001good evening everyone and I would like to call to order the conquered school committee no need for roll call since we're all present um so welcome everybody we are um have invited um the public here to speak about the naming of the conquered Middle School um so with that I am going to open up a 40 minute um period to invite anyone who wishes to speak on that would be great guys um any of the 22 names that have been published in the past few weeks um and we will open that we are going to use our normal um rules for public comment which means that um we take public comment we don't respond we don't engage in a dialogue we're just here to hear your voice um and then additionally we allocate three minutes
002per speaker um and we are pretty strict with that and um we will also alternate between hearing speakers in the room and um speakers on Zoom if you wish to speak on Zoom we ask that we use the that you would use the raise hand feature um and that is the middle button at the bottom of your screen um and we again we'll go in between the room and um and zoom so with that I am going to open up our public comment period I have asked people to submit forms so I'm going to call on you it might not necessarily be in order of how you gave them to me I wasn't keeping track and um for those people in the hallway if you can submit a form that would be great uh so
003with that um I'm going to open it up and the first person I'd like to hear from is Jen Turner good evening um my name is Jen Turner and um I do not live in conquer but I work in conquer I'm the executive director of the robins house and I'm here tonight um to speak um just once again for um the amazing opportunity that the school committee has to to name the new middle school after Ellen Garrison um who was born in 1823 um in conquered and she is sort of our most well-known um occupant of the robins house and she grew up in this community and she attended the public schools here um and she would be one of the um only people who um currently have a school named after them in congr
004who actually attended the public schools and when she left to begin her teaching career she often traveled home um to concerete in the Summers and she often referred to this this community um as her home the foundations of this community um gave Ellen the courage to be one of the first and I think that this is something that really needs to be highlighted um one of the first African-Americans to challenge segregation in the whole of the United States during Reconstruction and I don't think that we recognize as a community how historic her actions actually were in 1866 when she walked into that Baltimore train station to challenge segregation um in the time periods her personal courage and her belief in the importance of educational opportunities for all Americans would be a true inspiration to generations
005of conquered school students they will be able to look to Ellen and her history and know that she not only attended conod schools but they will be able to ask themselves if she could do that in an age that was hostile to African-Americans what will I accomplish in this world and how will I leave my mark for the better in conquered and the world today and the last thing that I wanted um just to share with the school committee as well is I started a petition um in the spring in May um 2023 and we currently have more than 1100 signatures um in support of naming the school the middle school after Ellen Garrison and the majority of the people who have signed the petition um are from conquered in the neighboring areas so I
006just wanted to um submit that to the school committee as well thank you all right thank you uh we will now go to zoom and I'm just going to call in order of how my screen appears so I'm gonna ask for Kristen Tyson hi everybody thanks for listening tonight um I'm come to speak tonight on behalf of naming the school the hudner Brown Middle School from for those who don't know Captain Thomas J hudner Jr or his story he's from Fall River Massachusetts originally that's where he was born and attended the Phillips Academy in Andover before graduating from the US Naval Academy he lived and conquered for 44 years from 1973 until his passing in 2017 it was his home and he lived here longer than anywhere else in his lifetime as a conquered resident
007he was a father a stepfather a husband and a grandfather to conquer residence the first Medal of Honor recipient in the Korean War and unquestionably a hero that reflects the history and moral activism of our great town as some of you may know on December 4th 1950 Captain hudner crash landed his Corsair in North Korea in an attempt to rescue enen Brown the Navy's first black Aviator and Captain hunner's brother at- arms enen Brown had been shot down and hudner knew that he would not survive his injuries the cold or the Chinese without AE despite his efforts he was unable to save enson Brown who died in his arms while Captain Hud's actions that day are something we would all like to think we would have The Bravery to do the reality of the winter
008in Korea during the war the statistical likelihood of death that his actions raised made it unlikely that any person would his actions on December 4th 1950 took place at a time when the US was still deeply segregated and many years before what we now call the Civil Rights movement began so the significance of his actions are even more noteworthy he came home married his wife Georgia and continued to be a pillar in our community until his death his son Thomas hudner III has raised his family like his father here in our community all three of his children attending Willard his eldest daughter a graduate of the conquered Middle School Lily hudner and his youngest currently a student there in sixth grade Reese hudner however if Captain hudner was still with us he would not want
009us to name the middle school after him certainly not alone and that is why I would nominate the the name as the hudner Brown Middle School enen Brown graduated as a salutatorian of his high school and enlisted in the US Navy in 1946 later earning a degree from Ohio State University he became the first black Naval aviator burning his wings in 1948 while overcoming tremendous adversity and discrimination he had already flown 20 combat missions when the aviators of the US s Le were ordered to support ground troops at the Battle of Tron River in 1973 the Navy commissioned the USS Jesse Brown a Knox class frot and the only third to be named after a black man presenting at the commissioning ceremony was none other than Captain hudner Jr the hudner and brown families built
010a friendship out of that pivotal moment that the hunner's entire family including his grandchildren are still part of to this day the recent book by Adam moo in film of the same name devotion was a summation of this incredible story and the continued relationship between the hunters and the Browns Chrissy Could you um could you work on concluding because you're at your three minutes sure this moment in history represents the best of us as Americans and as concordians the history in our town is filled with moments of fallibility without question but it is risen above these moments and I believe this moment this friendship between these two men would be something the Middle School's children could emulate and work towards thank you so much thank you we'll move back to the room you have very
011artistic handwriting um I can read the first name Edward Hurley Watts Hurley Hurley Wales okay you have lovely penmanship it's artistic thank you lovely but she couldn't read it but that's okay um that's nice all right that's all right uh Ed hurle whales 66 Old m and conquered um lived in the town for about 29 years now and my daughter Maya only child uh went to the Middle School um and I think what's important for me to to be here tonight is um Maya um harly whales uh went through the middle school and she had her series of issues with feeling included in this town uh my wife and I lived here as I said for a period of time and we've had our issues and always trying to find identity inclusion and that sense
012of belonging and to be honest with you I've struggled with that over the years in this town and I think it would be a really memorable thing to see um Ellen who we've done a lot of research around and you've heard from many people uh from from the research on how popular it would be to be to see some someone like Ellen be a part of this community on the Middle School um my wife my my daughter I'm sorry um went to sandborn um and at the conclusion of the eth grade did not want to be a part of this community anymore um so we centered a conquered academy uh for high school and upon completion of that to go off to college um she went to Northwestern came back home uh of course we
013thought she would be staying here on the West Coast and said this isn't a place where she felt included um and she now lives in Oakland California so I I I leave you that story to say that we could do a lot around this whole sense of community and that sense of belonging and naming the school is the in indicator of for the people who are of color in others that that would give them that sense of uh belonging right uh and and it also establish the sense of History which I think is important as well so that's my my moment so hopefully that helps um I'm GNA go back to zoom I'm GNA ask Kristen Moore to unmute thank you thank you I'm a resident in conqur and I'll just share a brief statement
014in favor of naming the school Ellen Garrison I think selecting a school name that is aligned with the Positive social values associated with Ellen Garrison offers several compelling advantages number one it's a stronger sense of purpose for students and teachers with a name that is an actual role model for integrity personal Excellence mutual respect and caring for others and that with that name the school can create a stronger sense of purpose and direction for its student and staff it promotes commitment to the school district's Mission the name Ellen Garrison can Inspire and serve as a constant reminder of the school district's mission to educate all students as lifelong Learners creative thinkers caring citizens and responsible contributors in our increasingly diverse Global Society I think a name like this will attract in idual to the same
015Mission a name like Ellen Garrison can attract families who are seeking a school that aligns with their beliefs and values and values such as inclusion just like as we just heard and this can lead to a more cohesive community that supports the school district and lastly I think the name signifies embracing change and growth that changing the school's name to Ells and Garrison Middle School demonstrates the school committee's willingness to adapt and respond to the Chang in needs of the community while staying true to the core values and mission of the district so I think in conclusion that decision to change the name of the school to Ellen Garrison is a thoughtful and it's a strategic move one that offers several benefits and by embracing this change the school can deepen its commitment to its
016values and Mission thank you thank you Kristen okay and we're going to go back into the room and I'm going to ask for Steve block also nice handwriting that I can read hi so I'm Steve block I live at 165 Cambridge Turnpike I'm here also to lend my support to uh Ellen Garrison I'll be very brief others will speak in more detail about the uh relevant details of her life I'll just simply say that I think the time has come I mean the time has come for the town to recognize that its history is richer and more diverse than we have previously seen in the nameing of our schools as admirable as people like Emerson and thorough and alqa I think it's just time to recognize the Richer and more diverse history that we have
017thank you okay we're going to go back on to zoom and I see Maria if you could unmute hi and thank you for this opportunity conqu is a time honored tradition of naming its elementary and middle schools to Memorial iiz the contributions of its important historical figures in particular Alcott Emerson Flo and sorn are notable for their shared participation in the evolutionist movement and along with educator Elizabeth Palmer py these honored citizens of conquer were also white we now have a unique opportunity to Accord this same level of honor to a person of color herself a daughter of conquer an anti-slavery Advocate and educator Ellen Garrison Ellen was the first to our knowledge the only person to legally test the nation's first Civil Rights Act in 1866 research that we've done through the robin house
018has and covered more than a 100 letters that she wrote while teaching the newly people of the South during the Civil War Ellen describes a great desire to go and labor among the Free People of the South and how it's our duty as of people to spend our lives and trying to elevate our race stating who can feel for us if we do not feel for ourselves and who can feel the sympathy that we can who are identified with them later in other school reports Ellen is asked do The Mad Show any more capacity than the blacks do the colored Scholars show equal Capac capacity to the whites as compared to the whites in the northern schools Ellen responded equally equal repeatedly having been born and raised and conquered and becoming a top scholar in
019the conquered school system she was indicating that blacks and whites have equal intellectual capacity Ellen returned to conquered in the Summers continuing to refer to the town as her home staying at her brother John's house on Mon street she was a true concordian her letters pround her Civil Disobedience during Reconstruction despite being the target of harassment she persisted using her quiet and strong self-determination and agency despite the risks to her own safety Ellen dedicated herself to teaching stating that the threatening behavior she received during her travels throughout the South as well as in Massachusetts and neighboring areas had not deterred her in response to repeated racist harassment she wrote I found out one thing about these people if they attack you be careful to stand your ground and they will leave you but if you
020run they will follow Ellen's writing conveys human dignity standing like a quiet anist ready to welcome students to forgotten history for writing lifts the capacity to improve Society through education especially for adolescents who come into school envir with similar identity challenges I can think of no better person than our very own born and raised concordian Ellen Garrison to name the conquered middle school after her life was a testament to how a building name can capture the spirit and Imagination of students and make them feel they belong thank you all right we'll go back to the room and I'm looking for Caren Hodes hi I am Dr Karen Hodges I am at 2:30 Harrington Avenue and I'm just gonna is this on you can hear me okay yeah it yeah okay um I'm just going to
021read a letter that I wrote to you all okay for Generations Jerry Moss has been an inspirational educator and role model for young swimmers and teens in conquer whenever I speak with people who've been raised and educated in this community they become joyful when I tell them that Jerry Moss is one of my son's swim coaches at cchs no matter if they were highly competitive swimmers or if they swam on the team purely for recreational purposes they all recall their time being mentored by Mr Moss is highly impactful I'm a psychologist with specialty in helping adults to nurture youth if I could describe the characteristics of the ideal Mentor for young people they would include the attributes that our youth ascribe to Mr Jerry Moss a genuinely warm and caring individual with high expectations for
022them when teens are asked what they like most about Jerry Moss I've heard them say coach Moss has a good sense of humor he has lots of knowledge and he's caring they explain that he has high expectations while also being incredibly supportive I recommend that we name our Middle School Moss Middle School to celebrate one of our Local Heroes who has strengthened the Integrity of our community by devoting his life and career to the betterment of Youth thank you for your time thank you okay we'll go back to zoom and I'm going to ask Ellen Quackenbush to unmute I I I hope you don't mind if I going to speak loudly I'm um at my son's apartment in La so there's a lot of road noise I'm going to just paraphrase a letter I go
023to the school committee um and S of edit it for some things that people have already said so I'm the parent of 2 G children of color and I strongly en encourage the school board to name the conquered Middle School a name that will inspire our children Nami our Middle School The Ellen Garrison Middle School is both worthy of the huge tax bill the conquered residents have levied upon themselves but also will do what schools are supposed to do that is make our children Wonder who this person in history actually was and I think Alan Garrison is an model for inquiry for Middle uh middle school students she grew up in an era in which her color Mater an object of curiosity and often ridicule not only in Maryland but right here in convert um
024and in Maryland she worked educating as M said educating pre blacks during Reconstruction she was a Pioneer in civil rights way before Rosa Parks Ellen Garrison in 1866 stood her ground in the segregated ladies waiting room the Baltimore train station um got get de took her case to court and of course lost it she believed in the power of education and as um Maria said believed that both colored quotee colored children a lot of children and white children were equal in skill my children did experience some Prejudice in conquer they would have been proud to have gone to a school named after a woman in color who knew her work stood her grand and made a difference in this world they're now strong grounded grounded GS before I would have wished that their middle school
025experience might have been enlightened by the name of the school that they entered every day middle school kids know the name of their school my kids did not say I went to conert middle school they said I went to sandborn so I think the name matters it that a name can help um encourage kids curiosity please name our middle school and name that will matter to that will matter and help our children children especially those in Middle School sometimes uncertain how they fit in the world be proud of their school and inquisitive and then after they inquire amazed at the concordion after which the school was named thank you thank you back to the rum Michael Williams Michael Williams 1284 Sudbury Road I'll be brief because everyone speaking before me about Ellen Garrison has much
026more history to tell but I would agree that as a 32-year resident here inclusion and welcoming is important in making the school name Ellen Garrison would show large swaths of our population that this is a welcoming place it's something that conquered should do thank you thank you all right um I'll stay in the room and ask Tom hudner hello uh I'm Tom hudner III I live uh 113 Adams Road in conquer um first I want to be clear that I am not campaigning for the new school to be named for my late father Thomas hudner Jr but given that the name has been proposed by others I felt that I should say a few words from the family's perspective some people in this room likely knew my father and anyone who did knows that he
027was a very humble and understated person surely many people who encountered him in town over the years had no idea that he was a Medal of Honor recipient which was certainly fine by him and along those lines he would never suggest that the new school should be named for him and I too would never be the one to propose such a thing I defer to others on the matter and there are certainly many worthy names and namesakes for consideration Ellen Garrison Jerry moss and and simply conquered Middle School are three such worthy proposals among many others naming schools or Civic buildings after war heroes was certainly more common many years ago I would just say that while my father's Medal of Honor action was a wartime action it was not an act of War it
028was a human act and one of compassion bravery and selflessness dad's wingman ensen Jesse Brown was the nation's first black Naval aviator and a Pioneer and hero in his own right who had overcome incredible adversity and discrimination to earn his Navy Wings in the military which had only recently been desegregated and this was several years before the Civil Rights Movement in a country that was still deeply divided a primary reason given by those who opposed the desegregation in the military was they believed no white Soldier or air Airman would ever risk his life for a black soldier Airman dad's actions on December 4th 1950 proved that theory wrong when Jesse was shot down my father did not choose to risk his life to try to save Jesse because Jesse was black he did it simply
029because Jesse was a friend and Squadron mate who needed help so Dad made the decision to crash land his own plane Behind Enemy Lines in the mountains of North Korea to try to Aid Jesse when asked through the years why he did it he merely replied that it was the right thing to do and that if he hadn't done it someone else would have I think most of us would hope that if we were in that situation we would be brave enough and selfless enough to do the same thing I know I do however most of us will be fortunate that we will never face such horrific circumstances but any of us whether a future Middle School student or any child or adult can aspire to serve selflessly like Tom hudner and Jesse Brown and
030to put the needs of others above our own thank you thank you I see no one on Zoom with a hand up again so I'm going to stay in the room and ask Susanna Benner I'm not very tall come down a little bit can you hear me you're yeah I think you'll be okay uh my name is Susanna Benner and I'm the parent of twin eighth graders at CMS and a third grader Willard I speak for my family and numerous like-minded others when I say we feel so lucky to be a part of this community have so much respect for the PE other people who have spoken tonight and for their opinions conquer has produced and fostered a prolific number of inspirational leaders and Innovative thinkers from the revolution through the transcendentalist and abolitionist movements
031and Beyond Conger has distinguished itself with a Pioneer Spirit we see this today in the civic interest here tonight and that spirit is exemplified in our Public Schools super intendent Hunter created and filled the district position of deib director and CMS principal Justin Cameron introduced to the middle schoolers the Celtics Playbook initiative an anti-bullying and anti-racist program valuing and prioritizing deib literacy in our Middle School is remarkable we are rearing our children to be leaders of the future and inspiring it empowering them to continue the Vanguard spirit that conquered embodies we have a lot to be proud of I believe all the names put forth tonight deserve to be celebrated as each is an example of a life lived with meaning and purpose but I also believe selecting only one of the at the expense
032of so many is limiting The Bravery and Leadership represented in these candidates is synonymous in the name conquered our goal is to build community our CMS students are ambassadors for the school in town and they identify as concordians over the last year year and a half as my role as CMS ptg co-president I have sold over 900 pieces of apparel and spirit wear branded with CMS conquered in CC logos CMS students represent conquered with pride as they venture out to compete in sports and musical Endeavors throughout Massachusetts while we all share in the vision to learn about the Extraordinary People nominated for tonight's consideration each person is just one piece of an entire story that makes conquered unique and an exceptional I feel strongly that we best fortify our community by keeping the name conquered
033Middle School when the new building is completed and we see a long envisioned unified conquered Middle School become a reality the process has taken Years A Dream made possible by the dedication determination and perseverance of so many individual concordians within the classrooms of the new CMS building I hope each nominee story can be taught to our students for years to come while I support conquered middle school for our school's name thank you thank you again I'm seeing nothing on Zoom so I'm going to stay in the room and ask Stanley [Applause] Griffith my name is Stanley Griffith 41 milun Lane it's one of the newer areas of the town I want to thank the committee for this opportunity to speak in favor of naming the middle school after Ellen Garrison I think that we have
034a unique opportunity to send a loud clear message about the town's commitment to diversity and inclusion and I think we have have an opportunity to educate future Generations about a unique concordian and so I'll be so many before me so many people before me have spoken eloquently as to why this honor so richly deserved and I hope that you would vote in favor of naming the school after Ellen Garrison thank you thank you and again I'm going to stay in the room um Joe [Applause] Palumbo I think as we all know uh black people have been a part of conquered from its very beginning 6 years after the Europeans arrived at mosquit Massachusetts became the first colony to authorize legal enslavement local indigenous people are being captured and traded for kidnapped Africans and brought to
035the Colony the stolen labor of black men women and children helped build the town in its first hundred years in fact the old North Bridge that stood on April 19 1775 was built with the hands of at least three enslaved men black men and women help participate in the American Revolution serving as Patriots and founding this new nation black men women and children lived in conquered throughout the 19th century in fact there was a higher percentage of black concordians in the 19th century than there were in the 20th and 21st by 1900 unfortunately only six black citizens remained in the town census as the nation suffered through Jim Crow redlining housing discrimination and restrictive zoning conquered became a racially isolated Community however in 1964 through 1965 conquer was building a new Junior High and began
036the six-month process of naming that building interestingly this was the same time as a major civil rights movement throughout the nation in Boston and uh in the wake of brown ver his Board of Board of Education in fact Dr King spoke in Boston to 22,000 people a few weeks after conquered named its named its School the list of names would not be familiar to us today except the one that was chosen Franklin sand born a radical abolitionist and educator from conquer's past conquer I think was sending a message sanborn's name was chosen to say something about who the community was who it wanted to be and where it stood in the long struggle for civil rights conquered again had the opportunity to name a school in 1968 less than six months after Dr King's assassination
037and the summer of protests that followed this time conquer looked to its high school students to research and present a set of names for review I think we can understand why the community was looking to young people to set some parameters in 1968 interestingly for the first time ever there was a name of a person of color on that short list in 1968 John Jack was on that list a formerly enslave man whose self-emancipation had earned him a place in the conquered narrative we tell of ourselves the town ended up choosing Elizabeth Palmer pey giving a nod to the first school name after a woman in the town of conquer I mentioned historical facts only to remind us that the naming of a school sends a message that is reflective of the time these schools
038names were chosen as attempt for the community to send a message about who they are and who they want to become in 2024 the same question is before us now who are we as a community who do we want to become our nation is becoming more beautiful all the time and the 2010 censes only 9 million people identified as mixed race in in 2020 that number is nearly 34 million here in conquer now 27% of students identify as students of color how lucky we are to know that that Trend will continue in the years and decades ahead so in closing when we think of the school name and the message we want to send about who we are and who we are becoming it seems perfectly fitting and proper that it's time to name a
039school after a person of color after a black woman after Ellen Garrison so we ask e of you tonight Court Carrie Alexa Heather Cynthia Domingo domingus think about carefully how you are recommending knowing the power of what you're about to do the power to send the message thank you the power to send the message about who conquered is and who conquered wants to become conquered is ready to take the step forward ready to prepare for the next 50 years ready to show a community that honors history Embraces our beautiful multi-racial future thank you Joe all right um next I'll ask Denise Jansen in the room still no one on Zoom hello can you hear me I'm Denise Jansen 126 Partridge Lane and I am here to support the name conquered middle school but I have
040to say that I'm gosh sorry um I mic Dro I I love what I've learned about Ellen Garrison tonight and on the town of conquered Mass website and in living conquered you know stuff is posted there too I truly appreciate that um I love the hudner family Tom coached one of my girls in Lacrosse Jerry Moss coached my kids all four of them and I love this town I've been here for 25 years and I know everyone almost on this committee and I know I know they're all really good people trying to make a difficult decision and I have to say in the 25 years I've been here this school committee in particular has worked really hard on all the deib initiatives in this town and I'm grateful for that I don't think naming the
041middle school will solve racism or sexism I understand that the messages are there we want to absolutely make the messages that need to be said that who's important how how do we decide that Ellen Garrison's more important than captain hudner or whatever um I didn't come here with the written script but I'm just speaking from here um I love the town of conquered my kids love conquered Middle School all four of them went there they played sports for conquered Middle School they played in the band for conquered Middle School they did theater for conquered residents to watch I I don't want to come across that I I think all these other ideas are are bad ideas but I I just think the only way to not marginalize or not separate anyone is to call them
042conquered students they're conquered middle school students no matter what color they are no matter what gender they choose to be or or even what you know lgbtq plus they are so I'm grateful for what you're trying to accomplish here and everybody's platform um and I just strongly support conquered middle school because we are one community no matter the color or the gender or what it might be I hope I didn't break this and we have still in the room um our Grady Finn sound like an attorney or a newscaster very fancy name hi there my name is Grady Flynn um I'm at 125 Central Street I'm a student at cchs um and I'm here to support naming the middle school after Ellen Garrison um I don't have too much to add because I think that
043the people um ahead of me have said some really incredible things all that I agree with um but I just want to offer uh a different perspective than we've seen so far um as a student in the conquered public schools and at conquered car High School I've seen um a lot of really great efforts um in moving towards greater recognition of diversity Equity inclusion belonging um which are all really great things uh this year I'm taking a black history class which is the first black history class that cchs has ever offered and I think that we've made some really great strides um as a community and as a district and as a school um I also know just in talking to other students that we really have a lot of work to do um in
044bringing this up to a lot of my friends people in my black history class teachers a lot of us agree that the opportunity to name the school after Ellen Garrison conquered Middle School is people who have interacted with the middle school been in the Middle School in the last five six years or whatever um they believe that this is something that could really make an impact on students learning on how they view themselves and their connection to their Community their connection to the the nation and their race um and this is a stride that I really believe is is worth taking and um I just wanted to come up and mention that between all of the people that I've I've spoken to and the youth who are in conquered middle school and have been in
045conquered Middle School recently the people who it really affects this is something that matters and it's it's some people might say it's just a name but names are really a really really important thing um so I just wanted to share my perspective as a conquer Carl high school student thank you very much thank you grd okay we are coming up on 40 minutes which is wonderful cuz it seems like we have gone through all of the people wishing to speak tonight online and in the room and before we conclude the public comment period I just want to say I think on behalf of all of us on this committee that we're really grateful for your engagement um your engagement in person here tonight has been really meaningful um additionally I want to call out all
046the letters that we received um you know I think it demonstrates that um this public process was a good idea um it shows that conquer citizens do rise to the occasion in a way that never ceases at least to amaze me um you know the fact that we remain a civically engaged community in a time of widespread apathy in our nation I think is just a testament to the community that we live in so thank you all um and that will conclude our public comment period and you are all of course welcome to stay and hear our discussion um on the topic so um with that um I did want to note that at our last meeting we um heard from our three student Representatives who um are elected by their peers at the high
047school and the student Senate who um Le who are essentially our liaison our Representatives on the school committee they had asked um if they could share uh if they could sort of assess public sentiment at the high school and then share their findings with us so I don't know if they're here yeah they are okay I so we have Harry Felicity and zarya with us today um so we're going to turn it over to you at this point um so you can share uh your findings that you've that you've come across okay yeah abely just give me one minute to screen share a quick presentation put together um so yeah in general we just wanted to survey as you said the tchs student population try and get a general sense of what people were thinking
048about the new name um and obviously a large number of these students went through CMS themselves so it can be some valuable feedback we had around 40 respondents we were hoping to send it up to the wider student body but we learned that um anything relating to the middle school we can't use our like School resources and that includes the email system so we weren able to to facilitate a wider sample size but I think there's still some pretty clear Trends here okay so the top two for first choices for the name of the Middle School were conquer middle school and Ellen Garrison Middle School conquer Middle School being the overwhelming majority being 69.4% while Ellen Garris in middle school being 11.1% uh it just seems like a lot of people really like feel fine
049with the name concerete middle school and yeah um and then with the once we get to the second and also the third choice it becomes a little bit less clearcut but PD s middle school and then just s Middle School are still the three majority here and also most of um people who selected that as their second choice were going for a conquer midle School in the First Choice question so I think in general this sentiment and you can see that in the third choice as well is either some combination of Sor Bey or conquer Middle School great so we also um asked for some feedback from students about what uh rationale they had for choosing the options and most of the comments that we got were about why people decided to um would prefer
050to still name the Middle School conquered middle school and one of the most common responses was that it's just the most simple to continue uh with names that the students already know and the community already knows and understands um which would be not only more convenient but also as the third response points out it might be like kind of inevitable that people are still going to know the Middle School most commonly as just the conquered Middle School especially um if there might be this kind of like transition period if a name is Switched and the second comment here also is pretty insightful we thought because it notes that the reason that a lot of our um other name there are other names that are being used for the elementary schools particularly because there are multiple
051of them but the fact that there is just one coner Middle School kind of means that some of the students see that we should have this one unified name to kind of represent all of conquered middle schools so that we avoid sort of like the competition between which potential other names or other people that we should be honoring when there are so many members of the community that we really do feel um matter to the history and culture of our school Community as well so that was just like some of the student perspective that we heard thank you guys per usual you're impressive and thorough and you come with slides and um we appreciate so much your voice um in all of our meetings and this is certainly no exception um here tonight so I
052thank you guys and we invite you to stay for a regular um meeting at the region as well when we discuss um more um High School oriented things uh yes thanks back for update as well later awesome perfect um so before uh we the five of us get into our deliberation um I did want to provide the superintendent um with an opportunity to speak um our policy does dictate uh that we seek a recommendation from her which she has um which she has put out there but she um just wanted to again before we sort of enter our into our community deliberation take an opportunity and potentially uh I think Mr Nichi as well yeah he's on Zoom uh so I'm just going to read what I wrote to the community because I don't know
053that it got to the community at large it went to the parent community in the effort to be transparent um so for the entirety of my tenure primary focus has been on the vision for the new Middle School when I arrived to the middle school was a school divided each building housed students in grades 6 through 8 unique decisions had been made to appear that there was Unity such as the creative sandborn time where the clocks were adjusted 7 minutes to be able to say the two buildings had the same schedule children were placed randomly fostering great angst and distress as they left their elementary school peers student identity rested solely on their attendance at pey or sandborn the buildings were often compared to one another as if they were separate and entities through the
054district strategic planning and conquered Middle School Improvement plans intentional goals were set to shift the culture and Foster School identity while better serving student academic and social emotional needs the buildings were reconfigured where grade six developmentally appropriately prepared all students for Middle School a new schedule rectified the sandboard time issue and created opportunities for intervention and enrichment nomenclature about pey and sandborn has been replaced by the grade six building and the grade seven and 8 building of conquered Middle School a conquered Middle School identity was born that filters through all that we do and is the spoke of school spirit and student engagement the culmination of the vision was a new conquered Middle School building where all students feel connected and that they belong the CMS building project officially began in 2019 and the only
055name during the 5-year period has been conquered middle school because of this Vision in that time a new name has never been considered by the conquered school committee conquered Middle School building committee or conquered town meeting during the three votes that were approved I greatly appreciate that other names are worthy of recognition and believe there are alternate ways to honor those who are nominated my recommendation is to realize The Vision by sustaining the school's inclusive recognized name of the conquered middle school and finally accomplish the goals that were designed to better serve all children thanks laori um Andrew I see your on Zoom if you'd like to make a statement as well good evening everyone Andrew uh please allow me to express my gratitude uh for the opportunity to contribute to the discussion regarding the
056renaming of conquer Middle School to the Allen Garrison uh Middle School I also want to thank those uh individuals who have spoken before me this evening uh thank you Felicity Zary and Harry for insightful research with students while I do not reside in conquered I speak before you tonight in my capacity as a director of diversity Equity inclusion and belonging for conquer public schools and Conquer Crow out uh Regional School District and as a black man deeply invested in the transformative anti-racist work in the school Community my perspective this evening is uniquely M untainted by internal or external influence I do not speak on behalf of any other members of the conquer public schools and Conquer car Regional School District uh particularly conquer Middle School faculty staff students or parents and specifically the black faculty
057staff members students and families in the realm of my deib presentations I often illuminate conquer's profound Legacy of uh activism and unwavering dedication to anti-racism and racial Justice The Proposal to rename conquer Middle School in honor of alen Garrison is a tangible manifestation of these values an unequivocal Testament to our commitment to recognizing and celebrating the enduring contributions of African uh of African-Americans U around the world Ellen Garrison's life story as researched by the robin cells epitomizes courage and advocacy her Tyler's efforts in advancing civil rights and education for new newly emancipated uh African-Americans underscore the significance of commemorating her Legacy within our school Community nevertheless it is incumbent upon us to acknowledge that not all members of our school Community espouse unanimous support for this proposed renaming a notable subset of the school Community
058is unfamiliar with Ellen Garrison's profound story and enduring impact such as her designation as conquer Rosa pars when she sat in a segregated waiting room in in a Baltimore train station and later was forcibly ejected Garrison felt and I quote as though she ought to strive to maintain her civil rights that it will be a stand for others but I digress the discourse surrounding the renaming of conquer midle school I feel underscores the imperative of keeping the current school name that reflects seven years of work in the pursuit of unity inclusivity and a sense of belonging that the collective and increas and increasingly diverse identities of conquer middle school students parents faculty and staff Aspire their school to be we must be conscientious in affording due consideration to the perspectives of all stakeholders particularly conquer
059Middle School faculty staff students and their families and especially the African-American faculty staff students and their families whose voices must occupy a central role in this deliberation and not be relegated to a May afterthought often initiatives such as this renaming risk being perceived as performative gestures mistakenly suggesting the culmination of our anti-racism efforts with a mere alteration of a name plate in other words I fear that this renaming of conquered Middle School gives the impression that our anti-racist efforts will be complete once the symbolic gesture is made when in reality the pursuit of substantive and sustained change demands more from us all as I close and share my perspective on this matter I implore us all to direct our Collective energies towards effecting transformative shifts that confront the lived experiences of historically underrepresented and marginalized
060individuals and groups within our school Community ring from the Insidious manifestations of daily macro aggressions to the systemic barriers impeding their full participation and recognition in our school community in addition to a Resolute commitment to proactive measures aimed at forestalling any reoccurrence of racism and oppression within our midst while I recognize the weight of my singular voice in this discourse I hope that my words serve as a catalyst for introspection and me ful dialogue among all engaged stakeholders thank you for your time attentiveness and consideration thank you Andrew all right um with that um if you all remember I sent out an agenda overview where I asked all of us who will be deliberating this issue to come prepared to speak about any name on this list or any location on this list that moved
061you and um sort of make a case I guess if you will and you know much the same way we've done public comment so I think if um it suits I am just going to sort of go around the room um and give every afford everyone an opportunity to sort of contribute their perspective to this conversation now that we have um received you know a lot of varied public comments so I'll start with um Miss Morano I am first sorry um so when I Was preparing and I and I don't have a prepared remarks so I am off the cuff um when I started preparing for this meeting I looked around at what other districts have done so over the past two or three years there have been five or six schools that have been
062in exactly our position position uh we had hopkington Westwood Gloucester hangam Agawam Brookline Belmont they they have sat around this table just like we are a lot of those schools looked at their policy first they rewrote the policy because it is such an important decision that we have to make as a committee so our policy as we recall we reopt it a new policy which really kind of underscored the importance of what we're doing we should not be entering in this lightly this is a a huge decision for our community um the community is looking towards us we can't be everything to everyone as much as you know I think that a lot of times even postco people feel as though the schools are everything and and we've been here through all of it I
063I feel as though our community has strong opinions in all sorts of different directions we have 23 unique names that were sub ited even after this process we've gotten maybe two or three additional names which we we kind of closed the deadline but we've gotten a few more additional names from there we've received over 250 emails regarding this and all of those I've also taken into consideration in preparation for this there are certainly names that have moved me I thought the suggestion of the MTO squid School moved me because it not only recognizes the land that that we live on but conquered in general I was moved my I moved by The Ellen Garrison story we've gotten a lot of feedback on that I moved by the Jerry Moss um you know I think in
064some of the emails in Jerry there there were so many things about Jerry and what he has brought to the community I've seen it you know with my own kids I've seen it with the high school whether Heritage Club or wherever you are but he has had impact on a large number of members of this community for probably close to 50 years maybe 40 to 50 years um I read the story of Tom hudner and I mean that I was brought to tears tonight so I really appreciate that story it there just so many people that are very deserving of this I also think about how do we also continue to honor the work of sandborn and peity so those are all the names I know it's not as simple as bring your best name
065um but I'm really struggling with this because there are so many well-deserving people that have been brought forward I I think you know we have something to talk about I I've considered Dr Hunter's recommendation and I had not heard Andrew speak until tonight and I do feel like that has really helped me come to my decision as kind of what my front runner would be is that what you'd like at this point you don't need to do that I don't I don't know I think it's more maybe more discussion so so that's where I'll start and then maybe somebody else can jump in okay Domingos I mean I mean you know I don't live in conquer I live in Boston but the situation in hand is you have an opportunity to educate the Greater Community
066I'm sitting here listening to folks for the last couple of meetings come in and speak about Mrs Garrison inspires me to actually do more digging myself because that's an individual I've never heard of not even in Boston so to have a school named after an individual her magnitude sends ripples this is something that's going to change the image of conquered the town's been in the news for the last two weeks regarding a sign this is what we're talking about putting a sign on a building and there's a sign in town that folks want to remove for different reasons so how do we Inspire like this young man who came in here and spoke about his feelings on how he wants to be looked at as a person and what he wants to make as a
067dent in history and having you know a school named after an individual who was born and bred and conquered and then left and and put her Freedom At Risk to make sure that others understand that the only thing that separates us has nothing to do with our skin tone to make people come back to a town and realize you know like the gentleman said his daughter has no interest of being in the town she grew up in how do we change that how do we have folks who don't visit conser on a weekly basis or daily basis or ever want to visit and say hey well you know for me first time I came to conquered was the MCI it's the only time you ever hear about conquered right in Boston so to have a
068school named that an individual that we can educate not only people in conquer but people across Massachusetts it's it's going to send a wave that it's going to give this town a light that it needs and like Andrew said in his presentation it's not let's name something and we're done it's like let's name this let's educate the population CU from what I seen from the students I'm pretty sure if they ask them do you know any of these people few of them would say no majority of them would say no so how do we change that moving forward how do we get people to say hey you know what the Phyllis weekly school which was behind my middle school the deborn middle school I had no clue who philis weekly was till I got to
069high school because we had to do a report on felis Weekly right in Boston so how do we change that if we're not willing to say hey you know what let's make a stance in history this is going to go down in conquer history like the gentleman said 50 years ago they voted for a school why did they vote for it because it was a need this time it's up to us to make that stamp in history and I I'm I'm leaning towards you know again I I don't have a vote but I do have a voice I'm going with Mrs Garrison because again for me it's something that my daughter can look up to it's another it's a woman in history who put herself last to educate and improve the life of others and
070I think you know that should be the message that we want to send um I understand you know we got all these great individuals whose names are put there but we can name the swimming pool after the swimming coach we can do other things like Dr Hunter said to honor these folks in different ways but how do you make a staple out of out of your community when we're not willing to name anything that's beneficial to everyone this is this is history of conquered and you know 200 years later this individual now has a school named after herself and students will write reports they're going to ask why was the school named after this individual we're going to have to speak on that the young man said something that you know sitting on this panel
071this committee you know first black history class ever where are we really going you know naming the building is a step forward but what are we really going to do to continue to educate the students that come through these doors so when they leave here they're better people and they can understand what the real vision of life is and again it's not just one person's speech I love Dr King's Speech but there was folks before him and before them and now it's our turn time makes theand it's a decision that this body can make that believe Decades of of great individuals coming in and out of our school systems so I could say more but I just wanted to you know again it just I I was reading some of the stuff and I was
072looking at it and I said wow how come I've never heard of this individual but again history hides its true Pioneers we only hear about the handfuls we're in Black History Month mhm and again from what I've learned it used to be it used to be called negro a week and it's evolved into a month let's turn it into a year round education where we're not picking and choosing when we decide to educate our youngest Minds on what we truly are trying to do as a body and I think that we're in a great start you know this is my second year sitting at this committee and it's it's it's again Meco has 33 districts we're only one of one of four who has representation for the Boston family so I'm honored to be a
073part of this and I just wanted to say what we've done here as a group is being implemented in other districts and it's not on deaf ears there's people who are paying attention and whatever we decide to do it's also going to be mirrored in other cities and towns thank you thanks MOS I want to say thank you I'm up next you're up next um so uh want I want to thank all of the people who wrote who made citizen comments uh I you know everybody took time and was very thoughtful uh the letters were very helpful to me um I feel a great weight in making this decision um I do think that a name a good name that we pick will be unifying um and I'm not concerned about that um I you
074know many of the names are are and the stories behind them um mean a lot to me and I've enjoyed reading the letter I thank Alexa for answering all the letters uh so you know I'll hold some more comments until we get around to taking a vote Court I know this decision is is difficult um it should be it should be difficult people have expressed that uh we could go for something simple and something easy and we could I don't think it'd be be in our best interest I don't think we should be afraid I really don't [Music] um I hope we all ask ourselves and I'm especially addressing my colleagues because you all have to vote I have to vote we're going to be accountable for this with all due respect to the folks
075who are here and thank you you're the people that I want to appeal to there aren't too many towns with an Ellen Garrison so it's hard to compare a with other towns we have an Ellen Garrison uh I believe we can name this school for Ellen Garrison and still consider ourselves one community and one middle school and I think kids will continue to call it the middle school or they might put the person's name to it they do it now I didn't have any trouble understanding what school my kids were talking about whether they said PE buty sandborn or middle school I knew where they went to to school there's been an argument that to put a name forth is going to somehow not be in the interests of unity I wholeheartedly disagree Unity is
076a matter of the culture we build and a culture is largely a matter of the leadership we bring to bear in these schools I think we can have everything we want and more if we name the school for Ellen Garrison we've had this name floated in front of us in this community for about 10 months now if we want to we've had plenty of opportunities to ask ourselves when we think about that image that person that name that history what do we think what do we feel and that'll help us answer the question that Joe Palumbo asked us who are we and when I think of the name it I do have to confront myself I do have to confront my privilege I do have to confront this country's checkered history I do have to
077confront conquer's checkered history I have to confront my checkered history but let's not be afraid of doing that because if we're afraid our kids are afraid we can't afford that we can't afford it I hope we have a unanimous decision knowing full well that it doesn't mean that we disregard or dishonor anybody else we're lucky there are a lot of people that we can honor and hold up and we've heard a few of them tonight and I think we should continue to do so hold those people up but I think we make a tough decision and I think we can make the best one for the long term and it's going to be one that I think can instantly benefit our kids today and tomorrow under the right leadership which we believe we've got in
078this District our leadership can make this work I believe the Ellen Garrison Middle School is by far the name that would serve Us best and again with all due respect to the other names and those proud histories that those people brought forth for us thank you and thank you Gary um I'm really struggling I um I wrote remarks that I am going to scrap um I'm purely overwhelmed by everything that has been said tonight um and that's after having already read read 300 emails with similar sentiments um somehow hearing them live feels really different um so I just want to say um Echo what everyone else has said and say thank you um to everyone for your honesty and your courage to come out and share your voice and your words and your stories um
079did the thing that I keep coming back to is like how lucky are we to live in a town with so many choices where it becomes um so hard to choose among them um what our school ought to be named and I I I I feel so great that my kids get to grow up in these schools and in this community and um get to experience what um I'm forgetting your name what remind me your name Brady Grady um was talking about in his courses um I love that we're at add in a black history um class I love the um Playbook initiative I think there's so much work that's happening in our schools both um that we're seeing in the public and that we're not um and that we're talking about at this table
080whether the room is filled with people or that whether it's not um and I'm really proud of that I think that that's something that we all ought to be proud of I actually think um Joe your question of who are we is um stuck with me um as well and I think we're all of these people we are I wrote down some of the words that people were saying tonight and it was um leaders and Mentor courageous inspiring hero I just I don't I I this is the hardest um conversation debate discussion um that I've certainly been a part of on this committee and I um I understand the symbolism in a name um and and yeah I'm I'm I'm having a hard time I'll be honest but I feel like we're in a good
081yeah we're in a really good Community with great options and um I'm excited to hear what everyone else has to say um this is this is not normally what I do but I am going to read a statement um just because sometimes I speak too long too much I get tangental and that's kind of my thing and I don't think that will serve um the public well so I'm going to try to keep um focus tonight so I want to begin by speaking tonight about the process of getting public input for large Endeavors such as the one we're undertaking here tonight in a way that I never could have expected this process in and of itself has been a truly joyful reminder that we all live in a spectacular Community with a history we should
082be proud of it's a reminder that conquered has always been the home home of men and women of bold and courageous action abolitionists Educators historians Heroes whether on a national scale like Thomas hudner or a quieter one like Ellen Garrison conquered has been and still is full of people that value their fellow man and more importantly their community and therefore it doesn't surprise me that we have such a lengthy list of citizens who exemplify such spectacular virtues choosing a name on this list to me is impossible who are we and by we I don't just mean the five of us on this committee but all of us in conquer the collective we who are we to decide who is most deserving and honestly a large part of want of me wants to ask why would
083we even want to make that decision a trend has emerged and begun to gain popularity of not naming public buildings or schools after individuals some school committees are adopting policies that prohibit the naming of schools after individuals altogether I believe this m has gained popularity for this reason because elevating a single individual over any other just doesn't seem right it surely does not seem right to me collectivism and Community the idea of the whole being greater than is some of its parts those are sentiments that resonate with me conquered is what it is because of all of its citizens past and present and not just the 22 individuals proposed on this list because of all of us in this room I actually believe that it's why I live here our shared values in conquered of
084liberalism and progress concordians always strive to do better and be better we have 55 committees in town for God's sake hundreds of volunteers working for betterment and change and progress It's that collectivism that I seek to honor here today by naming the middle school after the town of conquered itself it pays homage to us all PED in present and acknowledges that none of us is better than any other but what we all do in our lifetimes matters and even those of us who don't achieve greatness or notoriety have nonetheless made an impact somewhere to someone however if we were to entertain naming the school after an individual I also want all of us in conquered to think about this in conquered we generally look to our distant past to exemplify our greatness we talk of
085transcendentalists and authors educational pioneers and abolitionists like I mentioned before when conquer seeks now to name a building a park or a school I recommend looking at the names on this list from this Century or the last instead of always looking back to Antiquity in that vein the name that most resonated with me on this list was Jerry moss in 1993 when I was a student at cchs Mr Moss was a physical education teacher and coach he self-identifies as a jock I spent most of my time inside the outside of class in theater and the Arts there was no reason for me to have a close relationship with Mr moss and yet I did and almost every student in the school at that time also did I want to tell a story about Mr Moss
086that I wasn't even aware of until a few weeks ago when I attended the 30th anniversary celebration of the cchs Spectrum Club so when I was a senior in high school my trust Ed adult at cchs was a guy named Peter Atlas a math teacher who was also the most gifted artistic theater director I have ever worked with in 1993 Peter Atlas used the student newspaper the voice to come out as gay to the cchs community an incredibly courageous act at that time nearly immediately Peter established a GSA Spectrum the one that just celebrated its 30th Anniversary when Peter came out and established Spectrum Moss was one of the most vocal and staunch allies on the cchs staff I had no idea that Moss immediately emerged as an ally and I had no idea until
087till last month at the cchs anniversary of the Spectrum Club that Moss's allyship was so incredibly meaningful to Peter I spoke with Peter again today talking about how I was going to speak about this um and he said to me um about moss he came to Spectrum knowing nothing about what it was like to be queer of what our actual experience was but totally open to taking on the task of learning and identifying how it paralleled his own struggles Jerry Moss is a black man Moss is a true and deep Ally the words diversity equity and inclusion were not a part of our vernacular in 1993 at least not in any of mainstream way that they are now Moss was so far ahead of his time because he modeled and exemplified all of those words
088with Grace with dignity and the most positive infectious magnanimous Spirit there's a huge part of me that really and truly wants to name this school after Moss because he exemplifies that all I believe in but I also really do believe about what I said about my distaste for elevating any one individual over another I cannot fathom engaging a deliberation with my colleagues about who on this list is most deserving and honestly I can't imagine a group of people even wanting to to have that conversation which I realize actually sounds kind of mean when I read it aloud um so with that um I look to my colleagues and ask if anyone has any further comment or discussion for tonight or um where we go from here thank you for indulging I move that we name
089the conquered middle school that is under construction at this time the Ellen Garrison Middle School do I have a second second okay I repeat I don't want us to be afraid I do hear the reasoning uh the difficulty uh and naming somebody alive or or deceased but I favor the people who are just to be bold and aspire to the kind of people and the kind of town we want to be a number of names will do that in my opinion Ellen Garrison does it best for us I think decision like this will stand the test of time very very nicely any other discussion so I'm still kind of stuck on the dedication piece of it and how do we honor all of the people that people have brought forth to us um you know
090I think we do need to consider Dr Hunter's recommendation any any recommendation from the Massachusetts Association for school committee says you need the you should always ask the recommendation of the superintendent I think we need to consider her recommendation I also think we need to consider Andrew's comments as our deib director and our commitment to deib that we have made and it's what's happening in our schools that I think is really important for our kids um I think that the unifying the town behind this I I do worry as Andrew does what will happen if we're a divided we may be a divided committee we may not be a divided committee but what will happen in the town because clearly there are 23 different opinions that have come forward to us we've had numerous emails
091there are multiple opinions as to what we should do this is really super challenging for me I would like to figure out a way to honor all of the names that have come before us um and I think that that should be taken into consideration I I think we can do that and uh I think that's for this school committee to do at a future date if it wishes to uh I not only believe that the committee has heard the superintendent's recommendation I believe that much of the town has heard it in fact I think it was uh distributed to the uh students before I heard about it um no and she says no but uh I I was quite surprised at the public effort to uh distribute your opinion before it was discussed thoroughly
092here but be that as it may uh I want to assure you Tracy that uh we are aware of the superintendent's recommendation and I would be surprised if anybody didn't take it into account any other the discussion before car Cynthia Dominguez well you know um the town s elected this body um and entrusted this body to make these type of decisions I understand the policies and procedures that are set by other towns and and cities but conquers is is its own it's its own town and from someone who's coming from the outside in things like this attracts new visitors who eventually become residents and when you I mean I'll beat the elephant right so you know when I go into town and I can't get a plate of Soul Food am I coming back n
093out of 10 folks are not going to visit right so you lose tourists from different communities because of the lack of and we talk about inclusion and how do you when a percentage of the Town itself doesn't include itself I've I've been coming to conquer uh as a parent uh my son's a senior he's been here since kindergarten he was forced out of a forced out of a school into another school because of politics within the city right so as a parent my goal was to educate my son on being open-minded [Music] taking everyone's opinion and then forming one that better suits yourself not taking someone else's opinion on someone and says oh I can't you know hang out with this particular person because of their background so you know for the last he's 17
094now he'll be 18 next month so for the last 13 years I've been trying to mold a young man as I say to him I keep colors out of things CU I I don't fit in the crayon box right so I tell him as a young man everything matters someone's opinion of you is formed by how you go about conducting yourself and that's your character and the character that conquered has for the outside Community is not a welcoming one I've been chastised a few times for even sitting here while you wasting your time you you spent an hour in traffic what does it matter to you what matters to me is the fact that there's a group of parents who selected a group of us to represent a group of students who at one point
095had no voice and now that we have this position it's up to me to carry the torch for the next person who comes in and wants to be a part of this process right and Dr Hunter was there and I agreed listen I don't need to vote I just need to say my opinion that carries in my eyes further because people will see what my true Natures are I'm not here to cause Mayhem I'm not here to cause harm to anyone I'm here to bring an insight to a community that's been a part of the Meco program since the 60s and a lot of things that happen in the 60s continue to happen in the 224s so how do we change that like Court said if we're going to be scared to be the elephant
096in the room or we going to be scared to upset one or two other folks who don't have have the same mindset as us and you want to move this town forward I say this in Boston we got 48,000 students our modotto is students first put the students first educate these students on individuals like Mrs garison who I'm pretty sure half the student population has never heard of they all know they live in concrete they know that they're not going to change that but giving them like this young man said in the back his first time learning about black history is in high school sitting here that's all I keep thinking about this kid just learning about his neighbors he's a freshman he's a sophomore he's a junior he's a senior and in the school
097season you're not going to change his mindset on how or what who does he look up to besides our athletes no one knows about this educator who has gone and done some fabulous things you know just just listening to and looking into what she's done and comments from folks here you know we talk about Rosa Parks but then we don't talk about individuals like gison so again I understand where you don't want to pick one person over the other and we're not because there's other ways to celebrate folks I'm a swim coach I've been swimming since I was eight I love swimming and I have that said to me many times oh they should name the football field after you and I said uh I don't know about that because the reason why we do
098it as coaches it's not to have things named after us it's to see the indiv individuals that we care for become who they really going to be and including this into the school in my eyes you're going to have this first grader who's going to go to the middle school and they're going to say what's the name of the middle school coming from fifth to sixth grade and they're going to say the name is Alan Garrison and she's they're going to ask who is that now you have to explain to this young person who this person is versus you go to school at conquered Middle School I already know I live in conquer who is this person well why don't you find out I'll give you a week to find out who this person is
099and a little before you know it it's a wildfire there's kids that's actually looking to others who don't look don't sound don't come from the same backgrounds and say wow I didn't know that I didn't know my community had all these individuals who have done great things the gentleman who spoke about his dad and I watch you get emotional because I felt emotion because I I love my veterans but how do we know they exist unless they're on Memorial we have true life history in our communities and we failed to share it because again core back to you we're scared to talk about these individuals because of the politics I didn't join this because it was a political group I joined this because it was a parent group and we all wanted to make change
100for our children and the children that our children grow to become a community with and I feel that if we push this unified front and like you said Court leadership is the key how do we go about making everyone understand why the decision was made and how we're going to push it forward so everybody feels accommodated I think that 10 years from now you're going to have a different city because you're grow to a city it won't be the town of conquer you're growing to a city because people will gravitate towards here because they do like the suburbs of Boston your conquer is 30 minutes from Boston and most people don't feel comfortable enough to cross over 95 because of the history so how do we change that you know Paul River took a long
101ride but folks don't seem to understand that Domingos too so let's let's think about you know the future uh of how like you said um Alexa you know we always going to the past but if we don't honor the past our futures don't look too bright we we we're we're we're losing too much of our past like the sign that folks want to remove to hide the history and we need to embrace the history so the Futures look brighter so people can understand we all can come together because our main objective is to live and prosper and we're not going to do that by naming it after the town the town's already name conquered so it goes not to interrupt you can I ask a question are we going to do that by naming it
102after Ellen Garrison like I feel like I don't think that I'm I I don't think that is the solution I think the solution I think that I think it's it could be a step um for sure and it would be a very symbolic step we have so much work to do and I feel like we are doing a lot of it where if we name it Ellen Garrison can I give you an example yeah please this is the most diverse group of people I've seen in this room in the last two years the community is asking for it it's not Domingos is Choice the community is here asking for it you got the youngest sorry young man how old are you I'm 16 I can't wait to see you as an adult because he took
103his time to come in here and speak his mind because it it impacts him him he's in high school so what do he care about middle school he can't even he he can't even he can't even walk into the middle school building but he took his time to come in cuz you know why it matters to him it matters to him when he walks down the hallway and he sees his black and brown friends and he can walk over and say hey let's go get a pizza it makes him feel included when they talk about these days they talk about so many different things that it it blows my mind but they're coming together I'm I'm I'm listening to my son for 2 hours on Playstation I'm like who you playing with I don't know
104some kid I'm like where's he from he's from Jersey our world is becoming more unified but we who live here doesn't seem to come together we're coming together where everyone outside you know friends I got friends in California I never met but the people in conquer for the last 13 years I met you guys I go to Every football game I show up to every cheer in an event I'm at the softball game and I can feel the tension in the room right between this group and that group and for me it doesn't matter because I got alligator skin so I walk in I say hey what's up everybody if you reply you reply if you don't guess what that's your character not mine and this is why I had a lot to say I
105mean this is the most I've said all all two years because I know that this is gonna push this town to where you guys want to see it people should be coming you you have 130 mecho Families how many show up they don't feel included they sent me because they know I don't care I I truly don't as far as being out of place but as far as being an example as far as put my opinion on the table as far as moving the needle that's why I'm here so we can understand that all of us I say to my kids that I coach I spent 32 years in the swimming pool coaching kids you are as strong as your weakest link we cannot pull as a team regardless of what Strokes you do and
106swimming is an IND is an individual sport when you're in the pool swimming a butterfly you're by yourself unless you're on a relay just like track and I've watched these kids on the track team push each other I watch these kids on the throwing team push each other other I watch these kids on the football team push each other no matter what they look like one guy gets knocked down the other guy picks him up and I'm in the stands cheering that and everyone's like you how come you know all these kids I know football and football taught me one thing the guy standing next to you like this gentleman said about his dad he didn't care who was in that plane he knew he need to go get his comrade he went and got
107him that's what sports teaches us but how do we teach our children who don't play sports who don't interact with other students who sit in their little secluded areas in in in the cafeteria because they're not feeling inclusive so a name does make an impact but the lessons behind it is what's going to push everything forward it's what's going to make again back to Court's Point leadership how do we incorporate that to sit here and listen to the young man say this is the first time he learned about black history that's that's like to Andrew's point you know how do we make it so from from from as young as K1 preschool to our senior year in high school they have learned about so many different individuals like Mrs Garrison so at the time of
108their departure that's a well-rounded person they understand what life is really about versus and I'm not going to knock the man cuz the man did a great job we only talk about a handful of black leaders Dr King Harriet Tubman Rosa Parx Malcolm X and they're not the only ones who have put their lives at stake for the rest of us but those are who we teach and having this individual as a name of a school I think personally you're going to change your curriculum because the community is asking for you from what I'm seeing the community the most diverse group of people I've seen in two years and you've been here longer than me so I can only speak for two years and in your time here take a look at the group yeah
109so Domingos I couldn't agree more with your sentiments um and I think the good news is that we have like already um your kids are older everyone D is the youngest in high school we have curriculums in place we already partner with the Robin's house so Ellen Garrison is built into our curriculums the elementary and Middle School level or mostly Elementary mostly Elementary so Elementary so that probably happened after daa and fox were you know through but um you know so that's newer to us so to me everything you're talking about resonates with me deeply and I and again I think that work is embedded inside the walls of a school regardless of what it's named and the good news I think about our committee is we're committed to that work we have the staff
110in place to do that work we have a really good team under Andrew um he's built out his team um and to me that is is what matters um additionally like I do want to talk um moving forward about ways to honor any all of these individuals because I do think they're worthy and again just because we're in the discussion part I just go back to you know I I go back to this idea of elevating one person over another it just doesn't seem right and when again when you look at Trends in education and Trends in government people are not naming buildings after individuals anymore and I think that is actually um born from a deib perspective you know and and again to me I just can't emphasize enough like why can't we tell
111all of these stories you know we're already doing this this partnership work with the robins house um I'm sure there's there are more individuals we can highlight and exemplify um I also think there are better I think there are better and more unique ways to get whether it's Ellen Garrison or Jerry Moss or Thomas hudner uh into the school um you know and for me I know and I haven't vetted this with my committee I'm now I am speaking off the cuff um you know I know there is for example a um a group I think it's in West conquer and I'm going to probably get their name wrong called like art for all um and I know being a person on the building committee I know like we we value engineered some of the
112some of the decorative aspects of the school out like I would love love to explore the possibilities of putting a mural of all of these faces because they are diverse they are they are black men and women they are white men and women that to me is so much more impactful than a you know than a than a name on a plaque um I would love the idea of kids walking into school and seeing all these faces kind of together representing our past and our present is um to me that to me that is what's meaningful as we take this on and I just want to put out there that all of those things are possible and I don't think you know when we name the school to your point it isn't finished this dialogue
113will continue I think regardless of what we name it after an individual after the town we are going to have more conversations about how to honor these stories that I think have moved many of us and many people in the town so to me that's more meaningful work that I would like to engage in um sorry I could listen to you talk like all night because I feel like it's um very powerful and meaningful and it comes from the heart excuse me and I think that um it's part of all everything that you're saying as part of why I wanted to be on this committee and be part of this work um because I do think that so much of what we do so much of like I've T I talked so much about mental
114health character I don't yes academics are so important in our schools it's the the foundation but I also think the culture that we that create that we create that we build is um almost more important who are who who we are developing the future the kids of Tomorrow the Future Leaders and I think that um Ellen Garrison is a remarkable woman I have learned so much about her this this evening I've learned so much about her over the last 10 months um I have loved every minute of it um I love this partnership between um captains hudner and brown I just feel like there are so many people to honor and it would be um I don't I don't think that the naming of it the naming of the building um puts an end to
115anything and if anything it we have to dig deeper and be doing more when it comes to equity and inclusion I don't I hope hope that I hate I hate to hear the stories where you don't feel welcome or included or kids don't feel welcome or included and I think that that's on all of us not just at this table but in this community and that's on all of us to solve I would love to name this building Ellen Garrison I would love to name it after Captain's HUD and brown I I don't think that the name is going to solve our problem um and my support for CMS is not because I'm afraid um it is because I believe that we are all of these people and we have to be able to celebrate
116our history The Good The Bad The Great and and learn from it and I do think Ellen Garrison is part of our curriculum could it be more so absolutely are there ways that we could continue to do better and be stronger definitely and that's part of the work at this table that we are doing tonight under a spotlight but typically with nobody paying attention so I want to keep doing that work um I'm committed to keeping doing that work um and I you know it is a big part of why I joined this Committee in the first place is to do that work um so that's where I where I stand as hard as voting no will be that's where I believe um I don't believe it's a not it's a no for ER and
117Garrison I believe yes it is though it's it's not I think the name really does matter it is a very important thing it is so critical to our kids learning something about a black woman in this town if I came to town and I saw the name Ella Garrison I would assume oh they they dained to name it after a white woman and then I would read about it and I would be blown away and I would tell my kids somebody in this town was so brave to name the school after a black woman aren't we lucky aren't we lucky to learn something so I think it really does matter and I think putting her we should put people's pictures on a mural in the in the school that would be really great but it
118is not the same as her name being on the front of the school and I think it would be a wonderful tribute to that new building to have her name on that school I mean I just can't tell you how important it would be to the community and that's all I've got to say I Echo that because my name is Domingos right so I said ma why why did you do that to me he was born on Sunday we didn't have Google then right thank God for Google so I Googled it I said wow she didn't lie to me I was really born on a Sunday 1977 and I grew to like my name more because of the history behind it my uncle's name my Godfather's name my great-grandfathers were named so names matter we
119choose names for our children minutes after they're born some people don't have a name till the minute that they're born some people have the name the day they find out their child is born I mean their child is conceived because they want to name him after a great-grandfather a father we have a gentleman who's a third I mean it matters names matter but to have a name that you've never heard don't have no clue who it is like Cynthia said you're you're going to send a wave to Boston you're going to send a wave across this whole state did you hear what conquer J did they named their middle school after so and so they're going to ask you why that answer is going to be the reason why folks are going to take conquered
120and look at it as an actual true Pioneer in the Dei movement they're not going to look at it and say oh yeah they just got another black guy speaking to a group of black people just so it looks like they doing something cuz that's the conversation folks have their perception of individuals here in conquered because of the history like I said the first time I came to MCI conquer was to visit one of my kids that's the first time I've been to conquer had no clue where it was at didn't care about it drove by it a million times but never came into the town and when I first came into the town I was like wow I like this place because of the atmosphere folks who live here have a different perspective than
121folks who live outside conquered so like Cynthia said you pull up to the school and you see this name across the front of the building and you're asking yourself who is that brand new building got this name on there who is that people going to be intrigued and want to find out versus oh conquered Middle School they already know they're in conquered doesn't mean anything doesn't move anybody like I said the youngest person in this room spoke his mind because it matters to him how about The Unborn who are not here today who will be here in 10 15 years to go to the Middle School who feel left out because they don't see anything that they can gravitate towards can you name me one other building in conquer that has a black name to
122it I don't think can't even right that's my point you'll have the first building in conquer named after a black individual who who made herself into who she is today her hard effort 200 years ago is the reason why we're talking about her she went through we none of us can imagine the hardship she's gone through as a black individual when we were again laws to keep you from Reading you was put on exhibitions at zoos because you were considered an animal these are things that kids in my community fear when they see these images on social media am I going to be like that am I going to be this with thugs and gang bangers meanwhile others are described in other manners right so to have something that a that a young black student
123can gravitate towards and say look my school's named after a black lady that gives them inspiration to find out why and then turn around and take her inspiration and push it I want to be a teacher why cuz she was a teacher felis weatley like I said I never knew who she was until I had to do a paper on her and then when I turned around I says all these years how come we never did anything on F is weekly during Black History Month well our curriculum only gives us these five names I jumped at the opportunity to sit at this table so I can better understand what really goes on CU again like you said I got a freshman in high school and one leaving my my my daughter is at Dartmouth and
124she graduated in 19 and her experience compared to her classmates who she decided to leave I gave her a first adult Choice picking her high school we visited the school 20 minutes later on our way home she said I already know where I want to go I said why she says you're going to laugh they have a salad they have a what bar bar is's a vegan she says BPS doesn't give us a choice of what to eat I said so you don't want to go there because of that she said yeah I can actually eat lunch I don't have to pack but then once she got into the school her experience was totally different she didn't expect because in Boston that's not you know it's it's it's hidden but it's not out in front
125she didn't expect to be pushed to the side because she wasn't part of the elites and like I tell her your money is just as green socialism right we talk about racism we talk about classism we talk about socialism these kids see all that they want to be a part of something so giving them this name is going to give the future of the Meco program an opportunity that they've never seen and not only just conquered Belmont Lexington wurn swamp Scott Marblehead situ and the list goes on and on and on you're going to set a tone again we go back to Paul riva's days right that's how conquer became famous right to to to the majority of the people from the outside you talk about conquered the first thing that comes up is Paul
126R right you're going to give folks on the outside an opportunity to see conquered in a light that hasn't been shined there's other issues that the town's facing the town will deal with that but in this body you've been given a privilege an opportunity to carve out some of the history and conquered to favor the people in conquer so people outside can say hey you know what maybe I should sign my kid up for the Meco program because they're moving in the right direction when it comes to the inclusionary piece and making people feel welcomed but when we continue to just cuz people are listening people are watching like you said this might be the only meeting that we've had a lot of people attending but folks are listening there's always a fly on the
127W on the wall and people share information and what I've noticed over the years when you least expect folks to pay attention is when they really are I learned that from my dad I got eyes behind my head I never knew how he did it but he always knew when I was up to something right say that to my kids and and and this is what people are watching right now oh conquer's getting ready to make lame in middle school and I can guarantee you nine out of 10 is going to say oh they're going to name it after a white person I can guarantee you that sure but what they don't expect is for you to do the opposite and that's why I'm pushing to have us agree because the town wants it the
128people in the town wants it they want to show they are willing to change even if it's a name on a building that building will stand for the next 50 years and the folks who are outside looking in they're going to say wow great job conquer it's not a it's not the biggest step you know man on the moon but it's in the right direction and folks are going to say who was on that panel they're going to say Cynthia Court krie Alexa Tracy Dr Hunter Bob Domingos the people that are here they're going to look at all those statements they're going to say wow these folks actually took their time and effort to make a stance in my eyes that's what I see I see a stance you know we all have differen of
129opinions because of where we're coming from I I joined the group because my experience believe it or not was uh was a very unique one because I grew up lady next door was Irish the guy next door was Italian kid in front of me was Puerto Rican so we didn't see color we seen a cabbage we seen his eggplants and we have pastelitos so we was very diversed so coming to a town like concrete and all I can get is pizza there's no diversity so how do we show that you know we talk about the school's menu how do we show that we've been again the leadership from Dr Hunter she's pushing in the right direction we didn't see eye to eye at first but I've understand where she's coming from and her job is
130not easy and I don't want it you can keep it I think we all can agree on that think we can all agree on that there might be consensus there so Domingos um you have made a few references to the fact that a lot of people are watching us and I'm sure that's true and I'm sure what happens here is going to resonate beyond the borders of conquered um and I think that's fine but I want to share with you that my focus is conquered and I think it's the right thing for conquered um I prefaced all my remarks with the statement that I don't think this should be easy I don't think they should be simple and we're proving it's not it's not um whether it's uh conquered or conquered Boston uh or anywhere
131else where people are paying attention not everybody's going to agree with any decision that gets made tonight but I think there's one thing everybody will agree on and that is that uh we've been brave in the discussion and I hope we're Brave in the decision but we've been very brave in the discussion um and if our kids can say not only that Ellen Garrison was black woman which really hasn't been Central to our conversation um although it's it's very important it's part of the image part of the image but the other parts of the image are she was Brave in Middle School We Know It uh she was born in this town 200 years ago we know it uh she was a civil rights icon before her time and never wanted to be and we
132know that so the the story is going to be easy to pass on once we start it but we're not going to start it unless we choose to start it and I think that's what you're arguing for and I think that's what I'm arguing for is let's let's start that story let's start one more narrative in this town that's going to impact people in a way that we think is going to keep us true to our promises because we' made a lot of promises around this table about our deib commitment you know and we can pour money into programs um but it certainly doesn't stop there certainly doesn't stop there um so whatever we do tonight I want to thank my colleagues for being brave in the conversation I hope we continue to be brave
133in our decisions yeah I totally Echo Court's sentiment and I um I do want to thank all of you and I um want to thank everyone in the room tonight and I do think it's important that we have these conversations and I think any convers ations they all push us forward um and as I talked about that is kind of what I really like about conquered in our community we do all work to better this community we're tireless in it there's so many volunteers we're all volunteers at this commun at this table um so there is a motion on the table and um if no one wants to um has anything else to add I suggest we going ask for a roll call sure fine can I just ask um one more thing just because
134we did make this promise to the public so we have emails that have come in that we said those will also be considered public comment can you just review that because just so everything's out there yep that's fair um so uh yeah we did receive like we mentioned nearly 300 emails um the we received I I did not take into account today's emails we received about 160 emails in favor of naming the building Cocker Middle School um we received about 95 or 94 sorry um in favor of Ellen Garrison so um I suppose when you do factor in that public comment um you know we are elected officials and um that is part of our part of what we synthesize and part of what we take into account but it is not everything um but
135we did make a direct plea to the community to to weigh in on this decision as part of a public process and again we got the 22 unique submissions um the names of alen Garrison and CMS were certainly um The Front Runners um you know with a with a fairly overwhelming majority for CMS so um we um we we should move to um a vote unless anyone has anything else I just want to add out of the two ask yourself which one's more impactful before you vote which one is going to move the future Community forward as a Unity sure thanks all right we can do this by roll call per courts request Anderson no Booth ey Moran present rainy ey uh ranking no okay so the motion fails um if anyone is so moved
136to entertain another motion I do think it is Our obligation to name the school this evening as we promised the public to do so so I will entertain other motions at this time okay how about I would like to entertain a motion to name the school that conquered Middle School second no you have to move it oh sorry so moved sorry do I have a second second okay discussion can we talk about um how we might Gove forward in uh honoring some of I don't think that's appropriate tonight honestly agenda okay that's fine um we can put that well actually even let me finish can we agenda talk about how we can we talk about putting it on an agenda for nominating or we have a we have a motion in a second at the
137present time I'll I'll I think your conversation is relevant you can talk about it I I just would like to come up with a process whether it be tonight or at a future meeting on how we can um honor the many incredible people especially and including Ellen Garrison great um I will take that into consideration and we can put that potentially on a future agenda um any other discussion can can we add discussion from Zoom no I'm sorry the public comment period has passed that was at six for the superintendent consideration when and how names will be taken off of the elementary schools Al you can you can write you can write in to the school committee at using our form or our email address or make public comment um even as early as our
138regional meeting which is happening after this thank you um okay I guess we'll do a roll call vote well can I just um make a little further comment I think that what we have to really think about is we have spent an extraordinary amount of time talking about this thinking about this this is not a decision that any of us made lightly I don't think that any one of us actually slept last night I mean this is it's very emotional to people that have proposed names it's very emotional to anyone that has the authority to make this um decision and I think that I would just hope that we can all move forward in a way to unify the committee the town the kids that are going to our schools every day you know I
139think the work that we're doing in our schools is so important the um I think Andrew's opinion tonight was Val you that we actually didn't that's the first time any one of us have heard from Andrew and it was tonight he is the leader he is our leader and he leads our deib department that we are proud of and you know I think that I just want to make sure that that opinion is also honored here um and we don't lose sight of that so I you know I do thank everyone on this committee everyone that came tonight people that are home listening on Zoom this is definitely not a decision that any of us are taking lightly um and I think that that you know we're we all sit around the table every week
140and we make all different types of decisions this is one that I think we all really struggled with um for a multitude of reasons and we are elected to do the right thing for this community and this is what this committee has talked about we've talked about it now for I don't know two hours um and we we talked about it before tonight we are going to continue to talk about it you know after tonight but I think it's important to just recognize that there are differing opinions and there are different feelings out there and I just hope that the community can move forward in a respectful way and to have respectful discussion we definitely are going to honor I would think that that it's this committee's absolute um intention to honor anyone that has
141been brought before us so I thank all of you for tonight sure I think yeah I I Echo that sentiment I think that our diversity of viewpoints is a test is is a reflection of conquer's diversity of viewpoints and um that is again what I like about the name conquered Middle School I find it to be a courageous name I I think in this day and age we should value the collective town I do think you know what we what we talk about in our schools is is valuing all individuals valuing all voices valuing all types of people in and around our buildings and in our community and I think that name reflects that I think it's um I think there is courage in that name because again I think it demonstrates that we value
142everyone equally um and I do think there are there are better and more significant ways to honor some or all of these individuals um so I thank you all again and I guess we do need to roll call this vote if there's no more discussion okay Anderson I booth nay Moran I rainy no Rank and I okay the motion passes um so at that oh I am not adjourning our meeting I am keeping our meeting in session no I think you need to adjourn it and then we'll take a break and then I'll call to order again go to recess okay oh we don't need to adjourn we can just we are going to take a five minute break so everyone can use the bathroom um and allow our Carlile members to get situated and
143and thank you to the public and thank you to my colleagues so I am going to call the conquer car law school committee to order and we are going to start with public comment is there any public comment in the room or at home you don't need to get out I know could say it from the table very tall um Carrie Patel uh 20 25 I don't I don't even know where I live 885 tofet Road in Carlile um while I am not obviously a citizen of conquer we are um joined regionally and so while I have no say I'm speaking for myself obviously as I have no say on the um conquered School Board I just wanted to say how very disappointed I am in the naming vote this evening and how much I
144think naming that school for Ellen would have just I I don't even have the words but I because right I am actually I don't even live in this town and I am upset that that will not be the name of the school and that's all I wanted to State thank you thanks Carrie thank you and looking online I didn't do my general spiel about the three minutes sorry but we're okay all right looks like we have Derek Pinto uh good evening to the school committee and Leadership can you can you hear me yes yes okay great so my name is drik Pino I'm the parent of two coner Carl students and the spouse of a cchs teacher so I just wanted to offer congratulations to the French department on recently completing a three night 4-day
145trip from 1st to the 4th of February an international trip to Quebec City cada for 27 of our cchs students who uh enjoyed all kinds of uh activities from dog sledding to eating at a Sugar Shack some lessons in French Canadian history uh they visited the very rap people Mill University in Montreal along the way and then proceeded to enjoy a host of activities at the biggest Winter Carnival in the world in Quebec City so the tra trip was led by staff members Nuna Pinto Lena Smith and Tyler Tyler Patterson and I think the trip really served to underline the importance of our value of World Language programs so facilitated our students ability to communicate in a language other than English so you know I think it's important because approximately 7.2 million uh French speakers
146uh reside in Canada and there are 76 million uh native speakers uh and 235 million daily speakers of French so I'd like to think that when we talk about the coner Carl Mission and being to educate all students as lifelong Learners and creative thinkers and in citizens and responsible contributors in our increasingly diverse Global society that we're talking about opportunities like this so I want to thank the administrators at cchs ktie stall and Brian Miller and of course superintendent Hunter for their continued support of uh this kind of program and I wanted to also send special thanks to the uh French department chair for rousel for her contributions in supporting staff and students in this uh undertaking thank you thank you so much okay anyone else nope okay we can move on um and we
147are on to our cchs students who are still with us we have Harry and zarya and Felicity thank you thank you so much for sticking with us I hope you were doing homework in between no I'm just I'm just kidding uh give me one second Harry I think is still at school so I'm just going to share my Harry do you ever leave school I know we talked about that today like does Harry's always at school yes well I was at the bball game and I'm actually in my car right now dedication who won who won Terry right now third corner I like the update than all right um well I can get started so earlier in the week school administrators were kind of seeking out feedback from our new bill schedule um it was
148just a minor change but with the early release that we had last week the nutrition break or like the little break in the day for just a snack or break from classes was moved back um and yeah as I said that was for the most part minor but I think it was a largely positive response so I think that's something we're going to continue on with um last week I think uh we had an alumni panel that was for junior students and I just feel like it was like a really interesting um and like impactful thing that we got to experience like knowing where a bunch of alumni ended up after school it's just like a question that all Juniors and even seniors are always wondering like where they're going to be in the future
149so I just think it was like a really impactful thing to have and it was just really positive experience so yeah yeah also recently the debate team hosted the New England District qualifier so we had like I think over 200 maybe 300 students at the school over the weekend and it was really amazing it was actually like um very I think I heard a lot of people being like cchs is such a nice building so it was definitely like a great way for a lot of people to actually um noce cchs but overall it was a very successful tournament there were lots of there was a lot of behind the scenes effort that went into it so we're all very grateful as well I'm one of the co- captains so um we're all very grateful
150to everyone who was able to help us make that happen it was such a fun experience um as Mr Pinto had said the week in Quebec and from what it looked like it looked like they had a lot of fun and we had did really cool stuff there expences so yeah yeah um and then also the cchs winter sports teams have for the most part begun the postseason so girls swim and dive on dcl's on Saturday boys third we have our track DCL meet this weekend so lot some exciting stuff happening in the Sports World and as always student Senate is working on some more activities including blood drive art night and other activities like for Valentine's Day we're also um the art night is also going to be upcoming on the same night as
151I believe the Multicultural Food Fest which is something that class government is also working on and lastly this is like the time around which we start selecting courses for next year so um for everyone who's not a senior like Harry which is unfortunate Harry we're gonna miss you but it's definitely like fun to think about what we're going to take next year especially I think for me and zarya because it's going to be our last year next year so [Music] yeah pretty fun pretty interesting yeah so that's all we had today that was awesome um Felicity I am going to call you out specifically for planning that debate event because as someone who has planned events it is a ton of work to do so we appreciate that and then I have to say to
152the three of you I mean you really do put the time in with us and we appreciate your opinions your voice and just really going above and beyond to give us you know what's happening at cchs because it does give if you don't have kids there right now you don't necessarily know what's happening and it really you do give us like a little insight into a day in the life so we certainly appreciate that so thank you so much um anyone else have anything for our reps no just to Echo your your thanks and uh not only for the report but for sticking around being patient with us thank you yeah totally totally well thank you we look forward to seeing you after break our next meeting is February 27th so we will see you
153then do you guys know the date of the Multicultural Fest if you don't it's fine do you know the date March I know it's March March 5th it's March March 5th all right so um I would just tell the school commit members if you've never been to one of these it's really awesome and you can bring if you've got little kids or if you've got adults living in your house that are still children um you know just kidding you can bring them with you it's like a great dinner out and it you know you get to sample a little bit of everything and if you'd like to bring a dish or do a table you can also put something forward to do that I know a lot of the teachers do it we could do
154something I don't know never know like I me we're really excited 20 20 of your friends because it's packed it's pack oh it's pack we should do that that could be fun and this year we are meeting our goal of one festival at every school yeah yeah so you could travel and have a monthlong event maybe we could each commit to bringing it now but we could have a little table if we could commit to something like a little pot lucky thing everybody bring a little something you can cook Rene can cook Annabelle cook Rene could C in my house think twice about whether you're going to need electricity or not yes I agree yeah bring extension cords if you bring a Crockpot and hope the best all right thank you so much thank you
155guys so much thanks guys good night thank you all right we are not going to have recognitions tonight um but soon to come I'm going to preview a couple that are coming IQ is coming which is the radio and we forwarded um something from Chris noi who was just named to the top 40 under 40 like a big um recogn recognition yeah thank you for it was really great so we'll see him eventually because I think it's some CMS Playbook leaders too later in the spr great great and then we'll move on to our consent agenda so does anyone need to pull anything out of that I just have a question item number four should it reference one of the two districts item number four the warrant payroll CPS a well that would be all
156of them then cuz ours I believe that CPS is number four because number three is the region for clarity okay yeah you're right it should say that so we could um thank you can we have Aaron just update that after the fact on just so it's on the website so we know what it is that'd be great and I think that's it so I'd entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved and do we have a second second all in favor I all right on to correspondence um let's see you already dealt with correspondence CPS yeah I think yeah we had a tremendous amount of Correspondence we're grateful for the engagement it was extraordinary and I'm just going to bring it up I think there was one piece of Correspondence um for tonight
157sorry nope there were two one um one was about our audio from last week from the mosquito reporters so I'll just again say to Karen and to Sarah Hart if you're on thank you for bearing with us on that and then we had another item just which I distributed to you guys the solar task force information so you should also have that great and the superintendent I'm GNA Dr Hunter does not have an update for you tonight the I don't really have any updates I think we have all been been to a bunch of meetings recently I don't think I have anything pressing to update anyone else have anything pressing for tonight thing that I'll just remind all of us that next week we are going to be meeting with both the select board and
158the finance committee we won't be calling to order per their request but um we will be you know participating in some budget discussions we've um and we'll be supplying some materials for their review yeah would do clarify that it's conquered in Carlile at different points so we're all clear on who's going to be in attendance so they've only requested that Alexa and I come they have not requested no no no but but will there I believe there will be carile representative yes car will be represented let me clarify so on the 12th on the 12th I'll just say it should be select board and it will be carile the Carlile select board chair and the Carlile fincom chair and probably Victor will also be joining us he's our fin Le in Carlile okay uh so
159parisar will be there and maybe Eric dolberg might be there too so that's my understanding and then on the 15th the carile fincom is calling to order the conquered fincom is calling to order and they've asked us to be present there also they have not requested us to call to order it's certainly something if people are going and you want a called order we could do that and we post a meeting haven't been invited as a committee I think what we're there to do is answer like factual questions I don't think we're there to debate or deliberate or um you know speculate um so we've provided there specifically the select board has asked in conquered has asked for um very specific information that has been provided um and actually this the finance committee I think
160has asked for um specific information too so some some of that actually we're discussing tonight it's in our packet you guys have all had the opportunity to see those materials um so you know again I don't think this is um anything more than an opportunity to answer questions and I believe Bob and Lori are both coming as well yes and just for clarity I have not sent everything to conquered um Henry had asked for it on the 29th and we haven't met so I have not sent all those materials to him so I created that folder in the drive labeled I think it's labeled something like budget s spcom it's something like that and it's a folder within this agenda overview packet yep does that make sense so that's there and that's for us to
161discuss tonight and then the only other thing happening sorry uh Tracy real quick on the 15th where is the location and what is the time so um we're uncertain of that we're assuming it's the townhouse um conqu I believe so there was a TBD but I don't it's we'll be here in conquered in the townhouse in what they call the select Board Room which is on the second floor it's your townhouse I'm sorry square town yeah their meeting time is as you drive through coming down road which is it the one that was under construction forever the second big one on the left when you're you got it coming through both fincom both fincom will definitely be not be in that select Board Room no I it may not in the the hearing room so
162we'll get clarification and let you know if anybody wants to come it will be on Zoom also if you you know want to listen either way it's yeah we've been invited to their meeting so yes their regular business meeting which is seven okay but the select board meeting were last so correct not there isn't sadly a set time does that make sense everybody so they'll have their meeting and then we'll come on kind of at the end at the meeting on the 12th um at the which is the select board meeting and if we have and I know that we definitely have select board members on here tonight we probably fincom if we get clarification we will um send it out to you so you know time place materials Etc is it um are they
163all next year's budget Capital it's uh the request you guys have the letter it was CPS um budget fy2 Regional budget fy2 Capital FY 25 and Beyond is I'll say is um it's uh not for CPS they they've uh because we are doing the facility study they recognize um that we can't speak to a projected Capital plan anymore so would just be for fy2 for CPS and then at the region uh the request was for FY 25 and Beyond and so you do have an additional amenities building slide deck in there that I've actually been sent I've got some input from carof fincom actually on it with Victor so we've gone back and forth a little bit on maybe some adjustments and some things that they may be looking for so if you have any
164opinions or anything additional that you think that we've left out of that tonight would be the night to just say hey make sure you include that and then the only other meeting that's coming up that I'm going to hopefully attend but I have a dcl's conflict on Thursday is the commission on disability they are putting the amenities building on their agenda so it's the I think it's the second item on which is new business so I just may need some assistance if um the time runs over okay I may reach out to any one of you and I think that that's all I had did anybody else have anything pressing from from committees you Lea with for tonight no okay great all right so want discussion so I will turn this over to Carrie um
165we are going to talk about the budget book and the goal just as a reminder to everyone the goal of the budget book is to have that by that March 7th hearing I think I'm getting the date right and you we've had some information go kind of back and forth so I'll turn it to Carrie to lead us on yeah I um so I sent an email around to everyone Bob has laid out sort of an an overview of what he um expects to include in the budget book um I don't want to speak for Bob so I'm not going to um I know that uh a few folks have um asked for some other additions to be considered um I have forwarded those on to Bob we are like we can kind of use
166this time however we want we can go through each of those requests here or um if anyone wants to ask their question questions or um make their suggestions we can do that um I think from here Bob will create the document and have it uh ready for the again the March 7th hearing so uh I would very much like to discuss what's going to go in in the book um because I believe it not only uh represents the work that Bob and Central Administration does but it actually is is technically our statement to the community um because we do have that among our few responsibilities um I would hope Carrie that we could expand the conversation a little bit and not uh limit it to a book but rather why the book what do we
167want to do with it what's what's our purpose um what kind of Outreach do we want to uh have with our the communities that we serve um I don't want to just stop at the book but rather uh take take a look at uh our intent with the book what are we trying to achieve because the book that's a table of contents discussion so what um we've had so many books over previous decades that we kind of know what they look like and we kind of know what our our essential data is yeah go for it yeah uh so if you're asking me for a proposal uh I guess I'd put some questions to you um is there any plan thus far as to how we would release this well I for example for example
168uh in previous years and I'm not advocating this um necessarily uh but immediately prior to town meeting uh the school district would send out a really highlevel simple uh summary of our wonderful accomplishments and our and our necessary budget needs um and then uh people would take interest and some of them would would see seek out detail um and that detail could be had in the form of the book or uh a website uh source so again I don't know if there's any plans already in the works for uh communication with this being Central to it um I personally love the idea of a like narrative document that's simpler like this is obviously very dense and detailed I love the idea of a narrative document I wonder if we could separate the two like give
169Bob the authority to do the budget book as this table of contents and then once we have that information we could discuss what we'd like to do with it because I I agree with you I think it would be great to say I mean a budget we've we've all said a budget is a value statement let's tell the story of what we value with how based on how we're spending our money Carrie would you suggest that we would write that collectively as a committee no no the administration well I I I would offer up something different which which again I'm biased because I was part of it back then um there was a time uh for a number of years where every single department head and every single administrator was expected to put 50 or
17060 words out now they got reviewed by Central Administration and the school committee but it really kind of lifted up uh each person to say hey somebody somebody wants to hear me and what I'm doing doing with guidance uh uh they want to hear my priorities about English or my notable accomplishments um and each person got to step up and present something to uh for review had to follow a template of course and had to be brief uh but there was a certain uh uh measure of uh self-reflection at Department level or building level um that was I thought very useful and uh and also some accompanying Pride hey somebody's asking you directly for your story even though it was 50 words you know super brief um but that's another approach that uh was very
171successful and then there were times when uh there was no budget book at all and then there were times when there were PowerPoints for a couple of years yeah um so we've done all kinds of things I don't know if you've seen the actual books that we used to produce I have literal I assume so a paper we my the rainbow book no no no he's talking about the old budget book only way you could go see the rainbow you seen the rainbow books that's what I'm referring to the rainbow books I don't think they have in this building okay yeah what wait can you just clarify the rest The Notebook that was colorcoded so it was really easy to go to where you wanted to go so it was an actual binder and when
172was that that was yes exactly about roughly the time period of that 25 years ago 25 years ago probably 25 years ago oh wow wait it was 20 so that's what they did 25 well so I poked around a little bit this weekend because I'm like okay let me look around everybody's budget book and and I actually I texted you Shar and I was like where's Carla's budget book I can't find it you're like nope we don't do one Carla doesn't do one I looked at our town budget book and I was like okay this is over 200 Pages let me find the schools two pages we are literally two pages in the town budget book so I found that interesting I was just well no it we're we're spread out throughout with with capital
173and with C right but the schools it's it's very it's a very small part of it it's just interesting just a factual information and then we have our own and I I looked through you know years of ours from when we're on our website so I think everybody does it different um we've I think budget book is something we're probably going to bring to our chairs at our next meeting like there a few different things to just see what are you doing what's your experience did you talk to the Lexington chair do you want to share that um yeah so it was interesting so the Lexington chair was saying to me and I she like sort of made me think um they're actually she wanted to forward it to me but they haven't they haven't
174it's not official yet um they're streamlining their budget book and to me um because I think last year their budget book was 200 pages and they were like that's a disaster it's to too much and to me like when I think about the budget book you want it to be a document that people might be interested in if we're going to put all this effort in right you want it to be something that the people in the community might actually reach for or click for or whatever and and to and I was thinking that um you know ensuring that everything that we put in there is somehow like meaningful or interesting to the community and not put a lot of extraneous kinds of things in so I really appreciated what the the Lexington school committee
175chair was saying that that their objectives are was was to sort of streamline and and create a story that people might be interested in to your point about narrative um I'm looking at their budget book I'm sorry I'm looking at their budget book right now oh not not their newest one fy2 is it on now was was over the weekend maybe they had a meeting um yeah so um in any event I that resonated with me so you know I hate the thought of creating a 200 Page book that no one's going to look at um and I worry that 200 Page book um is not going to be interesting to people so I don't know how I'm not I'm not I'm not in a good place to suggest how to streamline it you're bringing
176up a good point that we don't have just one audience you know you know there might be I don't want to be pejorative about it but there might be budget book light for people who want to uh have a quick understanding and then there's going to be people who are in decision-making capacities who know that uh in fact Bob's office does generate more than 200 pages of detail and uh those decision makers might uh deserve the detail and all of that I think is the nice thing about for people like that is that's all on our website so you can click around and find it it's not to car's point in like the narrative form that might capture the attention of a more like casual person um so you know I think we have a
177good you know like for the detail oriented person and the good news I think is that you know we do that um so it's like how to make this document compelling so I have a very different perspective from yours I just got I think it is a really important document that we need to build up throughout the year that has Trends and data to support our budget so I do think we need to have a 10-year enrollment and then a three-year whatever we can project right we need to have a lot of information about special education Trends programs costs in District out of District I really think it's important to have that all be in one place and I don't think people should have to go poke around the website and you know Google things
178and try to figure out all these you know this is where we build this up so maybe we're going to have a light one this year but I think it's something that needs to happen throughout the year and not just have to be put together in two weeks that's crazy you know this people who build up these really you know useful budget books once you build it up it's just a matter of plugging in the data you know rolling it over after year sure that makes sense so and there might even be uh I'm considering based on what you say uh the idea that uh if the town which uh has a lesser portion of the budget than the schools can produce that level of detail are we going to be held to that standard
179well it's it's an award winner I think I I would es especially given your point of like two weeks I would I think it would be much more beneficial to do like a financial perspectus versus a budget book that tells like here's where our money comes from x% from Grants x% from State funding ex% from conquered um here's here are the supplemental here's like an overview of the supplemental grants you know like just a story of like how how do we get our money and then what do we spend it on yeah but I think we need to provide Trends to the community so they know as we're heading potentially to a financial cliff which I think is a real possibility where are we looking at where we're going sure I dis agree with you
180I I think that's a lot of work yeah but so to your point I think maybe we can start separate discussions of how to do that not like over like multiple years like it's going to take five years but to your point like you know it probably isn't going to be able to happen in you know a month so just to sort of start talking as a committee to Cynthia's Point how do we build this robust document that you know over time it might not happen this year will you know add to it next year and continue to iterate I will say that um the I do think it's important to have two separate documents one for the region one for the town because I think it's very confusing you mean CPS CPS and correct
181ambiguous what's going on yeah there are always two on the website and I was you know I think about as I'm like thinking about Bob and he's he's put out like as Court said you know a table of contest of what's going to be in there all of the things in there we've seen right now right so it's not like it's just him doing it in 2 weeks like he has access to all that yes it's putting it together and he's been working on that nice and I'm sure that you know on his computer he has all sorts of things on there I don't know what's on there but I think that um I think it's all spreadsheets true it's all spreadsheets really exciting stuff but I think that you know he has it all
182and it's just figuring out the package that we want it to roll out in but I so I gave some so it's it's a long night so I don't you know I wish we could meet again before or wish we could see it before March 6 and we do have another meeting we do we do 27th um and another budget meeting's not out of the question either if we feel like we need something then I just think we need to separate these things out like I I think we ought to let Bob run with this I think he's put a lot of thought and time into what is included in it we've given our feedback and and I think I don't think the conversation stops there is what I'm I do think it's critical to
183put the enrollment we have so many questions about future building projects etc etc how much space do we what's our you know ability that should be Oh you mean like housing projects I was like oh I'm like we don't have any more building got it yeah yeah we have NDA projections that go backwards like a number of years and forward a number of years we know what our enrollment is for the last 10 years right our actual numbers yes and then what do we have like for the next three or four years from that's I mean I'd have to go look for the enrollment if you're talking about going back 10 years it's I'm sure it's somewh what's not desie yeah yeah so yeah how we want to capture it how we want to break
184it out like do we want to no I just want to you know CPS enrollment like I said my thing CM K5 enrollment CMS enrollment in the region broken down by conquer carw okay and we have that because we publish it routinely through the year yeah that's like that's I like what you said about that so I and when I spoke with um Sarah the chair of Lexington she was saying too and we could work this into like even because we talk about it quarterly or quarterly transfers anytime something like interesting happens at you know that we see a shift and a transfer or you know sometimes those are indicative of sort of significant things happening with the budget they do pause and say hey um Bob can you make sure that this goes into
185the budget book because there's usually you know to car's point a narrative tied to it so maybe we could for next year specifically you know continue to talk about it and then for next year identify um a regular Cadence like we do with the quarterly budget transfers to sort of talk about anything above and beyond sort of what Bob is proposing for this year that we could that we could add so we could discuss that talk about it talk about whether it's worthwhile for inclusion um and then to your point over time time we're going to build up something that is easy for Bob hopefully and his team to do but um and that we all kind of agree on I don't know if that's the solution for moving forward but I think it's we
186could consider it I did see the list of things that were suggested like enrollment FTE counts revolving funds those are all things that are easy to do and we have that data and so um some of the others are a little bit more involved like getting into program Det retail and things like that um and not necessarily Financial um but yeah I do think it can be a continuous Improvement approach like we have this year um one of the challenges we still have is that um the budget's a it's not set when we first present it and that's not the number so it is a little bit of like there's certain things we can put in do early like the fleet of vehicles that's not going to change by the time we do the budget
187book but the actual budget will and if I slice it in ice ways I'm going have to do it again in two months no no no yeah yeah no I just wanted like a outline of the special education you know in District out of District what we've done with circuit breaker fy2 24 fy2 F blah blah that kind of stuff and not to get too ahead of our oh sorry court go sorry I think to your point about uh uh projections helping people understand what we know in the past and what we don't know about the future um I think we can uh mention that we've got 40 projects pending and we have uh uh big surprise and we have a big 60 Acre Site in question we have another 46 Acre Site in question
188this town could change profoundly yeah um we don't know we we totally literally don't know it's gonna happen yeah yeah we know something's GNA happen something is going to happen very much yeah I'm sorry no no no no I was going to say um if you charge you with this Cynthia if you can make a mental note and not to get ahead of ourselves this to me like as we talk about this this to me is like a perfect idea for a goal for next year totally um something that we can all work on it will commit us to this Pro like to this project again I would like to see us commit to a regular Cadence of this kind of discussion so that we can ensure that the narrative is out there for constituents
189who are interested and in a meaningful way whether that is a 200 pound like 200 pound 200 Page budget book or a 100 page budget book I don't know but um you know I think the more we talk about it that would be that to me is a really clear definitive goal that we can commit to that's tangible okay yeah Court I would very much like to hear the suggestions that came in and so uh you can consider which ones uh might be very wise or unwise and why which ones are very doable which ones are going to be a big lift um because each of us contributed our individual ones I don't know who's seen the entire list but I'd very much like to do that tonight because now's our now's our bite at
190that Apple yeah I mean we can do that the other option is just given that it's 9:00 and I'm happy to do that just the long read us a list well no cuz there some of them were quite lengthy but which is fine actually it's fine the question is I could also just circulate a list of all of the things and if there's feedback we could do it over email like not not deliberate but okay but when you say things are very lengthy but if it's reduced to table of contents language can't be too lengthy sure well then why don't you why don't you start with your would you want to just go around and add our thoughts well I'll look mine up but I was wondering who collected them yeah I have them right
191here but you can also could you could somebody just make it easy and quick for us that's all I'm asking okay so Cynthia wanted um uh an org chart um a bunch on a bunch of requests on special education including overall statistics District programming um a bunch of she kind of went through the special education questions that she wanted um I think that's it anything I'm missing on region CPS it was um fte's enrollment history she's already talked about all of these do we have any feedback I will say overall statistics is not specific and that would wouldn't do anything with that unless it was more specific which was statistics you included in your like I think there are a lot of Statistics somewhere down below special education I said overall statistics okay great and
192then court it's my only comment on special ed is we get a lot of feedback through CPAC of not making special ed be about money I just want to be sure we're balancing that messaging it is a driver I understand that I'm just trying to balance the messaging we're sending that if we put too much detail in there maybe it becomes part of maybe the programmatic and all that other thing goes into whatever this other document is going to be and we highlight more at a higher level this time I don't want it to be disproportionately heavy on sped I guess is all my I hear what you're saying I don't disagree but I would offer up this Comfort is that even with our uh in-house programs we're not a a big outlier percentage wise
193no no we're not no no it's more of an educational thing to make how you present it the mechanism how it all work you know the I mean we have program a chart you've seen the charts of the programs and the descriptions of them I don't know why we would recreate anything at this well we could just put them in we have the like to everyone's point we have most of this it's just aggregating it and I think we're trying to address the person who says why' you make me look so darn hard but people a lot of people don't understand that a lot of it is funded through circuit breaker terms of out of District costs so I mean I know it's good to bring for many reasons I get the point about bringing
194kids in house don't but just so people understand what how it all works and the mechanics of it just like a just like kind of like a a summary of circuit breaker yeah okay without numbers just a what do you mean by historical just what do we get for FY 24 FY 25 fy2 what are we projecting I think there's like 0.002% of the population who understands what Circ breaker is like that's not there it's for our elected other elected officials our finance committee people are interested I me think that's sort of her argument is people don't understand so let's no I know so that's why I'm saying if we're going to do that it has to be accompanied by an overview of what it is oh okay sorry sorry I thought that's what Tracy
195said and then you said no the actual data both both okay great I'm not working with you I'm just trying to understand you're just telling a story right this is special education this how it's funded some portion from the general funds you know you know just how it kind of works okay um got it so Court's suggestions were um some overlap FTE um revolving accounts information on the the various revolving accounts which I think might even be here already yes they are they're here the major revolving accounts we're not going to go into like the book Library fund that it's ,000 balance um but like Athletics for the region circuit breakers kind of a quasi endowment uh revolving fund um preschool like just the big revolving funds is ,000 a threshold or $5,000 what are
196you declaring the threshold to be in your estimation 5,000 I mean I we have some small things that are noise that yeah just going to add oh microphone Bob and I think so you know significant balances of $5,000 plus umly one balances yeah that'll be like 98% of the dollar balance cuz none of them empty out that's the whole purpose of over rolling account yeah except for preschool we intentionally um fully spend that one down great okay so Bob will work on this budget book for the purposes of March 7th he will take this feedback and create a budget book and then a lot of the bigger picture stuff we will work on towards collecting over the next 12 months really a budget book in its entirety is that what I'm hearing is there a
197desire to have a paper copy I don't so what we've been when we were doing them we were printing maybe 10 or 20 copies for fincom and a few extras and everything else was electronic and Bud would just do it here so not not that many of them I don't that's what we were doing cuz there were some asks we would ask we would tell them it rather request just I would do it yeah on request just it seems I think we maybe printed 10 or 15 most so will we or will we not see anything at the next meeting I just want to get my my worry about the next meeting is break the vacation and I don't want Bob spending his vacation I'm not worried about it it's not going to be ready
198next meeting there's your more direct answer I was being savier about it but it's going to be a surprise all in favor I okay yeah but you could just distribute it to us when it's ready we don't have to deliberate about it because if you have all the information now then we wouldn't really need to discuss it we would have it before the hearing right not sure how far there's two pieces to this one is there's there's individual pieces of data that support it and the second part is assembling it which is a little bit more work than it sounds like and getting it into the right order and getting a lot morees tedious than if if you say can you get this can you get I can do all those but assembling it into
199single document um and imaginate it is going to be uh because you're getting all these different sources that P I hope it's two do two documents though CPS in the region yes oh definitely definitely anything else would be very confusing yeah great but it's always historically been two documents do that two let's go a little little bit further um and I should know the answer to this uh I how do we flag what is a 6040 or 50/50 split so that people understand they're only looking carried in both books usually but I mean how do we how does the reader know that they've only got part of the answer the other answer here that's going to be what we have to figure out if we're not doing huge narratives some the I mean we know
200what the splits are we've got a hundred splits out of a yeah bazillion line items right yeah um could yeah be useful otherwise each of us individually have to figure that out for ourselves one by one we'll give that thought yeah yeah I don't know if if you do it once gets easy in the future yeah you've already asterisk your shared costs we should know what the share costs are um carile in particular wants to look at shared costs so okay yeah I see you're saying there's some there's there's there's different ways of doing that one is to say at the beginning there's certain things that are split 6040 like certain staff I'm 50/50 actually but like some typical this building 6040 there are some things where you might have one account that has some
201shared costs and some that are specific so it might not be um perfect um so one way to do it would be to kind of talk about the shared costs and what accounts they are another would be to try to flag it on an account by account level might be a little bit harder but I can I can think about that it'd be very much in favor of the latter yeah so and then it's contingent upon the reader to say oh I have to look in the other book and find the companion number and then I can figure out is it a 50/50 a 6040 and then you're you're spared all the detail of who's 5050 and who's 6040 and who's something else you simply said go look at the other book if you want
202more information on that line item full stop yeah I'll I'll give that some thought thank you okay okay anything else budget book before we move on okay amenities building is next I'm going to hopefully share my my screen real quick oh um is that okay if I share my screen share my screen I just had it open all right so everybody can see it I think our viewers at home can see it this is basically I lifted the last presentation that you guys saw on I think November 7th and we catered it a little bit towards um the asks from carile in particular I believe that conquered fincom I think that parisher was at one of their meetings so Victor did is kind of um blended it and gave me some ideas as to what
203would be helpful to both fin comps so y can you tell us what those requests were say what the requests I sure am and I actually have some more feedback that I hav It Incorporated in but I'm happy to look at that again so this is this is pretty much it's not quite in its final form but I can send it to you again and if you have any feedback from me I am um willing to take it so we all saw the current conditions I'm not going to go over that again uh these are just the beautiful pictures from last time this is the history and this was all in your packet so you have all of these things does anybody have any commentary on this history that's in here yes so the second
204bullet athletic fields were not included in the building project yep so the only thing that we lost in the building project was the cross country courts and the tennis courts we had athletic fields I just don't want to mislead anybody there's no then CC play decided to upgrade them which is a far different thing by saying we didn't have any athletic it's just do you remember what the budget was for the um athletic fields in the original project none no zero there's no budget no because they didn't want to put the budget for the tennis courts they didn't want to put it in yeah and I don't know so it was an upgrade right so but it still is the athletic fields were not so could we say um new athletic fields were not in
205the budget upgrades to the athletic facilities were not included which woulds obviously they would not be included in the building project okay yep or upgrades to existing conditions we're not includ transparent we did have a bathroom and we did have yes we should say that it was removed it was removed and unfortunately we we didn't do our deal the committee at that time understandably didn't do do diligence to figure out that we would have to add all those bathrooms yes yes okay it's where we are now just it's where we are Y and it's like whenever you do a renovation you have to come up to whatever today's code is and right but they might have thought a little harder about making that all we did was shift it and then Turf it MH if
206we just turfed it and not moved anything I but again it's like we inherited this right no no did put in the history they understand that they weren't fancy yep at some point yes yes all right and I unfortunately don't have any pictures of that that would have been helpful I'm assuming were like lol little Earth and zoom in from do you know what it looks like on the inside do you remember have you ever been in no anyone remember no no it's like the upper pict white bathrooms I don't go I know no pictures but I'm thinking it was probably similar to what LS has they have an old cinder block facility which is really all Westford has by the way it's a cinder block facility with like one bathroom in it and like
207a pullup garage okay we can't probably it definitely wasn't compliant okay so that's the history any other comments on the history page okay I'm no but just backing up to the cover slide you refer to amenities buildings plural is that intentional oh sorry no it's not amenities building oh yeah thank you that thank you court all right buing think it's Mission creep no it's one building one building let's not give anyone heart palpation yeah and again it's just bathrooms it's just our fancy word for bathrooms do you remember I was so embarrassed in 2021 we have this conversation and Jared's doing his thing like what's an amenities building like could someone review like what that would entail and Jar's like bath it was so embarrassing as my first J the commity and what would that
208be and I I don't remember if it was you or J like bathrooms I was like oh I white way to say it I guess all right I will make those changes and I'll send I'll I'll make them in the Google slide I'm not Tex have to do it all right now in the moment or could I wait could I no I can't I don't know how to do it hold on okay go back to the advisory committee one yep I seem to think around this table we discussed that the amenities building wasn't called out as a need um and if that's correct was there some other more oblique reference to bathroom facilities in the campus advisory report okay let me think about this I just don't want to get caught was established determin next
209step for uh well it was a it was so here's my you can help yep goad my recollection is the priority list was the things we thought we had Choice over there was an assumption about the amenities building but I don't know how to put that to a slide so yeah but it wasn't called out as a as a as a need no we all knew there was a need didn't make the top five List have our amenities so let's not spin let's be really careful okay okay so we can take it out all right you're you're on it live I'm editing live okay you don't want to have to defend this yeah totally I agree which is why we're doing this oh oh I can't move the slide now I can um our school
210committee goals so now this is a slide that Victor already did give me some feedback I don't think he wants this feedback but I think this is important feedback so I would look to you guys to see if that you find this important this was goal number three and it I've just stated what our goal was we all voted on it it was back in August so does anyone have any thoughts on this no need you don't think there's a need I think it strengthens our argument yeah and that was that's what he said it seems like we're sort of fishing for extra substantiation yep would anyone object if I just deleted the slide wholesale delete bye okay great I love working live okay why now this is a slide um that they wanted to
211understand why now so I'll give you guys a minute to look at this and see if we have any feedback on the why now I would only offer up a question on the first bullet do we want to explain why I.E that uh um the number of uh toilets or facilities or whatever the right word is is dictated by the seating by the fixed seating correct yeah that it's not something as obscure or esoteric that 1800 toite the formula actual you have the formula let people know it's a formula driven thing okay because everybody always say why don't you have them at Doug white why don't you have all right ex and that's the formula I would quote right out of the plumbing code that I I sent her the link great save a lot
212of conversation yeah yeah cut right to the so we're going to cut to the chase on that that's it we have the statement about the district strategic plan because I do think that that is an important factor in there good okay um an accessible portable restroom does not meet the needs of people with significant pH physical disabilities how about has not met has not met I like it I like it that standing yep um and then the last book it our fields are commonly used by the community throughout the year we have many multigenerational families in conquered car and Boston that attend our events we must provide an accessible environment for all okay it's pretty unambiguous all right risks of inaction cost escalation being the huge risk um and just for reference Westford was a
213million one in 2020 million one or million 3 something like that Weston Westford our numbers have doubled on our in five years y okay we have the ADA Compliant um situation I mean I think you want to add pluming code and ADA compliance because if the plumbing inspector here in town decides to say you're non-compliant you're going to lose control like you're but it doesn't say compliant yeah I changed it well she she's changing changing it real time complaint well no and well initially I was thinking if we got a complaint oh if you put it that way it's got to be U yeah no but I changed it to compliance I changed it to compliance okay okay she's changing live and it's not showing up on the screen so just so you know your
214changes are in there Community safety well how about uh if it's compliant ADA Compliant comma or and then you have your two bullets yeah mhm because if it's compliant those two bullets are no longer I have plumbing code and ADA compliance and then the two bullets uh I'm asking for an ore so you're asking the ore so ad because you get compliant those bullets go away or else oh yeah that's a good one Ada and plumbing code compliant or find some legal fees Force build yeah that makes sense does that make sense yeah nope I don't understand sorry I'm pling code ADA compliance and then just put or else findes that's what he's saying to put or else or or or else or else got it an or or or else for boting okay got
215it I understand got it safety um it's a little bit of hyperbole here I don't know if we need it um could could we say could we just make make it simpler um you know uh lighted access uh lighted accessible bathrooms uh are are necessary or if you leave it I think you have to say for example because there's so many other reasons it's not safe really right now yeah can wheelchairs get easily in and out of those no no no and I think the issue is so when I I read a lot about turning space and some so ad accessible I believe it's 180 degrees of turning space ada8 compliance is 360 degrees of turning space so you there's an actual measurement of what need but even then even if you have the Turning
216space it's not necessarily usable anyone um we can just say community um safety for example our Portable Restrooms do not have Lighting in them maybe if I stop the share and start again we can see it live I don't know why I can't see it live but oh sorry sorry I'm INE or make it a make it a future statement the new amenities building uh will be uh lighted and uh meet the current safety codes so but I think that's I think that's fine we're we're like jostling between the risk and like what what we should be doing oh right yeah yeah yeah we need to make a choice and so this should all be risk be risk because it's called risk an action so risk I think that uh and I think that it
217would be not be Ada comp compliance or pl plumbing Ada or Plumbing compliance or it would just be legal like legal reasons the risks of inaction are legal MH um or I don't know what exactly what is compliance costs something like that yeah mhm yeah continued violation of plumbing code and ADA compliance yeah or yeah and then for Community safety it would be like putting our community members in danger risk of injury yeah risk of injuries maybe if I take it out of presentation mode that might be why there we go okay okay there we go sorry okay so continued violation so the risk of in action or continued violation of plumbing code and ada8 compliance which could subject us to fines and legal fees and a forced bid where we lose control of the
218process Community safety all right Wordsmith let's go uh um okay I think it's not Community safety I think it's risk of injury so it's yeah you got to flip it yeah yeah make it the negative lack of lighting what lack of lighting lack of lighting yeah instead of example just put lack of lighting yeah just put l yeah um insufficient unstable unstable grounds that's the one I insufficient insufficient turning space and I think you actually technically might need a ramp to get in um like a for the handicap yeah and I'm not sure if it comes with one some that you see they have an additional ramp on it on on the portable one yeah yeah yeah it floods the area that the portable parties are in I think these two is it so wet
219yeah I think you could just say insufficient wheelchair turning great Y no keep the other part yeah on sle ground and insufficient wheelchair um Victor also made the suggestion to move the history slide to the lead slide you guys good with that sorry I'm just looking through this can enter again how do I do no just hit enter again no well I know well no cuz I don't want to no I I just going to decreased my indent um I don't I'm not comfortable with our greatest yeah I don't like it either there was a diff when I changed risk um we all live with a gap between what we Aspire and what we can achieve um our in our strategic plan does too um I think it just can be sending a message to
220our students and community that the current solution is good enough I think that's good okay shall we move on yep okay talk about the DCL that was that DCL slide just what everybody else sorry this is so picky but instead of cost cost escalation I would um no it's time just leave it okay sure yep okay okay sorry here's the DCL slide this is what everybody has got a trust you on that one what can't read it oh yeah sorry this is it's in your packet and you already saw this sorry okay what will it look like there are I mean this isn't really my finest work here but it's just a schematic of what it looks like and potentially the site the site but there are like six options for SES I don't think
221we have to give that much detail just just so they have a general idea of where it's going to be yeah it's not like it's going to be on the other side do it this way this way or this way right well that shouldn't matter cuz isn't one of the areas going to be used for concession stand well it is so we would have to once we get um a plan then we'd have to pick one like so say this All Passes say it passes at btown meetings it passes at the polls in B towns because that's what it has to do before we actually have the money to go out for a design this is just a schematic so this is what yeah think it potentially looks like but once we have the actual
222design then they'll say okay you should site it this way or you should site it this way and they'll make recommendations for then you would decide on that but there is definitely concessions in this in the schematic and when you look at all the options they they just it just moves the building around it's the same space area but it just turns it way ways but it's not like it's going to go across the field in another total area the gist Remains the Same in that vicinity does that make sense M yep on the last slide if you're going to show it it's hard to read you might want to just shade the ones that have an ameni building one color and the ones that don't another color or is it just it's just us
223that's what we did everyone but to his we did that Val you hard to see the we did that why don't you make that the headline County lead conquered is the only like we are the outlier yeah I mean we literally are yeah yeah you can't really see the shading if that was the intent right it's hard to tell col colors are pretty much the same is the outlier go with is the outlier I think that'll fit whatever fits yeah whatever fits kind of fits important whatever fits okay all right what would it look like what would it look like and I don't even know if this is necessary but I mean the point of this is it's it's a cinder block building good yeah it lets people know we're not building some Grand ug
224yeah and I will and I will say that my think that the best part about that in my mind was that AED machine because like you brought the Naran tonight it's accessible to it's not locked I and it's the naran's accessible like if anybody had a problem it's right there so we first brought aeds into the district all the nurses said oh I'm going to lock that in my file cabinet my go no actually outside your office yeah yeah front door and I don't think anybody's ever tampered with one um so I won't we asked that question of these guys too and it's been largely positive and there are cameras all over it are are your alarmed they are the ones at the high school uh most of them will notify conquered uh rescue we
225open ours car when they have the test them they've got to call them and say we're testing it worry cuz it's automatic yeah all right so that's helpful however as long as we're on the subject don't trust it yeah yeah because you always have call send somebody to call right away also we had a case where somebody grabbed the AED 20 minutes later the trainers wondering why isn't uh the rescue squad here yeah well it wasn't working that day yeah and I will say that blue light is right there I mean it's literally on that side of the stadium so it actually is great so if somebody's going to the ad it's it's like literally right there okay so that um I don't know again I'm looking for feedback I don't know if we need
226this but this just kind of gives you I mean it' be good to have Westford if they ask you for it yeah versus just giving them it okay did they ask us for several you have several uh schools with detail like this so we have all of those schools back from November but I pulled them all out with what they have why are we singling out Westford to keep in I guess is my question most recent because it's the most recent it has the cost it's most similar so just reference it that way or when you're pres I think or why you're getting this one yeah now the only trick I will say is we have been asked not to bring slides and they would like a narrative but we're going to bring we're Henry
227the select board chair has asked us not to bring slides I think Victor asked Victor asked for slides we're bringing slides and then we're going to bring slides bring slides I think it suits this discussion yeah so is everyone comfortable with that it's not his personal preference that's I know that I understand yeah so maybe we'll just we'll bring paper copies just so existing conditions I have question so you've exposed storage under bleachers which indicates that this is going to include storage but it is not well there the only storage is really like a little like I don't know if it's like a mop room or whatever St you're going to get in this I don't think there's any oh I see what you're saying is the like the but so we don't want to
228imply that we're going to solve the Storage storage problem I understand that yeah okay we can take that out we can take that out yeah you're still going to have that we're still going to have that yeah yeah so take out those two middle pictures yeah okay I'm going to try that you're not solving that problem I'm going to try that just take it out the bullet doing it I'm going to make it look better later oh no I can make it look and again I think that everybody uses under the bleacher storage everybody does yes everywhere you go you're like totally do what's going on under there and in whand what they did was they like they built like a little covering over it to protect it so like the mats for like the
229track and all that don't get wet and they can be closed in George but anyway and again concessions is nice to have but just just so everybody here knows concessions is a sink and it's electricity it's not fancy fancy so there'll be a microwave and a fridge maybe maybe maybe the current the boosters ra the current concession situation is an extension cord with plugs on it and your personal popup tent yes it is yes I own a popup tent for anyone that wants to borrow it but um they L it's there's only one source of power down there well that could be solved yeah totally okay all right any other thoughts are we good we're good okay thank you I really apologize to Wendy relli who is with us for going so late tonight she's
230available to answer question should we have them so Alexa closing out of this is that okay we're good Alexa and I went to the last solar task force meeting we have some specific asks just to talk about um you have that in your packet I'm going to see if I can find that packet but generally I I think what we need to just talk about is they want to get on the roof they want to do feasibility for the roof to see how much solar it can take that's really I think that's that's the basic question at hand okay they have removed the Basin um the other discussion that came out and you can help me if I've left anything out the other discussion that there was about the Bas in our last meeting is
231any so solar is impious surface which we talked about we have to talk about this now I'm just going to throw a few things out there and let everybody talk solar is imp perus surface if it were in the Basin it would need a fence around it so that's not something that we have seen yet they have pulled the Basin off of the Warren article so they're looking for access to the roof they're looking for a point of contact which would be Bob and I would also ask that it would just be cmlp on the roof because we don't allow anybody else on the roof so it be Bob and cmlp to bring designers in and figure out what they need so tell me again about cmlp only well cmlp and whoever like solar design
232whoever the professionals are Up on the Roof CU we can't let you know a whole we shouldn't be up there and other volunteers shouldn't be up there okay yeah oh professionals only professionals only professionals on the RO fidler on the roof professional on the RO exactly I sorry I didn't mean it as just cmlp because I think they're talking with um solar Design Associates so it would be kind of marrying all of these uh professionals together to figure out what's feasible on our roof okay yes and our facilities manager needs to be there too like they have to be in a way that doesn't impact us being able to maintain and access our HVAC units if you remember we had a crane removing a unit there and inst like you know you don't want to
233so what would be the timetable for this do we have to wait for town meeting they want to do something before I think they're interested in getting on they're interested in getting on the roof so so that they can get some type of feed feedback what you call it theying no I think detail detail detail in evaluation a plan of what's up to a plan so so in effect uh at this stage are are they looking for a formal yes um intention on our part to partner with them subject to yes they they want plan will essentially they want our per they want our permission blessing whatever verb we want to um select to pursue the roof anybody have a motion well let me we got we got action items we have it in action
234items no but it would help me in this discussion if I could get a preview of the motion well I'm going to I'm actually going to share one more thing before I'll try to write is it linked in the no no because we didn't know where it would go like you know so for example I'm not going to bring this up cuz this stuff gets so complicated like so for example one of the things that they said so when when you look at the partnership Elements which is in your packet there's what seven bullets up at the top um you know they said for example one of the things that was not a make or break was bullet number two with the acceptance of a battery so we didn't want to we wanted you know
235again I I don't that's not something I'm considering taking out um but you know we wanted to have some flexibility in the conversation tonight I think um so that if people had concerns or wanted to finesse some of these um partnership agreements so that's I think why we didn't put you know Ironclad uh language in the motion so that we could have some flexibility in the conversation so I've shared for you on the screen I'm just going to go through the bullets confirm the location of the solar site which is the rooftop for immediate consideration comments I think you should wait for the evaluation before you decide on the rooftop because to Bob's point you know you got a lot of heavy equipment that requires cranes and if you have solar panels blocking these equipment
236it's going to be real tough for you to maintain and and and upkeep a lot of that heavy equipment and from what I've seen from a distance there's not a lot of space up there you have a lot of equipment on that roof what what I meant was there might be certain spaces that we can't but like you have your space is very limited so in evaluation of of how much space you do have this is why a lot of the other schools um um have a lot of their solar in the parking lot because their roof is just packed yeah if you ever if you get close to some of these condensers they're huge they look small from the ground but when you get up there they're a good 25 30 ft yeah and
237I think that the only information that they have from that cadus report is from like almost like a Google Earth image so like they can see what's on top but without getting on the roof they can't even determine what the roof can take because they have to be physically up there then it goes back to the structure because the school wasn't designed for solar panels originally so is it going to be able to hold that weight without having some structural uh improvements so again it's it's our answers to those questions which are the necessary questions are they kind of embedded in this yeah I think the one takeaway I had was there looking for access to do that feasibility and answer everything you just very appropriately named so they can share it with the committee
238and then an iterative process happens as to what's doable up there and what's so I read confirm location meaning what can you do up there what can you do up there they have to do the cost benefit analysis yes exactly so we've visibility study well I I don't I don't want to we'll ask Wendy to speak on that maybe but um I don't want to restrict the language you know necessarily for them but you you know the way that in our conversations as as I've listened to them at the solar task force oh sorry shoot and had some conversations about this they keep referencing like the proverbial chicken and egg so they're saying to us we because these feasibility studies for example are expensive so to do the fact finding Domingos that you're talking about
239costs money and so what what they have kind of said to us is unless you give us an indication that you're amenable to this we're uncomfortable spending the money that is necessary to ascertain whether it's doable so does that make sense so so before we have to give them a signal hey you can go on a roof we can do this go figure out if it's doable and and and we we support you spending the necessary dollars to understand and do the studying to make that happen and that's really all they ask if everything works out you're going to get another yes yes exactly now because we don't have the details because you don't have well they don't have the details like they don't yeah so I think that's so that's number one there's no
240guarantees either like we did a feasibility study in this building for the HVAC and it turned out it was going to be not was going to not be beneficial so you know we don't want to create the expectation that just because we do the feasibility that it's going to be something that gets done right that's what that says right yes exactly and I think that in terms of like over the parking lot everything I've heard it's like three times the cost which to install which is why they're not they're not ready to go down the parking lot Road they're looking to start a first step I think that's financially expedient and you know given the the spending that has been in town they're they're looking to be as FR Frugal uh they're looking to be
241as financially cautious as possible um I don't think um it's ruling out by any stretch of the imagination the event the eventuality of potentially having parking lot canopies I think that will you know be something that they continue to look at but not for this year so we are really just looking for this year um giving them the opportunity to pursue a feasibility study to determine whether this is possible so that they can advance their waren articles and their plans now do you have a list of schools that do have panels on their roof cuz you know in my profession I've come across a lot of homeowners who regret anything on their roof because the repairs if you need to do repairs to their roof you have to remove the panels so now they're going
242I didn't think of that so now we're removing panels to put in a new roof and it's cating three times as much and I think too that bullet number five five five No 1 2 3 4 five sort of addresses that I think that um that isn't part of our consideration that would be part of their consideration so we're saying I think the vote tonight that we're seeking to advance is to say we philosophically support solar at the camp on the campus specifically on the roof we think we we think that's the best place for it and we give you permission to explore that um you know once they look at that detail they may determine you said oh this isn't this doesn't make sense for whatever reason whether it's roof repairs the lifespan of
243the roof those kinds of things but that isn't our purview because we're not bearing the cost so that is for I think the light plant and the solar task force to make those determinations that isn't ours does that make sense so are they are they going to perform future repairs yes absolutely so you'll so you see not only to the to the panels but to the roof oh he's right what I'm saying the future appears cuz that roof if you look at it it's white it's not have to do a much more advanced yes understanding this is definitely your concerns are quite valid it's expensive but I mean we would have to have a multi-page very thorough which and so yes and so and uh have one at Willard no middle school though um and
244that was one of the things I think you know when when Dean first um met with Tracy and and said you know we'd like to be on your your agenda in a few weeks you know that was actually the some of those questions that Domingos has brought up are some of our were some of our questions and what however I think is interesting so to Domingos just to for clarity Cynthia is correct this will start off a long process where the professionals at the cmlp and Bob and his operational team will begin if it moves forward to draft what are called memorandums of understanding so that hash out all that that detail our vote tonight is and so our vote tonight is just saying we we we authorize you essentially to move forward with the
245feasibility study if in fact later the the um memorandum of understanding that the the professional groups which you approve which we will approve we draft it right like that they they we think that they're terrible we also can say because again they they were quite thorough with this uh they write final acceptance um confirm that CCSD has the final approval of the proposed installation so let's pretend in a year from now we come and we're like Theseus are terrible you know they're they're putting the school committee at risk or you know whatever we can say you know we gave you authorization to to pursue this but now we think that there are too many risks and and and we're not going to pursue it so we do have a tremendous amount of flexibility even after
246this vote tonight and I think that's important so the way I read this is we are authorizing the light plant to conduct an analysis uh with uh some assurances that if the analysis brings forward a plan that is workable to them and workable to us we will approve uh the go forward yes um so I guess school committee for future school committee also gets tricky we don't like this be enjoying the benefits of your work from some other location uh but as a practical what is the immediate uh outcome of this uh quote unquote preliminary partnership agreement is it a report prior to town meeting and a refashioned uh town meeting article so I really think that what Dean is looking for is to be able to go to the select Board hearing and be
247able to say the school committee is in support of solar on the roof I think that is really could we ask Wendy Wendy you're here um and you've been so patient and I would love for you to sort of weigh in on our discussion and see if we've captured it correctly for our members and you agree with sort of the main gist of what we're saying before court falls asleep starts crying just kidding substitute any of our names in there all spot on what you're saying is exactly in principle what we're looking for which is your general um philosophical support and authorization to move forward the feasibility of ideally you know we would have feasibility done that's going to inform the actual financials of the proposal and validate um the feasibility and and the pricing
248ideally we want that done before town meeting for final vote um I don't know if it's going to be possible to get all of that done before the select Board hearing but we try to do as much as we could and is that the is that select Board hearing February 24th am I getting it right 27th 27th okay we have another meeting before there Monday that sound that didn't sound right though but we want to turn them loose no no no yeah I if they need us to do it tonight oh no no I'm just saying if there's more questions or what oh yeah yeah and I think we can just continue to be in touch if we have questions um or if they have questions for us and then let me just go back
249to those bullets I do the second bullet confirm acceptance of the battery as solution component to cchs campus personally I'm not ready to do that yet I don't know how anybody else feels about that like I feel like we have to look at feasibility first to see what we're talking about with solar because if it's not even say say it weren't possible say they come back and they say oh wow this is too much money we really don't don't have to go to that next step I think that's kind of a step two situation but and they've got very that's fair I mean that was optional yeah yeah we discussed it with Dean okay does anyone have any thoughts on battery uh let's see if it'll work um and Wendy correct me if I'm wrong
250there's more than one funding mechanism to make something like this happen we can we can bring in an outside party if or you can I should say yeah I think the expect is that this would be cmlp would fund the feas front the feasibility money um and if it's going to be um reasonable to proceed it would all be cmlp funded and ultimately U grayers would be paying for that and there's also money in the infrastructure act right there's the tax credits yeah yeah there's going to be a discount there'll be large so I just don't want people to be like oh my gosh another huge I mean the the Middle School L got a lot of tax credits right right it yeah it could be upwards of 25 and a half% yeah it should
251be anyway Point addressing Domingo's uh concerns which I think we all agree with bullet number three I would hope is uh something that we um interpret rather broadly that it uh is is looking at an engineering review not only from the cmlp solar perspective but the uh building the district district as well that we would want a a a broad interpretation of what scope [Music] means so um so when you're looking at these I mean I I think that we can agree with number one we're not ready to do two number three confirm the entire areas within scope I I don't love the word entire so I think until we know what we can put on there can we just leave that one out for now determine the scope determine int was to be able
252to look at everything just so we could it's I think that and again we have approval of the final sighting so I think that leaves us with the necessary flexibility obligates us nothing right so so I'm okay with it it simply obligates us to uh uh tell the light plant that if everything looks satis Factory to US based on this study we don't see the school committee being an obstacle correct exactly Point could we be later that's within our legal rights but but we're declaring a sentiment that we hope this will work okay um all right so the proposed citing that's good confirm the entire cost of engineering installation maintenance will be borne by cmlp I think that is critical that's a critical one for me anyone else yes critical okay got that one uh
253confirm all revenue from energy generation will ACR to cmlp so we will not get a an offset in our electricity costs at the high school not a direct one not a direct one check and because there we we T we did talk a little bit about this and I want to complicated I made it so complicated in their meeting and she made it very complicated sorry but they can't they they probably can't afford it no yeah we're saying okay we're borrowing our roof um provide a CCS RSD appointed single point of contact which I suggested Bob to be that person and Bob you and R obviously it's Bob but if you're going to bring you're going to bring Russ up there obviously definitely Y and then the solar task force considerations these were just two
254other things the part the partnership affirmation provided to the solar task force prior to the select Board hearing date on on February 24th so in our vote tonight I think that will take care of that and then there was just something about the drainage basin is not under consideration this year and they would like to retain the Basin site for future consideration so just a discussion about that before we move to a vote I'm comfortable with with that because uh they're going to tell us if they want to reconsider it um and right and we have the right to say you can't study it because they're going to have to study it anyway if they want to reconsider it so we'd be right back to where we are now so to let this stand I
255don't think puts us in any Jeopardy I assume it doesn't prude us from doing anything with that space no it certainly does on it no right that's true but if we if someone gave are going to be well right that's what I mean it's like oh right and if we accept for example the trees I just feel like the the the thing you have to name is you got an impervious surface problem there that I don't even know if it's doable so right but again to car's point it doesn't just because they retain the right to consider it if the existing conditions don't change that's fine and the answer is yes you do until you don't EXA yes you do until you don't seriously no that's that's very apt no I what if you know
256what if we had a donor gave us an enormous donation would would be wonderful and we wanted to put a greenhouse there because it's on impervious surface or something else there or the we have the 250th trees there that brought that to us we have to accept anything that goes there anyway right right with this that or the other thing you know any any so yeah I'm I'm okay with all of this so if I'm hearing you correctly Tracy we we are comfortable with all the bullets except for bullet number two which is about the battery just because it's the most confusing part and they said it's not a deal breaker one way or the other yeah okay so when we take a vote we're going to be really creative with their motion language and
257does the vote then get word Smith into anou a partnership mou well I don't even know if we're at that point yet I don't think so think we're there yet they just want permission to no I don't think we need it we agree with this in concept bring us what you got when you complete I I agree yeah do you would agree I would agree um okay so we'll deal with the vote after really a this is really a jam this reminding me of 2020 in our 5 hour marathon meeting my son said to me today he was like when do you think you'll be home 7 I said oh no I think N9 and then he goes remember Mom when your meetings would start at 5:00 and you'd be in the dining room and
258they wouldn't end till after 10: I'm like fortunately I do remember that yes that's what it is um okay I will just ask Wendy do you have any other additional comments or thoughts or do you think we're in the right path what you're needing no you got it all covered great great thank you Wendy thanks for coming all right the last item materials for February 12th meeting with the select board those are in your packet you have uh a full folder of those if anyone has any questions on additions or anything else now is your time thoughts are you good with me sending all of that along cuz I have not sent anything yet and we did um let the select board chair who did request the documents on the 29th that we just wanted
259to be able to show them to all of you first and send them after so so what else are we sending besides the presentation uh let me open up the packet everything's in that packet do they really want to discuss all those things I'm kind of confused yes they do actually um the only things that are additions there were memos from Bob that were in there that deal with the change the regional budget um there was their original request is in there the amenities building um I think that Cynthia that they really just want to reserve the right to ask questions about a wide variety of okay budget related issues I I did put the campus advisory report in there because that gives background uh we have the budgeting in capital from July 20th when
260we met with the conquered finance committee let's see I did put the amenities building the other slideshow from November 7th the CPS Capital that we saw on January 6th The Debt Service schedule Carlile had asked us for that before so that's in there on the amenities building okay there's also the presentation on May 7th from the campus advisory committee I'd like to have more than less uh the superintendent budget for for fy2 on CPS and the region the OPB funding schedule's in there and I think that covers it you should just turn this into a book is that the revised funding schedule I believe it is I'm going to just double check the date if you could just take a look at that it says I think it is oh wait this comes from the
261June 23rd audit so no that's probably the wrong document oh no I'll I'll I'll check okay which one that'd be awesome the um get question from the town about it the opep schedule oh okay okay so that'll come out and get swapped in and you will forward all of this to yeah I'll wait to hear from Bob and I will send it along these are all documents that we've seen we've deliberated in other meetings um and again I think but I'll say it's really hard to go back and find all those in the meetings that we had them and it was a little uh project that took longer than I thought so it's kind of like the budget book it's in one spot you have it all together yeah okay any other questions on that
262no nope okay all right we're on to um our action our action item so solar at cchs we don't have any motion language in there I would be very grateful to any member that would like to um craft a motion or I'll well I I could entertain a motion to accept the partnership proposed by the solar task force with the exception of the battery U before you second it uh you we're really not accepting a partnership yet um except for purposes of a feasibility study okay so I think we need to make that a little clearer so would we make a motion can't we just make a motion to say we approve the uh solar task force to do a feasibility study as as outlined uh uh and discussed this evening as discussed this evening
263with the exception of the battery right yes move that you want to put that all together I still want to learn I still want to learn about the feasibility of the battery right yeah and and yeah I don't think now time to do it so we feasibility of the roof and the battery yeah because we don't have to say yes or no to an ask whol oh we canart this if we have to but we won't know if we don't know withdraw anything motion them to feasibility study and that but just cuz I know we had this problem in carile we had people spend a bunch of money to do a feasibility study on a building and then they came to us and said can we use it and we said no yeah they're like
264we spent all this money why didn't you come ask us first we would have told you no to the GetGo yep no implied in our approval is a sentiment that if it all looks good to us yeah we can I second would you care and to their point why would they want to spend this money if we're going to say no so we at least have to say we're open to it um I'm a creation to um allow the solar task force to do a feasibility study on the CCH s campus second okay any additional discussion all in favor I opposed okay thank you to the solar task force for all your work on this and then we have one more vote to approve the uh I know look at you guys packing up what
265are you thinking sorry this is an important matter we might have discussed it great length and no I'm just kidding um we have the school calendar that you have with we we saw it for the first time last week right Lori would you have anything else to add to that I don't great hoping you feedback last time so I'm hoping you're voting it and just a reminder that we did give the feedback last time and I will reiterate again that the half days will be added later at cchs so I would entertain a motion to approve the 2024 2025 school calendar for conquer public schools and Conquer Carlo Regional School District so moved second second any further discussion no all in favor I thank you for the work calendar and yes can can I ask
266you a quick question about this year's calendar did we have a snow day here no no okay that's like we did not yet we did in Carl but I didn't think we did here oh we had like a you're further north no you had a it was like it wasn't it was yeah itn't it wasn't weather it was something a p pip bust yeah I don't pay any attention that has nothing to do you okay oh we just had no in the building period oh it count you know they would people call that a snow day day yeah yeah that I will adjourn the region thank you m very much everybody I appreciate your [Music] time