Concord Carlisle Joint School Committee December 20, 2022

001um all right so sorry thank you everyone for your patience we um obviously had some technical difficulties so I'm going to call the Concord school committee to order all right um so I wanted to start out with just a quick um or My Equity turn your volumes all the way down sorry for everyone in the room to bear with sorry guys so before we started this evening I just wanted to note that last week um a threat was made to Dr Hunter's personal safety and um Dr Hunter we appreciate your extraordinary dedication and tireless public service to our community um I think you've said this before but being a superintendent can be lonely and I know it can also be thankless so on behalf of the school committee I wanted to take a moment to

002Simply say thank you um we also wanted to thank um the police officers in our community um we value their critical partnership especially because the safety of our staff and students is always our top priority um and finally I guess to just want to say we wish you and all members of our Concord Carlisle and Boston communities a safe and happy New Year um so thank you um so with that we're going to move to public comment which I do apologize should be on our Concord school committee meeting for our policy um it was an unfortunate oversight um on my part which sometimes happens when we shift our Concord meeting to the front of the evening so regarding public comments 2022 has brought us significant amounts of public comment and thankfully they're finally not about

003covet um so I just wanted to make sure everyone knows we value the contributions of our constituents and we encourage it appreciate public comment um whether it is appreciative or critical um but one thing about covet is covet kind of upended all of the ways we do public comment um we were moving to stay-at-home orders being on Zoom but given that we've been back in person for almost a year with no interruptions we have not gone back um on Zoom our meetings have been in the public but they do still remain hybrid so given that we are going to go back to our long-standing policies on public comment and the practices that have been like in use forever so if you are in the room um you will see um an attendance form and this

004blue form if you wish to make public comment um if you could please fill out this form and drop it with the chair um and because we do remain on hybrid we will continue for the time being a practice of going between comment in the Roman comment on Zoom so with that um I know we don't have a lot of people here this evening but um I would move to open public comment for the Concord public schools and you have one form right there and I do have one form if there are any other forms if you could bring so I will recognize Katie Chapman of 81 Upland Road for public comment I like this this works nice and I will mute I'm fine standing okay okay so my name is Katie shagnon I live

005at 81 Upland Road in Concord and I have two children that attend Pharrell Elementary I also to work at two local school districts as well I'd like to start by saying help set frustrated and saddened I am over the events that have occurred at the previous school committee meeting and again with this meeting with complaints about banning books here in Concord Massachusetts in 2022 I am privileged enough to be surrounded in this community by people who are open welcoming thoughtful and accepting to everyone who passes through this or or calls this wonderful place home I have not personally experienced the hate and discrimination and intolerance that I've seen and heard at the previous school committee meeting the fact that those qualities have presented by members of our community leaves me shocked and outraged I expect

006my children to have the opportunities to learn about all walks of life through their education and our family experiences research has shown again and again the more diverse the population is which includes race disability sexual orientation gender identity and socioeconomic status the more creative and better Solutions the community names to solve the problems our schools are here to teach our children how to think and learn not what to think and learn that education must start from a place of kindness and respect and at the very least tolerance that people of people that looked act and think differently than yourselves our job as parents is to parent our children you have to work together with your children so that you can make informed decisions about what they read here watch as they grow talk to them

007be present and have a better understanding of what they are learning at school and how it relates to your family ideals also as parents we must be open to learn from our children and change our perspectives on life and the world as it changes and evolves around us so is that our community can be the best place available for our children to live and Thrive lastly I would like to thank our school committee and our outstanding teachers and staff for their continued dedication they're welcoming they celebrate and they love each child that walks through their door as it should be um also just Dr Hunter thank you so much for being part of our community and I am so sad that you have not gotten the continued support and I hope that our community continues

008to come together and support these people who are giving our children the opportunity to learn from growth thank you thank you um seeing no other public comment in the room or online we are going to commence our discussion about a potential Middle School building warrant article um we've talked about this a couple of times here um I don't know I don't remember who was able to hop on to the building committee meeting on Thursday but on Thursday court and I and other members of the building committee began a process where we put together a list of possible deductions from the scope of the project should the estimates and eventual bids come in over the 110 million that will be on the Warren article um I can take you guys through those they were on the

009agenda overview as well um which I will pull up but they essentially were the following items and the approximate amounts um the athletic fields they represent one and a half million dollars in project scope and cost um the associated Landscaping that totaled three hundred thousand um the wood look beyond the ceilings in um certain certain areas of the buildings they were about 190 000 uh the bleachers which totaled about 84 000 and then we did discuss the outdoor classrooms we don't have an Associated cost with that yet so that really isn't something I think we can entertain for this discussion but um I'm looking to all of you guys to hear your thoughts on whether we should consider putting um a warrant article on the table um if any of these you know my thought

010I'll just kick off the discussion my thought is if any of these things are considered um like deferments and not Cuts I'll personally say like the wood look ceiling I think could be a reduction in scope the athletic fields that's probably a deferred cost I don't think we're going to open a school without athletic fields um but anyway I open that to you guys that was sort of what we wanted to talk about today and and we have the ability to put a warrant article out there um should we think it's wise pass discussion on to you all said to raise hand it's very mild Court [Laughter] very passive sure do I need to unmute oh goodness yeah this is gonna be okay great let me just walk through um the process the warrant process

011so like we approve we vote on this this evening let's say it passes we get the bids from my understanding we can then the bid comes under the things that are on this list go away we can remove the warrant we can pull the warrant or you're missing once yeah that's what I want to make sure I understand the process yeah the first step would be we would submit this for it right the select board would have to say this is a good idea or it is not a great idea so ultimately we can put forth the warrant but ultimately the decision whether to advance its time meetings would then become in the hands of the select board um the reason we have to do this today is because the warrants are due January for

012us um so and then then your timeline begins to make sense then after that if these estimates come in or and the eventual bids come in below which again if we're into discussion I'm confident I see no reason at this point really why the next estimate um would come in above what the 60 estimate came in at only because economically things tend to be in our favor um so then if that was the case we wouldn't even bring this to the floor of town meeting it would just sort of go away but because things have been so unstable my feeling is if we can do this and do this responsibly and get things done for a cost we know as opposed to some you know I don't know we don't we just don't remember the

013future so yeah as as much as we can control things I'd like to try and control that that makes sense oh yeah um I've got a few things to uh share and also ask about about this uh proposal but first on a uh technical angle and I think it is a follow-on to your your question uh we have a January 4th warrant deadline what if we were to be in need of uh additional support for this project presuming that we get the new 7 million it becomes 110 which becomes what it really becomes with borrowing um if we needed more after that do we not have the option of a special town meeting within the town meeting that makes the January 4th deadline not a a hard and fixed deadline for us because that's not

014an uncommon practice to have a special town meeting inside a town meeting so so does that take this looming January 4th off uh off of us to give us time to see the 90 estimates come in and even the bids so I wanted to have them so I want to I want to put that question forward and I want to share my opinion which is I I don't want to take a stand on this proposal because I think it's premature um and in no particular order just a few things about it um I sat through the select boards meeting last night and one of their comments was uh the school committee has had two Capital planning meetings with us and on neither occasion did the school committee even discuss this with us this is quite

015a surprise was was the inference but that's because it doesn't meet a two or three threshold Well they claimed it did and they read the they read the language so anyway I just want you to know their opinion is over 4 million yeah that's why we did their position and again you know we can debate this with them I'm just I'm just reporting this part I'll give you my own opinions later but um what they'd uh I forget which member it was but they read the uh uh the tier language that refers to uh 5 million being an aggregate number meaning if you break apart a uh project but the sum total uh is 5 million or in excess that then it's tier three that's their interpretation so just we should be aware their interpretation

016is different than yours on that one so we'll have to what would be yes that would get us over the 5 million uh 1.8 plus 110 million I think was interested in the Middle School building project I mean that everybody knows that that is the two that is the main project so this is so it's still we're in the 1.8 so I guess the middle school project to town project you're not a school what capital project yeah but I'm not sure that this is a debate we should be having I'm simply reporting to you that their their opinion was this was uh a surprise that they hadn't seen it coming and there were two members who spoke uh uh to it uh and were not favorable one seemed to be middle of the road and

017two didn't speak to it so I think it's contingent upon us if we were to consider this to consult with the select board um I think that we want to hold off because uh we are not in need of it yet we do have uh the opportunity to work between now and January 4th or even Beyond if we put a special town meeting warrant article in front of the uh select board and move that forward um I'm I'm concerned about the continued added costs what we heard at the building committee meeting on the part of our select board chair was let's be cautious about how we put forth brand new articles if we don't need them because we don't want to signal bidders that this town will simply throw a warrant article after warrant article

018after warrant article that they don't have to sharpen their pencil when they're working with Concord I think you remember that those were his exact words but that was clearly his meaning and I think this would do just what he warned us against uh I think we have to remember that we've had the support of the select board and the fincom up to this point um I don't want to do anything to jeopardize that I think 100 million dollars 110 million dollars is a very very big ask uh what did we we see in a communication from a funding agency that supports uh concordians in need one out of 12 families in this town today are food insecure we're asking them to take on an additional burden for 30 years of well in excess of an

019extra thousand fourteen hundred I don't know what the number is but we do know that uh if we can get the seven million dollars added to the 102 we've got 110 and the real costs will be far in excess of 200 million dollars so 110 million dollar school is a 200 million dollar Plus cost to the town those are real numbers those are borrowing costs and I think we have to reckon with that and realize that we want a fantastic school for those teachers and the kids who pass through those three grades and we'll get it but I don't want to jeopardize something that is going to be a magnificent 110 million dollar school with this very quick move to bring more warrant articles to the table now if we do find that we are

020in need of of additional money and we don't want to saddle conquer taxpayers with yet another warrant article for this single project that would further jeopardize Public Works needs which are very real Public Safety needs which are very real we've heard those discussions with the select board the community preservation Act is not something that gets added to uh people's uh tax bill and they've already funded numerous times Fields they've even funded private privately owned projects so this year they didn't even have enough requests to meet their their their available budget and we could make that timing work for us if we wanted to but we're not there yet we don't need the 108 million dollars yet or everything that it signals to us uh and and to the community about our efforts to to cost

021manage I spoke to the 110 the plus 200 million dollar in real costs that doesn't even include yet the solar we know now what we didn't know a month ago that's another 10 million dollars and just because it comes at us in a different bill doesn't mean it's not a conquered rate payer that's paying it it's on us and some of us uh in this town are going to have a very difficult time perhaps I'm not um but I think our job as a school committee is to protect the long-term interests of the school and that means protecting the interests of the people who support it and show that our wants and needs are balanced with their capacity all right uh maybe and and yeah I'll I think I can finish up right now I

022think those are the the essentials um I think that if we need this we can come at it at a time that's much more appropriate and uh wouldn't uh perhaps send the wrong signals to the the town the entire town that we want to keep behind this project thank you what do we say to the community next year when the fields cost 3 million um that's what I get nervous about is it which is the more responsible path I fully recognize what you're saying but I just get worried that then we're going to be back here we could be back here in a year in 18 months asking for more money so that is the only thing I'm seeking to prevent and again I'm kind of bullish on this I don't think we're going to

023need it but you know my feeling is do you do you do you work with the devil you know so to speak the costs that we'll get today rather than roll the dice and say things could get work I don't know you know like I I'm I'm risk-averse in this scenario um for all the reasons you state I think I get nervous is the town gonna have an appetite in 18 months for fields that cost 3 million or um and and and don't get me wrong I agree we're we're working to get a meeting scheduled with the community preservation committee I think there'll be they'll be monies there too again this is make no mistake this is the backup plan it's not the plan um and that's what I wrestle with okay um so I

024I definitely feel as though it is the backup plan and this is we can always withdraw it I think we're confusing the matter to have a special Town meet we're going to have a special town meeting in February we're going to have a town meeting in April a special time May within a special town meeting the logistics of this is very confusing for people the town has already voted it's 103 million dollars the town has said yes to they've already said yes to the increase of their tax bill I mean I think that we have to recognize that the voters have said yes to that we're going back looking for additional money to finish the school I've lived in this town through every single School built and I think that the high school what do

025we do it took us eight years to actually we actually still haven't finished the high school the roadway is being paved this summer so we are deferring those costs and make no bones about it I mean it's Fields it's bleachers it's you know and maybe we don't put the bleachers in there I don't know but my feeling about the bleachers is I think every school should have bleachers but I do think that this is the wise thing to do is to have a backup plan I I was not at the rest of the select board meeting last night so I'm not exactly sure what was said last night but we are the school committee and we're trying to get this school built and have it be done the way that it should be done and

026have it be finished so I think that having a backup plan is something that we should we should do there we go um so with this borrowing be within the levy or outside the levy so we're basically tagging on almost two million dollars to the taxpayer so we don't know that we would have to discuss that amount and vote on that no no but so it's within the levy whatever amount right so that's we don't have a separate budget that's part of the Town budget we're a department of the town so we're adding schools or the building or whatever you're referring to it as an expert and then the breakdown would be this 1.5 or so for the fields and the 300 000 yeah okay well so I don't think CPA is going to be

027available for uh you know Landscaping it's not good it's right I don't think so but they would be able to tell you I'm of the same Accord I think we should hold off and ask those Blackboard to call a special town meeting within the town meeting which requires 45 days which would put us well into March where we would have a lot more information and I think that's the responsible thing to do I nobody at this table would want to open a school or the have the community without Fields there's no question about that but I think we can hope for the best and then if we don't um if if it's an alt delete um we'll have to deal with that um pragmatics differently what's the difference like so if we advance this article

028today it's just there we don't have to call a special time meaning I don't know if they're Associated costs with that if the bids come in below one or the estimates coming up below 110 million we wouldn't Advance the article so like from a very like literal standpoint what's the difference I don't like the message it sends that we're to go ahead and assume it sounds like yes exactly but we also have the message that we send to the community that they want us to Advocate we've heard that laborator that the community wants us to Advocate to get this building built and to get it built right so I think that you know one more time in the office visit the Optics of the select board in the same time Community like I think we

029have to just think about you know what what is our goal our goal is to get everything built and then to get everything done I mean I mean well that's Michael yeah I mean I think we have the same goal we just might come at it differently yeah that's fine you know could we advance the article and still do our due diligence sure I mean is there any harm in the advancing this article tonight we can always withdraw it give it a moment the last place we just wouldn't Advance it this way but we don't withdraw we just don't get up on the floor uh my my feeling is like similar to what you just said I I think that we ought to look at every possible option we should be talking to CPA I

030mean why not explore the idea of a I've not heard of a town meeting within a town meeting why not look into it but at the same time not lose the opportunity now to have this as a backup um my I I've said before I firmly believe that we have a chance now to build this building right um I think that we have an obligation to the students to the teachers to the community to do that and our moment to do that is now so I I hope that when these bids come in um that it's unnecessary and we can withdraw it and um and move on but I I think it I don't think it would be responsible to not have something on the table to do the things that are necessary now I

031agree the wood the wood panel ceilings would be a beautiful way to enter a building and I think entering a building I think our Architects out on one of the calls it's an emotional experience I want our kids to have that but if that isn't out of the cards like that's not a deal breaker but to me fields we have to have fields and I personally believe we have to have bleachers you can't have a gym without bleachers but um that's that's where I stand what uh if uh the school committee were not to move this forward tonight and I'll note the building committee hasn't even come in with a position on it and they're the ones who are actually responsible for this project and they're as committed as we are to seeing uh this

032school uh if we're it we're not to be moved tonight it doesn't go off the table it Still Remains as a option for us in fact it remains an option for us there could be a heck of a lot more realistic and accurate with none of the potential downsides because we're going to have a better number in the in the very near future so if we simply throw a 1.8 million dollar solution at a problem that hasn't been defined yet I think it makes future efforts to come at a problem if it does exist uh more difficult for us I don't think we gain any credibility by just throwing this solution at a problem that doesn't happen but we always don't need to do it now is my point [Music] it's 45 days prior to

033the April meeting that's your deadline am I correct it was raining and and if you look back over the town clerk's annual records of town meetings you'll see it littered with special Town meetings they happen all the time they're they're frequent more years than not yeah actually yeah so so it's not a bizarre move on the part of the town to do that No in fact some some towns have two Town meetings every year um so that they don't have special Town meetings but at any rate uh I would prefer not to have to take a position on this tonight because I think it's unnecessary um I think the if we don't move on it I don't think we're signaling to anybody that this school committee doesn't want a new Middle School I don't think

034there's any danger of that whatsoever um I really don't don't think we're going to jeopardize the project right well thank you guys bring this together um the projects right so the um the prior year projects we have I'll just run down what they are um we don't I think um have any indication that we're going to be over budget on any um we anticipate potentially being a little bit under budget on a couple um so we have the Alternative Energy research project on Alcott the feasibility study um we have some carpet tile replacement going on in the elementary schools to throw eru replacement at 660 000 that's a large item uh from prior years uh don't have any reason to think it's going to vary much from that um to replace all the ER used

035there um around which um is now up and there at the row I don't know if pictures have been shared yet or not but um so we saw it uh last week um that 55 000 comes from capital a portion and that's funded by the ptg um the Willard Fields have 106 000 allocated towards that for irrigation and um well drilling we have the 50 000 each at Peabody and Sanborn I know we've spent that some of that for health and safety uh items for both of those older schools and um at Ripley we have um some of this is going to be deferred to next year the HVAC upgrades is 294 000 and another 46 000 uh towards the um the project here you're installing the heat pumps in the pods uh 210 000

036for Paving the parking lot and sidewalk replacements and 140 000 for flooring at Ripley which is significantly uh it's partially complete we'll have the more work being done over the break um so that's 210 for the parking and 140 for the flooring Ripley so essentially all the year funds are committed um the the ones that will carry forward to next year are the ones that relate to the Ripley HVAC that will be needed to go towards that project in fy24 thank you any more questions okay um one thing yeah so this is another you know kind of interesting thing that this 900k is not like our budget is part of the town's budget it's part of the Town managers budget so I kind of always thought it was part of our budget but it's hard

037to hear this Legend from technology [Music] so actually all here even though we're highlights I think we can just vote um all in favor did somebody read the emotions so I said a vote to approve the CPS Capital plan Tracy in that sorry yeah I moved to the Concord school committee will to approve the FY 24 capital budget in the amount of nine hundred thousand dollars and to further approve the accompanying graph warrant article language for town meeting approval second that now and just for the minutes and I just think Aaron um all Congress public members are president and Aisha is also present sorry so he's working now it is all right so all in favor aye um all right so we have 15 minutes before our hearing I am going to move to put

038the Warren article on the second half of our CPS meeting when we vote on the budget as well if everyone is so inclined so that we can at least have a 15-minute break before the hearing does that work sounds good yes there's dinner just because we're going to be here you're joining us so I will adjourn I moved to adjourn the Concord public school committee I don't think you are Jared you're going to read it oh yeah we're staying in session but having a break for the break okay yep a recess to be convenience to reconvene in 15 minutes at 6 pm thank you guys and you can take us you can mute the whole room now thank you good welcome back or welcome us back everybody um at this point I would um open

039like to open the hearing the public hearing on the Concord public school budget and with that I will turn over to Bob Connery thank you good evening um so I am just so uh people aware we did present an initial budget for CPS Concord public schools on December 6th um there are no changes to um what was presented on the 20th uh however I know this is a public hearing we're going to go through all the slides uh again in the event we had new listeners um so I'll Dive Right In I'm going to project this on the screen so uh just uh to summarize um our our budget process um this is going to look familiar um we have a zero-based budget process we build the budget from the ground up we reevaluate each

040line every year we don't necessarily just take something and carry it over the next year we do re-evaluate uh its need and its importance um the budget's built by principals and administrators um also with the support of the department heads particularly in the middle school and the high school who do a lot of work on the supplies materials that are needed to support the curriculum today we are at a step in the process the open hearing where we present the school committee to present the budget to the school committee and we will be sharing this with uh with Town officials um now and as we move forward um at the same time we have the town budget process uh moving forward uh in the town of Concord we the guidelines um are issued by the

041fincom and we work with them kind of understand what their constraints that they communicate and we communicate what we see as the school's needs so this is a parallel process and then you know we're at a point in time there may be changes in new information that comes to light and um we'll uh that will happen as more information comes forward uh this slide shows our enrollment Trends over fy18 to fy22 you can see it's fairly flat slight slight decrease one thing I will comment on is though though there's a slight decrease that the needs that we're seeing for students some significant needs um are a little bit more proportionate uh across our student body than than they were in Prior years so that's kind of a challenge amidst the slight enrollment change we uh

042we have per pupil expenditure data that's shared by the department of Elementary and secondary Ed and we're sharing this I feel like it's contextual information that's that's useful to look at um so you can see Concord Carlisle and Concord we're slightly above the midpoint of our peer districts um and these are the districts we Benchmark with for various purposes I've also listed the state totals there as well um I think this is a little different than you might have seen five to seven years ago where we would have been a little bit further to the left in both districts think about this one yeah I'm happy to just reference you've heard a lot of these strategic objectives and initiatives they are what Drive our budget those are always where the priorities come from and making

043sure that we're focused on the efforts to make progress and I'll just highlight the four major categories of Student Success mental wellness deib and learning environments and I think throughout the budget there's a lot of effort to support those and we're grateful that we're able to sustain that and and move the projects forward so this is the top level view of our budget uh it's by the Desi 1000 function this is the view that we look at and we look at our quarterly actuals and the categories I do have a reference slide in the back that um it kind of lists what's included in each category as well um so and I'll be going through in detail more of what's driving um each of these uh buckets but you can see the um you know

044the other school Services is a fairly significant percentage increase teaching and instructional support on a dollar basis is is kind of the main driver of the 2.1 million it's 1.6 million overall we're at a 5.08 percent increase versus last year's budget and there are a few things contributing to that um and I'm going to go through those in the next slides uh our key drivers um and I've done this for um uh our key driver for the teaching and instructional support the 2000 level um it's a 1.6 million a little bit over 1.6 million increase or 4.8 percent over the FY 23 budget a 319 000 as support staff including uh 5.6 FTE increase for special ed tutors and assistance this is really driven by meeting student needs um part of the dollar increase sauce

045this also includes contractual increases in anybody that's Advanced a step as well supplies and materials to support curriculum are part of the teaching instructional support budget uh that increases 5.8 percent 78 000 increase we've seen some price pressure um from vendors um worked to resist the increases they proposed however this pressure still exists and we have a 5.8 increase versus prior year our contract Services uh decreases 82 um and this is really an offset to we've hired a physical therapist so there's an additional staff position that used to be outsourced so it used to be a contract Services cost um so those those two offset each other but the contract Services category is down 82 000. um and um our CTA salaries are up 1.3 million 1.345 million a 5.5 increase and I'll go over

046the next page what that is comprised of uh 2.75 or half of the um 5.5 increases of cost of living increased contractual increase in the CTA contract in addition to that there's steps in Lanes uh for teachers that have advanced either their education or a year of experience um we've added positions uh for and these are really driven by each of these well the physical therapists I previously referenced isn't necessarily really an additional expense it's just that there's an offset to the physical therapists and Contract Services the added positions are bcba and um that person is on staff now and is to meet significant needs we have across our special education programs um and we have students that are currently at Peabody they'll be moving up they're in a intensive learning program at uh Peabody

047will need that program at Sanborn when sixth grade students move to seventh grade um you know this might be an example of one thing that in a single building um might be an expense we potentially could avoid um the longevity scale um a change was was made effective in fy24 to bring these CTA contracts uh into parity with the CCTA contract in terms of longevity not all the 72 is just to bring it into parity some of that is including teachers who got onto longevity scale for the first time it also includes the some teachers coming off a longevity scale so it's kind of a mix of everything but the main driver of that is the is the contractual change okay retirements are factored into our budget however we did Factor some of these into

048last year's budget but they didn't occur so even though we've factored it into this year's budget we're not getting all the savings this year because we it's already in the Baseline um that we had for fy23 um and we increased the professional contingency budget slightly to forty thousand from twelve thousand so that's another Factor so all those contribute to the teaching instructional support increase of 1.6 million other school Services um a little bit more straightforward there's a few key main drivers it's a 9.4 increase 277 000 um we do have a nurse that was previously contracted uh service um it's an additional FTE for a one-to-one support nurse um we have bus driver salaries the 57 000 represents seven percent overall uh relative to the total cost of Transportation there is an additional uh route

049that's in there as well um so but most of that is contractual increases Special Ed Case transportation is up eight percent forty fifty four thousand the next two relates to Transportation as well so you know the supply chain pressures um and Fuel and energy costs are driving both of those 52 000 for fuel um and hopefully we see some stabilization there um we didn't get too aggressive or too conservative I think we tried to strike a balance in what we budgeted there there's some opportunity that it could be uh better there's some potential it could be higher but uh it's the best estimate we could make in transportation supplies and maintenance we do have some buses that are aging parts are getting harder to get and they're getting more expensive um so that's a combination

050of the Aging but also just the supply chain challenges for maintenance and operations it's a relatively minor increase of 3.5 percent especially considering that utilities is up a hundred and nine thousand due mainly to um the guidance we received from cmlp regarding um rate increases the rest of our our line items were very limited increases despite inflationary pressures fixed charges is a is a decrease there's two two factors driving this 58 000 increase for property and School Board liability uh policies um which incurred in part due to some lost claims history um we also have an offsetting so while that's increasing we have an offsetting reduction in early retirement and sick time buy out of 142 000 those payouts will be declining in sunsetting as those programs wind down we do not have any current

051um or exist we're not proposing any programs this year in the future so this will eventually wind down to zero and then out of District tuitions we've talked about this quite a bit in um previous uh school committee meetings in other forums um the most significant contributor to our increases are the 14 rate increase for private private special education institutions um the state operational services division uh presented us with guidance that that was going to occur um you might recall you know I said that we've communicated with the state we're hopeful for some relief um we haven't received any communication yet a lot of districts um Express similar sentiments that we did this is a lot for us to absorb in one year I don't know we're still hoping we we see um and get

052some either some type of additional Revenue support or expense offset but we have to budget what we know and this is what we know right now um so we've factored the 14 increase in um and you know that contributes to the bulk of this 251 000 increase overall and again most of that's from the private school increase we do have on the side we have a slight increase in the offsets per circuit breaker and Ida uh you can see the amounts on the slide but it's 15 000 in total um another thing we talked about last week I know the school committee's heard this but do have significant variability on this line um out of district tuitions for any school district is one of the most variable lines student needs can change significantly and out

053of District tuitions can be can be expensive you can have students move in and out of District so just as a point of reference last year's budget we had a 603 000 reduction in the FY 23 budget from FY 22. so this year there's a slight increase this this can happen um it does make budgets a little bit uh it would be nice I'm sure the the finest Kenny committee and select board would like it to be leveled and um but we do have the bumpiness um that uh School budgets have that town budgets might not the next slide is um just an example so when you think and hear about um out of District costs going up um it's important to uh remember that we've brought a lot of programs in-house and um we've

054basically got those programs um fully operational full of students and we've realized most of the Savings in Prior budgets the benefits in our budget um through for example last year the six hundred thousand dollar reduction we've received those benefits it's not necessarily reflected as a decrease in our budget going forward it's more of a cost avoidance and this is an example of two programs in District how they're staffed what the total in-house cost is compared to what it is outside of uh out of District uh and um you can see this the cost avoidance of approximately 1.7 million um so again by having these programs we're keeping students in District uh which is also best for them um and if it is best for them to keep them in District we're saving money at the

055same time so um just wanted to highlight that uh so even though we're not seeing year-over-year budget reductions we're still avoiding some significant costs um so we looked at the Desi uh Department of Elementary secondary dead kind of account structure this is just a different view of our year-over-year increase just at the top level of what salary increases versus non-salary increases it's a 4.6 increase from a salary perspective including salaries across all different positions in the district and this non-salaries is 7.6 increase in total 5.1 5.08 to be more specific um in the non-sowary key drivers are the tuitions that we just talked about energy utility utility related items um you know we've seen that in our own personal bills 161 000 the property liability insurance special ed transportation and there's an offsetting uh reduction

056in special ed Contract Services which it does impact the salary account but here it's a savings in the non-salary on the salary side our key drivers are teacher salaries it's a 5.7 increase or 1.4 million um 688 000 of that is the 2.75 contractual cost of living increase 386 000 is for additional ftes that positions we spoke about earlier the bcba the uh the BT the one-to-one nurse and the special ed teacher the um the one in red is the only one that's not currently um here now that's that would be an addition next year the other ones have um we've discussed we've needed to add to meet student needs or we've um offset contracted services the longevity payments is uh we talked about earlier as well as to bring the CTA scale in line

057with the CCTA scale um and then the remainder is uh various things steps in Lanes retirement assumptions and replacement cost differentials the non-teacher salaries is a 3.8 increase and that includes contractual increases in additional tutor and assistant positions and those are offset by the Sick and retirement program uh 56 percent decrease from previous years so as we move forward those amounts again will continue to decrease foreign level View at the at the school level um you know most of the you know drivers that you know I've kind of looked at this at the the Desi level but just this is just to share how things look at the school view um as a reference Esser funding so our Esther funds are starting uh we're in close to winding down we do have this year and

058next year where we have some significant Esther funds that we'll be utilizing uh primarily Esther 3. um you can see 450 000 close to 451 both this year and next year that we anticipate using for Esther 3 uh sr2 and the related American Rescue plan act Ida funds will be spent down this year there's also as a reference prior expenses for FY 20 to 22. and the next slide shows how we're spending the Esther 3 funds um we have a counseling position at Peabody for two years uh special ed teacher for our language based program for two years we have summer school programs that um we have budgeted for two uh you know if we can you know it'd be nice to to get to be able to use some of that in fy25 we

059have the summer uh there where we can spend um if we're able to carry some over um the required mtr's contribution we don't have any say that's a required piece when you have professional uh mtrs positions like the counseling and the special ed teacher you need to contribute that and the instructional materials um is one-time purchase items for culturally proficient materials the deadline for this grant is September of 2024 which is early in 2025. um so these school year positions can't be funded by it with this deadline again possibly if we can we'll try to carry some up to 372 000 into the summer of fy25 um but we're not sure if that'll uh we'll be able to do so at this point and that's it if there's any questions happy to entertain them anyone

060want to start well thank you Bob um yeah um I really like the way you presented it it's so clear and um no nothing but good things to say anyone have questions on our budget I've got a couple Scott too I've got a couple of questions I'm curious as a public hearing do we open this up we will we're going to do our discussion and then we will open it up because I figure the public might be informed even by what we have to say thank you okay uh can you speak maybe Lori this goes to you professional contingency can you help me understand what what that means that was the uh the the increase from 12 to 48k a small number yeah a few years ago we established a line item that we openly

061labeled as contingency for any needs that might come up whether it be primarily Staffing is was always our mindset whether we had enrollments that required an additional section or things like that um you'll see we had it at 150 000 at one point last year to get to guideline we took almost all of it in that proved to have some ramifications of the budget work we had to do to get through to open school for this current school year so we would like to see some of that reinstated because of where we are with guidelines and other needs right now we haven't bumped it all the way back to the 150 we're coming with a more moderate request but a twelve thousand dollars contingency line is it helpful for staffing needs and things like that

06240 would at least be a tutor um so that was sort of the month so and you could tell other contingency monies that weren't labeled professional if we had indeed well so that's somewhat we had to do this this year was to look where we had other other options um it's nice to know you've got a spot especially in the summer as you evolved through the summer and the unknowns play out okay thank you let me turn to Insurance um I I don't know if we should be disappointed that we became uncoupled with the the town I don't know if there was any uh discounting because of the volume when we were aggregated with them for insurance but uh if if part of it was claims related does that suggests to us we should be

063doing anything about uh risk avoidance uh mitigation that we weren't doing prior we did have um we did have my risk advantager come on site and visit our buildings um we can partner with them and and get guidance I do think that they provide useful resources um for example they give you some winter tips you know you can follow and look at facilities you know preset prevention so I do think working with them is helpful they're um I think one of the better resources that we have from an insurance perspective what I don't know at this point um again I've been able to dig into a lot of things but what I don't know is whether the rates that we were getting as part of the Town were just an estimate and then when we

064actually uncoupled and look at our separate assets whether the reality of what our real price was showed up so I don't necessarily think it's that we um had a detriment of separating I think that there may have been some inaccuracy in our allocation from the town coupled with the claims lost history um so that's that's more so I'm assuming MIAA looks back do they see patterns and then they look at current right facilities and operations and look for potentials yes okay yep good and some losses will will fall off the radar their loss history at some point uh request for after the holidays on your school summary for you um where you list out the schools we've got the fiscal 23 requested budget I think that actually was the approved budget um followed by fiscal

06523 uh requested FTE which I assume is approved it was approved as of July 1 with some changes of necessity can we at some point in the near future get your fiscal 24 FTE on that same table it's on the right side well there it is forgive me okay looking for it next week very good at me okay thank you yeah reading my mind okay uh and then finally sr3 use of funds slide uh the additional retirement monies are those relative to the positions on this slide thank you that's what I assume okay okay they're specific to those positions yeah any grant money that you use you have to carry the retirement for the positions that are in the grant so so we usually try to avoid it in this case it made sense to

066still do it perfect thank you yeah whichever the acronym is at the town it's only for me from uh we have uh at the region we did I think we have we do have a policy um yeah I believe so yes yeah they split the region good point okay okay sorry for that good thank you appreciate going through it again yeah it's good for us yeah do you want to open it up to this or comments on anything you've heard regarding what Bob just presented and I will look online and see if there's anybody there so if you're online use the raise hand feet we can stop the stranger here and we have Matt Johnson hello so first question I have is is this budget present my name is Matthew Johnson 21 Winter Street in

067Concord I'm a member of the select board with speaker on behalf so uh first question is is this presentation that we just saw available anywhere I can't seem to find it linked from the agenda do you want anything okay we'll link it tonight Matt no problem okay the second question uh is how does this budget that's as shown relate to the finance committee's guideline for CPS uh so uh Matt um just give me a second I have that in a memo I wrote to the school committee um the guideline as I recall was 3.3 percent uh the difference where we are right now between what we presented in guideline is 776 000 and change um that's where we are so the your bottom line increases how much remind me uh 5.08 um you mean as

068you're presented tonight yes okay and so yeah significantly above the guideline yeah um and then the third thing is just the increase in ftes it was quite eye-opening number of ftes with the declining enrollment um so I just wondered in the benchmarking data that you have do you Benchmark in ftes per student or anything like that it just seems like um there's a very large number of ftes with the declining enrollment yeah that's a great question most of them are attributable to the new special education programs we've actually cut sections at the elementary schools the last few years because of the declining enrollment when we bring in these intensive programs they have special Educators plus a pretty pretty broad range of support Personnel so almost all of it is those programs or the supports to

069those programs but we could break that out if if that was of interest to folks and we do Benchmark against other districts certainly yeah just curious where we fall you know we've been above other districts in high more students per adult we'll certainly keep an eye to look at the most recent data that's available okay thank you um just uh Matt the uh the agenda that's online has a link to the presentation I saw the link to the Capitol presentation and I clicked on that and I also clicked on the one for the report uh you know that shows the objectives for the school but there's not one for the operational then the title that says public hearing it's not it's right attached to that okay that's a hot link which normally it isn't on

070our agenda uh oh so hold it public hearings no I really am still stuck I can't okay I see action items three approved Capital plan there's a hyperlink there I see one down below cheer liaison's a superintendent report but I don't see one yeah and I just downloaded from the town website oh I see it's on the school website linked to the gender we posted there so that's I see okay well I don't have that one all right thank you thanks man if anybody wants you want the December 20th meeting here thanks um any other comments uh for the hearing I'll wait for the CPS chair to come back to close the hearing them it's a good idea all right I'm going to close the CPS here all right thanks Bob thanks Bob that was

071great all right and I think that with that we're just waiting for our law members who are here I think they're outside thank you appreciate us programs they'll just look like one of you know sorry all right so we'll conclude the um hearing thank you guys are Tracy here to did it um and I guess with that okay great [Music] it'll be seven better a lot of moving parts tonight yeah they put they went into conference room three is that you should know the hunt quicker than we thought just in case um no I did not I went to I everyone did a store because at this point it is 6 37 and I would like to call the link to order and for the minutes Aaron all members of the region the president and

072uh you should think those are also present so thank you okay so before we open up the hearing I just want to acknowledge that last week there was some threat to Dr Hunter's personal safety Dr Hunter we appreciate your referred your dedication and tireless public service to our community I think a school superintendent is definitely challenging it's stressful it's also rewarding so we thank you for all the time that you dedicate to our students our staff and our fellows so thank you and with that I am now going to open up the public hearing for the Regional School District so Bob welcome again thank you I'm just going to share the slides thank you yeah you can she can see that there's also the Giants okay um so we just went through the um the

073budget process for CPS it's essentially the same uh in many regards here um again just for the benefit of our Carlisle members attending we our budget process is zero based we build it from the ground up we do re-evaluate each line item uh every year we don't necessarily carry over items like um in many places where budgets are just increased a certain percent uh but a thorough evaluation is done by our principals administrators and our department heads at the middle school and the high school who look at the the curriculum materials and software um the guidelines process is something that happens as well with the town of Concord they provide guidelines for a regional budget and our town CPS budget and we're in communication with Carlisle we'll be meeting with them in January um talk

074about their budget we've actually had a preliminary offline conversation just to introductory with the Town Administrator um and so um where we are now is the open hearing we do know that we'll receive some more information as we move forward and some feedback and we'll we'll work through that and update as needed going forward foreign slides um really the cchs is the red one um which is relatively flat you can see over the past five years uh per pupil expenditures um this is with our peer districts I'm actually not sure if we benchmarked with Carlisle but I listed that since it's one of our regional members so you can see our um her people expenditures relative to the the group and we are slightly above the uh the median of our group foreign yeah I'll

075just reference these quickly because you're very familiar with them it's the four categories from the strategic planning process which as you know we've just renewed and are in the process of updating um but these have held and they do Drive what we bring to you for requests in the budget in this case mostly level service while we look at how to expand the usage of what we've had for funds so it's a pretty extensive list and I'll just name the four categories again which fit to the high school as well as the K-8 budget that we just talked on so Student Success mental wellness deib and learning environments and we're excited about where we're going to go in the next five years and you'll continue to see these be refined and tweaked this year and

076then brought to you an upcoming budget discussions and so our just um at the top level our regional budget and before I go any further the school committee is seeing this on December 6th it's slightly different uh from an expenditure standpoint um I'm just going to summarize what the changes were from the last time you saw the budget we assumed one additional retirement um actually we've reduced the contingency forty thousand uh whether how that materializes whether it's retirement um we basically reduced that forty thousand um and we increase Chapter 70 funding it's in the revenue slide it's not in these expenses um so the Chapter 70 Revenue we attended a webinar and we are like we're thinking that we'll be able to budget at least 50 000 which is what we changed our Chapter 70

077forecast from our last presentation and you'll see the Chapter 70 later in the presentation I just wanted to highlight what the changes were so overall we're at a 3.48 increase uh a million 269 917 versus last year um you can see the the main drivers by category are teaching and instructional support and uh fixed charges um and there are some offsets as well um those are the the the main drivers and we'll go through each of these categories like we did with um the CPS budget uh Administration is actually a slight decrease and and that's uh partly due to reallocation of some costs from the restructuring of the metco program staff um we actually have more staff um but it's not in the administration line um anymore it's in teaching and learning teaching and instructional

078support is up 4.4 or 869 000 over the last year um 727 000 which is the vast majority of that is increases in CCTA salaries uh 2.75 percent of that is the cost of living increase in addition to the cost of living increase their steps in lanes for teachers advancing their education or their experience years of experience foreign salary side is 7.2 percent increase that includes um it's 211 000 includes cost of living uh plus um increase um experience Factor the steps uh and there's two point ft 2.8 FTE increase um for uh tutors and and assistance in special ed programs overall um we there's an offset of 140 000 for a reduction in the professional contingency from 150 000 to 10 000. other school Services is 123 000 increase or four point four percent

079over the fy23 budget uh and that's driven uh mostly by the regular Ed Transportation increases and uh the case special education transportation maintenance operations is uh an increase of 3.6 or 73 000 uh utilities is uh one of the drivers our buildings and grounds maintenance is another driver um there's contractual increases for maintenance and custodial staff so there's some fairly um small limited increases in other areas despite inflationary pressures so um I think the 3.6 percent um it was was kind of a contained increase or fixed charges it's up 496 000 or 12.9 from last year a large portion of that is health insurance increases 269 000 or 18 percent and you might recall this from last time the main driver of the increase there's a few factors one is the nine percent projected escalation

080in premiums that we're anticipating um that will be charged by the insurance companies in addition with the change to Blue Cross Blue Shield we have more participation so increased participation levels are contributing and there's an increase share by the district on certain plans in alignment with the town of concord's offerings retirement retiree health insurance increased slightly as well um and the retirement assessment increased 120 000. um we did do some research into that and um do not anticipate it changing um and the last item is the property liability insurance we now have a separate policy with Maya instead of through the town and um our increase was 88 000 that's something hopefully with with time and experience um perhaps in the future we'll see some normalization there and perhaps a decrease and out-of-district tuitions the

081the the top line here is misleading um so even though we're we're decreasing 2.7 55 000 you need to look at both the gross tuitions which are increasing by 22 percent and the budget offsets for circuit breaker and Ida so um we are getting more funding circuit breaker increases when you have uh significant out of District costs some of those occurred actually um they started to occur earlier which is why we're seeing the increase this is also being driven by the funding for circuit breaker now including Transportation that's well it's being phased in over time so our revenues um for circuit breaker and Ida 706 000 are offsetting what would otherwise be a 669 thousand dollar increase so um it's a 2.7 or 55 000 decrease overall and looking at this again at the top

082level um separate from the Desi categories the salary and non-salaries 3.6 from a salaries perspective and 3.2 from a non-salary perspective uh 3.5 percent overall the increases are on the non-salary side the drivers are the health insurance premiums the Concord retirement assessment property liability insurance and case transportation and then on the flip side that the reductions or offsets are Debt Service decrease uh Transportation vehicle replacement we do have some leases ending in the out-of-district tuition's decrease that's the net number for out of District tuitions foreign driver is the salaries 764 000 for CCTA 4.8 increase we also have the non-teacher salaries which include which is 245 or 3.6 percent increase um the bulk of the CCTA increase is the 2.75 contractual cost of living increase there's some step in Lane advancement and there are limited

083retirements factored in and one of the retirements is in a I believe it's science or math where we typically need to hire an experienced educator highly qualified to teach those subjects so we do not factor in hiring somebody with less experience of saving budget savings um we produce the contingency as an offset in the second retirement program payouts are decreasing as well so those are the offsets on the salary account side excuse me sorry Esther funding um the Esther funding is a little bit more limited for the region than it is for CPS you can see the numbers are a lot smaller um and um the these grants were funded um based on Title One percentages and we have a little more significant Title One um component uh percentage of students and CPS that we

084do in the region um we are going to be using spending down sr2 and the arpa Ida funds this year and about half of the sr3 similar to what we're doing in CPS uh in the second half of Esther 3 and fy24 these positions are supporting a reading specialist for two years summer school programs and then we have the retired mtrs contribution for the first position listed that the program uh Grant deadline is September 2024 which is early in fy25 um so for Chapter 70 I talked about that before the um projected increase here is 66 000 or 2.1 percent we had previously projected a sixteen thousand dollar increase again based on um the webinar we attended we are and and the data we have on student enrollment we anticipate it a bump there um

085chapter 71 Aid um we budgeted what we've already realized um in terms of an FY um 22 to revenue um so we're very confident in chapter 71 Aid and interest income with uh bank account rates higher than 0.1 percent we're going to earn a little bit more money um so we've had a significant increase there 265 000 overall um and again those are based on actuals and Trends uh and chapter 78 is based on uh projection and uh benefit of student Opportunity Act funding you know excess and deficiency offset is leveled to FY 23 at 300 000. so of course the towns are interested in the impact to them and what their assessment will be this slide summarizes our um at the top you can see what our expense budget is 37 million eight eleven

086oh ninety eight we have Revenue offsets um and you can see going down we have the Chapter 70 71. these all serve to offset the expenditure budget and result in lowering the amount we need to assess the towns the total that we'll assess to the towns is 33 million 251 830. and you can see the two amounts uh respectively for each town are 25 357 846. in 7 million eight ninety three nine eighty four those represent a 1.58 increase for Concord and eight point three seven percent increase for Carlisle um the the the fact that they're not um even and they're different increases is really driven entirely by the percent of students shifting from a slightly basically there's more that the 23 percent that point seven four percent that Carlisle is getting charged is more

087than they were getting charged last year based on student enrollment at the high school uh so it's about a one percent maybe even slightly more than one percent uh change and that's on the entire budget so that has a significant impact on the assessments um when we look at our assessments the town of Concord likes to look at what they are without the impact of debt um and so you can see that uh conquered the increase is 2.39 without the impact of the debt which is we have declining Debt Service and for Carlisle it's 9.22 percent the guideline for the town of Concord is built on the assessment comparison without debt their guideline was 2.4 percent so we're at 2.39 percent we're below guideline um and the debt amounts just shown at the bottom uh

088as a reference the amount the uh the impact to taxpayers whoever is a little bit uh less and that's the bottom amount when you do factor in The Debt Service decrease it's 1.58 to Concord residents and taxpayers and 8.37 to Carlisle residents and taxpayers excuse me are excess and deficiency we projected um we projected being almost level almost exactly level to last year within um almost a thousand dollars um we um had read favorable Revenue um to what we budgeted and we had budgeted to use 300 000 um the combination of those leaves us against at one million 672 oh 68 which is 4.6 of our operating budget we're legally permitted to carry up to five percent so we're fairly close to the the maximum we're allowed to carry and that's it is there any

089questions foreign I have a question I don't think any of you are going to be able to answer it but I ask it anyway because I'm a peach like that um so I feel like I have some of the same concerns like that that Matt did with respect to um additional FTS and this is sort of umbrella not you know for everybody but I I do see and can fully intellectualize that it's also tied to the escalation I guess if you will of like a cute student needs that are not just you know minor um do you guys in your professional capacity like run across I don't know conferences I don't know wherever you might be professional um any discussions about where we see this trend do we do do do to people who know

090see this trend as continuing to escalate do they see it as something that's being tied to covert that we might sort of start to see a decline or you know because I think it might be worth it for all of us to understand like is this the new normal of like what we're going to start seeing with respect to needs and the demands and pressures placed on schools or you know might this cool off so to speak anyone no no no one wants to touch this one but I do think it's kind of important you know I and we do we are talking about it in all our circles for sure I know certainly the superintendents are I think there's a combination of things happening here so I don't think it's one answer I think

091yes there's pandemic impact and our kids are showing the signs of that and the academic and social emotional skills that they're growing and catching up on but there's also this other pronounced special education piece that's happening and I don't have the answers to that I think we're much better at diagnosing and knowing what services provided so much of it is good news for kids where we were potentially unknowingly underserving kids or not having the right etymologies identified and write deliveries in place but that is probably the biggest driver in terms of just FTE related that is the biggest driver of the Ft needs as we look to service more and more complex students part of the 14 year percent increase you're hearing at the private out of districts is they're feeling the same exact need

092to be sure they're adequately staffed with the right support staff I know we're having that conversation on the case board which I'm currently chairing case is going to be presenting revised tuitions that we're going to have to look at not a 14 we don't think but the needs are similar and those out of districts are trying to take complex kids that we're not able to keep so their needs even are are growing I don't think there's a quick turn coming um I think the needs are are very very complicated and isn't one specific answer and I think they were growing before the pandemic I think any of us in education for decades would say the needs of kids that we're working with Now versus the ones we started with our in our careers are significantly

093different and I'm still processing are we just better at naming identifying evaluating I think there's a piece of that and I think there's a piece of the world has shifted there wasn't social media and technology in the late 90s early 2000s when we were in classrooms initially that's all added and our lifestyles are different like there's a perfect storm of of things happening here some of it good outcome some of it very challenging so it's a great question and one we're all going to be talking about for a while I think yeah yeah I think mine is a bit of a follow-on to Alexis um at a high level um the question that comes forward is are we with our declining enrollment small with our ftes not so small and you know the increases are

094we also uh calibrating more properly what it means to bring in these industry programs did we underestimate uh needs for those industry programs and the the costs associated um and a second perhaps related comment is if so much of the budget increase is out of our hands acute needs sound kind of sacrosanct can't touch them got to deliver contractual obligations can't touch them got to deliver then it seems to me this Administration this school committee should be talking about where are the efficiencies that we can carve out with what's left after acute needs and contractual increases I think a certain segment of this town would love to see this school committee in this Administration dig in a little deeper on that before we bring any of these to a vote so I'll answer pieces of

095that I think Bob's shared a really I think clear slide that we are still if we're only going to talk fiscal and not student needs we are still saving money with our in-district programs there's no question millions of a year so we can keep fleshing that out I think the Simplicity of the slide speaks for itself um and the population of kids we're able to keep you know we're trying to figure out what our capacity is I think that's the current question but for every student if we don't service them in District they're going to go out of district for well times the money that we're going to spend in District um in terms of digging deep this is a completely zero-based budget we do that work on our side of the side of the

096house to bring to you as tight of a budget as possible it's been really interesting to hear Bob's feedback as we push through zero based and at the end he's like wow there's really no fluff in here and I said right that's exactly the point we are reallocating constantly we don't come with new asks for new ftes and yet we're doing new things in programming which we're going to keep talking to you about we really have dug quite deep there is some resetting after covid because we were saving money when kids aren't in school full-time there were savings um and we're readjusting that we've used up those inventories in our our leveling off but um I guess if the committee is asking for any specific questions we're happy to talk through the processes on our

097side with the Department chairs and administration especially at the high school the department chairs do a lot of this work now and that's been a really value-added process across the board any other questions from the table and we are at guideline at the region in Concord Carlisle's got a lot of discussion to be had and we name and recognize the eight percent increase over there is extraordinary and significant and want to be part of that solution so and we'll go over there at 12 says our meeting yeah well if it looked like a school committee it was not faced with an up or down on the administration's first recommendation what would it look like and I'm asking my fellow members if the school committee were to invest more time with the administration to see if

098we could achieve uh some efficiencies that would bring us closer to a guideline for CBS and reduce the eight percent for Carlisle because I think just an up or down on on this recommendation maybe doesn't show our best work I don't think it does personally we've got more time can I vote with the number right with the number can go down or the variety this type of comedies so you know so we can do more work we do have to learn the numbers I wonder too like and maybe I'm intellectualizing it wrong I'm curious as to what you guys all think like the way I sometimes approach the button maybe this is like wrong or showing too much of my cards like there's a part of me that says like where when we vote on

099this budget the way I intellectualize it is we're saying we recognize this is what the superintendent and the administrative team are saying that they need are do we accept that and then of course there's like ensuing negotiations I don't know if that's the right word but work that is done afterwards that says you know you know when we have to get to guideline um you know last year for example we voted on the budget and then still did like to your Point Court like look for more efficiencies continue to discuss and debate it um so I don't think one precludes the other I think and again that's just sort of the way I look at it do I intellectually understand this is what the recommended budget is recommend it like then knowing that there's still

100work to be done I don't know I'm open to others we made some changes uh with uh Revenue projections we changed made some changes with contingency but I don't call those uh significant changes I call those good fortune that fell our way and uh there might be opportunities to do more I'm certainly open to more discussion what I won't do is compromise what our students need to maintain level service and to provide what special education needs so I don't know tonight I don't know if we've got specific categories to look at in the future but I think that is the budget we brought you and we're always revisiting and revising and looking at new numbers um but my driver is what the schools need and collaborate with the towns and I think to that end

101it is worth pointing out at least on the Concord side because you guys haven't gotten to it level service I believe was calculated by this finance committee to be three at least at Concord I don't remember the region um three point seven one percent so we are not they're not asking for they're recognizing that if we meet what they ask it is not a level service budget I think was that was part of the conversation I don't know several spin calm meetings ago and then that was when perishare was doing the spreadsheet and all that but I do remember a number of 3.71 as being identified as level service the guideline came in at less than that so we are grappling with something that would be a budget I think anyway that would not be

102a level service budget well and I'll just to point to the point made of how we got to the number because we had some adjusting to do after the debt was adjusted at the Concord side we took risks rather than taking from kids and that means we dropped the contingency number so we have less money to use of things unknown to us come up and we upped the revenue without having seen the state's Cherry sheets so those are the debates that's what we did last year at CPS and it was really hard the way it actually played out we took risks that came to be and uh I don't think we want to continue to operate in that situation that's partly why and I don't want to talk too much CPS in this Regional section

103but that is partly why the CPS numbers is high so other questions there yeah since I've been here the due dates for budgets yeah further along right here right into some where right I mean yeah this is pretty much the old normally yeah so going I'm just wondering going forward like is this always this cat is now stained with the Cherry thing yeah yes yeah and they're coming out a little bit later this year right with the governor yeah so they have to set work within the numbers that the state gives them permission to increase usually it's two or three percent and the 14 is the difference this year so if the part that's if the child stays in a certain placement we can pretty much predict that is when placements change or new placements

104come up so it's not it's not the year-to-year increase that's the hard part usually this year it is it's the movement and shifting of placements or addition of placements that's hard right now so and you can correct me if you've heard otherwise what I've heard is we're going to need to front the 14 and if we get any additional relief it'll be on the other side like circuit breaker work so I don't think we're going to see a decrease no but well they uh from every indication they're going to take the 14 percent why wouldn't you yeah I will say commissioner Riley spoke to that very specifically on a college superintendents last week of they feel there's repair work to be done there that the out of District settings have had really big challenges in

105gaining and maintaining the qualified staff they need for the most challenged students that's true and uh all the other increases that we work to with the towns to absorb they've had no they've had two and three percent so he he really supported what was happening he heard our ask for some relief on the big jump in one year but he reminded us they're all our kids and um we need to talk that way right yeah for the yeah yeah oh yeah so um well our at the region yes supposing experts yeah all right any other questions from the table this is a 3.9 um increase that gets you to guideline does that include the right buffer that you were talking like avoid the risk taking that you that you did last year it feels comfortable

106right now with what we know um because e and D is healthy circuit breaker's healthy we've gotta what did we end up at a hundred thousand contingency there's a contingency line there that allows for maybe an additional staff of something unexpected one additional staff so that feels much pretty solid so thanks for asking yeah we do 16k the big safety net there is the the pulley the full circuit breaker it's like a million dollars I mean I'm having that safety net is important at CPS it's I think we we had the ability to carry over 800 000 we only carried over 400 000 change so we don't have the full circuit breaker carryover at CBS um but circuit breaker can be used for anything circuit breaker can be used for special education right other questions

107from Michaela okay so at this time I'll entertain questions from the public about the pros proposed FY 24 budget so if you would like to ask questions you can come on up to the table and state your name and address or you can raise your hand on Zoom just open that up and Matt Johnson good old man hello so I guess the most eye-opening thing in this budget for me uh is the health insurance increase so first of all it didn't really pop out anywhere near as much in the Concord public school but it's a that is curious uh and then the second thing is this 18 increase is above anything that I can find quoted out there uh in you know on the internet anyway in terms of rate increases it just seems extraordinarily

108High you did talk about an increasing uh percentage burden of the district for certain types of plans but I know that the town has been proceeding in that Direction and has been moving more and more of its population to high deductible plants which is a consequence of the tax regulations I mean can be win-wins for both employees and for the employer and I just wonder how what rate of participation do the does the district have among its employees in high deductible plans and is there any you know effort to to move them there that could then I think reduce the impact of having what is a a better more Progressive policy of of a higher percentage coverage um at the same time so Matt we we I before I started we had an open enrollment

109um it was the town and the school ran it jointly um so they received the same information in open enrollment um I can tell you that the the rate increase wasn't 18 the rate increase free forecast was nine percent and um you we are our own we have a very small Network that we're part of the Minuteman network with some local communities so what you might see with broad uh different carriers out there doesn't necessarily apply to us um I know that we the reserves the Minuteman program has um aren't what they were in the past um so that's a piece of it the additional enrollments it's really not that many it doesn't take that many to add up to a significant percent um it's about the district portion is a little bit more than

11020 000 a year I think for for one of these plans um so um what what struck me we can certainly look at the participation level what struck me when I came here was that our benefits number was pretty small because I came from a district about a third the size and our um our premiums Insurance costs weren't that much different than what we had here so I think what we're seeing is that we've had very low participation rates and we're seeing a slight increase in participation combined with um with the nine percent rate increase and we'll get more guidance on whether that becomes nine percent or eight percent or something different but that's the guidance that um that we have now um and if we find out something different we'll certainly look at that

111okay yeah I would just note since we've offered the high premium the high Premium plan we've definitely seen more uptick of enrollment there we've worked really collaboratively with the town um and sold that as best we could and made sure that it's been available so we've seen that at the region as well for sure um I do think you're seeing some adjusting what's interesting is we get feedback a lot and I know most of the school committees heard this of lower splits and I think we're seeing with a plan change and a little higher employee offering we've we've had again not a lot but a handful of people switch on to the plan that maybe hadn't taken it when they first were employed so there's a number of variables going on there so what about

112the distinction between the public schools uh changes in the budget for insurance versus the regional districts right so the CPS Insurance numbers are carried in the town budget so we're just not even seeing them there Carrie would have that information yeah okay so that's why it it seems like a tiny difference there versus here but this is one of those areas where you know we were talking about level service and you know here is a place where gosh if we could get creative and find a solution you know you could take money out without taking out service so essentially yeah thank you anyone else on Zoom in the eyes hey I am going to close the hearing thank you all right so at this point we're going to move on to public comment and who

113else is engaging every reminder we have assignment sheet outside with the wood forms outside and there's lukewarm used to be part of what we did here before pandemic so we brought them back so as a reminder this is a meeting in the public and not with the public so the school clinic will not be responding to any comments so if you'd like to speak we could state of blue form to me or all the blue forms if you'd like and I will call on you to speak and you can state your name and address before you speak we will go every other we'll certainly bring you first and then we'll go on to zoom you'll have two minutes and we have a 20 minute time period as per our policy so Mrs Anderson will be

114my time keeper and up first we have Pat Brewer and if you could just come on up to the microphone here and state your name and address and you will have agreements I'm Pat Brewer 132 Wright Road you know what now this is fine Pat Brewer 132 Wright Road I was not able to be at the meeting on December 6th there were some disappointing things I heard and I would like to respond I'm aware that the novel Ivy Aberdeen's letter to the world is being questioned by some community members as part of the curriculum as an educator and private tutor I have read and discussed this book with middle school students additionally I have supported students as they completed classroom assignments relating to the book and classroom discussions I would like to commend the administration

115teachers and staff for presenting the students with high quality novels that Broach topics pertinent to middle school students with respect and sensitivity I believe this fictional story allows students to see themselves in the curriculum and provides them with an opportunity for thoughtful and tactful discussions thank you all of you the staff the teachers The Librarians for your caring concern in helping all students feel that they belong thank you and now we will go your name and address sure hi everyone my name is Joyce degrief and I live at 1400 Lowell Road in Concord I'm speaking tonight both as a representative from core which is a local organization of community members organizing for anti-racism and also as a parent who is part of a mixed-raced family with kids who are currently and were previously in the

116Concord school system I want to publicly commend the school committee for its encouragement and ongoing support of this District's deib initiatives under the leadership of Dr Hunter and her administrative team as the school at the school committee meeting two weeks ago I heard parent statements that equated the work of deib with what's known as critical race Theory and a fear that it's doing harm to white children while I've never been to law school I know enough about anti-racist education to state that this is a falsehood diversity Equity inclusion and belonging May indeed ask us to think critically about our own lives and the life experiences of people different from us and race is certainly a part of this work along with other marginalized identity that affect how our children are treated but there's nothing theoretical

117about the pain but the kids in our schools experience regularly as a result of who they are on the inside how they look on the outside what their learning differences might be or whether or not their family measures up the upper middle class standard of our town the lens of deib is meant to see all people recognizing incidents of bias prejudice and discrimination and implementing changes so that everyone feels safe and valued as for this work harming our white kids that is mind-boggling to me I can attest that my two older white children have never been negatively affected by learning from my two younger kids of color what it's like to go through this world with brown skin we as white people have a choice about how we want to receive anti-racist education with shame

118and defensiveness or with gratitude for the way that it broadens our minds and instills empathy the work of deib is crucial for the education of all of our kids as students and as human beings for the most vulnerable it can be life-affirming life-changing and in some cases quite literally life-saving this work is long hard and sometimes even painful but I believe we can do hard things together and I thank you again for the role that you all play in helping our schools to become a place that's rooted in authentic relationships and Trust rather than isolation and fear thank you wow that's three minutes to the second joystick green if you practice wow online and it looks like we have Meredith Stevenson so in rigorous hi I'm Mary Beth Stevenson 271 cross street in Carlisle but

119I am also the vice president of the Concord Teachers Association and in the spring I was the representative to the health insurance group of union leaders that the town puts together and one of the things that all of us as union leaders if you talk to fire police DPW is we would like more options for our members to look at other companies other than Minutemen Health as we felt there were better options out there that would benefit all the members as well as benefit the town and potentially have cost savings thank you hey any other public comment from our Zoom audience haven't seen them we're going to close our public comments thank you um cchs updates uh we have a track star who's at the New Balance facility right now uh which is Beautiful by

120the way if anyone's been there yet you should go the high school is now going there so Harry is in a track meet right now Felicity is not able to come and I'm not looking cheap here Felicity anzaria are here yep all right so Felicity and zarya I'll leave it to you guys hi okay sorry give me one second I just need to pull up the presentation sorry okay can everyone see okay so um sorry you want to start okay hi uh winter blade winter break is um it starts Friday and we have a half day Friday which everyone is excited about because you know half days [Laughter] um on Friday we're also going to have the chorus pop-up concerts which it really only started last year but it was a huge success because the

121chorus kids get to like go around to the different breakout spaces and we sing lots of holiday music which everyone really likes it gets them in the mood for break and of course people get to miss their last couple of classes which is also nice that's a theme um there is some stress due to increasing workloads I know me my you know myself and Felicity have both experienced like a lot of a lot more work over the past few weeks um I know that some teachers are working to prevent this by like coordinating wind tests and assignments are due but it still is very stressful yeah I think that's mostly because it is the week before break hopefully it's it's not normally like this but um this past Saturday there was also the cchs instrumental

122concert prism um I wasn't able to go because I was eating birthday cake um a huge success and there were also bubbles which everyone is talking about the Bubbles the bubbles were quite something yes um also there have been a lot of early decision College decisions um so there's a lot of energy in the senior class um two weeks ago we had our district planning session on December 7th December 7th um that went well and we even finished early yeah it was delicious it was delicious very delicious tomorrow we have an advisory activity uh it's the cookie Fest I'm actually making there's a bunch of cookies behind the camera actually because I'm bringing them all in I'm really excited for that so yeah it's like a nice little advisory competition between advisories um I made

123red velvet cookies so hopefully that's that beats zarya's sugar cookies anyway um CC theater also announced their spring musical which is going to be into the woods so there's also been a lot of excitement um around that and it's going to be the weekend of May 11th to 13th so still a couple of months to go but good to be on the lookout for more info about the show um I think there's some type of sickness going around I was sick last week and I think half of the teachers are out I'm not sure if it's personal reasons a lot of teachers out so I'm assuming the sickness is going around but there's a lot of illness there's no question thankfully not coveted but flu and other things are coming mm-hmm um and then we

124only have two other short updates um green team is doing composting in the cafeteria which is nice and classical is also doing they're selling candy canes to like deliver to people on the last day of school which last year that was also very exciting for everyone so yeah we didn't have that much this week since it's the week right before break but yeah wow great that was a great yeah they are Felicity I know that you were in this play in the fall and it seems that you keep referencing chorus as a Wii so I'm assuming you are also in the course will you audition for Into the Woods yeah I'm do you have a part you want um I'm still I know um I'm not quite sure if I have the time to do

125this musical which I really want to though um hopefully I'll be able to but yeah I am part of chorus so it's I'm definitely a big Performing Arts kid zarya we should bake some cookies and bring them into school no pressure we also take leftovers [Laughter] this week I know ninth grade did it it was amazing last week I didn't get there but I saw the pictures so it's going to be a great time I might have helped make some cookies for ninth grade too so I could participate we all had to make like six or seven dozen cookies so I think oh my God leftovers what's that right you girls must be busy thank you foreign thank you bye-bye so I think cchs art is coming up Dr hooker yeah so I know Mr

126pigment's here so hi Joe uh so we've invited as recognitions different programs from the high school so we wanted to showcase the Arts tonight so we're going to turn it over to Mr Pikmin the department chair and he's going to offer some highlights and I believe there's a really great video coming with a lot of students and other information oh you're on mute Joe um yeah it's been a long time time since I zoomed but uh yeah yeah I was like does this still work um but it works great thank you so much for having me it's uh it's a privilege to present to you and there's so much exciting things going on in the art Department um we uh the architecture class uh went on a trip to the gropius house and that was

127pretty fantastic and inspiring uh and if you haven't been people travel from all over the nation uh to visit that gropius house people are studying architecture and um one of the things we talked about were elements that gropius uh sort of established in the architecture uh world that are present in the high school so it's kind of interesting to see uh like those handles that aren't the twist handles little things like that um anyhow um there was also a great collaboration between John Lindner and Jamie Andrade who did a Raku firing and they had an aesthetic disposition towards it they studied the science and the chemical reactions that are happening during a Raku firing um and we actually in The Gallery at the high school we are just putting the finishing touches on a show

128that highlights uh all the disciplines and classes that we uh run at the high school uh it's the aim of that show is to hopefully inspire people to sign up for in our course and see how fun it is but we also have a little section now happenings in the art department just candids of kids in the classroom and it's uh it's pretty wonderful so next time After High School uh go see that uh that exhibit um I could go on but we made this wonderful video which we are gonna which is all about student voices which was our real intention uh to share with you tonight so um so if Aaron you want to cue the video it's about eight minutes long you might have a charger class of 2023 and ITA here at

129intro to darkroom photography with Mr Cohen and through tiang I found a new way to spend even more time in the dark room and get to teach other kids about my passion right here I'm trying to incorporate different types of media into my photography so I am using some oil paints on top of a type of fiber paper that I already printed on Mr cone what's up Cole can I put a bagel through the dryer uh no how about pizza how about pie what about marshmallows Pop Tarts Pop-Tarts Toaster Strudels what about the DVD pancakes french toast cupcakes how about a frozen pizza how about Girl Scout cookies how about spaghetti Mr palette what about popcorn laughs hey Mr comb what about a grilled cheese hi I'm Gretchen hetland I'm I'm dark room photography this

130semester this class has helped me deal with my stress because it allows me to be creative and uh I can do my work independently at my own pace I've had a lot of fun shooting pictures outside of school and in school it's really fun to learn about photography this is my friend Anika at the train station and these are my friends Anika and Felicity in a park hi I'm Jamie Richard and I'm doing Ceramics right now um so one of the reasons that I love doing Ceramics is because of all the like opportunities I get and it's sort of like a creative outlet for me you know I started with intro Ceramics and then I did Advanced Ceramics and now I'm doing an independent study and the reason I did that was just because there

131were like so many opportunities and I think it's really great that we have like our own classroom and a designated space to do our work and we have a bunch of cool tools which like allow me to like do different like things and explore different techniques and so you know these are some of my works and I really love how they came out they were kind of like different shapes and this one's a crystalline glaze which was a really fun glaze that I got to try out and I just love how it came out with like all like the specs and yeah Ceramics teacher John Lindner partnered with the rivers and revolutions program to conduct a raccoon fire in the school parking lot students had the opportunity to make their own ceramic pieces here in

132the ceramic studio and then bring them Outdoors to have a Hands-On firing experience students were able to participate in both the heating and cooling elements of this process and later returned to their classroom to study the scientific process of Raku [Music] equilibrium unit Division and I'm a sophomore my name is Ben Wasserman I'm a junior um this is my first year taking digital photo and I took it because I really wanted to learn how to use a camera and take nice photos it's also my first year taking digital photography and I took it because I wanted to learn how to take pictures and edit them uh my favorite project so far has been taking pictures of the fall leaves because everyone in the class had a different photo and they all turned out really nice

133my favorite project so far is the light writing because it's something that you can't really do without a teacher teaching you how to do it so this is uh my first station that I finished it's uh right in uh Lin center right at a like a a Crossroads um it's called Carol um as you can see I got uh kind of a sculpture and then two pieces two perspective images and there's also a floor plan but so here you go you've got that crossroads right here and Carol's on this green space um I tried to use mostly unused areas so areas in between roads in gray space in any sort of abandoned areas uh in order to kind of like challenge myself and see you know what I could come up with if it's these

134kinds of shapes this is linside which is the station that would go immediately after the current Terminus which is Wonderland um and so linside is kind of right on the edge of Lynn kind of the cusp of the city this is probably where I would get off the meet my friend um it's in a it's in a great place it's kind of the sunken station with like a sort of a t-shaped um walkway area on top uh and yeah and that's the uh the unfinished sculpture for it uh hi I'm Jackson from perkio and I'm a depression I chose to do film because I my aunt and uncle are in the film industry um and it's something that I wanted pursue as a career and this course helps me with a jump start in learning

135the technical technical side of um learning the how to make movies and how to edit how to do all sorts of stuff one thing that we're doing in film is stop motion right now and it's not like the typical movie which is like the camera filming of a video stop motion is like multiple photos strung together to make a video which allows you to create worlds and places that aren't real but make them seem as if they're real and allowed you to use your more creative side um another reason that I like film and that I chose it is because it allows me to focus on stuff that um I'd rather do that helps me like with uh de-stressing and just uh working with the um less stressful and more creative uh and stuff it's

136really fun too and um I I really want a career in the film industry and this I think will help me a lot with that hi my name is Maisie Farrow I'm a senior at cchs and I'm taking filmmaking class here some of the films I've made include a stop-motion animation and a documentary plus some other just narratives and fictional stories it's a ton of fun and this is my third time taking the course hi my name is beginning of the year we worked on watercolor technique and so I practiced some techniques here making sure I knew what I was dealing with um and then once I felt ready to create a piece I started sketching a bit and just making sure I had my ideas down and then I began on the biggest paper

137I've ever worked on and it was really difficult and I simply did not like this piece at all and I wanted to do it again but I was kind of hesitant that I was encouraged by the program to do it again and I finally did this piece because I mastered my skill in watercolor and I'm very thankful that I was able to make something I was highly proud of virtual America wow thank you Joe you're muted again Joe I really want to thank uh Jamie uh for putting those together we each made a little bit of these films and she sort of brought it all together in that presentation which uh was so much stronger than I was expecting um and the kids are just so wonderful and uh they made so many awesome points

138one thing I really love about the video is that it shows the studios and the equipment we use and what a dynamic and wonderful place it is uh to work and to make art and um so thank you that's awesome it's like people don't even know what's out there so it'd be great if we could even share this video somehow oh no I'm going to share it hopefully you're good with that yeah um I mean I know my own it's been many different opportunities in in the art department and and I think that sometimes you know people need to see what you're really doing in this classrooms yeah excellent thank you yeah thank you all very much thank you thank you everyone for us that's awesome thank you Joe um so we start we should

139start and then we'll go around sure okay all right we'll start with Lori princess um okay so this well one big exciting meeting that we had this week was a meeting with Verizon um to talk about the potential of a cell phone tower on the cchs campus so we are at the very beginning stages of that um we have some significant uh cell phone loss up there as I think that you just know who've experienced it given the same safety issue with students in the building for the staff and there's there's literally no communication in the building so um we're anxiously awaiting some more information on that um that was part of her that was really what well wasn't really the largest data we had but that was one thing we had this month we

140obviously last week had a bunch of Lucy so we're thankful for that and I think we just made our Capital planning's final Capital planning session that's about it yeah we have a chair's breakfast [Music] not to report out a committee what I said on is the deib strategic planning committee which means again tomorrow night I believe it's six to seven six to seven um and we had a great presentation last time Kristen and Andrew jointly did it we've talked about all the professional development offerings happening um Andrew will have some updates for us in January so our school Community I've been meeting that was the one that we rescheduled is on I'm gonna get the date running I know I am I believe it's January 17th it is I just accepted the information it did

141right so we will see you all then and um that's all I had she had anything else to have no um on the cell phone tower conversation yeah what is the timeline for when it might be at like on an agenda for us to talk about like is it like a month away weeks away okay February maybe maybe February I think maybe there's there's gonna check out the campus but we wouldn't hear anything okay yeah is Verizon uh pitching the idea of Two Towers in town or if you're a singer they've been working with them they need to one at the campus isn't going to fix the issues in downtown Concord so they're still active Hope on their part for the umbrella or whatever options are really Central Downtown so then as a short-term uh

142crisis uh mediation if you will so we looked at uh putting the VoIP extenders around the high school so that people even pick up internet we've tried a lot of that I think according to Peter Kelly who I harass weekly about what our options are up there we've really maximized what what's there there is there are nodes or whatever we've got nodes we we keep adding there's a repeater on the top there's some extenders we tried to do that after a crisis last year where we had administrators outside of the student couldn't reach help um minimal though minimal minimal minimal can you just check with him because we have outside access points for the school where I work we have really good coverage outside and specifically for that it really was because of covid yeah

143so we could have but now we go outside for a drill everybody you know yeah I know we have had a few and we did some in covet I think the need is far greater than any Wi-Fi extensions are going to meet that seems to be United consensus so yes we can certainly check to see if we can do more but the needle service what we have outside I think you know when we're talking about it you know you can have a student crisis outside you could have a student crisis on a bus um a medical emergency on a field like there's really no reception anywhere up there and um you know this is not for like students to be texting their parents this is literally for emergencies and then we don't have that so

144um that's what kind of spur this you know meeting with Verizon I have on that all right so okay let's start with Carrie did you have anything we had the strategic planning meeting this week I don't know if we um I mean I think it was a great meeting we talked about um we kind of furthered our efforts around what does it look like in five years and then we broke into groups to talk about okay well this these are all of the visions that all of these different groups and stakeholders have come up with we've Kristen did an amazing job of actually sorting them for everybody so then we went through in our groups and um kind of drafted an initial outline of what um what the goals would look like in five years

145so from um off the top of my head like you know deib and the actual environment physical environment to um Wellness Health um there are lots of different categories we kind of went through item by item and really picked out um what was looks for themes and and began to draft it so it was a lot of fun Kristen did a great job facilitating at court no very much session two and it was themes and patterns that were emerging out of the data that came from the 50 people involved I thought it was really interesting that like you could see from the different comments where they were coming from from the different schools the aid groups the you know demographics how there were like some things that were like consistent across the board and what

146what the unique you know environmental aspects came into place I just thought it was a really fun experience so and it's been great getting to know some of the different people in different pockets of the community so I've enjoyed it thank you very much and you guys have two more meetings left right isn't it there's two more large groups okay okay great thank you and then I assume eventually we'll come back here for discussion but yes I think yes yeah I think that was your process last time right which is why we're not bringing bringing it right yeah right right right yeah great job represents okay thank you both and then the only other thing is policy which is on the agenda for later so I don't think maybe on that of course I think

147uh apropos of what you just reported I'll mentioned last night at select board uh the select board and town manager also spoke about strategic planning and uh referenced what uh we're doing here um Kristen I think you were called out by name and uh there was a lot of praise for the process happening here with the idea that maybe the town side of government might look to us as a model however I also got the sense that maybe they are going to be a little more operational uh than we are um in their efforts so that'll have to get teased out but anyway um there they know what we're up to and they know how favorable it has been so far and how favorable they were five years ago and how the town has been

148a little bit uh absent on that side even though they've done their Envision conquered work and some other very good work it's not exactly a strategic plan per se they spoke to the uh Capital article which I referenced earlier I won't repeat that they spoke to the their budget with perhaps half a million dollars allocated toward a middle school solar it would be a move toward the first five and a half million ultimately managed their storage may be 10 million a lot remains to be seen and the comment was why 500k is it a drop in the bucket um it doesn't really solve anything sort of a rhetorical question there to the question why the Middle School the answer on the part of the select board and the town manager is quite simple it's because

149of the eight circuits in town this one has the capacity to take whatever we generate there so it's really just a favorable location the next last night was the Dei commission a lot of members and community members showed up for that presentation and where it relates to the schools is twofold one they talked about about their survey how the town survey has yielded something less than 300 responses they'd love more they referenced superintendent Hunters social media efforts to help the school parents and population know about that survey and then there was a reference to uh I think it was is there a school Committee Member in the room I don't know if they knew I was there um we heard that yeah and it was in reference to survey so uh knowing I've got to

150manage my boundaries because I'm not a chair and we didn't discuss it here but I did share with them that yes we too are doing internal surveys and I left it at I'm certain that we'll uh collaborate what that means is going to be up to the various chairs I'm sure um but at any rate a lot of positive energy around the towns uh efforts there and does that do oh and then finally on uh something that we don't have to think about until next April uh we as a elected body um are invited to attend and participate in which means Marching In the Patriots Day Parade uh it wouldn't be the first time a contingent of school committee has done that so that's April 17th and the invitation is out there and our chairs

151have the necessary paperwork if we can get two or three of us I don't think it'd be fun for one of us to do it [Laughter] they mentioned quite a few times was the reporting system oh forgive me yes and particularly the Belmont recording system yeah they did call out this one I'm sorry it wasn't my notes and so I'll speak to it for a minute and then you can you can help me with it um they uh touted the the Dei commission the town one the Belmont system as a model and reference the town reporting and the school reporting and how it was yielding real and usable data um and then the comment was made easy to find the school material not so easy to find the uh material on the municipal side in

152terms of uh incident reporting and that's really what we're talking about is instant reporting um and uh we were not asked to weigh in on that fortunately because uh it wasn't something we would have discussed and we're ready to but yeah that was Central to I think their presentation was urging the town to make moves on it and and I guess that was the the dominant theme at their conclusion was urgency you know do it right but uh we have no time to waste was the real refrain throughout their presentation such that I think the town manager will find some uh immediate Monies to support their efforts well it's great we have so much already in place here and you know in our January 17th maybe we will get the equiotic we'll be talking about

153that so you know I think I feel like we're in great shape in the schools in this sense that we have all the right people in place and we're going through our process so that sounds good all right thank you support uh Sharon Sarah who wants it um just a div group had a fundraiser for the town it was a Pokemon uh palooza which was very successful the young kids I think was grades up to grades four participated and for two hours they traded their Pokemon cards and they had a individual from a shop here in Concord am I incorrect I think it was a they had a professional there to help them trade and things of that nature so it was very successful and I think that's something they're going to do in the

154future again and the other big thing happened to Carlisle tonight um is William Shaw's uh 13th birthday and supporting shop as well unfortunately when he was nine um and it's important to the school committee to know I think because all of his classmates were are in seventh grade right now um and they have really banded together to form a new club um that shines light on childhood grief um and that's become a vehicle for a lot of kids learning how to work through a lot of very challenging conversations and to sort of to normalize these conversations and uh and so I think it's just something that you should be aware that this group is rising up we'll be joining you know all the Concord kids in a couple of years and I think that high

155schools were involved in it too I did see it on the I don't know if anyone's a part of the cchs no day watch I shouldn't even say yes cards but um it was posted on it was posted on Facebook yeah I mean obviously the concentration so the the way that the that his birthday is uh remembered every year is that everybody puts green lights uh millionaires in their yards or whatever by their house um and so and there's a map you can go online they have a whole there's there's a non-profit that's all started from the school must be yourself Challenge and um and but there's a map and so the concentration of the the light kits are obviously in Carlisle but they're also I mean driving here tonight through a number of them

156also in Concord um and they're actually across the world they're family members and friends um all over the country and the world um she did a great job and so so Carlisle school committee we also had our budget hearing recently um not much to report on that the only thing to note is that um Jack our chair and Jim talked about um this podcast that recently came out sold a story I don't know if anybody has listened to it you know it's it's all about literacy and the teaching of a reading um it's fascinating if you don't have time for the six episodes instead on NPR on point there's sort of a half hour um succinct version but um and so Jack and Jan would like to have a really concentrated circulating conversation about this

157um about the findings of the takeaways and um what are we doing to keep up with the science of what we're saying um so that I'll let you guys know when we're planning have that conversation so that sort of that's the big step in Carlow uh Concord Carlisle Dalton Community Ed um so in addition to their perennial favorites like armchair traveler and voting courses and all that stuff as you know they've now also assumed the work of the center for parents and teachers right they've recently just were granted a two thousand dollar uh ordered a grant to help do these and so I just wanted to share to that point about how are we helping our kids get through all of these challenges they do have a few really fascinating um speaker events coming up

158one about tick tock or about building resilience and managing big emotions one about cell phones and parenting and the other is about at the time management and oh no so yeah there's another and and then one about bully and cyber bullying so all the information found online is probably also going to bulletin um regularly that's that and then sped um last month there was a big Christian and very people from from the school came to talk about 504 IEP mgets and like how can what are the paths for students accessing accommodations and what are the ways that teachers are now becoming empowered to offer accommodations through the mtps and um so that was really interesting um and and I think it's just there's a lot of information a lot of information there um and then

159just there was the said uh regular business meeting the other night um and they talked a little bit about that they talked and now I'm going to remember what was the first class so they did uh update on the most strategic plan and what they were recommending so that's why I like to get a a download from the chairs to see that because they went through a lot of topics but I think would be valuable to us and I wasn't taking notes that carefully but I think if we could hear from the chairs like a little memo or something because they did say what their recommendations were going to be grab a CPAC yes to the strategic planning yes yeah yeah and yeah they even we're going to approach the building committee with a recommended

160it wasn't really clear yeah so I met with them prior to that meeting so and some of them sit on the strategic planning team so that was the vehicle to gather their feedback there the the de-escalation room is a middle school building discussion that we tried to be sure we answered all their questions so I think we've been answering them as we go but I don't know if you talked to them after that see that that's what I'm saying I have not talked to them since then but Debbie was there and didn't bring me any updates so yeah so the big highlight really was that Bible for IEP yes yeah we can share that information out to more parents I think that would be really neat yeah yeah um I think yes those are my

161to my reports today thank you all right Cynthia so um uh I think we D I've uh commission and Concord has been working very hard to come up with the recommendations they presented last night they usually meet at noon uh weekdays without a zoom um they meet again on Thursday to go over their session with the select board um so I'll try to be there um the other thing is I think almost everybody in Concord was there there was a joint a joint meeting I guess it was called remote was sponsored by the vi commission but I think almost every Concord police officer was there or at least most of them well I did Charter that I said is everybody here and they said no I actually have 36 police officers yeah I did not

162know that and I think 18 were there yes because they were like somebody has to be honestly 100 people maybe um so it was a very successful event and I think and it was really just introductions and then people all had all these little smaller conversations which I think was really great so it wasn't just filled up with presentations and everybody walked away so it was a really great collaborative event to my opinion um hands off to the people who do that together nice thanks um and the other thing I should mention is there's a coffee on Thursday for chief O'Connor and one that would like to attend that to thank him for his service he is retiring and I really appreciate Chico Cotter session they have two weeks so thank you for all his

163assistance with everything and everything that we've done for the girls and for the town yeah he's been here for eight years but before that I think he was 25 years with the MBTA um so uh yes I think he's brought a lot of great Community efforts uh and uh I think we're gonna miss him for Cheryl he's got a great person as the interim who's been here for a long time and he's been really working with very collaboratively for a long time so I think we're in good hands but yes I think that Dei commission poppy it was a joint of Bob's their Police Department so yes I think they all put it together together with this group yeah so thank you for that okay uh anybody anything else I'd like to add the mecco

164families will be meeting after the holidays to discuss um steps for the next year uh the second half of the school season to see what can be done to increase participation not only in the group but within the school community so hopefully after this next meeting I'll have some more information about um what our plans are uh moving forward thank you so I have a few highlights um one I've started already made contact with our two new state representatives uh representative Gentile and Cataldo have both been in touch with me so they're both going to come here sometime in January so it's important to have that relationship established and very responsive to my Outreach before they're even totally fully on board um pretty exciting discussion uh brewing with the CCS just uh band they've been

165invited to be at the Patriots Day Parade as a lead up towards the 250th parade in um it does turn out that our uh drums the ones you have to hang over yourself to walk and marked are little uh under the condition they need to be in so uh we had a great conversation with Chris Noche and actually one of the select board has been engaged in this getting us invited and um so we are going to start to replace those with they're not they're kind of amazingly pricey so we're gonna do it in phases but a lot of great energy going there and I think I shared with you about EMA via email and you'll hear tonight when I'm excited Chris noche's gonna pick up the nanai flag and keep it going so that's

166exciting um You probably saw a picture sometime late last week of the Playbook initiative Middle School small representative then but a a an amazing one that got an opportunity to be on the floor parquet floor of the Celtics it's a pretty stunning shot to have come your way Friday night um so we're excited by that recognition uh we were notified by Desi that we received a little over fifteen thousand dollars per District in the Dei Grant process towards hiring recruiting and retention of diverse staff so excited by that opportunity we do have to get ourselves um implementing that pretty quickly the money has to be spent by the end of June uh so we're ready to roll on that a little slower than we anticipated um one really I think a fun note and I

167think going to be important note and Alex I'll embarrass you for next year here uh we're talking I'm talking with the uh smma our Architects for the middle school has been a front leader in the work to try to work toward changing plumbing codes because they're really outdated towards neutral gender-neutral bathrooms and uh really the options and ways you can approach that especially in new construction I had to go before the plumbing board to get even the smallest variants to set up the pre-work so if the rest of the code changes you'll have options to be more flexible it was a pretty eye-opening experience just in terms of the process it's very inconsistent the district ahead of us got denied um I'm really not sure why they got denied and we didn't like sort of

168eye-opening um and so our Spectrum kids had been already meeting with the safe schools Folks at the state level that looped around back to our Architecture Firm because they're the front leaders working with the state and this amazing Loop happened of our kids and our design team in the state and us um being in a really interesting position I think to try to get this momentum going it's been a lot of delay in the plumbing board even considering the changes so the Spectrum team met with the Architects and gave us feedback on the middle school which was really important and then we're going to try to join Force's work with safe schools I'd like to activate the superintendents I think the legislators like getting others aware and see if we can make some positive change

169for kids I can't can't say enough about what the kids shared with us about the challenges of gender-neutral bathrooms in our current and schools and we we have to find ways to do better in new construction so I'm so excited by that uh and then the last piece I can't leave the meeting without an incredible thank you um first and foremost to the Concord Police and their extraordinary reaction last week they took everything very seriously and assertively and uh I just can't say thank you enough um any outpouring of support has been overwhelming in a pretty surreal situation to say the least so so thank you thank all of you I know I had your support through it all and um just glad to have that client you know that Peak behind me I think

170it's not gone but uh glad to be on this side of that experience last week so so thank you and we have the minutes from November 22nd that we should have received from Erin so I would entertain a motion to approvalina from November to 27th okay second any discussion thank you Eric all right all in favor all right correspondence let's start with sure we had five pieces of Correspondence at Concord Public Schools all um expressing their support and admiration for the superintendent and we've had six pieces of Correspondence um at the region two were about literature um two were about public comments from our last meeting we had thank you to Lori in the district and then we had one piece of Correspondence policy and that is it so on to discussions discussion so we

171are going to our policies and I am going to actually turn it over Terry great um thanks so um we had a meeting last week about we're starting to review all of the K and L policies many of them have not been reviewed since 2005 or 2006. we got through a good chunk of them in the the first meeting that we had um and the recommendation out of the committee I'm just gonna go through I feel like it's important to kind of talk about all of them and then we'll go piece by piece for discussion if that's okay so um the recommendation that we made as a committee um unanimously there's a committee of the whole was to um keep so the K policies are all about community relations um so the recommendation was to

172keep Ka update Ka um based on masc's recommendations and then strike k-e-c-k-e-b-k-e-b-r and amend ke to include updated masc language so going through these kind of one by one the overarching policy around kka sets the stage for all of the k um policies the new language um it includes the same sentiment as the as our current policy the new Mase language but it's just stronger and it includes some more additional language it includes um not just effective accurate communication including volunteer volunteer programming but also it adds recognition programs that publicly honor and contributions of our students employees and Community Partners and express pride in our individual and Collective accomplishments and then it talks about community service efforts um so this I think is just what we talked about with Ka is that this is just

173a stronger um a stronger policy um that better communicates how we hope to partner with the communities in which we we work um so I'd love to open it up as anybody has any comments on Ka um for the first read and just for people in the audience uh the K policies are generally about community relations and this one Ka is specifically School community relations goals so it is setting the tone for all of the K or community relations policies certainly I think you said the important thing it's it's a tone set yeah as opposed to uh strict guidelines that those follow yeah and I think what we talked about in the meeting was how it's really important to get this one right because as we go through all of the other you know dozen

174K policies we want to look back and say does it align with what we want all of these policies to um represent so yeah they were all great okay so um the second one on the agenda is ke um okay so ke is public complaints um the initial version that we have um this is very similar to the initial version that we have um it has added language and it has sort of uh molded all of these other policies that we're going to be reviewing k-e-k-e-b k-e-b-r and kec into this one policy so this will become a comprehensive policy on how the uh both CPS and the region will accept complaints on Personnel on um on a curriculum on instruction on all kinds of matters would come through this policy and it sets a a

175process it goes to the teacher first the school building administrator second to the superintendent third and ultimately to the school committee if it gets to that point um and that so I think what they've done now is they've taken these four policies one two three four three policies four policies including currently put them all into one and they've made ke they've made ke stronger um so when we talked about it as a committee we felt like this was a strong this new language was a strong policy and that it could replace Keb kevr and kec ought anybody have any thoughts on this one that book is thick and anything we can do to streamline it and it's like not only streamline it but also make it better yeah yeah I think wise and I do

176think this does it does make it better it's a lot instead of having a way to issue a complaint about a Personnel this way a wage issue a complaint about instruction this way this kind of makes it all similar um so yeah makes it a lot easier better and easier for the community yeah yep that's what it's all about okay as the Carlisle District Court please um our instructional material one is really focused on Library um because I think that yeah it's focused on Library materials the sort of references other instructional materials that assuming the noise through the conversations around that would be what's available number rather than What's um ours really reinforces um the diligence and the faith we have in our library teachers and our teachers in general like that's the beginning of

177our of our policy actually affirms that we have faith in teachers Library teachers to you know choose books that align with our district goals and missions that are in keeping with the level of development that are Etc they're five or six characteristics or whatever that we say we know we trust our teachers are doing this right and if you have a question about it there's a form that you can fill out to have it explored and moved into more [Music] uh review process so the next policy is Keb and kevr which is the um public complaints about Personnel um and as we said these are the recommendation is that we strike these as they have been updated in the KE policy um and then the last policy that we reviewed is kec which is um

178instruction yeah curriculum instruction so um this is a policy that allows a parent to request that their child not participate in curriculum and instructional materials and it requires the school to provide an alternative um curriculum or alternative material so this is a policy that masc no longer recommends um and they have similarly they have moved some of this language into the KE policy um so that like any other complaint I don't I don't like this book this teacher is not working whatever the complaint is it goes through the same process so this is a streamlined way of collecting complaints um and feedback from the community which is always welcome um but just this is how we might go through the process and were you refresh my memory we 've straw polled voted I don't remember

179which and uh we were you where we we were unanimous in all of these decisions right yeah yeah so to summarize um we recommended for a first reading that we amend Ka which is the goals policy strike Keb kevr and kec and amend ke which is the public complaint okay and so we'll see these again for the next week yes yes great and we would expect to vote after the second rain is not correct yes next meeting for the public we didn't Link in the masc policies in our end of the week well they are so they're in they're on the agenda page of our website on the policy agenda if that makes sense right I don't think they're on right so just so we only have the current policies in this that's right so

180if we could just support the final read put them in yeah we're looking at a KA for example that's the oh no I mean we're looking at an masc new source updated as of this year and I want to make sure people have access to it right the easy one that's that's easy that makes sense yeah I don't usually do like old proposed yeah yeah that's what's on the following that's what's on the policy of the agenda maybe for the second read we'll do that so that when you vote it's clear we'll just pull it from the other one yeah yeah right yeah do they come in multiple language the policies awesome I know some districts do yeah you can't convert I think the PDFs don't convert on the translator on the web page so

181we'd have yeah that's a great Point yeah right uh anything else on policy competitive no just that we are already um planning for our next meeting which is right after the break so January 5th yes so you will see an agenda to that meeting this week this week before we right because we would like um Aaron to be on a vacation also and yeah so yeah so I'm working with Dr Hunter and the chairs on the agenda and we'll send it out as soon as we have it yep that's a high agreement okay [Music] I hope I can physically be here okay okay all right so moving on to our action items so our first action item is a vote to consider the recommendation of the literature review committee and you all should have received

182the memo from Dr Hunter on Friday that went to the school committee and I'm going to turn it over to Dr Hunter and Kristen because they were very much part of this process right so in terms of you know context here so last week Kristen's Kristen informed me that the literature review committee had met um just Clarity we had received a formal complaint earlier in the fall about the title in the high school library all boys aren't blue which is among the collection we have one copy that can circulate um so that had made its way through the process with the building administrators to Kristen to now the committee the group reviewed guidelines for Library material selection discussed why the book was in the library reasons it was being challenged and had a really from

183what I understand healthy discussion of the recommendation that they brought to me which I'm bringing to you the committee unanimously recommended that the book all boys aren't blue remain in the library at the high school um I am fully in support of that recommendation and bringing it to you and asking you to consider it just a little Clarity on process because you're in the midst of some policy changes um we are actually deferring more to policy ijr which is a reconsideration of instructional resources in that policy it's very clear that the recommendation come to you for final vote and decision and it's a school committee discussion not not Landing in our offices so uh we're here to bring that recommendation to you for consideration tonight answer any questions you have and um hopefully wrap up

184what's been a pretty extensive process over the last couple of months consider the recommendation of the literature you committee and doctor hello wait a second second well yep and any discussion so if I'm correct uh were we to follow you earlier kec a complainant would uh have to not accept a superintendent decision to reach us ijr it comes immediately to us right just to be clear what's happened and is there a three-year and there's a three-year moratorium correct and that particular ly yeah on that text right Regional just a regional vote it's the high school yes good point good point okay we're ready for a vote so all in favor and next we're going on to the nordics C team trip and you should have a copy of all the information for that this is

185our Nordic team at the high school returning to this feature and would you like to comment on that doctor I think you know we're just excited all these trips that we thought were pretty typical are typical again um so they're looking to go later in January to New Hampshire spend um just a two-night trip up there and um be together and ski obviously [Music] that the Concord Carlos school committee votes to approve the cchs Nordic team trip as outlined to Jackson New Hampshire from January 21st 2023 to January 23 2023 but the condition that assigned District liability waiver is received from all participants second any discussion every time I read it I think it says Jackson Wyoming um okay uh ready to vote all in favor [Music] and 2024 trip you also have all the

186necessary background information on that and this is a band trip um with the performing arts department and they really would like to secure the right price I would have to say that yeah so and just talking with Chris um he's really excited to rebuild the connection to Japan he's got this I think really exciting idea to um do a little more big picture view of Japan first and actually in thinking about it when the kids from nanai come here they never just come to conquer they to the whole East Coast so it's a little more of that mindset at least for the first trip in 2024 with then a plane plan for the exchange trip in the Ashland and then I visit in 2025. so he's outlined a pretty exciting trip to uh Tokyo and

187other spots I do think he's gonna see if some of the knife folks can meet him somewhere but that isn't formal yet so so you know things I'll note here that maybe we didn't get a chance to fully flesh out are all the other pieces that pertain to the other trips you approved all the coveted pieces will pertain all of the um fiscal subsidies will pertain Sharon Young scholarship will be available all of that will be in place um Chris's security actually pretty good price for given the trip that it is and was hopeful that we could uh help to expedite this a little so he could secure it for sure so this would be in 2024 April so it's 18 months out and to the kids know sorry do we wait for the motion

188for discussion to the kid do you know that if you if you're in the band are you going do you have to opt in how does it work too so we haven't shared this with the kids at all because we need your yeah approval first um so this trip will go open to the band kids primarily yeah that's always been the case when the band's gone when we met with him he did talk about opening an eye up broader than the band so I think we're going to evolve to something bigger than just the music kids which I'm really excited about didn't get was interested in going and thank you sir about the dates I'm just looking April 17th to April 25th of 2024 is a Wednesday to a Thursday probably I would have to

189say the airfare is probably cheaper probably yeah that's not what I said but I don't think the roots aren't even you can't even wait I I have April 12th to the 19th on the that would make sense there's 17th through 25th yeah on the itinerary obviously just the motion that's well I wonder it's the motion we did check these days with Chris because we spotted the discrepancies what do you have 16 to 23 17 to 25. it says the 17th to the 25th I'm like I don't remember let's see yeah Wednesday with Thursday but that's so the write-up of the trip and sleep yeah itineraries yeah the itinerary said yeah we did we talked with Chris about all this yeah Aaron's texting me the motion dates are the ones that are correct okay let's pull

190back from those specific moments and talk about our trip process um is this one where we would return to our initial approval followed by a final approval which we would typically do in order to have a teacher and a group Green Light a trip so to speak so they could start collecting deposits getting commitments making agreements but still give them time to fine-tune it I think the last time we approved some trips we decided to abandon for those the initial and final right but I didn't think we set a precedent where we're going to do that permanently I think curious what's going on here so what's going to be there yeah what's happening here is that this is that we really want to come back and he needs a service planning process so we've we

191knew we were bringing it to you tonight for a vote but that's not my point initial approval always did just what we described initial approval always permitted a teacher to begin to get commitments even get deposits even yeah I think if that's the case we could consider it initial approval well I think it benefits the teachers too because it gives them a little Alyssa was predicated on the notion the teacher doesn't want to get too far down the road until they get some approval from us on the assumption that the final approval is going to be forthcoming unless something dramatically changed which In My Memory never has never happened you know I think it really benefits the teachers and the truths you do it that way that it has been our time-honored way yep and

192then what's the but what's the balance for the scholarship fund currently there's eight thousand dollars left in the fund um having an expensive prep and yeah I know people are gonna feel pressure yeah so I I set that in here and I missed it yes okay yeah so yeah in the or in the AO it is well and what goes to the kids it certainly will be okay so the expectation is they can raise some some amount of money to go toward each person's to reduce it yeah and I'm sure that that will happen but the other thing I will say about um some of these trips because I've done you know I guess I'll just I'll state that you know the sharing young scholarship and all these other things I've done a lot of

193research on on some of these groups and when you're working with a company like World strides but you know whoever it is there is money built into the trips for scholarship there you know there's a lot of opportunity and I think the sooner they get approval the sooner they have an opportunity I feel for families that you know their child really wants to go on the trip and they actually can't afford it so if we have a ways to defray the cost that they that's encouraging I feel good about what happened with the Sharon Young Fund in this first set of fall trips and how those requests came in um sometimes as the parents sometimes it was a student um I feel really good about how that evolved so I think we're getting some further

194we've always done some of course I think we're building some further tools but I guess my point is different a thousand or something if we think we could with season pass I don't know thousand dollars per trip per kit yeah I don't think we as the school committee can get no no no no no I'm not saying that I'm saying it you know it would be kind of interesting to know what they thought but well I think also we're looking at it 18 months in advance and it gives the the kids individually an opportunity to figure out ways to fundraise for themselves but then also the to look at all the organized resources that are available I think of two trips these some are kind of opt-in trip which isn't really in the academic year

195yeah and this which is clearly you know front and center um a Class A group a school group um and I think this is part of the equity conversation that you and Lori remember very well I think it's good that we can give initial approval well in advance so that anybody who can support this and help us achieve some of our inclusion goals uh has has more time to do it I will also share with you that the Concord nanai committee is very delighted that Chris has stepped forward and the committee has not discussed this particular triple but it's very nice in time because we have a delegation coming from nanai next year October and they'll they'll know full well that this is the next uh Pearl on the necklace relationship yeah yeah we're all

196excited it's really neat so I guess what additional information would you like to move to final vertical like what should we what will be looking for so we vote on initial approval but then we'd want more I'm guessing that they would be able to speak a little more to our equity and inclusion goals vis-a-vis this trip and uh confirm the dates um uh and give us any changes in in this that's typically what happens yeah so I the dates are what's in the motion so yeah change a vendor yeah I think the vendor is the key that Chris wants to secure so hopefully the initial approval is allowing that I don't see us being ready to bring you wide scale fundraising pieces in the next meeting I think Chris needs to he was working on

197securing Logistics I I think we can tell you when we're ready to come back for final approval if that works there should be no worry about initial approval being a tentative approved correct no not that's not what it means never has meant that it won't mean that now it means that this is just a process by which everybody gets to be diligent about a trip of this huge magnitude it's not a not a small undertaking in the new motion do you need to Define pre just call it initial that's what the policy actually says okay okay yeah but I guess you know please let Chris know that you know this the committee is committed oh I hear that I wouldn't want him to feel as though by any means yeah something that he left out

198or no no no no teacher who's done one of these would be surprised they've all gone through this process right well Chris is going to cchs too and I think that this is a huge undertake we have someone that also has young children at home so I think that we just want to make sure he knows that he's well supported yes please pass along our I certainly will [Music] we've moved here they're incredibly yes they are yeah the new emotion and just uh we will put initial approval in there the concrete Carlisle school committee uh votes to uh uh provide initial approval for the cchs Performing Arts Japan trip from April 17 2024 to April 25 2025 April 25 2024 with the condition that assigned District liability waiver is received from all participants second okay

199any further discussion I just want to say I did go to the personal concert on Saturday you said the bubbles everybody else was amazing too it's a lot of talent yeah really a lot yeah yeah cool yeah yeah great we want to thank Chris for doing this but we know he's not alone he wouldn't be doing it if he was alone so thanks to everybody who's yes integrating support for this oh the trip the trip it's kind of alone right now I'm not sure so we're gonna build him some uh Team there because tonight he's not alone exactly there you go all right so all in favor [Music] and next we have our uh Regional budget so um thanks to Bob and Lori for their time spent on this and you can see the motion

200should be in front of you I don't want to read the motion I've got a question if you want to do it now or after emotions on the floor uh let's do an acting motions before I'm pulling it up sorry unless you have it I don't oh okay no it is [Music] I moved this Concord Carlisle Regional school committee vote to approve the ccrsd fiscal 24 budget in the amount of 37 million 811 000 98 and the resultant concrete assessment of 25 million three hundred and fifty seven thousand eight hundred and forty six dollars in the Carlisle assessment of seven million 893 934 984 dollars and to further approve the accompanying draft warrant article language for the town meeting articles and I believe that's specific to Concord or is it identical in both uh sure

201Congress doesn't ask for us good thank you okay do we have a second second discussion can you talk to us about buses uh we have buses to transfer I mean plus purchase of the release is embedded in this budget so we have lease assumptions built into the operating budget this will let us at least two additional buses each year um which is what we have in our replacement cycle right now so in high school we're talking about the high school budget we can correct at least two um High School budgets two buses uh at the um at the region you know we're not talking about CPS but two there as well and that's what we need to kind of keep our Fleet um from not aging too much um that is kind of the what

202we would say is the minimum we need to order on a year-over-year basis um longer term it might be nice to be able to buy them instead of lease them um but financially this works right now and this is what we are proposing um and these are the diesel buses um getting to the hurdle of financing the electric buses is something we'd have to come up with a different solution for either a different solution or additional Capital um it's not something we have within the operating budget nor the capital budget um the most promising thing that's been talked about there's vehicle the grid charging which has huge financial benefit to Municipal Light um and um would be a way to potentially the mechanics would need to be worked out but it would potentially be a

203way to to fund electric buses so that's kind of a separate discussion that's been floated yeah but um we need to go down a path there to investigate that so I mean we can speak to the the inventory of buses the fleet right now we have buses at the region a year ago we listed uh a bus as old as 2012 the rest of the regional Fleet is a bit newer um and in Concord which just anticipating that question down the road tonight uh we've got a good number of buses that are 2011 2012 and you know John's got quite a bit of concern that if we don't sustain the two per year per District uh we're going to really struggle to stay on the road and having lived that experience my first year here

204where the fleet was very aged and I was starting school late because it was so cold the buses wouldn't start um we don't want to risk returning to that I understand and appreciate the goal of electrifying the fleet but we need to have a separate conversation about a fiscal fiscal way to do that um if we're going to do it at a larger scale that we considered any retrofitting toward clean diesel clean energy it's cleaner diesel no we haven't I think that's just the honest answer that this one holds came to us and talked about how a diesel emits twice its weight in greenhouse gas emissions every year you know it's a it's a year over year uh problem you know CDC is pretty clear soot carbon monoxide oxides carbon monoxide the carcinogenic nature of

205diesel buses the high incidence of reduced lung function and pneumonia you've heard me say it before I guess I'll just continue to say it I think we've got to be more aggressive we have climate uh uh mitigation climate change mitigation goals in this town uh I don't want to have the school district be the biggest polluter in this town I'm concerned that we are um uh if not now when if we don't have the means who does um is there something more important than Children's Health um I'm not sure there is so I keep saying this and yet uh I I keep coming back to John needs two buses they've got to be diesel why don't we have an alternative solution we baked in this problem where where we've we've come to this table on

206this date um so we've sunk in too much time without properly addressing it um so we can't address it I mean we're going to say the same next year how many years uh does this get repeated where are we getting the money well we could have a separate Capital article and that's the time to decide well we just talked about like the capital article is a bad luck for Fields why would it be it you know like this is we're not comparing the same thing we're talking about kids health okay about getting kids to school and right now no I'm going to get the budget in front of us we're ready for a vote on the budget and this is the first we're hearing that we've heard from you about a lot of course before

207we've heard buttered buses before but it would have been maybe helpful to have this information given to us ahead of time that there was such a great concern so I guess I asked for the information at every budget discussion and we and the answer is right now is we need an alternative funding source that's been the answer that's what I've heard at these meetings and I think that we've had a vote on the agenda everyone's had the amendment we've had the agenda overview we need to vote budget tonight I'm not suggesting we don't vote the budget I'm suggesting we take this issue seriously and I've asked it to be an issue we take more seriously multiple times so I'll just continue to ask that we do so I think with each uh each uh vote

208where we refuse to do it we become more irresponsible than we were before and I think I may not uh have uh other members of a like mine but I'm still confident that this is the right thing to say the Parker can't do this for Concord and Carlisle and Boston kids who can and if we're not going to do it now when are we going to do it and I'll settle for that when are we going to do it you say we can't do it now when are we going to do it well you know it was interesting like did you I don't know if when you were at Mas at the masc conference we spent or I spent a long time talking we went I went to an electric bus um uh well we

209went to like a session on electric buses um and then we had a follow-up conversation with this gentleman at Highland which is a bus company that provides basically like leasing options um and what was what shook me um was specifically in the session because I asked a lot of questions in that session the guy the the representative from the EPA kept saying to us it's not your time it's not your turn um you're not gonna you know it was eye-opening he said you know you guys are not going to qualify for these grants being conquered conquered yeah we were very specific we are from Concord we keep you know I know we've applied for the grants and he did say keep applying because it will demonstrate your commitment to this and one day when you

210know you've got some rural areas which are struggling far more than we are some urban areas which have just denser Roots um when we when when we go through this process it will be your turn now I will say I don't think he had a date from when that would be but it didn't also seem like it was going to be 10 years from now it felt which is not helpful like it was going to be more like a two to five year kind of timeline where he said you know we're there will be more money there will be more subsidy um and then secondarily what was interesting in this conversation he said the thing that's been tricky too for the Northeast is these buses are great in California where the temperature is very consistent

211and there have and and it is trickier here where yeah but but specifically he said um he talked about the ability to heat the buses um and that a lot of these buses come off the road intermittently in like the colder months that we have here so you know I do think I I know it feels super urgent I'm not disputing yeah yeah no but but it was just interesting so like to your point I think there's an intro there's a conversation to be had about the when and maybe it would involve you know bringing some of these guys in when is it going to be that's that's my question to my colleagues when is this going to be important enough for this school committee I'd like to know if we're going to try to

212retrofit any of our buses I'd like to know if if the school committee should decide to support a budget that includes more diesel is it going to be the clearest diesel available in uh 2024. I would like to know if having sold nine buses we can claw some of that money back uh that would otherwise go to the town because we get some of it the town gets some of it and use that to offset our costs I'd like to know exactly what 71e can do for 71 somethings chapter 71 can do for us for a regional Bus if it's electrical I'd like to see us try harder yeah gives us 40K for bus and that would apply to Electric bus region or CPS yes anywhere okay that's no qualification everybody's eligible offset or of

213three hundred thousand dollars sure you know I I'm just going to comment and say advice on kids health I just don't want to do it and yet the fiscal can't compete with the instructional needs of the kids and the basics of getting kids to school so it needs to be a separate please let me finish we have applied for every grant that has come up I do feel the need to reiterate what we have done because I feel like this sounds like we haven't done anything and we don't care we run three we're about to run three electric buses we've got the first bus in the state country and got a lot of The Kinks out for the major Productions that are happening now we've pushed the limit with the state I don't feel ethically

214sound recommending to you going back to chapter 71 and tip and pulling from the state Bucket over and over for reimbursement that is not the intent of that fund that and that fund is intended for the rurals and the districts that are trying to keep Basics happening not to subsidize an electrification project I think other districts that have done it on scale have other opportunities because they're able to work at a large scale with a big electrical firm cmlp has its incredible benefits but it's making some of the solar a local discussion and so there needs to be a collective discussion of if the town values this if the communities value this it's not just the schools and so I'm going to ask that we pull this out of the budget discussion annually let's call

215a collective meeting of the fin comms and the select boards and have it where there's a major con combined effort because I don't think we can do it by ourselves and Dr Hunter so I would be treating it uh like the important item it is well let's do it then let's do it then include the light board and make it a huge joint meeting yeah 2023 that's a doable so if we're not going to start what you just described I don't what kind of can't imagine who will I think we should start can I make a suggestion to educate the rest of the board on what these electrical buses are going to look like and what the standards are I know I was here for the gentleman that was speaking on the electrical buses but

216again he's never been invited back to the group to further that discussion he only had I guess minutes it was something like 10 minutes to present what he had I picked up on a lot of the stuff that he was introducing but at the same time um where are we getting the electricity from to charge these buses what is it going to be a cost to keep the repairs of these buses I've seen a few articles where you know the the Chevy VoIP which is a small vehicle it's you know replacement of a battery is 25 000 and if you don't have a warranty that causes another issue so I hear you caught on you know providing kids with with a safer healthier environment my kids are on the bus for over an hour so

217I don't do diesel at all um driving a commercial vehicle I won't do diesel because it smelled and the health risk but at the same time the electrical piece is a lot of other components that we as a community as as a state still don't understand uh we're still using fossil fuels to charge these buses um so I just want to be educated a little more on it so we can come into a different space and say hey you know what um it's might it might work in California but it might not work here but it is working in Florida and this is what they're doing and this is how we can go about mirroring some of the some of the programs that they have and again back to what Cynthia said a minute ago

218that you know you sell one bus you get 40 Grand but the bus is worth um the bus cost 400 000 plus dollars so to me that's like you know a 10 return when we can continue to put students in classrooms so I just want to be a little more informed so we can have a better understanding what's out there because it's changing these electrical buses are changing by the minutes yeah yeah that's true I assure you you have the most highly skilled made crew right now on staff to maintain electric buses because it's good to experience there if it was that easy the TV running electric buses now and it's not it's not easy now and we could share we've had really big struggles with both of the two we've been running and they're

219on the road and then they're off and they're on the road you got to walk around with electric extension [Laughter] we will move on and can be in a different group to work on this but I I do think that I would agree with Lori to pull this out of the budget discussion because I do think it is going to have to be separate whether it's Capital art or whether it's more grant money more State money Federal money I mean prices of buses may come down in the next two years we don't know what's going to happen so I think that continue to have the discussion but outside the budget process could be variable but we have to discuss everything in the budget to discuss the budget and this is in the budget uh my

220question remains um do we know from Mr Arena if he's prepared to recommend what they refer to as today's cleanest diesel technology I assume I assume so yeah we can develop the spec we can look into that I appreciate it yeah okay so I think we have a motion off a table that's been seconded we've had a robust discussion so um but about all in favor I I post okay the budget test and with that I'm going to adjourn the Regional School community meeting so thank you for our parallel members and girls Lucky Lucky came late leave early [Laughter] everyone's jealous yeah yeah have a great break you guys you have a meeting tomorrow night I'm sorry Sarah's screening yeah happy New Year you guys fun thank you both so much yeah thank you all

221right thank you all right so our first action item will go in order will be um to vote to approve the CPS budget can I entertain a motion I have it or do you have it go ahead I moved this Congress school committee vote to approve the fiscal 24 operating budget in the amount of 45 million 197 176 dollars into further approve the accompanying draft warrant language article uh for town meeting approval all right can we have discussion on the CPS budget I know we've had some questions but I think we'll be making a mistake if we come in uh higher than higher than the town and I'm uncomfortable with something exceeding five percent and pretty close and I think we could do well to uh set that as a goal to continue working on

222this have there been further conversations with um Peggy and the fincom I know she had mentioned at our last meeting no paying attention just acknowledgment that they were paying attention and no there haven't been but I'm sure there will be okay yeah I think sometimes voting the budget sort of is the impetus to get those conversations kind of started but um okay yeah we've got a lot of asks on the table for the town right now um everybody's going to feel it you know right now we're inspired by a vision of a new school and we're happy with the support we give our teachers and our students uh but there's going to be a reckoning and I think they're going to also want to see that we really were as diligent as we could possibly

223be and by that in the women's school committee of the administration we're still doing this together comments questions more like it's like yeah I just um yeah my my again I articulated earlier earlier or I will articulate it again I don't feel like this is the the end of our discussions this vote I feel like this sort of kicks off our discussions and I think um and we still have work in front of us I don't think anyone at this table would disagree with that um but um and I think you know I think we all acknowledge that I think I don't think the that you know so I mean again that's just sort of where I kind of see it the start of work to be done but I think we'll still have to

224recognize that those asks are for programming that we need at CPS that doesn't exist right now or or you might need additional staff in the programs that are bursting at the seats which is a good thing I mean I think some of our specialized programs they're drawing students from you know people are moving to conference maybe specialized programs if you have heard that before um we're saving money by not going out of district and that that's just a reality to some of the money that's in this budget in a new school will help uh continue to support those programs because parents will see you know just like the the high schools this beautiful facility and I hear your Point Court you know more money out the door sometimes will bring more money back into the

225door and a lot of the things that parents are looking for now is to to have that sixth grade transition into seventh grade within one building I know it was tough for my for my daughter to put one building to the neck because it's like oh now I gotta learn a whole new building and so I think uh moving forward um the town will actually benefit from the budget that's been put in front of us tonight um to ensure that the future Generations feel you know appreciated because you know when you sit down and learn sometimes um can be intimidating but at the same time when you walk around and I speaking for kids in Boston when you walk into a building and there's no AC system and it's the peak of Summer um that's

226a big difference when you have a facility you can appreciate and you know I know the kids in in the family's World Future Families as well so that's just my opinion opinion but and Clark going back to what you said you know like you look at this budget mine item by line item and as you said I don't know exactly how you said it but so much of it is I don't know what the right word is like obligatory and the rest is there's just not a lot of meat left so it'll be interesting to see that's why I asked the question of where do we see kids and their needs going because you know like you said there's got to be some kind of we we're gonna have to figure this out because it's

227um it's daunting what we're in taking we've got work to do I think you know that's not very long first of all committee and we'll continue to have more discussions and yeah there's a point where a recommendation from the administration becomes a school committee budget there's got to be some work in between yeah or there's you can't distinguish all right well do we have a motion in a second we do is there any more discussion I'm really looking for looking forward something to do on January 24th I know it's kind of like in a weird time but I still think it will be helpful so that's a regular meeting that's right yeah I should have told Sarah and Sharonville some of the week good thank you all right so all in favor bye posed all

228right um all right and then this Capital article what I I'm going to entertain a motion for it thinking too maybe becomes the backup plan of the backup plan and say you know if it makes more sense at a later date to put another one that would supersede it for us special town meeting within a town meeting maybe that makes sense but to Carrie's Point um I'm a big believer in having all options on the table so if this is just one of them I'd like to have it if we decide not to use it great but I don't want you know just in terms of process and keeping options open um I still want to entertain this motion however we haven't really decided I know Carrie had some opinions on the bleachers of of

229what the sum total of the motion would include any discussion I guess I'm looking at the the draft that I think together um what does that include Bob I forget um because they sort of go together I get that um and he just uh actually with someone and I would entertain emotion yeah I'll read the motion okay um to then move into discussion but uh the Concord school committee I moved at the Concord school committee vote to approve draft form article language appropriating one million eight hundred and two thousand two two hundred and seventy one dollars for the purposes of installing new natural gas natural grass sorry athletic fields and Landscaping at 835 Old Marlboro Road and drive a second second all right now we move to discussion what's there now well this would be

230for the new building so the new building yeah so yes so what we so court and I sit as Representatives on uh the building committee so one of the things we did because um our estimates on the building that are all these estimates are like done professionally not by like us on this committee um because of supply chain and everything else going on economically have sort of steadily risen so the cap the most we can spend on this building is 110 million dollars that was a decision that was set forth by the select board subject right seven million dollar vote that brings us to one town yeah so the latest estimate which came in in October came in at like 108.6 so people are thinking and and are you know hedging their bets okay what

231happens if if the if the estimates come in at like 111 million then it's all this tricky process stuff but you you would have to essentially um start over because and and sort of go back to scratch and there was a hearing about this in Concord um it delays the project it it has cost potential cost implications so what the one of this warrant article essentially would be a potential solution so that if we get these estimates back January 13th 13th um this town meeting to approve um this is on January 19th if let's say they came in like I said at 111 million you've got them you've got a million bucks there that you'd need to complete this building so court and I sit on sit on the building committee what we did last

232Thursday was we looked at pieces of the building right the floor cost this the roof cost this um and what would be the first things that we would cut from the building if these bids come in over 110 million so this we made a list of five things one of which were the fields because they're outside you still get to build a building right they're kind of separate you can't really take out the roof and still have a building right so it feels left yeah so the fields some Landscaping bleachers in the gym um a a decorative treatment on um the roof and potentially outdoor classrooms but they didn't have an Associated cost um so what this would do would say if that happens so that we can still keep the building on track why

233you know could we put out a separate article that says if that happens we have an article that would be a town meeting separate that says we you know would the town essentially authorize an additional whatever it is 1.8 million for the construction of those two specific things so that's really what it's for so so that you don't open a building with no fields in short legally we need a means whereby if the bids came in over the available money we wouldn't simply have to walk away from the project we could give it a little haircut because we planned in advance but what a little haircut looks like yeah it was very problematic it's like the backup plan and um what I was saying in the comfort meeting I don't think you heard yet I

234was like where the economy is trending I'm hoping we don't have to use this but you always want the backup plan or you know I I'm advocating for it because I always want the backup plan but well I'm with you on that because I know just the design piece when you pay 10 for them to design a hundred and ten thousand 110 million dollar project that's a lot yeah that's a lot of money you'd be losing from the initial designs so I hear you on that and just um the grass piece that's why this actual was there before because I know that we're going we're trying to get away from Turf because it's causing a lot of cancer within kids so that's why I was just asking there yeah yeah it's not a natural gas

235yeah not a natural gas okay um so any more discussion I'll just uh read it read what I already said um I think some people's risk averse vote this is my my perception of it is it's actually a risky move I think it uh jeopardizes uh our standing with the select board and the fincom as well as some quarters in in town but more importantly it's just not necessary yet I just think it's premature but I appreciate different of you absolutely okay no yeah oh yeah and I guess that maybe you know you could have some further discussion with yeah I've had preliminary discussions um so yeah and again I mean we hope that we don't have to use it that's sort of where I net out any more discussion and I get all of

236that too it's it's hard right this is like interesting having really different perspectives on it um all right gosh everyone done all right so all in favor of the motion all it posed president so is that like an abstention or this different for the minutes it's an abstention got it okay I and a and I don't do abstentions yeah so they were both present so I was saying is that it's an abstention an obstetric okay okay just for the minutes all right so with that I can adjourn I think so great thank you happy Holidays happy New Year yes so crank my heat in my car