001All right. The Situate School Committee is committed to providing an environment of respect during meetings. We ask all members to interact in a polite manner, even when there's disagreement. We value the participation of our community and want all participants, including marginalized and minoritized communities, to feel welcomed and respected. We ask our committee members and all who participate to commit to these standards to support and respect our community. That said, I'll call the meeting to order. Uh, May 19th, 2025 at 6:00 p.m. Uh, let us begin with public comment. So, uh, anyone in person who would like to come up and give public comment, you got you can come right up to the microphone over here. Um, hi everyone. Our names are Juliet Finn, Sienna Petite, and Juliet Coleman. We are all currently sophomores at Situate
002High, and we've begun our civic action project. Um, our civic action project is trying to bring driver's education back to Situate High School. So, um, we used to have a driver's ed program here like after school for all of our students and, um, it was like taken away, but we think it'd be nice to bring back and yeah, so usually like right now to get your driver's um, lessons, it is a difficult process because a lot of programs like are far away and like it is expensive. Definitely for parents, especially if you have multiple children, it is a lot of money. And and we did some research and we think if we brought it here, it would be a few hundred less. It's very worth it. And um also teachers would get an extra salary
003if they wanted to participate in um teaching it and I think that would be beneficial to our teachers as well. Um, we have already spoken with Miss Kirk and Mr. Lynch to sort of like see what people think about the program and we do believe it's a good idea. There are just some things we need to work out and we'd like to get some interest and see if it actually is a possibility in the future. Um, we have also spoken to people from other Southshore schools such as Culver Lake and Norwell High School. And um, what we have found out so far is that how the process would go is there's a limited sign up for students who would like to participate in the courses. And if it was offered at situate, it would create
004further social opportunities, financial opportunities, and it would be an overall um more positive process for students, especially with accessibility. Thank you so much. Are you open to a few questions about your project? Yeah, I was the mic, I guess. So, thank you for coming and talking to us about this. Um, I was wondering, do you have a sense of what the barriers were or why it was like things that we should be thinking about like what challenges we faced if we wanted to bring it back? Um, so in the past, the reason it shut down was because the teacher who did teach it, Mr. Crowley, had retired. Um, the new teachers who would want to teach it, I was former students. That was a long time ago. He retired. It was a long time ago.
005Yeah. Um but after he retired, the class was no longer offered and we would have to the teachers who would want to teach it um would have to rego through the certification process to be able to teach those classes. And there would be a fee to get the certification, but in the end it would be a self-paid program in the sense that students would have to pay. But we still have to work out the financial aspects. And we were trying to contact Dr. Rab about that. Thank you. That that might that was my question too was do we know when this stopped and and why? But you kind of answered, but Mr. Crowley, I know I had him for driver's ed, so that was a long time ago. I mean, it must have been what
00615 or 20 years ago he retired, not more than that. I'm afraid to say um I do remember I do remember I think I took his class, but I didn't I didn't do the actual driving hours with him. It was some lady from Marshfield who probably also retired. Maybe maybe in a future meeting we could see some numbers, Tom. Yeah, work with them. Sure. It be kind of fun to see what what it would take. I think there would be a lot of interest in parents. I would have been Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Get something right in town. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good job. [Applause] Okay. Any other public comments? Nobody online. Everybody in person. Okay. Uh we'll go on to our student report and Ryan. Busy busy. Sorry I'm not meeting in
007few weeks, but thank you for having me. Um I would like to bash. That sounds like a great idea. Random places for my driver's hour. So, um, so to get started with our sports announcements, all of our spring sports teams have been continuing to impress. Um, boys lacrosse, girls lacrosse, boys track, girls track, boys tennis, girls tennis, and girls golf all have winning records. And tonight is the Will Robinson memorial game where the um girls will be playing the boys um the JV's at JV and eighth or seventh and eighth grade is at 7 p.m. and varsity and JV is at 800 p.m. Um and as we go into the spring season, athletic senior nights are underway. And moving on to general announcements. Congratulations to Kathleen McCarthy, the the physical education teacher who will be
008receiving the MIA Distinguished Women in Sports Award at Gillette Stadium on May 20th. Furthermore, the Situit High School store shipyard received the National Gold Level Operations um at DECA National Standards. And also this week is senior the start of senior spirit week. Today was superhero day. as we countd down to our last day, which is on Wednesday, May 28th. Um, math MCAST will take place tomorrow, May 20th, and Wednesday, May 21st. So, good luck to our sophomore students. Um, last week, our film as literature students, 85 of them, presented their final projects, which were short films they all made at the Real Harbor in um, Situit Harbor or sorry, the real movie theater in Situ Harbor. Um, admission and popcorn were free for anyone who attended. It was a great event and great job to
009our students in Miss Blake for organizing the event. Um, Situ High School hosted the DECA Life Skills Conference on Wednesday, May 14th. It was also an incredible event. It was about eight schools um their excl um programs performed and they Citro High School um presented their sailor launch program. Spring for the Arts took place on Thursday, May 15th. It was a great event that showcased both middle school, elementary school, and high school um artwork. And students in intro to engineering design, a project lead the way engineering course were invited to participate in the applied learning showcase at the New Balance Track in Boston. Um this applied learning project supports schools in implementing um high quality curriculum in a variety of subject areas and grade levels. Our students worked with our ISL program to identify areas
010where assisted devices would be beneficial for students getting throughout the day. And also on Friday, last Friday, prom took place at the Granite Links Golf Course in Quinsey. And our junior class was very excited for the event along with the seniors. And in guidance news, AP exams um took place the week the weeks of May 12th and May 19th. Um, and all 59 AP environmental students took the exam, which is quite an achievement because we love when all students sign up. And we wish Situ High School the best for AP students. We did have a technical issue with the AP psychology exam, so students will be taking that one this Friday, but that was nationwide. Any questions? No. Okay. Thank you. All right. I think uh we are going to go a little bit out
011of order and take number five over four just to have Senator Okconor and Representative Kierney um present to us. So um that's your introduction. Come on up. Thank you both for for being here tonight. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Good evening everybody. Uh thank you for having us. I'm Representative Patrick Kernney and I'm joined by uh our state senator Patrick Okconor. We have a little briefing that we put together. I think it's on the Zoom call as well. We're going to give you a little update on where we're at with our state budget process, what we have going on with u bills, some of the bills that we filed. So there will be policy funding discussion previous years and then future forecasts uh as it relates to all of the aid that this
012district is going to get but also all the districts are going to be getting statewide. Senator Yeah. I just want to say thank you uh for the opportunity to um present before the situ committee. Uh this has been something that we try and do um as often as we can. uh we try and get every single community whether it be the select board or the council um in the city of weouth and all the school committees to try and really give an update on what's going on. But I think especially now with almost every single municipality and a municipal funding crisis uh because of in my opinion rising cost of health insurance pretty much being the biggest driver uh that we have going on. We want to really detail sort of what we're working on
013at the state level to try to address some of these issues specifically when it comes to uh education funding in particular as well. So, we started our Senate budget today. Uh we got out around 4 and tomorrow and Wednesday and probably Thursday, we'll be in uh pretty late. And some of the things that we're looking to address will hopefully uh provide some relief uh the same way the House of Representatives did to the the municipal budgets, but also look forward as far as what we can do inside of the state to really uh correct some of the uh deficiencies that we have inside of our funding formula. So, we can get started. Yeah. So, as I said, we're going to talk a little bit about the budget, uh talk a little bit about some bills
014and policy that uh we filed, and we'll go from there. So, the beginning of January, uh both of us were sworn in. Uh they are two-year terms. To date, we've had approximately 7,000 bills that have been filed in the House and the Senate. So, we will start to work through all of those bills in the committee process. Um there's, you know, 200 members, 160 reps, and 40 senators, but uh 7,000 bills we'll be working through. We've both been assigned to a couple of different committees. Um being the Republican ranking member on a couple of different committees. Um and I am on the Ways Means Committee, so we look closely at the budget. Um she, the governor, filed her budget uh January 22nd. We had a series of Ways and Means hearings all around the Commonwealth.
015uh spanning from Worcester to Gloucester down the Cape. Uh and we touched on all of the things that the governor was asking for funding for. We then came out with our version of the budget, the Ways and Means budget in the House. It was debated. We passed our budget last uh month at the end of April and the Senate is now taking their budget up and as Senator Okconor has said, they'll be in session late most of the week uh debating their budget. So, here's a budget recap of the current fiscal year that we're in. Uh, the budget was based on $58 billion. Um, this is a tax revenue forecast of 41.5 billion that the state is actually going to bring in through our uh various different avenues in which we collect taxes. And our
016federal funding, which obviously has been highlighted more so now than ever before, is at 14.36 billion. The vast majority of this funding goes to assist with our Medicaid, our mass health system. Uh in addition to that, there's also federal transportation money and a couple other pockets, but the biggest one is obviously healthcare. Our stabiliz stabilization fund, our reserves is at $ 8.96 billion. Uh it's $6.9 billion investment we made this current fiscal year into chapter 70, which is a $319 million increase over the previous fiscal year. We made minimum aid from $30, which came out in the governor's budget. When we debated last year's budget, we upped that to 104. That uh was that delivered an extra $37 million to our school districts. Uh early literacy, this has been something that Governor Healey has highlighted.
017We rank uh very well in almost every single one of the national report cards and every academic metric, but literacy was one of the ones where we had fallen behind. And so we have made it we've committed to making um significant investments into early literacy and to try and get really a lot of the school districts aligned with the same uh curriculum and the same uh materials. That's been one of the biggest concerns is that it is kind of up to all individual school committees right now uh in school administration to um pick what sort of literacy initiatives are needed and we believe that some are better than others and and when it comes to uh the testing and that and unrestricted governmental aid basically the the money that communities can use for whatever they
018would like is at $1.3 billion which is a $ 38 million increase over the previous fiscal year. If I can add to that real quick, uh, I'd like to give all of you a shout out and, uh, Superintendent Burkehead a shout out. When it comes to early literacy, both Senator Okconor and I in the House and the Senate have really pushed for reestablishing the free all day kindergarten grant program. Uh, but this board here uh, really made an effort to make free all day kindergarten a priority, and I know you guys made that happen a couple years back. Um, that access to free all day kindergarten increases literacy rates in the third grade by 44%. So, um, thank you for championing that. Thank you for helping secure the funding in the budget to make sure
019that that is, um, accessible for for families. This is a little, uh, snapshot from the controllers's office. Um, in fiscal year 2024, uh, the town of Situit in total received $17.13 million in state money. As of uh, of date in fiscal year 25, uh, they've received 11.2 million. uh we expect that to continue to increase. This is a little Go ahead. No, you can. Uh this is a little bit of little snapshot on the Student Opportunity Act that both of us were pushing really really hard for. Uh it it re-established and reopened the foundation budget review which looks at what uh school districts get in education funding and unrestricted government aid. As you can see, there's been a significant increase from fiscal year 2022, the first year of the student opportunity act to uh fiscal
020year 2026, uh where we're looking at a $7.2 million uh chapter 7 allocation to Situit and a 2.4 2.5ish million uh unrestricted government aid. Um, when we first passed this, as was mentioned in the previous slide, there was a $30 per people reimbursement rate. Uh, in the House budget this year, and I think the Senate budget's the same, we're looking at $150 per people reimbursement rate. So, a 5x increase. Um, we're really really happy to be uh talking about that. Yeah. and wherever we hit on these slides um when we present we know we need to do more as a state in order to up those numbers. I mean they're not keeping pace with collective bargaining. They're not keeping play pace with inflation. They're not keeping pace with health insurance in particular. Um but I
021believe that and we might get into it a later slide. We really need to change the funding formula. the funding formula is outdated and we've basically um diverted to just assigning a monetary figure blindly uh in some instances to what every student should get in a minimum school district. Right now there's 233 minimum school districts inside of Massachusetts. So this is a lot bigger of an issue than just basically trying to pick an arbitrary number and assign that as the value of our contribution every year as a state to our local school districts. There has to be a better way and we're trying to find a better way. Uh, one of the amendments that we have in the Senate budget is to reopen foundation budget review. Another amendment is to actually open it up every
022three years rather than 10 years, which we have right now. And we need to do this because the funding formula is just simply not keeping up to date with all the challenges the school districts are facing right now. And we need to do a lot more uh to be a better partner as a state. But with that said, um you know, when we are debating this current budget before us, we increased our budget by about $4 billion and 64% of that right off the top is for health insurance costs that we're incurring as a state. So, we're facing the same financial challenges that communities are facing where discretionary funding is uh very hard to fund right now inside of our budget as well. This is a little snapshot on some of the other funding uh
023that we've been able to secure. Uh a few months back, we lost our federal uh support for universal school meals. Uh both the House and the Senate and the governor uh took up the slack that the federal government missed on and we allocated $170 million in the supplemental budget. Situate got a million21,000 for uh meals. We have seen that districts that have implemented this universal free school meals, it's been a gamecher for students. Uh students are going home on the weekends with meals in their backpacks. Um their learning outcomes are increasing. It's it's really a phenomenal program. Um it's really difficult to focus on academic teaching and and classroom settings when you're thinking about when your next meal is going to be. So, um, proud to proud to talk about that. Um, unfortunately, we're not
024going to be able to continue to step up to the plate and match all of the shortfalls of the federal government's cuts. So, that's something that we're discussing. I think the budget will probably be a little bit delayed um, due to the fact that of that $14 billion that the senator was just talking about, a lot of it is that Medicaid mass health reimbursement, and we don't know uh what DC is going to do about that. There's a lot of discussions about them changing Medicaid reimbursements to the states. So, um, chapter 90, half a million dollars for transportation funding. I know I've heard from all of you on circuit breaker and out of district school placements, uh, $1.8 million for that. Special education transportation, just under 300,000. Charter school reimbursement, not a problem that we
025face uh significantly as much as uh some of the other school districts like Boston. Uh but 111,000 for that and $47,000 for libraries. Want to talk a little bit about ear marks? Sure. Uh so last year's budget we were able to get um three ear marks um member directed spending um which is a better way than calling them ear marks with the negative connotation eararks have over the years. Uh but the sale home in situate uh we love that project. We think that's awesome that the town's stepped up so much to support that through CPC. Um $25,000 with a friend of situ. Uh both Representative Kier and I met with them and um they were kind of getting low on their budget and they don't need a lot every year to um you know continue
026to operate. So that was something that will probably keep them operating for quite some time. And then $50,000 for the Cole Parkway redevelopment project. Um and then obviously there's a lot of organizations um local nonprofit groups that support uh people in the Sichua community as well as students that we support uh pretty rigorously throughout the um the budget trying to make sure we get as many dollars as we possibly can back to the Southshore to do some of the amazing work that some of these local nonprofits are doing. So then here's here's this year's budget. Um so it's a $61.3 billion budget, $3.61 61 $1 million, excuse me, billion dollar increase over the previous year. Um the budget that was um presented and passed in the House and the one in the Senate is actually
027a more conservative budget, $647 million below what the governor put forward. Uh this incorporates $41.2 $2 billion in state uh tax collections stabilization fund basically holds, you know, with the investments that that has at 8.3 billion uh 7.3 billion this this year for chapter 7, which is a $460 million increase over the previous fiscal year. Again, as both Rep and I talked about, it's $150 per pupil. And then special education circuit rigorous fully funded uh which is $682 million which is up $550 million uh from the previous fiscal year but we were actually able to address that in a in a close out not a close out but a supplemental budget that we put forward to get more money into the stabilization fund. Uh $29.9 million for METCO uh for the METCO program and then
028$1.34 billion in unrestricted general governmental aid. And again, it's one of those things that we wish we could do more, but with the tight budget that we have, we felt like this was was good to be able to at least get this out to our communities. And again, we're we're looking to figure out ways creatively um in, you know, with everything going on federal level, too, how do we maintain what we have here in Massachusetts, then grow and invest um into the the core priorities, education obviously being one of the if not the top one. the House budget, if I can touch on that real quick. I think we were $500 million under the governor's budget. So, a little bit different than the Senate, but not much. Uh, again, I think we're going to be
029a little delayed in what when we finally signed the budget just because of those uh DC proposed cuts. We uh were a little surprised when March's tax revenue came in 13.7% above benchmark. Um, so some of the projections that we were receiving by uh the department of revenue and uh the secretary of ANF, we were a little surprised that we had collected as much as we did. Uh, but we also don't know what we're going to lose in in federal reimbursement. So it's it's a little bit of a question mark right now, but we're doing everything that we can to uh to come up with a good fiscally responsible budget. I mean, generally outside of what's looming down in DC, the state budget's generally pretty good right now. Now, I mean, we're we're facing the
030same correction that all the other uh communities faced when you had a lot of excess revenue come in during the years of COVID when a lot of money from the federal government was uh being distributed to businesses and to individuals and all the other um different ways in which more money just came into our economy. But I would say that, you know, we're pretty we're doing pretty well. It's just there's, you know, a few issues that we need to address. We need to be a stronger partner to our municipalities. That's for sure. Um, coming from municipal government of 12 years before entering this, I I get that fully. Um, and then we need to fix some of the systems that we have in place that are broken. But generally, um, you know, we're in a
031good spot. It's just we don't know what's going to come from Washington and what magnitude that's going to be. I mean, you look, we have eight eight billion and change basically in our stabilization account. So, we could withstand some of the cuts and basically drain our reserves, but our hope is that these cuts are not going to be realized as significant as um some might have, you know, projected they are. Um so, but it's a wait and see and the feds don't have to do their budget till the fall. So, we're kind of basing our budget off of what's the reality now and not what could potentially happen in the future. And Cit's done a really good job on some of those previous federal funds on spending them on one-time capital projects and not hiring,
032you know, um folks that are and are trying to figure out whether you're going to have the money to keep on or not. Um so we're lucky in that regard that um all of you and our select board has done a really good job at at prioritizing capital projects and and using that money on onetime things that have improved the community. You want to take on Yeah. So um so one of the amendments that I have uh probably going to be debated tomorrow is increasing uh circuit breaker 5% annually from the 75% figure to 80 then 85 90 and so on. I believe that this has to be done. Um we need to continue to find buckets of money like when we talked about this the free school meals uh special education transportation reimbursements charter
033school reimbursements. We need to continue to find buckets of money that we can send to communities in this period of time that uh it will take us to fix chapter 70. And in addition to that, I think the other biggest um fiscal challenge that that uh municipalities have is the unfunded pension liability. So, we're entering the last five or six years of that right now. And those last five or six years are heavy investment years and to catch up to uh fully funding unfunded pension liability. Those are, you know, mistakes of the past in the 70s and 80s that we're still currently uh addressing right now. But if we're able to continue to get pockets of money out to communities like increased uh reimbursement for circuit breaker, we're able to uh work in the next
034few years to fix chapter 70 and then five or six years from now, communities are fully funded in their pension obligation. There will be other things that are looming like OPED and and other liabilities that communities are going to have to figure out a funding schedule for, but I think that that's where the silver lining kind of comes of where we're where we're at right now. Um, I represent eight communities. I believe half of them have attempted overrides uh this year or even last year. It's sort of becoming the norm. I talk with my colleagues. I know that Pat does in the House, too. And it's it's happening everywhere. um it's really an unsustainable uh expense that communities have to pay for health insurance and you have all these you know liabilities on the back
035end of that and we've seen communities where their entire 2 and a half% override plus new growth has been eaten up just by health insurance increases and that just can't happen. We we as legislators I think and also um you know the reality should probably strike on Washington and I'm sure that this is happening across the country right now and there needs to be a better way. We've created a great health care system, but it's really hard to access and it's very expensive and um we need to figure out a better way to control costs. We're also in the first year of receiving we we thought was going to be anywhere from 1.7 to$2 billion in extra money from the millionaires tax um which is a 9% tax on every dollar earned on income over
036a million dollars. Uh that number came in this year I think at 2.4 billion. Um, so that money is specifically earmarked for education and transportation and I know the senator just mentioned a lot of the health insurance costs and unfunded pension liability, but um, we're also doing a really good job at tightening up the MBTA and making some critical investments in the transportation system that hopefully uh, support the viability of that system uh, going forward. So I think that there will be some money for education and transportation as we uh tighten those things up and then hopefully re reopen the discussions of the foundation budget review. Yeah. Another idea that I I've had and have have pitched as well as an inflation bank. Um 4 and a.5% uh is the cap on inflation that we
037have right now for our school districts. School districts have seen 11% inflation uh over different years. And so when we tried to put the numbers together to see if we could fund inflation, it just didn't work. statewide. It was just way too big of a number. And so one of the things that I came up with was all right, we cap it at 4 and a half% inflation, but any time that a school district be in a year in which inflation, let's say it was at 6%. They could then bank the 1.5% inflation that they didn't get in a year in which inflation falls below four and a half%, they could then apply it to that to that uh to that year. Uh and then another bill that I have uh is uh financial literacy.
038So this has been something that I've been working on for eight years now. Uh my my biggest complaint about the state house is that things just go way too slow. Um Amen. But I've had uh we have treasurer Goldberg on board now. So it's not just a legislative priority, it's a constitutional officer priority. Uh Caitlyn Laravedian, state representative, is our sponsor on the the House side. This has been something that we've been really working and it's a really uh it's a really cool space. So, three years ago, we were able to get money, $125,000, which was actually matched by a founder out in Silicon Valley whose mission now is to bring financial literacy to all 50 states, Tim Ranzanetta, who runs NextGen Personal Finance. And uh he was able to match with 125,000. We we
039put in place a summit at Bridgewater State uh University where we had educators from across the state um basically on a handshake agreement say that they would incorporate financial literacy into their curriculum by taking this 3-day um 3-day summit course that we had over Bridgewater State. The the technology in this u in this space is incredible. We've talked with a bunch of companies. There's one that actually has a metaverse component to this where in kindergarten it's K through 12 education where you know they'll learn about dollars and cents in kindergarten to you know storing some money away for a paper route in middle school and other things. And what they have is they have a metaverse where you can do a mock simulation of opening up a bank account or going to buy a car
040or get a car loan and things like that. And once they start in kindergarten with this program called stickball, um they get a sort of a a dashboard where they're able to, you know, be part of this metaverse and they answer questions on financial literacy in order to get uh virtual currency in order to then spend on certain things. And as they continue to go through, one of the things to the educators in the room too that's really unique about this program is it actually uh tests and realizes through artificial intelligence the level of uh literacy um and other different curriculum that the student can comprehend and bases the questions to that level of comprehension which is just fascinating to me that those that those things exist. And so anyway, they they use this program
041uh K through 12 and then literally once they graduate from high school, they turn off the simulation model and it's a it's a personal finance tool that they've been trained on for the past 13 years of their educational career. So, I'm really proud of this. My hope is that we can continue to get this going. It's a mandate, which has been the one thing that's kind of holding it up. Uh but we have got it if we've been able to get it passed out of committee without the mandate. But we strongly believe that there has to be a mandate associated with this because if it's not then school districts that have the resources to do it will and those who don't won't. And that's not a uh an equitable way in order to incorporate what
042I believe to be a really um strong uh foundational tool that students need when they graduate from high school, which is understanding financial literacy. Any questions? Um, well, first of all, thanks for coming. I know I think I don't know, for some reason, we just haven't ever put together, so thanks for coming out and um, giving us some information. Um, I have to say I agree with all of these initiatives. I was curious about the circuit breaker. Um obviously the increasing circuit breaker is vital um to all districts. I get a kind of a larger question is is there an answer that puts and I know that kind of complicated but puts out of district spending on the state rather than putting it back on the district. I mean ultimately this would do it if
043you get to 100%. Yeah. Um so I think 100% is is slim that that's going to happen but perhaps it could. No, I I I don't think the goal is to is to get to 100%. And a lot of us feel very strongly about that. Um but we understand that it's also reimbursement and it's it's not um the way we do it is not working for for a lot of school districts. And I know you and I have talked uh at length about this, but the uh increases in tuition costs for out of district school placements and the percentages of those increases is just something that DESIE and the administration really needs to get under control um because it's just not sustainable. Yeah. I mean, I my opinion of this is I think that taking
044care of the most vulnerable in society is is our responsibility. Um and we need to get to a better system because we hear from superintendent that you know are saying that there is a real um challenge right now between out of district special education and then you know the the you know standard sort of traditional education that they're producing inside of their their school districts. And there has to be a better option for that because you can't hit special education versus general ed and vice versa. And that's happening right now. And I believe that that's only going to continue to grow if we don't address this. So what I would like to see in my proposal is once we got to 100% I believe that there should be some sort of either partnership communication or
045actual full state takeover by Desi of out of school placements because we've seen that rapture through communities as well where you know you have parents who believe that their child should have a different IEP in place and it just becomes you know pitting neighbor against neighbor on some of these decisions that are incredibly difficult for school administrators to make and it really shouldn't be that Okay. And then also when when dealing with those decisions, there also and in most, you know, instances there's not, but there also shouldn't be that in the back of the head, oh wow, this is going to really eat into the to the school budget if um, you know, the the IEP uh determines that there's an out of school district placement to a placement that is tuition at, you know,
046200 or $300,000. This should be something that's a lot more streamlined that's taken over by the state and is not going to be one of those um you know continued fiscal challenges that you have every year. And I think that it's a moral thing as well. I think that the state should take this on and take it away from municipalities and fully fund it. Okay. Um so there's one other quick question. I think you mentioned that the potential recalculation of net school spending. Is it um I'm just curious how that would be impacted by circuit break. I guess it wouldn't. It's just going to be a different value, right? And that school spending is whatever $60,000 this year or whatever it is. Yeah. So, it would it would basically take away the whole per pupil
047uh minimum a school district formula that's in place right now where we, you know, pick a number this year being $150. It there should be a much more thorough analysis done. We're not sure where it's going to go. I mean, it's going to be about a two-year process of the of the Foundation Budget Review Commission going through all of these documents and trying to figure out the best new way to move forward. But I believe we need a new way to move forward. And once we get there, my hope is that it's based on actual data, statistics, uh, what the school district on the ground in real time is facing rather than even circuit breakers a year out reimbursement that you get um, the previous fiscal year. So, we needed to be better at dealing
048with the real challenge that the school districts are facing right now. And it gives us a good I mean, I'm excited and optimistic about the opportunity to to look at and work at the new um funding formula that we we'd have in the state. And I think it will be much more equitable. And I think that we're going to see increases uh you know throughout all of the school districts that are currently minimum aid if we do this the right way. And on top of that, the Student Opportunity Act is fully funded after next fiscal year. And we've shown that we can invest around $500 million annually to fully fund that seven-year program. Um, and I don't see why we would put the brakes on that and stop it. It's fully funded. Let's take that
049$500 million we've been investing and and reimagine a different way um to invest it. Obviously, keeping in mind the basically 26 school districts that get the majority of the Student Opportunity Act money. and let's look at um you know the next 26 the next 50 are all you know 300 plus school districts we have in the state because everyone's in need of financial financial support right now from the state. I echo the senator's comments on on uh taking care of the most vulnerable. The other thing that we both have really been pushing Desi on is uh when you're approving these tuition increases and out of district school placements is actually making sure that those educational facilities are providing the educational training and u educational opportunities uh that they say they are. um because we hear
050from so many different people that you know despite us spending $30 plus thousand on our district school placement that their student is not getting the services that they need. Um so I think Desi and both of us have pushed on on the commissioner to to really look into whether or not um these service providers are actually doing what they say they are supposed to be doing. Thank you very much. Um, yeah, I was actually going to make that point about the out of district that and I think the other thing that's really hard for us is the unpredictability of it. Just that these swings can happen. I think Tom, was it Tom that had the the quote about the six figure swing? Um, and that is just really hard to plan for too. So, if
051there was some way to sort of know that there could be an increase but it wouldn't be over a certain amount or that there was some sort of sense of predictability, I think would also be really helpful. Um, but I had a different question. I was curious. Um, so I was at a community event last week. Um, it was our state of the town breakfast. I haven't even had a chance to talk to you guys about this. Um, but I was just there in the audience. Um, but there was a question asked and then afterwards several other people mentioned it to me just kind of one-on-one. um about just concerning um special education and you know that's the area in which the federal government has the largest sort of oversight and that's also the area
052I believe in our budget that we get the largest amount of money from the federal government and so the question was a concern you know what what could happen could this be cut what would happen if it was we've not discussed it as a group but I think our track record shows that we you know strongly support special education and civil rights which is the other piece of um IDA and the federal oversight of that. Um, and so, you know, I I I think that our state will not, you know, leave districts uh out to sea on this. I don't foresee Massachusetts walking away from either of those concepts. But I was just curious if you had anything else to add from your perspective just to sort of if you have another insight or information
053or thoughts on um on that. I think our priorities and I I think I can speak for the Senate as well has always been prioritizing uh the most vulnerable. Whether that is uh with stepping up to the plate where the federal government is missing the mark on on special ed or universal school meals. Um we have $ 8.3 billion in the stabilization fund. It's there for a rainy day and uh we're we're looking at a storm coming and we're not going to be afraid to to step up to the plate with the resources that we have. Um yeah, we're going to protect ourselves, too. I mean, we're we're funding the attorney general with the most money that she's ever received in an allocation to file any and all lawsuits that we believe, you know, obstruct
054our values as a state. And we stand behind that, Republicans and Democrats. Um, you know, against drastic cuts from this administration on a whole multitude of of issues, not just in education, but obviously in healthcare, uh, in research, innovation, and progress, which we've already, you know, kind of seen that attack happen. Um, no, we're we're very concerned um about what's going to happen and we don't have all the resources in the world to to fully fund it, but um we will we will fight tooth and nail to try and make sure that we win in areas in which we believe that we're right and in other areas that may get held up in courts or whatever the result is. I do believe that we'll be supplementing a lot of potential cuts from the federal government.
055But my hope is that the courts see this the way that I think most people see this um and reverse a lot of the decisions that are being made and and hopefully our Congress um can restore those cuts or not make them as they deliberate their budget. The hardest thing for us and for all of you is the uncertainty of it because we don't every day it seems to be something different that gets cut or looking at being slashed or and and it's tough really tough to plan and forecast when you don't know exactly what to plan for. Um so we're I know you are trying to have those discussions. Uh we're having those discussions as well and we'll continue to be good partners and do everything that we can to uh to step up.
056Yeah, it's as chaotic as it is to the average everyday person who's watching this as it is to the state government right now. And we have no direction and we, you know, are very concerned that we're losing our federal partner. Thank you. Well, first I want to thank you for the future fight that you will be undertaking for for us and all the kids. Um, I have a question about the early literacy initiatives. Um, I'm just curious as to you mentioned a statewide uh program and I'm just curious how you would uh how that would happen like how who would be deciding on the early literacy pro early literacy program and it would would that be mandatory to supplement other programs. So, I know that the governor when she um gave her first state of
057the state, this was one of the initiatives that she had announced that she was launching. We funded it at 20 million last year. I believe it's a 30 million in this year's budget. Um and there's an early literacy commission. Uh there's a early education and care uh sort of group that's out there right now working with Desi and others to uh to fully kind of put this in. I'll see sort of what uh regs they've promulgated or things of that nature and get back to you know you all about what um you know I can try and get you like a one pager on where where we're currently at with that. But I know the investments been made. Um some school districts I believe have received grant funding and I don't think it's going to
058be a uh a mandated approach. I think it's going to be sort of a slow roll out in order for all the school districts to get the funding get c get caught up and then um sort of move it from there. But I know that they they do want to get this done in a um you know a three or four year window. I forget what the what the exact actual what the actual uh time frame of it is. Thank you. Y well thank you both so much for for being here and just a quick comment. I think that your attention to school lunch free school lunch is just I I it's fantastic. I think you both said it perfectly well about how it just can't be underscored how important that is for just a
059kid cannot learn without you know with an empty valley coming in in the morning and the mental health impact of that is just difficult to measure for parents and caregivers and you know with four kids in my house just taking that off that burden off of people in the morning is it's it's amazing and it's it's just something that really um glad to see that that advocacy continues for that because it's definitely impactful. and the financial literacy that sounds like a very promising program and kind of interested to see how it rolls out. Uh Maria and I were in Atlanta for the National School Board Association conference and we were able to present there and something that we we touched on different um our presentation was about some different connections and so actually we talked
060about credit for life and how Sichu does that program and it's so fantastic and uh it just seems like our audience was intrigued by all of this financial literacy and those connections and community building. So, um, it does seem like Massachusetts maybe is sort of a leader in this area. So, that's that's great. So, yeah, my hope is we get it done. Yeah, for sure. I'm glad you mentioned the mental health piece of that, too, because when the federal government was doing the the universal uh meals um they weren't necessarily universal and there was a stigma involved um with that and the way that we've worked with local school districts has has really taken any of the stigma away from uh from that. So, thank you for mentioning Thank you so much. Just want to
061thank you both for coming tonight and it's very informative and all your support of schools and state but also situate specifically. Uh anytime I've reached out, you've both gotten back to me right away with answers to my questions and support our students and teachers. So, thank you very much. And I want to just open that offer up to you as well with these um uh visionary ideas that you have. I think you know sounds like sports mall. I certainly do with financial literacy free lunch and all that kind of stuff. Um so if you ever need us as a resource or have questions or want us to help support these types of bills or work with the new commissioner that's coming in July one, we're we're a resource for you as well. So thank you.
062Great. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thanks everybody. [Applause] Thank you very much. Thanks so much. All right, we'll move forward to our leadership report. our director of human resources, Miss Bla. Hello. Thank you for your patience. Oh, no problem. I believe has catch up. I'll just talk loudly. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yep. So, first I want to start by thanking you all for having me here, the school committee and Superintendent Bhead for the opportunity to share some of the great work that we've been doing in the human resource department here at Situit. Um, so we're going to start um by just sharing the agenda for today. I'm going to um give you all another MTRS update. Um talk about and share some of the memberships and partnerships that uh we
063have now in our HR department. um talk a little bit about our presence at career affairs this year um and then give you some next steps for the department and where I see us going. So just to remind you um last year when I was here at the meeting um I gave you an update of where we were with our MTRS reporting um we had a backlog um that was dated back to November 2022 and that was uh statewide. it was due to the pandemic. Um, and so right now currently, and this has already been updated since I um finalized the slides, all of our um SPS um MTRS members, so that's administrators and educators that are part of MTRS can now see their contributions through November of 2023. All of our reporting, all of
064our deduction reporting up until April of 2025 has been submitted. Um, we are I am currently working with our rep to get those reports released in real time. He actually released November today. Um, they have to release them in order. So, they have to go in chronological order to release them. And then once we get all of last school year released, then he and I will work together to get all of this school year's released. But, at least he has the reports in hand. Um we will continue to work to get these um reports released as quick as possible so that our members can log in and see their um contributions and their service especially for our members that are retiring um and ones that are looking forward to return and want to know where
065they stand. So that's the the push behind it to make sure that they have the accurate information that they need when they log into the my TRS portal. The picture on the side is just to give you an update of um what the portal looks like now for members when they log in. Um on the last slide we go to the next one. So there are um a couple memberships and partnerships that uh we've committed to um since um my tenure here at um Central Public Schools. Talk about a few of them here. Handshake um was already we've continued that membership with them. They are um a place where we're able to post jobs and access and have access to college educators. Uh so that is um whether it's for temporary substitute work while they're
066still in school as well as catching any um recent graduates that are coming out. Um we also have a membership with the Massachusetts Partnership for Diversity and Education. It is a networking organization that gives access to diverse candidates. Um we also have um committed to um um having a membership with NIMNET which is a job board committed to diversity recruiting. So we post our jobs there and it pushes it out and gives us access to candidates um um that are diverse. Um and then SHERM which is a Society for Human Resource Management aka HUMM um is a resource for me as your director of HR. Um, it allows me to, um, have networking opportunities, but also if there were any templates or anything of that nature that I needed access to, I'm able to log
067into that site and just gather information and then just network and see um, what we're doing in the industry to make sure that we stay at the forefront um, in our human resource department here. Next, so to the fun part. So, um, I've had the opportunity to um, attend two career fairs. Um the goal is to continue to increase that to get the word out about Situit. Um most of the time when I go people haven't heard of it. Um so um it's really nice to be able to talk about how great it is to work here in Situate with people and share some of the great things that we offer. Um so in February I went to the UMass Dartmouth Job Internship Expo. They had two days. I was able to attend the second
068day and um just recently I went to the BSU Bridgewater State University Educational Career Fair which is the one that I went to last year. So, the top pictures are just pictures of how I set up our table. Um, you all have swag. We'll talk about that on the next slide. Um, just so you can see it in person and also take some home. Thank you to Superintendent Tenn and Burkehead and Dr. Rap for approving um the budget so that I could buy our um SW uh to to give out to our um interested um interested potential um employees. Um and also I actually um pass it out as welcome gifts to all of our new hireers when I um have our new hire meetings with them. We are also Handshake is one of the
069partnerships that I mentioned on the last slide. I also use that um that membership to sign up for various career fairs. Sometimes they're um free and other times they have small um fees for them, but they are doing a great job of pushing those out to make sure that we can hit all over Massachusetts and just get the word out about who we are and what we represent. Um the last thing that I will share is that we also I am continuing as a part of a connection to our strategic plan to pass out our lit one pagers and our mechco program one pagers um just so people can understand all the great work that we're doing behind the lit work as well as what MECO is because there believe it or not there are
070people who have never heard of it and it's really important that we catch out these job fairs our um young educators that are um up and coming so they can know you know what it is that we offer there. Next slide. So, this is our new um SPS HR QR code. Um you don't have to take your phones out now, but if you look at your swag, there are stickers on all of your swag. Um so, when I pass it out to people at our job fairs as well as our new employees, if you scan it, though, you don't have to scan it now. Um it will open up to our SPS School Spring website that I shared with you last year. Um, so I'm continuing to find new and um new ways to push
071our information out there and um just be with the times and making sure that um people can um get directly to us as quickly as possible and let us know that they're interested to apply here. So feel free to test that out. Let me know if it works. I test it all the time before um I give it out. Um but thanks to our um new IT director, Jackie, who showed me a site where I can create one and save the district some money in doing so. And lastly, I just want to share a couple of the next steps. Um, as you may know, we're closing out school year 2425. So, what that looks like in HR, that's processing our end of year. um making sure that all of our staff have their appointment letter
072so they know um what their roles are going into next school year as well as making sure that their approvals are turned over in a timely manner so they know and can prepare for anything whether it's medical or time off that they need to take. Um we are currently um in the process of hiring for our ESY program for the summer. So those hires are coming through as well as a few hires that are coming through for next school year. Um, one of the things that, um, Director Adams and myself have been have worked on and we're finalizing is a dual welcome video with um, myself and him um, to assist the search committees um, that we have here in Situ in their efforts to have the most equitable experience during the search process. Um,
073in this video I welcome everyone. U, Mr. Adams provides a brief overview of the 10 lit commitments and then we just kind of say thank you and wish them the best in their search um as we look to find the best um staff to u come aboard here to situate. And then lastly um thank you Dr. app for approving um our um we were able to get Docy sign. Um so my next big HR project is to thank you. Um so my next um big HR project is to build that so that so one just to remind you um last year we um I um brought in and built all the modules to make our hiring process for our applicants completely um paperless and now um that new hire onboarding process um will move from
074paper to fully electronic just to make it more efficient with timing and also to cut down on errors and also um to make sure that we are able to have access to information like when we need to find it or whatnot a little easier. Any questions? I No, this is great stuff. I love the efficiency of talking. I guess I I guess I just always assumed that it was that way. Who knows? Um I guess I'm just curious. Uh we whether I don't know if folks know or not, but we get like an all SPS email like we are on it as a result of being um spoken about. So, we get the updates of like here are the open jobs. Yes. And I'm just curious relative like are our job number like openings like
075typical? Are they lower than you than than you would expect? Are they higher? Is our turnover higher? Things like that. And I want to see how that turns into all of your recruiting efforts like have your recruiting efforts paid off kill those jobs. Um that's a great question. Um I would say that Situit um has done a great job of making this an ideal place to work. there's not a lot of turnover. What I've seen in my two years here, there's been more like for retirements. Um we haven't had that much turnover. Um this year we have about six um SDA positions that we're posting and some of those are from one-year appointments like new jobs that were created that are now going to be full-time. So um there's not a lot. I wouldn't compare
076it um I don't have a comparison right now to like a district that is similar size that but I can get back to you via email um if that's helpful. Um, one of the things that I'm looking to do with NIMNET this year is to actually post those jobs there and then see if we get any candidates that actually identifies that they actually saw our job through there um to help with um bringing in more diverse candidates. No, I don't I don't need that. I just I just I see the list and I'm like I don't know if this is good or bad. I don't know if we want to have openings or not have openings. I don't really know how to digest it% like you want because there's frictional. So, I think every year
077you're going to have retirements for the most part. And so, when you have a district that is um just filling retirements, that goes to show the hard work that you all are doing, that um us as administration are doing and all the um educators that are here that work here. That makes it a great place to work where people don't want to leave. Do you mean like the non like coaching and just in general? I just don't know how to I I'd like to see the coaching stuff has to go. Yeah, the coaching stuff that has to go. So yeah, every year we do repost all the coaching jobs and um all the stipen positions that we have contractually those get posted yearly. So that having that system electronic and um actually making that application
078shorter for our internal employees so they're not spending so much time in the computer reapplying for the jobs they reapply for every year that has definitely um helped out with the hiring process and making that more efficient as well. Thank you. I just have one one quick question. Sorry I just thought of this. Um I was just curious like I think in typical you know companies that are not education and for-profit the for-profit world the HR department would have some like purview over um employees who were on improvement plans and things like that you don't serve that function in situ right in a public school like that would be all the principal or their manager is that right that is correct there is some oversight if there is any discipline that comes with that then
079I would um come into that process there um I work very closely with assistant Superintendent Lynch. Um when people do um direct their um questions to me about evaluations and um improvement plans and then I make sure that I direct them to the right um place. Um if there's non-union um questions for evaluations, I do support like hiring managers and helping them through their evaluation process with their employees. But as far as like our um educators and whatnot, that is ran under assistant superintendent. Okay. Just curious. Thank you. Well, thank you all for your slack. Set the bar high. [Music] All right. Uh, Dr. Rab, thank you. Go ahead. I was going to give you more intro, but it's ready. We know. We know. Not fancy. It's just So, you have two things this evening.
080Um the first is an additional proprietary item for the Holy Cushing Hathley Elementary School product project. A couple of months ago, Doran Wood were here. They explained that process in a nutshell. Anytime we go out to bid on a product, it doesn't matter what the product is, we want to make sure there are at least three different versions of that product or three different alternates. Anytime there is only one or two alternates, we have to designate that product as proprietary. And that's a decision of the school committee and the school building committee. Last week or two weeks ago, the school building committee met and approved this one item as proprietary. And now we're before the school committee for a similar vote. So similarly, it is for extruded aluminum exterior wall panels. And there are two
081manufacturers and not just one, but there are two manufacturers that do this. Um, and it was recently discovered that the previous third specified manufacturer in this product category could not match the finished warranty provisions of the other two manufacturers and had to be dropped from the specification. So that's why they weren't on the original list. After reasonable search, Doran Whittier could not find another third equal product available in the US market for this product type. And so they're asking that the school committee approve it as a proprietary specification. Um, for the sake of the vote, there is, I believe in your blue agenda, there's a rather lengthy um, suggested school building committee vote, which unfortunately I do have to ask. We read the minutes. No problem. Don't worry. You committee vetted this out. Practice all
082day. Oh, yeah. Yes. Very thorough. We always very thoroughly vetted the items. All right. Yeah, we have a motion on the proprietary items for All right. I make a motion that the school committee, the awarding authority for the Situate Hadley Elementary School project, having found and determined after discussion with Jorah Whittier Architects, the project designer, and after reasonable investigation of other feasible alternatives, as reviewed by the owner's procurement official, that it is in the best interests of the owner and the public at large to have certain portions of the work, as detailed above as presented, be included in specifications for this project as propri proprietary specifications and not provide for or equal substitutions. Second. All in favor I thank you very much. Take a deep breath. A complicated way of saying couldn't find the right
083panels. Thank you very much. Uh the second is to accept a donation, but it's a little bit unusual from our normal donations. So we have a firm um that has reached out and they it's called Sand and Water and they would like to donate two t-shirt making machines. So they're the you know typical heat press t-shirt making machines and all told um this is about a $3,000 object. Yeah. And so they're asking us if we would pay $650 and they'll donate $2,410. That's a deal I'll take. And so I would I would I Mr. Mackey who's in charge of our um Deca and the business program. I'm trying to remember the name of the store, but it's not right now. That's a very catchy nautical. Yes. And that the store right outside the high school.
084The high school store. Yeah. um has reviewed the product, is interested in it, is excited about getting it, and so all I would ask this evening is the school committee to approve um a $2,410 donation from Sand and Water, and then we'll take care of the invoice. I just have a quick question. Sure. So, this is those machines that Yeah. And you see at all the sports events that you pay $90 for a sweatshirt. Yeah. Okay. Will help us massproduce them. Good. Save money. Great. There's gonna be some the merchandise spreading. Maybe for us. Yeah. I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the sand in water shirt press machine donation as presented. Second. All in favor? Thank you very much. That's great. That was very generous. That's the name. All right.
085Uh, celebrating student learning tonight. SH teachers. Oh, and we'll get an update on the robots robotics team. Hello. Hello. over there. She got my jacket. Jack then slides. Just press down. Um, hi everyone. Uh, my name is Sumea. Thank you so much for being here and listening to us. Um, really we're just going to tell you who we are. We're the cyber sailors. We're situates robotics team. We've been active for about 5 years and this is really an overview of um our year and we just like to show you again what we so as for introductions I'm Angelica Hajam. I'm a junior and I mainly specialize in design and building. I'm Rose. I'm also a junior and this year I focused a lot on programming uh partly building and strategy during the game season. Uh,
086well, I'm Sam. I'm a freshman. Um, and I do a bit of mechanics and anything else. And I'm actually Nick Garrett, but it says Nick. I was like, you're not Nick Solver. Nick, one Nick for another Nick. Yeah, I do coding. I also do a little bit of building, too. So, we'd first of all like to thank our sponsors. As you might see, these are from all over Situ. And we like to think we have situ as our wonderful backing community and a little family who makes our creativity, knowledge and laughs we've had this season possible. Um we thank our sponsors and whoever you may know who are with these companies sincerely. Um and we just would want to let you know that you've you know are one of our greatest supports and just thank
087you. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Just branching off from that, we'd really love to extend our gratitude toward all of you in Situ Public Schools. The help that you've given us has truly been tremendous and it's inexplicable to describe the impact that you've had on our team this year. Um we've had a very busy year this year as uh we do every year. Um, robotics has been a year-round um, team, a commitment. Um, and we have been working hard throughout the year at our preseason events um, all the way through our tournament events and even just recently we've had um, fundraisers and some uh, some more events like just this weekend we had a Barbie car race where a lot of the um, neighboring F FRC teams um, came together um, and race use our
088use our knowledge to create um, vehicles little toy vehicles, but um to you know kind of build community and have a good time. Um robotics is just a year round event and it's a it's good. You were wearing helmets. We were wearing helmets. Um yeah, so robotics a yearround event, but it is also extremely active, especially in the middle of the year during our um competition season. In the lab specifically, there are tons of different subgroups working together um to make a functioning robot for this year um this year's game. Each year has a new game and this year we've had teams of people working on one robot to build a functioning elevator. um attempting to build a climbing device to lift this massive 100 pound robot off the ground and some other um components
089that have been very important. Um the lab is always busy. Yes. Now you know a little bit about the lab, but what happens day-to-day really we all branch off into our own groups to form this big team all working on different parts of the robot simultaneously. use different tools, all kinds of like water jets, sand belts, bench grinder, you name it, we've probably used it or tried to use it. Um, and really what it comes down to is being able to thrive in chaos while organizing it at the same time and learning how to work as a team to achieve a goal really together through all kinds of different struggles. Yeah, I promise we're safe. No, we lost fingers. Couple maybe a little concussion, but we're fine. it wasn't for robotics. Let's be clear. Now,
090what do the students actually do on competition days? You might wonder. So, to explain it to you, um competitions typically are robots competing against others to perform a certain task. And the first day we're unloading, the next day we're competing and our robots obtaining a ranking compared to the other teams. And the day after that is alliance selections where the best robots get picked based on their ranking. And of course, we're all trying to make it onto an alliance and represent Situate in the best way possible. And students are really all branching off and doing their thing and whatever their interests are in. So whether that is scouting and building relationships with other teams and really being the face of Situit or building and fixing things after a plate comes flying off in the middle
091of match and we're scrambling to get that done or if it's sharing updates on our social media to connect with the families back home and people like you to really update you guys on what's going on. We're all there and we're contributing and it's it's long days but they're fun. Um, so when I look back on the hours and hours I spent and all of us I think do what we really learned was that the journey is more important than the destination. Always we had in mind that we're working for an you know this moving and when I look back the growth as engineers as students as young adults and as people and friends is tremendous. Um we h it's a growth in maturity and in creative problem solving. No longer when something doesn't work
092you stop. It's just it's a mindset where let's do it again. Let's prototype. Let's get back let's get back online and try to figure out something new. Um so it's it's really just both being able to ask for help when something isn't working and also knowing when when not to when you know not to stop and when to keep working. knowing never to give up. Um, as well as learning how to be learning how to use a a socket wrench and button head screws to being, hey, saying, "Hey, I actually need help with this. It's not working for me." are both little and big lessons that we want to apply all throughout our student lives. Now, as for the preseason, you might be asking, what is a what does a preseason look like for robotics?
093to explain it. Think of a sport before they go to the game. Obviously, they're going to need practice and this is our practice. We're all first year students here. And I can say it was very helpful to be going to pre-season competitions where ranking doesn't really matter and it's all about learning and growth. Yes, we were thrown in the trenches, given a screwdriver, and told to fix things even though we didn't know how to. But at the end of the day, it was a tremendous help to say the least before the actual competition. And aside from just the preseason events, we did a lot of work in preparation for our um major event. Um all throughout September and October, November, um the beginning months, we worked um tirelessly with um Mr. Son Dume. He has
094been a phenomenal help with mentoring us and teaching us um really what we need to know. Um he has been supportive and we really just can't thank him enough. But throughout the preseason, he and uh put together a series of um mini courses for learning programming, computer AED design, and fabrication that have been just instrumental and really inspiring and we hope to continue that next year. Yeah. Now we move on to prototyping. So prototyping is like one of my favorite parts because in my opinion, it's where you like learn the most. And even if you don't know what the engineering design process is, all you need to know is prototyping is taking your idea and then trying to make it and then breaking it and then fixing it and keep doing that a million times
095over and over until you eventually have something that hopefully works. And it's branches from every single part of the entire robot, the entire team from coding to building to literally anything. Thank you for showing this is what the robot looked like before it became all this. those parts and out of what we just it broke again and again and again again and eventually became that like magic. Not really. Now, in order for us to stay sane during these really long days, of course, we're having fun in the lab. We're talking, we're eating, we're making inside jokes about things breaking and us fixing them. And we're staying late, we're putting the work in. And really, I can't remember a bad time I've had in that lab. I always want to come back, even though the work
096might be tiring. So, yeah, we're having lots of fun there. Yeah, just add on. I had never touched the Allen wrench in my life and then Mr. Jang was like, "Hey, you want to help?" Like, okay. And uh I afterite quite a couple hours um possibly a few tears, but overall it was great. Um, I built this part of I built part of this on the robot um as completely as a freshman and something new and it was I was laughing all the time and I had friends and people I trusted around me who helped me and it wasn't like they were telling me what to do. It was like they were helping me learn for myself and learn tell myself what to do based on my observations. I really like that. Yeah, the lab
097is just a community really and every day it's something new and you always have just smiling faces and very difficult tasks but smiling faces nonetheless to help you through them and it's just it's just a really great time every day. Here's some more long nights for you. That's um me in the first picture. I think it was about like 8:00 p.m. at this point and we're ironing our bumpers. So, imagine how that went. Um yeah, and so after all of this all of this, you know, work work and then we get to competitions. This is this is the end goal. Um and we're going to show and this is this was the end product of all our of all our work and we're really really really proud of it. Um and so the competitions is
098not only an arena where the robot's supposed to do certain tasks in order to gain points and competing against other robots from other parts of New England. It's also that um you you win awards based on how efficient or how well your robot works and also how your community you know reaches out and how you use your knowledge to help other people. Um and so like there I am talking to one of the judges and I think this was creativity or outreach. Um and so you win awards based on how much you help the people around you which I think is a really special part that it's not just oh I'm sitting in a corner in the lab working my own thing. I'm actively helping both younger students and building new generation and I'm asking
099you know the pit or the team right next to me hey how was your day um can we you know we can let's take a walk and be friends and share our ideas and creativity and so that's really what competition is you know all the way from Vermont to Hangham right next door where it's really good community of competitions um the first picture there um I'm there leaning over fixing a robot that's a very memorable experience. So during one of our matches, one of the plates on the robot came flying off and broke. And we really had to fix that before the next match. And we had about 10 15ish minutes. And let's just say we were running. We were get the tools, let's get this done, let's fix this. And even as a first
100year student, at that moment, I felt like kind of accomplished and proud that I could jump in and be on in on the action and help fix it when times like that came. And it's not just um when something goes wrong on the robot, but before every match, and there's like up to 70 matches at an event. Um we are going to be uh communicating with other teams. We're going to be talking about strategy. We all built these robots. and how are we going to use them, work together and work towards this common goal. And I think strategy uh is one of my favorite parts of being at a competition because you get to see what did your robot do that was different than ours and how can we uh work together and use our
101two different robots to complete the same goal and it's just a whole bunch of fun. You furthermore branching off that it's more than just a robot. It's about creating a common goal and being able to unite with people to actually try to achieve this. And maybe you're working with people from other talents that you never would have met or you have different ideas about what should go on with the robot. Should you add something, remove something, change something? It's about working through that given a brand new opportunity every single time to improve yourself and your team. Uh yeah, so this is the part where it got a little challenging for us. Um not everything goes that goes as planned as life is. Um and now this was after uh our our last competition of the
102season and we're and now I think now we're watching um the last matches and this is when I think as a team we needed each other most because when something went wrong we all and we all we all had put the same amount of work in and so we all understood a little it was a little bit heart a little bit heartbreaking but it was also a really really fantastic lesson for all of us to learn. And so this I think was a great picture of um you know what a community we are that we were sitting and we're smiling and we've overcome something that we thought we would achieve but we didn't. Um and I thought that was one of the best. Um here's just some more pictures. There's a team dinner. We had
103some fun in the lab. It sounds like so much work but like we're laughing all the time. Um here's us uh with another team in the middle. That's the hang of the team. some more pictures at competitions. And I just wanted to reaffirm community support. It's vital. We're always looking to build on to what I now consider like a second family and outreach with the community and continue with all of the support that we've been given. And here are some students who are graduating this year and where they are going. Um and furthermore uh with the courses that we have at our um at our fingertips here at uh Situit, we um we have a lot of support with our knowledge base. Uh I have been taking u computer science courses with Miss Halahan which
104have been um very helpful in trying to um dissect the very complicated code that is in that monster. Um it is not fun but it is really really exciting to try and learn more and um the courses that we have here um just really support that. Yeah, I can add on to that too as someone who takes calculus. Uh I really feel like I can tie together a lot of what's going on inside the lab to the classroom. And I also even wanted to mention at the bottom you can see that DECA and marketing is also included as something that's related here. And pre-season we used to do these things called marketing Mondays where we'd meet on Monday and talk about marketing and outreach and grants and all of that. And I feel like I
105can confidently say that I believe I've learned even more from robotics about marketing and outreach and writing grants and promotion than I have even from DECA which is oriented toward business. So, it's very interesting how people can really explore their interests in this club. Um, so if you know anyone who'd be willing to be part of our family and community, we're always looking for volunteers. Um, always try always trying to work that outreach. Uh, so if you or anyone else would love to be, you know, part of this, we we really really welcome you. Um, and we need all the all tongue and you know help and I need somebody to talk to even but you can get we don't but um yeah, we'll we'll give you some safety goggles. Great. Thank you guys so
106much for our support. If you want to keep in touch with us or right here obviously you guys can totally come talk to us. We're also available. We have websites, Instagrams, YouTube, you name it, we have it. Thank you guys so much for letting us speak and hearing our story. I'm so happy that we were able to do this. And yeah, [Applause] if you have any questions, you want to see it or does that fall? Uh, well, we're trying not to get people here. Does she send you a video? Not won an award. Won an award from the international. Yes. So, um, part of the arena is the you get points. Imagine a coat hanger. That's about that's exactly 50 tall. And there's a level over here called L4. And so, our idea, which won
107a creativity award, was this built based on a mortar, was literally to just shoot it. If I can get this thing out and right on here. And that is actually six, seven points, considerable amount of points in the first part and uh even more in the rest of the game. So, this uh most people place it and we decide to go. So, and I just wanted to mention if you'd like to see our robot in action and all the things this can do, you should definitely check out our Instagram at Situate FRC. There's a ton of cool videos up there. And it's gotten pretty popular, too. We got like 60,000 views on one of our videos. So, for that shooter. For the shooter. Yeah, the shooter. This shooter really hit the gold. Um yeah, we're
108very very very proud of it. It's not functional at the moment. Okay. Well, I was worrying about like I'm like, "All right, I'm guessing the ball will like into the tile. We worried about not having enough time because they had so many beautiful things to say to showcase it." But we do have a lot of videos. So, um, to explain the arena, there's a net right here and you're supposed to put the ball in the net any way you can. And so, again, we like to shoot these things. That seemed to be our main theme this year. Um entirely sure why. It was pretty cool. Uh so this again, right, this goes up to the here maybe and uh either places or shoots this ball into the net. And this lines up with one of
109eight coat hangers in a circle and we shoot it up. Is that it? And this is unusual. Uh yeah, this the al this is called algae the ball. Uh, not very many teams opted to build an algaebot. Most had arms that that would hang these pieces of PVC. So, we we stood out for a lot of reasons for a shooter, which is a bonus. Creative. Yeah. Any other questions? Yeah. So, this is amazing. I mean, I think we always look forward to when the robotics. So, on the edge of our seat. So, thank you. So, you mentioned outreaching to, you know, other folks to gay team teammates. Um, so I have the pleasure and wonderful curiosity of hanging out with a lot of young middle school boys, driving them various places. And what's interesting is
110I hear them say how they love what you do and some of them are very intimidated by what you do. And so the question is like, how do you talk to those folks, right? like they're worried about not being the the best at engineering or the best at whatever. And so, can you talk to that a little bit? I can definitely take this question because I was there. So, last year, I'm so sorry, Miss Halin. She chased me down all of last year trying to get me to join. I didn't. I was terrified. Meeting every single day after school until dark. Is this a cult? What is this? And I can really say that we've kind of been trying to work on making it look less intimidating and really teaching people cuz that's what it's
111all about. Honestly, it is scary being thrown in there, but the support systems that we have are real. And I there was never a moment where I believed where like if I couldn't do something, then we were we were done for. there was always someone who was there to help me, to guide me, to support me. And we also have preseason teaching which helped immensely like at the preseason competitions as well. And Mr. Dum, bless his soul, has been teaching like um like many kids. We had so many new members this year who didn't know anything. We're all new and we learned so so so so so much and it's like it's I feel like a new person after this year and it's really about going through that first year learning everything being a new
112yes not doing some things quite as well but jumping in on the action and we've even been working on supports to kind of support the underassman next year we're going to do more of a buddy system where an older like a senior or junior who knows what they're doing, pairs up with one of the younger kids and kind of walks them through and explains every single thing that they do. Yeah, that's amazing because I do think, you know, as someone who's not an engineer, I think that idea of robotics is often it feels like it's reserved for the, you know, the elite of the elite. Um, well, I mean, you're fantastic. That's not saying, but I do think like making it accessible, right? And I almost imagine not that you have any more time because
113you're spending 12 hours in the lab, but you know those those times when you go to a restaurant, you get that special table where you can watch the chef cooking. It would be I don't know if you already do this like invite folks in, you know, middle schoolers or young. You do already do that. We're working. Oh, cool. Because I think it'd be great to like be able to see you have like a I don't know, just to be able to see you working and see all the laughter that you describe. So that's one of the missions of first really is to spread STEM education and so we're we're supporting the Lego League team starting in games. We just hosted them in our lab last week. Yeah. Cool. I'd like I'd like to say that
114you're you're completely right. Um when I first walked into the lab, I felt like I didn't know what I was doing. I honestly felt I walked in, oh, I know a little coding. And I felt I walked over doing a little summer than I had before. And that's completely understandable. Um, and I and I realized that it was mainly because trying to put this into words. Everyone is trying to make it seem like they know what they're doing because everyone really doesn't know they're doing. Yeah. Uh, which is a very common thing between ages, I don't know, 12 to 18 and adults. Keep going until you make it. Keep going. We'll see. We'll see Mando probably. This will happen over and over again. Um called act. Yeah. And so what what what came from that
115is the ability to say I don't know. And I think that was the most valuable lesson I learned and that we all learned was there's no embarrassment in in being in being intimidated and being the one who doesn't know everything and being the one who doesn't know everything. I there's um one of the guys when he he built this completely at home and he and this was this is what he spent his time on and I haven't done that and that's not my fault but I still felt a little bit ashamed that I didn't and so what I what I took away from it was that's okay you just need to push for it you need to take initiative when you're feeling it in you say hey I don't understand what you're doing could you
116please explain and that's what I think with middle school in particular and that's what I took Thanks. Any other questions? Ironic. I had a similar question to Carrie. It was Can you guys answer that? Can you can I think people want to see maybe um come off the presentation so that people listening they want to see stop sharing so they can see the robot. Oh, feed the robot. Oh yeah. Oh on Zoom they're sharing the screen. So there you go. You roll at it. Right into the middle. Wanted to hear I think I can hear you answering all this question so eloquently and can't see. [Music] Yeah. Um Oh, just you guys have mostly answered the question. Um and you I did notice that you all mentioned that you were first years. you mentioned it
117again when you responded. Um, and you you mostly uh mentioned this, but what was your goal when you joined this club? It seems like it it exceeded all of your expectations. I know you've already spent a little bit time talking about it, but I think for any first year to try anything, but what were you really expecting to get out of this? I think it comes down to a lot of how many different things we offer. So, personally, I love coding. It's one of my favorite things in the world. So, I went into this expecting, hey, you know, some extra coding, whatever. And that was what drew me in. And what was beautiful about that was it allowed me to experience so many other things. I no idea how to build a robot or what
118a robot would even do. But through my love of coding, I was able to open this new door and learn so many other things that I now know I love. Like, I didn't think I loved engineering, but now I know that building stuff and prototyping, engineering design process, like I said earlier, it sucks. It's just and it sounds like it also became like a really social club as well, which I don't think was I would assume wasn't really what your expectations were. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but it sounds like you guys spent a lot of time together and seemingly all got along, you know, as well as as well as everyone. Okay, I know, you know, the dynamics can be difficult, but honestly, I think it's impossible not to get along when you're
119staying in the school until 9:00 p.m. eating pizza together on the floor. And then again, it's impossible to get along. Um, I'm Ann Marie Gal and I wanted to add a couple of comments always. Um, but I'm also one of the people that was behind the beginning of this team um about five years ago and I mentor marketing with these fine books and uh marketing Mondays and uh Gavin we're the fan fan club over here several members of the fan club. Gavin Quinnland um serves on me on the 501c3 booster board. So there's a big booster well small organization, small but mighty organization fundraising for this team. So I want to shout out um to Mr. Quinland. Um but to add on to the comments about how you got kind of hooked in and how
120how we are reaching out and engaging younger kids and building the bench for the cyber sailors, there is this lady right here. Like there's not there's no better more welcoming. I get getting tearary my goodness at robotics even um ambassador for kids possibly in the building. I've had many wonderful experiences as you know with the fine educators in situ public schools but what Carrie Aliandam has done with this team is off the charts making a home away from home a very competitive team insane college acceptances and scholarships like every acceptance letter comes with like all this free money and my own student that graduated last year was also benefited from that. So it's an experience and the reason I'm a humanities person as you know I'm not a STEM expert but the reason that I
121got behind creating this team way back when with um you know past teachers and past principles and administrators was because it didn't exist in Situit and schools like Situit have teams like this. Well, we caught up and exceeded them. Um, and it's really all thanks to Carrie Halahan and and all, you know, everyone else saying yes when we ask when we say we really need help now. We need a little more money now. And people agreeing how valuable this is. Um, but without a teacher in the building that's going to know, oh, you know, chase people that are good at coding and create these warm, welcoming spaces and figure out overnights in Worcester when the rooms keep changing. And it's not it's, you know, it's extraordinary the amount of work that's involved. Um, it's Mrs.
122Dumain for sure. It's Mrs. Halian, um, first and foremost. So, I am so grateful to you for creating this amazing thing. Um, and they talked a lot about the preseason and the competition season. Honestly, it's year round. I think we give her a few weeks off in August. We have a big I'm not kidding. Like, the amount of texting that happens is not funny. It's it's it's in a it's a major major lift and it's to our to the good of Situ really. is a wonderful it's not even extracurricular it's co-curricular it's lifech changing it's it is real life actually by way of life engineering and um so proud that we have it and it's so I mean it's so impressive so um thanks for your continued support Gavin for doing things and space and
123more teachers and help like there's there's the amount more that we could too is, you know, I don't want to scare her away if I haven't yet. Um, but that, you know, the fact that we're adding now at the middle school is wonderful. That started with a sort of a pilot this year with some community um funding from the Rotary Club. There's it's a like a junior league. It's a tabletop kits, baby versions of this um that Matt Moulder and one of the new engineering teachers are leading up during school as an IBC right now to sort of recruit people and then next fall they'll begin their little mini competition. So, uh, lots of the same language and lingo and, uh, it'll be robots for everybody. I guess that kind of leads into my question
124was what do you need? What are what are you in need of? Space. That was what I was thinking. Yeah. Y, we have 30 students and my classroom is larger than the lab. Yeah. We have about 600 square feet in the lab with it's full of tools. So, it's really impossible to talk to have conversations about coding when the laser is running. Uh, and the saw is running and we yell, you know, sound saw. Uh, so yeah, we end up floating out into the hallway and sitting on the floor and working. But that's hard because then you then you have to split the adults that are in the room and that's not that's not really helpful because as you know, we have sub teams all working and all being advised by this group of adults.
125We have two major uh adult mentors who come and help us all the time. Bradley Hine and and Kevin Jean were there all the time. So, so any kind of space and I know that there's no necessary no space necessarily in the high school, but you know what's going on in the whole district in terms of space. So, maybe some planning could happen in the next few years for shuffling, you know, certain certain spaces. Well, we we obviously know how to make do with what we have at any given moment be via be it finances or space, but that's our highest need. Yeah. Okay, good to know. I was just going to add thank you for um this was awesome as it always is. Um I'm so happy to hear about the middle school pilot,
126too. I think that's fantastic and I think that will start to build that, you know, pipeline. I also um would love to see an opportunity for some students to talk to elementary school kids too and show them this and just say like, "Hey, if you're really interested in math and science, get them a vision for what that might look like as they get older." I think the earlier um we can get into kids heads that this is possible in the not too distant future. I feel like that's just so motivating and so inspirational for them and for their teachers. So, I would love to at some point see how we can make space for for that, too. just hearing from you guys that, you know, that doesn't even have to involve the adults, you know,
127just bring the kids in, bring the robot in, show the kids how it works. Like, I think that would just be really cool. Well, also just to your point earlier that you were a coder, but then connected to engineering. So, even for the kids, True, we see lots of builders who are interested in 3D printers and stuff, but they haven't connected it to the math and science. So, that what a entry point, right, to mot right motivation. Yeah. So, it could be both ways, right? Definitely. which is kind of cool. Yeah. Ruth Ruth Yasin maya's grandmother and again this has been an an astounding experience. My four kids who went through the situate schools would killed to have a program like this. It's just really amazing and blew our minds away. Um looking at my
128another son who's in Glastonbury, Connecticut, the first program which of course is what we you know kind of guides us. They have a K through 12, you know, high school encouraging this kind of training throughout. They have a wink for their first for their uh robotics program and they have things where again it gets you end up with other moving on down to middle school and even elementary school, you know, mentors who then help guide volunteers. So my young um kindergarten and first grade and third grade granddaughters are doing first height material. Now they don't they don't compete but it starts with Lego things etc. And they do have this materials available but it does take also further investment by the school district. Yeah and space certainly is part of that. That's great to hear.
129Thank you. We have one more competition if you want to follow along on social media. All right. Thank you all very much. Like this is like Oh yeah. program. All right, wrapping up. We've got an approval of minutes from Nate. I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the May 5th, 2025 minutes as presented. Second. All in favor? I. Right. Uh, warrants, we have three this evening to catch up. Uh, from May 1st, 2025, 245,72.35. Um, 133,000 of which is from our budget. On May 8th, 2025, $451,4754. and on May 15th, 2025, $16,848. And that catches us up to Okay. Um, correspondences or any other business or Future agenda items. The policy subcommittee to be on the next agenda to discuss the field trip policy. and general um a process for reviewing
130planting policies going forward. A process for reviewing policies going forward as a committee. Okay. Yeah. So you're just looking to sort of streamline that and expand it. Expand and policy. I think that's great. Yes. So maybe we can talk about one extra on that. I I believe that we subscribe to something at mask relative to policies. You mean that they hold the policies on that? I don't know. I don't really know what it is that they provide. Went down that that they provide the platform. Yes. Oh, that our policies go. Yes. Okay. I just I don't I didn't know what it was and I think when we initially bought it we bought in to sort of their like generic policies and then over time we have adjusted some of them. Okay. And added Okay. I
131just I feel like it's gone both ways where there were older policies that we aligned with what they had and then there are some that we took to a more specific situate model of sometimes when there's a big policy coming out that they're like here here's a template right but what if our policy is already unique to us like what do we do with that info okay we review it and say do we need to do we need to change anything okay I like that they have our new process offers an extended role for the whole committee. Yes, policy. Get excited people. Um I was just going to add that we pay them to host our situ. So like when you click on school committee in the policies, it goes to the MASC site all
132those policies are ours. Whenever policy subcommittee votes to change it like with the comp competency determination policy, we then send it to Ann Maria Masc. She updates the situate version of it. Um, so they're all situate policies. They're just hosted there. And then other districts pay in the same way, but it's still um their own policies hosted on MASC's site. So we are getting they are doing a service for us and um I think we it's the most streamlined way for us to keep our policies up to date. So that's what they do. Page of policy services. It seems like most districts use it, but it does stop other districts. It's the same format. I just I never knew I knew that we had something to do with them and we pay them for something.
133I wasn't sure if it was that we just accept their policies, but I know that we don't we have our own policies. So, I just didn't know how we Yeah. interacted with them. Like said, they do put out those. Yep. They'll put a They review. Yeah, they they do them. So, that's for next time. Okay, great. Um, there's nothing else. We'll take a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn at 7:46. Second. All in favor? Bye-bye.