School Committee 11.3.22

001Jen yes yeah okay got it okay all right good evening uh at this point I would like to call the meeting of the Hamilton Regional school committee to order on Thursday November 3rd 2022 at seven o'clock and I'd like to begin by inviting you to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America into the Republic for which it stands foreign okay um I'm going to start this evening with the land acknowledgment Julia the Hamilton Wenham Regional School District would like to acknowledge the Massachusetts tribe the tribe of indigenous peoples from whom the colony Province and Commonwealth of Massachusetts have taken their name we would like to pay our respect to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historical

002Massachusetts tribe territories to this day thank you okay um next up we're going to have citizens comments before we begin I'd like to let everyone know that this meeting is being recorded and live streamed on hwcam doesn't appear that they're any there's anyone that would like to make a Citizens comment in the room I'm guessing okay um uh do we have anyone on Zoom who would like to offer a citizen's comment good evening anybody on Zoom who would like to comment please use the raise your hand feature okay um at this point um I'll have Mr Tracy close down the zoom and let those people know they can continue to watch on hwcam shutting down the zoom link you can continue to watch the meeting on HW Cam's YouTube site hi um next up is

003the review of our school committee protocols I'll ask Amy as elected members of the Hamilton Regional school committee we including the superintendent accept the high honor and trust that has been placed in us to ensure that the students of the district receive the best education possible to that end we hereby commit to the following in the conduct of our business number six school committee members will attend meetings on time and be well prepared to discuss agenda items while at meetings members will stay focused on the agenda items and will not engage in communication outside of the agenda being discussed when making decisions school committee members will keep an open mind utilizing the best information available including research best practices public input and financial considerations members will debate issues and not each other members will analyze

004carefully and debate fully whenever necessary prior to making decisions thank you and thank you for being willing to jump into a long one appreciate it um and uh next up um as the committee had directed us to um spend the next few meetings reviewing the mission statement I'm going to ask Jen to read the portion that we're on today the Hamilton Wenham Regional school committee will lead and inspire a district that empowers administrators to seek Innovation responsiveness and creativity in all aspects of District Operations thank you okay uh next up we have the consent agenda before or does anyone have any items on the consent agenda that they would like to hold okay Amy I moved that the Hamilton Wenham Regional school committee accept the consent agenda as listed on the warrant on the geez

005on tonight's agenda second Ed by Jen Carr was there oh no there's no discussion um all those in favor all right and that is unanimous of the five members present um and the motion passes all right I didn't hold it but I did want to just shout out to Mahala that I appreciated her call out to the mission statement in the minutes um I don't know if you notice that in in all its Glory I know she's listening so um okay uh wow we are flying along okay so um next up under new business is um so if you notice on the exhibit um thank you for putting your night up there um the protocols that we have been reviewing all along um are um from last year we signed them as a committee last

006fall around this time last fall um and so the um the question this evening is to put to the committee whether we want to recommit ourselves to these protocols and have this committee sign them um so you know this is just updated with the 2020 to 2023 um School protocols so if you are willing Amy maybe we could have a motion before we get started I move the Hamilton modern Regional school committee adopt the two 2022 2023 school committee superintendent protocols as Linked In the agenda second second by Jen Carr okay is there just are there any before I guess before discussion are there any questions does anyone have any questions I have a question about number five um I I was under the impression we were not supposed to email all school committee members

007so that's that's an excellent question I'm glad you it's um so it's not it this is wouldn't be you emailing all schools before forwarding communication and um I do think that the word relevant to overall District policy those words are doing a lot of work there right this does not mean that every single email that you receive needs to get forwarded to the entire school committee okay um and you so it's at our discretion if we just email it to the principal or Eric or who should I send this to correct okay but there certainly would-be emails that it would be important if only one school member Community member received an email that really was and I I actually think that Eric's point of clarification is a good one that you might want to consult

008with a superintendent about how do we want to get this information out to the entire committee or do we need to or has it already been resolved right like okay um does that answer your question or do other people have other thoughts on that question um I have a related topic I guess I don't know if this is the place to talk about or if it's something we might want to add I wonder if a review of our process as far as answering people maybe I need to know a better process as far as answering people in the community that ask questions since we don't want to reply to all it's hard to know whose questions have been answered and who's haven't so I I've asked Eric before like have you answered this person and

009you say yes or no um is that the best way to handle all that okay I just wanted to so clarify so I don't and again I think that's um that certainly could could be part of the protocols it also could be um something that we might want to think about at a you know that's a great question to talk about with Dorothy at a workshop because it's it's a it's a real it's a real um it's an open meeting law question and it's a procedures question um and um I don't know I don't guess I don't have more of an answer than that but I don't think that's good to just maybe add it to the next right and I do think this I will just chime in and say I think this committee

010is it does a very good job of being very mindful of not um having those kinds of discussions over email um I think the committee is very Mindful and it's it's difficult to know when are the few times when I might be allowed to do that or when could it be you know when would it be helpful to just let people know I've already answered this and I I noticed that I and I don't want to go on too long but I notice there are times that I don't do it when I could in other words if the person is just asking factual information you know when is the next meeting or something like that um it might sometimes be helpful to CC the whole you know if I were going to answer it to

011Cece just so that you know and you know and you know that like this has already been answered this person doesn't need um and it's something I think maybe I might be overly cautious about yeah no I've feel the same way I also use this Eric's flow sheet where like which questions go to which people yeah and like if it's a principal question I'll say well if you look at this flow sheet the best person to ask it for that at the high school is principal Brian menagone his email is right that's right and and I think that's fantastic and I I wonder if part of what Amy's wondering is like I wonder if somebody already said that to this person that's what I'm kind of getting at you know like I wonder if somebody

012already said the best person to talk to is the principal or else so as is no one answering because we assumed somebody did you know right so I want to let anything slip yeah please if you see me on an email I I will try to respond for the group so nobody has to figure out okay to say so I will generally try to respond and if I feel like I'm stuck I reach out to Dana usually and we craft something together so okay great generally if you see me on there you can bet that I'll try to respond I try to get to them a little more quickly when I see that some people aren't stuck trying to figure out whether they should answer or not thank you okay other questions about the protocols

013okay is there discussion all right so um maybe we're ready for a vote what we I I what what my hope would be is If This Were to pass we have them here so that we would just sign them and then update with a new document um with this current committee's signatures are we ready to vote Yes all right all those in favor all right and that is unanimous of the five members present and the motion passes okay all right um next up we have a payment request um from Athletics uh Eric do you want to speak to this sure um this is a payment that in talking to everybody everybody thought was made it didn't get made we uh received a request from harmeling who they do our Physical Therapy stuff and and help

014us with PT people um saying hey you guys didn't pay it so we went back and looked and sure enough we didn't we didn't pay it so the procedure for it because it's an FY 22 item we need to bring it to the committee just to approve the payment we can we can pay it it's just a matter of having the committee approve it so okay um yeah and just to clarify that this and many back let me know if I'm saying this correctly it does happen sometimes this is a little bit different but it does occasionally happen just in the normal this is not but in the normal course of events it does occasionally happen that a bill needs to be paid in a prior year bill needs to be paid we would always

015vote on that correct yes um okay um Amy can we have a motion I move that the Hamilton modern Regional school committee um approved the payment of the FY 22 payment request for athletic department hi Julie Campbell Is there further discussion okay all those in favor all right and that is unanimous of the five members who are present and the motion passes thank you okay um okay uh next up um this is the vote on the superintendent contract um i s you all received the contract um this is just for full transparency sake for all the public who is listening um the reason that the it is not linked is because um this this is much the way that we do executive session minutes if someone does have a question or concern we would still

016need to go into executive session to have that discussion because it would still be under strategy and negotiations um I will say that that being said um that I take full responsibility that there are um some strikeouts that are still in the contract those strikeouts are correct they're correctly stricken um the contract would be fine with them still there my intent was to remove them to prevent provide you with a clean copy but they didn't all get taken out and then that was my fault okay so I think we need a motion you didn't make a motion yet did you I did not make emotion on this would you be willing to do that are we approving or accepting we are uh we are accepting I think accepting okay I move that the Hamilton munham

017Regional school committee except uh the superintendent's contract as linked or as shared with the school committee earlier yesterday second by David Franco all right are there is there any discussion does anyone wish to discuss all right um looks like we're ready to vote all those in favor all right and that is unanimous of the five members present congratulations it is exciting that's right thank you all it's safe to work with us though I I think it's important that I think we've all had the same goal to stabilize things and get things moving forward and this is just another step in that I think people will calm down you know get assaulted everywhere I go what's happening so you know I appreciate the committee's uh you know negotiation and openness and conversation and then look forward

018to to continuing to build what we're building so it's exciting thank you all right thank you good things ahead yeah yeah hey um next up is the equity audit final report I'm just going to do an overview of this we've we've seen the larger version of this um we've gone back and forth uh five times with with PJ PJP Equity Journey Partners to make it functionally uh readable and accessible by others so they've been able to take out some of the jargon out of the way and some of the charts and graphs out of the way and move them into an appendix and then really focus on what are the what are the primary points in this report so our deib committee worked with Regis who we all met back and forth and back and

019forth lots and lots of time to come to this and realistically uh this started a year ago as you know started last school year there were there were a number of uh meetings and surveys and opportunities to connect and learn and they dug through all kinds of data that we had available from things like our handbooks to discipline uh statistics or tennis statistics and started to just look at all the bits and pieces they talked to students and parents community members some of us and really built this report to outline our kind of equity status if you will in the district and and it it gives us some great information there are several themes that get outlined in this report sexual orientation gender identity and expression students who identify from historically marginalized groups Middle School

02011th grade gender systems and processes so these these are the things that kind of rose to the top when you started looking at the data and that they were they were uh focused upon each of the themes uh really work to help us to hone in on our goals because we had received this during the summer so as you know we built our last year's gold it's not really knowing anything in this year's goals by connecting the dots so that this um gave us the ability to do that and specifically the strategies there were six Equity strategies outlined in this report and that's really some of the things that we're focused upon as they connect with um our our goals our conversations our you know meetings that we're having at school so for example Equity

021strategy three if we're going to implement practices that support a sense of belonging for all students that's a big deal this year for us and it's really been my theme since day one like equity in the center of our work and trying to help kids to belong so today is a good example every single leadership team meeting we've had this year has has one piece of the equity conversation with our with our school leaders and our district leaders so today the the conversation was we did we did um biases last meeting and that kind of led us into okay so now let's look at belonging in your building how do you know or what things can you identify the kids belong in your building we did it in two we did in two phases we

022did kids and we did staff because if you remember from the data staff members um also felt like they didn't belong so those two prompts drove our leadership team meeting today and that was the conversation about okay let's think about it so 15 minute free write name what's in your building or or in the case of like Tom Tom Gary he you know what's it look like with your staff members technology Alan what's okay so we we went through everybody that was in the room um kind of pulled out bits and pieces so that principals could share some of the things that they're doing I think some some people naturally have you know if you go into some of our elementary schools if their mottos are all around belonging and responsibility and respect and so

023so there's more of a natural flow but this gave the leadership team the opportunity to have a conversation so I just want people to know that even though this is a year ago information that we're really acting on it already we're we've been acting on it through last year and into this year and we'll continue to connect the dots and so you'll see a lot of these these uh strategies are already connected the mtss um you know the belonging piece uh Equity skills like we'll as we get further into the year what is what does that look like for kids what are Equity skills and what are how does that how do they link to social emotional learning social emotional skills for kids and again a lot of that starts at the elementary level and

024grows up so as we look at that we're trying to figure out how that goes flows through the system and ultimately connects to the portrait of The Graduate work so there's a lot of trying to connect the dots here through the information that we have um so we've integrated some of the strategies into the district level goals um we're going to continue to work with more Equitable Equitable approaches in areas like budgeting resourcing and improving like things like student attendance looking at you know what are the barriers what's in the way for for some of our kids to get into school um and then we'll continue to stay focused like threading the needle into future school years I think you know and I said this when we approved the goals early in the year you'll

025see that deib goal or some form of it for the next probably five years connecting our work and and as we grow and you know we we're really good in some areas and we know we have some holes in other areas so we'll just continue to do that work so I thought people may want to take a peek at it I know we've had a discussion about the larger report earlier in the year at the workshop and certainly I can answer any questions if anybody has any okay um thank you for that and I I don't know if the rest of the committee had this the same experience but I started reading this whole thing and I kept thinking I feel like I've read this before because without reading before um this one's much better

026though yes yes more readable more readable yes exactly which is maybe why it felt like I feel like I've read this before but not exactly to Regis we wanted anybody in the community to read it and get it yeah not you know if you handed that 120 page oh forget it told them to people they would be like done in page three so yeah no it's very very helpful to have it sort of I would have liked more to more graphs and fewer tables really hard to visualize yeah I I really found and it was while I actually I appreciated having the tables moved to the appendix it did feel like oh I kind of want to live like you're saying visualize it you know let's come back around too what we've asked the principals

027to do is they're doing their work to use this as Baseline data okay what types of things can you do so as you know we have panorama so we started using Panorama this year Panorama has a built-in social emotional learning survey that we can do with our kids and that links into each of their data sets if you will so it just gives us another point and we can we can kind of go backwards and say okay here's where kids were a year ago where they now start to see how things are changing over time or if they're changing and if they're not then that's a discussion Point like okay what's what are we not doing well that we need to do better with um I've I just have two questions well I'll start with

028one question my first question um it says that the district's going to survey Elementary students this year do we know what that's going to look like so realistically we're looking at it from the perspective of our social emotional learning move so with with uh the counselors you're not going to give a third grader a second grader survey so it's more of a conversation classroom so you know how they do something like morning meeting you start to start to take advantage of those time periods but Council what we're trying to do right now is uh settle on a social emotional curriculum that we can integrate K to five Pre-K to five and um that will help drive that so it's really just getting all the ducks in a row and and then having those conversations grade

029level grade appropriate you know it's it's really like you know some kids will tell you I love to come to school and other kids you know you carried them in in the morning so this is it's going to depend on a whole bunch of things with the little ones so I asked that question because something that concerned me in the audit was just the um and I didn't pull it up but just the I I worry that there would be resistance from the community or there'll be misinformation around what is happening with the survey of elementary school students around this so I think we just need to do a really good job of of telling people exactly why it's important and what it means and why we're surveying Elementary School students that jumped out at

030me immediately and I said oh that's going to be of red flag for a lot of people not for me but for a lot of people I think they're going to wonder what that means and what questions are their kids going to be asked and that kind of thing so and it's a trust Factor thing it's a total trust Factor you know we're working on that piece of it as we know you know in in many areas and part of that is my job to be able to to put that out there I mean realistically we're going to give a kid a survey here you go you want to see it you know like it's not it's um you know they're as we go back a year remember the conversations like oh here we go

031CRT and race and all that came into play we've been able to show people that that's not realistic in in what we're trying to do here so yeah we can continue that with with the conversations in the district and certainly working with our own people I mean the the greater teaching Force if you will is really the parent's connection to what's going on in classrooms so really having them understand fully what we're doing and why and then and then they make that connection to to parents we're communicating differently this year you know what I mean so I think that's a that's an important piece of the puzzle where people stop me all the time and say I've I'm amazed at what I know about my kids school that I didn't know last year because of

032X so those types of things are you know are important for us to continue used as tools I mean it's just really how how what other ways can we communicate we just yep we're doing as you know we're trying in multiple languages now we're trying to shift into so that's another piece of that whole conversation about belonging where if you're the only you know um if you're the only Portuguese student in the in the building and nobody speaks Portuguese then what's your connection if your family only speaks Portuguese at home so those types of things have moved to the to the front of our conversation so we have we have a couple of principals who really are leading the way with that which is helpful because other people can take another piece of the pie

033and we can kind of trade it around so can we also elements because if anything it seems like they cut more of them than was in the original yeah we can just make it available just take some of the there's some things that we wouldn't want to put just people's names in that you know yeah I would redact it a little bit but yeah I mean we can get it quick it's fascinating reading yeah I mean it really helped us to build the goals yeah when you're starting to talk about Equity I mean we go back to day one when I met with all the teachers everything I did was purposeful based on that first document we got that was you know 120 pages because I all these themes that popped out were like these

034are the drivers for the school year this is this is really laid out for us so being able to help people to understand that and we'll continue to do the work through the sharing next year and thank you it's hard work um my second question is what are Equity metrics and they might have explained it and I don't know like how do we Define equity metrics so we're looking for places where barriers are and those are generally attached to something like attendance so attendance could be used as an equity metric for us suspension could be used as so any data point that what what the phrase we're using this year with the leadership team is equity pause so here's an example you're in a data team meeting I was in one two weeks ago with

035kindergarten teachers and in the principal and the coaches and they're talking about all this data and this moving around and then there's that piece missing like do we ever actually talk about how this data looks from the perspective of some of our marginalized groups so some of the groups we identified in this SOA report come right to mind you know so you have your economically disadvantage because your L's and you can start to use those metrics as your Equity metrics like where did they stand versus if you remember the amcas the big differences in the graph so those gaps are Equity metrics for us so the idea is and okay how now do you take what you know and get better at it okay thank you questions I have another question um so it seemed

036like reading this report that an HR director is dramatically needed in the district or just from this perspective and I know you know we all know this like what you put in your budget reflects your values like do we I'm just really talking to us as a committee and I don't know the answer to this but how how are we going to do this like how can we do this where I mean that's one piece I feel like there was a there's so many pieces in this that we're tackling like mtss and we're tackling a lot of the pieces but that's one that I feel like the school committee itself could really get behind um because it's a budget piece I don't know if it's yes oh okay got one in July that was because

037of last year's budget okay so just considering like are there other budgetary considerations that we need to take into account to make some of these recommendations a reality I think it's going to come down to resourcing yeah I don't think it's going to come down to Personnel I think the people on the ground are doing the work I don't you know I go to a one of the one of the gentlemen that I work with in my new sub group my superintendent's group is from Brookline a huge District lots of people they have they have an equity director I wouldn't go there we don't we're so small that we can manage those things within based on the information that we know you know so belonging is our big key in Brookline it might be very

038different so I think that our approach is we have we have we have the people that we need and it's really the resourcing so you know what types of resources so for instance the conversation we've been having with the counselors and the elementary principals is we need that SEL um curriculum to be able to get kids on the same page and what you're seeing happening now is the next level of the new teacher this is not new But the teacher evaluation rubric not only is the SEL pieces built into that rubric the next iteration will also have um the the cultural awareness piece so understanding about the kids in front of you so that'll now be part of the evaluated process so those are the kind of tools that we'll be able to use and

039then build from there I mean we we have to build appropriate training for our teachers we did a lot last year just to get people through the conversation about bias and we had a lot of uncomfortable conversations and several times throughout the year that's going to continue through this year as well and just kind of growing and um and then through the budget process we'll look at resourcing with our with our principles they're actually moving some of their monies around so that they you know they might they might use money in a particular line item and they're so that we just we met with some of them already and they're like okay I want to move this here because I know I want to get this you know our literacy curriculum is a good equity

040resource everybody's doing the same thing when I go to third grade in one building and third grade in the other building I know exactly what's going on and every you know what I mean and and you're seeing this different level of excitement where kids are actually going home to Mom and Dad and saying I talked about the nervous system today you know rather than what you do today nothing right so those those pieces all fit into the equity conversation when you start to look at it and then and then looking at everything we do theater the Arts Athletics you know all those all those are pieces of the conversation so we have plenty of people in place it's a matter of now helping to really organize that because you can't do it all at once

041so it's really like that's why we're so focused on that belonging piece because it came out so loudly in the equity audit all right I just I'm so excited that this actually came to fruition because as we know you know it's been a long time coming so just commend everyone that worked on it the deib committee did yeoman's work meeting you know weekends I I was getting emails around the weekend like we here's the next version here's this so they were definitely putting in the time it was important and you know Stacy leads that group and um has worked with a number of you know of our counselors and our specialized people to to keep that thing moving forward so thank you though for your hard work and I just I really encourage you know

042everyone if anyone is watching or not everyone to really take a look at it and and read the statistics and look at a lot of the reasons like I just think of a lot of the the reasons why the committee has made certain decisions are reflected in this report I thought it was really powerful so I hope that you know we can take as many recommendations into account as many as can be resourced like you said so if if there's something that needs to be resourced just come let us know you'll see this shift in in the budget process towards towards more like a lot I'm just really I'm just so pleased curriculum and things like that I know these are hard conversations for the community but I'm really pleased that they're they're being had

043it's it's a hard conversation because everybody has a different perspective and understanding of what it is and I think we've been able to answer questions when they come up like I've answered the CRT question maybe 10 times that you know and it's it's fine I'm glad people are asking rather than sitting home brewing about it come ask and come talk about it with us so that we can we can at least get the right information out there and I think that's important as part of the process you know I think everybody initially heard when we first started this process think about it Equity audit and immediately race came to mind a whole bunch of reasons whatever they might have been that's all people could focus on so we've spent this last year shifting that Spotlight

044to really like let's look at it from our district and who we are and then build from there and I think yeah there's so many different ways to be marginalized other than yeah race but thank you so much and thanks to the committee for their hard work yes they did a great job um I'm going to just jump in I was going to share a little bit about this in my chairs report but it seems like it fits in here so I'm just going to share that you know I was just at the masc conference um which was the themes were centered around Dei and belonging um or and one of the things one of the sessions that I attended was calling creating and promoting Equitable Equitable conditions in schools which was presented by Beverly

045who are our neighbors and I know that you spend a lot of time talking with them um and you know certainly they much of what Eric shared was very similar that they had to do they're about three years ahead they're about three years in um one of the things that I took away they said several times which was hard I think for the meeting it was a large group of people attending the meeting to hear was that they really anticipate that um that this isn't a three or a five year work they estimated that it is first of all forever but that they really estimate that this is a 10-year cultural change to really complete a cultural change that was hard for the room to hear and um but it was interesting to listen to

046a group that felt like they were really on the right path they're doing the work it's hard and still they're saying they anticipate that you know that big culture change is going to be 10 years look at like civil rights look at you know yeah exactly um but anyway I just wanted to share that because they are our neighbors um obviously you know there are different different communities but they are right close by and what Eric just said about that initial those initial steps when you're doing the audit about talking about okay but what is our spec they talked a lot about like what's our specific District what is in their case what's unique to Beverly so in our case what's unique to Hamilton one element um so anyway I just wanted to chime in

047with gonna I was going to share all that during my chairs report but just so people know through massc um we we get a lot of data I mean I holding this a program there's always something related to the that conversation of equity belonging it's inclusion but we also have um meetings every other month with the North Shore superintendents purposely to have these discussions like okay what are you doing so I know that I can they have a Dei director in Beverly I can have that conversation he usually does a presentation like last meeting we had last Friday a group from Cambridge presented what they what they're working on and and that's helpful to be able to draw from to be able to say oh you know what I can use that the state also

048has a number of things like this coherence guidebook that that's on the screen right now really helps us to talk about equity in the the equity pause piece right now so there's one one of many throughout this booklet that's you know how are we explicitly centering the voices of students families and diverse stakeholders in our planning processes so we're using as many resources that are available and that there are there are many many resources right now available to us so this is again this is work we're doing with the leadership team this coherence guidebook and we're we're building from that so things are purposeful and then we're also I'm on the board of eclc and NEC which also gives us connections so eclc does some of our our more complex training like seed training where

049um they're really digging deep like they're putting it like they personalize this the training I did with them last year was unbelievable and it was just like all about opening myself up and seeing you know really how I think about certain things and how I you know so so there's a lot of connections we're making outside of the community that that are just advantageous to all of us so okay thank you so much all right and we don't need no we don't need to do anything like that we're doing a lot with it but we don't need to this committee doesn't need nothing tonight okay thank you for that um all right next up dates from the msba and uh back to you Eric thank you um this is exciting news actually it's I got

050a phone call last week I was actually in a meeting in Beverly he got a phone call from msba Diane Sullivan and she said listen we want to Fast Track you guys out of module one and into feasibility and this is this is this is why I mean we as I've been saying all along we hit every Milestone on time we're one of the the few I think that hit the Milestones including securing the funding which is but she explained to me a number of communities are having trouble doing securing that initial funding so for us we have all the ducks in a row what would usually happen is we would have to wait until March when the board meets in March to for them to say okay we're going to invite in you know

051out of this I think there were 17 of us last year that they invited through the first stage then they go back and look and see kind of who who's ready and they invite in March they're trying to put us on the December 1 board meeting so that we can um move forward with the process because we do have a good plan they outlined in not only this letter which is a little bit complex but um the second the second exhibit is a little more friendly and it really says to us if you can so but what they do is they take all the information that they look through the process like new housing starts um births over a certain number of years changes in ins and out with with the school system they're looking

052at our enrollment projections they're also doing their own enrollment projections based on um it's really simple modeling of if you have this many here you'll probably have this many here but they do that out they project that out and they start to come up with numbers that they can support So this second document really outlines what their their willing to support for us and what happens is we take these four options and bring them into the feasibility study phase and these four options could generate others so you could you could give this to your designer and say Here's here's our first step what does this look like and then they start to look at it from a design perspective and start to give you other options so if you you know you you look at

053the first one it's okay just keep color school as it is build Cutler School K to five and we'll we'll allow you to build we'll allow you to build 285 seats for kids in there so um that's our first option on the other end of the Spectrum which I think the one we've been leaning towards the whole time is enrolling K grades one two one through five um and consolidate Cutler and Winthrop into one building in one location and allowing us 740 seats so so right now we're running about 680 kids in those grades when you look at the one to five grades so that gives us room for any growth and what we're doing we see now is the growth is coming at the elementary level all the increases in enrollment right now or

054in the K-5 range so that's how that's kind of how they build it and then they ask us to say here's what we'll support if you agree with that we'll we'll now take you to the board and vote whether or not you get invited into feasibility so she seemed pretty confident that as long as we were okay with uh the the options then we would get this back to them before November 16th I actually did have a question how come the enrollment for grades K through five if you consolidate the schools is a smaller number than the enrollment for raise one through five in a Consolidated School yeah it's a it's a great question I I when I first got this I asked it and because they're thinking about keeping some of the kids at

055the Bucher so it's so in the in this left-hand model if you will they're saying some of these kids can go to Bucher so some of those grades would still be running in the Bucher school so you'd ultimately be running two elementary schools not a lot of them because of you guys you know doesn't have a whole bunch of rooms but yeah some of those some of those grades would it wouldn't be so so in the scenario I think the best scenario for us would be that kind of far right hand side and you can run K and pre-K in the Bucher school and you can develop a pre-k program that could drive a driver as a financial resource where you could grow that program and make some money to offset some some budgets because

056now you have the room to do it and and uh you know the opportunity with that building so really that should be Consolidated Cutler Winthrop and Bucher yeah so it's a weird they don't want to use they don't want to put Euchre in here because they don't want anybody to assume that they're going to cover the cost that's that's how they explained it to me yeah okay because that's the same question I was like wait a minute no and I and so did I I think that the right yeah I guess without using the word it's right it's all Hamilton one of them the on the far right is all Hamilton one of them grades one through five whereas the other one is really consolidating Cutler and Winthrop yeah you know okay so and they

057don't include pre-K in anything no because they don't fund pretty correct well I mean theoretically we don't run neighborhood schools anyway right we run um enrollments uh I will say that I've in my what six or seven years teaching now I've worked in uh every District I've worked in has been in a new school and um swamps get Lynn Everly and all of them have been undersized within the first five years the fact that they're actually looking that we get a number at 7 40 with the 680 enrollment there shouldn't even be an option b the fact that they're actually going to roll that in and say that they'd cover it because I was already ready to come here and tell you guys like no we're going to need a print more from our town

058side because it just it's the way it the way it happens and even the way they're designing schools now they're not sort of designed in the same way like you know little breakout space and stuff like that where we know that those are really valuable things to have you know to separate spaces even at an elementary level you know but that that's a great number yeah and that's where the options come into play they can take that and then look at your building and say oh we could do neighborhoods in your building or we could do grade looping we could so each of these options drives the building configurations as you go through the schematic design phase in feasibility so realistically they're just saying okay I mean they're they're not going to fund anything they

059don't agree to so here's what we'll agree to they're saying to us if you agree and I think I think we're in good shape with this and and can can jump on that train and we're never locked in we can back out at any point it's just a matter of I was excited because they're fast tracking us to to say December 1 instead of May well excuse me March 15th no there's a lot of good things happening Chris Harry and you know this number's good right now the reimbursement number is really good you know it was probably you know four or five percent higher than I was really thinking we were going to get like we have a lot of good things going on like this couldn't have happened in a better time even if

060we got chosen in the program two years ago I don't think we'd have made out as favorable so so right right now all the all the stars seem to be aligning for us it's a really good thing about sorry oddly we should hit a different economic time by the time we start this which is super helpful um you know all of a sudden your supplies and materials are available and cheaper than they are right now so I think as Dave said you have kind of the Stars starting to align as you look three years out we're going to be in a very different economic place at that point which should overall save us some quite a bit of money yeah hopefully the bond rate will be back down somewhat what's that I said hopefully the

061bond rate will be down a little bit by then I I didn't have a question um what what's the what's both sides of the argument for ending up with two elementary schools rather than one just from a so when we had um submitted the first statement of Interest years back it was just for Cutler and then along the way people started to say okay let's think about the inclusion of Winthrop they're in similar States um once we finally got accepted by the msba they would only look at those two schools so when we had the walk-throughs with them Tom Geary actually convinced them to quickly walk through the bucharist so they could we were trying to entice them to say we want to include the Buick as well um their concern was the regional agreement

062because nobody knows where this new building could end up but they were also looking at it from the I think the financial perspective of what makes sense for the for the msba so assuming that you could get the towns to agree to go down to three is there enough economic is what's the drawback of doing that from a scale learning scale point of view whatever versus and what's the economic advantage of not having three overhead or the two overhead structures versus one what would happen it was it financially it will cost us the money so when you say okay we're gonna we we we want to include the Bucher in our in our model everything would be out of our pocket so now you're looking at 140 kindergarten kids moving to that building and then

063another I think I have 26 uh preschoolers right now that would go to that building as well so now you have to build out that space at our cost so when you're looking at eight more classrooms in a in a building it it gets in into into the millions of additional dollars that don't get reimbursed and what happens is I think people misunderstand this it's not a one for one reimbursement so you really have to be very careful about what you're choosing to do and not choosing to do and I can use a previous uh project I was involved in those Wilmington High School project and they wanted a an orchestra pit in Auditorium because theater was a huge there it's a huge huge thing and msba says you can build it you got to

064pay for it so they ended up having to Shell out I think over a quarter million dollars to do this drop in the floor and all the work that was and that's what ends up happening so what what do you want to pay for I guess is you know it's it's it becomes that the building committee starts to make those decisions along the way and sometimes say oh it's cutting corners and sometimes it's really like can we afford to keep paying on our side rather than getting the reimbursement Advantage so yeah it's kind of a balancing act got it thank you I think we're in a unique situation also where we're going to build an elementary school I think when most people think of building projects that they go middle school and high schools and

065sort of a drawback people have when uh when you're talking about a elementary school is a 740 person Elementary School is actually a really big school right there and there's something that you know I think we're all sort of romanticize that small neighborhood elementary school so you know if you're going to get any sort of uh sort of pushback that I think that's where it is in in you know that there's pluses and minuses to everything but like you know it's definitely understandable I grew up in the school literally you know and like so it if God forbid anything ever happened in the school it would break my heart a little bit in you know but like I don't see that happening but like this you know that's where you're getting into like you know

066when when you think like a 740 person Middle School it doesn't even you know it's a small high school but you know for an elementary school you're like wow that's you know there's a lot of little kids there I mean it would be awesome too yeah energy would be incredible but yeah um I think I just want to speak to that point though that we need to be careful how much we we talk about these numbers and get the committee you know the community to visualize and say this and I I think some of it's really a sense of what you're used to you know I mean I I grew up in an elementary school that had anywhere between four to six classrooms of every grade at 30 kids a class I mean and there

067were something like 20 elementary schools that size in the district so I I think it's all very relative I also think as Eric was saying there are ways you can make a school within a school you can have always kind of wings you can have teams um and I think that's a really effective way to break it down so I just I want to be really cautious when we start to apply emotional judgments about numbers the numbers are meant to be objective and I think we should try to keep them objective and recognize like no matter this is all going to be a change it's going to be a huge change for the community so I think I like the way they've broken it out with options and are being very factual about it and

068I think it's all going to be different it's all going to be awesome but I think it's also it really depends on what you're used to Eric what do you you need from the committee so we need a vote to approve for you and I to sign this to be to go begin that next step of uh we sign this agree to it send it to them we're actually we got another document today that they're going to need from us we'll send those to them before November 16th and um they'll put this on their board meeting for this I think it's December 1st it's early December and then we'll know soon after that what the next steps will be it's moving hopefully moving into feasibility which is exciting or helpful it's great yeah okay um

069so my understanding then is that you'd be looking would be looking at the second exhibit there um yep the one I have on the screen the one um that you would be looking for um authorization from this committee for um the superintendent and the chair to sign and agree to this correct correct okay um I don't think I said that very articulately Amy but um so I'm making I'm saying that we will authorize you and Eric to sign this document was that the motion mm-hmm sure I think yeah just agree to right that we agree to the doctor yeah okay I move that the Hamilton modern Regional school committee agrees to the Hamilton random Cutler study enrollment certification document as Linked In the agenda second by David Polito is there any further discussion okay looks

070like we're ready to vote all those in favor and that is unanimous and the motion passes okay exciting that is it's very exciting it's very exciting that was a great phone call to get um hey it's like Vinnie is up next his computer oh picture yeah just hit the source there you go there they are soon enough it's going to be a picture of a date and I don't think a third one in the picture talking about the picture is it the budget just making sure it works so tonight I'm here to present to you our FY 23 year-end forecast as of quarter one ending September 30th 2022. so for those of you who have seen many of my forecasts you might know that the first quarter is kind of the most inaccurate one of

071the most three-quarters it's mainly because only 25 percent of the fiscal year has actually passed and at the same time only 12 percent of the school years passed with roughly 22 of the 180 school days left so there's a lot of time to still go between now and the end of the year so the forecast will change between now and then so because there's so much time left I do not in my first quarter complete a an entire line by line analysis so I do not go through every 500 of our individual accounts because there's so much time still to pass and it wouldn't be worthwhile but what is included in this forecast is all major known expense changes through September 30th that we're aware of so what are those big changes so right now

072I'm just going to briefly highlight them and then go in a little more detail throughout the presentation so just starting with the biggest one and I know in particular order after that we have our prepaid tuitions so in FY 22 as you remember when I did my Q3 forecast last year you guys gave us approval to prepay approximately 1.2 million dollars in tuitions with FY 22 money for FY 23 tuitions on top of that student services supplied me with their quarter one out of District year in forecast and they're showing a favorable budget of roughly 350 000. on top of that the district is scheduled to receive an additional 270 72 000 in circuit breaker offsets this goes directly against out-of-district tuitions as well and like last year this year again we're riddled with vacant

073positions everywhere that I'm going to dive into a little bit more uh in a moment again health insurance we're seeing a favorable budget here and it relates mostly to our vacant positions that I'm also going to discuss uh and then lastly we have a favorable to Budget Transportation savings and I say this uh favorable to budget because we saw a huge increase in our transportation costs it was almost 13 so it's really not favorable but I was very conservative and how much I budgeted for the increase so it is favorable to budget but it's not really favorable with a huge increase it could have been it was yeah correct exactly uh so just to dive into Auto District tuitions I try to kind of make this uh brief summary chart because we're dealing with huge

074numbers here it's four million dollars so I'm trying to explain to you where this huge balance is of course with any time here stop me if you have questions I don't mind answering them in the middle uh but when you look at our out-of-district tuitions the very first thing you do is you look at what is our budget so when our approved auto District tuitions budget was roughly 4.1 million dollars so from there we plug in what student services is projecting the year-end actuals to be they projected it to be roughly 3.7 million so if you stop right there before we keep going we have an approved budget of 4 million and we're only realizing expenses of roughly 3.7 right off the bat that's where the roughly 350 000 comes from but you can't stop

075there because you have the big payment of prepaid tuitions uh so right off the bat even no student services is projecting a total of 3.7 million we use last year's money to pay 1.6 million of these tuitions so you have to take that off the top then you come back to circuit breaker which I mentioned on the previous slide we're going to receive roughly 272 thousand dollars in offsets on top of our normal circuit breaker that we have to use this year and we have to put it against prepaid tuitions so the net expenses in the end is roughly 2.3 million so you remove the 2.3 from the 4.1 you're left with the FY 23 projected actual balance of roughly 1.7 million but you can't exactly stop there so if you remember this slide I

076took this directly out of my May 5th presentation here I tried to explain the kind of phased in approach of leveraging our prepaid tuitions uh to to leverage that against the 770 thousand dollars of Chapter 70 money that were received in FY 21 that we used against our FY 23 budget so again that money was kind of meant to be one time and if we did not prepaid tuitions that 773 000 would have to be completely made up the time by the towns in the fy24 budget so the idea back in May was to use prepaid tuitions to every year for the next three years to phase in to phase off that 670k so it wouldn't be such kind of a hill in Valley in the budget Cycles but as you'll see throughout this presentation

077I believe we're going to be able to match that 770 without involving prepaid tuitions so tonight I'm recommending that we delay this phase-in approach one more year and leave the other excess funds to match the 770 000. now I don't need approval on this tonight I don't need approval until the third quarter forecast so we have plenty of time during the budget process and throughout the next couple months to discuss this but just so you know the forecast that we're about to look at includes that you go with my recommendation so if we do that you take the 1.7 from the previous two slides and use the excess funds to prepay 24 tuitions again in the same amount of one point just roughly the same amount of 1.1 million my recommendation before was only 550

078so just just so you know if we didn't do that our excess balance would now be back up to 1.1 million which would have to be returned to the towns through e and D so what we were trying to do is lower that 770 if we don't follow my new recommendation we're going the opposite way we're now making that 770 almost 1.1 million which further compounds those kind of Hills and Valleys every year I'm going to stop if anyone asks questions but while I take a drink but I'll uh keep going okay could I just say something um it's important to note with the tuitions they're super variable what you have today could be very different than what you have in February um for example we just had a very high end out of this

079replacement get closed by the state of New Hampshire forcing us to find a new placement for a very tricky placement so that it's a very specific placement that's almost a quarter million dollars so the reality is there is no place to put kids right now and where we we have some options it's going to cost us more money so we'll use some of that we know for a fact that there's at least one or two kids going on in the next 40 days into new placements um because because they need specialized programming so that number will change as as we move forward just just keep that in mind so what you what you see now you may not see when we get to the third quarter forecast again which is why the first quarter is

080first quarter forecast isn't isn't as accurate but um so just moving along to our salary Surplus I'm going to stop for a second and just say I know I'm using positive terms and surplus and balances but when it comes to salaries Surplus is not really a good thing these are kind of teachers that aren't here services that aren't being delivered to students I just really don't know are there any words to choose here I don't meet it in a positive thing again it's services not being delivered we're not a for-profit industry our goal is to kind of break even every year my personal goal is about one percent left over or two tops but but nonetheless this is Surplus money it is money left over at the end of the year so as it relates

081to salaries it really derived from four major areas we have our vacant positions our salary scale advancements otherwise known as our lane and column changes our salary breakage which for those who don't know it's when a a higher teacher on the salary scale either resigns retires or is terminated and we replace them with a lower experienced lower placement teacher on the salary scale uh and then lastly we have our increased offsets so a few of these I'm going to go into a little bit more detail again I developed this small chart to kind of help explain uh what's happening here when I made this presentation I did have a third exhibit to include in the school committee meeting which literally broke out every single 79 transactions that happened here but as I was going and

082all going over with it going over it with members of the business office I could see they were a little bit confused and it was just too much information so I decided to summarize it here if somebody really is interested on all 79 of them I already have it made so I don't mind sending it to you but nonetheless I'm just going to Briefly summarize them we had 16 occurrences of salary scale advancements that did not occur so this is a teacher or ta who submitted to move along on the salary scale back in December of 2021 but when September 2022 came they weren't eligible to move meaning they didn't complete all of the required coursework and weren't eligible for the higher salary increase but we budgeted for them so thus we have a savings

083of about thirty one thousand dollars as it relates to the salary scale advancements the next one I kind of consider my catch-all it's those salary breakage as well as any change in positions so if we traded in you know any Tas for teachers or if we move staff around or if we hired the lower scale teacher compared to the higher scale it's kind of all of that combined in the staff turnover column there was 44 instances of this happening and the net result was a savings of just under a hundred thousand dollars we had four instances of additional offsets this related to our idea Grant left over arpa funds from last year as well as additional offsets as it relates to school choice in all those items combined totaled an additional offset of roughly uh

084two hundred thousand dollars and then the last and biggest item here is our vacancies where we currently have 15 of them right now and in total the salaries combined are roughly six hundred thousand dollars without out the the biggest area here so in total just from these four items we're looking at nearly a million dollars in salaries left over as of uh q1 so here I just tried to break out what those 15 positions are uh just because uh I'm anal if you count them is only 14 I do count this as two because it is two crossing guards listed here but just to kind of briefly talk about it I could not get this line to go away no matter how many times I pasted it and same with the one up there I

085apologize for it but uh nonetheless we know some of these positions aren't going to be filled at all this year While others were still trying to fill so just to point you out the SLP 0.7 we're still trying to fill that today Mo hopefully we fill it by the end of the year so you might see this one roll off uh forecasts to come but another one just the special ed Pre-K position in the FY 22 budget sorry 23 I'm working in too many fiscal years the FY 23 budget we budgeted for three Pre-K teachers when FY 23 actually came we only needed two we don't think we're going to add a third pre-K in the middle of the year so this one's going to stay for most of the year so some of these

086will roll off before the year is over some will stay which again is why q1 is a is a little uh inaccurate the next area is around our health insurance so every year I in the budget I build in a premium rate increase for health insurance and then the budgets approved in about four months later we actually start negotiating with the health insurance companies so I'm trying to predict what the rate increase is going to be for six months down the road this year was actually pretty accurate I think last year we had premium savings over a hundred thousand dollars this year I think I was only one tenth of a percent off I think the percent came in at 6.9 and I might have budgeted seven or seven and a half I forget exactly

087but nonetheless the savings equated to roughly seventeen thousand dollars um the next category is around late hires in delayed enrollments so just to briefly explain this if a teacher a teacher is supposed to be hired on September 1 but for whatever reason we don't hire them until October one that one month is savings for us because we budgeted for health insurance for the month of September but they weren't hired until October in addition to that that teacher that is hired in October has a choice when they're hired to take health insurance on October 1st or delay it for another 30 days because they might still have health insurance from the previous employer that probably pays a bigger match than we do so they're allowed to delay it another month so those two items combined represent

088a savings of roughly twenty two thousand dollars on top of that that vacant list of 15 positions eight of them are benefits eligible for every eight of those positions it costs about twenty twenty one thousand dollars for their health insurance so for every one of those positions they're also uh is health insurance related to them that equates to roughly a hundred and seventy thousand dollars on top of that we are seeing about a hundred and ninety thousand dollars in staff turnovers so that means a staff member that left last year the 44 instances you saw on the previous slide about six or seven of them had health insurance and their replacement didn't take it so we budgeted health insurance for the original staff member and the one replacing it didn't pick it up so we're

089recognizing Savings of almost 20 grand in each instance that that occurred so in total just for health insurance we're looking at about a four hundred thousand dollar Surplus uh the next category which I think is the last is our transportation Surplus so again I tried to kind of walk you through um why we see the balance here so when building the 23 budget we look at our 22 actuals and 22 budgets so from there our general education Transportation was roughly 840 000 we also include thirty thousand dollars for our late bus run and another eighteen thousand dollars for our homeless or Foster Care Transportation for a total of just under 900 000 so while we were building the 23 budget everyone knows gas prices were exploding they went up about 200 percent we had no

090idea what was going to happen we we had to go out to bid for our transportation contract that started in FY 23. so while we were building it uh we were getting word that the industry Norm we're looking at a 15 to 20 percent increase a lot of them were suffering from a lack of bus drivers so they were all increasing their hourly rates that they give to their employees so we were looking at anything from a 15 to 20 percent increase which for us represented about 133 Grand to 170. but I will admit it I am very conservative when it comes to estimating increases like this I put it at 23 so that was roughly 211 Grand when the actual contract came in I wasn't too far off uh it came in at 23.3

091percent but that was over the three-year life of the contract for the first year of the contract they actually only hit us for a 12.4 percent increase so at the same time I was accurate with the three years I was inaccurate with the with the first year so the net that result was really about a hundred and ten thousand dollars that we're going to see uh and increase for the transportation when you net those two together it leaves about a hundred grand left over uh for our transportation budget so when you roll all those things up together this is it in DAC form right now I'm forecasting a balance of roughly 2.1 million this is the same chart again just in deci form um so what we're asking for tonight is two transfer requests I'm

092going to explain them briefly the first one relates to Transportation so when I built the 23 budget just like we kind of did in the prior year with teacher negotiations we didn't want to reveal our cards so if you were a bus company and you were about to bid on our transportation one thing you'd probably do is go look at our budget and see how much we put in for our increase I didn't want to show that we put in 23 so I put it under our benefits and fixed charges deci category so right now I'm just requesting that we move that money to where it's supposed to be if you look back last year at my first quarter forecast I did the same thing with the colas we put it in the same category

093and we asked for it to be moved out in the first quarter we don't necessarily have to do this it's more of an accounting thing just so I I don't have to track it every single quarter and account for it separately um so that's just to properly classify that amount of money that we put towards the transportation increase it will end up as a net result as the balance of roughly 100 Grand in that account I am moving the whole thing that we budgeted for the next transfer we're requesting right now is around technology uh right now when you look through our Charter of accounts there's only a few accounts that are negative and that's around our devices so about three years ago or I think it was four now we made a large purchase

094in devices and a lot of those are failing right now especially with the increase of all the devices we put on the system with covid a lot of them are failing a lot of the monitors are going and the Wi-Fi is is iffy in some spots because we have so many devices on it so right now Allen has a purchase order in to replace some of the equipment that I am holding on to because his account is in the negative this will allow him to replace that equipment and get the devices to where they need to be and in addition to that be ready for anything else that happens this year this will give him roughly about 70 000 more than he technically needs today but again I definitely foresee more devices failing between now

095and the end of the year um so right now we're only asking for two transfers uh we do definitely anticipate that on Quarter Two we're going to be asking for more transfers to do something with the remaining balance right now we really are discussing it with the leadership team in conjunction with building our 24 budget to try to leverage some of this to help us in the future but right now I don't want to ask for anything that we haven't fully vetted so it really is uh just to get Alan out of the negative because he's the only one that uh is at the moment this is the motion if you choose just thank you and I will take any questions if you have them thank you Vinnie thank you all right questions no questions

096okay that was very clear we have no questions thank you so much it's just one transparency I think it's important to know that we're not just watching these vacant positions sit there we're trying to take advantage of some of that money in in expanding some of our part-time positions and moving some people into full-time slots to pick up the slack if you will so somebody might be at 0.6 literate CTA they're also doing picking up a 0.4 that's open in like the kindergarten class or something so we're trying to take advantage of that and and cover services at the same time many of the positions that are there are um you know like lunch monitors and and crossing guards they're tough to fill you know sometimes if you get somebody that stays on it's great

097but trying to find somebody after somebody leaves it's really hard so we'll continue to do that we'll continue to look at ways to to take advantage of what we have the fundings that we have and the the ftes that were already approved and stay within those Lanes but but try to work to get kids the services they need okay all right um I think we're ready I move the Hamilton modern Regional school committee approves the FY 23 operating expense budget transfers as recommended here by the assistant superintendent of finance and administration and is presented on the previous slide entitled transfers requested q1 second second by anesthesic Vinnie can you uh switch to the previous slide yes thank you um all right is there any further discussion or questions nope okay looks like we're ready to

098vote all those in favor and that is unanimous of everyone present um all right thank you thank you for the motion language Vinnie um Eric I think we are back to you yeah I'm just a superintendent report and the and there is an exhibit there hopefully people had the opportunity to read this um so this links back to the conversation we just had about out of District placements in the state of Massachusetts the operational Services the vision sets the rates for state-run out-of-district placement facilities um this year we kind of got a shock where they sent an email out to all the superintendents and said hey by the way it's going to be 14 to share um so part of that really is is going to impact our conversation about budgets for next year I

099just wanted to put it on the table now this 14 if it stays at 14 will cost us about 350 000 increase in the budget just automatic like there you go here it is and we really don't have a lot of control over that it's just really what we have to pay um so so it was topic discussion last week I was in Beverly uh with several other superintendents of Regional Schools trying to figure out a way to attack this so we we reached out to um State reps and state senator and each of our districts and tried to at least get their ear on it um I'm supposed to have a call scheduled with Bruce Tire in the next week to be able to help him to understand it we've sent him emails we've

100sent you know all the local reps and Senators to see if we can get some help usually the increases are 1.5 percent 1.8 percent sometimes two percent this suddenly came out of the blue and and uh was a curveball for every superintendent and for some districts you know bigger districts it's over a million dollars million and a half dollars in some of these bigger districts for us it's about the round numbers I think 336 311 but it just depends on where everything falls because even though they say 14 some it may not go that high in every single place it it's really they're trying to deal with the same things we are hiring increased costs um so I think we understand why but the reality was everybody was shocked by all the superintendents kind of

101put their hands up and said no way so there is some activity happening and I just wanted you to be aware as we enter the budget season that this is one of uh several things that um we need to just consider as we go through the budgeting process and I'm I'm going to continue to work with the uh the group that I'm involved in and uh through the superintendents Roundtable to really push to see if we can get some action on reducing this number anybody have any questions about that yeah yeah um thank you so Eric this is so surprising and this is restricted to state-run facilities so I'm assuming the talking point to the legislators because the state is also projecting massive surpluses on their budget I mean it doesn't make sense to me

102why the state wouldn't just help cover this like they have the money also do you know politically why the state is pushing this back to the local level I mean I feel like there's a missing part of this increase I think operations good I just I that was not is it State I I thought it was a private school basically I'm sorry is linked to state-run schools but what happens is the private schools follow suit based on what the states and so it every it impacts every every single area except for out of States like we have somebody kids we have some kids out of state so I'm sorry I know I stepped on you the rest no it's okay okay well I'm just going to cover is Landmark raising their rights a comparable amount

103we don't know yet that's that's this was just the first volley out there that the officers um uh sir the excuse me services division said get ready for this it's coming so we we honestly don't know and it it could end up that they're all at 10 by the time things happen but this was really a shock some of the some of the superintendent emails were uh were of shock to say how am I going to come up with you know and and like I said the bigger districts have to come up with three quarters of a million million million and a half two million out of their budget so that's a that's a big bite for us is part of the budget strategy for us now I see why we're pulling back a little

104bit on the scale down of the prepaid tuitions because that you know that the proposed drawdown would have not reflected it but we might actually need that money in order to cover these costs so when do we expect this to be resolved or have a final answer we will probably complete the budget process before we have final numbers from some places okay which is which is tends to be what happens with everything like the bus contract happens after we figure out the thing the insurance happens after we figure out the budget these things will come too and waves some of the private schools will be last given how upset um and worried the superintendents and sort of the school leadership is is there would you know a letter from us as a school committee be

105helpful I feel like that would just be another piece like I think it I think it makes sense I mean I and I can I can send everybody the letters yeah there's a template design it said um one letter from all the superintendents that we just swapped out our numbers with it they're aware they're very much aware but I think it would actually make a difference though I think I think I think it's important to get their ear to be able to say hey this is unusual this is we're in we're in a tough time and now all of a sudden you know surprised we're trying to build a school we're trying to build Fields it's about a point you know it doesn't sound like a lot but it's it's almost a percent it's like

106point seven two percent of our yeah it's a lot that if you're if you're trying to control costs that you just lost control of something that you may need for for students or for teachers well and to sort of piggyback on a point you've made during Vinnie's presentation I think is important for the public to understand that some of these out of District placements are they really come at you and and one student can add significant cost and no amount of programming that we offer will help every student there are always going to be certain students that require very expensive out of District placement and it's not a deficiency on our part It's just some kids need that help and you never know when it's going to happen and you don't know where they're going

107to need to go and I wish the public sort of could understand sometimes that there's nothing about District efficiency that that will help this you know there's always going to be a handful of kids that require you know like you said there was a placement that was a quarter of a million dollars for one student you know those students exist and they're always here and we need to take care of them and and under federal law we do not have a choice it's like you can to your point we can't say no so I hope the public understands just how serious this is because this could be a huge deal for our budget and one thing we're trying to avoid from the superintendent's perspective is creating a regular ad special ed battle here the reality

108is these are our kids these they have needs that are different from other kids and you know my opinion is we need to be able to meet that need for those kids in in our community so it's um it's unfortunate and it may change it may we're going to push as hard as we can we have lobbying from all sides right now so we'll continue to do that and I know Mas is involved heavily um it's they're saying it's basically there's a fiscal program that's ending and they want to carry it forward um so these private schools aren't hitting that Cliff is there an equivalent Public School set of grants that we could apply for to potentially offset some of this 14 increase not necessarily in the workforce side I mean the the offset of

109some of the special ed costs some of them come from Grants for us right but I was if there was something similar to a Workforce grant for the public schools yeah I'm not aware of it if there is but but part of this for all of us in the superintendency right now is trying to figure out okay how do we how do we get around this or how do we meet this need yeah if it does come to full fruition so it's it's definitely part of the conversation so I just want people to be aware I I don't want to create a fury yet I think it's just just be aware as we move into the budgeting process you may see this big number and say well what's that for it it'll be related to

110this initially and as we work through it at the state level we'll hopefully get some action or activity um one more Yep thank you is there any move to uh to Lobby the state not just on up hub to have the state pick up the whole tab for special ed rather than this circuit breaker complicated recirculation it's a it's a it's a difficult question only because um again the the small group I'm involved in the regional superintendent's group so all the Regionals around here we meet um to discuss those things like we're supposed to get X number of dollars reimbursement for transportation special ed transportation we don't see it we're supposed to get certain amounts of money back for our Medicare and you know it costs you you're basically paying an employee to come up

111with your eighty thousand dollars in Medicare so you it's no gain there either so we we're continuing to have those conversations to try to get the state to fund more because that's that's basically what comes down to these unfunded mandates continue to come at schools and it's draining you know and it's creating that tension between regular Ed and special ed that really shouldn't be there it's it's all of us you know we're all together in this and I think it's uh it's it's one of the hot topics for us to try to to try to figure out how to work with people at the state level both at the commissioner's office and at the State House to say you know hey some of these things are not working out like you know they made promises

112on some things that were going to change in certain budgets and yet have yet to come to fruition but we just can continue to keep lobbying them and working towards them and I know masc m-a-s-s msaa they're all also pushing hard on on some of these issues because it's it's ultimately it ends up impacting our kids no thank you okay yeah no I I thought you were going to say that oh no yeah I just got something else on the report yeah go ahead um I anticipated something that didn't happen um totally new topic msba again we received our our response for our SOI for the roof for the high school and we did not get accepted again um now it's up to 30 years it's moving away from us slowly but the new reality

113is yesterday I received a letter from the msba saying they froze the that core program that program for those emergency funds who are so they're not even funding them because the number of projects that are way way over budget due to the economy is making them look differently so they froze that program even though we didn't get accepted but if we got accepted we we would yeah we would probably have a problem it would have been frozen yeah so so that program is frozen we'll wait and keep an eye on it and see if it opens up again we'll reapply we'll just continue you know it's just an automatic thing when we get the email that the windows open we'll just drop it back in so right now they're they moved up to 30 years

114I think we're at 28 now 27 or something we're creeping up on it so at some point the stars or the roof will collapse and we will have to just fix it so just just wanted to be aware of that we did get notification though but again we'll apply again in the spring we'll continue to do that what level of subsidy were you anticipating so I mean what's the roof going to cost how much would have come come from that so don't hold me to this number because it changes constantly but we we keep hearing between four and five million dollars to do the high school roof by the time you know by the time you you get to that point it could be higher or lower I don't know but in that rant in

115that realm they'll determine a reimbursement cost just like they did for the Cutler school it may not be 47 I think like Dave Polito said earlier we were all guessing in the in the mid to high 30s for for that project so it just depends on what they have for money and then how many projects they're funding that will determine the reimbursement on it and it's a it's a little bit easier for reimbursement on a project of that size because it's so specific to the roof it's not you're not worrying about all these other components that are involved like a full building okay thank you okay and then one more thing yeah go ahead I would certainly just want to extend congratulations to all of our athletic teams that made it into the tournament every

116single team is in and they're starting in fact this volleyball is tonight I don't know how they how they're going I'm still waiting to get the text but um you know it's fun for the kids I think it's a great way for kids to connect and be together and support one another so it's it's uh it's a big deal that every single fall team made it into the tournament so congratulations to our coaches and student athletes and athletic department that's great lots of hard work successful fall season okay right um looks like we're on to committee reports uh Capital Finance we have not met since our last general meeting okay all right policy well policy is smoking hot right now met on Monday and we finished up the F section and we had a discussion

117about where we were and we will be bringing forth the h i and J sections in their completeness up for first reading at the meeting in November 17th at the next meeting we're going to finish up the last two policies from D then we're going to start with K and L those are all relatively short sections um policy thinks that we'll have our review of those done by the next meeting or two which means don't hold me to it that we could have the entirety of the MSA masc policy review presented to the full committee and fully adopted by say January of next year which would be in policy subcommittee review like the whole thing which is years in the making and I would feel like it would be remiss not to credit Michelle Bailey

118Michelle Horgan Peter wolstek David Polito this has been a Year's like so policy is cruising we are meeting again on the 21st um I will say that at the last meeting we had a representative from the athletic facilities Improvement project as well there was some desire to make sure that our fiscal policies were going to be in alignment with any proposed contracts and so we've had a representative there Tim Fazio or another representative will also be there on the 21st and we're in close contact through the superintendent to District Council to make sure that the contract is in alignment with the policy so honestly I give policy subcommittee like 10 out of 10 wouldn't recommend right now we are crushing it awesome thank you and I look forward to that first reading of all oh

119they're riveting they are riveting um and uh and I did make note of that as a topic for future meetings so Eric and I will discuss putting that on the 17th okay um negotiations we have not met no exactly because we're slackers um okay uh so my chairs report [Music] um I do have several different things before we get to the exhibit I just want to we did cover it early in the meeting but I just want to say I'm really excited that we have an approved contract for our superintendent I feel like we are um starting NX we've already started an exciting journey and we're really excited to have you in this place for the long run thank you um all right and I do have some other details things um you'll notice that

120um we have the meeting schedule we did we have discussed this um once I just um this is yeah if you check it out this is oh too big too big um it's been there we go this has been edited we did discuss this um I actually think we probably need to vote on this okay because this is something we voted on initially being you know these um and this is a little bit adjusted so if you look there um there's a there's a couple of things so um okay so I'm going to start with this and then I have a question um okay so the Wednesday February 15th if needed Vinnie sort of has explained to us that if that we're going to have a meeting on February 9th and that if that meeting

121does not end with a approved Budget on the ninth we're gonna have the budget hearing on that night and then the budget vote and we we would need to have um the next and notice that it is a Wednesday February 15th if needed and that is correct the last day the last day possible by putting this out here what I'm sort of putting forth to the committee is that it is fully hoped and anticipated that we would not be meeting on Wednesday February 15th however if we are it's really important so this is why we're bringing this now so that you guys can a we can vote on that and all those that you can put on your calendars this is different than what we have yeah I won't be able to make Wednesday I

122teach Wednesday nights okay but that would only be if needed if needed but again like we would not want to get into it or might because we would not want to get into a situation where on Wednesday February 15th we aren't able to create a quorum to well but I just the budget vote require a two-thirds majority of the full committee could we actually this is worst case scenario could we actually do it if any one of us wasn't here I'm sorry what we certainly could do it if one person was not I mean what is it I'm just thinking five yeah yeah we'd need five but I'm pretty sure that having just looked at the financial policies which might well be in effect by that moment correct me wrong there was some discussion about

123a majority of the full committee for the budget adoption we looked at this on Monday remember we talked about full committee versus we need five in the room and you need the all the voters right right if only four in the room voted so the but the the super majority of the totality of the full committee numerically even if only six people were here that's my point it has to be five it has to be five even if there's only six people here or only five people here okay I just want to make sure that was correct um right no thank you for that because that's a separate that's a separate issue what I was really talking about being able to ensure that we can hold a meeting um so um so anyway well so

124my point is that typically we could hold a meeting with only four but because of this it has to be five because it's a budget thing that's the point so let me help you with the other one yeah so here's the other thing too where it's an if needed that that would be a one agenda item meeting correct so if it was like I am stuck someplace until seventh you could have an eight o'clock meeting you can have a it just needs to be and we could have and we could have and we could have virtual virtual meeting if you needed to to get it is just one item right and and it could be virtual that we could have virtual okay remember to say I can give my class a break in Boston and

125zoom in right I I actually do not remember the topic but we did have a meeting it was about the posting of the election we had a four-minute meeting with I think four of US presidents I remember that meeting exactly um so um but anyway okay so the other one was already on there it was because there was a month between the 16th meeting and the 13th meeting so we just put that as an if needed originally to say just in case right because that was already a long span of time to be without you guys but it's it's also you know in case something comes up as we approach town meeting Etc because you know if there's something that we need to develop in our meeting we may need that so that was so

126okay that and then I actually had one more question is that I and this is just I had also initially thought we had penciled in because if you look we have two meetings in a row in February the second and the ninth and then normally we would meet not two in a row we would normally meet the second and the 16th right so but I think that was moved because of all the mergers no we did that is why we moved it but I just want to make sure we don't there's no circumstances under which we would need the 16th because we're meeting if needed we would meet on the 15th okay all right um all right any other questions about this okay um right can we have a motion I move that the Hamilton

127Regional school committee approved the 2022-2023 school committee meeting schedule as posted on the agenda second second by Jen Carr all right Is there further discussion all right all those in favor and that is unanimous and the motion passes um thank you for that um all right so I actually have a few more things here on my chairs report um I wanted to well I want to just quickly update you on the masc conference um I will get my act together and send you a little email though not as long as last year because I was only there half the time this year I only went for a day and a half um I just wanted to read to you the sort of the names of the sessions that I attended so you can get a

128flavor for some of the things that um occurred so one was so I went to addressing the unique challenges of Regional School committees um mciea tools for increasing educational equity I went to the masc delegate assembly um I voted as instructed and all of the resolutions passed I will send you some had some minor um amendments um it was and it took a lot longer than oh no I'm sure um I also attended understanding the student Mental Health crisis causes impacts and solutions um and then the one that I already mentioned creating and promoting Equitable conditions in the schools which was presented by our neighbor the Beverly schools um I did ask when since we're on the calendar I did ask when the next year's meeting is and I'm going to say it and I

129encourage you all to just pencil it in because it's a great uh conference and I learned a ton so you might want to consider going so next year it is November 8th through the 11th which is a Wednesday through a Saturday November 8th through the 11th um and I encourage everyone to go if you could somebody bring up with the masc that that definitely discriminates against people who work five days a week yeah so second so there's no way I can go whatever okay no and it's actually I mean because the conference really was focused on Equity it was one of the one of the conversations that we had not in a session but just at a table that I was sitting at we talked about the equity issues around scheduling and a whole number

130of things and that did that came up um there is of course no actual time that would be Equitable to everyone you know but if they alternated no I I know um so anyway so yes that was that is something that other people are you're not alone in in do they change the location every year or is it always you know my vast experience is two years long I've been in the same location both times okay I do not know whether no it's always been there as far as I know yeah um so right and that is an equity issue as well in other words some people were driving from Western Massachusetts um I got the joy of driving through Boston on Wednesday morning which is super fun too so um yeah um anyway um

131so that's that um I I was there for a day and a half Dorothy does present our you know several different things I'm pleased to say I did not need to go to her session that was there on Thursday because it was on how to find a new supreme laughs no wonder she presented she's helped us a lot with that I was so excited to say I don't have to go to that one um okay um I did send out to the committee um this is just all dates I did send out to Committee in an email just the tentative dates for the superintendent evaluation dates um just for you to look at and as we you know just share with me if you have any thoughts or concerns and obviously those other tentative dates

132but they'll come up as they um but if anyone had any questions about that or whatever you could just let me know um Amy has a quick as our secretary has quick housekeeping yes information um at our October 20th meeting and I'm pointed out an error in the minutes from September 22nd around what the meeting date of our last policy so committee meeting was uh we asked Mahala to up to change the date listed and as she was updating found another instance of the incorrect date and another instance of mentioning a date that wasn't mentioned just as referencing another meeting so I gave her I advised her to make the changes and just say that I would inform the committee that she made these like minor changes the end thank you um and you know

133this while um you know while these things might seem small I think it's really important to do what we to be transparent and to share and so that there was um was a scrivener's error um but it didn't get discussed in the meeting so it's important it was important if we're if we're thinking looking something up later exactly you'll know what happened yep um I wanted to um I I did I believe I forwarded this to everyone but I just wanted to make sure everyone's aware that Hamilton put out to all boards and committees that there is a Gordon Conwell planning Gordon Conwell meeting for strategic planning regarding that property um on Monday um November 14th at 7 pm at the community house I did ask but I didn't yet get a response and it's

134possible that they did respond today was busy day um but I didn't ask whether or not they put it out to all boards and committees we're the only one that has one of them residents so I don't know whether really only our Hamilton people are allowed to go to that or not I'm not sure um but I did want to make you aware of that and um if I do get an answer I'll send it out to you okay um so but certainly Hamilton people certainly have been we have a strategic planning that night right Eric the 14th correct yeah okay um I think that that is all I have that's more than I usually have um all right and I am on to topics for future meetings nope Amy nope nope okay Vinnie you

135have the 24 budget phonics week and the audit the audit yes we got the audit moved to the next meeting yes yes thank you um okay um unless anyone has anything else I would be open to taking a motion I move we adjourn at 8 54 pm second second by Amy converter and anybody uh all those in favor and it's unanimous we are adjourned