Concord Carlisle Joint School Committee March 28, 2023

001I thought it was miscounted all right okay hello everybody I would like to call the Concord Carlisle school committee to order I will call the Concord school committee meeting to order and we have a quorum and just for the minutes Aaron um Cynthia Sharon Court Alexa and I are all here does anyone want to make a motion to put us into executive session a move that's Concord school committee in the Concord Carlisle school committee enter into executive session under purpose three of the open meeting law to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the maintenance and secretary's unions and return to open session at 6 pm and do I have a second second all in favor and we will be back at okay we are back it is 603 and just for the minutes

002Erin um morning in progress sorry everyone is present um Domingos is here Aisha is not and Kristen Anderson is at home on Zoom all right so at this point we are going to open the public hearing just pulling up my agenda and I will turn it over to Dr Hunter and our public hearing is on school choice tonight right thank you so this is the annual public hearing on school choice by Massachusetts statute we have to review this anally to um for the committee to weigh in on whether they're going to participate in school choice and welcome students from other districts into our schools we in my time have never been able to participate because of the lack of capacity current enrollment is very close to the school building capacities and we struggle with any

003transportation availability of kids to be able to access our schools so between those two we have not been a school choice District in I don't know how long but long time standing so you would need tonight based on any public comment which I don't know if you're going to get any but um listen to that comment and then decide if you wish to participate for the 23-24 school year or not and you actually have a vote on the agenda to make that decision okay so at this point I would open up to public comment on school choice I do not see any in the room um let me just look online I do not see any public comment for school choice online all right so it looks like we are ready to take a vote

004should we close the hearing too close to hearing first I will close the hearing and we'll vote later on in the meeting thank you very much I haven't done a promoters on now if you want to do it on now right now okay oh it is on right now they told me to close the hearing it's very confusing I'm getting mixed singles here okay so let's see the vote and if anyone has the motion in front of them I have it go ahead um I've moved at the Concord and Concord parallel School committees vote to not participate in school choice for the school year of 2023 2024. and do we have a second any discussion okay all in favor aye aye opposed all right thank you very much and let's see if our students are

005on Zoom it looks like they are I see Harry and Felicity and I don't see zarya yeah um zarya unfortunately had something else come up tonight so she's not gonna be here but Felicia and I have the presentation put together great thank you absolutely okay I'll share my screen all right can you guys see that yes perfect okay um yeah plus did you want to get started yeah sure so we talked about this a little bit last time but the we had the Multicultural food festival at tchs um I think two Wednesdays ago or one yeah but on 3 15 and that was a huge success there were lots and lots of people and you can see Harry has a photo in the top right there so it was really great lots of people were

006there yeah um and then also this past Saturday we had the radio stations wiqh Fest which is back for the first time since before covid um you can see a picture of it down at the bottom there were a lot of great groups performing it was a really great time so it's very exciting that that's back and I think people really enjoyed that yeah and sophomores have the elamcast today and tomorrow so my brain's a little bit fried from a morning of writing essays um and we have that another day tomorrow but um yeah we have like a temporary different like block schedule but I think so far everyone's managing pretty well and that'll it'll be back to normal after tomorrow yeah um and then also class government is hosting um the annual hypnotist show

007this Friday I actually signed up to get hypnotized so not sure if it's gonna work on me but I'm excited to try that out see what happens it's always fun to watch even if you're not like actually the one being hypnotized on Friday and and weekend the cchs Performing Arts ensembles will be intending the attending the mica Festival so that's like a competition and it's always really nice lots of great experience because I think we get to talk to like panels of the panels of Judges who also judge us so that'll be very fun yeah um and then also at our last update we talked about how spring sports are going to be started so um we're on week two right now um everyone is off to a great start the lacrosse teams had scrimmages

008today so things are moving along nicely and the first games I meet are going to be next week so it's exciting and student Senate is also running the bi-annual blood drive this Thursday so we already have like almost all of our slots filled up which is very exciting yeah that's great lots of great activities and do you have um any info on Prom proms coming up in May yes May 20th I think um yeah like uh ticket sales haven't started yet but I think that stuff is saying that's on the horizon for a lot of people great great I have a question is the um blood drive open to the community or is that just for students I can take this um it's not no it's just open to students and faculty it's just the

009way we run it like so much of the registration happens in school that we do kind of have to limit it yeah that's awesome that it's so successful and I think it's usually it's usually full Harry right like I mean all slots are taken by students and faculty definitely yeah we had a wait list I think in the fall yeah and is there an age requirement do you know to be 16 or yeah oh yeah there's an agent weight requirement it's through the Red Cross so they help to kind of run some of that part of it right anyone else have any questions for our reps best of luck this uh this weekend with Micah my best question yeah thank you Harry we think you're very brave thank you yeah we'll see what happens we're

010looking forward to seeing what happens oh yeah thank you have fun with that thank you thank you all right and you guys know that our next meeting is in Boston I think you're still on so you can either come we're going to bring the owl if you want to come and zoom or um you can come in person either one but I know that Harry you're definitely involved in track so I'm not sure if you'll get there on time so probably soon yeah yeah it might be a little bit easier yeah yeah we'll figure that out for sure all right thank you thank you both have a great night we will move on to public comment our public comment period will be a period of 20 minutes and as a reminder this is meeting in

011the public and not with the public so we will not comment on any of your comments so if you're in the room and you would like to speak you can submit a blue form which I have one and we will start in the room and then go online and you will have three minutes so I will start with Kristen hegarty Kristen Hagerty 95 Revolutionary Road I have uh three different points hopefully they're timely enough I missed a meeting um last Tuesday the 21st was metco advocacy day there was a number of folks from Concord who went but in particular there are there were two students two seniors from cchs who were both invited to give speeches to the legislators and everyone there um I encourage you to invite them to give their speeches they were

012very you know concise but very powerful and moving so perhaps as a student update you could have them um um in particular Autumn mandanka said in one of her things and I don't want to plagiarize the whole thing she said I believe metco has helped me find a voice in a place I felt unseen for most of my academic career and so they both spoke to the importance of their work in advocacy uh the second thing I have comments for the incident reporting form if that's not too late um I Heard the discussion that happened all of that was very relevant um in particular I think the part that I didn't hear as much about is what kind of education that could be done to make sure that it's not um that talks about why

013a reporting system why collecting information why um you know kind of going through this would be important to all students teachers and staff why is this going to make our community a better place how is this going to improve the environment um so that it doesn't become just kind of a uh a snitching thing I guess um in terms of inclusion uh I I it wasn't clear to me I saw the list of people who are on Andrews deib uh committee and it did not look like a lot of the Boston families who we saw here a year ago um kind of bringing their uh concerns forward and I want to know how we are specifically reaching out to kind of vet the work that's being done on both the form and the system and

014wondered if we are getting feedback from doctors warnham and um Blake the Consultants who suggested something like this uh specifics about the form that you guys discussed and that I would certainly support is um rather than making them check off a box it says this I've already talked to a teacher and I know you guys addressed that that might be a an obstacle is maybe asking uh a drop down to say what methods have been have you uh done to address this issue if any and then kind of list those so that it's not like a blocker that they have to do something before they submit the form um additionally maybe asking what type of resolution you're hoping for to um Sharon's point about you know is it important to capture how they felt maybe

015we can say what would be a satisfactory resolution and I did appreciate the discussion of sharing the aggregated data with the community so you can kind of look at trends um and finally on that um most importantly how is the person who's going to be investigating the bias motivated incidents which sounds like are usually the principles or their designees how are they going to be trained on screening and investigating um time is up so if you can just wrap it up sorry the last thing I was going to mention was about the Strategic plan and inclusive culture and that I encourage you to um particularly about increase the number of diverse faculty and staff to specify the type of diversity you are prioritizing thank you okay thank you all right we will go online and

016it looks like Charlie Parker is a hand race hi thank you for recognizing me I have three three comments on the capital planning process um versus on Alcott School I want to thank you for the study of the alternatives to the boiler replacement you did what we asked you to do and I think the results are promising I thought that review that we had a week or so ago was was excellent second I would like to see us take the next step with Wesson and Sampson and dig into the specifics on the Water Source heat pump option more discussion on work is required is required to get our arms around this it's promising but but uh not necessarily fully proven uh third I would hope that funding will be available for for this follow through

017through an Engineering Process and I hope that we can get started shortly on this work either through Western and Samson or someone else excuse me I on Ripley I just want to make a few comments uh there's been a lot of discussion about a plan that is no longer in the in the current uh Capital request but I I I want to make a few comments here I wanted to thank the school administration for responding to my request for information on Ripley uh I think the 1.2 million dollar plan for the pods needs a serious review of its fundamentals most importantly the four 1957 California style buildings which are the pods need to be evaluated before we go Prime Time with a plan for New Mechanicals the current sizing of the heat pumps seems extreme

018and may reflect sentiment that these pods have efficiency issues with both insulation and air sealing and it might make sense to consider reducing the amount of glass and to improve the glazing on an overall basis these pods appear to be inefficient against average construction standards and I I make that observation simply by looking at the sizing of the of the heat pumps that are part of the proposal uh they're quite large for the for the size of the of the classrooms uh Nat let's take the conventional approach and calculate heat loss and do a blower door test building efficiency issues need to be addressed before we complete plans for a major HVAC renovation once the efficiency issues are addressed the HVAC solution will look a lot different last on the revised Capital uh revised Capital

019plan uh that that was submitted I was pleased to see the 100 000 line item uh in the plan for a review and assessment of existing conditions across all the schools we need to understand the expected longevity of these schools and our long-term capital needs as costs are rising dramatically establishing priorities requires a high level view that can be shared with the town as a whole this is where we need to start thank you okay and any other public comment okay having seen none I will move on and we're going to actually skip down the throw chorus is coming at 6 30. we're going to keep going down on our agenda until they get here because we're a little bit ahead of schedule so we will move on to reading of the minutes and you

020should have received the minutes from Aaron um from February 7th and February 13th today I'm going to have any comments or changes on those or edits a minor minor one on Feb eight uh hate to be uh Booth Centric here but it refers to me on page Mr Booth stated that the responsibilities seem very extraordinarily wide I think I might have said very or extraordinarily but probably not both probably not both so we will ask I like the emphasis I guess um and uh then I think more importantly than that um you know I I hope we uh learn more about that new position soon because of the uh the broad Focus uh being laid upon that new position thank you okay so the changed how if we just go to extraordinary sure does that

021sound good so Aaron if he could make the change to extraordinary on the minutes from February 7th and if we can vote and accept it with that change does that make sense not being the word Barry keeping extraordinarily okay dropping very keeping extraordinarily thank you all right so I would accept a motion to approve the minutes of February 7th and February 13th to moot and my reference was an error I said Feb 8 it was Feb 28 Tracy I'm sorry okay okay changes to the minutes that was from March 20 minutes today so no changes on no change okay so we're gonna go back no changes to the February 7th and February 13th minutes move to accept second thank you any more discussion nope thank you Aaron for those and all in favor hi hi

022correspondence and I believe we only had one piece of correspondence from um to both uh Concord and Concord Carlisle would you like to take that one sure um sure we have well we've had a couple um so one we had um an email I think that was to both about a perceived ethics violation that was addressed um we had a correction um to a statement I made about the Concord integrated preschool um Nancy McGregor emailed us on that um and then additionally since our February or our March 14th meeting we were cc'd on about 50 or so emails supporting the CPS budget I think that was it yeah so it's mostly at Concord I would have to say so the reason it was just that one gently yes relatively quiet all right and then on

023to share soyuz Johnson superintendent's report so um Alexa and I will start we just have a a few things that have been happening this month we had another chairs round table which is with the chairs from Belmont um Lincoln Sudbury Lincoln Sudbury Acton Bedford I don't want to leave somebody else Weston Acton wouldn't come Wayland didn't come yeah but they're all in Carlisle those guys and it's actually been really um helpful it's been productive we now have a shared Drive amongst those School committees too where we can all contribute um so people have been contributing budget presentations and you know agendas and you know how everything's happening in other towns so we're really focusing on kind of best practices of you know what we can all do together it's been a great support for all

024of us I think uh the common theme has been that budgets have been particularly challenging this year for all of us um we've learned about negotiations in other towns that have been challenging so it's been really helpful to just kind of move on Dorothy came to our first one she's invited to all of them she did not come to this last one and we're hoping to schedule one more before the end of the year probably I would say may because April seems really short with a vacation week do we need to add to that no just again that um it's it's it's great it's great to hear two things one I think it's particularly validating because it seems like all of as Tracy said the themes are quite Universal um so that aspect I think

025is great and then the second thing is um that we all do things a little bit differently and we've all been able to learn from each other there um and again I think that helps thank all of these Collective committees in our area better um and hopefully and including ours so um yeah all in all I think it's been a good success and and it's been the universal sentiment among the chairs I think one chair might have even said if I'm not sure can I keep coming um this has been so helpful so um and he he also said to keep he I believe he's not even going to be on a school to really just keep coming and really he's actually been really helpful so it's been nice to kind of reach across to

026Carlisle too then we did go to the chairs breakfast in Concord and and actually Jack came you know we were like kind of education corner there all sitting together so it was really great so I think that um that's been really positive for all of us and then just think about anything else I didn't really you didn't have anything else did you mean no I didn't know I thought we could do it quickly we can do it quick for the goals but Sarah was going to report on our new member onboarding group so firstly we've been chipping away at the manual of what's what and one of the things we're struggling with really is how do people like to access information right and what what did you think about sort of the onboarding process or

027just about anything about the manual how we operate how it relates to how we operate and all that stuff so we are seeking feedback if anybody wants to get in touch with me and just share thoughts on you know some people like links some people want a paper a printed out version of things and we're trying to figure out what what makes everybody happy and maybe what are the questions to ask at the beginning because every group dynamic is going to be different right maybe some years you have seven people nine people whoever who want to have paper right and some years instead only two want the paper and seven are like I like the links right and so um we're just trying to figure out what uh what how people want information and what

028are your thoughts on what would what would have been extra helpful or what was a hindrance or what uh you know would make you use it yeah yeah what would compel you to access it I think is really the question yeah it does seem like such a dump yeah yeah it can be overwhelming what would make it less overwhelming and possibly there is no way to make it less because there might not be an information right but we're hoping that maybe with Collective group things brain power right so uh we can't unfortunately work on a document together because that violates open meeting laws but if you talk to me I can listen I can take notes um and then we can discuss it at our next meeting yeah do we have a next meeting schedule

029okay so um do it sometime in May May yeah April seems short is this the manual that Cynthia you originally pulled together yeah thank you I stole a lot of it from other districts well and so what we've done is we've looked at um other districts and some of the other districts we've been joining with they've put their manuals into the drive so it's they all kind of read the same yes they have a lot of the same things in them so it's not really stealing it's really collaborating with other districts that's what we're doing correct right and so the watch Reinventing the wheel yeah when it's unnecessary the one thing when are you hoping to have it done it should be a living document yeah so the first understanding is your date stamp it

030yes well and I think that the last manual that Cynthia worked on I think it said like approved on and then there's like a line so I'm not really sure if there was actually a date that it was approved or not it was approved so but it was just it's interesting just when you look at it and then when you said that Carlisle is always in draft form I think we're always interrupting that one yeah the one thing the one addition that uh Alexa brought to it was like a 30 60 90 like what did you in your first 30 30 days of being on a school committee what to do in the University I know but I like that but it's helpful because then you know that okay I would have been with the

031chair it's gonna be the superintendent we did tours of the high school you know we did like different things like that that I think is helpful to somebody new coming on because we will it was just how like I could intellect like digestible again make it accessible like don't think about this yeah until days 60 through 90. I don't know but but I always go back to that thing that door when we had Dorothy and Glenn here right and like how long does it take to get up to speed as a school committee member right you asked Dorothy and she says it's three months and you ask one he says it's three years yeah so I still feel like I'm getting up to speed I think I think that's a challenge with this document right

032it's the same it's the same thing like any time you do a survey right how would you rather get emails Community right or would you like emails do you want text messages do you want one big email with everything do you want bite-sized ones and you ask a hundred people and you will get a hundred different ideas of what everybody likes so trying to make a nice accessible mix of options yeah please okay the one other thing school committee copies so we've had I think two school committee coffees so far I will ask the Fowler coffee people to maybe report on their coffee and then did you go to Fowler all right you can do that yeah good but we had extra coffee okay great okay let's build a bunch of it so very true

033we we had a very small turnout but uh people who were very keen on uh conversing with us hearing from us um where they're you know essential takeaways to bring back here I don't think so um and I don't mean that uh in a negative kind of way it was more of a dialogue that we had right when I was in rather than getting advice or recommendations would that be accurate yeah it was a good conversation yeah so we were grateful um people we've seen before and some people that we haven't seen before which was great great um this weekend Sharon Alexa Aisha and I we went to Boston and we had one person come to our coffee and and it was actually great we had a great morning together so we were at the

034Panera and um you know we did a lot of parent to parent stuff I think that was really helpful so we had a great coffee and then we have two more coffees to go and Carrie is looking for yeah maybe additional members to come I think Sarah you're currently solo and Carlisle so I don't know if anybody wants oh you're you're going to do Carlisle too okay great okay across the border perfect and then we have your passport what's the oh we have space for our Carlisle member at the at the main library we have two Concord members so if you go it's optional if you either of you would like to go that's you can but they continue with the low turnout I felt like almost it was probably overwhelming you know coffee participant

035we were outnumbering her four to one so yeah so the Carlos two might be the magic show first the conference the next conquered one is one right [Music] um foreign ball coffees better attended I believe they were they were a little bit better I'm wondering if ball is the sweet one oh yeah Carrie and I went to one and no one came that was really exciting you know my reports in a minute but I did two last week and I had zero people at one and I had two people at the second one so it's just I think it's a good thing in a lot of ways but it has the same pattern yeah I think we could make the argument that if we do too many uh the people will disappear but we could

036make a counter argument which is if we keep doing them it'll start to arrive on the sort of cultural landscape of the district and people will be more inclined to come and you don't know yet so we might have no no we might as well keep keep working keep offering Concord is Wednesday April 5th at six o'clock main library okay great ready for the kids are we ready for the kids yeah they're all good yes I think we're we're gonna stop here we'll come back to our reports but we are going to welcome in the Thoreau chorus and I believe we're going to have a presentation I think they're ready I brought my camera for this one thanks well that's a real thing imagine that they're still around what is that if you're watching at

037home we're just going to take a minute to get the students in and I can see their principal Ms Charles is with us thank you for coming thank you so much for having them this is very exciting absolutely oh wow welcome right now we'll see I should tell the parents that are entering the room that you'll be able to see this on TV with Minuteman media your your childhood be on TV it will be posted probably in the next few days welcome should I got a bus feel free to sit and relax and enjoy the show I'm not sure I'll go find the kids okay all right they're coming in no perfect thank you hi everybody where should we yes exactly in the middle somewhere like this okay hi everyone welcome [Music] so we might

038be just maybe they can like Arch around yeah excited people [Music] so they're off campus they're all off camera oh wow there we go good shot get the money shot bye so for our viewers at home we're welcoming the thrill chorus and do you want to grab a microphone just so that people at home can hear you that would be great yeah thank you yeah thanks all right so I think it's on yes so we are the Thoreau fourth and fifth grade chorus my name is Kayla McLaughlin I'm the music teacher at Thoreau and the wire director now as well we're so excited to be sharing this program with you um we've got three songs and I'm going to turn it over to the students to announce our songs for today so yeah good evening

039my name is nefemi and I'm in fifth grade thank you for inviting us to sing for you tonight the road course started in November of this year and is open to fourth and fifth graders we are excited to share what we've been working on during our early morning chorus rehearsals my name is Ainsley I'm a fifth grader first up is this pretty planet a folk song by Tom Chapin this month at throw we are celebrating Earth month so this is the perfect song to get us in the mood to take care of our planet this song is sung in two-part round or a Canon that means half the group starts and the other half starts a few beats later yes yep [Music] um [Music] it's ready [Music] hey everybody oops thank you my name is

040Burton and I'm in I am a fourth grader the next song We Will Sing is called Yonder Come Day a Georgia C Island spiritual this song is about looking forward to a new day if you listen closely you'll notice in the song we we sing three different parts I asked you to really sing up because people on Zoom are having a hard time hearing you maybe move that mic a little closer or all right can you guys sing a little louder for the people at home don't step on each other ones um cartoons multiple questions come on down [Music] today [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you hello my name is Patrick and I'm a fifth grader our final song for tonight is my favorite things from the classical musical the Sound of Music we hope you

041enjoyed our music tonight thank you again for having us [Music] it was better according to the folks texting me yes thank you all right so keep the energy going yeah [Music] thank you this is a good job everybody thank you again so much for having us of course and also thank you to all the thorough parents who are getting your singers to school so early and getting us here tonight so I thank you so much we have a lot of fun in chorus and we're looking forward to our next concert coming up at night okay yeah awesome thank you thank you thank you thank you you were excellent and the middle school should look out for all of you coming to Morris next year exactly for us in middle school there is of course in

042Middle School we're going to just make our way out this way all right guys thank you all right yeah I'm having fun stuff ah okay well that was wonderful definitely set the tone of the evening we started with great food great singing we'll turn the mood lights down in a minute um okay so back to business Alexa and I are gonna really quickly go through our goals just um just as a quick update that we've tried to do throughout the year do you want to search you want me to start I don't care why don't you take the first two and I'll do I've gone over some of it um so we started out with a professional practice goals in looking at them we committed to reviewing these every quarter so we thought we were

043sure that we are doing that so we highlighted did you guys ever get a copy no okay they're attached the agenda I just highlighted anything that I added I added it yeah so we um I feel like once we conclude the coffee schedule we are we're ready to move goal 1A which was host and host consistent schedule of community coffees um as Court said we'll probably continue with this trend in the upcoming school year um but we were able to visit Concord Carl in Boston all at least twice um so I thought that was that was pretty great um we oh we had an update to the number of subscribers we had we have increased our subscribers we have by like like a tangible amount I wouldn't say we've doubled it but it's significant I

044forget what the number was 475 480. we're 80. this morning we started out at what I thought we were like 200 something okay so we have almost doubled it guys like then we've actually it's like legit I mean it's really what we're doing and that goal is asking people to opt into another email so it is impressive that we've almost doubled it um so we were gonna you know we intended to leverage the superintendent's distribution list and social media I would say we've we've done that because the goal was to double the school committee um distribution list we've had um periodic review of our updates and the superintendent's message we've increased our Outreach um we do have a QR code I don't know if people are using it but it is out there I've maybe

045used it a few times um again we have established our stairs Roundtable and that was in an effort to review other school committee's actions and procedures to aggregate best practices vis-a-vis information sharing um so um again and we have created a drive I think once um we've continued to collect data from other groups we can put that into our school committee Drive um so that people can sort of see what the other committees are doing um and again we were able to have two round tables already we will have a third in May um the other goals that we had are were complete we have committed and reviewed our protocols and practices um and then our professional practice goal of getting a budget um ready I mean we're still talking about the budget so I

046think that demonstrates our commitment to it and our thoroughness with it um and uh and again just just continuing um on there I'll let you guys I will do student-centric goals so tonight we are going to hear uh from Kristen Anderson for the our yrbs survey results and all of our student-centric goals really happen at the end of the year because we're really measuring progress and results at the end of the year so we can look forward to those coming up on May 23rd uh let me just see so most of the student-centric things are going to happen towards the end of the year we have already talked about acts SATs access AP exams um we have cross-referenced the budget to meet our student goals and then then just some we've seen a lot of

047presentations this year but since the last time we reported here we've added mechanical engineering and the toys program at the high school our strategic planning committee presented at our last meeting tonight we saw the throw chorus which was definitely students right front and center which I loved and we are going to hear from Jess who is our director for interim director of food services tonight and just for the public we did enjoy a lovely dinner beforehand in our executive session courtesy of the Food Services Program here between both districts and it was really excellent and if you don't know about some of the choices that your kids are eating please ask them because it's wonderful um and then in terms of our deib goals we since the last time Alex and I reported we did

048get our Equity audit results on January 17th and then on March 8th we reviewed the instant bias reporting form there's certainly more to come on that from Andrew and that brings us kind of up to speed on our goals and kind of where we're at and we'll report again you know towards the end of the school year and now anyone else have any reports before we move on to Dr Hunter no okay Dr Hunter superintendent's report thank you I had a few topics tonight to share feedback on uh the strategic planning process wrapped up last week really successfully with I think a lot of positive oh yeah oh yeah come in come in I think a lot of positive um feedback from the group as well as requests to know what we're going to be

049doing next so we've started to make those plans big thanks to Kristen Anderson she's online tonight um for her leadership through that process the draft is strong we're working on fine-tuning metrics and there'll be another round of sharing fairly soon so we're in great shape and excited for the goals for the next five years I want to highlight Thursday night at the high school the Administration has collaborated with a number of folks across the building to put together a speaker series um really a menu so parents can choose between topics on technology Mental Health social executive functioning and then challenge success is offering a college admissions workshop on the healthier approach to that so we're hoping for a big turnout it was really a brainchild of how do we get more parents more access to

050information and wanted to try this model so we're looking forward to that um I want to talk just a little bit about the Thoreau principal search we have resumes still coming in for another few days Kristen's launched this the search committee today and we'll do so again we're aiming towards screening resumes with a first round of interviews on April 12th in the meantime tomorrow Kristen and I are at Thoreau to talk with staff on their hopes for a principal and there's a zoom Forum on Monday night for a family's parents to give us that same feedback as we launch into the look at the candidates that are interested in coming to us so we're moving that right along and then finally I just want to talk on the homeless shelter at the hotel one of

051my asks over the last week has been to start sharing out with Bob's help the costs we're incurring so I put together a Serial memo that went to the state legislators over the weekend and the school committee was able to see that um just in terms of highlights of where we're at first I'll start by saying it's going really well we feel really good about the ways we're able to service the kids and the families and the kids were transporting back to their school of origin and the ones that we've enrolled here in District um so that part's been really satisfying uh the part you all need to help also keep track of is where we are fiscally as this all rolls out so we have 25 families we're servicing there are three others at

052the hotel with kids younger than school age so they will probably age up as we get to the fall some of them eight students are enrolled at CPS in the high school of the h6r ell newcomers with very little to no English uh we're still working on three kids and placements of where they're going to be for a range of reasons at the hotel on a daily basis we have three buses going in uh elementary middle high school and then there are 10 vans going to the hotel to pick up kids to take to school of origin to the combination of Chelsea Walpole Malden Worcester and Boston uh 13 of those kids of those 20 kids are going to Boston so Boston's actually sending six Vehicles just in and of itself we are cost sharing

053Transportation with those districts I just mentioned with the exception of two students who are special education and transportations in their IEP so we learned in the last week that those are still fiscally responsive responsible to the home District um the van transportation is ranging everywhere from 55 to 300 today for our share so double that for total cost but our share is 50 to 300. um Bob's projected out 55 days worth of this so one day last week for the remaining 55 days of the school year if everything stays status quo which sort of not what we've experienced yet but we'll get to that in a minute um at the region we are then projecting a 25 000 expense at CPS we're projecting a fifty thousand dollar expense for a total cost of 76 000.

054so that if we aggregate that into fy24 that obviously becomes concerning because that would be for 55 days of 180 versus the full hundred and eighty so knowing using that number to multiply you start to end up in the hundreds of thousands total proportionate to the two districts so that's obviously a pretty large concern of ours going into FY 24 where there just isn't cash flow for that and I'll talk on the reimbursement status in a minute um the state is telling me that we are going to revisit the where we are on April 12th uh there are still rooms they're allocating as long-term stay rooms um half the hotel is running a short-term stay or has the capacity too it's probably not all that running at that but the capacity is there they're anticipating

055they would Place approximately 10 more families once we decide the time is right I will say they're working collaboratively with us to determine when that time is right so um but it probably is this spring sometimes so more to come I think once we hit this Benchmark date we said a month ago of April 10th see how things are running on the mock side which is the shelter leadership and on our side um in terms of Staffing to the in-district kids we hired a full-time family coordinator who started today so we're going to have a person to bridge the needs of the families help with language she speaks Spanish that'll take some of the onus off of the lack of communication we've been struggling with we're watching our ell teachers loads because all the newcomers

056get two hours a day so you think we can probably get through the rest of the year the fall maybe another story if there's another 10 families coming in but we're reallocating between buildings and trying to just see how far our resources will go what the state is continuing to say the supplemental budget proposed by the governor with about 41 million dollars in homeless shelter support some of which would be to the schools past the Senate last week it's on the governor's desk awaiting signature so the next phase is then for the governor's office to determine how this will all be allocated they're certainly working and talking with Jesse um our state reps are on and actively communicating with them what I tried to communicate was that reimbursement which we do anticipate 100 Transportation reimbursement

057from what they're telling us and a per pupil expenditure but if it's not timely it will be just as catastrophic so trying to explain it needs to be timely and efficient and not a you know circuit breaker model where we're getting it a year later there's a lot of great listening going on we just need it to happen so that's really where we are um hoping that that next phase of you know protocol and procedure on the financial side starts to play up can I ask a question so my understanding is the transportation like you said to be a hundred percent covered the way I've heard it being bantered about with respect to reimbursement is 18 months is that outlined in the supplemental budget or is that at the discretion of somebody my understanding is

058that it's still being discussed which is why they're saying to me that they understand the time this was from dhcd on Friday we understand the timeliness Desi's on the call with me yeah the state reps are on the call with me all trying to really be sure they can capture the timely factor of this but do we know who the buck stops with I believe it's the governor's office when I talked to Salem he had been on the phone with the lieutenant governor on this topic exactly okay so this is Kim Driscoll kind of that's my understanding office working out a reimbursement schedule we're advocating for what what do we think is realistic quarterly I was pitching for monthly personally marvelous um and then the the pupil same thing if if they end up at

059the 18 000 annually also having that be a rolling reimbursement and not all at the end so kind of been apart from continuing to sort of sign Collective letters from here is there anything that we can or should be doing I think that's the answer right now it's it's making sure our voice and influence is heard at the decision maker level I will say I'm encouraged by the way in which they're listening and responding right now um Salem felt the same so I think those of us in this are being heard we just need it to be more than a half a dozen towns it really is unclear it's not a lot right now no so I'm actually part of my note was like we're trying to speak for those behind us here because we

060know there's more to come right and this is really going to get sorted out so it's not devastating to the school district's fiscal status and I have to say watching this unroll in the past couple weeks I mean I really have to thank Lori Bob the principals the administrative team the um I mean we did hear from some of the administrative assistants who have been over to the shelter literally enrolling kids and it has appeared to be seamless to the point that dhcd I mean they were very emotional about the the way that Concord has really taken on this and um you know I think we're kind of like the model for how to do it right now so thank you for that um it's been a huge amount of work but I think really

061great for the kids that are here and everyone else so thank you for that and I can't believe it's been two weeks it feels like it's been a long time and like what I said yeah it's been been really but again you're saying I do think it's worth noting um I was struck and moved by how much the professionals that we are working with named namely at dchd more so well and Jesse too but um were emotionally moved by the competence with which your team has swamped like swung in and managed this it was again Tracy and I do participate in some of these calls with a lot of um the people involved and it just was unexpected so it was unexpected to you guys moving to us to see their gratitude um also thank

062you I know you had a full play before this and just you guys have done an amazing videos thank you Mike my question is um on the reimbursement piece if if if we are expecting 100 reimbursement on Transportation are you also expecting some type of reimbursement for like staff you have to hire or does that go into the her person yeah the number that it would be part of that per pupil uh subsidy at the number we heard was 18 000 I don't know if that's holding um State average so the way Jesse said it is Desi has proposed that number to the governor's office um so that would be per pupil okay on an annual basis but hopefully a month at a time and I would have to say that I've heard multiple times

063please keep accurate records yeah so the record keeping that they are also keeping is important because you get eighteen thousand dollars per day so if a channel per day per day so if a child is with us for 23 days then you're going to get twenty three hundred dollars so you really need to keep track of because that's how you're going to get they're going to aggregate that 18 000 annually to however long the child's widows with us we did clarify a couple just technical questions the the out of District the transportation School of origin is ours to split through the entirety of the family stay at the shelter there is no end date to that so when while they're in the shelter environment that is the status they have rights to go to their

064original school and we have obligation to cost share that was helpful to hear and then I think also important was We are never the home District because of our temporary status here so I think that's a relief probably right once they are placed in a in a permanent housing setting they have to go to the community that they move to so that was sort of that's like an interesting segue with my next question which was have you had conversation with some of these families that are hoping that they will finish out in Boston for example the school year and then transition to Concord in the fall or is there nobody has that nobody's there nobody's got that much longevity in their their lifestyle right now I think they're still trying to settle into okay got

065roof over our head food coming in what do we know now what we know is English is the biggest need over there for sure it's a barrier to all sorts of opportunities so I think we might through Adult Community Ed and Community chest subsidy that we got last year try to be even part of that because um we have L teachers on our staff for adult community yet and and subsidies available so that's the biggest need I think but right now in two weeks time it's really just stability yeah and are you like how are you thinking about the out this year if the family stay stable we know there's at least a few five-year-olds that are going to age up into kindergarten um we're curious about this another 10 families potentially uh I would

066probably rather get to know them sooner than later and stabilize them this spring so we're in a little bit more of a known environment for the fall because I don't get the sense the transition transience over there will be minimal at least at this early stage of the shelter status any other questions or comments regarding the homeless shelter Senator Barrett spoke last night to the select board about his attention to the supplemental budget so in addition to the Reps I think we've got a lot he's been on many of the calls I don't mean to reach him out yeah um does the town have any active role at this point now that the chest has moved in Mark has moved in schools have moved in where does that leave the town so they're part of

067the meetings the the weekly meetings that we're having uh I certainly have heard police and fire State a little bit of the support they've given minimum but they've certainly had to attend here and there um a little bit with uh pedestrian traffic over there and how dangerous Route 2 is I think that's their priority right now is to try to help the members of the hotel and the families there know they can't be Crossing routes two over there it's so dangerous that was a big part of the last conversation how many side dropped over there um I think there is a Elm Street the film Street like actually almost to the road around their sidewalk but families are trying to go over to Baker uh like uber and they've got a van imminently coming this

068week to help get people around town and things like that so they're trying to build out options um I think so yeah wouldn't glad it's gone slow it's going really well and that is a testament to the uh I mean really all hands on deck here at the schools but that's been community-wide so it's been really great nice to see yeah yeah great that's all I have okay all right and now we are very excited to welcome Jess Brown and I will um for just for the public we enjoyed a dinner this evening before we came into our meeting um would you like to introduce Jess actually when Bob introduced Justin that's great she's on his team so um pleased to introduce just as our serving as our interim director of food service and nutrition

069and um it's a lot of exciting things going on in our schools um school lunch is not what we might have grown up uh expecting to see today it's very different in our schools it was eye-opening for me when I came here and it's improved since I've joined but Jess is going to talk about some of the things we're doing a lot of things that we're interested in Concord as well not just you know some of it kind of tangential things like sustainability and composting and I don't want to say any more and take away from the presentation so without further Ado and saw you Jess all right well nice seeing you all again this evening we had a little something to eat but um really uh Bob is right there's a lot that has

070changed in the food service department even just in recent years I've been working with the district since January of 2020. I was my predecessor's assistant and as we know January 2020 was just the precursor of breaking out so I probably spent nine weeks you know working on what I would call the previous program that was you know present at the district and you know through covet so oh do I need to step closer yeah close to the microphone yes be one of us I don't understand if the microphone makes sense all right yeah I'll just stand closer to it okay okay um so as the fall of 2020 you know came about we really decided to make a real change because of all the other changes that were happening we knew that you know we

071had to do kind of packaging for food we knew we had to you know offer something that was comprehensive for all students in one you know meal really and through some of those changes um and through some of the adversity of the pandemic we're able to find new and Creative Solutions to offer the community I think something they've been looking for for a lot of years um and here we are with what I think is still in the preliminary stages of what we can be doing with the department and what we can be doing with food service for you know students but um I think you know this is this is a good start and I think we're pretty proud of what's been going on so um yeah I guess that's the start I've actually

072put a little video together we have a staff of roughly 18 across both districts and um so these are just a few clips of things that have been going on this year kind of meet some of the staff and see some kids enjoying food so yeah great Aaron can you go yeah [Music] hi I'm Michelle friskowski and I am the lead cook at Alpha Elementary School I'm Joe Geary and I'm the cook at the Peabody Middle School because we use fresh food for our lunches and it's awesome to blow away the preconceived notions of school lunches the kids feedback coming in and complimenting us on the food is awesome makes it all worth it my favorite part of working here is getting to work with the kids every day and getting to know them and

073cooking for them hi my name is Matt Bissonnet I'm the executive chef here at the Concord parallel Regional High School [Music] hi my name is Grace public over I am the cafeteria manager here at Concord Carlisle Regional High School [Music] my favorite part about working here is watching the kids get excited to see them what I really enjoy about this job is seeing my kids every day and making foods that they love thank you the best part of my job is interacting with the students and getting to see them every day hi my name is TK and I am the head coach at San Juan Middle School [Music] thank you all right well this might you know um so despite you know some of the technology lag there um that was that's a video that

074my staff you know uh and I put together really briefly and as you can see our staff is really committed to the students I mean I think they really enjoy their job I think some of the changes we've made has really made them take pride in their work as well and um they clearly do everything for the kids and it's really it really really shows so that's great and we can just click through some of these screens you met some of these people during the video um but our high school staff our Middle School staff each of our elementary school staffs um and like I said they just all do a super nice job and I'm proud to work with them so one thing I wanted to highlight as far as some of the changes

075that have happened since covet in the past few years is that we've implemented a contactless ordering system so it's more of like an online setting you know like you might order takeout almost called nutrislice all of our menus are represented there and you're able to see images of the food as well as order them up to five days in advance you can order as late as the day of at 8 AM and like I said there's a variety of choices each day I know a lot of districts even like just in our area are offering one or two different items during the day we offer five to six different items each day in addition to a hot lunch so it just like I said this gives a variety of choices for kids so um you

076know it just broadens access you know if you're a gluten-free kid you're able to have choices each day if you're a vegetarian kid you have choices each day so um so some of those changes have been really instrumental in participation rates the next thing next there and go to the next slide yeah um we've also made a lot of strides in the quality and food sourcing we've made a real conscious effort to choosing all of our poultry all of it is raised whole muscle Meats without antibiotics and well hormones all of our turkey and deli meats in the same way I mean we'd like to get to where all of our meat choices are in that realm the beef is not there the pork is not there however um we're getting there chicken is what

077we use the most of and the fact that we've been able to you know really hone in on just that to start I think is is a point of Pride so that's great um we're also using all kind of fresh vegetables or iqf freshly frozen vegetables no longer are we getting cans of like commodity green beans or you know even um you know canned fruit and things like that those aren't things you see on our shelves and our kitchens any longer any of the canned items are usually crushed tomatoes canned beans we're using those those products for sure but we're using them you know in their like rarest form to create actual food and food products so um and also as far as our disposables are concerned we're moving away from Plastics that can't be

078recycled and moving away from any paper products that we can that are like Wax lines so they're not able to be compostable everything that we ate from today earlier was all compostable or all recyclable material including the forks so we can go to the next slide um I'm also proud to say that at the high school we're able to Source food from veryl Farm which is right down the street I think as you all well know I'd like to start bringing in even more of those products that we're getting from them but right now we're getting eggs apples Farm greens mushrooms from time to time as well and um it's great you know it's I think it's something that reflects the values of the community so the fact that we're able to use them at

079the high school is huge next slide we just talked about you know compostable materials getting away from all plastic straws getting away from plastic Cutlery any wax line paper products all molded fiber and compostable products when we are using disposables next slide please we can just move right into participation rates I know we were talking about this briefly earlier you can see the participation rates in um the school year 2019 2020. um you know the numbers are there and they bear out you can see the biggest increase we were able to have at Sanborn where we've got a 23 increase there over three years the participation rates being up across the district I think we obviously can attribute to the universal free lunch program that's also great um but I do think the changes that

080we have been making are coming through to families and kids people are wanting to buy lunch wanting to you know look at the menus make choices and um I think we're able to offer them something they really like yeah next slide please um our composting uh program so we've been composting in the cafeteria kitchens since 2020. we've expanded the composting program to our cafeterias um this year our middle schools are still coming on board with that and being able to compost all of their even broadened lunch materials in the cafeteria but um just even last year we were able to compost 30 tons of of materials so that's good this year obviously we're looking to see that jump considerably seeing as how we did expand that program to the cafeterias not just the cafeteria kitchen

081waste so I think there's an opportunity for us to expand the composting program Beyond just the cafeterias but um like I said this is a good start yep next slide please um student engagement for like our staff is big they obviously enjoy spending a lot of time with the kids getting involved in some of their initiatives and programs some of the things that we do at the high school annually every year we always do the Thanksgiving luncheon we haven't done it in person like we have in previous years I think next year we'll get back to an in-person model but we have been doing curbside pickup where you know our kitchen staff prepares a full Thanksgiving meal packages it individually and works with the Council on Aging to kind of distribute those meals to seniors

082throughout the community we do the same thing with the St Patrick's Day luncheon that we've just did two weekends ago yes yeah two weekends ago and um it's it's great I mean I know the community really enjoys it the seniors always enjoy that meal and that will also be back in person I believe next year According to some of the faculty advisors you might have seen some clips during the video of the cupcake fundraiser the kids did at school they do a variety of those things we try our best to partner with these groups at school whether it's student council student government or any of the clubs to you know do fundraisers that build them up you know by doing you know stuff for their school as well as contributing money to a charity of

083their choice so yeah next slide um some of the stuff we're really looking to do toward the future obviously our sustainability goals are big in the district and we want to continue to partner with the sustainability Community uh committee um Priscilla is great and definitely a friend of the food service department so we're going to continue to work with her to do what we can to help support the buildings throughout not just the cafeteria not just the kitchen we also are looking to in the same vein of sustainability Look To Source more so uh locally sourced food Desi is providing a grant this year that we have finished applying for for both districts I'm hoping that we receive it we're hoping to hear back about that by the end of the school year and that

084will make a considerable dent and what we're able to bring in just locally so we can expand Beyond veril to some of the other products Beyond Just Produce that I think we can we could really use and really use the money for and then some of the things that I'm looking to do just from an administrative standpoint is you know bringing some of the compliance documentation that everyone's written down on papers for years there's binders and binders and cabinets and cabinets full of these things where does the audits are really important to keep moving all of those things digital um not only we not have the space to keep all that paperwork anymore we need to be able to pull it up quicker and faster than just digging through file cabinets when we do have

085our deci compliant audits so um I'm in the process and in the process of teaching and training our staff how to do those things and keep them held digitally so you know we're ready when Destiny comes by awesome yeah I think that's it I guess I want to move through it quickly but I'm happy to take questions now before you do Jess I just the big shout out just found out August 8th maybe that we were gonna ask her to step up to take over the directorship because Bryce McKnight resigned the first week in August so I can't say enough about not only did she step up but Excel and um really take a program to another level so we're really grateful just for all your work and thank you really enjoying it very much

086okay the food was excellent tonight and I have to say I've got two kids at the high school that have said the food is so much better so no and that is this year you know and they've been at the high school I think anyone that has a kid at the high school knows like they really they're buying lunch at school and just loving it so great thank you so great you're welcome really great to hear that's wonderful I can't wait to tell the staff yeah no it's it's a different like it's a difference and that's that's who we look to as we look to the kids so they the kids are loving lunch buying lunch and consumers they love it they appreciate the variety for about this month like the ramen I heard all

087about them all good yeah it's amazing Caesars weren't available at the same time so you get to Branch out and try something new exactly it's back I swear and the Nutri slice I think is also a particularly effective interface um right that's been really helpful I like being able to I do everything on Sunday morning or Sunday night for the week um that's another thing that I was curious is it helpful for parents to do that to so you can plan your week or or is it intended to be fluid and something you can do in the morning like would you ever you know I'm just curious from your perspective on how parents are using it I mean as far as I know I two and a half year olds so I mean I'm doing

088other things on Sunday night but at the same time I think that it does give you the flexibility to be able to sit down Sunday night and say okay what do you want for lunch all week pick it out boom done you don't have to think about it anymore right at the same time you know if it's 6 45 in the morning or 7 45 in the morning you're like man you know what I was making lunch but I didn't get to it I can you can pull it right up you know and so I it gives you the flexibility to be able to do either one and you know I can't stress enough that if you don't make the eight o'clock you know cut off it's okay it's all been there right exactly all

089been there so you know all of our leads get emails I mean every day every other day and you know we we add lunches all the time and my fourth graders are reporting in addition to the lunch so which I you know order there's also like snacks for procurement like it seems like there's like fruit light not lying around but available um for like a grab and go yeah situation you didn't talk about that that's awesome my kids are so into that too so obviously there's a composed lunch that you can get a variety of choices in but if you bring your lunch there's you know always a basket of apples oranges bananas those are my fourth grader is telling the truth when he says I can also change it also take a banana yes

090absolutely yep you never know that's excellent I mean like that has been wonderful too and you didn't even talk about it exactly there are those at all the levels there's all of those things that you can augment to your lunch that are you know in the cost you know of lunch yeah so yeah it's great so we saw uh participation go way up double in three three of the schools right um uh picture after picture of happy kids um and it seems pretty apparent that's because of your professionalism and that of the people around you um you take it very seriously and uh and it it pays so thank you very much oh you're welcome thank you I know you have Bob and Laurie at your back uh yeah I hope you know you have

091a school committee that's very appreciative well thank you I appreciate that the staff a lot of them have been here for a lot of years and then we also have some newcomers I can't say enough about you know their willingness to kind of be with us on this journey and get some of these changes made I think like I said they're taking pride and the fact that we're professionalizing kind of these roles but having them take part and tracking some of their expenses and knowing certain things and you know everyone is served safe certified right on our staff too you know just some of these added elements like I said I think have really made a difference and um you know what our staff is bringing to to the Learners during the course of the

092day I have a couple comments sorry go ahead go ahead I know um one is I love that you're focusing on locally sourced I think that's so awesome I mean we have so many options around here like we I know it's more expensive so and that's the barrier but I just love that you're trying to think creatively and getting grants and whatnot to make that a priority um I also I have two kids at Thoreau one who will be in a couple years and my one of them will is pretty flexible the other one is very picky and they um it has expanded his his palette like he will actually because of the peer pressure because it tastes good try things that if I were to put in front of him he would absolutely refuse

093um which he does on a regular basis um however so I'm grateful for that too like meatball subs basic things but like good good food that he is now like tacos and things that were now um really introducing at home to because he's trying it at school and being like it's okay and I'll take it's okay it's great yeah so I'm really grateful for that and then I had the opportunity to um I signed up one day to help with the composting and it was it's such an amazing just like assembly line that the kids now just know they throw the food in the trash so they're accomplishing and Recycling and I love that kind of mentality that we're training them to do so um I know that's just part of it but I I'm

094grateful for that attention as well um and I think something you said earlier when you were presenting the meals was that I I might be getting this wrong but with something like inclusion isn't just about allergies that there's so many things about what kids can and will and do eat and how thoughtful you are about that I really respected that so um all in all thank you I think food is so critical to learning and um nutrition is hard with children so hard so thank you thanks you're welcome great I just add a couple yes okay so the food you've seen and it speaks for itself I just wanted to highlight in addition to that the student engagement piece you can see the students kind of participating in the composting we also had our first

095Halal meal I don't know if you'd heard about this before or not but this came from a student making a case for a meal and meeting with Jess and we've delivered a Halal chicken tender meal at Willard well at all the schools right I was at Willard you were at Willard but yep all schools so just you know the engaging of students just kind of fantastic I think and then you see some Community engagement some of the things she presented to this The Boiled St Patrick's dinner and so um it's kind of embedded within our school schools awesome and that wasn't easy to pull off because that you had to do all that packaging I mean I would think it's much easier when you have the senior citizens come in the building I I might

096have had a son and his friend on delivery Duty so I felt like I knew about the delivery process too but they were the seniors really enjoyed receiving the mails too because they felt like someone had taken the time to make prepare package and then to the delivery of it and the contact with the kids was actually really great so I know that took a lot of extra effort and even when we shut down in 2020 you were here in 2020 the amount that happened in the kitchens that no one knew about um I think you know thank you for that and I know it was you know three years ago but very real that you know people were really in need of food and what the kitchen staff did with the administrators and getting

097food to people was really exceptional yeah that was a good program that I think got run over the course of that summer and we had a lot of community volunteers and I mean I was news of the district and I got a chance to meet a lot of parents a lot of Faculty from across the schools that you know I've seen in recent years and they were like I remember people were doing food donations I was like oh yeah but um so that was that that was a big deal and I think um like I said it was just part of something that the community really cared about in the food service department was happy to be a part of just very quickly I just want to say I wouldn't call this a school lunch

098it's more of a culinary experience miles in the pictures and we were certainly smiling while we were eating and it's certainly not the lunches we had when we were younger as Bob said why not so I just want to say you guys have done an amazing job uh it's quality food it tastes good and it looks good and I like that you can see the food that you're ordering because that's really something I like to see what I'm ordering so to have that for the kids and also I know you said the student participation went up I'm wondering if the staff also participation went up because it's certainly food I want to have on a daily basis it has it it really is and I know that um you know just being a part of

099this change the past couple of years it was one of the metrics that we would take a look at to see okay so our our participation rates for students is this but you know we've got a hundred more dollars worth of you know um you know faculty and staff participation it's ticked Up Up Up and Up steadily um we have decent participation rates across the board at you know all well I wouldn't say participation rates as far as adults but you can see the increase I'd say in participation for adults and people really enjoy the meals and they look forward to certain things um for sure thank you all right well thank you so much thank you thank you thank you for all your time tonight I know it's been great have a good night

100thank you I wonder if I could put a question to uh relevant I think to this we've had uh state aid we've had uh federal aid we've had school lunch support we've come so far we don't want to slip uh is that going to be a big challenge for us they uh I believe I don't know if it's approved or about was it just approved that the universal meals well not the universe the state program for meals was approved again through next year so we're good through fiscal 24. correct that's coming yeah okay I was worried about protecting yeah I think because you know that approval came with a it might not last forever out of the governor's office I actually think Jess is inspiring people to want to participate and the you know a

101couple years of free May build that you know experience so that they keep coming even as they have to contribute legislator yeah at the high school in particular you know I have a kid that could leave and go to Sorrento's every day and he chooses to stay and eat in the building so three you'll go once but not twice and I also think Nutra slice has changed I've changed everything because like in the younger grades whether it's free or not it puts more control and ease in the hand of the parents so I think that is don't underestimate right the power of what that's done um for like the K to eight yeah yeah but even K to five the teacher's not spending 10 minutes doing lunch count you know yeah and then the office

102chasing it right it makes it easier for the students yeah students can do it themselves right yeah right totally right and I'll just note because we've had new experiences with uh limited English families like we're still making the technology work where you're supporting them or they're getting access to be a translated apps on their phones so it's that's been an interesting test for us is whether we'd have to work around Nutrisystem or not and we're going just fine so great all right um so up next we have Kristen Anderson and the youth risk behavior survey results I think she's on with us I hope you're feeling a little bit better I think you're all happy that I'm very far away with my contagious goals uh let me go ahead and share my screen and tell

103you that I have um there are about 80 slides here so I'm going to present the ones that are um with stars in the lower right hand corner but this whole um slideshow is available online as well as the slideshows from previous years administration of the youth risk behavior survey so I'm going to talk a little bit about the overall findings and then dig into some areas that need our attention the most and just to remind you two things one is that this is a very important survey for us for many reasons and one of those is that it measures risky behaviors so what we're going to be hearing about are some behaviors that are sometimes hard to hear about with our students the level of stress we'll hear about suicide ideation alcohol use and

104so forth so this is hard to hear it's very important to hear um because you get a sense of where our kids are and also many of these measures are useful in the metrics of our strategic plan specifically in the second column the Strategic objective about well-being and the third column about diversity Equity uh inclusion and especially belonging you'll see some um data from that tonight so we have participated in a group of 11 schools um over the past 25 years um working with Emerson Hospital they hire a group called Market Street research to actually write and administer the the test the measurement and I've been working with them for I think 12 years and people in my role and nurse role or head of guidance recently Allison nowicki at the high school the head

105of guidance has also joined me and that group of about 20 people gets together and we actually write the questions um and so we try to keep them as consistent as possible from year to year so that we can um measure across time if we're getting better or getting worse so we try to keep them the same we don't change them as much as possible but every year we do add a few more questions and then we subtract a few more questions so our goal is to keep this about 20 minutes long when kids take it kids take it in our schools during the school day usually during an extended advisory or something like that um so we have a very high participation rate because uh they are taking it during the school time we

106give it in sixth grade eighth grade and then 9 through 12th grades there are different questions um on a smaller set of questions on the sixth grade test we don't ask about some of them the more advanced risky behaviors and then the eighth grade we ask about a few more and then 9th through 12th graders all take the same um assessment so if you see this slide those are the school districts that we compare ourselves so when you see the data that is in aggregate we're not it's not a state aggregate it's an aggregate of those 11 school districts around us we're one of the bigger school districts but certainly not the biggest um taking it so I think actin box bro is is the largest but as you can see the list they're very

107comparable with us so um [Music] okay so summary of overall findings um so these are from the spring of last year 2022 and we had a full year back to school after the pandemic and so we saw an increase in some of our risky behaviors so you can see in these risky behaviors um very concerning I would say you can see right from the get-go the probably the highest level of concern about stress depression self-harm and increase in suicide ideation also and I'll get into some of the other particulars a little bit more in being bullied at sixth grade but it's gone down at eighth grade and then an interesting increase in the students looking at pornography so um some substantial decreases and we have been really happy with these substantial decreases over the years

108as you know we have really focused on vaping and trying to decrease the amount of vaping so we saw a big decrease of that alcohol consumption has gone down binge drinking has gone down social parties at families houses that involve alcohol has gone down so and I'm also happy to report low levels of sleep at the middle school have gone down as has the stress from workload so we're very excited about that okay so um so sixth graders and eighth graders but really sixth graders are most vulnerable to risky behaviors but they also have the most support so that's important to realize that they feel more connected to their parents as you would imagine and as probably you enjoy more of a feeling of connection with your students they're more vulnerable but they're also more

109connected to adult support so you'll see that as we go along so this is probably the biggest takeaway um beyond the stress and suicide ideation that I want you to take away which is um students have higher levels of risky Behavior if they're historically marginalized populations meaning students of color students with special needs but Far and Away the group that experiences the mo that tells us that they experience the most risky behaviors are students who identify as transgender or non-binary they're especially vulnerable on every measure that we give so we look for correlation between different pieces in in the appendices you'll see all the extra data there so they don't feel as if they belong at school at higher rates they can be bullied at higher age sexually harassed at higher rates and then of

110course be depressed harm themselves or consider suicide at higher rates so that's the transgender and non-binary similarly for the ratio on ethnic groups um not quite as high but we're talking about American Indian black or African-American and then South Asian Americans higher rates even though they only make up about one percent of our population so here is uh a couple of slides on resilience trust and belonging so our students uh have a relatively high level of resilience um you can see it's measured out of um uh 4.5 is very very high and we have an average range in the 3.2 or something like that so that's pretty high however there is a gap in the resilience level so those who identify as female or non-heterosexual or who have experienced bullying are more likely to be

111low in resilience males are twice as likely to be high in resilience compared to females and students high in resilience are likely to identify as heterosexual and not have experience bullying so in terms of safety and support we're getting into do they have a trusted adult at home and at school very very many trusted adults in and in the homes um and then outside of the school about 71 of Concord Carlisle students that's the high school students feel they have a teacher or adult at school they can talk to if they're experiencing a problem um if they don't about 11 of that of the population says they don't um and you can see the demographics on the right hand side they are are historically marginalized populations um with the transgender and non-binary students in that

112list as well as some of our students of color uh 21. so this is a a question that literally I wrote a set of questions because it was in our strategic plan for the last five years so we asked about it um and um overall 69 of the students at the high school agree or strongly agree that they belong in school with 23 feeling neutral about it so only 10 percent of the population feel as if they don't belong but as you would guess from all the other data and your own experience uh 25 23 of those uh students who identify as non-binary are in their 32 percent who identify as transgender 20 who identify as non-heterosexual and then you also see our Southeast Asian and native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders there as well so sense

113of belonging is very strong the students who are at the outskirts are historically marginalized all right we're not going to spend too much time on bullying and cyber bullying and sexual harassment because thankfully they have gone down so we are excited about that foreign okay so here's our real section we're going to spend a lot of time on which is the stress depression and suicide ideation so as you will know even if you look at the aggregate conquered and conquered Carlisle are high for stress even when you compare us to our life districts like acton-boxborough Bedford and so forth school and academic workload Remains the largest source of stress among all students but those in eighth grade indicate experiencing less stress due to their academic workload than they did in and those in the high

114school experience more stress additionally students of all grade levels indicate that they have more stress at home than in previous years so coping mechanisms you can kind of see on the right hand students have a variety of coping mechanisms some of them are positive exercise and so forth talking to someone and some of them are maybe negative or neutral television social media gaming and so forth depression increasing and as you would expect the students who are most at risk are our historically marginalized populations self-harm again the same um it is increasing uh 20 20 so one-fifth of every class of students has indicates that they have done self-harm um and the rates of self-harm are increasing among our middle school students compared to 2020 it's more than double what it was for sixth graders in

1152020 so two years ago the aggregate analysis show that students with a non-traditional gender or sexual orientation have especially High rates of self-harm and those who self-harm also show a display of high rates of suicide consideration and sexual harassment suicide consideration is at 12 of the population again that's way way way too high and it has increased um you can see uh down in the lower left 2020 we had two percent of our sixth graders reporting that they had thought about committing suicide and in 2020 it was at 10 percent so suicide planning and attempts 56 percent of the students at the high school who had seriously considered suicide had made a plan and although the numbers are small at sixth grade they are showing a decrease in going a step further those who are

116have suicide ideation by making a plan so these are very serious numbers students who've actually been physically injured in a suicide attempt and students who have heard about another student reporting that they're thinking about hurting themselves all right so that was stress um we're not going to spend that long on drugs alcohol and sex except to say that they uh are moving in the right direction as I said um less fewer drugs vaping has gone down alcohol and binge drinking has gone down um promiscuous sex has gone down body image and dieting has also gone down or stayed the same um and again some correlation there all right so I want to spend a while here on this section about social media and cell phone use because you'll see it correlates with those feelings of

117depression and so forth so um students uh do report on having a hidden social media account which is highest among our ninth graders with nearly three times as many ninth graders having a hidden hidden from their parents social media account than those in sixth grade and eighth graders show a substantial increase in Hidden social media accounts compared to previous years overall parents are less likely to monitor social media for older students so 49 of sixth graders parents monitor going down to 38 and 8th grade and 13 at High School uh about 17 percent of our students at the high school say that their parents don't know about a social media account that they have okay this is cell phone usage and we're about to come up to yeah here it is big shocker when I

118first read this I thought it was weekly data it's actually daily data so Concord college students report spending a median time the middle amount of time oops just under three hours a day on electronic devices on weekdays with ninth graders spending the most time three hours a day while 8th graders show an increase in spending six or more hours on such devices compared to 2020 and this is com 2020 is comparable to 2018 so a big increase in the last two years and our high school students think they spend estimate they spend uh over two hours on social media on weekdays so I love this we're spending too much time on our cell phones but 39 percent of us know that we are so Concord and Concord Carlisle students feel they spend too much time

119on their phones and 32 percent still feel feel they spend too much time on social media and our as you see our 12th graders are particularly aware so this is a big one um again we asked for this question to be in the survey um because we asked about cell phone uses at night and so if students have their cell phones in their bedroom at night so around a third of Concord 8th graders and um and then the high schoolers keep their phone in their bedroom at night and you can see when they don't have their cell phone in their bed in their bedroom um they keep it in their bedroom turned off they keep it somewhere else in the house their parents take their phone at night or something else they put it somewhere

120else and this is them keeping them turned off the times okay how distracting they are they feel like they need to respond immediately when someone puts a message to them on social media this actually has gone down so this is um our slide on pornography I I mentioned that it had gone up 27 percent of our population report that they are spending time looking at pornography so homework is one of our specific strategic initiatives how much time are students spending on homework a day you might think this contributes to stress from the earlier slide and they are saying two hours uh the eighth graders used to report that they were spending three or more hours that has actually gone down um and but the high schoolers are reporting they have more homework 75 percent of

121our high schoolers who report that they have three or more hours of homework also indicate that they have somewhat high or very high levels of stress due to their academic load this is really interesting about sleep so 35 percent of the population of our students are getting six or fewer hours of sleep each night with our historically marginalized students more likely to be in that category of not getting enough sleep so the next few pages are [Music] all the appendices and I just put this slide on there this is for me so you know a little of what we how we use the data and how we respond to the data so we do use the data in our health classes at the high school so every year we turn it over and this is

122actually really good because it corrects the perception that everybody's doing risky behaviors by seeing they're actually actually in pretty low numbers and but it also gives the teachers a reason why they're teaching about some of these things so we have a lot of people that study this data inside the schools and work with it put into place different plans with it and we have Partnerships with outside groups so most importantly probably our administrative team and also our Pre-K at 22 mental health Team this is all of our guidance counselors and school psychologists our Behavior Specialists and some school administrators we also have our School nurses that look carefully at this the town nursers and the town social worker now we are working uh in Partnership between the mental health Team and um bright which is

123an organization that helps schools create an mtss multi-tiered system of support for social emotional mental health and behavioral needs so the goal for what we're doing this is a kind of three to five year plan is to put into place screeners and we're currently piloting the Dasa screener to pick up any students that are at risk for any of these behaviors um and so that we can give them the individualized needed support that um will help them actually not go into the risky behavior um category so we also uh as you know changed companies um for our referral service for families to get outside therapists for students and and actually for themselves and we switched from the William James referral service to carousalis we've had great numbers uh there people have been able to find

124therapists and the mental health Team monitors this at each of our monthly meetings we have a great partnership and we have Through The Years with Emerson Hospital working on this uh Nami which is the National Association for mental illness we are working at the middle school in the high school as you know with challenge success and then we have a partnership with Landmark school also working on this so we have more new curricula that have been working on this so I mentioned the Dasa screener that's a pro-social so how good do kids feel or do their kids teachers feel um kids are doing in the social emotional and mental health areas as you know we have new curricula for elementary schools in fly five and responsive classroom that are working on some of these issues

125similarly we have a new Elementary Health curriculum that deals with all of these issues the great body shop as does are I think it's about six years old The Advisory curriculum at the middle school called home base both I wanted to point out the health curriculum at CMS and cchs because our students take Health more than double what they schools in similar schools around us do so for example at our Middle School kids have health twice in a six day rotation all year long whereas in other school districts they only have it for a quarter for example at CMS and cchs we also give a screener called the signs of suicide so clearly that's looking for students who are thinking about suicide are very depressed and then we have a very new um piece of

126software that we use to educate kids at the high school about mental illness or brain health and this is a cchs Alum who created this software and is working with a health educator at Yale University to do this so we're really excited to be using this it's a great resource for us and then we have ongoing professional development for our staff we I mentioned the mtss system we also have Allison and Wiki and Dan Simone teaching Mental Health First Aid to our Educators we've had great speakers in Dr Lynn Lyons on working with kids with anxiety Dr Sarah Ward on Executive function and Dr Jessica minahan on Behavior so that's just a brain dump of what I could come up with at the moment in terms of responses so with that I will stop the

127share and ask if you have any questions yes to me thank you so much Kristen Domingos is up first go ahead good evening um I noticed that um on some of the slides on the charts the black and brown students percentages are not reflected on all of them is there a reason for that uh it depends on if they are being broken out so after each General aggregate slide there should be um our historically marginalized populations a second slide so maybe it's in dard slides but if you go on the website it's broken out in slides that we didn't necessarily see they were like underneath that slide is that what you're saying yeah yep you can see how every group of student answered every question um the ones that I put up were at the

128ones that Market Street research gave us because they're statistically significant meaning um black and brown students are a historically marginalized population and those behaviors that I was reporting on they are at greater risk for so so would it mean that they like weren't at as greater risk as some of the ones that were called out right yeah so greater risk for depression or less sleep um but not for other risk behaviors alcohol consumption or something like that yeah if you go through you'll see that if they the threshold to be statistically significant then it's there so if you want to spend more time in the 80s besides would or ask us to highlight it for you we certainly can I think you know the depression and the suicide slides I mean those were literally depressing

129to me and like when you think about the sheer numbers of kids it was really hard um I think looking at our 12th graders because it said 12th graders so they would have been in 12th grade in 2022 like those numbers seem to be higher in everything and you know you look at those kids were at home for two years and it really did not do them a service and they really spent a lot of time in their bedrooms on devices on computers social media all of that and that clearly has an effect on our kids they had a huge jump in the not feeling of sense of belonging belonging right in that one yeah So to that point um could you bring upside 18. I don't think we reviewed it or I missed it

130uh like page 18. and I'll have one more sorry about that I didn't want to stop you while you're on a roll there was a lot to get through I know yeah oh I'm not screen sharing am I okay which was a good thing I pitched through all those okay 18. and can you just make it false yeah you got it so this was a little concerning to me that sixth grade number 14 percent and the ninth the 10th grade number um are you did you do it you know because they're going up from before yeah and that would contribute to not feeling you know belonging in school yeah so I don't know whether the principles or the staff particularly at the middle school had any thoughts so I think I'll just grab that one

131and this is something we're going to be talking about as administrative team I shared with you all because I got into it the other day with the Harvard's panel of folks you know nationally renowned folks talking about all of this this is not just a Concord issue our numbers are very distressing no question but it's a national International conversation actually and part of what they reference are some of the tools that have existed for a long time one being Harvard's relationship mapping and IT addresses just this where the staff Justin Cameron did this few back uh pre-covered and making sure that every child is listed and that an adult a staff member can map and say yes I know that child well enough to say they might name me as their trusted adult and the

132goal of that is to make sure that anyone who doesn't have a staff member who can name and identify at that level that that become your priority group of kids to go connect with so I think we're probably due for Harvard just they call it relationship mapping like I just said and I'd love to see us doing that over the next short term here because those numbers are bigger than they've been typically that's a been a strength for us the numbers have shifted Cynthia if you'll permit a follow-on I wonder Kristen what experts speculate in terms of the correlation between uh students at Great risk and students who intentionally don't seek out adult detention therefore requires the adults to do the intervention not students to ask yeah yeah and as you see I'm blanking on

133which slide number it was but the coping mechanism slide you saw that um one of the coping mechanisms of the younger kid was more often reaching out to an adult the sixth graders the eighth graders but actually the 9th through 12th graders are less likely than their younger peers to reach out to an adult I found that concerning as well into that whole mapping out the talking having everybody talks about the kids and make sure that there is there's attention correct and connections you know there's a lot of encouragement out of that really renowned panel which in some ways simplified what has to happen and becomes very hopeful is that those strong relationships can be really really game changing for kids in building that culture of love and kindness and support and start turning some

134of this around so that's the positive I think before we leave this slide I think it's interesting to know um you know in light of like how we examine our budgets and everything from teacher pay to what we're allocating to students I think the fact that we're all concerned about this slide I think demonstrates to not just us but I think should demonstrate to the community at large that I think the teaching profession in general has moved far beyond reading comprehension and long division and yeah if this is now what we're expecting of our teachers I do think that's an important message to convey to the community at large yeah because if we're distressed by this I think it means that we expect this nebulous role that is not defined in the teacher contract to

135be a part of what they do and I think that that's important to say out loud I'm going to say out loud it's not even just the teachers it's that cafeteria staff you just saw it's the custodians and it's everyone every adult in the building is part of the solution here and often the child who needs it most will gravitate yes to their teachers for sure but maybe to some other adult that they have daily interactions with and I think they yeah we've heard that recently from the administrative assistant so it's it's the incredible value every adult brings to a school environment yeah and you know two other points about that one is that Lori said this is not only a conquered and conquered Carolina problem if you look on the Center for Disease Control

136website they are calling it a mental health crisis for adolescents and that's what is reflected in our numbers suicide ideation is up everywhere there's not enough support for students everywhere and um the second point is just you know we do surveys uh of the students um particularly at the high school about who who is it that you feel close to and um the maybe surprising wonderful thing is it's generally their extracurricular like a sports coach or a um you know math team leader or something like that so it's it's really those extracurricular where you're going to probably do it for um your whole time at Cc or or much of it and so that's a really ongoing relationship and so many of our students are involved in those extracurricular um so that's where a lot

137of those good relationships are coming from risk behavior survey because this is anonymous but we do in our health class surveys thank you for saying you had two because I didn't take it down yeah so again with the sixth grade the The Bullying number is uh it's high I mean was it surprising to you all no no I mean we saw uh increase in all kinds of sort of aggressive peer-to-peer um Behavior as did every school across the country after kids came home you know came back to school from being at home for several years they they literally didn't know how to behave at school on the playground and um we were essentially teaching kids the behaviors that they needed to know sort of two years ago so you know sixth graders were sort of

138acting more like fourth graders and so forth um so I this one I I really expect to to rebound pretty quickly so we could say anecdotally I would say we're feeling some rebound the incidents coming off of playgrounds and some of the less structured settings are better it's not back to pre-pandemic levels but last year was incredibly acute I don't know I have a question about a slide that's close to this one yeah yes one about sexual harassment that looked like it was do you know the number the number of the slide it was at just after Bowl [Music] s uh side therapy seven okay exactly so that one looks like it's almost you know two-fold increase um or at least a 50 increase um in I guess in sixth grades three times for sexual

139harassment now do you think I mean do you think that there is more incidence of sexual harassment is there more awareness of sexual harassment so people can give a name to it and what do you think accounts for those right I mean like two times in the high school and three times in sixth grade is it's a lot I think it's both we're definitely seeing more it's the Cyber stuff okay mostly in person it's primarily the phones and the Cyber the social media we are definitely seeing an uptick in reporting and we get access to actually what's kids are posting and there definitely is an increase um I think kids are reporting more too so the combination seems to be the the good news is they're reporting more the bad news is I think there's

140more posting going on and we're um actually talking really actively right now about bringing in some parent programming being more direct with kids earlier in the health curriculum like you cannot do and you cannot say these things even in this anonymity of social media it's been Anonymous yeah and then a question could the social media use the you know almost three hours a day yeah and this is a complicated I'm just again I'm just mulling things over in my head and I'm trying to reconcile right like we have I mean do you we're we're DM we're trying to lighten homework loads and we're trying to push more homework time into the school day to give kids the space to get better have better sleep hygiene Better Health hygiene better all of that kind of stuff

141right I mean is there also a concern that this extra time is going to get consumed with more social media use I'm not saying I'm not advocating for oh load on the homework so that they don't right like so they stay off but I I did but I wonder about that and I do I wonder I couldn't tell from your slides and maybe on the the bigger thing it tells you what the historical like is the amount of social because I see that there's the six pers the people who do six hours or more I think was down but and I don't think that that's what we're talking about I think we're talking about oh there it is like um you couldn't tell where things were where screen time was you know pre-pandemic um from

142these slides yeah we really um our group teased this out much more we had many more questions on electronic devices and social media even certainly last year but even three or four years ago because it's become such an issue and I I want to distinguish between just having um an electronic device in your bedroom say as opposed to being on social media because those are two kind of different problems um the issue with social media is a comparison problem so I'm on social media everyone is posting what great things they're doing you know everything has faces you know with filters on them and everyone looks fantastic so it's really you know comparing my life to what I'm perceiving of other people's lives that's where the depression comes in it's it's not only that they're spending

143a lot of time on screens it's what they're doing when they're on screens so being on social media is more damaging than say like gaming yeah or having the TV on in the background right yeah yeah exactly yeah so if I wanted to say one thing to parents I would say get the devices out of bedroom when the kids are sleeping and what do you what do you make of this that you have ten percent uh fewer you know kids spending more than three hours on homework a night in the high school right it's not I mean I I guess this is sort of the million dollar question that everybody's grappling with right like is is that Timeless spent on like what some of these numbers be even worse right are we offsetting are we

144offsetting the the risky behaviors and all of that stuff like like are we I have a follow-up question are we improving the mental health and again not advocating right for like onerous hours but but ever there's always been this talk of kids need to have more more time at night and you know homework needs to be meaningful and all that which is all right um but at the same time we have increases in a bunch of these behaviors and right well like that's something that I'm interested in which I think is sort of the same thing like when you look at these what we're talking about as risky behaviors right you can almost classify them into two types of risky behaviors sort of social ones I'm drinking I'm making out with a guy or a

145girl I'm sick smoking cigarettes with my friends and then the sort of lonely risk behaviors which are you know suicide stress depression and what I see is and Kristen I don't know if this is I know nobody likes causal studies anymore or whatever but I am so curious in the inverse as we see you know you you mentioned Christian oh we're really proud of the fact that no one's you know drinking and smoking and you know kissing they're decreased yeah those risk behaviors are going down as we see this inverse curve go up and I have to wonder like you know of course if we're going to make gains in one of course you know if you're not doing social things anymore all of these that means to Sarah's Point are you alone in your

146room on social media which then skyrockets all these other things whereas if you're out smoking and drinking and doing whatever are you less likely to sit around and say I'm depressed I'm stressed I'm lonely I'm and I don't know but it does seem like there's an inverse like a very clear inverse relationship but I just don't know if anyone studied it and you under approve it in the in the youth risk uh Behavior do they ever do they uh track like to what extent kids are involved in sports or extracurricular activities that's where so many of the kids are finding their passions or finding their trusted adults are finding all of that stuff right and we are liberating more afternoon time or you know time like to what extent can we bolster that and and

147maybe that's also where you're loot like you know if you can sort of track who is not engaged in something right would probably be kids that are more apt to engage in these isolated risky behaviors right so to what extent can you guys sort of see like what you know who in this Angel is is involved in a club in clubs or sports or you know any of this uh who you know the kids who are really exploring Passions in a healthy way yeah we absolutely can see that yep and it's usually uh somewhere around uh it depends what you include but it's usually in the 70s if you include you know 70 somewhere in that like 75 if you include all sports theater music that's you know those are big draws as well and

148can give you a sense of uh belonging to a group and less of I think as Alexa said a sense of isolation so it's really the kids who aren't involved that um are at most risk so I think you're both absolutely right um I was looking at the the stress um this the Strat this lied about stress and um it seems like they're aggregating I am feeling some stress or what was the other one or very high stress yeah is there ever a disaggregation of those because I feel like some stress is actually quite healthy um I think having some stress about anything whether it's am I going to make the sports team or get the role in the play or or or get an A can can be a motivating factor in a very

149healthy way um and I just wondered if if there was any disaggregation of that to determine what like are there is there some healthy amount of stress rather than just this big block of stress bad yeah um every question on the yrbs is disaggregated so you can see the answers for each one um what you can't see always is the and I think um this was brought up earlier you can't see the disaggregation Always by subgroup because often we're talking about a handful of kids um so we you know it wouldn't report because um it's uh it's it would be giving away their identities [Music] and school committee is going to host along with you yeah my maybe the the parent education piece because I do think like I look at it's CHS in particular

150the cell phones and all that and it's actually been wonderful like really uncomfortable for the kids at first that oh my gosh I gotta put my phone in the caddy and I gotta do this and that and it's great that the school is doing that but then these kids all come home and the wheels just come right off the bus right I mean like the the phones are are next to them while they're doing their homework and it's like oh I've spent 10 hours doing homework I'm like well have you spent 10 hours doing homework or are you tick-tocking in the middle and you get the gaming on and you get the TV on and you know whatever else is happening and I do think that there has to be some responsibility on the parent

151side too as to like this is what we're doing in school this is what we see is really helping our kids focus more here are some ideas as to ways to do it at home and then I you know and I think about I've had teenagers in my house for over 10 years and I'm still going strong and getting a little grayer but it's changed so much like there were filters on phones like oh your alarm will go off if you're on your phone past nine o'clock and your Wi-Fi gets shut off I mean like my oldest kind of lived through that and that's gone away and now it's just literally a free-for-all so I do think that there has to be that parent side of it at home because we can't expect the school

152to be everything to every kid that's in the building like there has to be a partnership between parents and the schools and I will suggest the parents know that and are struggling too yeah oh it's just the struggle is real I mean it is real so is there I think this may be a stupid question it always references Concord Carlisle middle schooler 6th and 8th grade and I'm just I assume it is just the Concord kids but I'm just making sure is that Concord and farewell combined or is it just no that's just conquered so Carlisle receives their own results yeah the transgender non-binary yeah that's been in the survey um we have I want to say my earliest memory of having that as a question it it used to be like male female um

153and then we added I think there's like five categories now um and um I think we definitely had it in 2016. I'm trying to think back further and I can't remember but yeah at least five years I would say what grade are those five uh introduced they're right from sixth grade okay thank you Kristen is there is there any cada 20 22 like task force or group but I was wondering if there's a if there's any or it seemed like that on your list of resources or what we're doing from this data I'm wondering if there is any um talk about making that a broader initiative like something where there's to Tracy's point of like parent involvement where there is kind of this like forced engagement about not just what's happening in schools but also

154at home um yeah I just wonder if there would be a value in that well I I would ask Court to speak to this as well but I remember when I was coming on um in 2012 uh the first reports of um the stress level were coming out from the use of behavior survey that was like The Big Year of the big jump um and it was kind of um headlines in the in the local newspapers and so forth at the same time we also had had three students who died by suicide in the community so there was a a sort of task force with a lot of interested community members and groups that formed and they put into place a lot of the structures that we have today so we're really thankful about that

155I think you know probably the biggest um well my impression the biggest is that we uh you know do the subscription so that um to Carousel so that anyone who needs therapy can find it easily and they've been great with like a 24-hour turnaround so that was that was a big um I would say of that but um I think right now there's also a group starting I'm forgetting the name Laura you'll remind me but a similar kind of group starting with uh the town as well but court you were there you were part of that I know it originated right here at Ripley with a health coordinator who then became a principal um when the first yrbs came out it was sort of shocking and we frankly nobody knew what to do with it

156because we didn't want the schools to roll it out alone as if the schools alone owned the data and the the follow-up responsibility um a community group got started that actually Incorporated itself as a non-profit the alliance for teen safety uh and had every youth serving youth facing agency in town working under this one shared umbrella so that they could share resources and not compete for them um and it did its work over the course of a decade or so and then it evolved and uh effectively hung up its hat after a while we still had the corporate structure sitting in the mothball that was done by a previous Town manager and I so that if we wanted to resurrect it in a time of Crisis we could just turn a switch and do it

157um but Laurie and others are still in contact with all those players all the time so de facto is still happening and there's a formal effort right now going on this is what Kristen's talking about with the Concord Health director she's working with the nurses we share with other communities now and they're calling it The Concord Behavioral Health collaborative and we're at the table and what I'm taken by is the level of concern about adult mental health needs is just as high as kids so that even drives a more urgent need for a community effort they're doing Mental Health First Aid training that'll they're just pushing out that information for May so community members can get engaged there there so I think you're going to see more and more Collective efforts I think our personal

158goal is just normalizing the conversation we're watching the PA and others start to bring bring presenters in certainly Thursday night the high school has got some presenters on this topic and just you know any time and every time we can talk about this we need to keep talking about it so it's yes the formal structure is all that amazing list Kristen puts together which I'm overwhelmed by when I see it all in one place that we aren't doing all of that and then just really drawing the conversation to a level of it's okay to talk about all this yeah I mean I think that is such a key piece of it is like I think because an incredible list that you put up and thank you yeah but how are we how do we communicate

159that how do families know about it how to teachers know you know like how do we make sure that it is not just something that you're not reaching the point of you know suicide idolization before you even find out that there's these resources that are available yeah yeah Carrie it's a great point I mean I think probably the most important thing we're doing right now is putting into place that mtss work because there absolutely are little tiny pink flags before you get to a crisis point in a big red flag um and the way that the screeners work is that they're actually pro-social behaviors we're asking I know how I feel I know how to make a friend I feel I know how to reach out for help you know that kind of um positively

160phrased and so but you're looking for those kids who are self-reporting that they actually don't have those skills and that they're you know and those are those are skills they're fixable they're teachable and we have some great professionals that can do that and that can make the difference you know catch this issue when it's a tiny stream instead of a Roaring River and that was one of the big shall I say philosophical debates uh when yrbs rolled out was how much of the focus would be on quote deficits and how much could we move to the pro-social uh an asset sort of model uh knowing that this looks like deficits but we can turn responses to an asset-based uh approach as well um I wonder if I could make just a couple of comments um

161one comment couple of questions the comment is I I hope that uh we don't over rely on electronic self-reporting um because I worry about the misses um that could happen there and I think our educators are sensitive to that um I on a uh item that's not necessarily student related but certainly why are BS related is this Emerson State Grant funded still or do we all contribute as districts how's it work now I know we give a lot of in-kind support because this is our business um yeah we we pay just a thousand dollars every Administration which far uh is far less than the actual cost what it would normally cost so this is really supported by Emerson and they have been doing it for years and and finally if we are uh offering 100

162more Health instruction than some of our peer communities um how do we keep that up and how do we leverage that so that we start to differentiate ourselves from those peer communities and that's sort of a rhetorical question I don't think we need to all those curricula are under review right now for exactly that reason if the time and structure is there are we getting the most from that yeah the instructional opportunity with kids because we should we should we want to look different yeah yeah and I mean we can see the direct results generally with health education you want to give kids the skills or the knowledge about two to three years before they actually are going to be in a situation where they need it um so you know for example you know

163puberty or sex education you you want to do that when they're in fourth grade fifth grade um something like that um before they can become or feel surrounded by decision making points um so we've had a lot of good outcomes with teaching anti-smoking you know our rates dropped much faster than the the country's rates because of our anti-smoking health program within the public schools similar vaping it was a really big problem I would say six years ago something like that if you can remember we had sensors everywhere and so forth and um and now it is much much less so so I think it shows one of the strengths of giving a measurement like this is now we can see where to focus some of our time in health education we need to spend more

164time on positive brain health or mental health how you take care of yourself what are warning signs in your friends and so forth so that kids can have the knowledge before they actually need it correct I have a question about the timing of the when what at what point in the year and I'm asking this mostly because of I'm thinking of seniors or Juniors and seeing you know in particular um at what like when in the in relation to the college process and all of that is serving given yeah it's hilarious to watch that difference even you know if you give it in January or you give it in March the difference in the seniors is hilarious um and uh conversely the Juniors you know if the senior stress goes down the junior stress is

165going up and so forth um so we generally give it um in March um and that's just an agreement with all the schools around us we try to avoid because we're giving it in sixth grade eighth grade and then 9th through 12th we try to avoid those MCAS Windows um in early late March and and um all through you know April and May so that takes out basically the spring you can't give it in there um and so uh the high school as you all know have midterm exams at the end of January and then they're starting new classes in February so we basically have to give it some time between um after February break and then but before MCAS is in the end of Feb in the end of March so we kind of

166have a window and that's everybody all the school districts window foreign just one comment on The Trusted adult data I'm wondering how we can use that to enhance how we're asking students to report incidents around racism and bias if we're asking them to trust the process when really I think it's you need more work around trusting the adults to enhance that process so I wonder if we're using this data to enhance that yeah yeah that's a great Point thank you very much yeah everyone involved in uh in that process and setting it up is aware very aware of it stayed in holding it in yeah yeah it's a great Point none of the work we're doing happens in isolation right the deib work informs is reflected in all of this data the academic success piece

167is directly related to all of this if kids aren't available to learn we're going to have a harder time showing you know rigor and Excellence so it's all connected it's a great point so we have to make a deal next time I come to speak can I come talk about something more uplifting than um you know risky Behavior but it is important I mean this is I think this is important for us to all really keep our eyes on and I'm glad we're doing it and having you know we had a lengthy discussion about it which just really puts us in the Forefront of what we are dealing with and it is in fact a mental health crisis and that's not being dramatic by saying that at all I mean I think that we just

168have to look at our kids and know who's in front of us in our classrooms yeah and our teachers too I mean because they were with those kids every day so and the Very fact that we uh introduced the survey it informs kids about one of the things that's important to us for sure well thanks Kristen sure thank you so much we'll be seeing lots of you in the spring and all of your presentations I'm sorry that you missed the food tonight and they feel better that's the Highlight but yeah definitely feel better and thank you you can feel free to drop off should you need to thank you thanks Christian thank you all right thank you all right onto Dr Hunter superintendent's goals and updates thank you I for the sake of time there's

169a lot here and I'm going to trust you'll find time to make your way through we've had it you've had it so I'll just highlight a few things and then if you have questions I can answer them um mostly I was going to highlight things that we don't spend as much time talking about because there's a lot here that we do um I think just in terms of special education it's been a really important year this year and certainly Debbie will come back before the year is out um you know we're really honing in on finishing the Continuum of programming looking at the efficacy of our other more typical Services I pulled some data just to reference here we're seeing you know we're all watching this especially the Early Childhood data on early reading acquisition

170that's where our biggest lag is coming out of the pandemic but really encouraging to see in the January data we're seeing 50 to 70 percent student growth percentiles which 50 is a really solid number that they're closing gaps so if all all of our kids and this was all of our kids there actually aren't outliers there starting to really pick up pace that that's closing I think when Kristen brings you the June data you'll start to see especially with the little little guys that were making some nice progress so and that's obviously super important um especially that I'll just highlight you know the leadership piece was a really important decision making collaborative effort this year to you know set the stage for the future years and sped and between hiring Angel as permanent director and

171Val as assistant I think we're setting up for success and I'm glad to have those pieces in place um in terms of looking just to highlight on student well-being you've heard an awful lot here tonight obviously and Kristen did such a great job of outlining it this is what this administrative team is spending a huge amount of time on in terms of then supporting teachers who are the front lines as you've mentioned so I think it's that piece one thing I want to highlight in terms of professional development that we've I think are feeling really excited about we finally you know using the faculty meetings for training that all all teachers are accessing deib special education mtss which we're expanding as Kristen said to social emotional um the collective common conversation district-wide has certainly become

172more of an aggregate playing field and it's not just the voluntary pieces so for us the structural component of that this year across that training component was really really important and impactful say the least so um in terms of Switching gears a little to communication I think we've made some great strides and looking at lots of multiple ways to communicate highlighting emails social media copies you know we've named a lot of that but I think just being incredibly accessible I actually take the lack of people that copies as a sign they do feel like they know what's going on um so sometimes it's a lack of feedback that gives you the most feedback um in terms of looking at student engagement and diverse needs under that goal we did put together evaluation goals that many

173teachers have used they were suggested goals district-wide all about student engagement and some of that to both increase uh the more engaged a child is in their learning there's then not only higher academic performance but likely more satisfaction and joy out of the learning so really trying to look at our instructional strategies and I think you're going to see pieces of this as the spring goes on when the math department comes in and shows you the inquiry-based uh highly engaged active learning that they've been using like in math it's really hard to do that and they've adopted this instructional pedagogy that is changing the entire District's approach to math instruction so that's one example um we worked really hard to revamp Rivers as the pandemic had had a pretty significant impact on that program that

174we're also proud of so we're in great shape that with a day I pulled the data that we had just about 40 kids in both semesters next year um so really kudos to the teachers who are going to take it on in the fall they took on a marketing campaign with the kids as the course enrollments were happening and really did an incredible amount of work um and you know face-to-face time social media like all of it to really promote the program and it mattered so we're really excited to see that come back with its full Glory uh I think then just the other things I would highlight Dei work that you know just in terms of my personal role in that really trying to be somewhat of a lighthouse on the messaging you know

175I think you heard Kelis and Carrick when they were here you can't say it too many times and seeing my role in that as being really really critical um I think I continue my work with Mas we're excited the summer Institute we've been selected to present two sessions of Workshop one on the literacy the literature selection process for diverse texts that Kristen's brought to you and then Andrew and I will be presenting on the Dei strategic planning process so we're definitely feeling still really engaged in the state level discussion which actually is an incredible Support Network at the same time and then a lot about the well in strategic planning so I'll leave those for now just see if you have any questions there's a lot of links so dive in purposely those things linked

176so you could go another layer deep as you sort of made your way through appreciate all the information yeah you know it felt good to put it all in one place and see that the work really does um aggregate into the portfolio and we're going to bring you the metrics to show what it looks and feels like but sort of related but 10 gentle and not for you for everyone else um I as we use you know Lori's reporting on her goals for example for um the basis for which we'll start to engage in her evaluation every everything is in the drive has everyone accessed it appropriately and gotten started and found it easy to use going once thank you for the reminder yet um just again it's all in there I don't know that

177it's like particularly friendly so if you have complaints with the like the document itself that I think in the I advise everyone should make their own copy you know that they can keep in their own Drive um of the but you are allowed to like make a copy of the rubric and evaluation form um I haven't found a particularly technology friendly way to do it personally if anyone has one I don't think that's deliberation feel free to share it we're 10 days out and it goes to you and Sarah and Sarah okay 10 days yeah what is can you just remind us of the deadline the deadline is five to ten days from Seven Friday April 7th yes I'll say and then that will give us an eye and we'll have to get together and

178figure it out but yeah no stress that's true and then you'll give us a date because it will go on the agenda for I believe the I think we have it on that too we have it on that table that I shared earlier it's it's slotted okay great all right thanks for the reminder we all need that um and I will turn over to Bob conrick for his update on Ian day so uh just to uh let you know where we are we've had our end our excess and deficiency approved by the Department of Labor Service division of local Services of the Mass Department of Revenue um the figure it came in at was one million 651 280 which is 4.5 percent of our operating and capital budget per ccrsd um You Might Recall we

179had estimated about 4.6 back in the fall um the allowable cap is five percent so we're 175 000 approximately 176 000 below that um we do have some small offsets in there that are temporary um that will go away when we certify again next year um just because of timing issues um these this e and D amount also factors in that we've allocated three hundred thousand dollars in the FY 23 budget so when you certify an FY 22 if you've already committed funds to end it counts that you know against your end number so that's factored in um it does not factor in anything we're planning to do for FY 24. separate that'll be for the FY for the June 30th 2023 uh certification process so that's where we are it's not much different than

180we anticipated um and just wanted to share that with you were they a couple of months late this year uh once they get into tax um rate season the municipalities take precedent over us um it was a little bit earlier than last year um a little bit later than we'd like but we'll keep working on it I think some of the things um timelines um have gotten a little bit better this year and we'll look to continue to improve that with our submissions thank you okay great and you don't need anything from us at this point no this is this is determined by DLS we um we can't refuse it no we're just here to listen yeah all right thank you very much all right we have two votes on our agenda tonight we have

181a vote to accept the cchs benches for the class of 1978 and I believe that you have a motion within the links of our agenda anyone would like to make that load do you have anything to add Dr Hunter I should say no I think the class of 78 reached out to us very excited um and really meaningful to them to leave a legacy here and we're grateful for their contribution and we have a rendering of that yes we worked hard iron but other people worked hard to pick the perfect bench class of 1970. and this is it so thank you the next picture will have smiling students yes exactly perfect so would anyone like to make the motion sure I moved at the Concord Carlisle school committee votes to accept a donation of two

182benches from the cchs class of 1978 to be placed in a location to be determined second anyone second okay all right thank you for the class of 78 any questions thank you the students beloved uh all in favor all right and our second vote is on I am going to ask you Dr Hunter to talk just for a second on this one um the donation yeah so as the homeless shelter opened and we started to work with the families directly it became clear that having a little incidental money available to us is very small needs came up the mock is very well supplied over there and as you know the community just did this enormous drive so we're talking very small needs but little incidentals that having some um petty cash essentially would be useful

183and I can't say enough I didn't ask for an amount I thought they were gonna offer me like a hundred dollars they offered me a thousand so Community chest has donated this check so that we can draw from that which should last us a good long time and we're just really grateful for the immediate response chess and emotion on that I moved its concrete Carlisle school committee uh vote to accept a donation in the amount of one thousand dollars from concrete Carlisle Community chess to support the families at the Best Western I just have a question this is only for the region or is this cat like where it's both yeah yeah you should probably vote it both now and so I'll uh I'll withdraw that motion and move that the Concord Public School the

184Concord public school committee and the Concord Carlisle school committee vote to accept a donation the amount of one thousand dollars from the Concord Carlisle Community chest to support the families at the Best Western thank you thank you through the second okay any further discussion with our very sincere thanks to have a little bit of unrestricted money for unknown needs is pretty fortunate yeah we're all very fortunate thank you great all in favor hi hi and with that I would like to adjourn the Concord Carlisle school committee and might I suggest just a five minute break yes okay so if you can mute us for five minutes we'll be back I guess we're still in the session so um all right so that we'd start off with the easy stuff um I think Dr Hunter just

185wanted to share some updates about what's been happening um on the middle school project nothing particularly exciting but nonetheless you know really the only activity to report the bids are out so um we did host I don't know how many vendors were there contractors and subcontractors last week at Sanborn um yes they come to Sanborn even though we're demolishing uh they have a chance to have questions answered they were able to see a couple spots in the building that may have some things we'll Salvage but um it was a good turnout so I think there's a lot of interest in the project and we look forward to the bids coming back in a few weeks April 28th you're due in the 21st I'm not sure exactly the turnaround time when they'll be available to everyone

186but we know timing of town meeting is an important yeah piece of that too okay um that's a question about the timing for town meeting so have we predicted how we're going to move or not move that article how does that all work um I think it will depend on the bids right but those are coming until the Friday before town meeting no they come in nine days before time meeting when are they become public so uh there's some details to work out here I think the uh bids are in the 21st what I'm not clear the Middle School building committees do to see them on the 27th which might be the day before assuming you post the packet and such so I'm unclear if there's some reconciliation and work like that to be done

187early on the 24th and 25th if they'd actually be available then or not um so you could meet before town meeting and make that decision like on Sunday afternoon yeah that's what I was thinking yeah because we'd have to meet anyway we have to do that yeah we've done that in the past I think before this is a little more meaty topic but sure you know um it's a little confusing um so I just want to be sure are we we're going to have a handout or something a town meeting I think you make a good point if we can get a few days uh puts put a placeholder in now um or we might be doing better decision making because because as you say we don't know what's going to happen I know it's

188the worst so to give us uh 20 minutes before a town meeting may may compromise our capacity to adjust it and move I would not recommend meeting before the building committee meets because that would probably inform us the Thursday that's Thursday they could do it Thursday afternoon or Friday morning right that's what I think would be yeah I think that's wise um why don't I do a little informal polling of the five of us to see what time might work and we'll pop it out can I just ask a question but as of right right this second when everything is out we're moving the article when the bids come in we're either we're going to withdraw it if the bids are under a certain amount so do we need any discussion about that I mean

189we would just withdraw it right like no I'm thinking if we're going to move it so I think we need to really I don't think we've because we don't know right isn't something that we've really tried to socialize with the town voters but what's really going on with us because I do think there's some confusion about it yeah sure there very well could be yeah I mean I think um But but so that that to me is like a different concern that's not going to be like something we'd recognize we have a public meeting on campus it will not be sure that's a good thing yeah great yeah perfect Tracy I think you're right Cynthia I think you're right we need time to anticipate and manage questions about who knows CPC or all the things

190that uh people are going to bring up conceivably I just think it'd be yeah great more open great noted um and here's hoping good news of who we had yes my interest yeah because the word on the street is uh the contractors are trying to fill up their 2024 schedule hopefully yeah hopefully good well all right are the I looked at the website that we maintained for the building project do we have uh I believe we do all the hill documents that they have distributed yes okay um one that we have have really uh not discussed at all uh is the security implications uh at the building uh even though we know we have Consultants on the job how that's been called out in terms of requirements yeah admissions is something that I think is

191going to have to be uh publicly known at some point it came up today we had actually we can share yeah we had a community question come in through the police chief man okay so that led me to reach out to smma and they're going to put a bit of documentation together that was not the reason I mentioned it yeah and and unfortunately the inquiry from the Community member was because of the tragedy yesterday so I think you're right we need to have a little bit at our fingertips to to share well good on CMS okay yeah very excited um Okay so items B and C on our discussion I'm going to sort of propose we sort of do under a larger umbrella and um I thought I'd start just for the record to talk

192about what's been happening in the last couple of weeks um since we've met the finance committee had their meeting to discuss article 17 which is our CPS budget it was I think almost everyone in this room was in attendance so I won't go into too much detail but um it was an extremely long exhaustive meeting it went late into the evening and I won't editorialize beyond that they took two votes in that evening one was a vote to recommend affirmative action in favor of our recommended budget at a 4.7 increase that vote uh split even seven to seven as we all know that when you cannot achieve a majority the vote fails um then a second vote was proposed to vote [Music] um to recommend affirmative action on the finance committee's proposed guideline which was

1933.3 percent that vote um Advanced eight to six so um that leaves us um going into town meeting as of this evening not in alignment um with the finance committee which is um you know certainly there's precedent for it um it's you know not the apocalypse um it's certainly not the outcome we hoped for um but it is where we are so um in addition to that there has been what I will editorialize as a lot of talk about um a more dire financial situation for the town that has been talked about a lot in the finance committee meetings so you know where I think what we need to talk about is our position sort of on our on our two articles the Article 19 and then I forget the number of our capital budget

194but our capital budget and if if there is anything that we can do in light of um sort of the larger climate and I think I would entertain from all of you guys some discussion on that and I'd first like to talk about it from the CPS budget and then I did want Lori and Bob to have an opportunity to talk about the capital plan after we sort of get through the budget but I think they may end up somewhat related or I don't want to exclude discussion from one in the discussion of the other if that makes sense but I do want to focus primarily first on our operating budget Article 19 and sort of try to get people's thoughts on it we are where we are um if if I knew a way

195to uh bring in recommendations if I knew enough about the budget to bring in recommendations to help bring us closer to the fincom sustainable growth guideline I would certainly do so um I don't think the school committee uh is involved in in developing the zero-based budget I didn't watch it get made uh and don't know enough about it um I I do know that uh there are contingency monies um but I don't know the extent of them I know there's a listed forty thousand um and I know there's other contingency monies elsewhere that aren't called out as such um uh but I think the community has heard a pretty clear message and that is that uh uh touching the original recommendation is going to endanger kids so I would Echo what Cynthia said we are

196where we are anyone else no I think we I do think we are where we are I voted in support of the budget at 4.7 and I still maintain that square that's where I'm at um I have much else to add beyond that I am not in favor of going to the reductions list and cutting things out of our budget I think that we've been given a level service budget we're just looking for level service and we have to recognize that were there ftes that were added in yes but they were added in because we needed those to serve as students so I think that you know to touch any of that it is going to touch kids and so I'm not I'm still fully in support of the 4.7 budget can you bring up

197ftes so I'll give you a pointed question uh this year uh absent line items to enable it we added close to seven positions could we do the same next year that's not so much a financial oh do we have the capacity to do it next year yeah no I mean we had the capacity this year and it wasn't in the budget right right we we have extra two funds we had sped arpa funds we had release valves to to to cover some of those things uh hiring last summer was focused on closing gaps there too right so the only thing that's left as a relief valve is the 40 000 contingency um Esther 3 is some element of small amount of budget relieving for the summer school we have a little bit there um but

198it's not much um I want to say 20 000. um and then to the extent that we have retirements um it would be a contingency except for the fact that we have an under District placement that's occurred since we budgeted that we already know we need to absorb so um you know does it I I don't have the exact dollars of what that is but you know I'm assuming that it would at least substantially offset the out-of-district placement so I think the danger is when we look at getting to guideline um if we look at it one way in terms of what can we do to to find places to save we also have to look at the flip side which is what are our risks and and one of them is a budget and

199out of District placement um one definite and one potential and then the second risk is that we don't end up with the state solving the homeless shelter costs um we hope that we get a reimbursement in the same year um because then it's just a wash um right right so I feel like you know there there were some safety nets this year it's still a challenging year this year um but those safety nets aren't really there for next year and I think the one position that was added um was really kind of missing infrastructure position at the high school it's not added at CPS the dean of students position is the only thing that we have and we've talked about finding a way you know we have that on our agenda to find a way

200to offset it um so I do feel like part of what happened here too is we've we've gotten to a place where we have a full ER I'd say Laura could say better than I do but I feel like we have a fuller build out of our special ed programs in-house and now we're not we don't have any missing programs and types of programs that are left are so specialized that it wouldn't make sense to build a program for one or one student we plugged the holes in the sequencing yeah um so and that takes time yeah I mean I'd like to talk a little more on this year's budget having been part of last spring and how we got to guideline you know we had we I'm going to say Jared and I had

201very very lengthy conversations when we got to guide when we came to you and said we could get to guideline that we knew the reserves were there if we were going to need them we knew we had some hiring to do this in the Summer where we could try to come in lower late retirements that we could try to trade and coming lower um and I think what happened as we in the transition you know he left me the list of where the money could be a lot of it one time because it's Esser it's circuit breaker it's that sort of stuff and um we ended up using most of those relief valves unfortunately so I think some of this year's 4.7 it's a perfect storm if you're doing some catch up from those now

202needing to get established in the budget you don't have a couple hundred three hundred thousand coming in from savings by returning kids to the district there's only 15 of them now and um and then all the other cost pressures of inflation and the 14 sped tuition and all these other random increases that sort of hit us so in some ways you're watching other districts not be able to come in at under five percent because all those pressure points hit together so could we handle uh two or three out of District placements next year I mean I'm nervous about that I think wait sorry what did you ask could we handle two or three out of District places budgets are living things right so what we say tonight might change tomorrow because some other things going

203to happen at teachers or whatever so people have to handle it they'll have to be Ebbs and flows somewhere else to make that happen am I sure if I can am I going to have to look at Staffing to make that happen you'd always hope you're not trading out of districts for Staffing and you're the one that works yeah as of right this minute the answer is yes we can handle it but we're going to go to supplies and other things like that PD we'd go to things that aren't stabbed got it okay that's helpful thank you well and I think that's the challenge every year you could have a move-in tomorrow where you you know everyone's worst case scenario if you had a set of triplets that all needed to go out of District

204you immediately have three District placements right amen the question about that though from my understanding the mass law is that a move in the old District if they're in state pays they're out of District only if it's after April 1st for this year that's the case right it's only April 1st to June 30. 30th during the school year they would pay out but okay so we had a move in over the summer the intention of the law is if you're so late in the fiscal year that it would be hard to absorb a two hundred thousand dollars right it's impossible to observe it that's always hard but that doesn't make April in June your budget's pretty well spent established the the thought is the preceding District had it budgeted they had it budgeted and you're

205in the fourth quarter right they should have a budget in that by 24. they probably do but that's not that doesn't make sense but there are kids when they move here no no I just I I'd like I'll personally go back and look you know but it just just everything I've read makes it sound like not to the next fiscal year that's not my understanding that is accurate yeah it doesn't make sense yeah I guess I my this the meeting this evening with both the the update on the Best Western with a possible three hundred thousand dollars or two hundred and thirty thousand dollars across the two regions um for the Best Western which could potentially be reimbursed but we don't know when or how it's money that we have to pay out at some

206point plus you add on the relatively sobering extremely sobering picture that Kristen um painted about the mental health status of many of our sixth to 12th graders I just don't think I think a 4.7 budget is more than um reasonable in my mind I feel like everything that I've heard over the last six months have we've been talking about this um and learning and hearing from Bob and the community and everything is that I'm I'm even more the questions of to myself to I feel like the administration in these meetings how can we bring the number down but I I don't I don't see how we can do that without hurting kids and that's that's where I am so I'm I feel even more con uh confident in the the number 4.7 today than I

207did even yesterday that's it yeah so should that end I don't know if this is a decent segue like I I feel similarly in that all that is in the operating budget is um things that address immediate needs of the students that are in our buildings um I think it is a far greater challenge given the environment that we're in with with students number one and then forget the inflationary pressures secondarily to um have the flexibility needed to reduce the operating budget personally as I segue into the second part of our discussion I don't quite feel that way about the capital plan and I think and I know I I'm fully cognizant of the way that the tax impact affects residents and that it is not the same and one is dead and one is

208um and one is not but what's interesting to me is when I listen to the finance committee they often conflate the two they say the financial picture is because of both the operating expenses in the town and the schools and the debt so to me if we're going to conflate it to advance one narrative we should conflate it for our narrative too or not for our narrative but in our discussion so if the debt plus the operating budgets are contributing jointly to this problem I think wherever we can be fiscally prudent we should take a look at it so again that's my perspective and in having that perspective I asked Lori and Bob to re-examine the capital plan to see if the flexibility and restraint and the ability to talk about the concept of needs

209versus wants could be realized there um I think it was D in our joint meeting in this room that talked a lot about this philosophical concept of needs versus wants I don't think I don't think there's much in the operating budget that's a not to be I don't mean this to sound upsetting but there's nothing particularly exciting in there like is a level service budget we're delivering the same program it's not like we're adding all this fantastic Innovative stuff this year um so given that there are that I don't perceive that budget as having something that's chock full of wants um where I think we could maybe have some discussion and especially because the impact to the students seems farther away is potentially in the capital plan so if you guys want to talk about

210what you've done there so we can introduce it into this discussion unless anyone wants to talk more in the operating budget happy to continue to do that as well but operating budget is is at what point are we going to take a vote to go to town meeting do you know what I mean like I just would have to take another one because as of right now the our vote is you know to advance our article as written well not as written sadly because it's written so darn early but to advance our article inclusive of the 150 000 introductions that we voted for at our last meeting so if we were to do anything different than that we would have to take some kind of vote because we have not voted on that 150 we

211did no we did but we voted on them we've no we voted it we voted it we took the vote right before the the finance committee hearing okay okay and then okay and then the finance committee met so is there value in in voting again on the where we are or versus the fincoms guidelines uh unless unless we were to change what we were doing I feel like our vote would our existing vote would stand which again I don't have the math in front of me but as of today there the vote passed in favor of article 17 has written less than 150 if we were going to change that um we would have to vote we'd have to have another vote and is there value in voting for the fincom guideline only if you

212want to achieve it we could we could see could certainly propose it uh this is Matt Johnson the select board liaison to the school committee I just thought that I should also note that at our March 20th meeting the select board also voted on the CPS budget and the vote was three to one yeah at the guideline amount the finance committee guideline amount thanks Matt certainly we can do that we can if we can marinate on that thought we can hear from Lori and Bob about the capital plan and see what we feel about that and then go back to this larger umbrella discussion I would be careful about uh working one operating budget and one capital budget as if they're supposed to connect oh no I don't think they should at the end of

213the day a tax bill is a tax bill so they will have connected but our deliberations I think should be in here sure but I think again I think they've been conflated in other um we don't do so right and and but I do think the only reason I'm sort of saying well yeah so I mean again so I don't know I I think I think again what I'm trying to propose is if there is desire here for some more prudent examination what we might examine both and I get I get what you're saying but I think we do need to examine both here's the flaw in letting anybody conflate them and that is uh it uh suggests that we're not zero based in the least with our Capital planning that we are engineering Capital

214planning to send a message to people who are dealing with our operating budget I think our our Capital plan has to stand as a capital plan um so at your ass we went back and looked at the capital plan and um I think also looked at where we were in the process and the feedback we've been hearing especially about the Ripley project to do the heat pumps here over the preschool and I those were not unreasonable things people were asking us including all of you um even though the vote was to support it you know the cost was very high for the electrical infrastructure based off a green communities grant that it two years ago was far less under 100 200 000 and let us down a path of unknowns which is why the cost

215kept going up so I think we learned a lot I learned a lot I was speaking for myself Bob wasn't here sort of on the more recent end of the story um I think I learned a lot I think the facilities team learned a lot um and I think in just looking at where we were coming off the Alcott study where we're like oh now there's other options is this the best use of that kind of money here at Ripley or are there other better options now so and I think I'm going to jump to my master list here what I did for my own sake to some extent but then decided it was a really great communication tool was to put together all the sustainability efforts because that's what the Ripley project is about

216sustainability it doesn't fix the fact we have 1960 vintage boilers here those have to stay online because it doesn't take care of the whole building so to me it really is an environmental project more than a fix the need of boilers that are aged um and I think that's where we were without cut last year was there we thought we took a recommendation from a report a couple years prior trying to lower Emissions on a boiler that still had life in it that got brought up for question and then we went to the study and now we realize there's other options we didn't really understand back then so I think the challenge I'm seeing and I tried to name it in the memo is this tension that exists with the sustainability efforts between cost meeting

217the town's goals which I think we're all in agreement we believe in and the evolution of the options that changes so quickly so I think that's where my takeaway was I just want to slow down and pull back and work on a Master Level view of all of this and I think it needs to be not just a school discussion because the price tags are so big in some cases so coming to that conclusion and not really having a Readiness for what would necessarily be next because if we're going to do us a big picture view of it where we start we have options I would name that but where do we start strategically and with a with a master plan on how we're going to accomplish sustainability goals versus keeping buildings heated and such

218needs and wants started I guess to borrow your words and that was one of the words I was using when I did it but some of that asks in my head so coming at the capital plan with that lens I asked Bob and that team to pull back and really Whittle down and we only looked at fy24 because it's too much in a couple days to do the rest um what were the driving you know more maintenance well-being and safety needs versus sustainability pieces or things that had that kind of connection so I think Bob can talk you through what's in the FY 24 proposal because of that mindset we we did lower the number so do you want him to scoot through the list would be great yeah just to um kind of echo

219what Dr Hunter said I think our first plan was we felt I'd say some are compelled to see the Ripley project through the completion in our first pass because we had done the studies we had designed docs and um you know as we got the feedback we and then we saw the dollars on the Alcott study in a different Vision I didn't look as like as good an option um so um what we um what we focused on was to um we also um I thought needed to step back a bit too and say we have three Elementary buildings that are getting to the uh age where things start to break or need to be replaced so the existing conditions report is basically an assessment assessment of your um of your buildings all the sub

220components the exterior the roof the mechanical systems and it will give us a capital plan roadmap for 10 years and Beyond with dollars associated with all the things that we need to prioritize that also highlight whether there's any critical needs so I've done this in a different District I know a lot of people have done it I think it's been done here as well we don't need to do it for the Middle School assuming um that things go well it'll be a new building we don't need to do it for the high school that's the region as anyways and and Ripley we'll we'll think about whether or not that fits in here if we did that I would have to figure out how to allocate that cost across two districts um so that's what the

221existing conditions report is and and that will be a whole list degree with all of our Capital needs it won't be just sustainability will be everything um the BMS systems yeah can we go questions you as the way to the end or now or at the end how do you want to do it if you want to ask about that project you can ask about sure um when you've done that before um has there been a estimation estimate or a projection as to the intended life of the of buildings they factor that into when the repairs were were done we can also design and our spec what we want them to tell us and how we want them to tell us I think the spec is critical yeah yeah end of life you know long

222range I think is uh something that everybody can understand even though planning can only work five and ten years out right we've still got a a sunset for every building right right or a guesstimate and there might be buckets it might not be you know one two three four five it might be one to three three to five because you know you might try to stretch something out a year or some things might break before they're anticipated so that would be the idea in some communities you'd actually be uh taking a school offline or putting a new school online I think with our elementaries looking at as far as I can see that's probably not the case right I mean yes so these are three schools that are I mean they're and they're not that

223far apart in age and they're out of time when I think it makes sense to do it um because we could uncover something that we'd say well maybe we need to prioritize that and there's another example in here I'll talk about that later why wouldn't we focus our first study on Ripley to me that is the facility that needs the most attention and we have to decide what how we're going to deal with this over the next 10 years and the other question is uh currently we have how many rooms are the Concord Children's Center rooms three and what do we expect to happen with those next town is the town has oversight of those rooms those are three double classrooms with yeah so that the town has 12 review of that right so I

224think what I'm saying is I think we've got a complex facility and I really don't think Carlisle should have anything to do with the capital investment in a Concord Building you know they should pay operating costs but they should be paying they've only contributed the little bits we've done here this is central office we haven't asked them to learn more yeah we agree right so this is more of a town issue especially if we're going to have Town use of this facility so I think we need to work together you know with the town and figure out how we're gonna so I think we need to do the study of this yeah I think it should be included in the sure well you know what when we if let's just say that you were to

225approve everything here we do have the flexibility I understand to allocate between so so maybe we would defer defer one of the parking lot items yeah um the BMS systems upgrade that is the building management system and we had a failure of a Network actually I'm not going to do the acronym it's basically the brains of the of the building management system I think it's a controller um that failed at Willard and so when that happened we had them look at Thoreau and Alcott and we got guidance that we were looking at close to end of life there as well and you could wait for it to fail or you could replace it we feel like it's important to do that now um that's um so this is not uh software updates this is uh

226server and Hardware Replacements it's it's a component within the building management system I don't know I'm just curious what component is it the soft component or the hard component it's a lot of money for a soft component yeah I know it's that's split between two two schools it's two schools it's nonetheless yeah these are often it was 25 000 at Willard so yeah software updates are usually embedded right in a contract so I'm just curious what this is it's the whole system we would need rest yeah so line it further that'd be helpful to manage like heating yeah yeah so those are eligible for great Community grants what I've been seeing it's going to save you money yeah we could certainly look into that so I don't uh I can't wait for it to fail

227and wait and then find a grant that's I think why we're bringing it up because we'll have an opportunity to be proactive where the one at Willard had failed so we had to just fix it fix it yeah and I don't I don't uh dispute the need to have good systems because we are so uh digitally dependent on our building Ops right now I think a knowing more about it uh B looking at uh grants and getting going on that being proactive on that uh couldn't couldn't hurt us at least know what's possible um so I'll I'll keep going through the list I can certainly uh forward the the information I have from Russ um and get more as needed the next set of items um were and these are you're going to see across

228all three schools we felt like if we were going to look at sidewalk and parking lot repairs you saw some in future years in our Capital plan we felt like we should try to do this at the same time across the schools that needed it to get better pricing um you know these are estimates on what what the costs would be our actual costs could be a little bit more a little bit less um then our scope you know can be determined partially through you know being informed by some of the existing conditions data um so the parking lot repairs are at Alcott Thoreau sidewalk repairs also at Alcott and then walkway and parking lot at Willard so they're purposely kind of lumped together in the same year so we can bid them all at

229the same time definitely makes sense the economy of scale the town has recently adopted a rating system for this study do we anticipate uh bringing in the town so that we conform with their rating system we've worked with the engineer at on the high school project we so we have a relationship with that person um so we would certainly be in touch with them um to leverage their expertise you just got a ranking way to evaluate each lot and okay he used it for the roads that's what I heard him use it for was the road because the road's not parking lots because we're almost a month out from town meeting and I would like to see the data for the town to evaluate off the sidewalks the parking lots at our schools but I

230don't want to rush it so if this has to go a year later I don't think that's necessarily we put them all together in fy25 I think they should be bundled but I think there will be uh constituents that we that we have to here and listen to who will expect us to uh see this get some DBW attention simply because they're going gangbusters uh on asphalt and concrete all around town and I think they're deferring some of their Paving of parking lots because it is Carrie has one in the budget but it's something like almost 300K so like I'm afraid that these expenses are going to be a lot higher than we expect so I just think we need to get numbers before we vote very to be very low numbers you think these

231numbers are low numbers yes well I guess I'm not an expert at parking lots or asphalt or anything like that but I think overall you know we're looking at like if we look at the big picture of this is lowing our Capital ask is what we're doing right I mean this is just the big picture is we're substituting this out for what our initial ask was I would disagree that's not what I'm doing I'm not I'm not here to lower and ask I'm here to determine what we need yeah I think those are fundamentally different right I I think I'm I'm looking at it both ways as we're trying to meet we've been asked by the finance committee to look at our Capital project because I think that they think that it's too costly um

232are the middle school is definitely factoring into this that's been very clear at every meeting that I've attended that uh part of part of this kind of ask and I'm going to go back to our operating budget and I'm kind of all over the place sorry but I'll go back to our operating budget and the reason that the guideline wants to be lowered the middle school just keeps on coming into that discussion now our Capital project is coming into the discussion so this to me represents an effort to lower our ass number one and let's look at what our facilities people and what Bob and Lori are suggesting for items and we either trust the numbers or we don't and so as I said I'm not an expert on this so I do trust these

233numbers um are they exact probably not you know all of these are projections we're not putting anything out to bid yet um so so that's just where I see this and I think we need to focus a little bit on what's our goal here ask a quick question um one is it customary that there would be evaluation from Town employees of the like vetting our projects is that customary it's it's been something we've done on occasion when there's been a beneficial need I'm I'm confident Russ and his team can evaluate parking lots I heard Alan's ranking I don't think it's that hard I would rather get in a proactive mode on some of this I mean the High School Road you know how horrible condition that's in and it's really years too late to have

234done it you know if if we're gonna ask to spend time on all the evaluation we're not going to get that done before Town um so either there's an ask that we want to work on these projects because it's the ones we feel are the priority given that we're suggesting we're only going to bring forward things that maintain safety and operations at the schools and not try to epitomize sustainability I think at some point there needs to be and I think the hundred thousand dollars is what's going to drive this is to put to paper projects that people have confidence in and I'm struggling with how else to do that because this is now second year in a row second version of this year's plan and a lot of you know kind of in fire

235Joe mode all the time here because and then that makes it even harder to bring the necessary information so I'm just feeling a little stuck I guess you know and and one thing that I so there's sort of two things when I think of this the first I think you're talking about kind of this cycle that we've gotten into where in trying to be responsive to the town's overall sustainability goals and in some level of partnership with them several projects have been identified and let's talk about the Alcott boiler and the Ripley heat pumps in so doing a couple things have happened one when you you know in the case of the alcohol boiler um you know in light of the new sort of fiscal mindset your P now we have people saying oh this

236is kind of a want not a need we've got you've got a decade left in these boilers replacing them now is is a want we want to be fiscally sustainable I understand and respect that argument um also I think you know we in in taking the green communities grant for two hundred thousand it necessitated a million dollars in spending um again we want to take the grant um but you know at what at what cost I also so and then so that we have that cycle compounded with the fact that and this goes back to the alcohol boiler too that by the time we can implement the technology has evolved gotten better so then we get in these cycles that say not only oh it's kind of like a want not a need that's sort

237of like the the people who have an eye towards the fiscal impacts then concurrently you have people on the other end of the spectrum wing and saying oh but the Technology's Advanced we shouldn't do this anyway so I recognize that that is not the ideal cycle to be in so I think that's sort of part one where I am where I agree with you like something here isn't working because it's not as linear and as we want and then I think the second thing which I think Tracy's trying to talk about is you know do we have an opportunity here to show some you know fiscal discipline and and you're saying if if you change your lens to talking about whatever you said safety and operations yes we can have some there is an opportunity

238for fiscal discipline so that's sort of how I see this um I think those are both positive things um and again like you I'm fairly confident in Russ's assessment and his capacity as a professional to evaluate this and make his recommendations accordingly so that's sort of the three-step process where I'm at so I mean I I don't personally see a need for anyone else to come in you know why is rust not so I do agree with you we should not we don't have a DPW at the Concord Public Schools we're a department of we don't have a Department of Public Works we Concord Public Works in the in our department we are a department of the town and we should use these Professional Resources who have many strategies to mitigate declining parking and Paving

239they don't always repave everything do they have all kinds of tricks and things they've been using lately to prolong the life of of a resource and I really do think it's in our best interest in the town's best interest to utilize that resource and it's you know I don't expect uh somebody here to to have that DPW expertise it might even be a good look for us these aren't costs of repaving these spaces either these are these are repairs they're estimates of repairs I I just would like to have it like a little more information and I don't think we'll be ready for town meeting so that's why I'm saying you know so were you suggesting we don't we don't Advance a capital article for town meeting well I think we could all the way

240through it yeah working our way through it you know I do want to clarify we work very closely with many of the Town departments I'm not resistant to that I just don't know how to do that in a month's time I'm not sure I'm not sure I want to give up the money because I haven't we haven't had a chance to do that I think they can come over and help us figure out how to best spend the money that's allocated so I guess that's what I'm questioning about maybe that's where I'm kind of headed because I I think it would be the in everybody's best interest and we came to together to work on this the other thing is um Bob love Usher said that he's totally opposed to these small bonds and I

241how do we get ourselves out of that that's a town question yeah that's a town question we didn't do that in our last town but it's not our decision it's not our Justice we just I think what you're asking is how do we manage the the the disagreement right because Bob's point is a worthy question you're paying that they're they're paying Debt Service so they're not using as much of their budget to pay for Capital when you switch to using it pre-cash or are using it through you you have a tax effect to people so that transition has to be decided by the town I've just had some other side closed our conversations that I don't feel like I should share but I think that's eight an opinion at the Town level I don't know

242that it's a I wonder if I could uh introduce a big question which is a little bit out of order but really germane to all of this if one of the stated goals is to uh reduce the ask if another one is to have an Ask save the money as you say if we have a Olcott report that uh seemed to be pretty compelling and if 745 was on top of 300 was on top of 100 green communities Grant how do we explain how it's completely disappeared here why didn't the spoilers aren't at the end of life they got a decade left that was a very pointed question yes yeah at Alcott from Finance committing it along yeah I mean we were asked to say how old are the boilers at Alcott and why you

243know boilers is supposed to last what's our what's our timeline for that because that's a half million dollars Alcott the the study we just got from Western and Sam's yeah that's going to have to be part of Beyond fy25 as we look at the longer term again but it's big yeah yeah it eats up a big chunk of uh correct hypothetical 900. okay and I hope an intent was to to put forward items we felt could be supported without controversy and um and then to table things that would require further discussion okay um I will point out one item that um the the in the road the dry fire suppression system in the 1994 Wing So we had a fire now we've had a sprinkler burst we need to do something well for the same

244problem long term there um it's hard to get somebody to provide an estimate you need to have drawings in some cases so that's the engineering part and then you're going to have a bid so when we build a capital plan um it is challenging too um to get the exact figures so it is you know these are our these are our best estimates this is Russ's best estimate um the um the existing conditions assessments will give us estimates with the work that they recommend to us so that will be helpful um so again our thought was I mean you I don't know if we want to walk through all the items here some of these are repeat items that you've seen before but our intent was to try to advance something uh that was not

245controversial um we certainly could um consult with um with Alan um I met with him before yeah that's good and if we got feedback that he felt like something um you know I didn't wrestling him already had this conversation but if we got feedback that said listen yet there's a less expensive way to do it then we'll we'll do that and we'll preserve the capital and we'll have it available for a different purpose or we'll have it available to cover something else here that might go over um and when we have these existing conditions reports that makes it easier next year to have a little bit more of a clear road map um for the next five years and Beyond so when you looked at this list you you referenced non-controversial items so these are

246all for maintenance repair that is Russ's best estimate of what needs to get done right most of it was on The Five-Year Plan we just accelerated it accelerated for 24. the only thing that wasn't I think is the existing conditions report the Thoreau roof repair and the BMS was that on there and the system upgrade because the Willard failure was very recent yeah it was still a loading dock went up from 30 to 75. we didn't have this to create a playground an additional service sure we did add that now based on what we were able to do with the 50 000 we had this past Capital plan there's a bigger need there we knew it was only a portion of the plan so you're right we've added that as we've had prior year 25

247and 50 right and 25 two years ago you landed it it got pulled out the first time it was in the Thoreau so it landed at 50 last year and then we had the ptgs money to come to six at some yeah we have a project I mean that's a that's a pretty big amount of money do we have a is there a design or a plan well it's interesting to me about that one is it's it's now at 185 000 um but it follows uh excuse me it presumably is simultaneous with the master plan or do you see the master plan uh occurring before the that magnitude of playground work yeah and I think just you know the accessible playground business es I remember like we have out here this playground here it costs

248300 000 seven years ago that's all rubberized now I mean it's so this would be like phase two of the integrated playground phase one was built we actually had a bigger design than we couldn't afford I guess that's the short way of saying so in the future I think we should be much more uh Forward Thinking and getting CPC funds we could do any other playground or Recreation work start now no because that's what they got CPC funds to do a lot of the integrated preschool programs some of it yeah and uh yeah we might Children's Center playground there might be opportunity to yeah lower the capital or add to the scope or sure yeah can we come back to uh the fire suppression yes um the question I have and I think others might

249too is we've we've had uh first the fire there we've had the water we've effectively uh rebuilt or rehabilitated it twice thankfully with insurance um presumably both times we've got uh fire department uh reporter analysis um this uh item suggests to me that there's still something that is very unique about that wing of one building that requires something so very special um yeah what did we do wrong where after the design it's a design two repairs we're back where we started so it's the attic is just wide open over those classrooms there's some insulation over the drop ceiling but above that it's just completely wide open so it's com it's subject to the elements outside it was a hundred degrees the day the fire happened because those heaters caught fire the one did which ironically

250are there so that the pipes don't freeze on a negative 10 day uh the good news is the heaters are upgraded now so that will never catch fire again but that wide open air space the freezing cold just got to it it's Gonna Keep it's going to be just as subject to all of it if we don't do something different so the heaters have been addressed that won't happen again now the open pipes it's actually stunning the pipes haven't Frozen for now because it's like that it's tragic but it's it's pretty sad that we're heating a vacant space yes that's crazy in an insurance company as as much as said it's their job to return it to its previous condition right so thanks but no we did that once so we wanted to repair it

251but we we want to do more than that and we're not going to turn away the money to fix up the room but um so right now it's a wet system which means the water the the sprinklers system remains filled with water um in that area that the dry system would kind of keep it back um at some Central Point and call for it when it's needed if there's a change and I I think it's the hate um going to a certain level so that would mean that there'd be no water in the pipe to freeze in the classroom that's near the edge of the building um but we need a design and you know I don't know they might there might be a different option which isn't uh you know maybe there's some insulation

252but I the thought was that this was um the best solution um part the rest of the building is a dry system I'm not sure why this Wing is different it's what happens when you renovate yeah you have the original structures still there so all of our other elementaries are dry well the rest of the row is I would that's interesting because of the renovation I think that this is the old Wing yeah right but other Elementary's have a dry system another wet system but I don't know I don't know if we know that off the top I can check on that if it's far more versatile these days if it's wet I think they have adequate insulation yeah um so how do we let's see yeah so I mean we need a warrant article

253when in a week I think it's April 14th is the date um there's something like that date that everybody goes over there we can talk to Carmen and let her know we're working so I mean that's a completely different uh except for the number that the concept of it is yeah because I do think this is something that we're going to need to vote on sooner rather than later I think last night she was referring to the mailing that goes out that's right and then there's that doesn't determine and then there's stuff that um if you want to include to your point um like handouts they need to be approved so sure what recommend a handout on us yeah yeah it should okay so we have two boards and committees that haven't taken extended timeline

254yes yeah uh sure yeah yeah and about without voting yet so yeah so well I mean again if if someone wants to put emotion on the floor and uh I don't think that's appropriate all right I have one more question about Ripley and that is uh uh would it be in everybody's best interest to have a conversation with the town about the town's uh intended use of the clouds out front uh about uh the what Mr Parker referred to earlier tonight um doing the the basic uh air ceiling and uh insulation of that before significant new monies went in there um uh apparently uh the calculations that he saw suggests that the the systems are about twice what would be required were that to be properly sealed with good window treatment so would that be

255something that sure but I don't think we need to do that for the purposes of this plan because it's not included in it well that's what I'm asking is would it be appropriate to be included as a first Ripley step the the basics on sealing the building before we start to replace infrastructure well I guess kind of where I'm at is I I'm still going back to our professionals who are making recommendations to us as a committee on this building and I understand that there's a lot of interest in the Ripley boiler in the Alcott boiler from the community but I do think that we have to look at our but I wasn't talking about the boiler she's talking about that he pumps he pumps sorry I'm talking about the heat pumps yeah we're talking

256about this you're talking about doing excellent digital insulations new boiler money I first buttoned up the doors and the windows I think most times people wouldn't I think most public facilities wouldn't I'm asking is that something we should consider and discuss with the town and in fact I'll go further and say I recommend we do so well okay interesting I have shocking a different perspective which is um to me when I look at the way other towns and municipalities are addressing sustainability they are they're not at the school committee level so for example when we talk to all of our school committee peers um in our Round Table we asked about this quite a bit and everyone's answer was unanimously the same absolutely not we can't afford it and I think you know you look

257at different municipalities most people are not most some people who are on the Forefront of this have big town-wide master plan so what I would hope we could pivot to um would be a situation where we might one day accept a grant from something that the town of Concord applies for they have a sustainability director and we might accept it like an edfund Grant and you know we're gonna give XYZ amount of money for XYZ project and it's gonna pay for the entirety of it because I am concerned that you know when I listen to members of the finance committee and and the select board and the way they're talking if these are not insignificant amounts of money then to me our priority needs to be education and safety of kids and if and if

258and if worked and again I go back to uh de ortner's needs and wants conversation if we are entering a phase in our tenure here at as school committee members Representatives where we are being asked very pointedly to focus on needs and not wants I believe the sustainability stuff needs to firmly come out and into that wants category and we need to be able to show the fiscal discipline required to be able to focus on what is our purpose here in this building that's my opinion but I think you and I might be saying the same thing I think this is a town issue that is great yeah yeah and we need to work with the town and figure out how we solve these problems that we have in front of us that's great you

259know that's I I agree and it's all coming out of the same pot you know at the end Yes except that that's not how it's perceived in the community you know so and I think it's it's incumbent upon us to make sure that it is delineated because there is there is a macro narrative out there coming from our boards and committees that the schools are are hoarding the resources the financial resources in the town and I I think it's important to start correcting that narrative and to start demonstrating hey okay you don't we don't need to gobble the resources I don't need to put some two million dollar boiler in here or you know whatever I think that is it's important for us to start to start showing that and I would like to push

260those expenses elsewhere and yeah of course we can designate a liaison whether it's Ross or Lori or whoever to work together but just and part of why I put that big list together most many of the projects that I've now circled back or been stymied were Town recommendations out of the reports they supported for upgrading and going to sustainable projects so that collaboration's been there I think there's an and I will continue to be there we work we Thrive off of working at them they're helping you know bid the high school project so it's really about a master plan of town what are we doing when and how are we going to pay for it is what I think is next because I think the one-offs of let's do this and I'll cut let's do

261this really like it's not working right I I feel pretty strongly right now I just want to step back and like who wants to come to the table to have this conversation at a town level yeah because somebody can do it alone we're creating 50 years yeah funds um right to and or doing three-year bonds right with the three years of blah blah blah blah blah and they might go through it all or they might not you know so yeah um but that's got to be a community decision yeah not saying well it's the towns needs versus the school needs this is all yes I like that position yeah that's great that's why Community yes how great planning so we're not you know and I think it like for VidCon presentations we should all be

262coming with capital together not Carrie presenting her in hours to say no and then it's confusing like why we're Department of the town we have a regional Capital plan that's a whole different conversation but we can't borrow money right you know we're not a municipality we are part of the town of Concord so I just think we you know I think it would behoove us to do much tighter planning so that we can kind of walk together and yeah and that's why I I'm in support of Bob's I know that plan is expensive at a hundred thousand dollars and I yeah but I think it's well worth having that road map so that we can be responsible as we move forward I think that's like maybe the best thing on this planet in some regards

263because um I do think there is also interestingly you're talking about things that um at the elementary school starting to reach their end of life and I I think that also needs to be um better um messaged to to the community conversation do we want to maintain them for 50 years or is there 70 years you know what I'm saying yeah yeah no yeah I think when people see us potentially spend a hundred thousand dollars with a analysis that has some pretty uh robust specs to it and it's headlined with intended uh shelf life of these schools people are going to understand the magnitude of our needs because they're going to see uh not a lot of uh one-offs um uh and reactive instead they're going to see that uh things were on a map

264even though the timing might move over the course of because of many factors right availability the needs own the exact when and the exact severity unknown but but the likely needs uh we're not unique now we're we're in New England facilities I thought there was at the presentation a couple of weeks ago about the Alcott boiler there were there was one thing that stood out to me which was that there are other school districts looking at these same things and none of them are going through with it because of the cost the price tag and and to me that was like I I landed in the same place as you Cynthia which was this really needs to be moved to a broader conversation and I don't think that it necessarily means that like we wouldn't

265spend Capital Money like that's designated to the schools on the sustainability efforts but as part of something like as part of a bigger plan so like X percent of this year's budget will go towards the town sustainability efforts as it pertains to school projects or whatever whatever it is but I don't think it I just don't I don't want it to come across as though we're just trying to like hunt the cost of it to the town it's more of just having a more strategic and thoughtful plan and it might not be that the school building is the least efficient building it might be that you do the study and it's the townhouse or yeah it's you know so you basically if you have it where do you start at a macro level you can

266rank which ones are the least efficient and you could you know maybe it would be picked to be a school one year um and um it's always been Sanborn but I do think the undue burden on the schools when I look at these amounts they're significant they're not 50 000 to close the deal to get the sidewalks right it's like um these are significant dollars yeah um Terry is borrowing 4 million this year right yeah so you know we're just not part of this cap larger Capital conversation I just don't feel like we are yeah well because we don't yeah we're not going to be able the one other thing I thought was a good observation is this nine hundred thousand dollar number was meant to uh bubble gum and tape old schools this is

267probably 20 year old really old number and it's it's not caught up with maintaining a good points right that's a very good point like what what if we're going to find something on here the year that we need a new roof it's not going to be nine hundred thousand dollars right yeah so I like it's all the more reason to have that plan yeah so that we can ask you know nobody wants to move small capital investment into our operating budget but you know if we explain it correctly right why we're doing it it just had large Capital there's a separate line on to be borrowed so that's just these are some things I think we need to discuss we could leverage it into an argument for those larger expenditures when they come along yeah

268and I think those are longer term discussion so I would recommend that we take time to sit with this and we I know that we're going to have a tight tight meeting in Boston but I was going to suggest that we just add this item to the meeting on the 12th that's what I would suggest on the 12th there's an exact session exact session on the 12th I love that suggestion and some information can come to just a CPS meeting yeah yeah perfect Forum like a reporter a memo or a table or this or that it doesn't all have to be presentation driven no not at all and that is at 4 30 that for us but it was via Zoom that's okay Zoom that's just the five of us and you guys yeah that's

269okay I think it's fine yeah okay so prepare to prepare yourselves to vote on this Capital plan then on April 12th we have both a public meeting and executive session yep yes so we'll revise those agendas Baron um if you asked me you had mentioned putting Ripley in the existing conditions reports so are we able to edit these amounts then I think these are a very live amounts I think they're all in play as we yeah sure I mean because you're right because we're going to iterate yeah you can iterate the space time yes 1000 covered four buildings yeah I think you should absolutely show us what that if it goes up a little bit and then when you're talking can I just dig into that a little more is it obviously it's a it's

270beyond what we did at Alcott yes it's everything can you send you sent me the one you did in your last question can you just clarify what Alcott was what you're referring to sorry to Alexa boiler oh with the boilers I'll send it to you Alexa okay send it okay because that include how many of our schools are on sewer just anybody know Beauty no no all right I think they're realistic we replace this tank yeah oh don't bring that story up that's not a good story it's not a good one just erased that right out of my head large numbers here yeah yeah so yeah I'll send it see what it looks like and then I guess before we conclude the evening is I mean going back to the budget I don't know is

271there if there was you would have heard it I'm sorry if we had ideas you would have heard them by now right so I think Cynthia said it at the outset we are where we are somebody's got something specific to bring to us yep okay well we put that on the agenda for the 12th as well if they're put it on if you need a placeholder yeah it doesn't hurt it doesn't hurt yeah nobody can Falls this if we yeah have late breaking news Well I also think that with the pin com select board having conversations taking votes that I think it is I think I do think that we should vote again that we should say Where We Are are you suggesting we do it now or on the 12th we can't we don't

272we don't have a vote on our agenda well we could we don't have to have on the agenda take about entertain emotion but I would I would consider that unlash unless you're going to change the number but you are not right well I don't I well I don't know um all right well let's put something on for next week on the 12th on the 12th unless the superintendent is recommending a new number which I think she would have told us you would have heard that by now is there is your point to have it voted and supported is that your point or two yeah they're a different number no not necessarily well I think I guess there's two two thoughts one is in my a lot a lot of activity in the town has happened

273but both a select board level at the community level just people weighing in at all of these meetings and then also at the finance committee Finance convenience like board have both taken votes on it first and then second I I think um we haven't like we've discussed it we've talked about it but I think that there is value in in saying we've heard all of this and this is we've talked about it but we haven't actually voted on it and votes change we have the ability to information can change our minds that would work for me if we were deciding to accept the recommendation then something there's nothing on the table yeah absolutely nothing on the table what do you mean on the table like from fincom like they're not saying I mean so we

274so so I guess Carrie like if you were going to suggest something you could suggest or if any or someone would need to suggest a change whether that's okay let's let's add back 115 you know let's go to 5.01 or or do we look at bincom guideline or do we look at somewhere in between I think someone would have to make a proposed otherwise a suggestion otherwise one thing that isn't that I've been thinking about is that fincom voted both for our guideline or our requested budget first and then second they voted for their own guideline and I'm curious if there's value in US taking those same those same books like on what is our what is our vote on the fan com like if we were to say we to uh uh send the

275superintendent back for budget revisions to bring us closer to the guideline if I thought a or there'd be a second B if I thought the vote would Prevail and see if I thought Lori uh could could and would do that and the answer is no to all three of those he gets a guideline and not shave Services I would have so so I think what I hear you I'm gonna say it my way a re-vote would simply be adding an exclamation point to our earlier uh uh budget recommendation instead of saying we move it's we enthusiastically move by virtue of a second vote well that's kind of it's lost on the decision makers in town they're too smart for that they they know that the there is tension around uh the fiscal health of the

276town because of the spending needs of the various departments and entities and these uh tension filled and divided votes kind of speak to where the entire town is but you and I know what's going to happen in town meeting you know is our budget's going to prevail some people are going to be happy and some people are going to be unhappy and others are going to be agnostic and others aren't even going to show up unfortunately you know I think we are where we are um we've got our budget and it's 4.7 well all right I found that two vote thing they did very confused it was very confusing that would be my whole machine yeah well I I know I watched it and it added to the confusion of where what are we voting

277for what are we voting on yeah well they had trouble knowing what they were voting yeah yeah it was awesome everyone knows nothing good after 11 o'clock whatever it happens thank you thank you thanks uh for that the piece of wisdom Dr hunter that wasn't as intentional it made my point yeah