approved by the reads board of directors are maintenance and improvement of reid's properties and
157leased properties provide for funding for payment of the lease for reads academy public day school location during periods of time when enrollment is below expectations and to prepare to purchase the location of the academy public school to eliminate the expense of a lease beyond 10 years the limit on the balance as approved by the reads board of directors is 4 million for the reasons above the 18 member districts of reid's collaborative have provided consistent support and vision over the past 47 years school committee members and superintendents have sought to ensure specialized intervention for the students with disabilities who require services provided by the highly qualified staff at reads academy reads deaf and hard of hearing program reads clinic reads district services and within the many specialized services provided to school districts thank you for taking
158this additional step to secure an equitable learning space for the students attending reads collaborative now and in the future thank you [Music] certainly that the school committee approved this so as i understand it needs to be two um motions approve the um reasons for the capital uh reserve so very second discussion rich is is this kind of like uh since we're a collaborative so we're part of this and we're like part of the decision-making process is this is this kind of almost what we did with the um the revolving account that we asked how meeting for where they want a place where they can accumulate money so that they can eventually buy their building i saw that's that's yes mr mr oakley that's exactly what this is this is a a fund that if you
159heard the frustration you couldn't hear the frustration maybe but we tried to work with the msba to try to get some money and build a facility at the grove street site and ran into brick wall after brick wall these students are public school students these students are our students in a lot of instances and we've felt a little frustrated with that given that our next step was to look for a property and hopefully find a partner who would rebuild it as a school and then lease it back to us with the hope at some point to actually buy that facility and go from a leasing situation to perhaps at least own situation the rebuild x company bought that piece of land that used to be i believe was travelers insurance at the rotary uh that's
160completely rebuilt you saw some of the pictures um and they were now leasing and i think they want to enter into i know down the road so that's that's in some that's what this is uh it's just the ability to accumulate accumulate additional funds in this capital reserve account so they could do some things uh part of it is looking at that academy they have now on grove street the building on the right they they feel they don't have a use for so if you look at that five-year plan on page two the school committee part of that is to divide that lot and to sell that building and that's whole section of land and that money would go into this account for future use so just an example sounds great yup yeah so the
161the bigger difference though would be the reserve fund that we have the school committee has authority over the this reserve fund the board of directors yes that's already over so i just want to make that piece any other schedule um i think i understand this already so um we're just giving them the authority to make the thing then the money that they put into it they decide where that money comes from we're not being asked for any sort of investment of where it comes from and where it goes okay yes sounds good thank you yep in accordance with the play on this outline got it the five year plan other questions so the motion on the table is to prove the reasons for the capital reserve fund all those in favor say aye aye aye
162opposed itchiness next show entertain a motion to approve the capital reserve fund limit of four million dollars second discussion all those in paper say aye aye opposed it's unanimous and the chair will sign thank you very much and moving on now to uh sarah hickey with a summary of an article for a special town meeting which is coming up in the in the very near future thank you very much superintendent school committee members i apologize i was unable to attend the agenda setting meeting and that should say articles plural so i have submitted to the town manager that the town manager requests articles months in advance so that he can accumulate everything we actually have two articles one is for unpaid bills from a previous year so i'm finishing up my fourth year here in
163middleborough one of the things that we know is we can only spend fy22 money on fy22 expenses one of the strange things that i think has happened because of the pandemic and it's not a middleborough thing it's everybody else out there um is we're we're getting bills we in november we got a bill from february of 2021. we can't pay that with our fy 22 money and so these bills 10 in all totaling 5 643 and 91 cents have to be approved by town meeting and then once they're approved by town meeting we can pay them um so that's the first article uh the second article is the one that you see that was in the um dropbox which is a reclassification of monies we have a shortage of bus drivers we are required by
164law to transport our special special ed students to their schools and so we're having to hire private vendors in order to do that and the cost for the private vendors exceeds what we had budgeted in that line so this second article that i'm talking about really is just moving money from the operating budget into the transportation budget which are accounts that are held by the town but neither neither of these articles are incurring additional costs correct i'm all money is encumbered for both of these it's just a matter of sort of semantics if you will or some tactics don't you want to vote i'm sorry do you want to vote to approve i mean they're already at time meetings so i don't think we have to they've already been submitted to so this is the
165information yeah exactly that's information required thank you any questions for sarah about these two that these are to be honest with you these are articles that we put in pretty much every year the um the new bills that come in late you know are somewhat sometimes lower sometimes higher depends on what happens and it depends on where you go before now i've only had one that's in the four years that i've been here and so to have ten come in dribbling traveling between july and february was unusual things would show up and would laugh and say oh this is from a year and a half ago people working at home exactly or for whatever reasons any further questions thank you sir you're welcome you're all set i'm all set thank you very much i do
166want to uh congratulate and thank greg stevens for all your work on the committee uh it's been a pleasure getting to know you i did not know you before you joined the school committee uh but it's been a pleasure getting to know you you've always had the kids mind kids at heart and everything you've done and occasionally disagreed but we've always moved forward so thank you greg and rich potentially good luck in the election uh if you're not here then we're gonna miss you too and i've enjoyed working with you and uh if you win we'll see you next meeting sounds good thank you very much thank you so next time on our agenda is just two informational purposes just reminding everyone the dates of the town town election are april 2nd and special town
167meeting is april 25th uh everyone should have got received a survey from a survey from the town clerk it'll say your uh precinct and i believe it says where you're located too right correct okay if someone did not receive that or if they're just wondering or they lost that paper where do i vote uh mass or where do i vote ma.com is um where you would go to look for your new precinct so that's just informational you had something that you're good yeah um i got an email inviting me to uh a town uh debate and i wondered if this would be a good time to just announce the details of that and i know that um miss chartoff is is organizing that did you wanna just for the folks at home um is that
168okay go ahead yeah so a week from tonight we intentionally look to schedule around the school committee meetings um a week from tonight march 24th 7 p.m at the elks lodge all the candidates from the town have been invited to come to introduce themselves if they can't come in person they have been invited to submit a three-minute intro video so that everybody gets a chance those who are in person after all the introductions will take questions elks lodge has 150 capacity for their fire codes and all of those things so if we have a lot of people we'll be counting heads at the door um but it's just a chance for everybody in the town to um get a chance to meet all the candidates on an equitable platform that didn't cost anybody who is
169running any money to participate so we hope to see you there if you can't come in person there is an online form that has been posted on as many different social media platforms as possible where you can submit questions in advance and we'll be asking those at the evening as well okay so thank you all thank you next time on the agenda is the msba the high school building project as the superintendent has mentioned we're in sort of the final phases the fields will stop being built in the tennis courts and the basketball courts um and so the punch list will hopefully be gone through by the time we hit summer and i can only hope and pray that this ends soon we've all been here from the very beginning for sure so any questions
170about that again we are under budget we are not on time co would push the software well well this morning on the news the low new lowell high school is 38 million dollars over budget exactly wow mainly because of steel a lot of increased construction costs um with that uh greg your covenant subcommittee yeah so uh we have a second sub committee meeting on covet issues uh you know basically all the issues we brought up the first time pretty much have been resolved i think the biggest uh thing we heard was that there was a desire that how these policies were implemented especially the masking policies and testing policies that it just uh that there should be more curriculum or training on how those get implemented teachers all you know they had their own reasons
171and uh so i think the subcommittee heard that uh there should be something more formal if this happens again there's been more formal training on how those are implemented uh we decided not to have another meeting because it seemed like everything had been resolved you know pretty much you know the masking the buses all that stuff have been not an issue at this point thank you sir next item is consent agenda channel entertainment motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second second thank you um just so everyone knows that consent to gender occur includes meeting minutes and fundraisers at the nichols and the high school any discussion seeing that all those in favor say aye aye opposed it's unanimous uh the last item i have for the agenda tonight is the superintendent's contract i
172had um after the the new superintendent's contract after for those who saw our last meeting we voted to offer the position to ms lines subject to negotiations um and then afterwards we went into executive session i met with the committee and the committee outlined the parameters of the negotiations and ms lines and i met and we set up those parameters and we turned the um contract over to our attorneys and they i brought it back and i gave it to the school committee tonight before tonight to look at um um for purposes of discussion chairman entertained a motion to approve the contract for the new superintendent so here's a second discussion just so everyone understands um the new superintendent's contract will begin july 1st 2022 as the previous superintendent's contract ends it's a three-year contract
173um her starting salary is 187 500 that was factored in based on the current superintendent's salary and reviewing uh comparisons for other both recent hires of superintendents in the area and presently seeking superintendents in the area her um [Music] contract includes um having to have a performance evaluation done by the committee and she can get a raise based on the satisfactory performance of both her goals and the um and the uh the evaluation as has been in the past um it outlines sort of the basic things that are requirements of the job and what superintendents are supposed to do it sets up reimbursements for mileage and it sets up different pieces that she's allowed to have a professional association dues a computer part of the state retirement decision system how much we spend professional development
174we also included as we did with the superintendent when mr lynch started um that they she would attend the mass association of school superintendents induction program which is for first-time superintendents it's now a two-year program yeah it was last time okay it was a two-year program so it's over the course of two years she attends the program i believe um it's sort of classroom work and also there's a mentor assigned to each of the superintendents correct um so it it provides opportunities and the committee agreed with that um other than that some of the basic that you would see in any administrator's contract did any member of the committee have any questions or thoughts anyone in the audience have any questions or thoughts then with that the chair would um ask for a vote all
175those in favor say aye aye opposed it's unanimous um and at this point i invite miss lyons to come up and sign the contracts with me um just so you know i had to make one change because you're not a him not presently thank you and just so you know everyone we signed three contracts one for the district one for the school community and one from this alliance yeah i know and last but not least the top welcome to the district thank you so that was yours so with that i um i've got to do this twice as i said at the last week i wasn't expecting to do this again i had hoped brian would last longer but um [Music] he's gonna get that for me for a while but um i really appreciate
176all he's done for the district and how we've changed over a period in time and i really look forward to miss lyons and the next coming years very excited and i know the committee is too uh and with that the chair will entertain a motion to adjourn all those in favor say aye opposed thank you everybody we'll see you uh first thursday in april