001yeah i just think science like unless you're working with journals every day and reading journals like all the time they don't make sense have i not made it clear i mean i get hives and i'm late i get like upset oh yeah i know i'm one of those people like i get like i get like upset we need one more though right here one two three four i did have to drop this bill off at the community and we've got anna so we've got all right we gotta go hi anna can you hear us do you know where i was uh mr tracy do you feel like anna's all set up there anna can you give us a test here um coming to you live from western massachusetts i mean it's connected now let me
002see if i can turn it up okay you guys sound great i can hear you just fine i can hear if it were quiet in here i could probably hear everybody has to be very quiet the gentleman from hw cam is going to try and tweak the settings on this try it now this is anna broadcasting live from western massachusetts yes yes i can hear that you got it yeah okay if you could do more of that don't forget about me over here i love it we could see you too how are you guys going to see me to vote we can see you we can see you can see you we can see your computer okay all right are we on yes okay yep let me jump on i zoom real quick all right
003uh i would like to call the meeting to order it's 703. we have okay anna can you hear us yes i can okay great and we can hear you terrific um all right i will ask us to begin with the pledge of allegiance to okay um so we do have one member uh anna cedzek who is participating remotely this evening um and uh do we is she on the um all right so i will just um uh say my thing anyway um so we are opening citizens comments on zoom before we start i should say that we are this meeting is being recorded and this meeting is also being live streamed on hwcam um on youtube as always um the zoom link is open for public comment as soon as public comments are completed the
004zoom link will be closed and if you'd like to continue to watch the meeting you can turn over to the hw cam live stream any citizen who would like to speak for before the committee should first identify identify themselves by name and address and always i ask you to limit your comments to three minutes we genuinely appreciate citizens comments both live are on the zoom and of course we appreciate any input via other methods via email it's important that we hear what you have to say at this point do we have any citizens with their hands raised in the zoom if you are in the zoom and you would like to speak please raise your hand there's only one person okay all right uh it doesn't so looks like there's no one on zoom i'm
005assuming there's no comments from the audience though you're welcome to okay thank you all right and that's the end of citizen's comments um next on the agenda is the review of the committee protocols i actually had anticipated a member who's not here to read so would somebody be would you would you be willing to read this and this read the parts in red thank you as elected members of the hamilton wentham 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 administration will endeavor to make materials for school committee meetings available the friday before the meeting the school
006committee will recognize that some circumstances will not always make this possible in any event we recognize that having background materials available for school committee members is a best practice school committee members will vote according to their convictions will avoid bias and will uphold and support the decisions of the majority of the committee once a decision has been made positions will not be used for personal or partisan gain all members will maintain the confidentiality of privileged information and will re respect the open meeting law thank you jen okay next up uh is the consent agenda um before we have a motion does anyone have any items that they'd like to be have with uh held on the consent agenda okay jen oh i'm sorry anna any any items to be held okay um jen can i
007have a motion i move that we accept the consent agenda as written second second by michelle horgan all right all those in favor [Music] that is unanimous of the six members who are present that includes you anna um i don't know anna if you can see the if you can see the whole room but michelle bailey is not currently here so we are six um okay and the consent agenda passes thank you all um all right moving right along to new business i'm going to turn to eric and you can start us off with the superintendent goals thank you very much while he's still sitting here i just want to let craig know he's all set it's all set thank you um superintendent goals i as outlined in the um memo that was distributed along
008with the goals i wanted to take a first shot at developing goals related to the current district goals and the work that's being done as part of my you know continued communication plan and you know future plans to stay connected i think it's important for us to be able to completely stay connected through this is a little bit backwards where the principals and the school councils would have had the advantage of seeing my goals ahead of time if i was in at a normal in a normal time of the year so i tried to keep that in mind as i developed this so that they wouldn't have to go back and make adjustments based on something that i put out there the model is a standard model that is used by a number of superintendents
009in fact in talking with with several in the area they use the very similar models and there is one thing that i do need to adjust on here that dana actually caught this standard two um is missing is one of the alignments but it actually will fit right into several of these so i just have to add it in with the correct indicators but i wanted to give you an opportunity to take a look at the goals that i've set and kind of the first volley if you will and certainly if this is the wrong direction i am not wedded to this particular model i just thought this would be a good opportunity to get out the information related to my goals so that we could settle those you know hopefully by the next meeting
010and be able to continue our journey forward okay do you want to what what do you want to discuss each one or do you want us to go through them with questions how do you want to approach it i think from some of the conversations i've already had but some members people have been through them and given me some feedback that i've made some fine adjustments so far and i'm certainly willing to take any feedback if you want to go that route okay so maybe um let's just do it in a sort of um maybe just let's just start with goal one and if anyone has any um clarifying questions about goal one um that hasn't and i actually really appreciate hearing that um people are getting their questions answered during their um you know
011scheduled conversations with the superintendent that's a good use of everyone's time to make sure that you know we everyone is uh taking the time to get those questions answered does anyone have any clarifying questions on goal one uh this is oh sorry oh go ahead john um this is just grammatical yep under benchmarks number two it should get the third word that at just cross it off it should be log demonstrating regular school visits all set thank you anyone else with the clarifying question on goal one um i have one anna go ahead anna uh thank you um and i i want to go back so i have a question about this but i didn't quite hear what eric said about number two um standard number two i do have a question about that actually
012um i guess when you my only question on this is it seems like the title of it is maintain momentum during transition which i like a lot but it seems like what it's really about is like the evaluation of the staff and the school improvement plan so i was just wondering if like i'm wondering if maybe you could define what you mean by momentum a little bit more because some of it feels like i mean maybe this is not what you mean but it sort of just feels like you're saying we just need to keep doing what's required of us by law like the like you have to do the educator evaluations right like you don't really have a choice not to and we have the formative assessment and then the school improvement plan so
013i guess for me it kind of feels like i like the idea of maintaining a momentum but i'm not quite sure the things you've identified as action attract to that it feels more kind of just like you're going to keep doing what you have to do i'm wondering if you could build that out a little bit more sure can i jump on them thank you sure thank you anna i i really tried to um think about the issues related to the transition happening in october versus starting in back you know back in july and really trying to make connections throughout the district with not only the school improvement planning process those those kind of building level goals but also working with each of the district level leaders to make sure that they are also in
014alignment with those goals and and i think the momentum piece is something i thought about a lot as i even interviewed for this position as trying to continue without having any giant hiccups in the road or having any giant issues come our way so i'm really trying to connect the dots given the things that we have to do and the things that we want to do and bringing those together i can certainly build this out a little bit more if that makes sense yeah i think it does i just i i guess i want to know how you define momentum you know like what that's all um can i can we go back a step because you said something about indicator or sorry standard two that someone else had said and that was one of
015my favorite comments is that there actually aren't any evaluation criteria at all focused on standard two that seemed to be something missing to me entirely correct that's what i led with when i intro when i did the introduction the um standard two um in indicators i didn't add in and i don't know why that is my own fault but i will go back and and put those in there there are certainly uh in all five of these goals ways to to connect those dots as well so i just i noticed that at the last minute after actually dana and i were talking about it so that's i just i didn't quite hear you so thank you for that um so would you add it in as a whole new goal or would you add it
016to one of the existing goals i would i would add it to one or more of the existing goals okay um anna are you anna do you have anything else on goal one you know what it says okay uh michelle horgan do you have a question yeah just a quick one um i'll wait for eric sorry heck the av guy um so can i just elaborate more on the maintain momentum are you also talking about pre-pandemic because you have historical knowledge and you are on the building leadership team i see that as the work that was being done in 2017 1819 and now we had the we had the pause and during covet and now that maintaining momentum is part of that is that part of is is that what you're saying here too it
017it's it's part of the process i think if you go backwards a year and start to look from where we were to where we we've been we want to be and you know go i'll take you back to that interview process when we talked about making that shift and and keeping them forward momentum um focused on the goals that we we had set as a district and i think mary beth had done that kind of put the pieces in place but i think there was a little bit of a fear including me coming in in october that these things would kind of fall away a little bit before we we got them up and running and i think we've been able to to establish a momentum that that should continue to move forward and climb
018steadily through the school year okay great thank you um eric i just had a quick question um uh under the uh key actions the final one there says supporting the implementation of school level improvement plans um so i guess this is not really i don't know that anything needs to be changed in the written document i'm just curious about what that looks like supporting so when the schools create their goals they don't necessarily have resources to be able to go out and say okay i did set this goal and these are our plans but now we need help with professional development or now we need help with acquisition of something to help them to meet that goal and i think that's really part of my my position is to support that and and find them
019the things that they need and help them to identify the things that they need along the way and they could be it could be just one building related thing or as we're learning you know just looking at elementary connecting those elementaries so that they're doing the same things is is asking for resourcing and part of that process is how do i help them to resource so they're not stuck wondering where they can go to get pd or where they can go to get a set of books to work with their teachers or where they can go to get assessments for their for their kids so it's it's more of a resourcing thing than than anything thank you that was helpful um is anna still there she drop off i could hear her before even when
020we couldn't see her anymore um nope she's still there there she is can we hear it is that a screensaver anna can you say something so we can know you can hear you oh yeah she looks muted and are you muted can you say something anna sorry yup this is anna oh there you are you're back you're back okay um so i just wanted to make sure that um i know for myself which this was you know when i was doing this last year it was new i know jen this is new for you um so i want to make sure that everyone as part of your review is looking at the um you know the standards as eric just mentioned that we need to make sure that the standard number two gets in there
021but also when you're looking at each one of these goals that you've looked at the standard and the indicator and you feel like it's a good um match okay um okay good okay goal number two does anyone have any questions anna i just have a comment oh okay sorry all right anna you go first then we'll have julia sorry would you say jenna david's cough is it's loud in the year uh no anna you go first goal too oh my only question on this was um i i really like this goal eric i think this is a this is perhaps one of the most important ones here and i like all the the um i like all of the benchmarks my only question about that is there any notion about the website itself being more
022of a tool or is that more of a district tool and then as much as i love the use of social media and i think that's a great tool it doesn't reach everybody so i was wondering if you would you know you've got the email to the i guess i'm thinking about the community at large that wouldn't receive a superintendent email because they're not in district it may not be on social media i feel like we're potentially missing an important constituent group if we narrow it so i was wondering about maybe adding a benchmark that wasn't social media or an email but something more analog or something maybe you know meeting members of the community that aren't going to be reached on those channels i can certainly look towards it the the website as you
023may know is is due to be revamped so we're careful with what we put on that right now because there's a currently a four-month process to redesign and rebuild and and re-actually deploy the resources on the website so that they're useful i could also check with the towns to see if there's a way to piggyback something that they do at their level to be able to say hey here's the the newsletter or the weekly update for example that comes out on friday i also post that on a weblog that anybody can jump on and get and you can also subscribe to that so you know every time i post something on there so maybe i can work with the communities to see what they have they they they tend to be a little bit more
024limited but there may be opportunities to take advantage of it okay julia oh yeah no i had a very similar comment my comment was that i think this is a fantastic goal i've already seen evidence of this increased communication and just availability in the school and i've already heard some fantastic feedback um from the community so really my my feedback was i i really like this goal i would also echo that the website should be some a goal i'm not sure if it's a district goal or maybe it could a benchmark could be oversee the website revamp or something maybe that could be a benchmark so it's not necessarily like we we know we will have a new website in 12 months because that's obviously not very realistic but something around spearhead the website overhaul
025something like that sure perfect just add it right in allentopia gets to spearhead it but i get to go back and forth about how it actually happens so yeah i don't i don't know what the adjective is i mean the adverb is going to be but i will figure one out well if i'm julia i'm just going to try to pair it sounds to me like when you're looking towards evaluation it sounds like one of the things you would be looking at is how the website has evolved and improved and so you're looking for a way to sort of make that be reflected in that is that am i reading you correctly yes okay okay all right um this is uh i'm not i don't know exactly i have a quick question on or it's
026not a question i guess my my question is that again i think everyone really liked this goal i think it's really um my question was a lot of the benchmarks are very clearly how to quantify right that that you actually did these things um and i guess maybe i didn't know whether you thought about or whether there could be a benchmark that would be more reflective of effectiveness like is it um because having ac you know in other words we all know like you know having social media posts are we can quantify that but whether there is a way to quantify whether it's successful or effective i don't have a concrete answer to that i think i thought about this um last weekend when i was working through this document and i think it might
027be something that i could add an either a benchmark or an action that is related to i'm going to do surveys about me through the year that would give us some of that feedback that would say oh yeah people enjoy this but don't like this or uh maybe that's the way to incorporate that in there so you can get the effectiveness uh as well yeah and also just a i mean a useful learning tool if you discover you know that twitter is really connecting with people and instagram is not well then that's just a practical mature that you're learning okay um anybody else anything on goal two okay moving on goal three questions uh anna so i my comment about goal three and goal four and goal five to some degree and i think i
028think to superintendent transit you'll appreciate this they seem way too easy for you they seem like gimmies to be honest and maybe that's okay but i kind of feel like they don't quite feel like goals i just sort of feel like well i guess my response to them is sort of saying like well yeah of course of course you're gonna have to do that because the process is happening it doesn't it just it feels a little like like you're taking a box but i don't know that it's honestly they just don't seem very hard and i guess i kind of feel like i was maybe my mindset about the goals the first two goals are very clearly you as an individual leader of the district have a role to play that is unique to you
029and if you don't do well in those there will be you know some sort of observable change i kind of feel like the strategic planning process is just it's happening like we're doing it there's other people of course you'll be involved the new superintendent program also just kind of feels like a participation goal like yeah we just of course you're gonna do it so i'm not quite sure how to frame that like part of me feels like you set the bar too low for yourself and i think you could do another goal that's a little bit more i don't know philosophical or far-reaching or you know this is back to sort of some of the the different standards that are there like not only standard two missing but you know there's only one from standard
030one and then standard three and four are well represented but they're repetitive like there's not a lot of there's not a lot of breadth of evaluation and i guess i'd love to see you write something and think about another way that you could really bring your personal force of leadership which is strong to the district as opposed to just sort of ticking a box to be like yep i'm going to do the new superintendent program to me that kind of feels like me saying my goal is to take the masc training and like once you click the box you're like okay look i did my goal it just feels too easy um and i would love to see you know something really maybe focused about operations or management or budget or working with the town
031you know like i don't know so i guess these i'd almost like to see them strike because i feel like it's they're too easy for you and i mean that from a place of respect and affection i think that you've set your bar too low and i think i would like to see those quite goal five i feel like is also kind of there like that's a little bit more involved but again we've set up this mtss system it's going you're running it we're working on it as a as a district so again all three of these last ones feel a little bit like a box ticking exercise that i don't know will i don't think they'll adequately demonstrate what you as the individual superintendent are doing in a leadership capacity for the district i
032don't know if that comment makes any sense or not but that's my response to those three goals it makes absolute sense um before you i'm going to just jump in quickly before i let uh eric i just want to i'm specific um technically we're on goal three right now but anna you mentioned three four and five i did want to just tell respond and up and to tell the committee regarding goal number four which is that professional practice goal um i actually um had had some conversations last year and also this year with dorothy um because we had a very similar goal from mary beth this is an eric you can speak to this but i think on this one it sort of needs to be here and it and it is kind of a
033i'm pretty sure it's about julie julie's and mary metz yeah yeah yeah it's so so that doesn't speak to and i know anna you and i know eric wants to respond uh regarding goal the other goals three and five but i just want to say regarding goal four i really think that um it does this is kind of a standard you can speak to that because you're in the program but it is sort of a goal that does need to be here and it is sort of a just fulfilling of kind of the program it is it is and it's i agree with anna in the case of it's it's kind of a check box yes but it's one of the things that mass uh really requires us to put on there to keep us
034accountable to make sure we're going to our you know every other meetings to make sure we're attending the classes to make sure we're doing um all the things necessary to be involved in the nissa program so they ask us to put that on there um which which is is absolutely a slam dunk when you say okay i gotta attend the sessions i gotta do this i have to do that the work involved is somewhat related to the work we're doing this year especially the strategic plan and i think out of the three goals the heavy the heavy heavy lift is going to be the strategic planning part um because we don't have a good plan for that right now and i think that's a that's an important thing to note at this point in time
035and and part of that will be more in my lap to be able to run that process i don't think we're going to be able to put that out to a consultant to do because frankly we haven't budgeted for it so the reality of that will be that'll be the heavy lift out of all of it the mtss piece will be the second heavy lift realistically because it relies heavily on data we don't have consistent solid data structures at the middle in high school and not say they aren't there we just haven't assembled them or even determine what makes sense as we build these support systems for kids it's you know one of the things i've tried to stay heavily involved in at the elementary level with the mtss is really gaining an understanding of
036how they're integrating their assessments with the actual outcomes and then the conversations like a day like yesterday when teachers are working to identify individual weaknesses at the kid level at the singular kid level that detail needs to now transfer up where it's never been not is not as easily done because of the structures of the facilities and the structures of the teams so those two will be the heaviest heaviest lifts this year but certainly i understand anna your position and and i would say let me go back to the drawing board a little bit and think through the the leadership piece and and see what i can add or or at least maybe grow from that from what's here michelle horgan you look like you had a question before me john i think budget issues
037fall really nicely under communications which i know we talked about earlier [Music] adding it to that so i think that will expand that goal in particular and i'm actually okay with some of these goals being check boxes i mean anybody who has a job is gonna have some things that you just you have to check off every year and they have to get done um i really think these goals are are much more challenging than we saw last last year and i wasn't here with julie with julie but like these definitely go a step above anything we were asking mary beth to do particularly in terms of the communication i mean that that in and of itself is almost a full-time job yeah david yeah i was just gonna say you know haven't been through
038these a lot in you know within my own professional environment but also just from a school committee standard even the check boxes you know the the um easier ones do require a lot of work um and you know these are incorporated but also on top of just the day-to-day operations of stuff so um you know the goal three you know since we're on here is is a pretty large ask um and yes it is something that we you know would expect him to do normally but at the same time i think we want to also support that you know making it a goal making it something that you're focused on is important to us because it's important to the district and that we want you to spend your quality time there um and you know
039again if we're doing our reviews in a few months and everything comes out exceptional maybe next year then we say okay you know what we could up that you know push that bar up a little but um you know i i i do see a lot of work here involved and sure every once in a while you need that that little gimme to go so but i i do think you have a a decent amount of work here ahead of yourself and you see the challenge and we're going to ask him to do it in nine months right not a year julia yes i think well i can't speak for anna but i feel like i understand what she's saying because i feel like she and i gave similar feedback to mary beth with with
040the goals whereas goal one is is a goal you know maintain momentum during transition you know keep the district moving forward and goal two improve communication and build relationships so i think what what i'm hearing is that goal three four and five are part of a bigger goal there are more benchmarks like the strategic planning process that's a goal to improve the district or something like that that's that's what i'm that's what i heard anna say i can't speak for her but i feel kind of the same way i so i think it's a little bit for me semantics like um i see participate in a new i i don't have a problem with a single one of these goals by the way but i just think maybe participate in the new superintendent induction program
041that's a bigger overall goal of improve leadership skills or something do you see what i'm saying so i'm not saying to re i'm not necessarily saying to rewrite them um but i think i do think that goals three four and five are more benchmarks than maybe goals but i i don't know i can't really offer any other specific feedback than that but i do i don't have a problem with the way any of them are written but i do see them as part of bigger loftier goals hang on one second i'm gonna let michelle horgan talk michelle i just i see these goals as foundational goals for us um and we haven't had that for a while and i think we need this to be able to build upon that because if we build a
042widow's walk on a house of cards it's not going to last but if we have this in place and we build upon that then next year it becomes you know the bar is raised and the bars raised and for so for me these are foundational so thank you uh anna do you have one more thing i do it's kind of i want to affirm what julia said and maybe offer maybe a better way to phrase what i'm saying because i think it's helpful and maybe this is you know i think this is just based on early evidence of having worked with you a little bit eric but i feel like the higher level goal that might be better be a better umbrella for do the strategic planning the new superintendent program the mtss program is
043because again i think i think that the foot goals is more philosophical something like you know establish yourself as an innovative creative leader within the superintendents of the north shore or something like that and then you could have these these benchmarks that say i'm going to participate in this program and go to this training i'm gonna look for innovative funding opportunities you know something like that because i've been thinking a lot about like what is the role of the superintendent and you're one of the few identifiable community leaders you know and i feel like something that talks about you bringing that force of leadership and personality into the community at large but also within sort of a field i don't wanna maybe those shoes don't fit maybe you don't wanna be seen as an innovative
044inspirational leader for the community maybe i'm putting words in your mouth but to me that's what all these sort of smaller pieces would build up to is like how are you establishing yourself as a competent professional leader who has done all the box dipping i hear what you're saying like everyone has to take a box i just feel like i want you to push yourself to do more because i actually think you're capable of doing more i really do that's my pep talk from western massachusetts uh i do have some comments eric if you want to if you want to you to respond or if you want me to just um i'll listen first um so it's interesting because what i want the feedback i want to give i guess more to the committee is
045that i i i actually i think i under i fully understand that that the structure that sort of julia and anna are discussing but or and i guess my one and only experience doing the evaluation process as i look at this i think the structure that is provided here is a more useful structure to completing the evaluation process than what i fully understand the idea that anna's sort of describing about having sort of a higher level goal i just as a matter of practicality i look at this and i i'm thinking about my job in terms of doing an appropriate evaluation and i think i see this as these goals being divided up the way that you have them would allow me to make i think useful evaluative comments as we move along as i
046think about the formative assessment as we move along so that's my two cents on that um but i do understand the comments of the committee eric i'm gonna let you comment okay thank you i i appreciate the feedback and certainly that's what my expectation was coming in here there would be some feedback related and you know given the realities of our district we are in an unusual spot i i agree with okay what's that leadership piece look like in real life on unattached if you will to say district goals just kind of being out there and and being being the face as as anna said you know it's one of the things that i think you will see through this process that that's you know me being out there and being involved and being a
047part of the communities is really the kind of the backbone of all of this structure that will make you know can some of these other things come to life more clearly as as we go through the process i think the strategic planning process the mtss process are not one and done these are multi-year goals that will continue and grow as we just determine you know the direction of the district so we have this conversation at half at the halfway mark about my goals then it allows me to start to turn the ship based on your feedback say okay we need to turn in this direction as we establish this long-term strategic planning process that's an intricate process that involves again a lot of people and a lot of feedback and really trying to hone in
048on what we as a group want to do in in light of you know what we can do with with budgets or with resourcing and people over time strategically either a three or five year plan and those are all conversations i think we still need to have so i think this for me was just foundational you know coming in october 1st versus coming in july 1st i think it might have been maybe structured differently but i i do agree with the feedback i think you know there's there is a strong need for leadership presence in this district and i get that i understand that and it you know that's part of i'll let me go back and think that through a little bit and see how it relates and and maybe maybe in in reformulating
049some of these in in direct relation to the rubric itself instead of to our specific district goals maybe that's a maybe that's a different way to do it so i appreciate it right thank you anybody else okay thank you for your work on that eric and we look forward to seeing them again um okay so we have next up on the new business we have um as we had agreed we talked briefly we had a discussion regarding the regional agreement um and we agree and we decided to put it on here i um i guess i'll open up by saying um i well we're in in a few minutes we're going to get um a recommendation um and potentially vote on the school attorney i mean the uh excuse me the um district um attorney
050and i guess i'm open for anyone who has more questions or more information that you want but i guess i'd like to put out there that um after conversations with eric and really sort of thinking about it it seems to me that we might really want to wait to make any decisions until we can meet with our new attorney but that's you know i'm open for discussion david um really what i wanted to say is as we operate as a district right now as we're coming out of and it's still really in the you know sort of this area of transition um the only thing one of the only things we really have to fall back on is this backbone of our current moa right i mean our current district agreement so it makes it
051doesn't make that much sense to sort of take the one foundation document we have that is currently not in flux and throw that in flux amongst everything else that's going on um you know we understand what's going on you know within the district within the two towns sort of what everybody's thinking um and you know but it's just such a tough time to to you know it's it's it's it's our pivot foot basketball right so we can move one way or another based off of this solid document um and to sort of go in i mean there's there's definitely things that we do want to discuss and and you know for the newer members to the um you know to the board it's a complex document and there are some things in there that as
052you read through as you get to sort of realize a limitation for us as a district you know we do want to go back and discuss at some point but you know where at the same time you know four of our members are on the you know newer side that maybe you know a little bit further down the line as we understand more of the nuances within the um the agreement itself that would make more sense you know once we're working with an attorney for a while once we have our superintendent in place for a while um and you know we're not sort of dealing with all these covet issues right the aftermath of covet then it makes a lot more sense to say okay because it's going to be a long complex discussion and
053you know and really um you know something that it could change a lot of things and and to sort of try and discuss that now just doesn't make the most sense you know that that's my view from from sitting here for five years thank you um and i will say um you know because i've had um i have asked some questions is you know hamilton's the one that sent the letter um so i do think i you know when i um actually i'm going to have another convert or a conversation excuse me with um bill olson um i do think it's it's it's okay for us to get more information from them about what they're looking at and um you know to get clarity just to ask questions um but at this time like i
054said i i agree with what david said there's a lot going on and you know i would be interested in what this future attorney advises us um you know one thing i would like to put out there is it might be an opportunity once once we get that person in place to have that person attend a meeting and give us some you know thoughts on the regional agreement so that's just a thought but thank you for that david i appreciate it um other people anna thank you dana um i i mean i sort of agree with david um for sure and i i do think it's wise to wait for a new council to come on board it feels a little bit it feels like a like it would be unwise for us to formally
055open a conversation without having our counsel up to speed um that said you know i guess i want to understand as you framed it getting more information i still stand by what i said before which is i think that we as a courtesy to the town of hamilton even though wenham's letter had indicated that they didn't see it as a priority i think when any one of our town boards says we'd really like to talk to you about x issue i think it's good form for us to say okay let's try to understand what that means however i do agree with you that i wait to open a formal negotiation of it until council is in place but i think i i still feel like i want to understand what they're asking the other thing
056that's a little bit up in the air and legally i don't know what it means at all for us but um right now the state has been considering redistricting on a legislative level and at present there's if the president plan were to hold i think wenham is split into two different legislative districts and hamilton is in yet another i do not know what effect that might have on funding or allocations or sourcing but i'm a little bit concerned about opening up something legal when there are these sort of state-level forces and i don't maybe it means nothing but it's um it's just something i i'm thinking about and i don't know what that means if you have multiple representatives across a regional school district it's been represented instead of having one ref you know brad
057hill was always our one representative we potentially would have three representatives if that redistricting held which it's just something else that's kind of percolating and then i also do agree that the district has a lot going on and a lot of really big goals as do the towns the towns are both doing master planning there's a lot of big thinking happening so i do agree it's sort of like you know there's an old piece of advice that you should move have a child and get a new job all at the same time like there's just too much big stuff happening this is really big and i think if we're going to do it i want to really understand why we're starting to do it and also what our potential end game might look like and
058right now i don't know that i feel comfortable making any sort of right decisions but i do feel like we have to have some sort of courtesy response to the town of hamilton especially to understand what they're to to show respect that they've asked for a conversation i think we need to honor that somehow thank you anna um yeah and i and i would say it's not just a courtesy it's it's it's it's genuine we really do you know we we are all in you know one community and i genuinely do want to understand fully what it is um they're saying and that's and you know so i so thank you um all right um anybody else okay um all right next up i'm gonna turn it over to eric for the um problem solving
059guide thank you very much um this is a product that has been vetted by the leadership team more for accuracy than anything and um borrowed with with permissions from several districts around here in response to conversations that occurred at meetings school committee meetings here related to what do i do if a parent reaches out to me or this happens or that happens i i really try to design this not only for people here on the committee as a kind of a reference guide to say oh if a parent reaches out or comes up to me at a soccer game and says this happened there's a kind of a quick guide to say oh then here's what you do so that we're all on the same page and i think the the the idea will be
060to you know as as i talked about with one member yesterday kind of marketing this over and over through the school year so that you know it's it's going to be uh front and center on the website on each school website so it's not like well you know where do i find this document it's right there on the front of every single web front page of websites and then disseminating it again widely and continuously probably every 60 or 90 days to say hey by the way and that could go out in an update every once in a while it could be attached to every update as a as a link so there's a lot of opportunities to really get this out there and drive it out there and um i do intend to make one
061change on the on the suggestion of a member today that um what if all else fails that's one of the things that you know what what if some parent goes through the whole process of the elementary level and it doesn't work and what we're going to do to resolve that is add a paragraph at the end to say if all else fails and you don't kind of get satisfactory responses here's what you're going to do you're going to you're going to reach out to me and then then it's in in my lap to be able to deal with but i think this gives people a process and people can understand it and it keeps you kind of from saying um i don't know like email i'll email the superintendent and find out now we can
062just say here's where you go and here's what you can do and then again we'll publish it and help people to understand it and ask principals to publish it in their in their communications as well thank you people have questions jen i came up with one after we got off the phone for elementary level step two what is the difference between the adjustment counselor and the school counselor so it's it's really the adjustment counselor and school counselor so school counselors are specifically doing that you know kind of day-to-day classroom counseling they're more of um how would i describe it more of a curriculum based they're working on skill sets with kids at that level um so try to connect it with things that they do like when they're in a particular setting or when how
063they act how they react i guess is how we looked at it when they're at lunch versus when they're in you know a classroom and there's a behavioral issue they're really two different responses and it's going to depend on the school some schools have two counselors and others have one so it's it's really going to be school dependent as well yeah i just didn't know if there was a difference yeah mostly situational in in given that the school counselors are really structured around a curriculum at any level so if you if you go to the guidance at the high school level for instance where i would be able to speak more clearly about it they have a particular curriculum that they follow so we try to connect the dots there the things that they would
064talk about in those instances whereas the adjuster the adjustment counselor would be more trying to help kids through these navigate if you will um uh anna thanks dana um i had the same question as jen but i guess i'm still a little bit confused so for example my kid is a cutler i'm not familiar with that so you're saying some elementary schools have two counselors and some only have one correct the winthrop has two consulars um so okay that's helpful that's good i didn't know that um one question i have two questions so something that's not really addressed is and maybe it's understood but what if the concern is about the person that you're supposed to go to you know what if a student is having a problem with the teacher about something in the
065classroom and doesn't feel comfortable talking to the teacher or doesn't feel comfortable talking to the assistant principal about something is it understood that they could elevate it to the next level or could they go to a different person if they're more comfortable with that person because they have a relationship with them um that's one question and then the other section i wonder if we need to add and this sort of gets to something that we've been talking i've been talking about as an agenda item but what if it's a community-based concern about something bigger in the district like you know something about the superintendent's office something about the bus i guess the bus routes could be a bus concern but as a committee member i feel like sometimes i get concerns and i still don't
066quite know where i would put them because it's solely based on grade level issues and very student focused what would be a similar path if it was community focused and how would you want us to advise people to elevate it sure i think the the reality of what's occurring is important to understand and if you i'm going to use um georgetown as an example their recent events that they've had there would certainly not go to anywhere but the superintendent's office to sort out so i and that's what i would say if somebody reached out to me i would i would take that and and certainly put the right staff in the right places to navigate that along with myself so i think the bigger community issues that come to any school committee member our lines
067of communications are wide open like you can call me on sunday at midnight if you want to but um those are i think pieces that i understand as as my role as superintendent and i think all of us can agree to as as kind of the leading the charge if you will but this is more of trying to manage all those school level issues there are other things that will spill in police issues that you know may involve a staff member for example that like ann is saying that certainly would come to me to be able to sort it out so there's still kind of that quarterbacking piece if if you will by the superintendent on these larger scale issues um we're a small district 1700 kids so it's it's not you know it's not
068far to go to get answers and to connect people together so i think this was generally just for here kind of the things that happen most often in our school district and the bigger issues tend to get elevated i mean immediately you know this the second night i was i was kind of the second night i was officially appointed i got a call at nine o'clock at night from the police they called me directly so that's just the relationship we have with people in the community as well and i think that's important to note that most of the you know the kind of police fire and the community-based people the town managers know they can reach out to me at any time they all have my direct connection so and it's the same i think
069with school committee i wouldn't want you to sit and ponder through this chart and say well it doesn't fit anywhere so i don't know what to do that would come directly to me and ultimately it's my responsibility if something doesn't get sorted out it's going to end up in my lap and i think that's you know the kind of the piece that i'll add at the end if your concern doesn't you know get alleviated or doesn't you're not satisfied then you know ultimately it'll come to me in the long run and somebody may jump through all these hoops to get there and that's an important piece of the puzzle as well if you start to look at problem solving within our school community and then within the greater towns thank you um i just want
070to add eric that for me i think this is a really important document that is i read it as empowering for parents um which is what i think um and for students i think i particularly liked the high school um i know it said it in the high school and i believe in the middle school it encouraged that the student ought to you know be the one if you know obviously given depending on the circumstance but to be the one to take the first advocacy step and i see this i like having this document out available to parents it sets up an empowerment kind of that you as the parent can you have resources you have ways there there's a process and that um having a document like this sets up an expectation that your
071voice is going to be heard and your problems going to be addressed and i think it's um i think this is actually a very important step in doing that in addressing it it feels empowering to know that oh there's a process i can follow and here it is so so thank you for that one thing please so i i didn't mention there's kind of an education piece to this so there's an expectation that at each school level uh principals will also kind of say to parents here like if they have like uh curriculum night would have been a great night to showcase something like this we have everybody there here's a process here's how it works and at least that education piece can happen so we'll continue to find ways to to continue to educate
072people including kids like kids should see this students should see this document i don't think it's a you know an adult-only document because there are kids even at the high school level that say i'm i'm not sure what to do or an example that dr carr and i were talking about what if you know it's a male female issue what do they do in response so that's a piece we'll have to address at the kind of that end paragraph if you will but there are there are some things that you'll cover all the bases with and others that get a little more tricky i just want to add too its communication isn't one way it's not eric communicating to us it's like you're saying dana and and eric it's parents communicating and knowing what channels
073and how to advocate for their child and themselves and their families okay thank you um all right next uh i'm not sure was it well eric and anna have been doing a lot of work and i'm going to turn this next agenda item over to them to talk about a recommendation on a potential [Music] school committee council hannah do you want to take this one sure okay um so the memo that has been presented to you is sort of a really good summary of our process but i'll go over sort of a verbal highlight um eric and i both reached out to our respective professional organizations superintendents and school committee members to just do a little fishing to see if names came up and i think fortunately there were a few common names that kept
074coming up over and over so we developed a short list of initially four firms that we wanted to hear more from so that was the first sort of happy coincidences we didn't have 20 recommendations we could narrow it pretty quickly to four firms that kept getting recommended for different reasons and um i can speak to what i heard from school committee members i put it out on the listserv and got a lot of really nice responses back from other committees across the commonwealth uh with very specific recommendations and also um you know rationale for why they like someone not so we made a short list unfortunately one of the firms that we wanted to interview is so good and so busy they're not taking new clients we didn't actually have a chance to speak with
075them um but the other three we arranged interviews with and we conducted interviews with all three of the firms last friday and based on those interviews um we got to the end of the process and i said to eric okay coach who do you have who do you like best and um he and i were universally in agreement that the firm we felt like was the best representative for us before was o'connell staff attorney that they would uh liaison with us as an attorney named mark terry and we both had a really good feeling about him the good rapport you know very knowledgeable very very seasoned and a lot of experience um so it was fortunate that we both sort of agreed and kind of agreed for the same reasons both experience feeling um i
076personally really liked him because he is also a school committee member and has been a school committee member in amherst i think it is no ashland and um he's living through the same coveted nightmare that we all have been which was actually really reassuring um from her perspective taking so that is our recommendation um there was some other sort of demographic criteria about the firms that we picked up uh you know just numerically we had a small a medium and a large firm mark o'connell is the largest firm that we interviewed they're also the oldest firm that we interviewed which was interesting they've been around for a very long time and have you know been doing this for doing well for a long time so that is our recommendation to you and we feel good
077about our process and the criteria and with your support we would advocate moving forward with them okay thank you anna and thank you so much both of you for all the work that you've done on this i know that it was a lot of time and i appreciate it um what do people have for questions michelle i had asked yesterday how does this compare to our past fees so the the most recent invoice that we've paid it's we paid we've been paying 200 an hour and this is um oddly that this this group was um lowest out of the three i believe or at least right they were all in the same ballpark within five dollars or so these this this merrick o'connell group is 235 an hour they they stress to us you know
078their individual billing outside of schools is for over 400 an hour and for schools they restructure in order to you know help they they get the the idea of the budget constraints within schools so i think that was um a fortunate thing but they were all right around the same 230 235 240 250. um with various other things thrown in there miracle o'connell will do some free workshops for us at the school committee level uh whereas the others would not have they would have charged us for them so they just there's also a wider spectrum of um expertise thank you um if i can just add to that to michelle your question about billing they bill the rates are all very comparable and they also bill in um six minute increments so you're always being
079charged for ten excuse me um as opposed to being charged by the quarter hour uh we're only being charged by the tenth of an hour which that rate would make a difference so it's a little bit more favorable as eric said they um because of the breadth of their firm you know they've really covered everything i think they have 61 attorneys which is you know it's a good size firm so that gave us some comfort that if for some reason um there was a question that came up and and the interview questions that we crafted we talked about regional agreements we talked about working with relatively inexperienced school committee members i freely admitted that our committee is young and a little bit green with a couple exceptions we talked about construction projects and what that
080might mean for us and did they have expertise in management so um you know we sort of asked a lot of different questions but a breadth of things that we as a committee and as a district might encounter in the next few years thank you any other questions okay i just have a comment thank you for taking this on you know it was we've been blessed with naomi for so long in this district that uh it was a daunting task and and i really appreciate you putting so much time and effort into it and eric thank you so much thank you great yes thank you i agree thank you um and i will um well i will take a vote i guess and then i will mention we do want to appreciate naomi and make
081sure we communicate appropriately with naomi um so um okay uh jen you willing to make a motion i move that the hamilton windham regional school committee accepts the recommendation of marek o'connell attorneys at law as the school committee attorney pending the successful execution of any necessary contracts second a second uh seconded by michelle horgan sorry she beat you anna hey do we have any further discussion okay uh oh anna there's just one other thing i want to say before i forget it um and i just want to compliment superintendent tracy and also janelle in the central office in working with this on them they were so organized and timely and helpful and accommodating organizing multiple zoom calls multiple documents receiving documents i just wanna none of that would ever come to public light had i
082not taken a moment to say it right now it was all very behind the scenes work but i think it's really important to recognize when our staff executes at a high professional level and both eric and janelle were super rock stars to deal with especially given my travel schedule work schedule all of my insanity so i just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to both of them and complement their professionalism because it made my life really easy and trying to get through this process and coordinate all this work in the middle of a busy work day so thank you eric and thank you to janelle too who we also put a lot of time in i just wanted to get that in there thank you all right thank you um all right
083um are we ready for a vote okay all those in favor and that is unanimous of the six members present and the motion passes um i uh eric i can you and i or you and anna can talk about what we actually need to do in order to go about making that next process happen if there is anything um i will um i'm just speaking out loud i will definitely um contact naomi unless somebody else wants to be the contact person but i'll contact naomi she has been doing such a great job just hanging on with us um and in her retirement she's been with us months longer than she had intended we're very appreciative so i'll be in touch with her okay and i'll reach out to the other i wanted to wait till
084tonight to reach out i'll reach out to everybody else tomorrow morning just let them know okay which direction we're great all right um and i i will you know just on the off chance that she's you know that she's watching i'll contact naomi tomorrow but um knowing that we have she'll understand that we have a process in place still but she knows so okay uh all right vinnie i think you're up get off this don't trip do we need to turn in around or or is she going to be able to see it on her that's okay i as long as it's just the handout from the exhibit video i printed it and have it so you're good now there's people there okay tonight's so some budget realities that i faced while uh conducting this
085forecast is the fact that only 25 of the fiscal year has passed and when you look at it as the number of school days there's only been 20 of 180 school days in the past or roughly 11 of the school year while going through the budget one thing to point out is that our 22 budget only incorporated a 1 cola while most of our staff next uh the budget did not incorporate the 500 copic supplemental payment that most of our bargaining members that will be receiving uh the budget currently is and this represents the addition of the math teacher at the middle school the biggest factor to consider is the fy 21 prepaid tuitions that i'll go over in a second and then lastly one thing to mention is i did not perform a line-by-line
086analysis on this forecast as it's the first forecast and again only 11 percent of school years a lot is going to change at year end of approximately 330 000 this is how it is dispersed this is how you disperse it over each deci category uh so to go into prepaid tuitions for a moment at the end of fy21 uh you guys authorized us to prepay tuitions at the end of 21 we 1.09 million dollars in prepaid tuitions so what this means is we use fy21 unspent funds in order to cover unbudgeted or unforeseen expenses in fy 22. so what are those on budgeted expenses right now this is kind of just a running list of the major budget categories 1 cola this is roughly costing us an additional 214 000 district-wide this covers everyone from
087the teachers the tas the administrators and the custodians in addition to that accumulates up to roughly 175 000. in addition we spent approximately 34 000 for which was not covered by a grant on the academic support program at the ymca over the summer excuse me in addition it was brought to my attention in about late june that there was an issue with the lighting system at the high school auditorium during the past year there was an electrical issue that caused one of the motherboards to forward heat so it's becoming kind of a safety issue that we really need to address and get that replaced this year in addition there are a few stipends across the district mlp stands for uh my learning plan which is the platform teachers use to track salary advancement and tuition
088reimbursement due to our retirement and kind of the mlp guru retired in addition during the 2002 budget cycle we had removed all the t-shirt in charge sightings come to find out we needed them at an elementary level so we have them back in the next thing is the new teacher mentor stipends so the history around this is every year when we hire new teachers tesser requires us to give them a mentor the mentor that they receive receives a stipend for their work last year during covid in an effort to not bring people together we did not run the mentor program so this is the second year and we have to backfill everyone we didn't mentor last year which is why we have more teachers this year roughly nine more of them than we had budgeted
089for this is uh accounting for about an 11 000 increase as i mentioned before the additional 0.2 math teacher at the middle school is costing roughly 13 000 uh the next segment is around the high school guidance office so this year we had a retirement but the retirement isn't happening until late october so in order to have a seamless hired a transition at the start of the year so we had to cover two salaries for the first two months of school in addition to that the amount we budgeted for the new staff member came in a little bit higher than we expected so as a result those two items combined in the high school guidance office are contributing for a little less than a twenty thousand dollar increase the next item is technology so darren
090copeland when we issued out all of our ipads and chromebooks to help support students when all those devices came back we were missing chargers some of the screens were broken and a lot of them were just damaged overall and the it department really needs to replace all these items vinnie can i can i interrupt and ask can i ask i'm just actually asking hw cam can you turn vinnie's mic up just a little bit talk closer thank you so the next item is their strategic plan as many of you know we did add 20 000 in our strategic plan majority of that money was spent on the portrait of a graduate so if we want their strategic plan to move forward and if we are going to contract it out we need about estimated 40
091000 for this the next item is about an additional 52 for contracted services relating to maintaining students in district in order for us to not send them out of district we had to contract out more services this is costing us about an additional 52 000 from now to the year end the last item on the list is tents as some of you know a lot of the tents were covered by the esser grant but the esser grant wasn't improved until october so from the beginning of school in the end of august to the beginning of october we can't apply the cost of those tents to the grant so the general fund has to pick that up so in all i'm estimating about an additional six hundred and sixty thousand dollars in unbudgeted expenses so add
092the two together from a big pitcher perspective we prepaid about a million dollars in tuitions at the end of last year and we have about 660 000 in unbudgeted expenses so this is where i'm coming up with our roughly 335 000 uh predicted fund balance at the end of the year so that's kind of the overall budget um presentation the next one the next few slides are around the transfers just to walk you through the first one so when we originally built our 22 budget we did not want to reveal our cards while we were negotiating so the 1 cola that we built into the budget we placed it instead of placing it on each individual line therefore being able to see what we have budgeted for increase we put it all in our insurance
093account so this first transfer takes that one percent out of the insurance deck and distributes it out amongst each of the eight categories that covered all of the staff members so this is the first transfer that moves out the original one that we put in so then the second transfer is the additional one percent on top of the other one percent that we didn't budget for that is coming directly out of the prepaid tuitions account that will again be dispersed out into the eight different accounts so as you can see just with these well let me do one more so then transfer number three is the five hundred dollar covet supplement payment that i believe is roughly costing us 170 000 as i said before this one again is distributed out into all of the
094deci categories so these three transfers are really the main reason i didn't do a line-by-line analysis it's the main reason i didn't go through everyone's salary lines because i need the amounts to actually be the correct amount to therefore recalculate everyone's salary to give you a proper estimate of where we're going to be at the end of the year when you have to factor in the original one percent that's not there the additional one percent this coca payment um even my eyes start to get crossed when i go through it so then transfer number four is everything else that i covered on the previous slide it's the additional ymca the lighting the additional stipends the math teacher and so forth so this fourth transfer takes care of every other item on the list i think
095that's it so yeah that would be the motion if you so what's next the next is the second quarter forecast which obviously ends on december 30th i will probably present it either the end of late january the beginning of february but that forecast will include all the salary breakage so what i mean by that is in our 22 budget we may have budgeted for a certain individual to be at masters you know step four but we actually hire somebody at a bachelor step three so whatever those savings are is what i refer to as a salary breakage so once the second quarter rolls around i will i will include that in the forecast again one of the reasons was because of all the transfers but a second reason is we have a lot of vacant
096positions right now so hopefully by then they'll be filled and we can have a more accurate number and the third reason i didn't do it is we had over 70 new employees this year all 70 of those employees have approximately two months to give us their transcripts which directly will change their salary going back to day one so even if i went through every person most likely there's going to be about 40 of them that change between now and the next three weeks which again the time i would spend on it not to say it would be worthless but would have to all would have to be all done the second item is health insurance so during the second quarter i will go through and do an analysis on who took insurance and who did
097not during open enrollment again this relates to the 70 employees they have until the end of they had to the end of september to give it to us so they're not going to be properly reflect reflected on our health insurance bill until october so we don't know exactly who they are as of september 30th and then again the second quarter will include a line by line analysis where we will meet with every department head and kind of go through their their budget and their lines to properly reflect the forecast for the second one so just to end it i really it's just we need to proceed with caution this is really only the first quarter a lot of things are going to change from then until now even though we are predicting uh a roughly
098dollar balance that really only represents one percent of our budget that's really where you wanna be at the end of the year uh healthy budget kind of ends with one two percent leftover um so it's really not something you can go and say what can we go spend this three hundred thousand dollars on that's something you really would want to do come april after the third quarter not after the first one as i said many many things are gonna change so that kind of does it i can go back to the motions all right thank you very much um before we do the motions anyone have any questions i actually do have one um it's about the technology lost or damaged during remote learning i remember having to sign a waiver saying that if something
099was lost or missing we would get billed yeah so we did bill a lot of people but some of the stuff was kind of just wear and tear that we didn't appropriately you know charge them for so a lot of the technology that we did disperse was already four or five years old so by the time it got back to us it wasn't so much that the student broke it it was just that it's now past its useful life but we didn't really have a handle on that technology until it all got back to us so yes we did bill out some people but a lot of people who left during coven also left without paying their bill fair enough um anna so i have a few questions and a couple concerns some of this
100makes sense to me why it's unbudgeted right the cola and the covid payment are are clearly in the category of things that we we we hedged and the contract came out different so those i'm actually not bothered by i'm not bothered by the out of district placement you can't control that you know a math teacher here a stipend there that the salary in the guidance office some of it makes sense to me that it's quote unquote unbudgeted and vinnie and superintendent tracy this will sound critical to you but it's not meant to be personal at all but there are some of these things i just don't understand why it's unbudgeted and maybe that goes back to mary banos or maybe it's on us or i just don't know but i don't understand why we would
101have not foreseen the lighting auditorium problem and built that into the budget i don't understand why we would not have foreseen that the technology might need to be replaced i really want an explanation as to why we didn't budget for the strategic plan when that is literally goal number one of this district and i don't understand why we don't have that in the budget when that was literally the first goal ends with a strategic plan so i can accept that we have some unbudgeted things due to covid same thing with the tents i mean we kind of foresaw that we would need tents i don't understand why we're not using escrow funds for that i also am still really unclear as to why we didn't use all the esr funding for the ymca camp i
102remember when that was pitched to us we were told it would be grand funded it would be this great thing and now you're saying it's going gonna cost us thirty four thousand dollars in on budgeted money so i don't really have i guess i mean and yeah i guess my other frustration is you know i don't feel like we as a committee have any latitude to say no here like i you know we have to pay these expenses have come up you're saying they're unbudgeted um but i'm looking at this and i i guess i sort of want an explanation especially on the things that i guess i feel like we should have been able to budget for i do not understand the strategic plan i guess if it's not part of the budget then
103why is it not part of the forty thousand seven hundred dollars that's under the superintendent contract and services line item there's also this twenty five thousand dollar non-exempt superintendent office budget i remember raising those as questions i don't remember what the non-exempt superintendent office budget is but i would love someone to explain to me why goal number one of our district is quote unquote unbudgeted how did that happen and how do we fix that so i think i have answers for every one of those but you hit me with so many outcomes i know i have that effect on people i know what i heard so the tense i did mention this before we did build it into the esser grant but the eso grant was not improved until after the tents were installed we
104cannot place the expenditures before the grant was approved onto the grant therefore we have to cover it from the general fund when we built the 22 budget mary beth was under the assumption that cobid was going to be over and we were not going to use the tents that's why they were not built into the budget the next thing i believe you might have asked was about their strategic plan we did build in 20 000 for this strategic plan we also built in 20 000 for the portrait of the graduate but the portrait of the graduate came in at roughly 36 000 which ate up all of the money for both the portion of a graduate and their strategic plan those are about the only two i've ever mounted the auditorium lighting if the motherboard
105was that just not that was in june of 2021 that was presented to me we got the budget approved in february of 2021 so we had no knowledge of the lighting issue at the time the budget was developed okay i think the other one anna mentioned was the ymca ymca we had mentioned that a few months ago that also relates to the esr grant we did put a little bit on the master grant but that also was not approved until after we had i know mary beth had mentioned that we were over on that account and that was because of that i really don't have an explanation on why she did that all right vinnie i totally appreciate i appreciate all of that i just from a if i'm if i'm the public looking in
106on this it it just looks like anna can i interrupt because uh superintendent tracy would like to address anything um the esser grant has come up a number of times there people should know that we put in fifty thousand dollars for tents in the s or three if you think back to the september meeting we had um that was submitted i think october fourth and and you know we can't spend any of that money until we have it even though we budgeted twenty thousand four tenths in the spring out of the fall and then another 30 for tents in the spring we we don't know if we'll need those but we're anticipating that and um the ymca piece also an sr3 we had a discussion i want to say back on the second meeting in
107september as well about this because there had to be some money moved and then in sr3 i added in another ymca program for next summer so we're allowed to extend that out so i took advantage of that um opportunity and just built it in the the same amount 35 000 or 40 000 into fy23 so that we could offer that for our kids again without having to actually we don't have to budget it in our overall budget okay um yeah go ahead um thank you all for that i think man i guess it all makes sense i guess i just the point i want to drive home and i don't know if we can fix it moving forward but from a budgeting standpoint even if you subtract out the the negotiations piece of it which
108is significant that's almost 400 000 of this unbudgeted amount it's it's really frustrating to see that we have all these unbudgeted things it makes me question like well what on earth did we budget right like that that's a significant delta of what we budgeted versus not and then again as a committee level i totally understand we have to pay the bills but i feel i feel really powerless that if i didn't support one of these transfers or do something with it like at this point there's nothing we could do about it and it just sort of feels it feels fatalistic because i feel like i don't understand why our budget was was off in these ways and i want to figure out how we can try to avoid that from happening again in the future
109um especially things that have nothing to do with it the covent stuff is different i mean that's i don't know i'm just i'm frustrated that our budget is off by this far so early in the year like that makes that makes me concerned about what else is working in the budget that we're unaware of and i appreciate that you put in there proceed with caution i think that's exactly right so if you remove the cola in the coconut you're talking about less than point less than one percent so that means the budget is 99.2 accurate okay thank you um vinnie can you move it to the slide so that we can have the motion i've got it oh okay all right jen go for it i move that the hamilton one and regional school committee
110approves the fiscal year 2022 operating expense budget transfers as recommended here in by the assistant superintendent of finance and administration and as presented on the previous slides entitled transfer number one transfer number two transfer number three and transfer number four second second by michelle horgan is there further discussion okay all those oh you have a discussion jen i i understand why anna's frustrated i think we need to be careful that the frustration gets aimed at the person responsible i don't think vinnie or superintendent tracy were responsible for these mistakes so i think again we just need to make sure that we're not taking out our frustration on them because it seems like they're already planning in advance so that this doesn't happen again okay um and yeah i mean i don't know that we need
111to believe or i don't i don't know that many of these would be in my mind um mistakes necessarily they're things that occurred so um okay uh anna um i just want to offer clarification to what jen said i completely agree that's why i sort of started by saying this isn't really directed at vinnie or superintendent tracy i i completely agree with you it's just frustrating and i agree with vinnie that it's you know relatively small percentage it just i guess i just don't like unexpected things that seem like they could have been foreseen that's really my high-level students it seems like we should have been able to see some things but i do appreciate that it's a it's a small amount but i i also appreciate that you inherited this budget fully and you're
112simply executing it and i know that and you know we're all in it together so i appreciate jen saying that okay are we ready to vote okay all those in favor and that is unanimous of the six members present and the motion passes okay thank you vinnie for all of that okay eric uh we are ready we are moved up to the review of our face covering policy as we do at every meeting if you can sure i think everybody's probably got it but uh anna he's uh eric is just putting up the uh data uh dashboard which i think is exhibit two so the one thing you'll notice in i try to stay in touch with our nurses a couple times a week to figure out some of these numbers as i've said before
113these numbers come from a document that's shared with me from the pope from the winnem and the hamilton uh town nurses this is not a school department information so i'm grateful for them for keeping it up to date and for giving me the access to be able to be able to jump into this so our cases are are dropping in or or the same in our communities so right now we're looking at um in hamilton the town of hamilton over the last week two cases within the town you know new cases um town of wenham one new case um and then the the ad aggregate excuse me over the over a 14 day period is is 10 cases 0.7 positive cases at the school in the last week zero pool testing the last group was
114126 pools and then the the um percentages of vaccinations you will notice uh the one that stood out to everybody it was the cutler and the 80 range is now up to 96.84 some of that is data retrieval as i think i mentioned earlier a number of our teachers don't live in the state so if they got vaccinated in another state they wouldn't come up in the mass system that our our snap system is linked to so with the recent policy decision that you made regarding requirement of vaccination people have started to upload their cards into our snap system following following the instructions that went out with that memo about a week after you had determined that that um stance so that's where our data is and and again we're not seeing a lot in
115school we are seeing some cases at home but not coming to school they may get identified at home over the weekend and they tend to keep them at home there are a few cases like that around our districts but nothing has there's been no huge increase anywhere within our system so what we're doing is working okay um so are there any questions for the committee from the committee um jen it's again this is related to this with the holidays coming up do we need to develop or reinforce some type of travel policy for people who decide to go out of state for thanksgiving and or christmas so i i would say unless we're going to create our own town policy there isn't a requirement for the state of massachusetts or for deci on on travel
116right now i mean we would certainly say recommend to people please double check get tested um it's just there's nothing that's in place right now for us to lean back on to say yes the state is is recommending it or or the department of education is recommending it yeah it wasn't true a couple of the universities i work at have travel policies yeah my daughter school does too other questions anna um what percentage of our overall student population is participating in the pool testing right now do you know so if i were to guess there's 126 pools with with about approximately seven to eight sometimes nine in a pool uh so if you do that math you're looking at probably 45 across the district right the seven or eight some staff members yeah some staff
117members are in there um not a ton but yeah some staff members elect to be in the pools um but i i don't know have an exact count i could certainly get that for you but no i was just curious like the rough percentage what did that yield and and similarly are the pools uh skewed towards elementary or are they participation-wise i would say yes that they would be skewed but they they actually increased last week we had four extra pools so there's approximately 40 extra kids roughly other questions um can we maybe ask um our teachers union to maybe do another poll of their staff members and maybe have it be specific to the schools that are at the higher rate high school and see what their comfort level is for mask versus unmasked
118yeah i can do that yeah and again it might like jen was saying it might not make sense with the holidays coming up in the next six weeks um but maybe just get a pulse and and michelle i want to thank you for that i think um you were the one that had this agenda item be added to every meeting i think it's a really important thing to get i think continue to get information and be really forward-looking one of the things i would want you know at some point it's likely that we're going to need to have another mask discussion policy and getting gathering information is important um from from to my mind this it would be important that we do that in a way that um you know so that way as much
119information as possible inclusive inclusive and as much information as possible and yeah and um you know so that no one is feeling like that things are coming at them too quickly for them to process or to make input so thank you um have we um have we heard from desi does the middle school and high school count as one building or two determined on a district level it would be determined at the district level so in some cases where the buildings are actually connected together and kids cross over in in you know like like um georgetown how high is georgetown middle high school is the only one i can think of right off the top my head they have 7-12 and they kind of intersperse we have a fairly distinct separation between middle and high
120school the the major shared area being the library so that would be how something we would talk about at that point like how how does that impact kids what does that look like does that become a masking zone something like that there's a lot of options i think to look at and i know the kids are writing about it in their school newspaper and they're reaching out to ask questions and i think it's important to bring them give them a voice in the conversation i think you know maybe along with the staff and reaching out to people in the community as well in our in a school community to get that kind of general feeling of of masks versus no masks would be important if that's if that's all right yeah okay thank you all
121right next up is a update on the district goals thank you very much roll through some of the things that are happening there there's a lot going on as usual we've been very busy for the first 11 percent of the school year as as vinnie mentioned um portra the graduate we went through some of the feedback from last session to try to get a feel for where people were people had homework assignments they were you know submitting a 50-word response to the hope streams and aspirations they also we also excuse me aggregated and disaggregated some data related to the landscape shifts that we talked about during that first session so we now have kind of a generalized idea of where people are are focused and not unusually our group is very much focused on the
122human side of what's going on for kids and i think that's a that's huge you know if i would have picked some direction to go that's the direction i would have gone on gone in um and it certainly makes sense coming out of covid and kind of being in lockdown and dealing with all those issues that that we went in that way so they'll be meeting again on the 27th next week all members they'll be reading this great and greater good it's a an article for each of the 50 members to read as part of a discussion next week and we'll also start to bring them into part two of expanding on the landscape discussion and now talking about integration of technology and and how technology impacts our kids and their futures could you share
123those articles absolutely people who are part of that group absolutely and we'll put out the information um within the within the superintendent's updates so that people can can actually see you know here's the first chart like you'll see tomorrow's update there'll be this article plus there's a there's a bar chart that i think is important for people to see like where the group of 50 lean towards dei um lot going on there we did the first pd for staff on the 13th 191 people in a zoom that actually was very well managed and and went extremely well i was a little nervous about that big of a zoom call but um it was it was handled well by regis and and stacy they they really um took some time to organize it and make sure
124that uh things went smoothly we have our leadership team you'll actually notice we added a b to the d e i e dei you know the diversity equity inclusion and belonging and that's a piece that we've been encouraged to add in our conversations from the uh journey partners equity journey partners uh regis shields um she's she built that into the first training and it was really good it was actually good to kind of bring that to light um so the first committee meeting was on the 20th of the deib committee they just kind of set their norms and did their general introductions they'll start to plan out what the equity audit is i think we need to do a little education first before we jump into it it's important to lay out for the community
125so that they understand what's happening there are some people who you know didn't get picked for the committee for example are kind of they're a little bit down and they didn't get picked but we still have opportunities for them in this process because there'll be a good number of focus groups over the that kind of three and a half almost four month period to gain information so their insight will will still be useful and very much needed um and then the deib committee will continue to meet the first wednesday of each month november third they combine the advisory committee and district leadership they're doing a visioning session and that's that's uh really kind of what it what it should be and how it should look based on uh what the what the consultants have laid
126out for us so everybody has an understanding at the district leadership level and then um november 12th pd is the all day pd that will be a really deep dive and we're doing that in split sessions so we have the i believe it's the elementary going first in the morning they'll be doing a number of different groups and then it'll flip in the afternoon there'll also be sessions at the secondary level same sessions just different different building locations so that's exciting to to kind of finally be up and running and then the pd plan outline which was laid out by the by the group by the dei group and it gives a basic excuse me i can't open it there we go uh basic outline of what's generally going to happen across this whole process
127including the meetings through the year the four sessions and then also the work that will be done at the school level so a lot going on there and then teaching and learning the mtss piece at the elementary this is a fascinating uh thing for me to to be involved in not you know being a secondary person it's uh it's been interesting i'm grateful for jen clifford and the elementary principals for kind of leading my kind of leading me through this as well because um it is really interesting with the data that they already have the data that they've already collected in that first round and i think uh dr car may have asked the last time you know okay when's the when do we see that kind of next set and i believe we'll collect
128data near the end of december within december and then do the comparatives and that'll give us a good idea of the resiliency of our kids being back in school um so early bird uh which is uh dyslexia screener that was that was administered dibbles uh is finished and that's the the one uh piece that they were comparing yesterday during their professional development time they went into grade level teams and they actually looked at that student level data and tried to identify trends or even individual issues so much so that in one case a student came up that was highlighted based on scores that [Music] may need to be plugged into a different approach and that was just based on looking at the the initial data that was picked up so i think that's important for
129us to to know that we're already picking up um some of those kind of missing pieces if you will and they'll just they'll continue to do that through the school year there's three different data collections we've joined the mass literacy support network and jenna's involved in that group pretty heavily she's she's worked with them in previous years but it's one of the things you apply to and try to get involved with so we're getting some support from them as well and then the instructional coaches are inventorying the district resources to teach reading skills pre-k to five and this is what i talked about doing the same thing at each building we don't do that now and we're finding that we do it differently even in the same building to no one's fault it's really just
130not been as organized as it has been there's a lot of uh like study groups occurring about the science of reading there's opportunities for teachers to grow in particular areas while they're doing this work and the coaches have done a great job ramping up and getting all the the pieces in place and resourcing and then helping teachers to understand what they have or reaching out and try to find out what they need we're kind of in that what they need mode looking at even when you're looking at like disability categories um or disability uh excuse me are program categories like what type of program are kids involved in are they getting the same services so that inclusion equity pieces is starting to shine through for us in this work just kind of naturally so the
131secondary secondary level they just completed a curriculum audit that was uh one of our benchmarks on the the district goals 10 15. we will present that i believe it's that next meeting i believe it's in the first meeting in november um to show you what it looks like and and how they're using it and they've actually come up with a couple of other steps the curriculum leaders at the high school have really been focused on this understanding the connection a knee ass coming up but also for their own i think for their own edification they've been able to say all right we have this this audit and tells us what to do how do we help teachers now take that to the right step so they've developed this counter sheet that does you know kind
132of puts people excuse me puts parts of our curriculum in two frames and they happen to be kind of in a red mode or a green mode if you're in green mode you're really just kind of continuing to update if you're in that red mode there are there are some things that are that are missing in the udb charts or something missing in the design of your overall lesson so that work continues and again the the action plans that are being developed under the the uh leadership of the curriculum leaders and the middle and high school principal they have taken that piece over the curriculum piece um and really starting to kind of get it super organized enough so that they can lay out their timeline and they need to also work with the pdc
133professional development committee to find enough opportunities to do that work during our wednesdays when we have that that time period um so there that's where they're at now the world language study group they had their first meeting and it was kind of generalized introductions and here's where we're going uh second meeting drafting questions that they want to send out so that they can they can get a kind of an overall picture through the community of what uh parents students want they also are reaching out to other districts to see what types of models they have in not only similar districts just localized districts they may be bigger school systems but they just still want to identify what kind of models are out there and then the athletic and learning facilities peace there has been an
134agreement executed with gail to perform phase one of planning for tennis courts improvement of the softball field and update pricing for the entire project it's been i think three years it was almost three years so it needed to be updated plus the addition of the tennis court and the softball field were not in the first one so there was money set aside to do that so tom has executed that agreement and then working for uh with the facilities group and identifying some community volunteers to take part in some of the work and that that will be occurring along this kind of new trajectory we have to start actually opening up the door to say you know what what type of um fundraising will occur what what community aspects will be involved how do we connect
135to them i got to tell you from my perspective i've learned that we as a school district have some wounds to heal there's some there are some sore spots in both communities related to past treatment and i think that's important and i i've in in every case so far i've requested to meet with boards individually where that's come up because i think it's important to hear them out find out what kind of the grudge or or what they're upset about and then to build on that so that's part of this process is it's actually helpful to me to get into boards that i wouldn't otherwise be connected to but that can help us in the future growth of the district and then the msba the project zoom meeting was last friday and they just general
136got general information from us and kind of talked us through the the process and then yesterday we met with them um at the cutler school and and toured each of the elementary schools over about a two-hour period um they video things like like places that we want to identify as look this is an issue these are problematic areas these are some things we're having trouble with and then we'll continue to fill them in on data so now we're playing the waiting game for the next 10 weeks and that will be you know we'll have a determination of yes we'll invite you in the process or reapply again in in march so and and you know of course we'll get feedback from that that whole process as well but um we're keeping a positive eye out
137for it i i think we're gonna you know positive energy as we say in my house we always want to be thinking positive so i think it's a good opportunity for for us to to kick this project off because no matter what it's going to be five to seven years out it's still going to be a long ways out and there are a lot of discussions that will occur not only with us but also in the communities before we even get there again that whole transparency thing what does it mean why are we doing it what does it look like how do we kind of meet the requirements of the regional agreement et cetera et cetera so this is kind of a bit the bigger picture will come once we hear back from msba and
138that is it for this this week okay that was a lot thank you there's also the school is actually the schools are actually running too so in case anybody is wondering like the teachers are going 100 miles an hour really doing great things in the classroom and all these things occur outside of the classroom these are not these are not taking over for anything so it's important to note that that people are putting in the time and i appreciate it there's so there's a ton of work going on here and i think it's important for us to recognize every time people are doing that it's they're really above and beyond working hard towards these goals thank you do people have questions anna thank you um i have three questions so um one of them is
139about uh the mtss and this is just sort of you might not have an industry yet but i know that the rm scores from last year started to roll in has there been any analysis done on those to see if there's any trends or something coming out of that data i don't necessarily put all my faith in standardized tests but they are interesting data point has anyone discussed what's going on or what the data might show for kids in our district from last year uh i have reviewed all of the mcas data for the district and its cursory review i did not sit there and go point by point but it's no different than what you've read in the paper there's definitely the identification of learning loss across the district i say that delicately because
140i don't 100 buy it and i and that needs to be public because the tests were different they're comparing data from very different tests to 2019 so in some cases our kids only took a portion of the test or one segment of the test and those results are being compared with a full testing cycle of 2019 because in 20 we didn't do it so i i agree and i think the data points are interesting and that type of data is good to use in conjunction with the data we're gathering now through the especially the elementary levels it's important to look at those kind of side by side and a couple of our principles in conversation really want to work towards okay what can i do as an instructional leader to drive that change in in
141particular buildings we we know some buildings have been consistently down in mathematics for example that's important for me and this the particular principle of that building to focus on even though the data is not i mean the state really compared apples and raisins it was it is bizarre to me statistically if you know anything about statistics it's it's not statistically appropriate to do what they've done and that's fine but i think the data points are important to look at and use and then and then compare going moving forward so there's definitely there's some interesting reports that the state does in the um edwin system that we can go in and they are there they break down to the classroom level and even the teacher level if we want to to be able to say okay
142what's happening in different locations we can compare uh locations like buildings and things like that so there's really some some opportunity there i just really put that warning out um the the comparison is statistically not appropriate in my opinion um and then two sort of related questions to the dei update so you made reference to some sort of document that has like an overall plan or schedule or what the cadence of activities is going to be is that something that you could share either with the public or with the committee um because i feel like even though we're getting these great updates i still feel like i don't entirely understand all the activity that's going on in the district there's clearly a ton going on but you tell it to us here and i'm writing
143furiously but if there actually is like a document with a roadmap that's been provided i would love to see it in writing so i could think about it and understand what's happening so i guess more of a so does something like that exist yes it's actually on the document i'm reading from and i can share it out to the committee first thing tomorrow morning i would love it and then related to this and i guess this is a little bit of self-accountability for us as a committee i feel like this amazing process is happening to every other part of the district except for the committee and as one of the primary stakeholders one i'm feeling a little bit left out there's this great dei work but if you're not part of any part of it
144a teacher like we as a committee haven't participated in any of the trainings and i just want to be mindful that the masc resolution we all adopted last year talks about annual training on bias and dei issues also for the committee is there at some point a plan to have some of the energy capacity of that sort of 75 or 80 thousand dollars or spending on the partners are they going to work with us should we be soliciting our own trainings should we be budgeting for it because we as a committee haven't done anything other than make it a goal and then listen to updates so where is our action item because i would love to get a little bit more personally involved because i'm frankly feeling a little left out and that bothers me
145i'll jump in good the there are two approaches to that you could do it as a committee but i would suggest you join focus groups and be involved in the focus groups because i think it's important for not only you to hear kind of what what the community is saying but also to be able to kind of give the community your your feelings and opinions around those things as the drivers of what's going on and certainly there will be opportunities for um school committee if you want a singular specific training we can set that up without there's no issue with that it's not a problem we we really want to do this as a community and and in in that sense inviting you into those processes as an as a member of the community rather
146than as a member of a school committee but if you see that differently please let me know and we can we can make the adjustments not a it's not a major issue and i think um we'll also see um some opportunities as we get into the equity part of it for school committee members to be parts of that as well yeah i think i mean that's that's great i guess one thought is sometimes you're going to get a little bit of different input from the community if the school committee person is there or not there so i mean i think i think we should i feel like it's more of an and or both and then the other thing is just in terms of our own accountability you know we've all sort of pledged that
147we're gonna do this we're going to do training annually but right now there's no way to measure that we've actually done that as a group so maybe that's a discussion for you know a future topic or a retreat or something but i think it would be good for us to walk the walk we're asking all these other people to go through training and do the work i think it's really good for us to also do that ourselves not necessarily as like part of the committee like i think the school committee needs to do its own training and do its own work and so far we haven't actually undertaken that as a discrete item so okay um for future meeting baby yes go ahead so one of the things i would i would say to that
148is i will make that happen i don't i don't want it to just float away we'll we will make it happen we'll make sure it happens and certainly i do want you to be involved in those community level discussions as well you know just as as community members as people who have children in the school system i think it's important so we'll do both yeah i just want to echo what anna said because i do feel like i've been hesitant to participate because i don't want it to look like it's the school committee organizing this committee right so i feel like i feel a little conflicted on what my participation should be but i completely agree that that we set it as a goal for us as on a committee level so we need to
149we need to own up to that and have accountability absolutely have accountability for that but thank you for inviting us into the focus groups so okay all right other questions or one more question so when they are doing the audit is the does the audit is the audit really just is it talking to the community doing surveys is it targeting people calling people on the phone going into schools what is what is it or we don't know that it'll be accommodation we don't know that yet the primary the primary piece of it is in person focus groups okay so there'll be targeted focus groups that they'll invite people into and they'll be led by equity journey partners and they have a process that they've already that they use already and we'll do that for different
150groups so student group might be separate from a parent group might be separate from you know maybe even a secondary versus an elementary type of a group so i think that's part of the dei committee's work is to lay out what that looks like and even though we have a general proposal from equity journey partners like this is what this should look like which we're going to publish out in the next part a month or so to say here's what the equity is what an equity audit is here's why we're doing it and then kind of lay out that piece of it i think again i think it's important for us to educate the community because without that education people might take a side that may not be appropriate but for really when we're just
151kind of gathering data and looking at kind of looking inward okay thank you okay looks like we're ready to move on i think um okay committee reports um capital finance do we have a report uh yeah that would be me so we did vote in new officers for the capital finance committee i got nominated and elected president and julia got nominated and elected as secretary for the group okay we heard a presentation on an energy performance contract review on how much energy we are wasting and how much we could be saving by updating things like solar panels and led lighting and elements of our heating systems we went through the budget with vinnie to discuss the cola and some of the other issues that were there and we did a capital needs assessment review right
152all right and do you have a uh well first of other people have questions do you have another scheduled meeting yes november 10th um we'll also that's also the day we'll be meeting with the other three the other two town boards so it's the tri board meeting as well oh my question is when do i need to submit the minutes i try and do it within two two weeks two weeks sometimes that doesn't happen but okay thank you um policy do we have an update we will next time we meet on monday we have a massive agenda so uh policy will have all kinds of fun things to talk about but we're meeting on monday at six o'clock the agenda was posted okay thank you um negotiations uh we uh do not have an update
153um it's just me here i am the rest of my committee is not here right now um we don't have an update i am still in waiting to schedule our negotiations with the uh custodial union um and i'll let you know when that happens okay um okay uh my chairs report i think um oh one thing i do want to let you all know is that i will be not here at our next meeting because i will be attending the masc conference um which when we did the schedule we did actually know that it was a conflict and the schedule just didn't really allow for any other thing so i will not be here and i uh think anna will be running the meeting she's looking ready for that excellent um what else um i
154uh have as you um oh i did want to let you know that the master planning i'm still you know participating in the master planning they are having on november 13th um there's going to be a public opportunity for the public to participate um and um that i don't actually have any documents yet for but they will we'll have something to put out to the public give an opportunity to give some feedback to the master planning i'm sorry that's just for clarity that's a hamilton master planning um and um eric and i did do some we met a sort of just introductory uh vinnie was there and eric and i we had some introductory meetings um getting ready to talk about the budget with the um fincom and the town managers and town town manager
155town administrators and the select board members um really looking forward to you know having lots and lots of dialogue and continuing what we got feedback that last year was a more collaborative process and more transparent process and looking forward to trying to build on that um our next and then um i think jen just mentioned that on that same day i think november 10th we're going to have the i i don't know why we what do we call it they called it tribe all bored all three old towns that's good um so and that is i um just for committee members i think i did send that out to make sure you put that all on your calendars on the 10th i think that's it anyone have any questions okay topics for future meetings i
156did write down anna and i know that uh the superintendent wrote it down too on the school committee training but the dei which i guess is deib yep michelle looking at the agenda it could either be the fourth or the 18th we can do an update on the athletic facilities um you know superintendent tracy gave us one we can go more in depth um we did have a meeting in september and we have another one scheduled for the first so i'm fine if if the fourth is full just move it to the 18th if that fits better okay um either one yeah so i'll i'll we'll look at it and get back to you and what i'm sorry tell me exactly what you're you're looking for an update on the the athletic facilities what what
157we've yeah who we've met with and what steps we've taken we could do that okay yeah i know we reviewed the high school handbook do we also have to review the middle school handbook i do not think so that would be something i would normally look at michelle bailey and ask her but i do not think we do you really could read it in the law right exactly yeah the law is specified as a high school handbook okay but we did do the they or the committee did do the middle school handbook last year did we i don't think so i don't think so i don't think so yeah we didn't okay yeah i think so this is this is where we need michelle but but i do not think so legally the high school
158handbook is supposed to be the one that's reviewed i'm not aware of the one but i can look back through some of the meetings i could be mistaken as well yeah it yeah i we all could be last year last year was pretty hectic so you know yeah yeah i mean it could have been is that possible that it was more than a year ago like it could have been two years ago uh yeah so um uh anna um it's not so much a new or an old maybe just a reminder um and i'm hesitant to open up this can of worms because i know it's fraught with high emotion but i want to talk about the logo a little bit only in the sense that we sort of tabled it and it's still sort
159of out there whether or not we're going to do a redesign or not but on a more specific level i have noticed around town that there are some newly made signs at various facilities maybe their town i think there's one for certain at pingree i think at patton i haven't been back to the high school to double check but there are new signs made that show the general with the weapons with a mask on saying mascot hamilton wenna and i know that we had been assured years ago that people were not using the logo with the weapons anymore but we clearly have new signs being made by some semi-formal entity so i don't know if we can try to remind people if you insist on using the logo which you know has not been formally
160um retired to please not use it with weapons i thought that that was sort of already settled so i just wanted to draw people's attention to that i'm not sure if that's a question for the towns or for tom or wherever but jerry still has guns in many applications that are on town and you know school property and that's where he sent me and i'm sorry i i thought initially that you said those were a town property did you say they were on the school property also i i haven't been back up to high school to see so it might not be it might not be at the school so i guess the question is is that something that we can ask the towns to not do i mean this is like like public parks
161where everyone is playing it's the general's logo it's the school's logo like again i don't know who really has copyright you know ip ownership of jerry the general with the holsters i guess my point is that logo is not being retired with the with the weapons and someone in a municipal sense is still making signs using the school district logo with weapons and i feel like that i was i thought we decided that that had happened years ago that people were not supposed to be using a logo with weapons in an official capacity all right sounds like sounds to me like there's two different things there one is a question about that maybe um the superintendent could just look into um or ask someone to look into you know the signs around town it's a
162separate that's the separately i hear you asking that as a potential topic for a future meeting um you're looking at whether or not the committee would like to take on the task of uh just retiring the cartoon general i know we talked about it we'd have had sort of an intense conversation during a prior school committee meeting and there was some conversation about it but i don't think we really ever release resolution on it so um and it may be that nobody else wants to take action on that but i'm still interested in having that conversation about not not again for clarity in the public not getting rid of the generals just the cartoon drawing of the general itself and using something that is inclusive gender neutral more modern in design etc right thank you
163all right if there if anyone has anything else otherwise i would uh entertain a motion to adjourn so move to 9 20. is that seconded by julia all right all those in favor and we are adjourned