2025-09-23 School Committee Meeting

001Good evening everyone. We're going to reconvene our school committee meeting for September 23rd. Thank you all for being here. We have a lot on our agenda tonight. I am going to turn it over to our superintendent for the closing and sealing of executive session minutes. So I recommend the closing and sealing of the executive session minutes as presented. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Unanimous. Thank you. Next on our agenda, we are going to turn it over to Laura Chapman, our vice chair for the disclosure of executive session votes. Laura. Good evening everybody. There were six votes taken in executive session tonight. We had two members absent tonight, Member Chambers and Champlin. The first vote and Pouliot, excuse me. So there's three members missing. The first vote that was

002taken was an approval of the executive session minutes from August 19th. We had one abstention, which was Polly Hopkins. All others approved. The second vote that was taken was a motion to pull A to A homeschool instruction requests. That was approved by all except for Polly Hopkins abstained. The third vote that was taken was a motion to approve A to B through O. All other homeschool instruction requests were approved. The fourth vote was a motion to approve homeschool recisions. That was a unanimous vote. The fifth vote was a motion to approve the previously pulled A to A. And then that was approved unanimously. The sixth motion was a vote to return to executive session to reconvene. Sorry, a vote to end executive session and reconvene to open session. And that was unanimous. Thank you, Laura.

003We're going to move on to the next session section of our agenda, which is recognition. And I'm going to turn it over to our superintendent, Gina Picard for Charajo Teacher of the Year and ESP Professional of the Year. So this is one of my favorite opportunities and recognitions as it's the highlight for Charajo. So this year, the Charajo Regional School District is proud to announce that Lindsay Bliven is the recipient of our 2026 Charajo District Teacher of the Year Award. This prestigious honor recognizes Mrs. Bliven's exceptional dedication, expertise, and tireless commitment to her students and the broader Charajo community. Lindsay comes to work every day with a smile and a contagious enthusiasm, modeling both professionalism and a deep passion for teaching. A leader within her school and beyond, she contributes as a member of the

004school improvement team, the health and wellness team, and a technology leader. She has also taken an initiative to establish a student council to amplify student voice. Her excellence has been recognized nationally for the prestigious PAEMST award. And I know I wanna remember her presidential academic education, Heidi Fee would be disappointed in me because I have to practice that, but it's a very prestigious educational mathematics and science award. And she consistently supports district level curriculum work while opening her classroom as a model for district walkthroughs. Her impact extends far beyond academics. She's forged meaningful community partnerships that bring learning to life, organizing engaging field trips, inviting experts like NBC 10 meteorologists to connect real world experiences to the curriculum, even landing her students on the evening news and inspiring students with a personal video message from

005a former NFL Patriots player as they prepare for Rycast assessment. At every step, she ensures that each student feels supported, encouraged and motivated to succeed. She's also deeply invested in her own professional growth, knowing that her learning ultimately benefits her students collaborative solutions oriented and innovative. She consistently steps forward whenever there is a need in her school or in this district. Her commitment runs even deeper than that, as she also serves as a parent representative on another elementary school improvement team, truly modeling dedication to our school from multiple perspectives. Mrs. Lindsey Bliven is a shining example of what Charoho stands for. And we are proud to celebrate her incredible contributions to our students, our school and our community. Mrs. Bliven will also be celebrated this Saturday, September 27th, during the Educator Water Fire Educator Recognition

006event. And we hope you'll visit with her and see her in Providence this Saturday. Mrs. Bliven, if you could please come to the stage. The chair of the school committee will present you with a school committee citation and the Charoho page. Next, we have the Charoho Regional School District is proud to announce Agnes Rebisacci as the 2026 Support Professional of the Year. Agnes has been a steady guiding presence in our district for nearly three decades. For more than 10 years, she has been the heart and the soul of the Charoho Tech environment. She is the person who keeps things running smoothly, whether it's in Health Careers Program, the Culinary Program, or wherever an extra pair of capable hands needs to be, she is there. She brings expertise, holding a CNA license that allows her to

007work directly with students, learning healthcare skills, guiding them with both technical and know-how and encouragement. She brings creativity, supporting culinary students in preparing meals for events and showcases their talents. She brings something even more powerful, a tireless spirit, a problem-solving mindset, and a warmth that lifts both students and staff. Her colleagues describe her as the glue that holds it all together. She motivates, she raises the bar, and she makes others feel valued. Simply put, she embodies the very best of what it means to be Charoho as well, and our Charoho support professionals. Thank you, Agnes Rebisacci. Is Agnes here? I didn't see Agnes. But we have her citation in pen, and I will give that to her. Both Lindsay and Agnes were all here today. Thank you. We also celebrated, along with their colleagues, Convocation

0082025 when we welcomed back staff and students. So congratulations, and I'll see you Saturday. Congratulations. All right, so some of the members of the School Committee are going to read the Charoho sports highlights, and we are going to start with member Karen Reynolds. Boys' Cross Country, Charoho placed top six runners to sweep the Rodgers-EWG meet. Charoho swept its Southern Division Opening Tri-Meet over Rodgers. Exeter West Greenwich with the top six runners across the finish line at a new 2.6 mile course at Breton Point in Newport with Leo Haxton finishing first for the Chargers followed by Isaac Graham, Cam Cogshell, Ben Steer and Luke Baxter and then for the girls cross country Meriden Alge debuted with first place finish as Charajo also sweeps the meet. Freshman Meriden Alge was the overall winner and Charajo kicked off

009its season with a pair of southern division victories over Rogers Exeter West Greenwich at Breton Point Claire Tassano and Chloe Grissom were fourth and fifth overall for the Chargers. Aliyah Grant took seventh and Alexa Austin took tenth congratulations. Laura. We have field hockey this is Charajo versus Prout for the first win of the season. Vivian Smith scored the game. winning goal with an assist from Gabby Richie as Charajo Prout recorded its first win of the season in a one to oh in a one and oh victory over Pilgrim. Ella Quigley played a great role in transitioning the ball up the field to Maddie Burdick and Richie for the Chargers. Nola Belnier made one of the saves to for the record shutout. The next one we have up is girls soccer Charajo and Barrington. Morgan Bruker,

010Addie Denikor and Julia Diogo and Julia Diogo, excuse me, scored second half goals as Charajo pulled away for a four to zero victory over Barrington. Eileen Simmons opened the scoring for the Chargers with a 3-3-3 after knocking in a rebound off a penalty kick that went off the fingertips of Barrington goalie Zoe Dyer. It hit the post and bounced directly off the back directly back to Simmons. Aubrey Currier and Kylie Toro each added assists and Ruby Kim made four saves. This was a much needed win for us. Last week we lost two games where we did everything right but sport. Charajo coach Brittany Godbout said in both games we had multiple opportunities to take the lead, but we just couldn't finish. It was so nice to see four different goal scorers and two goals off

011of some nice passing. Congratulations, girls. Thank you. And Polly Hopkins is one of the scorers here today. Please welcome Polly Hopkins. going to read the rest. I'll read boys soccer. The start. Yes. Charahoe makes it a repeat at the Piver Cup. This excerpt is from Larry Kelly, special to the sun. Two spectacular saves in two seconds. Charahoe boys soccer. Charahoe's Connor Prescott stops Stonington All-New England player Sal Alessio with a sprawling deflection on a one versus one move and then denied Nolan Neal's rebound kick with another diving stop for in the quick first half sequence to preserve Charahoe's one zero victory over the Bears for the Chargers second straight cup championship. It was the third straight Piver crown for Charahoe coach Brian Williams, who was Westerly's mentor in 2023. The tournament is named in honor

012of Piver, a former Stonington standout goalkeeper who died while working in the World Trade Center during the 9-11 attack. Those were tremendous saves, Williams said. To keep Alessio off the scoreboard is huge. Hats off to Connor and also to our back line. Charahoe primarily marked Alessio a 26 goal scorer last year and nearly 80 goal career striker with the rangy pair of a six foot two Ethan McCann and six one bearing Brandon Resinger. It was the second straight season for the Broncos that Alessio and Stonington, winning the 2024 Piver semifinal three zero. Charahoe also employs McCann's height up front during direct kicks. Ten minutes into the game, the defensive ace turned scorer collecting a rebound off Luca Fasaro's well-placed 35 yard direct kick from the left side. The win marked the start of a grueling

013stretch of four games in six days. Congratulations, Charahoe boys soccer. Thank you. You want me to read girls? Yes, please. Okay, I'll read girls tennis to Charahoe sweeps doubles in win over Narragansett. Molly Orwin and Mackenzie Andrade led a sweep of the doubles for Charahoe in its five to victory over Narragansett. Ella Murphy and Brooke Patnod and Allie Wood and Bryn Campbell also posted doubles wins for the Chargers. Aubrey Campbell and Olivia Gray posted singles wins. Charahoe Downs Westerly at Rotary Park is the headline. Olivia Mandaria, I think I said that, rallied to win in three sets at number three singles as Charahoe Downs Westerly 6-1 at Rotary Park. Molly Orwin and Mackenzie Andrade won at number one doubles for the Chargers. Ella Murphy and Brooke Patnod and Bryn Campbell and Allie Wood also had

014doubles wins. Virginia Royce won at number one singles for the Bulldogs. Charahoe faces Smithfield on Wednesday at Stonington High School. Thank you, Polly. Thank you to Karen and Laura for also reading those updates. Karen, did you have something? I just want to add that the girls soccer team also won the Piva Cup this year. I believe it's the fourth year in a row that they've won it. They did. And it came down to an amazing finish. With just penalty kicks. It was an awesome, awesome game. Thank you, Karen. Congratulations to the team. All right. Next on our agenda for recognition is somebody read girls volleyball. Volleyball. Volleyball. Who's got volleyball? I'll read it. You do. Okay, you're up. Charahoe records first win in five game thriller over Cranston West. Charahoe recorded its first win of

015the season, rallying to win in five games. And you're up. You're up. You can't even read all those numbers. On Friday over Cranston West, Olivia Lowell finished with 15 assists, 6 kills and 9 digs for the Chargers. Alexis Kauras added 9 kills, 10 digs and 3 aces. And Abby Tiernan had 11 kills, 4 assists and 7 digs. Dang girls. Excellent. Thank you. Next on our recognition. Grow Garden summer report and recognition. Thanks to the generosity of Karen and Larry Phelps, Larry is our member on the school committee, and Eric Cairo, who all donated their time and equipment, the garden flourished and provided a meaningful way to give back to the community. This season the Dan Potts Kids Grow Garden donated 82 and a half pounds of fresh vegetables to RICANN. These donations directly supported families

016in need and we are grateful for the positive impact our garden has had. Thank you to Superintendent Picard for her continued support of programs that strengthened both our school and community. Thank you again Larry to you and your family. And I'll turn it over now to the superintendent has some recognition and Gina. I'd also like to thank Trisha Whipple who is actually now running the Dan Potts Gardens in Dan's absence in retirement. So while we wish Dan well, Trisha has done a number of great things for us. She's been a great mentor to us and we're so grateful for her. Nice job and I really appreciate the Phelps's support and the entire community. So thank you to Trisha. So I have a recognition and this is a recognition as a surprise recognition by the student

017education advisory panel to the superintendent. The students, this is their first opportunity to create a recognition for Cheriho and it's called the first impressions recognition. And if you came to convocation or if you heard about it we discussed really the importance of everybody in our in our school community, our custodians, our clerks, our secretaries, district admin, teachers, support professionals. We all work together and we all have a vested interest but everyone really goes above and beyond. So one of the things the students charged me with because they like to give me homework is that I was to give the first recognition and then they would create the criteria of how they wanted to look for these individuals in our community. So the first impressions I was I took a couple of bus rides this year

018and I met bus monitor Frank Weinman. He's a great wineman and bus driver Ed Otis you and I have to tell you they are going to get the first impressions they already received their pins and they were recognized and I explained to them that the first impressions recognition is about just showing joy. So our bus drivers and our bus monitors are the first faces our kids see in the morning and the last faces our kids see in the afternoon. And they really do Yeoman's work and sometimes it can feel relentless but they do it with a smile and they they greet greeted every child in the school district. by name, family members, younger siblings, even their pets. So when I got to ride with Bust a few times, Ed and Frank, I have to say,

019everyone leaves really happy and they're just a joy to be with. So congratulations to Frank and Ed, our first ever recognition for the First Impressions Award for our students. And last but not least, on behalf of the Rhode Island Board of Education and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, it is my pleasure to present Chair Louise Densmore and School Committee Member Jessica Purcell with their citations for completion of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees Leadership Academy. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you, Gina. I'm gonna grab my hand. Thank you. Those were very good educational sessions. Wouldn't you agree, Jess? We came away empowered to do our jobs. All right, we are, thank you, Gina. We are gonna move on to policy, graduation policy, and I'm gonna turn this over I think to Gina and

020perhaps Polly as the Chair of the Policy Subcommittee. So the graduation policy is just a crosswalk alignment. The School Committee has already approved the policies where the changes were made. So this is just a cleanup to make sure it abides by the right regulations and the law. Andrea Drake presented at the Policy Subcommittee just the quick review. But again, this is just a cleanup and my recommendation is to approve the graduation policy as submitted. Second. Second. Okay, so we have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion by the members? Okay, hearing no discussion, seeing no hands raised. All in favor? Unanimous. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, public forum is next on our agenda. So as you all know, you are welcome to speak on items not on our agenda. Please direct your comments

021to the Chair. As part of the Chair of the School District's public forum policy, it states, quote, that each citizen who makes a public statement has a response to the policy. that each citizen who makes a public statement has a response to the policy. that each citizen who makes a public statement has a response to the policy. So I'm going to ask the Chair to present the following responsibility to be accurate, present facts, present information based upon personal knowledge, not hearsay, be considerate and allow others to speak without interruption, unquote. So as the Chair, it's my role to keep decorum and be respectful of time management. With that being said, I'm asking the audience to refrain from any cheering, clapping, booing, shouting or disrupting the speaker who has the floor. We have one, two, five.

022So we have speakers, all from our district tonight. So our public forum policy states that this section of our agenda may not exceed 30 minutes. So each speaker will be allowed up to four minutes to speak. And I'm going to ask our Vice Chair, Laura Chapman, to keep the time. When the timer goes off, I'm going to thank you and move on to our next speaker. Please try to make your points as succinct as possible within your time allotment. And we have five speakers tonight and I'll announce the first three speakers are Etta Zaslaw from Hopkinton, Laura Rahm from Charlestown, Helen Sheehan from Richmond. So if Laura and Helen could make their way closer to the front, that would be appreciated. Thanks, Etta. Turn that button. Is it open? No, I think it worked now.

023Go ahead, Etta. Is that better? Okay. So thank you, Louise. You're welcome. I rise tonight as a taxpayer, which might surprise you all. I'm a taxpayer who believes that education is a shared civic duty and that public education is the key to a productive democracy. I pay taxes as an investment in our shared community because I want to drive on smooth roads, cleared of snow when it falls, and be surrounded by people who are skilled and educated. I want the kids in my rural neighborhood to have the same opportunities as I do. I want them to have expansive learning experiences beyond the neighborhood that will ensure a successful life, whatever they choose. So I've really been thinking deeply about our situation here in Cherahoe. I've lived in Hope Valley for over 20 years, taught for

02410 years at the middle school, served on the building committee for CALA, which is the Cherahoe Alternative Learning Academy, and I presently serve on the Hopkinton Economic Development Development Program. I've been a member of the enrollment commission, so I have vested interest in what goes on in this community. Tonight I speak from the heart to encourage a coming together of all of us, newcomers and homesteaders. First of all, for our students, but also for the economy of our community. If achievement in Cherahoe Public Schools starts to decline, young families with children will not continue to move here. Sure, the student enrollment will decline, but so will our property values. We are not paying our taxes. I struggle to understand how that helps any taxpayer in the Cherahoe District. The narrowly defeated $150 million school bond

025for three new elementary schools and the maintenance improvements to the Switch Road campus in 2024 is proving to be regrettable. It was a one-time offer based on the statewide bond that financed it for a reimbursement rate of up to $1 million. The school board has been working hard to get the bond to the next level. We have a bond rate of up to 81%. Those of us who voted for it are upset that we left maybe around $120 million on the table in reimbursements, and we still have outdated schools. If we float another bond at that same amount, we will only be eligible for up to 61% reimbursement, which will be about $91 million. Over $30 million difference. So we are going to turn this to your attention to encourage you to really do the

026best job you can with this capital improvement plan that you are planning to work on tonight. The real kicker to me, and many others, is the fact that the reimbursement money from RIDE comes from a statewide school building bond that passed in 2018, and it passed with a 76% state approval. So possibly many of us voted for that. And the reason for that bond was the recognition that we have old schools throughout the state, and they wanted to encourage upgrading of all of our aging schools with new ones throughout the state. Those reimbursements come from a fund created by our tax dollars. Other school districts are benefiting from our money that we left on the table, an amount estimated to be $5 billion. Think about this. While our students are still waiting for the adults

027in this community to commit to a plan. Another fact that nags at me is the longer we kick the can down the road, the more expensive everything gets. It's past time to upgrade our elementary schools to that A-plus quality that we all want. I encourage school committee members, parents, professional educators, community members, all to be part of the solution in order to make this happen. I encourage you to be successful. Capital improvement, be a successful capital improvement plan. Studies show that well-designed schools can lead to higher student achievement, retention of great teachers, and better physical and mental health for all involved. I'm not saying build palaces, but safe, secure, inviting, and accessible buildings as an investment in our community, and especially our kids. Thank you. Thank you, Etta. Laura Rahm, please. Can I just clarify,

028it's 65%, if I'm not mistaken, right? We can get the 4% regional bonus. Just to clarify, so Etta, if you get your number straight instead of the 61, it's 65% because we're regional. Okay? Laura? Hi, good evening. My name is Laura Rahm from Charlestown, and I would like to ask permission to read a letter from a parent from Charlestown, Charlestown Elementary School. Please. These are not my words. These are a parent that could not be here this evening. Okay. So is that okay? Yes, ma'am. I am writing to you as a concerned parent regarding the impact that repeated disruptive behaviors are having on my child's classroom. While I understand that schools work hard to meet the needs of all students, I feel it is important to share the very real consequences that these ongoing disruptions

029are having on both teaching and learning. When a student has a behavioral outburst, the entire class is often forced to stop what they are doing. Teachers are losing valuable instructional minutes, and students are missing out on lessons during a critical stage of their education. These disruptions are not occasional. They are becoming frequent enough that children are falling behind, despite their teacher's best efforts to make up the lost time. Beyond the loss of learning, the emotional impact is concerning. Children have expressed feelings of they are scared and uneasy when classmates scream, throw objects, or block exits. Schools should be a safe and supportive environment, but right now many children feel anxious and distracted instead of focused and ready to learn. I want to emphasize appreciation for the teachers who are doing everything they can under very

030difficult circumstances. However, the situation is not sustainable. And it is not fair to the children who come to school ready to learn. They deserve classrooms where safety and learning can take place without constant interruption. I respectfully ask for the district to take action to address these disruptions so that teachers can teach, students can learn, and all children can feel safe at school. Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. Ryan Russo. Charles Tom. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Laura. Louise, can we add that into our meeting minutes, if she has a copy of that? Laura? Please. Why don't you hand that to Angela? Thank you.

031Thank you, ladies. Thank you. All right. Next is Helen Sheehan, and then we have Brittany Maranzoni and Kelly Gillette. So if Brittany and Kelly can make their way down to the front, that would be appreciated. Hi, I'm Helen Sheehan from Richmond. I see that on this green and white paper there's a website to go to for information, and maybe you could let me know later if the Bureau Veritas, when it will be available, and will it be on that website, and will the Jacobs Report be on there so that we can look at it? So when I looked at the numbers of what it would cost to repair the three schools, as it's listed here, that is $16.7 million as compared to that. Helen, I'm not sure, where are you getting that information, $16.7 million?

032It says insight into basic maintenance but does not evaluate classrooms, program growth, or educational needs. And then it listed all the three schools. And next is the dollar value, which I assume is the repair cost. Okay. So this is an agenda item. So this is an agenda item that we are going to discuss when the representatives from Colliers and SLAM. So if this is pertaining to that. I'm talking about taxes. So as far as I know, there's not one school in Rhode Island that has started building that has been built. Okay. Okay. So there's not one school that has been on budget. That's not accurate. All right. Maybe there is there one that's on budget? There's more than one. I'm going to hold it to the public for on-poll. From what I see, all I

033hear is millions of dollars over Cranston. There's so many of them way, way over budget. So I'm concerned that we will have the same issue. The other issue is historically the schools keep raising the taxes every year. That's inaccurate. We have no control over taxes. This is not fair. Did she say we didn't raise the taxes? We have nothing to do with the schools have nothing to do with taxes. We don't, we don't control police, fire, senior centers. You tell us what we have to pay you and that's what we pay you. We, we make a budget that's ordered on by the people of the town. You make a budget and the towns have to pay that budget. That's how it does it. And everything. Wait, that's not unique to Charoho. Your budget is determined

034by you. The school committee. The school committee determines the budget. And right now it takes almost 80% of the taxes in Richmond. Okay. It only takes 24% of the budget in Charlestown. So how I would like you to look very carefully at what the taxes, what you're, what you're doing for budget. So I don't know what the number of teachers is in comparison to the non-teaching staff, but the money should be going more to the teachers. Cause that's our, that's the main job. So I would like you to look at those hard decisions about where you're going. And I would like you to think about where you might consider some of the expenses because truly there are so many people that struggle with paying the taxes. Anyway, thank you. Thanks, Mrs. Sheehan. Brittany Morenzoni from

035Charlestown. I got it right. Brittany. Thank you. Good evening. So I'm Brittany Morenzoni. I'm a parent. I have three students in Charoho and a resident of Charlestown. So I'm here today to be a part of that. So I'm here today to bring attention to concerns of parents that have reached out to me personally. Many classrooms within the school at Charlestown have been evacuated due to behavioral disruptions. Parents are not made aware of these disruptions from administration, but when they come home on the bus, in the car, immediately. While I truly believe in respecting the privacy of students during these moments, it's important to recognize our children may be losing 30 minutes or more of instructional time due to the escalation and de-escalation strategies. Teachers are forced to move forward with curriculum regardless of whether the

036material being taught is mastered or understood, all due to the strict district deadlines. Unfortunately, parents... Yes. ...are not being informed of this loss of instruction time by the district. Instead, when inquiries are made, a standard reply that we cannot share the information due to policy restrictions. During the past few weeks, parents have actively searched for that policy that prohibits administration from contacting parents regarding classroom evacuations. There is a growing concern and frustration among parents over the lack of transparency. And the generic responses being provided. Our children are missing valuable instructional time as a result of these behaviors. But I have some solutions to propose. Collaborate with Jonathan Anderson to formulate a statement that can be issued when such events occur, ensuring parents are informed. Parents don't need detailed information about the incident, but a simple

037notification that the evacuation took place would allow us to address as parents the information that we need. Thanks, Janice. Have a great day. Have a great day. Have a great day. Have a great day. Have a great day. Have a great day. Have a great day. with our children, like how we see fit. Acknowledge that our children are also affected in these situations as they witness the events. Please provide the policy that states we as parents are not allowed to be informed about any disruptions that could have an impact on our children's learning or emotional well-being. Ensure adequate staffing is in place. Currently, there is no effort in hiring any additional staffing in elementary school according to the Cheriho website today just to help support staff and relieve the stress our teachers and building administrators.

038I want to emphasize that I support our teachers wholeheartedly. I appreciate everything they do to manage behaviors and maintain instruction amidst the stress. I firmly believe that teachers are not receiving enough support in handling behaviors. I trust the educators and staff of the school to be able to support our teachers and building administrators. I am proud to have my children at my children's school to provide them with the best education possible. But this can only happen if we stand up and voice our concerns. I do urge parents on a conversation daily to reach out. If these incidents are happening and these are evacuations, I'm urging them to reach out to the administrators and Gina Picard to illustrate our pleading support for the classroom. All students deserve necessary resources and support. Parents demand transparency regarding our

039children's education. We want to see the policy that clearly states in black and white, not subjectively, that you cannot share with us incidents that involve our individual child's intellectual and emotional well-being. Thank you for your time. Thank you. I think the superintendent would like to comment on that. I'm actually concerned that Mrs. Malvern-Zoney used to be an employee here. So if she's not sure what first steps she needs to take, I'm going to ask her to come back. I think she's going to be a little bit more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more

040of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a

041more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of a more of during the day, and I'm witnessing teachers doing their best job, like you said, but I'm concerned that what you're presenting isn't accurate. We cannot, imagine being a parent of a child who's had an escalated event, where kids go home and talk about said child. What would you expect the principal to be able to say? Violate the law? We can't violate the law. We can only share what we're allowed. And yes, John Anderson provided Principal

042Poore with exactly what she could and couldn't say. He always advises, because we have a responsibility to all children. We have the free, appropriate public education. We're not a private school. There are laws around how you can discipline students. I'm happy to share those laws, Brittany. If you reach out to me, I'm happy to have a one-on-one session with you, so I can show you all the documents that you're not sure where to find. Thank you for mentioning that I was a teacher prior. That's fine, but this has nothing to do with me being a teacher prior. What it does have to do with is that... the telephone game of parents, when children are coming home, guess what? We all know the names of every situation. We all know from eight-year-olds what the situation is.

043I'm not asking, the parents are not asking for there to be anything other than a general statement, your child's classroom was evacuated. That was provided. It is not provided to the parents on the day that it happens. Excuse me, excuse me. When it happens, it should be. I will speak to Ms. Poor about the systems around that, because we do have the systems, as you know, the crisis prevention intervention, and she has shared with me that she has, and I will follow up. We don't discuss employees here, and I can't discuss personnel. Thank you, Brittany. Thank you. Thank you. Brittany, do you have a copy of that that you could... Yes, I will email it to the school committee members. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. Kelly Gillette. Good evening. I'm here to urgently raise

044concerns about the lack of consistency and safety in the learning environment at Charlestown Elementary School. Frequent and severe classroom disruptions are compromising students' education, teachers' ability to instruct, and the overall safety of the school community. Twice within a two-week period of the four weeks that school has been in session, my child's class was forced to evacuate once after a student blocked the doorway while screaming and crying, and again while students were displaced from the music and art room for similar behaviors left to hold class in the hallway. These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a recurring pattern that disrupts learning and creates serious safety risks. Parents across multiple grade levels are reporting similar issues. These incidents leave teachers and students in unsafe situations and interrupt instructional minutes for entire classrooms of children. Teachers are also

045bearing the financial and emotional burden. Many spend their own money to ensure that students have necessary materials, which are sometimes destroyed during disruptions. Teachers then spend hours restoring their classrooms. This is unsustainable and unacceptable. Despite these challenges, I want to commend the teachers for their perseverance, patience, and dedication. Their extraordinary efforts do not go unnoticed. And as parents, we are committed to supporting them in every way possible. Parents are being made aware of these incidents, not through official communication, but by our young children sharing their experiences at home. Many are expressing confusion, frustration, anxiety, stress, and even behavioral changes. We strongly urge the school to protect their children. We are also encouraging the school to prioritize transparency and timely communication so that parents are fully informed of incidents affecting our children's safety and learning. Students

046deserve a stable, structured, and safe learning environment. Teachers deserve the resources and support necessary to do their jobs effectively without fear of repeated disruptions undermining their work. As a district, we cannot allow this pattern to continue. I am calling on the committee to take immediate action. Whether through increased staffing, increased behavioral supports, or district-wide protocols prioritizing safety and instruction, change is urgently needed. We as parents would like to see these issues resolved within the district before escalating these concerns. Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to hearing what steps we take to ensure consistency, safety, and accountability in our schools. Mrs. Gillette, thank you for speaking tonight. So what I'm going to ask you to do, and I appreciate you bringing that to our attention, it looks like that there are

047some parents here who perhaps share your concerns. I'm going to ask you to speak to them. I'm going to ask you to speak to them. I'm going to ask you to speak to them. So what I'm going to ask you to do as advocates for your children is to sit proactively with the principal, Mrs. Poor. And if you can— Okay. All right. All right. So if that is not to your satisfaction, that I would encourage you to set up one-on-one meetings or as a group with Mrs. Picard, the superintendent. And I'm sure Mrs. Picard will inform us as to not— us as to next steps to hopefully address these concerns. So thank you for coming tonight, all of you, and for letting us know. We appreciate you. Thank you. Kelly, do you have a copy

048of that you can give to the Secretary? I did email it this morning. Great. Thank you. I'm sorry, Linda. Did you say something? I just said leave it secret. Okay. Yes, we did. Thank you. All right. Thank you for your comments, everyone. And we are going to move on now to nine of our agenda, which is business consideration. I'm sorry. You cannot. I'm sorry. So our policy is that you have to sign up first, and then we would recognize you. But I think Kelly Gillette was the last person on our public forum sign-up sheet. But if you have concerns that you want to make the school committee aware of, all of our email addresses are on the Charahoe website. So please feel free to email the members of the school committee. Thank you. Thank you

049for being here. Okay. So I'm going to move on to number nine, business consideration, 9A, consideration of and vote on negotiation, subcommittee's recommendation to approve the NEA certified final tentative agreement. So moved. Second. Okay. So we have a motion and a second. Discussion? I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the union and union president, Vin Lefkowitz. And NEA representative Leslie Florio on the collaborative efforts as we embark on a new three-year agreement with our educators. And we realize and value our educators. And there were members of the subcommittee, which were Diane Teft, the chair of the subcommittee for NEA negotiations, myself, Patricia Pouliot, and Laura Chapman, who was just added last month. And we can... And we can see that the agreement came to a final tentative agreement. Any other

050comments by the committee? Okay. So Diane, did you want to say something? Hi. Yes. Of course. I'd also like to add that it was brought to the members, and we did receive information today that they will be ratifying that contract. Thank you, Diane, for that information. All right. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this? Okay. All in favor? Anyone opposed? Anyone abstaining? Thank you. Madam Clerk, did you get that? I did. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. All right. Next on our agenda is a presentation by SLAM of possible elementary school redesign. And I just would... Before we ask the representatives from SLAM and Colliers to make their presentation, I would just like to say that by law, in 2018, school districts in Rhode Island were required to have an elementary facilities

051plan as part of their five-year capital plan. Charajo has not had a comprehensive plan in many years, but not for lack of trying, which makes this work that we are about to tackle as a school committee urgent, and it is required by law. As you may recall, the school committee, during a special meeting on August 5th, engaged Colliers and SLAM Collaborative as our project managers and architects to help us devise our elementary school plan. Tonight, I'm delighted to welcome representatives from SLAM and Colliers, who will be giving us a presentation on three elementary school options the school committee will consider, and also the community will be afforded the opportunity to come to town hall-style meetings starting next week at each elementary school. At those meetings, the community can give feedback, and then the school committee

052must then decide at our October meeting which plan to use. The school committee will then decide on the first plan to move forward with as part of a stage two application that we will eventually submit to the Rhode Island Department of Education. Gina, would you like to say anything before we turn it over to our guests? So, we actually have slides built into the presentation for context, but just, I think what's important to remember is there's no decisions being made tonight. This is really for the school committee to understand the options that they asked SLAM to provide some examples on, so you're not seeing actual representations of schools that are not in the school committee. But what you're seeing here is the results that we're getting. This is examples of possibilities based on options provided

053by the school committee at their August 5th meeting where they hired Colliers and SLAM to do this work. So the community meetings that will be held is where you can provide some input and ask some questions regarding what the school committee puts forward. So the presentation tonight is to allow the school committee to ensure that it is the message they want their constituents to hear so it's fine-tuned and that they can stand behind the message as it goes today. every school so this is really an important opportunity for the committee to ensure that the slides are the way you need them the information and the clarity is there for your constituencies okay so I think what we're going to do is the members of the school committee will be asked to sit in the audience

054while we have the screen come down and then we'll turn the presentation over to our guests Kathy are you going to be taking the lead on the presentation okay sir if you can just give us your name for the record because you're gonna be leading our presentation and I would appreciate making sure that all of our members know who you are and your role thank you I'm a design principal who slam mark what is your last name Rhodes our HOA yes thank you thank you so mark we're gonna ask you to speak right into the microphone because we're hearing from the audience that they couldn't hear your what you just said thank you thank you everybody for joining us tonight we're really excited to be here I'm Kathy Ellithorpe I'm the principal in charge from

055the slam collaborative I'm an architect and mark is here he's going to present he's the lead designer and we also have Cory Boudreau who's who's working with us on the project as well so I'm gonna let mark take over and again thank you all for joining us tonight I will lean over and destroy my back into this mic which was a little taller I can lift it up all right now I feel like a rock star so I'm gonna go through a little bit of a presentation and as mentioned this is very conceptual in nature to really look at three ideas that we were asked to study and provide some conceptual costs for what I'll do is I'll go through a little bit of what we were asked to do and I don't think I

056think Gina would like to participate in this don't give me the mic okay so the why now so the flyer is that one of our constituents mentioned earlier talks about the opportunity that exists right now and the Rhode Island law so back in 2018 when we talked about the state bond and I think it was miss sassloff that mentioned that there was an opportunity in the state because many of the facilities across the state were very much in need of repair up beyond because what ride will tell you is a school's life is about 50 years because obviously it takes a beating right I mean there's a lot of kids most of us don't have you know five five years of education and we're not going to be able to get a lot of 500

057kids walking through our bathrooms every single day so this takes a takes a hit takes a toll so the Jacobs assessment was done back in 2017 and that's available on the state's website so if you if you search Jacob's assessment you'll you'll get that but what's important to remember is the Jacobs assessment and the Bureau Veritas report are not for us because we do have to do a deeper study that's basically was put into law so the General Assembly could have a overview of what it means that our schools need and it's basic maintenance and infrastructure it doesn't look at classrooms it doesn't look at our learning spaces it's just basic maintenance and what the Jacobs does and what Bureau Veritas will do for the General Assembly is give you sort of a cost Outlook

058for about five years what you can expect the problem with the Bureau Veritas report is it's not available however we're doing a stage two which is what we've hired slam to do that is the most in-depth report you can do as a school district it's required by law so the state does not allow you to do projects that are not approved to receive reimbursement and oftentimes and I think that the last time we did this there was a lot of confusion around what people thought the Chero Act could or couldn't do and I just want to be clear the laws have changed so I ask that before we provide information to taxpayers that they may anchor to that we speak factual and if you're not sure I'm happy to always assist so the Bureau Veritas

059report is available for the general assembly to do that and we're doing that we're doing that in the fall but again it really is not neither here or there for us because you're doing a stage two so you're going to get a more in-depth analysis of our buildings that's a cursory overview so when you look at the building ages from Richmond Charleston and Ashway Richmond reaches 90 years this year Charleston's at built in 1954 so you're talking in you know so when you look at our opportunity we do get a 61 cent minimum reimbursement which is available on rides website that's that's the minimum and then we have four percent but there are some opportunities that I would be talking to our General Assembly of reps and senators to really push right to think um

060more vision oriented around career and Tech opportunities with younger learners which are really exploratory and we're doing that work now Charo is a national leader it was recognized as a national leader with the U.S Green Ribbon Award and we believe and and ride believes that we are very much visionary thinkers and it is excited to see this plan come to fruition and then really what we want to do is remember I asked all of you remember you're not building the school of five years from now we're building the school that's going to outlive hopefully all of us in this room because you want to make sure it lasts so we want to really be don't think about the schools you went to I encourage you to visit some of the new facilities look online if

061you can't go visit and some of the opportunities that exist because we're creating the schools of a hundred years from now not the schools in five years from now so we really have a huge opportunity here in Charo to make sure that we think about education in its most inspiring form I think it is important to note that the community input sessions are listed up there so we will be there to represent uh input from the committee we'll incorporate that input and represent those ideas to each community because we really do need to hear from you a little bit on a timeline Gina we'll go over that get a stamp for a second they just like to hear me talk so then um our elementary planning timeline so where are we we are in June

0622024 when after you will recall the may bond did not pass so we began working in June to be re-establish our necessity for school construction committee and then we worked on our stage one again required by law that's been been been new since 2018. so if you're thinking about the Cala building you're thinking about old rules and old laws. Those don't exist anymore. So in February 15th, we had a new revised stage one. We are one of the only districts that keep doing this. So we're putting taxpayer dollars into stage one and stage two plans that are not coming to fruition, where we could be putting that money into plans. So what we really want to know is, what are the questions, what's holding you back, so that we understand and can really address those

063questions? So February 15th, we submitted the stage one application, and stage one very easily means, show us all the facility reports and with your architect, because you are required to hire an architect, and you are required to have an owner's project manager. So with that, they go in and they provide a facility overview of all of the needs of the district, including our classroom spaces, which is more than the Jacobs and Bureau of Erichos will do. And then ride reviews it, and then they approve stage one. That approval came to us about June of 2025. Then we met as a committee, September 23, you see we're here. So on August 5th, at their special meeting, they hired SLAM, they hired Colliers. August 5th, we hired them. Then we had to do contracts with them. And

064the fact that we have a presentation here tonight, I'm really proud of. I want to thank SLAM and Colliers, because that's not an easy turnaround. But I thank you for the work. Let's just say, we've been doing this for a while. So we've had to repackage a few things and update. But I think if we're all aligned to do what's best for the district, we're going to do it. And if we're all aligned to do what's best for kids, we'll make sure we understand what the community needs and wants, because you will determine what the schools look like. And then we're here tonight. So then Mark already mentioned that we have three community meetings, one at Richmond, it's at September 29. We have the one at Charlestown in October and the one in Ashway in

065October as well. And if you check on our website and the e-updates, those dates are there as well. So is this me or you? You can actually recite this whole presentation. We were asked to look at three different configurations for the elementary schools. One was a carryover from what we studied a year and a half ago or so, updated to today. But more importantly, we looked at a unified school, which means taking all three schools and combining them into one facility on a site, a combined site. And the third option was to take a look at renovations and additions. Take a look at those existing schools. Keep the character of what's there. We try to explore where we can. But understanding the average square foot per class in your existing schools is about 560 square

066feet. Varied standards are 900 square feet. So it's really, given the class sizes, your teacher contract, the amount of students that are in these classes, it's not so great from that point of view. We're also looking for parity amongst all of the schools. So everything we show you, the EdSpec, the program behind them, is exactly the same. We wanted parity. meant a bigger cafeteria, they all got that same cafeteria. Because your schools right now have different populations at each school. What we're looking to do is have more parity so there are even numbers of kids in each of those schools. That means the cafeterias get bigger, the gyms get bigger, the support spaces get bigger, administrative spaces get bigger, specialty spaces. We'll talk about Da Vinci spaces, which are expanded learning opportunities that are different

067than being within four walls of a classroom. But these were the things that we studied. Things that won't change your main campus effectively. The fields are the fields, the buildings are the buildings. You're doing yeoman's work to really maintain those. So that was not really part of our charge. So when we think about a site for a unified school, it is not on the main campus. That's important to note. Nothing is disturbed on the main campus. When we think about a site, a future site for taking and combining three schools into one unified school. A regional elementary school. It will not impact the existing campus. No detriment to the fields, to any of the open space. Anything that's there stays there. Another note would be that there have been some opportunities from school committee. I've

068heard from Laura Chapman, Linda Lyle, Louise Dinsmore, Karen Reynolds, Jess Purcell. Gina, is there any opportunity to bring grade five back? When we first started this five years ago, right? And the board of directors said no, because the bonds and the bonuses that were designed by the General Assembly did not allow you to underutilize spaces. However, everything changes, right? Sometimes when time passes, everything happens for a reason. So one of the things that they did say is that if that is an interest of the community with our career and tech vision, we're getting ready for a new strategic plan, Vision 2029. That's something they want to know more about. And they're interested. They see the work we're doing that's nationally recognized. And they do think that we could be beginning to think about moving grade

069five back if that's what the community wants. So that's an opportunity that also exists if we think about those, the things that we've heard from our constituencies that may be more fruitful for us to focus on. But that's, this presentation doesn't show that because we haven't had those conversations. But I wanted to be clear that most of your school committee, at least half, I think, have talked about bringing grade five back. So those are the kinds of things that if that's an interest, we have to know now because that plan will have to happen. So those are the things we want to know. Yes, no, how should we listen to the community? What are those things that you really want to see? And we know that grade five is an opportunity. And as long as

070right here is our plan, they'll, they, especially with career and tech opportunities, they know that we're a light, a beacon for the state for that. So as I mentioned, parity across the district is important. That was part of what we really, the charge from the community. When we look at student population, we are required by RIDE to look at projections that are five years out. So from the date we submit stage two, five years from that date, 2031 would be that date. NESDEC is an organization that looks at student populations across the state. They're actually regional. 1,281 students was represented. That's pre-K through fourth grade. That doesn't include fifth grade. So that's pre-K through fourth grade. 1,281. 1,281 students. When we did the last go around, the last stage two for you before, we were

071designing for a similar number, a little bit less, but the capacity of the schools that we were designing at that time was about 1,340. So we don't just design to that number because that's not going to work long term. We base it based on your teacher contracts, the maximum students in a classroom, how you actually want your kids to learn in conversations with RIDE. But we are required, and that's really important. We are required to have a standard, and that really sets the amount of money the state will chip in is based on the number of students represented in our stage two. So that's non-negotiable with RIDE. So option one, I'll go through kind of a unified school building, which is a really interesting design opportunity for us. What's interesting when we look at this,

072it takes about 27 to 33 acres to pull this kind of building out. It probably can be a little bit less, but we figure there needs to be multipurpose or community fields as part of this because you have that many children, you have the community wants to come together and use the school. These schools become community resources. It's about education, but after hours, it's about bringing you all together in really interesting ways to use those spaces. This is a site, and if this option through the community discussions and working with the school committee is accepted, we'll look for site options. It will require us to have a letter of intent to submit. We just can't say it's going to be a site to be named later. They really need to see the proof. It's kind

073of interesting when you look at a school, when you bring three schools together, three existing schools have unique identities, whether that's STEM-based, environmentally-based. We want to maintain that sort of character. When you think of a unified school, it's not about being big. It's about just coming together as a broader community. So when we design schools that are this size, and we're not just going to build them, we're going to build them in the same way that we did in Boston. We have one in Johnston going up right now. It's about how to break down a scale of that building so each school or each community is still represented. Traditionally, what you would see is what's called a finger-based scheme, which is you can see the fingers that come down towards the bottom of the screen.

074There's usually a unifying spine where, for instance, in this particular diagram, buses would probably drop off on the right-hand side of that screen. Parents would drop off on the left. We really do not like buses and parents' cars to cross. So you really organize the site so that doesn't happen. CALA has a separate drop-off, potentially. Some of your more inclusive classrooms could also have separate drop-offs, so your students could arrive with dignity at the times they need to for the kinds of support and services they need. You get the benefit of combining three schools. You don't need three gyms. The gym would have to get bigger, but you don't need three of them. You don't need three cafeterias. You don't need three kitchens. You're able to be more efficient in the resource allocation towards the

075square foot of a structure that you provide. It's a really interesting diagram. Okay, Gina. So the interesting thing about a unified school is that when I first became superintendent, that was the plan that I came into when Ryan Callahan was the chair, Craig Luzon was on the building committee, Gregory Zenion, and they were looking at a unified opportunity. We didn't get to the end part of that because, as we know, COVID happened, and there was a lot of work to be done. But one of the things I'm going to ask is for you all to sort of put your opinions just out to the side a little and really just take in the information. Because one of the things I think I've noticed in Charajoh for the six years that I've been here is sometimes

076things divide us. But I really believe that more unites us. I do believe that when I spoke with Dr. Callahan at the time and now Chair Dinsmore, that a unified school may be an opportunity for us to be able to do more. And I think that's what we need to do. And I think that's what we need to do. And I think that's what we need to do. And I think that's what we need to do. We need an opportunity for us to think differently about educational opportunities. So think about your child now, you know, and then they may need a specific need. Right now, we are busing kids to different schools that may have to leave their siblings. They might have to leave where their friends are. And that's hard to determine, but if

077we think about it in a way that we'll have all of our teachers, all of our staff in one place, the design—if you don't like this design, this is not our design. This is an example. where after in October, if the school committee decides on something like this, you have to hold myself and the school committee accountable to being intentional. I can show you data of schools that are this size that have great achievement results when it's intentionally designed. So I tried to think about when I first came and what were their concerns. So if I understand the concerns, we can probably talk through that to come to a collaboration if this is the design the community wants. But I want people to think, look, what are you worried about? Are you worried about that

078our youngest learners are in with fourth graders, possibly fifth graders? That's why we would design the buildings so that their paths don't really cross. Those of you that went to the middle school, you know, our middle school is kind of living their own little hallways and seventh and eighth grade don't connect with fifth and sixth often because we understand that sometimes it's different maturity level. So those are the things, really ask yourself, what would I be concerned about if this was the plan and how do I come to an agreement where, because what I know is, and you heard Ms. Sheehan say it earlier, the school committee is not going to be able to do that. People are concerned about their tax dollars. That's a real thing. Nobody wants taxes to go up. We don't

079want to, we want to do that. Do you want two boilers or eight boilers? Do you want three gyms or one? You may want three, but just think about the opportunities and really just kind of note down what would I be concerned about the pros and cons? Because there's no bad way, but if money is always going to be a concern, we may want to think about our resources in one place so that we can really maximize our opportunities for students, instruction, and our educators. Yeah. Oh, it got cut off by the logo. Sometimes our logo moves in some of these presentations. As a mind of its own, when you look at a school like this, you tend to break the grades down. So when you think of those fingers, they're two stories. We feel

080your community really shouldn't have a three-story school. Two stories feels about right, given the scale and sensitivity of the landscape, the architecture around. All of these are based around the pink color objects are learning communities. Those are, think of Da Vinci spaces, STEM, all of those are based around the art, music, where you can, instead of having the child move to that location to have that, access to that, you bring that activity to the child. So it creates a better community of learners for that fourth grade or fifth grade or whatever grade that might be together. It also allows you to have expandability. I know you have a bubble, I think, of second graders. I think it's second graders that are moving through right now. If you have independent schools, you have to manage that

081through busing because you only have so many classrooms in each of your schools. So you have to manage your three schools currently. This would allow you, if you had less first graders, you could have some overflow classroom space. It just accommodates, makes it easier that over time. This does have a partial second level, which would have typically the upper grades and all sorts of paired grades. You could look at pairing one and two or three and four. There's lots of different ways that we'd want to work with G-Unit and your educators as to what the right way to pair grades effectively for team teaching, because we know, there are oftentimes children are at first grade or at a second grade level. So you have an opportunity to sort of team teach and have that child

082experience some opportunities in a second grade classroom. I'm going to show an image of what it could look like conceptually. This is a site that doesn't exist. This is a building that only exists in my mind in a computer right now. So please be gentle. What we look to do is some of the architectural clues we developed with you the last time, we've brought those forward and applied them to each of the schemes. We did that because we wanted the cost to be comparative. I didn't want to guild one and not be fair to the other. So I use similar architectural materials, similar style. So costing would be comparative between each option conceptually. And we do show costs at the bottom of these, and I'll get to that later in the presentation. That's a construction

083cost. That's today's dollars, what it would be to have somebody install the bricks and mortar, the mechanical systems to get the building operational. There are other costs that go with that. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But we wanted to compare. It's easier for us to say construction dollars versus construction dollars, because each opportunity has different things. You might have to acquire a site, you might have remediation and existing school. If you're going to renovate it. Option two, which was, I'll say a very unique and difficult challenge, honestly, when you think about the existing schools and trying to bring them up to ride stage. And that's the development of the new standards because ride would require renovate to new. If we don't meet that threshold, they don't contribute. And we've dealt with that

084in a lot of districts in the past and have had a lot of hard conversations to really understand. It's not just about changing a roof and replacing a window. The ed spec can't be applied to that building. What are you going to do? They're very cutthroat about it with us, particularly as architects. So when we looked, I'll show each of the opportunities. Each is fundamentally a little bit different. The sites are very unique. There's a lot of topography in some, ledge in others, wetlands around. So there are unique things to deal with. So when we look at AshAway, we kind of did our study of existing building. It is a two-story, mostly two-story scheme, sitting on a site. What we decided to do, we needed to take something down to provide more space to add

085back something. It doesn't really have a gym that's appropriate size. The cafeteria would be undersized. The kitchen is woefully inadequate for the student population that would be in that facility in the future. The average classroom size was about 565 square feet, in this case. So it was really difficult to sort of take a look at that and say, well, we can just sort of change the windows, change the paint and the carpet, and that's gonna work with RIE. So when we knocked down a component, we took down a single-story underperforming component, and we decided to add back more significant architecture to keep it in parity with everything else. So, yes, please. I just wanna ask the members of the school committee, as they're going through the slides, it's going to be challenging for us when

086we go back up to the stage and ask questions, that if you have questions on each option, write down your questions now, so we can try to organize our questions as efficiently as possible. So if you have any questions about the unified school, write those down now, and now he's going through the additions and renovations. 17 slides again. That was a good point. That's a good point. And my memory's not that good. So when we look at the site opportunities, the things about these interesting sites, they are narrower through the street and deeper. We have to have leach fields. You don't have town septic. We have to look at these sites and make sure that we can make sure that there's enough site left for those components, even as you increase the size of the

087site. So we have to make sure that we can make sure that there's enough space for the school. We were very careful in each of the schemes to make sure bus drop-off and parent drop-off were still separate. We wanted not to bias what we were designing, even though as architects we always have a bias. But you can sort of see we fill the site. We fill the front yard. It's a different character as you approach the building. But what we wanted to do, as I get to the planning of this, we wanted to make sure it had the same size gym. Now this gym is striped the same size of regulation elementary school gym. The size of the gym is a little bit smaller than what the unified or regionalized school would have because of

088the number of kids that would be in there. We end up with a, one of the things that's very interesting and difficult to deal with in existing schools is safety and security and visitors like me who come to a school, have to do a tour. How do I check in through a secure environment? The current schools do the best they can, but they're not equipped the way modern schools are with the technology and the cameras, the ballistic lasers, and all the things that we have to do to keep schools safe and sound. Things like the media center, the gym, in this case, the cafeteria is off in the back, we typically like to group those together so after hours you can lock the doors down to the classroom wing and the community could use that

089if it's voting or you're having a community social event or a rec sports game going on in the gym. We still want to maintain that separation and we definitely want to provide expanding learning opportunities like the pink spaces in the previous scheme so students and teachers can get outside of the classroom and do more group activities, team-based, project-based things in a Da Vinci space. This does have a second floor. We have to be very careful. One of the unique things about elementary school design, first graders typically cannot be on the second floor or above the first floor. If you do that, and I have done that in other districts, I have to provide dedicated, dedicated stairs. So if you put a first grader on a second floor, they can't take the same egress stair as

090a third grader. It's an interesting quirk. They could be in the same house or high-rise building together and take the same stairs but not in school. Getting the flex spaces, the Da Vinci spaces, keeping some of the existing building, you can see the aspect ratio of the second grade classrooms on the top of the screen, not very deep, great for natural light, but very long so the students are really spread out through the space. So doing the kinds of activities, that modern teaching necessitates is a little bit more difficult. We would prefer classrooms in the addition that are a little bit towards square, not perfectly square, but not that long, narrow aspect ratio. Now that long, narrow aspect ratio works great for a pre-K or kindergarten classroom, just not for the other grades so well.

091Again, a little different character than the cow wall panel and sort of the gray stucco and things that are there today. Each of these schemes, even the additions, can be very beautiful. There's a lot of interesting architecture. The sites are just very tight, so circulation, parking, it's hard to make it idealized, but it does work. So if we look at Charlestown, and this is where I might get in trouble. So as we looked at that plan as a single, mostly single story, there's some ramps and some other idiosyncrasies about that building, and somebody did mention accessibility, I believe you mentioned accessibility. We took a long, good, hard look at how children or faculty, teachers, or administrators who might be in a wheelchair or might just have hurt their leg and be in crutches and need

092to get around a building. The buildings aren't so great for that activity right now. They meet standards mostly, but in some cases they don't. So we would need to fix that. So we took a look at this building and decided, wow, that site's really tight. There's a big hill almost towards a mountain in the back, so we really can't go behind. There's a lot of So we made a difficult decision of knocking down what's in the red box to the left, because we needed to clear enough site to add enough square footage. As a single story building, the renovate to new with additions average about 50 to 55,000 gross square feet per building. And that's all dictated by the edspec and ride standards. That's not something we just make up. I wish it was, because

093then we could cut it. As we look at this site, it's a unique site. There is some topography that makes it a little bit challenging, but in keeping the L-shaped bar that's in a dark gray crosshatch and adding the light gray piece, this is the site that gets all of the pre-K. So that's a lot of pre-K classrooms, which typically are bigger. They're only 1,000 square feet versus a 900, because they have a dedicated bathroom as part of them. Because you really can't take that young child down the corridor in an elementary school to another bathroom. They have to be in the room. We're able to get parent drop-off and bus drop-off. This is the most constricted of sites because of that corner. We'd have to work to make sure that the visibility as buses

094or parents pull out would work, but we think it could work. But it does have some challenges. When we look at the planning for this, this particular opportunity, you could see more than doubles in size. Again, it's a single story scheme because there was not enough room for me to go vertical and get an elevator and two egress stairs and all the things that we would have to do in this. So we have a pre-K kindergarten wing. So think of early education. You could lock that wing down. They have their own DaVinci space for their movement space or their extracurriculars. Each of the schemes does have some flex classroom space. That was something we explored before. The unified scheme, the three new, the renovation to new with additions. Because we know there's, like your second

095graders, as I mentioned before, there's gonna be times when you have more students just because there could be another baby boom, there's a housing development that happens and more kids move in. We need to be able to accommodate that. The nice thing about the way we've done that addition in the front door, all of the administrative suites have that sort of safe and secure person lock as you come in, you're buzzed in, you're in sort of a ballistics rated, you're in a lobby space. You can't get into the rest of the school unless you're escorted. You can't get into school without going into the lobby space of the office first. So there's a secondary way that we work that. So we really work the security as best we can. As you come in through the

096main door, we have the cafeteria, the kitchen. We have a platform. Think of it like a stage for an elementary school where you could do a performance, things like that. That platform opens both to the gym and to the cafeteria so you could use it for interesting events. So if you're a small school assembly and a kid's sitting on little carpet mats in the cafeteria or in the gym, you can open up the wall and have that platform be accessed. So it just gives you a lot of flexibility. Media center as well. A lot of the schools, even at the elementary school level, become community resources for after hour educational events. We want to design that in to no matter which direction you go because it just makes better community spaces. And this one, the

097gym component cafeteria is the sort of red barn in the back. The media center is the glass to the left. The early childhood center is the barn, the white barn in the foreground. And under the canopy is the entrance to the school. The existing building is off behind this to the left or to the right, my other left. And if I thought this one was challenging, Richmond was especially challenging. So one of the unique things about Richmond, it's a beautiful piece of architecture but it's a split level scheme. You enter not at any floor or you enter into a space, you have to either go up or you go down. And that just creates an accessibility nightmare to deal with folks that may be mobility impaired or visually impaired. So as we started to look

098at this, and as you get behind the beautiful existing building, it was added on to over many, many years. So it has a bunch of different levels. There's ramps, there's stairs, and nothing lines up. So when you think about, one of the way we as architects think about designing modern buildings or modern schools is we try to provide the most square footage in the smallest container we can. Because that means it's less for you to heat, less windows to maintain, less roof to replace over the years. It's not about sprawl, it's about compaction and community and creating spaces that'll work together in a really efficient manner. So you're gonna see a lot of red here. So when we looked at how to transition this site to the next 50 years, we looked at all the

099underperforming, inaccessible space in the back and said, we gotta clear it out. We'll keep the historic front. We'll use that for its best, highest use, public visitation, the administrative spaces. Some of the things that were there are pretty good. When we look at that site by clearing out, we think, look at the amount of red, that footprint. When we go and we sort of look at a modern interpretation of adding on and renovating in one shot versus over many years, we can do a more idealized, called a plush-shaped scheme where the historic building is the crosshatch in the front, and the historic building is the crosshatch in the front, and the historic building is the crosshatch in the front, there's a little courtyard space, internal courtyard that could be used for movement space, active play,

100or contemplation space, or it could be for garden space. There's a lot of elementary schools that are doing community gardens or child-based gardens. Each of the wings, the ears on this, are different classroom grade sets. So you can figure out what you combine, whether it's first and second, third and fourth, all those types of things. The main amenity spaces, which would be sort of a learning commons, Da Vinci space, gym, cafeteria, and media center, all sort of in that middle zone. Again, after hours, it may not enter through the front of the building, but you could come around and have access from the back as community for rec events, those types of things. It looks very simple, and I'm happy we're here at a very simple scheme, but it was very complex. And I will

101say there are compromises. Each of the renovations of additions do have some level of compromise that a new facility wouldn't. It doesn't mean they're subpar, but they are compromises, and we'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. But you can kind of see the planning that I mentioned. The amount of blue space, which is office space or administrative space, the purple-pink color spaces tend to be those multipurpose expanded learning opportunities against central in the building, right near the courtyard, which I think is elegant. The gym, the cafeteria, the platform that has access both to the cafeteria and the gym, like the previous scheme. The lower level we try to use for some flex classroom space and inclusive space, but again, getting to that lower level is a little bit difficult because there's multiple

102elevators required to make that happen. Elevators are not cheap. That's unfortunate. When we look at what this might look like in the site, this has more of the foreground, the existing school in place, and what's behind is the addition. So it kind of takes on a little bit character of something in the field behind the historic building. The rest of the things we looked at are something that we looked at before, but we brought them to today's standards. There are a few moving parts that we moved from the pre-K from one building to another. We adjusted for some student counts based on the new NASDAQ numbers, that 1,281 that we have to design to. And these should look very familiar. We think they're interesting uses on the site. They are about the same square footage,

103maybe a little bit bigger than the Renovate to Edition. Just because some of the mechanical spaces we have to create. In the older buildings, we can sort of stick things on a roof. In the newer buildings, we can't really do that. And we have to meet a little different standard. But you can see sort of the idea here. Everything that we talked about in all the previous schemes still happens here. You have that sort of community stuff to the right, which is great for the students. And you have the academic wing to the left. So after hours, you can lock that down. It's a short walk for any student to get to those specialty spaces. The Da Vinci space clustered around classroom spaces and teacher support spaces. So again, you're moving activities to where the

104children are, instead of moving the children all the time to where the activities are. So it takes too long for them to settle. These schemes did have a second floor. Again, nothing above a second floor. And these were based on a model school, at least for that time. They don't all have to look alike. It's just made it easy at that point to sort of compare an apples to apples type of comparison. They fit on a site each very differently. Each site is very unique and very different, very beautiful, but unique and different. But the planning is very similar. We add inclusive classrooms or Cala or pre-K are the real differences between each of the three options and where those services are provided. And we choose colors. You may hate the colors, I apologize. Colors

105are just colors, that's easy to change. You can see in Richmond in this case, the amount of pre-K classrooms, that's quite a six pre-K classrooms, is about, is about a six to 8,000 square foot add to any of the facilities. That's a lot of space. And you also have to think about pre-K drop-offs, very different, the handoff of pre-K child than it is even kindergarten or first grade. There's more of a direct handoff. So that flow on the site is quite different. You really wanna create a separate zone for that. Sort of the summary for conceptually where we are right now, we're showing some numbers in yellow. These are not our numbers. These are working with the cost estimate and working with Collier's to really look at what we could do given what Ride would

106reimburse. And these are arranged, because what we think is Ride is gonna look at a $15 boost in a square foot cost based on escalation that's happening. So by the time this goes in February, whichever option you choose, you're gonna have the benefit of 15 additional dollars per square foot from the state because of escalation values. They've been pretty good about that year over year. They've recognized, and that's a good thing for a lot of communities. Option one, which was the unified or regionalized elementary school. Yeah, so escalation and construction is kind of been all over the place. COVID, it was 10, 11%. Now we're down in the two to 3% range, but Ride is still trying to play catch up because the state couldn't allocate enough money during those early pandemic times or coming

107out of the pandemic times when all the architects got to build again. All that pent up demand happened. So the state's been really good, but they can only do a little bit at a time. But when you think about $15 a square foot on 100,000 square feet just as a number, that's a lot of money. That really adds up and that means you get more, which I think is important. When we looked at the cost ranges, so the low range is today's dollars. The one on the right is what we expect Ride to fund post-February. So when we look at the unified school, we're in that sort of call 87 to $90 million range, right? That's all the benefits of combining into one school. That doesn't account for a bus operational efficiency, staffing efficiency, maintenance

108efficiency, the number of boilers that somebody mentioned. That's just the construction dollars to get it in place and occupy it. When we look at option two, the renovations to additions, this is the really tricky part. It's tricky one for us with Ride because they really stand on us and we have to certify that it's renovate to new. And for us, that's a sticky thing to do that we have to say certain things. That construction range is call it 89 to about 98.1. It is not cheap to renovate schools. You have to abate them if there's had material. If we demo it, you have to do the same thing. If you decide to, you know, you turn it back to each community and they sell it, they don't have to do that. If we renovate to

109new, we have to tear it apart and put it back together to modern standards. It tends to be a little more time intensive because it's selective demo versus bringing a bulldozer and sort of knocking it down. Not surprisingly, the most expensive option is three new schools on three sites. Think about it, three gyms, three boilers, three cafeterias. That's the construction side. Then you have your operational side to consider, the busing routes, the staffing, the maintenance and the facilities. So at least what we know right now with the numbers that we've been able to calculate, and again, whichever option you choose, we'll continue to look at finding efficiencies where we can. But this is what we're seeing. This is what the numbers and our colleagues, our cost estimators, the CMs we know in the community are

110telling us in sort of trend lines. Construction manager, sorry. Yeah, we've got a lot of great lingo. The thing that we also want to make sure you understood is I showed construction dollars. There are other monies that have to be put in for total project cost, right? That could be land acquisition depending on a scheme. That could be remediation, full demo or selected demo. All of those things are additive. The nice thing with Ride and the way they do things now, the technology in FF&E, the furniture fixtures and equipment. So if you were to take a school building, turn it upside down and shake it out, anything that falls out would be FF&E. That's the technology. That's funded separately below the line. So that's not in that construction dollar. And Ride is very generous. The

111state's very generous with that money. Same thing with technology. So video screens, projectors, computers, cameras, security systems, all that's in that technology number outside of the construction number. So it's very complex to really work through the numbers and Holly's a miracle worker at that. But what we wanted to do is represent what we know today are construction dollars to compare sort of apples to apples to apples and have you sort of look at the opportunity and make informed decisions and ask informed questions based on that. And with that, we look forward to talking with each community very soon. I'll turn it back over to the school building committee. I will reiterate what the chair said that if our questions could start with the unified conception design, then the reno and additions, and then the three

112design, because we did a lot of conversations around the three school design the last time. But I know there's new people in the room that are interested. So that would probably be helpful to the school committee. I hope that you will invite your friends to our community meetings to get more input because I do think that there's a unique opportunity that we have for the future of Cherahope. This presentation will be on the website. The reason why it's not there today is because the school committee is approving it tonight to make sure this is what they want to see at the next meeting. I'll turn this around so I can see. Busting into those pickles. Okay. So thank you, Mark. Thank you to your team from SLAM and Colliers. I know that that took a

113lot of work, time, energy, and effort from August 5th to September 23rd. You rose to the occasion and put together a great presentation. So thank you so much. So I think in the interest of efficiency and organization, I'm gonna ask the school committee if they have any questions of Mark and his team on option one, that you presented, which is the unified school. And then after that, if the members of the public have questions about the unified school, we'll take those and then we'll go to the second option. Does that make sense, Jess? Can we start with overarching questions, like high level, the whole presentation, maybe then just rather one option? Okay, good suggestion. So does anyone from the school committee have any sort of broad, overarching questions for Mark and his team? Jess? Okay,

114so one thing that came up on the beginning of the presentation was how the Jacobs report, and it had numbers from that, but how the stage two application really is what we use to determine next steps. In my opinion, I think it'd be better to highlight what stage two is. I think the timeline does. But I think that information is more important than the numbers from 2017 and numbers, or the stats that we don't have yet, which is really for state level discussions. Other questions were, overall in the presentation, you had really nice header pages for each section, but then when you get into the section, the header at the top of Ashway Elementary School renovation is the same as Ashway new construction. So I'd like to see it say, you know, renovation or new

115at the top of each page, because some people might share just one page to other people, and it would be good to have each page say what it is. And also page numbers, I think, would be really helpful. Sorry, I just want to make sure that I'm saying everything. Did I see what the reimbursement rate was, the 61% plus the 4%? Yeah, I said 61 plus 4. So yes, that equals 65. Thank you. But there's also a 5% bonus, the safety and security that was made permanent. I know we can't get that in addition to it, but could we ask for that instead of the 4%? We can ask for anything. I just, they're not giving it. Right, okay. But that doesn't mean that our General Assembly can't help us out if we try, but

116it's, Ryda said no. There is opportunities right now for, if I'm not saying this right, Holly, like efficiencies in like going green and environmental, but it is like, you have to spend 75% of your budget on that, which is difficult to do. But I do think that if we all remember, the bonuses that were put in by the General Assembly, that means we could actually have conversations with our senators and reps about what bonuses, I think, and exploratory opportunities, like for career and tech, is something that we should get bonuses for. And I think that if our General Assembly puts legislation in, that others would be, especially if Ryda's looking for us to bring it to the middle school, we're talking about bringing exploratory opportunities to elementary. So those are the kinds of things that

117I think we would push with our own legislators, because I think other districts are thinking about that, but they just haven't had the opportunity to maybe bring it as far as we have so far as a community. And to build on that, if we brought that down to the elementary level with the conjunction of grade five, hypothetically, we would create more open space in the middle school to bring it into the middle school as well. Correct. And the other thing I think that's important to mention is that when you think about those spaces, like right now, if you have three schools, and listen, I shared that with you last time, because there is no bad way to do it, but knowing the cost is gonna be more, one of the opportunities is you don't have

118to be at Charlestown to experience outdoor learning or Ashway to experience STEAM and Richmond Health and Wellness. Every child in Cherahoe gets every opportunity and can try different things, which is, you know, you could do it now in three schools, but the resources are difficult when you're trying to do it in three places versus one. And knowing that budget is always a hot topic in our community, that's where my thinking is, when we think about how we can unify and really bring more opportunities to Cherahoe, not less. To go back to that page with the stage two, the start of the presentation, I think some of the confusion I anticipate is what a five-year capital improvement plan really means. So it doesn't mean what do you do in the next five years, and then like

119you do another five year, even though that's what the law says, it says a five-year capital improvement plan. I'd like to see more clarification on the fact that this is a plan that goes for the next 50 years. You did have some language about that, but you know, on the state, it has, you know, describes it as a long range plan, typically five years, which is work you can finish within five years, not just work that lasts for five years. So that's where I see like this confusion point that could happen. The capital improvement plan allows for systematic evaluation of all projects and schools at one time. It's a way to really plan for the future. I think that's something that we wanna emphasize, that this is really a plan for the future. Then the

120other, the big, another big question I have is, how are we going to collect feedback at these presentations? Will there be a form as people leave? Is there a link to a Google form? So that we can actually capture some of this data, and it's not just, oh, I heard someone say this, or someone, I think it would be good to actually have it more systematic, systematically collected. I think that's, sorry, my notes are kind of around, but I think that's it for now. I did appreciate some of the little fixes I noticed in the draft that we got were all fixed today. Little things I noticed were all, little things I noticed were all, little things I noticed were all, I think, improved today, so I appreciate that. I know that you're working really

121hard. Thank you. Thanks. Did anyone else have any overarching, broad questions? Laura. Just looking for clarification. So when you were talking about the $15 per square foot escalation, can you, so what you're saying is that, so it sounds to me like RIDE or the state of Rhode Island was just lagging in that. So is it, meaning that, So is it, meaning that, So is it, meaning that, when the, if construction had started, let's just say this year, that this escalation that you're referring to, that the state wouldn't have actually been caught up to that yet, so we would have gotten less per square foot. Is that correct? Yeah. Hi, Holly Demerson Colliers, your OPM. There's a very specific formula that dictates how much you qualify for. So right now for an elementary school, it's $564.00,

122$564.00 a square foot. So if they decide to increase that in the fall, which sometimes they do, they did it last year, but the year before, they were very generous. So we're anticipating that it would go up $15.00 a square foot. So whatever that math is, $564.00 plus the 15. It's a very specific formula. So it's the students times a certain amount of square footage per child. And then that tells you how big the school is. And then you multiply that by this number, which is the $564.00, $564.00 right now. That's what you qualify for, for the construction in the original soft costs. So that's how the numbers, so then you're basically, that's why the number's dictated by ride, right? So it's different with the renovations because it's a renovation, but any new construction, that's

123how it's calculated. Okay, got it. Thank you. Thanks, Holly. Jess? Just to clarify on that, but that's not ride giving us money. That's them approving us asking for that amount of money from our taxpayers that they would then reimburse. That's what you qualify for. Exactly. It's a formula to develop the quantity of money that we can ask for. Yes. So actually, this is a good point too, because it came up in public comments about projects not being on budget. That's inaccurate. So I think it's really important that people understand that what happens is, and I'll give you Newport as an example. They have a much lower enrollment now than when they were first planning. So what happens is, ride only allows reimbursement for the kids that you currently have. So they're not going to let

124us say, oh, we want a gym for 2,000 people because we do. They'll say, sure, but we're not reimbursing you for that much square footage. We are reimbursing you for this much square footage. Barrington actually increased, the town council gave Barrington schools more money because they wanted to make different spaces larger. Those are the kinds of things where we're right. If you go on the ride website, they have like a point by point what you can have, the square footage. Kindergarten classrooms are different things. They're different than fourth grade classrooms that are different than ninth grade classrooms. So it's really important for people to understand that if you have a cost overrun, typically it's because there's a need that a district wants that's not reimbursable. And like a Hollywood TV, like you can do that,

125but they don't want to reimburse you for this. So if there's things that community wants, then the school committee will decide, is that something that we want to invest in? Yes or no? So that's where you've got to be careful when you use terms like overrun or over budget, because that's not an accurate term to say. But if there's specific projects you're interested in, I'm happy to get more information. As I know Holly and Kathy both have projects that they can share as well. So I have a question from, I guess I would say that this was a broad question from a design perspective. I've been in some new schools where the ceilings are extremely high, which that could lead to escalated costs in terms of heating and cooling. So how do you determine, and

126I'm not asking you to point to the slide 42, but how do you determine things like ceiling height for a building when you're mindful of construction costs and also operational costs? So it's a complex question. I can give a simple answer, then elaborate a little bit more. So Ride has standards for ceiling heights in a classroom. Nine foot four is minimum, they prefer 10. So we start at 10 and we work together and try to hold 10. Most times we end up at nine foot four because of structural issues. So we're not going to be able to keep up with the structural beams and running duct work through or piping through a building. That's the sort of typical classroom space. When we get to sort of cafeterias or gyms, gyms have a requirement of 23

127square feet clear, right? So you can play volleyball in there and the basketball won't hit the structure. That's easy. Cafeterias, if you are gonna use them for spaces like this and you have a platform that you need to open, acoustics dictate that. So we work with acoustic engineers, purposely for ceiling height, understanding the modeling we do now with our engineering teams to model energy is very interesting. And I'll give you an example in Newport, and there's been lots of discussions about Newport and it finally opened and they love it. When we designed the skin of that building, we did what's called a frit, which is a pattern on the glass that reflects daylight. It rejects heat and it keeps the heat within the building, it rejects the sunlight. It's a So ceiling heights are really

128dictated by program need, by acoustics and ride in some cases. Okay, thank you. Okay, Laura. I have a question. I'm sorry. So the other general question I had was, as far as determining the space, you had mentioned that you that there are certain things that you have to factor into this. And if you already have three existing elementary schools, I mean, the cost differential, I would think, to having to purchase new land somewhere else. Which type of things do you like? There are known pieces about each of the existing locations where you guys would basically say, you know, we know that this area typically has a lot of ledge. Because if you hit ledge when you're trying to do a project, that's one of that's a huge unforeseen cost. So how do you determine factors

129like that? Yeah. So in stage two, we will have some exploratory work with our civil engineering team. So whatever option is chosen. There. There will be boots on the ground sites doing some some test testing of that. We also need to test environmentally the conditions of the soil as well. Thanks. Okay. So seeing no other hands up for broad questions, let's let's move on to the unified elementary school option. And I don't know if the members of our committee. I'm sorry, I did not ask the community if they had any broad overarching questions. Sir, would you like to come up to the microphone? Please tell us who you are and what town you're from. Thank you. Simon Manlove, town of Hoppington. While we're talking about the presentation that's going to be sent out to the

130public and put publicly on the school website for people to look at the options going forward. I would just make the suggestion that I believe that the presentation needs a little bit of stronger language stating that as as you presented today, the costs in there are construction costs. That does. As you put very. Well, that does not include any of the other soft costs of that. I think that that should be emphasized stronger so that we do not have in the future people coming up to us and trying to say the total cost was this. You put it in the presentation. When that we know now that that was not the total cost. Thanks, Mr. Manlove. Probably have to do that right up front. Good job. Yes. Any other broad overarching questions in the community?

131Tracy, would you like to come up? And state your name and your town of residence, please. Hi, Tracy Sylvia Richmond. I have a couple general questions and I'm not sure if they're to you or to you. I guess three different areas, but at what stage in this entire process do things like bonuses for LEED or LID or other environmental design criteria come into play? As well as when do we compare the costs? And what are the costs? And what are the costs? And what are the costs? And what are the costs? For things like remediation, wetland, septic problems. And as well, when do we compare busing costs? Three new schools, one school, different routes. Also, in the presentations for the towns, are those, each of those to be repeated, pretty much tonight's presentation? Or is

132each town specific to those schools? Can the public go to all three and provide comment? And then lastly, I am concerned with the current. Federal funding changes that change every day and how any of that may impact rides reimbursement abilities in the future. That was a lot of questions. I just want to make sure we just stay right there. Yeah. Give us your first question first. Make sure. Yeah. Start at the first one. Excellent. Any where, I guess, where do these other cost factors come into whether they're bonuses for things like environmental design? We just got that environmental design award for this. I know. I wish we were going to get. Yes. I work in environmental sciences. So those things are things that I would love our CTC to keep working on. It would be

133great if we could role model things like that, stormwater and all sorts of stuff. And then the busing and other. So let's start with the bonuses and busing. Construction issues. So bonuses come with, so our stage two application, basically the architects will, they have the, and it's on the RIDE website. They have the criteria that we have to meet. And then RIDE will share. I know, you know, Holly has a better input about the 75% of our cost project would have to be. Environmentally approved, which is not no easy. Nope. That's security. I'm sorry. I'm going to give that to Holly. Go ahead. Give it to Holly. We can do one question at a time. Thank you, Holly. Security is 75%. So that's a just question. There are two other bonuses. One is security, but

134the whole project has to be 75% of the cost has to be security. So it would be like if you were doing the security in your high school, like, but only security. So the other one is, you know, the cost of the project. So it's not just the cost of the project. It's the cost of the project. So it's the cost of the project. So it's the cost of the project. So it's the cost of the project. Is the other one is the net zero. It's really in part of the problem with that one is there. Great program, but it's very expensive to do it to the school. So it in order to get the bonuses, you have to have a very specific design. That's very expensive. So it's weighing that as to whether it's

135cost effective or not. So in the process after the October meeting. the school committee decides which option based on the community feedback, that they will begin working with, we begin working with Rye, Colliers and SLAM to determine which bonuses and what we would have to do to be able to meet those bonus requirements. And then they let us know based on the review of the application submitted in February for approval in May, June. So the transportation, we're doing that now. So that's something we have to do always each year. So for example, Mr. Zanian is putting out our transportation routes, school building authority Mario Carino has offered the state resources to be able to review all districts route, which I think is great, because it really looks at, because remember our bus company, it's a

136vendor, so you wanna make sure you're getting efficient rules, efficiencies out of those routes. And I think they do a good job, but sometimes a new eye, a neutral eye can come in and say, well, how come this, because when the state went into reviewed, for example, Providence, they were able to take seven buses off the road. Cumberland took off one, but even one bus is money back into the educational resources for kids. So that's gonna happen part of this work. What was the third one? No, because we would need to have- The question was, will that occur before the October vote decision? So it depends on the model. So like we know right now, we have an idea of the three schools, right? So we already do that. So one unified school is similar

137to the main campus. So we would run basically the same locations, but I think what's important to remember, which probably I didn't say was this, these schools were anticipating the bond for November because we have to get all that done and that takes time. So by the time the voters vote on it, November of 2026, then you're looking at like shovels in the ground, 2027. So really a school, any of the options wouldn't be done till 2029. So this change, what I say today, may not look different five years from now, but it's based on our current registrations and we look at that for enrollment. Tracy, do you need the microphone for other questions? Thank you. Sure, sorry. And then I guess the bigger question too is which presentations are gonna be at each town?

138The same presentation. So whatever, like for example, remember Purcell gave feedback, so as they give feedback of Ms. Chapman, they'll fine tune it and every, you don't have to be a Richmond parent, you can go to Charlestown, whichever date works for you, it's the same presentation. The questions may be different because I can't tell you what you're gonna ask. And will you have an, I just added this one, will you have an FAQ on the website like the last time? Yes. That was excellent. And then again, once these are locked in, again, we don't know what the federal budgets are looking like, but is this pretty much guaranteed through RIDE or is this dependent on federal funding going to RIDE to reimburse these things? No, this is based on state dollars. Thank you. Thank you,

139Tracy. Great questions. Thank you. Jess. Can I just share what Maru said with us up in necessity for school construction subcommittee, because that question came up, people are worried that if we go into an agreement with RIDE and they say they're gonna reimburse us for the next 20 years, something will happen. But there are so many communities across the state that are locked into these deals, that have these agreements to improve their communities and their schools that if the state ever tried to take away money, it would be such a huge issue that it would be very unpopular. So it's highly unlikely. And we have a wonderful track record here of getting RIDE reimbursement. And it's not a thing that happens across the state. So just to share from that, that was what he said

140at the meeting. Thank you. Okay, seeing no other hands raised from the community, we're going to ask the school committee members if they have any questions regarding the unified school option. Laura. So for the unified school option, what has been the, Laura. So for the unified school option, what has been the, What has been the, I assume that you're going from more of a commercial side for the mechanicals, from commercial size to industrial size. Is that, no. So then how do you determine which things still have useful life? Like for example, we just had two new boilers that were just ordered. So does that get moved to the new locations? Is it not usable in that type of setting? Boilers are tough because when you think about By the time, even picking a renovated school,

141by the time that school is complete, that boiler has another five years or four years on it. The new systems that Ride is pushing in our engineering team that we promote tend to be less hydronic systems and they tend to be more electrical. That's Ride is heavy pushing that. There are components that come together, but we have to follow New England chips, which is a standard for environmental design in schools. And that dictates air quality, energy usage, water usage, conservation, all those types of things. And that's part of what we have to work with Ride and our engineering team on. When it comes to commercial versus industrial, industrial tend to be systems that are, I'll say, low on human comfort and more on, think of like an Amazon warehouse, that kind of thing. That's an

142industrial system. When we look at a commercial-based system, it's for human occupants, right? And when we look in LLW, we look at elementary schools, not everybody's 6'3 like me. Some of the kids are little. So we think about systems where air distribution is different. So their comfort level is different, but it still works for a teacher. There's a lot of thought that goes into those that are low energy use, low water use that will work well for you, be easy to maintain. Because some of the districts have chose systems that are just impossible for their techs to maintain. We don't want to do that. Right. That's what I was. That's what I was concerned with. Chair. Yes. I would just remind the committee that if we go with a unified school, we will be returning

143the schools to the towns. I don't think they would appreciate if we return a school without a boiler. I don't think we would do that. She didn't suggest it. She was just asking questions. Yeah. So Laura, did you have any other questions about the unified? No. Okay. So if my notes are correct, Mark, on the floor plans for the unified school, was it on the second floor? It was second grade and fourth grade. So why second grade and fourth grade and not third and fourth? So when you think about that plan, and I wish you could have it up, it's less about team teaching across that floor. And it's more about team teaching with the DaVinci space that's below you. So you're really lengthening the grades vertically. Now you have the opportunity to do that

144horizontally as well. We just have shown it in ways that other communities have found it successful, but we'll work with you all to figure out what's the right educational delivery method. And class placement within the field. So that's really an institutional decision. Okay. All right. Gina, did you? I'm sorry, Jess, go ahead. I just want to know if you had any other questions. Yeah. Or if any of the other school committee members have a question about unified locations, the biggest deal for me. I know that that's something a lot of folks that live in these three towns are interested in, you know, it's not like, you know, in Johnston, they're building one big, school, but it's one town that's 26 square miles and Cheriho is 126 square miles and it's three towns. So and I

145know that the necessity for school construction committee and the administration, especially Mr. Zenion is looking at spaces and I know that there's discussion about making sure it's centralized, a centralized location, but even that, you know, is not there's kids that live on the border of their towns that have a long ride already. Um, so that's just something that we're looking at. Yeah. So that's just something I really want to have in our minds. I know there was a note in the presentation, but I think it's really important maybe to, you know, also mentioned the cost of purchasing that land. I don't think that's included in the construction cost, but that would be an additional soft cost to the unified school plan that does not apply to the other two options. So, Jess, don't they redeem

146it? So great point. So we, um, but a good note for us to make sure we do. The reimbursement, the reimbursement is allowable on the land. So, for example, um, you know, there are properties that were afforded opportunities when, when I first got here, when they were looking at the one unified school. Um, but yes, when we have a lot of land opportunities, it's just going to be about the centralized location. So if that's a concern for parents, one things I want, I want the committee to understand is that you can create policy. And if you're worried about our little ones, you know, you want them not to have more than a 30 minute ride or 40, you can put that in policy now. Yes. It increases your transportation costs to my friend, Simon Manlove,

147right? So those are the things that change how we, how we do business. But if that's a concern, then that's something that you could, you could fix with policy. And did you say Gina, that there is a reimbursement on land acquisition costs ride? And just to be clear, ride allows you have to get for the assessed value of the land. Nope. We just would have to have an updated appraisal, updated appraisal. Thank you, Holly. So what is that reimbursement? Is it the full price? Of the appraisal? Or is it a percentage of the appraisal? It runs like the rest of the project. So the 61% plus the regional. Yeah, it runs like the progress, the project 61%. Okay. Laura, just a follow up question on that. Is that the, when you're talking about the single

148school, how many, how much, how big of a piece of land are you referring to? Yeah, I think we would based on ride metrics anywhere from, we'll say 27 to 30, three acres. Okay. But that is somewhat, if it's a long linear piece versus a square piece, it's quite different, right? Right. So I think we would need to, if that option was chosen, look at the land opportunities that are available with you all and sort of scale the footprint appropriately. So, you know, just because if it's 20 acres, it's still probably fits, right? But we have to, what we're trying to do in these presentations is use the ride governance and the ride facts that allow us to move through the land. Sort of it forward and conceptually everything else becomes a little bit different

149once you choose something. Actually, that's a good point, Mark, to clarify. So again, that that conceptual idea. So even what we see, whatever the committee decides in October and what we move forward to ride stage two, we can make adjustments. We have to show ride that we have a, we have a facilities problem, which they know because they have those reports. That's stage one. Here's all the facility needs that we have. Stage two is this is a, an example. That we can make it work. And then we present that. But if there's a shift, let's say, you know, at the school, we didn't like the colors. We want this room to be differently placed and that that all can happen. The one thing I think that was confused, confused in the last time was, for

150example, these individual spaces schools, you know, right now. So it's ad hoc. We pop people into different places, but confidential office spaces, right, is very specific about who can have those spaces. So you just can't create an office. Unless, you're going to pay full amount of money for it with no reimbursement. They, they'll allow confidential spaces for nurses, school psychologists, um, administrators. So those are the, so not everybody goes, oh, I need an office. So the new designs are designed for much more integration and collaboration based on the ride standards. And that's all online and it will be in our FAQ as well. Okay, Karen, I just think we're going to get a lot of questions, but I think the number one question we're going to get with the unified is where's it going? And

151we would have to defer that to, I'm sure the administration is three steps ahead of us. Um, and I have confidence that there are three steps ahead of us. And Greg, did you want to speak to that at all? So there's quite a bit of, um, our source of land within, um, a two mile range of this campus to fulfill the requirements for the unified building. It would be a matter of, um, sit, you know, contacting land owners and seeing who's willing to sell what they're willing to sell for. Um, I would not recommend, you start negotiating, um, buying land publicly. No, that's not what I was thinking. Yeah. So if, can I just expand on that? And I don't, I don't know if this would be a Greg or Gina question or both of

152you. Um, has anyone expressed an interest in discussing land options with us as knowing that this was on the agenda tonight and, um, that we are looking at that as an option? Yes. Okay, thank you. All right. Any other questions from the committee? Holly probably gonna be a little silly. Um, the aesthetics of the school. I don't know about you guys, but these design aesthetics from the outside, I don't like, I don't, I'm sorry, I don't like them. Um, they're very barn square plane. At what phase do we get to say, Hey, you know, maybe we want the entire facade of this building, brick or I mean, is that further down after it's typically further down? Still great. Yes. Okay. So everybody bring those ideas to these meetings. When you look at these pictures, think

153of them visually as well as the space. And so what we try to do in a stage two is provide enough material differentiation. So you have money to play with because we want you to be able to make those decisions in stage three, which is the next step after stage. Two where it becomes we have to implement and we have taken over so many stage through streets that were horribly planned in stage two because they tried to make it pretty versus follow the rules and get the money. Okay, thank you for that clarification. Is there anyone from the community that has any questions about the unified option before we move on? Yes, please come to the microphone. Samantha, did you sneak in Samantha? I didn't see you in the back. I've been here the whole

154time. Okay, thank you. Thanks for being here. Sign up for public forum. Um, but I appreciate the conversation around location because I know that's going to be a concern for everybody. Um, and I understand that it's not the best negotiation strategy to have this conversation publicly. So I would want to know at what point can the public know where the location will be? And at a minimum, will the school committee have a definitive deal, solidified, secure, ready to go by time the October? Meeting happens concerning that if we choose this path forward, we may not have an opportunity to switch to one of the other options and we could just lose it all in, uh, something that could be prevented. So that's my question or concern. Thank you. Thanks, Gina or Greg, do you want

155to take that one? So the we will not have a done deal in October. That's that's that would be quick. Um, but what right? Um, we we would be in definitely negotiations, but not it would be it wouldn't be in our best interest to do that until I knew what the school committee community said. Right? So once the October meeting happens, it's hard to say because I know I know I mean, I can just go back six years from what the land opportunities that we had when I first got here and many of them still exist. Um, I think, you know, we had somebody walk into the building committee meeting offering up their land, so it's not necessarily. We're not sure. On land around here, but I do understand the need. But with ride, we

156have to have a letter of intent. The chair how act allows the opportunities for the school committee to have all kinds of options. Um, but in the application, they're going to want to know that that we have a deal, even if it's not completely done, that it's negotiated at a certain point. So they come in at that stage, but October would be fast, but I get it. We also have to negotiate a deal with a land over that that understands that if the bond is not approved, uh, we are not purchasing the land. So it's a it's a it's not as simple as just buying a piece of land because if the bond is not approved, I don't think chair home wants to own, you know, 40 to 60 acres. Mr. Avadisian. Yes. Uh, again,

157I'm stuck on the land, um, and and I'm I'm looking at the three town politics, so I'm wondering if, uh, we are considering all our options. Uh, I'm not necessarily thinking about putting it in the town of Richmond. Um, uh, I not that, you know, if it worked out fine, but I think that, uh, politically, it, it, I know I'm my personal opinion is is that if it goes in Richmond, it's one unified school. The odds have diminished that it would be, it would be passed in all three towns. Can you, uh, my, yeah, Mr. Avadisian, can you just share more? Because that's an interesting, uh, that's, that could be something that holds up the process and I want to make sure that I understand the concern. So is it that, for example, let's say

158it's, it's around the main campus, which is Richmond could be Charleston depending on where you land. But are you saying that because it's in one town that it's unlikely that borders from whichever town it's not landing in would vote? No. Is that I'm just, I'm not sure I understand it. Yes. Okay. Um, I mean, I could be specific, if you'd like. I mean, sure. The more specific you can be that better. Well, I, I, I know past history and this is going back a long ways, but, but, uh, Charleston, uh, did many years ago, try to withdraw. And I know that, um, there, there was, um, sentiments within the Charleston community that they were uncomfortable with all of the schools being located in Richmond. Um, and, um, do you know why? Um, yeah, because because

159because, um, periodically the town of Hockington specifically mostly, um, will express the idea of, uh, a taxing district. Um, and and and what that would spell for the town of Charlestown is, uh, an equalized tax rate across the three towns, which would substantially, uh, put the burden of the schools on the taxpayers of Charlestown. Um, so I, I, I just think that that there is a, uh, there's a very significant group within the town, um, that will will consider that when when we're talking about, uh, a unified school in, I think, more Richmond because the main campus is in Richmond. Um, and, and, and understand that, and that, and that, and that, and that, and that, and that, and that, and that, and that, and that. I'm not, I'm not sure they're going to be

160doing it in Richmond because the main campus is in Richmond, but, you know, I don't know. Maybe, maybe, maybe they'd be comfortable with it in Hoppington. I mean, but I, I don't know. I, I, I, I, mr avedisian was alluding to is it goes back decades uh yes charlestown was threatened with various things such as equalized taxation or taxing districts on and so forth if you compare the the three towns uh grand lists and even though it was done like 25 years ago i think the percentages are somewhat similar uh charlestown's grand list is considerably greater than the other two towns combined and therefore charlestown would pay out of its property uh towards this the operation here anywhere from 50 to 65 percent of the total budget because we just were more valuable and uh

161that just would be devastating to charlestown uh you know maybe we can come to a political agreement where we wouldn't go in that direction and that would ease uh the concerns of one community um and i know i've talked to some taxpayers and and they they also kind of a roundabout way what mr avedisian was saying but they want something tangible in their town also okay you know they want a building okay jess i think you had your hand up and then laura you're good okay um so my question is if you sorry the so if you look at the three elementary schools based on your presentation i my feedback from you was that out of all three of the schools it sounded like richmond was actually had some more benefits to it from your

162perspective just you know maybe it was aesthetically or however you said there was some good stuff there um so i'm curious if ashway elementary school is is definitely the smallest school um does it make sense you know or is it even possible to look at it as maybe there being a school in charlestown and a school in richmond and so sure that wasn't part of our that wasn't part of our options so two schools was not what we charged slam with we charged slammed with three options and two new elementary schools or two renovations was not part of that agreement that we signed correct correct thank you i mean i'm you can have as many options as you would like to pay for but options cost money um and take time so you know we

163can play there are two schools three schools four schools how about we make the middle school into an elementary school build a new middle school i mean the options are endless but you have to pay for them thank you for reminding us okay seeing no more hands and none other from the public can we move on now to um the renovation slash addition option for the three elementary schools so karen had her hand raised first karen your question so in the presentation you mentioned that 900 square feet is recommended for a classroom space if we did renovations is that possible it it is but it does mean more demo so say there's two classrooms next to each other or three that are 500 and that's 1500 i'd have to take two walls down subdivide it

164in half and i'd get close ride's pretty good about saying okay we'll let you go to 850 if you take that 50 net square feet that you didn't put in the classroom and you put it in an expanded learning environment but they won't let you off the hook unless you do something like that they want to see the square footage in the building somewhere so it benefits the student okay did you have a follow-up karen i have a second question um so i noticed in the richmond you're still considering using the downstairs um i'm concerned about the lack of windows in the basement area um that's a good concern so new england chips has different than lead which is usgbc but they're similar there's daylight and view criteria so daylight is one access to natural

165light view is another i have to look out so the percentage of a percentage of openings that we have to follow in the lower level probably doesn't meet that so we would have to either blow away more brick that's there dig up more ground and put bigger windows in um you also have that some of that's below ground and there's a lot of theory that maybe that's not so great in terms of insulation moisture those types of things so so i have a follow-up to karen's question about the window issue in the base in the lower level so when you said we'd have to demo more brick that accounted for in the projections of 29.4 million to 32.1 million? Yeah. Okay. I assumed I had to. That's why you're the architect. Yes. So we've been

166through enough old schools to know that there's no insulation. When we go to make a modern school, we study where dew point happens in the wall, which is moisture which leads to mold. So we have to take what's there and really run it through some computer modeling and figure out, okay, the dew point can't exist here. I have to do something different, insulate, change the heating system, provide more ventilation through it so it dries the space out. All those things get factored in. That's not very cheap to do. And subterranean spaces are more difficult. We don't know if the water, there's a water table issue, right? We've heard that some of the classrooms have had some water table issues. That could be hydrostatic pressure pushing up from below grade water on the slab. If that's

167an existing building, that's horrible because remediation is to rip the slab out and start over. So you start losing the benefit of the existing facility very quickly depending upon the environmental conditions that we find. Karen. It was brought up the possibility of moving the fifth grade back. And you may not know this answer. If we do renovation and add, is that still a possibility? It's difficult. It's unlikely to be able to do that in three schools. Because it would cost, you'd have to increase that cost because you're gonna increase your square footage. And the site capacity. I just wanted to make it clear that that's that. Quick question. That was an earlier conversation. If that's something the committee wants to do, your option, the best option would be the unified. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Laura.

168So the amount that you're, when you did these preliminary plans, they're for housing, how many for each of them? Just if you're doing it based off of the new schools. Yeah, so the easy way to think about it, is the 1,281 divided by three, but it's not that simple because the Cali program has a certain number, pre-K has a certain number, because there's more of them in the inclusive classroom. But we try to make it even. Because the sites are, the site capacities are really what's dictating it. How many parking spaces that we have to, for staff and parents and visitors and bus drop off and making all that work. It tends to be pretty equal across the three. Because I remember there was, Gina, I think there was reports or something online, I remember

169from back when the other bond was there, where it had the number of students for each, that each school could potentially have within that particular school. So the last design, they all had parity. So every school had the same amount of students when we did this last time. Because they're not gonna let us have, like, Ashley only has two tracks, but everybody else has four or three or five. So they. when you create the parity they want to ensure that all of our schools have the same what they call um help me out what's the term they use the grade span um no that's not it it's because it's getting late and i'm getting tired but i'll think of the word lord i'll get it okay jess there was mention of the swing space in

170the presentation but the big difference that has occurred since the last time we had this discussion is that the most the swing space we have in district is no longer readily available because valley school has been closed and the furniture has been moved out so there's not a readily available swing space for the rental in addition options for the new school options and i just want to make sure that is and that's something we would have to tell right about and that has to be a soft cost that would be in addition to these prices that's a great point so in that case while one school was being demoed or renovated we would have to find a place for those students to learn okay thank you for bringing that up jess that's a really good

171point all right any other questions from the committee any questions from the community please step up and say your name and the town where you're from uh randy beaver from hopkinton uh in the renovation scenario would the cost of operations with would you be putting in new boilers would all would the cost of operation be similar between the renovated facilities and the new construction option so between two and three would you be looking at roughly similar you know annual cost to operate the buildings it would be close the difference would be in the renovation to addition there's more skin area so i might have more air changes bigger air handlers to to operate the skin would be high performance the same amount of insulation all that type of stuff but because i'm keeping some of

172those things in the building so if it's a single story existing building it spreads out a little bit mark did you say skin yeah so facade so again i'm using outside walls yeah got it how's it going so it's getting late that must be an architectural term all right any other questions from the community okay moving on to three new elementary schools do the members of the school committee have any questions about three new elementary schools seeing no hands raised from the school committee do any members of the community have any questions about three new elementary schools questions about three new elementary schools. Okay, well thank you very much for your presentation, for your, oh I'm sorry, Mr. Avadisian. I guess my question again would be where are we gonna house, if we're building two

173elementary schools, so we're gonna need three new sites. I'm sorry, what was the question? Did you say, Mr. Avadisian, did you say three new studies? Sites. Oh, sites, okay. So we would probably do one at a time. So you'd have to house the students in one of the schools. You would typically pick the smallest school to ease the burden on finding a place for those students. But then once you started that construction process, you have to be complete in five years, but you could manage that. We have to be done in five years. Mark, if we were to find a swing space that could accommodate two schools. Even better. You could provide two at once, right? Yeah. And that would be recommended. Absolutely. The more quickly you can do construction, the cheaper it's going to

174be. Okay, and we would have to add that into our budget projections for those latter fiscal years? Okay. Holly, did you have a comment that you wanted to share? Okay. I love his optimism. Realistically, you would have to do two in one, or one in two. You would run out of time to do, three consecutive new construction buildings. You could do two at once. So either two swing space or one large swing space. Thank you. Mr. Avedisian, did you have another follow up? Yeah, so swing space, and are we talking potentially trailers like we had before, or are you, I mean? So the last time, like I said, we did have, we had sites in South Kingstown right across the line from Charlestown, as well as, and some of them don't exist anymore, because now

175they have utilized them, and knocked some of them down for field opportunities. But with three sites, what you would have to be thinking about is typically which one you do first, so that you can manage. So Richmond is the largest population, so that's gonna be the most difficult one to move, then Charlestown and Ashway. So moving at, starting with Ashway is probably your best bet, because you have less students to move, and then you move all those students back, but now they actually fit more students at Ashway than they do, because now you've created that, you've created that parity. So it's not easy, and as a parent, you know, I've done, you can do it, because my little one went to Swing Spaces. She had three elementary schools in her time in her school, because

176she had the old school, the Swing Space, and then went into a new school. So it can be done, it's just, you know, it provides disruption, and it also provides a cost that doesn't go into your new buildings. Thank you for clarifying that. Mr. Luzon? Yeah, I got a question for Gina, and I, then I got, just, I'm gonna go to the next one. Then I got just a blanket statement. Gina, the $2,100 per student, and the 3,000, or the $5,100 per student, comes out to six and a half million dollars. Do we pay 35% of that, or does, how does that work? So that's a great question. So it's the same thing, so we pay, I believe we get the whole thing, correct, Holly? That that amount is per pupil. Yes, you qualify for

177that whole thing, and the reimbursement is the same. So it's 64 here, and it's like the 61, 65% back. So if you, and actually a great point about that is that if we would have to invest in updating furniture and things like that, that cost is included in technology because you're building your school, so all of those costs become decreased when you're looking at your operating budget, because now instead of us planning for those new, we're gonna get more money from RIDE for building like new or new, and that allows us the opportunity to take that away from the operating budget, because you're gonna see it on that end of the construction. It'll be there. The other thing too is your furniture opportunities come in, because now you're placing all that furniture, one versus three.

178One of the things I think, and again, from the outsider sometimes, the unified, I think when I first came here, Ryan Callahan said to me, do you think one school is a good idea? I said I think that depends on your community, but it has a lot of opportunity, but I do, I know that the biggest worries as a parent typically are the size being overwhelming, so the spaces have to be intentional, it's being about, you still want high achieving, you still want high opportunities, and that exists, but in the end, the opportunities with the new technology, think about just the unification of a resource. So then when you have a social worker who's split between two schools sometimes, you don't have to worry about that travel expense, you're not worrying about sometimes finding, you

179know, you're not worrying about, well, for instance, Instead of having a floating sub at every school, you may only need two out of the three. So things like that. But what you're saying about the technology and the furniture, like we have young chargers. Everybody's a charger. It allows for an opportunity for us to think about maybe this is the precipice that gets Cheroho really unified, united as not the Charlestown, not the Richmond, not the Hopkinton, but we're all going to the same school. We're all the same team. Craig, you had a statement? Hey, folks, committee, we're crossing the Rubicon now. All right? So going forward, I hope we don't resort to what we did in the past. You know what? I know I'm leaning towards one, but if I'm the only one leaning towards that,

180I will gladly join the rest of you to promote whatever we decide as a group. But we all have to promote it. Agreed. Thank you. Well, thank you to the team from SLAM and Collier's. I know we all know and recognize how hard you worked, your entire team. So thank you for your expertise and for your thorough presentation. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you to those that came out. I appreciate the feedback. And I also just want to mention that they are up the upcoming community meetings. Richmond Elementary School meeting will take place on Monday, September 29th. At 530. Charlestown Elementary, Wednesday, October 1st. And Ashway Elementary on Monday, October 6th. Those are all at 530 p.m. And I'm planning to go to as many as I can. But I don't

181know, Gina, if we have to worry about a quorum at these meetings. So I think maybe we need to talk offline about that from the membership, making sure that we don't have more than seven or more. If there's an interest for more, we can always do it as a special meeting. Hopkinton did that when they came to our community meetings. The Old Town Council came and did it as a special. But I can talk offline with you about that. But maybe what we can do is sort of give an interest of who wants to attend and see if we have more than seven, then we can do one as a special meeting. Okay. Thank you. All right. So we are going to move on. Business 9C approval. I'm sorry. Yes. Samantha. Thank you. They gave

182the feedback. We couldn't. So if somebody disagreed, right, not an official, right. It's more like they gave their feedback so that we can update the presentation. Then we send it back out before the September 29th to make sure we captured everything. All right. It's approval, not approval. There's no objection. There's no approval. Why is there just feedback? Yeah. Tonight was about learning and getting feedback. Technically, we want to make sure that this is what we want to send, but we'll do the updates. Yes. I understand what you're saying. Thank you. Okay. So I'm moving on now to. 9C approval of RISAS Rhode Island student assistant counseling contracts. This typically happens in May. So don't get nervous when you see it again coming around May. But right now, our councils are not in our schools for

183this because we had to go back and forth. We had to make sure that the new legal requirements on confidentiality have followed. So we did our due diligence. They actually thanked us from RISAS because they got an attorney to make sure that they were doing their due diligence. Let's just say Chair Holt leads the charge of making sure we have the confidentiality around our student needs and making sure that we get reports on any concerns that happen. So I am recommending approval of the RISAS contract, which we do annually. Typically, it's in May. So moved. Second. Okay. So we have a motion and a second. Discussion among the members. Polly's hand is raised. I need clarification on 8.3. Okay. There's a. There's. An error in the wording. So page six. It's on page seven. Six,

184seven. Yes. Six, seven. Labeled six. But it's on seven where it says through the term of this agreement, cyber insurance and the amount of. There's a five. There's a four. It looks like 54 million in aggregate. So it's four. So see that the five. I see what you're saying. But yeah, that's just the insurance probability. Yeah. Making sure. Well, yeah. So is it four million? It should be. I believe it's four. See, that's why. That's why I had a problem. But I can double check. That's it. That's what they're on it. Making sure that they have their insurance. Laura. And then I'm sorry, Holly. Polly, did you follow up? Go ahead. No. Go back and forth. My question was about the opt in piece of it. It looks like from the way that the contract

185is outlined, it's showing that parents there. That they you either if you don't opt out of it, then you're automatically opted into the service. And I'm just wondering if there's a way to make it so that it's a one that you actually have to opt in for it. We would have to change the code of conduct because the code of conduct the school committee approved says that if a student violates our student like our has a substance abuse that they have, they work with this counselor in that in that vein. So, for example, students that are caught with vaping devices and things like that. We have a responsibility to hold to the code of conduct. And this is part of the counseling that does that. We have a 360 millennium program. So kids can't opt

186out of the code of conduct. They can't opt out if they have a substance in school. That's mandated by the school committee's policy. Okay. And is there well, I guess parents are aware. Yes. Parents are notified. Okay. Because it said that in the the the document, it said that it it follows. Whatever the state law is. And the state law says that if you're age 16, you're allowed to receive mental health services for substance abuse. And there was a couple without your pack without parental consent or notification. And so that's why I was wondering about the opt in part of it. You know how if parents have that ability to allow their child to opt in. So the can. Did you hear that, Craig? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I didn't hear any of it. Okay.

187Laura, do you want to repeat that in the microphone? Sorry. I was saying how in the the document, the Rice House document, it says that they follow state law. And state law in this in Rhode Island is that if your child is 16 years old, they do not need parental consent to receive mental health services for, you know, whether it's substance abuse or, you know, whatever it is. And there's also doesn't need to be. There's also doesn't need to be parent notification. So there's a clause in there that talks about the opt in and opt out. And I was wondering if there was a way to, you know, revise it so that it could be where the parents can decide whether or not they want their child to opt in or opt out to these

188services. Okay. And GINA had said that it's a school committee policy. The court of behavior talks about when there's a substance abuse, you know, disruption in school, that it's mandated that they see the parent notification. In the court of behavior, it talks about when there's a substance abuse, you know, disruption in school, that it's mandated that they see the parent notification. And you know, with respect to that, I'm going to say I'm not sure they're doing the right thing. see the student assistance counselor it's one of the requirements for their remediation to make sure that not only are we addressing that they don't not supposed to have in school but number two that that we ensure that we work with the family but typically the families are always involved in up and our procedures but

189we don't our normal protocol is that we notify families however the student assistance counselor has that confidentiality so they only have to inform certain things if there's a violation of law because it's like a counselor right so you could only if they're gonna have imminent harm to themselves or others that's where the risk management comes in but for things like this typically the family's always involved and I don't recall something that I've been here where they're not or that were a parent wanted to opt out because typically they want their child to receive supports to be able to no longer use the substance right I guess I'm wondering if the so if the student says I don't want my parents involved wouldn't the counselor at that point have to you No. So the families would

190be notified if there was imminent harm. Correct. Okay. Holly. So my question just comes down to I'm sorry I said I'm sorry Craig I said the parents would be notified if there were imminent harm and Gina said yes so if you didn't hear that. You just told us recently that we're full we actually have a lot of mental health staff do we need this? I didn't mean to say we're full I don't know. But we have mental health staff in every school we're full I misappropriated that word but for the first time we have the staff to cover all the mental health needs not all. Not all. Right. We have the first time we have social worker in the elementary. Yes. So do we need this or is it a contractual position that we need

191to have in each school? So yeah. So it would cost us more so we would never get an educator at this amount of money. So because they get also grant funded. So what I can tell you is when I first came here this is one of the services and Mrs. Zenni can speak to as a principal that both he and Ms. Drake now and now Ms. Brett and Nini will share that it has been a vital part of the community for the middle and high school because they're not in the elementary schools. This is only they work at the middle school the high school and Cala. So this amount of money we would never be able to staff it at this at this rate. So it allows us to have this opportunity through the grants

192through the for the state to be able to ensure we have. The collaborative resources for students because this is a very specific type of counseling which is different than your typical mental health because it's involving a substance. You know back in the days we tobacco now it really is the vaping devices as well as an up here to peer. They know that this is an opportunity for students who need help. That's why we brought it back down further into middle school because you know it's our kids telling us that sometimes it's older siblings providing them with opportunities in middle school that are not in their best interest. Then they become addicted. And we all know addiction is real and these are some of this is one of those opportunities where we wouldn't be able to

193afford this. But I could I could ask you know miss Drake I'm sure miss Brett and Nini would be happy to share some of the if someone wanted a mental health workshop at a school meeting. We'd be happy to share the different kinds of supports and resources so that people had. No I was just wondering since you had said we finally have all of these. This is a very specific kind of counseling. I just wanted to pull that out and pull that thread and see if. So Greg money. I get it. So Greg I have a question. I don't know if you can answer this or maybe Gina. So it says that the cost is $30,000 in the wording. Have we budgeted for this for the fiscal year 26 school year. And then what's the

194term of the contract. Like what it's one day. So when does it start and when does it end. It was supposed to already start. It's supposed to start the first day of school to the last day. OK. All right. Great. Any other questions. I think we're going to go to the next question. I think we're going to go to the next question. I think we're going to go to the next question. I think we're going to go to the next question. I think we're going to go to the next question. I think we're going to go to the next question. All right. So when does it start and when does it end. It was supposed to already start. It's supposed to start the first day of school to the last day of school. OK. All

195right. Great. Any other questions. All right. So we have a motion. Thank you. Yes I'm aware. Thank you. So we do have a motion and a second on this. We had discussion. It doesn't look like anybody else's hand is raised. So motion to approve the Rice-ass counseling contract. Thank you. Yes. Great. All right. Approval of virtual learning day plan. Gina, do you want to talk about this one? Yes, I am recommending approval of this plan. This is the very similar plan as we had last year. The only changes is update of the schools. The principals go through to make sure like Miss Brett and any being the new administrator at middle school, she checks, you know, her sort of areas. But just so this is just in case of an emergency that we need a

196distance learning used to be called now it's called a virtual learning plan because it aligns with the law. But if there's any questions happy to answer, but I am recommending approval as presented. So move. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on this? No discussion. All in favor? Great. Unanimous. Okay. Item 9E discussion of second Cheroho yard sale. This is a past event because we had it last week. But just to remind you, so the policy says that we have to notify you of the items which you did have. But we always like the opportunity in case you have any questions to be able to add this to the agenda. So it's discussion. We don't have to vote on this, do we? No. Okay. I just have a quick question. What happens

197to the items that are not sold? Do we donate them to like Salvation Army or something like that? We are talking about different options, even maybe more. Sometimes if it doesn't go, we do let people come for donations, other districts sometimes. But in the end, if nobody wants it, then it's trash. But that makes me sad. So I was thinking about other opportunities where we could be talking about and as budget comes us, not to belabor the point, but that we could be thinking about opportunities. And again, we don't have the bandwidth right now because we don't have the staff. But it would be interesting if people didn't want it and like they didn't want it and Johnny K. Ketcher didn't want it. How could we maybe put it on a Facebook marketplace or a

198Craigslist to really just get a little bit of revenue? Okay. Thank you. So this was only discussion. So we don't have to vote. So we're going to move on. Approval of out of state field trips. I'm proving them as unless somebody has an objection, I'd like to prove them as out of state field trips. I'm proving them as a whole group of and I am recommending approval of all the trips as most of them. All of them are ones that happen annually. So moved by Linda. Do we have a second? Seconded by Craig. All right. Any discussion on this? No discussion. So all in favor of the approval of the out of state field trips as a group? Unanimous. Thank you, Gina. This is also item G is also a grant that happens annually. It

199happens based on rides, equipment fund, technical programs, direct auth, works very hard program by program to ensure that we're thinking about what the needs are to ensure our programs are enhanced every year. So we're recommending approval of the MOA for the category of funding of ride. So so moved. Second. We have a motion and second. Any discussion on this? Seeing no hands raised. All in favor of approving this MOA? Unanimous. Thank you. Budget transfers and budget updates. Greg, do you want to talk about this at all? We recommend approval as submitted. So moved. Happy to answer questions. Okay. That's right. So moved. Okay. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Okay. Discussion on this? Okay. No discussion. So I guess Mr. Zanion. I thought we didn't vote on this anymore. The budget transfers

200you do. Not the update. Not the update. All right. The update is for your own edification. Okay. Well, you put them together. I know. Because sometimes it makes it easier. Okay. All right. So what we're asking, what you are asking is asking us to approve is the budget transfers which is 41 4133 dollars in the top section and then 5106 dollars and 45 cents in the second section yes okay all the second another page okay yeah you have it but this was from right july 15th july 15th and that's the running record so technically it's the new ones that's all i have okay i'm sorry that's okay all right well it's it's the list last week okay any other discussion laura just what's the total grade of all four transfers roughly uh 9 11 21

2015 okay thanks did you hear everyone hear that 21 5 okay so all in favor of the budget transfers unanimous thank you consent agenda items 10 10 a minutes from the special session of the charahoe school committee on all the budget transfers august 5th does anybody need to pull is anyone pulling anything from the minutes hearing no one pulling anything here seeing there's none i make a motion to move all and this has only happened like three times in my 13 years all consent agenda items but before i do we will acknowledge the donations so give me some a little bit of time here folks take your time one thank you to the first hockington seventh baptist church who donated several backups filled with supplies to the district there were 36 everything that this lockdown

202got in so many ways there being checks there for ola church they've been pushed down the fence there till i get to please we'll get to this pandemic they will reinforce supports that bloodshed they've been nearby fire with a sum of dollars that victorian christian industriallism lost 26 lighters and one perfect there was 36 backpacks filled with supplies to the district there were 36 backpacks and all thank you to cheryl cry nick and all the church and all from the church who participated in preparing and distributing these backpack donations 2 we would like to thank mr john reaser and the uri police department for a large donation of school supplies in topeto church school supplies valid approximately 280 dollars on august 25th 2025. four we'd like to thank mr ronald mann who donated 500 to

203the richmond elementary school garden and greenhouse mr mann said he was very impressed with it with this work the funds will be used to support the garden and greenhouse club five thank you to mr frank wyman who donated several walmart gift cards a beautiful pencil and acrylic painting and a donation of books to the district six we'd like to thank main street pizza donated many sheets of pizza and trays of salad for ashway elementary school staff luncheon on august 26 2025. seven we thank you to jeff to the jeffries family for their new in box donation of portable disc golf basket to cherokee high school valued 150 dollars i need a second all in favor of the consent agenda items taken as a group unanimous thank you okay so uh my report opening up schools

204as the year begins i'm pleased to share that our classrooms are full of energy our students are settling into routines i'm impressed with both the quality of instruction and the high levels of student engagement our families continue to receive information via the e-updates reacts that in the last august and september they received busing and report school calendar student services and support and the school board and the district of chile and the county school board and the district of kent some of the new school board members have received spritz lessons and support meal programs and most importantly if you want to get the text messages sent up for school messenger as a parent richmond playground equipment is slated to ship on september 29th which means if the equipment arrives during the first week of october installation

205is expected to begin on the week of october 13th for reference the last installation at charlestown took about two weeks so we anticipate a similar timeline for this project the town of richmond water advisory from the Town of Richmond. The Town has reported that repairs have been completed, the system has been disinfected, and follow-up samples confirm no bacteria are present. RIDO officially lifted the advisory on the 15th of September. Guidance on cleaning and sanitizing after a boil notice is on the RIDO website for those who are interested. And the Town of Richmond has asked that if anyone is interested in getting timely updates about water alerts, that you can go to their website and select Richmond Water System Users under the Notify Me. Opportunities for parent and community involvement. We encourage every family to find

206an opportunity that works best for their time and interests. To learn more, you can visit our website or the regular e-updates. Some examples are school improvement teams, PTOs, boosters, special events, mentoring, chaperoning, special education advisory committee, green teams, et cetera. We appreciate any time, energy, and talents because they really make a difference for our students, and we thank everyone who's already been volunteering and giving back for their support. Our main campus, we have 20-25 building committee updates thanks to the strong support of our community in the November election. On our bond vote, several key campus projects are now complete. Tennis courts are almost completed. Lighting is going up. We're waiting for ADA work to happen. We have the track resurface project completed, which would provide our athletes with safe, high-quality facilities. The Career and Tech

207Center roof is almost finished, doing a little bit of fixing here and there. Many projects are ongoing along with our improvements, but basically, we're just trying to make sure that we're doing what we can to make sure that we're doing what we can to make sure that we're doing what we can to make sure that we're doing what we can to make sure that we're doing the right things, the safety, the modernization, and supportive learning environments and opportunities for our students, and we are grateful for the community support so we can make sure that Chairhouse students continue to learn, compete, and achieve at the highest level on all courses. Field hockey. A parent recently raised a concern about the length of the grass for field hockey, and she's here with us tonight in the audience,

208so thank you for attending. Please know that we do work closely with the Rhode Island Interscholastic League, and officials are responsible for reviewing our field conditions prior to competition. If anything happens, and if any field were deemed unsafe, officials would not permit play to move forward, but we do acknowledge that our fields, as you all know, are needed of improvement. They may not be ideal. It's important to emphasize that they are safe for student athletes, but actually just today, Mr. Zendi and I met with Justin Kahuna, our athletic director, and our coach, Ali Bobbin, of the field hockey team, along with our previous coach, Joran O'Fountain, to be able to talk through some very real solutions that I thought they were very innovative and creative, and I think we're creating systems that are really important

209so that we can give the school committee a plan about really all of our field needs and create more of an opportunity so that it's an ongoing item. This has been, as many of you know, an item that has taken its toll on us because we've lost a lot of staff, and we've lost a lot of, you know, this is where the budget gets cut sometimes, and this is where we're feeling, and I think that now that we feel that. And that's one of my... Let Scott have his hand. No, you can't speak during some of the discussion. Okay. Because it's only report out. Okay. Unfortunately, we can't take public input. It's not during this part. It's about... Okay. I get it. Mr. Sunderland, would you like to send us an email so we can

210know about your input? Okay. Thank you. Okay. So superintendent's report, thank you. Coming events? Please make sure you tune in to all the events. Most importantly, this Saturday we're gonna celebrate our district teacher of the year. This is not on here, but I think it's an important recognition. support recognition I will be there and present to support Lindsay Bliven and as always we have lots of home spirit week has come is this week for the high school lots of homecoming dances open houses so we hope you um look at the coming events and participate thank you Gina school committee requests for future agenda items or legal opinions Craig um Greg do you think somewhere in the future I'm not asking for it tomorrow um with the field hockey situation all the parents complain about is

211they want a synthetic surface they want I'd like to know what it would cost us just a general idea if we were to look at the main field no questions he's asking we can't talk yeah so we're gonna you want this to be put on for a future agenda item I'm sorry keep talking into it do you want this to be put on for a future agenda item we're planning this for budget this is the this is the agenda item that we're talking about right now that's that's up to you folks okay I'll note it yep it's 9 59. Jess um so at the budget sub community meeting on September 8th I made a motion for our members to compile a list of possible agenda items that we could bring to the full school committee

212regarding the budget speaking for myself the goal would be to inform members and the public about preparing for budget season and continuing to make the process as as transparent and accessible as possible and I'd like to open this initiative up to everyone here and ask that if you have any recommendations please share them with Miss Karen Reynolds she's the chair of the budget subcommittee so that we can discuss it at our next meeting and hopefully bring some items to the regular school committee agenda to make this budget process to start planning in advance and get some items on the agenda that could help okay thank you thanks Polly the eighth graders want their DC field trip back I'm still hearing it is that an agenda item are we putting this on the agenda or is

213this a huddle with Greg and Gina and see if it's doable for basically anything to do with field trip that would be like a school so which school improvement team would that go to okay it should first go to the school improvement team okay technically first go to the principal um because you have to ask the agenda Polly can you bring that to the school improvement teams I yeah I go to the Ashaway one okay but that's elementary school so that you're in the middle school yeah I mean I'm getting a slight revolt from all the eighth graders that I know okay thank you for bringing that to our attention do we have a motion any other future agenda items do we have a motion to adjourn yes we do motion to adjourn okay all

214in favor unanimous good night everyone