Concord Carlisle Joint School Committee May 23, 2023

001good evening yeah yeah welcome I'm calling the meeting to order because we need to reorganize as the first activity tonight but before we do that we're going to just do a quick round of introductions because we have a new school Committee Member so Carrie Patel we want to welcome you from Carlisle welcome glad to have you here and uh why don't we just zip around the table Sharon maybe you could go next Carlisle region region nice to see you Harry Rankin nice to meet you thank you nice to meet you Alexa Anderson nice to meet you Tracy Morano we've met before you know all right um Bob Conley I'm the assistant superintendent of finance and operations nice to meet you Carrie welcome Kristen Anderson uh assistant superintendent for teaching and learning welcome Cynthia Rainey Concord

002great so Carrie slow us down at any point ask questions it will seem new and we're ready to help you acclimate so tonight the first order of business is to seat the New Concord Carlisle school committee to elect its officers and make other necessary appointments I request that the chair of the Concord school committee called for the seating of the Concord Carlisle school committee and for the election of officers for the Concord Carlisle school committee other appointments can be made at that time if the Committees have worked out assignments the appointments that require a vote in addition to the chair of the school committee are the appointment of the treasury is the appointment of the treasurer so you're calling did you catch that Alexa yes I will call to order okay so you've you've called

003to order yeah yeah so I am going to make a motion to recognize Alexa Anderson Court Booth Tracy Morano Cynthia Rainey and Carrie Rankin as conquered members of the Concord Carlisle joint school committee and Sharon Whitt and Carrie Patel as Carl members of the Carlisle Concord Carlisle school committee okay how does everyone like that all in favor okay um so then I guess I'll continue on um now I will accept nominations if there are any or chair of the Concord Carlisle school committee this was a tough one maybe we didn't get a lot of a lot of interest in this so I would um nominate Tracy Morano great do I have a second for that nomination anyone no court sorry you know I can't hear you Court um um all any uh all in favor

004of nominating Tracy Morano as chair of the Concord Carlisle school committee okay so I'm going to turn it over to you your meeting thank you Murano so at this point uh nominations will be accepted and voted for the vice chair of the Concord Carlisle school committee so I would based on my email submissions like to nominate Miss Sharon Whit to be the vice chair of the Concord Carlisle school committee second and all in favor thank you guys so much both for volunteering we appreciate it so much all right and next up we have the appointment of the school committee recording secretary and this would be the lovely Aaron who is behind the scenes so would you like to make a motion where I'll make a motion to appoint Aaron Higgins as the recording secretary second

005all in favor aye and then we also are going to appoint a treasure to the Concord Carla Regional school committee I will make a motion to appoint Allison Blake is The Treasure of the Concord Carlo Regional School District second all in favor aye aye okay and this is not on there but we're gonna um we're trying to do things the right way and we are going to also receipt uh Domingos to Rosa who's not here and I use a lot in to the Concord and Concord Carl School committees so we don't have to vote on that but I just want to acknowledge that and you are in a two-year term and so is Domingos and you can continue on as to be the conquered rep even though because I talked to Magnuson he was like

006but miles is going to high school I said it's totally fine you can still be the Concord rep so um so we're happy to have you with us again so thank you yes thank you thanks guys it's been a good year really good here all right and at this point we are going to adjourn into executive sessions so if someone has a motion in front of them move that the Congress school committee and has gone through Carlisle School debating will enter a new executive session under purpose three of the open meeting law to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining of the secretaries and maintenance unions and return to open session second okay all in favor aye aye all right we will be back in about 15 minutes okay maybe more maybe less no promises

007maybe more maybe less okay very Felicity [Music] okay everybody's okay I'll share my screen oh it might be that one oh I think we're can you hang on Harry hang on one second sorry we're having some technical difficulty in the room really act away [Music] who else is on June is anybody else on Zoom there we go okay I think that's good all right welcome back everyone we have our cchs students with us tonight we have Harry Felicity and zarya and just so you guys know we have a new member to the regional school committee which is Carrie Patel who's at the end so just in case you're wondering why we have different people here we just receded the Concord Carlisle school committee okay we're ready for the update okay perfect um all right so

008we can just jump right into it let's see if you want to get started all right awesome so student Senate recently had a number of spring Spirit events um we had the Color Run which you can see a photo on the right I was there and it was a lot of fun lots of colored powder and the weather was great too there was also the cornhole tournament in spirit assembly on Thursday and on Saturday which is the one day the weather wasn't good we had the drop-off swap off in preparation for the pop-up thrift store which I think is sometime in the next week or next two weeks ish so these are all just a bunch of really exciting events um to help wrap up the year for students yeah definitely um and elections are

009underway for class government and student Senate so that's exciting and definitely kind of starting to show that we're getting down to the wire at the end of the year um and also it's the last week of classes for seniors obviously their last regular day is going to be Thursday so it's another thing that's kind of crazy we're all kind of getting ready to move on up a little bit uh course schedules for next year are out and students are reading with their guidance counselors I know I had had to get a meeting with my guidance counselor and basically change my entire schedule but I know everybody's pretty excited to get their schedules for next year so yeah yeah I definitely second that um also for another Performing Arts update um into the woods was really

010great um thanks to everyone who came I don't know if any of you were at the Saturday matinee but that was the time when we had possibly a squirrel and some electric issues and a power outage but anyway it was still a really great experience um for I think for everyone and this week we have the pops concerts um the chorus Pops concert is tomorrow night um which is also our chorus director Ms Smith's last concert ever since she's retiring at the end of this year so that's really special and then the abandoned Orchestra Pops concert is the day after on Thursday as well um last week we had our last math mcast I saw a sophomores University and in two weeks we have our last science MCAS which I know I'm very excited for

011I want to be done with MCAS I'm so glad to be done yeah um and then one last thing that I want to point out so um we had our final meeting for Juniors and seniors who are currently advisory leaders and one of the things that missed it all and Mr Joe were able to talk about is kind of the program for next year obviously with the new bell schedule we are losing the traditional weekly advisory time so they want to kind of tell everyone that there's still going to be a role for upperclassmen to play in helping to sort of lead and shape the 9th grade experience um and they're going to be keeping a lot of the people who were Juniors participating this year and they're going to be looking for some Rising

012Juniors as well so I know that's exciting for a lot of people in school who had been wondering about that program with the new bell schedule yeah that's it thank you great Felicity my Instagram started suggesting um a Felicity for Senate Instagram account so I just started following you um thank you for following my my Senate account actually Instagram disabled my campaign account for three days and I got really scared because I was like it's right before the election I can't have this happening to me oh it's a mistake it's recommending that I follow you so I did and it's been fun to watch your um your campaign live so thank you that's scary um Felicity I just wanted to say I took my um daughter and her one of her best friends to into

013the woods last week and we um on Friday night and we I was so impressed with um the talent across the board from the music in the pit to the lighting to the incredible singing like it was just such a fun performance and she and um her friend they're seven they're little so they were talking about um doing like Theater Camp this summer or something but it just got them really excited so thanks for um I know you were really involved in that and thanks to everybody who put that show on it was awesome yeah thank you I'll definitely pass that on to everyone else in theater I'm sure they'll really appreciate that so thank you and I know you guys were all involved in the Color Run and the spirit assembly those were excellent

014additions to the high school it definitely brings that school spirit aspect to the school because you know you get it in the fall and it's great but to have it in the spring I think all the students really liked it I know my kids loved it it was just a great day the weather was great you had the perfect weather for it and of course they loved seeing miss doll and Mr Cabeza get dunked that was the highlight it was Mr hoppitzall was he the other one after Drake he was that's great so I know it takes a ton of work from Senate so you guys did a great job anyone else okay we have two more meetings left this year and then in terms of next year I'm not sure how that works out

015with you guys who's going to continue or if we'll have other reps joining us so we'll just wait and see what happens with that that's how it usually works we hear in this in the fall so we'll see you next time but feel free to stay if you'd like thank you all so much thank you oh thank you all right we will move on to public comment our public comment period is period of 20 minutes we will start with comments in the room and then go online and just as a reminder you will have three minutes this is a meeting with the Pope in the public no with the public so if you have a public comment you can use the raise hand feature and you will be called on I see no one in

016the room and no one online so we will move on to our chairs liaison my raised hand didn't work oh I'm so sorry okay Ikea go ahead sorry about that I was fumbling on on my end um so hi everyone good good evening my name is Ikea obas I am a Boston parent I'm here today regarding concord's Public Schools decision to involve the police and response of the incident that occurred on the school bus from Boston to Concord on May 4th while students should certainly face appropriate discipline for any inappropriate behavior cps's overreaction was very traumatizing to all students on the bus and needlessly so this trauma was compounded by the fact that it was possible Elementary School students could be on that bus Elementary School students have the option of taking the middle school

017bus in the morning so that could participle they can participate in before school activities like chess um is one of them my daughter's in that and so it's traumatizing that the middle school students but it would even be more traumatizing to have younger Elementary School students on that bus like my daughter who's six we appreciate Dr Hunter's email to the school Community which clarified that the adults made mistakes and that children's did nothing wrong I agree that her assessment was you know it was implicit bias was involved and that much work remained to be done in this regard while not excusing the student's Behavior I believe that there's a systematic issue underlining the incident for a substantial part of the school year that has been no consistent bus monitor on the Middle School Bus even

018though CPS is supposed to have a bus monitor on that route giving that it's a longer duration in light of the above I'm requesting that one Dr Hunter the bus driver and or the bus District dispatcher apologized to the students for the overreaction and the unnecessary escalation two that parents are notified as soon as possible when the bus monitor is unavailable for any of the mecco bus routes three an emergency bus monitor should be secured for the Middle School Bus as soon as possible and plans put in place for next year so that there are no gaps in bus monitor coverage if a bus monitor isn't available on a certain day I hope that we can share the burden of Staffing more widely as a Boston and conquered Community instead of relying solely on the

019mecco directors and staff that's a small pool of people four bus drivers and dispatchers should be required to participate in the annual Dei training unless this is already in place five the school committee reevaluate cps's bus policies and create one consistent and fair policy that applies to all routes the policy should clarify when law enforcement is prohibited to be contacted if any of these steps are already have been taken thank you we I ask that the it be communicated both to the Boston and Concord families thank you for your prompt attention to this matter thank you for allowing me here today and I'm looking forward to a prompt follow-up um and looking forward to partnering on this thank you thank you and it looks like Elizabeth Frank you have your hand race also hi I'm

020Elizabeth Frank I'm 1283 Elm Street in Concord um and I just want to express my support for the comments Ikea just shared on behalf of the metco family collaborative um as I mentioned at the last meeting we really appreciated Dr Hunter's direct clear communication about the bus incident um and I would appreciate if a further follow-up could be shared with the school Community regarding further steps and actions the Administration has been undertaking um and also that the school committee put it on the agenda to discuss and finalize the transportation policy that could apply to all routes before the next school year begins to make sure that this doesn't happen in the future thanks so much for your time and consideration all right thank you anyone else we'll do not see any hands raised all right

021I've closed public comment so moving on to our reading of the minutes you should have the April 25th minutes from Aaron does anyone have any changes comments I haven't heard from anybody all right second districts the second any further discussion all in favor aye right correspondence at the region I believe we had two pieces of Correspondence one actually was meant for clock Republic um and the second piece was on um embedded leveling for English at cchs and in Concord we had three six emails three were I would sort of give an umbrella classification is deib related emails one was a thank you for the budget work we did a tone meeting one my favorite um uh was an eighth grade civics project email and then we continue to be cc'd on emails from a non-conquered

022resident regarding a dispute with the town of Natick and the Concord Police Department was that right all right we will move on to our chairs Liaisons and superintendents report and I'm going to start with our school committee goals um so Aaron if you could pull that up and share that that would be great just so everyone can see we're talking about um and I'm just going to quickly go through kind of where we're at it's from a status perspective I think we maybe two meetings ago we went over these two meetings ago so our professional practice goal on Communications um oh look at oh I've got errands on top of mine thank you um so it was to develop new communication channels to share the business of the committee with the communities we represent so

023we we've actually done a lot this year in terms of communications and we've had Community coffees we're building our subscriber list I didn't check in with Dr Hunter to see if we've actually met I think we doubled it we did double it exceeded our goal I believe our goal I love that yeah really yeah it's shocking really when we say that we're really asking people to get another email from the district and when they sign up that's what they're signing up for the subscriber list is an email I thought that girl was quite ambitious yes so that was great um we've been using Dr Hunter's social media and Aaron I'm going to pull mine up so I can just scroll a little quicker sorry um we have we've had quarterly updates we were on the

024parent newsletter I think next year we're definitely going to look to have like a little section on Lori's District bulletin that we can make you know small updates just so people know we're still here and we have definitely been reviewing other school companies actions and procedures so Alexa and I this year started the chairs Roundtable and we will continue to do that next year all of the Committees that we partner with have been receded that they're in the process of being receded so there'll be some new players to the uh Sarah Wilson is the chair of Carla so she'll be joining us at those meetings and those have been really really helpful um we've actually talked about it at the chairs breakfast in Concord like suggested to other committees like it's really helpful like if

025the select board even had chairs from other areas a finance committee had chairs from other areas so we're trying to socialize that a little bit because I do think it's been helpful for us um and so we're pretty good in the Communications Department the budget our professional practice School of budget which was to have our budget workshops which we did all that early on in the year um and just to continue to understand the finance committee's guideline process we started that in the fall and we're going to continue to work with the finance committee on that our student-centric goals we're going to hear actually a lot tonight from Kristen Anderson on student wellness so you can see in terms of status we have a lot of things happening tonight so we will Mark those complete

026when we're done and we're going to hear the final star 360 data and the reading data in June at our I think it's sort of June 13th meeting so we'll see that um and let me see so student wellness we've got budget and then our deib goal we've continued to do that we had a great meeting I don't know if um anyone has gotten who wasn't here had a chance to watch it but Andrew did a phenomenal job with his presentation it was really really great we sent that around to everyone there's just so much that's happened this year so we felt really good about that and and I think we our meeting was supposed to be an hour and I think we're about an hour and a half an hour and 45. we just

027really brought those of you that were here was really great so if you haven't gotten a chance to see it you weren't here you might want to take a look at that um we will just continue on in that matter we have some the the one thing that we have to get back to and I'm part of this committee as a CCTA hiring committee that is kind of an ongoing project that they've been doing a lot of work with um Wellesley College Andrew talked to us about that about um different firing fairs that he's gone to so we'll bring you more of an update once that group gets together again and I think that's about all we had there so that's just a general update we've finished a lot of things there's one thing we

028did not accomplish this year and I will just call that out which is our forum and we are definitely going to do a mental health and well-being Forum in the fall and what we had decided a couple weeks ago was really that this time of the year we would not get enough people to come to that and really to do a good job with it we want to have it as a kickoff versus an end of the year kind of can you make it there because I think we're all feeling a little pressed in the spring and I think parents generally feel pressed and I think I need to make that part of our like summer work to make sure that we stay on top of that planning really narrowing in on what we want

029to talk about and then of course scheduling the date so that's just a one thing on that um I think in the last meeting you had asked if anyone wanted to be involved in that and I meant to email you but I would love to thank you already too okay I actually did okay you actually did thank you so we will keep you involved in that um and then just carry for you we have a school committee drive that once your email is situated you're added to the drive and so you'll have access to everything that we keep on there and everything that's on our drive is really public information um so you'll get that as soon as we get your email situated all right and the question our Protocols are very or difference in

030my opinion from many other districts in terms of our communication everything has to go through the chairs and just very aware of that okay oh yes thank you thank you so will so we'll have a meeting and we'll kind of go over all of our protocols and we'll meet with Dr Hunter so we have a document that the new member onboarding group was working on this year like what you do in the first 30 days 60 days 90 days and so even though you've been a Carlisle member it's just kind of getting adjusted to the regional side of things okay so we'll we'll work to set something up in the next like week or so if that's good with you all right do you have anything else to add on school Penny goals no just

031that um as we continue to sort of look at them if you find something individually that you think that sort of we missed or whatnot just give up give a shout and a holler I think um I've appreciate this as a chair this document in its specificity has helped keep us on track especially as we plan agendas and whatnot so um I do think it's a good tool to continue to use and everybody should be keeping an eye on it so that nothing can slip through the cracks yeah and certainly if we've forgotten anything please remind us because we need help sometimes in that area all right so that was all I had and I will give it to Dr Hunter for the final strategic plan great thank you uh so we had spent some

032time and I say we kind of looking at Bob and especially Kristen I'm working with the leadership team here to provide metrics that feel measurable and can hold us accountable over the coming five years so that's the change that's happened since you last saw this especially if you were on the larger committee a few that I thought I'd highlight I'm not going to go through all of them obviously under multiple paths to success we're striving committing what I think one piece of feedback that we heard very loud and clear was to aim high and put in metrics that are not only realistic but inspirational too so I think some of these are more inspirational and hopefully we can strive to reach them others I feel are realistic the I think this first one being in

033that category of increasing student performance by 10 percent as measured on our assessments and I won't go through all of them but we definitely are committing to wanting to factualize and make that rebound happen off of the pandemic mental health and well-being student survey feedback demonstrating that at least 50 percent of the students see Improvement in well-being life homework balance and homework practices and subsequent to that as measured in the youth risk behavior Studio survey student stress is cut in half from 2022 measurements I think to me that's among the most important data that's here it reflects outcomes in other places for sure but seeing you know our numbers get back to less than 20 and 25 percent of our 6 through 12 students in depression anxiety or self-harm kinds of thoughts is just by

034far the driving priority Hi Maury what um I'm sorry I'm looking at that that was 2.3 if you're trying to map it I'm sorry against the student feedback surveys are those like done through that pair thing or are they just sort of like intermittent ones done like in home base or looking for a new um data platform yeah and so our data platform that we've been looking for has should have the ability to do our own surveys so what we're proposing as a metric is to design a student wellness survey and culture survey that we give annually okay and so we can track all of our progress so what we have what you feel we have Baseline data and then we would create a survey that would sort of continue to track I think we're

035trying to find a formative way to measure progress in between the full youth risk behavior surveys okay wonderful yeah and would that be done in this fiscal year or is that further out next I'm talking to fy24 uh the data platform selected this school year we're pouring everything into it right now the data um so then we would the next up would be to take the mental health Team and take all of the surveys that we give so the youth risk behavior survey the equity survey and so forth Wellness surveys challenge success surveys and meld their questions into one survey that we could give to kids annually and that's all can be done in-house or yeah okay so it is it would be our proprietary yeah even if we're borrowing challenge success we've just take

036this style of the question okay there's lots of like um a big package that a lot of school districts use is called Panorama yeah they have a survey that they use so but there's lots of them that you can sort of take from under inclusive culture I think the one I certainly want to highlight here is by 2025 20 of newly hired administrators faculty and staff will identify as people of color 100 this is ambitious for sure 100 of these staff will be retained from year to year the goal here is to close the gap so that we're closer to the 25 diversity in the student population with a more diverse staff and that we focus highly on retention um and then finally in the Innovative environment thread creating outdoor space options at least one

037additional one per school with sun shelter which was very much stressed by the committee um at least one working Garden and we're part way there as different schools have some of that up and running already and then um looking at the food which I really love this in this plan um adding one new meal of a multicultural offering every semester so I think you'll hear more quantitative pieces to this it's not a hundred percent quantitative but there's a lot here that will be very measurable and we'll be able to bring you regular updates on and progress on great so the next part of this work will be the big rollout which will be this fall I think it's better timed to the start of the school year and project the next five years so the

038community students staff everyone to take and see the final product at that point yes oh sorry goal 4.5 with um the district-wide calendar I think is so useful especially because we have so many um community members who are members of many different schools but um is that something you anticipate having up and running well yes we're up next not for lack of trying even before now um we really we're looking at a new web page this summer so to me that's a critical tool that the website that we're going to look at will have to have and then we need to build habits at the schools that they're actively using the tool there should we sort of pseudo do it now and even in the current website but if it's not thorough it's not useful

039right uh so it'll be part of the web page potentially as early as this fall we would yes okay ambitious nothing like the start of a school year to build a new calendar again it's ambitious I was just curious yeah that's the hope I just want to thank everybody on the big committee who did all this work um and I would hope that not necessarily in this plan but in our annual superintendentals and school community pillions that we can add in environmental sustainability um into our yearly goals because I think we hear very loud and clear up from the at least the conquer Community about environmental sustainability and not just in our schools and then collaborating with the town and our sustainability director that's awesome thank you I agree am I correct that we'd consider

040these to be uh uh driven by the administrative leadership it's not a school committee formal document here it's rather something generated by uh administrative leadership is that so in the commit and the committee that said bye by the community of us in that room okay um I I agree with you Dr Hunter about the value of some quantitative data in here um where I see a couple of examples of it um is is the starting line so to speak July 1. where's where's the Benchmark from which we measure anything I'm not uh yeah that really isn't spelled out here if you look at each number like it says 1.2 we've tried to start going through each initiative and hyperlinking it to a baseline for each one so we've started already trying to capture that so

041um it depends on what the initiative is but for example if we're using that 1.1 since Laura used to as an example those MCAT scores that we would be using as the Baseline would be the 2023 meaning the spring we just gave so we don't have them yet but that's the style that we get them in that's located in there do you consider any of these to be uh as the jargon goes stretch goals ones that uh might be challenging for us yep absolutely what would you call out as uh as one of some of the more daunting or ambitious goals I mean I think two of the ones that I sh brought to the Forefront here today are 50 of the kids reducing their stress seems like a stretch goal given the environment clearing

042currently and I think 20 diverse hiring is a stretch it's it's certainly something we're always working on and sometimes the position that becomes available in the pool of people that are available all have to come together so I think that could be a stretch but we heard loud and clear especially on that one through the equity audit aim high and show us the progress and we'll you know be understanding of maybe coming up short but the goal is to hit it at least at least at the beginning of the five years I'm going to say we're going to work really hard to hit all of these it's 7 16 now diverse staff I think it's a little less than that of what's a good percentage percentage uh where are we right now I I it's

043almost there it's not yeah it's there yeah so yeah yeah okay yeah you should remember presentation better than I am I think why I'm hesitating because if you split out the teaching faculty from the support staff it's so much less than the teaching faculty that to me seems like a real priority area and uh no that makes a lot of sense yeah ultimately this will live on the central website and we'll be able to watch uh these Benchmark data flow in that is the Hope yeah the Hope or the expectation is the plan that is the plan thank you great thank you any other questions on that okay thank you Dr Hunter for that um okay on to our discussion so I'm gonna turn it to Alexa because she's going to do a couple of

044these and I'm gonna do a couple so so thank you for uh bearing with us these past this past week Alex has done a ton of work on this in terms of just meeting schedules and Liaisons and you know um so the school committee meeting schedule I think is is quite basic and and very straightforward I don't think there's much to discuss there I trust you've all received it um there isn't much to be said what I think will become our next order of business probably what we do mostly in between meetings as scheduling is exempt from open meeting law is trying to schedule some additional summer meetings one of the things that I noted last year in in sort of looking back was we didn't vote on our goals until our like October 25th

045meeting I want to set us up for doing a lot of the the kind of organizational work a little bit more over the summer which we weren't able to do last year because of people's schedules that being said people's schedules are no better this year um so a couple things I wanted to toss out to you all one um we always strive to have full attendance at our meetings we can meet when it's just a quorum I just wanted to but but also under like recognizing that goal setting and um and talking about our norms and our Protocols are all really basic like really important foundational work so I don't like the idea of moving forward with meetings just meeting the requirements with a quorum but just noting that um we might have to in

046some of these cases um again I don't like the idea um not everyone has even given me their schedules even with just Court Lori Carrie and I I think are the Carrie Rankin and I are the only ones that have done it we there are no July dates that are possible I mean and we're talking people out of the country not like you know oh I could zoom in from my you know Beach Shack on the cape um you know this this is time zones this is you know bigger family trips that are you know kind of bucket list oriented things where maybe a zoom meeting is not in order but I am going to seek to continue to try um to get us all together and so what I'm going to ask I do

047have these color-coded calendars like I did last year that I will pass out or email to you all um and then I think what our next discussion will have to be is whether um again I always strive to want in-person meetings but we might have to move to zoom and and our you know and on an atypical schedule so stay tuned for that look out for those emails I do want to get them scheduled and I want to get this squared away in the next few weeks um so just I just this is my appeal to you to be looking out on your email so that we can try to button this up so right now we have June 6 June 13 on 22. yes correct yep um well at 6 p.m 6 p.m yes

048so um again this is a project I like I like trying to get these logistical things in order um but I have a question about planning I agree with you that it's obviously best for goals to be done as a group um at the same time I feel like what we've learned in the policy meetings in the last year is that we've had a lot of like really good conversations when the vast majority of people are there and then when we bring it to the table here when everybody can come together um it's like so it's almost a better conversation because the a lot of the yeah it worked out yeah and the people who aren't there so I I actually think like and I'm I'm one of the people who isn't available in parts

049of July but so I actually think it could be beneficial to have some of the like brainstorming sessions actually I like that perspective um if other people aren't able to make it yeah because it's not our only chance like we we you're right you just see it yeah you'll see it after that and you'll definitely see it in August like so if we had maybe two sessions over the summer try and get if you could get if I could get to one that would be great yeah and and then if we all come together as a group in the fall to like really hone in on where we are that could be that's a customary I don't know I assume this is okay with open meeting law like let's pretend Harry couldn't attend is it

050customary that like not to make more work for someone but like should you have want to like submit a memo a couple points or thoughts that they could be introduced like via a surrogate like you could say hey Court I can't attend this meeting but here are my thoughts could you share them is that appropriate I don't even know I'd be very cautious yeah yeah we have another committee I'm on we were called out by the town clerk this week we're simply sharing a Google document that we weren't even editing because the potential for editing was there yeah and they said you know you just got air on the side of caution yeah so my I'm no expert on this but my sense is we can have the most freewheeling conversation any way we want

051about scheduling the full stop yes yeah yeah I'm just wondering like again if someone can't come can they email something if I look at what she has it she's influenced me prior to my arrival here and that would be called in violation yeah that's my guess okay although I like the idea we're striving for efficiency yeah and inclusion like that's my biggest thing I'm striving my goal is to have everybody at the table or this foundational work but for a busy Bunch but even when we did our goal setting that we did break off into groups so you know even if you had you know four people at one meeting four at another it might be very yeah and then uh in August we could come together and see what we came up with okay

052you just need to have Forum of course yeah it's just a Concord meeting yep right good point yep um all right so stay tuned and just stay vigilant looking at your emails good luck Alexa thank you in court you're really throwing a wrench with your fabulous vacation yeah [Laughter] um enjoy it anything um do you want me to do that and then you were also on yep okay so thank you all um we are we were able to put together what I think is a really strong slate um for a vote tonight on our uh liaison and representative group so I am actually it's your meeting so I can make the motion I'm going to move to advance the following slate of members to liaise with and represent the school committee for the following organizations

053and town committees to the Carlisle Board of Selectmen and finance committee Kerry Observer Carrie Patel the the Concord finance committee Alexa Anderson to the Concord select board court booth to the Concord Dei commission Tracy Morano to Peg access Cynthia Rainey to the Concord Financial audit advisory Court booth to adult and Community Education Carrie Patel to CPAC Carrie Rankin to sustainability which is our in-house committee Cynthia Rainey to the calendar committee Tracy Morano to the CMS building committee Alexa Anderson and Court Booth to the Dei strategic steering committee Sharon Whitt to the CCTA bargaining Tracy Morano Carrie Rankin and Sharon Whitt to the CTA bargaining Alexa Anderson yes we pull out the CTA and the CCTA sure you can pull them out so strike those and also we're going to discuss the warrant signing um so

054separately as well so I move that slate do I have a second second all in favor let's do discussion just okay oh good point he wants to speak to it I I don't know okay you're right discussion anybody people okay with share that list with Aaron this is going on I did anyway yeah so I didn't know if I could share it in advance because if again y'all that's concerned we were afraid um but everyone um I appreciate people who did email me volunteering um and their willingness to serve in all these positions okay we all appreciate it quite a bit so any more discussion so these are our official these are the groups we're going to liaise with yes this can always get updated I mean I know some of them are important that

055they be is the who's on the adults the cease whatever it is the adult ed committee that's a regional program so that's perfect yeah that works there are some things that are tricky all right we good any more discussion okay all in favor of this slate all right yeah okay so this year um oh we'll talk on CCTA bargaining and CTA bargaining um again I I asked for volunteers for these we wanted to assign them early um I think for a couple reasons one we anticipate that they're going to be extensive um and two um because we knew um we we wanted to plan and potentially you said even maybe start earlier than had been traditional in the past so we just thought as if we're doing this kind of thing um we wanted to

056get on it early and additionally um because the ask is significant it might have impacted someone's ability or willingness to to take on like a heavier liaise situation so that was sort of our rationale um so we can talk about them separately so again thank you to everybody who was willing to step up to the plate so um for CCTA the CCTA bargaining group um Tracy Morano Carrie Rankin and Sharon Whitt um were the nominations would anyone I would move to nominate Tracy Murano Carrie Rankin and Sharon Witt the CCTA bargaining group is there a second for purposes of discussion sure second okay so um does any of those three have they bargained with either of the units before okay so I would uh propose that Court Booth joined the team and we removed one

057of the Concord members I did negotiate yes class go around it's okay for purposes of the discussion is we also have a need on the CTA so if we're going to have the same issue I mean I don't know it it court or would you be if it's so needed to be would you be willing to do both I think we're talking about probably a dozen meetings each oh easy yeah yeah these are uh these are protracted right no question about it yeah well and I and I think that part of the um you know we've done the smaller bargainings because you've now bargained with two units I've bargained with two units so I I mean I think that bargaining is bargaining you know what I mean I would I just um I'd like to

058take a vote okay Mr Booth is willing to serve I think the CCTA experience will inform the committee about the CC CTA bargaining and I think the people who will learn a lot from hearing how that partnering goes so I think that additionally that is what has happened I don't know if that would be true again I was working with who stepped up to the plate here um I didn't I I always consider this a very different conversation and I never think it goes down like this so I I misunderstood well so I don't want to bump somebody who is vying for this lovely responsibility uh well I think so we don't want to give you bills and able to take take one of them on CCTA is probably the one that would be uh

059where I could add more value but that's my opinion you all could I certainly learned a lot my first go around learn from what the CCTA did and it helped inform me with bargaining with the CTA sure because I had never done it before would you want to do what we could also I think given that um given that you sort of misunderstood the assignment if you will and I don't want to put court on the spot about with respect why don't we tape all this discussion um and move it towards next week if you will Lori and maybe put that on our June 6th agenda yeah sure okay Alexa through you might I ask that uh you share with us which members thus far have said CTA is is a is a maybe for

060me wait say that again will you mentioned CCTA oh CTA we have Initial Ideas yeah you and me I mean you were a little bit more vague you said I would be interested in bargaining and then I worked with who the other respondents were saying that they had an interest in okay sort of piece them together in a way that I thought was Equitable and um thank you and why not so um so yeah um okay so we can table that for June 6th we won't advance that piece of the Slate today um and then the final piece um that I wanted to talk about um was uh nominating warrant signers so if Carrie you might not know this um traditionally we have had um really um majorities of of our two committees as warrant

061signers so almost everyone has been a warrant signer um in in the past we it's it's been interesting this year both the Concord select board the fight Concord finance committee the the chairs we've all been talking about how to um lighten the load a little bit for people and um when I had solicited requests for who would be willing to um be a warrant signer that was um lighter interest than some of our other committees and um we had talked last year about moving to a single warrant signer which is very common practice in in a lot of other districts I was going to ask why do you need 4 for and are you saying great I just want four people at any given time yeah and so well you know so typically there was

062just a lot of common practice at the region we had four and at CPS we had three so it worms really basically a quorum was and everybody gets every single warrant so that will not change everybody will get the emailed warrants so you can take a look at that and we talked about doing it last year we didn't move towards doing it Bob was came to us at the beginning last year his experienced with signal single signatory warrant signing so he'll help us convert to that and I think it at this point it makes sense because we all have access anyone can ask a question on the warrant and again all questions go through the chairs but it's everyone has access and I just think that it becomes tricky also when if they have to

063chase anyone down to you know I need one more signature or whatever like I don't want to complicate that and we didn't have a high level of Interest yeah and we had two enthusiasms yes people interested so this I think could be the year to do it quick responses anyway can I speak a little more to process uh my understanding is that whether we have one signer or multiple any one member can put a hold on a warrant absolutely um what I think would ask questions what I think would be helpful to me um is to clarify that a little more let me give you an example on at least one occasion maybe two I posed a question and the presumption was I was putting a hold on it yeah when indeed I you know

064in fact I wasn't just had a question it's a question yeah so shame on me I should have said this is not a whole this is a question so much shame on me for making this up if you pose a question this sounds all right to you Bob we should be explicit this is a holder this is not a whole good idea ending an answer yeah sure great and then Cynthia and I briefly texted today about um if if we move forward with this another thing that we are going to explore for future meetings is putting warrants grants and minutes on a consent iconic consent agenda which we had briefly also discussed last year but sort of did it didn't happen and I think you know I I know that you all know that we've

065we've been striving to make our meetings efficient and inclusive and all of that so I think that would be like that I texted right back or speaking my language so um I so so the warrant will go in that because on in that consent agenda as well so it's just another way to make sure things don't slip through the craft by any of us or any of individual members so and Bob can I just ask one question so the actual amount gets printed on the agenda of the warrant correct well the you you can do it A Million Ways yeah I know I I said we could we get two weeks it just came out today yeah so you're if you're all going to receive it what's required is that we share it with all

066members of the board okay um if you're all going to receive it via email that requirements met up I can find out whether we're supposed to post it um but the second thing I would recommend that you you could do is you could point an alternate if let me just make an example if courts approving them and he's on vacation [Music] um if you don't have an alternate then the you'll need a majority of the school committee to approve so that's your decision you can either appoint an alternate or you can just have the majority of the committee approve of somebody if the primary approver is on vacation so that's those are your options I would hope we move in the direction you're suggesting the alternate you need to expedite some of these Okay so

067wow okay I'll volunteer be an alternate wow okay this is wow this is very collaborative so um I am going to move to make um these appointments for everyone's consideration I am going to move that we appoint as the CPS warrant signer Cynthia Rainey as the CPS warrant signer alternate Carrie Rankin as the regional warrant signer Carrie Patel and let me just ask for Sharon would you like to be the author yeah which you did express interest would you prefer to be the alternative great great and then I will appoint uh as the CPS warrant signer alternate to be sharing wet please see ours today discussion is somebody happy with that thank you to the Warren Steiners wow we could get the minutes and the grants and this that'd be really helpful if anybody could

068pull off an item on the cassette calendar and select word they even discuss minute changes yeah in that in that consent agenda it doesn't preclude discussion it just wraps it all together okay great all right any more discussion I just want to be sure Carrie knows Bob will loop with you it's an electronic approval so you won't have to drive over or anything like that even easier yeah yes my first I'll just admit what I did the very first time that I was a warrant seller I printed out the entire warrant and I was going through it with a highlighter and I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to be doing and I got a call from um Kristen Vasquez and was like do you think you could maybe think about approving it and

069I had no idea what the time frame was like I'm like oh my gosh I can't really just did that so this is the region did she update her distribution because it's still going to yes I saw Sarah was on that yes Sarah's still on can you get to yes because Sarah was on today right yeah okay thank you guys for being flexible and amenable to this can we take a vote all in favor hi hi awesome if I accidentally approve ccrs they weren't please forgive me it's fine um all right yeah that gets confusing we won't process it okay all right thank you so much for that Alexa that is a huge amount of work that just got done so we love that and we will talk about bargaining at our next meeting um

070on to our presentation from Kristen Anderson our assistant superintendent on mental health and wellness and there was a presentation that was already shared I think Aaron is probably going to share it with us oh you're going to share it we're trying to get the video to okay you like it are you going to stand too I love that I am I love that okay oh wow uh it's like a TED talk you can walk around with the mic I'm hoping this helps with some of the video choppiness that seems to happen when Aaron does so interesting yeah that too much no it's great it's great so I'm really excited to present this to you because I know this is the problem that you are I think you actually have to hold the mic because he's

071going to come out of the room and tell us to hold the mic he's gonna hold it I might break out into song I mean we would enjoy that if I turn it on no I think it is on so we're not going to hear it in the room but our audience at home will hear you lovely voice on yes good okay so uh this is a topic that's very important to use for committee and to everyone in our communities um the mental health and wellness of our students so um I'm going to start by telling you what the problem is because I think it's probably the most important um issue of facing our school committee and the help of our young people today is uh that we do have a mental health problem here

072in Concord um there is a mental health crisis especially for adolescents in the country so you uh have seen all the reports from the uh Center for Disease Control nationally this is the the numbers of depression anxiety stress suicide ideation self-harm and so forth are very very high for teenagers so that is reflected in concrete as well in our data so I'm going to talk about a little bit about the problem and then talk about really get into detail about our plans to address the problem what we're already doing and then happy to answer any questions about any of this so I this is an issue that I work on with the mental health Team Pre-K to 22 age 22 mental health Team you can see listed there the members which is all of our

073guidance counselors uh and school psychologists preschool through age 22. and we meet monthly on this person yeah when are we going to do questions uh let's save it for the end yeah because it's very thorough thank you very much youth mental health uh problems are prevalent and consequential yet wildly uh misunderstood and uh unaddressed so in that CDC piece that I mentioned it said one in three teens struggles with mental health one and three so 33 75 percent of Lifetime mental illness emerges in adolescence and their definition of adolescence is age 12. so it if it feels like it's getting younger and younger that you're hearing about um kids struggling with mental health issues it's because that is what's happening um and then 50 of those struggling never seek help I'm celebrating all right so

074um I've presented to this body before on the youth risk uh Behavior survey um but we know from that survey uh and every other survey that we give that this is an issue in Concord as well so um I just linked to the presentation so you can see them all the youth risk behavior survey from 2012 14 16 18. we didn't give it in 2020 and then 2022 we also give the challenge success service we get the uh well being surveyed in 2021 during covid and of course we made the equity survey all of those ask questions about students well-being so you can look through any of them and when we see that data and I'll show you a few Snippets um even though you've seen the larger pieces um what you notice is that

075we have an issue and then the second thing that you notice if you break down the data is that the groups that struggle the most are are historically marginalized populations of students so particularly our students who identify as lgbtq plus our low-income students uh our bipoxic and our students with disability and that's true Nationwide and it's also true here all right so here are I think three slides from the youth risk behavior survey last administered here in Concord um at the middle school and the high school at um 2022 so I just put this overall slide up here to remind you we had risky behaviors that increased and some that decreased but these are the increases and I just pull out among the increases this is the sixth grade eighth grade and then High School

076in the sixth grade depression increased brought by 11 that doesn't mean it's at 11 it actually increased by 11 uh and at sixth grade I think it's in the 50 range something like that self-harm 16 increase um so and you can see depression at the eighth grade level up 10 self-harm six percent at the high school level stress from academic workload increased seven percent stress from pressure at home nine percent depression increased five percent sources of stress um so you can see we also increase here school and academic workload went back up higher uh with our you can see our sixth graders 8th graders and then these are our 9th through 12th graders at 65 percent experienced uh high levels or somewhat high levels of stress 65 more than half this is really concerning even

077when you compare us to towns around us for example actin box broke it's the same uterus Behavior survey their number is not as high this is the number when we look at our strategic plan we want to cut that in half and we think we can do it so really concerning data similarly depression and as I've mentioned before the numbers of depression uh have gone up you can see variations sixth grade eighth grade 9th through 12th grade the reason I put this slide on here though is for you to look at um the vast majority of the kids who struggle with depression identify as a hood from a historically marginalized community so for example 60 of students who identify as non-binary have struggled with depression does that make sense I'm saying yeah so we've learned

078in everything every area of Public Health that you actually want to get people the information you want to get students the information they need two to three years before they actually have to put it into action so the the example that you'll see in every research study is smoking cessation so when we started as a nation but also here in Concord when we started in the late 70s into the 80s doing smoking cessation or don't start smoking um we saw a decline because we started that program in Concord in fourth and fifth grade and so they just students never really picked it up and so that's what we've seen in the youth risk behavior survey the number of kids who have tried smoking has gone away down over these years so for mental health and

079wellness we want to get the students the information two to three years before they're ever going to need it how would you help a friend who's struggling with this for example what's the sign of depression stage of behavior those kinds of things so we have lots of plans as you saw the Strategic plan Dr Hunter presented tonight to address the problem so that's the Strategic plan link there we have one of our four pillars addressing Mental Health and Wellness so right away one thing that we identified as a mental health team was that the Care Finder service that we used was not adequate for our need so we weren't we used interface from the William James college and they didn't place any families with online there so right away there was a pandemic that was

080a problem so we started looking for another service we did a pilot of this company carousalis um so for a while for about three months we have both Services we found this one to be um really answering all of our needs um what happens is a family will call or the guidance counselor will call on their behalf and the family gets hooked up I'll say this really slowly because that's so impressive the family gets hooked up with a therapist of their description whatever they want whatever language they're talking if they are struggling with a particular issue whatever they need within 24 hours 24 hours it's called a warm handoff so there's an actual person who's texting the parent who's conversing with the parent so they've had a tremendous amount of success can you sorry I

081just can't see [Music] what is it what is is that data uh this data is um you get it it's a whole stack of data but it's basically asking um who's looking for help is it um Families how old are the kids there's no individual identifiers but what's the age range or the elementary age or the middle school age High School age um or it could be their parents it could be anyone it could be one of our staff members so all of those kind of demographics and then who they get matched with so we actually get the names of the therapy groups or individual therapists if they stay with them um we also the great thing about this service as opposed to the interface service is that families put in the type of health

082insurance they have so right away the care Solace person is asking um do you take this health insurance so that's not the family doesn't have to deal with that so that's another thing we get so how many were under a Harvard Health Plan how many under top cell fan and so forth does they answer your question yeah I'm just curious what they what the usually do the like I'm just curious um if you can speak to like what what is up like how many kids are using this how many families are using it yes yeah yeah so um what we can't measure is like how many students overall see a therapist in Concord because some people don't use this service what we can measure is how many uh families use this and get matched with

083a therapist so that's what's up so a hundred percent of the families that have called uh and followed through get matched with a therapist through this so with interface we were more around 50 and that was a lot of that was a insurance issue is that yeah so we have um overall that was the short term this is the long term um obviously mental health and wellness is a very complex issue um we want to deal with it and address it in these five ways that I'm going to describe now um so in a minute I'll talk about the education we're doing with students um in terms of mental health and wellness then I'm going to talk about training students on their social emotional skills then I'm going to talk about mtss multi-tiered system of

084support through which we are aiming to identify kids who are struggling or lagging in their building of skills and then bringing them up just like we do in reading and math then I'm going to talk about our system of discipline and what we hope to roll out in the next five years is a is a system of restorative justice in schools called restorative practices so that discipline becomes a learning experience and finally I'm not going to talk about it because I think Andrew has talked about it enough but the deib work and anti-racism work um is very very connected to this as you saw our historically marginalized populations are most affected so starting with learning social emotional skills and here's where I'm going to attempt to play the first video there are three short videos

085we turn the sound off of that one right on the keyboard special emotional learning centered at a Verizon body it reduces their emotional tension so they can get a little bit into your closet and material you find that identity increase exponentially and students are nurturing the ground and cared for that we get much more out of them when they first address so for us is actually an activity it really expects students to be College and Career very it's important for us to oversights those self-awareness self-management social awareness relationship skills and responses to decision making self-awareness abilities to time their thoughts and feelings to behaviors we find that somewhere in this is one of our first names for young people being aware of their own body space there self-management is the ability to self-motivate past that

086control so regulating those emotions in the classroom they're breathing exercise but that might be coming by or taking a break so my parents who don't really know how to do it their anger or don't really know how to resolve the conflict but they're getting them in school that helps them deal with it in a less stressful way social awareness is about increasing the first showing interviewing for others activities might include service learning projects addressing social justice issues probably as a great opportunity for students to address and power personalize that in a conference because relationships are important in budget-based management is the ability of students more opportunities to resolve conflict the ones that I need to full life and it may not verify for us tomorrow you just have to know how to make a relationship

087whether I started going through a life partner you have to know how to handle the conflict and how to academic challenges sometimes [Music] is [Music] sometimes so you choose to be somewhere out there responsible decision making is considering the well-being for self and illness it's evaluating the consequences for various famous actions we do this in the share the journalists once everyone problem solving or having students today to do issues possible with one of those pictures [Music] teaching these students could be productive Citizens We're teaching them life skills we're teaching and challenges I think of all the millions of dollars spent on try to learn and all these intervention programs and when it all of a sudden um where do we have I think we're you know we're targeting everything who you are as person once

088you know who you are then learning becomes is [Music] so have you heard um if you can pick up the yeah and then turn down the volume on the computer sorry is that better yeah yeah thank you so we just started in the video but uh what they were talking about is the social emotional skills um the five areas these are called The Castle five areas of social emotional learning um and we use uh an advisory curriculum to teach these we just adopted at our elementary level responsive classroom um and then fly five this is responsive possum is the approach that we're having in the whole school Live 5 is the curriculum that we teach weekly uh starting next year to all of our students and home base is our advisory program in the middle

089school and it was created by some teachers at the our middle school but it is completely Castle aligned so we're excited about that so we've also changed the Elementary report cards for next year so we're actually going to be reporting on how students are doing in their growth of skills in all five areas next year so this is just the training that we're going through for our elementary teachers with uh responsive classroom and fly five um and the reason I put this up here is to point out uh that there are multiple opportunities for students for teachers to learn about both we were so so thankful to receive a huge Grant from the Concord Education Foundation normally rolling out a program this big would take us about five years to get everybody trained up but

090their generous support has allowed us to do it in one year one school year so we're starting now at the end of June and by next year everybody will be trained and then we'll have our usual plan for getting anyone new up to speed on the group and I'll talk about restorative it's been a minute so the next set of topics I'm going to talk about are mental health skills which I have just learned in the past five years or so how those are different from social emotional often people complete conflate them bring them together so we teach mental health skills through our health curriculum so um we are one of the few school districts that has a robust Health curriculum in the elementary school we use the great body shop you might have seen

091the two-page magazines coming home we adopted that I want to say two or three years ago after a two-year pilot foreign at the middle school it's very very unusual uh all kids have health all year round so in most middle schools uh it's once or twice a week for a quarter or a trimester or something like that here in Concord we are remain having it or all year round because we think it's so important for all of our students for the reasons I described earlier we want to get them the information before they really need it so what are mental health skills um positive and negative ways to cope so what do you do if you're feeling stressed out you know are you going to go do drugs overeat binge watch television or go for

092a walk talk to a friend reach out to an adult those kinds of things so communication skills how do you tell someone that you're struggling what do you say when someone tells you that there's a progress oh oh and I should tell the story I don't know if you want to tell the story the mental health curriculum that we use um I could say it's on the brown although it's National but it has one of the most wonderful stories to come out of a terrible tragedy so at our at our high school we have just adopted brain health boot camp which is probably the best piece of software I've ever seen educational software you want to tell the story sure sure um so we've been working with the chase Bjork Foundation Chase was one of

093our students he committed suicide January 31st 2020. we've stayed very in touch with the family part of their grief turned into action yeah I'm using my mic yeah the family really switched gears and has become very involved in providing tools and resources with the goal that no family go through what they have Chase's older brother is really the lead design on this piece of software and it's a self-guided learning environment for kids to learn about mental health signs symptoms the biology of it and I think for us it's an anchor now to the high school health curriculum and I think one of our biggest goals as you probably are taking away from all of this conversation is to normalize these conversations but also to help kids know there's some physiology physiology to to it and

094that it's not just a stigma that there's something wrong with you so we're really grateful for their partnership and support they are on a pretty big mission to bring this out at a high level make it available to schools everywhere free of charge so entire living any other schools piloting or just us yeah so they had to to start out us and some schools in Boston and now it's Nationwide right okay being part of a pilot also helps us it makes it great for us as we give them feedback and support so the next flower petal of ways that we're improving is a multi-tiered system of support much like I've described to you in past meetings for reading or math um I think I'm gonna not show the video sure feedback is a little yeah

095unwind and we know and we have the presentation and so we had access to the video before this so people can watch it or some might have already watched it everybody can watch it all right so as you know from previous presentations there are three tiers to a multi-tiered system of support tier one is the education that all students receive and we make sure to have this comprehensive along the lines of the standards we make sure that we measure that every student's getting it so that's what I talked about in this case mental health for example and social emotional learning that would be what we're teaching in health classes and what we're doing in the advisory curriculum so then we have a screener that we use to see okay who's struggling so we want to

096catch things as they say Upstream tiny little trickle before the issue becomes a big huge ocean so um we're looking for students who have a tiny little indicator that they don't have a skill they don't know how to name their own emotions for example and therefore property manager emotions if you can't name them and understand what's happening to yourself so then we have smaller groups that are working to improve their skills in specific areas that we've outlined through these screeners and assessments does that make sense so this is really what we're beefing up for mental health and social emotional learning tier three is much much much more intensity so this is usually where a kid is already in crisis um they're having some kind of serious trauma response they are having school refusal there's something

097like that this is a much more intense but also evidence-based response that we would do in school and then we would work with outside folks to help the child does that make sense we can't work on skills if a kid is in a full-blown crisis so we have to calm the situation down and get them to where you can actually figure out how to solve and how to work with the students so this is the triangle I've shown you with reading and with math but it basically shows the social emotional um Continuum all the way through here are all the ways we might address something from tier one tier two and then as I just mentioned the crisis response and the behavioral system as well all the way through and that's just one school so

098as a part of this we wanted hatch any issue before it becomes a big issue right so we need a screener and then um we for anyone who a student who gets identified as perhaps a problem is there we give a bigger assessment we involve the parents and so forth so we've been looking for one screener that we could use kindergarten through grade 12. um so for a couple of years we've used I think maybe five a pair which is um out of Walden Behavioral Health and they only have a system for middle school and high school so we've been using that but we've been looking for something that's more comprehensive um because as I mentioned before these things start earlier you can catch it earlier so for this past year we've been piloting modessa

099and we have four big Pilots happening in our school district this year so we have for example all of our ninth graders took this Dessa screener eight questions they older kids report on themselves younger kids like we did one class at Willard the teacher reports on them and then we see okay is this is this whose teachers are already talking about we need to go deeper that we need to give a questionnaire do we need to do some kind of other testing do we need to involve the parents all those bigger questions this is just trying to get that first level of information there's another one called strength and difficulties questionnaire we haven't done that we might do it next year these are social emotional skills screeners this is a mental health screener all right

100so the last area I'm going to talk about is what we're trying to do for discipline this is a long haul um we're not trying to put into place a system of restorative practices next year but we do want to start walking in that direction so every school in our districts have made a commitment to do something along these lines so I'll explain the the areas but I'm not going to show the video there's also a great video here all right so just like multi-tiered systems of support in other subjects there is a multi-tiered approach to putting restorative practices into a school so I should say uh restorative justice practices uh started actually in the prison system um and they actually here at MCI Concord and was one of the sites a long time ago

101and uh you've probably heard attorney generals talk about how effective they are in that kind of situation you see fewer people committing the same crimes over and over again recidivism so um what we hope in schools is is different in that we're really trying to have any behavioral infractions any rules broken um be opportunities for Education right for kids to learn so um there's three levels that we do that the first is the tier one what everybody gets and what we need is a strong community of talking so we can talk about the heart issues um and we just know each other and people trust each other more so we're working on this tier one which is called Community Building circles they're fun we're we're trying to do a few I did one with a

102high school group last week it was tremendous fun um then you move up to tier two which is an early intervention a child has done some small Behavior infraction and there's a way that an adult in the situation can address it so it sort of takes it down a notch so the kid can learn and then they can think about how do they restore um the trust that's been broken through whatever the action is that they did so a big difference between a restorative justice practice and a traditional discipline system is that in a traditional discipline system rules aren't broken in restorative practices system relationships are broken so you're trying to restore or repair the relationship and then the very tip of this triangle is for the major serious harm kind of situations um and

103that's where you this is what everybody thinks of when they think that restorative justice which is these circles with one child or a group of children who might have um broken a very serious Rule and all the adults and then and the children involved as part of that serve or any of these involved in any of these the student has to want to do it so it's their tools and I really encourage you to watch this video it goes much more into it I'm sure we'll do much more of it um this is me and the English teacher at the high school running our restorative Circle uh it was really a lot of fun and then this is just uh showing the flower again all the ways that we're trying to address Mental Health and

104Wellness in the school district over the next five years we're not trying to go fast we're trying to do this well so we're doing mental health education in our health classes social emotional skill building through our advisory program multi-tiered system upper support to identify and and work with kids who are struggling restorative justice for our discipline system and all of our deib and anti-race symptoms all right thank you yeah please I would just say you're probably going to have to turn around and use your microphone if you ask a question foreign so we will take questions that anyone has I definitely have a few I'll hold mine um any questions for Kristen I just want to make one note about restorative justice and the opt-in um I think everybody knows this but if you don't

105opt in it doesn't mean nothing happens it means you go down a different path yes okay um not only does restorative justice have a history and the prison system it has a history in the concrete Courthouse as well where in the 80s they looked at Native American practices actually because of a pioneering judge out of the Concord District Court um it's a very Nifty work came out of them as well yeah yeah that's why all the everything in circles you're coming together as a community there's no one person in a position of power you're trying to decide something as a community yeah ah I have a couple questions go ahead um so I think generally I um I really appreciate the emphasis on Mental Health um I've not been shy about the fact that this

106is something that's deeply important to me among many other things on this committee but I think mental health really is a crisis and our community and across the country um so I really appreciate the emphasis the um evaluating K through five and sharing that information with parents really struck me the um new pilots and access to counseling and efforts to break the stigma um I think that was all really great I think what my kind of question is is I think when I um saw this on the agenda my expectation was we were going to see some of the pair data and some of the Dessa data and really get an understanding of where we are and this felt more like a an overview of where we hope to be going maybe I'm not really

107sure I feel like this was a little bit more informative about curriculum enhancements perhaps um so I'm just curious how and you mentioned at the end that this is sort of a five-year plan plan or Vision how do we know what to look for or at the end of that that you we did well yeah yeah to see and how we're going to measure it love to understand Maybe not today but what are we seeing with some of that other data now yeah so um the only statistically significant data that we have today is the youth risk behavior survey that from 2022. everything else that we're trying the Dessa the pair their pilots that we can't uh aggregate the data yet so I can't I can't give it to you yeah okay so you know

108we looked at for example the Dessa um because we gave it to the whole ninth grade so that's over 100 students so that's generally thought of as significant um and you would want to see growth from one Administration to another Administration but we haven't had a whole year of school so we've only had one administration of it yeah so we don't we don't have the data yeah next year we would have more data or okay well we're probably okay yeah I what we've decided what the mental health team decided is um to do a second year of pilot with the Dessa K to 12. okay so that's where we're going for next year okay so so you would see Dessa data but at the same time that's only a screener for social emotional learning not

109for um uh mental health okay and then will you be setting goals around this work of like how do you evaluate these programs and determine they're worth investing in and you know how do you evaluate all of that yeah so the curriculum programs are pretty easy so that you know it's just like math or anything else did the kids learn the skills you know can this one divide fractions um and so forth that's easy to measure um what is much much harder to measure is mental health that's why easing out social emotional learning and mental health you know how do you really say we're healthier as a community we're not sure yet like how do you how do you you know apart from the youth risk behavior survey you know kids self-reporting how do we

110say that we're healthier so we have a lot of measures that we're trying but the science isn't there yet you know so we're we're at The Cutting Edge yeah you know but no again I like there's a lot that I really am excited about I'm just aside from like seeing that picture I'm just not sure how we would have ever know that it's working yeah we as a committee not like you are in the buildings and whatnot if that means yeah I mean I think you're going to end up pivoting over to the outcomes and looking at discipline and behavior data yeah and hospitalizations attendance all of that sort of indicator that we do have already and then trying to look for causality and whether what we're doing is helping so I think it's going

111to be a bit even if your metric on the Strategic plan like reducing stress by 50. can you again causality I remember when you and I sat on that um you know that board at the at Emerson and we were on it with a team of psychiatrists and all and they were like no one is doing causality studies anymore no everyone's fearful of talking about the causality of things and linking those so I I know in the scientific world of mental health world because that was sort of where we were um it's it is it's obviously very hard yeah so yeah I think we'll just have to sort of look at the metrics and this is going to sound almost unprofessional but like it feel almost if you're gonna metrics are indicating a move in

112the right direction you're gonna look at a lot of data and it's going to feel better you're going to hear different things from the kids than we're hearing right now you're going to hear qualitatively a lot of different Focus areas from the teachers right now they will absolutely report how much time they're putting in on helping kids stay regulated to a varying degree of ways of that how that plays out and I think that what a great report that is if they get more instructional time back and say that the kids are are self-regulating so we have to look at it from all friends thank you I'm going to ask you a difficult question uh notwithstanding our attention to this our resources you tell us that uh we're an outlier as compared to some of

113our peer communities what's our hypothesis as to how that is so uh I could talk about the correlation that we see um I don't know if it's causation but um as I've mentioned we test uh in the youth risk behavior survey with eight other school districts uh the largest we're the second largest the largest is acton-boxborough um uh so they're right but you know Maynard right around us um geographically and where we are in some cases double the stress we're double the stress uh in terms of lack of sleep um doubles and statistics a lack of sleep you know so we looked at a measurement of seven to ten hours for our middle school kids um eight eight nine hours for our high school kids and the number of kids not getting that we're higher

114in that area as well so sleep is one social media is definitely in there we have higher uh access to technology those numbers are high higher pressure in terms of amount spent on homework amount of time spent on homework amount of feeling parental pressure from students all of those are high also so to generalize what I'm hearing is our kids have more social media access than some of the peer communities are kids have more academic stress and time requirements as and that helps to explain the differences and the lack of sleep yeah lack of kids getting enough sleep as a consequence of these demands that we're all there's so many things out there about the relationship between sleep and that social media and phone use kids are keeping their phones in their bedrooms and we

115all know where that goes yeah so those Stephen two could be related I mean I can't say anything caused it but those no I know I I've framed it as a difficult we're looking at hypotheses we can't pin this down and it's it's rather General uh conclusions we're making about how this could be so we need to start somewhere okay thank you so that's the questions um maybe during the next budget cycle if you could bring us the cost of some of these items so we can really show the community what our investment is in mental health so responsive classroom is that just a K-8 or pre-kh and I was going to ask where are we with Pre-K and mental health not that that's it's a primary concern but I think it's important that we

116have that data to collect it and and see where we are with our Pre-K population as well and then I was asked about the plus 12 I guess I'll call them population and retracting them at all yep uh happy to answer those questions so when we had an elementary adoption committee for two years previous to this we had preschool Educators on that and uh the curriculum that we chose doesn't include preschool although you can you know sort of tailor some of the kindergarten instead we for them they wanted to go with a curriculum that does so there's a curriculum called Second Step so that's what they're piloting now um yeah so that's preschool um throughout uh you you asked about throughout the age span so um on for students who are above the age of

11718 who are with us they would have uh individual education plans that would have those um spelled out and the measurements spelled out so that's kind of a unique to each individual child and then your other question was about cost I'm happy to break out the cost to to um generalize about it if you think about health as a curriculum area I would say it's probably our least expensive curriculum area if you compare it to like math or reading or even music just so we can get the five five and the responsive classroom and that goes through eighth grade it goes through fifth grade fifth grade yep and then we just have the health curriculum in the middle school and we have home base which is their advisory and they wrote their own curriculum and

118then the high school of the health curriculum yep um I didn't see really mention of challenge success which I've always seen before yep so that's uh do you want to talk about yeah so challenge success is an umbrella program that supports schools and how to look at their structures their practices their communication with students families Etc so that they can start to really address some of these especially in high performing districts like ours because it does bring a different stress to the table that other other communities may not have and definitely is now being seen as a risk factor per se um so yeah success is definitely still very much in our world here and you'll hear that a lot I think in June when this principles come through right good plan I guess that's

119what I'm seating there coming to us is that I it sounds like somebody we know that not that we cause it but um things are going on in the schools can certainly add to stress and mental health and wellness right and it's unintentional to cause those things but you know whatever the other thing is um you know going forward with a new plan it looks to me like I just did a little dipping around they're not that many resources for families on our websites and dealing with how to deal with social media at home right because schools can only do so much but a lot of it's like Alexa said having that phone tablet computer in the bedroom um is certainly going to be a problem for going to sleep um so there are a

120lot of resources for parents in that card right before but again I think um you know whether we direct parents to those really extensive resources I'm not saying we have to yeah develop our own but yeah right but it's just certainly not there's people doing that you have Lynn Lyons who's a well she's got a podcast who's really aimed at parents um came to our school and I know that but sometimes here as well yeah so sometimes people it's a ship you know it's it's a person walking by and people just don't weren't there um but all of a sudden they're like oh my gosh I'm all of a sudden I have a fifth grader with a phone and I don't I I'm struggling so I mean you know um no resources yeah yeah I

121think at least just a little pointer to say you know we're gonna We're Not Gonna curate everything for you but can I think post covered that kind of dropped off I mean prior to covid I thought there was not squarely in the district but in the community right um a great deal of emphasis talking about the scores of social media and again I just think we've pivoted to different things not not in a good way necessarily but um you know I think it is now just one of the Myriad things I mean the Surgeon General came out today just basically doubled down on it and said it's yeah it's a it's not just a problem it's a crisis I was at the Board of Education this morning with two students in a department chair from

122the high school speaking with the commissioner and the board about these topics and I think it was the tip of a very big iceberg that was shared from us than the other districts that were invited and all hands on deck for sure and they've been slow to recognize it um one other you mentioned belonging right um and challenge success is a big thing to improve mental health is belonging and I just um I don't need to know tonight but it just seems like something that we should be pretty aggressive about um and it just doesn't affect a specific or specific populations that affects every kid in the building yeah buildings you know like and it's kindergarten through a pre-k through plus 12. so um I just I wasn't at the meeting I'm going to watch

123the recording um but I was just hoping that you know we can get going with that because yeah it sounds like it'd be a pretty powerful um thing to have students feel like they belong or more students feel like they belong yeah I think you'll hear Andrew speak to that at the meeting really that's the goal of all the work yes that all kids feel that if they belong yeah yeah okay thank you thank you go ahead yeah yep the data and back in 2020 the youth risk survey wasn't conducted we didn't give it we didn't give it we did not give it okay so it was given by our by the um communities that decided to in our group of eight um but since kids were home and we had just sent them home

124that was 2020 that was March of 2020. we decided not to add to the stress and give another Serve online survey yeah okay but uh some of about half of the other communities did give it okay yeah um also are we planning to expand the usage of the um care College Solace I'm sorry so anyone can use it um and or do you mean like have therapists into the school or something like that just that is it just the high school or is it aimed at Middle School everybody can use it everyone yep so any um parent child uh staff member in the community can use uh uh carousels to find um therapy or help with substance abuse so it has both probably more adult initiated uh in terms of either families or counselors starting

125to get kids connected to Services um I don't I don't think it's widely used by the students right now as a tool they solicit on their own it's mostly families and and staff that start the process okay and just one last question are we doing anything to address the specific issues for mental health issues around kids on IEPs yeah it's a tricky one but I'm just here yeah yeah it would be answered directly in a child's own individual IEP but we certainly have programs for students who um struggle with building either social emotional skills or with mental health like schizophrenia or something like that yeah yeah yeah good questions I I have a couple on carousalis I was digging around to see how how do you find it as a parent because I had I

126actually had an experience her parents said you know where do I find it and so just giving that information to parents and maybe even through like the district bullet it's been in my newsletter about once a month yeah it's been out here I would just keep watching because they don't realize like you can just say you know my kid goes to Concord public schools and then you get access to everything um it all goes back to your website I know I know I know it's going to be a challenge even with a new website but I know start over and yeah and just you know to say to anyone listening you know you can find it at the high school through guidance or you can find it on the district website here or just you

127know just where to find that PDF can be tricky sometimes um because I think it's a great resource that as much as you tell people about it I'm not sure that they know about it um right and you know to just send that to push that out would be great Standalone email all by itself yeah as we go especially as we go into this well I think about the summer and even resources if kids are graduating and can they continue to use it say they're in college can they continue to use it they can just say I want to conquer Public Schools or if there's a parent struggling can they use it yeah they can so I think that's the most important piece to really you know push out there especially getting into summer when

128people don't um always think about the resources they have through the schools um and then can you just talk a little bit about I love the restorative Circle that you did and you know if it's if it obviously nothing that's private but like can you talk about how that really worked did you have a topic did was it something that came up organically I think we should run a school committee meeting like a restorative Circle all right it's wonderful uh so yeah I can describe what a circle is like you can do it with any topic you can do it as part of an academic class trying to learn something you can do it just for I think Cynthia said belonging uh in fact that's what it's recommended that high school students for example do

129it once a month um so we're starting to think about a pilot in the English Department at the high school so the way you do it is you want about 15 people someone is The Keeper of the circle that means they're in charge of the talking piece so this is a piece that you pass around and as each person has it they speak they answer the question there is trust within the room there's you establish confidentiality within the room you have chosen as a group you're talking piece so that's like the first thing you do the whole thing you go around about three times the hot seat is the one immediately to the left um and um usually some wait time is given um surprisingly if if you don't have anything to say or you

130don't want to say anything you can say pass but you have to say pass so it's a way for everyone to be in the room together kind of on an equal footing and you close the circle with a reflection on how it went and what surprised kids and um they just they loved it I I I I mean probably the best I won't give too many identifying details but there was a student uh who was a male really big guy he was huge uh playing a lot of sports and um Sports skier on and and at the end when we went around he had been kind of quiet um you know always adding something to the conversation but not long diatribe some kids had long stories that they told he didn't but at the end

131he said I really liked it I really got to know everybody here and the whole thing took a half an hour so as you go around you can ask questions of belonging like we did one of my questions to the group was when is the time that you felt like you really belonged to a group you really felt like you belonged in um and or you can ask about um you know what's an important theme in Catcher in the Rye that we're reading or something like that something academically motivated what strategy might you use to attack this word problem we tried once so yeah that's great yeah all right thank you thank you I think that's all I have anyone else you wanna no no no no no no I'm looking around I wish I

132had like the talking piece anyone else no all right well thank you so much this was this was great as always informative um and we look forward to hearing more from you in our next meeting so thank you all right we are moving on we're totally changing gears to the exciting cchs Road update which is very necessary I was up there this morning and um it's very exciting so I will let uh Bob inform us about what's happening so it is out to bid which is good news so we had um we worked with a ton of a concord's engineering department Steve ducray and his team um and did specs were developed they've also added on a little piece at the BD Center um some of the pavement there um and bids will be due

133on June 9th and um we'll hopefully have a a winning bidder that's in our budget we do have fun set aside for this um we also um we're clear on what our requirements were timeline wise so in the bid we included a substantial completion date of August 25th 2023 for the pavement portion of the work um there are pieces of work that are not going to impact people driving that could potentially be done later and I think there's some reseeding of grass that that needs to happen later as well but um so fingers crossed in two weeks we'll have a bid and there's a pre-bid conference as well that happens before then but um so we're kind of looking forward to moving ahead with this and it's been on the docket for a while and

134so you obviously don't know until you award the bin but when ideally do you think it will happen will be over two days three days a week like do you know what it's going to look like for the high school campus Because You're Gonna shut it down right it will take some time okay um but they'll be able to do it they'll be able to shut off pieces of the road or um you know either entrance and then they'll also be able to touch you half of the road one side of it so they'll structure in a way that people can still access the property okay like summer camps and because I assume it's happening over the summer yes yeah before August 25th yeah there's Community usage throughout the summer so we'll have to to

135do that but it is the least it's really the only time we can't do it during the school year so and will the lighting come after the like the intent is to phase it in that's going to be a subcontractor of the of the GC but um the attempted to do it all at once there might be um like that would be one that makes more sense they're going to do the conduits as part of this so like if they have to install the lights later later they won't be like the conduits will already be dug um so and there will always be lighting so even if you're replacing like we're always going to have a well-lit area even while you're in process do you think I will check on that I don't know if

136you specifically asked that but that's a good question yeah okay um I'll check on that okay that'd be great I was going to ask that question because uh for Town meetings sometimes they bring in those emergency lights I think we're going to have to invest in those temporary lighting yeah I don't remember if that's in the bid but I'll check okay that'd be great thank you so the other thing is uh we definitely need to coordinate um well you know the town needs to access the Doug whitefields so we're gonna have to figure out how to especially you know there's a one-way Road uh getting people in and out if we shut it down so I'm not sure it's a summer so is it great to be talking to the town about what's going on

137out there yeah and didn't we talk before about like like you do it like you would do your street so like half of you would do one half of it then the other half fit so you would never totally lose access we'll have access to the facility absolutely yeah we'll coordinate with them right but we have a one-way Ring Road right so it's big enough yeah right it just requires probably actually it's not doing the Ring Road no it's only in front of the beauty so the Ring Road is not being paved no I understand that but it's access to yes you have access to food to go around but you're gonna have to do one way you know following me so that's not really a wide Road Road up to the Doug whitefields but

138that's not part of the scope you're not getting access to the actual Street side because that's how you go up there right we're going to have to coordinate all this because the town and yeah I mean it's active even without kids there it's an active campus as you're well aware yeah right all right any other questions on that decided that that's happening so it's been a long time coming since the beginning of the high school build I'll just say so this is very exciting you think it's going to come well under our allocated number I didn't say that well that will be good to know about when you get that'd be nice be a nice surprise right it would be nice okay all right great all right on to well we're on the CCH campus

139uh campus safety which is one of my favorite topics to talk about because I do think it's critical at our high school I'm going to give you a quick overview first and Peter's with us right he's on some Peter and Derek okay great so we have been talking Alex and I had had a meeting with Peter and Derek Dr Hunter with Bob about some upgrades that we can do to have better communication at the high school it's all about communication so the three things that have been talked about so far have been Wi-Fi calling within the building um two Wi-Fi access points outside of the building so outside of the cafeteria outside of the office area and blue lights on the campus which are light similar that you would see on a college campus and

140so they would have a call button on them and it would go directly to 9-1-1 so if there was an emergency on a field outside we would have access because there is essentially minimal cell coverage at different points of the campus so that was kind of our first meeting and I will just start with that and I'll let Peter jump in really really the focus tonight is the blue lights yep so Peter's been working with the vendor Derek's here as well and um are able to sort of show you a scope of work and potential locations and talk through some feedback with you so all right hi everybody um yeah so as Tracy said this is a when you think about securing the the campus in a better way um the emergency communication systems like

141Blue Light phone towers and call boxes I'm sure you've all seen them on college campuses they're very visible um they're really a visible deterrent in many ways and you see them there you feel the campuses and monitor you know unlike a college campus where they have a 24-hour security crew there to monitor things we don't have that so the way it would work here when someone pressed the call box it would dial into the police so we'd have it go to the dispatch there um in looking at trying to be cost sensitive how we wanted to lay these out there's lots of different options um it requires data and electrical to hook these up so when you look at our campus Derek will jump in and show you the map in a moment we did

142a walk through with one of our vendors to look at what the best option would be and they have units that you can attach to existing polls where we have data and electrical already and that's going to really save on installation costs cut down on you know branching for electrical and other things that would have to happen during an install uh Aaron if you could pull up that graphic on the high school and Derek could you talk a little bit about this walk through with our vendor and the locations that we landed on yep so uh basically what we did as Peter stated as we looked at the locations on the campus where we already have uh fiber optic cabling and electrical most of these sites that you're seeing um there's a camera in that

143location so uh we were trying to spread them out in a manner where they would be in somewhat accessible and spread them out and then by the fields so we have one by the upper field then one more down towards that next feel that I think it's like a lacrosse field um and then on each side of the engine says Walden and the throw entrance uh there'd be one there and then one down on the lower field that would serve uh both the football and the two baseball and softball fields down there proposed locations after a walk through on on what might make sense again trying to minimize some of the installation costs that can go with this those were things that made sense if this was decided people want to move forward we'd obviously

144want to do a walk through with high school administration and others to look at these sites and make sure that everyone gets their input onto how this looks for the campus right does anyone have any questions about cost is always a question so I'll just put it out there do you want to talk about are we prepared to talk about the cost talk about what you have for now uh yeah Bob and I discussed this a bit earlier he can go over some of it what we don't have is an installation costs it will be less than the cost of the product um until we make a final decision on locations it's hard to determine what that cost might be there still might be some trenching involved and we want to try to minimize that

145with the electrical and and the data cabling as Derek said so that part is a little bit in flux till we pin down locations uh Bob do you want to touch on where that final invoice came in for those five proposed units and again these are just proposed we it's a flexible situation at the moment so the quotes um were approximately 24 000 just under twenty four thousand so close to five thousand dollars a unit um and we would be able to fund I would say if you look at two of them they're right next to the athletic fields so we could um reasonably support those being paid for out of the athletic revolving fund we have another one that's adjacent to it and somewhere between the school maybe that one would get split between

146the operating budget and Athletics um and then there's two units that are more kind of on the behind the school the lower side of the school whatever we call that the front or the back um so the total cost of twenty four thousand not including installation the the larger portion of this is the the hard is the hardware cost um 12 000 from athletic revolving 12 000 from the budget it is um something that we'll be able to find and absorb uh twelve thousand in the operating budget um the um you know and IT addresses it addresses a significant concern related to safety that we don't have a quick solution for otherwise and what's the timeline how they would be able to and when they would be able to install it Peter I think Peter

147has that information yeah I we spoke to the Vander on availability I don't think if the decision is made to move forward it should not be a problem uh doing the install this summer we have our wiring vendor um he's available and just uh getting the hardware once the order is placed but we don't we're not getting the impression there's any issues there as well so it would be a summer project um and ready to go by the Fall school year as well it's probably important to note that above each unit will be a camera so you know if there's something on someone actually pushes that button there will be a a camera recording um that going on as well like do they it does not no um I mean they have access to zombie

148that's something we could work on but out of the gate um it won't because I just think about you know when you push the button even to get into the school those cameras are live so I didn't know if that triggers something the ones that are at the door the ones at the door are live but I didn't know if the if the blue lights if they had that visibility a lot simpler I think in terms of camera yeah it's going to record whatever goes on around the blue light and yeah that's about it right to be to be retrieved later if you need it if necessary right so the blue light is a VoIP that's ours and there's no ongoing subscription costs is that accurate I believe okay it ties right into our current

149phone system okay thank you so the Doug Whitefield is Tom Concord so we need to coordinate with them we don't that's not a regional property yeah we can coordinate that with them yeah I don't think that would be a problem I don't think that would be a problem no but yeah we can't just go right right it's not our property or we could revisit the location to see if we could get it as closely adjacent to it if there was just so to get there was an issue but either are any other questions or comments or well the need for this like whatever the next steps that's yeah so I mean for me um securing the campus and ensuring that students staff and visitors have access you know have the ability to stay safe I

150think is the most important aspect of how we kicked off this discussion um and even just for Carrie we sort of kicked off this whole discussion um by talking about whether there might be interest in putting a cell phone tower on campus because of the lack of service and we had had some incidents outside the building where you did we didn't have a student staff visitors didn't have access to a landline and you know as we saw that continuing to happen we felt this is important we should make sure that at least kids get at a very basic level be safe so um in talking about and recognizing even if we were to pursue a cell phone tower which we haven't decided one way or another if we have interest in that we learned that

151a self-enteric takes a lot of time to you know from start to finish it tends to be almost like 18 to 24 months so then we started talking about what we might do in the meantime so to me this what we might do in the meantime is really important and also too in our discussions what I when when I learned that even with a cell phone tower let's let's pretend we've pursued that and we did it and whatever there might be need for these pieces of this ecosystem to support and ensure that we're truly secure so for me this is a very high knee this is a need not a want we I think it's our duty to ensure that there's that people on our campus are safe um so I am very much in

152favor of this but areas as to what everyone else thinks and I would also say obviously I am totally in favor of this I this has been an issue ongoing we've talked about it for a significant amount of time this year we've heard from community members they're asking us what are we going to do now um and I think about the amount of activity our campus has after hours um and blue lights are just they're known out there in the community so you go on any college campus you want they're a symbol and you know people know what to do when they see that other high schools there aren't any really around here that have them but I think our campus is quite large and spread out and I think that this should be a

153priority just to keep everyone safe and especially visitors so they know what to do and that's so can we just you know Bob said he wants to walk the administration through the locations we have to get the quote on the installation so I'm not sure what the timeline is and all that work everybody's very busy time of year um but I would like it to come back with a full dollar amount to the school committee I'm in favor of it but you know I just don't I won't I just don't want to see the installation installation costs yeah you know they might say oh four is good enough oh no we need to you know Administration and I do think that um it has the capability and Peter correct me if I'm wrong that you

154can add to it like if you found that you know that you had an area that you know I think about like those baseball fields that are way out there you know like I don't know like is it is it good enough to just run there this or do we need another one out there I don't know but I mean obviously there's cost associated with anything but I think you can add on to the system is that right Peter yo absolutely and it is does come down to cost you can put them anywhere it's just a matter of how you're going to tie in essentially the electrical and the fiber to the unit so that's site specific um yeah in regards to a walkthrough I mean that's not going to take much time but I

155think it's important that you know so far Derek and the vendor myself have only one looked through the campus and be important that other people see the locations um certainly the High School principles and everyone's comfortable with what we're setting out to do in addition sorry it addition to dialing in the town on the town property I think we ought to dial in the town on the public service excuse me Public Safety experts um As We Gather the numbers absolutely are any uh procurement uh uh factors that are special uh sole source of Supply type thing or anything like that uh where we're going after a particular vendor the only thing is it would have to work with our current phone system so that would be the only proprietary function of it so there would

156be some proprietary restrictions okay good are these on the bid list I think they are he said they're on the state bid list yes they are so then it's all set good so this can get streamlined once this homework gets done yeah yeah okay and ideally the goal would be to this to happen over the summer so we're ready to rock and roll and when school starts question no I just want to say as a parent and as a first responder I think this is very important I know that cost is important but I think that the safety of our these kids and the access to public safety is is so much more important so to be nitpicky on cost and not being the picky I just think it's important for as a parent as

157you know my child's going to the high school next year it's it's scary the lack of communication that my that my son would have if you know an emergency came I'm not being nitpicky I just would like to I'm just saying I'm just I just wanted us to go together after everybody looks at it and we just see if there's any change in the scope up or down you know so Peter if we if we sort of agreed if you will it once you sort of Loop in the two co-principles [Music] um and and if if you could get um yeah if you if if you guys can get the I don't want to say buy-in but approval that these five locations work for the campus um Derek uh or Peter I don't know which

158of you guys could we get that additional dollar amount for the installation within the month of before our last June 13th meeting so yeah I mean I'd be able to have an ins um an install figure you know within a week so yeah the locations we would just want to we would just want to be updated on it on the dollar amount I would think right well the locations are going to play locations we'll play a big factor to it because again yeah we're talking about the baseball diamonds and they got to run a trench from the top of the school to all the way down there that's that's going to be kind of costly but my question that I like to ask is on these entry points within the school are there do they

159have the capability of using um I guess the intercom system there does that have an emergency access to it in the building like outside of the building like if I walk to the main door is there is there an emergency button there that's the one in the back um just to throw that out there because sometimes that would be the key because I'm looking at the the layout if I'm in the back of the school and I got to run you know 500 feet to get to an emergency button maybe we should start off with the emergency exits that we already have at the school just as a a point of entry um because I know from the schools that I worked out of that was one of the most important pieces yeah it was

160like we got cameras but we also have access to the emergency buttons yeah no we can find out there's there's an emergency button in every main office and there's a firebox at the entrance of every building so there's already infrastructure there so we can certainly find out I think you make a good point because in a in a panic I might rush toward the main entrance of the building thinking I need to find people and I would go to the building for people not uh find something on a sidewalk unless I saw of course the blue light yeah yeah I like your point they're so symbolic yeah they really are yeah it's wonderful so when you press this it goes conquer PD yes so they are in the loop they are uh not yet not

161yet not formally they're not manager okay tonight to get all these folks in the loop so I will that's really important because they're they're not on our payroll thank goodness yeah and I'm sure they will be um elated on this because I mean even like doing drills and things like that I mean they're aware of our communication issue at the high school so that was I had a few logistic questions and that was one of them that when the button gets pushed what happens you know have you talked to the police is anybody going to show up What's the timing what do you have any um you know policies or procedures for when the kids just constantly push the button for no reason sorry I missed that when kids just push the button for no

162reason just wondering just thinking through um these things so because it it's a go with the police they don't get to decide what's happening on the other side right yeah yeah they have to respond and I would assume that I mean I would assume that you have things in the high school have like if you pull a fire alarm what happens right so it'll be the similar thing because it really is the equivalent of doing that and I think the the rollout at the beginning of the school year it was hugely important because any of the messaging to the parents to the students and anybody else that's there all right any other questions or comments on just a related one where do we stand vis-a-vis our own internal security Personnel at the high school we've

163got we're fully staffed again okay it's crazy I guess that's the short answer yeah all right thank you really pleased with the quality and caliber of people we've brought in go ahead um but just a clarification question would you have would you be able to communicate with the police would you be able to respond to questions because usually the police have a handful of questions before they deploy to anybody well what these systems have something in place where they can ask the individuals who press the button what's going on what's the emergency or is it just going to be you know all hail breaks loose and all of a sudden the K-9 units that comes flying out no so yeah so yeah so when you push the button it's It's Gonna Act Like a telephone

164so dispatch will answer they'll be able to have a two-way conversation with you great so it's going to be the same if you pick up the phone dial 9-1-1 they're gonna answer it in the same manner and then you know you can tell them your nature of your emergency are we switching topics to wireless indoor outdoor or is this all part of the same sort of ecosystem conversation well we'll continue to talk about this so we also talked about the cell phone tower so for good with blue lights we're gonna move on a little bit to cell phone tower okay well and then I do have questions about the indoor and outdoor Wireless so that's if we've talked about that or not we have not talked about that I think it's more of an internal

165I think they're managing their Wireless situation so we're not updated on that yet no they're not ready on that oh okay okay I understand I jumped that was just the jumped forward a little bit sorry blue light okay greatness one last question for me operation hours is it going to be functioning during school hours or is it going to be a 24-hour type of thing 24 7 24 7. okay so in terms of cell phone tower because I know that some people are listening specifically on the cell phone tower so I think we need to decide if we have all of this happening what um what is our need where do we kind of stand where do we stand with the town and there are a few things that I think Alexa and I have

166talked about that we would like to explore more with the town on other options that the town might be pursuing um if we choose to move forward with that so does anyone have any strong feelings about the cell phone tower on our campus at this point and how we move forward in either pursuing it or waiting because we do owe our Verizon rep some information on that who came to us our last meeting Carrie so I guess I just feel like if we we have a like and I've said this before but we have a town-wide problem and we need to have a town-wide solution so if putting a town putting a cell phone tower at the high school helps solve the town-wide problem then I'm 100 supportive of it but if it is just

167I just don't think that we should be doing it in isolation exactly that's where I am I would love to hear what the town's approach to this is and how we if our property if this property is something that could be beneficial like I mean I think all everything should be on the table at this point but that's where I am okay and I I only heard a little bit about this project but I and I could be wrong but I heard that it was only a Verizon tower was only going to help Verizon customers is that the case because if it is what like um no it's not a Verizon customer so what happens is Verizon um installs and now they would whoever would install the tower would have to win the bid so

168say Verizon wins the bid and they build the Tower all the other carriers can hang off of their Tower okay so it would not just be Verizon but it would be up to the other carriers to decide if they want to hang underneath it or not oh okay so how do we move forward sort of reuniting this community-wide conversation I have some thoughts on that you have some thoughts on that I'd like to hear everyone else's thoughts on that okay great does anyone have any thoughts on that about how we should well I just want to remind you all we did meet with the town's I.T director and had a conversation with them so we aren't working in total isolation no just want to name remind us all of that already yeah yeah I mean

169obviously we're from Carlisle but is your and I'm just asking is your town on board because the only thing I know about cell towers and Concord is there's two bimetal sex that were there's In Contention when we were doing our cell towers where our uh fire department because we don't get good range either yeah so I just and I know there was some contention with those so is your you know so is your town even on board very much so um I think the my interpretation of what I've seen um with respect to the town is they are trying to support Partners if you will who are willing to put Towers on their properties at present I don't know if the town has identified um sites on their own but they are um guiding assisting

170and partnering with private for lack of a better word um thank you he says Parcels of land you know what what not again terminology I don't know um and so that's sort of my my personal take in in the conversations that we've had so um absolutely yes I think they would be highly collaborative and supportive of this can I make a comment sorry I've had my zoom handmade you know what we are at we are meeting this is a meeting so our public comment is only at the beginning of our meeting but if you have a question you can certainly email us but we only take comments from the public at the beginning of our meeting I apologize um okay sorry go ahead um yeah no so so that's sort of that's my take I

171that that would in my estimation from again the conversations that Lori Tracy and I have had that would not be an obstacle I think I think what we need to gather some sort of consensus on is before we take any kind of next steps is is this something that we would be interested in pursuing and again then going back to Tracy I think my feeling is um I guess I'll just out with it I was going to listen but I'm sort of talking um like I think the next step would be for us we've met with the in the I.T leadership I think one of the things that we had bantered about was meeting with um the chair of the select board to talk about sort of again how to make this part of a

172comprehensive plan we do know um because there are infographics maps we do know that our parcel here or at the high school is part of a larger comprehensive strategy where it would benefit not just our campus but the town so the part of the overlay the overlay is the technical term of like where they needed to be to get coverage I know um so yeah so so we do know that we do know that putting a cell phone tower on our campus would have benefit not just to our campus but in addition that would serve the community there are other sites that would would that are part of that overlay as well so I do think there could be discussion um with the select board with Town leadership as to you know you know should

173we we should we pursue sites concurrently look for the best option you know I I don't know but I do think there's we are like we should do it a little bit more collaboratively I don't I don't know so what is resin expecting from us nothing no thanks an answer at some point yeah I mean we need to this discussion with Verizon has been happening since um 2017. I have to say so what you know they're they're hanging on they're waiting and and obviously they we have a property they're interested in um I don't know if other cell carriers are interested in that there are some things happening on the horizon to build the Tower they want Verizon to build it because Verizon I mean it will cost us nothing so so getting back to

174campus safety if we pursue the blue light locations and people feel like there's you know significant coverage um does the administration then have many fewer concerns about I don't personally I still think we have a pretty significant problem there um I think these other things are better than what we have right now but it's not enough I was down a Memorial Field last week and I could send a text maybe I couldn't tweet I couldn't send pictures on the tags like it you're pretty you're pretty paralyzed down there so no we can get an emergency is really great that's going to be a big Next Step but I don't feel that it's enough and what's the income you said it's nothing but it's got to be something yeah well it's about sixty thousand a year

175but I look at that as a first first offer they really want it I think we negotiate a better this is about some income it is about some Revenue yeah yeah I'll uh Echo what I think you were saying uh Alexa and that is uh this is worthy of consideration after we look at it as a comprehensive uh Town set of solutions uh we had a Verizon rep here uh recently and I thought the analysis was a little bit deficient uh because it only came up with a Solutions on our property um and if he didn't quite answer my question were you were you uh requested to only come up with Solutions on our property I didn't get a yes or no on that but only when I see a comprehensive town-wide solution am I

176ready to consider anything um uh declare it right now all things being equal I would not put a tower on school property but again with the Proviso all things being equal so we need to see what that means where where are these alternative uh proposals and solutions yeah I'd like to us to hear about the wireless options yeah and we did only ask I mean his his scope was just a campus we can't ask him anything else because that's outside of you know what we can do um and just I guess to Echo kind of what you're saying is you know I think about last week we had this Spirit assembly Harry told us about the spirit assembly you're down on the field you still have probably students and to teachers in the building so

177you might not have a 9-1-1 emergency but you might need the nurse so how are you going to communicate with the nurse when you're down on the field so there is still it's not just about you know the kids can't text each other or whatever like it really still is about safety but I think court is going back to and I and I Echo this I I think you and I are quite aligned um I don't have any insight yet as to whether the town leadership in terms of like the employees themselves and or the select board themselves I don't see yet any evidence that they that there are other sites being looked at um I see what I've seen thus far is individual groups and organizations us being one um you know I know

178a church in town being another I don't know how public that is what I have not yet seen is whether to your point there is a comprehensive strategy that would necessitate I think some Town involvement the private property you refer to is in fact Town solution number one and they have a second location should that not come through so it strikes me that if we're trying to deal with a communication problem for the town of Concord we look at where there is a definite sighting because they have two uh pretty clear pretty definitive and they're going to choose one or their backup and then I think you can get the analysis if that one is parked here where is the second one best located you got to park one somewhere before you know its implications

179for number two The Dominoes kind of thought and I think that Brown is working pretty assertively toward this yeah so maybe we can do a check-in with um Henry the select board also has their list of liaison assignments and I believe that Henry is our liaison anyway so we do owe him a meeting okay Tracy you brought up a question I now have as a school nurse do you not have access to your school nurses when you're out on the field well there's no there are walkies and things like that like from a cell phone no no I was like what if you go to your cell phone first though you just don't know what people are going to do right like you don't know I'm sure they bring walkies yeah security is down there

180they have access it was just a hypothetical so to speak have we looked at alternatives to cell phone towers like the smart cells or microcells we could put them more places they're less obtrusive is that an alternative have we looked at that have you looked at that before this discussion or no well they know no Peter she's still on I'm just thinking we could put them where we need them and as many as we need and that I think the issue is we don't have enough signal to used to amplify them amplify otherwise yeah it does come back to that core issue when we built the high school during the construction project we did put a repeater in the building and it was part of the construction um but the struggle is to amplify what

181signal you're picking up and it's kind of a vicious cycle there where you can't really get what you need um to amplify in that building it's a very strong system existing in the building but uh there's not much signal for us to get um I would like to hear about the options regarding the wireless access points which we could Peter it would the infrastructure in the Memorial Field we could put one down there right sure there's already one down there we could expand it it's in the Press Box yes yep an outdoor access point or an indoor access point outdoor it looks like we need to come back to this week we've been looking at both and we had said that we weren't ready to talk talk about that yes we were like starting with

182the blue lights and then we'll get more information on that can we create a timeline because I know from the last conversation we had we were looking at 18 to 2 18 to 24 months to put this Tower up and time was just you know if we're still waiting to hear from the city uh while the town if we're still waiting to hear from you know other parties um we're losing time we're not gaining any more so if there's a way that we can put a calendar together so we can have some of these things ironed out so we can have a better discussion yeah at the end of the day you know this time next year we'll still be in the same place exactly so I think the blue light's the easiest thing so

183maybe the priority is like by our next meeting is if the principals can do the walk through with uh the blue lights I don't think are a big lift yeah so that I think we're good that we can get done and then in the meantime we'll connect select board to help you help with that make a little timeline for um getting some comprehensive data with them so that we can make a better and informed decision about this Tower here we'll do as much as we can on the Wi-Fi by then great great okay thank you guys so it's coming back to our next agenda sure um but I I do think we're making movement I actually had one more question about campus safety just since we're on that sure um for next year the the

184this year the uh introduction of the fingerprint is that continuing next year just because I'm not sure who's aware but I come here every day to pick up my son for lunch and it and my other son who I don't who I always ask uh it's not working on the cafeteria yeah I know we've been kids you know I know I've done it because I did use the bathroom and you just have to wait there and bang on the door for somebody to let you in so I'm just wondering yeah where people were aware we are aware and the folks that are zooming in are the ones responsible so we'll ask them to keep taking a look at it I think it gets fixed and then goes down again a lot so we have to

185figure out why I did actually talk to my daughter about it and she said but oh it actually works now I was using the wrong finger so depending on what finger you fingerprinted well yeah you have to use the same one she was using the wrong finger and she's like oh it works I'm like okay great so and I and I do think sometimes the kids um and I'm not suggesting but some of the other kids just it's easier to knock than it is to put your finger down they don't always do that but does that mean there's not a problem no there's I think that they're quirky that's what I would I know when I was there last week the sign there's a sign there that says it works right now so it clearly

186has been a little bit up and down up and on so I hope it's under warranty all right so moving on to our action items we have a furniture donation to approve today and it was for um desks and chairs [Music] can I intercept everyone yeah go ahead move to action items I had one um it should have been in the report so I apologize I had some good news I wanted to share from ccace that they received fifteen thousand dollars from the community chats for scholarships and they also received another fifteen thousand dollars for parent education so I wanted to pass that along and share that great Community chat Story community chat yes yeah all right yeah throw the good news no that's a lot donations money is always great yeah yeah that's great

187I mean Bob's technically we approve technically at some point we approve that okay so um our furniture donation if anyone has emotion language in front of us if they're for standing desks and chairs I have it all right I moved at the Concord and conquered Carlisle School committee's Vote to approve a furniture donation of four desks and six chairs from Wally Johnson at energy for the common good and we have a second second any discussion are these new or used slightly used they're in great shape do we want them yes I have already vetted that or we know where they're going they are soliciting from the schools right now so I have a few people that are interested in seeing them because I would note that we're going to be getting a rid of vast

188amounts of furniture in our middle schools very soon if it's anything like the high school certainly we are yes so these are in much better I hope we're not setting a precedent for being the recipient of used furniture um we just had our drop off swap off in town a couple days ago so I'm not opposed to this but I certainly wouldn't want it to be a precedent no we turned down more than we accept so this was vetted in with our worth our while and I think the standing desks tend to be a hot commodity they are standing yeah middle school and the high school and and I do know just from experience that Concord Ed fund gets grants every single year for standing desks and they do not do just Furniture so they're

189not doing furniture anymore they're not doing Furniture so it's you know it it seems like it's Furniture but for kids that really need to stand and move and all of that and adults too yeah they're both any other discussion no I'm grateful for it I think it's um when we can get high quality things that don't cost the district money I think that's important for us to vet those and in light of where we um all stand financially so I appreciate the donation and think it's wise for us to accept it and I think this you'll want to approve us two separate okay we find the locations for them oh okay in the high school so in the in the approval so this is just new so if you are a member of Concord and

190the region you can say I for both and if you remember the region you can just say for region and that will do it okay all right so all in favor well this is tricky because we're not on Zoom um the eye for both or we can just say we could roll follower two separate votes oh my gosh I don't think I was here in the good old days um do you want to do the laundry um CPS you know you need emotions for cchs all right so let's go down let's vote on the region all in favor can I have a motion to approve the um donation at the Concord Public Schools the move that the Concord school committee vote to approve a furniture donation of four desks and six chairs from Wally Johnson

191at energy for the common good five seconds some portion thereof hey all in favor all right thanks all right thank you and with that I will adjourn the Concord Carolina school committee thank you to our car law members [Music] um and given that this agenda's so short can we press through or does someone need anyone need a break okay wonderful I love you people do it all right um so we're gonna go right into Bob's update on our CPS capital projects and where we stand on those you did receive a memo um but if Bob if you could do a quick recap for us all so that we're all on the same page that would be outstanding sure so uh at I think the last meeting or the meeting before was asked to provide a

192summary on prior year capital projects and where they stood um and where they were going so I've done that I um wanted to focus a little bit more just I don't think that I need to sleep you've seen this need to read through everything but maybe highlight some that are um significant the first one is um 2020 so this was approved in 2021 town meeting for use in FY 22 the eru replacement at Thoreau um the Project's gone out to bid we anticipate awarding uh the winning bidder in June 2023 we have a significant lead time supply chain issues so we expect that the um time that this work will be completed um will be late spring or summer of 2024 obviously hoping for spring we've heard 50 weeks lead time quoted um so again

193we'll we'll push as hard as we can to get that in uh before the warm weather next year and hope that we have success um there are some smaller ones I'm gonna skip over unless people had questions and I did want to um highlight a few things that were completed this year um we do have carpet and tile Replacements going at uh Capital dollars allocated for those in each of our schools work was done at Alcott two years ago in Willard there are some remaining funds that we'll use for Thoreau which has the the need the most need now um the integrated playground upgrades that throw were completed um we want to thank the ptg for their funding they contributed uh they cost shared that with us contributed a large sum of money to help

194us complete that project um so that was completed in the fall of this year we have new flooring here at Ripley I believe there's one room it's substantially completed and there's one room uh additionally that needs to be done but it's basically complete um at a savings um the paving and sidewalks I don't know if people are familiar with the walkway we've had Community kind of feedback on the status of the walkway people like to bike so we went out and received quotes for that the quotes came in above 50 000 which requires we were supposed to go out to bid if it's above 50 000 so we had to kind of cancel the quote process go back out to bid so we're in the process of getting that bid document together to go out

195that doesn't necessarily have to be done during the summer it's in a space that's um behind the building and it's not going to affect traffic so we'll hope to award the bid in June and have the work done during the summer but if it carries into the fall it's not not an issue in addition part of that 200 000 will go towards the pavement we can do some crack ceiling we are part of the town of Congress procurement uh on crack ceiling and repairs to Pavement um and we're so we'll work with the vendor that's selected for that to do anything we need to do out in the um and this is again this is more minor repairs this is not like a repaving um we completed the alternative energy project the Ripley Electro connections

196was deferred um and I did note some of the there's 50 000 placeholder for each of the two middle school buildings which are very old and and um obviously being replaced for a reason um so I did kind of highlight some of the projects that were done there over the past few years that's not all inclusive but uh include some of the significant projects that we had um to address during the past two years um you know to the extent we have things that are not health and safety related in the Sanborn and Peabody um which we'll try to obviously avoid capital investment that isn't necessary um but if it is related to life safety and health we we need to do it and those are the things that we've spent on one of them

197was door improving the door access you know to make sure we had secure building access so we worked on that we had some mold remediation in another building so um those are kind of the things that that money is intended for um so that's the that's the last uh a view of the last couple years um and uh leave it there unless there's any questions anybody have we uh issued the bonds for any of this so uh this was interesting to me so I learned that um we typically borrow in the spring town uh the town typically borrows in the spring um nine months into the year um and there are laws um they've assured me that uh permit us to spend um in the meantime um so that's something that um I've learned recently

198they have just gone out to borrow for 2021 and 2022 um I think that was my understanding from what was conveyed to me that was an oversight um so they're borrowing for both of these two years together at 1.8 million and then in the spring of 2000 24 Bill borrow the uh funds for FY 24 capital of 495 000. um who floats the money to pay the vendors in the meantime the town has internal borrowing Provisions to do that but on behalf of the region or just CPI this is this is just CPS yeah I know the region yeah so they're they're covering it somehow they are and we've also had projects so for example there's 665 000 here for the erus we haven't done that um and that's gonna those funds aren't going to

199be spent for that work's going to happen 12 months from now most likely um you know we have a uh analysis underway um for all of CPS buildings um how does that uh figure in with the ER are you replacement that we put forward two years ago does that uh uh give us pause to say let's get that analysis in place and see if it confirms our our plans at uh thorough uh the erus we we need for the building to run its HVAC systems it's not functioning too well it's building's a little bit I think more than a little bit uncomfortable at this time of year it also helps with Energy Efficiency if we did an assessment now it would show up as a need um this will um but the assessments FY 24

200Capital we're not going to do that until next year um but this has been identified as a clear need and if we didn't do it it would just show up to something we should do right away notwithstanding the fact that it might take more than a year to do it yeah I mean that's the concern too we already hear about lead times of this analysis and that work I'm just curious if that can benefit us in any way so I guess my question is is it the eru agnostic to gas or electric infrastructure or is it does it matter yeah maybe that's a better question I don't know my understanding is the eru works with the existing infrastructure that we have there right um if we looked at the example we talked about in the

201alcat feasibility study that was designed to work with the existing systems that were there um you know we're not necessarily looking at integrating a different system with this but from what I understand that that's that's a possibility okay all right thank you for that Bob we can move on to our action item um I'd entertain a motion to approve the CMS field trip Lori do you want to give us some um data on that yeah just a really quick high level Mr Cameron's hoping to take six students who are Playbook leaders to visit with the grandfather of a child who a student currently um who's a holocaust Survivor they had hoped he could come here he's not well enough to do that so they're going to Connecticut if this was a little closer you wouldn't

202even need to approve it but it's over the line um and they're looking to do it next week because they like to video it and then have the eighth grade group watch before they go to DC in the Holocaust awesome it's really cool can we see the video yeah I know I I think we all can see the video yeah it's really cool so I looked at the proposal can you clarify the dates or well it mentioned a date for the start of the trip but a time for the end of the trip so is the presumption it's all same day you get down there and back there all down yeah down there and back okay got it thank you what part of Connecticut uh West Hartford okay I'm not that bad an hour and

203a half hours not even yeah yeah like a motion to approve the CMS field trip to Connecticut uh on May 31st any discussion I think this is great that's a very important trip doesn't it yeah all right all in favor hi hi with that let's adjourn thanks everybody thank you