2023-02-02 HWRSD SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

001foreign Wilbraham Regional School District school committee meeting it is 6 30 PM I see that David Sanders from Wilbraham Public Access channels reporting is there anyone else here recording this meeting we will do roll call and alphabetical order here Sean Kennedy here Patrick Kiernan president Lisa Marie here tomorrow Ryan here Michelle Boudreau hi here please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance [Music] of the United States of America and justice for all this question discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of a public body and the terrorists of declares Lauren Brian second so I thought of this afternoon I don't think we can because about this development of my recommendations so you're saying it's listed here but it's not listed in the closing

002so you have to know the person's name it's an individual or the organization the negotiation so it's not there foreign thank you um [Music] hello um so student council is having a stress for college day for the ALS Association tomorrow so they'll be taking donations at the door and they're very persistent about it the course and band programs will be having their honors recital next Wednesday eight from starting at 7 pm and the swim and dive team is League champions and so is the wrestling team so congrats to them um Tuesday the 7th there's another mini chog for the third graders and semester two open house is happening next Thursday and that's all that I have is also I think a dino tonight at Mandarin oh was that I thought it was like they might

003have postponed but it was canceled yeah any questions have a great week and one tomorrow all righty so you have a few memos in your file the first relates to the second floor railing um this has been an ongoing safety concern for the school in the district we have a proposal sorry about that we have a proposal um to put this work out to bid and we expect the total cost all into be less than 120 000 we're suggesting that we consider taking that from the minutiae capital state stabilization account we do think it's going to be significantly less than 120 000 but we're looking at where bids have gone recently we're just apprehensive about where things must come in at if somehow we get a bit above that we bring it back to heaven

004and this cost includes engineering fees and things like that how much money is in the stabilization fund now say again how much money's in the fund now uh it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 and some thousand dollars to 25. so when I think it was December this is uh potential to inquire the concept art but mm-hmm play it under right now uh so we've we've done the switches we're funding the 300 000 of switches from the town's ARCA funds um we haven't this this is this has been on our Capital plan um has something to do so we didn't necessarily think to take it for our top funds um last I talked to the town they have dried up their ARCA funds I believe both towns still have our funds available both accounts but

005during during one of our finance and operations of committee meetings it was noted by one of the members from Wilbraham that was attending that they didn't necessarily have the funds would earmarked for other things I think they had the earmarked with the Fun Zone exist correct because I know that Camden still has funds available I think again that's like 600 000 and I think we'll ran that somewhere and pay any big range of art but and potentially look at it and see if we can split it between the towns and the district versus going all in from a stabilization fund I think we could argue that's what this is really really truly intended for the civilization fund was created out by a third that's it's pretty rich for rich ly I'm happy to take it

006all backwards to make that request if that's the role of the school committee and we should put on the agenda in the future to talk about the stabilization fund and exactly what it means what we should use it for I think we should just get some clarity on that because I think all of us would have a different opinion on it on the table I think it's come off three different times I didn't even came up during one of the budgets cigarettes just trying to yeah if you could go back to the towns I think that's a and just uh did you go to them and they said we don't have any or did you just you know in meetings we've had they have indicated that that the Wilbraham has indicated that their funding has

007been earmarked already so that that would not be an available source instead of just assuming that we'll take it back and I just can you call it a majority vote that we will have Aaron do that so that it's noted somewhere that maybe as a whole committee decided to do that um yeah I don't think I know but I think it's better to just do it all those in theater situation not a full quality thing senator all those in favor all right thank you okay uh the next item on the list relates to our metco grant as I've shared our numbers are when they have dwindled rapidly in our Metro program next year if we do not recommit to Mexico we will have no students and therefore no funding um so that is a hundred

008and thirty thousand um that would typically go to offset our budget at this time with no other source for those funds it's our recommendation uh that the school committee uh vote to recommit to the state Echo program when they're going forward basis 130 000 and then we also received a thousand three hundred fourteen dollars so yes we are in so we're in an interesting situation we're going to hold harmless situation with metco so they that that Grant has a I don't think it's a law it's just a provision that they they try to make sure that there isn't an interruption in funding if you're committing to this program and you have a drop off in students for a year or a couple years because you just couldn't enroll it up you didn't have enough room

009they don't want you to lose funding so we're not really living within the spirit of it the spirit of it is that you would continue it at times when you could but we fell through the cracks to keep it simple so we we we're at we were at one point at that hundred and thirty thousand dollar level and we're not going to go below it as long as we continue to commit to the program um what if we were to take in additional students and we were to um I think end up with that would come to you know what's called 15-ish students if we were to exceed that funding level our vetco grant would go up above 130 000 but for now in speaking with the the program director um as long as we

010make a conscious effort to continue the program they would honor our funding level in their minds do we have the infrastructure in place so I know went to high school that has not felt and there was a medical coordinator who was part of the public schools just that exist here do we have the right Personnel in place to support um there's not that anyone in place to this point I mean I kind of fell into this when I when I started looking at our our grants um it was Pete Dufresne at one point because he was at the meeting and that's what he told us right when he was uh I mean I think I think some districts do have a Mapco coordinator we we've been using it to off some some instructional costs and

011some Transportation costs to the part of part of the Met program is that we provide transportation to those students so that would just be my question do we have a plan to truly Implement and support so great but I think that's really important to have all I can say is we we have the same plan as as we had two and a half years ago when I got here um I think we have to we're there's a convening meeting on March 8th which is where we will have to determine that we are going to recommit to the program at that point I can have conversations with them about what the requirements are and whether we can you know what we need to do I don't believe we're required to have like an entirely separate full-time

012position as a coordinator it just isn't the funding for that so to some degree you know we'll do what we do and we'll we'll coordinate the grant to the best of our ability as we're doing now easier to help your hands feedback go coordinate is there an lpvec Metro coordinator not to my knowledge now where they're uh not all of the the lp back schools are are in metcal and I I there's no none that I'm aware of and I'll be back up yeah John what are your thoughts on this as we're looking at trying to close budget gaps I think every hundred and thirty thousand dollars counts I think that to the question of infrastructure as we learned at the budget meeting the other day this was sort of a part of Pete's position

013I think likely it would be a duty that is assigned to another administrator as an additional duty within the district I also think that there are benefits to all the students of having a more diverse student body and so I think through all those reasons I would be in favor of continuing the program so would you need a motion well it's not listed as a vote on this agenda so I think tonight was just to get a sense of the committee but you know you can put it on an agenda for a vote is it possible then if that's the case then you can come back to us as the community just kind of give us an idea of how you plan to create an infrastructure or have an idea of how you want to

014facilitate the program just to make sure that we're not setting you guys up to fail if we say yes go for this sure absolutely I just think it's fair for you guys to understand what you're getting yourself into and what that may look like uh the next item on my agenda is Vitamin C uh mrhs lighting um I'm not going to read the entire memo but um this is a bit of a summary of what has happened a little bit of a cost summary as we're sharing um based on a lot of the changes that have occurred to our systems at the high school over the past couple years we think the best uh sort of way of doing this would be to do more of a post analysis so the the March 2022 to

015March 2023 analysis would probably be the best way to look at this some of the items that have changed since um in the past couple of years during covet include the additional 1000 Chromebooks in this building so you know they're charging every night so they're being used every day and every night we've increased the air circulation we've increased the grade of the filters the better is being pushed through all of that taps our electrical system Additionally you know over those years as I see at the the last sort of best time to look at it when we were sort of in full session would be 2019 there's been significant inflation in Energy prices in general in that time so it's hard to really evaluate this we also have solar credits so our solar credits actually

016track with our total usage so the more we use actually the more solar credits we receive so that offsetting solar credit amount is is an impact as well so when you combine all of those things it's very hard to get a really good track on what the original the kilowatt hours for the solar credits the solar credits don't subtract from the kilowatt hours of tracks at the end right but many of those items that I shared to the kilowatt hours right so the uh you know running the air circulation um through higher grade filters and more more frequently um electricity use as is are the Chromebooks as our air purifiers that are sitting in many classrooms now so when this is done we can just do comparison and we should have an accurate chart okay

017are you able to calculate the kilowatt hour for the light itself so each light based off of the structure of the building has a kilowatt hour for the the light so we should be able to tell based off of the structure of the lights that are actually still on 24 hours a day to figure out what that cost is and then subtract it from what that Mach number is [Music] if there's someone who can help us figure that out I I'll be more than happy to send you the calculation because I was just told how to calculated the other day I'll be more than happy to send you the formula I just don't know based off of the schematic of the light the lights that are part of that system right it should be like

018on the light it's on that plan okay um sure we'll we'll see what we can do I I that's not my area of expertise and I understand that so I'm not I'm not putting them on the spot for that I just want to help you get that number okay okay send me the formula 500 this uh thoroughly yet but I'm looking at um at this time the Denver no longer supports the install product or software and they offer no software that is backwards compatible with the underlying system are we going to be able to real estate meaning so sorry let me get to this yeah um so I mean one of the problems with any proprietary system is I mean they control the revisions of the software I I don't think we can promise that

019their next Generation would be fully back title loans just like any um computer I mean at some point I know Apple for many years was very Backward Compatible and they ended that at some point so anytime you bought a new computer it wouldn't be Backward Compatible or your software wouldn't be backwards compatible with your back to see from you know the 1980s I don't necessarily know that this would be eternally Backward Compatible and there would be a need to you know make a change to things like the server and things like that should should something change however one of the things I'd add to that is we've been assured that there will be some kind of a manual override so if we get into this situation again you can send someone down to a server

020somewhere to put the switch to turn off the lights okay uh and you have uh a monthly budget report um the the same items that we've been talking about a lot continue to plague us um substitutes continue to um run up a lot for us I think I shared with you that we are running um the past couple years last year and this year we're running at least 50 over um our sort of three coveted numbers on both substitute days so I think I shared you right around 3 100 uh days on average Creek Cove is in 2022 we were over 5500 I haven't calculated since early January but we were at 2800 in early January so you know expect substitutes to continue to be a point of pain out of District special education costs

021are exactly where they've been um know nothing everything everything in there is is going up as opposed to going down with anything at this point so we're trying to stay as steady as we can with that you will see at the bottom I have a running tally of the available funds that we have in school choice as well as Esser that we will put forward towards our budget showing that we do have still have a pretty strong nap budget available of 1.3 million dollars looking at this we have um looking at last month to this month and looking at some history you know Holdings steady Weaver by the 200 250 000 a month burn rate of available funds so things we spend on things that aren't already in Comfort right so supplies additional things like

022that um you know we are kind of uh we've spoken with um department heads and principals um and not necessarily sad payments free spending but let's be careful about what we spend um I guess the word John uses chill spending um to the best of our ability through this knowing particularly that next year is going to be a very challenging thank you any questions all right thank you very much thank you which is [Music] in the school Community um and it's just I think it's an important conversation to have now um like that's something to be that we have um so just a reminder beyond our quality so that is those are the rules that we should be abiding by and just a reminder that the whole board refers to the subcommittee so does that

023communities cannot give directives to the superintendent or Administration and there's just so any interactive surveillance from the full school committee and another thing is the minutes for subcommittee meetings they should be completed and sent to the full board for approval and they're the only um the full board is the only body that has the authority to act on those items I know we've been having the subcommittees do their own medicines I haven't seen any sort of community many many meetings meeting minutes sorry um I haven't seen any since I've been here for seven years I don't know Phil has been here longer who's not here right now but I've never seen some committee meeting minutes so it's part of the open meeting lot so it really has to be over meeting a lot of choirs

024that they I mean your subcommittee can approve their own minutes but really that's the secondary but they should really be right into the whole committee so you really have to be done within three meetings for 30 days okay is this a change of policy or is this something no it's not so a timely manner we had that run by an attorney or something just to make sure that we're all so we're also we're all expected to actually take the open meeting while training yeah every two years so it's actually part of that so just because just because we haven't been doing it it doesn't mean that it's not been a requirement I just want to make sure that it is a requirement because it's been a long time and we haven't done it so exactly

025so in reviewing some of what what we're doing versus the should be doing but doing sure we're uncovering that there's a lot of things that haven't been happening that should be happening and that's like that one's regulated by the state that's not a school committee that's not Mast the masc direction back to the open media law itself but how would the the full committee approve the minutes for when they weren't necessarily at those minutes it's not a matter of it's not a matter of being at the meeting it's making it part of the record right so because that subcommittee is doing work on behalf of the full committee it's just voting the theme to record oh okay similar to when we have a committee meeting um you could maybe miss the meeting the last meeting

026but you can participate in both because it's just making it part of the record be abstaining from it doesn't necessarily do anything other than just saying that you don't vote on it at all it's just saying when you say hi to say you agree you're just saying you are agree to make it part of the record I just said I thought you said they had to vote on the minutes well they vote to make it record so when I get to the vote is too voted to record but then it also brings foreign [Music] manner a timely manner manner is considered to be within the next three public body meetings or 30 days to our date of the meeting [Applause] the Attorney General approved admitted to be approved it for public bodies that's meeting wherever

027possible Origins it says yes can you do that last night in general yeah encourages minutes to be approved public timing manner that is referenced right before that was saying that you have either 30 days or or within the next three public body meetings whichever is later okay but they're saying try to do this as simply as possible um and that the law requires the existing minutes being made available to the public but they're changing the request whether they have been approved or remained and dropped form uh materials or other exhibits used to um used by the public body in an open meeting that's also being made available to the public we were doing we have some of the other sort of the meeting minutes um so yeah so just a second they say no power

028except to deliberate on I guess that have been put forth from the whole committee um and then no no decisions are made until the full form says so number two that's the only other one that I don't think we've ever followed that yes that's what I was gonna say so either we should if the ultimately agree sends back to the policy subcommittee to memorialize how we've operated standpoint for we should probably imagine yeah I think in practice we've been doing something different and I think rather than going back to a policy that we haven't followed I don't feel that they follow it before I came on board because it's been that way since I got here yeah it's a little bit number two to edit into how we have how we do it now well

029I mean is that what we want to be doing yeah because that's how we've been that's why but I think doing it doing it one way versus you know because we've done it that way is that the proper way that we should do it or should we as a committee if we're going to vote to have a chair to our whole committee allow them to appoint who the the chair of the subcommittee is yeah that's too much power it allows for the committee to go into a meeting with a chair ready to go versus a meeting where you have to set an organization most School committees operate where the chair of the subcommittee is appointed at the um the organization meaning when you vote for your new school committee chair the officers and then it's

030not at that point I like how we do it now I I think that we as a group have all decided yeah okay you can do this this or whatever is and when we've always come to an agreement in in all the years that I've been on the committee there's never been an issue with that um so I would say let's keep doing the way we're doing where the whole committee is involved rather than the chairperson dictate I don't necessarily know that picture dictates versus the full committee can make recommendations for the chair to make the appointment I think it's your person will appoint the subcommittee chairperson and its members but I'm sure that that would be done with the discussion I mean again we are this was the reference to the policy was created

031as guidance so we can create it and make it what we want it to be as a whole committee so if we if the will of the old committee is to bring it back to come up with either using it the way it was the way we've done it or following it the way that it was suggested by the masc when the law when the policy was adopted unfortunately I don't know when it was adopted because we don't put those notes on the bottom of the policy so we know when it was accepted into our policy manual so a few things it also does be subject to approval by the committee so I think that also makes it sort of a piece by case but we want as a committee and say that we wanted

032to go back to the policy committee we can certainly do that yeah I would say I would make a motion to send the BBE subcommittees on the school committee uh I guess we're going to call it subsection two back to the policy subcommittee to have it reflect more how we've been doing things rather than how it's written down sorry I I think it's one of the best meetings we have is when we all sit there and everyone gets their say everyone jumps on different committees whatever it's something that has always worked in front of them but I think that's what's in that the writing of that word is subject to the approval by the committee it's no different if we had a conversation and said okay Bill Sean and Mar are going to be on

033finance which one of you would like to be the chair bill can thank you'd like to be the chair if nobody else wants to be the chair and everybody agrees with that then the the school Community chair will appoint the message so there's no need for an organization meeting me to start that meeting what if we get someone who's uh who is just like let's just say one party over another party and decides to make all the chairs of all the uh you know just one partisan person that happens to be chair I'm just saying how is it working but it doesn't work like that I can't face up this subject to approval by the committee it's worded in such a way so it cannot be done so if you look at the top the

034school committee so we have been doing it this way is that what we're saying no we're not following our own policy but the difference is it gets voted on so I think tomorrow's point if you do it during the reorganization meeting subject to approval by the committee of full committee hazards that you roll right into your committee meeting subcommittee meeting set up with your chair and so forth versus doing having the first meeting be a reorganization meeting in every subject so the only difference is is that at that meeting we would say all right who who we chair in this world committee yep so if you want to nominate yourself to be the chair or something we could all say yes unless someone wanted to not unless someone else wanted to do it and then

035maybe you could explain why and then the committee could then say okay well we'll make a decision as a committee to say who will be the best person for that role I mean I don't think it's gonna honestly be an issue with just making sure that we can fly with our evolved I I I I'm a fan of changing rules to reflect how societies run rather than changing Society based on how the rules are so I would say you know let's just go and make it how we've been doing it if anyone have does anybody did anyone have a problem with that we've been doing it is this it just makes any willing to be able to know how you get a meeting going it started because when you go into your first meeting it's

036okay so who creates that agenda for that first meeting because you don't have someone appointed as a chair so you're not following how that works that that puts your bonus on John but he the subcommittee level shouldn't necessarily have to do that reorganization would be no different for the organisms [Music] but one thing that I see is that if you go from here then you're basically the first decision that the subcommittee has which is which is elected to leadership to basically taking that responsibility away from suck so basically you're taking the autonomy of the stuff oh can you use your microphone yeah turn your microphone on thank you sorry about that I'll repeat that so the way that I see it is is that if you the reorganization that control committee level has done very

037simply and that is that the uh the superintendent basically takes control of the meeting and gathers in and basically all you do is you just say okay fine first order of business is we you know collect officers it doesn't it doesn't take a long time to do it but like I said what you're doing is you're taking the subcommittee and you're basically taking the power away from the subcommittee because you have a group of three members who will be working together and then you have four other members of the committee that may influence who that person is that's going to be leading the committee but in the minds of the committee members that may not be the person that they think is the best person to lead to commit so I I think that it's

038a you know it's a slippery slope because what you're doing is you're basically taking the the first authority of basically taking it away so I but it's not an authority to the subcommittee the subcommittee is just a working group The Authority of the subcommittee the authority of the subcommittee comes from that a chair to elect officers to the subject correct that's how we do it on the full committee that's the full committee but a subcommittee is just meant to take a task from the whole committee so that more time can be dedicated to the business side of what we do so that focuses on that one aspect and to have authority there's no Authority at the supplementary level committee no I understand but what you're doing is then you're taking four members who are not

039involved in the subcommittee and basically putting them in the position of dictating who's going to lead the subcommittee who at the subcommittee level the members of the subcommittee may not agree you understand what I'm saying but I'm just saying I think it's the will of the full committee as to who they want to be I think you're I think you're assuming something that may not happen I think it could have easily have been appointed similar to how our subcommittees are set up now at our organization meeting where we just say which committee we want to be on and then someone would like to be the chair that all Michelle is doing is making it to record that billboard Tempe has been appointed the chair of the finance operations and Technology subcommittee I don't think it's

040going to be what you think it is I just think it allows for more fluid business per our own policy I think if you look at number two it sort of space right out of the committee chairperson of the subject to approval by the committee I understand excuse me it's not going back to the committee and it's been already predetermined it's subject to the approval of the committee subject to our approval I understand what I understand what the policy says what I'm saying is that if you and we're let's say right you have three members that are appointed for policy policy four members of the committee who are not involved in the policy we'll look at that and say okay well we're gonna elect this person is in the chair because you're going to take

041the recommendations of the full commitment okay so the four members of the committee who are not on the subcommittee have now have a strong influence on the leadership of some committee and when you get at the subcommittee level the three members of the subcommittee may not agree that that person is the best person to be at the helm of that subcommittee so what you're doing is you're diluting what the subcommittee can do simply by saying okay you guys don't have the ability to the election you think is going to be the most effective person to run the subcommittee we're going to appoint that person for you and so the ability of the subcommittee to work as efficiently as it needs to is being undermined by the ability of them to elect who they think I

042mean if I'm on a sports team all right I'm one of the elections captain on the sports team but don't most coaches and like don't most coaches are playing a captain no no no there are some teams I'm just saying that and sometimes it goes based on seniority too much this entire thing is that we nominate people to be chair of if I nominate somebody and they're not there while student are capable or have the time then be able to plan it on the nation so I think there's also that reason it's not just somebody arbitrarily saying okay Bill I want you to be I just like that just just to understand this better so we've been doing it a certain way and it's been working for a certain way for at least eight years

043that we know with the experienced members on this committee um can you tell us why you think this is better well first of all that just tells us that for eight years we've had a policy that we don't fall off so there are likely a lot more policies than we have on our policy manual that we're not following it's our diligence to make sure that we're following our own policy well we're supposed to have a student representative sitting with us with voting rights and stuff like that to participate meetings and we have some sometimes you know we encourage them to stay but they usually come and just tell us and leave they're supposed to be elected and I bring it up every year we can't force we can't force a person we can't force a

044person to do that role and it's actually the the student committee there's five students that get elected to those roles and it's usually one of those members we can't force that any one of those students to come and be a part of our meeting you don't have the election the election is supposed to be within the school right it doesn't get done it's a policy that gets ignored okay actually it does not yes there's a school committee election I'm sorry Steve was he's not in here that's not what the policy is the policies that's supposed to be school-wide it's the student advisory committee that's a title for it too I could actually look at it wildly I would encourage them to send it back to the policy for for number two in particular to look

045at the language and ensure that it's clear to come back to the full committee with language so the other part of this policy that needs to be reviewed then it's also number three because we as a full committee should be tasking the subcommunities with the things that they're supposed to be working on or topics things like that like similar to like the like situation we have now that could have been something that instead of necessarily just keeping on error we couldn't pass it to something with the finance operation subcommittee to potentially if this Arab and using it as an example I'm not saying that that's what's going to happen but there's different there's different aspects of clockwriting that should be done that way versus there are two agendas being put together that shouldn't have topics

046on them I think the whole thing should go back I'm just trying to understand some of the policy stuff completely we understand where the convention Al effort well yeah I think I just don't think it matches how we've been doing it so if they've had a policy and they created this policy and then inspires me know over eight years never enforced this policy or hit the policy should you know is this where like you go where the path is and that's where you put the concrete or you just put the roads where you want to put and make people well it's not funny where you want it to go this has been policy and policy manual but it's not been followed it's been done differently I understand but I guess I don't understand how when

047it started to divert from what the policy was but I'm asking you why is this how is this better and I've asked that now let's get a second time how is it what is here better than how we're doing it now well the conversation is about stuff communities in their role and what their duties and responsibilities so as a school committee and our subcommittees we have not been following and and the subcommittees have not been operating the way that they're they are set up to to do so so remember that the subcommittees have no power independently it's the full school committee so the directive is given from the school committee and the school committee is the body that votes fine you know things that we decide to move forward on has there been an instance

048where a subcommittee has decided policy or something like that no we're just making sure that everybody understands the role of subcommittees I think you just sent them instances would have suffered peace we're not in a problem yeah I could well one of one of um we were discussing meeting minutes earlier so meeting minutes should be coming through the full committee and I can say that since I've been on school committee and I believe Sean also alluded to the fact that since he's been a school Community he has not seen any subcommittee minutes come through the whole school committee for approval as opposed to for just the uh the um The Five-Year Plan minutes thank you right or you know it's supposed to be done within a certain amount of time but it hasn't been happening

049so that's just an example of something that has not occurred that should be occurring there have been other conversations that have happened at the subcommittee level that has not made up to the full committee level so it's just important to make sure that we make sure that we are for conversations so I'll be more than happy to speak on this because I'm the one that brought up as a conservative chair um the fact that the finance operations have Community had a conversation about school choice and then actions were taken by the district that should have been taken by the district from the direction of the subcommittee when it wasn't the will of the full committee to take the actions um and because that information hasn't been presented to um the general public is why I'm

050being I want to say big but are you talking about the survey yes John did I give you direct orders to create a survey it's not a matter of there being direct orders or direct requests it's just making sure that many discuss it and the administration felt that it was a reasonable survey to put out we've talked about it was part of the conversation about doing a survey but nothing was decided it wasn't decided in the meeting that we will do a survey and we will instruct the superintendent to do so if that's not something we would do in the meeting I understand but it's when when information from the survey was shared with only subcommittee members when it should have been shared with members of the full committee I'm just making sure that all

051of the items that are on the agenda or subcommittees are at the will of the full committee because that's what is supposed to happen but the subcommittee did not direct I didn't say that they did so I believe the superintendent did an excellent job of taking the initiative to try to gather information so certainly if there is a question that pops up and in this case it was regarding school choice and more specifically why schools Choice students choose to attend this school I think it's a I think it's a very important question it's a superintendent felt that it was important enough to create a survey for it that I think rather than rather than look negatively I would look positively wait a minute that has been discussed at the full committee hang on that's been

052discussed at the full committee and we have instructed the superintendent on many occasions to dig dive deep into why people are yes I'm not but I can finish my thought so you know rather than rather than looking at that conversation looking at as a negative like I would look at it as a positive because you know our CEO basically said well that's a great question you know what I I think that's good information I think it's information we should have so I I don't see that as a negative but you're you're imposing an emotion on something that is not being said there was nothing about what I said is it being a negative I was simply providing you with an example is I'm not putting any negative onus on what the superintendent did or what

053happened in the meeting it's merely in the meetings that I sit in you make comments where you'll say we should do this we should do that so that in turn becomes someone taking a directive a direct action from a chair of a subcommittee I'm not saying that even saying that in wrong or negative or bad I'm just saying I think it's important that it's very clear what the subcommittees are doing and working on so that the full committee knows and we're meeting the requirements of the overheating law motions and policy pde is something it's already been made and seconded it was no it was just you wanted to send it make an amendment to the motion to oh [Music] policy policy supplement so he's amending it to include all of the points rather than I

054believe I guess I said point two yes okay so all the points dollar paper hi hi just regardless of committee bill but one of the important things for our subcommittee so just making sure that when you're recording out when you have a set of community making sure that items are reported out typical day as well can you explain that I don't quite understand just say it again when a subcommittee holds a meeting making sure that discussions that occur at that subcommittee's meeting getting reported out to the full committee yeah well I think that would be the I think to the meeting I think that basically qualifies yes section 10. some Community updates isn't that where we're supposed to do it if there's any music we talk about what's been talked about I think the minutes

055will make [Music] I would encourage us as members of the elected body to participate in the open meaning law training that's required of us every two years or at least I know I don't know that I don't know that anybody knows who hasn't who has a Blog okay we submit it to the Health Department this year you want to be a hypothermal committee so we should try our best to do better and perform Better Together no I agree the minutes the minutes with my colleague even though we've been doing things over here we're doing how we're doing it whether it's within what um thank you so we will continue with um I'm gonna recuse myself on this because I'm a employee of Amazon and though I did suggest and help facilitate this to a certain

056point I think I'm just going to step out of them okay so I guess the question on this is just whether the community would authorize the district entry into this agreement this is a essentially an agreement profit by Amazon of to address the donations you receive on a periodic basis and that are put in the pantry at TWD so in your packet you see it's a simple agreement with seven Provisions we have in the past the committee has in the past voted to accept the donations at that time this agreement wasn't known to the district but we have been asked by Amazon if we would sign with this receivers of so looking at it I was not selling this based off of three five seven fact that the documents governed by Washington laws will Washington

057laws are certainly friendly they are not the friendliest State you would want to be in so I would not sign the zone [Music] thank you do we know if we have the option of amending or redlining it to send it back I know well I'm just here but you have the right to redline any agreement to say that you don't agree to it yeah I would say that the community has the right to propose any changes it has the right to not sign because it's certainly not compelled to sign this agreement just because it has accepted gifts and passed did we run this past concert we did not be any interest and he's having the attorney look at it I'm sure that if Patrick picked up two or three things on and I'm sure the

058journey will pick up five or six more um and do we feel that the expense involved in having the attorney look at it and they can post changes would benefit the district if Amazon did agree to the changes to this to the society contract so it's my understanding that the boxes come in not marked not labeled we don't necessarily know what's in the boxes until we see them that's great do we know what the cost has been to dispose of anything that cannot be used and has that been an added cost I mean I realize we have a trash service but if there's items have to be thrown away I know that becomes an added and I know that we have I think we have a policy for Surplus um so can I just happen

059so what's the so you just said the boxes coming from Amazon they're not parked they're not labeled so they come with stuff that may not be used by the districts in the independent worldwide we don't actually know what it is or if it's appropriate for students for the school to have again I'm not knocking them no it just I mean if if boxes come in I mean are they the boxes don't have a label they don't have a shipping and label they don't have anything so we don't even know what these boxes are coming from uh that was mine saying one box came with like 25 10 12 inch straight for his phys Ed um another box came in with giant containers and Tabasco sauce not saying again couldn't be used but it's just an

060idea there was other things that couldn't be used at all in the school that I recall ad mentioning I'm not sure I would say we don't know where they're coming from you know they're coming from the enzyme Distribution Center what we don't know is what's in them not like for example the district says we could really use yoga mats you know can you save those for us and send us a box and you have them you get whatever we get some of the stuff we can use in those in the pantry some of the stuff we can use and goes gets distributed to schools there's some amount of stuff that you can't use and get thrown out and I think one of the problems that we used last summer I haven't been on top of

061it since then was that there was so many boxes coming back and that takes people to just move it move forward and that takes a lot of um around anything this was sent by Amazon with the request that we have some inside it we felt that it was important for each of the committee before just having a Singapore do we even have a policy regarding we do have a gift to the district policy does it cover gifts in the district or monetary donations or they could be like technology or instruments things that you know what the district is getting before the donation is made they can be both monetary gifts or material gifts the policy essentially says that gifts on group under a certain amount the superintendent can receive gifts of a higher value have

062to go before the school committee which is why these gifts in the past have come before the school committee because we were fairly certain that it exceeded the threshold there is a public published gifts one do not decide Amazon pushes and determine that there's enough value in what they're doing kind of the conversation with the attorney operate as we are both such founded Amazon refuses to get to make calls so our policy kcd reads in accordance with state law all grants are against to the district shall be reviewed and accepted by the school committee before expenditure or use in the case of gifts from industry business or special interest groups no extensive advertising or promotion may be involved in any donation in school you know so automatically become the property of the school district and

063he gives her cash regardless of donate event will be accepted by the vote of the school committee kept separate from the general fund and expanded at the discretion of the committee as provided by law the committee directs the superintendent to assure that an appropriate expression of things is giving to others just because moving forward as we have been and if Amazon pushes back and we can see if that's why would the person ask if we think we're deriving enough value to send it to the attorney to build a point what we're receiving we don't think is something that we should pay a legal bill for get guidance on them so yeah I've I've never done an analysis of the value of the gifts received versus the cost of the staff in order to stop the

064country I think that's really what would be the way to figure that out I can take a look at that and try to um develop some suggestions or guidance of my own with respect to whether or not it makes sense to have invest many legal fees and trying to figure out whether or not this is worth thank you okay so we are moving on to umrc physical graduates okay so after December Sewell Road meeting we recall we were shocking about the U.S news and world report ratings and what it was that we valued in education how best to measure that and I suggested that looking at actual performance of our students in college would be a more direct way of assessing their preparation for post-secondary education then what can they keep participation and scores which

065are predicted at best I said at the time that I knew I could get the data for our district it was unsure whether I could get comparable districts so and the good news is that I was able to get our comparables and so I have some information shared tonight so the next few slides follow the same format I used when presenting our accountability data the boxes represent our peer districts and I've shown the range of outcomes for the lbpc districts although deci does not identify any of the other lvpec districts as peers for US based on differences between our communities so the first thing you can look at is how many of our students enroll our College University immediately following graduation this is a percentage of our students who are sitting in a college classroom

066the September after graduating from high school you'll see that just over three quarters of the class of 21 were enrolled in higher ed the fall of the graduation year which places Us in the close to the top of the range of other collaborative districts but in the bottom half of the range for our peer districts the data is from the class of 21 which is the most recent available that was obviously used was impacted by covid but the reason we're looking at that as opposed to 22 which is beyond most recent graduates is that information is not available yet so um some of our students subgroups enrolled at higher rates relative to their peers in similar districts most notably multiracial students and some of our students enrolled at rates that were lower relatively peer groups

067most notably Hispanic or Latino students but most of our student subgroups enrolled at range is to put them almost directly in the middle of their receptive peer group ranges so um that's the first measure how many students graduate end up in a college next fall but enrolling in college is just the first step to obtaining a degree to reach that goal you need to stay enrolled and many students drop out especially a large number of students drop out before the start of their second year and so this slide shows students who continued from the first year to the second and this is the class of 20. not the same stupid group we were looking for because you have to go back a year to get the information about how many students persisted from year one

068to year two so here I think our outcomes are decided to be better more than 90 percent of our graduates who enrolled in college returned for a second year of college which puts us above the meeting for our peer group and near the top of collaborative districts many of the student subgroups are well into the upper end of the range for their peer districts including multi-racial students who have a 100 percent first to second year persistence rate which made us the Exemplar among our peers our female students also came very close to best in group in terms of persistence but the most direct measure of all perhaps is how many students actually attain a degree and what that's what this slide shows so we're looking at a different group of kids again because you need

069students who are in college long enough to obtain a degree so this is the class of 2017 but again it's the most recent group that's getting College long enough to earn degrees that have been reported to the database um in this these figures students who did not enroll in college immediately after graduation in 2017 are excluded from the data set so this shows the success rate just of the students who enrolled immediately upon graduation and you can see that about 70 percent of our students obtained a degree in the first four or five years and that puts us in the top half of the range for our peer districts as well as for our collaborative districts a Black and Hispanic early Junior students had the highest degree completion rates among our peer districts they are

070the exemplars for our group which is why they're in Orange Although our Asian graduates and students with disabilities showed lower rates of jury completion for their respective subgroups so another way to look at this is to follow the class of 2017 through their college career you can see that here at where they were at initial enrollment persistence from Year from the first to the second year into the entertainment and throughout that entire pathway our students were sort of in the middle range of our peer group and also look at that same class with respect to the lvpec districts and to see that our students will have the second highest success rate at each step in the process as compared to the other lbpdc districts so another thing you could look at is whether student participation

071in post-secondary education is increasing or decreasing over time as measured by that first indicator which is immediate post graduation enrollment and you'll see that we've been remarkably consistent sending about 78 to 80 percent of graduating seniors onto higher ed which has caused us to shift up slightly within our peer group because some of the districts have seen changes of up to 10 percent in a negative Direction that's correct any kind of close secondary I don't have all the data I can give you some data on two versus four but not not all of this um and so then you can also look at it with respect to our other collaborative districts again you can see for most of this time frame we're number two you can see again we're moving up within the group as

072other districts sort of have less participation in higher education in our district remains relatively steady um and so I did want to just also touch on other outcomes because higher education isn't the only goal students have immediately upon graduation some want to join the labor force or the military um in 2021 which is again the most recent year we have data for about 10 percent of our seniors had aspirations along those lines so here you can see how those different types of non-higher Ed goals for our district compared to our peer districts and the part that I think about most in the stack is the orange or the unknown component because I think it's important for everyone to leave high school with some kind of a plan even though everyone has to improvise and adjust

073to what life throws at them it helps to know what you're improvising from that's why I think about the orange part of the stack and keeping that as small as possible in 2021 that group that left with no real known plan was just two percent of our seniors which is fairly small compared to our peer groups as you can see however you know I'd love to get the percentage lower still because some of our peer districts were able to get below two percent um so what I take away from all this is that while the percentage of our students enrolling in college immediately after graduation may be a few percent lower than it could be our graduates tend to have more success remaining involved in completing programs which causes them to wind up in a

074strong position if you measure success by our students ability to complete what they set out to do that's what I can share about that uh yeah just I've done package Point yeah absolutely um I just want to say uh excellent job absolutely it's incredibly helpful never seen data really presented this way about two major eight years and it's it's according to see that work that we do is thank you I thank you for taking the initiative and doing this a really valuable information that's for us sure just sort of like no I don't know how when we look at the new website someday because I think it would be important and to do some of this data value I think it's important that the community can see it as well absolutely thank you I do

075have a comment that I would have a factory on and this was from a student model girlfriend who's a senior here at your job dear Hampton Wilbraham Regional School District school committee I was in attendance at the December school committee meeting and as a student at minute talk I would love the opportunity to share my opinions in regards to school rank I acknowledge that it can be important however the ranking system of U.S news and World reports seems to Value superficial statistics rather than the well-being of students as an AP student I have learned how valuable these classes can be as students being both college credit and a deeper understanding of the subject however I have also learned that if that an AP class is not always the right fit at the beginning of high

076school I value taking harder classes Above All Else however last year due to scheduling issues I was paced in honors American literature rather than AP Lane and it was a potentially one of the best things that could have ever happened to me I was introduced to my favorite book in that class and became a better writer additionally I was taken I was taking a class at Harvard material I had cared about more than the content of AC Lane a class I would have been taking simply for the sake of a dnap class by taking this class I also was able to have a less stressful semester where I had the time to hang out with my family and friends on the weekend a large difference from the semester prior when I was taking three AP

077credit classes I also was able to devote more of my time to the difficult Spanish class I was taking and was more successful in that class because of this this taught me this taught me that forcing AP classes on students is not the right solution not only will you be causing students to learn to prioritize the wrong things in their academic careers but in some cases you will be setting them up to fail if you really want to increase the amount of students taking AP classes then subsidize the costs of AP tests in order to encourage Financial Equity within higher education I urge you to prioritize students over status considerably Molly Olson we will continue with the subcommittee updates so we will begin with the curriculum subcommittee show okay thank you finance and operations yeah

078yeah so we met on Monday um we had a fairly robust discussion uh there uh we are facing a three million dollar shortfall s looking at the looking at Finance committees sort of uh Appropriations on it you can see that there were not nearly in the range where they're comfortable and we're not we're at the point now we're trying to whittle away at the budget the problem is when you face a deficit this week there's no way that you can there's no way we can Whittle down a budget without impact Construction so we will continue our work with Finance to try to get the number down as much as we can and we did have a discussion at the beginning of the meeting about the about and there were some suggestions that were made and

079I'll I'll bring it back to you guys where they were hoping that this particularly was judici was and Carol Fitzgerald was hoping that the second round table would be a smaller sort of working group where you know I think this meeting was was good I think with a bunch of round tables it was sort of an excellent display for the Republic and understanding of where our money goes and where that deficit came from but there was more interest in creating sort of a working group for that second meeting and kind of paring down the list of buildings but that was something that was thrown out and so I agree back to you guys I you know I think what we wanted is we want to make the round tables as productive as possible you know

080and we don't want to get in half a convenience point you know that they're here in a row what kinds of things can we do to make things better I know that during the meeting Laura had a suggestion that he worked in the masc OT create a couple of resolutions for the masc um which makes which makes sense the masc is the sort of our our you know our largest Fulton that we have that Republic ministers creating that can be discussing and real world resolution is talking about special education and how much that impacts the budget here and there's some good things came out of them so it worked to go on the budget but overall it's you know it's going to be it's going to be a really hard budget here this year and

081it's going to be way worse next year because once those federal grants dry up to be a lot of space I don't know yeah I'd like to add um um so basically camera brought up a really good point she said that that being the last budget Roundtable was more of a state of the school's meeting and uh having our representatives and stuff in there you know maybe that's something that we could do in the in the fall or early winter you know and then the one that we would have now um really is getting into the budget like really deep diving you know budget um goes to present 61 percent and that goes towards the school district so you know really something like that we also had a discussion about maybe changing the dates for

082that which is something where you would have a state of the schools sort of before the before they would say Thanksgiving day so we'll have our simulated back and we've got to get it uh you know get an overview of just like we did talk to the legislators and then do the working group in January because I mean our next meeting is March 2nd and we have to have our budget done approved by Marshall before you know to have that working to get their work done so we did the working group in January to the state of the schools in the fall that would definitely I think that would help create a little bit more difficult as far as you know timing to get that done I just wanted to touch base on the comment

083they made about the masc involvement with resolutions it was more specific along the lines of one of our biggest issues with transportation and for the last few years Patrick has brought up a really great idea about considering having the legislature change the CPA used to include you know Recreation to include sidewalks and I think that we probably wouldn't be the only District that has that problem and so I think we could use our voice here as a committee to you know generate a resolution then we vote on and we extend with Sean to the next meeting so that maybe other schools would buy enjoyment that's pretty to me a great use of the legislative to say you know Jay calaveri said you know you've got to come knocking on our door you know you can't

084just expect us to say we're interested in the money so let's do let's try to use the MSC who has that you know boarding body and then the um the other use of it too would be to potentially see if there were other resolutions that we could help for the funding aspect of like the formula we're talking about changing but how they calculate the formula and maybe starting that where we could get other School committees to go via MNC as well as the possibility of leveraging the lpdc and having a meeting where we all get together somehow because we don't know how it would work but you know if we have to speak a our portion of Western Mass to get funding then how do we do that and how do we officiate bringing everyone

085together to say that we're all having the same financial difficulties I know that Aaron has mentioned a few times in our meetings about the lip service having the same concerns about increased costs um that they you know how do you how do you recover so two two things so I was struck by the work the parent did comparison regarding chicken schools yesterday's Boston Globe Boston Public Schools will increase their school budget this year closed by 65 million dollars they spent 28 800 per people which is a 39 increase pandemic so if you look we can talk about sidewalks all day long stickers and quarters that's what we really need to attack so we're hearing that these districts desperately need that money and we look at 28 feet and that's not mistaken that's roughly twelve thousand

086dollars more per student than we spend on a student here were being told sorry if we're going to do a resolution and there'd be some iron with me supporting a resolution I would say that's what he needs to focus on that we're actually looking at something that truly can make a Monumental difference in a budget and that's the ludicrous that we're being told these different reviews twelve thousand dollars and that's just that's a good question that was the first question second part uh Johnny said earlier right every 130 000 if we're looking at helps I would ask the committee's thoughts and I was thinking about what you said with this strategic third sweet message people in buildings right those are the most expensive things we have a building right now that to your point here

087is under his planned operating capacity we have another building that is under this planet operating capacity Epiphany in theory could ask the district to look at closing for next year which would have an immediate budget really can would also not put us in a position where we have a risk of the enormous more than five years so it's not going to trigger the need for code updates it has institution plan works its way through and it's decided that that building has a huge to ask the administration to look at to take clothes officially for next school year to potentially re-house the program that is there now in another building that is under its plant operating capacity today and that's potentially I don't know 130 000 I don't know what it is but the message I

088heard from you every single dollar helps and I think we really need to take into consideration that we've done today while looking at the built environments in the future because that has to work so yeah I mean we're talking about this for a couple of years um and there's no question about it we look at our budget there unless you want to start really carving into education the area in which at least show the most amount of financial leakage is in our building utilization last year if you remember our budget was reduced by the finance committee for 120 000 which was the direct result of the finance committee concluding that the operation of Thorne Burgess was crossing the district 120 000 and so they basically reduced our overall budget by 120. I can tell you

089their eyes were fixated on this again all right and not just foreign close the building then I think that it's something that we need to seriously consider obviously education is the main goal but at the same time I would counter to say that education is largely dependent on the funding if you're inadequate funding than educational suffering so we need to find a half median between the two and it's going to take it's going to take a lot of sort of a lot of different discussions happening simultaneously one of the things you have to look at is the regional agreement have to look at building a utilization we have to look at the new data that NASDAQ gave us all right looking out for our projections out until 20 2032 okay lot of things that we

090need to consider than moving forward on this but we have to we have to do something the great irony is is that the original Five-Year Plan was set in 2000 into 2017. which means that this would have been the year that Five-Year Plan has gone through that you would have had seven to twelve in this building five years later we're facing the exact same problem and now the only difference is five years ago we were facing a budget deficit of around a million dollars an hour so we're hemorrhaging cash in terms of building utilization I think it's crucial for us to really drill down on this and you require a couple of ad hoc subcommittees looking at different different parts of this in order to get it done efficiently strategic plan institution strategic planning committee

091is one group there's only four members there's only so much that they're going to be able to do so how are the committee wants to move forward on it but I'm going to say that you know it's a problem that we've known has been existed in existence for five years so we really need to we really need to move on issue I have no issue that I would just say that if that's if that if that's the will of the community would you just make sure that what communities are communicated to publicly that that's what we're looking to do and just to make sure because if that includes either giving the building back or the district maintaining the building just making sure that's clear under our current lease agreement I understand I just want to

092make sure that because if this it gets all right just want to make sure that we're respectful and making sure that this like Boards of both communities as well as the finance committees are aware of that can I just admit that motion to so I was thinking more I was just taking more along the lines of like you know I'm looking at the three people who are probably the most instrumental in providing as many information I don't know about an educational programming you all know about that that's why you're here so I probably say rather than rather than sort of like you know but only when saying we're just going to look at the closure of one building and we sit down and look at like what we can do in district-wide sort of removing

093the parameters of the regional agreement like what is what education what is the best thing for our district and what's the best way that we can move for education but also financially actually we have a committee that is that is supposed to be doing this I have a great subcommittee report and we'll tell you a lot of different things we'll be talking yeah we have been talking about this and I believe we are specifically meeting what is it Tuesday and we're specifically talking about school configuration so the reason I'm not sure we'll have to be presented in what two months a month and a half two months that that is probably the one that you that you made captions but and that was one of the I think one of the largest items that came

094out of um the Strategic plan depending for me like when we were having the discussion to create the new strategic plan was at least looking at that like everybody agreed that it was time to start to look at that to figure out the proper usage I think if you're going to go back into changing the regional agreement though you have to have a plan so people understand what that was better to have a visual than just people say what's going to happen the utility and the value of it you know I think I think that would be sort of a rigid step um but I I would be cautious only in the standpoint that I don't want to necessarily like you want to make sure that you're constantly moving forward I don't necessarily want to

095do all this work and move sideways so um you know I would still encourage us to sort of you know brainstorm and figure out like you know where TWD fits into the into the overall model of this and try to get a handle on education the best is I mean I was looking at the numbers from NASDAQ and if they're projected I was a little confused on some of their projections but those must be coping whether they were at but they were adding numbers per grade they're out of like 20 students per grade it was a little different than the report they had given us a few years ago so but at the same time you know if if we're using those numbers as as a projection you know all of a sudden when you

096get out to 2032 you know having six classes in this building now becomes tight and the decision becomes okay so do we try to reconfigure the students in the buildings or do we may consider adding Annex onto this building and allowing expansion in this building so um all things to be all things that we talked about but I think that John and Aaron and Lisa really need to be like from Center on all of this because you guys have more knowledge about education all of us were together so I would really say that you know we need to look at the educational models see the value of each but also look at building what it is that we want to do I would say that the restrictions of the regional agreement I will Factor those

097and Factor those in but I will look first at what you think the most optimal educational uh configuration would be based on not just finances but certainly the the well-being of the students and also taking into account the projected sort of leveling of slight rise even you know even going up you know they were putting us at like I think it was 30 69 which is not considerably higher you're talking 100 more students but you know when you add those in through 7 through 12 students if the students kind of making things yeah my update's not as interesting okay sorry I just you is that the will of the committee I would probably just I would say John I present on Tuesday what he's looking at the configuration of the buildings and I understand that

098we could say next year is a skip but I I would like to hear John's plan uh and see what the other people for for Wilbraham and then think about it could we hold it off for a meeting before we do it is it okay to wait two weeks we're just talking about Lauren Burgess right yeah okay just moving the students the programs that are there instead of that building yeah okay okay so am I um my LP event meeting was back in January something and then we had the budget Roundtable so things might have changed when John gets to do his report but this is my report um there's going to be a ctec open house February 7th from 5 to 7 pm and they're highlighting Advanced manufacturing technology automotive technology carpentry cosmetology culinary

099arts Early Education and Care building Property Maintenance and management graphics and visual design help assisting information support services and networking and Landscaping at the time of the meeting there were two finalists for the Dei coordinator but I would assume there might be some changes since then there was an electric bus update besides the 10 million grants that they had received they just were awarded another 2 million grant for to add on to the buses um each district will be getting at least one bus or more so it does depend on routes and and things of that nature and we're charging stations will be so they don't have that information yet um and they started an advertising campaign to get more bus drivers they did started a print campaign in newspapers a radio campaign with local

100stations and have some Billboards up around and that's it on that seat check where you have an eighth grade child today received an email representative and the HIV represent the open house just a point of order um would she need to submit the minutes from the uh from her meeting to this committee yeah I'm just wondering yeah yeah oh okay okay um I have nothing to play for on the corporation nothing's very important negotiations um so we met last night for a very brief sorry for very brief meeting um and what we have what you should have in your folder today is the memo to review for the first reading two policies that just had some silly changes to them sorry I had an operation policy ijla the Library resources and policy jrd for student

101photographs there was just some language updates to ijla for the Library resources where wording was changed to be the reasons for withdrawing the item may include but are not limited to as well as just adding the cross-reference of the instructional materials policy IJ um and then for the Library resources policy oh sorry the photographs policy I apologize I don't have that noted I'm here but I know it was just um we added the word thankful mentioned so it was just because his wording changes we have to run them by that committee so tonight is just the first reading the next meeting we have would be the second and then from tonight's meeting I will take over the BBE policy um to be reviewed as well we have been asked to take a look at them

102by John to take a look at the graduation requirements policy that we have and we had someone we had a student appear at our meeting but because they were on the identically speak that they've been asked to look at the attendance policy um Paul with the policy for attendance or dismissals so you'll see that come forward in the future meeting and then kcd which was there was some language change September by the masc I haven't had a chance to fully review with the committee if that changes from the policy we have now but just a couple of words updates um from MSC so you'll see those come forward as well and that graduation change certification so that's we didn't have that we hadn't looked at it so I didn't it was beautifully touched on just

103at the meeting for what the future agenda for our future asked for our future agendas our next meeting is February 13th at 4 o'clock P.M in the district office yes I know but we there was because we were adding this meaning we were changing the time but it'll be on the public Village just a quick one so um a student reached out to me um who is over 18 years old and uh the issue was what kind of rights does a student who's over 18 years old and therefore an adult in the eyes of law um you know there were some issues and she wanted to to speak to that and I know Mara did talk to her and I just I just it was fun I I was surprised that we didn't have a

104policy when the student's 18 years old you know it was uh it's a good good progress on Business Online and even I did bring it up with John because you know our protocol normally that we didn't know that so our protocol is if a student comes to us you know we encourage them to go to their guidance counselor go to their principal and then the principal doesn't work for that you know you can go to the superintendent assistant superintendent and I know talking with the Chinese thinking about that so thank you for that um I did bring after my conversation the student I did bring it up to John because I thought it was important to know that I had communication with the students um and he had said that that he had had a

105conversation um at the high school level for that because obviously an impacted high school students oh yeah I'm not sure if we have to have a policy on it so much as it's a procedural right um item for the high school so um we'll just get clarification on that for the next meeting and I did communicate with the students that we would reach back out oh great so it might not even have to be a policy change this mentioned something School level oh great thank you Mark no problem thank you you feel all right so the planning committee update so we met on January 24th the role of the planning committee is to look at long-term issues based in the district the group is asked to look at the following items and make recommendations to

106build Bridges to the representative bodies and communities that we represent this may include coming up with better ways of doing things or confirming that we've optimized the way that we do things so our priorities are building utilization and this include looking at quantitative data surrounding enrollment building capacity space constraints flexible reconfiguration which would also include building tours and things may get added as we look at some of this information so those are the things that we're focusing on right now and that is going to be our primary focus at our next meeting we will also be looking at the regional agreement or assessments so that would include the potential to cross-town lines and this will also include surveying community members and eventually create a schedule for an annual review of the regional agreement um we

107also discuss community relations identified ways to bring the towns together and communicate into the broader the broader more broad Community just along with most sorry sorry so that's a non-school community members um so this for example this would be utilization of Crypt media using the handful of times the reminder for important announcements the town-wide verbal calls and then utilizing the local news media and then the superintendent has offered to have a superintendent's corner of a local newspaper but she's very excited about um the planning committee is able to make interim recommendations throughout this process and you will work we will work to be as thorough and efficient as possible and not take the whole five years of Plano our next meeting is Tuesday February 7th at 6 30 in the district's College and I thought

108that was the reader you know that if we agree with something then we bring it back to the committee right away rather than you know not just one big report like so there'll be a lot more hopefully back and forth once it comes to an agreement you know once you've reached out to the town's people and get a get a as much of a consensus as we can generate uh for voting here I could say I know you have representatives for select board for each town and I have representative from select board on both towns I probably facilities people provides a lot of supporting information yes but for right now yes members and bringing people right now the committee for four numbers no this is something that we one of the one of the things

109I was making sure that we're very transparent be sure that everybody's aware which is which isn't sure that we not only are communicating at our subcommittee level but also for the school committee but also the broad community and all parties involved in making sure that you know the people that have the information that we need you know with the buildings locations um second um so are you doing the consent agenda are you doing the reports well because there's a vote on c and a vote oh okay um just on the note of the under the executive session there was um it says purchase reporting secretary is not president during the Eight Second session I do not believe I stated that during the year so we just have to make sure that if it wasn't paid

110for the meeting that was not added in thank you [Applause] um that was just part of the consensus this is a field trip that's happened in the past so just a pleasure improves to income field trip to Hiatus second all right anyone closed okay okay most improved donation to Green Meadows trauma club and honor John M Flynn second I have a question on that because what was in our folder had a non-disclosed amount I'm curious on that as well so I wasn't sure how we could approve something if you don't have an amount of what it is it's over 500 dollars I think that is that's the threshold so foreign wanted to keep it private okay and they didn't make a signing agreement no agreement [Music] all in favor all right um okay so let

111me Begin by lowering expectations and maybe saying we have to go to the chief because um if anyone's interested I'm not planning on bringing a master plan next Tuesday uh I have started to gather some information about the list of occupancies of schools and what they can actually hold in a practical matter because the listed occupancy is basically based on if you've had the building maxed out if you had the building full of students and had an assembly going on and had members of the public so it's back for like all hands on deck but your actual educational spaces are a subset of that so um what I will be doing on Tuesday is providing some information about what our listing capacities for all the schools are and for one of the schools where I've

112been able to actually go around and go through each of the rooms and get some realistic numbers and I'll be doing that with all of them sorry it's not going faster but remember Ryan and I are on our third meeting this week so there's a lot um and there's a lot of other stuff which you will see too as I get my report excuse me John with that being said do we want to make that motion to close twb to instruct them to close TWD next year or are we happy with how it was no it wasn't remote oh okay okay thank you yeah okay so uh so next I'll I'll thank Green Meadows for sharing the invaluable insights from the recent family reunification bill I spoke about that a lot at my last report

113um their work and preparation paid off just days later when we had to actually implement the family reunification operation after the WMS evacuation but their support went beyond sharing insights for those of you don't know they also sent some of the staff who had helped set up their drill to help the family reunification that took place here at the high school so I just wanted to thank them and let them know how appreciative of the teamwork that was on that also with respect to my entry plan I want to let you know that that is wrapping up I'm looking forward to presenting my entry findings at the next school community so I'll be able to share some Reflections on what the first months have been like uh the website review and evaluation team continues its

114work to improve our district website the team had a meeting with a local firm named wild apples two weeks ago we also have a meeting scheduled with another local firm rediker to review their website solution we hope to make a final determination concerning the product and process that best meets our needs for communication in the future so that we can prepare for a migration to whatever comes next in the next fiscal year and then following up on a report you've heard earlier happy to announce that the search for a new geie coordinator has come to a close and I'm thrilled to announce that Vanetta Lightfoot who has served since 2016 as the Multicultural Affairs operations manager for stcc has accepted the position appreciate working with the other ldpec superintendents and executive director Joel to make

115this selection and I look forward to working with Vanetta to improve our district in other personal matters that can also report that the district has hired Dr Carolina kapsinski as a middle school Spanish teacher for Green Meadows the absence of Spanish instruction at Green Meadows was brought to my attention even before it was hired so I'm happy that we're finally able to provide the students of Hampton with this learning opportunity two meetings with mass mass Insight are set to kick off the audit process these meetings will take place tomorrow and Monday the focus of these meetings will be to forge a partnership between mass insight and staff from that we hwrsd to align on the equity audit timeline and outcomes familiarize ourselves with the mass Insight the district Equity audit framework and review the stakeholder

116engagement process established career communication channels and ensure thorough data collection for a complete picture of the district and knowing that vocational opportunities and expanding them is an important goal in the Strategic plan and an important role for many of our community members we've been examining our practices specifically around educating and informing families about the vocational and Technical educational opportunities available through SeaTac as you learned earlier tonight we are doing a very consistent and thoughtful Outreach to eighth grade parents which is a change of practice from the past to that end in vitamin c tech staff to meet with current 8th graders and their families and will be asking the committee to approve some minor adjustments to our graduation requirements as you may recall from the December meeting principal Hale was talking about the disadvantage our

117students are at by not being allowed to go to Seatac as ninth graders part of that is based on graduation requirements but working with high school staff we feel that there's a way to modify that so that we could send students in ninth grade I think it would dramatically expand vocational opportunities for our students and I think it would still enable them to be held to a very rigorous standard next the middle school has restructured the Learning Time deficiencies that I reported on both at middle school and Green Meadows working together with school staff administrators were able to find a solution that satisfies them and satisfies the law essentially it's about reducing passing times and increasing time on learning so I'd like to thank everyone for their ideas and the flexibility they've brought into their

118search for a solution finally I've included in your packet enrollment for February which stands at 2880 as well as NASDAQ enrollment projections for the next 10 years projections of course are not an exact science but they do give us a sense of what might be likely it's the modest increase in high school enrollment and a modest increase in student enrollment in grades K to AIDS and that was my report yeah I just asked one question sure so then so I'm my middle child is uh Engineers so I was actually home that day when the call went out and so when we look at the when we look at the uh how things were set up and I know John was facing you know but just a very unsettling situation and trying to move those kids

119with respect to each one of the schools I would say that evacuation plans you really need to look at how exactly the evacuation plan is going to work at the Practical level Stony Hill was basically backed up in both directions and I think about that not only in terms of you know people waiting in their cars but also you know you know through traffic people are trying to get through emergency vehicles Etc so I I would really implore the administration to work with each of the schools to look at their unique situation the high schools and is in a much different position there's different areas of Ingress and egress whereas when I look at Stony Hill where I look at Wilbraham Middle School there is one access road going in which really limits the ability

120to have students that have power so you know I know that I was in traffic for probably 45 minutes and other people in the traffic longer than I was um but it's you know I think it's crucial I mean this is a water main break what if it was an active shooter situation um the the tensions And the emotions run much higher um so I would want to make sure that we have is an efficient process as possible to move the students to a safe location and then allow unification to occurred there like I said I mean I didn't even see that I had a friend who was farther up in the line than I was and I know that the the overhead police weren't there until about 30 minutes after the call when and

121by then the traffic is back up in both directions you know pretty much Stony Hill was down to Glen Road and I don't know how far it was going you know going south but you know I would implore us to take a hard look at that going forward that we have a usable plan but [Music] I'm just curious if I can imagine if it was like an act computer situation a complete system respond fairly quickly yep our our plan does include First Responders and would you do an after action with you after each event one of the things that um we thought about after after this particular event was would it have been better to relocate to the high school amenity to the family room education there which was actually you know one of the

122things that went out to families in my message that night was if we have a future situation where we're able to do that we may want to move the traffic to a different spot so certainly is part of our thinking about what Michael like next time but I'll also say just a couple things um one is that anytime we have to do family reunification is going to be a long process it's not like dismissing from school at the end of a regular day it takes hours you have to make sure that every category is right yeah it's it's perfectly understandable that I I do agree with the idea that you know I think if if evacuation of the building is of urgency then we should really be looking at evacuating students from the premises and

123then do the reunification someone else because like I said this is a water main break but if it turned out to be a fire where there was potentially dangerous situations now you have kids standing outside so I truly believe that the evacuation plan should be get the kids out of the building haven't accounted for moving to a safe space and then allowing information that way you're covering all the basics so it's just a water leak it's just a water leak but if it's a fire an actor situation the same the same plan it's the same thing you don't have to worry about altering it well I'll say that it may not be you may not be able to do that every situation is unique there may be some situations where we're not able to move

124students from the school it may be that the threat is in the community or it may be that for other reasons reunification can only be done on site so that is a possibility as well but thinking through this one you know if we're in a situation where we can safely move students to another building first I think that might be a better way to go in future it was it was it was a good training exercise the only way here doesn't know it is to actually having tried to get some things done traffic wise at Stony Hill uh road is a state highway and so nothing can be changed without state and it's a long process okay sorry the enrollment report those of them is right for dream about us I mean we've talked about

125the fighting of all my free Meadows so take a look at that's like a three percent increase in January they pick up nine students and it's across the board it's three grades didn't pick up any so it's not like that's a Pre-K increase in the sometimes see so all I can say is I I don't actually go check with principals to make sure that the numbers are right I believe the numbers are right I have the principles talking about move-ins throughout the course of the year so that's why it's curious I mean that that's awesome right so who we talked about how long have we had the conversation of providing enrollment specifically enhanced and that that's a that's a big jump and then if we look at it just compare it back to 2020 let's

126say and of the K through five every grade but one has an increase from 2020. and if we look just to write 2020 as we compare where four students short of where we were in 2019 and 2020. potentially it's a six right look at that difference it was 19 in grade six it's four now so that tells you that the K through five we're seeing we're seeing the job that's this this is a good thing at any time because we've sat there and said what can we do it's naturally occurred there's a lot less more sales signs as soon as they go up I will tell you they quickly are down for our homes that are doing for sale for keep between Wilbraham and Hampden right now so um T-shirt that guidance we have Easter

127Club monthly value conductor Health Service update grant writer Medical Department Of Studies also the high school program studies the lpbc collaborative parameters of stabilization fund met Co-op dates on table number two um also discussing um uh possibly numbers reflecting those projects oh and then yeah anything else I think maybe this is a quick answer but do you remember at that Roundtable um the the what was it uh Angelo's people said that uh that the booster club had secured like 350 000 dollars to pay off the rest of the turf David reports over towards yeah yeah towards towards that um I thought that was the the thing that the selling point before that it Embraces if they've done any fundraisers or something can we I don't know help them with that like promote whatever kind of

128reason that they're doing or at least okay good good all right okay anyway that meeting will um so um thank you for our next meeting the Acoustics are a considerable challenge at my elementary past meetings can we work to make sure that we should do whatever it is to make sure yep yeah you name it it's everywhere okay so the layout and configuration plays a big role the Sharks versus the Jets yeah but then it also on Theory do it in the library I mean the library is what we use to do PTO meetings we had more people that have come to a school community meeting in the library there so just an idea judging by the amount of audience we have at the meetings lately I mean we could you know dance get a

129little bit planned to have a couple extra seats depending on who's coming to visit with that our next meeting is Thursday February 16th at 6 30 on that mileage from school we are invited at six o'clock for a mile treaty presentation hi hi uh myself [Music]