Concord Carlisle Joint School Committee February 7, 2023

001six o'clock and I would like to call the Concord Carlisle Regional School Community to order and I'll call the Concord school committee meeting to order and I will note that this meeting is being recorded and for the minutes all members are present I use a lot Miss present and Domingo's DeRosa will not be here this evening so up first we have our cchs student update looks like Harry is with us Aria are here as well um thank you yeah I'm just gonna share my screen really quickly all right so um I can start us off I think one of the biggest things we've seen this week is anticipation for the new bell schedule I know teachers have referenced this or have been a lot of rumors going around with the students about what it's going

002to look like and I think people are just excited to finally see that I know that it's very close to being shared with the wider School community so that is exciting tomorrow morning an advisory course selections have started I think today is when they started and I know that many guidance counselors have been scheduling meetings to or like get that started and you know select our courses for next year um and then also student Senate has been working to finalize some of our Valentine's Day festivities I think right now we're looking to do some cupcake decorating of some sort and also just some decorating in the library so that should be fun nothing too crazy we want to keep it kind of low-key but definitely some fun things to celebrate the holiday and also just

003a fun thing um we were talking about this in my advisory but I know a lot of kids have really been appreciating the revamped Instagram I have a screenshot of it I think it's like a really good way to share information and it's letting the school hadn't really done a tone in the past so it's exciting to see it being used um I don't know if Felicity wants to talk about this but yeah um So Into the Woods the spring musical is holding auditions next week which um I checked the sign ups earlier and there are a lot of people we're gonna have a pretty big cast which is going to be really exciting so yeah oh do you want me to talk about sports okay I don't I thought um but playoffs are starting

004soon for spring Sports yeah like I'm doing track and we have our DCL meet this coming Saturday so it should be exciting and then hopefully going to States after that um he also have we also have black history month and I know that black student union because I am a part of it uh We've we uh started this thing where we are sharing biographies of impactful African-American figures during English classes and I know it's all grades right and and yeah so yeah So yeah thank you guys great looks like a lot is happening so I have a question for you guys so student Senate have an Instagram we do yeah um it's not the most active right now but we're looking to get it back up there so if we wanted to post something about

005a school committee meeting or something like that could we send it to you to post for us for sure yeah you can reach out to Felicity or I or also our moderator's name is Iola Chen um her email would be ihen23 icon carl.org she does a lot with Instagram okay great thank you it looks like things are busy at cchs and uh good luck on dcl's this weekend they have a great facility if I don't know if anyone's been to the the New Balance track but it's really awesome and Felicity one of the members here has been in into the woods so maybe she'll be talking to you about her prior performance at cchs and into the woods just a little known fact for you that's so cool thank you our next meeting actually have

006you talked about our next meeting I have not okay please okay so our next meeting we are actually having in Boston at the Kroc Center and you are welcome to join in person or via Zoom and we're gonna have a social ahead of time if anyone wants to come and we'll get some more information to you about that so our February 28th meeting will be in Boston all right thank you thank you very much all right and we will move on to our public comments section of the meeting our public comment period will be a period of 20 minutes as a reminder this is a meeting in the public and not with the public so the school committee will not be responding to any comments if you were in the room and you would like

007to speak you can submit a blue form to me and you'll be called to speak if you're on Zoom you can use the raise hand feature um and you will be called on when you are called please state your name and address before you speak and we will go every other starting with comments in the room and you will have a timeline of three minutes and it looks like we have Caitlin Egree thank you um you could actually use the microphone right over there the standing one is that okay yep sorry yeah on December 6 I asked this committee to give me any sex and gender related education material tooth in all classes but I was ignored so I am asking again it is public material so tell me when can I get access to

008this during the same meeting he has a few concerned citizens challenge the school curriculum and this Library collection we challenge the reason they think focusing on white Privileges and convincing the students that our country is racist why would millions of non-prite people come hit from all over the world and rise to succeed is this country versus during that meeting on Zoom a person stated that that as a woman of color was discriminated and marginalized not only in this community but in this world for someone who attended three leading universities is member of international bodies feels discriminated and marginalized shows that something is wrong with a common understanding of what it means to be marginalized myself a legal immigrant I know that this nation and and the freedom it provides is a blessing to the world

009and it is why at least millions of people came across the southern border illegally in the last two years for 17 years I have been living here but I have yet to see any racism from anyone in this community or this school or the school board this is the country to which our director of Dei has chosen to immigrate and from Africa video concerns citizens challenge the school curriculum because of the dangerous gender ideology Miss freed claimed on the Zone meeting that she was an expert on diversity equity and Justice education I want to remind this body that this ideology is getting the interest across to the National Socialist ideas marinated in racial rankings and results we are challenging the books that are sexualizing our children and that are in the school library there should

010be no place in the curriculum for gender identity and sexualizing of our children teach them the fundamental biology and Anatomy I find a point that the school board yes you can continue sorry thank you I find appalling that the school board voted unanimously with the superintendent to leave this trash available in the school library by placing a warning for that content on the video recording on the meeting because a passage was quoted verbatim from one of these books hypocrisy we don't we do not want to ban books but neither do we want to expose them to pornography by making it freely available for children and teenagers in our schools we are open to discuss what guidelines need to be in place to achieve this but in some parents fear that they actually can meet pornography

011for their own social emotional learning they can easily access that stuff from the Internet or just get it directly from public libraries thank you thank you okay and I will look online to see if there's anyone online and if you have a comment please use the race hand feature okay I haven't seen none we will have um you need to put your mic oh sorry really close really close sorry working with the microphones here um mystery agree good evening my name is Robert degree 80 Wildwood Drive Carlisle first I wish to think and congratulate the school administration and school committee for providing the taxpayers of the detailed line item budget for 2023. it is widely praised for its unusual transparency and it rightly builds up and improves the image of our school system and I

012personally who is not so well worth the numbers as the school committee members are I'm also grateful for this detail and honest account of the school system's finances looking through it I was struck though by a single light and line item number one two one zero Under The Heading that's a 100 function table on page 23 of the document titled superintendent the school committee's fiscal year 23 adopted budget and this pertaining to what superintendent unquote According to which it is 157 560 566 dollars for the current fiscal year 23. furthermore on page 106 item 3510 says quote superintendent salary Uncle at 99 260 dollars but from the context it is more likely to be that of her staff salary than that of Dr Hunter upon her hiring six years ago February 1st 2017 we could

013lock wickedlocal.com reported that quote according to Concord school committee chairman Wally Johnstone and Conquer Carla Regional school committee chairman Bill Fink the job description includes a salary range between 200 to 250 000 annually of course we will have we all have all heard about fake news to add to my confusion in her job application submitted to the Concord Public School dated January 3rd 2017 a month before it was a very quick hiring process apparently Dr Laurie Hunter wrote that as an assistant superintendent of the talksbury schools her gross income was under 37 900 and are we to believe as I know for some people do that her real inflation adjusted income has essentially gone down since joining a school system that itself would be an outrageous Injustice and it might just explain according to the

014latest rankings of the U.S news world report why our school system why are high school ranks at number 40 among the urban and Suburban public schools in and around Boston of course 40 as we all know 10 times bigger than four so we have that going for us or is it possible maybe just maybe some other parts of her income and possible of other employees as well may be placed I mean I'm sorry I'm being misplaced and inadvertently bundled under different headings of other equally transparent line items speaking of transparency when another matter thanks to chairwoman Marano for helping me track down Dr Hunter's doctoral thesis presumabino she will also help you to borrow and study to the superintendent's permission of course what is the classified document and I need a security clearance as well

015to leave it and thank you all for listening thank you hey anyone else on Zoom having seen no one else but anywhere else in the room like to make a public comment okay I see no one so we are going to close up public comment which brings us I think we have our high schoolers with us but should we everybody with us or no if you're not ready till 6 30 we can do something else okay wait for that student all right we'll wait for the students so we will move down to our next item which is the meet the reading of the minutes from December 20th and from January 10th so I think you all had a chance to look at those and I would take a motion to approve the minutes from December

01620th and January 10th so move do I have a second second any discussion okay all in favor aye for both right those are approved and we'll move on to Dr Hunter's update great thank you I have a few highlights tonight of ongoing activities that I thought you'd have interest in uh first I want to start with the soreau building and the water issues we had over the weekend after the pipe froze and the roof of the 94 to 2022 building so we have relocated one classroom which will be long term uh they're temporarily enjoying some steam lab time for the next day or two all other rooms reopened today so we're just really grateful and appreciate the support we had this weekend especially from the vendors that we know very well who built the fire

017responded to the fire and then re-re-housed us not very long ago so um in terms of the middle school student and the traffic accident on Friday I just want to report she's stabilized and home and healing well long road ahead but this community's support and Outreach has been really impactful to them as a family and we're going to continue to stay close in terms of the homeless shelter we received I received an update from representative Cataldo actually an hour or so ago he's been very actively engaged with the state and talking about what the plans are as of right now it looks like they might be scaling back the plan to only house families in the very most temporary mode of three to five days and not to leave them in other settings for multiple

018months so that's a new new piece of information that may may be the course may get modified we're not sure but that's what we heard as of tonight that that would obviously have less impact on the schools goes without saying uh in terms of strategic planning we're excited for our third of four sessions tomorrow night with the large group uh we've been looking at the survey data that came in we had over 1800 responses to the survey that went out uh so we're obviously have some great quantitative numbers we've worked as an administrative team under Kristen's leadership to look at themes and the qualitative information and all that'll get brought to the large committee tomorrow the plan would be to bring you the draft in between tomorrow night and the last meeting of the big

019group in March so that the school committee can see it while it's still in draft form and offer any feedback as a group and then lastly we've been talking a lot this week about Metro enrollment uh yesterday as a team we met and decided that our course of uh our goal let me use that word our really robust goal would be to flesh out the elementary school and try to get back to our 10 students per grade there's been some attrition we have not been able to bring in the numbers we usually do at kindergarten the last few years because Medical Inc didn't have the children in the in the pipeline so our goal for Alcott for next year would be 10 per grade was 12 in kindergarten and that would put us in a

020really good place going forward to really you know have the program be on track so that's our next step is to talk with metco Inc see what they have for applicants start to look at that application and enrollment process and we'll give you updates as we have them those are my updates tonight all right great and does that mean that the entrance points will be a little bit more flexible than they have in the middle class so in the past it's been K six and nine and as a team yesterday we discussed really stepping back from that way and not sticking with the status quo as a group that felt like the elementary was the best place to focus right now um so what our goal is is to fill 10 seats per grade with

02112 fingers crossed at kindergarten so that would um it might mean level enrollment from this year till next because we're not filling in at the secondary level but if we could get Alcott really stable at 10 or 12 seats per grade it would you know really take care of itself over time so that's the focus and I think those are realistic goals but there's a lot of variables that have to play out because of the challenges of um just having students to place we should have more options if we're now that we're opening up grades one through five right yeah uh does that uh put us in a competitive position with other districts that are not as flexible with entry points it doesn't really conform with family decisions as a rule but I think you're

022trying to uh premise this on the fact that if we're a district that can do it we'll attract people who might otherwise not have considered conquered yes I think that's correct and we've heard from mecco in the last few years when the kindergarten's thoughts weren't filling that if we became more flexible there'd be more options so we're hoping that's the case Harry trip a question yeah um on the Best Western if the if these are very short term what would our responsibilities be as far as Transportation goes obviously a lot can change but uh none really that we wouldn't try to school them in three to five days but would we have to like bus them to their home district and like not in that amount of logistics it's just the way I understand it

023is the three to five day stop that's what's set up at Devin's right now it really is just that you know stay put for a few days while they get placed somewhere else and then that next step would be where they're actually looking at transportation to school okay yeah thank you real soon are you sure yeah another question about the Metro um I think a lot of um do we have anything like um like promotion wires as like just to put it out there just information about Concord because a lot of parents have um asked me questions they're kind of under the assumption that Congress too far or just don't know a lot about the Concord Medical programs we have like anything put together to present so you do we'd love to get it to

024you um Felicia Deb and Andrew did really great job prepping for mecco's big open house a few December now we do have material so we'll get it too thank you okay um why don't we just cover correspondence and then we'll go back to the high school so do you want to start with CPS Alexa sure we had two pieces of Correspondence one was about special education breakout rooms at the middle school and the other was from the metco collective about Metro enrollment perfect um I think that was that at the that CPS CPS okay and at the region we had one on our deib efforts um thank you guys for that and then we had another piece of Correspondence uh looking for Dr Hunter's dissertation So I responded to that and you all should have

025gotten a copy of that and I think that's it all right so now I want to turn over to Dr Hunter so she can welcome her recognition tonight yeah and we'll invite uh Dr valep and Tate and turn it over to them we're excited to have the high school science department represented here tonight yeah that'd be great you can take the microphone out though if you want to move around in case I don't want to point at my forehead um so I'm thrilled to be here um Tate Becker um got two videos to show um the first one Tate has compiled uh it's the first one is about our engineering program um and the reason I selected these two different programs is a they're very different once or more science more Outreach the other one

026is sort of more academics um in-house so uh the first video that you'll see has to do with our engineering program specifically our mechanical engineering class and some of the projects they do um Tate has is the gentleman who compiled the video so I will turn over to him yeah awesome hi I'm Tate I'm a senior I took the mechanical engineering course uh last last year when I was a junior second semester um I was lucky enough to TA last semester and I'm also taing this semester um so I made the video just to kind of like explain the two projects we do in the class versus like a hydraulic arm um and the second is like a walker mechanism using linkages so we can probably just play the video now and then you guys

027can ask questions afterwards yeah great okay oh sweet [Music] thank you [Music] what you know about rolling down in the Deep when your brain goes numb you can call that mental freeze when these people talk too much put it in slow motion yeah I feel like an astronaut in the ocean you know up and down in the Deep when your brain goes numb you can call them into freeze when these people talk too much but it is slow mo [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] exactly [Music] what's happening foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign thank you I mean I think the other thing I would say is we started this engineering program we went a while back right and I think way before you got involved right we've had some rudimentary materials and it was making

028things out of wood only and uh with one of the district we've got it printers and a glow board laser cutter and you can see that an emergency things that are about science that needs to be really nice activity so I think yeah my group my group especially like especially for the Walker for the legs there's a lot of like intricate pieces and we use the laser cut it and just like printed them all out within a day and then we have a little uh test out different lights using the lights without it so it was really really helpful having to make that out of like wood using like a band saw would have been you know it would have taken like like weeks longer to create maybe just kind of pass it around like

029but one of the ones that you saw so if you can speak into the mic that would be great thank you just for our viewers at home yeah no worries yeah so I mean that's just an example one of the ones you saw in the video and you can see that some of the cuts and the measurements and everything have to be really precise we're just not going to walk just like especially the gearing and the requirements that Mr Panucci and others have put on them to sort of have different type gearing and that type of thing uh and hydraulics how to be uh specifically sensitive enough and I was it a was it a bonus if you could take out the Jenga yeah in order to get in order to get like the full

030100 you had to be able to pull the piece out and put it back on top and then so it was like basically like the can picking up the can was like the first step and then you had to be able to uh pick up marshmallows which for my group you saw in the video like we designed a separate claw that you could just take out and replace um and it scooped it up and then for the uh for the Django we went back to the original claw and like squeezed the outside of the pieces then pulled it out and put it back on top Yeah question tape uh trace it back to the beginning we see the end product at the beginning do you get a a challenge statement that you have to interpret

031do you get specifications all we get is just like uh a grading rubric basically and then we have to um create all like the design ourselves my group we all knew how to like create designs online with CAD so that's that's how we started we spent like probably the first few days drawing stuff up and then we got to work 3D modeling which took like the first uh few weeks of the project but then by that time we had everything designed online and especially because we had the laser cutter we could just um easily like convert like the the model online into like real life using the laser cutter um so then like uh the construction for our group especially didn't take as long because like the tools we had and is this uh part

032of our curriculum uh already maxing out so that you've got to build the next uh piece of the curriculum as our students get more advanced where's where are we and where's it going so I I mean honestly part of where it's going has to do with uh how many enroll right so right now we've got an intro course which Tate took in order to get to the mechanical course we also have an electrical engineering course um I mean I think we'd love to see more um part of it has to do with who we have on staff and their Specialties all right now currently we have four physics teachers all with engineering degrees and so we have that luxury and but you know down the road if we were trying to add another piece right

033or I know we're going to add a sort of a biotech class which we can kind of kind of put in a bioengineering section to it so right now we've got the enrollments really steady um and it is difficult because there are electives and as you know there are so many opportunities out there whether it's not just science and engineering but some of the great things that's going on in math and Humanities um yeah we always love to add more for sure can you say a little bit more more certificate oh yeah yeah right right so the courses that were that that I kind of referenced they could be taken just one and just kind of their semester courses and so the idea initially was you know years ago students and parents students didn't know

034what Engineers did right so they had a member of their family there was an engineer but weren't entirely sure what that meant um and then one of the things you often see in the United States is that the engineering the number of Engineers the United States is turning out is not that many and oftentimes when you go to a university you choose the university and and don't know what engineering is you go to the university and it's if that universe doesn't offer engineering it's too late right you've made friends you've made inroads you don't want to leave and so our goal initially some years ago was to just put in a few courses to talk about to describe what some Engineers do then that kind of piggybacked into this idea of an engineering certificate which

035is almost like a minor if you will the idea is that you take two programming courses uh three these three engineering classes several other a couple other Tech electives that could be graphic design there could be some of the art classes and then a slew of science courses and then the idea is that you would graduate you know the sash so if you want to go to graduation if you see students that say cchs engineering those are students that have kind of I think it's 52.5 credits in that stem area um kind of recognition that they've spent a lot of time with us and and typically we have it's not it's not a huge number because it's quite a commitment it's about 15 or so students per year that complete it yeah which feels about

036right yeah sure thank you I will um allow a question from the audience just one though this is really going out of turn go ahead um it's only okay but that's it we usually do not engage with the public but we do have a suit in front of us it's very exciting so basically so this is uh this was this is uh the group that created this I was Ting for them uh this is a group of two people um they made this like during half the semester the second half um so like during this time like I would like help them out answer questions or whatever but they they pretty much did this by themselves um well there's six weeks right yeah so there's there's two projects for the full semester and this one's

037the second half so it was half the semester yeah so from our members um any other questions for Tate or commas I I will say my comment I'm gonna go with mine first which is I love the video I love that we have videos of our students that can really get out there because I know that like a lot of ninth grade parents they're not aware or even 8th grade parents aren't aware of what the electives are and you do really have to plan your schedule to get to this class it's not as though you can just decide as a first semester Junior I'm going to take mechanical engineering that you need a few prerequisites to get into that so I'm so glad you're here telling us about that and I love the video and

038I know that Tate does a lot of videos um for other things too so thank you for that any other questions or comments for Tate or Dr Bella I think there's one more video to show oh there's another video yeah great yeah you're dismissed if you want to me all right uh the second video um I wanted to sort of acknowledge one of our our longest standing science club um and that's uh headed by Jen Benson one of our biology teachers and it's called Toys teach Our Youth Science um and I I wanted to kind of give them a tip of the hat for a number of reasons they they their their goal is to each month go down to one or two elementary schools and in in preparation for that sort of develop a

039series of activities teach a lesson um for after school um and I think especially they were still active over Zoom doing these activities will resume with students um and the the student couldn't be here tonight his name's Sam Richmond um his video he's got audio he's talking throughout so uh he had a commitment tonight but uh we can just play that and uh I can answer questions about that if you'd like great thank you thank you [Music] hi I'm Sam a junior at cchs and I have been with toys for about three years now all I can say is being able to meet younger kids and help them learn more about science is such a gift for me whether on Zoom or in person seeing their little faces brighten up exclaiming look at my paper

040or my tower is really tall when we do chromatography paper or when we do spaghetti and marshmallow Towers is something that just brings me pure joy being able to inspire them to try different experiments and let them know that no matter who they are science is for everyone is something I would never even consider giving up as I continue to grow as a person toys has helped shape me into the person that I am today who wants to help and support other people and Inspire them to follow their interests and dreams and I could not be more thankful now before I introduce you to some of our other members I just want to take a moment to thank Mrs Benson for all of her hard work and efforts as the advisor of this club she's

041been a wonderful leader and I can promise you toys just would not be the same without her now I would like to introduce you to some of the other members of the club okay [Music] at the end we can try mixing them together that's a good idea so now we can do your milk yeah I really like it I don't think so all in the car but I'm sure you can do it again at home yeah and I could eat my Skittles yeah then you can eat them yeah I'm bringing this home I'm bringing this one [Music] right now I'm just gonna mix them all up I need some blues are you making a rainbow can you line them up on the edge like she's doing like that make a circle can you make a

042circle around the edge can I have some purple you have a lot of purple oh that's smaller in my freshman year because I saw it on the school website and the opportunity is not really working with kids we also get to design experiments and work for years and that was really great and I took away so much from actually coming here I'm gonna get really valuable experience working with kids hi I'm Yasmine I joined toys club when I was a sophomore and I'm glad that I did it's been an incredibly rewarding experience I love seeing the kids not only enjoy the experiments but also start to understand some of the science behind it I think it's an amazing Club not only for the kids but also for and I hope toys club stays at CC

043for forever hi I'm will wood I've been doing toys since freshman year and I love helping out all the kids with the experiments my name's Sarah I joined freshman year and I really like how I saw this Interactive okay so my name is Juliana Bolton and I joined noise Club at the beginning of this year and I'm a freshman um something I really enjoy about toys club is just being able to learn and interact with the kids I think a lot of times people don't think kids can teach us stuff but when you work with them you see how much they actually know and it's really inspiring hi I'm Reid Moffett and I joined toys club last year as a sophomore and now as a junior I can say that you know toys club has

044been really important for my love of Youth education and it's allowed me to further pursue you know educational experiences so there you have it a little bit from a couple other toys members and I can personally say that it this club has been one of the most fun experiences I've had in my high school career and it's been amazing to meet new people and collaborate with them to bring science and joy to these kids and once again I'd just like to thank you for watching well that's it well enjoy the rest of your evening yes thank you thank you so much and especially for coming in person this is really great to really see science in action oh I don't want to be in Zoom anymore I know thank you thank you all right I'm

045cheeks are yeah don't forget thank you oh and don't forget your models yep there you go that's at all okay all right we're gonna move on to the discussion section of our calendar of our our agenda sorry and this is the 2023-2024 calendar Dr Hunter thank you so I'm bringing you the final version proposed uh by the calendar committee for the 23-24 school year the group met three times three times uh combined Administration CTA CCTA school committee Alexa was your representative so it was one of the simplest calendars we've done in a long time just because the dates fell in a really similar way to this school year and we were able to roll most things forward just by a bit so a couple highlights we would return staff would return the 28th of August

046students on the 30th then you'll see the holiday in October we look at one of the three PD path early releases you'll see the three of them are here one in October one in December and one in March and then you see conference days the high school in October the elementary schools in November and the Middle School in December completely on par with what we've done this year and then the rest is really straightforward the school vacations fall where they do uh you'll see the December break would begin on again on Friday half day and then with a return on Tuesday January 2nd and really the last thing of note would be the 22nd of January as the full PD day at the middle and high school and the elementary would have their April conferences

047on the fourth so it's pretty pretty straightforward we're happy to take any questions we were hoping the community's anxious for it they start planning so if if there's no reason not to we'd love to have you vote that tonight questions okay looks great thank you I from some of the younger families with um the I've heard a couple of questions about the shift from starting I know this has happened years ago but the shift from starting after Labor Day to before Labor Day and then in particular the like two-day start with no child care and whatnot can you just speak a little bit of how that came today sure so the intentional by Design is to get back before Labor Day so that it's beneficial in June so you're out earlier uh the the Friday

048before Labor Day is contractually a day off so that we always have that four day weekend to start with in the teacher contracts thank you just from an educational perspective we actually like the slow Progressive ramp up that it provides we get in we sort of get routines set up everybody gets four days to yeah recuperate and then we come back and hit the ground running the week after makes sense thank you welcome great thank you to Alexa for serving for us on that let's note to all of you it's the best committee ever to join I said that last year and I think Cynthia had it right before yeah I do too right we love that they didn't cover though it wasn't the best community but it was a little more difficult to Pivot

049now so yeah it was it was lovely group of teachers Lori it was just great yeah great okay and then we're going to move on to um Alexa I'm going to ask you ask you to just kind of tee this up and then Lori has some slides to share with us sure the the fact that this is in our regional meeting is admittedly a little bit of a little bit confusing um a week or two ago the conquered finance committee met in their um meeting there was robust discussion about um certainly about the budget but they was about the CPS budget and then there was some introduction of data about student achievement specifically um per pupil spending specifically things um all the kinds of metrics that we look at that the administration looks at that

050and that Desi um kind of you know keeps for us um additionally there was some discussion and concern about the Boston magazine ranking so all of this sort of coalesced into a discussion but in that meeting in that conquered finance committee meeting they were all the data that was kind of thrown about was all regional data so even though um the Concord budget remains um with a Delta the data that they were sort of discussing was all regional data so because um we want the opportunity to respond to that discussion we have a meeting with those with the finance committee on the 15th I asked Lori late last week after I had sort of talked with the finance committee chair um to determine whether we would be able to respond to that even though our

051meeting on the 15th is again about CPS data and CPS budgets um once we agreed that that would be a good idea to in fact respond to their discussion about Regional data I asked Lori to pull together some data specifically about the rankings for us all tonight and I didn't want to bring that to the finance committee obviously without talking about it with you so I thought this would be a good opportunity to do that and turn it over and just as a just a reminder to the committee this has been ongoing since I believe I sent my first email about September 1st so about an era in some of the data so I will turn it over to Lori but this is definitely something that has been on the top of our minds because

052we do believe that the rankings are inaccurate so I will leave it to Lori thank you and I admittedly am uh excited to have a chance to talk through this topic because it has been a an issue of the cons concerns have come to me as well from the community I had sent a letter out early November trying to explain what we had realized had happened our efforts to try to rectify it which continue uh until today they have said they will republish it if I can get the core data Bank corrected which means it's not Desi it's student data Clearinghouse I'm directly connecting with them at this point asking them if they'll take our data straight from us change it Desi then says they'll re-look at it if student data Clearinghouse changes it and

053Boston magazine says if Desi republishes that they'll change it so for tonight we'll talk on what we know and have access to and just sort of put some parameters around it um I think it's worth noting that as professional Educators the rankings are always a challenge for us formulas are determined by non-educators different things are weighted that may or may not reflect the community's values and priorities and they're presented as a compiled aggregate Apples to Apples when that's just not always the case and that happens more often than not so but let's go through this so Aaron if you go to the next slide so Alex has covered that you can go to the first data set so if we look at what the rankings actually cover we are showing you here the top 10

054schools that Boston magazine ranked this past fall you can see the list I'm not going to read that to you that's going to be our sort of home base of districts that we're going to use as comparison throughout the discussion because the reference points they brought forward had them you know in the top 10. we were ranked 31st so that was an immediate question for us as to why that would be we had never seen a ranking that low before even close uh it's in the next slider so one value that is used in the formula is class size so if you look here we've provided the class size reported by Boston magazine I'm going to stress that because some of these we could not validate on the Jesse web page so I'm questioning Hingham

055at 7.9 kids average in a class the deci page does not collaborate that so so that's all I can say is I don't know what to make of that um ours is accurate at 19.5 Which is higher it had been ticking up and then we can talk on Why without having an in-depth answer to that the general answer has been we've been facing some increased enrollment really close look at our sections and really budgeting and providing sections down to the 0.25 FTE through the high school administrators one's course sign ups happen so we we don't leave fluff there we as a team had come to feel comfortable that class size of around 20 was acceptable and I think more classes have become closer to that that's my anecdotal answer we have not looked deep into

056the coffers of Aspen to look at section sizes and tell you more next size slide future ratios another factor that the formula uses this one you can see we're right in the thick of the Midway range there at 12.3 staff to students so that made sense that fits the data as we know it next slide Aaron MCAS is certainly part of this formula so we were able to look at our performance this is all 2021 just reminder not 2022 2021 and you can see that in ela we had a 91 proficiency and better rate which is up in the top numbers among these districts Aaron go ahead to Mass a little more in the middle of the range here at 83 for Mass both are competitive and certainly comparable to the top 10 districts that

057they named once you go to SATs Aaron when we looked at the SAT data we actually found some great strengths here you can see where fourth in this ranked list of average SAT score and I'm just going to note this this is one I think we feel really proud of because it's a nationally normed test and there's less variation than there might be on an MCAS or otherwise so maths go ahead yep thank you uh 647 you can see we're fifth on that list at that point next to advanced placement and this I think I will put elastics on because this one also becomes a factor in many of the rankings more on the U.S news and World Report side we don't offer AP courses in the humanities that's a choice of the of the

058district it's a philosophy it's an approach very unique we are always penalized for that because our kids can't enroll in AP courses except in science and math and some others and World Language thank you um so it has a negative impact they can still take the test which is how these scores come to be and do very very well on the test and so that is very validating to us that we're offering High rigor and the kids are performing at such levels so 92.8 of our kids uh compared to the other districts is a really really strong showing next Aaron graduation rate so this is the graduation rate number which um as you can see is right along with all the others and typical for us obviously that almost everybody's graduating this next one percent

059to college is the problematic one that seems to be the driver to the lower ranking so if you're if you look on both Desi and Boston magazine they are reporting that 73 of the graduating class of 21 attended College you're all going to I think acknowledge that that seems really low for us when we look at what we reported to Jesse it's closer to 90 percent so the discrepancy we can't totally account for we're not the only District that has seen this issue Medfield reported it actually before we did through incredible efforts I've tried to figure out where the 72 percent came from and I can't say I've come to something I'm comfortable concluding at this point you heard all those organizations that are involved student Clearinghouse isn't using the deci data we provide I

060can't understand why we're providing data that someone else isn't using so there's a lot of questions here on the process and the reliability of what's being actually put forward so this is the most discrepit number and seems to be the one that drove it so low because all the other factors are on par with the other schools and then the last piece that they mentioned in their formula is Educator evaluation are teachers we have an incredibly strong staff and that reflects in the outcome of the evaluation process last slider and so this is just the history of the rankings and our Iowa ranking among Boston magazine um so you can see the variation for lack of another way to describe it depending on different numbers it's really important to note I think especially as we're

061in budget conversations class size is weighted or people's spending is weighted so the more we tighten our belts on fiscal responsibility could be counterproductive to the high ranking I have my own opinions of that but that's just fact based on how they are putting things together so they're actually rewarding really high spending um plus these other academic points so that's their choice I guess and we can question that or not but um it definitely is a very important piece of what they value in the process so I think we wanted to just be sure we had the actual performance data available available explain what we understood in the ranking and why um and then just ensure that the community had access to that information um and I'm just grateful for the opportunity to do that

062tonight I'm happy to take questions I think there's a lot of things we don't all have answers to but I'm certainly happy to hear them Sarah hi thank you thanks for this this is this is great I mean having a kid going through the college process right now of course you hear you hear the ins and outs of the sausage making of the U.S news and World Report and things and things like for example the spending does wait and then colleges up their spending in order to lower their you know to get a better ranking and all that so and and the rankings definitely don't capture the holistic picture at all so I think we should all be careful and putting weight I mean with our kids in colleges with our school and and just

063hope they're all getting a good experience um I do have a question about the about the graduation I mean like the graduation I mean not the graduation the going on to college thing is crazy because if you I mean yeah of course I'm sure you know I dug deep into this just like I love looking at those kind of thing and there's like no correlation sometimes usually the CC numbers do correlate to the deci numbers but not always the right ear and then there are some schools where it's totally totally off like they'll have like Jesse will say they have like 86 going to college and then U.S news and World reports says it's like 92 I mean it's really it's crazy yeah we've all been doing this it's not one thing I did notice

064and it looked like a very anomalous short-term so I'm not going to call it a trend but a like a recent event it seems in fact also knows that Jesse takes uh two measures of college of going on to college right one a year after and then so they they can capture who took a gap year and stuff like that right and I don't know if this is true but do we have like because also the year before we had like 76 on the first dipstick and like 86 on the second dipstick right are we I mean are we seeing a trend of more students taking a gap year I mean like that like I would think that's something that that the this wouldn't necessarily value but is a really I think a a good

065sign of our students sort of prioritizing their sort of holistic approach to life and you know taking that multiple paths to success and and all that right so if they take a year off to go work in the Peace Corps or to to teach something or to learn more about something before going on so are do you think we're seeing any more of that I think in covid we did I understand it's just those two years right yeah I think in covid we did I I don't know that it's a huge growing Trend after covid but we're still obviously coming out of it um the crumb I got about the 72 percent and I say crumb literally uh Desi said that one of the colleges had quote unquote reported late to the student Clearinghouse so

066that would infer the college as a part of this reporting system on the data point we're questioning it's not our reporting so that opened up a whole other layer of questions I haven't been able to get answers to but that was certainly one of the early responses was that but only one college they know that was where they started and then they sent me off to the Clearinghouse because they couldn't get any further with me um and it's crazy that this kind of ranking doesn't take into like contact time with teacher you know like our teachers are so available to our students like outside of the classroom so they get even like a one-on-one right of classrooms sometimes that is not um available in a lot of other districts um and we look at you

067know the program that came here tonight our mechanical engineering program our engineering certificate these rankings don't capture any of that that's happening in our high school and that's unfortunate it's just purely numbers based and when you look at that 2022 ranking that's based on 2021 data that they pushed into 2022 and if you because I I've spent a little bit of time with the deci website and the Boston magazine website and in 2021 that graduation rate it was only reported in March every other year it gets reported at that 16 month Mark like March in another time so that particular year but it was for every District but the mistake is in our district so it's just it's extremely frustrating because obviously more than 72 percent of our kids are going to college that number

068that we're reporting I mean it should be 91. and and I guess my real reasoning for really getting this corrected is that our kids aren't getting the credit for it and our teachers aren't getting the credit for it because they're the ones that are working in those buildings working for all those scores are you know and they should be rewarded for that and not you know here out there like oh or only 31 well I think I know we're better than 31. and and I think the education that our kids are getting is superior and I just want our teachers and our students recognized for that well and yeah I think what I found most compelling about this data is I don't want to say in all the metrics that matter but in all the

069metrics that we're looking at that speak to student achievement and the teachers that help bolster that achievement we are really strong I mean in most of the student achievement metrics that we all care about um we're not just in the top ten we're really in the top five in almost every student achievement metric when you look at this group um that is to me what needs to be communicated to the community what we are doing when you again you don't have the opportunity to look at the qualitative stuff in these kinds of rankings the engineering certificate the one-on-one time with teachers but even when you take that out which is some of the stuff that makes our district really Thrive and shine we're still we're still achieving it exceptional rate so to me that was

070the takeaway from this um and I'm and again I'm it was important as well to me to just ensure that the community understood where we are because well even also too the going through that Boston magazine chart is very challenging it it doesn't freeze the frames you're it's it's their user interface on the website anyways is rotten no offense to Boston magazine so I don't think the average Concord resident the average parent was doing that amount of due diligence so seeing it this way the way you laid it out is very helpful so thanks anyone else nope it's really helpful thank you man really helpful and I wish we'd have that you know use risk behavior that that question about the trusted adults like I wish they would also put that in in their rankings

071because I think that is really important there are things that we don't measure by a test score but just that our kids have a trusted out in the building to go to I think is really important and critical but one question if I might I don't know if we we have an answer tonight we look at our class size and that differentiates ourselves from other districts uh but so too does does our class load for teachers are those two directly correlated do you think Dr Hunter fiscally maybe indirectly correlated because if we add a section we have to we may have to add more ftes than a district that teachers can teach five so perhaps indirectly um I would not say that's how we make decisions exactly though but we certainly have become very cost

072thoughtful about class size you'll hear CPS so hear a lot more of that next week to bring you fiscally responsible budgets where we feel like they're not educationally compromising things so and I think actually this exercise prove that is actually the case so those two are clearly outlier numbers compared to the fear communities the class load for teachers and the number of students in an average class did you have something Sarah sorry I thought somebody else raised their hand you're taking this to the to the Concord fincom next week the 15th the 15th right in terms of just in terms of conversations at the regional level is there is there going to be any conversation at the regional level or is this a presentation of this and taking questions on this and then that's it

073or is there like a I think well just to know yeah should we should we forget no no and again I said a little more than welcome I just don't want to make you come um so I think you know the truth of the matter is as as the finance committee is really helping because we have such a significant Delta to really keep this CPS focused um the meeting on the 15th however um I feel strongly because they spent so much time speaking specifically of regional data only that it was important that we were able to address that so to that end I suspect this will be brief there won't be much discussion around this because the focus should be on CPS which again is why I'm saying come but don't feel like you have

074to if that makes sense we can't really have a discussion about it so we can't discuss a regional issue unless we call Regional School and we don't intend to I mean we you know we we're going to do this presentation if she's going to do the present presentation with no discussion so this was kind of our time to discuss it just so you you can come if you want to come my my recollection of that meeting was that there was a very brief reference to possibly looking at the guideline vis-a-vis the regional budget next to the guideline vis-a-vis the Concord budget and it my sense is it didn't get much traction I think the response was no let's have each budget each entity stand on its own feet was the the sense of the meeting

075absolutely yes now whether it'll stay there or not we can't so we don't know and we are preparing three times this many slides with dense dense historical data that will all be CPS only so I think pretty quickly we're going to be focused over there yeah so even if you come you can't still discuss if we don't call Regional joints maybe yeah so tell us if you're coming all right thank you for that I think that was really helpful for all of us and and just it's just a good discussion point to have as a school committee all right so we'll move on to our action items so we have two for tonight uh the first is to vote to approve the staff enrollment requests did you want to say anything about this doctor just

076briefly uh we have two teachers looking to enroll their children uh both at cchs uh one has a kindergartener coming in and the other at the high school okay and does anyone have the emotion language in front of them I do I moved at the Concord and conquered parallel committees vote to approve the following staff requests to enroll their children in Concord Public Schools Concord Carlisle Regional School District for the 2023-2024 school year and the tuition be waived cchs teachers some to enroll in kindergarten at Willard sibling currently attending Willard cchs teacher daughter to enroll in ninth grade at cchs okay do we have a second second any discussion got a question yep it looks like often we include the names of the teachers but I don't think we always include the names of the

077teachers is there a Rhyme or Reason to yes yeah a couple of months ago I had an inquiry about very specific things about the teacher because the name was there so I brought a concern to the chair about privacy of the staff so it's this school year we changed it I'm not sure which month but it's fairly recently we stopped putting their names and it was at our January at our first January meeting or January 10th meaning that's when the change happened and we perhaps didn't communicate that I think I put something in the AO that we were improving staff enrollment requests but we did do it once this way already so going forward just for privacy purposes I pose the same question today further I asked where do we stand in terms of teacher

078enrollments uh K-12 I believe this brings us to 54. if I'm correct yes yeah okay so we have a second that's our discussion and all in favor and the post no okay moving on to our vote to approve the 2023 2024 school calendar and I would take a motion if someone has that I'll make it up or you read it I moved at the Concord and conquered Carlisle school committee vote to approve the 2023-2024 school calendar as presented second just a quick point that I should have made earlier the high school schedule was rolled out today to the staff that's going to the kids tomorrow and going to parents tomorrow afternoon a piece of that is that we are looking to add 10 early release days we didn't bake it into the schedule but we

079have room within the 990 to add them so you'll see a note at the bottom where we need to determine those dates and bring those to you later on so we we will reapprove the schedule when you bring the news correct updates to us okay so this is the current schedule as of today I can guess what might happen on those 10 days but I wonder if you could speak to it is it all PD is it uh some form of PD we have a lot of discussion to have it'll be part of the discussions we still have to have with the CCTA okay so we'll get an update on that yeah all very professional work of different kinds for sure okay great all in favor okay and that has been approved so at this

080point I would like to adjourn the Concord Carlo Regional school committee thank you Sharon and Sarah good night 7 12. that's record I know I uh I'm really jealous to eat with their families they probably have a Carlisle meeting tomorrow meeting so you guys do do three school committee meetings a month um when with that I would like to invite up our cmlp friends in the audience maybe you guys could take Sharon and Sarah's seats one there um thank you thanks guys Hi how are you doing hello so thank you to Brian and Dave for coming this evening um I appreciate you accepting our invitation um we um are hoping so if you guys want to introduce yourselves for our audience first I'm Dave Wood I'm the director of the light plant uh Brian folds

081I'm the chair of the light board Concord um well thank you both so um I'll speak for myself and I think the whole committee by saying um you know we're hoping to use this conversation um to really be a conversation I think um we want to ensure that as um the building the middle school you know gets kicked off that we're ready to collaborate effectively with you guys I can speak for myself I don't feel you know properly up to speed with the project in a way that um feels you know like I can be in an effective um I don't know champion of the project um someone that's providing all the oversight relative to where I can you know do that as a school committee member on the project so um I do want

082I guess to just take this opportunity so that the group of us at this table sort of all feel like at the end of the night we're on the same page in terms of what's happening when it's happening how it's happening the scope and all that and I think the best way to do that I know that you guys are not going to do a presentation was to just have a conversation where we all can ask questions of you if that makes sense um so to that end I will I know a lot of our members do have a ton of questions so um some have been given to you guys before um and maybe we could even go through some of those and then ask some new ones tonight if anyone wants to start

083um I'll turn it over to an eager member part [Laughter] so I I want you to correct my understanding to the extent you can uh my sense of how this is unfolding is that the light plant takes responsibility for bringing this to the project the jurisdiction lands ultimately uh with the schools but in partnership with Town through the light plant with details to be worked out love to know what you know about what that's going to look like in terms of jurisdiction and governance and responsibility um initially my thinking was that this would be a rooftop array that would satisfy the needs of the school feed in to the grid and it would offset the school needs and now it looks vastly bigger uh something around 5 million has become 13 million um and it's

084going to I think fundamentally change what this beautiful building looks like from uh Old Marlboro Road I don't think people understand that um but I think that's the the price of doing business with solar if this indeed is the best site for the the extra output that you're seeking uh and so one thing I'd like to hear tonight is uh was that parking lot in fact the the only place in town um I'm sensing that that is your conclusion but I'd like to hear it from you um and what the Alternatives were um before you landed on that because when I look at the at the rendering it it doesn't look like anything that the building committee has looked at for more than two minutes before and I don't even think the building committee knows

085the extent of this well I I know I mean I'm not directly involved but I know that's about the fifth draft I've seen so it has been the design for for since the Inception of the project that it would have a solar canopy over the parking lot and I I'm not opposed to it and I think we have to meet concord's uh concord's objectives and this is a piece of conquered land but the more we hear about it uh and the sooner we hear about it the better because we're we're moving pretty fast on this project right now yeah so we we did we did hear this from the community that they haven't heard a lot about the solar component I know that the uh the building committee the Middle School Building Company had really

086focused on the Energy Efficiency of the building and the sustainability aspects as well as all the education and other components that go along with the school so we're doing a public forum uh on the 28th of this month uh and that the whole goal of that meeting is to bring the whole Community up to speed with this aspect of the project uh we are talking tomorrow about this project at our light board meeting in preparation for that meeting on the 28th I haven't seen a lot of the the materials related to that presentation yet but we'll go over that tomorrow morning the project itself uh early on when the middle school was proposed uh town meeting amended it to be a net zero project now the roof alone will not make it a net zero

087project so it has always been viewed that there would be a canopy in order to get enough production to meet the needs of that that building on an annual basis the way that I view it and I think Dave also views it is this is a place in town for us to meet our in-town generation goals so we would like to maximize the solar generation on this property whatever way accommodates the the primary function of education so we don't want to intrude on that we do want to make sure that we can really utilize this because uh town meeting has told us we can't cut down trees to put up solar arrays that we need to find other spots and it's very difficult to find enough locations to really fit our goal in there of

088an up generation so um we we can go over more details but does that kind of give you some background on why the solar canopy was there rooftop gives us about 80 percent of school needs am I correct I don't I don't know exactly I don't think it does we're trying to address Town needs I do understand that I certainly understand that I don't I don't I if I was to guess a number I would have guessed a little lower more more 60 or 50 percent but I'm guessing so I I yeah the output on a little bit is less than the canopy and the two combined um so if you want to achieve that goal we got that ball yeah the net zero on the school specific on the school yeah correct you need

089both correct so when town meeting approves the one and a half million dollars for the feasibility study the amended it at town meeting to be a net zero project and that required this the building committee to make it as efficient as possible so at a very low energy needs but that also required that we have enough generation on site to to generate the power that that site will need and the this the reason you also had mentioned about the 5 to 13 a lot of that I believe and Dave can speak better to this but it's the storage aspect uh that really bumped up the price yeah so you know we just are in the final stages um right now of updating the numbers for tomorrow um and when we put the number together um

090we had based it on a two megawatt battery and um we're actually going to put a One megawatt battery because uh the solar output is going to be around 1.2 megawatts so we're trying to match them um so when we put the number in the Warren article we wanted to do worst case scenario now that we have more updated information it's actually going to be uh quite a bit less um so like Brian said we're going to be going over that tomorrow morning in detail on our presentation so um feel free to attend if you want but you can always watch the recording after too as well I think it's in 12 hours so uh with the information that you're gonna are you gonna we have a school committee meeting the same night as the

091public yeah are you going to have that recorded we are yeah you'll be at the townhouse right right yeah so the townhouse is set up for the recording so between that your meeting tomorrow and the public forum I'm going to reserve my questions so after that date and I think we should come back together yeah and I I did see uh Alexa had sent an email and I had responded to those questions so you should have those and if you don't I can get them to you okay yeah to get you started yeah no I think so I think we should give you the opportunity to do your prep for the public forum and um we'll listen to the exchange of information there and in back in um June when we were doing the design

092uh there was a meeting held of the immediate stakeholders that had to do the coordination between the smma the the building committee the light planned SDA and all the other acronyms that are different companies working to coordinate all this and it was a really good conversation back then to really kind of put out really detailed technical questions to this to these Consultants to be able to work through the details so uh you know at a high level I'm very confident that the plans for the high school already have Incorporated the design of Middle School sorry sorry the Middle School um have the design of the solar planned into them but you know there's obviously still details to go over and diagnose yeah there's quite a few details still to be worked out you know the

093important thing was getting the design the numbers the financial analysis done first um we obviously have to sit down with um Dr Hunter and get a memorandum on an understanding done like we did on Willard um you know so there's some arrangements like that that we're going to have to get to as well the good news is we already have one from Willard as a template to work off of the project are a little different but on the same token that's something that is going to be in a later stage yeah right I mean and I'll just say you know I'm sure you're going to shoot your own home but besides the obvious win of generating solar you get wins from not having that asphalt heat up every day and um so there's a lot

094of other buses you don't have to shovel off your car perhaps and we don't have to plow the parking lot and things like that um and also by generating so much energy in town There's this reduction in expenses at the light plane right so that's that's why this project is really a light print plant project where the rate payers are taking on the debt and not the tax the taxpayers and the reason for that is and that's why it's front of meter is that those savings go back to the people paying the electric bills because they're the one putting up the capital and uh there's this financial benefits is also those environmental benefits and also this there is education benefits because the kids will go to school seeing these things around them every day yeah

095and uh you know we'll really get you know a good understanding of how these things work and at the public forum just one more question are you going to talk about integration of things like storm water management I mean obviously you have all this water yeah well we can talk about the shedding of water off the panels with the actual drainage system that's that's beyond scope so yeah anything to do with the solar Story the storage and solar that's that will be the topic best case scenario for uh how this coordinates with the timing of the project otherwise I'll let Dave take that one so our goal um assuming we get funding approval is to have the solar array and storage everything done before the kids go into the building that's the goal it's um

096there's a lot of variables yeah but that's what we're shooting for um assuming we get approval for the borrowing um so yeah there we go I think you're going to get approval for the borrowing we've got to go through a bid process so we got to get all the details done and then get it you know make sure that the materials are not going to get delayed by supply chain and so forth but that is the goal is to have it done before day one yeah the good thing is is you know our consultant and smma have worked very closely so um you know there's pieces that are kind of overlapping the projects and we know that and we've identified that um in terms of the drainage that's all been factored in with smma um

097with the runoffs on the arrays and all that so all those things have been taken into consideration so I know Carlisle's had some trouble with the drainage and then icing I suspect new constructions was probably a little easier to manage that but yeah yeah yeah and there's there's a number of different things you can do with runoff um with snow and whatnot and discussed it with um SDA solar Design Associates our consultant so we've been paying close attention to that that was it was one of my questions day one with SDA is is about range because I know REI and Framingham they have shedding of snow because they just put the panels up to the optimum position from the Sun but it drops it under the hoods of the cars indents them so we've we've

098talked about that and so forth so Dr under mentioned Carlisle and people who have asked me about this plan uh I've suggested they take a look at Carlisle is that indeed a good example I actually haven't seen that one okay okay I haven't been to Carlisle I've looked at the one at Lincoln Sudbury high and there's a lot of similarities with the canopy aspect of it so right you've seen that one for the canopy that's kind of similar and Wayland also has a similar array Carrie I have a couple questions um microphone oh sorry um I I guess one of my big questions the community has become very comfortable with the rendering of the school um which does not include any of any of this um and we've put it we've spoken about it at

099town meeting we've talked about it here at the building committee is it I I would I think it would behoove everybody to have a rendering with what that would look like at this February 28th meeting I don't know if that falls to you or the building committee but so that's our goal okay we're gonna try and accomplish that because I think it would be really shocking especially with all of the there's a lot of money involved um so yeah okay that's my one comment um on I I think the thing that I'm I'm I am not a solar expert I've done my done some research and anticipation of these conversations but the thing that I'm really trying to understand is why why would Willard like why is the setup so fundamentally different between CMS and

100Willard because why would Willard it seems like aside from potentially this grant I don't know if we're getting grants for CMS but aside from that the town paid for the vast majority of it so why would CMS not be getting some of the benefits of you answered your own question so the town paid for most of the Willard array that's why you're getting Bill savings the utility will be paying for the array so they will be getting the savings and from a legal standpoint we can't send power directly from an array into the building afraid that's illegal so that's why it's all coming out to a you know our interconnection equipment and then it'll go into the building except there's no cost benefit like we're we're having to pay for a lot of the obviously

101we all value The Net Zero ready Net Zero building that's a huge value for the community um but it's really expensive so how and that's not something that can be there's there's not any way to negotiate or to work out some arrangement with well that's part of the mou that I was referring to earlier yeah yeah so that's what I'm asking about so when we get going through that piece that's where we come up with agreement on you know we're using the land right yep and uh you know that takes away from using it for something else so we also um that's where you get into the negotiation okay and then in 2015 there were properties that the town uh at town meeting we voted to allow for solar arrays to be developed on and

102in that school property was one of them okay so the town has already voted to allow solar to be on that site as well as other sites that are in town yeah and I fully support that I just I'm just I was surprised to see that there was such a vast difference in how how the setup was at this point yeah and it has to do with who's putting up the capital that's that's the main thing okay thank you and then I guess one my other question I don't know if you have the answer to this but is if the article isn't the 13 million dollars for the warrant um what what is the best case for that um so that's actually going to be part of tomorrow's conversation so I don't have the final

103numbers in front of me yet we've been working on them all day okay um so it will be less than that though okay um pretty good amount okay okay those are my questions right now so I just again I'm a a novice with soul or two admittedly so when we talk about a rate pair yes is a rate pair somebody who has like essentially an account with cmlp I am I so I as a homeowner am a rate payer um so in essence even though it's not a tax increase it's a it's a rate increase it's a rate increase to the vast majority of us who live in Concord and have an account with cmlp um my question is have we calculated at all what that annual cost will be to rate payers over and

104what it will look like and how you know it's it's all very neat and tidy when we talk about let's say for example the building itself We the finance committee does extensive data analysis to say this project is going to cost the taxpayer this amount of money for this amount of time do you guys have a similar um analysis to share with the community yeah we that's the approach we take on things is how much is it going to cost the customer right yeah and we generally use the median customer we're going to present that tomorrow morning of what it's going to cost you know per month per median customer so all that in all that analysis has been just about been done so so the news is go to tomorrow's meeting if we want

105to see what the increase is to take care okay yeah that's what I expressed in the email is that we're tomorrow is our prep for the meeting on the 28th the 28th is when everything gets Nails nailed down and and the schools are also great payers so correct so I mean I guess I have a question on what is it going to do to us what is it going to do the school is the right payer so our rates are now going to go up we have a fully electrified school it is going to cost more money for all the power in the school so how is that going to affect us from anything right it's the difference between us going out and Contracting for power with a somewhere in New England to buy Power

106and then to pay the transmission for that power and pay other fees to get it here to Concord or to take it in town so that's the comparison it's a it's a it's an energy product that we're buying so when we look at the solar array it is about the cost to the customer compared to the cost of the customer with our current methods yeah and then my next question is we talked about the mou which is um kind of is it written yet so that to me would be something that would or should if you're doing things perfectly be completed before town meeting so that the community has an understanding about how we all operate so you know full disclosure from my perspective um I get worried about the implications to our operating budget

107so for example as Tracy just said if we're not Exempted for example from as a rate payer having to contribute to the project we're supporting they're going to be implications you know to our costs each year and and again it's just you know where my concerns as someone who has to manage and you know cooperation with the superintendent that operating budget um and then you know I think part of our due diligence is to maybe have further conversations with Carlisle to see if there have been any unintended or other maybe Lincoln said right unintended costs um associated with these things so that we can begin to socialize that with our own committee the finance committee um you know that's sort of just sort of where I am because I don't want to go down this

108path and say oh goodness um not in again not only is it providing no benefit which I I understand I'm not going to dispute that but now we have all these additional Associated costs that I think is just my personal fear in this conversation and I do think that if you were to ask you know your probably average Concord resident they would assume that oh we're getting all the soul around the building so it's gonna you know heat the building and it's going to provide all the electricity and they're comparing it to what they would do in their home and it could it could if we decide to have taxpayers take out the bond and add to the to the town debt and have a behind the meter system but I don't think that's the

109most logical way to go about this project I think our current plan is is a much better one because the utility is a much better um operator of that generation facility that the tab would be yeah but It's Tricky for your one rate payer being the school you know like I you know fundamentally like um I think you're right it makes sense um I'm just thinking about you know the one rate payer of being the school of I don't know is there anything you can do in the mlu to help there be some benefit and I don't know the answer to that but that's just where my mind is at and just for clarity of process any mousse we've had with the town at any of the schools I might be the facilitator talking with

110Dave but you folks see the draft and tell me what you want in it and I'm just a messenger back right and I guess my other question just in terms of the building committee have they projected what the costs are going to be like the electrical costs are going to be is there any projection of that not that's come to the building committee do you have any uh like even the size of the building and everything else what are the costs going to be smma has all that information um so it's available there yeah okay have you seen it or no you've stated okay you've seen different early estimates okay I don't know what the latest is but it's always been well below the production okay great and um what would happen in the summer

111when the school of college is not going to be highly used the array would produce and send to customers in the neighborhood which is great yeah and it would reduce our capacity expenses and our r s expenses in the summer so that would be good because I I know this could be reduction in some expenses so it's not all you know a bad story that's a that's a big difference between building an array in town and Contracting for wind power in Maine is that we actually reduce some of our expenses and getting that energy product to town good so and I assume that the public hearing would be the uh the Enterprise public hearing would be another opportunity to ask questions and and okay and that's I don't know what day that is but it's

112in March April it's in March I don't know the exact ticket yeah the the the concept is is the public forum is where we're going to talk a lot about um the design the aspects um the soft tasks because we're also going to talk about the funding and and the payback for it but during the hearing it will be more money talk rather than talk about Statics and other things so okay good yeah we hope by by the hearing and town meeting Town everyone in town will feel they understand the project and and what's going on and I'm sorry you you don't feel completely up to date at this well that's not anyone's fault right it's hard being a novice getting into the getting into the real stuff I don't think that's through anyone's fault

113I didn't need to apply that no no it's just overwhelming it's something I've heard from others and and it's just when built when the building committee was working on the sustainability aspect there was a lot of focus on the eui and other aspects of the building as there should be appropriately and and solar was always female people do it and and you know we had to wait for the project to get along to know what we're working with and so forth good any other questions well I think the fact that we're catching up a little bit now um is in fact uh properly timed it simply speaks to what you just said uh we've been doing other things you've been doing other things in Readiness for what you're starting tonight which is the next phase

114of this rollout so thanks for being here tonight yep appreciate it well thanks for your opportunity thank you guys so much for coming and I know it was quasi short notice so I appreciate it very much take a break for what 10 hours or something thank you both so much okay we're just going to work on numbers I'm not done yet thank you thank you have a good night um all right that was excellent yes Savvy did that um that was helpful though okay next we're going to move on to our budget discussion um nothing really here in this discussion is a big surprise but I did want to formally and in public um you know for the record and for all of you guys make sure you know that two or so weeks ago

115um we did have a meeting uh that included Lori Hunter Bob Connery me Carrie rinken our vice chair along with the guidelines chair parashar Patel Gail Dowd Bob lecher Peggy Briggs the finance committee chair was unable to attend at the last minute but um Bob was able to demonstrate [Music] um two ways that we were able to start to close the gap in our budget Delta so I figure if Bob if you want to talk about those two things um and we'll start with that okay thank you um so we um we start a budget process really early um and so we have some estimates built into the budget um one of those estimates is uh for our special ed transportation we trans uh we um contract with case collaborative we're a member of the

116collaborative contract with them for special ed transportation and at the time we built our budget um in November and into December we had an estimate we've since gotten updated guidance from them on what next year's allocation will be and it's 50 000 less than we had initially budgeted so we that's a clean Savings of 50 000 that we've are able to factor into the budget um the second item is more of a discretionary decision to reduce out of District tuition budget um so it's a hundred thousand dollar reduction to our budget it's not necessarily a reduction in expenses uh what we're doing is strategically utilizing our circuit breaker Reserve funds that we carry over from one year to the next um we're going to carry over a little bit less best practice is you might

117recall this from the budget workshop and from other discussions we've had best practice would be to carry over a full one-year balance um and utilize it the following year um and for a lot of reasons that's best practice including you have kind of a known number that you have access to the following year um we given the fact that we have an extraordinary fit 14 rate increase in our out-of-district tuitions unprecedented in probably our careers here um collectively it's typically two to three percent we felt like we should try to leverage the reserves a bit further um and use that to bring the the budget increase to a smaller level by a hundred thousand so what we've done is the combination of those two things is reduced our budget by 150 000 and CPS uh

118we're now at a increase of 45 million forty seven thousand one seventy six which is now an increase of 4.74 over the FY 23 budget um the um the breakout since we typically present at the Desi function level I've also kind of laid out what you had previously approved at the Desi function level shown the uh reductions on which lines uh and categories they appear on uh to arrive at the revised budget um and so those are the changes we've identified since we last met we also did meet with the administrators and and talked uh kind of through where we were um the the increases we've had to Staffing are all um they're all level service increases they're in support of special education they're for bcba they're for um a one-to-one nurse for a student

119they're for special ed assistants and tutors those are where all our increases are um this is essentially a level service budget we have some pressures without a district tuitions with utilities and I think this is what we feel like we can do and operate within next year this is an unusual year um and so this is what we're what I recommended to Dr Hunter and um she's supported and we're bringing to the school committee requested a reduction to this amount questions anybody just so I understand that uh a little bit better Bob um first with the note that for zero-based budgeting these seem strikingly neat numbers um but that neither here nor there I suppose um when we go to town meeting we're looking at a uh uh a change of fifty thousand dollars in

120the warrant article ask and uh the hundred thousand dollars comes from uh revenue streams other than the uh the budget request the effect will be a reduced the effect will be a reduction to the general fund budget so right you'll pull it from existing of circuit breaker right yes and the fifty thousand the exact amount um we the gross number is actually higher we're factoring in a surplus from case that we can't they're not going to be able to tell us what the Surplus is going to be so you know we could guess some different number and make it a not round number but that's not appropriate okay with it yeah we can't zero base case collaboratives back charge to us all right uh my comment to my colleagues and to Dr Hunter uh Bob

121U2 of course is uh we're about to meet with a thin com uh what's the logic of making a change right now uh prior to that meeting there's a signal to them that uh we're not in conversation with them I'm not signaling anything other than we're still doing our due diligence to review the budget and where we're at I don't think we're going to find much more to work with um but that's I think what it signals and uh just if I just want us to be aware that that's what we would be doing and I'm not sure it was you mean by taking a vote Yes oh no my intention in taking a vote is just to say that we accept these recommendations and to have that in the record that we're okay with

122these reductions um I don't I think that I think that we are going to continue to work with them I would like to hear um you know the way I see a typical negotiation going the you know we come in sort of where we both are we've done that um we've made the first good faith effort to show them that we're you know we're making a good faith attempt to listen to their concerns from a fiduciary standpoint and make that first step forward in my experience with negotiating the next phase would be for the other party to take that into consideration and perhaps you know counter with something at which point then you would move to the next step where we might be prompted to take a look again to see if there's any more

123that we can do that to me is the normal order of operations and what is considered a negotiation so to me it's just I'm saying taking a vote just says we accept this as the first step and then onwards we go yeah I'm not comfortable with that signal that Dr Hunter referred to I don't think that for 150 000 tonight it's worth sending that signal that we're done oh I and again I don't I if that's the interpretation I don't want it to be yeah no I don't want it to be either for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars why why would we take the risk we always have more work to do but I guess doesn't it does it make it look like we're moving and we're looking at the budget again I look

124at it as we're looking at the budget again and here's another hundred and fifty thousand dollars I just I can't I can't assume what health income is going to interpret what we're doing what I'm trying to say is I don't want to move this goal post a tiny bit at the risk of the signaling that uh that we're referring to here or the misinterpretation that could occur I just don't think it's worth it for this small amount of money and I just asked about that so we're meeting him Monday we will get some of the answers to our questions yeah pretty much all of them yeah everything Friday Friday okay so we're going to just discuss that data information whatever on Monday and then what's representing you to fincom on Wednesday correct correct okay um

125I'm kind of of the same mind as I I'd like to see the answers to my questions and everybody else's questions and what we're going to present to fincom that we don't know tonight so all I meant to say and again so we're just speaking a different language here all I meant to say is are we collectively the five of us comfortable with taking these reductions you know some people would say oh I don't know is it good practice to um put at risk this hundred thousand dollars I didn't know what anyone was gonna say there could have been um there could have been a plurality of us that's a bad idea um so all I meant to do was ratify okay we're okay we are comfortable with Bob's recommendation onward we go but that's

126why I have all those questions about circuit breaker and I kind of like to see a bigger picture oh okay you know I'm not saying it's a bad recommendation or it's a good recommendation I just kind of wanted to see a bigger picture that's the way I am yeah um just like what's happened in a couple years past and what we're projecting you know all those things so that that was really the Crux of why I just wanted to have a okay more conversations but again which is I totally get what you're saying yeah yeah not misinter oh and I now totally get what you're saying I we should probably both do better at saying this is why I want to take a vote and you should probably be better at saying this is why

127I need that information and then yeah so that's smart I'm perfectly content with uh Bob's assurances that these numbers are going to work and a hundred thousand dollars is not an unprecedented move it's simply one that uh in better times we'd like to avoid um but we've certainly done it before um and uh it's not a a huge amount uh relative to some other circuit breakers that we've moved um sooner than we would have liked um my only my only uh hope is that we wouldn't uh formalize this with a new vote on a new budget it was so much pending instead rather accept this with thanks to the administration for the work knowing that uh in the next week a lot more is going to unfold and for 150 000 I don't want to

128signal to the fincom that uh that we're going to do this negotiation vote by vote but rather let's have the conversation with them that we promised I think we'd be better off politically strategically fiscally to do it that way I think they'd respect their process more it's my sense of it can I just ask a question of Bob and Carrie and Alexa and actually Lori at the meeting too so how do you think that fam com would feel about us doing this now versus waiting like do you have any sense of so I I uh just to be I would just be very um clear on this I mean this is savings we've identified that we can do it's a good effort to close the gap um like I don't see the harm in reducing

129it how people interpret things I'm not going to get into thinking about that I we did talk to parashar suggested we could make these reductions that my thought is he would take that at face value and expect that we'd make them I don't know if anybody feels differently that was there and I mean I am comfortable in this group so you know as long as we sort of give a verbal that we're comfortable most likely with these recommendations you know I'm comfortable with waiting five days till you know Monday and or seven days till next Wednesdays to have the conversation without the vote if you think there's you know strangely some political Optics to consider it's not the hill I'm going to die on taking this vote well I think to do this is to

130ask people to interpret it you know we are sending messages with our decisions and we we do honor them to interpret it to understand it to respond to it so I think this doesn't happen absent an interpretation by the people who are joining us with a concern about uh educational spending and fiscal responsibility yeah um yes I'm going to these are very defensible I think they make a lot of sense um I I think I made my case and I think Lori your your reference to the signaling that could happen um really corresponds with with my concern I do think there's been a lot of signaling coming our way the meeting we had of parashar was very direct and then to see what they talked about at their last meeting this committee is going to

131have to advocate for this budget there's just no question to me on that they're not signaling and I'm interpreting and I'm going to make it just for myself I'm not interpreting a message from fincom that they're looking to close this we're hearing really very different things to the point where I'm sitting here defending performance of the schools so I this is not a luxurious budget it's under five percent now that was important to us to get under five percent I think that gives you a different tone to the political aspect and we shaved too deeply a year ago there's just no question part of the thought part of the increase is the the reconciliation of some of the places we shaved and having to put stuff back in and I just I I think this

132is going to get really hard I just think we should name that I absolutely want to talk with them I want to I'm looking forward to a chance to explain how the School Educational side works with the numbers they've asked for we haven't done that in a couple of years but I do think this is going to get really hard so nobody wants to Signal anything but we are definitely getting signals I don't want to say we're not so so if you could give us the if that information about what we're restoring that we shaved last year that would be very helpful I don't think the nurse the one-to-one nurse is an excellent example we gambled on whether or not we would need it took it out of contracted services and by July we were

133hiring a nurse okay but if there's other things outside of that I mean if we can do that aside I think that would be useful to me to advocate for the budget arms like you said yeah I just talked about my head is Insurance costs we had significant pumps for insurance both workers comp and property and we have utility rates going up and then in the transportation side we have diesel costs going up but I'm saying things we cut last year that's what all of the all of the contingency money we cut so anything that would have absorbed we were trading and reallocating as best we could we almost froze the budget so we'll give you the list for sure that'd be helpful you know I mean maybe there's a slide in there and I

134you probably are saying it and I just didn't hear it no we can pull it out so it's easier to find I am confident we get all the value out of this work and these savings you've uh brought us as a recommendation without formalizing a new budget quite yet I think we get all the value by bringing these to fincom it's okay if we disagree you know I don't think it is okay yeah I don't think either of us have bad intentions I don't think this this certainly doesn't do you mean realize internally here disagree or with this calm I'll leave out okay no that's fine I just um this isn't uh I don't not singling a lack of support for the budget I just would like a little more time to to look at

135the answers to those questions to be very clear can we just leave this motion on the agenda for Monday sure or I mean or we could amend it to say you know it's not maybe it's maybe it's in the wording it's we move to approve the exceptions jobs recommendations as described I mean that's really all I that's really like the entirety of my intention it wasn't to say this is the budget it's that I just want to make sure because again like these things can be you know I don't want to say controversial but these things can be points of disagreement so I wanted to make sure that at the very least before we went to fincon that the five of us agree that Bob's recommendations are ones that we feel confident in before we

136hit the road running to the next part of the negotiation with fincon that was sort of my intellectual process there that was all I was seeking to do so I'm more than happy to listen to a different amendment I just want to I just want to make sure that we're all on the same page before we move forward does that make sense yeah and I'd like to certainly accept these number one or not vote a new budget because I think that declares that we're not going to engage with the fin comms um and that's not true we do want to engage with the fincom and uh and similarly I want the fincon to re-engage with us Gary this may be a useless rhetoric but I I think you you know that when we support a

137budget uh every single member of this committee is then dedicated to sporting that budget right through town meeting no matter what kind of uh debates we have here we stand up and support uh whatever whatever the uh consensus of this committee is so there's no worries there no it's 100 True um do we have any more questions before we like maybe talk about like a different way to word the motion Gary if you could start thinking of some language on the Fly um um I don't even know the report submitted by Mr Connery uh and Dr Hunter this evening relative to the CPS budget are you comfortable with that language yes of course yes I think I want to Second it second okay well thanks for the continuing effort and we know it's getting more

138difficult with every passing day I might just have one more thing to add to our little discussion here I just you know as watching a lot of meetings I think we also have to just name the fact that I feel like the new middle school project is affecting our operating budget and I just think it's really important that we're at that those two things are very separate and we're advocating for operating budget of our current students and not for our future students and I just I just have that feeling and whether it's a feeling or reality I just want to put in the record okay all right all in favor of the motion all right and Dr Hunter do you want to talk about the the row petg Jennifer so this is the last step

139of the thorough playground the ptg it's in and being used uh thank you for your support in the capital budget this is the ptg's contribution to the project that they've done their process and now you need to accept the donation and we will pay all the bills and be done that generous donations that's awesome yeah they've had it for right many years and waited for the right moment that we could execute the playground with them so um I was set to lead this effort no you were and then and then we moved and we went to Willard and I was like no I was really excited seven or eight years ago yeah so anyway um this is amazing benefiting it's wonderful It's a Wonderful playground yeah thank you so this is great um did we

140have a motion no anyone want to read one yeah I have it the Concord I've moved at the Concord school committee votes to accept a donation from the Thoreau ptg in the amount of seventy thousand dollars to support the Thoreau playground project second anyone second thank you all in favor discussion of discussion I would uh respectfully ask that our chair do something a little bit extra to reach out to the officers of the ptg give them the map see them in the morning good morning yeah thank you okay great many thanks yeah thank you this has been I assume this is what wasn't one fundraising effort every year yeah so uh to you know this has been generations of uh Thoreau families so thank you to all those who've been doing all those took the

141runs and the whatever all the cakes and the things that they do a lot yeah all right all in favor aye aye with that I'll move to adjourn thank you everybody thank you thank you