Concord School Committee and CC - Joint School Committee - September 13, 2022

001um all right everybody good evening and welcome to the Concord public school committee I would like to call our meeting to order and we are actually all present so we don't have to do a roll call um so we have a pretty quick agenda tonight with really one main topic for discussion and two quick approvals um or two quick votes I should say um I want to kick off our discussion of the Ed plan um just for everybody in the public for everybody who's newer to the oh whoops sorry I will entertain actually sorry we have public comment because uh we're calling to order the Cocker barber school too many if anyone is in the audience who would like to make public comment um we'll entertain that now and similarly if you are on Zoom

002if you could use the raise hand feature we can call on you there as well nobody's answer no all right um so moving forward the agenda in front of me um we will go into our discussion on the educational plan so for background for everybody the and I know most of this is probably duplicative but um the building committee is confronted with as our building committee chair likes to call it a a real Bonafide dilemma we have um a project budget and scope that was approved at a January 20th town meeting um and then you know we were we progressed into more detailed architectural documents the ones that we have right now are at 30 is that right thirty percent SD are thereabouts at that Milestone you send these documents um off to estimators estimating

003firms who then sort of give you a sense of what they think the the construction budget will you know the construction costs will be so when we got those estimates back um we found that they were about 5 million or so over the budget we had hoped for expected and also frankly approved at our town meeting so we have currently engaged in a process called value engineering which is essentially the way the building committee looks at reduction in the scope of the project some people like to call them cuts um to to to to collapse that five million dollar Delta and hopefully get us to um the original budget so in in all of these iterations we you know we have a list in front of us that has all these ideas for for different

004ways to reduce the size and scope of this project to meet our budget and we're it's really challenging is is the long and short it's just hard um so one of the and and in as the building committee sort of goes through these ideas um we have kind of hit certain roadblocks and and one of the discussion points that has come up time and time again is this educational plan now back to the educational plan this school committee voted on the educational plan in January I think of 21 I don't remember the exact date January 26th of 2021 and the educational plan is a document that describes um the educational program what we expect our Middle School to look like for our kids how the teachers are going to deliver it and how the space

005is becomes a part of that so like for example actually could you give a good example like with respect to inclusion or I'm going to talk teams because that's the biggest driver of the building our team model is to put four teachers of each of those major core content areas English math science and social studies proximate to we do that now but they're not near each other put them proximate to each other with a common team space in the middle so that we can do all sorts of activities together kids are in the same place all day aside from when they go to lunch gym some of those common areas and really build a smaller community and then have fluid and flexible learning space so so the educational plan really does in fact relate to

006the space and and I found that really a sort of fascinating thing so um so what we are looking at now time and time again as we've gone through this value engineering on the building committee um we are confronted with oh well what about what about if we reduce the scope of x b y z um and sometimes it will come up well does that adversely affect the educational plan um and are we willing to make cuts that would affect our ability to deliver our Ed plan so um right now the sort of unspoken agreement if you will is we're not We're Not Gonna We're Not Gonna entertain cuts um that that might affect the Ed plan so and interestingly we own that Ed plan right like we voted on it it's our Ed plan

007so in some ways my feeling is if we were going to entertain or the building committee we're going to entertain cuts they really almost need our permission like oh yeah we're willing to entertain amending this Ed plan so that you can fulfill um you know your value Engineering Process so that I think is what we should discuss um tonight last night this the chairs of the building committee went to the select board um they had can Aaron share the slides that we yeah that Don and Pat did you pull this one helpful um they did sort of like a recap of what we've sort of cut um to dates um in this sort of value Engineering Process so um I'll go through these really quickly on um on May 6 you'll see in that first

008Slide the the building committee um we removed uh square footage for a maker space and an alternate PE space so that those were already two cuts that did sort of affect the Ed plan but there was consensus um that that those two things could be well accommodated in other spaces so even though we cut them it's we were still able to deliver the Ed plan um and keep that intact um we revised the size of the gym that was actually um an addition we revised the auditorium size to 420 seats also in addition the background here was there was a lot of community input that um that led to those decisions um and then we were going to review the building design um all in all so that happened so on the next slide you

009can see where those spaces are obviously this is sort of a kind of Representative look at the building not what the building itself looks like so you can see in the blue there that's where we had the alternate gem alternate PE space removed the maker space and then um the the um the larger gym and Auditorium there in the little bright brighter Orange can I just clarify that the Ed plan wasn't calling for the larger gym in Auditorium we were going to be okay enough with a smaller gym and a cafetorium the community spoke and influenced the committee to increase the size that hasn't changed yeah um and then you'll see on the next slide our timeline um and these are sort of future dates that are relevant um historically oh sorry Jesus these are

010his last sorry these are last year States um so uh so this is sort of a review of where we are and then moving forward um we are concurrently pursuing our value engineering and we have also um asked the select board to consider um a warrant article for a special town meeting that would help us if needed um to get some extra dollars in the event um we are either able to Value engineer the entire budget Gap or um or the or or in fact the bids come in higher um and then the final slide is um some value management we've already agreed to um and anyone who's watched our meetings can sort of see what those are these are all um these were all items that had pretty broad consensus I would say um

011so I think people feel pretty comfortable um with taking those yeah I would just note too that a directly you've had correlation to the Ed plan we were fine with them but we did reduce the classroom size so the square footage is 8.25 instead of the msba recommended 950 and the team comments have come down in size since the original plan all within what we think is doable um and then the keep saying the final Slide the actual final select um is just a comparison of other um projects out there in some incomparable um phases to us so you'll see that um we're still doing pretty well we have a lower cost per square foot than a lot of comparable projects out there which I think to me indicates you know that this building is

012is is pretty conservative building um and with that recap is there anything you want to add before I mean the only thing I'd add is the obvious that we're an incredibly uh extraordinary Economic Times that's why we are where we are not because the scope of the building changed or anything like that it's simply all the inflation and supply chain issues and um unknowns a lot of the a lot of the high estimate right now is the unknowns and making sure we have Monies to cover those as they might have so I think the question before us is to um discuss how we feel about the Ed plan and whether we are willing to be a little bit more whether we're willing to loosen the reins a little bit um in the event the building

013committee um could put potential reductions in scope that would affect the Ed plan I think that's really the question we need to answer the Ed plan has come up not only in our uh Middle School building committee it's come up at both the finance committee and the select board as well so I think everybody all of those those committees are interested in our perspective on that so they can even help inform where they land because the select board is going to be charged with pursuing a town meeting warrant or not and the finance committee ultimately does um make their recommendations about the budget as if in fact we have to go to town meeting so I'll turn the floor to you guys for discussion Court's ready um I I agree we have a problem um

014in that we have competing needs and we have large Town needs looming beyond our school needs um I think it's regrettable that the inflation index that was given to us was so far off I don't think we were well protected by our professionals but we have to deal with it uh I do take exception to the idea that we should amend the education plan if needed to satisfy the CMS building budget um and I'll tell you why I don't I personally don't think an ed plan is in fact a budget or a space document I think it's what you said earlier it's a program document and so I think that what we have to focus on is can we deliver to teachers and students in the facility um the Ed plan was delivered about 12

015months after the design was started in Earnest because the Ed plan was running late because we were running late with it so we own that how then did the designers design a building absent an ed plan they did it using the actual data of teachers and students from our Middle School actual data real data back at that time and then moved it up to the 700 number um we have a building that is about 30 000 square feet over what the msba would have suggested to us we wanted msba multiple times to be compared to work with that and then do our own Concord ad um where that to be the wishes of the town so um I'm of mind that the education plan is uh very intact and I think it's important for the

016school committee to know that um we as a building committee have stayed stayed away stayed far away from discussing the team Commons um the reality right now is I understand it is that we are going to have a incoming population that would warrant seven teams numbers student numbers and we're going to build nine teams so we have very very ample opportunity to expand in that Ed Wing um to avoid a discussion of the quote-unquote instructional Wing is to put pressure on the building committee and as a consequence the community if in fact very little is in play like the auditorium and the gymnasium because we don't know how much else is in play um I think Thursday we'll learn more I think we're going to dig into uh what we can do on the exterior

017of the building how many quote-unquote outdoor classrooms do we have how much theater space do we have Outdoors does it require the solutions that are being presented to us and so on so I think there still is room before we consider we as a building committee consider gym and Auditorium um I hope so all right can we hear from you and others a lot of times finally um as to the the numbers you showed up there I informed you today I'm still looking uh as to where those numbers exist in the MB msba site they were sent to you in a link on Saturday yes okay good it's in the body of the email because I showed you what popped up for me when I went to now you have the direct links in your

018email very good thank you that's all I've got oh and finally ve is normal I want folks to know that ve is is normal on projects might even be normal in our own residential work uh if we were going to renovate a home we might be talking value engineering so I don't think we should be too horrified at the prospect that we're doing that no and I and I think we've pointed out there are a lot of there are a lot of ve items that we've taken that had I think Billy broad consensus which I think you know people are willing to be um to be cooperative on this to meet you know to try to meet somewhere in the middle anyone else Cynthia Carey Aisha Tracy I had a question on the teams so

019Courtyard reference seven teams versus nine virtual population coming so we have enrollment projections of those for 10-year enrollment projections or are those yeah and I'm not prepared to go through an entire iteration of the procedures that happened to scrutinize the enrollment work with the NASDAQ product projections look at actual enrollments and plan accordingly we we are at 6 55 now I shared that with you last week that was expected and anticipated and counted on no question um we purposely are building ourselves that cushion to go as high as 700 knowing that a new school often attracts families we have a large number of private schools that we share students with we'd likely keep more of them in in-house and the way we're compensating for that is smaller class size in smaller square footage of classrooms

020with more teams so those class sizes are low so the the numbers if we're open today at 6 55 the numbers are in the High Teens rather than up in the low 20s across the nine teams that's intentional so that should we get that 50 50 some more students they're going to add to the class size but not pinch us to the point where we're we're struggling for another option or another team that we can't accommodate Etc so that's why the classroom square footage is under msba because we built this expecting to be under the number they use for class size to accommodate the enrollment piece and how many times have we been rejected by the msba four four yeah so realistically that's never an option so we have to find our own building um

021and I guess you know it is a 50-year building we don't know what a normal moments what's going to happen we don't know what the housing Market's going to do there could be a correction in the housing marketing price is really high right now five years from now they'd be really low everybody could move to Concord you know and I do agree that you know when you have a population that goes out to private school sometimes the building does weigh into people's minds on that and and I do think that we will have a shift of private school students coming back into the public school and to under build a building and to make it really tight in there I mean I I'm an educator in my past life and I feel like smaller class

022sizes what we should be advocating for instead of a larger class size I would much prefer class sizes in the High Teens then in 25 and that has happened in in my history as being a parent here we've had class size of 32 at the middle school we had 70 move-ins One Summer which it can happen you know usually it's 30 but it can happen that we could get an influx of kids and I just want to be prepared for that should that because we just have no idea what's going to happen Okay I just have a question on this is isn't it standard that when you build a new school or building that you you assume for growth like I imagine the experts have spoken to this subject that there is some foreign Court

023brought it up I think it's appropriate to respond to what's at the and I do think I would like for none of this meeting not maybe at the next meeting but a full discussion about enrollment he outlooks the current enrollment I think that'd be really if we haven't really talked about it last couple of years um um do you have anything else you want to add no I'm just I'm just wondering if there must be some formula that the Architects have talked about around how you think about building a building because you wouldn't want to build it for the community you have now you'd want to build it for the community you expect to have over the next 50 years I would imagine and that's the beauty of going on our own yeah because msba

024would dictate and they correct me if it if it's changed but in the past they would build the current population so you'd be in trouble by the time you opened the building yeah I still go through the projection process with them yeah they're they're going to have their own opinions which tend to be more conservative and sometimes like our high school we're we're a chock-full because the you know you know the younger grades are lower so we knew we were going to have to get through this tighter time period as enrollment declined in the coming years the the high numbers are still at the high school the lower numbers are making their way to the middle school so then if but if that's the case then why would we want to be looking at cutting

025classrooms I don't think anybody has discussed that I don't know why that keeps entering nobody's talking about cutting classrooms Oh I thought that's what you were implying when you said um the bill committee considers so far correct me if I'm wrong Alexa the uh billing committee has considered the instructional Wing thus far sacrosanct am I exactly right and but but again I think as as we as we move along in this process we need to I think it would be helpful to the building committee yeah to to know where we stand on this if if we might be a little bit more laissez-faire and say you know what hey we understand you guys are up against a wall and and and and and and look at these types of things or if we um if

026we believe that the building should committee should as you've said just now look at cuts that don't impact adversarially the end plan I think that is what we have to decide collectively today and maybe I could say it more clearly this way I believe that the reason we have a significant budget problem is in no small part because we're hanging on to those nine teams and and so it leaves us fewer opportunities to look at Value engineering elsewhere in light of the fact that we have to look some if indeed we have a budget problem it was of inflation Cynthia I think you've wanted to say I feel bad you know I I kind of feel like we're all over the place um in our conversation but I don't want to touch the Ed plan

027but I think there's a I think there's other things that building committee could do I'm not saying specifically honestly I don't I'm not able to follow it I'm hoping for a public forum where perhaps that you could maybe after this Thursday meeting lay things out for the community because it's very difficult to follow exactly what's going on but I think as far as the Ed plan I don't think we should touch it we voted unanimously a very short time ago for it and I think it just it should stand us the way this all right yeah I agree I think there's a lot of thought um an incredible amount of work went into this Ed plan I think that it will serve not just you know I think it will serve our kids really well

028and um I think it looks sounds to me like based on the presentations I've seen from Dr Hunter and others on the middle school that have followed as best I can on the building committee um that this is a vision for our community and that the Ed plan is part of that Vision it is it is both a building and an end plan and um I think it it is more than a the Ed plan is more than than just a program I think it is part of the building and um I wouldn't support touching it yeah all right so I think I think maybe if we could entertain emotions about the Ed plans so that we can make sure that other committees who intersect with ours um no with a vote where we stand

029I think that would probably be important so I if anyone I can't make a motion if anyone would put emotion forward we can move into our action items I can try okay so um I moved that the Concord school committee um is it just reaffirm its support for the Ed plan as written in January of 2021 um and therefore not support um amendments to the building that would negatively impact um the Ed plan the education plan do we have a second anywhere I'll second up discussion by anybody I'm going to have a hard time with it because we're implying that there's somebody out there that would put the eggplant in general to Jeopardy and I haven't met that person who wants to put the eggplant in Jeopardy number one number two I don't want to

030reaffirm this because it implies that somebody thinks there might be something wrong with the Ed plan I don't think anybody says there's anything wrong with you I don't know I don't think I'm just giving you my opinion okay that's all I'm doing my opinion yeah I think that I feel more comfortable straight up or down to the public that we have to go back to our own Ed plan and say oh it's really okay and no we're not going to hurt the the educational delivery of kids I don't why is that even in debate I don't I think it's going to be misinterpreted I don't feel that the end plan is being challenged I don't think that our commitment to kids is being challenged when I work on this building so I think it's a

031or I'm sorry but I think it's a poorly conceived idea I don't think it's going to move the building project forward either frankly sure well I'll offer my perspective which is a little different the finance committee the select board and our own committee have all discussed different paths forward that in our meetings in our building committee meetings it will come up might this production and scope affect the Ed plan Dr Hunter has weighed in on some of those things uh Prince uh Justin Cameron has weighed in on some of those things so to suggest that there haven't been opportunities for the building committee to move forward with a path with reductions in scope you know it from here forward I think that that has happened so and and I do think as you know it's

032not just the building committee the select board and the finance committee need to weigh in on this so I think they need to understand it will help them inform even the the what their work moving forward is their flexibility here I think that that's a fair question to help everybody I'm doing this in the spirit of you know kindness and transparency help we need to help everybody have a clear understanding of what each group is willing is sort of willing to do so I disagree with court on that anyone else have discussion well I think if we're reaffirming it and we're making this commitment what is the harm in voting for it and we do have a motion on the table so I'd actually if there's no more discussion I'd like to call it to

033a vote can you reread motion please Carrie sure um I move that the Concord Public Schools the Concord public school committee um vote to uh reaffirmative support for the educational program as written in January on January 26 2021 um and therefore not support um any amendments to the building that would adversely affect the education the implementation of the educational program um so we don't need to roll call so we can do all in favor hi hi I'm going to ask the minutes reflect that I'm voting yes but reluctantly because I would like this I would have liked a straight up vote what does that mean straight up I would have liked just to reapprove the educational plan period oh got it um all opposed no there isn't stated so that passes um and then so

034our next action item is to vote to approve the CMS handbook um Lori do you want to talk about that yeah this is very straightforward We There were changes only to uh dates and names so we're just bringing this forward for you to formally approve for this school View I'll just make a quick statement I'm not I'm fine with voting tonight on the handbook but I think um we might need to scrub it for up-to-date policies because understandably there could come a little yes so for next spring yeah yeah I think there's like an outdated sexual harassment policy I think in there so just maybe it's not what the reference is wrong oh okay the mdl reference is not perfect no no there's others but okay so just if we get a full screen view

035of it next spring thank you um all right so all in favor of approving the CMS promotion yeah sorry oh I need to move to accept second all in favor all right um I don't adjure in this meeting we're just called to order and we'll convene the region uh oh Sarah Sarah yeah they're here doing things a little bit opposite today we usually start with the reason to be at CPS so it's it's a learning curve for all of us thank you so I would like to call to order the Concord Carlisle school committee and it looks like all oh yeah because all members of the school committee are present and we also have our representatives are present in Domingo's welcome it's great to be here we had you in person last time so good

036to see you again this year so um and you have to make this we're going to get you just a little housekeeping we're going to get you your badge and you have a book in front of you and for those of you that weren't in our last meeting in person you also have books in front of you appreciate it so all right so we're going to start with our cchs student update and I think I see let's see we've got Harry and zarya and Felicity so you're up all right just give me a minute I think I can screen share but oh perfect there we go perfect okay so um this is our first student update of the Year obviously the first thing we kind of wanted to touch on were some of the changes

037we're making for this school year and a lot of it's internal but I thought it was just worth highlighting at the meeting the biggest thing is we've created kind of a group within student Senate where people can come and talk about their concerns we had our first meeting on Monday it was actually a little photo of it down in the corner and right now it's mostly made up of student Senators but we are going to try and advertise it to the wider community so anyone can feel like they can come and sort of use us as a bridge between like them as students and the administrators and this is something that we've been talking about for a long time but our like reach only goes so far with just the three of us so our

038hope is that we can kind of get perspectives from more of the student body and then also just here a lot more about like what's kind of going on at the school yeah and we also had this idea to kind of create a public forum type thing um whereas students can talk with the committee or Administration like kind of as um so that the three of us we can act kind of as a go-between so that more students can get their ideas um into like school committee or higher levels um and we think that this is going to be particularly useful for like issues that students have a lot of strong opinions on so that is something that this Advisory Group that Harry mentioned will help like facilitate yeah for sure yeah um and then

039just one more point one of the things we sort of talked about at our meeting on Monday was involving student voices and more place of the school committee meetings um last year I remember we featured trash trucks and also Spectrum Club and it's something that as Representatives we've just been keeping our eye on if we think there's any opportunities for our students to come and present we'll certainly bring it up sorry um there's now a sense of normalcy and return to like a pre-coveted atmosphere um some students are like adjusting to the workloads that have like recently gotten bigger and ramped up and there's been more rules in place regarding being in class and Technology usage during class for sure yeah I think um one of the biggest things is kind of making sure that

040kids are like actually in class I know last year one of the things we struggled with was people coming late leaving early and stuff and it can feel a little bit harsh at first but I think we'll get used to it over time particularly with the younger grades who haven't really known too much of a different policy um what else oh do you want to touch on the building access oh sorry that was me okay sorry um yeah so we have um as you guys may know probably we have the fingerprint scanners at um cc to kind of enhance security Now um those seem to be working well there's like slight confusion and that's mostly in zarya in my grade 10th grade because there was some delay in getting the fingerprint thing set up for

041our grade but um mostly for the upperclassmen who are the people who will be using this the most for open campus purposes um it seems to all be going very well so and zarya can touch on like the key fob aspect yeah um I I don't think there's been any formal emails about the key fob but uh I know that Dr Hunter is working on that so I don't think that's going to be too big of a problem yeah um and then travel this is something we saw in the agenda I know everyone's really excited about this it came up at our meeting and I think everyone's excited to see The Return of trips one of the things though kids were a little bit concerned about the cost of trips and I'm sure there are

042financial aid policies in place but normally when the trips come up people's first saw us that they're excited and then the second thing they say is that they're a little bit worried about the cost so I just think it's something that's worth bearing in mind throughout the planning and everything um the lunches have been approved um and they're like way more this big of there is a bigger variety of lunches my friend in fact loves the chicken and corn that they serve now [Laughter] I will pass that along okay I'm excited to hear that shout out which is also like a hot one yeah it's been a real gift with the coveted restrictions off of the food so they've got more options it's been great yeah yeah um and then I think one of the

043biggest changes we've seen this year is that philisto you can touch on this too but people don't seem to be as concerned about the new attendance policy um yeah so last year like when it was first um updated a lot of people were like kind of complaining about it in the beginning but um we think that that was probably mostly because it was such like a big contrast to what like the how relaxed things really were during covid so now that we've gotten back into like a new school year and especially with the ninth graders who didn't really have like these really LAX restrictions um or they aren't used to uh sorry basically the people are getting used to these new attendance policies and I think everyone is starting to understand that they're really just

044trying to get everyone to be in class basically so yeah that seems to be going well um and then with incentive I don't know sorry do you want to talk about the efforts to get someone from metco uh yeah there's been efforts to recruit like a mecco representative for a student Senate um I don't know much about the Medco representative position but I know that there are at least three people signed up for the position and being looked at for the position yeah and then also we met today some of the like I guess leadership within student Senate with the cchs administration and I think that was actually really important to kind of get the year started like that it's helpful for a lot of concerns that wouldn't necessarily be appropriate to bring up here

045at the school committee meetings but can probably be dealt with with the administration and I think it just helps with our role as like sort of a bridge between students and the people with the power to actually make decisions and then this is just kind of for fun but some of the events coming up over the next couple of weeks we have the poet Richard Blanco's presentation on the 15th and I know we're going to be talking about that in advisory too which is really exciting and then on the 17th we have a training from the Massachusetts Association of school committees for student reps I went to one last year this one is on Zoom but I think it'll still be valuable especially since zarya unless you didn't get to attend last year on September

04623rd we have the activities Fair which is kind of like for I think the clubs during The Lunchbox and everybody gets to like you know go see all the clubs and activities we have to offer um and the pink dance is something I'm new to this year it's a dance where is after I believe a football game um and it's held at 7 30 and the 10 ticket seems really fun you wear pink foreign yeah and the day after that um is kicks for cancer which I'm sure everyone has heard about or if not then you've probably seen the lawn signs all over Concord so um yeah that's just like a really great activity there's always like a lot of people who show up and it's a really great Community event as well yeah um

047and then just two lessons to touch on we also have the mighty moose 5K all part of the kickster cancer weekend kind of the graphics off to the side and then also rehearsals have started for cc theaters fall play I believe the performances are later in October but definitely something exciting coming up so yeah sorry I know it was a bit long-winded tonight but we definitely had some things we wanted to be sure to touch on good job I could take some notes on that and I think that maybe you know if I have updates like that I should present slides so the public can see my updates so thank you for that I just have one question and then I'll open up to the rest of community if anybody has a comment or question

048or anything like that um how do you guys feel about the cell phone Pockets at the high school do you think that feels new this year and for members of the committee who maybe don't have someone at the high school a lot of teachers are using Pockets where students check their phone in at class have you ever heard any feedback on that um I mean I could start and then you guys can jump in I think it kind of depends on the way individual teachers are implementing it like in a lot of my classes the teacher will kind of say either just have it away in your bag or if you don't think that you can be trusted to not be on your phone or it's kind of like a willpower thing for you then

049you should probably put it up in the little holder but I honestly don't think it's too much of a change I mean the policy has always been in my time at the high school just don't be on your phone during class like don't be on your computer during class when you're not using it for something that's like kind of relevant I don't think it's been too big of a deal good good anyone else like questions oh yeah go ahead Felicity I was just gonna say I don't have much to add but I know because I don't actually have a phone so like it does it's not so applicable to me but I do like I do know that some of my teachers are using that for attendance which is like I guess it could be

050it could be both good and bad because if your phone is in the caddy I guess like even if you go to the bathroom your your teacher probably knows that you're not just gonna be like walking around the hall is with your phone but yeah for for people like me hopefully I won't just get Mark's absent someday because thank you um me personally I have I have difficulties in the caddy only because I forget things really easily so I'll put my phone in the caddy and then leave for my next class and not remember at all to to bring my phone with me and I'll like remember like right before school ends like I almost left school without it one time um it was not really fun but you know thank you thank you anyone

051else have any questions or comments they're good thank you very much thank you thank you like right update okay um at this point we're at the public comments section of our meeting and we just as a reminder this is a meeting in the public but not with the public if you'd like to make a public comment we're going to start in the room first and you'll have three minutes to state your name and address and then if you are online you can use the raise hand feature um and then you will be addressed in hi I'm Kristen Haggerty 95 Revolutionary Road I have a comments with two different things one is about the strategic planning process that you guys are going to discuss this evening I'd like to know when the results from the analysis

052will be shared publicly um or if they have already I didn't see them I believe that's at August in your opinion I'd like to know who will be or was invited to join the inclusive planning team and I'd like to know what's being done to seek and include more diverse voices in the strategic planning process especially those who have not been included in the past um and I'd like to see metrics that represent the concerns of students and parents especially medical families and other families of color I think that was probably um missing largely in the last strategic plan and we have an opportunity to capture that better um and uh you know by comparison or the reason I'm asking these things is when I did look at the education plan which I know was

053written and updated you know in before now um they're listed about 17 contributors to the plan and I would be curious to know how diverse that representation was that went into the development of the educational plan they just discussed my second point is about the discussion that was had about the CMS building and you're concerned what I heard was somewhat a concern about enrollment maybe I boiled it down but and I want to encourage the committee to understand and appreciate fact-based decisions based on historical data which you have as well as reasonable projections which also exist like the housing production plan which includes a projection for Concord that says the population is aging and certainly based on zoning we are not having families move in with any significant increases to enrollment so there are some

054some data points that we have that I think would be useful and I want to make sure that we're not making decisions or I'm not making any decisions that you're not making decisions based on assumptions for worst case scenarios because the other data point we have is new buildings were constructed at the elementary school each one right over the years and I think you can look at enrollment data to see if a new building attracted a largely significant population change so you have a lot of data points that you can look at without having to say well we think that a new fabulous building is also going to change enrollment in a way that's going to degrade student education because I I do not believe that it will so thank you thank you all right

055anyone else in the room having seen that one if you are on zoom and you would like to make a public comment please just erase hand feature and it looks like we have no one all right so thank you uh moving on to the reading of the minutes so you should have received the minutes from our last session which included the workshop and the um the school committee evaluation and the goal setting and I had a couple members reach out to me with comments so if we can just have a discussion before we vote if you have any additions or discussions on the minutes so I do I have not finished compiling those I did have a chance to watch most of the workshop um so I do have I'd like to put a hold

056on them because I don't think it's like I can't in lifetime give you all my changes but so I I sent them out last week and I think I essentially recorded So you're not prepared to vote on them tonight it's faster hold you don't mind till the next meeting um okay and any other comments I mean if everybody else is ready to vote then oh abstain I guess okay so I would I want to make sure that everything I've heard anything because I think it was a really good reading and I think there were some good takeaways that I don't think were fully captured but okay so so maybe if we can hear from other members to see if you're prepared to vote on these mats tonight I don't know the nature of the uh

057scrutiny that Cynthia and Sarah are giving this but I trust that if they think it's worth a hold and if the chairs don't think that these have to be on the street as formally approved immediately I think we should uh honor honor the concerns of members around this table okay and I'd ask the other members are you prepared to vote on minutes tonight or not I'm happy to hold I'm happy to vote okay either way same same okay so let's put it on hold and we'll put it on our meeting for the 27th and if you have any additions if you could please send them to me and then um we'll get them to Aaron and it's just the work to see them it's just the workshop yeah every I'm not I'm prepared about in

058the other minutes okay yeah so for both you just the Workshops the workshop I mean it was like we all put so much effort into that self-evaluation I just want to make sure and just to be clear and I think and I'll just publicly say to everyone too with the minutes I'm also prepared to put in the document from Glenn and Dorothy that captures in written with the written form what their recommendations are so we can add those into the minutes and that might you know that might capture better exactly what the recommendations were because it was really more recommendations from them um than a discussion from us about it but I'm happy to attach that also and I'll get those with there yeah yeah I just think that you know future committees it it

059was a lot of good information that's good to remind that we don't need to re like future committees don't need to recreate that whole you know okay you want it as a baseline to move forward yeah so that that's what I'll be proposing is to add those into a minute so they'll be the first edition and then I'll resend them out great and if you have any other comments then you can send them my way is it worth voting on the other one today and just hold on the workshop is it just a hold in the workshop yes yeah okay so let's vote on the 822 minute so I'd entertain a motion to approve the 8 23 minutes which was the meeting that was not the workshop meeting so moved second thank you any more

060discussion on that thank you Aaron okay all in favor aye opposed okay um correspondence um I did not uh I will say as of noon today I did not have any Regional School committee correspondence um and we at CPS had 22 I believe emails that um were all singularly focused in nature which was support um of keeping the scope of the CMS building intact and requesting um to let voters decide about amendments to the budget in town meeting we did get one I think Regional email I thought it was Regional um this afternoon um sorry great sorry I had to make a cut-off point at a certain time in my preparation sorry okay so then that was it that's all we got okay um share some Liaisons reports all right I think we have a

061few people that want to make reports since they you had something so I have the peg access uh committee um I actually just not liaison but a member um we're in the process of doing a review of the franchise agreement which is a pretty big deal um we uh at the recommendation of John Harris because it was over ten thousand sent out an RFP to 12 firms I think 10 to 12 two met the criteria and we awarded to buskie Associates uh at the tune of around 38k so it's a fairly elaborate contract with a lot of services from The Firm over the next year or so um so stay tuned we're going to have Community forums and focus groups and surveys and all kinds of things to educate the community of and this importance

062and as I'm a member an issue that came up is the ongoing desire to upgrade the equipment in this room and what we're trying to uh get the equipment ordered and we hope that that can happen soon so Mark doesn't need to set this up in such an elaborate way every meeting so I'm going to put in my two cents to get that done that is underway so I don't have the exactly but it's in process um when we like assign chairs Liaisons and members Domingos and Aisha weren't with us do you mind giving a quick overview of what the peg accessport is so um almost every community that has um a community television it's public education and government is that right do I get the peg acronym correct and we basically oversee the operations

063is that kind of correct or not the operations but the Court's more senior um expert on this I'm going to sort of defer so I don't think cities and towns give right-of-way to companies to bring in telecommunications services and in return to for allowing them to travel on our information highways around town we can extract money from them in the form of negotiating a contract and then typically that money is used for local public access television so that's the the essence of it all and our one company is Comcast you know some some communities have multiple companies and we just have one and we're a little bit different because we have our own light plant that provides Broadband so the Comcast has some significant competition yeah so it's an interesting Dynamic here in Concord Carlisle

064has a different situation than we did a question if I'm right through the chairs sure just um is the this vendor this consulting firm husky groups yeah group who did the Carlisle work correct a year or two years ago and I think credibly am I accurate in saying they now are working for the town of Congress to a inform the contract renewal process and then B help the town manage it absolutely yes he manages it yes and this consulting firm kind of holds our hand right because it's a com it's a complicated process okay and it has I think there's significant changes in 19 or something or other 2019 to some of the laws around the franchise agreements and this is a California firm which is interesting um so she is uh you know National

065but she's just had experience in Carlisle which I think made us feel like she she knew basically the community and this will be a 10-year contract yes is it 10 or 12. no it's just yeah I was just 10. okay okay um and I don't think any does anyone else have a an update for tonight Court we can be I think uh quick on this one um this is last night's select board um Dr Hunter was there our chairs were there we have uh Peggy bricks Briggs and Matt Johnson here with us tonight both there last night just a couple of high points um the building committee chairs reported on value engineering to date uh made the point that we continue on with our work this Thursday and uh chair Nelson uh was quite explicit

066that it's being designed to an ed plan quote unquote so uh I think the shares are comfortable that we're we're on that Ed plan um when we look at the current Town approved budget of 103.7 million with a 2.5 percent contingency we know that that uh didn't work out as well as we had hoped were 5.3 higher there was some discussion about the idea that maybe nobody knows but maybe the building committee would bring not one but more than one uh path forward to the citizens one being uh minimal value engineering hence a higher cost or two a back to budget which would be uh significant in its implications or three a building committee quote unquote recommendation with the assumption that might land somewhere in the middle I think that's what I was picking up

067but again that was speculation with discussion still underway as to whether there might be a special town meeting in December reflecting help me out here the 60 percent estimates or in January reflecting even better 90 percent uh estimates others can help me out so and so next Monday on the 19th will be when the select board decides if we're going to have a special town meeting I said the Crux of it I don't think Mr Johnson can speak for this election the discussion will take place about a special town meeting yes that that is going to be an agenda topic great so thank you okay um and no other committees I don't think uh yep just said I didn't email this but I thought it was worth uh just noting that the Carlisle castle playground

068started getting built this weekend um all five Carlisle school committee members attended at some points over the weekend to help out but more remarkably there were a bunch of cchs kids there there was the cheerleading team there were you know ad hoc groups of of kids um and so I just wanted to give a shout out to all the the Concord Carlisle kids who came to help move rocks and dirt and to assemble and everything it was just a fantastic and there'll be another building weekend towards the end of the month I think from about the 20th to the 25th and hopefully the grand finale will be the reveal on the 25th and the good news is it's no skills required so actually Sharon I got a little discussion about this if we would like

069to go as a committee and go help with the builds we certainly could do that there's a Sign Up Genius yeah um so I'll send out the Sign Up Genius if anybody wants to help build a playground two of my kids were actually there and the cheerleaders thought that they were babysitting and they ended up building and it's a bit of a surprise and um but they gladly built a playground and uh you know and it was great because it was really into volunteer and I saw it in Laurie's tweets this weekend so it was really you know it's really a great Community event between both towns so if anybody wants that I'm going to send the email out with the Sign Up Genius link and there is babysitting there too for people that have

070young kids you can drop your kids off and you can do the work and they'll get babysat and there's even food and their meals yeah their meals yeah we've had amazing sandwiches pizzas all sorts of stuff donated right right um I think in terms of we're going to hear next week about the Dei update uh next meeting sorry on September 27th and I think no one else sent me anything so I think we're good yeah rather than give me a whole agenda item I just wanted to name our reinvigorated efforts towards security which covet had essentially stalled or undone in some places it was just a contradictory to do some of the security measures against locked down and lockdown versus some of the distancing and other things so we've been really on a mission to

071prioritize that as we rolled school back so all of the teachers across all of the schools have had Alice training the sros went building to building over the course of two days they did the presentation eight times but it Matt it was really important they did it in a smaller setting where teachers could interact with them so the teachers have all been trained we're going to be following up now with some vet visits to classrooms by the sros making our way to training of the kids at the middle and high school we're still talking about the developmentally appropriate way at the elementary schools so more to come on that with the goal of drills and practicing by the end of the month or early October we've put badges back in place all the staff's been

072asked to find their badge wear it all the time really visually set a tone of security Kristen's office took the emergency response plan that we updated in the fall of 19 in January of 2020 and um finally got it off our desks and sent out for binding and production that will be hard copying classrooms and posted very visibly um and we're looking at an app called crisis go that we've sort of had on the back burner for the last few years and just really sending messages of our schools are locked that's what the kids are talking about fingerprints and fobs we are working on the fobs um Sun's open campus is a challenge uh so we're pleased the response has been really positive by staff families were noticed as you saw in my letter on

073Friday and we're going to continue to communicate with them but it feels like we're getting our plans back in place and we're we're just feeling good about that so I just wanted to offer that absolutely and we are going to be putting um you know superintense reports for things like this right into our agendas where chairs liaison superintendents report some as it might be these the assistant super General Finance we might put in a little report in there if there's not an actual vote just to kind of be a place holder where to put that um yes uh Dr Hunter we have been talking about crisis go or the equivalent for a while um and and as I recall we've got some schools that are in particular need uh because cell service is very poor

074so are you also prioritizing who might get attention first is that we certainly will so it's going to be a voluntary rollout we can't mandate it because teachers will need to use their cell phones so as we talk about the kids um they will work on their laptops but it will be voluntary we're going to prioritize the high school in Alcott because the cell service is worse there than other places although that I'm hearing the town's working on that with a an attempt at a plan um but until then we want to be sure we have all the options that we can the sros just in terms of how things have evolved just telling teachers that even if you don't have cell service if you hit 9-1-1 on your cell phone someone's going to get

075it and not to let that limit you because you feel like you don't have service 9-1-1 will bypass the fact that there's really no towers around and get get to the station so that was informative in and of itself we want to have as many tools as possible because we're just being as prepared as we can to give teachers options not ever knowing what the situation would be so that's that's going to be the rollout and yes that is meant to be another option because what the crisis Go app will allow is a red button it's literally red hit the button and you can notify people you need help and it will know where you are so without any texting or any other signals of any kind yeah more to come all right um moving

076on to discussion we are very excited tonight to have some of our cchs teachers here to talk to us about travel and I know if Dr Hunter if you want to start and then yeah I'd love to go to them so we are excited this has been many years since we've had this discussion and um even more since we traveled because we had a lot of discussion in 2019 2020 and then no one went anywhere despite all that discussion so we are glad to be bringing this back I've been working directly with the high school teachers that have been interested in putting together and organizing international travel so you've got the list from them and the ones that are able to attend tonight are here to just answer questions for reference as you can see

077we have four trips that are proposed for this school year between February and June a French Exchange in February a trip to Italy in April both corresponding with the vacations and then two trips once School's Out earth science trip to Iceland and a London trip um right after the close of school as well two trips are on here for consideration those aren't quite as timely because you'll have more time they do need some indications shortly so they'll be able to work on the planning pieces because those those need on front end time there's a proposed New Zealand trip in February of 2024 and then the Denmark exchange probably the timeliness there is not that our kids go to Denmark in uh 22-23 but the Denmark kids would come to us so we would need some

078sense that you're supportive of sending our kids to Denmark in April so that we can do the um in the host part uh this coming school year so I think the documents the intent here was that they're pretty thoroughly um thought through back in June I had brought to you things that we knew we needed to talk about and we've been working through those core you know accordingly one is the covet piece and I'll just name there's no perfect answer the covet peace and travel um we've done the work on cancellation policies and having lived some really difficult experiences when the trips were canceled very suddenly two years ago we know what didn't work um there is inherently we haven't found 100 refund policy all the way up till the trip happens so there's going

079to have to be some stated risk here I wish it were different it just isn't so we're going to be very clear that parents under kids and parents understand what if the if there's any what the Financial Risk might be some of them have really strong policies that get you very close to full refunds just a hundred dollar deposit others less so some of the exchange trips tend to New York directly with the airlines because there's no big tour group going along with it we're working just on airline piece so each of the each of the leaders is getting very versed in what they're proposing we'll be sure we're communicating that very very thoroughly um the money part let's just name that we all have named and know that that's a challenge these are expensive

080trips so what we're working through on this Sharon Young scholarship fund is healthy right now at 25-ish thousand dollars that hasn't been used to this point every every T every trip will go out saying that there's an opportunity for subsidy I'm going to pull together the Sharon Young committee whatever we called it Madeline's already volunteered to be part I think one of you should participate and we'll put together the package of how to ask for the subsidy and and the formula we're going to use I've done some research we've done this years ago I did more recently there's a huge range of what other districts do Newton's pretty generous and does annual huge fundraising for this purpose LS has a pretty tight policy it's a limited scope of support pretty well based on the free

081and reduced lunch criteria says a much more narrow approach I feel like we're going to be somewhere in the middle because these are expensive trips so even families of um pretty average kind might be hoping for a little bit of relief so I that we are going to pull together and all all families will know I think what our goal tonight is if you'll consider approval and I know we normally do first reading and second timing with you know trying to pull this together we brought it to you in June hoping that that was the intent of a first reading without all the details getting it to you now worst case if you waited two weeks I think it does slow down enrollments and slows it does have impact on enrollments and planning on the

082trip as we try to get word out to the kids we're going to consolidate it all into a very um effective web page so the kids can all see all of the trips at once we want to be sure that the scope of opportunities is very clear both this year and next year people are going to want to plan we expect some pent-up hope for this based on um a few years of not traveling so we've even talked about waiting lists and how to manage those because we expect that might be the case this year um other things we're going to talk about is just making sure we can meet the needs of all kids as they travel um kids are very complex in certain situations especially to be internationally around the world and we

083want to just be as thoroughly prepared as possible so that's work that we'll be doing in-house at the high school leadership and service teams and administration and I think we're feeling pretty comfortable this is a nice I I thought we might be bringing you a list of like 10 trips and I was going to be overwhelmed with that it's a nice balanced approach I think to getting started again with very veteran trip leaders which is why I'm excited some of them could be here tonight so that's where we are we're here to happy to answer questions and talk through anything you need more information on would they could they introduce themselves so you'll know who's here thank you hi oh good go ahead hi I'm Rhonda Pannell I'm actually retired last year but I came

084back a couple of times and going back to the exchange which is one of my favorite things about my job so hi I'm Florence Russell and I'm doing the French exchange along with Rhonda panou and Nuna Pinto is a new French teacher hi I'm Caitlin Smith sorry my image is not up but um I'm department chair at the Concord Carlisle High School World Language department and I'm supporting um the French and Latin teachers in these two travel opportunities sure I'm Theresa Rogero and I'm here um representing the other science teachers in our trip to Iceland thank you Melissa hi I'm Melissa Carr and I'm um excited about this New Zealand Opera the trip to New Zealand and the associated Leadership Academy um and the trip would be next year and the um Academy would be

085uh begin at the beginning of the school year next year and hopefully we would finalize the participants this year so that's part of why uh I'm bringing it to you now and I'm super excited about it great Madeline hi I'm Madeline Pooler I'm one of the Latin teachers and I'm excited to hopefully return to Italy with my Latin students and Greg you're the last one my name is Greg Cole and I'm one of the art faculty at cchs and I've been running the Denmark Exchange program for a number of years and we're excited to rekindle our relationship with our sister school who you know they've been as locked down as us so um really looking forward to seeing them and having their students visit great so sure okay so um I guess I'll just start

086I just have one more piece of information to add because I was part of and I disclosed this at the spring a few years ago I was part of that Sharon Young scholarship committee and the intention was always to raise more money but it was the last meeting of that foreign scholarship available for kids so that was just my own comment to add so I would turn it over to our committee to see if we have any questions we your packets were very thorough so we appreciate the packets and I'm just going to open it up for questions first and then that might lead to more discussion Court uh in June we looked at football soccer and cross-country trips if I'm correct um and so I I'd hope the school committee is quite clear on

087which trips We Are Tonight uh being asked to provide initial approval for which really is the the norm we're telling teachers yes we like it start your start uh your your fine tuning um and which trips uh the administration is seeking final approval for and on any final approvals uh is there anything more we're going to learn uh or as or is the detail such that uh there is no more planning to be done I'd be curious on some clarity there and then as to the Sharon Young separate question um Sharon Young fund is that a separate account within Student Activities is it one of the many sub-accounts that lives over there um donation fund it's on discrete balance and managed out of your office correct very good thank you so we did vote the

088travel for the TR the athletic trip so those are off of your need for tonight it's the six that are listed in the agenda um French France Italy Iceland London England New Zealand and Denmark no I understand that but what I was seeking was which ones are initial for purposes of more planning which ones are final because we don't have time for more planning I mean I I think that we've had the information about the trips I would I I mean it would be my opinion that we should go for final approval on French Italy earth science London and as I heard from Dr Hunter the Denmark exchange we would need to know that right now to accept kids here because I think for parents to get the information in a timely manner they need

089it as quickly as possible and if we wait to the later meeting in the month I think we're just delaying it a little bit more that's like a whole other month and then they can get the information out where you know now we can get the website up and running and it can really be accessible to parents so that would be how I see that New Zealand's a little bit further away but it also requires a lot more planning so I think we could definitely go for initial approval there and then you know see if there's any additional information we're seeking I trust Dr hunters in accord yes thank you unless you think differently sorry I think that's accurate that would mean Melissa you'd have a couple more weeks we might have more questions we

090haven't really shared the full leadership plan idea of yours as thoroughly as we probably could so but yeah and then I I think teachers do you have more planning to do or you feel like you're ready to roll this out I know you've been working really hard the last we met write a school open two weeks ago and they've been working all summer so I think they're pretty well vetted because of what you did in June to kind of give them that initial maybe not first approval but enough consensus to do the work over the summer well we're in the process of uh making all the arrangements and we have um already um set up a schedule for for the students to come to be interviewed next as of next week and we're in touch

091with the French with the French School in Versailles okay any other questions for our teachers while they're with us on their trips um and just for the committee I had asked a question about the to Dr hunter that she then passed through his car so thank you so much on the leadership academy maybe you can just talk about Melissa could you just talk about what the leadership academy is sure um the idea here is the leadership academy would begin in September and it would be it would so September of next year September of 2023 and it would be monthly meetings um leading up to the trip and then the trip would happen and then there would be a few monthly meetings after and the idea really is to introduce um the the people to one

092another the people who'll be traveling to one another as well as to introduce the students and teachers who are traveling to the Maori culture and New Zealand history um and some of the lead and do some team building activities before we travel um internationally together and also to do um to be in some exercises in in leadership um so it's it's not to be clear that we're calling it The New Zealand Leadership Academy it's not enrolling in a separate institution it's it's run by us um so I don't I I don't know did that that answers it and and at first I was thinking you know I just hear New Zealand Leadership Academy I'm like is there a class associated with it but no it's really like just a trip bonding and you've done this

093before with Earth Science when you did the Iceland trip you've got those kids together for a period of time before those trips so it's the same model that you've used before it's a similar model it's a longer timeline um but it's a similar it's a simple it's a similar goal and similar model um but it's a longer timeline uh and has has some reading involved and so a little bit of an academic component but it's not a formal class okay I got a couple questions just some clarification questions um how do you guys go about picking the students is it you know offered to you know freshmen's all the way up to seniors and how many students are you guys planning to take on the trip would one of you like to volunteer to start

094that great question so am I up Rhonda so um it depends normally for Italy we've done 25 anywhere from 25 to 28. um and we've just um prioritized by grade seniors Juniors sophomores so we sometimes take 9th graders usually we don't mostly because they get a lot more out of the program if they're further along in their Latin studies so um but it just depends a little bit on sometimes there's you know just particular circumstances over the years I have taken students from all four grades um usually with Latin we are able to take um almost everyone who wants to go we don't have you know if there's an I ask kids to submit an application just purely to ensure that we're all on the same page because this is you have to really love

095Latin and want to be walking 10 miles a day because we really we walk a ton they call it the pool or death march on the last trip and and um because it's just that's the way you see Rome so I just want to make sure that we're all on the same page on sort of is this trip right for you um you know that's really um that's really sort of the purpose of the application process but that's always I've never not taken anyone um anyone who's wanted to go so um and the financial piece I know you've addressed that but that is something that every year every time I've done it and I've done at least six trips we've always been able to provide financial aid we've sometimes had to get creative at the

096last minute but we've always been able to do that and that's something that we all I know take very seriously and want to be able to provide the opportunities for everybody okay it's quite similar for the French exchange although it's not a trip it's an exchange so actually uh typically we have a smaller group um in the past it's been 16 but uh the last time we had 18 because actually 18 people applied and we wanted to take everybody so we made it 18 so we decided to keep it at 18 at this time um similar to the um to the Italy trip we have um the upperclassmen that have priority and students that have never ever been to France so maybe if somebody has possibly had you know is half French and has spent

097all their summers in France in France we might say well maybe we could let somebody else go who's never been to Europe something like that um but we have interviews uh like I said next week and we'll see how many people we have and we try and take it you know of course as many as up to 18 as as we can so um so Park it's worked out really really well in the past and it's been a huge success so I'm happy to do it again excited about it did that answer all the questions go ahead I'm new to the table so I'm just trying to figure it out um what's the cost what's the average cost um per trip or per pupil yeah um this year uh Phil house it's 1900 is that

098correct yeah this year it's uh we we are targeting the budget of 1900 knowing that three years ago three years ago the budget was seven we asked for 1700 but um we try to uh so we don't spend everything we spend what we have to spend and we gave back almost 500 back to the families um so because the the 1900 the cost uh includes so of course the ticket and then the French students who are coming to conquered Carlisle uh to visit the families we pay for all their field trips and in exchange all the American students doing to Paris the field trips are paid by the French school so it's um a nice agreement and so it's 1900 will will cover more than anything and whatever is left will be divided by the

099families yeah and I speak for the Denmark exchange is a similar cost structure I think and we've also been able to do refunds and I think that's the cost breakdown so having chaperone on a on a trip that's more like a tour that the exchanges in general tend to be a little cheaper than the the trips because we're staying we don't have to pay for hotels and that sort of thing so because we're housing students when they visit here and they're housing us when we're when we are there so that significantly reduces and Anna stated the cost so in Denmark if you're on a if you're a school group you get free access to most of the places that we go so that really helps too so it's it's sort of the two different things

100uh maybe Melissa Carr uh whose round trips could speak more to the cost of the more tour tour tour guide trips in general I don't want to make up an amount that I don't remember correctly the the two the two trips I think the um earth science trips in the past have been it is a very different cross-structure as Greg has pointed out because of the hotels and um and costs of doing the activities when we're doing it as a tour group as opposed to when we're being hosted in people's homes and so it's a very different cost structure and if I'm remembering correctly some of the earth science trips have been around but I don't know Teresa what is this year's I don't want to misspeak for what this year's is yeah and I'll

101be honest um Ray Pavlik is the one who has these numbers and he's um at a soccer game coaching a soccer game right now so I'm a stand-in here so I don't have that number but it is in our packet yeah we have the number in our package and I think yeah yeah and I think they can range anywhere from the exchanges like say like 1800 all the way up to closer to like 5 000 and up so so there's definitely a difference and again the exchanges they're staying at uh you know families houses which definitely is different and I guess you know I think what I would say to the committee if we don't have any questions I'm changing my mind to I actually think we should put them all on Final approval because

102to give these trips to parents is a menu because parents have to make decisions and kids have to make decisions and if they have some but not all that might change things because you know I know that families like they might say you know my child has to pay for it or it's one trip in your four years to cchs or it's no trips so to I think to be fair to the students and the families maybe to offer all of them as a menu so I would just ask our committee to consider all of them as a final approval and that was just my as I'm thinking and listening I'm like okay wait a minute how are you going to decide if you're a student or a family what the decision is and I

103think you need everything in front of you first so but if certainly if someone has questions on a particular trip we can push that final approval but we do have a very thorough um packet from our teachers so there was I mean these trips are very well thought out there's great information one thing I had just had a question now about about the exchanges is it required if you participate in the exchange you then have to host somebody or it's an option to host somebody can ask them the Denmark exchange has been a it's been a requirement of participating in the exchange is is because the Danish students come first that um yes you're expected to host and go on the trip now we've had extra Danish students come and I've actually had to reach

104out to the community for extra housing at times but we've never had the opposite we've never had someone a student not host okay yeah so the same thing for the forensic change if you put you puppete then you have to [Music] save us for the Denmark uh when the coming we may have more French students than than American students and one family family may have to host two French students but we may offer a French student to a family who doesn't want their child to travel this year will they make they can make a separate Arrangement and say my child can't travel during the vacation but well he'll travel uh in the summer and then it's a separate separate arrangement can I jump in also um now let's say for a Boston family wanted to

105take advantage of the program and their children applied and they were accepted how would that work out for the Boston families is that something you guys thought out the Denmark exchanges had Boston host families and and the Danish student lived with them in Boston and rode the bus in uh every morning and took the late bus back to Boston after they so the the real the idea of the exchange part of it is to experience the school life of the host the same way as our students experience what school life is like in Denmark so um yeah we we I hope that I hope that answered your question thank you it's the same thing for the French exchange and as a child I I participated in in exchanges and it's basically a family has one

106more child for two weeks so you have to uh to agree to it one more child [Laughter] but you lose a child for two years the community who can't go at this point for whatever reason but they could receive a student and enjoy part of the exchange participate and learn the language and culture through hosting and that can also add to the cost as an exchange participant it may be priced lower than the group chips but it does include the cost of you know the meals that you provide for the student while they're with you um and then the families of course will provide meals on the other side so that isn't more of the um cost that's not shown in the price foreign aspects of our trips over the years have been challenging for

107this school committee um and it seems like a lot has been worked out um in uh skipping the two-step approval uh I'd I'd be doing so on the premise that we have experienced teachers who have done this before um and we don't want to put that two-step process in place because in this case we don't need to but I don't think we're setting a precedent to say that two-step isn't the way forward often um and for newer members I want to uh suggest that some teachers when they have embarked on new kinds of trips have really appreciated the two-step because upon initial approval they could actually advertise it without being fully committed to producing it and they'd get they'd learn are they going to get a Groundswell of interest in which case then they'd go

108further and do the many many hours of work of planning so sometimes that initial approval allows them to let's start talking about it yeah without making promises that they may or may not be able to keep and I have to say I just really want to thank the teachers I have had students participate in different um you know trips and all of that and these teachers are with our kids 24 7 and they take care of them if they get sick they take care of them they're afraid if they're crying if they're homesick all of these things still happen when they're in other countries so we certainly can't thank you enough for that and the amount of time and preparation that went into this that should be noted too this is way above and beyond

109your job description which we appreciate so um thank you for bringing this to our kids of cchs thank you our pleasure and we will vote at the end of our meeting so stay tuned but you don't have to stay on stay on and we'll let you know Dr Hunter Hunter will let you know how about that sounds good thank you thank you thank you thank you [Music] all right okay moving on I know that was excellent discussion so um school committee and superintendent relations I actually don't have anything to update tonight so we can look forward to uh an update later on but there's nothing new to report and on to item C which is school committee goals and I am going to turn this over to Alexa Anderson all right everybody um I emailed

110you all this afternoon um stabs at goals so I appreciate everybody who submitted um our homework assignment essentially with um taking a pass at a Communications goal as well as a budget goal I sought to sort of synthesize um everybody's input um and took a stab so um we've got a Communications goal suggestion of the school committee will improve internal and external Communications through refinement of processes to ensure we're operating a good faith with one another and our constituents that goal will have I think five action steps um that I think we should sort of discuss and agree to and and have a good understanding of do we have the bandwidth to do these all all these things um and and are we going to commit to them so first one is develop new communication

111channels to share the business of the committee with the communities we represent some sub-bullets to that would be um post and host post and host um I didn't write that uh uh consistent schedule of community coffees that would be open to anyone who wants to come and talk about issues with us we talked um also about having more formal interaction with the ptgs that has has been that had been kind of best practice where the committee would proactively say we would like to come and join your meetings so that um again it's just increasing our access um or sorry increasing the community's access to us um and then we were discussing other community groups that we might be proactive about meeting with and I came up with all the all the groups um that so

112I think this it might warrant more discussion because I'm thinking we already have Liaisons with select board Finance League of Women Voters we don't have anything formal um conquer Dei commission uh Peg access Concord Carlisle adult and Community Ed um so I'm looking for any other groups with whom we might proactively reach out to um then we also talked about uh increasing subscribers to the school committee distribution list I think we might can I just go over it and then we'll discuss huh she's going to go over it oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and then we'll yes um so okay so then increase subscribers to the school committee distribution list we can talk about like a realistic percentage I think um we talked last year last meeting about leveraging the superintendent's distribution list potentially um

113putting you know uh some kind of frequently school committee update you know not very often but sometime in the school committee and sorry in the superintendent's um messages to the community review other school committee's actions and procedures to aggregate their best practices vis-a-vis information sharing both internal and external review finalize commit to our protocols and practices and then continue to use our facilitator Rob Evans to analyze our progress with respect to internal and external Communications and take his recommendations so Sarah I saw you first if you wanted to start the discussion yeah I just wanted to speak to the that identify other community groups to meet with yeah and I don't know how well everyone at the table here is familiar with Carlisle school committee happenings but last year we um we had some turmoil

114for lack of a better word over this exact question of how to properly engage with outside groups because um maybe you speak with one group and then another group comes and they want to speak and it gets if you're if you're talking about sending one person to go and hear and report back that's one thing but if you're talking about sending the whole committee or somebody to speak on behalf of the committee it can get very complicated so I would just advise that we tread carefully there because um we don't want to we don't want to disappoint anybody we want to and so the way that Carlisle landed is that if there are groups that want to engage in more profound conversations with us that they can write to the school committee and say I'd

115like to present on a certain topic and core and and Dialogue on this topic and like here are my goals from the conversation like this is what I hope to achieve so that's I think that's really good feedback I I wonder if we could take like a quick straw poll we can easily take out that action item if if you know if if we think that might be a little dicey based on um people's past experience with trying to make that part of an action step um I think that's appropriate if does anyone have any thoughts on that about removing that anyone think that's a good idea hands yes yes but I think perhaps um maybe the discussion was I would like to see us get these groups on our mailing list I would like

116to see us invite them to our copies and I would like to see us produce a product sometime newsletter and a report at the end of our year where they are they are interested and educated as to what the school committee does for the community um one notable group that I think we should try to liaise with is the 2025 Committee in Concord which is very active regarding the 2025 and I hope that the schools will be part of that yeah actually Diane reached out to me yesterday so the committee as well well I'm just giving you an update yeah so I mean maybe you could redirect her to uh you know one of the chairs and we could maybe better understand what the 25 I don't really know the details but I know they're

117very active yeah so could we to in that spirit I like that so it seems like there might be soft consensus about chucking action sub bullet 3 which is um he already deleted it um which was about proactively reaching out to other groups and instead replaced that Cynthia with increase Outreach to groups uh Community groups and invite them to our subscriber list yeah but I'm not sure exactly how to do the mechanics of that but there must be awake yeah right we'll figure it out and increase subscribers to school committee distribution list and then maybe a plan actually we'll move that good point so I'm going to take that bullet out and move it to the a sub bullet on this distribute on this increased subscribers to school committee distribution lists I like that and

118then um we had a bullet that was post consist post and host I like posting hosts because I think it sounds good post and host consistent schedule of community coffees and then a sub bullet under that would be um to proactively invite different groups and we can probably do that via a simple email to those chairs yeah um to those Community coffees that we host to like the conquer Business Partnership totally yes and awesome so we can discuss I think in between meetings putting that big list together okay great um and if anybody has anything on the list can you send it like if you can think of a committee out there send it and then we can add it on so we'll be ready at our next meeting to have it on there yeah

119that sounds good okay um okay this is all really good I like this okay so then okay I guess I went through all them anyone have any additions Court um just back to the 2025 committee for the new members that's uh concord's 250th is that right the revolution the revolutions not conquerors yeah we already did conquer yeah yeah um I am uh one of many members on many committees um and uh I'm on the community participation uh subcommittees so de facto I'll be one of your links with it I'm sure other people will as well another three Educators history an elementary middle high school yeah I don't know when some can be wrong but there's a raft of committees yeah all highly choreographed uh by the powers to be yeah great yeah no surprise so

120a number of us um I would like to uh look a little more deeply at the reference to facilitator Rob Evans um one because I think we already have a paid consultant uh who's our communications consultant um and two um if we're going to bring on a second one how are we going to coordinate the two and what uh what do we have to do a line item that for because I don't think that was an anticipated right say that again Court I couldn't hear you when you look that way it's hard uh I'm curious how uh just the last and I'm curious about uh the the costs for a second consultant in this Arena oh so I was thinking in this vein this was my addition where we are already teed up to have

121um a meeting with Rob in November and I was thinking that would be a good way to leverage this goal to something that is actionable because we're we're teed up to do it anyway and so if I think this is an opportunity to give a little bit more Focus to that meeting to say you know how are we doing so that we can all assess and and provide him with our feedback how are we doing on our internal Communications because I think this goal is about both internal and external Communications um so we're having that meeting with him anyway so I think this goal would allow us to provide um like a a laser focus for that meeting that was that was sort of my idea so it wouldn't be anything new necessarily but just

122leveraging this goal um to give some Focus I'm still making the point that we have two we would now have two paid consultants in this communication uh uh side of things um albeit one primarily external um so I was simply making the case that maybe we'd want some kind of coordination between the two Consultants yeah they're both working on communication on our behalf yes okay okay I I think I wonder if it might be um more clear if we break the actions action steps into what are the action steps to improve internal Communications and what are the action steps to improve external Communications and that might clarify okay I can do that so hold on well that's our only one with extra money but um I think I mean it I we could because I

123don't think there is a link between Rob and the our external external 100 but I cannot okay to analyze our progress um with respect to our internal Communications and make recommendations Sarah um I don't know if anybody else attended the goal setting learning lunch last Friday it was similar to what she discussed with us but she spelled it out a little bit or maybe I just heard it better the second time um and she think so based on what how she described it I made a like a spreadsheet of because she said you start you know you name your goal right you start with your mission right how does this relate to the mission um for your District um what are the specific action items then what is the output which she says like as

124measured by and then ends with outcomes and I liked how she phrased this like how will things look different when this goal is reached um and I just wanted to propose that as I'd like to propose that when we put our goals together ultimately that we organize it that way rather than in the bullet points like with the specific action items that's associated with the goal with what the what the product the format looks different which we had had some discussion about that with the Whitfield this summer so yeah yeah and like so you can very clearly see what are the what are the actions we're supposed to do what is the output of those actions like what's the problem right and like and what is the aspiration what change do we hope to implement

125and so so I tweaked it a little bit when I did my thing and said like what's either the relation to the self-evaluation or to our mission and values cool anyone else on this first so I guess bullet three review other school committee actions and procedures to aggregate best practices so that's that could be a lot of work yep um we might want to name some of those things like our school committee reports that we sort of publish every is it usually every meeting or every other I mean or if or if we think it's too much in this first here of this goal we can also table it no I think we should either they we're producing them because they right but we also have to evaluate I think what we have bandwidth for

126so but we're doing it I'm saying we're doing these reports right yeah wow pardon me I say might as well share it like you're saying well I mean I think we did are they providing the value that we want that's what I'm saying so it will be a good thing to I think for us to look at if we're investing in them and so isn't that the review isn't that the goal yeah oh so you're agreeing with the goal yeah I just think we should list things specific things like our reports our committee reports right okay so our external committee reports yeah yeah okay don't watch every other everybody else's school committee meetings and try to figure out what does everybody do that you wanted to figure out a couple of Target things that I

127think what you're saying like find like a couple of things that we want to look at right not I'm not saying how to write them that we don't have them got it so what is our consultant doing for us and then what what are we getting out of it what we want and is the community getting out of it what we want them to get out of it I guess does that make any sense yep and I think one thing we can do to add to our subscriber list is we could reach out to you know I've always had this idea to get a bunch of school committees together and talk about you know how do you reach your subscriber list what's your best practice of doing it is it you know Lori's sending out

128on our Twitter to doing you know X Y or Z is it a subscriber list push out is it a school committee website revamp where we can have newsletters on it so that's certainly something all things that we can talk about throughout this goal and so would a sub bullet been under bullet three be meet with nearby districts I think it would be helpful and I would love to have like a you know we we talked a little bit about this and our Dei committee like of having some type of professional development for school committees and maybe masc would do like a local workshop for a bunch of various School committees to get together because I do find it's really helpful when you go to their trainings and you have time at lunch to I

129happen to go to a training that was in person to talk to other school committees about what they're doing and maybe you know we could do something like that so we could have it say meet with nearby districts um a nearby School committees to discuss best practice best practices vis-a-vis Communications potentially facilitated by the masc I like that does this body have a social media platform no no is that something that will be worked on the masc which is the sort of governing body so that the trick with social media and why they don't recommend it is um because we can't deliberate or anything like that you can't um once people start commenting so let's say I put a post out uh school committee has to prove trips yes school committee loves trips we've approved

130them now let's say all of a sudden people start commenting I hate Trips Trips are terrible I hate ecuadorians um you know I don't want people going to turn off the comments you can I you can I you you could um so I don't know we've kind of been advised not to do it as a school committee and I think it's can you turn up comments on all social media you can mention of comments and I think it it's it becomes a slippery slope of who's who's going to push it out so one of us would be pushing it out so somebody's job is going to be to push it out what's the feedback we're going to get on it and we have a subscriber list that we do push things out to already so

131um other schools now I during those luncheons that I talked about I talked to other school committees they've gotten themselves into real trouble on social media and it has become a bit of a headache to school committees and especially during in recent past masking that was a big issue when there was any like the school point would just deliver you know Mass to be worn and it was like a free-for-all within the community so I think it you know social media definitely has a place in all of this but the safer way to push it out is definitely through the superintendent's messaging and and what is happening in the district and a lot of the things that we we have here it's you know it's their public meetings people can come to them we're very

132open about it so that's probably talking about talking about other things have evolved where you can turn off comments yeah I think the bigger issue right is who's doing it and then what happens if let's say we give the assignment to Sharon and now I don't like what she's put on you know then you know so so we have to decide there are constraints of this body which like we have to do we have to discuss things it has to be open so a lot of the fun of social media would be if we're all discussing Sharon's going to post a picture of a dolphin and say the school committee loves science well then everybody knows in advance so so I think there are tricks to it but I do think we should could discuss

133it yeah and keep it on our radar it would be you just to share information yeah again you were talking about these trips and you want to give it to parents and then you pretty much approve who's on your page yeah yeah it might be your you know the towns between Concord and Carlisle the parents that go to both School the students where you can get you know like Tick Tock because students love Tick Tock if they're working on a specific project like what they just presented to us imagine having that uploaded onto Tick Tock before you know it every single student within both visuals and again it's just like you said you just wanted to engage and if we control what actually goes on those platforms and which you can it kind of takes

134away from a lot of things that you're saying where people are commenting yeah because you control the the populations on there it's not open to like anybody you're not gonna have a guy from Texas who just jumps on there it'd be more control building of course you have an administrator who will sit there and actually approve who we accept and who we don't accept and of course this body would would approve whatever was put on there like these trips I'm looking to trips off I'm like you know it is expensive but again there's someone out there who might be able to fund or sponsor a child so they can have the experience but how do we get the information out when like for myself you sent me an email it might take a week for

135me to respond yeah yeah if you put up a tick tock post my daughter's like Dad did you see it what so no I think it's 100 worth talking about and pursuing is that something we can look at what other school committees have yeah yeah oh no yeah totally um figure out a best practice there yeah all right so do we feel pretty good about our first pass this Communications goal any other feedback comments thoughts what are the next steps do you just so so I'm gonna pop this out to everybody um with all of our to incorporate all of our revisions and discussions tonight and then we would ultimately approve [Music] ideally we'd like to approve them all so we're going to go next to the budget um yeah and and we won't have

136all of them we could entertain um and I might suggest because some of this work is timely um I might suggest um approving our professional practice goals um together at the next meeting if if we get through sort of this budget one um and then our more student-centric goals separate and apart from that but we can we can certainly discuss that um I think that could be a good idea so that we can get started on our own professional practice um initiatives especially because communication is timely and we might want to get hopping and because our next professional practice poll is around budget which is also timely Cynthia so another way that we have a good way to interact with other school companies except for November conference um I think it's in person only this

137year again you can attend remotely and I'm sure they're going to have sessions on on everything we're talking about yeah right so I don't know if anybody's going to we're going to go yeah okay um we were the only ones that responded that we were available so well people can still register yeah yeah so I haven't necessarily decided that I'm not going oh okay we were okay I didn't hit the early bird we were just hoping to get we were able to uh leverage that early response or whatever when is it November 3rd to fifth maybe I think I think it's like a round you could send out to everybody just the information okay since our new members might not have yeah and if anyone else does want to attend and we would need to

138know that yeah we'll resend it out just so we can get registered no I understand yeah okay cool all right so sorry this is probably not critical but I think I wonder if we actually do want to say by X percent like increase oh yeah we do need we need to talk about that thank you do we have a goal about what percentage we think is reasonable to oh do you know what it is 440 as well 15 minutes so what's the total population we're 60 now 400 uh how many families in the district how many residents in the yeah like the total population there's about 18 000 people that live in Concord thereabouts right how about the schools um weekly newsletters but also you have you know towns of people that will join on

139our list I'm on a subscriber list for other boards so you know we'll just we'll keep at it where and some people well just to go to the percentage piece because if like you said if we're at 5 000 in Carlisle another 18 here in Concord and we're only at 400 and let's say 450 I mean we're barely scratching you know yeah maybe it's not a percentage maybe it's a number maybe a thousand I mean I know what I've managed websites and communication things for organizations there's been a way to track engagement right do we have a way because it's fine to have a subscriber it's great to have a subscriber who opens your email okay or follows a link so is there a way that we can is there a way yeah yours go

140out and be a MailChimp there's all sorts of analytics yeah oh great yeah we can start looking at those lots and so actually so maybe we can Facebook's does it for you they'll give you a weekly report saying you had 10 000 engagements and how many people watching right how many new people got on your page and what they won't be able to track this goal which is good it is a measurable goal yeah um anyone want to throw out a number percentage anyone 100 yeah double it yeah um like all these first three bullets no sorry the first two bullets are all saying the same thing so I think that actually the goal should be or the action stuff should be developed new Communication channel you mean no to to share a business of

141the committee with the communities we represent well I don't I don't know but I feel like increased subscriber is the goal and then develop new communication channels to share I don't know that's the measurable but it's not a separate bullet because all of these can go into that same bullet so like show me what you want to do and can I just remind the committee that where we've been at this yeah okay can we get a QR code I go to a lot of the sporting events so it's like when I engage with a parent I don't have a I don't have a flyer subscribe to our thing yeah like on the back of your phone and they can love this takes them for like yeah where they can never stick your QR code okay

142all of this we're gonna distill all this various feedback it might take us you know and then we could do a spoken Hub maybe if you could just send it out and then um so I will I'm going to send this out to you guys I could probably do it by the end of next I've done it live um all right want to go to budget next everyone feels pretty good about where we are straw poll we feel pretty good about Communications yes no okay all right budget so synthesizing feedback I came up with established common knowledge of budget procedure as it relates to school committee responsibility um our two action steps um were to schedule a budget workshop with the masc the timing I just put in is early November totally negotiable I was

143just thinking to ensure alignment of our practices with mgl requirements and masc best practices and then I also think we should leverage our new assistant superintendent of finance and operations so that we understand sort of his methodology because it might be a little bit different than what we're used to as it relates to budget preparation I'm going to write and presentations what do we think Cynthia so um I think I would add an initial button about bullets excuse me to add a timeline as soon as possible for our budget timeline because we usually have that by now okay you know like this has to happen now this has to happen Carlisle conquered the hearings the presentations to the finance committees the um you know the budget deadlines I sent we have the we can add

144to it but we sent out the list of all the meetings and what's coming up with fincom and then the budget development timeline okay okay so we resend the the schedule the meeting Society email I understand where she like a budget calendar to know that this is due when it's due yeah stuff like that because that that would help keep people on track so when we meet with Dr Hunter at our chairs meeting we'll discuss this and we'll have a timeline that we'll get outside then then we could just decide when best to schedule these things are perfect earlier later okay and then one other Nuance I would say is the way that the pin cons in Carlisle and Concord operate they're not sure how we get that little in a condensed fashion without saying

145go watch everything last year um yeah all right um we can we can work on that develop understanding of finance committee guidelines and all the guidelines formula yeah yeah okay hold on because we write it uh develop understanding of Finance committees guideline process yeah and setting and budget guideline and budget process guideline and process okay I like budget process you know you know what I'm trying to say it's not their budget but and when I remember when I send this out when everybody looks at it if you you know we're a team be critical revise it rewrite it I don't you know this is it's all good for me good um okay great so I'm gonna this is awesome I feel like anyone else have any comments sorry I don't want to argue for any

146change in language um but I would note again to my way of thinking the the budget goal of establishing common knowledge is actually an objective um the real goal is to exercise our fiduciary responsibility on behalf of the district and the towns um so that was so wait say that again but but this is a professional practice system so this is a an internal goal for us does that mean that's why I won't insist on a change of mind people we have this overarching oh yeah that is not as small as making certain we all agree uh in practices right um well that's a responsibility a duty not a goal necessarily yeah that's part of our job duties because yeah specifically normally when we do all of our goals in the end we'll have sort

147of our reach goals but we'll also have our core functions included right in the goals right like we you know like one of our goals is to produce a budget to town meeting right that's it's a it's a goal that we meet we know we'll meet but we keep it in that list of yeah of goals because it's an objective for the you know it's undeliverable yeah and I think we're trying to move away from that so that we are differentiating between what our job responsibilities are job duties are versus what our goals are um so that that's very clear we can maintain both documents but I think they're very different and we can have like these are our core functions all right anyone else going that's Sharon oh I think she looked like you

148were ready um going once twice all right moving on thank you guys this was awesome oh iPad we have one minute and 45 seconds okay I'm gonna be a better time keeper on this discussion next month sorry I mean I just want to be cognizant of our reactionals that are here with us and thank you I apologize so I'm just gonna set my clock all right so we're gonna move on to school committee practices and protocols you should have all received both documents um and your agenda overview there are links on the agenda if you're on the agenda to both of those we've gotten some feedback and Alexa is also going to lead us through this discussion so I'm going to defer to her um and tell you 15 minutes oh my god um can

149we start with protocols um you'll see we have 15 protocols this year um many are the same some are new I'm going to go through um through them one by one and sort of talk to you guys about what the feedback is um on each one um and and and how we incorporated it or in summons in instances um kind of uh did not am I on this yet and can I also suggest that we'll go through it one by one if there's any discussion if there's any discussion on that just in the interest of time not like don't wait till the end let's just do it one at a time okay so one goal one we had no feedback on goal two we had no feedback on goal three we did have um some

150feedback about sort of specifically what Sarah was talking about the differentiation between our job responsibilities and our goals so um you know we could offer putting a job responsibility um overview in there but our goals our fact are different we had a lot of conversation this morning oh my timer one minute I'm sorry um uh we did have I did have we did have some discussion with Dorothy uh presser our masc representative this morning who said they should be clearly differentiated goals should be separate and apart from core functions um and she's more than happy to speak with anybody about that um okay so Sarah I had one other comment that didn't make it in there I guess oh sorry about the numbering of one to three annual goals when right now we're talking about

151four oh how about I change it to up to four four everyone good with that yeah and I also suggested that we add the word smart in there just to remind us to do sure I'm good with that hold on let me go to my hold on I'm just gonna put this let me just take notes yes um I'm gonna write up to four annual smart goals good fine done um okay moving forward um oh um on protocol four had no comments from any one protocol five um the chairs will ensure that all members are kept abreast and informed of members questions I think you guys have started to see that come out um I think we're going to do that by email if anyone wants that further articulated in this goal I think I

152don't know if that has any unintended consequences of being so specific but that was one of the feedback pieces I didn't um I didn't change it so that we could have flexibility in that um but we can discuss that uh six had no comments seven had no comments oh no seven had comments oh yeah there was a typo that will get corrected um oh chain of accountability we had a couple of questions on that this is number 11. so I thought we were in seven oh none of these sorry eight nine and ten had no um had no um comments on them from anybody so on eight what would happen here we've never had this discussion becomes alternative so the that would be a vote to stop discussion and move the question if if there

153is a question um we I saw I saw this specific protocol in a lot of different I'm saying it takes a vote of the committee to stop discussion sure but if someone can yes someone can move to call the question or move to call the vote or whatever it is um so yeah that would just be a reiteration of that and and to make sure that we are practicing you know good time management and they're um that's really nothing new it's Robert's Rule no no sure but I think it's just stating it yeah we're stating it and I think yeah and I think too that um oh I lost my train of thought I don't know um we saw we saw it in a lot of places I thought it was a good one because

154um you know meetings it was interesting I read somewhere meetings are for our are for Action not you know endless pontification and discussion so I thought that was I thought that was a really good thing to just sort of reiterate um as we work towards time management um which you know I think I think was a goal for us last year time management and I think we did pretty well with it and so this is just sort of another way to reiterate it um so it is no change we're going with no change yeah no you're not suggesting a change I'm just taking notes sorry I'm sorry okay so we had a couple of questions on this uh number 11 the chain of accountability um oh sure the school committee will strive cheers I think

155that's fine um it always sort of falls to the chairs people kind of think it's um but anyway so yeah that's fine I like like we can strike that anyway anything else on eight nine or ten that wasn't already communicated okay 11. so the chain of accountability um this was another one that we found in District after District after District after District um and I think um this isn't about there were some questions like oh shouldn't we refer the constituent to the chair who would then refer to the superintendent this isn't um about members facilitating um interaction when it's when a constituent comes to you this is just about um ensuring that when a constituent might come to you and say as Tracy's managed this week the parking at the high school is a disaster

156um sorry sorry um this is not about um saying oh I know uh you know you you know I'll go talk to the superintendent about it this is about saying oh I I hear your concern if you have a concern about this the two people you might reach out to are Mike mistrula or Brian Ryan Miller and Katie Stahl and I will say just for clarity purposes the parking's going really well at the high school is all reports just so everybody knows I think it was the initial frenzy of change so it's going really well students are parking so far so good for anyone that's listening that's true sorry it became a little dramatic sorry sorry um uh so that's what that refers to it's just to ensure that you are you are passing along

157the right person rather than um trying to self-facilitate um we got resounding feedback that no one likes the word timeout um which is is totally fine we're gonna revive number 12. that's in number 12. clarifying sorry um we're gonna revise that to all members representatives in the superintendent should raise a point of order to pause the meeting and address any uncivil Behavior um or alternatively we can discuss can raise a point of order to pause the meeting um we had no feedback on 13 14 or 15. so I know you can't um see these changes but does anyone have additional thoughts or discussion looking pretty good all right so I'm gonna send you guys additionally these the protocol document that hopefully will be able to approve that will incorporate all the changes that we discussed

158and um and for a vote possibly next or next in our next meeting all right I know I'm kind of hustling through this is everyone okay with the pace yes be honest we're interested only eight minutes you have seven minutes left okay um when we talked about protocol uh so no so now we're moving into our practices document um so feedback included I synthesized this all into your document where am I okay um regular business meetings other business meetings are at the discretion of the chairs um we we give the over arching schedule to the committee it is um not something we vote on it's just sort of a courtesy copy we try to do it quickly after the new committees are seated um and things such as workshops forums and executive sessions are ones

159that sort of can come up for various reasons so that's why we have their scheduled a discretion of the chairs and can I just um well we're all sitting here in this room there's been some discussion tonight we start at six o'clock I just want to ask people the six is six a better start time than six thirty like well we have everybody captive in the room I think we should maybe just quickly just take a six easy six thirty anyone have a preference just go around the room six to six thirty don't just do it either can I can I think about it yes sir either it totally depends on what the week is I know I agree Cynthia either same thing can I asked our administrators earlier the better okay so I actually

160would if we've the majority of others can I propose six o'clock start times versus 6 30. just to get us out a little bit earlier I'll stay all night but you know it just might if it's an either or I think earlier is better because I do think we should yeah so yeah just to be careful about backing up for executive sessions because we can get in the five range okay that's the only reason to an executive session what is the earliest someone can be here for a meeting now this is just going to be um our Representatives cannot come to Executive sessions so what's the earliest we could start an exact session if needed I'm just saying if needed we don't have a lot of bargaining this year we don't have a lot of

161bargaining yeah and that's so I'm gonna I'm gonna start with five or five thirty I am I know you're looking at me that's okay I'm mostly good but for example I know that I have an out of 12 found board meeting on the 27th that I drive back to town for that that cramps my you guys were seeing that one before right um but we're okay because we don't have things right now so just in and even as a worst case if you if we started to have meetings at six o'clock on a on a regular basis you could also just do that session at six and start the median right I mean yeah if it doesn't work yeah yeah we could do that so yeah so just like like five or five thirty like

162does that feel okay to everybody well let's just say six five thirty yeah for exactly so okay the meetings starting at six yep we just have to really socialize that because everybody in town has 6 30 in their head so we just have to make it yeah very well communicated okay yeah okay okay so I'll mend this to say six um okay and if we don't agree I mean I'm just proposing something about changing times I think you should ask Cynthia brought up a valid point you you know it is the past practice the meeting start at 6 30 or at six six thirty Thirty forever so again you know for something like that where you have a community already accustomed to 6 30. is that something that you just want to change on the

163whim or is it something you want to do a little Outreach well I guess I my thinking on it and I'll just give you my opinion is sometimes we have teachers that come here too like our teachers tonight and the later we s like it just gives you a half hour wiggle room if they had to come but but totally agreement yeah sorry yeah I might add that also I think when the 6 30 practice that would that's been around for a long long time predated zoom predated a lot of stuff I think a lot of it was also to give members of the community an opportunity to get here in person to come and participate which is now not as much of you know it's a burden yeah not as much a burden yeah

164yeah I do think you're on to something though and I think maybe we should if we move to six o'clock uh do it uh three meetings from now so we have two meetings let the words otherwise the violate our own surprise rule yes Point okay I like that good okay um okay hustling along um oh uh so in item two we have the goal is to distribute the agenda Thursday prior to each Tuesday we're gonna just replace that with three business days um to conform to with our other sentence following sentence which we talk about with two business days and recognizing it will be in draft form and there will potentially be changes because it's three days ahead of time because things might come up on the district's end is there a cut-off date a

165cut-off time yes so so that we have to post our agenda um 48 hours in advance and we can make revisions to it at any point but you guys will all get it three days ahead of time so you can see what's coming on the agenda all right moving forward on the executive session like if you were to move make an executive session what how much time do you have to provide notice on that same same or even the committee like from a scheduling perspective like if you moved the meetings to six and say you're having an executive session at 5 30 would you let us know too like I know we'd let you know as soon as we possibly because we would want to schedule with you yeah still ask you yeah yeah yeah

166so we're always going to ask you if we're gonna have an executive session I'll probably send an email that says hey we need an executive session can you guys make it at 5 30 yeah whatever right yeah yeah and in Carlisle we do our executive sessions after we used to meeting so it's also I mean it's an option if you don't have other people coming in when you have other professionals coming for you know if your lawyers like if there's if there's somebody specific who needs to be there then it's harder because who knows right right yes that's a good point yeah but if it's just us yep then we have flexibility um okay moving on we had no um comments on four moving on to five um so we are at um uh a

167point in time where our policy contradicts our handbook right now our policies um talks about public comment at the beginning of each meeting for an allocation of 20 minutes so we did so you know we can discuss and the policy meeting amending that policy to provide for additional public comment but there it and in our handbook it says um length are is at the discretion of the chairs and our policy it says 20 minutes and our policy it says open in the meeting at the it should be done at the opening of the meeting and um they both say three minutes so we should just Rectify those but for now we're gonna adhere to our policy which is beginning of the meeting 20 minutes um okay can I just say one thing sure we've never

168asked for the topic of comment before we just say ask your name and address wait they were like way back remember the forms that you said well I know but no I know but that's right I think the rationale behind that too was for larger like Zoom meetings if we can get topics so I've noticed for example when we have biggest like big topics that have high interests sometimes what happens is five people will make a comment about masking right you'll have five public comments then someone will pop in and come and talk about literacy and then you'll see like a lot of hands go down or people who might have you know so so this way we can maybe group together it's more for Zoom I think than anything else um people who are

169gonna make like comments and additionally if we can see we have 50 people that are about to say the same thing it's it's easier for us to or we think are going to speak on the same topic how would you know in advance what the topic was well you can put it in the chat yeah or similarly what if they're in the audience I mean I'm just trying to scale this and our our comment tonight had what five topics maybe yeah yeah so we could say uh the topic or if it's multiple just says we used to we used to have a form outside that if you had a topic pre-covered you would fill it out and you would hand it at the end of that table and then we would call the person up

170based on one of the wonderful things was the minutes would have that person's name spelled correct yeah I suggest we toggle this in our Communications yes um but but but but to Cynthia's point it is it could be difficult to manage I'm happy to to do another little straw poll should we just strike it but it's also a good way to capture information yeah like you know if someone wanted to say something on zoom and they can go to a link and they can put their information in and then turn around you can actually go back to that person because you got now you got an email you got a phone number you got exactly what they're looking to have addressed and then again like we're trying to increase communication maybe another layer to add

171to that communication piece I'm just thinking you know either way so before so the idea would be to bring back the form all right why don't we see what other people do I have a good idea to your point why don't we strike it for now because it gets confusing and I will add that um like the what you're talking about potentially the discussion in a Communications goal about adding the form and capturing information does that does that work for everybody yeah right practices of other communities and see how other people manage everything yeah some striking topic of common percentage um some people require you to register before the meeting right no I know it's really varied so we were trying to make it as low impact as possible while getting more that's what sort

172of I came up with but okay yeah so we're going to strike it you'll see that and then we're gonna put something in it we're gonna add to the communication goal okay guys and we are at 20 minutes yep okay sorry we're almost done um okay and so and actually that was it there was one question about um differences between meeting types I sent you guys all an email um with advice from Dorothy on that so I hope that clarified the final question on our practices document are we actually going to use a consent calendar I mean I don't I'm fine we should I think we should I think okay tell us give us examples in in like an example like when we're approving um let's say like some donations a staff enrollment things that

173generally like could be grouped together that are generally fairly non just so we acknowledge the donation that's the one like thing I like to do yeah yeah oh yeah yeah right oh always yeah always we can do that in life because when we get donations typically they do come to the meeting and they you know so we would have it in discussion and then the vote would just be okay okay sure good yeah all right um so I will put all those together for you guys for a quick look at for our final brief and then we'll talk about them and hopefully improve them next week nice work thanks I'm just going to ask before we go on does anybody want a break or do you want to just keep going forward does anyone need

174five minutes nope okay all right so moving on to deib and the policy meeting schedule um so we talked about our meeting schedules we have those four meetings for deib meetings that will be I think it's confusing when we have the concepts of workshops and workshop meetings it's a workshop meeting and the clarity from Alexa today I think um really showed that and we had a discussion with Dorothy about this morning and it is a varied meeting it is it actually elevates it to be something that you know that is all we're going to talk about at that meeting so it won't be in the middle of a meeting like this where we're talking about everything else or we won't add anything to it they will be focused meetings so um that's what I am

175proposing that we run the deib committee as a workshop and the dates are on there um so you can take a look at it does anyone have any comments about that yes Sarah question about like so when you need when you say the workshop like the way I Envision this and I think it could be really good which is or or want to hear you know the way the way that I see it yeah as I understood through the emails was that basically let's say the first Workshop the October 12th is dedicated not to div but to a specific topic within deib like we are going to talk about teacher you know you know staff retention and and hiring of diverse faculty right like that could be a topic and somebody an outside facilitator or

176somebody within the community you know in that kind of example like the teachers working on in the high school working on the working like somebody would come and facilitate the conversation or do we not have a like I'm just trying to understand the vision of it is that we would it's almost like so Kristen will present it six of our school committees Andrew will come to our deib Focus meetings okay and we're going to hear from Andrew on all topics of what we want to hear from what he's going to present to us on the Strategic plan like I envisioned the Strategic plan being the first thing that he presents to us so we can really again push that out to the community um so it's it's not going to be an outside facilitator this

177is going to be an in-house meeting with our professionals here okay okay are these conducted uh through the chairs where the Quorum expected the Quorum would be expected because it would be immediately committee yep and so what we will need is we will need an RSVP um before the meeting so we ensure that we have a quorum yep but as their workshops there's no there's no action okay no action item there's no voting I'm just wondering in a workshop you'll have discussion and we could make a recommendation to this same committee so we'll all be on the workshop we could make a recommendation to our full committee but we will not take any votes in the workshop it will be discussion based and they'll come they'll be proposed at the regular business it's just to

178provide time to have a more focused conversation that will enrich our action items at a further possibly yes yes and it's a great opportunity for Andrew to be with us because he is our deib director and so for him to really kind of guide us through all the things that you talked about so it's strategic plan it's it's retention and hiring it's you know it's all talking experience yeah it's all topics of choice you know perhaps we might have students interviews I don't know like it I mean it's just going to be another meeting a very tight meeting okay but you'll get an agenda you'll get the AO about it and the agenda overview that just so you'll get a schedule and what kind of so would there be students at this meeting just because

179the last these last um the first couple weeks um have been um challenging yeah and I know a couple of students have had um disturbing um issues at the schools so I um are there going to be sort of representation just I would like to hear from my students but yeah so it would be open to anyone so everyone could come but if there's something specifically happening at a school I would refer that to Dr Hunter which it would just it would be a slow no just overall just the environment I just think of it you know it's important for us to have students themselves regarding this yeah so not just specific um no no it's a specific things that are happening just overall just uh yeah you know how they're the years going because

180it's been off to all right to start okay and I think that would be helpful to hear the student voice we do hear it at our regular meetings too so it would be helpful to hear that in those meetings okay yeah the thing I like about this structure is that all of us are able to participate I I um dialed into last year's diversity equity and inclusion meetings and I found them to be really well run and interesting conversations but I wasn't able to participate and I think this is such important work and we have a lot of work to do in this space that having this focused time where all of us can really be engaged in it together um will be really great so I I like it okay yeah and the meeting

181oh go ahead sure sure yep is do we have the possibility of adding one next one sorry based on circumstances that may arise say student experience you know we find that maybe we need one more do we have that flexibility oh definitely I think we definitely do I think you know it's to get these dates on people's calendar first to ensure we have a quorum here and then if we find that it's it's necessary to more meetings we certainly could add more meetings okay thank you will be recorded right and and visible well I mean that's that's something I don't I don't know we don't we're not required to record this meeting and we didn't record last year it's really I don't know it's up for discussion yeah it's not it's certainly not a requirement

182but we could record them I think that would be a good practice just in case someone wants to go back and actually listen and create a feedback and and be able to give an input you know further down the line and of course it's good documentation to just you know put out there this is what we're working on this is what we'll talk about and this is how we're moving forward okay and it really talks to equity and belonging right the people can't access it physically they have the opportunity not to participate per se but at least to see it I'd be in favor of recording it because I don't want to have a discussion with anybody about why we didn't right because I wouldn't know how to do that yep it's an open public

183meeting so there we go um okay so so that's where we're at with deib and that does not require a vote and then we move on to policy and we do have a vote interaction items on policy and I would like to appoint uh Alexa Anderson Court Booth Tracy Morano Cynthia Rainey Carrie Rankin Sharon Whitt and Sarah Wilson to the policy committee um and it's I think that we all need to do work on policy so I'm pointing the entire committee policy and I would also like to appoint I've had an offer from Carrie Rankin to chair that committee so that will be coming up in the votes so I took the feedback of committees that people wanted to be on and I do think that policy really needs to be all of us for

184this year so just a point of order are you appointing are you recommending yeah so I'm using the word a point because it's in our policy and then we can vote on that so that is Food For Thought and the action items and if we want to have a little discussion about that before we certainly can do that Alexa yeah and just a point of clarification because we have to operate with respect to a quorum that's why we haven't appointed our Representatives because um You You by virtue of your representative status are excluded from the Quorum um but you obviously are invited and encouraged to attend us this meeting so just to be sure it is not we're not to exclude you by any means thank you thank you yes um so yeah okay any

185discussion about that and again policy meetings are open they're open to the public I'm curious about the 10 a.m how many people are going to often be unable to attend oh sorry yes so we are going to send a potential re-look at that schedule we might add a couple of evening meetings um that was also brought up and I did get approval from Dorothy to do um either evening or or like late late afternoon which would be like five o'clock um kind of meeting she is open to that on a limited basis can you put the dates up again Aaron could you put the dates up for those meetings oh I'm so sorry um yeah they're in the email but I can text with you but I'm not going to do it okay that's okay

186that's okay I think we're verging on this school committee Google calendar thank you Aaron I know right so the dates are up there and then what was also on this document and I it is not part of this discussion right here but those sessions for the strategic planning meetings which all are scheduled from four to seven but we'll hear more about that from Dr Hunter so moving on to the superintendent's goals thank you Dr Hunter I'm going to take a breath and let you take a breath too I'm sorry sorry uh and I'm going to just offer highlights of my goals you've got them attached to the agenda so you can look at them um and I don't think there's any surprises here a lot of us are continuations of work that's been ongoing and

187reflective of our strategic plan our school Improvement plans and really all the you know Collective threads that really hold us together as a district and move us forward uh so the first one is a student learning focused goal with those focus on special education so we'll really be looking at the service delivery models that we're providing inclusion will be a big Focus this coming year professional development attached to that um continuing to look at the Intensive programs that we've created in the enrollment and needs of those kids but also the criteria in which those kids are entering those programs and again the PD that needs to go with it I'm certainly looking at student data that's attached to the research-based practices with a focus much because of our discussions of the last year in Reading

188achievement and that'll be embedded in the discussions as we go forward as to the piles of data Kristen's going to bring you and one big focus is the leadership structure uh you were notified of a plan to create an assistance special education director of student services because of a resignation in the structure that we currently have that is happening as we speak making progress we also have an interim director so we need to this time I can't keep her first here so we're gonna actually have to make the plan to fill the permanent position which is a important big Collective Endeavor of all of us um in conjunction with Kristen and her office and W2 on the principal's mtss is one of our driving discussions this year as we've implemented and monitored this plan for

189Student Success so we're very deep into this right now out training staff thanks to Kristen she's traveling through staff meetings looking at the screeners and tools that we have totally tied it up and are consistent among not only horizontally but vertically we'll always be looking at how this applies to the dyslexia guidelines and where we're strong and proactive work and making sure we're servicing students appropriate for their needs and programs aren't going to now match those identified needs in a very intentional way that's been talked through uh the third is to really look at student well-being and I put this under student learning on purpose we are convinced that if our students aren't well socially emotionally and otherwise we cannot get to the academics so um we're rebooting challenge success this year at the middle

190and high schools we have yrbs that's a youth risk behavior survey data I believe I feel strongly we need to do more follow-up surveys as well as your year has gone on goes on we're focused on the equity audit right now so we haven't been doing it this moment um we have replacement programs rolling out of K-5 for open circle and just an ongoing value of how important this is to us and Kristen will come with a really big thorough plan that we've been vetting and talking about and talked on this morning in fact so professional practice goals that I'm naming I'm of like-mind of you and looking at communication and being purposeful about it trying to not you know get get off of the coveted communication today aside but um you can see I'm

191working really I think to to shift that direction and the newsletter to come back to school the format of the emails I'm being really purposeful about social media to mingos's point it's such a great messaging tool and it can capture things we don't have another forum for necessarily a lot of positive activities and events and kids a lot a lot of kids um so trying to be purposeful about that and um I held a virtual coffee where no one came so we're gonna keep working on the effectiveness of that for Hurricane my secret life often we had one other person she didn't want to he or she didn't want to talk so we're gonna shift the five o'clock it's not a good time of day come to figure out so we're gonna try again in

192the morning and be available at least accessible I know there's something good news in that I supposed to but hundreds of people come I know people have hot topics yeah um student engagement is a a big focus of ours so we're collecting common evaluation goals among the teachers and Educators fostering Innovative learning focusing leadership meetings and teaching on teaching and learning we did that for two hours this morning it was great and I am really being purposeful about being on classrooms and that's one of the best parts of my job so it's also good for teaching learning but it's good for me and honestly um budget which I know you referenced obvious I wasn't even going to put this in I also if Bob wasn't new I was going to take it out because it's

193so just what we have to do but I want to be sure we're thoughtful about it several of you are new new leadership at the towns both communities so it seemed warranted to leave it intentionally developed here in terms of all those connections we need to build and um I think the final point there I'll just message you know the budget should reflect all these other priorities I'm talking about and that's the tool and the strength of of the process hopefully um deib of course that needed a place here so making sure we continue to build safe spaces I think to the point of students having safe space to share how things are going for them staff parents Community multiple media and forums working with Andrew on the Strategic plan and the rules that I

194have in that I continue to serve and lead on the and superintendents Association Statewide Dei committees and value that work oh greatly and then continuing to really making sure that the the mecco Boston initiatives that we named last spring and worked really closely with all of you on WE execute and Implement and um make sure we get the feedback that we're being positive and effective on on that the middle school project I think we've talked on tonight so I'll kind of leave that as is but we're obviously hoping to break ground and then I'm going to leave the Strategic plan one because it is an upcoming agenda item and I'll talk all through that process so um it feels really good there's no code goals here for the first time in years so I'll just

195wind up with that yeah that notice yeah that is great yeah um any comments or discussion on superintendent's goals um where would MCAS data review be in that yeah that'll be in uh the one of the first ones where we're bringing data to you I'd probably put it in these goals under the mtss goal okay Kristen's planning to come probably in November yeah it's not fully out yet so yeah October end of October into September sorry marks sorry sorry Mark uh we have some MCAS data but we don't have like the full comparative data so we have we have to push the date back but we do have all of our other measures like uh access data which is for our Ells uh sat act all of that so we'll bring all of that to

196you one because great right anyone else okay all right moving on to the most exciting topic of Warrant approvals and signings so I've had two volunteers so far um Sharon and Carrie thank you for volunteering we're looking for some more volunteers so we officially need to uh just appoint Warren signers we need three for CPS we need four for the region Sharon is offered in the recent region so Sarah you're off the hook officially um so we need two more members of Concord and I would ask if anyone would like to volunteer sure Cynthia anyone else all right Alexa who is it gonna be fine I didn't realize my language wasn't like I was moving back I'll admit that um so okay so at CPS we will and we will all still receive the warrant

197so everyone will still have the warrant the process is still the same if you have any questions please send them through the chairs so we have Cynthia and we're going to vote on this later Carrie and Alexa at CPS and we have Cynthia Carey Alexa and Sharon at the region okay can you clarify what this actually does yes so the warranty you're gonna have an idea yep so the warrant is I'm gonna ask Dr Hunter to actually no but what's this Bob let's ask the meeting um that was a subtle cue I'm going to ask Bob to explain this one go ahead you'll do a better job than I will well I should um I guess plus I think there's there's legislation that allows you to designate a a signer for the payables and uh

198payroll warrants um typically it's a single person sorry microphone sorry there's legislation book for it's two separate types of districts a regional district and Municipal District so CPS is there's one legislation there's a different one for the regional district conquer Carlisle uh basically allows you to designate a a reviewer a signer and then uh to have an alternate um so um and what you're supposed to do is then report at the next meeting when I did my last District was to we just posted the warrant as backup or we just distributed it to members um so the information will be made available to everybody um so yeah um okay so we are not changing the process we're not ready to change the process to a single designee okay so we were going to just just

199decide who the designates were going to be for this year because trying to understand so like what a warrant right because I'm looking at that so listen listen yeah when I started in this I had the same confusion why is it called the warrant and I still don't know why it's called that but it's a it's basically a list of bills that we're going to pay okay and it has to be uh in public school districts it has to be approved by the school committee before we can pay a bill okay and I will admit I didn't know what a warrant was and I was assigned to be a signer and then I got it and I diligently printed out the entire thing and sat down for hours now to print it out it might

200be like 40 pages sometimes and I had no idea what I was doing public notice because we were Yes again and again again so in this situation it's built yeah yeah okay it's a bill that we approve and this is not to be confused but the town warrant which is which is another thing that we'll get to you know closer to December right so for this purposes this is all the bills of the district so there's one for CPS there's a warrant for CPS there's one well there are two for CPS and two for the region one is payroll and one is other bills that's how I interpret it and then same for the reason yeah because someone who's watching they're like woman why is the school getting warm thanks excellent point thank you all

201right so can I just make a yes if you're picking a subcommittee everybody has to sign it has to be a majority of the school committee if you're not doing this alternate process and majority of the school committee has to sign so you have four for the region somebody's out sick or not available okay thanks guys thank you yeah parallel I was like signing on my computer right like I couldn't just write back I approve I had to actually like sign on the physically sign it or print the cover page and scan it back right is this effective like after this meeting assuming it passes in a vote if it passes it's effective immediately yes great you can sense that maybe I'm looking forward to passing the torch support what do you think record are

202you looking forward to okay great I didn't even want to look at Alexa foreign planning process for 2023-2028. yeah this is actually what I'm probably most excited about this year so um our strategic plan was crafted in 2018 and I'm going to talk through the process because I think it's important you hear what we did five years ago and what we're planning now is gonna essentially replicate that a lot of you at the table we're very involved at the time um we worked with a consultant Lori lycus who's unfortunately not able to sit and be at the table with us but we'll consult from the side um which wasn't the original plan but it will still be just fine um so what we really try to do is have a represent representative process where there's

203a large planning team you can see I've highlighted that on the memo and last time five years ago the planning team was 50 people big representatives from all different groups across both communities Boston for sure was represented both a father and a daughter we're here and then liaised back to them as a group so I'll get to that in a minute because the planning team has a role and responsibility to liaise to the people that they represent so the ptg will send us people CPAC will send us people school committee we do have to talk about how you're going to engage because of your Quorum open meeting stuff um and the community League of Women Voters the town halls had people here and it was an incredible session incredible four sessions together um so what

204we will do the the front loaded work is really where the leadership team and I'm pointing to Bob and Kristen because our the administrative team does some drafting of things for you to see just to make it doable in a 50 so person group of um three three hours to get started then that group is going to essentially be taking on the data analysis after they've gone out to work with the groups the daily liaise with so initially we're going to bring you some thoughts on the 17th of October the 50-person group which I'm about to start recruiting for of like our thoughts on where we are five years into the Strategic plan and what we feel like we've accomplished what we think we've made some progress in what we didn't get to covid wasn't

205in the plan 2018 so some things something's got really well done and others not as much and we've been trying to name that and that will be a lot of the work that the group does is sort of reflecting on where we are and then the visioning activity is how do we see ourselves in five years and the power of this visioning activities and you're going to do this as part of the group um describe this District these schools our kids our classrooms in five years really put yourself in the present tense as if it is 2028. and that I can't say enough about what that tense a verb thing does to empower the discussion um we do replicate that visioning activity it's qualitative data so it's a heavy lift because it's a lot of

206language that comes back so we do it once with the big group they all essentially get trained on how to run the visioning activity how to collect the data and then they go off between October and December to do it with each of the groups they represent so CPAC will do CPAC ptgs etc etc and then when we come back together in December we've got this big data lift and we choreograph a unbelievably effective structure to divide up the data which is pages and pages and pages of you were you know um narrative and divide it up so we look for scenes and in December between December and February that will all get synthesized and cleaned up based on the themes that the big group finds um we'll get it polished enough to share out

207February come back so I take those themes and start to write what turned into objectives and initiatives for the next five years um and it somehow all comes together and what's a really big process with a lot of people and buy-in involved what we found five years ago was the same things Rose to the top like the aggregating of the data is pretty straightforward because the themes were very similar across across all the different stakeholder groups which made it simpler is that going to be the case right now we won't know until we ask um and then in March the hope is to get to where we're gonna have you know something to really start to put together for public viewing um Etc one piece that I didn't mention that's along the way in all

208of this the first page of the two pages of our strategic plan are key cornerstones to that plan which is Mission Vision core values some really important statements that the big 50 member group will also review and make sure they still speak to what we're aiming for um but the kids are surveyed we work hard with the kids to all feedback we did it in advisory and home base last time um so that they could do the visioning activity and bring that back we did it with every faculty at a faculty meeting we ran multiple parent groups I pointed a few people because I was at Sarah's house five years ago doing it with Aaron Carlisle making sure we heard from the Carlisle folks um and I just I think what a five years we've

209had so to really look back knowing we had all these goals plus covid I think it's going to be really um satisfying in lots of ways validating but it's also going to start to set where we need to go next what didn't get done and What needs to get added to the plate may be taken off we looked at them today together real quickly and there's some things there we wouldn't have worded the same way now we're like oh that doesn't quite fit the way we said it back at five years ago so there'll be some tweaking as well and if there's major changes that this just doesn't pertain anymore that'll need to happen too so in terms of the school committee this gets let me I don't none of you are here as school

210committee members though so I think three so Rachel had a few were on it I saw you there and I I'm coming on yeah for some of the sessions but probably not for the first one because it probably the election probably happened Midway through or something yeah and I can't Echo enough uh the uh praise that Lori puts on that process yeah it was exceptional it was it was you know yeah it was and Harry who was one of our students is greater on that committee and I remember him vividly because he was quite vocal yeah uh the way we manage the school committee and this is up for discussion and you don't have to settle it tonight but you want to start thinking about it everybody wanted to participate at all of the big

211meetings right so but we didn't want to post we didn't want to get too complicated about it so what that committee five years ago decided to do was to pick two people who would participate in the 50 member sessions because they were split up at tables everybody else could attend as Observers and everybody could come to all of them either as Observer or participant depending on this rotation that allowed different people at the tape you know to engage with the groups while the others observed and that allowed all seven of them at the time to fully engage and participate because they always knew what was going on and when it was their turn at the table they hadn't missed a beat they did put a norm among themselves to say if you're going to participate

212you have to be at all four meetings um so that's how they handled it it's up for discussion if you want to take that same creative strategy so for clarification the the seven members sort of cycled through being uh yeah at the table however literally at the table yes yes yes yes and otherwise and um the idea being that if you ever wanted to see that the table you had to commit to being in the audience three out of four times essentially correct okay got it so the gift that Don Domingos and Aisha have is as non-voting members and not technically part of the Quorum you can be at all four sessions with no public meeting and just be the representative so that's actually some interesting participants I know it was very interesting yeah yeah

213yeah the the lack of boundary on you actually is a positive there so that's great um you folks what you don't want to do you know they've at least five years ago we didn't want to post meetings and say we were deliberating about a strategic plan when there were so many other things going on at the time that's not totally what was happening so so you have the for me it's four meetings it's four meetings the dates are set here and I'm sticking to those dates because with all these folks involved that'll you know we have to make a schedule and ask people to make it work and Erin can I ask you to if you're on if you could pull up the four meetings and yeah given the late hour I'd propose can we

214put discussing how we might do that at our next meeting yeah is that okay which everybody the first meeting is October 17th so between now and the next meeting look at your schedules and in order to participate you have to be at all four from four to seven five days so it's October 17th December 7th February 8th and March 22nd so we'll be ready to up there oh yes people and so it's going to be with yes and if you if you can't commit to three out of four of the sessions you are welcome to attend us still attend any time you can go yeah right but we definitely need two people sitting at that table of 50. yeah um participating business ultimately uh come to school we perform on approval is that I forget

215how we do it forgets too yeah and I think on the one hand it enhances it on the other hand we don't want this group to think they're subservient too yeah it needs to be approved right so powerful right so so let's look at that yeah you might have accepted it more than a month yeah like that it certainly was brought to you I I I'm gonna go with an operational question now um I thought the outside consultant uh and her objectivity or Independence was critical plus she was a very gifted facility if she's only Consulting do you have confidence that you're going to have that baton in the room that you need yeah Kristen's offered to help so yeah this time because just beyond know the process um and we I talked with Lori

216at length about that there was actually I took a lot of pressure from the Superintendent's Association as a first year superintendent for not running the process last time and I pushed back hard I'm like absolutely not I want it to be outside this time I'm more almost neutral I'm without it being Lori who knew us I don't know there's something about someone who knows the plan because we're she she said even and agreed with me because we're not starting with a new plan we're going to the second five years of a plan it's she felt it was less critical and wonderful thing is yeah yeah and I would say the envisioning process is something that's called the Futures protocol um and that I run two or three times a year with different different or different

217purposes yeah which is great that we have the talent right here so thank you for that I think and I would just say given the October 17th time frame even though we're not discussing how we might run this process internally just straw poll will we be okay to discuss and vote on how we do that at our September 27th meeting um just you know in a One-Shot deal everyone you know just because we like to do the two-steps I think what she's saying is she's kind of proposing that we run it the same way that the last committee did with the rotation no I'm just saying so I was saying the essence of time because we want to get out of here let's not discuss how we might run it tonight unless everyone sort of

218agrees yeah let's do that but um right but we'll discuss it at the 927 meeting and also vote it so that everybody has time to prepare because we we kick up on the 17th is everyone okay with that good discussion and a vote in the same night okay good yeah okay great moving on to Mr Connery thank you good evening uh I have four items to report on to require a vote um but just go through them in the order they uh appear on the agenda the first one is we're proposing Dr Hunter and I are proposing an increase to short-term substitute pay um from a current rate of a hundred dollars a day to an increase of 130 per day which equates to twenty dollars per hour um this is for short-term assignments of

219less than 10 days we've looked at our uh rates for us we have different rates for longer uh substitute periods and we're competitive we're very competitive on those rates so no changes are being proposed to those uh the rationale for this I've outlined in the memo but just to kind of cover them um right now we're not the only District it's very difficult to find people who want to be substitute teachers pay is cited as a factor sometimes our pay is relatively low we did some benchmarking with what we call our peer communities there are a couple that are less but I've talked to one of the directors there and he said yeah we have a problem we should be doing something about it so let us know how your your process goes so um

220I think it's it's kind of a widespread problem and this is a step that we think we should take to improve the situation hopefully we can attract some more candidates and you know this is important you know the last point it's very important to having continuity in our teaching and learning and providing quality instruction um and or not pulling people from other assignments to cover um so we recommend and hope for your support on this this item the next two items are kind of I don't have a lot more to tell you other I can tell you for the feasibility study we're looking at uh for uh in case people aren't familiar with this we're looking at a RFP process um we basically request proposals to look at electrification of the Alcott Elementary School for

221its Heating and Cooling um you may recall there was some um Community discussion and decision to defer looking at um high efficiency boiler there so this was the next step that we decided this is let's take a look at electrification what would it cost we received five applicants proposals they're like 50 60 pages each we're going through that now ranking the candidates and then we'll consider price after we've done that the RFP process allows us to consider their qualifications their submission and not just price sometimes your lowest price you know we're looking at a 202 million potential plus scope project we'll not necessarily going to look to save a thousand dollars and pick somebody who's cheaper so that's why we did the RFP process um so but we're still evaluating uh I hopefully will uh

222we'll have a selection um in the next few days um so but we're pretty pleased with the the applicants that we've applications we've received um and then just an informational update uh we have um you may notice that periodically there's some reimbursements on our warrants um we have a p card uh that we no longer use because the vendor uh vendor Service uh was not very good um didn't mean our requirements and so we terminated that arrangement I'm currently reviewing a legal document with another vendor TD Bank that is a partner of ours for five years is an excellent firm and they have a specific division that Services municipalities and school districts so I feel like that'll be a much better fit um but that's in process and will help us avoid the most of

223these reimbursements in the future um so that's just an informational update the p-card account as I understand it when we have Ones been previously authorized so uh does not require a vote and it's kind of just like a credit card for lack of a better term yeah and make decisions on limits and and things that's usually uh parameters on the card that only allows certain uses yeah um yeah okay buy a lot of tickets on yeah and I guess just for clarity of the warrant signers um I'll just bring up a question that I I had from the warrant this week that I passed along when you see you might see a staff member's name with an amount of money and it's because we didn't have the P card so I actually Bob was able

224to refer me to his memo which was fantastic so I was like okay great so that that's just another piece of that warrant process you will still see you know there are reimbursements for example somebody um takes a course um they get reimbursed after they complete the course so that you're still going to see some of those but yeah there are certain vendors who we need to use a p card with so that's in process right the last item is a separate memo for um I just wanted to it's in the uh it's in the action item section but we have very specific language this relates to borrowing um for the access road work at the high school which my understanding was previously discussed and may not have been formally approved by the school committee

225it was approved by the town just recently um last Tuesday week yeah last week um and I needed to put a separate memo because there's very specific language that our bond Council and wants you to approve I don't have an answer to my question which is can you just approve the motion as written so I think I would ask for tonight that you read a couple motion unfortunately okay I'll push for an answer next time so in the future we know whether it needs to be read or not um so this is a project related to the access road uh the bulk of the money will come from this borrowing is an additional 200 000 that will come from the capital stabilization fund um and uh my uh the timeline is going to be out

226a little bit so um but we do need this approval before we can move forward with the borrowing thank you questions Cynthia have we talked to the town um as to whether there's an escalation in the project there is uh an inflation factor and a contingency builds into the estimate for this do they feel still as I'm saying the town still feels confident with their number um because I've seen a couple of towns say that it's even with their contingency it's gone above that yeah I I would say um if I look at this if I use the building project for example if it were to go five percent above that's fifty thousand dollars we would have the ability to to access um and pay for it in other ways I'm not too concerned yeah

227okay um you know as a last resort you know if there was if there's you know we could look at the scope too and there might be some minor things where we could save some money but we would prefer to avoid that if we didn't need to do that you're on it good thank you okay anyone else on the feasibility study um can you just I know it's it in your memo it said that it will be done this fall but can you talk through what the timeline on that would look like so we've asked them to have us uh a report to us so that we can consider it and um during the budget process but it's going to be kind of near we anticipate having a report maybe I think late November I

228don't have a specific date memorized but we did give them a date we wanted to have the information before we did our December budget presentation I don't know if I'm speaking into this enough but so we'd like to have an information for our December budget presentation so we can share it um you know this speak this is a broad issue sustainability you know we have certain Capital allocated to us 900 000 a year at CPS and um I don't think that we necessarily have capacity built in to support large sustainability like electrification of Alcott Willard and Thoreau um and um so you know this is a way to kind of get some of those issues on the table Yeah and have a broader discussion than just us trying to pigeonhole it into a smaller capital

229budget makes sense in fact and I guess Matt's gonna hear this firsthand I think probably worth noting at our session on Capital planning with the select board in two weeks at least put a placeholder out there because that discussion is about 5 million and above based on what I saw in the actin report for electrifying buildings it adds up very quickly and some of these may have high price tags so I think you will want to and we're not going to meet again because we're meeting with them before our meeting so I just want to say I think you probably want to put a at least a placeholder out with the select board to say this is what we're exploring my words have been till now we don't need anything probably and if this is

230going to become the priority it's going to be a town discussion not just a school decision in reference to uh substitutes uh happy to support it um I think it's necessary I think the school committee would benefit from uh perhaps an annual uh update on the attendance status in our schools how we stand because I think it is a a trend line for us to follow in terms of Need for coverage and Workforce stability yeah kovitz just made that extraordinary so it's not what it it's hard yeah without suggesting that okay thank you Bob these memories thank you really great and clear I appreciate that so much very clear okay so on to our action items this is the exciting part of the night the first action item we have is to approve the cchs

231travel and if you um open up your agenda there is emotions stated there but the motion actually we need to remove the Ecuador trip so which is sorry I'm just opening mine up first motion says Seven Trips you're gonna be six to make that six so just a question just about the on the agenda itself it says vote to approve cchs travel 22 to 23 but we are actually approving two trips that are in 2024 should we update the agenda to report I mean we debated that yeah after it was posted and it was you know yesterday afternoon yep you're correct and I think the tricky part is there might be more trips in 2024 so we're not like this yeah right oh let's see some motion that we're held to yes the motion is

232correct okay let's change it to a tchs travel yeah right okay so based on how they get Carrie go right ahead and move at the conquer Carlisle school committee votes to approve the six overnight trips as outlined with the condition that assigned District liability waiver is received from all participants do we have a second any discussion the one not on the list just for public record here is which one Ecuador Ecuador should be removed thank you okay all in favor aye aye aye opposed okay so the trips are happening it's very exciting um on to our next vote which is to approve the cchs handbook so I'll speak to that just briefly it's the same as the Concord committee did earlier for the CMS handbook we only changed dates and names um I've heard the

233feedback that we need to do some proofing of policies and such as we prepare for the spring version of this handbook um but we just wanted to formalize the dates names and the 2223 version of it okay do we have a motion move to approve second all in favor aye okay motion passes and now on to a vote to approved the policy committee and we I don't believe we have attached language to that and as a reminder I have appointed the end I would like to appoint the entire committee and I would like to appoint Kerry Rankin to chair that but I cannot make a motion so it's a it's a policy subcommittee of the whole yes not committee we only have one school committee right so we can call it a subcommittee so moved

234second it's okay you want a second oh I can second yes Alex is going to second that all in favor aye host okay and you're voting that for both districts yes yes see now I'm not used to this non-roll call with voting for both districts thank you Dr Hunter you're welcome um okay on to our warrant signatories and we do not have motions for these so I would entertain a motion to appoint Cynthia Rainey oh actually I can make a motion for CPS let's do two you need two emotions there I agree so I'm going to make a motion that Cynthia Rainey Carey Rankin and Alexa Anderson be warrant signers for conquer Public Schools second all in favor bye pose no one okay and I can't make this motion but I would entertain a motion

235to appoint um Cynthia Rainey Carey Rank and Alexa Anderson and Sharon Whitt to be warrant signers for conquer Cardinal Isle Regional School District second any discussion on that thank you okay all right thank you all in favor aye for both no just for region so I messed that up myself um and now we're on to our substitute pay and I believe we have a motion on there and I would ask that someone read the motion is it both districts or yes yes yes yes at the Concord and Conquer Carlisle Regional School committees vote to authorize District administration to increase the short-term substitute teacher per diem rate to 130 dollars per day and do we have a second sure thank you all in favor aye aye how do we vote for both because this is I

236haven't voted you say you're voting for both unless you're from Carlisle you just say it all at the same time so they say both and we like instead of saying eyes and we say read shares can call for the region yeah for the region you take turns calling it oh okay let's do that okay I'd like to call all those in favor for CPS all right all those in favor of her region I have no recollection I wasn't here for that okay um okay and the last action item we have is the vote to approve the cchs access road barring and this is a very lengthy motion that should be read in full it's the regional district for the region so this is the region that's voting on this I move that the Congress Regional

237school committee uh uh through the following motion that for the purpose of paying the costs of reconstruction of the access road on the district's campus including the payment of all other costs incidental and related there too there be and hereby is authorized under and pursuant to chapter 71 section 16 subsection D of the general laws and the district agreement as amended the incurring of debt on the full faith and credit of the district by the issuance and sale at one time or from time to time of bonds or notes in an aggregate principal amount of 853 thousand 665 dollars any premium received by the district upon the sale of any bonds or notes approved by this note less any such premium applied to the payment of the costs of issuance of such bonds or notes

238may be applied to the payment of costs approved by this vote in accordance with chapter 44 section 20 of the general laws thereby reducing the amount authorized to be borrowed to pay such costs by a link amount and that within seven days of the date on which this vote is adopted the secretary B and hereby is instructed to notify the board of Selectmen or in our case the select board uh uh for Concord of each of the member towns of this District as to the amount and general purposes of the debt herein authorized as required by chapter 71 section 16 D of the general laws and by the district agreement and do we have a second okay any discussion okay and for the region Olympics just just embedded in all of that language is if

239we do better on the borrowing we shave off some of these costs yeah I can explain it better than I can but uh that amount won't go up it may well go down because of our borrowing capacity our bond rating sometimes you get a premium when you use your bond and it reduces the borrowing okay so all in favor aye aye all right and that passes conquer don't you have to vote no so um now yes um we can move to adjourn Al it's a little second favorite hi hi thank you thank you all thank you Domingos nice to have you thank you thank you