Concord Carlisle Joint School Committee and Concord Public Schools, July 30, 2020. Concord, MA.

001i'll bring the conquer kyla regional school committee meeting to order um let's do a roll call for uh attendance uh booth frozen boat present uh cynthia rainey here wilson mustafi here johnston here and uh i don't know that alex was with us too okay um first up would be public comment if anybody has a comment you could just raise your hand on zoom that would be ideal i don't see anything we're on one page still so chairs and liaison reports um i don't have anything you've seen what i've seen as far as school committee stuff goes it's all been right here exactly not much since the last three days i would just say thanks to the community for the kind of feedback and and input that we've gotten we'll get to correspondence in a minute

002but i think so that's all on the planning process for the fall uh any leads on the report other committees do we have anything from well i think we'll uh reference fincom when we move to correspondence yes which we'll move back to now i haven't taken it out of order oh no that was right oh yeah you're right okay we did all right you wanna do that yeah sure yep i tallied him up so correspondence we've had a few more emails even since monday uh we had two more regarding anti-racism we had eight emails that were um either comments or questions regarding the plan to reopen and we've had and we had the two emails basically one to each committee from the finance committee starting to plan for our fy 22 budget as if we

003weren't still in the midst of 21 again um but they reached out to us to start to plan uh the guidelines discussions uh in october for the fy 22 budget so we are grateful for that and coordinating with them and we'll start that process um pretty soon actually and i think that was it unless you saw anything else walleye that i missed mentioning you got it all i i wonder if i'm i might oh the one whoops sorry go ahead cart yeah i i'd like to spend another minute or two minutes on the uh the anti-racism policy work and curriculum work uh recommendations that are coming our way because uh the recommendations or the appeal or demands put before the school committee um uh from a number of people now are pretty consistent and i

004i'd like to just call out that uh the the appeal we're hearing is uh for a curriculum that embraces more anti-racism subjects more historical context around origins of racism the value of an equity audit in the school district and uh the uh examination of inputs and uh where where we're getting information from in terms of students and families that inform us and that teacher training reflect [Applause] a need for anti-racism understanding and efficacy and that generally equity issues around students of color and other marginalized persons and be examined uh and acted upon so i just wanted to i don't want to read the the letter but uh simply uh put it on on the record that uh we're hearing this um we know it's an impassioned thoughtful appeal and uh there's a lot of detail

005to it and it's going to take a lot of careful attention and uh commitment on our part and so we know that definitely i think it's also worth pointing out as laurie has mentioned that there's been a lot of collaboration um with many of the people or the groups sending this as well and so it is definitely a joint mission to make a lot of these improvements and that's something that we're committed to as well thank you um the only other comment i was going to pull out of those emails i mentioned is that one of them was an offer of help you know on things like making masks and shields and that kind of stuff and we have heard that several times from the community so i just wanted to acknowledge that and reference

006that but we appreciate those offers so much and and will engage when the time is right to coordinate those so much appreciated and we um will certainly take our community up on the willingness to help out here and i think that was it for correspondence so yeah thanks for that and i do want to make uh just make note we have been very actively involved in cultural competency and attempting to work on issues we know exist um for some time it's always helpful to have input from from people and especially recent students which most of that is um and uh there's a long way to go here in el tour thank you um anything else in normality as a segway our uh as we move on our metco director mr uh namichi was uh heralded

007today uh in the metco newsletter for his singular efforts around pulling together conversations uh uh that are i believe statewide uh that are bringing um metco students uh and other students of color uh together for dialogue uh that is in in the metco ink's opinion uh a real hallmark of of uh what's what's possible and a standard setter for what should be happening by way of community dialogue that just came out today so thank you mr dimici yes so superintendent's report thank you i just had a couple of updates since clearly we'll be doing others as we go through the agenda yesterday i met with the board of health officials in town and all of the private school headmasters uh so we're just trying to come into all of this reopening of school with a

008baseline of common common approach crime on understanding of the protocols common understanding of the roles between the board of health officials and the schools clearly a community of partnership and collaboration supporting one another so that that was a really positive meeting and that's on top of the ongoing con um conversations i'm having with the board of health officials so um that that was just a nice nice discussion with my colleagues and to have a a local based approach um that's consistent to whatever extent appropriate in each of the different environments um so that's one update i just also wanted to remind you we are uh the finance committee on tuesday night of next week i know you mentioned the fy 22 memo that we received we are actually talking to them about fy 21 on

009tuesday night so jared and i will attend that we do meet monday so we'll mention it again next week but um that is immediately going to follow your discussions next week and kind of be in the middle of those as you've got a budget workshop also later in the week so um we're looking forward to talking with them and hearing with what the approach is going to be to try to finalize the budgets as we get closer to town meeting do you remind uh at the time on that 7 o'clock pretty sure it's 7 o'clock okay um early retirement incentive yeah do you want me to start you wanna yeah why don't you kick it off okay i'll just quickly frame it especially since we have a couple of new members um in 2017 we

010were in need of some budget relief and so we did some work to study different options creative options outside of the normal budget process one of those options was to to offer an early retirement incentive to staff who had 15 years in the district and the rationale behind that is there at the top of the salary schedule and we benchmarked a master's step seven um entry point for their replacements for a delta of an annual savings of over forty thousand dollars um the incentive was to be paid out over three years for the total of 40 000 and what it allowed every year was significant savings that compounds as it goes um so if you look at the memo that's attached to the agenda you can see that over time we've saved hundreds of thousands

011of dollars because of the folks who participated in this program um so it was a win in terms of the finances but equally as important to us was that this was meant to be a positive positive project in collaboration with the teachers and those who participated participated because it felt good to them and it just was successful on both runs we had brought it back uh i guess a little over a month ago probably april-ish may um to suggest we might revisit this um and as we were rebuilding fy 21 thought it could offer some cost savings we asked the teacher unions to survey their membership and um had a moderate risk low response for this one a moderate response last time we had done it in two phases for one fiscal year and then

012a deadline a few months out for the secondary fiscal year and it seemed that there was more interest in the fy 22 time frame than there was in the fy 21 time frame well so as the summer's going on here and we're really getting to the planning process of how we're going to open the schools there's also individual plans being made and situations being reflected upon and people frankly just really having that struggle of their own health and their family safety and other variables so it was suggested that we might look to revisit this it does sound like there are people who um might be interested in partaking immediately and that would be my recommendation that it would be at a a short-term invitation we should look at it again for fy 22 but that

013should be part of the fy 22 building project process not something i think we just automatically roll forward um i guess i'll frame all of this also in a really challenging time of managing just all of the pieces of reopening school yes all the work that we did to roll out to you but just in in the in the regard of individual staff members we're we're supporting people like i said with medical and family medical but also child care needs and there's a lot of moving pieces right now so this i think could be beneficial to put one more option on the table for um those who are eligible to consider and so i thought we'd bring it back to you for discussion um again i'd be suggesting that if we did this it would

014be a very immediate process in august with a short turnaround and a one-time event for fy21 that would close um and then we can decide later if fy22 is something we want to look at or not so that's we had left it that we'd bring it back for 22. i am bringing it back earlier than i had originally thought so that's i think where we're at we're i can't answer more questions jared could run all the numbers but i think you've got them in front of you that it in terms of the savings well and just to summarize and make sure i understand everybody else does the benefits of doing this are twofold one is that it lets some teachers step out of this situation where they're uncomfortable anyway without having to you know figure

015out leave or things like that and and then financially it means that we are letting them retire not continuing to pay them and also not in some cases paying leave on top yeah thank you for clarifying yeah okay yeah so just to clarify we would pay them something we just wouldn't be paying their salary in some cases that yes depending on their situation yeah i guess the uh sort of thing that jumps out first is uh assuming we need to replace them uh in that late day day i suspect given what's going on around the state that replacing is probably feasible i believe so yes and we're going to replace them in some cases we're replacing people either way right yeah yeah gloria when we when we look at the memo uh for cps for

016example we see on 6 30 20 9 ftes participated is that accurate yes so there were two phases last time uh if i might this all originated in 2017 so it's just still playing out now yes got it thank you yes okay okay and this would be a one year and it would uh impact uh teachers who have already commenced into fiscal 21 uh salary receipts but uh that would simply be adjusted and would be a simple bookkeeping matter i assume correct yeah okay so actually just clarity um most teachers who get paid through the summer it's fy 20 pay the fy 21 pay starts the first of the school year all right thank you um so just an initial thought to in terms of framing i know we looked at this several months ago

017and decided not to do it um that was without a pandemic of course the the reasoning at that point was the level of interest we didn't have a huge level of interest primarily we were in the pandemic but it was the level of interest for fy21 that made us rethink it um that's that's changed which is why i'm bringing that back right okay so so that has primarily changed the other factor that we've talked about in the past and i don't think this is as relevant but just put it out there with a few years we didn't want to do it necessarily we decided not to do it again right after we had offered it so that it didn't seem to become a yearly thing right which we have said we certainly don't want to

018create so my initial take is that those concerns both on um interest and making it a what seem like a yearly process are are not concerns right now because there is interest and it wouldn't be have been yearly we've skipped years already um so my only question would be are there any other downsides we're not discussing yet because otherwise it seems like a pretty good idea um i don't i don't see immediate downsides i think the concern over the yearly piece i i do know there was interest in 22 so i don't know how that would play out but i honestly i'm so in the moment here i don't know that that would be my biggest concern we can tackle that in the coming months as we go forward we can and i would also

019say we're in a pandemic so nothing gets yeah this is automatically a yearly thing right yeah yeah to your question heather i think normally we might hear the the concern why didn't you tell us earlier but in fact we did and so this is a this is a renewed attempt i think the uh conversation today assuming that we are very favorably inclined and this is another way of supporting teachers the way they would want to be supported right now the question might be what is the uh the responsible incentive figure to put in front of teachers i know that uh what three years ago we had a forty thousand dollar number that was uh a bit more generous than most uh comparable school districts were providing when they were putting together similar uh offerings um

020do you have a recommendation there lori or do you want to uh push that our way i i i think i mostly let you dialogue on that i would just you know give you the history of where that number came from um it really was a result of doing the math and partly the reason that number's high is because our whole salary schedule tends to run higher than most other districts so we can we can bring in a teacher with less experience and still save money even with that kind of a an incentive attached so some of it's just the relativity to our salary scale which is why we landed there um but i think that is up for some you know that's for your dialogue here today if you want to revisit that i

021just wanted for simplicity i brought you what we've done in the past and uh and i think this wouldn't influence my decision ultimately but i think we ought to pause for a moment and note that uh this could incentivize some of our best and brightest and we cherish our breath best and brightest i guess the one thing i would say yes that could be true but um given the medical things that i am aware of uh that's the case anyway yeah so and a number of them are going to be eligible for very extensive sick leave and i worry financially a bit on that side of it so and i'm not you know i'm not begrudging that make sure i say that out loud but just trying to strategize the finances while we meet the

022needs of the people is is part of the goal uh so i i i would offer up my opinion and that is that uh this is a responsible unnecessary move on our part sorry can i just ask if um uh have we looked at uh numbers uh that other districts are uh proposing right now in this uh current situation of the pandemic and budgetary limitations i've looked at a few few schools and the number is uh not forty thousand um what is the percentage um of that incentive uh how does what is the percentage of this incentive um the way it would relate to the uh earnings of the the salary of the teachers is it ten percent eight percent five percent two percent what's what's the i don't know if i would try to

023do the math off the top of my head um they're paid out in installments over three years so each year they get about thirteen thousand dollars which is partly how the budget pays that out but we save more than that every year so we come out in the positive um the average high end of the salary schedule is about 116 000 i'd say and the salary of the person we would look to replace them with would be 75 76 000. so i've seen um from the short research i've been doing um on districts um retirement incentives i've seen some districts proposing eight percent um on the on that higher end um if they were offering incentives uh eight percent of the salary and so that would um would that be most of the teachers would

024be in that 170 um landscape there or so these are all teachers at the top of the scale so um this number again i i don't have all the numbers and i don't want to be doing numbers while i'm trying to speak with you at the same time again this number was a result over three years almost three years ago of the work we did to look at the differential of savings and because the salary numbers are so you know generous that the savings is generous also so it is higher than other districts i will not at all i'm going to cover it about 11 10 to 11. i think i'd look at it a little differently um the kind of conversation about the number relative to salary and relative to other districts uh is

025a very good one to have for 22. um i think given what we're trying to accomplish with this right now um both with the speed with which it would take place um and the reason for doing it the benefit to us is actually going to be a little greater than it is in the normal circumstance i would hesitate to adjust downward um the dollar amount over what our history what this most recent historical early retirement incentive was um i think we uh i think we could hurt our prospects if we did that i don't really see it i don't see it i don't see a strong reason to do that we had the same sort of discrepancy in our last uh projections and decided to go with these numbers um and like i said this

026is not strictly about uh saving you know a certain amount of money on the budget where this is likely going to happen anyway so it's uh in fact could be a significant improvement first i don't know if that i don't get too detailed into that for some obvious reasons but um i do think it's i do think it's important that if there are people who uh find this attractive uh that we we try to exercise it well if if we had the benefit of time which we don't i i would want exercises like looking at 40 000 over a four year payout and probably a couple of other permutations but i i'm with you now now is not the time yeah and you might do that for 22. um and i do think it i

027do think it makes total sense to wait on a 22 incentive because you'll have a lot more information by the time you're considering that in the late fall early winter so uh i know chairs uh want to close this conversation properly i don't want to preempt it but uh what happens from here if uh if we are to move ahead do we uh make it formal on monday wally and heather yeah i think that would be the right approach unless somebody uh firstly felt they needed more time to consider it um plan for a vote monday yeah because we want to get this underway for obvious reasons and i fully support this program uh lori do you anticipate a sometime in august deadline or is this you going to yes oh definitely you're not going

028to keep it open no i might be a quickest turnaround program you've ever seen in a couple days a week to be expected in this environment so we meet on the third the seventh looks like a good day right so so to that point uh sometimes these programs uh don't uh take because there's a minimum threshold a district wants to arrive at before they launch a program like this are we concerned at all about the opposite that we uh should cap this in some way i am not right now because i did the time with the uh cta and ccta before i would bring it to you they've the cta has done a soft survey and um seemed like it was three to five people interested um c cta it may be less than that

029so i don't think we're gonna get overwhelmed so if those numbers doubled it it wouldn't uh dismay us or throw us into financial upheaval no yeah we're personnel uh people okay thank you we're already in some personnel so i don't i don't need to hopefully it's going to just be one person at a time we settle it but they're every district right now with all these unknowns and moving pieces it's really a lot stable stable for the open to school we will be i'm sure i wish up evil was uh something that we were avoiding right now yeah [Music] it'll be it'll be fine i think this just gives us another tool in the toolkit here which is helpful so between now and monday if anybody has any other questions just reach out to either

030wally or me or lori and and we'll plan to wrap this up on monday okay good all right um okay so and cynthia can chime in along the way here we met again yesterday with the calendar committee which was formed based on the contractual um representation so we were reflecting on the commissioner's uh directive that we could consider 170 school days instead of 180. so we went back to what we had brought to you earlier in the week and did some um a lot of really great conversation and some creative thinking and came up with a kind of a i feel like it's a very comfortable approach it gives us time on the one end for onboarding staff and all the training and protocols we need to do with them and then it brings kids

031back in uh in a little bit of a virtual way first and then builds to the in person over a few days time so i will just do a quick overview of what we had um suggested we would be looking at professional days oh let me let me back all this up by saying we really only looked at september and october with a little bit of high level look for the rest of the year um the committee felt that to try to try to really look at where other days are going to fall with so much uncertainty and wanted to get the year up and running and be sure we had a little more information to work with so the committee will need to reconvene in in september to talk on what we think november

032beyond i think the high level would be committing to the vacations maintaining themselves and an end of school date of june 16th we know with the 10-day reduction that's really comfortable and indeed the commissioner finally said what i've been saying to you is snow days are not snow days are going to be virtual days going forward so that inc you know that really solidifies the end of the year um so we really focused in on the startup of school and some thought about what october might be benefit what what might benefit us in october so september august 27 through september third we'd be on boarding staff and doing training and protocols in professional development on tuesday september 8th students would receive a virtual school day that would include getting to know you orientations of especially

033the transition grades welcome back they'd certainly zoom with their each class likely and get to see each other that way we actually liked that idea in many ways because it builds whole class feeling to start the year in the middle and high school where those kids won't physically be together for any foreseeable time wednesday the 9th if we assumed it would be an early release half day as we proposed earlier this week that all wednesdays would be we would bring k to five in for the half day and have six through 12 have a virtual day and part of the thinking there with the hybrid schedule to start 6 through 12 on a half day wednesday is not a great start so it made sense to get do a little more virtual with them on

034wednesday and then start the rotation on thursday and then everyone's in beginning with the hybrid schedules as they are outlined on thursday the 10th so we haven't used all 10 of the days which gives us more flexibility going forward during the year which the committee thought was very beneficial we did suggest a professional day on october 13th to be attached to the three-day weekend which is not in your memo but i would like to ask you to consider renaming that at the committee's recommendation to indigenous people's day and we will list it that way on the calendar so that's what the committee's bringing to you with the big picture view of expecting other things to stay stable in terms of vacations and end of school date and a plan to return to the calendar in

035early september and a reminder of the wednesday half days so it's going to be a work in progress that i think fits the fact that everything is a bit of a work in progress but i think it sets a nice ramp up to the year and give us a chance to do everything we need to do with teachers before we're live with kids our thanks to the committee for this uh lori the [Music] 170 days refers to student learning the uh teacher days remain 185 is that correct yes okay thank you um so in terms of the 170 if i'm counting correctly since the only compared to what it used to be um the kids would have started the 31st that week that the is now professional development the 31st through the third i'm jumping

036between screens here calendars and documents is four days of extra professional development and then the one extra in october so am i correct that so far this schedule uses five of the ten extra days we have and we have five left to work with still well so typically we actually have five already because the teachers work 185 days out of 180 right so we actually now have 15 to work with total apollo yeah so that would count it as of the 27th so right so you're you'd have the 27th through the third so all of those days the 13th and then you'd still have all of the remaining to follow yeah so it's actually more than that okay got it so it's six in uh august september and then one in october seven and then

037we so we actually have then eight to work still yes and some of those are the typical conference days we're going to look at and there's always a pd day in january for the upper grade so all of those normal things will be part of the discussion so those will equal usually those are three days in and of themselves and then we'll look at how we spread the other remaining ones okay so we have of the extras we basically do have five left to work with got it okay good thank you and the thinking was that now that we have some uh dates regarding the start date we need especially cchs administration to go back and set up their calendar so we know the semester and and the quarter ends and exams and all those

038sorts of things and then we could drop in at least the high school have a better idea about how to set up the conference days etc and even at k8 they used to want to go back and sort of strategize and where to put the conference days so um that makes sense i'll just say i know this would be your plan anyway but i'm going to say it out loud that parents will need good notice in order to plan for those professional days when the kids are not only not in school although that can happen a lot but not doing remote so i know you'll do that anyway but just saying out loud that we want to make sure we give parents as much notice as possible as we schedule those yeah and i i

039i will say that comes with all these other moving pieces that you know in this year notice is just a different sense to it than what we would normally have and um yeah fortunately that's just where we are where we are yeah um yeah we in my opinion i think i said this to the committee i would rather kind of go slow and set out a calendar that continues to change again and again yeah because then they probably have settled and we're undoing stuff and it this will we will roll this out saying this is september and october september we will do november december and as far out as we possibly can yeah makes sense can i ask a quick question on the calendar i've been getting a lot of questions and i just don't

040know how to answer it what was the sort of thinking behind the half day wednesdays i just don't know sort of the background um we we know we're going to need but let me start with the elementaries have always had that it's just been on tuesday yeah yeah no i'm talking six through 12. yeah because of the hybrid split because it's monday thursday tuesday friday so doing it in the middle of the week keeps everything nice and balanced and teachers have been working in the half day period why the that's for time for teachers because we are starting everything in a new way we know we're going to need to continually have department meetings and team meetings of teams of teachers training technology training social emotional training cultural competency and anti-racism is on that list

041and it's everything's new so cool yeah no i'm glad you asked we can clarify that when we send this out so the only big changes for the high school the middle and elementary i've always had a day a week with a less than full schedule so nearly enough i think you know just yeah it's gonna get pulled quickly yes yeah i wouldn't be surprised if the kids find it beneficial too um especially the ones that would have had three full days of uh remote learning on that week right any other uh comments i'll just clarify wally the high school kids will have remote learning asynchronous but they will have remote learning on wednesday afternoons or we will not make the time and learning requirement from the stage yeah that's why i clarified oh and that's

042just just at the high school um i no that isn't just at the high school it's the 99 the 990 that's now down to 9.35 i think is a number we need at the high school the others we don't need it for time on learning we're still working through those schedules um but it does look like the others might even have some synchronous things so we're still sorting it all out what we needed was the teachers available half the day for professional developments we're still working on the student side of it so from a student's perspective it won't always be a half wednesday probably not okay that's good i think that's something we should clarify in our outward communications because but the afternoon will be remote engagement not in right okay so that's good i'll

043put all that in the communication when we share the good that's helpful that's great yep yep again we'll vote on this on monday um assume these two things are on the uh posted agenda well i had this dilemma of having a post before we had this meeting i think the calendar is we'll be sure the retirement incentive gets added aaron's on this meeting so she's probably already doing it while we talk okay good which would uh put us under the window anyway and we're just heading so that's okay um as long as everybody here is okay yes so um so we're finished to that discussion yes okay let's move on to reopening plans yeah i thought um i think the intent of this agenda is really for mostly for you to dialogue and ask questions

044just a few highlights from our end on again reminder of the purpose of what we've proposed is that it's trying to really strike the balance between maximizing in-person learning while achieving safety measures and protocols that through all the committee work we deemed necessary trying to also balance the time in school the time out of school in a way that didn't allow for big gaps of time for kids to be away from the school building and live instruction at the elementary level we really focused on bringing all kids in five days a week because of the challenges of remote learning i know there's been questions about the half day there as well so i'll just you know give a little more of that rationale more clearly to be able to cohort the elementary kids is what's

045really allowing the all of them to come back rather than going to the hybrid alternating mode however by bringing them all back when you then start to look at the more complicated settings of lunch recess as we don't know it at all or certainly as we used to know it on the specialists when they're even if the specialists are coming to them which we debated there's big differences in who's exposed to each other it starts to shift the cohort feeling considerably um so all of that added up to essentially not meeting the safety mandates we were setting for ourselves so we essentially got to two choices we could either go the hybrid split day with the elementary and they had full days of remote learning or we could bring them all in and do the

046early release every day so we've recommended the half day early release because every student's in school every day and that felt most beneficial for the kids built some really nice routines hopefully for the youngest students and set a really predictable plan for families knowing knowing that no matter what we did we were creating a child care issue but hopefully the most stable was managing the afternoon piece so that's a little background on that that i know has come up the one other thing that i know we've all had feedback on and i think some feedback's gone to you as well um is the question of the alphabetical split at the high school and you know the challenge of kids not being with friends and that's just a consistent piece we've heard from the kids directly

047we're hearing from their families um it was on mr miss julio's task force this morning and we talked some on it he's considering some options to see if we can even do some data gathering to see what other things we can come up with but we do know that structure is the best structure for all the safety measures we need to achieve i guess i might as well explain this too while i'm explaining things if you bring them in by grade level which is what seem you know of course you have more of your friends and your grade level you bring them in by grade level the natural split in the class size that we get when we go alphabetical disappears so then you've got a group of ninth graders in english who are all

048at school and now we're then taking half of them and having to remotely teach them in the building or put a tutor with them while they're teachers with the other half definitely not exactly what we would have envisioned for academics and then the trick there is if you've got like 9 10 in the building our plans and hopes for some zooming in evaporate because the 11th and 12th graders don't have any classes going on to zoom into so it just doesn't work the same way and we had also hoped to keep families together and the only way to do that is alphabetically so we are still seeing what we can come up with committing to alternative and creative options where kids can be together um we know it's it's definitely a pressure point for the

049kids and we're glad they felt comfortable saying that and i have talked to all the local just talked to all the local districts around us hoping somebody else had figured out another way and everybody's gone alphabetical so so i'm just going to open with those pieces that seemed like they were the two biggest pieces of feedback i have had a lot of positives too so i shouldn't forget to add that um and then turn the conversation over to you um i think just as far as framing this goes a little um obviously we haven't had a lot of time since this was presented to us on monday um but we would like to vote it on monday um and so if there are things that you have been either would like more information about have

050been wondering about or might have issue with i think it would be beneficial to us to treat this as if we were you know we had made a motion and we were now discussing prior voting we'll do that again monday uh for sure but uh let's surface anything that might be on your minds now um so that if there is anything uh that we feel needs to be adjusted prior to we've got a little time very little to do something about it prior to us hoping to take a vote on monday molly i thank you i could offer up a couple of comments uh one is uh i don't think anybody's happy but i don't think that was the goal either uh we knew this was going to be a very painful uh balance of

051needs and issues um my early read is that what the superintendent shared on monday shocked nobody and that's good news that's good news uh and then finally what i'd say is there has been a a hope sort of a latent hope on the part of some people in the district and expressed by a few we've got such an exception exceptional school district and such talented folks leading it and teaching in our classrooms uh can't we leverage all our our innovative uh talents and our creative capacities and do something different and sadly i think the answer is no because every school districts conquered carlisle and and others uh are dealing with the same external realities uh so as much as we'd like to say uh that we've got something novel um uh no pun intended that

052would be a very bad pun um we simply don't because our realities are so similar to to that that everybody else is experiencing everybody else got comments questions so i don't uh i don't see this as voting for the plan because this is as lori says it's a road map it's a general set of we're gonna try to do these things these three different options and this these ways and i know that a lot of things are going to change as we get more information um not you know change in a big way but uh i think the very details about um how we're gonna do bring back uh the hybrid model or the remote model or i don't as we discussed we don't think it's possible to bring everybody back at six through twelve

053so um i don't perceive my vote as this is we're locking into this plan we're locking into an approach which is going to change um as it should and uh so i appreciate all the work and all the level the uh level detail that's gone into this and i think it's uh something that's gonna require a lot more work going forward so thank you thanks all right i also wanted to comment on the on the plan um i appreciate the uh the thoughtfulness and all the heavy lifting in this planning process you can't make a and you can't meet everybody's needs unfortunately there is no good there is no great plan there is no good plan there is a plan um that is feasible um when it comes to uh ensuring everybody's safety and providing

054the education for for our students the best we can and that's that social emotional piece i just wanted to say that that day the the virtual day that the high school teachers will be speaking to our students and families um about um return to school is such a great idea i when i saw that um when i saw that on this on a schedule i i was really happy to see that because um i i've seen the impact of those virtual webinars that um uh personally when we were going through um the college visits um it is it brings some normalcy and some understanding of what to expect which um we can all expect that anxieties are high and and students are really interested in knowing um where they're going and uh what is going

055to happen to them and and parents are on the same boat with them so i really appreciate all the great ideas that are being put forward by the school administration and um and yep that's it thanks thank you i think i've heard a lot of feedback about how detailed and thought out and um you know while it's not what everybody wants it's um it it gets it gets us somewhere that um the people feel they know where they're going which i think is a really good position to be in are there any like known unknowns at this point for the that that could change anything between now and and i know that there's all sorts of stuff that's always changing and we kind of know what we know is always going to change but is

056there are there any concerns that you have laurie about um some piece that's not quite exactly where where it should be to make this you know the we've already this week made a very significant shift into the next layer of detail which has actually felt really good so we're really pinning down the sket the details of the schedules for all the levels um honing in on travel and how kids are going to switch classes like we're getting into the next layer which actually feels really good and so long as the schedules i've been on the meetings all day continuing that progress i think we're in a good place to finish that up by next week because really you know each piece we had to build the big picture structure which is what went out now

057we're building the next layer of structure and then there's this other layer that follows that so i think we're we're doing do we're doing well um i have to the timeline we laid out has been completely on track all summer long so barring something that we haven't spotted yet and just continuing the pace at which we've been which is somewhat of a challenge no doubt but i think we're going to be in good shape i do think the the little gift of some time there at the end of august probably helps avoid anything getting left too rushed because we'll have a window there to wrap it up and then roll it out to teachers so i don't see anything right now but i say that with such a great sense of it could change in

058you know an hour is sort of how this has gone so but it seems like we're we're doing well i've been on a lot of the task forces and staff meetings and talking with the principals on um the building level piece is taking off which is exactly what we planned yeah yeah in terms of supplies facilities all that kind of stuff everything we're in good shape in fact we're going to open the schools up earlier than we thought to the teachers because that will help them to get in and start to strategize this new world that they have um we hit one little snag with 90 m9 and 95 masks for ppe and the fire department's taking care of that so the little they you know i can't say there haven't been some but we

059kind of just step back and re-strategize it and this is the gift of such a collective effort like today i got an email emerson's offered to help with whatever they can help with like the collective piece of this has been really important so that we're all we have resources to go to and not just trying to do it all by ourselves so so far we are navigating any little hiccups that have come along thanks on that same same uh line of thinking lori are we uh still awaiting any uh outside contractor work on facilities no in fact and russ is on he's going to talk more when we get to the cps stuff later uh we really pulled back any work that we had planned this summer which was really smart because now we're not

060at anyone's um timeline on those external kind of projects so the only vendors that are coming in now are on an as-needed basis at our descript well usually at the middle school it's not always our discretion it's because there's a little issue we need them to fix but otherwise is that our direction and discretion so um that hack if we had tried to do any projects of any kind that would have created a much bigger issue so i'm glad we didn't um so thank you for asking that and you're comfortable with uh any uh testing on uh air exchange yeah and russ russ is on so we could probably ask him he's um secured vendors for us russ are you available there yep uh let me see just give them i know we didn't tell

061you we're gonna ask you about this part um can you just give them the quick version of what you've secured for engineering for hvac and air testing okay so good afternoon everyone um so we've hired a engineering firm blw just to come in and do an assessment of all of our hvac equipment and just to ensure we're running at a hundred percent and just to offer up any recommendations um they can do or we can do is five any uh improvements um we've also reached out to uh matt mabbitt environmental and we're hiring a an industrial hygienist to come in and just to do like a a risk assessment and just look at some of our uh cleaning uh processes and uh some of our chemicals that we're using to ensure they're uh approved by

062the cdc um they're also uh this industrial hygienist they can do uh swipe samples on high touch areas that they can test for uh covert 19. there is no test out there for ear monitoring for covet 19. we have to tell them or ask them uh what we want test for tested so [Music] i should be meeting with them next week and they can give us some recommendations so all right thank you and we know we note that you're at ripley right now yes yeah thank you to your entire crew for their their uh extra attention and uh extra work this summer yeah thank you court yeah we've uh you know to laurie's point i'm glad we didn't take on any extra projects because this has freed me up to get the ppe and the

063tents and i'm going to be working very closely with this engineering firm and the industrial hygienist so it would be hard to be running projects now and doing that so all right thank you yeah so lori it's not really part of the plan but um especially the elementary schools with so many parents driving their children to school yeah um i'm i'm hoping that uh the conqueror police department i know that the resource officers are but that's that's a big big lift yeah yep so the elementary principles were reaching out to them today and pro and also uh is going to come in and be part of the conversation there's already been some creative brainstormings i was on the alcott task force yesterday and um one of the veteran staff reminded us that there used to

064be a big someone here already know this but it was news to me that there used to be a big loop around alcott and could we reinvent some of that different approach rather than the way it's paved right now so we're starting to strategize it um certain settings are harder than others for sure alcott and thoreau probably the top of the list um just given their name you know the settings they're in so yes we are definitely getting engaged in that conversation and um working through that making people very alert to bikers and walkers and yes it's going to be a little chaotic at first there's no question about that and so just to have everybody you know slow things down a bit no no need to rush to school correct that is right they

065won't yeah tardiness will have another definition than what it did before great thank you we will judge we will judge their arrival by their intentions that's right um so i would just comment i will also i can i will keep saying but i think given the the myriad of factors and how they're changing and the timing and everything i think it is truly amazing actually the way this plan has come together and the fact that we have what feels like a multi-pronged plan that we can use as a guide and shift as we go using it is really impressive so i just want to share my thanks to everyone who is involved and i know it is incredibly collaborative um so huge kudos here um my comment in question is somewhat has been in a

066way um foreshadowed by a lot of these comments the fact that there are still things that are not done and will in the next level as you said um some details yet to flush out and as we approve this one i think it'd be great for us to be able to communicate at some point kind of where those other things stand or when we will hear about them um one i think about in particular in terms of timing is what the remote plan looks like for for families who opt remote not when everybody's remote but for families who opt out of in person what that looks like right only that they'll need to know a little bit about what it looks like before they make the choice possibly so i know that's a chicken and

067leg dilemma there um and and other things around um i know you've been and so this is also to point out i know there's work going on on all of this already you guys mentioned talking about um scenarios with the headmasters and other school leaders and i know you're trying to get more feedback on thresholds that would then um enable or inform other decisions you know the threshold for closing in one direction if we have to like just as likely or likewise thresholds for opening more fully at some point so all of those and i know that those are things that you're looking for and and that was a big part of our discussion yesterday with the health officials and all the concord schools was to start working through that and we did start to

068think we could at least put some scenarios out you know the more i listen the more i understand why the it depends is really the answer but i know that's not an easy answer for people to understand because it's very non-precise so um we were we were doing some of the hypotheticals or in case some cases some actual things that had happened in other local districts in our communities and you you start to see that we could probably put categories of things out um and maybe that would be helpful it's very hard to get to an exact number but that doesn't mean you couldn't put a number out and say this is where we would definitely be thinking about closing or something like that it would depend on the circumstance um so we're working on

069that was a huge part of our conversation yesterday and i uh left you know and i spent a lot of time with my colleagues in the public districts around us too and um i did leave that you know one of our local private schools is bringing borders back and i thought well at least i'm not responsible overnight so um we're all learning from each other and we've had some nice emails since and so i'm going to add that to my regular rotation of meetings and but yes the thresholds are a real big piece of communication for us to try to put something out to help people feel like there's some predictability right so in the meantime it's just good for everybody to know that you are working on those things you know here here's the

070plan that we're voting on monday and here are the other things that you know are yet to come but haven't been forgotten about it right um the to the question on predictability so for remote days i think uh in grades 6 through 12 seem very clear in so far as it seems like you'll for the most part follow your existing schedule um for the half days for the elementary schools when do you think parents might have a firmer sense of what those afternoons will look like so to heather's point things can start planning like child care or i don't know even i know there's a lot of talk in the community about tutoring and cohorting small kids for tutoring that kind of thing so will will the days be predictable yes very much though um

071i spent almost all morning on the elementary schedule both the in-person and the remote afternoon and we're really close to don we're going to just need to share it out among the rest of the teaching staff and probably another week or so i'd say we're closing in on it yeah right it's going to be very very predictable so that and the good news is we're building it so that it's likely to be predictable in the remote full remote environment too so that's been the goal so one schedule and it it holds across both settings all right other questions or issues that people have or or if not you know if you come up with anything else you think of other things again make sure to reach out to one of us or dr hunter before

072we come back monday ideally because monday we will hopefully take a vote on this yeah and i think just important to say you know the vote you're taking is yes a vote of endorsement of what's there but also a vote required by the state it doesn't mean everything in that plan isn't going to be continually reviewed and um effectively monitored and evaluated because that is absolutely best practice in this case and some of that we won't know till we're in school and find the hot spots that need to be tweaked so and laurie just for the record uh on the uh 31st is it a draft goes to the state so they what i submit tomorrow um is a very really all it's a very simple questionnaire that asks me to explain in person hybrid

073and remote for all three levels and then i have to send the full document um the commissioners assured us that he's uh prioritized his entire staff to be reading and reviewing so we're glad to hear that and both the forum and the full report in the next two weeks great thank you laurie have you heard of any schools any districts that have prioritized uh getting uh students on campus full-time or is everyone looking at hybrid everyone seems to have at least some hybrid going on um certain schools that accepted the three feet have had a little more you know we were able to do it elementary i've seen a couple districts that went with the three feet and have been unable to do do more with the upper grades um but i haven't seen anyone

074who's fully open 100 percent and my colleagues and i are surveying each other all day long so not yet okay thank you so we can uh unless there's anything else anybody wants to and we can uh adjourn the region saying enough i'm gonna take a motion to adjourn the original meeting i moved second um any discussion do a roll call um i rainey hi john's tonight it's all yours all right thanks everyone thanks thank you sarah you're welcome to stay very welcome um okay so on to cps stuff we have some capital discussions lori i'll let you tee this up yeah i'll open it russ is here to give us his um feedback and input we had uh said and committed to the town of concord that we would review this capital request as part

075of the rebuild of the budgets and the postponement of town meeting so i'll just remind you what we had well we had voted doesn't it feel like a lifetime ago when we voted all this voted in i guess the middle of winter a plan to work within the town manager's allocation with a heavy focus on energy uh replacement units at the eleventh alcott and thoreau specifically we had also uh referenced fifty thousand dollars that was six hundred and ninety thousand fifty thousand for the integrated playground at thoreau and um 20 for increasing a boiler exhaust at willard 40 000 for an ac chiller replacement also at willard and then the uh standing 50 000 at each of the two middle school buildings so that i think i do think town of concord is uh hoping

076we might revise this we've had some high level conversation about that and i think asked ourselves some questions that have led to russ's engagement today i can start with the easy ones and then we can make our way to the ones that probably need more discussion the middle school p the 250 000 slots for the middle school need to stay so let's not i hope you'll support that um i do think the thoreau playground we have funds available from other sources so we can get started uh without that 50 and i'll be honest to say that that's not the priority of the moment anyway so um it definitely is a need and a want um especially with those new programs over there but we have we have funds to start from ptg and such so

077the 50 000 wouldn't make or break that getting going uh and then i think uh we had the boiler extension height of 20 000. i think we feel that can wait and i know russ wanted to just talk with you on the ac chiller at willard and the erus so those would be the two i'd say that are really up for review i could we could subtract 70 000 for those two projects maintain 140 and then debate the 690. and sorry maintain 120 and debate the 690 and the 40 000. did you follow all that okay so russ do you want to just talk on the boiler no the erus and the chiller yep so the erus i do i know the last time we met you know i said this was something we could

078hold off we don't need right away um but it probably would be good if we could have the money for next spring with the lead time of equipment of these erus being 12 weeks i would recommend that we go ahead and pursue that um i don't know when yeah okay go ahead i mean i don't know if we don't do it now when the next time would be that you'd have this opportunity and where we only have a window to do this project in the summertime it would be nice if we could you know line this all up and plan and just order the equipment and just be able to execute this project next july so russ i wonder if you might uh bring it down to a less techn less than technical level um

079what does it uh [Music] quantify what the benefits are and quantify what the costs are for postponing could you do so well there is there will just be a lot of maintenance costs these units are at the end of life a good example just two weeks ago we have the kids camp over there in the kindergarten wing now uh using that and we lost a um compressor for the air conditioning so you know we had to have a company come in and repair the compressor and i haven't seen the invoice yet but that's going to be a few thousand dollars that's going to hit our maintenance budget was that an ice up situation or a uh a leak it was a freon leak yeah so they had to find the leak you know repair it

080and then recharge it and so it's and we can keep limping along like that too if if we have to i know there's another unit there another eru the wheel it's missing some of the fins or so it's not running at you know a hundred percent capacity so if you were to take a uh a a mere guess at uh maintaining it for another year where the town to be very inclined toward us doing that what would you want to see in the budget 150 000 knowing that it would be an unfortunate use of money but necessary in order to defray doing it right it's hard to put a number on it court because um those compressors are very uh expensive like the other project we have at the willard i think we're we're putting

081uh 50 000 aside in um for a compressor over there so yeah it would probably be a few hundred thousand in the maintenance budget uh so in spite of uh increasing austerity that we have to point toward this seems like a responsible thing to do unfortunately i would say um it would be and it's also there will be a energy savings as well because these units were not originally designed they were modified um so now you're going to get a a unit that's designed with air conditioning and it'll be uh there's a payback on it and a general question are we in a competitive or non-competitive uh climate for uh capital purchases type any any big changes uh in the economy that are driving changes around these kinds of uh uh project fitting you mean

082like with contractors and vendors and um i would say it's probably a little more competitive um we've gone out to bid once on these uh we could go out again if needed okay but no huge uh drama in the industry no it's just well the only uh critical path i i think would be is the lead time on equipment i'm just finding that because of the the virus it's really slowing down supply chains so i just feel comfortable if we could get this stuff ordered in you know february or march or not have to wait to go through another round of getting it approved so of course thank you for all those questions i think it really helped to frame our discussion and thinking here to me it comes down to is this a question

083of pennywise pennywise pound foolish to put it off um and i know last time we talked to us i asked you you know does it seem like even though it would take an investment now it's more responsible fiscally to do this because of the fact that we could waste more money over the long term and it seemed like probably yes to at least do some of them i know you have more information now so given all that you just told core kind of high level conclusion does it feel like it would be i guess like court said almost irresponsible not to do it because of the extra cost that could come later or lots of words in your mouth or is it the opposite you know i would say it would be prudent to go

084ahead and do this now versus just keep throwing maintenance money after this and putting band-aids on the units just to limp us along you know okay it seemed like that's where it's going again i don't want to forget i just wanted to make sure that's what we're hearing yeah and would you start is this going to be alcott first because yes right is it worse shape is it the correct term i believe they're older units yes at the alcott the the original i just have a memory that either alcott or anthro were not designed with air conditioning and neither of them were either it was put in after the fact and there were numerous issues around it yeah so when i say the systems were modified that's what i mean the air conditioning was added

085and after right so yep well and for more context we've been talking about replacing these er earrings for several years now and some of them might have gotten done but it so this isn't the first time we've heard they need to be replaced and we've kicked the can down the road a little bit already yeah i'm starting to get to that feel that feeling you better do something about it before it's a problem right i think that uh during the process the the price i assume you've built in some contingency that it might be less than 690 or no it's going to be about that yeah i know i'd have to get with uh jared in the end i i don't know off the top of my head with the bids thanks there is an

086economy of scale here so the more we do the less we'll spend is that generally true yes that is correct and it's it would make sense to do all of them you know just because of uh this is going to be crane work so mobilization fees and things like that it would not be cost effective just to have it one replaced at a time or so that was one of my questions initially was could we just lower the number and stage it out more but it fiscally doesn't really make sense to do that right so i'm a little confused so we have a 690 and fy21 right and then 680. so 690 both the row and alcohol i think it's mostly alcott yeah i don't we the way that it's written there didn't break them

087out individually but i think the goal is essentially to do alcott and then essentially to do thoreau and fy22 yeah now of course we're about to enter 22 so because 21 is running so late we could in theory do both next year if we left the numbers yeah yeah but then you've got a problem getting the commitment before they've got to be ordered well that's the fy 22 problem yes i said in theory okay you know i know nobody wants to think about this but we don't know that we're not gonna have some issues we're uncovered next fall would be nice to get hvac systems uh you know up to snuff just in case we still have issues um i think if we had known this was coming we would have argued that we should

088have gotten these fixed a while ago i think it makes sense to move forward i don't i don't know if everybody is satisfied on this one if so um tell us about the uh ac chiller if you'd be so kind rush and so the ac chiller at the willard school there's two of them and and they're basically chiller or i'd call them compressors too um but two chillers handle the whole school right now we have lost uh one chiller it's just been deemed that it needs to be replaced so we basically do not have any redundancy there if we lose the other chiller um it's going to the building will be without air conditioning and is the 40k for one chiller or two for one chiller so [Applause] i think we could follow on wally's

089comment of a minute ago and say uh we do need the redundancy as much now as we ever did i would say before our coffers are threatened further in the town we do the responsible stewardship of these buildings and keep that number in here would be my sentiment i would agree russ is this a repair that can be done during the school year or no yes this can be done during the school year you know after air conditioning season it can you know this nice fall project or october november or early spring good it'd be a good place for the spring yeah yeah yeah thanks so um i i missed this when we first started talking about this are we taking the boiler exhaust tight increase off this are we leaving it on i was

090going to suggest you could take it off but you can revisit that if you'd like um it's it's not feeling as urgent it's been that way for willard's entire life it's a matter of having to make sure the door management happens and such so that the exhaust isn't going to the building it's not an unsafe situation but it's inconvenient for sure on that issue there the wind has to be blowing just the right way and it's um you know some days it's a problem and some days it's not so design flaw that happened yeah is it does the door have to be up and forth fortune come in no the the issue there that the stack the boiler stack or chimney or it's it's too low they didn't want to see it from the street

091so it needs to be extended um so i've had one company come out and take a look at it and they were gonna do some uh engineer do an engineering estimate for me um can't just go up there and put a piece of pipe on right you're right yeah two feet yeah and it's funny because they got four boilers tied into this and two hot water heaters and it's yeah it's uh you know it was undersized where it shouldn't have been so it it's not an issue though it's something if if you have to hold off on something i i concur with lori that's probably something we can hold off on yes because it's been like this we keep it on our list of as soon as possible yeah it's good to keep on like

092a five-year plan or something absolutely okay it sounds like we're headed to reducing this by uh seventy thousand dollars yeah so you know i didn't we don't have a vote on the agenda we can add that on monday um there is some convenience to all these meetings because we're never too far away from another one um so i thought we'd start the discussion and then vote monday as we like to do so you're not deciding the same day yep i agree i think that makes sense yeah no it wasn't intending that we'd vote on it but um if we were to uh have to get this number down some more um how would i do it and russ can pipe i mean really the only place you have to go is the er use and

093i think then you'd this would be a fiscal strategy more than the change of need that you'd then want to look at what we put in for fy22 and how we approach that plan because the need is still there so i think if you had to lower you'd end up with a three-year eru project instead of a two-year eru project most likely which as we just said is maybe not as cost effective and i'd like to hope we have reasonable odds of not expending the uh the 100k at the middle school but something considerably less yeah because we've got a lot of uh preventive maintenance attention happening uh with russ's crews at both buildings yep we might get lucky yep i just want to make sure we've thought about that um before we get to

094town yeah good point and i think also to be able to explain what the future cost is of doing that if we cut it in half now we as a town will be paying more as a result because of the fact that we lose the economies of scale we should have an idea before we get there of what those costs are you know presumably under some let's say slashed model russ is the chiller one of those things that if you lose it you can bring in a piece of equipment and attach and recreate the capability temporarily yep that's a possibility and it's it's good too because it's outside it's on the load and dock it's that is a viable option if we had to do that we wally uh we did we did that at

095the ripley school once when steve martin rented the ripley school true story russ uh rented the ripley school but then refused to use it unless it was air-conditioned and uh so we brought in a unit and parked it in the back yeah steve martin wild and crazy guy yes goldie hawn as well of course this was a while ago i think you only have all extras they left it here wow i don't think we charged them enough either we don't seem to when the time gun hollywood shows up it's like oh just just you can just use it all right so does that give you the as much as you need right now lori really it's a matter of tabling until next week when we vote but yes is everybody comfortable with where we are

096okay good then russ thank you so much for being here that insight anytime have a great night everyone youtube internet okay so one more item a discussion of one to one technology um k5 so lori can you give us a little more update here and we have peter kelly joining peter's here too welcome yeah jared goes out of town i just bring others with me um i referenced the other day that we were really studying our needs at k5 for technology in a normal time we are well resourced and just getting you know working on the replacement cycle this spring as kids were working remotely we did essentially rely on families to have accessibility and we surveyed and made sure that those who didn't either had internet access or we uh loaned them laptops and

097peter how many laptops do you think we loaned k5 boy uh 40 50. i mean yeah that's about right i think over time it happened gradually um but in really looking at you know where we're going here now that we've got a plan that includes half a day of remote and the potential to be fully remote again um and very clear messages coming from the state that devices should be part of this reopening plan we've been reviewing what we have in inventory we've been considering the options and wanted to bring those to you we good news the good news is we do have money budgeted um so assuming our budgets go forward as we've budgeted for them and these are in the draft budgets that you're reviewing even from this week um we've we have

09860 000 allocated each elementary school so we've been trying to use that as the the marker and not have to go into the coven money and also strategize the the choices in terms of are we trying do we try to stay on the replacement cycle and make this part of the long-term plan are we in more of a an emergency band-aid kind of mode so we're actually going to give you some of these options to look at and then we did price out just flat out buying all new machines for all students k5 which will you'll get a little sticker shock when i put the number up here in a minute but uh so peter's here to talk through i think where we are at i think we're mostly just wanting to keep you informed

099of the options we don't really we we probably need a verbal blessing on the money since we're looking at spending from a budget that's not formally approved i'm sort of saying this and thinking out loud as i say it because it's so strange not to have a budget at this time of the year so let me show you where we are with options and then peter can i think take take it from there peter do you mind going through yeah it makes sense to drop down just the elementary 101 proposal gotta thank uh sue howard and the instructional technologists at the elementary schools for going through our inventory and with what we have there you're looking at filling in two grade levels and making them one to one you can see that there's four and

100five as listed there and this is a general framework and kindergarten could make do with the ipads we have in the district but we have that hold a backfill for the rest of the school the students in the school and it comes out to about 720 devices so if you look back up at the numbers where lori slides that back up i mean these are the costs right so per cost if you a little higher lorry on the top there we go when you're looking at chromebooks you're paying for everything needs 265 a unit um that gets us well within our current budget lines uh for the three elementary schools if you wanted to make that change if you took our current budget line annually and tried to buy the macbook air as you can

101see you're not going to fill up you've got 720 units versus 185 units and that's not going to make up the difference um so when you look at it from that standpoint the choice seems pretty clear we reached out to apple on the finance side today and we have financed with apple before uh and the numbers that came back today are pretty interesting if you look at the four-year lease option that they sent and it's 1.29 apr that four-year lease option comes under our annual budget for the three elementary schools on the hardware line and if you think in terms of you're making an upfront purchase of those units that if you bought them annually every year over the next four years you would end up with maybe a handful more um but this number

102that came today is is interesting it fits the budget it keeps things um intact as far as the program that we're running with apple uh we have the secondary piece this as laurie said assuming the budget's approved we can purchase for the middle school what we would normally purchase for them this year the 8th grade the rising 8th graders who still have their laptops we'll get those back and the goal would be to put those down to elementary school as many as possible we're confident 180 plus or minus could get down there and if we get that many out of the middle school to recycle down the elementary um we can then take the ipads out of consideration you can align grades three four and five with macbook airs and then the lower level can

103either be just depending on the decision they would be chromebooks or if you go with the lease route which is the only way you'll make the apple works go with the least root um then you'd get the whole school on the macbook airs so there's really i mean there really are only two options to make this work quickly the other consideration is um not just cost but availability we won't see a chromebook until close to october um everywhere we've talked to all the reps they're saying you're not going to see anything late september shipping early october if you did the apple lease you'd have them out of the warehouse in one to two weeks so you would hit the ground running when school started and have equipment in hand otherwise you've got a delay so

104i guess let me just frame sort of where where the questions lie i i we can talk big picture technology plan that's not what this was that's not what this is right this is crisis boat um we are not normally one to one k5 by design because we don't we don't have kids on computers all day long and they're not taking them home and all of that um we've been trying to build a robust replacement plan we've done that really effectively at middle and high school now and this was the last stage when we're just getting accelerated on it because of the cobid crisis um the question really is and you know peter and i have very strong opinions about this and you hired us both knowing what they were so i think we're okay

105to voice them um you know we're not chromebook fans we see a lot of districts do them because that's what they can afford the apples peter how many years are we getting out of the apple machines we still have 2011 2012s in service in the district yeah so they're they're serving us very well um i actually thought like the lease option that you know is really the only apple option that's available to us given cost that's happened you know since two o'clock this afternoon essentially so i really thought we were coming here to say you know sometimes you've got to do what you can and we'd have to consider chromebooks so it's interesting to be at a place where maybe that's not necessarily the case um and we're you know doing so well with the

106apples and what they can offer us so i think to some extent we're looking for permission to consider going this direction with the one-to-one and then feedback on the device for sure and you can also consider that in the elementary schools they have our largest contingent of older laptops they do that you know part of the discussion laurie and i were working into this year was the stat establishing what the program would look like for them to going forward if you did this one larger purchase on the lease and we get back to normal we're all back in school uh full-time that is really sort of an upfront catch-up purchase you could look at where we could retire some of those older devices out of the school and get back on track and that would

107lead into potentially whatever decisions are made on the program for the elementary school that gets us caught up in a good place to launch from as well right so the idea would be that after the this year where we're remote you'd continue to obviously go on this four-year lease and those laptops would migrate back up to the six through 12 use are you referring to the the eighth grade ones that were going to come down no like i'm saying so if if you lease macbooks and it's a four year lease the idea is that you'd have one to one usage for k5 for this year and so then in years two three and four those macbooks where do they go well i think one of the benefits of this would we've as we discussed before

108that we've been behind on our replacement cycle the elementary school this in essence would give us one big boost where we could catch up and eliminate some of the really old devices that should be retired um and at the end of those four years of this lease option during that time frame we'll figure out i mean laurie's going to guide us on what the best look for the elementary and technology it is but it allows us to catch up uh very quickly and at the end of those four years we're in pretty good shape we don't have that gap that we have right now that we're looking at yeah it is we do need a plan to get those old machines off line and that this would allow us to do that you were all

109worried about like five-year-olds with a expensive device like that like are we worried about them getting freaking trashed oh we buy apple care and yeah we thought i in my previous district we did ask parents to buy insurance and okay okay that we haven't had that conversation here uh we might we're so these numbers are with apple care for three years yes for three out of the four years and are we assuming that we would expect every student to accept one of these do parents families opt out and use their own devices uh what what happens there so there's two ways to approach it one one is you can just put it out and ask the families who need the device if they want it and then let people use what they're using um or

110do we prioritize it and this is where i was leaning which is why we've priced it the way we have or do we prioritize it that we get a lot of benefit from every every student being on the same device i know the technology specialists have a very strong opinion about that having now tried to support essentially a bring your own option for the last four months um so the you're right those are the choices you could probably lower this number if we made it a question of what's your level of need rather than everybody getting one yeah well i i think the the efficiency argument with consistent use consistent machines is inescapable yeah yeah it is it is it's hard to have a telephone conversation with a mom or a dad or a child

111about uh making the device work if we don't have a compatible device in front of us at the same time yes lori as much as i appreciate uh the need here i would like to see an ipad um approach i i don't think the community can support this huge number especially when we know 22 23 fiscal years could be very brutal and once you lock into at least we can't we can't decide no we're not going to do it anymore um i work in a district where we're one to one just five six seven with ipads and it's very successful um with keyboards and it's a at least a third to a quarter of the price and are they uh a little more durable against uh lemonade and uh yes for the proper cases we

112have very rigorous cases making a big ship for us i i just this number is i don't think is that uh same police option available yes yes no we could get uh numbers on that as well how much would it change do you think well hard to say she was trying to lower my rep is trying to lower our pricing a little bit but it won't be significant um based on our volume so i certainly get another quote turn down pretty quickly that's a question i mean these these are i mean the thing that's intriguing to me about this is we solve the immediate problem but we end up in sort of the same replacement cycle we had planned is there a pedagogical difference between the ears and the ipads in our in our destination

113as a district they're different yeah yes yes we we were definitely looking to be a um a laptop oriented upper elementary program um with ipads at the lower elementary um and the more tools that we've been bringing that's been the mindset um you know when i look at the the software we've just secured for this coming year i i do think it would have impact cynthia's right i'm sure we could make things work but we had gone into things expecting laptops but you know we've thrown chromebooks on the table here today too so we're we're in this what do you do immediately versus the long term and do you try to meet both needs at once or not i guess that's part of the part of the strategy well speak a little more about that

114uh laurie and peter the the user experience is different uh but if the actual interface is all web-based does the ipad drop out any functional utility of specific software applications well certainly there are different software packages we'd have to look at the curriculum side and what's ordered and you know a compatible if if they've got a compatible ios software for it um so that requires us going back to look at that as larry said a lot of decisions they allow the software we looked at work being expected to be run on laptops yeah okay so we so that question remains open what would we uh either put in jeopardy or or force out squeeze out of the uh the plans uh if we were to go to ipads at a given grade level yeah i

115think technology has become very much more as it should be a curriculum question as opposed to just a hardware question like it may have been when we first started rolling out hardware into the buildings and as curriculum and integrated lawyer can certainly speak to it then you start to make decisions that the device does impact so as we've talked about um in terms of platforms three to five will be on google classroom but k2 will be on seesaw so i guess the first question would be that if we were to look at ipads k2 does it affect the use usage and user experience in seesaw and then to court's point what else does it affect right i mean i think i'm just putting these on our list of questions that we would need to look

116into i think i think that's a very necessary piece of homework uh sorry peter everybody's kind of real time at this point indeed what about the strategy of having the fifth graders on um macbook airs to ease the transition to sixth grade because i'd like to see either fifth and sixth i'm not you know what i'm saying because you have that big transition year so you know we try to have a in our school so the fifth and sixth graders are on the same platform and then we move them up as they get into the older years of middle school so i think having a consistent device in fifth and sixth grade would be helpful in that transition so um so that's a that's an option you know we use ipads but i can see

117having um fifth graders have the same devices they're going to get in sixth grade might be helpful um yeah we do have the current inventory in the buildings and laptop carts so that right now you could have fourth and fifth grade on those existing laptops so you're looking to backfill below that with what you need okay um can i back up to the some of the numbers again for a minute initially it was chromebooks versus macbooks and so now i guess it's comparing the three of them to some extent but with the information that we have the chromebooks that budget number of 190 000 is a one time if we look at the lease the 175 a year fits into our budget um but we're paying it four times right right so we are paying

118more overall so i guess and i'm just kind of laying this out for a comparison point um the downside is we're paying more more overall the upside is we end up with technology or we end up with hardware that fits into our pedagogical strategy already as well as things to start to feed into that replacement cycle right so to help us with that ketchup right so if we went for the hi i'm not gonna say macbooks versus chromebook so macbook presses either chromebacks or chromebooks or ipads it's you're somewhat you're balancing those by the fact that you're feeding into your future replacement cycle and so for those let's say years three and four or future years when you're paying when you maybe wouldn't have been for chromebooks is it fair to say we're not paying

119completely incremental there because it's something we would have had to put into other devices anyway and now these devices are becoming the ketchup ones so i guess i'm trying to define are years two through four actually incremental or are they just money that we would spend anyway and we're spending it in a different way well i think that makes sense right assuming you've got the same budget lines for hardware in the elementary schools you're going to spend that annually on new hardware um that line covers both staff and students going forward uh so if that line stays the same then yeah you've you've gotten the asset in year one you're paying year two three and four for that asset but you'd have purchased new assets in year two three and four regardless okay so basically

120we're purchasing now what we maybe would have purchased in years three or four but we're getting it now to use with the younger kids and correct know i mean i hear it would be interesting to see what the ipads look like but i and i hear cynthia's concern i don't know that hardware is the place to try to save money in the event things are so bad we're looking you know we would have wished we hadn't spent an extra 50 or 60 grand a year you know this is a pretty integral part of the program delivery um and i think if we as a district have made the choice that uh the errors are better than uh than ipads or work better for what we're trying to do i would hate to see us i

121don't think we should impose a pedagogical decision on the district because we're we're anticipating a budget shortfall over the next two or three years um that's going to be probably a you know not a significant difference between ipads and macbook airs i think you'd have to i would i would want to look somewhere else for the savings i respectfully disagree with you wally so let's get the numbers let's take a look um i do think that uh if i had to uh 175 000 as a teacher plus um and i'm just afraid of 22 and 23 looking very bleak especially what we just heard today about the economic conditions in our country so um i would just like to try to be as cautious and conservative as we can everywhere that we can be and

122i don't think there's a significant pedagogical loss within that with a ipad my question though would be so now you'll have 720 ipads that then can't or maybe they can but are not the same technology that the upper grades who already have the one-to-one technology have so then we would essentially if we are not doing remote learning in the future we would have an excess of 720 ipads that don't really have a place to live or or be utilized is that a fair statement well that's other questions we probably need to go back and i mean this is literally we got the lease information at two o'clock so we've had zero i mean literally i'm doing this five minutes before the meeting because peter texted me the information so we haven't had time to have

123any internal dialogue and i think the ipads is a fair question to put on the discussion table so let us take between now and monday and uh get you another round of information so we can talk through all of the options i mean alexa they wouldn't go to waste they certainly wouldn't um may shift a little of what we were strategizing is it a big shift i can't say without a little bit of time to to talk about it and lord i hope that the the conversation includes uh the question of why parents who could opt for a mac air uh end up providing their younger children with with ipads instead and i would hope we could hear from some of the uh early elementary folks and uh the k-2 folks in this regard but

124i think a critical question is the one you brought up already if we are reliant on seesaw if we already know that then how does that perform on the ipad that's to me a basic question we used ipads all through remote learning and use seesaw anecdotally i can say it worked great i would expect it would yeah i wouldn't have concerns about see-saw on the other devices well that's good news that then that means it is a viable option that we've got to look very carefully at so i guess i'll just preface all the work we're going to do by saying you know we aren't going to have time to build you what we would wish we could have which was some master technology plan and all the pedagogy that goes with it and all

125of that we'll do what we can in a couple of days to bring you solid information for what where we're at so peter and laurie would it be accurate to say that your your objective for next year is to make the shifting sands of where a child is going to be on a given day or month uh at least uh seamless on the technology side if if it's not seamless in terms of uh where they park themselves uh in the morning yeah and seamless for families because it's become clear we've just sent out a plan that includes remote learning for all kids at the same time and i think we have to be part of the solution to that so making sure the accessibility doesn't become a family issue the one thing that didn't get

126said or i i missed it so my my apologies the the lease here is least not least to purchase it is leased to purchase court okay good all right so we ought to call that out specifically when uh yeah when when we make this known to the public whatever we're gonna do it's a one dollar purchase option at the end of the finance period traditional yeah yeah okay so there's 725 dollars you could save yeah i'm gonna lighten it up a little great so so lori some maybe some back of the i mean quick math on k3 ipads versus four or five macbook airs or something yeah that's what we'll do we'll get apple to give us numbers on the ipads and we'll play around with the allocation to different grade levels and make a

127suggestion to you as to what technology fits best where and revisit it on monday sounds good thank you so much no good suggestion to do the homework you feel like you have what you need from us in terms of guidance on what to collect and questions i do i just want to you know just make sure your expectations are in line with the fact it's thursday and that's coming monday we'll do our best yeah yeah and i think you know time is critical here too so it is it is um you know i'm not you know i think we need to be careful as a committee to um you know not create a problem getting things in the hands of the people that need them for school opening it's just a large amount of money

128so i think we need to do i understand that peter were you planning on being in tomorrow uh absolutely because if if not we just changed it for you okay i'll have my apple rep on the phone after we get off the meeting here yeah right on it well thanks to you and your team for uh for being uh what in a big hurry to work this out but being patient with the school committee thank you thank you so much appreciate it that was a good that was a great dialogue i mean we're doing this quick and we should do it thoughtfully and quickly at the same time at the same time a little hurry up and wait and hurry up again that's your bumper sticker the benefit of meeting twice a week is that

129it can roll a meeting and not have great no no no we're not i know you can't even get the agendas done in time no right yeah all right thank you that's a good discussion peter thank you all right thank you thank you for joining us appreciate it much appreciated um and everybody else unless is there anything else before we adjourn now that's it for today okay then i would take a motion to adjourn i thank you all we'll see you currently on monday bye bye you don't want to meet over the weekend yeah yeah bye you