001there we go great so we have everybody on the concord school committee among us so i'll call the meeting to order it is april 27 2021 and we are being recorded and we will begin with a roll call please anderson present both present present is dead present greedy present all right thank you our first order of business is uh the concord middle school uh things have changed a little bit since uh i communicated with our building committee chairs uh don guerriello and pat nelson and notably uh there was a meeting on the 15th of april by the middle school committee followed by a meeting last week of the concord fincom that produced some requests to the building committee and i think those will frame part of the meeting of the building committee this thursday in
002the absence of that exchange fincom and building committee uh i think this would simply have been an update uh and i'm guessing pat and don would have entertained any questions or comments it didn't have a the specificity the the best way i can characterize uh the the meeting on the 15th is that the uh this is my my telling the committee made it a bit difficult uh for the fincom if not indeed the community by uh perhaps confusing people as to whether a new budget number uh was escalation uh due to the passage of time which was one communication we received from the town manager's office or escalation due to further consideration of community requests for additional gym and auditorium i think there were very clear statements to both effects uh leaving people uh perhaps
003in in a bit of a quandary uh the the specific change that occurred on april 15th is that the uh 90 million plus estimate of 2019 uh manifested in a vote a a near unanimous vote uh by the building committee to the effect that the not to exceed budget would be 108 million dollars that the project would not exceed the 15 limit on impermeable surface and that that new number would enable the design team or architects if you will to go back and examine whether the gym and auditorium could be expanded and if so how without intentionally without a lot of specificity on on what that meant there was no particular mandate for uh what that might look like we do know that uh the the 143 000 square foot uh building in the space
004summary and the 99.2 million dollar budget uh was uh to i believe everybody's uh understanding in accord with the ed plan but things have reopened uh or at least specific parts of the conversation have reopened subsequent to that adoption of the 143 square foot uh dimension and the uh the related space summary that went with it um generally what uh i might have anticipated tonight would be simply to uh ask uh people uh if they had uh questions or comments to or opinions to share with our chairs of the building committee but i think we can be a little more directive and ask are there opinions from this committee that heather and i should hear from you because in in two days we're going to be looking at the building committee agenda that i think
005focuses uh uh not singularly but uh in a in a really specific way on the finance committee's request and that request was that the building committee revisit quote revisit the vote for 108 million dollars with their their understanding and their rationale behind that request so i think that's where we stand um i'm curious if others on the school committee first and then building committee patent dawn next i think that's an accurate telling of where we stand right now um court i'll jump in quickly i think um i agree with you that it's important that we get all the school committee members um you know any input and comments here um i also think though it might be important for us to ask don and pat or don or pat whoever wants to to step up
006to to give us kind of a rendering of that meeting um i i know you just characterized it as the building committee i think um uh not exactly your words here but created some confusion um and i don't know that i took it as confusion but i think we at least need to let don or pat kind of outline that decision in a way that they saw it coming out that maybe is not confusing before we open it up to feedback does that sound fair i i just think it's important for them to be able to speak how about you do it heather since this is a school committee conversation and you are one of our liaisons and you have a different perspective on what happened are you able to do that sure i'm happy
007to can i can i just ask um uh the committee to consider uh don and i are here as the chairs of the school building committee which you know serves the school committee um and i think i would like the opportunity to sort of just give a presentation of what where we're at with the committee um and and then hear and definitely then hear from the school committee reactions to to that it just see that i would like to do that so i i shared with you my framing of it um we've heard requests that heather frame it her way pat has suggested that she frame it also so i think we're going to collect multiple opinions um and that's sometimes the way uh reality gets sorted out heather you want to start and then
008we'll move to pat sure i'll just i'll just give kind of my quick high level impressions um when you were saying that the the budget number got moved either because of uh escalation or because of jim and auditorium feedback um i i didn't feel like it was an either or that necessarily was confusing i felt like as a natural part of this process we had gotten a lot of input on the space that we had been discussing because of that we had to look at the budget numbers and we went back and looked at the specifics of what we discussed at town meeting and i don't know that it was all a matter of escalation but when you look at the numbers that we discussed at town meeting with escalation it brought us to a
009potential upper end of 108 and so the town manager's suggestion was just that we move it to that cap not that we're necessarily moving our building budget to 108 but that we move our cap to what those numbers back at town meeting would have meant today and then we look at the gym and auditorium and what makes sense and what is realistic and make sure it doesn't go over that but i don't necessarily imagine that means it's that it's necessarily going up to that but we'll look at our options so anyway that was just my take on it which was that um we were take we were taking that feedback considering it and looking at the numbers that were originally discussed and adjusting our cap based on that um but really i do think so
010so that's kind of my that's my general take i won't go into more details but i do feel like it's important that don or pat give us kind of an update or presentation i thought of this as a listening session like we've done with lots of other groups um and with all of those groups we always present something first and then take feedback and and comment in questions so i do think it's important that don or pat kind of present to us where the building committee is from the chairs perspective well they they certainly can do that we're going to be mindful of the time um i did reference confusion and i will i will cite where that comes from for me uh mr crane submitted a memo to us that reads uh construction cost
011escalations on similar projects are between six and eight percent per year semicolon if the project is bid in 2023 the project cost would be in the range of 98 to 108 million unquote um the budget uh discussion and the motions began with 110 million dollar recommendation that was then reduced to 108. uh dawn you'll recall you confirmed mr fischelis's uh 110 then 108 motion by asking was this due to the larger gym in auditorium quote unquote to which you said yes so to me that represents uh a change in numbers based on a escalation stephen crane b uh a larger gym and auditorium uh mr fischelis so i i stand by my claim that i think some people are appropriately confused meaning i think it's legitimate that people are confused and this deserves some some
012uh some clarification so pat if you want to start off yeah absolutely absolutely and you know i i gotta say one of the best things about zoom is that i can go back and look at meetings and and you know get the the the actual facts and details of the meeting because it's some it it was there was a lot of information in that meeting and there no question about it court i think that some people are confused about it and um and seeking clarification on on the escalation is an exercise we're definitely going to be you know looking at on our thursday meeting um but it but it still to me kind of came down to or what i my sense of the meeting was that we as a committee needed to find a
013place to set a cap on the budget that up until um that meeting we were kind of operating without a cap on the budget other than um numbers that were discussed at the 2019 town meeting nothing was put into the article uh numbers that were discussed in order to put out the rfs for the contractors so we looked back as as heather i think explained it very clearly we looked back at that discussion to kind of see what the community what numbers the community was give were given at that time when they voted to approve the feasibility study um so that said we kind of looked at that we we've been getting lots of community input as you know uh around the auditorium and the gym and so we we kind of use that as
014a uh framework to um to give us some some barriers some some edges to to work within um and so we we settled on the we voted on the 208 million now that was with the caveat that we would be um looking at what makes the most sense for the middle school what makes what is the most reasonable thing to be doing for the middle school what is consistent with the ed plan and what is consistent with community needs um but that it wasn't set as a as a target it was said as well this is these are numbers that have been kind of thrown out in 2019 um let's let's see what we can do within these numbers we have heard over and over and over again from the finance committee that they do
015not want to see this project exceed 100 million and that's that's the job of the finance committee to to to express what they feel is an appropriate um burden on the on the citizens so we will also be taking that feedback in as we look at what we might do within that 108 million where we how high we want to go based on all the information that that we can gather from from all the places i mentioned earlier so at the meeting yep we did go to 108 million we voted for that it was a target and it was um with the caveat that on thursday we would be looking at all of those options for the gym in the auditorium we will also be looking at some new information that a member of the
016finance committee and our finance committee liaison has developed dean banfield for his understanding of escalation because really at the end of the day what we want to get at is what do you think this project is going to cost and what do we think we can do within within that number um with that number what the what the base project is going to cost with the um what you as a school committee voted on for the education plan and then what what more might we want to do um i i don't know if that's any clearer than anything you know that that anyone else might say about that meeting but but that was essentially what what we were focusing on and that's how we got to that vote i i certainly uh agree with that
017and i think that uh your reference to the 108 as they do not exceed and also as a target really speaks to our uncertainty about whether it is a do not exceed or or a target um well i think that it was caught up excuse me i think it for me and maybe that's what where the confusion is but for me it wasn't confusing at all it was very clear it was a do not exceed number and not a target okay well you did reference it as target and i said that that it was a department and we did have a 90 million that became an 80 to 100 million and we thus built to 100 million so i mean these are these are genuine and legitimate questions that i think uh bring us to
018the broader question of whether uh this community can uh bring this this school forward um this project started at this table with this school committee so we're deeply invested in it um [Music] sorry court may i say something sure thank you um it and it's related i guess i just want to say that the only thing that was voted at town meeting was the 1.5 to study this project that's correct right and i'm sorry if there's kids in the background um but that that was all that was voted there was no budget set there were mothers that were loose that were put out there based on unknowns right so as a professional that designs buildings i'm not designing this building i'm not saying this is i'm just giving some perspective you have to study something
019in order to start to refine it and get numbers put on it and then put it in front of a community to vote on so what was presented at town meeting was as you likely know because it came out of the school committee was really loose on a feingold alexander study that was done years ago that made some assumptions that you know in order to even put a number out there to study it's hard to put numbers out there because people grab hold of them so that was the 90 million and then it said on um you know on the article 14 it talked about a 2019 feasibility here we are 2021 so two years later we're still in feasibility um it talked about escalation costs after one year on top of that it could
020go to 92.5 to 97.5 and then two years on top of that 95 to 105. by the time we get to the end of sd we're going to be almost three years out from that so the idea of escalation is that as we all know nothing is stagnant nothing ever holds in time like the cost of construction if you go look at the msba chart that they have so much data it goes up and up and up so um escalation is a crystal ball no one knows the answer we don't know what construction costs are going to be when this goes out to bid hopefully in 2023 but the idea was that those numbers were looked at as possibilities like without having studied the project so what was approved at town meeting was a study
021of the project so since then we've gone through early feasibility we've gone through the educational program which you all are deeply invested in and thank you for approving and getting involved in that um it's critical that you guys are behind the educational plan and support it and it sounds like that has pretty broad support which we're appreciative of uh but what came of that was some increase in size from the assumed building that was put out there at 2019 right and that's for good reason um and as you know court we in the design subcommittee scrutinized and looked at can spaces be shared do we need this many spaces we're really working hard to try and right-size the building which i think we've done to be honest with you um we've right-sized it for the
022education yet allowed for flexibility of the future which is critical when you're designing a 50-year building so the 90 was an assumption based on having not studied anything the 80 to 100 was just for the rfp that was just to put a number out there to hire an opm and a designer to say we think it's going to be somewhere in here we don't know we haven't studied it yet so here we are in feasibility and right size the building is 99 numbers are all over my head but it's 99 ish on just under 100 for the 143 000. when we put that out there to the commun you know we basically said here's the size of the building we were flooded with information from the community and feedback from the community saying the auditorium's
023too small the gym's too small we want more we are we're willing to pay more and part of our scope is to engage the community and listen and so that's where we work so we're saying we could get the building right sized at 100. so what does that do now that we have this community feedback that we can't ignore this is a community building it's affecting all of us that live here and pay taxes here so then we need to look at what's right for that building recognizing we don't have a budget nothing was ever voted so let's vote on a not to exceed budget and then figure out the right size auditorium and gymnasium that's correct for concord and does that mean it's the largest and the biggest probably not does it mean that
024we may end up where the ed plan says that we need as far as educational spaces maybe but it's our committee's charge to study it which is basically what that 108 allows us to do so from my perspective that those are the official votes the 1.5 to study it we're studying it that's where we are the 90 was a a number a ballpark honestly it wasn't a bad guess it's not terrible and then the 80 to 100 was just a range that was put out there for the request for proposals to hire professionals and as a professional i've never once seen an rfp that's exact because no one has a crystal ball and often it's a range and sometimes it exceeds the range by two times because they study it and say oh it needs
025to be something way more than we imagined or it's at the low end of it because they realize hey our building actually kind of works and we're going to look at just fixing the spaces that don't so there's a huge range of opportunities when you study a project and to get it right at the rfp level like that was just a range if you go back and read the meeting minutes we all were saying it wants to be arranged what are we comfortable saying so i just want to share that perspective as a professional as a designer what it's been voted and where we are so the 108 is absolutely and not to exceed we're not going to go over it hopefully we're closer to a hundred and we can get some community spaces in
026there that you know we can gain broad support from the general community so thank you that's my perspective on where we ended up you know and honestly i don't have the answer on the community space um that's why we're listening and in a perfect world we had asked that this be a listening session before that meeting because we were trying to get input from select board fin con school committee to be able to inform that vote it's just we weren't able to get on the agenda until today so thank you for having us thank you for being here now and i do want to turn to to my colleagues uh in in a minute uh i do want to however first on uh state right here that the design subcommittee uh didn't wait for the
027space summary to be approved to then pay attention to athletic interests drama interests music instrument interests or financial stability interests in this town we were sensitive to them from day one this the the possible implication that we woke up to the fact that we had these constituencies only after we hit 100 million dollars and or 99.2 to be exact today today's number or 142 995 square feet uh is erroneous we've been exceedingly sensitive to those constituencies throughout that design process we we know that those are interests that are that run deep in this town and that's why i reference this as a a reopening of these discussions because i think they were very real many months ago so i would like to turn to uh our colleagues if you do have comments i'm not going
028to put you on the spot but you know that we have four members of the central administration staff on this committee as voting members you have two of your representatives uh heather and myself um and a number of other people on the committee and the uh item on thursday morning is going to be uh some form of a look at this uh middle of this fincom presentation from mr banfield that's going to be brought forth again in some form uh followed by a discussion and if you have questions or or sentiments that heather and i should hear they're not going to bind us we've got to act in our what we believe in the best interests of the project on thursday morning but we do want to hear them [Music] well i'll start off um
029i am i've been paying close attention and regarding the fun the project scope the escalation that discussion in the financing even the discussion at the select board meeting yesterday afternoon was confusing very confusing i'll say it and even carry the floor said the numbers under initial um estimates were wrong so she has to redo them so in terms of the escalation cost so i'm going to request that the building committee have a finance subcommittee meeting and try to straighten this all out because the community needs to get a really clear solid financial picture on you know where we thought the escalation was in 2019 because that's a constant question um and then where we think the escalation is today even in the let's put aside any project and you know enlarging the scope in any
030way is that 99 million solid i just want to be sure that we think it is um another thing is uh i listen carefully to the cm at risk discussion and i'm going to request that did anybody on the committee or staff reach out to our neighboring towns who did see him at risk um with a lot of sustainability built in back to boxborough which is currently in midst of it in lexington which i think had a pretty successful project and asked them you know did it cost them more did it save them money i really think it's important that we get another point of view from a party who did a building nearby with similar elements and acting a b is in the middle of it i guess i don't think they even put
031a shovel on the ground yet maybe they're close um the one other thing i think we need to clearly understand is we're very unique we're going without the msba we're probably foregoing at least 20 million dollars in reimbursement maybe it's a little bit still it's a lot of money right so i think we have to be more careful with our money and our our expenditures as a town so that's all i have for now all right thank you cynthia uh either uh questions or comments uh for heather and i to bring forward or uh anything you want to address uh toward pat and dawn alexa sure i mean i'll just sort of give sort of where i sort of stand personally on um on the direction that we're going um so i you know i
032i've been going to all these building committee meetings some of the subcommittee meetings as well and um i haven't personally experienced confusion but i i recognize how it could be depending on um you know what meetings you've been to and what what you've attended and all of that but sort of where i net out on this is i thought it was wise to escalate the budget to 108. um i've listened to sort of both sides of this debate but ultimately i found that the arguments in favor of um moving this s this escalation to 108 are sort of more compelling at the end especially if it means that we have more flexibility in studying whether we can um to borrow don's phrase right size some of these non-academic if you will facilities the gym and
033auditorium um i've lived in concord all but seven years of my life i was here as like an adult taxpayer when we did alcott no 4 and willard and i don't know 08 or whenever that was in the high school in 2010 so i do think that we have consistently been conservative with our buildings all of our buildings seem to have undersized gymnasiums not quite adequate auditoriums and i think that they do have some i don't know um detrimental effects and how that we deliver extracurriculars and the ability for the community to to utilize these spaceships these spaces so i don't know as this will be a building that's supposed to last for generations i do think it is worthwhile to reflect on what some people consider these past mistakes and build and building that
034can deliver like a holistic education i mean we all know that for our students to be successful i said this i think in the last meeting we know that we have to deliver these kids opportunities inside and outside of the classroom and we know that the education that we deliver does do that extent it extends beyond our classroom so to continue to excel i think we have to have the right spaces to do that and what i'm personally struggling with is as an elected member i feel like on the one hand you're sort of duty bound to represent the citizen taxpayers on the other hand on this committee you're duty bound to represent and advocate for students so sometimes i feel like and maybe this is one of those times sometimes those two duties can
035be in conflict um and don't they don't necessarily align but even in this situation i'm not entirely sure that this is a conflict here because when i think of concord and i think of a town where people flood here buying homes over and over and over again and what they're really buying here might not even be so much a home is what they're kind of buying is their children's education we see that time and time again and in no time certainly more than now and like anything else if people are coming here for that infrastructure this educational infrastructure we have to mean not only maintain those investments but like improve them as well so i feel like doing this properly is a way for us to essentially improve our our investments and i feel like
036the ship has sailed right on this 100 million-ish dollars with which represents like the thousand dollar um average tax increase to the building or sorry to to like each taxpayer's annual bill so like what we're really talking about with this 108 is is 45 so i don't know again i just i feel like i don't know guys i quoted her last time but i go back to carl and reid at the select board and like to be pennywise and pound foolish just does seem i don't know foolish and i do think that you guys have done this the right way and the process has gone along nicely and you know community input is coming in and i don't know i support what you guys have been doing i think that the vote laster two weeks
037ago in the committee meeting was the right one and that's where i net out not known for brevity guys sorry no that was very clear thank you thank i'm you the time i know uh dawn has another meeting coming up but i think we're okay fatima yes okay well first i i want to thank um don and pat and the whole um building committee for all the time and the energy that you're putting into building our next middle school i really appreciate every ounce of effort and time that you put into this and um i want to begin with uh uh i i i'm going to echo some of the the sentiments or the responses that came from the the chairperson of the finance committee um in in in response to the the pennywise and
038pound foolish um we're not talking about pennies we're talking about a hundred million dollars um so and i personally think that a hundred million dollars is very generous to our students the tax burden um is difficult to sustain for many families in concord so increasing it is going to make a lot of lives difficult in terms of advice [Music] when we're taking uh feedback from different uh sides in our town to move forward with the planning of this building i personally would choose to listen to our finance committee rather than our architects since in terms of the direction they want to go for instance the construction delivery method or the escalation costs because their purposes are different the finance committee is looking out for the interest of the taxpayers and also wants a good quality
039building the architects have a different purpose a different goal and that's fine uh but i worry when we talk about you know um we need to trust the architects on this um i would be cautious and trust those in town that um that know uh the finances and can can can steer us in in a sustainable direction at least financially the other concern that i have when you know when we ask community members whether they are willing to pay more taxes for a better building [Music] and then if we base our decision on that uh uh that that's a concern for me that's not how we decide to raise taxes some of us you know some some of us may want to raise taxes maybe if we to to raise taxes but not everybody has
040responded and again as the uh finance committee pointed out perhaps more than two-thirds of the families that live in concord of the taxpayers in concord do not have children in school and they may not want to pay more taxes for a building that's going to go over a hundred thousand dollars um perhaps uh my my my last uh point is uh i know this has been a very um passionate or or emotional conversation when it comes about the to the spaces uh that are um going to be included and the size of the different spaces of our building um i often hear the the turbo the phrase community uh center or community space it is a middle school we need i think to remind ourselves that we are building a middle school so um that
041i think uh is is important for me because if we frame it as a community center then yes it justifies going over 100 million dollars but um when the finance committee recommends 100 million budget they're talking about a middle school um and i think i will stop there thank you thank you fatima gone can i just thank you um for those comments can i just respond to the design bid build cmar comment that was made sure because i don't think the finance committee weighed in on that just for clarity um they only spoke about the budget yes you're right you're not yeah no i just want to be clear because i don't think we got um feedback from them on that and we didn't go into that vote that was an additional vote that was
042taken at the april 15th meeting and happy to give an update on that if that's something you're interested in hearing we were planning on it but this discussion has led us down the budget conversation which is valuable so i don't want to derail anything but i don't think we've heard from the finance committee and just to the point of trusting the architects and the owners project managers we hired them to give us advice and be professional so i do trust them in the sense that they're working for us and our you know our town's best interest is should be the you know the advice that they're giving us so if we can't trust them then um i'm concerned because we're paying them 1.5 million for the town meeting vote in 2019 so um i i
043would i i would offer up the communities that use a construction manager don't do it because they mistrust their their teams they do it because they want the extra risk management it's not born of mistrust so i don't want anybody to take that away okay i'm just responding to what was said so i mean i'm from where i sit i mean they're the professionals they do this every day for a living every day so um you know they gave us advice and as a committee we vetted it listened to community input on it vetted it some more and then voted um so and it you know in the end it i think it was 11 to 6 um to go design bid build that is correct yeah um i'm mindful of the time we've gone
044over a little bit um i think we have focused on uh budget and uh scope escalation uh appropriately because that's uh what uh we're gonna be hearing on thursday when where can i just make one more comment yes please all right um so i just wanna i i feel like the parking issue is sort of getting pushed pushed aside as this is these will be like one-off events it's not going to be a big deal you know we'll figure it out park up and down old marlborough i just drove by sanborn last weekend and the parking lot was at least half full just with famous doing soccer so if we start having you know a lot of theater events and gym events we're going to have a constant parking problem at that site and i
045just think it's not there's been no study of it it's just i think to say it's a one-off it's not going to happen very often it's disingenuous and dangerous in fact so i really think you have to think of that as a um a plan for it not say it's not it's not going to be a big deal because it is a big deal and it's that's road is already not safe so i i don't think you could say oh you know it's only going to be the spring play if you build a big theater it's going to get used more frequently quite well taken yeah and i think that's under active consideration of the building committee uh those those uh considerations about uh parking and usage and large events because i the one thing
046i really don't hear uh in the plan is the outdoor spaces i've been asking for it for a while and for example the cross-country and track programs are certainly the most the biggest um population of the middle school after school activity there's no i mean you'll get the numbers lori can get them free but it's it's maybe a hundred sometimes for cross-country or at least 80 i would say um and compared to basketball it's it's much more highly subscribed and i'm just wondering what we're going to do with the cross country course is that going to go down for you know a couple years that's fine but you know we just need to set is that in the in the project is it not um you know those kinds of considerations i think we haven't
047done a real we haven't really i've heard not a real needs assessment we're hearing from special groups and some groups just don't have a strong organization like others so i think we have to think of everybody thanks thank you just quickly on timing my understanding was that the outdoor pieces come a little bit later is that correct don and pat i was just gonna ask if i could respond to that yes as we move into schematic design there'll be a lot more information on that i think there have been some budgetary assumptions and that includes outdoor learning spaces outdoor um activity spaces and um i can't speak specifically to the cross-country um uh path but if that's a priority coming out of the you know the user meetings as far as physical pe and gymnasium
048um you know athletics uh that absolutely can be part of those budgetary assumptions and we'll see more of that as we move into schematic design so but i completely agree with you on that i mean it got left behind in the high school project just because that group doesn't have a loud voice yeah i cut through the one over near the high school all the time so that didn't get rebuilt until like two years ago yeah yeah okay uh with that i want to thank pat and dawn for joining us um i want to thank our carlisle members for your patience i think we're going to wrap this conversation if that's acceptable i think heather and i have heard some perspectives and concerns i don't mean that in a pejorative way at all [Applause] that
049we can bear in mind as we go forward with the building committee so thank you for that with that i want to turn it over to sarah to convene the joint school committees please hi thank you cord thank you don thank you pat sorry thank you sorry sarah thank you for having us so it's uh 5 16 i'd like to call the concrete carlisle regional school committee to order with the roll call please anderson present who's president wilson present great thanks um this evening we do not have a student update they will be with us the next time they are looking forward to giving an update on the full return but felt that there hasn't been much that happened over break so so we'll see them on may 11th and as always look forward to
050having them here um and so now we can move to public comment um if it's your first time here and you want to make a comment or well in any event if you want to make a comment go to the participants button and raise your hand we'll call on you in the order in which we see the hands raised please state your name and your address when you begin and please try to keep comments to about three minutes you'll get a reminder if you're getting close to the end of your comment time um and if you've spoken on a topic before please try to keep your comments even briefer um and uh yeah we look forward to hearing from the community now are there any public comments i don't believe so sarah i think so
051okay so with that let's go on to uh recognitions the cchs green team thank you for coming thank you yes so there's about five students i'm priscilla guinea and i'm the advisor to green team and thank you so much for inviting us and the students want to present a project that we've been working on all year and we're really passionate about it's the native pollinator garden project so we have some slides and we will share those with you and we're looking to seek your approval and we've gone through a number of steps and we'd like to share what we've been doing so far so miss kenny i can share a screen if that works for you if you want to do it that's fine i can help prompt who will be speaking that sounds great
052awesome can you all see my um my screen okay so um this is our presentation on our plans for a pollinator garden at cchs um so far so we'll have a few different students presenting today um okay so i wanted to start with what is a native pollinator garden so in general it is um using native plants to attract endangered pollinator species a variety of pollinator species so this includes bees butterflies birds are also pollinators and our goal with this garden would be to educate the community on the importance of pollinators and ways they can support pollinators and also to help the environment at the same time um why is a pollinator garden important so i think that this graph is very um telling uh we can see that most of these native bee species
053are have decreased in numbers um from from their historical numbers so we're seeing a serious issue and and in particular these two species as you can see the half black bumblebee and the golden um northern i believe are particularly at risk so we would hope to choose plants that would cater to to these species and one reason why we think that there is this decreasing in in native pollinator numbers is that many restoration projects don't actually provide plants that that support a range of pollinator species certain pollinators can only use certain flowers or grasses and so um many restoration projects have not provided the adequate um type of plants that some of these endangered species are needing and which is why one of the reasons why they're seriously struggling and one more thing about pollinators
054is we need them for for the biodiversity of the whole ecosystem in supporting the whole ecosystem apparently a rough statistic is about a third of the food you eat couldn't be produced without pollinators pollinating it so another reason why pollination is important yeah so just a little bit on our work so far we've met with a few experts which include delia k who's the concord town director of natural resources um matt morris who's part of the native pollinator task force for the sudbury valley trustees um dr brianman will windmiller who's the director of the grassroots wildlife conservation and mark hanson who's a part of the concord pollinator health committee and so we've also with the help of delia k we've chosen ideal location on the cc campus which will be shown in like the next
055slide and we've also planned for the implementation of the garden which includes when we're going to do it who's going to help us all of that which we'll also be going over in the following slides the location we met with delia k director and will holden land manager from concord natural resources department um to find the perfect location for our garden so as you can see in the picture on the right the star marks the spot where we were thinking of and we also got approval from russ hughes the facilities manager so we're all set in that area um just some considerations that we want to take into mind was the flat surface so there is a slight slope but that shouldn't be a problem um and there's also a manhole cover but we planned
056our garden so it won't be near that but it'll be a few feet away and plant roots won't interfere with that and then finally there's also the young beech tree and we gave it a 10 feet buffer space which was what was recommended and so again that won't interfere right so just more garden specific so we measured and marked the exact outline of the garden so as you can see we're just standing around the edge if we're going for like a butterfly shape it's about 500 square feet of area and there's no special soil needed because the native plants that we're trying to plant can grow anywhere and out yeah that is a pretty big space of 500 square feet area but we're going to probably start with half of it to see how that
057goes so here are some features of the garden that we have planned we are considering a paver path through the center if people would want to walk through the garden we also would mark the edges of the garden with with stones just for clarity for the grounds crew and for the community too we're hoping to put clear signage once again supporting our goal of education and the edges being marked by stones we would probably buy some of the stones but also we would find some stones ourselves to to decrease costs and also to add to the the natural look of the garden and then one other detail there would need to be um one other detail would be that we would need to water it for the first year and only for the first year
058because um once again these native plants have been adapted to live in these conditions so they really wouldn't need much maintenance after the first year and this rain barrel um we would elevate it on a platform in order to use gravity to to get the water to the plants and we would also paint it with flowers butterflies bees pollinators um just so it it matches with the rest of the garden and that's temporary once again um so we wanted to talk a little bit about fundraising so we estimate that it's going to be between 800 and a thousand dollars like maggie mentioned we already have a rain barrel and some plants to get started but we do need the rest of the plants and some paving stones um we could do two stages i know
059emerson talked about possibly doing the first half and then second half so it's possible if we don't have the funds immediately that we could do some in the spring and finish in the fall for possible fundraising tactics we considered a gofundme putting out information in the concord journal the cchs voice and the carlos mosquito and also fundraisers fundraisers within cchs like stickers are pretty popular and a honey stick sale and then finally the implementation so that would be um students would provide the labor on a volunteer basis so that would be green team and we have approximately well um approximately 40 members but 15 who about 15 who show up consistently and then also we would get the help of ap environmental sciences because they are looking for an end of the year project so
060there would be tons of students to help out and we would plant the plants this spring and sort of check in with the the garden over the summer um and weed it and every everything else and and then sort of more on the process of how we would do it is we would remove the grass and we would compost that so we're being as friendly to the environment as possible we would plant the plants and as i mentioned before water them for the first year and so all we need now is a final approval for the project so that's it um i'll open uh the floor back up to comments or questions thank you thank you so much for sharing this a couple of years ago there was a neat um event at the high
061school that was about landscaping and and uh and all sorts of um [Music] just environmentally friendly ways that you can you can modify your gardens and stuff and i remember that there was a wonderful um presentation about this um about the pollinators and so i'm so excited to see that you guys have taken this on as as a project i think that's just phenomenal and you've done some great work so far and a lot of research and clever clever ideas around this so um i i don't think i have any questions for you just just applause um and court well i will i will share in the in the applause thank you margaret and ruthie and emerson and catherine and certainly miss guinea as well maybe this one's from his gynae um how might uh
062this really apply to classroom teaching and learning is there a curriculum thread here that you're going to try to exploit in the best sense of the word oh and i didn't mention alicia i'm sorry thank you too yes alicia's here as well and we actually had other students who planned to come but sports got in the way unfortunately today um so you would have seen even more students who are passionate about this and in terms of the curriculum thread i think there's a really strong curriculum thread for students to be working with outdoor plants so in biology and ap environmental sciences we could absolutely include this because it's a really nice ecosystem study that we can be doing looking at both the pollinator insects and animals as well as the plants and the interactions so
063just getting a sense of the interaction collecting data recording the data there's a great app by dr robert jager who's like the expert on native pollinator work at umass dartmouth and we could participate in that it's called be cology and we can report the bumblebees and they're learning a lot more that graph that maggie showed is phenomenal and he's like the expert on native pollinator plant and animal interaction so we could participate in that that would be really exciting i think wonderful thank you was the location for convenience for uh people who will maintain this or for high visibility for everybody who uses the campus or or is there more to it i'll let the students answer that why'd you pick the location i guess i can can start on that one so um one
064of our criteria was um obviously not having a slope so we identified the area around the drainage pond as a good area because it is um currently doesn't seem to be being used and it's also um it's not very sloped um which is good for the garden and so we actually met with delia k who's the conquered town director of natural resources and she also identified that location as a prime location for a garden and we we liked the location other than the the lack of a slope because there is a sidewalk that is pretty close so people would walk by and see the garden good wonderful thank you oh sorry go ahead cynthia no i was going to commend them for uh reaching out and working with delia k and mark hanson and the
065i think the professors at umass dartmouth that's just wonderful collaboration and i'm sure you really enjoyed it and i'm glad you got to work with julia on the location that's just really wonderful um and i look forward to walking by it near future thank you and i i really want to thank dr hunter too because she actually pointed us to a number of these resources and we found some of our home there's a great network of naturalists out there who are really interested in conservation biology and i just wanted to add dr windmiller actually helped point us to that location too so he he's very interested in the high school landscape he's got background in animals and plants and conservation biology is his thing so uh thanks to really lori hunter helped us out too
066in figuring out who some of these point persons are and it's been a great networking opportunity for our students it's been amazing great thank you hey i want to join in in the um uh applauding your efforts that's a wonderful uh idea and um this is something that i have um participated in in the past in a different district starting a school garden and it was just fascinating going through the process i have a couple of questions um are you planning i know you talked about the impact of pollinators on food production are you thinking considering planting vegetables and fruits or just flowers so it's a great question and i know bryce who's head of our food services down the road i'm sure would love to look at a sustainable vegetable garden as well that's
067clearly a bigger hurdle in terms of making that happen so this one seemed like a very reasonable step in school gardens and this one is great because it could be part of a native pollinator corridor that's what's so essential to these plants and pollinators is to actually have lots of spaces all throughout the community and then in terms of a food and vegetable garden that's an a new step but that would be really exciting i think bryce and other people would love to see that happen down the road right bryce has on hold a very ambitious greenhouse garden plan with cef that covid suspended but i'm sure we will revisit it that's wonderful in terms of funding have you considered or looked at grants that might be useful for for this kind of project i
068think the issue for us is just it's the timeliness we have to basically move on the plans immediately when they're available so i actually myself purchased some through the lincoln conservation land trust because they're really like state of the art in terms of native pollinator so i got i gave us a head start but it's it's really kind of that issue like having the money ready to get the things when we want them so we need a little bit more flexibility and agility and that's kind of what we're working with so we're hoping we can just reach out to the community and get some funds and then be able to spend it when we need to yes thank you and again going back to my personal experience in this i know that um local garden
069centers and local farms are always eager to to help donate uh plants um and you know they could use it as underwriting if if if they wish um so and then um you mentioned i don't know if i heard you correctly uh you me will you be using volunteer students to maintain the garden yes so um i can answer that one yeah um so yes it would it would be um members of green team and ap environmental sciences would would volunteer their time and and help plant the plants and um check in with the garden maintain it thank you so do you will this count towards the 40 hour 40 credit hours for volunteering for the high school i'm sure we can arrange that yes absolutely and the great news is green team is first-year
070students all the way through juniors we don't seem to have too many seniors and well they're leaving in a few weeks so we're just really happy we have a great breadth of students and the ap environmental science students are our seniors so we're going to catch them my last question um i know we compost with black earth right laurie dr hunter so um i know that they uh i don't know if we get compost from them but in return for composting with them they they provide compost so i wonder if that's something that the club can also uh explore yes absolutely i'm sure we can explore that and that's a great thought thank you yes yeah in fact it's this group that got the composting back on track recently after coven came in so we're
071we know they're connected to that for sure that's wonderful and finally i'm congratulating everybody uh particularly i want to say hello to emerson who was my colleague on the challenge success committee at the middle school um and i'm really happy to see you uh continuing your involvement at the high school yeah thank you i'll just add my applause quickly very quickly both for all of your initiative and for the comprehensive planning i mean it seems like you really have all the details thought through well here and um it looks fabulous i applied you well done i just have a quick question guys not for this year because i know everything is one step at a time when you're taking on these kind of projects but um i know that there are similar like student and
072at the younger level student and parent together-led groups who are interested in this same kind of environmental sustainability i know when my kids were at throw school there was even interest back then in doing a vegetable garden they have a little garden that i think might now be in some level of disrepair it was sort of when i was leaving and i'm wondering if maybe like i don't know you guys could marinate on the thought of trying to figure out how to work together across all of the different schools as your journey sort of evolves because i think that would be really cool um like your big kids mentoring little kids and i don't know it just seems really neat a cool idea to me i love that idea i'm gonna have a-list comment on
073that because i think the students are really interested in that so alice do you want to comment a little bit about the idea of working with the middle school or the elementary schools because you've done that this year yeah i think that's a great idea me um catherine and ruthie actually did a presentation to middle school about some of the things we've been doing at the high school for sustainability so i think that would be another cool thing that we could add in the future be awesome you guys are awesome this is so great well done catherine yeah i just wanted to add on um uh i know a lot of people who are involved in the alcott garden um and that they're really close and a lot of the parents involved in that and
074they've expressed a lot of interest in having the high school be involved in the garden there or even some of the initiatives they took to teach some of i think it was second and third graders about the garden and different types of planting so i know the parents involved in that gardening system are very interested in working with high school so i think that was a very good point and that we could definitely expand on that well you came not only to teach us to inform us but also to seek the school committee's endorsement and i think you have abundant evidence that you've got that endorsement so we want to thank all of you and ms gein you certainly and the support that dr hunter provided along the way and we know you've got many
075other supporters um including folks in town government and natural resources and you've recruited people like dr windmiller so thank you for uh your really careful thorough efforts to to put this together um this is going to be something that uh you make possible at the high school that's going to be there for many many uh people to enjoy in the future um and and benefit from in so many ways to say nothing of the benefits to our our uh ecosystem um we we we shouldn't uh uh think this is a a small garden this is a small garden that's a big idea um that has so much potential so thank you thank you so much for allowing us to come present thank you and we look forward to hearing about your fundraising absolutely developments yeah
076great thank you so much thank you good night good night all thank you thanks for coming and good luck with it that's so exciting um i think that's wonderful um um so where are we oh chairs and liaisons reports do we have any updates i know policy is meeting on thursday yep okay also i don't know if all of you guys got this but as liaison the c pack has uh a formal date for their appreciation awards which i think is may 6th um their their nominees are out or i don't know if they're recipients or nominees i forget but um they finally have their their date fantastic um on behalf of uh both chairs i think i speak for sarah as well here um i have requested that in two weeks time when we
077meet again we put aside a few minutes to discuss what i will refer to tonight as school committee coffees um we have had from a few different sources including school committee members the idea put forward that we do something by way of uh making uh community connections uh between the community at large and the school committee uh more possible through uh perhaps an informal means this being rather formal what we can do here in public comments um so far the conversation has only gone so far as to say perhaps a a monthly uh convening of anybody who would like to connect up with a a couple of members of the school committee might serve serve our interests in the community's interests nicely so we i would request that we put that on the agenda for
078two weeks time and think about it in advance so we can really keep that conversation brief and see what we might put together for the future sarah anything to add to that i don't think so um you know it'll be good to figure out the details figure out how how how this all works out but i think um we definitely welcome more more dialogue more interaction [Music] and this would not be considered uh anything formal uh and nothing would happen that would officially represent the school committee instead it would be uh listen and learn thank you that's all i have sir okay i haven't heard anything else no so i just wanted we referenced it earlier but the finance committee did meet last thursday and sent a letter to the middle school building committee the
079um it wasn't on their agenda but select board did have a discussion um about the middle school as well so i'm sure that that will come up at the middle school building committee on thursday at 7 30 a.m okay thank you oh okay and um always we can go to the meeting uh to the minutes um a motion to accept the open session meetings from three from march 9th and march 16. and executive session from uh march 2nd and march 9th so moved for both committees and i will i will second session thank you aaron aaron thank you for keeping us uh keeping a fun task okay uh roll call vote please anderson aye and who's 5 for both about eye for both is that iphone book mustafi i for region radiate for votes and
080wilson for region great thank you um correspondence i have nothing for correspondence on the regional side court uh yes the concord school committee was since we met last it was copied on 14 pieces of correspondence that had gone to the middle school building committee and we received one uh advocating uh more mask wearing off school grounds by children coming and going from school okay um oh superintendent's report dr hunter thank you i'm going to pick highlights of this but we can talk on any parts that you'd like even if i don't mention them in terms of thinking forward we actually started this morning as a leadership team a protocol to capture what we want what we think was positive out of the covet experience to date that'll be then replicated it was a train the
081trainer kind of model um so that the building and central office leaders can then work with their department chairs and grade levels and it'll get replicated in terms of data collection from students we're going to be administering challenge success surveys which are going to capture a wide range of information across wellness and academic perspectives it will also be a nice comparison to look at our previous challenge success survey data collection back in and 17. these are similar to the youth risk behavior surveys we usually do they actually we administered the youth risk behavior survey literally a month no two weeks before we closed last march so unfortunately we're feeling like we need to update those and i think this will be a great tool and obviously we always just value the work challenge success puts
082into surveys um that'll be part of a bigger picture plan we also want to capture uh feedback from parents so more to come on all of that um just updates from the state in terms of academics we did hear from the status to the tiered focus monitoring and special ed in ell and had no findings and special ed and civil rights one minor finding which is a simple corrective piece um with ell so we're really pleased with that especially coveted lens was put on all of it so um kind of an interesting place to be where you're creating things on the fly and then being assessed on them all at the same time uh two remaining professional days in the month of may the third and the 28th are coming up uh we obviously i'm
083going to skip to the real news of the day is the full return of all the kids uh in having the middle and high school students return where we're through two days um overall an incredibly huge success and that's to the credit of absolutely everyone um i think the the pinch points we predicted didn't all come true at this point which is great uh traffic before beginning and end of day and lunch um our true test will be on rainy days um so we're actually grateful not to have started with with the weather being an issue um but a lot of great collaboration i couldn't even begin to name everyone so really successful so far um so thank you to everyone involved there um just in terms of covet status i think it's worth mentioning
084a few points i was on a call with the commissioner earlier he is mandating full return of high schools may 17th at the latest so we're grateful we're already in um he also mentioned you probably saw the governor is you know starting to ease some restrictions outdoors we are being very clear and he reiterated this at the state level that we are not easing restrictions in terms of mass squaring and such at school at all outside or not um we're going to leave the year strongly conservative in those measures and be sure we do as much as possible to stay in i will that's going to sound a little counter to my next statement which is jesse has looked at uh minimizing quarantines to three feet instead of six feet um and we are not
085going to follow that right off i had a lot of that was put out initially over the break i spent time with both susan rask health director and trisha mckeon our public health nurse we have concerns that it would just be a three-foot parameter within the school not in any other place i understand their intent is to minimize the impact of quarantines we've felt that extensively we would very much like to work through the full return and better understand our vulnerabilities here before we start going to a less a lesser distance in terms of close contact identification so i just wanted to be sure i was clear about that with all of you that hasn't had a lot of attention out in the media but it is out there that desi is allowing that as
086a choice um we're going to stay more conservative at least initially here i you know case counts in the last four days where we've had eight since sunday so and two today with kids and a staff member in school resulting in quarantines that are happening as i speak so we just want to go a little slow um let get certainly get through this week after the vacation and see if that all settles down which typically it does um and just go from there so just voicing that that's the direction we're going and if you want to offer feedback or support on that we'd be happy to hear it i let me interrupt then right now say i can't speak for my colleagues uh they'll speak for themselves but i i want to support your conservative
087approach to this um i think we have seen an uptick in the last 24 hours uh i don't think we're out of the woods yet and uh i think it's going to protect the greatest number uh for the greatest number of days um if we keep doing what we're doing uh so thank you yeah thank you you're here i agree with court and i'll remind you we we have tightened up the live streaming access at the middle in high school but not for quarantines if you're quarantined you are absolutely able to access your classes throughout that time period um so thank you i think you know we can keep revisiting it for sure if if things contin continue to moderate but um i i think an exciting number and i want to be sure we
088support the families that chose to say remote but the 95 return is among the highest i've heard i do think there's a lot of confidence and the full return and a lot of belief that's where kids want to be and i think we're hearing that from them a little mixed on occasion with the wow this these are a lot of people i haven't been around so many people in a long time uh but 95 return is is pretty pretty exceptional right now and you know certainly indicative hopefully of the faith and trust while we work really hard to make sure those kids at our home are connected that is absolutely a priority um probably the other exciting news this week was seeing all the staff back there staff who'd been remote this whole time and
089it just was such a full compliment at the middle and high schools to have kids with live teachers everywhere you looked yesterday it was it definitely felt like a big step forward um in terms of test uh student testing and i'll be curious to see the numbers this week we've we've had some up increase before the break to get over 1700 k through 12 so i'm hoping this week it continues to grow aaron's here to talk high school sports in a few minutes we are mandating it for the athletes at middle and high school in an effort to minimize we we've been quarantining whole teams we'd like to switch that and go to a testing mode and a close contact process and try to keep more kids in school so we'll keep you posted on
090that um we are at the concord shifting gears completely to money uh we're going to the finance committee in concord's public hearing next week on the 6th so you don't want to note that jared's building this re revisiting the slides that we've had already that we've used before [Music] to put the budgets in in the in front of the community and take any questions they have we are still jared this is correct right still awaiting final numbers from the last stimulus package correct nothing yet surprisingly slow um as soon as we know we will hear i'm going to save the uh dei comments till we get to that agenda item and you've already spoken on the middle school um one piece that wasn't part of that other conversation was just the design team is reaching
091out and uh justin and i will be scheduling each department to meet again with the uh design team that'll sort of be the first round of schematic design starting off hopefully before they leave for the summer so that we have that feedback from them so it's very busy but a lot of good good happening it feels good to be forward thinking and forward moving thank you i think i think your your your flexibility your adaptability is um is to be commended in terms of uh you know keeping the rules evolving and um and being conscientious and and and cautious but still really working towards uh maximum student uh student in-person time uh in the safest way possible yeah and that's such a collaborative effort and you know that's the messaging of the community is this
092that's really the outside piece might impact us more in school and just staying on the same page doesn't mean we're not going to get cases it could happen any time and will um but we're we're working as a really big team in a different way now so great thank you are there any questions ever hi um i wanted to commend again uh dr hunter for reflect again the flexibility to uh to adjust um while uh everything is fluid uh really on the go i had a quick question uh about how if we heard any feedback coming from the classrooms from students or teachers or families about um how is this spacing working out for our students now that we have everybody in uh in the building sure we've had um a nice flow of positives
093from families and thank yous i will say and mr mistrula said it to me before i got to the high school yesterday he said it's going to take you back a little bit when you get to a class of 25 all in that room together and he's correct and i think we heard a little bit of that from the kids not to the point of panic but again they're adjusting to being in that kind of environment again they were distanced you know not not all squeezed together the way we used to do but it it's so different than what we're used to now um it does take a little and i i know last night um we met with some teachers a few of you were there and heard some kids are just rolling with
094it and excited to be back others are having a little anxiety of how do i stay safe and how do we navigate that and we're really working to support all of those feelings so you know just like all these other changes it's a it's a change right um and we've got to have got to approach it that way i will say i saw instruction happening yesterday across all the middle and high school rooms um so i think we've had those moments of introduction and i did hear a lot of teachers talk about icebreakers like these cohorts of kids haven't been together since ever uh in many cases so some icebreakers going on and a little bit of that first week of school getting to know you and then making their way back to the content
095from before the break so i did hear a couple of teachers had no remote kids yesterday and they were actually able to turn the zoom off and close the computers and just be together and talk the way things used to be and we heard from several teachers what a really nice thing that was and kids do you know just to talk and not need a screen as part of the interface so so but we're gonna yeah it's a day at a time but a really great start so thank you okay are there questions or comments i just you know it's being in a school we're pretty much in the same schedule well actually it's gonna be tomorrow so i really don't know but we have all the kids at the elementary's back and just hearing
096them all run around outside in the big group it's just and they have the longer day you know so they is they can have their recess and they can really spend time with their friends and it's just it's it's so great and it's a great time of the year to do it i'm wondering how the uh traffic pickups drop-offs are going it's going it's going okay um it's a lot of people but i think i think between the plans we made and the resp you know collaborative patient response of families um it's going okay so that's actually and concord police i can't say enough as always they've jumped in to help and navigate and strategize and um so far so good good thank you yeah yeah i actually thought that might be one of our
097biggest issues and uh it hasn't been at least yet yeah that's good hey gotta take it one day at a time we did get a lot you know i think the difference of getting more kids on the buses um everyone who wanted to get on is on so they really are at a capacity for 25 kids at a piece i think that probably mattered more than i factored in so [Music] i want to congratulate you and all the the staff and families and the students for for a successful return uh and and i see the excitement i don't think i i never thought i would say this but i i really um i have missed the recess at um willard you know i actually missed that so it was great to hear them again and
098uh so yeah it's it's it's wonderful but the front view the strange thing is that we have gotten used to uh to the social distancing and the remoteness that now as a class of 20 feels crowded a lot of kids but the kids are very excited to be together again and yeah it's it was it was interesting for the um the sixth graders and the ninth graders uh yes kids for the first time uh this year it was really uh interesting yeah but thank you and congratulations for everybody yeah i know i and i talked more about it with the high school than i did the middle school but just those transition years where kids you know some of the remote kids hadn't been to the schools at all and we brought so many back
099there was a lot of concerted effort to acclimate them we brought most of them were able to get in before the break and um just realizing that those groups of kids had not experienced the the transition's already hard and hear all these other variables so thank you thank you thank you um reports for discussion aaron jonquis welcome hi everyone hi erin hi erin like every time i'm here i'm following up a student presentation that blows me out of the water tough facts to follow we feel the same way i've just got a a few slides uh tonight that i think you had earlier um i think i can i don't know if i can if aaron can share those or if i can maybe i'm a co-host you've got them [Music] okay um just gonna
100briefly go over our spring program talk about a few of the safety protocols and um and answer any questions that i can we have just over actually since i put this together more than 425 students participating this spring we're up around 4 35 we've got baseball and softball boys and girls lacrosse boys and girls tennis outdoor track and field for boys and girls and then this year we started a unified track and field program which was on our agenda for last year and was curtailed when school closed so they had their first practice yesterday unified track and field is a partnership with the special olympics program and we've got uh students uh in both our pathways and and bridge programs that are competing uh as athletes and uh and some other students that are serving
101as partners they're called so we've got about 15 students in the unified track and field program and they had a blast yesterday a lot of enthusiasm around that and we're really excited to be able to get that off the ground so that will be a highlight for us this spring typically with the unified program there are four meets two at home and two that are away since we're a new program they're trying to figure out how we're going to fit in but we're looking forward to to getting that off the ground this year fortunately all of our spring sports are outdoors so that really increases our safety and our comfort level and then in addition the majority of spring sports are low to moderate risk as designated by the eea masks are required in all
102of the sports and as dr hunter expressed uh we have a conservative approach in athletics as well for math squaring and one of the things that we're implementing this spring that's different from previous seasons is pool testing by team we're going to start that on monday of next week we've got to take some time to finish tryouts and make sure that we know which students are assigned to which teams and then i'll be working with the school nurses here at the high school to coordinate team testing pools and so we're we're working out some of the fine details you know some questions have come up that we didn't think about um originally we've got uh we've got about uh five or six middle school kids who are playing in our softball program so we've got
103to figure out a way to include them in the pool and and then we've got some students who are fully remote and you know since we'll do the testing during the lunch blocks here at school i don't want to ask kids to come in just to test so uh the school nurses and i are working out a plan to try to do that after school before practices so it's not an inconvenience for families the feedback overall around that has been pretty positive when we introduced it to families even had a couple of conversations with uh kids about it um you know and uh some questions certainly but um i think that the spring athletes in particular are really eager to have an opportunity to compete uh having lost out on their season last year so
104they're really willing to uh to do whatever it takes in order to complete their season and many of them have either themselves or have had friends or teammates experience at least one quarantine period and if there's anything that can that they can do that can contribute to a shorter or elimination of a quarantine in the event of a positive case they're they're all in so we've decided to keep the locker rooms closed and we're gonna we're gonna see how that works out for the first week or two it's a little trickier than it has been up until this point in the year because we have all the students on campus so we don't have the benefit of having half of our athletes at home and and arriving at school changed and ready to go but
105practices start a good 40 minutes after school at 3 30. so there's lots of time for kids to change either later in the day during a lunch block or if they have the last block of the day off as many of our upperclassmen try to finagle and it's worked out okay for the first two days so i think once we get into game schedules and have uh you know later start times for teams that are at home um and kids heading out to away games i i think we'll get in a groove and that'll work out okay let's see sorry about that and we'll continue to play in pods within the dual county league with a few exceptions um we are in the sort of a fortunate space where we have opportunities for lots of
106kids um in girls lacrosse for example we'll we'll have three teams unfortunately we're the only team in the dual county league only school rather with three girls lacrosse teams so uh in in those cases i'm forced to sort of uh look outside of the league and find us opponents to play but again i think that um with the moderate to low risk uh for most of our outdoor sports girls across la crosse included we feel a little bit more comfortable with uh playing communities that are a little bit further from from home this year the miaa did vote to hold a state tournament at the close of the regular season they are a little bit different one of the most significant modifications is that it's an open tournament which means that each school and team
107a varsity team will have the opportunity to decide if they want to compete so it's an opt-in tournament the season regular season will end uh around june 15th but there is the possibility that if a team advances deep into the postseason they could be competing uh right up until the end of june in a state tournament um so you know we'll we'll sort of tackle that as it comes i think um you know we're expecting that if a team advances it's possible that there'll be conflicts for um a few students or families uh based on plans that they made already kids who have summer programs they're attending or summer travel plans and so forth so we'll try to handle those on a case-by-case basis and and do what's best for the students and work with
108families and as always we you know we've got senior events and graduation and town meeting uh this spring so we're just trying to work together and collaborate and make sure that we can fit everything in um it'll be a hectic few weeks there in june but we're we're glad to have it so and that's it i i told you i'd be pretty quick tonight so um can i answer any questions for anyone i want to thank you of course for your work um how late in the uh into june i thought i saw some july something third date yeah so that july third date has really been uh an eye opener for people originally that july 3rd date came because when they elected to have a fourth athletic season the fall two season that just
109finished they basically took the school year and tried to divide it into quarters equitably so that each season would have a comparable length of time as we got further into the school year there was a lot of discussion about uh july 3rd being too late and so some of the individual committees have voted and made recommendations to the mia that tournaments end no later than june 26th for for example um i don't have any expectations that will go as far as july 3rd i think everything will be over while we're still in june um but you know there's a there's there could be the possibility that one or two teams in the state have to play a game on july 1st for example you know if weather forces us to move late but i think
110everybody is doing their best to um finish up while we're still in june because i know you schedule our field so i'm sure camps are eager to get on to yes we've been working through all that and uh um i don't know you know you don't schedule the doug white field but i'm sure you collaborate with the town and talk about that schedule as well or not really or or for the summer you mean or during this year yeah during the summer yeah to be honest with you um the recreation program uh runs i think adult lacrosse up there um and then our field hockey program typically uses it for a junior clinic for the middle school kids but that's late august but for the most part everything that gets uh that happens here in
111the summer is either down in the lower grass right um or or memorial but um i've always worked closely with the recreation department so we're we're in contact when needed well i'm sure they're all when does the season start today yeah we started yesterday so um you know we were today was a beautiful afternoon i was you know out before i came in for the meeting so we're lucky that uh we've gotten the last two days in everything's going well so far so excellent thank you it's great to our our grounds guys the facilities crew they've really done a nice job um we had uh the turf field groom today and the grass looks like it's in you know prime sort of late spring conditions so we're really grateful for their support erin thank you
112very much um would you be kind enough to remind us remind me about the fee schedule for this year yeah uh most sports are uh 300 per season there's a 900 family cap the couple of programs we made we have a reduction so that would be the unified track program uh the fall two track program uh no you know they didn't have any meats it was intramural it was four days a week so we reduced that to 150 and then one of the things i forgot to mention is that we have a uh our wrestling team is just doing level one participation which is all outdoor uh strength and conditioning only there's no actual wrestling no person-to-person contact but we want to give those students an opportunity for a team experience so they're going to
113do a four day a week strength and conditioning program outdoors and so that's going to be 150 as well thank you very much you've careful through thank you erin the whole thing looks awesome it inspires confidence um thank you it's i i know how excited the athletes are i just had one question on testing i love that we're doing the testing for everybody in pools um given that there are now kids getting vaccinated are kids who are vaccinated still getting tested yes great so it's just everybody yeah the recommendation is still for those students to be tested makes sense and for kids who are already in the pool program who are participating in a sport there's nothing they need to do it's just administrative for you guys on the back end right what where what
114where uh what we're doing once the rosters are established um you know for example let's take the ninth grade baseball team if we know there are 20 students on that team and say five of those are already involved in the pool testing now we'll pull those five and put them in a separate pool with the ninth grade baseball team so there'll be two pools of 10 students so that's why we just need a little little couple of days to generate the rosters and schedule everything awesome great i think i just comment the middle schools getting up and going too very paralleled with a couple of differences one being lacrosse um and two they've actually brought basketball outside for the spring we never we never it started not being intentional and then it became very intentional
115to not play basketball inside at the middle school in this in the surge over the winter so we're excited that that program's coming back and have a little different flavor and a less risky environment and so a lot of middle school kids engaging too which is great helps you jump shot to face face the wind well um if if at any time during this season you know anything comes up feel free to reach out and i just uh would say you know send again my appreciation to the committee and to dr hunter and and mr masterullo um you know we're very fortunate i think our kids have benefited greatly from being able to participate all year and um i know that when i talk to my colleagues in other districts um i'm just you know
116really appreciative of the support that we have here so thanks very much well aaron thanks to you too the covid layer is a whole another responsibility for you so we're appreciative of all your work well my pleasure thank you very much thank you good night everyone take care great um so old business dr hunter again yeah thank you so this is meant to be a verbal update primarily on where we are with the follow-up to uh the last conversation we had on the dei director as you know and um has been announced we've appointed andrew nomichi as our directorate of diversity equity and inclusion um andrew's i'll give you a little background on the rash and now behind that i think it's worth saying out loud beside what maybe you already know of andrew he
117comes with a master's degree in cultural work and that has clearly served us well in the opportunities he's had so far in the district and the consult and work that he's provided to us and talking with him about his visions of this work it was very clear that he's got another level that he wants to take us to and i'll talk in a minute about what we're doing for metco because to do that he has to leave medco um to someone else to run on the day-to-day basis and really just be at a 50 000 foot level um as the program you know may need a check in here and there but really his vision of inclusion for all and how we can accomplish that and the ways in which it can happen and the
118ways to engage the community and i think we're going to invite andrew to an upcoming meeting so he can talk with you directly on all of that and since you know we really saw we didn't do that piece of the process um and part of my rationale for it's very it's unheard of for me to make an appointment without more of a dialogue and interactive process with the community and and such um you know i spent some time this past year you know i'm sitting on the superintendent's association equity diversity inclusion um piece and then having been on some uh webinars with the a national association what i really heard loud and clear in all of these forums with my colleagues was the the challenges in finding on people with certain skills and that the
119connections and relationships were so critical to be able to do this kind of work that requires a safe environment and so andrew brings the skills andrew brings the relationships that i think are going to help us to hit the ground running um and i i just wanted to be sure we captured that opportunity so i would love to bring andrew i think we're going to slate him to come to our next meeting and have some dialogue with all of you um again he's he's got a vision for us and i wanted to get a chance to start to share it but also know he's going to build that collaboratively and uh you know really take us to the next piece the part that has to happen in order for him to be available to do
120that which i'm sure is part of your you know worry and concern and and hope is that we have the mecco program run as adeptly as we have been having it run under andrew but have that happen without andrew so we have posted for a metco director and so those resumes started to come in over the break we utilized all the connections that we've built with the national registrants for candidates of color so it's out on all of the normal platforms plus those those connections and that's already served us well in a couple of other searches for teachers so we expect that will be the same that will be a thorough process and we're actually meeting with metco families tomorrow night to talk through where we are how they can engage what's coming next and
121then the mecco director will have more supports underneath that position at the school level so there's an availability for even more support to kids and families at each building level we are definitely looking to flesh out liaisons academic liaisons at each school and then deciding what other supports we need so that the scaffolding allows for really thorough um in-depth supports to to all kids that have been so well served and allows andrew to take off with this piece and and role we want him to have so all of those pieces are are moving and we'll we'll get andrew here to speak with you and then keep you updated on the hiring processes i'm actually meeting with a liaison candidate tomorrow and then the director p says it as it goes forward so it's it's an
122exciting exciting place to be we can start to feel the difference already just in having the position and um seeing how it's you know going to connect to the work we're doing you know i i was on a quick meeting with the core group last night and you know it is going to be a little bit fluid right there we might have a path we set out on and we're going to want to adjust it as we go but um and build it collaboratively and take all the input we've already heard which we really valued at the session you all attended and the upcoming one we're going to reschedule um you know a key to this piece is the feedback loop um and this work i think unlike any other it's just so critical i
123i know intent and impact can be so different and um we have to be sure whatever our intentions are that the impact is what we're looking for so it'll be an ongoing iterative process for sure so more to come all right lori i hope you can pass on our not only congratulations but for me at least even more importantly our thanks to andrew also i mean i i feel very fortunate that he wanted to take on this this role and position and that we have him like you said it's not easy to find people for something like this and i feel like he's an amazing resource and so i hope you can pass on our thanks to him for having the vision and the drive and desire to do this because we're lucky to have
124him i will and then you can tell him yourself and i guess we will definitely look forward to having him uh with us to to hear about this new this new undertaking i don't know if he's sleeping like that's the sense i get from him of like how you know he's already already processing i'm very pleased that he's going to take this on and i look forward to having more conversations with him about goals and metrics that he wants to put in place and most importantly right now the kind of resources he thinks he needs um to make meaningful change um i'll share with the committee what i've shared with the superintendent more directly and that is that uh i am very hopeful that uh uh mr namichi's focus will include metco but won't be
125uh uh devoted uh too much to metco so we have i see it a structural problem he's got a direct line to metco responsibility but he has another direct line to a k-12 uh a strategic change initiative um and those those are those are different they're connected but they are different and on the one hand the new metco director is going to need a lot of support deserves a lot of support if it's a new new person coming into that role but if it's exclusively andrew then it can only distract from other objectives so i i i really want dr hunter you to understand my concern about that um and uh how how uh mr nemichi puts uh focus or boundaries around certain aspects of his job i think is going to be critical um
126because my fear is that if we change names but don't change other aspects of this we're going to continue to struggle the way we have struggled for so long this we we've created a big opportunity here we don't get to do this kind of thing very often so i think we really have to emphasize how important it is and to your point uh the the iterative process or the feedback loops or the communication mechanisms whereby we manage and monitor what this can mean for us is going to be critical which leads me to say again that i i remain uh convinced that a school committee subcommittee that looks at this at a school committee level can benefit us as well so that's something that i'm going to bring back in the future perhaps when the
127new committee is seated or perhaps we'll set it up for the new committee finally we almost uh pulled together a second community session for purposes of a community-wide dialogue you've got one specifically for our boston parents tomorrow and i don't want to let that one drop off the radar and i know you don't either dr hunter correct so we're working on that date get through um find that right time where we avoid conflicts and be as accessible to everyone so i would say by the third week or so of may we'll be ready to do that okay thank you any other questions or comments about any of the uh the reorganization and an appointment uh so i just remember from our last meeting um that the only real work done with our consultants is the
128survey with the seniors is that kind of a correct for this spring yes that's correct so is it possible for us to get a copy of the survey i assume it's getting done pretty soon yeah sure no absolutely um and then you know i um i agree with heather and quartz um i look forward to having um you know i'm really excited to have a dialogue with mr namichi about um how we move forward and um perhaps a little more detail on what he what his expectations are and i know it i agree it needs to be somewhat fluid but in the other hand working with consultants needs to have structure um and clear measurement and goals and otherwise um you know you won't be successful um so uh so yeah if we get a
129copy of the survey and sort of get a you know an outlook from andrew about what he sees for the next you know short term yeah and i yeah i think you'll hear outlook i think yo hill's structure i think your whole vision um i think you know you'll hear all the base you know the foundations that we need to then get started and the pillars under which each each category of work is going to fall so good thank you i just wanted to add that this is a very important work and um i'm really excited that andrew has uh decided to step into this uh role as a big part of success uh in in programs that are so sensitive uh is that trust those bridges that he has already built with the students
130with the faculty understanding where um where is the culture of concord and our students and where they need so i'm really looking forward to seeing him um come in and hit the ground running um so looking forward to this and it's really a process that um it can be ordered from top down it has it's it's a grass root um it grows through grass root connections human connections and associations and those conversations and um so um i'm really excited that we have uh someone uh with his uh with his background and his um and and already those human connections um in place okay just um want to um say that i have a high regard for uh for andrew and i uh admire i appreciate the work that he has been doing for us since
131he joined i have also high regard for dr hunter and your judgment in in in your appointment um of him and i i want to express um that uh want to go back to the forum through the parent forum and some of the feedback that um we heard uh in that forum and i i wonder what um how we are going to fold it into this this work i i um i think it would have done uh justice to andrew had we um done a nationwide search and uh decided that andrew was the candidate for us i think he um compared to other candidates i think he would have done justice attain but i do understand dr hunter you're hearing from other superintendents that uh the pool is not that um that wide um i
132i would have liked us to have gone through that process and given it a few months uh as the the community forum had recommended and also what i'm curious about the plans of offering uh andrew support um you know again i i echo some of the sentiments from that parent forum that this is not a job for one person that it's probably a department um so and again going back to uh trusting your judgment and what kind of support that he'll be needing if you could just tell us a little bit about that yeah i think we all we all have that same uh question going forward i feel i honestly feel like we need to let andrew become um in the position to get into the position bring us his you know he needs
133an entry plan just like every position typically would in leadership um where he's really taking in and obviously his he has the benefit of some background experience but i feel strongly he needs to do it with this new lens on that he's not you know doing an entry plan as mecco director he's doing an entry plan as director of dei um and i think that will start to be the survey work along with this you know formal surveys we're doing with um the the consultants it'll start to inform us i i i think that we we may get to a place where there needs to be other people deli you know designated as you know we heard the suggestions of someone targeting elementary someone targeting secondary i think we may get to that place i
134don't want to rush to that until we've done the work and let him you know really build that entry piece to understand how the the pillars of the work and once you hear the categories and targeted areas that we're going to be be looking to how how does that fit because what the other part of the the other part of what we know is this has to also be work that's done collaboratively across all of the leadership positions working directly with teachers and such and so to what range can the position reach that initially and then where do we need other hands do we need other hands um so i think that's part of the work this this early days is to really understand the supports that he's going to need i don't want to
135act like i have i don't know that answer yet um i think it's likely he may need more support that's probably very accurate but i think we want to let him get started on and really understand what best supports it would be i'd hate to rush to put things in without really being clear on what the purpose is going to be so more to come on that i i heard it loud and clear too and certainly share the question of of what does the support work look [Music] can like ask a really maybe difficult question um and i think maybe uh it does uh reflect some of the concerns from the parents so in a scenario where andrew a new doctor hunter disagree on a on a pathway or a vision what what happens how
136do you foresee you handling that with him if you if you don't see eye to eye on one particular point or one particular direction [Music] so i'm smiling because that's already happened um on it happens with all of us among the leadership team i'm gonna say we we this is what happens right we spend the time together to talk through my perspective and their perspective and whatever expertise they bring in andrew's case it will be the equity work um the first example i'll give you is the letter that's so carefully went out last week in response to the verdict of the chauvin trial that was a letter we worked on prior to and ahead of time and there was a lot of dialogue about that and there was absolutely things that uh went out of
137my comfort zone and andrew said it has to be there lori and it was there so it's a it's a process to he is the expert in this just like i defer to ruth on special ed and etc down the line that um you know i i must and am respectful of that so um i think it will we will be okay i i will say i think there's courage to come in this work and i'm going to be excited to have you know i don't want letters like that going out with just my name on that that was actually very uncomfortable last week because it was such a a collaborative work and once he's in the position we're going to be able to name it as such so i think i think there's a
138lot of growth to be had there so i appreciate the hard question um there will be times it's out of my own comfort zone and probably comfort zones of others and that's the point right so we need that thank you um so we'll see we'll see andrew soon and uh and we will look forward to figuring out when uh when the community uh no thank you okay all right um and so now we are on to new business which will be heather the with the cscchs capital projects i believe we're going to put off okay that's right do we wait am i looking at the most recent do we need a motion to put that off or is that not on the most recent agenda i might know this on the most recent agenda i
139move that we uh take item 8a cchs capital projects and uh postpone it until our may 11 meeting unless there's one scheduled prior i just quickly speak to that i'm sorry just just can i quickly just speak to that let you know what i'm going to be doing for the next meeting i missed that part as soon as there's a second second so thank you for taking this off the agenda today i just need a little bit more time what i'll be bringing to you is sort of just an update to my february 9th memo as well as the drainage project on the softball and baseball fields at the high school i just wanted a little more time to work with the team and uh and we'll have something in front of you then big
140picture a big picture thank you and big picture means we'll be looking at anything we have to entertain before we close out fiscal 21 as well as next to that a longer range uh plan that might be in the form of a five year am i correct correct yep um in and out and i'll reshare my february ninth memo that we started just naming some small projects and some larger projects and i'll just build off of that and get some input the other work i wanted to do was to be sure we go back to the uh school committee's subcommittee work uh of the previous years the 1718 year there was a standing subcommittee focused just on the high school campus the 1819 year there was a follow-up one i think it just makes sense
141to sort of recollect all that information with some new members on update it with the projects that have come along since the good news is the building's young enough there still isn't too much maintenance etc to work on there but we'll start to to look forward on that as well so good thank you thank you sarah roll call roll call anderson i for both booth eye for both thou die for both ms said i feel both i'll stop the i for region maniac for regions this is just the region right oh forgive me oh yeah oh yeah we're all for the region too then again ocean for region thank you okay heather okay we're on then um and i'll i'll say it's alexa and i together so i'll start off just with a quick intro
142and then i can share screen for a minute um it's exciting we're doing this now we're going to talk about the yearly evaluation process that we do with our superintendent um to me it's exciting because it's an opportunity for us to to thank laurie and validate what an amazing superintendent we have um and and there's a whole process around this so we've all talked about it before we talked about the beginning of the year at a high level as we outlined her goals um and we agreed on a process so what i'm going to do is pull up that process and review it i've laid out a tentative timeline from between now and the end of the year when we present our review um we'll go through the form and again at a somewhat high
143level but do a little bit of a how-to because the form can be confusing the first time you're looking at it uh and then just look at the actual rating descriptions um so and at the beginning of the year when we um all when we assigned ourselves to lots of different things we assigned alexa and myself to do this so um and eva's also helped with it a lot because she was involved last year and i dragged her in a little bit by mistake but um alexa and i are going to be primarily coordinating this process between now and the end of the year so we'll go through this um and i want to say in case i forget later um we'll do somewhat high level today so that we're not taking a long time
144but i'm also happy to spend individual time with anyone you know work as you work through it before you're looking at it whatever maybe because especially for those newer members it it's a kind of weird confusing form and process the first time you go through it so i don't want this to seem like oh my gosh we're skimming through it and i don't get it um because this is the big meeting so i'm happy to spend individual time with anyone i just want to put that out there and i just want to jump in before you just to make the point yeah i like i highly recommend it is a really it is a really weird and uh not friendly form i'll just say that uh so i highly recommend that you open it as
145soon as possible and pretend to go through it and you're going to have questions so um ask them as soon as possible because otherwise you're going to be sitting inside on a beautiful day it's a very good point good point yes and i'll validate that even just heather and i's private kickoff meeting i felt i got um a private tutoring on this and i do feel it was helpful okay to anyone who needs it um great so i'm gonna share screen now hopefully that's coming up okay can you all see the superintendent evaluation process document there is that big enough do you want me to zoom it a little if it's big enough for me i'm blind it's big enough for everyone okay there we go okay so what i'll do we'll stay high level
146at first um because this is something we went through back in the fall but as you all remember there was the standard form that jesse provided in 2012 and then they provided a new one in 2019 we had the option of adopting it or not we decided to adopt it the primary difference is that in the indicators that we rate um we now specify focus indicators and choose those to rate instead of doing all of them which makes a lot more sense because all of them is just a lot and gets confusing um so we adopted that the process that we all agreed on um we've been through most of it as we know we agreed on the goals we did our mid-year review discussions in january and now we're starting the spring part leading
147to the end-of-year evaluation the final evaluation so again unless there are questions i'll keep going to our timeline for now so this is everything that i just went through we all agreed on and approved back in the fall now i'm showing you recommended uh dates and time frames so to make sure it makes sense to everybody um the first thing is that we use well first thing everybody can do their their own reviews like something recommended um first official piece is that the superintendent always provides us something to to show us what she has done all year towards her goals um this year because she has been so organized and we've coordinated all together through the superintendent reports the collection of superintendent reports actually becomes her automatic uh overview of everything she's done towards her
148goals so she will collect those for us and those become kind of her end-of-year summary uh as well as and doctors talked about some other data that she'll provide some surveys um some reports that have been pulled together so by may 14th she will provide to us um basically a report that's the collection of her superintendent reports as well as some supporting and related data and that's for us to go through um you know compare to the goals etc the goals we all have and i sent out the other day but i can always resend them if everybody if anybody needs a copy of her goals again um so then the next piece is really important between may 17th and june 1st every committee member will meet individually with lori this is a really important
149time it's a great time to discuss what's gone on during the year um to ask any questions it's also really important if there are any concerns that they come up here it is only fair for us not to surprise her at the end obviously um with some you know concern or criticism that hasn't come up first in person in order to discuss it and hash through it so if there are any concerns this is the time to bring them up during those meetings and so that's why what cynthia said it's really important to be starting to look at all of this now so that by the time you have your meeting with dr hunter between the 17th and the first you have a good feel for for um what your thoughts and any questions um
150so then between that meeting or you can start it before but by june 4th everybody will fill out their own individual evaluation form um this form is attached here and i'll i'll go through it in a minute so i'll go through the high level how how you deal with it um but those need to begin by june 4th and then between then and the 13th alexa and i have the fun job of synthesizing these and so what we do is we take everybody's form we kind of highlight for the main points and we do a summary of each section so in each section we basically summarize the feedback from everybody and that becomes the final summative evaluation so it will address everybody's points obviously not everybody's verbatim but all of the themes and feedback that
151came out um we will send that out by the 13th both to the committee and to lori and then on the 15th is when we have on our agendas scheduled to present the summit of evaluation um and that will be the end of our year so that is the timeline before i move on any comments or questions on that either can i just add um i am going to put the reports together and give you some other data to go with it if there are specific things and some of you mentioned things to me in january that are on my on my to-do list and to to include but feel f please at you know let me know now um so that i'm sure to be as thorough as you're hoping um i just want
152to be sure that invitation is there and don't don't don't hesitate at all to ask for things that you were hoping to see or expecting to see or the goal makes you look you know inclined would be useful um that way you know i can include it right off on the 14th if after you see what i provide you still have things you were hoping for questions of oh do you have something that shows this or did this happen and is there something to document it please let you know make that part of the part of the process definitely yeah thank you for mentioning that i should have mentioned that um from others questions heather and alexa yes in terms of the the work you're going to do on synthesizing the individual forms into one
153um i know that what's quantitative uh is is information that probably you'd share by form of a range and an average um in terms of the uh the comments or the narrative um do you pull together representative quotes uh or try to try to rework it and it's not a leading question i i just don't recall um i you know depending on who i was working with i've done it in different ways in the past i think it's primarily it's a combination of both um for the most part i think we would look through all of the you know let's say take a certain question a certain standard look through all seven um answers to that question and highlight themes but then also take a lot of quotes so you know in the in the
154rewriting it's not necessarily putting into our own words as much as inclu usually including quotes from all of them or from most of them you know depending on how they're rewarding and how much repetition there is um but putting into it putting into our own words themes that come up a lot you know if the same theme comes up five times uh just making sure that we were that clearly that that's a theme and i would see quotes as necessary and they can certainly be anonymous quotes they would all be necessary to illustrate anything that we would synthesize so that members and the superintendent can be sure that they are founded or you know based on something very specific um but again i think it's important for brevity and clarity to to summarize them and
155yes like that will be something that we write but then again to illustrate what is what is written i think quotes are would be would be very helpful if not in necessary i think they are and and those quotes will be in quotes so you will know what's coming directly what's being pulled directly from somebody's individual evaluation and like alexa said they will all be anonymous we're not going to identify who said what purely that there are quotes all right and you made the earlier point that uh we'll all have an individual time with with lori so right as with so many things we should minimize uh unexpecteds because we're trying to communicate as effectively as we as we do thank you thank you very much yeah sure aren't you comments or questions thank you
156i just wanted to add that even though just the overall evaluation um uh the summative evaluation is presented at the school committee meeting uh the other evaluations of each member still becomes a public record so and if it's not a secret just just um if anyone wants to ever look at it they do exist so it doesn't go away awards are recorded and and uh just wanted to add dr hunter is always very generous with her time but making those appointments early it doesn't seem that a year is slowing down might be helpful definitely that is very true and larry maybe we can ask aaron to help coordinate that with all of us yeah that first email will be from aaron okay good we'll make sure we get us all on your calendar early um
157and we did try to create a long window there so that they're not she's she's not you know slammed with all of us in one week um but at the same time if you can you know if you can work it into your schedule earlier is probably better than later so that you have plenty of time to meet first and then write okay other comments or questions all right if not i'm going to stop i will consider just if there are any more comments we'll consider this than our accepted timeline and these will be our dates i can send out a review of them later so you know what your deadlines and everything are um but we will consider that accepted and i'm going to go on to the next one now we will go
158through um the actual form and oops in my sharing it all moved around here we go okay did that are you seeing the form but okay you know i am too there we go um okay so this is the form provided by dusse jesse i'm going to do my best to walk you through it so that it doesn't seem too confusing um at a high level this form basically presents kind of the high level summary ratings and data first which makes sense from the reader's perspective actually to some extent maybe it's designed for easy readership of the superintendents or who's being evaluated that means as those filling it in we don't actually start at the beginning which is what can seem a little confusing or counter-intuitive at first what you're seeing in step one and
159step two are the high-level kind of summary ratings for each of these categories of goals and each of the standards before you can actually fill those in you need to do all the indicators and goals that build up to those so as you're filling it out you're going to skip right over the first page and actually skip right over the second page the second page in a way is the the biggest and most important that where it says step three rate overall summative performance that is your your personal overall rating for the superintendent so everything else adds up to that so that's what you're gonna do last um and step four are the comments relating to it so again you're gonna save this one until last and you're gonna move on and basically start on
160page three now right you're gonna start on page three so um when you look at the overall form the rest of it is is broken out into two different types of rating one is specifically on the superintendent's goals that we have all agreed to at the beginning of the year that's this part on page three and going into page four the next and i'll come back to this the next are the four standards which are just general performance standards for a superintendent um and then we'll go through those so let me go back to the goals first those are the two parts basically the two sections that you're going to be filling out and you rate the meat slightly differently so in goals i have pre-populated this with each of the specific goals that we
161all agreed on for dr hunter in the fall um in addition we've referenced the focus indicators that will become more relevant down below when we're looking at the standards but it's at least a reference point that connects them it'll make more sense when you look at the standards um so for each of these the goal has a category first on the left that is relevant that category becomes relevant when you go back up to the first page because there are three categories of goals and then you're summarizing into a category so what you're going to do is each of these individually and then when you go back to the first page you're going to look at those three student learning goals and summarize those into one student learning goals rating etc the same for the
162next ones so for each one you have options obviously of everything from did not meet up to exceeded um what we agreed what we've agreed to in the past was that the standard of met um basically means met to the extent possible you know and i think this came up in a big way last year when covent hit right there there were lots of things that we had to look at and say well okay this got a little derailed during coven but she was on track or at the point where we were supposed to be when that happened etc so i think that's important to keep in mind is that when we say met for the most of these it will be pretty clear um but sometimes you have to look at it through a
163lens of met to the extent possible maybe there was some outside factor that means that it didn't happen according to the exact wording but we did it differently and if differently accomplished the goal then that's met even if it's not exactly to the wording there right so so that's just an important lens to keep in mind that we're looking at the spirit of the goal um not necessarily every word if if if the wording becomes irrelevant somehow um so you've got three certain learning goals i'm not going to go through each one because we've been through all the goals before um on the full goal sheet that i've sent out each of these has breakout steps below them but these are the high level goals here in the in the various areas um so the
164three certain learning goals then the three professional practice goals sorry two professional practice goals and then three district improvement goals all of those you will rate individually and then like i said when you're done you will go back up to the top sorry to be scrolling but i'm going to show you while we're talking about it and see how here in step one you had professional practice goals student learning goals and district improvement goals and so you will take the ratings from let's say the three professional practice ones average them and and put it there um as the high level uh rating for that category okay is that all clear on the goal rating part of it before i move on okay i'm happy to go faster or slower if i'm either boring you or
165or skimming over detail too much i appreciate the way you're handling it this is okay okay great i've gone through this process before and this is you going at this pace is really good for me okay good i'm glad i'm glad all right so it means doesn't it make you want to recreate the form yourself we all had that conversation maybe in our free time some summer regrouping i know it's tempting it is not user friendly i hadn't looked at in a while until heather pulled it back at him i know and you realize well i remember the first time i looked at it i thought i where do i begin here it's just yeah so anyway hopefully it's helpful and again if you haven't used it before i am more than happy to spend
166time with any of you know anyone individually because because i know it's a little weird to go through okay so here's the next section which is the four performance standards and again these are for lack of a better term generic performance standards they're not specific to lori we didn't make them up they're coming from deci what we did was specify what the goals relate to so each of the goals up top have a few have references to you know 1b c what various indicators under all of these standards there are you know six in different in each but let's say six to eight indicators the indicators are are more specific so standard one is instructional leadership under instructional leadership we have our six here or seven including last one indicators instead of spending time on
167all of them because not all of the ones that we particularly want to focus on we have our focus indicators highlighted and so what i did was i added my blue arrow and then i grayed out the ones that are not our focus indicators so that it's very clear here what you're filling out in looking at this form so you don't even need to fill out a rating for 1a because it's not a focus indicator and heather these focus indicators were what just to jog my memory are what we collaboratively decided on as a committee like when like in september in october we agree october into november right so these so even though these aren't our indicators you know the the what we the way we've customized it is by focusing on these one two
168three four specific indicators right and we chose those four sorry i'm going to stop the goals by going up exactly because in these goals of lorries we have the relevancy here in focus indicators so in student learning goal one there is relevancy to standard one indicator b standard two indicator a right exactly and so basically i went through all of these listed in these boxes and then highlighted them down below fantastic so any indicator that has a relevancy to the goals that we specified is then highlighted down here for us to specify a rating right with your cute arrows is is that cl i want to make sure that's understandable to everybody is that clear i'm good so far but i want you to speak specifically to one f one f student learning oh the
169one that does not have uh the one that does not have a rating so that is because um it's really based on data and measures and it's not really up to us to decide how our student's performing um so so we have goals that are relevant to it um but really that's that's a bunch that's related to data that that's not really up to us to decide why i'm just curious why we declared it a focus if we're declaring it impossible well i think it's not that as much that it's that it's relevant to some of what laurie's doing so if we look at lori's goals that student learning is relevant to those goals and so i think it's important that we highlight it just so that we know that in a way it was
170more important to uh approving her goals than it is to the evaluation because it was important that stealing student learning was a part of her goals right and i'm i would think so lori you know maybe some of the data that you're going to share with us in our packet will have to do with student learning and therefore that's the you know that's the data there i i read this to mean we're paying attention to it but we're not rating it yeah i like that yeah i think that makes sense heather is this different from last year didn't we not have this goal did we not rate it uh this is a new one it didn't i think don't quote me i think it didn't exist in the last form and now that they put
171it in they didn't have it as a rating is that correct laura do you remember i think it's it it's evolved is the answer between the combination of what used to be district determined measures when this process first came out and that was what student learning was based on where right these common assessments we were all going to use and measure plus mcas of course i think as that sort of that never came to be with the district determined measures and then i think with the revised superintendents rubric um it it just evolved into to not having the rating per se um based on i really think it's meant to let me qualify this way the teachers don't get rated on exactly where their kids are on mcas that's not how our state approaches data
172and that's been a big part of the discussion of this process i think it's meant to reflect that as much as anything that it's you're not getting you're not setting a goal to have kids get to a certain level and you're then going to be proficient or not based on whether kids accomplish that goal um some states weight the data very very heavily and it's half of your evaluation as to whether the kids meet your goal or not so i think it's meant to be the the balance that's evolved there that's my takeaway on why it's written the way it is thank you yep makes sense um so going through the the rest of it is quicker to go through because now this is all the same standard two is management and operations we have
173two focus indicators in this one family and community engagement we have another two focus indicators there and the last one professional culture another two focus indicators there um so those are the areas that we're going to rate under each of these there's a space for comments um you know checking boxes is one thing but it's the comments that that are really valuable i think especially to the superintendent um and we will look at all of those and again when we are aggregating all of this we will take a section we'll kind of average the scores on the of the check boxes of course and find the the average and where it lands um but it's the comments where we will find themes and use quotes etc um i think that's the last page there's nothing
174else so once you've done that i'm sorry nope you go first um so once we have once you've filled out all of that then again you're gonna go backwards back up to your top page and now you get back to page one and again you have the high levels here so you have that standard one standard twos and three standard four each of those and you're going to take your average ratings within each of those standards and give the standard a rating okay um in terms of these ratings i'm going to come back to those and then i have a separate sheet that actually goes that describes each of the ratings so we can figure out how to rate so um i'm sure that's a question but put that on hold for a second while
175we just look at kind of process um once you've done all of that now you have your high level uh goal analysis your high level standard ratings and you have the last page to do page two and here's where you're gonna give your overall summative performance rating and your overall comments and then you're done um so process wise any questions or comments or okay good um that's our form i will close out of that then we're gonna stop sharing and i have one more to show you because we'll look at ratings now um okay let me just find the next one oh it was up here here we go okay i thought they were all on top and then they weren't okay so now oops now i have to find it because it's not good
176for me all right everybody see rating the superintendent's performance against standards okay you can see that yep yes okay um okay so this is against the standards um obviously the in goals it's a little more clear it's you know met close to met exceeded whatever it may be um these i think are a little more i don't know if they're more they're a little more subjective and therefore difficult to define sometimes so the ratings against the standards proficient is understood to be the the most common and fully satisfactory reading um this is what basically all administrators are going for to be at least proficient in everything that they're doing um it is considered to be a good rigorous expected level of performance um and i would i would also point out that it means overall
177proficient it doesn't mean you know perfection in every area um you know there might be questions or slight concerns here and there but i think the big question is is our superintendent proficient generally proficient in this area generally proficient as a superintendent um you know even if there are maybe a few things to look at and discuss here and there exemplary is above and beyond that so it's a rating for something where we see dr hunter as a model for leaders regionally or statewide or anywhere so it's something where she has gone above and beyond what would be expected of the typical superintendent uh needs improvement is is an area that needs some looking at um and again i point this out because i think some of our i don't even want to say debates
178but misunderstandings in in the past when different members look at these is well does that mean that you know there was one little thing that maybe wasn't perfect and so therefore it could use improvement or or does this mean a real issue and i think it's important to point out that needs improvement means it's a little bit more of a red flag it means okay we have some concerns about this area of leadership um and that's that's kind of how it's seen in the in the overall so heather like to me i'm thinking like my kids report card right like for this to me sort of tracks to the elementary level like um report cards that oh right where proficient is like if you're hanging with the class and you're meeting the expectations you're reading
179at grade level and like you're not a math star but you're you get addition and subtraction and you're in second grade you're proficient and like then there's like rating two which is like hey it needs improvement we are flagging you and maybe you need some like tier one interventions look at me like bed liaison um liaison terms um you know you need a tier one intervention at this point like are we thinking of it like that um i i have a strong disagreement with little okay okay that's i mean i'm asking like to me that's where my mind is going that's the misunderstanding i think in doing this work um i'm talking about it i think heather did capture pretty well when she explained proficient um and if you read the example i think it
180really doesn't attract to what i would think of as classroom ratings because proficient has a higher standard than i think it would in what i consider a proficient and there's more often there's more there's only four here and unsatisfactory is such a you know there's just there's really three i think available to me honestly because unsatisfactory is such a bold a bold statement yes that is right but i think needs improvement i think what heather was saying it is you can't just cherry pick one thing like you know your uh punctuation wasn't really good in one of the reports for something we did it was always very good but i'm just saying you know something that would be ridiculous right to pick uh that but i think um it's really really hard to distinguish i
181think between proficient and needs improvement right that's what i feel so right uh i think that needs improvement isn't as it doesn't warrant um uh getting pulled out and needing extra instruction from a consultant or something you know that's what it kind of sounds like the way you describe it yeah yeah yeah i think it's trying to help you know it's just saying that uh you know there could be some work done in this area um but i don't think it's as as dramatic as the unsatisfied it's it's really tough like heather said in the beginning it's it's very nuanced and um i think everybody has to put you know you have to put a lot of thought into it when you you know i i have to say just between the three categories because
182i think unsatisfactory for us i'm just doesn't but you know that that's up to the individual but it's really nuanced i mean i'm sure for educators uh you know when you don't have data just sort of trying to grade students it's it's again it's very nuanced well it is hard and i think that's why it's important to have this conversation because it's also important important to all be on the same page yeah you know because if if somebody says oh and it needs improvement is a real red flag and that means you need intervention and then cynthia doesn't think that gives and needs improvement well then all of a sudden it looks really bad for laurie right and it didn't mean that we're not meaning the same things right so i think we have to
183kind of agree on on a standard here um to the extent that we can um how exactly you specify that and maybe it's somewhere kind of in between the you know these these levels that we're talking about i mean i think you wanna my personal take is maybe that it does you know a needs improvement doesn't have to be so extreme that it means oh my gosh we need an intervention here right um but at the same time that you want to think about it because it is because it's a reflection on dr hunter and we don't you know we don't want to all of a sudden feel like we're peppering her with needs improvement all over because of little things yeah someone when when we did when i did my first one um someone
184who had been on the school committee for a while said don't fear the needs improvement right like it's it's it it's just it's a nudge more than um more than a giant flag being waved about something um that the most you know and it it's not like raiding on you know on yelp or something where you want to give five because you can get four it's like oh my god there was food poisoning there kind of right it's it they we have to be you you really take that word exemplary and treat it um for for its value as exemplary and and the the profession means like you did a great job um exemplary is at least what i've understood is that it's so much more and and needs improvement is there's something that that
185could have been better and that's true for anybody's performance on any rate it's not expected that necessarily that everything's going to be exemplary or you know well and i think too it makes the qualitative sections where to court's point we can pull quotes to demonstrate and support the rating it makes those qualitative areas important and i think just use them so that we can get a sense for you know where we're seeing these it will help us to inform what we mean by our rating the little bit i have to say is uh i agree the instrument itself is kind of clunky but it's ours um and these three descriptors proficient exemplary and uh improvement i think are worded uh in in a way that works for me um i i think some care went
186into this um and for me if i had to paraphrase needs improvement it's uh please pay attention to this one um next year um i i agree with with with court i think the definitions are clear and i am this is more food for thought really uh this is my first evaluation like alexa so it's more technicalities than any preconceived ideas or or plan so it proficient i see the word rigorous there and i don't see as you said heather uh it's okay if there's questions here and questions there that are not really working uh sorry if i mis um didn't paraphrase your words correctly but for me proficient would not have uh would not have any concerns it's not exemplary but proficient does not have concerns um and also my definition of my understanding
187of needs improvement it's always been that needs improvement for me is associated with setting goals which is perfectly normal and healthy because we cannot we if we tell the the person we are evaluating again this is in in general in technicalities uh if there is no area that needs improvement then there is no goal setting for the following year so for me needs improvement is just a direction uh of uh for goal setting that's how i understand it and it's not like it's by no means a red flag is nowhere near a red flag for me so we're all in agreement that uh yeah yeah i want to thank heather and alexa for putting this together for us um even though those some of us have done this before i think uh resetting it every
188year is is uh necessary for us and fair for the process i think it is and i know you're wrapping up i was just trying to come and realized i was on mute i just want to make sure that we're not kind of each going in different directions because i think i just heard some different things from each of us um because needs improvement as a way to establish goal setting is different from i have a concern and so i i just want to make sure that we are all kind of on the same page here but i completely get you and agree with you in terms of and needs improvement is a is a good way to focus goals that obviously if there is something that needs improvement that should be a goal for
189next year or a focus area whatever it may be whether it's a high level goal um but i wouldn't i wouldn't want to use that as a way to determine goals there could be something that's going great this year that continues to be a district goal next year but that doesn't mean it needs improvement now so i just i just want to make sure we're on the same page there i wouldn't want to use needs improvement as a way to say okay this is what we want to keep working on next year and that is and so i'll call those needs improvements so that they become goals i think goal setting can happen individually from that does that make sense i think i think if i be correcting me if i'm wrong again i think
190that most of us do agree on that needs improvement definition that it's not problematic i think we are on the same sure it all says that it's not unsatisfactory i think where i struggle with is is again and i'm too nuanced i i i'm sure of it but where you say improvement is necessary and that's in that's their wording not mine and expected so like i can't think of a good example off the top of my head but that's where i do i i i recognize that it's not unsatisfactory at this time also their words but but i think it is i i think yes it's not necessarily to be taken as a poor rating but i think it needs i guess to just i think be mindful and considerate of that one sentence that
191you that you have to believe that improvement is necessary and expected not just like ah she's over like she's all right but she could be marginally better necessary and expected to me has some gravitas to it that and and that was the sentence to me that prompted you know my first inclination as to how these ratings looked and and i thank cynthia because you sent me on a new track which is great um [Music] but i still i don't know maybe i'm just being too freaking literal i think it's more sense when you do your write-ups when you start writing and and you start if you if you have issues that come up while you're writing right so that you say oh here's something that could have been if if if you're going towards those
192kinds of words and thoughts sometimes then it's easier after you do your write-up to do the rating right if you're if you're right up is you know i can't believe how well this was managed and this you know i i wouldn't have envisioned looking at other districts like this was a model of something then you're you're in the exemplary if you're if it's um everything went great and and there were no major issues then you're in the the proficient and if there are here's something that i saw the superintendent struggling with or that they felt didn't always come across as well as it you know or whatever i think when you do the write-ups you you it's much easier to then check the boxes would other people agree yeah i think that makes sense i
193think that's very helpful the way you said it sarah very abstract like this right and we've just never done it no yeah it's a journey thanks can't wait this might be it could i i hate that this is about me but i wanted to offer one piece of the teacher evaluation that's funny i was just going to ask about that and i was about to say because it's from the same set of regs and i don't know just so you hear the frame of reference that we have as educators on the other side um a teacher who is needs improvement overall in standards one and two cannot get professional status and they must go on a directed growth plan because the the stakes get much higher that it has to get better or there's there's
194potential of bigger consequences overall not down in the individual elements and indicators but if it's an overall needs improvement there are some pretty significant stakes attached um i've i've tried to hear these conversations and put that aside in the past um but just frame of reference for what the regulations say for teachers i wonder if that the stakes there are more for the school because when you decide to uh you said that uh an evaluation or performance uh warrants a professional status then you're committing to this teacher for a number of years uh is that an accurate understanding of the stakes the high stakes because then if you take them on for a number of years with the professional status knowing that they had these weaknesses and didn't point them out then it's it's a
195responsibility that you have to live with for years i suppose i suppose um yeah i can't say for sure that that's the intent because we think of it more i'm hesitating because we think of it more of an annual process regardless of where people are at um developing educators going on a one-year plan versus professional status goes on a two-year plan so there are other nuances that contribute i think that's also relevant in the sense that this is part of this is part of this evaluation process is standard as part of the educational world here and i think we it's one thing for us to debate these things um and the nuances but if there's kind of a common industry standard understanding of what needs improvement means i think we have to acknowledge that and
196be aware of it um and like larry said it's not the individual indicators and and i'm so you know i don't want to sound like i'm standing here saying you know don't use any needs improvement i'm not certainly never trying to say that i just want to make sure we have a common understanding um but i do think that's important if a if a high level standard is called needs improvement that in the educational world professionally when you know maybe outsiders are looking at it it is considered somewhat of a red flag um i think that's important just for us to acknowledge i love that yeah i'm i'm reminiscing back to october and i think this is very similar to the discussion that we had and forgive me for saying this from my perspective it
197feels like you're saying don't say needs improvement no i wanted to just give you the reference for what the teachers have by by regulation and again i'm uncomfortable because this is about me and that is not at all what i'm saying nor is it what's happened in the past so i i hope you reflect on the way you want to approach it it's important that i know what you're thinking when you do it though so i understand what message you're trying to send absolutely and that that's i think what we're trying to accomplish here because it it's hard with all of you to have it come with the same messaging so that's that's all and maybe a lot of that's got to be through the dialogue i guess while we're on it this is the
198most one of the most important things that happens for me all year so i just want to stress the the value i put in this and um how much it matters i if you if i may i just wanted to add that um during the misc uh presentation this we usually spend actually a good amount of time explaining that um the the rating system and and and that difference between the needs improvement and proficient because it seems that that um uh i identifying what it really means is is is a struggle for a lot of school committee members um so i remember um in those discussions you know getting that explanation that needs improvement and we should not be uh confusing with there they are there is work that is continuously done that is not
199finished um uh in in just one cycle and um just because this work is isn't is not completed doesn't mean that uh the superintendent needs to needs improvement um it doesn't coincide with coincide with that rating it's it's i don't know if i if i'm even explaining it um sufficiently but um that relationship to uh to to to work that um [Music] eva do you think it would be worth heather or i reaching out to dorothy or like rep lady to get some clarification i i actually do because i remember at um when i when when i was on boarding for the first year this was also in in my mind a question and this was also a a a point of discussion so it wasn't you know it was we also didn't scheme right
200through it and it seems that you know we do this superintendent evaluation every year but it's not an easy form it's not you know it's not self-explanatory and then you are you know trying to figure out the nuances so it might be worth reaching out to to masc too too i think that's a good idea go do that alexa you and i can coordinate and we'll do that perfect they do have a great idea so i think most of us did take that evaluation workshop with masc right um i i just want to say it is 7 30 i would have to excuse myself okay before you go i just wanted to say one thing fatima i know 7 30. i only wanted to say to you specifically apologies to you if it if you
201took this as you know me telling you how to rate or not what to do that was not the point at all it's only that in past years i have we have experienced uh discrepancies where people rated very differently and so i just really wanted to get us all on the same page so no apologies needed at all because it was pretty presenting a perspective no apologies needed we're brainstorming okay yeah no no no no offense taken absolutely all right thank you and have a good evening fatima you guys have a good night um okay i think especially given that we're down one i think we'll wrap that up then and alexa and i will follow up with dorothy and maybe bring back some more feedback and um that wouldn't violate open meeting lab for
202sharing information like if dorothy gives further explanation it's something maybe just well i guess we still have a good idea we can forward it along what she sends to everybody that's what i mean right exactly we shouldn't then say here's what i think she's saying right right right but i'm just thinking like so that it could inform discussion for next time if we get it quickly i'll i'll pass it definitely yeah great awesome and i just sent a link to the two of you to a desti webpage with five videos masc made on reviewing and i haven't seen them before have you ever seen them i looked at some of them actually that's funny you say that okay yeah well maybe we'll share some of that with everyone also questioning heather about the logistics so
203i just looked at our uh remaining meetings for this fiscal year and we don't have the 15th on our meeting list are we adding a meeting uh i thought we did that i that was when it was scheduled in an email that sarah sent out to all of us right i think we were pulling the 22nd back to the 15th so that it happens before school is out to facilitate vacations for jared and i yup so i'm just gonna say we have still probably a good amount of material to move through this year and i'm just this takes up basically i think most of the meeting and i think we're disingenuous if we try to slide in any other large amount of material so i leave it to the chairs to balance all this out
204and i agree my other comment was going to be i would like us to as soon as possible set the summer meeting schedule um good idea and not wait until june and um because i want people you know i you know i don't think we need a lot of meetings or we need guidance from lori to help us know about you know how much re-entry meeting time we need for this year versus a lot less than last year right i think in july it's pretty minimal i would i would say maybe one meeting just that off the top of my head but yeah about it yeah and as a new committee i think we do need a workshop um sure i think that's really important um it's not a lot of new members but still
205it's a it's a new committee so so i'll just leave that you know i i know we try to set it with the new committee in june but there's going to be so much else going on at some point you're all going to be in the same room together which i'm really excited about what i have to say yeah that's a big positive okay so can i just confirm so i have in my meetings notwithstanding the potential for that meeting on the 4th of the 11th is that still correct of may we have the 11th correct i have the 25th of may mm-hmm marvelous i have the 8th of june and then 15th of june correct but our website doesn't say that got it all right update that we will update just be sure that
206we can fit everything in without having six hour meetings what are you implying okay well thank you alexa and heather um we look forward to seeing what uh what dorothy has for us yeah clarification um yeah um and and thank all of you i appreciate how much you're wrestling with all this so thank you it's important and uh and it's time for action items so let me get it pulled up um i guess i'll preface with a little context on where we are with edco obviously we're making our way through dissolution and really the timely piece is addressing the fy 21 deficit which is very significant and so districts are each getting through our assessments and percentage of the collaborative um being assessed uh based on that current deficit which i don't have in front
207of me but it's around two million dollars at this point um so we have been invoiced for approximately i could pull the actual numbers up and get them to approximately 70 000. per district much of our discussion as of late as a board has been trying to give districts options on when and how to pay the the invoices um and generally and we would prefer just as some others did that we would like to pay it in fy 21. um some districts may think may be in better standing to do it in fy 22 so as a board we're trying to create structures that allow options so that's what this is intending um the seafirth fund is in uh i'll equate it to a revolving account that was a one purpose only donation prior to
208we've since changed the bylaw around the use of the fund and have been using it operationally we've used all of it um and so this is meant to give district it's meant to give edco a vehicle to take in the money in fy 21 so the districts would pay their assessment it would go into this seaforth fund and then they could draw on it to utilize out the fy21 you know needs i do expect there'll be another round of invoices coming before we're finished as they start closing more and more things out [Music] but so each district had to bring the vote forward so that we could all agree that the seaforth fund could be a piece of the cash flow essentially and so that's what you're voting tonight is that we could contribute all
209districts could contribute to the seaforth fund in fy21 and then the executive director could continue to pay out the operational costs that we have um just other quick updates is there's a lot of moving pieces and still a lot of unknowns i am joining the um finance subcommittee that meets next week who is kind of navigating the first rounds of discussions on a number of topics so that'll keep me close and give me some voice there and then we're going to keep moving it's complicated i guess i'll leave it at that there's a lot of layers to the dissolution process so this is more of a procedural you're allowing you're allowing funds to go into that account and then to be used for fy 21. i need i need help on the on the motion
210lori um so a couple of questions i know i've spent some time on this before yeah forgive me if any of these are repeats um is it necessary to direct our monies through the seaforth fund uh and not direct it straight to an operating fund maintained by edco it's it's comparable to the region there's no way to do that so you've gotta do the another another stopping point for the funds or give permission to them and have them be allocated what we're trying to do here is increase revenue essentially and we can't change the fiscal year 21 budget without a vote of every every school committee this is in the bylaw of edco that the board doesn't have the authority to change it on their own without it going process through i'll be honest court
211part of my answer is every meeting we have we're getting direction on one thing and sometimes we're getting new direction on the same topic so it can be very confusing to say the least so this reference to amendment in the budget is specifically the edco budget yes but we don't uh we don't vote on that budget we simply accept uh fees because we are members so it's a little unusual we're amending a budget that we didn't adopt in the first place all right just want to make it clear what i totally agree and and following what i was asked to do they provided us the language you've been um okay at coast council the practical result is one that edco can do this and number two that our finance director will redirect uh about seventy
212thousand dollars from each of the district's fiscal 21 accounts from uh where he might have directed it come june 30th to now the seaforth fund to uh in effect uh front load uh some of the costs that we're going to ultimately have to incur yeah i mean that i think i'll separate those two things the vote you're taking allows the edco side of that process to work we actually still have ability here to not do it in fy 21 if we chose to we're going to recommend that you do but what it does on the edco side is allow for the increased assessments the use of the see first fund to take in those assessments and then to pay them out to the operational budget it's all process for edco that you're approving tonight versus
213the actual invoices we got which we are we're thinking we can tell you about and then run through the warrant process for approval unless you want to do otherwise we hadn't gotten that far yet that's more of your purview for sure on how and when we pay those bills all right i'm content with it i'm not i'm not speaking for anybody else thank you for that clarification now you're welcome those are great questions it's very confusing you might say this can the amount change from what we are voting on today with that that's why it's written as increased assessments without it being it's referenced in april 15th if it goes up again i i guess i'm unclear as to what they're going to need to do if it goes up again the april 15 memo
214is the 70 approximately 70 000 each remind us mr richard is a cfo he is there i forget what title he that we don't have a business manager at echo right now it's a con a consulting firm that comes in and takes it on in lieu of a business manager so he is the one doing all the books thank you forgive me cynthia i interrupted you i'm sorry no no i was going to say what's your i mean could this double could it triple this year they're assessing liabilities right now so i can't say i'm sure depend they're they're trying to put as many liabilities they're trying to put as many liabilities out as they possibly can so there are options to pay as much as possible in fy 21 knowing districts have a sense
215of what they have for funds versus some of the unknowns coming up in the coming coming years but it sounds like in terms of unknowns for this year if it changes let's say it doubled or tripled like cynthia just said we wouldn't necessarily have to pay all of that this year we could considerably push off some of it okay so this is just the operational deficit what they're trying to now navigate is the assessments of the liabilities that we have as we dissolve so that's the part that's not clear yet as they go through some of those outstanding so it is 100 clear that if this did go up i'll just restate what heather said that we would not need to pay it in fy21 i know that is what i am verbally being told
216because we will have options this sounds a little like i don't know but you're having a report to us i'll remind you our attorney is present at every meeting and an executive session with me um because it's so confusing uh so this came forward with her knowledge and yep okay we'll get an update next meeting you're going to get a lot of updates yeah okay it just sounds to the public a little concerning to say the least um it it is concerning and sarah like at any point you've had the pleasure of the whole thing is concerning so there's but but this is a good it's it's a strategy to um afford some flexibility and to uh to figure out the best way to to handle um the liabilities right so as i read it
217this motion gives edco this uh prerogative but doesn't do anything else uh by way of a mandate to us at this point in time correct exactly that is correct given that i'd like to uh propose that the school committee uh approve the amendment to the edco fiscal year 2021 budget and thereby to increase assessments as outlined in mr richard's april 15 2021 budget update and to include restoration of seaforth funds used for operational costs in fiscal 21 as determined by the executive director secretary radio for both wilson for region thank you um i believe now we can adjourn to executive session with the no intent to return to open session i'll read it if you wish that'd be great that the concord school community and the concord carlisle regional school committee will enter into an
218executive session under purpose two of the open meeting law to conduct strategy sessions with all non-union personnel and purpose three of the open meeting law to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with collective bargaining units concord teachers association concord car lab association local 1703 state council 93 afl-cio cps building service workers cc news public service workers maintenance and not to return to open session is that good for both okay anderson eye for both high for both out for both mustafi for regen brainy after both wilson for region see you all there see you there good night to the public [Music]