001here it's 602 and we will start so we'll call the meeting to order um thank you for starting at six o'clock um we just have a lot to cover plus we have an executive session which is we just want to make sure we get to everything so we're starting a little bit earlier um just to clarify um our regular open session meeting and our executive session meeting were like posted as separate meetings and since we weren't sure of the time when the executive session one would actually start we cancelled it and just put it at the bottom of this agenda the meetings are still happening we're just not guaranteeing when the executive session will start um so they're both going to be here but they're all on one agenda um so with that we can
002um open up for citizens comments uh this will take 15 to or 10 to 15 minutes um depending on how many people want to speak each person is allowed to speak for three minutes michelle horrigan keeps track of the time so please keep track of her um and keep an ear out for her because she'll also give you a verbal cue because i know you guys can't always see until you become panelists so with that i will look to see if anyone has raised their hand um that is the way that we know to promote you because it brings the names to the top super so um we have six right now so that will probably be the only people who get to speak and i'll just do them in order that they're here so
003so doug will be first stacey maternity second kathleen o'connor third olivia suleiman fourth gen carr fifth and paul gamber six and that will be it for tonight so thank you we'll see how quickly it goes paul might get bumped so okay and paul you should be all set if you want to immune doug oh i'm sorry dog i apologize i if you unmute you should be all set uh okay can you hear me now yes you can thank you okay so it's doug de gada actually michelle um i live at 16 perkins street in wenham and uh i'd like to thank you all for having me on but i also like to start by thanking former school committee member stacey medernick for her commitment to the committee and for representing the families of hamilton and
004wenham it's become quite clear that this volunteer position demands much more of its members during this time compared to pre-pandemic expectations the issues before the committee and the hours required to properly address them have continued to grow i think stacy recognized her limitations in the face of that increasing required commitment and saw that there were other citizens in town with more bandwidth to tackle these new issues so she passed the baton her selflessness and consideration for the future of the district should be appreciated by all of us uh but listening to these meetings in the finance subcommittee meetings have been alarmed by a pattern of dialogue from several members stating that these meetings are too long take up too much personal time equally alarming uh is the that the committee chair has suppressed and limited
005the public comment period i'd like to remind this committee that they're elected by the people of hamilton and when them to serve our interests as they relate to our schools like stacy committee members have the right to resign at any time if they feel they did not have the bandwidth to properly execute their duties particularly now there are many other citizens standing at the ready to take on this commitment to represent the concerns of the entire district without suppressing the concerns of parents and students alternatively i appreciate and would like to recognize those school committee members who have been speaking up on behalf of the citizens while i understand the committee and the citizenry will not always be in agreement there should exist enough respect to allow the concerns of hundreds of anxious tax paying
006voices to be heard like a great many parents i've grown concerned by the obvious lack of any detailed re-entry plan for the students of hamilton and bueno simply stating that we're waiting for a vaccine does not constitute a plan our and your goal should be to return all students to full-time in-person learning and that requires a detailed plan once in place it needs to be communicated to the parents more effectively and in a more timely fashion than this administration's abysmal failure on that point thus far i signed the request for dr carr to be added to the agenda for today's meeting or for the february 17th meeting in the last 24 to 48 hours i along with over 180 other elementary school parents taxpayers and voters sign that request as the way to strongly encourage
007all the committee members to vote to add her to the meeting agenda like dr carr i'm perplexed as to why the district has been using a personal distance bubble of excuse me square feet a measurement above and beyond what's required by dese for all students let alone elementary age students finally we must remind the school committee that they are an elected body tasked with representing not just their own interests but those of all families in the district ignoring the concerns of a large group of parents cannot be allowed to continue despite suppression by the chair of parent voices those voices will not be silent we'll continue to work together with other parents teachers and the hamiltonian teachers union to develop solutions aimed at getting our kids the best education possible but that requires students to
008be able to come back full time at a bare minimum all elementary school students thank you very much the next person is stacy stacy you should be all set hi there hi i would like to ask the school committee and superintendent banyos to think about this budget and to make some changes i don't i'm hoping that you guys will not rubber stamp what is given to you as a budget you need to ask the hard questions to know and understand what's going on with this school budget we have been in a pandemic where the kids haven't get had much time in learning time we were told by superintendent banyos that this year would be better than last spring but it hasn't we need to focus on the kids and don't make the central office top-heavy
009yet again in this tentative budget superintendent daniels is asking the school committee to add 3.8 instructional coaches one at each elementary school and 0.8 district-wide leader i believe from what i was looking at at an increase of 396 000 for just instructional coaches we already have curriculum leaders we were told uh we were told to add similar positions six plus years ago so that this would get us curriculum but it never happened you're adding expensive positions that haven't worked in the past if not adding more than we had before for what one of the reasons we hired our current superintendent is she has the curriculum background our interim superintendent last year agreed that with the background she could help with leaving the curriculum why not look outside the box hire a teacher like we want
010to do last year to do the curriculum and then add a teacher instead look within our own district for talent our frameworks have not been touched since dr celeste bowler produced them in 2014 and we could even meet those frameworks at that time we do need curriculum i do agree but this has been an age-old problem we need the superintendent to lead us with her curriculum background last year the citizens were asked for one of the largest school budgets of 8.5 percent the largest budget put forward to the towns taxes for schools in wenham were assessed at over nine percent in taxes when when them is at its levy limit and almost at state max where did they that get us kids have not had a lot of learning time we need to put the
011money in kids in education not make this district top heavy again we're a smaller district and we have a very high out of district percentage let's start working together be transparent and communication is key think outside the box we can't keep going to past practices it's not working let's make the district great as we once were and why people move here people aren't going to buy into this budget being top heavy they want to see the education piece come into place i ask you to look at creative ways and work together let's start to work at the finance working group to think outside the box and i asked the superintendent to start attending so all this work can be done together and i know that there is the tentative budget is adding about 15.2 position
012so i thank you for taking the time to listen to me to speak you're muted michelle kathleen o'connor thank you stacy kathleen you should be all set if you want to unmute hi thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak my name is kathleen o'connor i have three kids in the district two in the middle school one in the high school and i have a statement i would like to share with you tonight i urge you the superintendent and the school committee to make returning to school in person for our students your top priority this week my feelings about the current situation have turned from frustration to anger i am angry about what is happening to our children we continue to ignore the words of our health professionals our local pediatricians at garden city
013issued a statement this week saying quote depression and anxiety are rampant in quarantine closing schools and insisting on unnecessarily long quarantines is causing a mental health epidemic end quote yes we have a pandemic but another epidemic is playing out on the sidelines a mental health epidemic and we're not even paying attention to it doesn't this scare you why isn't this being addressed or even discussed i won't recite the studies about transmission rates and how low they are in schools or the studies of schools that have gone back in person safely at four feet but i am going to urge you to revisit the decisions we made back in august it is time to revisit every one of those decisions they no longer make sense we cannot afford to wait any longer to see how this
014plays out or to wait for a vaccine our number one goal should be to find a way to get more students in the building let's get creative maybe we need to have three cohorts instead of two maybe this gets more kids back it's time to revisit using off-campus space if the only obstacle to using space at a rec center or community house is because we don't have a nurse then let's look into hiring one and let's certainly take a comprehensive look at the space analysis we need to open discussions with the union about the six feet of spacing because if we can get our kids back at five and a half feet and that's the only obstacle we should be thinking long and hard about those extra six inches if one of our parents has
015put together a spacing plan with a fresh way of looking at that space then they should be on tonight's agenda to deny that is wrong there are so many things we could be doing to work this problem and we are simply not doing enough i am not challenging your effort and certainly not your intentions i know you are working hard and i know you mean well but i am challenging your priorities what has happened to the great school district that hamilton went on once was we need direction and we need leadership we need to get our kids back in school and we need to stop ignoring a very real mental health epidemic to quote the doctors at garden city garden city pediatrics our kids deserve no less thank you kathleen sorry thank you kathleen i
016was on mute so there's no background noise thank you jennifer jennifer you should be all set yes sam um my name is jennifer carr i live at 5 meridian road and went on mass i would like to start my comments with a quote from eleanor roosevelt which is applicable to the current situation surely in the light of history it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear to try rather than to not try for one thing we know beyond all doubt nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says it can't be done end quote covet 19 at the beginning of the school year was scary we weren't sure how transmissible it would be in schools we did not know if we could bring our kids and teachers back safely the research was
017was not and could not have been done at that point we can no longer claim ignorance about this disease over 376 000 research studies have been published looking at covid and the schools and both the cdc and who concur that coven 19 transmission does not happen very much within well-run schools the director of the cdc was recently quoted as saying there is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated dr emily oster of brown university studied 200 000 students and 63 000 staff members at schools in 47 states she measured an infection rate of 0.13 percent among students and 0.24 among staff using your own data i completed a space study that demonstrates that we could bring all of our elementary
018students back both hybrid and remote and maintain social distancing at 5.25 feet at winthrop and bucher and five and a half feet at cutler we could bring all the kids back and still maintain the social distancing required by teachers in their moa as that is built into the usable space data you sent me i asked the chair of the committee if i could present the results of the space study at one of the committee meetings to explain step by step how it was done and was told no you didn't want to hear this information as it contradicts what you've been telling parents in the district all year i would ask the school committee chairwoman and the superintendent to explain why you're so afraid of knowledge that supports a point of view that is different than
019your own why are we not listening to world-class researchers to the cdc the who and the state of massachusetts all of whom are in support of bringing kids back full time why is there not a detailed plan in place to bring back kids in person at our schools as many schools across massachusetts have done why can't we try i would remind school committee members that your job is to do what's best for our kids not to rubber stamp whatever is being said by the superintendent the best thing for our kids both educationally and emotionally speaking is to bring back all kids who want to come back full-time my analysis shows that this can be done and it is unconscionable that you choose not to do so or even listen to the analysis thank you very
020much thank you jennifer michelle you're still muted olivia solman olivia you should be all set i thank you olivia swillman thirty person silverwood in one of them uh so i sent a letter this past saturday signed by over a hundred hw community members on behalf of the hamilton one of human rights coalition i only heard back from superintendent bonios and anna so i'm going to read that live right now dear superintendent bonos and school committee members under the leadership of the hamilton wyndham human rights coalition and its youth education action committee the undersigned individuals formally request that all hamilton went and regional school district staff receive unconscious bias training during the 2021-2022 school year or earlier if possible we also we also ask that this training occur every year and we encourage that these professional
021development courses target different focal points but still include themes of inclusivity anti-bias and anti-discriminatory teaching methods and practices this annual training should be mandatory for all hwrsd staff including administrators educators counselors coaches school nurses school community school committee members and other contractor employees this last year has proven that it is not enough to say you want change or to say that you are accepting but you have to work to create change the masc anti-racism resolution adopted by this school committee on july 8 2020 says that quote it is the responsibility of each school district uh to provide all district staff including school committee members annual professional development on diversity diversity equity inclusion and that quote it is the responsibility of each school to ensure that we create a welcoming community for all students it has
022been seven months since this resolution was passed yet there has been no visible progress on creating a more accepting school community we appreciate the district's stated commitment to equality and anti-racism but these words are empty and performative when nothing happens afterward it is crucial that action is taken quickly to begin professional development in order to create the safest school environment possible for students staff and their families in our hamilton in our human rights coalition meetings we have heard stories of how hwrsd schools failed and continue to fail to make students of different races genders gender identities and religions feel comfortable we have heard of staff inappropriately commenting on students names staff upholding outdated gender norms by saying that it is disgusting for girls to lift weights and be muscular and staff calling students names that
023have negative racial connotations these are just some of the many problems in the schools that need to be addressed and corrected during this time of educational upheaval it is important to reflect and think about the new normal we want to create the collective trauma of the pandemic and the systemic qualities it has exacerbated cannot be ignored or set aside by our district's participation in unconscious bias training we will progress towards a trauma-sensitive institution we will be building a community that is welcoming to all students staff and families not just those of the majority race ethnicity and or belief system the hwhrc has conducted research on different companies and facilitators that offer diversity bias and cultural sensitivity training and we can make recommendations that might be productive for the district selection process we are happy to
024share our findings and we look forward to working with you on this crucial issue thank you olivia thank you um olivia did you set up a meeting with dr or with um superintendent banos i did great thank you and the last person to speak will be paul gamber and then that's it for the night thank you paul you should be all set okay thank you i just figured out where my unmute button was uh thank you for your time i just wanted to uh it's paul gamber's 16th juniper street in one i'm gonna have two children in the district uh i just wanted to speak to the committee from a person who faces covet firsthand and uh as a practicing dentist we were mandatory shut down by the state for eight weeks and then from
025that was from march 18 to may 18th and we opened june 1st for emergent care following by preventative and elective treatment after that so um obviously with dental procedures we create a lot of aerosols and obviously there's one person in the situation is never wearing a mask and we're clearly within the six foot distancing uh that being said uh the ada put out a study in december this year or not december 2020 about the safety of dental treatment despite those obvious high risk factors and the study came back that from the ada science and research institute that fewer than one percent of dentists are cause are getting covered and from the dental hygienist association the monthly incident rate among dentists remain less than one percent and the cdc has put out that um there's no
026documented transmissions of cova in a clinical setting to date and that's as of december of 2020 so um obviously my reason for bringing all this up about dentistry is its relationship to getting our kids in the classroom in a safe environment and the risk factors involved there's really and as some of the other speakers before me said there's a lot of studies out there all you have to do is google them there isn't any study that's saying that kids in the classroom create a high risk factor for themselves amongst each other or for the teachers and i think it's been shown out in private schools and some of the school districts that have been open that it hasn't been a risk factor [Music] so it it doesn't take more than a google search to kind
027of verify a lot of those current research there's a youtube film and i encourage everybody in this committee to watch it it's called num a short film by this young lady named liv mcneil and it's about three minutes and 22 seconds it's worth every minute of your time to watch that video just to see uh firsthand i think if you don't have a kid in the district what a lot of kids are feeling um and and as the last thing um as much as i'd hate to say it is that my lack of seeing any kind of agenda towards a solution to this problem is very concerning and my next recommendation if we don't start to see an action plan in place would be to encourage parents to address the school committee about voting no
028confidence in the superintendent's ability to lead our district going forward especially into next september and i would be next to encourage parents to address the school committee in that regard that's the end thank you thank you paul michelle you're still on mute michelle you're on mute ethan i know it's the beginning of the quarter um so maybe you have a lot to do maybe you don't would you like to go first or would you like to stay and listen to representative hill um i'll i'll go first if that's all right okay that puts you on cue representative hill that you will be absolutely next thank you thank you this is bonus if i could share my screen absolutely let me get that set up for you ethan thank you okay should be good yep january
0292021 student representative report by the student body government there have been a lot of exciting activities which have either occurred or are being planned by student government since christmas break the seniors have planned a trivia night open to all ages tomorrow night with the proceeds going to the innocence project i'm personally looking forward to this trivia night both because it serves as a litmus test for a successfully a completely remote event like a trivia night can be and also because i'm excited to compete of course many classes also again hosted restaurant fundraisers which have continued to be a good source of income without putting others at risk of contracting coven the freshman class recently hosted a very successful fundraiser at the hamilton house of pizza and the sophomores are approved to host a chipotle fundraiser
030soon another exciting event in the works is a spring theater production by the middle school which is still in the planning phase the junior class has recently had to make some tough decisions to cancel junior prom for this year and the seniors are still waiting for more information from their venue before making a final decision finally the senior class was surveyed and we've decided to have blue and white gowns with each student being able to pick their color regardless of gender a recent change made in the school deals with increased fundraising for live streaming equipment in classrooms these include more monitors and better cameras so teachers can set up higher quality streams for their remote students the constant zooming does leave some students and faculty in both the middle school and the high school worried
031however problem which may also be exacerbated by the new wednesday check-in requirements mandated by the state recently we've had some awards some notable awards given to the students at the high school amanda lanin won a regional silver key in the scholastic art and writing awards competition this year with her piece spring reign as shown ella tran also recently won the bay state award for the music category in the 2020 ocean awareness contest congratulations to both ella and amanda as we get closer to spring the student body government plans continues to plan a spirit week to help this year to go out on a high note we are currently planning on holding spirit week the week of april 12th right before april vacation we're considering a wide array of events to compensate for activities that may
032have been made unsafe by the pandemic we are also trying to adapt a lot of the older spirit week traditions provide a mix of fun and safety will be a very difficult it will be very difficult to modify spirit week while retaining the energy from previous years but i am intent on creating events which will get all the students of the high school engaged and hopefully create a sense of spirit that is much needed after months of hybrid and remote learning thank you does anybody have questions for ethan no just thank you ethan for keeping us updated on everything you know sometimes if you have a student you only hear two things in a whole week so i'm glad to hear the whole you know last month summary thank you and thanks for being civically
033engaged any ways that we can specifically support you you know spread the word like do you need anything from us i would say as of now um the biggest thing that i've been focused on for a while now is uh spirit week i think i'm gonna keep planning kind of keep trying to get students engaged in spirit week as of now we're still in kind of the very initial planning phase phases but i could see possibly um events coming up that may need support from the school committee i'm not entirely sure to be honest but okay great to just kind of let you guys know that that may be in the future okay thank you thank you keep us up to date all right thank you so um we had originally asked ryan hill to
034come and speak to us a long while ago in anticipation of the governor's budget and then the governor punted down the road a little bit um and now he is here because that governor's budget has been published and is going to speak on a few topics so we're welcome uh representative brad hill hey everybody good evening before i start my remarks ethan uh i'm a general from back in the mid 80s 4 and 5. and i remember spirit week in all of those four years and i'll tell you it brought all our classes together and brought all the students in our classes together and i'll tell you to this day and this god's honest truth i still have lifelong friends from high school and a lot of it was because of spirit week and all
035the fun that we had during that time with all our our fellow students and and of course in some cases we took on other classes in different events um and a couple of times we actually won those events um so i remember many many years ago the fun of spirit week so i wish you the best of luck as you start putting together uh that for this year because i think now more than ever we need some spirit we need some fun uh and you said you want to end the year on a high note and i can assure you that when you get your spirit week all put together that's exactly what we'll be so i enjoyed your uh presentation and uh good luck with spirit week because i still remember mine from way
036back when thank you very much so uh to the hamilton when i'm school committee good evening everybody uh it's nice to see you uh it's been a long while since we were able to talk and actually the last time i came before you i was kind of dooming gloom because i was afraid that the state was going to be seeing about a six billion dollar hole in its budget uh moving forward into fy and although it wasn't six billion it was about three and a half billion dollars and because of the um foresight that we had and that the administration had over the five years last five years we actually had a rainy day fund that helped us get through fy21 and as you already know we didn't pass the budget until about a month
037ago for fy21 so if you don't mind i'll just speak real quickly uh fy 2020. um in every instance both local aid and that means the unrestricted government general aid as well as chapter 70 actually saw an increase in the budget for fy 2020. uh it was very important we heard loud and clear from your superintendents uh through the north shore superintendents roundtable and school committee members throughout my district and throughout the commonwealth that uh the education needs to be a priority even during these times of uh decreased revenues we heard you loud and clear and with that we actually increased chapter 70 and hamilton wenham actually received about 52 000 extra dollars um than it did over fy 2019 and in regards to hamilton and wenham with their unrestricted general aid they also each
038saw an increase in that particular line item which is very important as they put their budgets together to help pay for their programs as well as education hearing that message loud and clear and knowing that we had passed the student opportunity act um there was a pledge made that you know within a seven year period that we would um generate you know over a billion dollars for chapter 70 that would be distributed to our school districts and we're trying to keep that promise and governor baker actually increased again despite another three billion dollar hole a 19 percent increase in education funding in his budget so what does that mean for uh hamilton wenham it's about uh well first it's about 197 million dollar increase over last year which was a month ago um which is
039includes at 30 dollars per student which you usually run the 20 25 range we made it 30. so for hamilton wenham that's 3.7 million dollars that you'll be getting in chapter 70 which is almost eighty thousand dollars over last year and over a hundred and thirty one thousand dollars over the last two fiscal years for your chapter 70 distribution now let me just remind uh you folks that in the seven year pledge that we made that a lot of the funding was going to be front loaded for the cities through the special education funding and ell and that still is the case uh districts like hamilton wenham and moscow and manchester essex they're going to see a bulk of their increases in the tail end of that seven-year uh distribution schedule so i'm happy that
040despite the revenue decreases that we've seen that the federal government actually has come through uh with dollars for us in education and that has allowed us to be able to put money into education uh for this fiscal year and moving forward and just to remind you that the rainy day fund that we took out of last fiscal year the governor takes another billion and a half dollars out of that rainy day fund to help pay for this uh budget that we're now debating and that leaves about maybe about 1.3 billion dollars left in the rainy day fund and we have to be very very careful now about what we do with the rainy day fund because the rate the bond companies will be looking at uh how much we have left in there and we
041don't want to see the rating go down because we now don't have a bigger savings account as we did just two fiscal years ago so in terms of local aid i'm very happy that the governor has proposed uh what he has uh regional school transportation uh is going to be 75 million dollars this year and you will see that that's actually a decrease over the fy 20 numbers which was about 82 million dollars but that's because a lot of the contracts uh that were in place last year um wouldn't be uh reimbursed at the rate that they were going to because they weren't used and the numbers are different and we understand that the number is much lower on what the reimbursements will be this decrease reflects that but the reimbursement remains about the same
042as it was last year and in terms of the special education circuit breaker law which is something i care very deeply about we actually increased over fy 2020 uh 22 million dollars with the notations that the funds that are included now in that line item include implementation of the student opportunity act language um if you remember during a debate of the student opportunity act we actually added language to the special education circuit breaker law that now includes transportation costs and other um factors that you asked us to include in that law and is part of the student opportunity act for i would call it suburban communities this was very important to us and we're going to start implementing those changes in this fiscal year budget uh that the governor proposed so in captioning not [Music]
043always hope to available a budget by july 1st as that is the beginning of our fiscal year over the last couple years we haven't met that date unfortunately uh due to negotiations between the two branches but um moving forward that is the hope and these numbers could change what i would say to you is if they do change it's going to be on the plus side not on the negative side uh usually the governor puts out what i would call the basement uh numbers and then we work upon that and i think if you go back in history the governor has always put out regional school transportation numbers and we always increase it or a lot of times we will increase it during the house and senate uh debates and i have no inclination that
044we won't do the same thing during this debate uh moving forward and our debate we hope usually takes place around april um and in terms of special ed again i think the superintendent can uh agree with me we you know we wait a year you know a year later we get the numbers for reimbursements um so as the year moves forward our numbers may be very different than what the governor has here in january you know come april so those numbers could change but again in the positive and as i understand it we're right around 73 to 75 reimbursement which is right about where we want to be uh for the special ed funding i was also asked to talk about pool testing here in the commonwealth and i'm just going to ask if everybody
045can raise their hand everybody understands what pool testing is so i don't need to go over that is that an accurate statement so the the questions that were asked of me is what are the estimated cost of the program and moving forward you know currently the cost for a district which is estimated is to be about fifty dollars per pool which is approximately about five dollars per individual swab in a pool size of 10. there are also additional costs such as a monthly administrative fee and a one-time startup fee districts and schools may opt into the additional contracted service through the pool testing service provider such as delivery of collected specimens to the laboratory and or in-person support and as you know the initials i believe it's uh and correct me if i'm wrong mary
046beth uh the initial program is a six-week program um that we will take uh care of the cost meaning the state and then at that point it would be a decision by the school district whether they would want to continue and they would then be able to uh contract with a state contract so you wouldn't have to go out and redo everything all over again and unfortunately i was asked how much will that it cost the district if they so choose to do that unfortunately we're going to have to go through the pilot to find out what the cost truly would be and what you would then have to pay if you choose to move forward with it but it would be obviously a lot less money if you choose to do it because it's
047a state contract which will be common wealth wide which saves a lot of money for school districts uh moving forward and then i was asked you know what would be the staff well i think all along we would understand that the people that would be carrying out the collection in the process are going to be uh staff members from the hamilton wenham school community and it would be decided by the school committee and the administration on who would be administering that but it would always be somebody within the school district the employees from the school district that would be implementing and processing and collecting uh during the pooled testing so i hope that answers a couple of the questions that we're asked to mean in regards to pool testing and we can get back to
048that in just uh you know a couple of minutes um i also wanted to let you know if you didn't already know and i know mary best been in contact again through the north shore superintendents um committee uh you all received a one-time assist to the school district the administration recently released more than 50 million dollars in one-time state funding to assist local school districts hamilton wenham received 56 000 under the covet 19 response remote learning and student support grant program and as you probably know the districts could utilize the funding for purposes related to covert 19 such as the purchase of personal protective equipment hygienic supplies and for the costs associated with socially distance on-site learning as well as remote and hybrid learning and you should have received that uh notice last week if
049i'm not mistaken and those dollars will be forthcoming and i just uh wanted the school committee to know you know how have we actually helped school districts during the covet 19 pandemic meaning we being the state um the past few weeks desc has actually been able to provide schools with some direct support that may be helpful to them uh for example cloth masks were paid for by the state again they purchased them as a commonwealth so we were able to get them a a very uh small amount of money and that was at no cost to the school districts the commissioner actually purchased 12 air purifiers that went directly to support schools with ventilation solutions dese made the purchase on behalf of the districts and shipped them directly to you eliminating any added procurement or
050shipping cost that it would have been put on you if you had had to do this on yourself and the units provide you know two to three air exchanges an hour in a typical classroom and then of course the pool testing in the schools is something that you know we want to fund the first pilot program of which you know is is uh quite a big chunk of change that the state will be uh paying for so that's a little bit of an update of what's been going on uh at the state level but also you know what we're proposing in the budget i think it's clear and i hope it is to everybody on the school committee that education continues to be a priority for the legislature and the administration um certainly senator tara
051and i uh have been listening to you over the last few months and we too have uh made it very clear to uh the chairs of the ways and means committee that education needs to continue to be a priority uh moving forward and then i'll just leave you with this uh last thought and then i'll open it up for questions is i was asked and have been asked by all of my school committees how will the enrollment uh be calculated for chapter 70 next year and obviously a loaded question and a question that i can't answer tonight and the reason for that is because we like you are waiting to see what those numbers are going to be moving forward for those of you who have been around on the school committee for a while
052i know michelle will recognize this name and a few others um david i know will as well uh chairman alice pisch we hope will be reappointed as um the chair of education and she has been wonderful she actually has been um in contact with us already to talk about this very issue um aaron michaelis is our chair of ways and means he also has been talking about this issue and as we get closer to the budget we hope to have better numbers i know i was told that you anticipate that a lot of the students who left for private schools or catholic schools uh may be returning in the fall when i'm hearing district-wide is that may not be the case that a lot of these students may just remain where they are for the
053rest of their educational career we don't know and we won't know for a few months so uh as soon as i get some type of an answer i obviously will let the superintendent know and who will then you know follow up with you folks on how that's going to move forward the commissioner is looking at this very very carefully he's listening uh to us and i just want to as a side note add that commissioner riley has really been someone who's been listening to all of our concerns the good the bad and the ugly of what we've gone through over the last year and one example of that was the m cast if you remember some of the comments that were made from the administration early on they were not going to change mcas one
054iota it's moving forward and that's just the way it's going to be well they listened they heard our concerns they heard legislators they heard school committee members they heard superintendents and as you now know that uh has been changed uh moving forward so i i would you want to throw out you know a public kudos to the commissioner because i i do think they do listen when we when we tell them that we have concerns and so far so good in regards to commissioner riley and the job that he's doing moving forward so madam chair and madam superintendent that would be my short update moving forward and as i said this is the first step in a long process and the numbers may change but again for the better not for the worse uh as
055we move forward so with that madam chair if anybody has any questions i'd be more than willing to entertain them at this point yes i have i have two comments um i know commissioner riley's under a lot of stress but i would say what has happened with the mcats is inadequate and that we're still having it and it's still a burden and there's still a lot of unanswered questions and i would also say i'm highly disappointed as a committee member as a parent and as a teacher the teachers were moved down the list on the vaccination schedule and that when um superintendents across the state including superintendent banos and union presidents across the state including our um vice president nick pristine or steino have submitted letters that those letters have gone unheard and that it's
056making it exceedingly difficult for us to return to school when we were saying to our teachers they're not important enough to get a shot so i would encourage you to take that back to commissioner riley so uh we actually had this very conversation with governor baker yesterday actually because uh we have been hearing um the concerns uh from the teachers and it was a very uh good conversation and what i'm seeing and take uh the teachers out for just a second anybody in phase two uh or who would like to be in phase two uh as we start getting more vaccines into the state we're gonna see some changes to phase two and who is put in them and when they may be getting their their vaccine so we are taking uh this very seriously
057with the teachers we are talking about it and like i said yesterday we actually had a uh zoom call with the governor and this issue was brought up by just about every legislator um who spoke to him i believe the north shore went so far as to request they would be put in phase one so you've already lost that opportunity because you've already moved to phase two and didn't move people into phase one so um but yeah we would actually continue to pressure that yeah anna had her hand up to ask a question thank you michelle thank you representative help for your time and coming here it's a great budget update very encouraging um i had two sort of quick follow-up questions you said the 56 000 is a one-time allocation coming to us and
058that's sort of new money coming into this year's budget is that right yep for the current budget it just was allocated last week i believe and that came out of federal money uh that we got through one of the acts that was passed uh and it was allocated finally last week and there was a formula that was put into place that allocated those dollars and hamilton running received 56 000 of those dollars so that would be in addition to a federal allocation i think i saw an email from the superintendent that we're getting 305 000 from the federal side of it is this in addition to that is correct wow okay um second question is the air purifiers were interesting because we recently had a donation of that to our district is that program still
059available for any district are they all spoken for do you know the i don't expect you to know where the air purifiers are but do you know if the program is still ongoing or is it full or so let me uh contact eesc and see if that's something that is still available i know a lot i know a lot of them have been delivered and have been uh used up but i would look to the superintendent to um she gets more of the information than i do on where and how when the grants are actually put forth but i certainly can follow up with you on that okay because we had a very generous donation from a family and then last question more philosophical as you heard there's a lot of parent unrest in our
060district and really across the state uh all districts are having the same conversation and i think one of the issues that we're facing is that there hasn't been a lot of state-level leadership around what constitutes safe distance what constitutes thresholds for getting students in person do you foresee a scenario any time in the immediate next few weeks where the governor the commissioner might actually make a statewide decision to say districts across the state you need to return to in person the minimum distance is the three feet um i think some of the problem we're having is sort of the hodgepodge grasses greener effect it's really difficult for small districts like ours to keep our parents satisfied when there's sort of such a um a variance of guidance do you think the state or governor the
061commissioner governor might actually um mandate a return to school and is that something that you you personally feel one way or the other about so the governor has made it very clear that he wants to see everybody go back to school and i think for months he he's been very clear he would like to see that happen he has been reluctant to do a statewide mandate uh he feels very strongly that he wants the school districts to make those decisions uh he was a local official at one point and feels very uncomfortable mandating that any whether it's a selectmen a board of selectmen or a school committee you know be mandated by the state to do something that may be in conflict to what they want to do he would love to see everybody go
062back to school and i think to answer your direct question i have not heard that the commissioner or the governor is going to be coming out and mandating that everybody has to go back to school i too would like to see kids go back to school as i think we all would we want to do it in a safe manner and i've been working with as many officials as i possibly can to make that happen many in my district districts have gone back to school as you know uh and there's it's been a positive to my knowledge it's been a positive um reaction for everybody that i'm aware of at least from the reports that i'm getting uh so philosophically obviously i want to see people go back to school um but how we do
063that again i want to work with you to make that happen i don't want to be mandating you that that happens okay great thank you so much for your time brad are you saying that there are local districts that have all students going into school every day as normally scheduled no they're they're they're do i'm sorry that they have there were some who are doing remote only who have now have kids doing you know a hybrid yes and and it's worked very well uh for them uh ipswich as you know has been doing that since day since september and you know there's been a few bumps i'm not gonna lie to you and say there wasn't there's been a few bumps but you know not a lot of bumps uh moving forward so you know
064school districts are looking at how do we get kids back to to the classrooms and again most of my uh school districts um but there are you know to be clear there are some school districts that actually are going back you know every day and there are some districts that are not back every day right so yeah it's both sides that are still all remote um you know we we have to be looking at all of that my my olympic brad thanks for coming by tonight is that you know um obviously you sort of addressed a little bit more but when you're talking about the transportation costs um in in those numbers uh currently going down based off of last year's numbers you know we we all know it's a reimbursement in in you know
065you've heard it from michelle and i for years now that um it's underfunded every year um you know to under fund to you know continue to sort of cut that transportation costs it would really cut us off at the knees here within the district right because because we all know it's a reimbursement we in and we you know um use that money to create future budgets right everyone sort of went through uh you know we honored our contracts last year despite the fact that we you know uh were not in need of the transportation so you know to sort of be penalized for that you know in the future it would be um you know honestly quite disingenuous from you know because year after year you know we keep saying that you know it's supposed
066to be uh reimbursed at 100 percent and every year it's you know i think it's been getting a little bit better the past couple years but you know we really rely on that money um and just the thought of sort of cutting that off um you know even though there were some little um you know peaks and added bonuses that you were talking about that'll make things a little bit easier moving forward you know just the thought of that um you know getting cut off is really sort of disheartening to hear because it's hard to believe as a regional school district that that obligation that will ever truly be you know honored as was originally you know um [Music] intended with 100 reimbursement for regional districts so you know it's something that i know we
067we have to face as a district every every budget season and we'll be talking about it more and more uh tonight so i i hope you heard me say that uh as we go through the legislative process that most years we actually increase that back and i have no reason to believe that that won't happen again this year because once we start getting the numbers from dsc what the actual cost is we always try and um and add those numbers and if you looked at some of the uh past governor's budgets they have come in lower for regional school transportation and we've actually increased them and although we were never at 100 david and i agree with you and we push it every year we offer amendments every year to to fully fund it we
068actually got up as high as like 83 percent in 85 which was the highest it's been since i was an elected official yeah i know and i definitely heard you say that i just wanted to do my annual you know push for more okay message loud and clear received so horrigan and then julia yeah hey brad nice to see you again um so just to piggyback on what david was saying so the rationale behind the reduction was because we were able to renegotiate our contracts last spring is that the case so i i believe if i uh a commonwealth wide that is a correct statement yes okay okay so what you're saying is that we would then as you've done in the past able to advocate for us to get it back up yeah potentially
069okay all right thank you and and again i i know i said this in my earlier statements a lot of transportation costs that deal with the special education transportation is now going to be part of the special education circuit breaker moving forward and a lot of the additional money that we put into that account or that the governor proposed uh in that account it takes into effect those changes so that will be helpful as well but again i'm not saying that we're not going to do something with regional school transportation but i actually sat on a commission that just put out its report uh this i believe it was in december dealing with transportation here in the commonwealth of massachusetts and a lot of what you're talking about tonight uh we try and address in
070that report and again it comes down to subject to appropriation but we worked very hard on that report we've traveled across the commonwealth and we heard from every quarter and every section of the commonwealth about transportation both regional and special education and we want to do something about it chairman paich chaired that commission i was the minority member on it and it was happy i was i learned a lot a lot more than i knew before about transportation and we want to see some major changes not only to to regional school but you know to the special ed as well thank you julia did you have something you wanted to ask and ask um one statement and one question one um i would strongly push that in terms of um funding chapter 70 that you
071strongly advocate and we strongly advocate to move back to the october 1st 2019 enrollment numbers um rather than the 2020 numbers i just want to say that officially i think we need to strongly advocate for that i think it's uh it's more reflective of the student population and the second thing is when you say the state can't mandate things i mean deci um the department of elementary and secondary i don't think i said they can't okay he would prefer not to mandate because there are certain things being mandated so there's you know in synchronous learning time and hours and things that have been like pretty contentious um in our district and i think across the state so i think just being clear about what we can mandate maybe what the state can't and why um
072i think would be would be helpful and maybe that's an issue for deci an issue for the governor um because i do think things are being mandated um and other things are not being mandated sure actually um and michelle i think and again dave because you've heard me for many years now talk about education education mandates is something that we hear about every single year we come before you and other school committees and what i've asked my school committees to do through their administration is to please put together some of those educational mandates that you would like to see go away uh and masko actually did a very good job of this so did triton uh two years ago and we would love to have something from hamilton wenham because we would like to file
073a bill that would actually get rid of some of these mandates that are very very costly to school districts and from what i understand very redundant uh in many of the things that we mandate you have to do two three and four times uh which is silly at a cost to the school district so moving forward um i i would love to see a list uh come from the hamilton wentworth school committee or the administration of what mandate you'd like to see disappear that are costly and and maybe just aren't needed uh moving forward and like i said two of my school districts have done that and uh it was a it was a a lengthy a very lengthy list that they gave us and when we started going over it like it was very
074redundant very redundant so uh julia you bring up a great issue uh and something senator tara and i have been working on feverishly but uh we need a list to tell us what they are because yeah but feverishly for many many years and it's not gonna change we we as school committee members need to really be like pushing harder to get together with other committees so that we all learn from each other and can advocate more effectively as a larger group so that's something we'd really like to work on we do appreciate that last year um we got together with triton and you and brad and lenny and i can't remember the lady's name um senator zaglio there you go and um and um you know maybe that's something we can look at doing as
075we get closer to you know the time the budget gets passed on so super thanks julia as always thank you it's always a pleasure you're welcome and as we uh as we move through the process just so uh some of the newer school committee members now we uh i go through michelle and i go through mary beth to get the information out to the school committee as best i can um michelle has a red line to my email and mary beth has a red line to my cell phone so uh if you guys need anything please please please don't hesitate to contact us um moving forward um and as the senate as a house uh puts out its budget in the senate puts out its budget we will certainly update you on um how it
076affects hamilton when i'm moving forward and if we hear anything else you know covet 19 related obviously we'll uh contact michelle and mary beth yeah the governor was actually uh on a call yesterday at 11 o'clock with the president's people and that's all he was saying is please please please we need the vaccines we have the places in place we have the people ready to do it and we don't have the vaccines and it's been very discouraging probably the single most helpful thing you could do for every district in the continent yeah thank you david agreed thank you uh everyone and madam chair and madam superintendent we'll talk to you soon thank you thank you sir super so the next item we're going to discuss is um pool testing and um and then we'll do
077the student opportunity act in the budget um in an effort to streamline conversation i'm going to try um and just do like a round robin type thing so i'll just like go around the screen and i'll ask instead of having to raise your hand and stuff like that so we can get to everybody i'll go around the screen and just ask you whatever it is and um we'll go i don't know we're going backwards alphabetical order by first name how about that backwards alphabetical by first name whoever is whatever michelle would there be value in having tom and leo do their presentation first yes okay um letting people know like when we go to ask questions we'll go backwards alphabetically first name i guess i don't know if people want to go backwards alphabetical order
078by last name that's fine if you want to go forward i don't care but um now i have to figure out what that is okay but we have two michelles and we also have two d's and so now i gotta go to the second letter so i'm gonna have to make the list actually what encourage you and i would just say an interest of fairness don't always go in the same order because peter and i will just always be stuck at the bottom forever and ever so usually i just go with whoever turns the camera on first but you know now y'all your camera's on set um so um who is going to present tom or leah or so michelle this this evening um our director facilities and operations uh mr tom gary and our
079lead nurse leah tavenkin um have been deeply studying this issue um they've taken field trips to see how this is working in other districts they have attended a large number of webinars and and really haven't engaged in a thoughtful assessment of the situation they are prepared this evening to share their findings with you um and one of the things that that i think you'll hear is that there are pros and cons to this issue and what we hope to do this evening is to let the committee and the community understand those pros and cons um and then turn it over to the committee for some direction so with that um tom i'm going to turn it over to you you should be able to share your screen sure have we uh promoted leah into the
080panelists she is here all right thank you very much i'm gonna go ahead and share that presentation i thought we were going to get out of the presentation with a great presentation by our distinguished guest prior but i wanted to share with the committee some of the findings that uh superintendent banos shared with you so to begin i do want to state that like anything else in this environment the situation does remain fluid for example at five minutes before the meeting started the superintendent and i received the email from the partner firm that we've been matched with through deci with some more information that we have to submit so unfortunately i didn't have the time to update the slides for that piece but you will notice there are some highlighted notes on here that i've
081added since this presentation was uploaded to the agenda as an exhibit so i will share in final with the committee afterwards um the presentation i'm showing right now okay can you hear me yeah and tom you may want to put it on present just to make it a little bit clearer for folks sure okay so again thanks representative hill um for that nice introduction um so pool testing involves um mixing several samples together in a batch and then testing the pooled sample it's a pcr test for covid19 and so this is just a representation as to what it what it might look like right we take a bunch of of students or staff they're broken into groups and they each each student would in the pool would would swab and the swab is usually um
082a um a saliva type swab they would be put into a test tube and then the test tube would be tested if the positive if the pull is positive then we would have to go back and we would have to test each individual in the pool we call that reflex testing and our reflex testing that we chose would be the binex now testing it's a rapid antigen test and um you know that that is not our first um wouldn't be our first choice but um it would be in addition to the pcr test um that we would be doing with the pull testing folks and i think it's important to note um that as leah alluded to this would be what's considered a shallow swab in the bottom of the nose not the deep invasive
083swab that many of you have heard about and the intent of the pool testing is not to bring back every everybody into school um it would be in addition to the other mitigation strategy strategies the physical distancing the hand hygiene the um you know wearing mask and sanitizing and of course staying home when you're sick for the destiny six weeks six week program um districts will secure a contract with one of the three vendors that deci has established so desi has gone out and secured statewide contracts which does save districts the time with procurement in having to evaluate bids and publish specifications so uh i look at deci as being a facilitator in this process they have um you know they have matched us up there is a slide indicating that um forthcoming um you
084know but on the surface everything you know the program seems great right it's of no cost to the district um but as we'll share with you folks too is that you know the devil is in the details um we've put a rough estimate um and as was shared with the prior speaker we won't really know what those true costs are until we enter into this pilot program so as far as implementation procurement and setup as i said before desi has been a great facilitator in securing those statewide contracts they selected three vendors um it was part of our application process to select uh a preference with the vendors of the three or indicate that you don't have a preference in the research that leah and i conducted um also by taking field trips we realized
085that one of the vendors just wouldn't be a good fit for our district um and the main reason being is this one vendor that we did not select as a preferable vendor their turnaround time on testing seemed to be delayed because they were doing the testing in-house the other two firms use the broad institute which is the standard for massachusetts run by mit and harvard they tend to turn the results around quicker they run their labs seven days a week so one of the steps that we'll have to undertake is create the database and uh by to create the database we must receive consent forms from each parent and staff member that wishes to take on uh enter into this program as of right now that is a paper form that has been issued by
086deci it's a word document so as of right now we would have to issue the paper forms to all in-person students and staff and collect those those forms back and then enter in all the data around the database is my understanding of how we would proceed yeah we would use their whatever contract we went into we would use their program so we would have to learn to um you know use their program we would need training and in addition we have to have some we have to put all the data in right so if we have you know 1500 um consent forms we'd have to put them all into the database right and then from um after creating the database and collecting all the consent forms we would have to be strategic on how we
087establish the pools and this is doing some research from other districts that were quick out of the gate to get this done on on under their own funding um you know for example um i use the bus our bus drivers right we would not want to create a pool of 10 bus drivers um because if that pool came back with a positive test we would not have the staff to be able to transport our students now the same goes for teaching staff or even building by staff district wide so we would want to be careful on how we plan these pools so as not to cause a major strain on already strained staffing models leah do you want to take this slide on how it may look for the actual testing piece um so let's
088see um so we the the swabs would be supervised by someone who is trained to supervise and it could be the nurse or it could be someone else and it's it's pretty easy right they take a q-tip and they put it in the nose and they swerve around four times um the schools and then they do the other side and we could do a training video for that the schools that we have spoken to you know the kids can do it right um students in grade pre-k to one she'll have a specimen collected by a trained specimen you know the nurses could either help them or they could do it themselves again uh one of the dis one of the schools that we spoke to the pre-k could do it themselves and then specimens are
089transported to a testing facility via a vendor courier either we would drop it off at you know fedex or we would have a courier take it to the lab and then the results of the pull test would be uploaded to the database so usually it takes a few days depending on how the lab is doing and how much it can turn over that pool um so in one situation uh one school district we spoke to they got a few positive pulls back on a friday right so you you can imagine that there was a lot of scrambling on a friday afternoon and we have to and figure out how we're going to get everybody back to do the reflex testing or the antigen testing on these databases one example that i saw there's different um
090you know there's an administrator and then there's the testers um so they would have you know different views similar to i guess our aspen system where um you know as a teacher you have a specific specific view as a nurse i have a specific view and and the same for the administrators um so so far the action taken to date um we may be repeating ourselves with some of these slides um but we have attended various webinars um dating all the way back to if i recall the end of december when this was a novel idea um and you know we've also part taken in webinars through desi mass department of public health we've submitted our initial interest application which is why we are here tonight as well so we you know to align with
091the school committee's schedule we did go ahead we moved forward with the application so we wouldn't lose our spot in line as that was due last week you know we also took field trips to other districts both private and public to see the testing in action and we have also submitted our formal application to desi uh the highlighted parts were not included in your packet because you know we're receiving information sometimes as the hours change so we have been assigned to a vendor cic health and today we attended a webinar for cic health to give us kind of an introduction to how their company operates this program so um you know once the pools are processed at the lab if the pools come back negative then everybody resumes their normal activity however if the tests
092come back positive next slide we ask that the people in the pool the individuals in the pool to quarantine and then we do uh follow-up testing uh via the aba abbott binix now rapid antigen test um and those individuals will be presumed positive until we need to have a pcr test conducted so just i just want to talk a little bit about the binex now test originally i think desi offered binex now testing through the schools that was i think their first go at testing it was for symptomatic individuals and the nurses met with dr taylor our school physician and we didn't think it would be a great idea or we didn't see the value in it and the reason is because it's an antigen test it would need to be followed up with a
093pcr test and it could only be used for symptomatic individuals so for example you have a student comes in with symptoms you would test them if they're positive they still need to go back and get a pcr test so we just didn't see the value in this case the pull test is actually like a pcr test so we would be doing things in reverse we'd be using the binex now test as um you know to test that positive in the in the um in the pool and therefore we wouldn't have they wouldn't have to get my understanding um is that they wouldn't have to go and get another pcr test we would consider that person positive however um if everybody in the pool tests negative right so if we have a positive pool and we
094administer the binex now testing to everyone in that pool and they test negative now we have to go and we have to ensure that they get a positive test and that will require further quarantine and um we don't have that capability in the school to to administer a pcr test similar to if you would go to a stop the spread site or um you know the hamilton testing site i think it is important to note that um the reach the research is showing that the binax now antigen test is really dependent on the viral load in the person that you're testing so tom i hate to interrupt you're very difficult to hear you sound muffled could you start again please sorry let me uh unplug a change sorry about that is that better folks much
095better thank you all right thank you um so the research has shown that the abbot binax now test um has better results um or less false negatives if there is a high viral load right so it's safe to assume that those um people that would test positive with the binax now test uh would be exhibiting symptoms so the lower the viral load the lower the effectiveness of that abbott binax now antigen test so i think that's a really important point to make because we could be faced with positive pools and then negative antigen tests which would then trigger uh pcr tests so we would be really dependent on not only the stop the spread sites but also the existing testing that is being done uh in hamilton on a weekly basis so when it came
096to the application there was a field to fill out for each school district and deci has indicated that additional resources could be funded under this program so for each school we requested additional resources to assist with the testing and also additional in-person supports to assist with program coordination you know due to the fact that our nursing staff first of all they have done an amazing job of stepping up to every challenge that's in front of them the additional duties of contact tracing and the planning for vaccination um you know i i've you know i think leah will be the first to say like we'll take on anything you throw at us i have reservations with the strain on the staff and i worry that if there were a surge in cases you know we would
097have some problems with executing this plan a hundred percent and um you know it's my opinion that if we're gonna undertake medical testing of our children and staff members uh that we need to make sure that we have the dedicated resources to this program so we did indicate to desi that we would um you know be in need of assistance so for illustration purposes i put together a rough schedule of what this may look like as you can see it would be us it could potentially be a seven day a week effort right so we take cohort a and a b so a b is students that attend monday tuesday thursday friday uh k1 for example um we would pool test them potentially on a monday right so with the 24 to 48 hour turnaround
098planning best case scenario we would be getting those results back on wednesday so if there was a positive pool we would be looking at executing the antigen test the reflex testing on thursday and possibly if that pool turned up all negative with the reflex binax now test we would be looking at taking advantage of the saturday testing through the town and as you can see the various groups are going to be staged on different days and without actually putting this into practice this was our best best faith best faith effort to illustrate a possible schedule so parents staff members and you committee members can have a good representation of the possible schedule so benefits and challenges for this program um the benefits is that it would identify asymptomatic cases um institute additional mitigation strategies give
099confidence to students and staff and parents to be in school and then the ability to maximize pcr testing and then the challenges it would be a strain on the nursing team um we'd need additional resources to help us with testing and data management um also consent to test will need to be collected from all parties so um you know one district i spoke with they just started their 33 percent of consent um and you know that that's not a that's not a lot um questions regarding absenteeism of students and staff also dependency on town pcr testing through dependency on town pcr testing and then large pools may result in quarantines resulting in further strain on staffing and students structured um and you know we could the pools can take uh anywhere between five and 25
100i believe um we're actually leah we're we're capped at 10. so the uh one company was offering up to 25 they were the ones that were doing the testing in-house the other two one of them a beacon project and the vendor that we were matched with with desi has a cap of 10. um so we and i think right now preliminarily we'd be looking at uh caps of eight if everybody entered the program okay didn't know that but good just found that out today so apologies folks all right so moving on to the committee um put two slides together uh with requested action um and of course we're here to answer any questions that we have the answers to um you know but if you if the committee um wishes to continue uh with this
101process and proceed with pool testing i would just ask that in your motion that you include that we receive the additional supports to fully execute this program and if we elect not to proceed um i have confirmed with desi that we would be held harmless from penalty if we were to decide that this isn't a good fit for our district at the current time so that's what we have prepared for slides and i can stop sharing my screen if that's the preference and happy to answer any questions that you may have oh peter good news on the list of alphabetically last by first name it comes you so you will be going by first and comments and then we'll go all the way around once and then we'll come back a second time i'm good
102to go yeah okay thank you i just have a handful of questions um you answered one about the the logistics of who gets pulled together so it it sounds like yeah you have a plan there to make sure that there's smart pooling done um i guess no particular order that rapid antigen test um the right reliability is suspect right isn't it well it again it it works best with um individuals with high to moderate uh viral load so i think it's uh 89 um for a high viral load and you know 78 for the moderate uh viral load and again and it also works best when um you know the first several days of um infection okay it's just my sister just had a false positive followed by two negatives and it created havoc for
103our families because we all had to go under quarantine and that that was an issue that we discussed at the beginning uh when they were offering the bionics now we've had situations where people have tested positive with a rapid antigen test and then um have had a pcr test within uh 24 hours and it was negative and that trumped the positive pcr so i can understand that must have been concerning for your family well it also just created a lot we we've got also got a lot of different stories every time we talk to the what is it the ctc through the state they first said that her her her pause her negative test trumped it they think they cleared us from quarantine walked it back said no and there's a mixed message there's certain
104protocols and then she got a second negative test and they still wouldn't clear us and then i had to go out and get another one and we my whole family tested negative and then they still wouldn't clear us but still but my school said i'm clear so i went back to work um i guess enough about that i just was concerned about false positives and the havoc it could create through all the students and all the families um how how frequently will we do the pool testing per group i guess so this would be um in concept in the desi concept uh we'd be looking at weekly right so um and would be once a week cohort b once a week cohort a b once a week athletes once a week that's how we have
105preliminarily planned it right now yeah and i was told also that when when you're deemed a close contact you have a five day waiting period before you can take the pcr test correct um so if someone is in quarantine or if someone's considered a direct contact they can choose to take a seven day seven full day quarantine period if they chose that they would need to test out on the they would test on the fifth day and then if that was negative they would uh be able to leave quarantine at the end of um on the eighth day um so they would have to serve seven full days yeah quarantine used to be 14 days um now the um dph came out with sort of three options right um 14 full days which is the
106safest 10 full days without testing um and then the seven full days with uh testing a negative test on that fifth day right all right and my my last question this is the big question and it's already kind of been alluded to um you know we don't know what the cost is going to be but i believe representative hill mentioned that what i guess what part of it would be picked up by the state so what would it cost yes so during the six-week period um you know for this program the cost would be picked up by the state so following the six-week program the cost would be borne by the district that's all costs right so that is not only the you know five dollars per swab which is the budget number that people
107are tossing around right now but those additional resources that we had discussed right um you know we would have to pick up those costs maybe we get better as we go through this and we can trim some of those down maybe we find out we can do it but um i don't think we're in a position right now to underestimate that number um so right now i think we have to take on the trial to figure out the true costs of what we need okay and one i'm sorry one last question um it just came to me that there would have to be some kind of training for the administration and the collection and or the supervision of the swab testing is who would provide that training i guess how would that training happen so
108right now um you know we indicated to deci that we would ask for the additional resources to help with that on-site testing especially for our youngest um our youngest students uh that pre-k to one population that would require you know we would in our talks we would want them to be swapped by a professional the folks that can self swab that would be under the supervision of a trained observer i'm not sure that you know there's many people in our district that are kind of sitting by the phone waiting for something to do right now so we would almost you know we would recommend that we have you know those third parties come in and assist us with this effort yeah and i mean training would involve you know teaching them about the swab and
109we could they they would supply you know videos also um and also staff would have to use full ppe um and there would be training with that also yeah i just thought of that because dr william hoover who presented to us about learning management systems his learning management system was just um uh picked up by the state to provide all training for administering the vast number of vaccines that we're going to have to administer throughout the hospitals in the state right i think lee brought up a good point that i neglected to include in the slideshow so while deci is picking up the cost of the testing um you know ppe would still be a cost formed by the district so we would have to provide um you know all the ppe associated with the
110testing yeah it requires a different level of what we're accustomed to in a general setting right so if you're doing test collection or you know even observing um you know we would require a higher level which would include a gown gloves face shield and mask similar to you know some of our staff that service our intensive needs students yeah i just think there'd be there's going to need to be a lot of training involved when when you think about the collection of the supervision of collection and handling and of samples um michelle horgan thank you okay i have a lot but i'll keep it simple so what has been our transmittal rate in schools so far to date that we know of that's a good question um so in terms of transmission in the schools
111i i haven't seen any right we have a case in the classroom you know i i don't see the transmission um okay all right so the testing is another mitigation defense for us and the end game is to make teachers parents and students feel safer correct okay um so it's not the magic bullet we're not gonna bring kids back right so correct okay okay um all right um if we go back to a positive pool testing there'll be 10 kids teachers potentially bus driver involved with that pool maybe right so when they're waiting for their rapid test um are they in isolation or quarantine in their home that we would ask them to quarantine but not isolate their room and and so my que within so if a child tests positive in that pool they
112go home do you tell the parents that you have to have your child in the room by themselves or are they able to be part of the family so we would probably ask them to we would assume they're positive right so if they're positive they would need to isolate so we would ask to you know have them stay distant um and as if they were positive okay and okay so to answer your question yes i mean we would ask them to quarantine until we until we know because then that family would potentially be exposed if if that person in the positive pool was the positive case right so the sooner we can get them out of circulation um you know the quicker we can move through the process i guess okay and how you mentioned
113that a district only had a 33 return rate um of acceptance forms right so what does that do to the pool testing if let's even say we have a 60 return rate on all students so what does that do to the pool testing um i could speak to that so i think for for you to get the maximum results on pool testing you would want 100 participation and i mean and as you go down it just becomes that less reliable um that's my personal feeling on it some of the private schools have a little more success because they can mandate that right like they can mandate that everybody partakes in pooled testing um you know we can't mandate that every family commits to this process right so i hope that answers the question i don't
114have like an exact breakdown of do we need to be at 60 what's the sweet spot between you know 60 or if it's 40 but i think the more people that would sign up the more effective the program would be yeah okay and last question um and i think you i may not have heard correctly or didn't hear would we as a district be administering the um rapid the antigen test or would we go outside for that i know the pcr is an outside but would one of our staff members be doing that with the nurses okay the nurses could administer the rapid test and we would need a doctor's order from dr taylor our school physician um and we would also need to be trained and there are training programs out there for the
115rapid um now the finance now test okay great thank you so by consent also it's important to know by consenting to the pooled testing you're simultaneously consenting to the avid binax now test as well so that's part of the same form great thank you i'm technically alphabetically next so i'll go ahead and take my turn so um it's my understanding that the town testing is going to cease on wednesdays have you confirmed that with it that seemed like that was in your schedule and i've heard that that is is no more michelle i can speak to that um i had the opportunity to speak with our town managers around this particular issue because we would be reliant on the town's pcr testing in terms of being able to have the fastest turnaround what they are
116sharing with us at this time is that they have a limited number of tests back or tests left so they are anticipating moving to one time a week testing um so instead of when that initial schedule was built we've been experiencing twice a week testing they are anticipating moving to one time a week testing and i do not know if they have yet determined the day of that but they financially they are footing the bill for that they are running out of funds they have a a backlog that they'll be using but it they will not be able to maintain the twice a week testing yeah that's what i had heard okay um i guess my next question is logistically so when people are taking this test and they're swapping their nose they're taking their
117mask off where would this happen i mean we like i don't see like oodles of space left over because if we did we would be filling them with children like where would this happen right it's a really good question and that you know we've had numerous discussions around it right and and the administrators would have to kind of help us figure that out because they know their schools but um the districts that we have spoken with in elementary schools it was done during mass breaks um you know they would go from one classroom to the next um in high schools um they could potentially do it you know around lunch but there would have to be a space in which to do it and we are in the middle of winter so we can't really
118do it outside um so again that's something that would need a discussion and and with the administrators in terms of of school space and logistics and schedules right so there are there are multiple approaches that we've heard from some districts some districts you know have a central location they call you know classroom one down to the cafeteria they test the kids they send them back other schools will set up a cart go classroom to classroom have them come out in the hallway so we would have to work with our partner cic health and figure out what works you know i don't think it's going to be a one-size-fits-all solution for every building you know to do this efficiently we'll have to look at each building individually yeah they so they would take their mask down
119underneath the nose and they would do the swabs and they would place it in the pool um in the in the tube so you're right they'd be taking their mask halfway off okay uh next just julia thank you thank you so much tom and leah um just thank you so much for your research and for your due diligence um i've also been just reading a lot and researching a lot about pool testing um i'm a gigantic fan of data and a proponent of testing as many people as possible and i have a million questions but i guess my my only question the really only question that matters to me is will this get students back in school quicker and if not then i don't know is it going to divert resources that could be better
120spent somehow getting kids back in school that's my only question because i know you did say on your slide the um give confidence and give confidence to parents and students and teachers i think this is me speaking and i'm not saying anything against the slide i think that teachers and administrators and and students and parents have the confidence so i just wonder what we would do with this data that would help get students back in school um and i think that's my literally my only question and you might not be able to answer that so yeah i i think that you know part of you know one of the hurdles of you know that's been spoken many times of getting everybody back into school is the physical distancing right and the six feet of physical
121distancing has not been retracted by the cdc it continues it was published last week in a white paper that this return to school is contingent on you know on mitigation strategies such as the physical distancing hand washing staying home when you're sick i don't see where the pool testing would be a substitute for that um i really don't i feel strongly about that and i i really don't think unless there's contrary information as of last week the white paper that was published does recommend that it's in regards to the wisconsin school um the six feet of physical distancing yeah so the 16 would need to be a that's a that's like a separate discussion we would need to have this would not contribute in any way to furthering that discussion as far as we know
122correct okay thank you that's it michelle you muted david you would be alphabetically backwards next because v comes before n between you and dana so thank you sure um so i think uh excuse me um you know as i look at this thank you for the for the data but i think that's one thing that's sort of not too clear is as you're as we look at that layout of when everybody would be tested right um the reality is that's per school right so we've got five schools here that need to be tested in you know realistically four buildings five you know five buildings but you know the high school and middle school accounting is one um the district i work in does pool testing and uh we are considerably smaller in size um and
123we are actually basically in one building i know that um you know we had to hire three nurses to actually uh conduct these tests and that when we do our pull testing it takes all day on friday and um utilizes the entire gym to do it um you know just thinking about the way you're presenting the information right so we'd have to be doing this five days a week you know four or five days a week of consistent testing at five different sites you know we're not talking about hiring one nurse to do this and training out one person to do this you know we could be looking at anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen people just to sort of get this done and at the you know same time you know where
124are we going to do it we just had to move kindergartens into our largest spaces that we have at the elementary school and you know especially at the elementary level that that's really worrisome about you know because that's where we're going to need the most supervision that's we're going to need the the most space to actually make sure this is done correctly um i mean obviously it seems like a double like oh well if they're going to pay for it for six weeks and like i don't even know if we could staff it even if they're going to pay for it for the rest of the year you know i don't even know if we could actually end up finding the staffing um and like i said this is from living it for three weeks
125excuse me over in salem um you know i don't know i'm really curious as to you know you said you you applied or you requested help from desi about the staffing but you know what do you guys really see as far as like staffing goes the need to to bring on right because because like i said when i first saw that that chart you put out like okay well that seems doable but then we have to realize that that's times five right um and and you know we we have to think about staffing that and then you know as julia said are we sort of putting our resources in the right spot about trying to get you know what the ultimate goal of getting everyone back into school right i mean great points uh with
126the application uh we did specify that we wanted on-site assistance at every location and with that i would you know if that's he said yet we're we're going to send you one person to do the whole district that that's something we push back on and say that's not adequate right like we need dedicated people to each building not only to get the testing done but we're talking about medically testing children it should be somebody that's familiar on a weekly basis not a revolving door of who's ever available you know that's one of the concerns i have is making sure that we execute this in a thoughtful planful way and it really is going to be resource dependent whether or not we can execute this in my in my opinion and i think the other position
127along with the testers is that we would need somebody to oversee the program and coordinate it so we would be looking for desi to provide that as well one of the things that we know from the application is that if you are requesting support in order to administer the pool testing that it that you may be delayed in having the testing materials available to you and it is my understanding and tom and leah correct me on this if i'm wrong but if it's delayed it's not like when you start you have six weeks when it's delayed you have whatever time is left during those six weeks correct like then march 28th i believe is the last date and just to pee back off what tom is saying and to add a personal note um you
128know when i think of this program and again i i think i would want the nurses to be heavily involved they're the ones that know the students and you know we conduct screenings we conduct other health um you know programs within our schools right and we know our students but with the districts that we have spoken with you know i get this oh it's a lot of work it is so much work to an already taxed group right and if cases go up and contact tracing increases or if um if we have a nurse that becomes ill or can't be in school for a period of time then we're down a nurse and also a lot of we have great substitutes but they are helping out with the vaccination efforts and so um you know
129in the coming weeks uh you know the towns are going to be vaccinating i know our nurses are you know going to help out with that effort so there's a lot to think about oh okay that's dana um thank you um thank you to all my school committee colleagues you've all answered asked a lot of the same questions that i would have asked um so i guess um my question is um i think the only question i and i don't know is do we know about what impact or how much time and learning um we anticipate that what impact that will have and i know that's difficult to judge but per student um but i mean the swab itself i guess i'm just sort of what's the impact on time on learning my understanding is
130that once you get the pools um created and you have all the testing uh all the training done and you have everything set up and you sort of fumble through that first week right because we all when whenever we start something new it's a process it's a learning curve right so you know then it becomes easy to do right i've talked to some some individuals who have it in their district it's very quick sticking in the tube and you go move on but that would be a huge learning curve in a short amount of time with less resources okay um and then i and i think this is maybe julia really already sort of hit on this but i you know the the mitigation strategies that we have in place you know and i don't
131want to like jinx ourselves but are working right we're doing a good job right we're doing a good job our mitigation strategies are effective right we've right that's what i'm hearing and i've heard all along and i guess maybe this is the same point that julia was making but it this is so what i wanted in the fall like in august this was my dream this is what i wanted and now because i think i didn't have any faith in those migration strategies or less and now that they're working it just maybe there's no question here i guess i just might go i'm just talking myself through that like it what i think julia's question is sort of what's the value you know because i think we've already created the value by the the hard
132work that the staff our teachers and our nurses have already created by the mitigation so yeah maybe there's no question there so okay there's agreement on my side uh dana as you know from the cove response team i've i've been vocal and beating the drum about pool testing for a long time something i wanted to see way back before it was i guess mainstream so i mean now at this point where we're exhibit we're showing that our mitigation strategies i guess have been successful right i mean i think we would know if they were not successful um it would be very clear if they weren't successful so you know i i'm i share that same thought where i'm i'm having trouble finding the value at this moment and it's hard i mean at least i
133i also being on the covered response team it's hard i mean right i mean i was very vocal about wanting testing um but it it just feels okay different now all right thank you and anna with an egg surprise it's a wrap up thank you um where's that clean up hitter all right i do have a bunch of questions um the first one is um some of it is sort of procedural and some of it's a little bit more philosophical so tom can you unpack for me why you think we'd be so reliant on the uh stop the spread and um town testing sites because the faq put out by dussy says that any costs of pcr testing afterwards would be covered by the state and i know that you know if you go over
134to danvers or you go to one of the cic health sites themselves which are in newton cambridge there's even one in providence i mean you can get a test and pay for it and jesse will cover it so why is it that you think we'd be so reliant on these other testing sites when the costs are covered by the program sure i wasn't even really discussing costs i come at it from time out of school right so knowing that this testing within the town they turn the results around quickly just like the stop to spread um that's you know where we came up with that initial planning it wasn't really about the cost per se it's more you know getting kids practically you know to return back to their normal routine well but theoretically like
135the only people who'd be taking a pcr test or those who are already quarantined so they could go to any number of places and these days i mean i say this from direct experience the cic health platform is amazing i did a csc uh pcr test i had results in nine hours which was amazing so i i i sort of questioned like i don't know that's true because the costs are covered um one other question sort of about the logistics the i'm hearing you talk about the paper form it needs to be formed why couldn't we use our aspen and our snap portal to automate that and get an electronic signature and if it's if we can't do it with an aspen it'd be simple enough to create a google form once and have an
136electronic signature by submission of this form this constitutes my electronic signature for permission i'm sort of questioning why we have to go 1997 on the forums and we have a lot of digital technology there that's that's a fair assessment that was my first question of why that wasn't rolled out with the initial consent form that the state put out snap would probably be the most logical to investigate to see what we can do there using a google form i don't think that's going to work because we have to be hipaa compliant because it's a medical consent form yeah but we have to at least at the very least look at snap i think that's one of the true the only platforms that we have that would be compliant for this um you know that's not
137to say that jesse's not working on an electronic form right um once you do it once if you do it right it's pretty easy to integrate so you know to me that's as someone who works with databases i feel like there's got to be a better way to do that um i also just sort of want to point out you know the the resources are going to be provided you know in terms of all these things including on-site coordination so i hear what you're saying it's a lot of sites a lot of places but realistically if grades two and up or self-swapping right we can teach them to do that um or have supervision it's really not in my mind it's actually not that many kids they're taking their masks off they're having lunch they're
138doing things like it takes it like a matter of seconds to do it so i just i'm hearing a lot of like i can't i won't it's hard it's just like but i actually think it's not as hard as we think it would be um and tom you said you know there's not a lot of people waiting around not able to help i actually don't know that that's true i think there's a ton of medical people in our community doctors and nurses who would happily help us do this if we couldn't get enough resource from the state even though they are providing it so i wouldn't assume that there's a heavy medical community here people willing to help um and they will train the trainer um you know obviously i think the money is there
139uh after the six weeks but i think if the first six weeks i think to me it's like a no-brainer that we should do it uh despite these costs because in my mind and this is sort of more philosophical you know i think any testing is good testing um because it helps keep the whole community safer on some level and i'm sort of uncomfortable questioning the underlying science of this i mean this is being rolled out by the state by the dph by the broad institute which quite literally is one of the world's leaders in anything to do with medical innovation and they're all part of this so part of me sort of like yeah it would be great if this had happened earlier but it is happening now and you know yes there are
140flaws in the test but you can still have a high high viral road and be asymptomatic the new variants are coming on like i don't personally kind of feel like we're so close to the finish that we should end like there is still time coming the vaccines are coming for teachers and i'm going to talk about that next but you know vaccination for kids is still a long ways off and there are health benefits to testing the kids they go out to the community and do other things so i i just i don't i guess i'm protesting i'm a protesting biased person i'll just say that um and then the last thing i want to read into the record and i guess this is more process frustration a few days ago i reached out to
141david smith the chair of the board of health and hamilton to get their take from you know their perspective david advised that he had been working on a statement and had a joint meeting and that he was working on a statement he was going to share with the school committee it's my understanding he actually emailed this letter to superintendent danielson shelford yesterday but none of you forwarded it to the full committee so as a process standpoint i'm sort of frustrated that there's a department a board of health letter that hasn't been shared with us so i reached out to david and i just want to i suppose read it into the record because i don't think my fellow school committee members have read it so this is a statement from the hamilton and wynonna boards
142of health on covid pool testing in the hamilton water regional school district this was dated yesterday the superintendent of hw rsd has asked the two boards of health for an opinion on the possibility of the schools implementing covit 19 pool testing we understand and appreciate that a decision on whether to implement full testing in the hw rsd requires weighing a host of complicated and interrelated factors including logistical financial sociological testing technologies and student family teacher staffing relationships taking into account and integrating all of these elements into the decision is well beyond the scope and expertise of the hamilton and went on boards of health however the district has expressed concern about the potential impact of choosing to adopt pool testing on the resources and staffing of the two boards we are aware that potential we
143are aware of that potential and can respond to it as follows in the event that hwrsd decides to implement pool testing in consultation with the school nurses who would have primary responsibility for running the program the hamilton awana boards of health and their public health nurses will commit to providing whatever support is needed to make it happen while we are not comfortable making a specific recommendation as the boards of health we do as a matter of principle support testing is an important means of helping our communities to control the spread of this very contagious virus in that vein we do want to ensure that the district considers in its decision two key points raised by the cdc and its guidance on pool testing as follows pollution should only be used in areas or situations where
144the number of positive tests is expected to be low for example in areas where cohorts with low prevalence of coping 19 infections in general the larger pool of specimens the higher likelihood of generating false positive false negative results for more detailed information and guidance on these and related points please go to the link on the cdc webpage and guidance on full testing www blah blah in conclusion the two boards of health will try to respond to the best of her abilities and knowledge on any follow-up questions and a specific topic or facet of pooled testing so i just wanted to read that into the record um and again i'm frustrated this letter wasn't shared with the full committee before we had to vote on it um but the part that jumps out to me in
145it is that the public health department said they would help us and i like i kind of like the can do attitude they'll commit whatever is needed um and then the point that you know we are talking about incidences of low prevalence of covet 19 right we don't have a lot of cases in our community right now we don't have a lot of cases in our school relatively speaking and we know that the pool sample size is going to be kept small so i kind of feel like i'm hearing a lot of reasons why we can't do it but i also feel like we have a lot of reasons why we could um so i just wanted to read that into the record and say you know i hear it's going to be hard but
146there's a lot of funding that's free i think it'll help people be more comfortable and um i want to push back a little bit on the idea that this couldn't be used as a means of getting more kids into school you know that's that's not a decision that's been made it's directly attached to this and in my mind if we can provide more comfort more testing more data that would actually to me be a reason to try to encourage not only kids to get to school but stay in school if we had more information so just thank you could i just add for the record um that david smith did send me the letter but he sent it to my work email um and i did not get it till this afternoon and i just
147pulled in from work at 506. and i haven't had a chance to read it yet noted um i believe he also did send it to the superintendent i don't know if she can confirm that or not i mean it's it's water under the bridge but it's a similar situation and i really appreciate all the work that the boards of health did it did end up in my personal email i did see it this afternoon i did share it with tom and leo um as we were finalizing pieces but um that that occurred later this afternoon and i would be happy to send it out to the committee but again it by the way that it worked out it happened to end up in my personal email anna can i speak to a few points water
148under the bridge because you've just made accusations against two members of the committee that they have somehow violated our code of ethics or whatever without even contacting them and giving them that opportunity and now they've given you an explanation so i ask that you not i i have not questioned anyone's code of ethics i'm simply saving david sent a letter it was sent out i understand in boxes they're they're like that's all fine but it's information that's relevant i'm not accusing anyone of an ethical violation i wanted to read it and i would encourage you to go back and listen to what you said and then determine if you said whether or not they went against our policy i would encourage you to do that i'm saying that it's information pertinent to our vote that
149would have been incredibly helpful to have before this meeting that's what i'm saying okay we had did you want to respond to something or other so i yes i am i have recognized leah to speak thank you anna sorry um so i just want to just point out because um you know the board of health has been wonderful but we have february vacation coming very quickly right which would be valuable it would be valuable to get this program in place um and next week the public health department will be doing the second vaccinations for the ems so you know i think it's a timing issue right could we do this yes we could all figure out how to do this and we're smart people but um you know could we do this effectively within the
150time frame that we have um not sure i i i wonder i'm sorry it'd be anna you brought up a good point right in in it it made me really think that if we did bring if we were able to somehow bring people back right and and please help me out here right i need a little bit of a hive mind going on if we were able to somehow utilize this to bring people back do we run the risk right in in do we run the risk of actually creating some sort of false hope within the community right whereas right now people are being very stringent about you know johnny's got a sniffle we're not going to send them into school today right and all of a sudden johnny's got a sniffle but he tested
151clear last week so we know he's fine so we're just going to send them in right like and i know this is a slippery slope argument right it is so so you know i'll take take it with a grain of salt but you know i'm really trying to you know as i said i'm going through this testing right and i think it's also important to say that like i work in middle school in high school so we all self-test but it still takes three three administrators right to do it so um even with self-testing just the whole check-in process that you know um the handling it in the checkout process it still takes three but you know like i'm really sort of on the fence because i mean ultimately yes we want to get everybody
152back in school right i don't think anyone's denying that and it you know but is this the appropriate vehicle to do so is it the appropriate allocation of funds to do so i'm not sure yet you know and i think what you just brought up sort of pushed me back to the well maybe it you know because like i said like tom tom and leah's presentation was like oh no all right maybe this could work you know and then i started sort of thinking like well no maybe it just really won't and then when you just said sort of just like well maybe it will yet you know but like i can't i think it has to sort of it has to be said that like you know is there someone that's going to be
153like oh we're doing all this pool testing now so we're going to know and and it's going to be safer and that we let our guard down a little right is that a danger of doing it i mean i think my personal opinion is as as we've all said it's one mitigation strategy it's an additional tool that we don't have right now so it's on top of everything else it's not a replacement for or a sense of like false hope but i mean pool testing has been in place at major universities and employers for months and months it is unfortunate the state waited till now to do it i totally validate like wow where was this plan in august but i also think we can't get too far ahead of ourselves in terms of the
154end of this virus you know especially for kids you know the teachers vaccinations are on the horizon that's great kids vaccinations are not there's still a concern in the community as leah said you know i was really happy to hear you say it's it's not about spreading in the schools it's not spreading in the schools i think we're pretty confident in saying that but it is spreading in the community we are still having you know occasional quarantines pop up at youth basketball at youth you know football they're still the concern that parents the kids are taking home to the grandparents of the parents so i think that i'm happy that i don't think sprite is happening in the school but i don't think that's the only reason to say well then we don't need this
155because we've all said over and over the spread is not at school the spread is in the community this is testing that would help our community as a whole be safer and kids are a big part of that so again i i'm a i'm a protesting person i see great value in this and i sort of um i i would like to see us despite the logistical hurdles given the resources being provided by the state and then the resources potentially at our disposal both ones that we have to pay for potentially ones that we could get from volunteers like i just i think we should do everything we can to get as many kids back in school or stay in school or keep the community safer as um as these new variants come over you
156know that's another part of it we really don't know quite when it's going to be yet and to me this is going to make everyone safer so madam sheriff i may um i just want to clarify that in no way did i mean to insult the science behind pool testing i think you know i'm in agreement with everybody that the more testing the better um i really outline the two options for the school committee to support the administration like it's either you don't feel comfortable that this is a good match for the community or that you know we take this on but only if we're provided with the resources that we can execute this 100 percent there's a lot of things that we do on a daily basis in tasks not cobit related in any
157field in any job that you can wing you can get away with you know a mistake here and there and it's not that noticeable i'm going to go back to saying that if we're medically testing children first and staff that i want to be 101 effective in this i don't think there's room for error people are going to notice if this is done badly so i just want to clarify that you know if we do want to take this on we we just need the additional resources that we put on our application to desi in order to be you know i want to make sure that the program works so i just wanted to clarify in case there was any misunderstanding like i mean i've been beating the testing drum since i don't know april
158may june and if i can jump in time i think that this is why this decision is so hard right that you know there there are valuable pieces to testing um and at the same time there is a lot of complication in actually um putting this forth in and and one of the challenges is if we don't do it well is that we can have folks quarantining in missing instruction and that piece as well and it's a real dilemma right in terms of how to move forward but i would echo tom's piece in a in certainly part of your presentation that if the committee chose to go forward it would be absolutely critical that we have the resources that we need to do it well okay um so we'll go around uh so people who
159have spoken once or twice we're done but if you still have something you need to add that would be great so peter and julia just had their hands raised so go peter the ask is we need the resources to do this but we don't know what we don't i guess we don't know what we need though do we do we know exactly i mean from david's point about the logistics and the cost impacted me greatly and julia's point about are we diverting resources that could be spent elsewhere and then the point about you know trying to get this program going getting the proper staff trained you know in david's school they had to hire three nurses we have we would have to have a coordinator here we're talking about six we only have a six
160week window to implement this effectively um i i mean i understand the benefits of training but i i'm um of testing but it could it could just blow if we're not doing it properly it could just blow everything up with a lot of missed instruction a lot of quarantining that's not necessary but i guess they ask is we need the resources to do it correctly but we don't know what the what are we just going to throw money at this and hope that it's enough or hope that is not enough i just don't i guess i don't know what's being asked when when we're asked we need the resources to do this properly i i can actually clarify that for you uh in this in the application that we submitted to desi we indicated that
161we needed at least one on-site support person per school and also assistance with the data coordination that was that should be on the final slide for the action so that's what we indicated to deci what we needed for resources that would be funded under this pilot program through desi that would be funded by desi going forward we would have to borrow that cost [Music] and i guess my other big thank you for that sorry my other big concern is that the training to collect or manage the supervision of the collection of samples um the proper handling of it how long is that going to take again six weeks goes by like that nice yeah and it would just what i would share and tom if you want to jump in here um we are we
162are getting information daily from the partner we've been assigned around that kind of detail and those conversations just started today tom do you want to add anything to that i i apologize peter i your um my bandwidth kind of dropped for a second so i didn't get the whole question no i just how long would it take to to get the the folks trained to either collect or supervise the collection of all these samples safely across five schools and i'm assuming including the administration office um yeah i don't have that clear answer for you right now um we were just assigned our partner yesterday um received the initial contact from them today so i'm guessing i should have some rough idea over the coming days uh there's also a few webinars that we have to
163attend as well so i'm just nervous i know part of this cost is being picked up by the state but it just sounds like we are going to end up diverting a lot of resources and bandwidth to something that we're going to have to start paying for in six weeks anyway you know in terms of um how long it would take the several schools that we um we [Applause] talked spoke to um it sounds like it's about four good hours to do a cohort of around 200 people and that's you know um it's pretty much i think the size of our some of our schools and the elementaries would be smaller no i guess no not that i'm sorry not that that time that time was knowing that time is helpful as well but i'm
164talking about getting the folks trained to be able to do the the collection of the supervision of the collection training would not be like days on end i believe it would be like a training webinar i see thank you thank you oh i'll stop monopolizing the meeting here julia um so i mean i have one point and then a question one point is if i mean if this happens we have to encourage the entire community to participate because i'm worried that um what i've heard in other districts like literally from calling them and talking to them is that there was enthusiasm at the beginning and now there's not enthusiasm and also someone had a quarantine and i don't know what happened so i mean i'm not i'm actually not opposed to trying something but i
165implore the community like if you're writing us emails if you're asking us to vote for something if you're so pro something you have to also be willing to put your money where your mouth is and participate i mean really that's true um the question that i have is can we do just six weeks would that be worth anything or is it not worth it to just do the six weeks and then see how it goes so what i can answer is that there is no requirement that we continue after the six weeks right so if we get to that four or five week period and we realize that it's not working out we're not obligated to continue the program one okay so sorry the question is if we vote like are we voting to do
166the six weeks so that's kind of my question like what is the time frame that we're voting on i guess that's just my question and then i will yeah i think the anticipated vote is for the six-week sponsored by desi um one thing that i i would just add to that that the timing here is challenging because there's some question knowing kind of where the vendor is right now as to whether or not we could have this in place after february vacation um because one of the things that we could see this is being really valuable is after that vacation time where we have seen upticks in cases um it it seems like it's a pretty big stretch at this point that we would be ready to do this by next week and therefore be
167able to do it after february vacation um and then when april vacation occurs um the six week period is over um so one one one piece just an another kind of piece of the puzzle is that the the two times when we can foresee a particular need to be able to test um it seems unlikely that we would be able to get it ready before february vacation and we would have to now we could test after april vacation but that would mean having the the district pick up the cost of it and dana what's next um i people asked my question so i um yeah i'm i'm really sure but yeah michelle can we move to vote yeah i was gonna say that everyone's had like two rounds so um dana why don't you make
168a motion and okay um six weeks we're gonna make the motion in the affirmative correct yeah you actually have to make a motion to move to vote oh i'm sorry i'm sorry i i move that mean i move that we vote is there a second for that okay second by michelle horrigan um david yes peter will we have more time to discuss yes well no because i think anna still had a question right all right peter thank you though um can we make a motion to give more time for discussion no it's okay it's fine just don't know later no mr morgan yes anna yes dana yes great so now make a motion i'm gonna make a motion um okay excuse me michelle do you have to vote oh i'm sorry yes i vote yes
169sorry my apologies um okay uh so i move that the hamilton regional school committee accepts the or proceeds with the state's offer of pool testing with uh the caveat that we receive from the state the assistance that has been requested on our application second and i think we want to do just the six weeks i i could not get right but i think the states are only six weeks anyway so yeah that falls to the state park okay seconded by anna all right um so we've decided to go for a vote follow the backwards alphabet after we is after we vote i i guess after the second don't we always take a minute to discuss if there's any more discussion normally but we voted to vote so not now so what is your vote on
170the motion no all horrigan no michelle bailey um no julia no david no dana no anna yes okay so that did not pass so there's no action on that okay um it's in the state of note saying where were you six months ago um all right student opportunity act plan so um brad hill talked about this a little bit you'll remember last year when dr kukenberger was here there was this promise of money to assist with special populations and um having to do somewhat with chapter 70. and then and we wrote the plan and we submitted it on time and then the deadline was extended and we were so proud of ourselves and then the legislature was like oh that was subject to appropriation and we're not appropriating it and you don't get the money
171so now they're thinking maybe they'll give us the money but in order to do that we have to submit a report on the plan so that is what is before us is that a pretty good summation yeah it's been a um a challenging piece and you know when you talk to the folks at the state they are um acknowledging that the timing of the soa student opportunity act and the covid crisis um merged in such a way that made this particular state level um initiative problematic um so what you know in and again and chatting with the folks around this one of the things that they've said to me is that we know that districts are just trying to get through with covid we're just asking them to get something in and their their kind
172of thinking is get started and then get better once we get moving um and what what you heard from representative hill this evening is that there there is at least currently in the governor's budget um a request to start funding soa that would provide hamilton went with some additional dollars so the the background around student opportunity plan um is again particularly related to closing gaps with with subgroups and how do we move forward with that um and in the plan um they they ask for a number of different things and you you have access to that in front of you so um the the first piece is related to what subgroups would we look at and again in terms of trying to get something in um with the you know get started get better kind
173of idea that the the state has has put out there when we look when when i've done a quick review of our three-year mcas testing um what we see in subgroups are we we see special education subgroup is there's a gap we see social um for english language learners there's a gap our low um are low socioeconomic students do not test as high as our primary group and our african american group and our hispanic and latino students also show evidence of not always having the same types of outcomes um so they asked us to identify the student subgroups um then um the next thing that they asked about is okay what are high high leverage evidence-based programs that you will consider employing in order to close that gap with our students that are um not
174achieving at the same level and the way that i went forward in terms of filling out this plan is to look at the initiatives that we already had underway so one of them is related to the category of [Music] paying attention to our early literacy program and being sure that we have an evidence-based program related to that that is one of the key areas that they identify as being a strong evidence-based approach i think that the committee had identified that before my arrival and then refor reinforce that with our our district goals so what i had in the plan is that we are moving forward with um our new literacy tutor positions and that type of thing what you'll see here i had to call them and ask them because we obviously don't have any
175of these for fiscal year 21 and they advised me to just put a zero for that right now um and that there'll be future reports coming but we're we're our alignment is already the work that we've done already that is one of the evidence-based categories that i have put into this plan um and the second category is related to guaranteed and viable curriculum and in our budget one of the things that you see that we have been working on is the reinstatement of a teaching and learning leadership structure and in particular at the elementary level we struggle with aligned curriculum and well-articulated curriculum and the instructional coaches that are in the budget are certainly a critical piece of trying to get that address so that is a a second piece that is in there um
176then the the fourth thing that they ask us to respond to is how how might we envision engaging all families in this work and part of our central office piece that we are still working on is um the restructuring of one particular position and i i indicated in this report that we we may be able to morph that position into something that is very connected to student engagement in terms of and then finally they asked for certification were stakeholders involved um so i i indicated that our elementary literacy team clearly had impact related to the early literacy piece i noted the school committee district goals our district leadership team work um our curriculum instruction assessment vetting team and i did note that at this point we were not able to collect parent data due to
177the covet situation um and again spoke to the department today and and talked about the fact that we are planning a strategic planning process where all stakeholders will be will have an opportunity to weigh in and they felt that that would be a positive move and supportive of this document so at this point um again the the ask is to just get something in um it what has been presented is in alignment with what the committee has already discussed um and that as we move forward and if we are fortunate enough to get the funding there will be opportunities for us to continue to revisit this and make adjustments as needed so happy to answer any questions that folks might have so we'll do that round robin again um so we'll go around once and
178then go around twice if you have anything you want to ask and then um i guess we need to vote correct just to approve and and just so you're aware um what one of the things i ask them about is that they do ask that the committee votes on this plan um and i submitted it last week the official deadline that they had put out was january 15th me and a lot of other districts missed that um and in all the craziness so immediately got on the phone to talk with them about that and they said no worries just submitted and just indicate when your committee would be voting so i have on this form um indicated that we have a meeting this evening and that the committee would be voting on it at this
179time yeah it's been a lot of chatter about some committees about like who knew who bothered we didn't get the money who cares all right so if we go in the opposite order um for this ron robin it puts anna thank you uh michelle thank you mary beth okay so i have a couple of content questions and a couple process questions um some of them are minor some of them bigger um one thing i just want to point out is a point of cultural sensitivity that i think we should adjust anytime we write it is we shouldn't write african-american slash black we need to use the or there in the same way you've done for hispanic or latinx students because of the identity factor so i just think that's a point of cultural sensitivity we
180should be mindful of and and also you'd know that was a drop down menu from the state and that's what you had to check so okay that's good to know but just the way it comes out is you know unsurprising it's frustrating but um so that's one small question um so the thing that strikes me about our submission is that the point of the student opportunity act is to intentionally provide focus on those subgroups right like that's written into the four commitments intentionally focused on student subgroups who are not achieving at the same level that sort of commitment number one the guidance from the state says it is critical that districts district resources support student subgroups as the legislation attended um as part of the soa districts are required to submit a three-year plan evidence-based
181plans aimed at closing persistent disparities and achievement of non-student subgroups it says you know the department of elementary and special education will focus primarily on the extent to which districts are implementing evidence programs that will close the gaps in these communities so i think the thing that i guess i'd like you to speak on a little bit it seems like what we're doing is actually just taking our overall literacy plan which is part of our generalized budget and calling that good enough but the point of the act is to really focus on subgroups and i don't see anything in our plan that talks specifically about how students of color english language learners students with disabilities or low-income students are going to be helped in addition to anything that's happening in the sort of gen ed
182population could you could you address that it feels like we're repackaging a tier 1 tier two generic plan in a way that doesn't conform with what the statute intends yeah no um what what the the statute is is asking us um is to engage in evidence-based practices to help close gaps for students so we have begun the work and we do not in obviously that work did not happen this year because of funding issues but these practices are the types of practices that are likely to close the gaps for these subgroups and one of the things that i know we will be asked to do is as we move forward with implementation of these practices to track whether or not they are having an impact on the particular subgroups so for example if we were
183to you know work on our tier two intervention really working on aligning curriculum and that we see let's just say for example our special education students really responding to that but our low socio economic students not responding to that then we would be asked to consider what else could we be doing for that group because the efforts that we're putting forth are not impacting that particular subgroup and so i don't know if that helps anna i mean it does it's sort of unsatisfactory because i don't see anything in our proposal that actually says here are the programs that are going to specifically address um disparities among non-white students you know like there's nothing that's sort of targeted in that way and i think that really is the intention of the law um so i'm sort
184of uncomfortable with the generic feel of it um this one's sort of more of a really specific question under commitment three you've listed three different metrics uh two of them make a lot of sense english based and math-based outcomes but high school graduation rate is the third one that you've listed however this is supposed to be evidence-based to monitor success over three years so if our plan is targeting elementary literacy and then high school graduation is a metric we're not going to know the high school graduation rate for more than a decade for some of these kids so i'm confused why we're including high school graduation as a metric on a three-year plan yes so ultimately when we think about things like the curriculum work well there there will certainly be a focus budget-wise on
185restoring that work at the elementary level that kind of curriculum work also is happening at the high school level in fact we you know we have nests coming up that that will be looking at our curriculum documents and can impact um students that are in the subgroups so that that is a a piece that we have in there now and whether or not that continues to be a a good measure is is remains to be seen again in the attempt to kind of use what what options they laid out that seemed like a reasonable one to put forth certainly could be adjusted in the future i i again i don't quite understand that because the entire body of the plan is about our elementary literacy restructuring um not about our high school accreditation so it
186doesn't totally track um the parts that really really actually are more worrisome to me um is the bit about legal certification around community engagement and so that's a strong part of the law it says certify that you've engaged stakeholders as specified by the law each plan must be developed by the superintendent in consultation with the school committee i don't know if that's really happened and shall consider input and recommendations from parents and guardians and other relevant community stakeholders including special education english learner parent advisory councils school improvement councils and educators in the district we will look for districts to confirm they engage groups as outlined in the statute alongside other local community groups so that plans reflect student needs as identified by the community and you know this is a legal certification that i understand
187there's pressure to get this in because we've in fact missed the deadline but i as a committee member really uncomfortable certifying that we've done anything like that when we've in fact done none of that at all um just as a point of order there's a somewhat meaningful typo in the community engagement part where you talk about the pendulum starting in march 2019 and it's march 2020 um and it's just so you know i did catch that typo and correct oh good and if you go online you'll find that corrected good um so i guess my i'm really uncomfortable certifying that or using the mulligan of it's a pandemic it's been hard i think that all of that just feels like sort of a a big excuse to have not done what we're supposed to do
188um i'm also just sort of frustrated that you know you're coming to us for not only sort of a rubber stamp but a retroactive rubber stamp you know it's not something we've talked about it's not something we've engaged you mentioned the district goals um and the development of the literacy program but there was no mention whatsoever of the student opportunity act as part of those goals like i i just i feel like we're trying to kind of put a square peg and a round hole on that and then the last part that makes me a little uneasy is there's parts of this that are just are speculative so the entire funding strategy is predicated on passing the budget which that's tbd obviously the other thing is you talk a lot about this community engagement position
189as sort of a way to get at engagement and again that's a position that the committee has never talked about at all um you've sent an email with a job description but i wouldn't i'm a little uncomfortable that we're positioning to the state as if this is something we're definitely thinking about and doing it it's like not even something we talked about so i i understand that you're under pressure to submit something but i feel like it's um i'm not inclined to approve it for those reasons because i just feel like the purpose of the law was to really help at-risk populations and this doesn't feel like a plan that's actually meaningfully trying to target students of color english language or owners low-income students like i don't see how it actually helps them specifically i
190feel like it's just going to be sort of generic help to our predominantly white predominantly affluent population because it's part of our sort of overall gen ed population so um and it's you know you know i'm a stickler i don't like submitting things late even if it's it's busy it's hard like i don't like the fact that we've missed the deadline and from a general compliance standpoint like that that's frustrating to me even though i know it's been a difficult year i would have liked to have had us turning it on time and i would have liked to have more of a true partnership in the development of it and i don't feel like we've had that and now you're asking for our blessing on something that we really had no development so thank you
191and i can just offer some thoughts related to that again the the state is being very clear that they understand the circumstances that districts have been in in the timing of this plan and the code virus um they have you know i've been on the phone with them you know submit something get started get better is kind of their way of thinking about it that all districts are trying to figure out how to submit something in an environment where the kind of community engagement that they're asking for has not been possible in this environment i did speak to her specifically about our plans for strategic planning and she indicated that that would be the exact kind of process that will be helpful and as we go through that process if we want to adjust our
192plan in any way that is certainly something that we're able to do so that this is a reality of you know and just another piece of the pandemic that created challenges within districts um desi is very flexible around this they understand the reality that districts are dealing with and they are that you know they do not anticipate having any problems with this plan as it stands knowing that updates will be coming adjustments can be made and again the the direct quote is get started and then we'll get better as we keep working with it dana did you want to ask anything no not at this time david did you have anything you wanted to ask yeah sorry um you know i i just sort of to to back up with anna said a little bit
193you know i i think about when i did my you know sci course and and they teach you that like you know things you're teaching for secondary learners um about best practices or actually best practices for um you know all classroom types and and it's going to help everybody um you know so i could see why that you know that call to tier 1 and tier 2 support um you know is the same plan but i think to sort of back up what that is saying as well is that you know um marginalized communities within our community are you know extremely marginalized right and and we need to be very clear and very cautious i mean it goes to speak to uh and i can't think of her name but they only that's spoken are
194um comment section earlier about you know this is we we do i think as a district need to look at how we treat those communities and how we i have no idea why i'm blinking like that sorry um there's like nothing blinking at my head i know your red sweater isn't there's nothing blinking i do not know where that's coming from so i'm sorry but the um you know it i mean it's no laughing matter either it's a bad bad time to laugh but you know i i i could definitely back up anna and and what she's saying and that's something that we do need to work on um as a board as a district and as a community um and and i do want to see that going there excuse me and i do
195think that we should um you know be careful about you know like i said it's best practice so it works both ways but let's make sure we're looking at it from the right direction right in in in that these the student opportunity act is to try and make sure that we're helping these marginalized communities in in within our district and to make sure that that is the process we're looking at it from not that it you know and not top down right so like bottom bottom up and you know bottom is probably a bad term to use but um you know and so that's just really what i wanted to say is just sort of back that up and uh on both ends right so i'm really just sitting on the fence all day today
196um julia did you have anything you wanted to ask um so to clarify this this is a report for funding that we didn't get but is it sort of a forward proposal for funding that we hope to get is it both things but it's a it's a start right um so right now we we don't know for sure if we're going to get funding next year um if we do then that funding could be used for um the the proposals that are in the budget right that would help with the budget offset what we will be held accountable for moving forward is to look at whether or not the strategies that are outlined here um actually have an impact on the subgroups that we've identified so if we move forward with these and we don't
197see all right we've really focused on a robust intervention program and this the the students that we have identified in these subgroups are still not moving then we need to ask ourselves okay that that's not enough right the other piece that i would connect up around this is the strategic plan right part of what we've been talking about collectively is the importance of a vision and goals um that the the whole community has had a chance to vet and we're just not there yet but the intent is to get that done hopefully next fall and as part of that that conversation about um you know how do we help all students there has certainly been conversations and important ones around questions of equity are we paying attention to ensuring that all students have equal opportunity
198to learn are we paying attention to those students that um may have more struggles than others and what are we doing to ensure that they too can be successful that's all part of that strategic planning that's coming up um and and and so what this is is the first plan that says we already know that we are doing things that research would tell us will benefit our students in these subgroups um but there is an opportunity to continue to refine this we there is a responsibility to check and see that if in fact these strategies are benefiting those groups of students so this is this is a first start right this isn't something that is cast in stone that can't be changed and once we have that ability to go through that strategic planning we
199may decide to add additional pieces to this um but this is where we are at this moment okay yes i definitely think that the the committee as a whole needs to have more discussion on this and more input and weigh in um before the next proposal or whatever iteration is is right right and and one of the things that we're we're hoping is that not only with the plan but they would actually be funding associated in terms of how you how might use that funding um so yes i i completely agree with that julia and i'll be sure that that happens okay i don't have any more questions yeah so that makes me next um but um so julia you you encapsulated the situation perfectly this is a report that we submitted last year to
200address literacy and some um behavioral con whatever programs and then they never gave us the money and so now we have to submit again to decide you know how would we use the money if we get at this time and so um but the expectation has been that this money wouldn't come and so it's kind of a surprise all of a sudden the governor put it in his budget and everybody's super excited that it might happen so that's you but you explained that perfectly um my only thing is i would just push back the the lateness of this report or whatever is not unusual many districts have been talking about this and nobody really thought a report was going to be due since why would you send in a report to say what you did
201with the money that you didn't get so it's been a little weird in that way and um i do support the idea of the community sort of support person and you know i liked the idea when we discussed it in executive session um i think way back in gen maybe even december um so i think that that is something that's sorely lacking when my kids were in elementary school there was like an after-school program run by parents and it was always discussed like it would be so much better this was something that the school district could do so um i think we're trying to start to get at some of the things that we need and how we address literacy in this district has been a question since my kids were in elementary school so
202it's something we have to start doing something about the next person alphabetically is michelle horgan yeah i just want to ask um david peter and michelle if you can refresh my memory so when when last year we we submitted the student opportunity act it was for kindergarten first grade i'm just trying to recall in a bcba or the ucba was in there and i feel like that was was it the um kindergarten tas which we ended up not being able to have because of the um budget well because they took money right yeah i think i think it was because i was going to say the tas and i forgot about the bc uh ba but yeah okay so it's a theme it's a constant theme and again to your point david you know there's
203there's benefits across all um all education all kids best practices are best practices right right so i just think what's important is that we had this this was in our plan last year and and a version of it is in this plan this year so i think that's the most important thing to take away is that we're working towards improving our best practices or finding our best practices right so okay thank you but michelle you muted that leaves you peter as the cleanup hitter um [Applause] can i yield some of my time to anna i think she had something to say then go for a second round you don't have to speak if you don't want to i just want to be sure that everybody gets a chance to speak yeah no i think uh
204everything that has been said was what i was going to say now we go around another time anna um i think i mean this is all helpful concepts especially because i wasn't part of the last round of the soa application obviously with dr kukenberger and whatnot i think the thing that really troubles me here is um the point of the law is really to target those populations it's not meant to be incidental when you do best practices for everyone that you also sort of help out your marginalized populations that that's not the point of the act because the whole point of the act is that's how education has always been it's always defaulted to the affluent white super majority and that's what's created the gap in the first place so the thing that i'm really
205struggling with is that this is not targeted to those groups there's nothing specific that's meant to sort of focus attention and boost up it's our general ed plan it's part of our budget um the way that it was framed to our budget was that it would be to help keep out of district placements which i do think could help with the special ed subgroup population but we're going to do this you know mary beth you want to do this no matter what independent of the soa um i just i feel like we i really just feel like we've put something in a box for sake of wrapping something and we've omitted the important part which is when you're talking about eliminating educational disparities it those words matter you know it's all about focusing on the
206subgroups as popular as the legislation intended it doesn't say hey districts if you want to provide generalized support to everyone and as a beneficial effect your subgroups win well that's great that's that is explicitly not what this law says so i really feel like we've we're we're missing sort of high level point um and then i do just want to sort of i mean i don't see anything in this legal certification that gives us i mean america i understand that you talked to jesse and that they said like on a really strict legal sense i'm really uncomfortable certifying that we've done community engagement that we haven't done and i kind of take issue that the fact that we couldn't in the zoom world there are all kinds of community groups meeting new connections being formed
207especially for different populations that have a hard time getting together like the zoom era has actually been meeting mayhem i have more community engagement now with the various volunteer boards that i work on than i've ever had before so i'm gonna push back a little bit on that like i just i think we can do better than this and i think that in our haste to submit something what we've submitted is actually sort of um not not in keeping with the purpose of the law is and frankly you know there are a lot of things that our particular district could have done if you're looking at those 17 categories talking about cultural competency and professional development for teachers talking about retention of teachers in a diverse workforce like there are parts of this that actually
208really feel much more targeted to the spirit of the law than what we've done so yeah i just i as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about you know racial equity and all of these issues and sensitive populations i just feel like um i just feel like it's not enough it's not honoring the spirit and i think that instead of sort of elevating the at-risk populations we're treating them again as an afterthought which is historically at districts like ours what has always been the problem but um greener why don't you make a motion and then we'll see if there needs to be additional discussion can i ask a question yep um so um when is the um the next um i think julia sort of alluded to this when is the next time
209that we have to submit something um when i when i spoke to the folks at desc their timeline has all been thrown off on this too so they are not yet sure when the next kind of report will be forthcoming um so i i can't answer that dana they're just again their whole timeline on this was thrown off as well um but it's not like it's a year from now right it's in um you know i would anticipate that there'll be something and will that require by the you know before the end of the year and will that i mean in other words will it be that at that time they're saying whether or not we're actually getting the money and right you know so again if you look at something like this it says
210you know tell us your budget for you know what you're gonna do with this um and again there was no budget because none of the money came um so there you know i i want to assure people that none of these things are intended to be this is your plan and though shall not you know move from that at all right this is an initial pass under an unusual set of circumstances um i i really think that the work that we are going to engage in related to this strategic plan and this conversation about equity in our district will play out in many different ways and there may be additional strategies that we want we develop with our community stakeholders in order to address those needs but we're just not there yet um and we
211again need to submit something um and the the department understands the circumstances that districts are in right now they understand this can change and that they themselves are trying to figure out what a reasonable timeline is around this thank you go ahead and make the motion and are we we are moving to approve correct um i move that uh we approve the student opportunity act plan as presented on the exhibit on the agenda very second second second by michelle horrigan anybody need to discuss anything else great so we'll move on so i just want to what happens if this doesn't get approved the plan they would come back to us you know what i can tell you again david what i heard when i called them is that the words that they used or they
212are going to use a light touch in terms of of approving current plans given the covid crisis and the scenario that districts are facing right now so would it mean that we would have to submit another plan or does it mean we wouldn't get the money or does it mean this plan is really not that big of a deal um but again what i heard is there is a very low chance that this that this plan would not be approved um and that if there there was a concern i would fully anticipate that we would have the ability to make a change if need be so we're just turning this in for homework credit it doesn't you know there is a reality to what is happening right now right and that and not that turning
213it in for homework credit but it is a initial draft right that i am sure over time is going to get tweaked and get better and again we we will have a responsibility to look at whether or not the actions that we are taking are actually impacting the students um you know to to your point in order that this is targeted towards um so this is an initial pass um not you know and that this will be coming back um and that this is be ahead renewed interest particularly because um it now appears that this money may be part of the governor's budget are there any consequences for us legally certified that something happened that didn't happen uh no anna again i asked that specific question of the state and explained that we were we
214were looking at strategic planning and that what is i in the comments section i am clear as to who who engaged in the formulation of this plan um i listed the specific groups and i but is it a problem that we're certified we've engaged the community when we haven't um again the the department did not suggest that that was a problem okay since we have a motion that's been seconded um i think we're ready to vote i just my concern is i want to make sure that we are taking seriously that we're we're focusing on the sensitive uh populations of our community yeah and you know peter just to keep going back that that that is an important theme you know and uh an important issue that i hear coming up in lots of places
215from this committee from our community from our teachers from our leadership team and and it is going to require if we're really going to make meaningful change in that area a really thoughtful approach right on a lot of different levels and i think that the strategic planning process inc in conjunction with all of our stakeholders can get us to a place where we can formulate a plan that is is not just something that is being handed in right but is a true clear commitment to making a difference for our our more vulnerable um learners um that can can struggle with having equitable access to the type of learning they deserve so that is a is an important value um and requires you know i think and deserves um a thoughtful um response and plan um
216so that we can actually see change so why don't we why don't we pull this back and actually do that i mean if we're talking about putting our values into words nothing in this plan shows that we actually are valuing that specifically i feel like to me it's i actually i mean you've said like you're turning it in to get started is something to do like to me this feels like a completely lip service box check why don't we go back and say you know what instead of dusty instead of turning in something that's basically repurposing our gen ed literacy plan why don't we pull it back and actually do some community engagement why don't we engage those minority stakeholders why don't we actually have the community meetings we're supposed to be having to put
217the time in like that's the point of the law and i just want to caution like the on page one of the guidance it says fundamentally each district's plan should be a commitment to do a few things well it should not not as involved and underlined to be a comprehensive strategic plan so i i think actually we're missing the point there like the strategic planning process excuse me this is mary beth well i know we're going to do it but again the strategic plan is a high level district plan and that's very important and i'm not saying we shouldn't do it the law is meant to be a targeted subset of that i don't see how we're complete i don't i just don't think we're i don't have our compliance and it feels it feels
218wrong to be doing this in such a superficial way when we could actually vote no and if jesse doesn't care about the timing you've just said well every once it's pandemic it's not a big deal you're late why submit something that's not really a reflection of our values if we're actually committed to doing it why don't we pull it back and spend a little more time on it because we do need to have a plan submitted and to to your point um that the the deadline has passed and we need to have something in um the what the the guidance says is that this plan is not meant to be a robust strategic plan you should focus on a couple of things which is why we have very targeted things focused here that the the
219department itself in its guidance says these are examples of targeted approaches that fit with these guidelines they they list these 17 things these two things come out of those 17 things that they say are evidence-based that can impact students um ability to learn and address and i i appreciate that that you may have a different perspective on that i want to honor your perspective and let you know that i i hear that there may be additional things that that down the road we can do to support these students but what i can tell you i i believe fully is that one of the ways that we can best move literacy um outcomes for our students that are in subgroups that are not having the same kind of outcomes is a really strong intervention program one
220of the ways that is evidence-based that is in the suggestions from the deesc is to ensure that we have strong curriculum that's a really really good place to start doesn't have to be the end game but those are powerful evidence-based interventions for students that that help to close those gaps okay so we have a motion and a second so we're going to move uh forward to vote so anna no dana yes david no julia no um shall bailey yes mr horrigan yes and peter no okay all right so um i guess let the desc know that we will not be taking the money i guess because i don't know what this means so all right um i am going to call a five minute recess since we've been at this for over three hours i'm
221sorry to the staff who have been sitting on here but i think we deserve to be able to stand up for three five minutes so we'll be back here at let's see 9 18. so return okay and we're back um so tom looks like um your department budget is the next one up um how are you planning to handle this was vinnie going to present something in general or were you gonna present something specific or how is that gonna happen i actually have a slide deck uh but madam chair i would be willing to go last of the three um you know in the spirit of allowing my colleagues to cut out a little early i had planned on attending the rest of the meeting okay super so why don't we have alan go because
222i think his will be the quickest sorry craig allen are you back oh he's going to lose i know he's going to lose a prime spot oh there he is that's okay did i miss something you're up you should be able to share yours your screens um without a problem you can just pull the slide deck up okay tom gary allowed you to go first so you can cut out thank you okay so uh this is the other i'm the president for the i.t department as the director of the it department and i've created a slideshow for you and here you go so um i uh i'm presenting about the the idit dac right so what the i.t budget is is represented back um i decided after having a conversation with uh principal schuster scherster
223sherston the other day that i've used this vin diagram the kind identify how i want i t department rit department be perceived by the end user it's not how i'd run an i.t department because how i want the end user to see our iit department how it reflects upon them and how we utilize the funding that we get to assist them in their their uh sorry oh here we go yeah right so that's that's the venn diagram um so i like to use ability um there's one that one of the components of the venn diagram uh to me usability in this sense is like how with the components you need to be able to do anything with a computer um in some ways a hardware is you know you can have hardware um that is
224uh um not very usable like a door stop that is old and uh and maybe broken and that that that being a door stop is a low end of the usability scale then you have a hardware that's brand new and fully loaded with all the applications you need um to um create and engage your activities um that will be the the ideal model we fit someplace in between so usability means she kind of shows you like here is the applications that we use on a regular basis we use some place around 1500 different applications every month but there's really a very small subset of applications and and websites that we um use regularly the most and these are most ones that kind of represent a small subset of those we actually pay for so like
225brain pop is uh an animated um tool that allows kids to see a video about the a particular subject and then take a little quiz about it there's also dream box we use dream box for math we use it a lot at the middle school level um and that's that has it's a math um it is a math um based one we we've curated for a number of reasons um to be used at that that level it's it became much more important to us over the last year when we started we have solid work solidworks is a uh a modeling pro um software that we use at the high school it's an industry standard for the most part um it's made by desto systems a company i used to work for and uh it's used
226in the shop the shop it's used in our um or we call it uh anyways the modeling program that but we use it in stem programs we have creative suite which is adobe creative suite which is a full array of suite of applications around graphic design we use them in our digital photography classes we use it in our animation class we use it in our graphic design class too um that's mostly at the high school but there's also other components that we use across the whole district like adobe acrobat pro um edpuzzle is a application there's a website that we've adapted we've used it for a long time sorry ellen we can't hear you anymore you can't hear me anymore now you're better i'm sorry i think when i flip between um applications look at
227my notes it pops me off maybe so anyways ed puzzles use the high school in middle school and uh it's an application we've used for a long time but now we've just upgraded to the paid version of it the same thing quizlet quiz is like a um index card that you know teachers create the students can create and then they come with a quiz at the end um in this year we're coming up in our life cycle of of um equipment purchasing if you will or computer purchasing um normally often we we spend a lot of time and our money in putting equipment in our teachers hands uh this year all the equipment we're purchasing goes directly into students hands uh chromebooks for the elementary schools replace some eight-year-old ipad macbook airs and then there's
228at the high school we're going to be putting in new desktops in the stem lab and in the graphic arts lab in 102. we also have some need around audio visual replacements we continually place these under every year there's some that fail or break or need to be replaced because they're too old um we also have some need of suiting out some new classrooms with the money um access to information so i think that having a computer system that doesn't have access to information is very crippling to the person things particularly if we consider how much information we gather about our staff our are purchasing our students and uh to have information connected to it is important is important part of our activities we so that our biggest applications in this area are our aspen
229student information system our financial reporting system or our erp which is uh infinite visions by tower tech document management we which we don't have to actually pay much for we pay for licenses sorry i lost um we have library catalogs we purchase and pay for that goes across all the school district libraries a web hosting for our website um we have ticket management systems we use for between the maintenance department and the it department to um manage our assets and to to uh take track of um tickets of repairs and and uh and work orders um and we also pay for in the in the round of access information our internet connection we have two internet connections we spend some eighteen thousand dollars a year for them and uh we also pay for sis isp
230services which you know maintain a lot of our external looking um facing like our dns uh they engage in uh they filter all our email and they manage our firewall so they're part of that that internet access there's security which is a big part of what we do um i hope this is the part that's the least visible to people um but the part that i probably spend more time engaged than most of the other parts um in in light of the last couple years it's been very important to school systems and municipalities but we have a number of components here we spend a fair amount of money on each year jamf active directory and acls active uh access control lists um jamf is what our management system is for all our macs pc macs
231and uh ipads and phones we have some security software called black carbon black and we pay for email filtering our email's filtered actually twice before it gets to the end user and we do that through our isp there's network security we engage in we have firewall we have content filters for web content we have um wireless controllers to manage our wireless activity and keep the people on it supposed to be on the people not supposed to be on off of it we have phone systems that are at each and every uh school um that engage in uh um that are important part of like the security of maybe a classroom i think of it that way um you know though it is also a way to get a hold of the teacher and we have
232uh emergency communication systems um communication like blackboard that comes in that category uh we're required to have uh mandated to even archaic all our email we do through our isp and we have we just this year put in a new backup and recovery system um to help mitigate uh any future mishaps that come around maybe ransomware it's an important part of upgrading and keeping our systems up and running and recovery time some just some kind of ways to gauge what the size of our iot infrastructure um we have more than 20 200 devices out there in people's hands right active devices that are what i call production devices those are computers i pads um iphones we have uh macbook airs we have macbook pros we have imacs we have pcs we have um chromebooks hundreds
233and hundreds of chromebooks um just a wide range of uh devices we maintain and manage and support we have 120 147 classrooms that have fully fitted out with av systems that include interactive whiteboards auditory system speakers and and some rooms they have document cameras but almost every single room has a fundamentally the same thing in that is the ability to project what you're you're using and what the device you're using onto some surface and then interact with it if you have the right software on your computer um we have some 1500 active email mailboxes we manage and uh every teacher um every student from the sixth grade on up has a active email email box mailbox um since the two um september 1st and these actually these numbers are about two weeks old now since
234i lasted them but we've done some 1400 and 4 500 zoom meetings um we have you know 500 plus active uh google classrooms with an average of 500 um class teachers posting to these classrooms every day [Music] where our our k 6 12 students received over 1.2 million emails in the last uh six months and they themselves have sent some 64 000 um emails themselves so the i.t dac as you can see from the budget um comes down a couple components um hardware um we're going to spend this year 186 this next following year i hope to spend 186 thousand dollars on um high school stem computers um new imacs the art lab lab in the high school engineering laptops where the shop uh in elementary school chromebooks which should be um i think that's
235just 90 of them um we spend roughly about 1500 on professional development each year conferences technical special specific training and skill development for my department and the extended um i.t committee and uh we have contracted services ninety one thousand ninety three thousand one hundred and three um thousand dollars uh these are contracts we engage with out the third parties um printer toter is a big part of it for our 115 uh different laser printers we have our internet um uh connections comes out of the of the contracted services our hardware slas uh service level agreements on our servers and our phone systems and our um i guess that's it actually and uh then we have vertical contracts we contract with a couple people for vertical help for areas that are very specific that are very
236niche uh engineering skills we need and we we contract with outside people for those two um our software i mentioned some of the software earlier uh we spend 180 163 103 on this um this one actually grew a lot this year some 31 percent um and this is mostly due to new um external new uh remote learning um software we've engaged in it's continuing to be using we're assuming continue to use these next year so those software descriptions and software as um this service in summary the i t dac we have uh our biggest change really is comes when we have we have in our dac this year a re restructuring of one eye one position this would be the uh k-5 technology coordinator been added to this stack we also have an increase in
237the software like i just talked about we also have a decrease in what we're spending hardware a small amount eleven thousand dollars and a small decrease in the contract of services this comes from a renegotiation of our our soft our managed printing services the i.t dac is overall one a little over a million dollars um a 128 000 increase comes from the software increase and that one at plus one restructuring position or 14.4 increase um salaries salaries make up 544 000 that's that increase in one position and our our non-salary um commitments we hope to spend next year or 458 959 or 5.1 percent increase the i.t dac overall makes up about 1.6 percent of the total i.t budget that goes to questions i blew right through that so i know i go fast i'm
238sorry and you might have questions if you haven't please feel free to ask all right so um anna did you have any questions uh just one quick question first of all ellen thank you so much for all your hard work this year i feel like of all the unsung heroes your department is right up there so just on behalf of a virtual district thank you um one question i have for you is i know there was some money in the budget this year for the website and i think that there's some money in there too um i think the website has become sort of this anchor on the district do you feel like you have sufficient resources to make our website the modern flexible nimble easily updated integrated piece of technology that we need it
239to be um so our present website is uh eight years old i think um the technology that backs it up is probably more like 12 or 15 years old but that was available and the contract was in place when i got here it was brand new and it hadn't been placed yet um when you engage in something like that it's a fairly heavy lift in the sense that it takes a ton of time and i i mean not my time as much as the secretary's time and stuff and we have it a lot invested it's some 15 000 documents in there um so it has it has a fairly large breadth so to say that i think that we have what it takes to move to the next a new you know state-of-the-art one i
240don't think i have the money to do that right but i do think we have the money to go to something that is very comparable every other school system um around us it has um final site is heavily used in massachusetts um they have a whole new set of uh of tools that they like to use that they're powering that is more ada compliant it is easier for the end user to use and more structured in the way how we grant permissions and be able to access the actual um pages it is cumbersome now but again it's quite old so i think that i we have um enough money to do that transition uh to um a new version of it to the updated um uh back office infrastructure that they can provide i put
241money in there for photography and updating the imagery and i put money in there for additional um services around migrating the existing documents i think that when we do do this that the secretaries and administrators will have to get uh behind it and actually spend some time getting used to it and then updating their own pages so they are more current and and keep them up personally a lot of the way we keep it up is simply through posts through twitter and things like that and that's not always maybe the most attractive way of doing it or maybe not the most effective way saying that there's ways we can tie those pieces together so that you it looks right here but still goes out there to the rest of the world and draws that traffic
242in yeah i mean i think the social integration is is you know that could definitely improve so for now then for this budget cycle you feel okay with what you've been given yes yes okay okay thank you for all your hard work thanks dana did you have anything you wanted to ask um no i think i'm good thank you david thank you very much i had a question but i forgot it i i might circle back to if i can i'll i'll give you a pass to come back uh julia i don't have a question just thank you so much for all you do every day thank you i have a great staff i must have some believe alan can you talk to us about servers i remember that's what it was about that yeah
243because you and me can you tell us about servers and where we are and then so um i think that one the interesting thing is that we had a lot of work to do around covey but that was on top of what we normal work we have to do and we had committed um because of the urgency of it in my mind to put a new new virtual server environment this summer which is a forklift replacement uh meaning that we had to actually remove equipment and put new equipment in and then migrate all our servers on some 14 plus servers and some three terabytes of information to that new cert that new server environment we accomplished that in in the later part of july and early august and in the beginning part of the year
244before we did that we put in the new uh backup and recovery system which we started in june so those two components were part of our big part of our last year's on budget and we tackle them right away had those um programmed and loaded to go july 1 and we did engage them right away and they're up and running so we now have really i wouldn't call it state of the art but we have a industrial standard that most companies would be envy of of our server environment so quite pleased with the work um tom sacco did a lot of the work he did a great job yeah so that part of the budget increase from last year was to address that long-term issue and it sounds like it happened is what you're saying
245yeah there is a an increase in our our monthly costs around um uh cloud storage um as we move from tape based backups to now we back up locally to a server and then we take that and move it up to the cloud so that if something happened locally we'd still be able to recover from the cloud yeah wow no you still had tapes okay michelle oregon i just i just have recollection of you last year allen presenting your budget and you think back or look forward to a year and you're like holy cow i mean what you guys have accomplished in this last year under fire um is incredible and for some reason i keep thinking about your budget lion for paper and it was and i think gary cheese moves out and i'm
246like that's you take care of that pretty well so just just to reiterate what everyone's saying just thank you so much for all you've done with everybody else in the district for our kids so thank you i appreciate that we one of the things we did do this summer we placed all our copiers because that was on the end of the leasing contract we will accomplish that in july uh first week of august so we have 16 new copiers but they're much less views than they were before at the high school level but at the elementary school levels they're pounding out the paper because they go with those packets out every month so um kind of a trade-off but overall our printing is down peter uh yes please let me echo and emphasize the thank
247you for you and your team um for everything you've done to keep us going here through this uh new paradigm i i do have a question do we have a plan to move away from ipads to more usable you know computers with keyboards this is just a teacher talking i just think ipads are a disaster for education i don't know if a computer would be any better classic laptop but i'm just wondering if we're moving away from ipads well there's two parts that that the one is the the cost right um and the other one is the user what the usability so we can we had a long discussion about this in leadership in june about how what we wanted to do we um what works and what doesn't work and why and the ipad
248has a lot of flexibility when it comes to multimedia adaptations and and driving student create creativity in that where chromebooks are cheap and easy not much less expensive than an ipad and they come with a keyboard um there's a hint that there is a trade-off for the two um i think that one of the things we all recognize over the last couple years is that what we used an ipad for five years ago is not how we use it today and that having a keyboard attached to that ipad has become more important if not crucial starting from like the second grade up or even below that um so i think that the ipad has um a lot of of of um attraction when it comes to certain activities it's going very well at the middle
249school as far as i can understand but they all came with uh uh with keyboards on them i think that at the high school level one of the things i think is very interesting is that the kids all get ipads to start off in ninth grade and then by the time their juniors and early senior year almost every kid seems you know the vast majority kids have moved to their own personal um computer uh i think this is the kids want this and i think that the parents have um are thinking that their child needs it and they want to prepare them for college um and have this device in their hands so they go off to college they're ready to go so i think there's we have to look at how we're what we're
250doing at the high school level and maybe become more flexible around that that leasing program this is not a a new subject it's a subject we address every year and have rather um long conversations about about it with the principal and vice president principal at the high school and also engage the middle school principals at it because they're affected by what we do at the high school and how we ramp that up it's interesting that there are so many new ipads at the middle school i want to see how this year goes with those ipads and then maybe that will affect what we do next year or years after at the high school because now we kind of have a feeder program that is priming those kids so i i don't disagree with you peter
251um there's there's pros and cons and i think that has to be weighed by the um the people and staff um and then i'm ready to go with whatever they want to go with yeah i wish we would also address the addiction factor that i've had some kids exhibit all the same symptoms as an addict um when it comes to their screens and using ipads inappropriately in school for social media et cetera which to me it's just doesn't go away with uh laptops either yeah i don't get it all right thank you sir that my son ever gave to a teacher was you don't even want to play games in her class so you just you have to figure out how to get him to be that good all right so uh the next one
252up then will be craig allen thank you and your entire team we couldn't have done it without you this year you guys did a ton thank you yeah thank you everybody best of luck yeah thanks alan bye bye hello um is it okay if i do a screen share yeah you should be all set craig do you guys have that up there now all right perfect uh thank you for the chance to share with you tonight um and try to be go through this and um kind of include what's uh where we've been and uh what's in this budget what's not in this budget and then um just some data uh to understand how the users affect our budget and how they affect the families uh in our district so okay so the first um
253the first kind of set of slides here just kind of gives you uh some highlights from last school year we did earn the highland award for the second year in a row which is the cape and league's highest honor given for overall excellence in athletics it includes participation academic sportsmanship and at a varsity level how we fare in competition among our peer schools we won four league championships last year five teams qualified for the state tournament and we despite having no spring season still had over 63 percent participation roughly 9 out of our 10 varsity teams achieved academic excellence almost all of our teams achieved sportsmanship excellence and we had some coaches and players of the year that distinguished themselves uh above all others so quite a year last year we're in the middle of
254a good year uh this year albeit with a very different focus we're presenting to you a level service budget uh from an expenditure standpoint the one ad that we made this year was to add a girls varsity lacrosse assistant coach because the boys lacrosse varsity team has an assistant this has been in place since before i was here i'm certain the reason why this happened was the physical contact nature of the boys game that is not a part of the girls game still it is the right thing to do in my opinion to add uh an assistant for girls varsity lacrosse that's the only extra expenditure we've added uh in the entire athletic budget for next year um what we've also done uh is we have finally combined like sports so sports like soccer basketball
255hockey lacrosse and tennis will no longer have a user feed distinction by gender boys soccer will be the same as girls soccer same for basketball and those other sports uh it's important to note that the that one sport that will really be affected is our girls hockey players um that play in marbleheads co-op we're a guest to marblehead they host us and the marblehead user fee is somewhere in the 400 to 450 range while our boys team um you know next year if we didn't combine them would be roughly 1600. um this was an issue that faced a fellow cal school in in pentucket and um they got an ocr investigation thrust upon them for the opposite reason their girls were part of a co-op that was you know a very high amount while the
256boys at the home school was paying a less amount the inequity there uh kind of started an ocr investigation that lasted over a year and so the point in that being is that whether you're a co-op or a host school it doesn't matter so boys and girls hockey are going to be combined it's important to note that our state of our state athletic association that we're a part of approximately two years ago commissioned um a blue ribbon commission just to analyze all areas of equity be it gender be it socioeconomic all areas of the state association that we belong to they have looked at the mi handbook and rewritten a lot of that language they have um starting next year there's going to be a completely new structure for state tournaments that they've had their
257hands on one of the things that they've made clear to me after asking several times and that it's important to note that baseball and softball are not like sports so as we go through this you'll see that baseball and softball remain their own user fees and according to the state athletic association that we belong to they are indeed separate it's important to note some items that are not in this budget um certainly we have to be realistic about where we are and um kind of the spotlight but i do think it's important to keep things on the at least on the back burner if not the front burner and you see there some issue some things that we will not include in this budget it's long been my assertion that every varsity team should have
258at least one assistant coach when we did the gymnasium floor when the middle school was built over 20 years ago now we've never properly maintained that floor we take care of it every year in terms of refinishing it and making it safe but if if you've been in the gym recently you'll notice that all the lines that used to be white are now yellow taking that floor down to its bare minimum completely resurfacing it is something that's supposed to happen every 10 years and it's been 20 and we haven't done it we still need a new sound system in the gymnasium for everybody that's ever been in a basketball game the way we play the national anthem is i hold my phone up and i put the microphone to my phone in a very unreliable
259uh kind of sketchy output and not always consistent we have no you know we still need some more weight some weight room equipment for competitive athletic teams and there's no added money to aid in the improvement of our outdoor athletic facilities which we all know is another discussion that we could be here for five hours on but there's no money in there um so how do the user fees work to fund our athletic program um i thought i thought it was important it was asked of me to kind of give a very very brief two-minute history on where user fees have been over the last say 10 to 12 to 15 years prior to 2012 i don't know when exactly it started i want to say it was mid to late 2000s the district contributed
260nothing toward athletic fees it was 100 family based there was a 10 scholarship and there was no family cap in 2003 in 2012-13 fy13 which was my first year here the district started contributing twenty percent of the needed user fees the families picked up eighty scholarship remained at ten there was still no family cap in tuta in the late in the 2014 year there was a lot of communication with the school committee from the constituents that they felt like there should be a family cap meaning you know a lot of schools will have third sport free or anything over seven hundred and fifty dollars is free or whatever um we couldn't do that the way our fees are structured so we implemented a family cap that was roughly that we added what would be ten
261additional percent contribution from the district uh and that allowed us to give the third sport as an individual free and fourth and greater as a family in fy 19 which was the last uh year that we had a full school year um 111 out of 687 team members now that's not 111 distinct families the only way we can calculate this is by doing team membership 111 out of 687 or 16.2 percent benefited 16.2 percent of our team team members benefited from the family cap the last two years prior to this after much discussion with the school committee your your predecessors some of you are on that um we went to a 60 district contribution 40 family kept the family cap this school year at this time last year we were going to have the same
26260 and then march and april came and we had to rethink our budget because there was the thought that the chapter 70 money might be greatly reduced and so we were asked to drastically cut the district's contribution to 25 percent we did up the scholarship to reflect um actual need rather than a need that you know we came up with 15 years ago and we kept the family cap so you know it right now it's 25 and so that's just you know a very brief history of our user fees um if i use the fee contribution stays at 25 percent you see there how how it breaks down we need 593 000 to run um if you add up all of our individual sport budgets and what they cost that's what it costs um 25
263of 593 is that 148 number the admin costs which is um the athletic office the trainer um some stuff that kind of applies to all sports not just one sport is is consistent at 235 scholarships at 15 and the family cap which to get what what we needed to do and cover those costs at 10.5 percent is 62 000 and with the 25 user fee contribution the district cost is 460. um if we were to keep the 60 that was last year um you know essentially this number the district total number goes up by in the total cost when you add everything up goes to uh it adds about 175 000 to be where we were last year um the family cap can come down as the contribution goes up because families have to cover
264less in that family cap scenario i also have here for later reference i have all the costs at various percentages of contribution from the district we can come back to this if we need it so what does that get us and how does that you know and let me just like do this obviously if we're um if we're creating a budget right and we're focused only on dollars and cents and not value and not different things clearly the the 460 is more preferable than the 635 but let's see how that plays out with user fees so what you have there and the newly combined sports by gender are reflected here is an estimate based on a best guess participation uh for some sports a year and a half from now so these aren't the final
265user fees it's a best guess estimate please understand that um as participation goes up or down these these uh percentages change or another percentage the dollar amounts change so you can find your favorite sport there and find out if the district contributed 60 percent what those fees would be you'll see later these are pretty much in line with what other schools in our league are paying at a 25 percent contribution you can see it's drastically different uh hockey is sorry with that hockey is over 1500 um gymnastics is 1200 foot you know find your favorite sport um and and you can see what that does to the user fees and how significant that is we also have here for later reference i did a middle ground just so you could see what 35 would look
266like and again we can come back to the slide um so if you take the average of all of our user fees which the way our user fees are structured we can't do this but just as a and not to say we couldn't change the structure but as it's structured right now we can't do it this way but if you averaged all of our user fees out it would be 640 um with the range with the low range of 445 and a high of 14.65 and a three sport average is 1288 because right now we have the third sport free so 640 times two times two is the 1288. we also have the same numbers for 35 and 60 so in a vacuum that doesn't mean much right how does that compare to our fellow
267schools um you can look at all the numbers here i would encourage you to look at ipswich and amesbury which are the most close to us in terms of enrollment um in fact their enrollment is right near ours for the high school at least i don't know about the overall district i would assume it's similar but you can see for everybody the one sport average and you can see the range from low to high and you can see the three sport total average so you look at ipswich and say oh one sport for ipswich is 650. well if switch pays 650 if if you play one sport two sports or three sports um you know you look at amesbury they're 285 per sport you look at uh someone in i don't know look at whoever
268you want north reading linfield kentucky we are clearly um the most expensive school and it's not really all that close um again we'll be able to come back to any one of these you want i don't think i need to sell anybody on the school committee in fact i know i don't on the value of athletics and how important they are and what they mean to a school community in in the life of a school but there's some things i felt it was important to share uh it's it's my assertion that the athletic department and i'm not saying this is right or wrong uh is the single most visible part of our school district it's not the most important not by a long shot but we participate in in a normal year 500 about 575
269contests with other schools in our district 575 in 180 day school year um and so i i would suggest that there's not many other or sections of the school that is that facing to the public seventy percent of our high school students participate in athletics i have the last full year there and this is something i never considered but i find it very interesting is that the 385 athletes make up 22 of the district's current 1731 students um so one out of every five students in the district is a high school athlete um and and i find that number to be significant um we absolutely look at athletics as an extension of the school day in fact we look at it as a second school day um that takes place every day at three o'clock
270on weekends and over school breaks where the goals of our programming are outcome based project learning otherwise known as the games that get put in the paper or on tv or whatever there's an outcome there that there's a product that you collaborate with your teammates with to put out a result that everyone can see you have to be accountable to your teammates you have to be resilient in the face of adversity and you have to be creative within structure there's some articles here from the nfhs just to make this case but i can't say that enough we absolutely feel that there is a second school day that happens every day for 22 of the district students um and to do that we fund that right now at less than 1.2 percent of the district budget
271at 25 percent we're at 1.184 um and you have the different breakdowns there based on uh if you were to fund user fees at 35 percent and 60 again like the user fees in a vacuum what does this mean what is this compared to well the outliers in our district are georgetown and newberry port georgetown um has half the teams as us they don't have nearly the amount of sub-varsity teams we do they don't nearly have the programming and yet we're only a third more funded than georgetown newburyport granted is on the higher end of 2.92 so you can say those the outliers but let's look at the communities closest to us ipswich and manchester essex um their athlet i mean the manchester athletic program is funded almost 50 percent higher than we are compared
272to their district's budget um ipswich is about 20 percent higher um and again even if we were at this 35 percent we would still be below what our neighboring towns are um and again i'm not i'm i'm not for one second thinking people don't appreciate what athletics are what they do but i haven't really presented these numbers before and i felt like it was important to do so um i'm absolutely you know i'm sure there's questions i'm willing to keep this screen share up i'm willing to take it down if you want to go back to slides whatever you'd like to do if you can stop sharing so we can see each other that helps okay um so craig a lot of that went off on a tangent to user fees can you just tell
273us how much the cost is to add the budget for the um lacrosse coach uh the highest and lacrosse coach is about i think it's 3500 or so um of of which the district's only paying 25 i that if you give me two seconds i might be able to look up the exact number but it's around there all right um all right does anybody have questions for um craig and that's questions so we'll go anna up to peter go um awesome craig i love it um you know how i feel about those life sports combinations that makes my heart soar especially here today on national women and girls uh in sport day so i guess my main two questions are do you have any impulse to do what ipswich did and just go all the
274way one faith is there a pro con on that for us i mean i know it's that's the real fair thing to do but i know that that would make some sports much much higher than have been but also other space lower but i know ipswich has done it for a couple of years can you talk about whether or not that's on our horizon yep uh so i would say right now the way our fees are structured are very based on what the participation is signed up as a week before the season so let's say it's the fall right and we uh i meet with vinnie and we finalize user fees based on who is signed up up until say a week before the season we don't know what those people are going to be
275in the spring we don't know what they're going to be in the winter so as it's structured right now we couldn't do that what would it what would it take to do it like what does ipswich do that we don't do i think there would have to be a leap of faith that we would go so up until several years ago we did publish the user fees fairly early based on best guest participation and now like so if you think of the fy 22 baseball season or softball season or that's like a year and a half away right so some of those numbers are more difficult to guess but we will write say 90 percent of the time 95 of the time but we got uh jeff sands told me that we got audited and
276that that was a like a huge variable that we we could be drastically underfunded so we would have to take in order to do what you're saying we'd have to take the leap of faith in the best guest participation okay um i guess one thought i have on this and i don't know i don't know that the committee really has them but you know we talk a lot about the boosters right the certain booster clubs bring in a lot of money and others not so much has there ever been a conversation about mimicking the ed fund or friends of the arts as it pertains to sport boosters because you don't have like friends of the core as friends of the band friends of drama you're friends of the arts if if we were to somehow
277either make that shift do you think that it would require or be facilitated by the merging of make it you know friends of the generals like all booster clubs also combining would that help at all um it could i i i think you're you're very accurate in that some groups are very active and some aren't and i think that's because some user fees are outrageous and some are um it's not right or wrong it's just the way it is uh right you know i think i don't i i think we could work toward that but you get a lot more close to everyone having a very similar user fee i don't think you can have um i don't i don't know if i froze did i freeze did i start but you're back yeah um
278so i think if we're going to have one booster club we need to be a lot closer to having similar user fees right i mean i kind of feel like those two things go together and that would help with the sting of it a little bit where everyone pays to save but also pulls funds the same and you know that's just one thought i have um i totally get the baseball softball thing that maya sort of doesn't consider them like sports are are we allowed to consider them ourselves if we wanted to are we allowed to go against them or not so ultimately the user fees are our discretion the the way that i feel about that is i try not to have an opinion um i know like i'm that's not a couple like
279i feel very loyal to the guidelines set for us and and like i was very interested in that question because that surprised me but i feel like um like baseball and softball are different in that you know a dozen baseballs costs a lot more than a dozen softballs but you might go through three or four softballs a game in 18 baseballs um one of the answers that i got from the blue ribbon commission member was that you know softball six innings and baseball seven they're just the perception is they is they could be similar sports but where they have stated they're not i'm more loyal to the guidelines that i'm told to follow rather than my opinion right like that it's just interesting because like lacrosse also has a couple small variables in it you
280know lacrosse like boys and girls across are a little different in yet those are treated as like sports so it's interesting so i guess you know what one observation um you don't have to go back to the slides but you know the user fee the family cap only benefited i think you said 16.2 percent if we just eliminated that and returned 62 000 and put that back into the budget with that we could use that money to go closer to that 35 or 40 percent contribution right yeah so because it's 10.5 percent uh would make up the family cap that's why i put the 35 in there um so that you could see what that would look like i mean part of me kind of feels like if we're gonna if we're gonna combine the
281fees which is a little bit of a sting for some families but on the path towards equity if it's a small percentage of families paying in anyway i mean 62 grand is notable in terms of rearranging that and it seems like that would be a way to i don't know i i don't know how the rest of the committee feels about it but i would be totally in support of potentially eliminating that family cap and repurposing the money either back into the athletic budget or potentially into a different part of the budget since it's such a small number of families that are actually benefiting from it i feel like we could spread that wealth more efficiently but i think that's more of a philosophical question for the committee but those are all my questions for
282you awesome presentation really useful stuff dana did you have anything you wanted to ask um oh no i think michelle was next you already said her wasn't oh did i great go michelle yeah thank you anna for bringing that up because we did talk that we did talk about the family cap in our last capital planning financial meeting as a parent who has benefited greatly from the family cap i als always felt like i was getting away with something i didn't feel right um as craig stated that 16 of our athletes that are using it so if we and again it's as anna stated and we talked about in our meeting a couple of weeks ago if we as a committee would agree to say okay let's have that 62 000 be spread across all
283sports um and have every family benefit that'd be great again it would only benefit those that are playing all three sports if you have a one sport athlete in your house um or two they wouldn't be but i think the greater good um is really important so um so maybe we can bring that up and talk about it like craig thank you so much for that informative um presentation oh you're muted michelle i just i want to keep the eye on that we have to approve a budget and that the topic of user fees is not really part of that unless we're changing we can change the budget at a future date uh julia yeah oh i i would love to see you know 62 thousand dollars appear in the budget i just wonder if
284we're talking about you know really being equitable or i i we haven't talked to families about how this would impact them um i don't know we really haven't thought about it so i don't i only have two kids and we're all nerds we don't play sports so i don't know but they're also young but i just think that we're making assumptions that people can afford this and not taking into account maybe their um like we haven't talked to the public we haven't talked to the actual the athletes and the the families that are going to be affected by this so i just want us to be cognizant of this i'm not saying i'm opposed i just want us to be cognizant i mean um i i think we actually spent a lot of time talking
285to the public uh about this two years ago right when when the um decision was made to or you know it was voted on that we actually put more money in in the district contribute more um and it was a pretty devastating um hit to a large chunk of our community right 73 uh before last year 73 of our students were uh participating in athletics of some sort so you know it was a hit that was felt you know uh throughout most of the families at our district you know not all but most um you know and i i i wish you know in in the idea of diverting money earlier right by not pull testing i i wish it was as simple as saying okay well let's throw some of that money that we're
286not now spending there here unfortunately i also know it's not that easy right um but i do know that it is definitely um you know my goal in in and i would hope that this board's goal um that we move into that direction if it can't be in this budget cycle within the next or the one after that that we can get back to you know very you because because the other thing is when you have these lower user fees right so right now julia your family might not be athletes but they can be and if it's not that this huge financial burden they can you know try things out and and it doesn't have to be like this and it's not this point that you know maybe we keep that 73 73 even higher
287right and that's the ultimate goal and we want that for not just sports right we want that for the arts we want that for for everything we you know and in in um you know so so it's tough that this hurts this one always hurts me um well the past few years it's hurt me it felt really good two years ago uh voting to to push more money into the program but hopefully hopefully we can you know turn this around um you know sooner rather than later all right so michelle can i ask you a question though if we wanted to make the shift in because it kind of sounds like there is some interest i mean not officially a vote but like how would we when would we do that if we don't do
288it now like when would if we wanted to eliminate the cap and redirect that funding why wouldn't we do it as part of some of this process because we're not going to change it tonight yeah it would make more sense to do it over the next couple weeks you have to approve by march and there's an entire month between now and then okay but if it's something we want to revisit is that i mean it is doable it's doable to it's doable to do wow i'm getting tired too it's not doable or advisable to do it tonight yeah so i mean it would seem to me like if if you say like that bottom line number right is what you approac is what you're probably going to approve later from my standpoint as long as
289you tell me what to do with that money by say july right it's like the total dollar amount is going to be set if you want me to shift some of that i need to know by july and you could have all the time in the world until then to do it yeah okay um all right vinnie roll it all up for us michelle we still have tom um but my strategy almost worked i was that close right by the way thank you tom thank you for the reminder thank you craig and feel free to click off yeah i get a ride home still see you later bye craig okay all right i'm gonna go ahead and share my presentation okay all right folks so earlier i presented on pool testing and i'm going to
290pivot uh to my bread and butter which is facilities and maintenance for the sake of folks that were um not on the committee at the time i presented the budget last year uh just some fast facts regarding our properties so throughout the towns of hamilton and wenham we have six buildings that our team maintains 93 acres of space which equates uh 365 000 gross square feet and in 20 fy 20 we had 17.75 ftes on our team through the course of the budget reductions last year we did not reduce the amount of buildings we did not reduce the acreage nor the square feet but we did we do have a staff reduction of 15 of 2.5 ftes so currently this year we're operating you know with a smaller team and as i said the buildings
291have not changed as we go into next year you will see in addition of the in the budget as a placeholder right now for to add a fte to our team with the hopes that we would be able to add a licensed tradesperson vinnie and i will perform an analysis at the conclusion of this fiscal year if the committee approves this position to see if um we would get the best return by adding an in-house tradesperson so last year i presented what the fy 21 budget would allow us to do and mind you when i made the presentation it was roughly december january ish prior to you know what so we had the initial idea to improve the care of our natural turf fields until a project that would provide artificial turf comes to fruition
292you will see a red x over the items that we had to defer in order to fund many of the projects i presented over the summer when it came to hvac response and other coveted related items of course safety functionality and life cycle those are things that we have to maintain so for example if a circulator pump dies on a boiler that's nothing we can defer we have to heat the buildings if the if we have an issue with a motor starter that has to be replaced we can't sacrifice or defer that one thing that we did defer in the budget was some of the aesthetic improvements and by aesthetics i would you know classify that as keeping up with the joneses right so a lot of our properties um on the exterior and interior
293are a bit tired um so you know i had grand plans to improve some of the landscaping um at our properties and to add paint where it was needed and just make other um quality of life improvements um part of our preventive maintenance program you know suffering a staff reduction of two maintenance techs and also the diverted money towards covet expenses um really through a wrench uh pardon the pun into our plans for the pr improving preventive maintenance now we still do um preventive maintenance on some of our large ticket items such as elevators fire alarms sprinkler systems you know other life safety systems roof inspections so we're still performing preventive maintenance on key infrastructure but some of the timelines are extended one thing we were able to accomplish this year um i mean partly
294because it went hand in hand with some of the covid response was standardizing our cleaning operation and our products um so historically schools uh tended to like certain products uh or have relationships with certain vendors and they you know so there was a mismatch across the district so we've standardized all of our cleaning products paper products and soap in order to take advantage of you know economies of scale and this slide is going to look similar because it's my plan that if our line items in contracted services and supply lines stay the same that we can get back on track with some of the plans that i began to roll out last year to the committee so hopefully when i report back next year you will see green check marks across the board and no
295x's so in summary the significant increases to the facilities and maintenance dac throughout the district is the sixty five thousand dollar increase um in the account um that we call the four hundred forty two twenty salary account that would provide an additional maintenance staff member um and then a 7 500 increase in what is a new account in the budget which um you know a lot of vinnie's hard work was reclassifying expenses that come up um you know as we find them um so this would be related to our um you know our alice program uh that we currently are under contract with so that's a new expense because that is a new account that was paid for out of another funding source in prior years so in summary before i take questions the staff
296members listed here part of our team have been integral to what i feel has been a challenging year for custodial and maintenance services but everybody on this list has stepped up to the challenge so a special thank you to mark trish chris mark terry bob chris jonathan fred phil drew mike bob frank and bobby b so with that i'm happy to answer any questions that you uh may have and i'll do my best to answer them okay first of all is it like a rule your name has to be bob or bobby or like that it was funny prerequisite yeah yeah so that's great um do people have questions for tom firsthand gets to go first ah peter gets to go first and then what the reverse alphabetical from there just a quick question i
297know you are standardizing your purchase of cleaning products uh looking for best deals how about when we buy material i know we buy a lot from yankee pine which is one of the more expensive um places to buy materials and i don't understand why we weren't buying from home cheapo or or lowe's yep so um i can't put my finger on any purchases that we've made from yankee pine this year i can say that the majority of the purchasing and procurement uh that i do are from uh either statewide contracts or national procurement contracts where we get to take advantage of those economies of scale right so um you know plumbing for example you'll see um fw web on invoices who have a state contract you'll see home depot who have a state contract um
298so you know i i look at that stuff and certainly like you know we take advantage of some of those blanket contracts that we're able to get better deals on great thank you you're welcome michelle did you have anything i'm having a problem like no i'm good thank you julia oh i just have one really quick question um because it seems like and we love the grants we love people that give us grants um we celebrate them but for things like um air purifiers and is there a way that we can i know you know anticipate these these needs or is there wiggle room in the budget for things that just kind of come up or how can we best support those those kinds of things that that just kind of come up i guess
299that's my question sure uh i mean one thing that um you know i i took a lead on last year was applying for a school safety grant to add access control throughout the district so we have now have a unified platform and system for access control that we were able to secure through a state grant you know that's something i'm always looking at um as far as what grants are available um whether it be through an msba grant or um the the air purifier one got me because i hadn't heard of that one yet and i would have been the first to jump on that you know because we did secure um probably about a dozen of them maybe even 15 of them to be able to deploy to a school if we had an
300hvac breakdown um but yeah i do take a look at some of those grants that are out there and we'll chase anything right i want you to think i don't want you to think that was a slight at all no no i don't i don't okay definitely i don't want you to misread what i was trying to say i wanted us to be more us not necessarily you like us to be more proactive in getting you the things that you need so i don't i do not want you to think that was a slate against you no no no no not at all okay but if that was something that was needed like how can we further anticipate better anticipate those kinds of needs but thank you so much yeah no one one thing too
301is that um you know last year uh took an inventory a lot of our bigger infrastructure loaded into our school dude platform so we can try to better predict when you know when to expect a failure right just based on life cycle so that's always helpful for grant applications but you know i think the committee last year made a major correction to a lot of our contracted services items so you know we have the ability to bring in like the very best technicians that are available to service our stuff that we're not always just looking for the cheapest way out that it's going to be the best investment going forward yeah thank you very much tom david um yeah the only thing i really wanted to sort of ask about is the um money we
302had voted in last year for a couple of projects just sort of wondering where we are on that and if there's any sort of timeline or restriction that like we have to get going on on some of those projects before we sort of lose the money no great great question are we related to the capital projects yeah exactly so i got the good news from vinnie last friday that the money has cleared our account so we just got the disbursement um security projects um very close to tying the bow on the specifications that have to go out to bid um just finding the best timing for that because a lot of the work's going to require bringing contractors into the building for that project specifically right so we need a window of time that you
303know we can have a contract bring somebody in to complete it so a lot of these items are going to be tabled towards like the june july timeline to actually start them but a lot of the pre-work is being done now so we can have you know bid packages ready to go contracts ready to go for when the kids leave school for the summer that's awesome because i think it's you know important to sort of remind everybody out there of like all the balls that are in the air at any given time here right in that like in in in addition to you know your work your day-to-day work of keeping the district running the you know um new things that just pop up because of covid you know that we're also looking at you
304know long-term projects and uh capital projects and capital improvements um all simultaneously right in in in that you know we're so we're we're not operating in a vacuum here and there's there's a lot going on um especially in regards to facilities and operations so um you know so i'm just curious about that but we we don't have to worry about that and then the updated um you know you did we group the updated usage to the field you should study into the that's a separate that was a separate project under the capital budget so um you know that i think will i'll have to give you folks an update on on that project right because one of the problems with the study before right is that we we didn't pursue a construction project soon enough
305after some of the studies were done right so there's some updating that has to be done if we update too early without a plan in place to execute the project then we might have to like we might get stuck on that treadmill of just you know rewriting specs and then not having the project come through and then rewriting them again so so what might be planful and strategic on on that yeah no no and i i really appreciate that right because that was definitely a bummer because it ends up looking like a waste of money even though you know it was a good start we realized that there was a lot to grow on there but you know in some sense we did waste some money because we didn't move on it fast enough i
306just i i almost the opposite right is there things that we need to do to get started to make sure that you know that money that's allocated doesn't get lost somehow right in in that where you know now that it's cleared that it's actually there you know even if it's just we're starting to write the uh rfq or whatever it may be um you know to show that that it is beginning in earnest once we have um a debt exclusion it lasts forever so i mean if we didn't do anything and then but it has to be for the specific project that we specifically got okay cool yeah and and david just after budget season um the capital uh planning and finance committee is going to look at the um turf field and the all
307that stuff all that good stuff so it's on the docket all the fun stuff telling you guys there is fun stuff here there is this is this is the stuff that will be fun like to to execute right like these are the projects that drive me so um thanks tom anna did i ask you if you had questions did you have questions dana and anna yeah no i'm good anna um so first of all thank you tom for everything you do and all the hats you wear including social media manager among other duties as assigned um so my question is that 361 thousand dollars coming in from covid specific things i don't is there any place on our budget and i'm thinking like ppe or things that are directly covered related is there anything that
308we can use that money for that's in the budget now that could be you know allocated to something else because i i don't actually know that ppp like is in here is a line item but i know we bought a ton of it so from where you're sitting like what are you thinking we can do with that 361 thousand dollars well i think i may punt on this one because i think that's a bigger decision right than just facilities because i think that 361 000 isn't just restricted for facilities well i just think in covid like i mean i know it's going to be covalent is there any i'm asking you is there any part of your particular budget that you could see that kind of julia you know i know that um the family
309just donated you know these purifiers and other things other are there pieces of equipment that has this pandemic moves and shifts that we could uh use that money for that would help alleviate you know i'm just thinking ways i mean that's a lot of money that's now coming in that i'm curious to know what we're going to spend it on sure i mean one thing you know of course like these these were these would be decisions that would be hashed out with the entire leadership team but one thing that i see on the horizon um could be additional furniture purchase right so we we were able to use some of the um the appropriation from the capital budget vote to purchase the desks we um we secured the quantity to return us to like the
310current model that we're in right now right so you know even if down the road cdc recants their recommendation of six feet and they say okay four and a half feet totally if we're going to put more seats in the classroom we would need the actual furniture to go with it because we did transition away from group tables at the elementary level and even at the middle school level so that would require um you know additional furniture just as a basic right that's something i see coming down the road and potentially if you know we had a situation where in a particular space say you needed a plexiglass barrier right if that was going to be something like there are things that is the as the plan evolves there may be additional costs that come
311up that our facilities really did so other than that i mean i don't really have any questions it seems very modest given what we do and how much we do and how much acreage you literally cover so all right benny you have a good team thank you thanks tom you have three on base and you're up mary beth's actually gonna queue it up so hey thank you you want me to do the slide deck kitty or do you are you gonna put it up i can certainly put it up if you want me to yeah sure either way i can pull it out the agenda if you've got it that'd be helpful yep okay can you guys see that yes we can thanks okay well thank you guys for uh meeting tonight we're here to
312uh present the superintendent's uh tentative fy 22 budget uh as of february 3rd uh it is going to be me and mary beth presenting it tonight i think this one is you marybeth yeah and this this slide you may recognize from previous meetings but just as a reminder that a budget is a series of decisions that talks about a district's values its priorities and its goals all trying to be contained within the financial constraints of what's possible um as a reminder uh what we had talked about in terms of the reality of this budget is that just moving the current budget forward accounts for about three percent increase we we know that chapter 70 is not going to be finalized prior to the budget process so we make assumptions related to that this is a
313year we where we do not have any surplus to offset tax rates and one of the things i know everybody has in the back of their head is that we have looming facility issues that are going to need to be addressed and that will have fiscal implications for our towns one of the things that we did want to point out in addition to presentations is just the list of assumptions that this budget is built on because there are a number of different factors that we do not yet have clarity on and so this budget can continue to move back and forth depending on what occurs so again what we have budgeted and the assumption is that chapter 70 will come in at about 95 of fiscal 21 actuals um and part of the reason we're
314at 95 is that enrollment question continues to be out there our transportation reimbursement is budgeted at 90 percent circuit breaker is budgeted at 90 percent so if any of these numbers move up or down our budget is going to move up or down we are assuming level funding of entitlement grants that's like title 1 and iga and title 2a um we did this slide a couple days ago where we were assuming no soa funding and now we're getting word that there may be soa funding um we have built in assumptions for contract negotiations we have built in assumptions about staff and faculty who are on leaves and they return and that we are anticipating at this budget is built on the assumption that students will be back to school fully in person in the fall
315so for example if we were to find out from the state that we were we were to be responsible for providing a fully remote program next year that is not in this budget and would have implications in terms of funding so one of the things as we move forward you'll see that that between this budget vote and the final budget vote the numbers may move based on um some of these things shifting and moving i'll just jump in and add that we we had made this a couple days ago when we assumed that there was no soa funding but the state has recently published chapter 70 numbers that did include it but based on uh the vote tonight we don't exactly know where that stands since since it was uh had a no vote we
316we might lose that funding but we have to obviously confirm what the what the end result of that vote might be so okay and then just a reminder that um of the 180 1.8 million dollar budget increase 55 percent of that is again that level service taking what we have this year and moving it forward into next year 40 of that increase is related to recovery trying to restore the very very significant cuts that happened in june of 2020 um and finally the five five percent of that is starting to fund an opev account and as a reminder the the budget priorities that that were used in the formulation of this budget were related to primarily the goals that the committee voted on one was to restore the teaching and learning leadership structure as related
317to district goal number two and to implement a systemic intervention model related to district district gold number four in addition one of the kind of casualties of last june was that our middle school had to move away from a middle school model and move more to a junior high school model best practice and fairly standard practice in grade six through eight is a middle middle school model so this budget does include two teaching positions to return and recover are grades six through eight so that they can be in an environment that is intended to be best practice um we're we also need to respond to some of our enrollment needs so you see a couple of positions going in where we anticipate having larger enrollments we'll need additional sections at the elementary level and then
318we have been trying to be as creative and fiscally responsible as we possibly can knowing the challenges that face our towns of hamilton and wynnum so this is the summary by deci category that a regional school district is required to vote on this is the same thing that we have been presenting you this will ultimately be if you approve tonight will ultimately be our tenant of a budget between now and the final vote i believe there are two more school committee meetings and this budget will change i believe i already have a list of nine items that i'm going to put in between now and the final budget between the next two school committee meetings uh each of the meetings uh me and mary beth will present any changes that have occurred between the tentative
319and your final vote on i believe it's the second wednesday in march so this is the budget motion for you guys to approve it is our last slide before we take any specific questions but i can either leave the motion up or just kind of stop sharing to answer any questions you guys might have yeah let's stop sharing for just a second um i had a question but michelle actually helped me out with that because i got nervous when i heard about the uh um for both uh transportation and circuit breaker just after talking to with brad earlier i was like wow that's a bold prediction but then she corrected me what actually meant because they apparently only had one ear working at that time but yeah because brad's talking about the 75 whatever but
320it's 90 of what we received last year versus 90 percent of the expenses that we expect to be so it's going to be that's um actually a little bit i don't want to call it conservative and no that's okay conservative is good we're hedging our vets gonna be their usual selves and so that's good um so the process um for approving a budget is we have to approve this tentative budget send it to the town so that they have something to sort of work with to build their budget then between now and the second week in march um we'll have several more discussions including one next week with the towns that um and a couple of hearings where we'll hear from the public where we can adjust the budget um up well we can't well
321we can adjust it up or down depending upon what we hear the needs are so does anybody have a question um that they need to have answered before approving the tentative budget okay so anna's hand is up first so we'll go in that alphabetical order so anna okay thanks michelle um so i guess some of this is sort of a procedural question so like there are things that i i don't want i personally think need to come out of the budget but it sounds like just procedurally there's a vote and then there's more opportunity to discuss so i mean i think um what happens if we vote no on this budget now anything okay let me let me try and can we're gonna help to fix it yeah because this is this because this is
322this has come up i think every year or in some capacity in the five year or so years i've been on the because we're not locked into anything this is a byproduct of um the two-town you know the town agreement and this is something that if we ever went and opened the books we'd probably change right because it causes like way too much confusion and thinking that we're locked into too much this is now great they've done a ton of work right so this is actually it could be a fully passed budget if that's what we chose but this is to just give all the other boards in town a number and like some working documents to go with so they can go and do what they need to do on their end and then
323you know we have now this month of really and this is what i was talking to you about uh the other day this like crunch time that we're in that like even in the best case scenarios right this month is just to say goodbye to your family right because this is where we go in and we really start you know crunching those numbers moving 10 000 from here to there this is the time to do it but what we're voting on tonight is just that rough number and it can change and it usually does so i guess my question is like at the subcommittee level we've hashed this out for quite some time like we've talked i think we've gone through the line items at least three or four times and i've had a lot
324of questions there none of that's reflected in any of this like where does where does that criticism go because i i mean i think high level is everyone knows i think this is too high i don't think it's passable i would like to see us cut it in places do we do that as an entire committee now is it at the full committee level does it have subcommittee function like how do we actually go about making any of those recommendations and actually having it change in an actual way it would be helpful if the committee subcommittee can come with recommendations but ultimately the decisions are made here if the committee doesn't have consensus then we'll go there the subcommittee makes the recommendations and then we bring it to the full committee yeah the subcommittee if
325the subcommittee can't get to consensus because based on our last couple meetings i'm not sure that we will get to consensus i mean we might i'm a wild card there i know you didn't want to put down your cards last time so i guess that's my question is if we can't reach a set of recommendations that the three of us agree to do we bring you doing a school budget i think is the best description right it is it is unfortunately it's it's a good question though it's a really really good it is you know and that's the this isn't easy sorry well so that's my question like i i i want to have this conversation as a full group i want to put the cuts that i would propose in up at the right
326time if now is not the right time to talk about it i can respect that it's you know there's a process and we have to go through it but i'm finding it hard to figure out when is that right time because i brought him up in subcommittee nothing ever changes now we're here you're asking for a vote nothing ever changes like when do we discuss anything we want to change if you brought them up in the subcommittee and they didn't change then that means there was no consensus right no but we didn't vote we never i don't think we voted no there was no vote there was lots of discussion right um consensus so there would be nothing but there's no yeah but i mean i don't think there was like two against one it
327definitely wasn't like that there was just no consensus so i don't do we need to have consensus do we need to do like two people that's the question i think we're asking the hard part we haven't had a functioning finance working group in a very long time and we still don't because i'm on there and i refuse to vote yes or no on anything there used to be a functioning system in which there was three people and they would make a recommended they would have crunched some numbers before this even came to us here and there would have been some consensus done and stuff like that i think the problem is that we don't have consensus the three we also don't really know what our roles are and that might be just i don't think
328that we actually know are we supposed to be literally voting like yes we want to make this cut no we want to make this we haven't had long-term members on the committee because serving on the committee is quite difficult for those who think it's easy it's not easy it's very difficult so we've been burning through um committee members and this is part of the this is one of the results of that we don't really have a long-established process that allows us to work efficiently so that is um mary beth wanted to answer something yeah or actually ask a clarifying question um one of the one of the things i hear is that there's a concern that the budget number is too high um is there in in districts that i've worked in the past typically
329the way that that is handled is that there is a number given to the leadership team and says saying that we we think this number is too high we want you to come back to us with suggestions about how to lower it or um it's you never have a budget situation where oh you're not spending enough it's almost always cutting it um is that the process that has been used in the past or would that be different from previous experiences with the budget yeah so i can just shed a little like based on last year's experience the initial budget that was presented to the subcommittee was over 13 and we went back to julie and vinnie and said okay give us three variations of this you know super low medium um and high and in
330the discussion with julia and anna you know at 5.02 there's not a lot of we didn't have the great variance as we as we did in the last year's budget you know so vinnie and julie came back to us with you know i think 11 and 6 and showed us the drastic cuts um you know we talked about that at the last meeting but again and this might just be my takeaway that because we're dealing with 5.02 there wasn't a lot to cut there um well i i don't yes so so in the past part of what you know because what would be helpful and i think that ways that we can be supportive of the committee is that if the committee is feeling like this number is too high we can come back to
331you with scenarios around here but but i think that excuse me i'm sorry to cut you off but here's oh i'm sorry and i didn't hear your talk okay um but i think what the what we julian and were talking about earlier too is that we don't have a consensus so i think there's some room to cut it a little bit anna's you know 10 degrees away from me and julia is doing a nice job of of but it's not me it's not even i wasn't given anything to vote on i don't know why don't you talk about voting just talking about just talking about where we think a budget should be so let's talk about that so let's talk about do we feel that this percentage is where we as a committee are comfortable
332or do we feel like it needs to be cut down by three percent or it needs to be cut down to like let's talk about that i guess that's that's helpful because i think i think that's sort of where the subcommittee is stuck so i mean i think what michelle is described as accurate i i think just put up that slide with the percents on it do you have the slide that shows like the total budget percent and then maybe like the assessment percentages so we can just have that fresh yes great so so part of my frustrations last question is i actually feel like i've been asking for variations on a theme for a while you know i this is not new information to marry meth that i think that we need to have
333some cuts so um i do want to see some options because i do not think that this budget is passable i think the community has a strong negative impulse not just based on the percentage but also based on the value proposition the debt ceiling um i i just don't think it's physically passable and i worry that in going forward we're really well i think we're setting ourselves up for a big no to be honest and i'm not comfortable as a committee member recommending this level of increase partly because i know it's passable but partly because i just don't think it's fair to ask of it i guess the question i have and this is sort of the higher level question that we got stuck at is i understand that mary beth's curriculum sort of restructure
334has a lot of merit i understand the high level idea i keep coming back to my fundamental position that i don't think we can afford it and so what i would like to see is for example could we keep the curriculum directors in place but if we cut the instructional coaches which i know mary beth really really wants i'm not saying that it's a bad idea but i'm just real dollars and cents i think there's three at the elementary level and one at the middle school and they're like 95 000 each so that's that's like four hundred thousand dollars that we could potentially cut that seems like a variation that i would like to see us think through and similarly like and i think this is more about like what is the priority i personally
335think that restoring the middle school model is super duper important i think what we've done there is really hard so i guess what i would really like to see from mary beth before pushing this forward is some sort of variation where instead of trying to restructure and regain everything that was lost could we scale it back could we you know cut the coaches do we have to have all 6.3 new aids like are there ways to make it less of a big bite because i don't think that the community will tolerate this level of increase i think anything in an override category that can't be justified is like a hard contractual obligation i think is a no go and it worries me that we're putting something forward to the towns even just to get them
336thinking on it we've been told over and over for a number of years we want to curtail the spending you know and i know that there's philosophical issues here but when the fincom says to us you know we think we could tolerate a 500 000 increase we could tolerate this and then we come back at them with like a million dollar increase it just feels like we're ignoring their advice and part of me is sensitive to the fact that you know the people on the the fincomes and the board of select are also elected to serve the community and it's sort of like if somebody's given you advice over and over and over we don't think that we can afford this we don't think we can afford this and then we present to them something
337that clearly has been ignoring their advice although with good intentions like i understand what mary beth is trying to accomplish i don't see how that gets us to a point where the community will tolerate this and i'm not convinced that we have to do all these things this year given what we've gone through and it worries me that we're setting ourselves up for failure because it's hard enough to pass the budget in a good year there was a huge increase last year and then frankly and i know this is hard to hear the school community is so angry on so many levels that they're doing some mental calculus they're saying the district's not giving me what i need i'm gonna have to go to private school i'm thinking about moving i'm paying for a tutor
338i'm paying for a pod i have to get mathnasium going there's a lot of people that historically would give their heart to the district that are so angry i think they're going to vote no partly out of spite and i don't blame them and partly because they just can't afford it i think we're asking too much of people this year so i don't know what we do with that that's my opinion i don't understand through our voting process how do we reconcile my opinion which is only my voice and i don't know what anybody else thinks about this and i don't know how we move forward from here yep can you scroll down so we can see the two town assessments so five four three and two eight zero okay that's great operating uh this
339is both operating in deck combined do you want us just start operating operating in debt combined real quick yep um 588 and three exactly great can you stop trying thanks okay so we're not and i'm we're not getting from you what the what you for us to go back and say come back with something else doesn't give them direction so we need to maybe talk about i think she'll be pretty certain number of positions cut like what is the number that's that's i think what i got caught up with in the committee meeting was that i was thinking the budget was too much but i also wasn't sure i mean 500 000 that sounds like an insane amount of money to cut out of this budget so i i wasn't necessarily agreeing with um the
340fincom committee as well but i just didn't know what is the right amount of money to cut out um and what is the number we want to end up with right that's what i think we need to get to so mary beth yeah i i was just gonna offer um and again you know what's helpful for for me to be able and our team to be able to respond to you is to have a number in terms of this is where we want to come in at and then we would come back to you and we would say here's you know knowing what we know about how the district runs how education runs this is what we would recommend if you want to hit that number and you can take our recommendations or not but
341i do think that it behooves the committee to hear from their leadership team what what they would do with this budget if it is the collective direction from the committee to reduce the budget let us know how much you need us to take out and we will let you know what our recommendation is about how you take that out right i wouldn't say that we direct what gets taken out we direct the amount that gets taken out peter then dana i i just wish we would hear from the leadership committee before we saw this to see what you know to justify you know this budget because again the budget reflects our values our priorities and our goals and i wish we'd hear from the leadership team before this to to get more insights into the
342budget um i do have questions like this 12 12 and a half percent increase in administration um um i guess i'm trying to understand what that number is because it says it goes from six point nine four to 7.47 is that one person salary no vinnie explained that last time about that it's actually a shifting of positions from one place to another and we did hear about the leadership from this leadership team two meetings ago and tonight yeah i mean i think number one the night before but yeah yeah you remind us of what the shifting of those positions were um so i without actually knowing what specific line you're talking about i believe it's because we moved the uh k through five uh reading specialist coordinator from the elementaries to the central office because
343now they're over three elementary schools so you have to report them as district-wide yep i see and are we bringing this 40 recovery are we bringing back um the tas and and teachers and that's that's the thing i'm questioning is can we actually afford that much recovery i want to make sure that dana gets to talk i have a couple other questions but dana has been very patiently waiting and i want to acknowledge that yep thank you i guess i'm oh sorry peter peter go ahead why don't we let anna just direct the whole meeting go right ahead i'm sorry i was trying to make sure dana was trying to speak beforehand peter would speak and then dana would speak after so when peter would not be we'd have that happen so peter are you
344finished or would you like to ask more questions thank you no i'm not going to vote for this budget okay dana um so i guess what um and maybe this is i mean i think i had a lot of similar questions about procedure to anna and julia just having never done this before um so but what i'm hearing or what i heard anna say or today tonight my on my understanding of voting on the tentative budget really is about in general are you are we thinking that the budget is supporting our values and looking towards the um the direction that we are hoping the district is moving in and and then my understanding and i guess i'm just sort of asking for clarification because this is sort of what anna was sort of anna was
345sort of saying in general i hear what anna's saying like in general she's feeling like that a lot of these things make sense and i think they're valuable but her concern is that it's too much money and i guess if my question would be that that would be of i'm not trying to i guess i'm not trying to put a vote on anna but i'm just sort of saying that that sounds like you would vote then for this tentative budget with the understanding that like we're gonna come back because it doesn't sound like we really have consensus about whether people think that this is the right like we don't have a consensus about what that budget number is to ask because wouldn't we need as a whole committee need to come to to say we
346want you to see what this would be at four percent say instead of is that right michelle may i say anything to get to we're trying to say so maybe maybe we should maybe we should vote on if we think this is the right level and then if we know this isn't the right level then we can vote to give some direction on what level that's what i was sort of asking is that like are we trying to come to consensus on what what we would want to ask mary beth and vinnie today were to present to us is that what well and one way we could do it is we could vote for this to be the tentative budget and because tentative is what it is and then vote a direction for them to
347come back um with uh you know some things whatever you want to call it there's some benefit to having a ton of it tentative budget in terms of like the towns having a tentative budget and like there's a benefit even if it doesn't end up being but there also would be a benefit in this meeting to have people know in this meeting what direction the committee was instructing the administration to go so in other words if we hypothetically if we voted the tenant of budget and in the same meeting sort of said and also this is our request of the or i know yeah michelle um i speak um yes and then we're going to have a motion to approve this tentative budget and then we'll follow that up with a motion of some sort
348of direction okay so i have a question for vinnie and then um another comment to me so vinnie i've asked you a couple times to try to figure out what where are we gonna have to get to to avoid that override because i think that that's gonna be the sticking point is at what level do we hit that you know if it's unavoidable if contractually if something is happening it's unavoidable then i think my position would be we have to be able to justify in a bomb-proof way but what is there so for me in terms of giving a direction of like how much to look to cut it would be really helpful to know [Music] from the town side like what does that mean and i think we've talked about that a couple times
349but i don't know if we really know that number so it's hard for me to say cut 400 five hundred thousand dollars or whatever because i don't know what that number is that's not vinnie's number to calculate we don't know because the town could decide to give all of when i'm had the ability last year to not have an override they could have given all of their increase to the schools and then had all the override on their side hamilton has that in their control but we that it the towns have just traditionally taken what they need and then push all of the additional things over to the schools it's it's all within the town's control whether there's an override on the school or not granted five percent increase is more than the two and
350a half percent but there it it going to an override and being called a school override is a hundred percent in the town's control okay so i mean i think i guess that said and this is where i think going back and actually heeding the advice of the board of select and the fincons um one town okay but still like i guess i think i think that um i do think we should i think at some level and i don't know if this is what peter's trying to get to or not but like i i would have loved to have seen us get to that point sooner or this meeting have had some of those options but um before we get to that there is something i i want to say that's really important that
351doesn't involve changing the bottom line and this is a follow-up to what olivia said what i've motioned what we've talked about there's over 200 000 of professional development in this budget in different places it's working here and there so i move that we commit to unconscious bias training as part of our fiscal year 22 professional development budget development budget is spent is an operational issue under the control of the superintendent if you would like to allocate money to the school committee to put that forward you could do that i'm not asking that i'm moving that we commit to spending some of the money that's already in the budget for that purpose which is something we've already committed to with the resolution it's something that's an important value said i i we have over 200 000
352i don't understand why we as a committee couldn't say this is an important value for us to spend some of that 200 grand on this year that's that is my motion i'm asking that we direct some of that money to that purpose in this budget cycle a formal motion and i am telling you that that is not within the authority of the school committee to tell the superintendent and the finance person how to spend the money it's within our discretion as school committee members to establish the money and then to provide them feedback on how it could be spent but it's not us to commit so i want to make motions that say what what and how the district is going to run we don't need to have a superintendent and director of finance or
353assistant superintendent you're taking away their authority to do their job to lead the district so let me ask this mary beth would you be willing to commit to spending some of our professional development money on unconscious bias trading this budget year so here's what i would say that yes i can see pd money being spent that way next year here's the way that i think it makes sense to do that i you know as as michelle was saying you're committing the money for pg but one of the ways that you can ensure that some of that money goes towards pd is around your district goals right so if you were to say um at the end of the year as we define those goals one of the things that we want to look at as
354a as a school district is ensuring that we make specific progress related to equity and anti-bias training or and i would go beyond that training but how do we shift our culture in that way and one so what i would say is there's money there right and part of what happens then we look at our resources we look at our goals and we say okay how do we use those resources for our goals one of the things that's also been worked on and as part of this overall um curriculum instruction is the the formation of a professional development committee um and so to say to them here you know here's here's a district goal we're working towards right design something that is going to move forward around that and then um use funding for that
355so there's funding there the other piece that i think you need is a district goal that says it's important that it gets spent and that there's money spent in um in pursuit of that particular goal so this is where i would argue the resolution that we already passed that masc anti-racism resolution the letter from olivia was right we have already affirmed that as a district goal we all pledged to it and said that this is something we're committing to so this is where i'm a little flummoxed that we can't direct a particular kind of allocation because i think that resolution already did so and i also just as a point of order like i don't understand why this is even remotely controversial like that troubles me on a really profound level so i don't understand
356like we've already affirmed this as a resolution we voted on it to direct the district to do it so i'm simply saying can we make good on what we've already asked and voted to do like i don't i don't understand why we can't just say of this two hundred thousand dollars we will allocate some place between ten and fifteen thousand dollars is what good trading might particularly cost you know it's it's a drop in the bucket i don't understand why we're having resistance to it if we've already voted to do it i guess that's the problem isn't resistance training right so the problem is there is the what what you know michelle is trying to say is it is not our job as a committee to get into the weeds of how the district is
357run right it is our job to shape the direction you are correct we voted as a board earlier this year that that's the direction we want to uh go into i actually disagree with your motion because i think putting it off until next year is too late i think this is something that should be looking into into the spring we discussed that earlier right that that definitely came up earlier excuse me um you know what's being lost here is the fact that you know where while at the same time we're getting complaints that well why didn't i hear any of this earlier we're also going through the process of now spending 45 minutes to an hour voting in a tentative budget where this is becoming a cyclical pattern that these meetings are becoming so long
358i'm not complaining it's a job that needs to be done that we're not allowing ourselves to actually get to this type of business that needs to be done right it we are in these tremendously trying times with covet right it is in every day like thought in every day we need to be acting on some part of koben but as i stated earlier when i was talking to tom there are so many balls that are in the air at any given time that we can't ignore right so who's to blame for not being you know uh things not coming up earlier ourselves is is really the bottom line right because we haven't given anyone the opportunity to get there and am i saying that it's 100 our fault no but it is and we have
359to look at ourselves that way what i'm saying you know and what i'm trying to explain to you guys that this tentative budget is just that it is a placeholder and it's very important right especially from your standpoint and on why you're not comfortable with it because if we don't pass this tentative budget tonight right it actually affects town meeting if town meetings set and they can't then change the town meetings they have to then create a special top meeting so in order for us to try and save a hundred grand we're making the town spend 60 on creating a new town meeting right so we have to keep that all in mind that like there is nothing about this process that's perfect there's nothing about this process that part that's perfect this tentative agreement
360this tentative budget has been nothing but a pain in the butt michelle bailly will tell you every year we go through some sort of because no one wants to be locked into this this isn't the final budget i'm telling you right now vinnie doesn't want to be locked into this budget right now but this is the work that's sort of been done that needs to be done to get to that next stage and like i said this is now the crunch time of when we make those decisions excuse me you know and because and you know they're difficult right because it's coming up in your subcommittee that you can't come to a consensus but you know think about it this way it doesn't need to necessarily come up to a consensus if you know you're
361very passionate about even if they're voted against you when it comes up to the bigger you know to the bigger board for the actual vote for approval there might be three others that agree with you that weren't in your subcommittee that you know then the budget gets moved that way right so it's it's you know we have to keep moving forward for the sake of the district to keep running right in the towns to be able to actually operate and there's there's nothing i can tell you right here that's going to tell you you're going to feel 100 satisfied at the end of this so and like in like the thing is no one on this tall is in in and that's just sort of that's the part that really sucks about this process you
362know in in any type of budget at this level so how do we so first of all first we're going to have a motion to approve the tentative budget and then we're going to have a motion on what kind of direction we want to give for the next step so what happens to my motion about the bias then the julia's second does it just go into a black hole it was not seconded i seconded it i didn't hear so sure we can vote on it but it's but it's not within the jurisdiction of the school committee and it's not actionable so we can certainly vote on it but neither one of those things are it it's like when we voted on the three to five thing in one it's not actionable because it's not within
363the authority of the school committee to direct how professional development is spent it's within the school committee to set a goal and to then measure and and hold the superintendent accountable to meeting a goal but it's not within our authority to direct how individual line items are spent we don't say go buy the blue tables go and to you know super joe's hardware store to buy this we do not direct where the money goes i'm not saying but i wasn't it wasn't a motion to a specific vendor like buying a piece of paper it's it's a concept that we've already affirmed item and we are not in that that is not in our realm of authority then i would argue everything we did in that anti-racism resolution was indeed performative if there's no way for
364us to make it actionable those are just totally empty words i believe in the meaning after that one of the things we said is that we need to take this into our goals and figure out what we're going to do with it unfortunately because we have covered right now and because we have so many people criticizing us over every detail we have to rehash it and rehash it and rehash it we don't have time to set goals yet so when we can have agreement about trying to work as a team and set some goals which is what our next workshop is going to be about we can start to have more authority around that but until then we can't so i'm hoping we can pull together as a team and build some shared vision and
365goals when is the workshop the 23rd okay and that's when we would maybe identify a new goal or review the district goals process of setting goals okay we probably will not have time to set the goals themselves that's usually more of a longer period type meeting and it usually happens at the end of the school year because you're setting them for the next school year okay well i still second the motion unfortunately even if it's just performative yeah i think it's important that seems to be our way julia it's a performative gesture very um it's very snide and i would hope you'll go back and watch and hear the tone of your voice because it's very snide i am one of the most open people i'm very transparent i am very much for everything you
366stand for and at every turn you make it look like i'm evil and bad and i'm not and so i really would hope that you would think about what you are doing to the community to this committee and to me personally when you make snide remarks like that you made one in an email this week and you just made one in the meeting so please consider that so um yeah i think we're off track i agree i want i want i i don't want to be out of line but i think we're off track i think um i don't know what to do with the motion that's on the table i don't i don't know i i do i it is i think we're off track and it's difficult to um i think there's been
367a lot of generalizations being made about people and when one is sitting quietly it's difficult to listen um and be lumped in with you know i um i agree that it doesn't make sense to direct it's an operational part of the budget i mean it's an operational it's not our role um but it's very hard to hear that you think that because like i support i think we all wholeheartedly supported that motion that earlier in the year and i i guess i really do believe in the good intentions of the people on this committee and of the administration that that motion will be fulfilled i so it's i don't know what to do with the motion on the table but i i think it's a procedural question that i don't know how to handle but
368i think we are off track and we do need to vote on the tentative budget and i and i'm a little concerned that at every me and this is going back but we put together an agenda that has on it the things that we're going to talk about so that the public can sort of anticipate that and yet at every meeting you're throwing out in the middle of conversations motions that have nothing to do with what we're talking about we're talking about approving a tentative budget and you're throwing out how how one line item somewhere deep within the budget is going to be spent when we're approving the nine lines that are from the desc so it's it's it's not transparent to the public what's actually going to happen in our meetings because you throw
369out right i think we just need to vote on this and then we need to vote on the tentative budget and i think our meeting has to be over and it's unfortunate because we have some very very important things that are still on this agenda and we've wasted a lot of time tonight okay so but i don't think we've wasted any time right and there's a pre i would look to you michelle as the chair for really just a very procedural like what is the appropriate procedure when there's emotion on the table that it appears there's concern about whether or not we really have jurisdiction over that motion but we still have a motion on the table and what's the procedure should we vote should we you know i don't know but we can vote
370i mean we can vote but it our committee needs to start and this is and this is this is just this is the issue like it's like what i was saying before we don't have long-standing people on the committee and we don't have a long-standing superintendent so because of that instead of being a well-oiled machine that drives right down the lane where we're supposed to be we're more like a roller coaster that's like all over the place and we're not in our lanes and we're not doing what we need to do because we're not focused on our jobs with the committee's trying to do mary beth's job the committee's trying to do vinnie's job vinnie's you know we need to focus and until we do that we're going to continue to have these issues so
371i'm very concerned about taking a motion that puts us onto a roller coaster instead of puts us on a road to success i just want to put on the record that i do not want vinnie's job not me neither so but you know that's what we're i don't think asking i just don't think asking the kinds of questions that we're asking um is trying to trying to do their jobs and i understand it's almost midnight and we're there's nothing wrong exhausted but i in the question i just don't see anything in inappropriate tonight happening necessarily i just think that we unfortunately have so many things to discuss and we only meet once every two weeks and it's just a lot of a lot of things to discuss yeah and and many school committees meet once
372a week once a month i think we need to know god can you imagine they're focused they are focused and they stay focused so let's just vote on this motion whether or not get it off the table and then we'll go and get a legal opinion and spend money on that whether it's actionable because there's disagreement so to be clear i'm not directing the choice of vendor and my motion was i move that we commit to unconscious bias training as part of our fiscal year 22 professional development budget that was what i said it's the same thing as me saying i want us to buy desks this year it's the equivalent thing i'm not saying who what where or when but it's the same thing noted david uh no peter wait a minute what are
373we voting on whether or not to tell the superintendent how to spend twenty thousand dollars okay that's that's what i thought but my question is you just said if we vote on this we're going to have to spend money to have a lawyer to review to see if this is i just heard you say we're going to have to spend money if we vote on this yeah because to naomi to say is this an actionable motion can the school committee force the superintendent well we know that that's we can't we know that they can't do that michelle would it be helpful to you would it be helpful if i withdraw the motion seconded do you not want no michelle no uh julia yes anna yes no motion fails all right okay now we're gonna have
374a motion on the tentative budget and then we're gonna discuss whether or not to give direction to some other level michelle one second because i do not need this freaking blowing up tomorrow my phone blowing up or my facebook blowing up i am in no way voting against moving training into this district and as i said earlier i think it should be sooner than next year's cycle would like to say that i i i was all i'm voting out no against was the fact that this was not an appropriate time or place to put that motion in correct want to make that perfectly clear right can we make a motion to say that right now no we're not going we're going to make a motion to approve the tentative budget and then we're going to
375make a discussion around giving direction on any changes we'd like to see moving forward so dana can you put this on the screen for you it's going to be beautiful it's going to be the easiest motion ever it's going to be like this bond motion it hasn't been so far um i move that the hamilton went on regional school committee approved the tentative fy 22 general fund expenditures budget of 37 million six hundred fifty two thousand ten dollars this amount includes general fund operating expenses after offsets in the amount of thirty seven million seventy six thousand five hundred sixteen dollars and general fund debt service expenses in the amount of five hundred and seventy five thousand four hundred ninety four dollars furthermore the gross operating expenses of the district before offsets have been allocated by
376the deci defined chart of accounts according to the summary by deci category chart included in this budget presentation as detailed in the exhibit is there a second second by michelle morgan okay so an affirmative approves the tentative budget and allows it to be sent to the towns um uh whatever no vote um means we will continue working on this um budget tonight um michelle horgan yes anna yes yes leader no then yes dana yes del bailey yes that's six one okay now i'm going to ask if the committee would like to reconvene on what is today friday evening uh no i can't do it friday monday i prefer we just keep going okay i great let's go so monday the 8th okay oh i mean we're coming up on midnight nearly six hour meeting how
377much more time do you think we need well my guess would be two hours but to think so but they're just here i still have lesson planning to do papers to correct i don't think we've got two more hours here really let's just move forward and then we can always stop in a few minutes so at midnight i'm going to start asking you to vote to continue the meeting in 30-minute increments so um all right so how do capital planning how do you guys want to proceed with having the discussion um i would recommend that we like we did last year ask for um two other budgets and you guys can speak up too two other budgets that represent a four and a half percent and four percent and what would that would do to
378the budget if we what lions would look like could we do it as a four and a three go a little bit further then can you calculate what if i don't know how the spreadsheet is set up but could you calculate what a four percent budget would be as far as an assessment to hamilton because i'm thinking it's still going to be over five percent also mary beth and vinnie did um the fincom guys ever get back to you because you asked them point blank what type of number um they would like to see i did not hear a specific number did you vinny uh i've been kind of working with the finance director kind of trying to narrow it down we haven't gotten an exact number but we got a more accurate range of
379about 250 to 400 that would have to come off our budget in order for them to not have an override but that is just a range and not final or anything so you say 250 000 to 400 000 off our total budget would get potentially below the hamilton override problem uh correct okay as a preliminary number for now i mean it could it could change if their budget changes as well so would it make sense to with that in mind do it taking 250 off and do it taking 400 off i mean based on that um yeah so you're asking me what what would the budget be if we had to hit 400 just as a high mark i think so i mean that's that would be i mean i don't know if that's really
380gonna be enough i still think we might have an issue but um i would be curious to know what that looks like if we talk if if that's the direction we're getting from towns that that might be getting us close to the range or it might be avoidable i'd be curious to know what that looks like i don't know julia michelle i mean i don't i don't know what the process is here to figure this out i don't know either i think we should i think we should look at all of the options and i mean it really does i mean the towns like what could be passable um i know that any cut is like a cut to the bone so yeah i wonder if we did a series if we did something we're
381at like 4.45 now if we did 3 and a half 3 percent would that be helpful information to the committee my my my concern with that is that you're creating four budgets right you're creating four budgets so not only do we not have the time for that but it's if we put out a three percent budget if we make that public knowledge and we decide we want to go with the four percent budget it's going to be really hard to sell that four percent budget right so so this is that sort of tricky spot and we have to be careful what we wish for here so vinnie how if we took if we took 400 000 off what would we be at i mean if that's the highest end of the hamilton kind of range
382what did that look like so i'm talking just in terms of a net budget because that 400 grand could be expenses or it could be revenues whatever gets them below their mark so from a net operating budget perspective it would be about a three point two percent increase to get below that threshold that's too low yeah i know i mean why did you say that's too low so this budget right now at 4.4 right so this budget of 4.4 doesn't even get us back to where we were pre-covered right so that's something to be you know as we're as we're so concerned about getting everyone into school right now right we we have this sort of thought about trying to get to where this just was pre-covered this four percent 4.4 budget doesn't even get
383us there so that just just to sort of you know start to put things into perspective a little so that that's right i guess i um i i appreciate having this conversation and i think it's important conversation and i'm i have to fully admit that i um was a little stung by some emails and some chats saying it's obvious that i don't care about children and that was a very difficult for me to hear our budget document is a policy document and i'm on this committee because i care about children and i understand anna's concern about whether or not this budget is going to pass but i am really hesitant to present a budget that is we're going to be entering into a year where we need to support the children that have just gone
384through the most difficult year ever we need to fund the year so that we can support them so that that when they come back i mean all the things we hear i mean like yeah there are real mental health challenges there are going to be learning gaps this has been incredible and i it is painful to not at least advocate for the things that we really need to support the students in our community and i'm not opposed to hearing what it would mean to cut this tentative budget i'm not opposed to hearing that or looking at that but i think we need to make sure to keep in mind that this is a policy statement this is a statement about our values and so i think i don't i totally agree i think i just
385think we can thank you this is the discussions that we have been having in our our our subcommittee meetings and this is why we can't come to a consensus because you have your values and then you have the realities of of the financial situation everybody's in but what dana is saying is that public education is the foundation of our society and we as a community value our education and i said and i was very please don't roll your eyes at me i've had four teenagers in the house um i have i'm lucky i have the benefit of seeing what this district has done for my family i have four well-educated children that are about to become or some are functioning members of the society i see the value of it dana does we understand you
386can't put a price on that and i'm sorry i said this in the meeting i am sorry if paris upset they should be upset but it's a pandemic and for them to not support public education is throwing the baby out with the bathwater you can't do it now so that's my two cents and that's again why we cannot we couldn't come to a consensus because we have just different views or just different thoughts of where we are right now back to the number thing 250 what's that percent what do you mean by 250 sorry if what would that be you would be at 3.7 no anna um i think i think the you know i think the problem that we're having here is that i just don't think we can afford the things that we
387need i mean i don't think it's a matter of want or thing i think the thing that's driving me in the back of my mind is just the mindset of the voters and how they feel and i think i don't think it's about valuing education or not i really don't i think this is much more brass tax around money and i think that people just don't feel like they have it and i don't think that appealing to some sort of sense of value actually is effective especially for non-school voters right which is a huge part of our voting block and then i think especially about the people in wenham who are are even closer to that levy ceiling than hamilton is like we vote this this year and it moves the needle up and then
388we get to next year and we have the next round of like well we still haven't recovered yet and we have our new contract and then we have this with that like these towns are approaching 25 per thousand which is literally where the state cuts you off and says we're sorry and i just feel like it's i feel like as much as i of course value public education and i of course wish that we all could just spend any money that we have like we don't have the money to move it forward and i think going into the towns to ask them to do it i i just i feel like we're shooting ourselves in the foot not not just this year but even the next year still like what are we going to do
389next year when we've moved the needle and it's 23 dollars per thousand and then there's the next new thing that we need like there has to be like a reality check that's not about who does or does not value education because i don't think this is about values i think this is about pocketbooks and reality and that's what i'm trying to say i'm not judging anyone's values i just don't think it's passable at that level i really don't mr horrigan so just getting back to what dana said this is a policy so we as a committee have to agree upon this policy and then it's up to the voters to make that decision we don't know you hear we all hear from people in the community but we don't know the whole the whole community
390we're hearing certain pockets of people we don't know the whole community we create the policy and then it's up to them at the at the balance to decide whether or not to support it and if they value education and or if they don't or if they're more concerned for their and i respect that i respect that 100 because of my jobs in the community i understand and respect that but it's up to us like dana said to make a policy as a group pass it and then give it to the communities to support it or not support it yeah i'm i'm not even i mean i'd be willing to see what a 250 000 cut would be but i'm not even sure that i could support that i think it's important also to just sort
391of note right as we're wrapping up and i i do think that we need we do need to wrap up right because but we it doesn't matter what our ask is our budget will not pass if we cannot get together and sell it to the community period if we give them money back it won't pass if we can't get together and sell it so i'm telling it doesn't matter right i for the first four years you know michelle will tell you you know i said it it our job right and this year i've been sort of giving it a giving the other way a little bit more than i have in years past but our job is solely to do what's in the best interest of our district that's what we're voted in to do
392excuse me while it is a goal of our committee to work and coordinate with the other town boards it is actually our job in duty to make sure that we're doing what's best for the students in our district excuse me paying mind to what they owe is obviously something that should be back in our mind but making cuts just for the sake of saying that they're you know i don't think it'll pass is it necessarily and i'm not being accusatory here what i'm saying is it isn't necessarily acting in the best interest of the district this is where i said this gets there's no like easy answer here right this is where like you're never going to be happy but i think if you you know uh it was someone and i think actually everyone
393here and you know but i am talking to you a little bit more specifically with someone with such strong opinions and moral integrity right that sometimes you just have to that's the horse to ride on right and i understand and i appreciate you know the idea of coming back and thinking about this fiscally and financially from a town perspective but you know let's be realistic we all know who gets hurt when cuts are made in education right and it's never the top of the heat it's it it always ends up trickling down and it's not anyone's fault right i'm not being accusatory in any way but i'm saying we need to make sure that we're doing our best to take care of everyone in all of our kids all of our neighbors kids in at
394the end of the day our property values right because they're definitely relied on the strength of our schools and you know that's what gets me lets me sleep at night when i have to make these tough clothes knowing that i'm raising my own taxes you know beyond the point where it's comfortable you know i call my taxes my summer house because if i lived in gloucester i'd have a summer house with the money that i pay in taxes to live in well you know um but i mean i just think that if you need something to help help you get through this that if you just start if you think about it that way like i said it's not perfect it's not gonna make you feel better and be like all right let's go but
395i think it does help swallow the bitter pill a little bit more so i i just ask that you guys consider that i say can i say something i think i think that's incredibly helpful actually if you see um that really kind of shifted my perspective on a lot of things if you see the north star as what's best for the district because i'm i'm a lot like anna i like to see what's best for everybody like what's feasible what's realistic what's morally cracked like i i but i think thinking with that like laser focus almost like what's best for all the kids what's best for the district i'm kind of willing like to fight a little bit more now so i don't know so thank you dana i i i guess i wanna um
396speak to both anna and julia oh julia i don't know you very well but but um but i think one of the things i hear or i want to raise up is that anna i see you this is such an important conversation because i think when we come to a budget agreement when we have the committee votes and have his budget you anna are gonna be are a powerful voice in talking to the community because you are right you're and so because not i mean not only your you know your community communication but also your deep knowledge and understanding of the budget right like you're going to be in a big asset so i think like to david's point like the big picture is like it's really important that we not only come to consensus
397but then that we are able to then communicate out to the community um so i think the important thing is like what's really going to be helpful right in this moment like and if anna if you you who made the motion about the like like what would really be helpful to see like in terms of the budget like is like is this conversation come to you and said like okay this is the number that would really be helpful for me to see um i mean i i appreciate the diplomacy everyone's talking through and this is this is this is the kind of meeting that feels good to be in so i appreciate that we're sort of here i think um even though i do agree with david you know our purpose is about is about
398the kids in the schools um we don't we don't live in a vacuum you know like it's we're not apart from the town we are the towns and i think that um there has to be some measure of recognition to the guidance we're being given by our partners you know the fincoms are our partners they're our neighbors the select boards are our partners and our neighbors and ultimately actually i think the better strategy for me is that not only do we the school committee love the budget and sell it if we could get the fin comms and the board of select to also love the budget and sell it okay now we have a winner like that's like that's when the community will come together to support people and i think that if we go
399into this knowing and we've already been told by the boards have selected the vidcom that they think we're high i mean you're having a hard time convincing me that this budget is is where it needs to be we haven't even gotten to the other people who not only should theoretically be our partners in the broader community they will actively say no you know this is not something sustainable because again they're also elected to serve the community like we're all in one big capital city community together so i think trying to sort of subdivide into the school community from the hamilton community the wenham community like this is where we all come together and i would like to see us have a little bit more of a sort of homage to those partners i also do
400think and you know i am not trying to i'm not trying to stir the pot for the sake of stirring there are so many families who do feel so frustrated with the district that they've invested alternate capital into other things and they've lost faith in us and i don't know that unless we actually change course about getting kids back to school and showing them what we can do and working harder for the kids i guess right now my feeling is i'm trying really hard to fight for the kids right now this year to help them with these mental health issues to help them with their learning to me the best way to get our budget passed is to restore confidence in our school district by actually really trying to get the kids back that will
401help us earn the trust of the community that historically supported the district because if we don't do that then there are families that as much as they love public education if they're weighing the cost and saying you know what my kid is really far behind and i don't have confidence in my district so no the money i would have spent on my tax increase i'm going to pay for a tutor i'm going to pay for mathnasium i'm going to go out of district those conversations are happening in a large enough number that it makes me very nervous to move forward here so that's part of it too like all of those voices are valid and i'm trying to get to the point where the school community loves the budget the select boards love the budget
402the finn comes on the budget the seniors who have always been here for years i want everyone to love the budget and feel like it's a reflection of the community's values as a cohesive holistic group that's my goal here and i don't think that starting off at a point we know is high and we've been told is high is going to get us i mean i don't think it's about values i think it's really about anna i have to push back you are not the only person on this committee i'm not saying i was i didn't say i was the only one i said that's my perspective you're the only one in this committee who's pushing to get kids back in school and that is not true every single person never said she didn't say
403that she said that she's been working really hard to get kids back in school she never said she was the only one though i agree she implied the rest of us are not and the truth of the matter is we all are trying to get kids back in school within the constraints that we have we have buildings that we were built and we cannot make them any bigger we have staff that is here that we made an agreement with and we we're so we're all trying to get kids back in school and i'm hoping that the parents can understand that we're doing the best that we can to get kids back in school with the resources that we have been given we were not given you know a building that you could pour water on
404and make it grow we were not given unlimited money to buy staff okay we're no i don't think we're gonna go here because then we're gonna go for like two more hours to just to debate this we're going off topic dana you had your hand up yeah and my what i was saying was i think we need to stay on the topic at hand which is are we going to direct vinnie and mary beth to come back with us with another budget and i am i myself i've said what i feel about the budget but i am open if someone is going to name a number i'm open to someone directing and i'm open to looking at that budget i have that would not be me that would be directing but i am open to
405if someone wants to do that i think we should do that michelle horrigan if we know that our contractual obligations put us at three percent um i would suggest that we look at four percent and four point five percent budget increase over last year and in and in that in just right now but also um so you're saying but also i'd like to see what i'm saying but but what would with those decreases what are we losing what services are not we able to provide to our students yeah so look at four percent mm-hmm and then yeah yeah you think we're three percent just right out of the gate no matter what yes so can we do 3.5 and four if we're already at four and a half could we do two clicks down a
406four and a three and a half but then i think what date to david's point you were were giving too many options to potential options and and you're you're you're we will not be providing a hamilton one education that's my personal opinion at three and a half percent or even four percent we will not be providing a hands online education and if i if i michelle yeah yeah i just want to jump in um you know i do want to echo an earlier comment by dana that you know i have concerns about where students are going to enter next year and if there is a and what we have put forth with the 4.45 is not an over-the-top budget this is not all kinds of additional resources this is the minimum of what we need
407in order to service these kids so i particularly coming off of this year i do have concerns about going much lower than we already are you know i am happy to take direction from the committee and come back to you with whatever number you decide but i will share with you that i do have worries particularly next year when we we really don't even know yet what we're going to face how we ensure that we have really strong programs in place for kids when they return and to do that we need the positions that we have put forth in the budget so michelle why don't you make a motion i make a motion that we the school committee direct uh superintendent banos and assistant superintendent vinnie leone to uh um look at this budget tentative
408budget again with possibility of reducing it to four percent and four point five percent i did it backwards does that sound right yep okay second oh there's a second okay so all right i think we're already at 40 yeah yeah okay 0.45 yes but we have the budget and then we would have the four percent four percent right okay okay um peter what do you think about that meaning do you want to vote i'm literally asking for your vote at this point because it's 1205. yes um anna so it would be just one more version at four percent that would be the next verse but we wouldn't be doing anything less than that would just be one one more version at four percent it would be the next version if that is something that we
409feel we would like to give more direction on than we would would okay i guess i guess julia yes dana yes david yes you david michelle horrigan yes bailey yes okay i'm going to ask the committee to vote on if they would like to continue until 12 30 or until such time before 12 30. dana um yes if other people are willing to do that yay all right i'll ask someone else are you willing to do that what did you ask me well sure i'll ask you how about you don't get with you yes david yes peter what's left vaccination planning enrollment we have an executive session that really is kind of timely so i think i would go straight to the executive session and then come back to those things but we'll see okay
410uh sure yes uh anna always yes it doesn't sleep michelle bailey yes okay so all right so now it's left on this agenda mary beth um should we move into an executive session well yeah can vaccination planning be an email um for sure okay so i i know it's in the um executive session so let's do that and then we we have a meeting with the town next week um on wednesday that starts at seven so why don't we start at six and then try and hammer these same things out so you know if we have questions about vaccination email we can do that if we have vaccine you know information about enrollment report we can do that i'm sorry what's that what's the proposal we're talking we're talking about meeting before the town meeting
411the the joint meeting yeah if we could meet at six i can i can't speak for everyone else um that sounds good because right now we're not it's not the i got a request if we could go to the vaccination planning because the public health nurse has been on here to be part of that oh my gosh oh my god really so why don't we honor that yes oh jeez then we'll see what we have for the executive session go oh my god so if you would like to promote marybeth tang and by the way this is not being taped now so this won't be on tv so the only recording of this is now on zoom so we're gonna have to get this over to the tv station later today it is still recording
412we went too late there's more important things on tv oh my gosh oh my god marybeth yes definite bonus points oh my goodness you're still standing oh my god no i'm kidding i will say i am very ambivalent about the um pool testing decision i uh you know we did see on a public health side uh a number of individuals who were identified because of someone who tested positive through a pool test outside of our community that then touched our community in a number of individuals so you know having had that very personal experience i was prepared to think you know this could be really beneficial i had real worries about um the logistics and how we could roll it out so you know i support the decision wholeheartedly i didn't know how we could
413do it but particularly around like after april vacation because a lot of the schools aren't necessarily doing it private schools aren't necessarily doing it you know weekly like the state is suggesting that is totally appropriate to me at colleges like gordon college where there's communal living you know our students are not communal living outside their household anyway um mary beth did you get any sort of update from um from my colleague in hamilton is there something that because there's been a lot of discussion in thinking and planning that i'm not ready to fully roll out before you no i i have not and thomas i can double check with tom what i was planning on sharing is just what the state is sharing at this point but i know that there are many conversations going
414on and you can probably add some meat to the bones there um mary beth um around what the where we are related to the state piece so i can pull up those slides quickly and just go through them and then whatever you have as latest information i'm sure yeah i really don't want to keep you i know everybody's super tired and it's been a tough long night so i know that the state is very well aware of how many really interested in seeing k-12 faculty and staff vaccinated quickly but they were moved below the higher mortality populations i hate to be blunt but you know they've been moved below people who are dying at a greater rate for vaccination so um both both hamilton and when the position now that we're in possess finally in
415possession of vaccine and we will be administering this weekend so we're getting our feet wet we're getting started we're getting our um 75 plus residents vaccinated and i've had numerous conversations and a lot of thought and planning about how to vaccinate our k-12 faculty and staff and um just need to have some more collegial conversation about how the two towns are gonna work together to do the entire district that's not really quite ready for prime time though and just for clarification i'm not sitting on any information very bad oh i know me or you no i i don't have any information other than what you know just our initial conversations about yeah biggest concerns that he shared with me when i was in office this week was that um you know people might have to
416be out of the building to go get their vaccination possibly or out of their classroom or out of you know and that's a lot of people to have to manage absenteeism and stuff like that so it it's complicated if we want to have the schools be open and educators getting vaccinated all this going on so i'm giving that a lot of thought michelle and you know not to not to show my hand too much but one of the things that we are thinking about is um and no promises here but like a tuesday afternoon where many staff can be out of the building on a wednesday a friday afternoon so people have the weekend to recover and i think that's critical particularly with dose number two it's not as essential with dose number one but
417dose number two so that we don't you know really handicap ourselves with the ability to have sufficient staff to operate buildings yeah exactly so and you know and i know that one of the things that i will put out in the community message tomorrow is what kinds of things are we doing to start to get the district positioned to bring all kids back but this is first and foremost right now is how do we manage the logistics of getting people vaccinated and that that requires a lot of energy and focus right now um but uh that that appears to have the biggest payoff at this moment and i know that the public health nurses are working day and night to try to figure that out tom is working leah is working and just logistically trying
418to figure out how we get all of these people vaccinated how much can we actually do it here in the district what are the possibilities in terms of finding people's slots and difference in different places and that that is a critical focus right now because once we can get a timeline for when we would have our staff fully vaccinated that helps move a number of other issues along well one of i guess the real take-home message i'd like the committee to have is i'm telling people routinely get the vaccine as quickly as you can and as conveniently as you can you know we're working very hard to try to make it available in district but different communities are going to get allocation from the state at different levels so hamilton and when i'm right now
419where we can request 100 doses a week that's it different communities will get different allotments depending on their unique circumstances so we might have a teacher who lives in a higher risk municipality that has more doses coming to them so we want to say to that faculty member get it in your home community if you can get it there faster than we can get it to you just get it so um please if you can share that information with anybody that you talk to whether it's a 75 year old that you know or whether it's a faculty staff person get your vaccine as quickly and conveniently as you can and then you get your second dose timely we're going to do everything we can to make it super convenient for you but you might be
420able to get it somewhere else faster so get it fast that's it if i can just add real quick before i sign off too is that we did push out a staff-wide survey to gather interest and within 90 minutes we had over half the staff respond to that survey you know we now we're up to almost three quarters of the staff which are remarkable numbers for um you know surveys just from what we've put out in the past so and and one of the things that we're seeing in that survey is that the vast vast majority i think we're 92 93 of people are interested in getting the vaccine um and a number of the people that said they know it was because they had already gotten it positioned that they the nurses are skewing
421the numbers unfortunately we have nurses and volunteer uh first responders as well right so they've already got it um but that's yeah though definitely well i appreciate you letting me cut in before you went to executive session thank you for staying up late and working hard i'm sorry about it right back at you mary beth thank you get some sleep everyone eventually have a good night i move that we vote to adjourn into executive session for purpose number two to discuss to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel well that's what it is it's not all this other stuff and then and to vote uh i'm to go into executive session for purpose number three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining and not to return to open session second great
422uh let's vote dana yes the horrigan yes diana yes yes yes david yes great