MGRSD School Committee 04/14/2022

001so hi jake hello how are you i am fine how are you just watching the storm brew here behind joe's head is it significant it's looking like it's gonna be i sort of looks like williamstown north is maybe some really foreboding clouds that way at least it's a storm brewing behind my head rather than in my head i don't know which other things that we can be thankful for i don't know no no no i've i think jake's probably laughing i've been a little bit like punchy today but not in a bad way i probably just had too much caffeine hi patrick hello how you doing you've been punchy in a way joe that i wish i were writing down some of your words of wisdom and your phrasing oh i don't know if that's

002a compliment or uh it's absolutely a compliment but it was a good day it was really warm and and it was like a very productive beautiful day outside the grass is starting to green up oh that's good my mower's busted so it's got me a little nervous oh no i pulled it out the other it's got a flat tire just get some goats hi ursula hello hi julia hi there you know what i noticed christina i was trying to change my zoom name the other day and is that usually you can do that in your little dot dot at the top is that something i can't do because we're recording i wonder um i don't know did they move it it's something that you can't do i believe because our account is it's one of

003the precautions that you have in place to avoid zoom bombing related issues so it's a security so i need to do that in a different zoom prior to another meeting and then i'll be okay well in the meantime i'll just be ursula and mike and there you go that was from the softball meeting you could definitely be worse ursula you can let mike know that dude hi carrie hi jose christina you look like you're in a spaceship i do that's cool yeah it is cool like a module or something it's my fancy my fancy racing chair here yeah super comfy but kind of silly looking waiting for curtis and steve there's curtis he likes to slide in right on time hi curtis hello i'm guessing that's hi christina it's steve hi steve how are you

004good the team's all here jake are we waiting for anyone else on your end just uh nolan but i see him oh okay i'm right here jake apologies nolan sorry i think we're i think we're set christina great okay i'd like to call the mount greylock regional school district school committee to order it is april 14 2022 at 6 00 p.m we are meeting remotely via zoom um due to a law signed by governor baker uh the meeting will be broadcast on willy net tv channel 1302 in williamstown and posted to the mount greylock regional school district youtube page within 24 hours after the meeting i'm going to call the roll julia bowen here jose constantine here curtis elfinbine here carrie green ursula malloy steve miller here and christina connery is here at mount greylock

005regional school district our mission is to create a community of learners working together in a safe and challenging learning environment that encourages restorative based processes respect inclusive diversity courtesy integrity and responsibility through high expectations and cooperation resulting in lifelong learning and personal growth next on our agenda is public comment no one has signed up ahead of time for public comment but if there's anyone in the public who's here who would like to make a public comment please raise your hand not seeing any hands so we will up coach paris if you could um unmute yourself let us know what town you are representing and what agenda item you're speaking to you have three minutes well i haven't had a chance to look at the agenda but um my name is rick parris lanesboro i live

006in the town of lanesboro and um i was asked it to get on here um from john benzinger i don't know if he got anything on the agenda in regards to yes naming of the baseball field yes after coach messina okay well i just would like to just say a little bit about coach messina i mean he's a great guy he's been a community member and uh baseball coach up there at greylock for 29 years counting a pandemic year he's impacted a lot of lives my kids lives a lot of other grown men at this point that are uh they've gone on to do great things and uh he's dedicated his 29 years to baseball and obviously we know he doesn't you don't do it for the money for 29 years getting paid the little

007amount of money you get paid to be a coach he did it for the love of the game the love of the kids um and just impacting their lives and he had a special way about himself and how he did that and and to this day these kids still come back to find him to say hi to him they actually have a alumni game that they try to do once a year also and so what we would like to do as now as being the coach and and seeing everything and seeing him retire we would like to to represent him and and dedicate the field in his honor and his name um and call it the messina field and that's what we're looking to do thank you rick thank you that's it for me i

008guess i don't know if john's on here or not would anyone else like to make a comment okay moving on um student representative update i know we could not have a student here tonight because of their busy schedules but i think jake schutz the principal of mount greylock regional school is going to speak on their behalf yes i am good evening everyone molly did want to be here but she was she was busy she did prepare some notes so i am delighted to read her notes for you all tonight so this is her update with with this great warm weather spring sports have started we have launched a new unified track and field team which has been an awesome experience for all involved they had their first meet on wednesday with wacona seniors are slowly

009but surely announcing their post high school plans which has been really inspiring juniors and seniors had a dedicated directed study performance on wednesday by the pmp playwright mentoring project which was a unique experience for everyone involved course selection is wrapping up for next year and quarter four has started off smoothly student council has officially wrapped up its book drive and is looking towards putting on elections for next year's officers and representatives we are still collecting data about school start time and look forward to sharing that once it has an accurate and sharing that once it is as accurate as possible our school's youth environmental squad is working to recreate the garden behind the school and register educate vote rev just ran its annual voter registration drive in time for the may and june town elections

010and that wraps up molly's update thank you for listening thanks jake thanks molly okay next up approval of minutes i would like to make a motion to approve the march 10 2022 minutes do i have a second a second julia seconds any discussion okay hearing none all in favor sorry constantine no fight unmuted there sorry open by an eye green eye thank you and i would like to make a motion to approve the april 1 2022 minutes ursula seconds any discussion hearing none all in favor bowen eye conrad constantine elephant eye green eye hi okay thank you that motion passes i would like to make a motion to approve the april 7 2022 minutes ursula seconds any discussion carrying on all in favor oh and i connery i constantly not open by nine green eye

011oh thank you that motion passes okay moving right along we have um our next step in the agenda is a principal update and we'll be hearing from principal nolan pratt of lanesboro elementary hello everyone do i have permission to share my screen yes let me know if that works i got it thank you so much you're welcome quick thumbs up if you can see that awesome thank you so let's dive right in we have a lot happening since the last time we have all seen each other by january we had our winter concert or um with a limited capacity crowd students in the orchestra abandoned course demonstrate their skills as they played several pieces my personal favorites was the queen medley that they played where everyone started stomping their feet and clapping their hands it

012was great it was a great time uh through the lanesboro initiative for excellence grant the berkshire music school has brought two items to us they brought an assembly for students in grades three through six which was all about jazz and how it started in america they also brought together a puppet workshop which is after school on thursdays for students in grades k through two and that's an eight week program that ends with a performance through williams college winter study and the williams college center for learning and action our grade three students participate participated in biowise and you'll see that in the picture in the top left and what that is that's the life cycle of a zebrafish that students learn about they also learn about genes and hereditary in that in that time through the

013a grant from the mass cultural council mass autobahn has been working with our students in grades 1 and 3 to teach about seasonal weather equals ecosystems and adaptations so animals can live in different environments and the mcas we're right in the middle of mcas every educator knows that the mcas happens in the springs uh shout out for the students who have been absolutely working their hardest crushing everything that they do and giving everything they have for that assessment we've also had a lot of we've had three zoom around the world performances the um we've had one on zoom we've got two one on zoom about kazakhstan one in person about morocco which is what you see on the right there we had a bunch of students sit in and learn about morocco and the presenter

014brought in different artifacts from morocco and tomorrow our students are going to learn about panama on the left was something that was happening today that was just awesome it was a big bad wolf competition uh students and grades kindergarten and three teamed up to build the strongest houses they could with gumdrops toothpicks straws on a paper plate and then they watched as the um to see if the structure could withstand the big bad wolf which was a hair dryer uh several were successful some not so much it was just awesome to see the creativeness of our students a lot of other things are happening at lansboro our book club is wrapping up its first book this monday we have read the only black girls in town thank you to melissa carnes and aaron jennings for

015running this group and sheila parks at the lanesboro town library for helping us get copies of the books so we can all read together the mount greylock multicultural student union has been running activities after school once a month for our students in grades four through six and you'll see that photo in the bottom center and it's just a great time for students to learn about more than what's here in lansboro and the lansboro elementary school recycling association uh which is a group of third fourth and fifth grade students have begun collecting cans and bottles out of each classroom to make sure they get into the right recycling bin some things that happen at our school that are part of our school that are also part of the greater community are um we had a gaga

016pit installed by a local eagle scout vince welch uh he used the lanesboro initiative for life grant to build the guy got pit with his troop on troop ape they installed it last friday and the students are already loving it and also on the right you'll see the grade 5 girl scout group they put together covid kits slash flu kits for their bronze award project and those are kids that can go home and students when they need to collect work and be out for a couple of days i always like to brag about our wyverns of the week because we have so many good people in our building doing so many good things here's a collection of wyverns of the week over the past couple of months and our upcoming events uh trivia night the

017pto is hosting a trivia night to raise money and that is on april 28th from 6 to 8 p.m at the brookhouse our spring concert this is a cool event we are combining with hancock elementary school to do a combined spring concert and that is on may 25th summerfest is on june 3rd and our field day will be the afternoon of june 10th and that is my spiel what questions do you have for me i have to ask what a gaga pit is gaga it is a game that is sweeping the nation um it is an octagon but not the not the violent kind of octagon the fun kind of octagon uh it's dodge ball below the knee um and you can't catch her throw the ball you can only like hit it with your

018open hand or a fist and you just try to hit you can only hit it once you hit the ball twice it uh you're not allowed to do that so you're out um so it is if you youtube it you'll find a lot of great gaga videos ursula i see your hand raised yes i just wanted to note that i've heard a lot about this gaga pit and that everybody in the school was lined up to use it and everybody wanted to turn so i want to see it because it sounds great and i also can't wait to hear more about the trivia at the brookhouse because that also sounds really fun for parents so looking forward to that we there might be babysitting available at the lanesville elementary as well even better and the

019host the host is someone you probably know pretty well as well so it's gonna be a good event thank you seeing no other questions thank you all and have a fantastic evening thank you so much nolan okay up next we have um a summer programming discussion and i'm going to turn it over to patrick priester who is our director of special education services good evening everyone um when if i share my screen you should be all set let me know all right how is that can everybody see that all right so i'm here to talk about summer programming for this summer um our extended year services programs we're going to run in our elementary schools in williamstown and lanesboro we plan to run them from july 11 to august 11th on a monday through wednesday

020schedule operating from 9 45 to 1 i related service programming uh we're planning to operate that for four weeks from july 11th through august 3rd monday through wednesday 9 45 to 1 45 sessions and that could vary depending on interest from our students our mount greylock tutoring program we're planning to run for five weeks july 11 through august 11th on a monday tuesday wednesday thursday sorry monday tuesday wednesday thursday schedule and again depending on um on interest we may bring that down to monday wednesday um in camp russell we're planning to send our students again we can't brussel this summer it's always a big hit among our students to go there and we're planning to do that from july 5th through august 5th some of the staff that we'll have to plan on hiring this

021summer i'm a summer coordinator to run the program among all three schools nurses in each of our buildings two speech therapists to be split up between williamstown waynesboro elementary and mount greylock high school two occupational therapists again divided up between williamson elementary lanesville elementary and montreal's high school and one physical therapist that will be a regional split among the three schools as far as elementary staffing for our programs we're planning to hire four teachers in each school and four classroom paras and additional pairs depending on the needs of our students and who decides to attend that could vary to some degree and we may offer some life skills programming in waynesboro elementary depending on the interest of our students there to attend camp russell or to get more academic skills and at mount greylock regional

022school the principal schutz is planning to offer history programming american in the world which is a us history course um english courses at all levels plato plato courses um those courses can vary depending on the needs of the student um five-week in-person program at mount greylock the sessions running from 8 to and the second session from 10 to 12. bustling will be offered from lanesboro and williamstown elementary i'm sorry williamstown elementary communities recovery and remediation based not advancement participants need approval from their guidance counselor enroll and students who require attendance to advance in grades will be invited by counselors via letter sent home to families and i'm sure those discussions will be happening shortly before the end of the year and they'll be reaching out to the families that qualify for that and that's pretty

023much it i'm like a stop make sure okay um anyone else have any questions about summer yes ursula but this might be a question for um carrie or joe but i'm just curious with all the staffing for the summer is that accounted for already i assume in our budget plans there's a there's a summer okay i figured yep yes yes gary patrick uh thanks for this i'm wondering how does this differ from what we offered last year not not the other piece which was you know um new for last year but this is an annual this is something that we've done for many years i'm just wondering if it's similar to what we've done for many years or if it's it's different than any significant one uh it's pretty similar one the one change we

024made this summer is we went from a typical monday thursday schedule down to a monday to wednesday schedule but we increased an hour of each day so we're actually going to be getting more hourly time just there's going to be less days we figured after the past couple years people might enjoy some long weekends this summer or longer weekends i'll just sorry patrick i'll jump in a little bit on that answer um at the middle in high school um jake and colin reached out to the faculty uh maybe a week after our last meeting just to check in with you know where where they felt they were in the school year relative to school years past about 60 percent said that they were they were where they normally should be or actually ahead a few

025that you know together that was about 60 and the other 40 or so reported that they're they're in the ballpark of where they where they would normally be it's it's sort of the normal give and take of what a school year brings so um and as we've been tracking that throughout the year um we did we did not have state money available to run as comprehensive and as big of a summer school as we had last year we simply didn't qualify um that money was more limited this year and was much more aimed at um uh you know urban districts and districts who have a much a much higher level of economic need in individual households and and as a district than we do and so we we really felt this was the summer after

026a school year that has looked and felt very much like a regular school year at least here for the last month or month and a half we we thought it was appropriate the budget for and kind of returned to um summer school as usual as well so just to flesh out that answer okay thanks jake and my other question um is whether um we're confident that we can stop this from within our district staff yeah for the most part nope go ahead yeah for the most part um we may have to post externally for a few positions but for the most part we believe we'll be able to staff it in house but i'll also add that we have been incredibly fortunate that our teachers have been dedicated throughout the pandemic with with these summer

027programs in ways that you you read very different stories from other parts of the country we've been really supported by them with with extra effort extra hours so it's been great [Music] any other questions for patrick okay thank you very much patrick thank you okay next up on the agenda is the finance subcommittee report so i'm going to turn it over to kerry green who's the chair of the finance subcommittee uh thanks ursula i'm going to wave my time and move on to the next next item okay i can't leave a piece because that was christina not ursula but we forgive you the next item on the agenda is the policy subcommittee report normally i would turn this over to jose who is the chair of the policy subcommittee um but i believe we're moving

028these items to our next uh regular session jake do you want to speak a little more to that yeah just very briefly we we had some new policies that came to us from the massachusetts association of school committees last week our the law firm that we use the dupray law firm sent out a memo related to a couple of those policies based on some some federal office of civil rights audits they have been involved in over the course of this year and so we we simply opted to um pull these off for now so that so that we can take some of the dupre law firm way in back to the policy subcommittee um uh my read of what the dupres sent us much more comprehensive much more detailed and inclusive of some things that

029i think we want to be inclusive of and uh so so we simply uh after a conversation with jose simply pulled these off so we can get them just where we want them before we bring them back to the full committee for uh for a first and second read so apologies for that and thank you for giving us the time to get this right thank you okay can i make a quick comment steve yes uh can i make a quick comment yeah so i just want to say thank you for you know the time you're doing and you know pulling them to just really look at them to give us not just the school committee first and the second read but also the community a chance to really look at them and make sure that

030these policies are going to do what we want them to do so thank you thank you steve okay so moving right along next up we have the business administrative report so i'm going to turn it over to our business administrator general bergeron thank you very much uh the first sub-item is um great lake regional school field and track project next steps um what i'd like to recommend tonight is that we use an opportunity to put out a request for services for an opm for the entire duration of the project coming up coming up ahead um an owner's project manager within this context given the scale of the project given the timeline that we're looking at in terms of trying to get a designer on board in the spring summer to do work in the fall

031so that we can we can get things out in the winter at the right time for a contractor and then having that contractor start next spring and work through the spring and summer within that site right back behind the building that jake and i are in right now it just makes all the sense in the world for us to to navigate this that way and have an opm um really taking us through all of those steps um for all of our sakes um and so a process that we could use for that is for the school committee to authorize um the superintendent the business administrator and the finance subcommittee i think to get a request for services out for an owner's project manager for this project and to receive the responses and make a selection

032i think that's an efficient thing that we can do with the committee of three if the committee is willing the subcommittee as well as the full school committee so that's what i'd love to put forward for discussion i'll make the motion second okay carry moves julia seconds discussion and i'll just add that um i did this hasn't been uh we the finance subcommittee has not had a chance to discuss this but i did have a chance to talk to joe just yesterday we walked the fields and i absolutely support the hiring of an owner's project manager this is going to be you know if not complex or complicated at least you know a relatively large project and um we want it to go as smoothly as possible and we want it to be um such

033that it does not uh draw on the time and energy of our administration um any more than need be so this is a good move thanks carrie anybody else ursula did you have your hand up i don't think so but i i just wanted to say that i i hadn't heard this before either but i i agree with the idea and i think it makes sense so i support it julia um also in great support of it uh but i do feel like i missed or maybe we haven't discussed the ballpark of what no pun intended um but but i i i like is it how is what's the number dollar value we're talking about range i actually would have a difficult time pinning that up tonight as far as a range that we will

034see in responses you know if because this is far smaller than your typical say msba building project of course where where i think we would all know the ranges that people have seen um this is something where i i think we're going to need to assemble what we think the responsibilities and the challenges will be for an opm and then get it out and see what those responses are so i don't i don't have a good frame of reference for that full full trajectory for them okay on that same note i would assume then this will be funded out of the williams college gift as basically part of the project yes which could be something kerry to add to that motion um just to make make sure it's clear as we as we go forward

035i would accept that julia do you accept that yes jose thank you christina and uh could i just carry have you repeat the motion just to make sure even with the amendment to make sure i understand what we're voting voting on joe i think has the language of the motion um to and and now i feel like i'm i'm trying to repeat what i had said before as precisely as i can but i would say to give the responsibility to the finance subcommittee and the administration to select an owner's project manager for the field and track project and to fund that owner's project manager contract out of the williams college gift to mount greylock regional school okay thanks joe and then the i think what i heard in your response to um to julia is

036that we don't have necessarily a job description precisely crafted for what this person would be asked to do uh and i guess my other other question the question really that i have is is who um will this person answer to presumably the administration and the finance subcommittee or could we expect this person whoever were to fulfill these responsibilities to meet with the full committee to be able to answer questions that we might have directly of the project i think that's something that when the finance committee reviews and talks through what the scope should be whether or not the finance subcommittee includes reports back to the full school committee on some regular basis that is you know that's something that i'm sure as far as an opm concern would would be concerned would add cost but

037at the same time it might be considered a valuable tool to have but in any situation the contract would be held by the school committee and the opm would ultimately be responsible to the school committee then final question joe the what is the advantage from your perspective of approving this motion without the job description sort of finalized or presented to the to the full committee the advantage would be that we could potentially navigate the process to developing the request for services get it out get responses in vet them and make a selection prior to a month from now um okay thank you probably actually come i think given a reasonable timeline we would probably take a couple weeks to make sure we had something ready and it would take a couple weeks of having it

038out for people to respond to and then after that the selection would happen pretty quickly based on the qualifications that that were provided in the selection criteria okay and this this this selection would happen as i think as the motion um states by the finance subcommittee and the administration um i think i still have maybe maybe what you're hearing is some concern about uh the lack of clarity uh and details with regards to you know the responsibilities of this person and maybe they maybe they're so uh commonplace in terms of what an opm is uh expected to do in their performance but i i'm not well versed in opm duties but so i think i think i have some concern about about this i'd like to hear perhaps from the finance subcommittee members of the

039finance subcommittee maybe carry his chair about what you all think about this moving forward um so jose i think i can talk about the opm in terms of the large building project that we just you know did um the opm is really um works for the owner its owner's project manager works for the owner to protect the owner from errors to potentially save money because things are caught further in advance than they might because they're knowledgeable about these kinds of projects we would want to hire someone who has potentially done you know track and field before or managed that kind of a project they know what to look for where errors can happen they help to facilitate the communication between the owner and the um folks who are actually doing the work right who have

040hands on the ground and um it in my experience it and i think we're going to talk about another project tonight that is costing you know more money than than we thought it might um it's the kind of thing where an owner's project manager uh could in the long run save money uh for the district um in terms of um things that might be overlooked by people like us who are not fully experienced with building fields and putting in tracks uh this is steve i'll just add to this uh something that kerry said earlier that you know one of the reasons we regionalized was so that our administration would be able to spend their time on the big issues of the district you know when we were three school districts they had a lot of

041meetings that were just a repeat the big building project was a tremendous amount of time for the senior administration and so i do strongly support you know bringing in someone to assist with this thank you thanks steve ursula yeah i still have a question and um i also say this is someone who doesn't know exactly how this works given that this is a state um monitored or whatever building project is this something where you go to the state and say we're looking for an opm or is this a private bid from a private local company that would okay i don't know if it was a state directed program we need to follow a state approved process for selecting but it was a local project manager type of it could be a local for it could

042certainly be a local firm they would just need to carry qualifications into the process that that we could identify and approve in terms of uh cost julia um a a norm would be three percent of the overall project cost um so if the project was a three million dollar project we might look at ninety thousand dollars um the the other comp that we have is um and and i don't think it's a great one for our situation but the opm that was used for this building that i'm in right now we brought them in even we had an architect already selected so perkins eastman was continuing through other other work so we did not utilize the opm at the point of designer selection um and then they were kind of an opm light in some

043ways by by the nature of their their contract um that was forty two thousand dollars in total on a two point two million dollar project um so i mean that's that's the range that we've seen but um i'll opera julia did you have another question i did um thank you joe for that and um so i just want to make sure i understand the emotion in front of us we are there's a motion to approve the subcommittee in the administration to draft the request for services and put it out to bid but we would approve the contract hopefully at our next meeting so we would still have a chance to look at it and i mean not that you can change much at that point but we still at least have an upper down vote

044yes yes right no i would say well absolutely yes the school committee will approve the contract no one will be hired without school committee approval but if the committee also wants to review the request for proposals um then we could potentially have a special meeting to do that so we're really just trying to i think joe is trying to expedite the process we're not trying to that doesn't sound like you know he's trying to bypass the school committee but if there's concern and i'm hearing this also from jose maybe we discuss the request for proposals at the full committee level before it goes out on the on the street i'm not sure joe how do you feel about that yeah um in that case i think we would probably look for a special meeting not

045next week but late the week following to review and approve a request for services that would then go out and then the full school committee could then um i think you would probably end up during that meeting appoint a subcommittee to to then review what comes in it would be within the context of an open meeting um but it could be the full seventh too so you could have another special meeting about two weeks later jose thanks christina um thinking about uh you know ways to to find deficiencies in this process i think i think at the moment as the motion stands i think julia articulated it well for me and i think i think it's what you what you you also said joe although my memory is going fuzzy so the we're looking to

046the administration and the finance subcommittee to put out a bid for or put out a call uh for for this service um maybe implicit in this motion i i just want to make that clear were we then assuming that this finance subcommittee of the administration would then select a finalist that then would be reviewed by the full committee is that the process at the moment that we are we we might be on the verge of committing ourselves too is it yes as the motion stands okay all right i so i think hearing from carrie um you know i for my advantage you know i trust both the finance subcommittee and the administration to carry out that process and and look forward to reviewing the final uh selection or or nomination by by the finance subcommittee

047at our next full committee meeting okay any other discussion okay we have a motion moved by kerry seconded by julia all in favor owen eye conor eye constantine eye open by an eye green eye thank you that motion passes all right so the next sub item here is uh one that i haven't been looking forward to for the last week um the facilities building that is that is currently starting to go up um on the right back behind me if you were to look through that window um the we are at a point where in order for us to make to do all of the things that we need to do to make that building very functional for the purpose of cold storage for all of the various items that we have that need to

048get out of the weather that need long-term storage we are i'm not going to sugarcoat it but then i'll back into the details we are requesting an additional 134 thousand dollars that takes us across all of the work that we need to do with respect to having a driveway that leads up to it all of the electrical work drainage to protect from water running off and and pouring down towards and across that foundation as well as just the cost associated with the additional um requirements that came out of structural engineers work and understanding how to how to make sure that the building can go up per per code and be approved it's uh it is partly because costs are much higher now than they were a year and a half ago when when we first

049considered this um part of it is that the competitive quotes that that are coming back for the various things that i'm talking about there are all coming in higher you know three four five different vendors all producing higher higher numbers um and and the other side of it that that i won't sugarcoat is that we the district certainly underspecified the the foundation the need for drainage the reality that that it would be an island within within a very muddy area down there if we don't have a proper driveway constructed leading up to it and and the requirements around the electrical that that is needed in order to make the building so that it can be used um completely and functionally so that's what i'm putting out there but i expect plenty of questions and and

050i hope i can at least answer them somewhat directly julia has her hand up um i have uh maybe two questions to start one is did we have an opm on this we did not okay um good question second um i thought like you mentioned the competitive bids coming in now and prices have gone up i guess i'm confused because my understanding of public bidding is you do the subs then the general uses the subs bids and that's your whole bid like how are the how are the subcontractor or the how are the bids coming in now more more pricey than expected so given given the way this project evolved the district specified a building that it that it wanted a pre-fabricated type all the steel arrives with all the bolts the the paneling the

051doors the insulation it arrives on site it arrived six months after it was ordered [Music] which was much delayed versus versus how that was originally supposed to happen the in the meantime the plan had been that the site work required would be one project where quotes would be would be requested [Music] that then the erection of the building would be separate um and and so on electrical would be separate the original plan was also for insulation heat that process definitely did not go as it could have or should have and as a result we are now in a position where every step along the way things have not gotten done as efficiently as they as they could have or should have um and uh things have been delayed numerous times and we're now staring at

052these costs as opposed to any others or as opposed to say a single bid for an entire project with subs within that so that's where we are and i have learned my lessons from a variety of different angles here can you provide um thank you for that explanation and can you provide um just some numbers on this i at least as it stands now the total now the expected total cost of this building and it's i believe it's coming out of our williams college gift uh and what impact that may have on what is left in the williams college gift the total cost across the you know to to looking forward to completion and over the past 18 months it's going to end up being if this request is approved it would be 314 dollars

053in total um that had that goes across the cost of of the building itself um the site work the erection the drainage the electrical the driveway and the additional structural engineering and [Music] and components that go into meeting those requirements from the structural engineer as it relates to a steel building going up as a cold storage facility and this is also for the cross country team or that's the cross so part of what part of what brought us to this place initially is it was determined that the cross-country team and the athletic teams in the other seasons would utilize the entirety or almost the entirety of the building that is up and right alongside um and so that pole barn structure wooden wooden framing that went up um in 2020 2021 um that structure was

054uh it was different as far as the way the code treats it and i think that's something that the district underestimated the degree to which the the wood framed building of that sort versus the steel building that is going up in the back um there there are some significant differences there that i think were were not treated as carefully as they could ever should have been and so that pole barn is serving nordic along with athletic storage it is also throughout the pandemic um served as a as a cafeteria um as storage for all of all of the things that we needed to shift out of the main building in order to create six feet of spacing uh within the rest of the cafeteria so it's it's served a variety of purposes and and this

055new structure will serve to serve for storage it will serve for um all of the implements and equipment that we do not need in a in a temperature controlled environment um and uh it will it will be well utilized and sorry the second part of that question was the impact on the williams college gift um so the college gift as of january of the value is 4.7 million dollars across the principal and interest that 4.7 million dollars of that we had three hundred thousand dollars that was still outstanding for finishing off this construction project as it relates to um baseball softball and accessibility to um the southern part of campus um so 300 000 yep that number for the baseball in softball sorry i just missed that um 300 000 was remaining on that contract

056outstanding um and um the and 200 and if we take into account everything that we're asking for here tonight 270 000 for this project so that's 270 plus 300 570 000 would come off of that 4.7 as of um as of january of 2022. how much for the new field wasn't that um at the at the high end um and this was when we had looked at it as a synthetic dirt field along with a track we had looked at 2.7 2.8 that was that was for all of that all in but that was back when the design had the track going up in a different corner of the campus a synthetic turf field going back behind so it's a little bit apples to oranges there with with a number of things but it was

057also a year and a half ago over a year ago um so a new cost estimate will will be needed in order to actually get that close to close to bed jose thanks christina and then joe i i think i i know or at least certainly hope the answer to this question um if we i don't has and i think i've already i lost track here in this conversation has a motion been made for this item agenda so we've already made the motion to approve uh this cost adjustment or there's a there's no no we have not made the motion yet okay i didn't think so my memory memory is not what it used to be uh but assuming we do make a motion it does get seconded and that motion passes um do you

058feel confident joe that uh that then you'll have enough in place in terms of a budget to see this project uh to its fruition to being final you don't see you don't foresee any any additional expenses that that can arise uh i i feel like this number has enough padding within it that we will safely finish this without needing to come back this is the second time that i've come back and i have a very high level of confidence in the people and the process that we're using right now to make sure that we are at least overestimating costs as well as the degree to which we are now the team is fully engaged in making sure that we get this done and get this done so that it's very functional for the next 30

05940 years thanks carrie yeah i just want to clarify joe joe said that he's learned a lot of lessons he's he's you know fixing the situation so you know let's let's make sure that we understand that joe joe is coming he's come in to to manage this he's essentially become the project manager and you know this is we don't want to do this to him again you know which is why we're hiring a project manager um for for the for the next project which will be quite a bit bigger so thank you joe for solving this problem and it is what it is it's an investment in the management of all of our fields right because our big equipment is going to go into this structure and um you know we'll we'll just look at

060it that way as far as i'm concerned carrie would you like to make a motion um sure what was the number again 134 000 additional from the williams college gift to mount greylock regional school for the completion of the facilities building project ah so moved hey carrie moves do i have a second a second julia ii any further discussion julia um i 100 understand that these here we are and we need to move forward um i just want to name my i feel i need to name my nervousness around what will be left in the williams college gift um and i understand that was the january projection for the how much was there and the market's gone haywire and expenses are only going up and so i i don't i just i needed to say

061that out loud and if there's anything else that you know i just think we all need to be very cognizant of that um there we're seems like we're perilously close to being less than potentially less than a million dollars left after the fields the bigger fields project um which is uh not where we had wanted to be so that's all thanks julia carrie yeah um julia just remember we won't spend the money if we're not comfortable i mean this has happened twice before with the synthetic field if the natural field and track come in higher than what we're comfortable with in terms of what funds are left and we'll have a new number by the time that number comes in you know then we make a decision based on that information steve yeah i just

062wanted to support what julie was saying and just to always be mindful that every time we choose to go to the williams endowment not only is it getting smaller for this year but it means we have less money to be riding the endowment hopefully providing even more in the future and so you know we really do need to consider how much of the money do we want to be choosing to come from the endowment versus asking the towns because you know long term if we can keep the money in the endowment long term that should be a good strategy thank you thanks steve okay any other discussion okay all in favor o and i connery eye constance you know elephant eye green eye ursula malloy sorry no problem no i okay thank you that motion

063passes thank you joe thank you and with that i am i am done for today thank you okay next up we have our superintendent report so i will turn it over to our superintendent chase mccandless thank you christina i'm just going to do a share screen i have a presentation to really keep me organized more than anything else and um several items to to go through tonight by way of a superintendent's report um just for a little table of contents uh you have your agendas but for folks watching at home i'm going to start off with some congratulations that are not on the agenda then we have the deib director draft job description for you to take a look at it should also be in your packets a brief overview of where we're going with

064school choice for the 22-23 school year and then the actual slots want to start the conversation about naming the baseball field messina field as coach paris uh mentioned in the in the public uh input section of tonight i know john benziger assistant coach and and uh parent and community member is uh is on uh the call i think to to to weigh in during that portion too if any school committee members have questions um just a quick overview of mount greylock regional school end of year events mostly for your your calendars uh and then an mou guiding cold weather recess practices which i intended to have on tonight for a vote by the school committee but which i neglected to put vote on the agenda so we'll be introducing it to you tonight and we

065will have it back on the agenda in may for an official vote and i apologize for that um first of all congratulations and well done to our our newly minted unified track and field team this is a picture that the superintendent from central berkshire leslie blake davis uh shared with me last night uh really made my evening um you can see our team for the most part over here although aiden um definitely infiltrated our competitive territory there so good for him not surprised that he has friends everywhere he goes but i'm really grateful to the coaches and the folks who make this happen very grateful to the athletes uh who are who are out there competing and i believe their next meet is again at wakona in two weeks from last night so not the

066wednesday of break but the wednesday after break so um we wish them well and um i understand from some of the parents involved they had some pretty worn out uh athletes when they got home last night so that's speaking as a parent that's always a good thing um also want to share some congratulations with with uh with five students here in particular um eddie brannon who's a senior has been awarded his eagle scout his brother james i think was awarded at the same time james i believe is at umass right now um and then nolan mentioned it earlier tonight but vincent welch had the privilege of watching him along with his mom and dad and grandpa uh and principal pratt installed the gaga pit you really do have to stop down and see that in

067action um it's hard to wrap your head around until you actually see it but i can assure you that vincent is a star because he is the one that got the gaga pit happening at lanesboro um his older brother anthony is also going to be awarded his eagle scout to him uh and uh and you know that eagle scout is a big deal you have to be active in the troop for at least six months as what's known as a lifetime scout you have to provide written references from clergy from family from school officials you have to have earned 21 merit badges over your career and then you know sort of the culminating project is you have to carry out a uh an eagle scout service project to your community and um thinking back over

068the years that that i have known eagle scouts as a professional educator um these these young folks have really done some really good value adds to their community and uh we're very grateful to all of these students and very proud of all of these students so well done uh and we're also just incredibly proud of mackenzie sheehy who is a senior she is off to duke university next year and we can't wait to see what she does down there but mckenzie was named a finalist in the national merit scholarship program and just for a bit of reference for those of you that aren't familiar with the national merit scholarship competition and program about a million and a half students a year enter into the program by taking their psats as juniors of that million and

069a half young people who who sit for the psats the 50 000 highest scorers are considered for recognition in the national merit scholarship competition so from 1.5 million to the 50 000 highest scorers 34 000 students are then um recommended for letters of commendation so you're a commended national merit scholar and then it gets down to about 16 000 from that million and a half who are recognized as being semi-finalists and then ultimately 15 000 students from all of the young people who this year are graduating from uh from high school's private public independent parochial charter from around the country uh who took the psats their junior year of that million and a half 15 000 are ultimately selected and honored as finalists and um and so to consider mackenzie who is uh an outstanding

070athlete an outstanding student and most importantly just an outstanding young person with uh with character and integrity and a work ethic that um the next 10 of us would be envious of the dedication and work ethic that she brings to everything that she does she is now a finalist in that program and coming up here later in the school year um the the 2 500 winners of that competition will be announced and so to all of these students recognizing all of them are four eagle scouts our three eagle scouts and one alumni eagle scout and then mackenzie um just just a few examples of just stellar stellar life performance from the young people that we're honored to serve here and so to do eddie and anthony and vincent and to mackenzie um well done where

071the entire community is incredibly proud of you and so now moving into the to the items that are actually on the agenda um we we do have the uh the diversity equity and inclusion and belonging uh director position description in your packets tonight very grateful a lot of people have weighed in on this some just really really heavily and uh and i and we are indebted to them that includes our students many of our educators uh our administrative team and we happen to live in a community where there's just a lot of of a dedication and b expertise around this type of vital vital work and and i am grateful to all of the folks that weighed in on this it's still a draft it's still evolving and we know it's it's always kind of

072staggering when you look at a position description i'm just going to pull this up as i'm talking when when you put together a position description particularly for something as important as this is um it's it's just a little bit overwhelming to consider that there really is not anybody who can fulfill everything that we are looking for and so um there are some amazing people in in the greater world and even here locally that do this work but but we understand that this is our our wish list um we understand that that when we actually get somebody in and get the processes run and make a higher that um nobody will be able to fulfill these um these expectations um but but we do want we we are looking for a wonderful dedicated expert person and

073then you know looking at what their strengths are and what some of their learning areas are we can really customize what the actual work is to uh to to to you know best support the individual who actually has this job um i don't know if you have questions about this i would encourage you to look at it it is part of the school committee packet so i would ask um folks in the community to pull up that packet and take a look at it um we we are you know still looking at at certain pieces of this and um you know we had an interesting conversation about should we require a desi license should we not require a deci license really the the space where that matters most is is that that will determine which

074retirement system the individual goes into we must require somebody and hire somebody with a deci license if we want this to be a mass teacher's retirement system position um berkshire county retirement which is essentially a parallel system with the same uh benefits and the same requirements if we don't have a licensed person steve i i see your hand up we'll just go into questions now so steve can you start us off uh yes so thank you again and thank you everybody for all the work on this i particularly like how you were describing this as a draft that has been worked on by many voices in the community and what is particularly nice about that is this is a chance for other people to look at it now and have a chance to provide feedback

075to us before we go further so we just you encourage everybody who is you're watching this at home to take a look at this and you know send out feedback so i assume they should send it to you yes yes yes perfect and then the other thing is this might have been on some of the policy stuff that was removed but i think at one point we had some documents that were enumerating a lot of different uh categories and i'm always a little bit concerned when we enumerate because when you make a list there's always the danger of what if we forget something and so just as a rule of thumb i just prefer you know more just you know general language you know we value we do not discriminate on any grounds we want

076someone who will help work to an inclusive environment and this is going to be for a variety of axes from cultural identity to religious political medical beliefs thank you yes thank you thank you and thank you for that invitation for everybody in the community to who's interested to please take a look at this and uh please feel free to weigh in and i will certainly ask the school committee to give it a uh a a particularly close look and um and and certainly get your feedback back to me uh you know individually or we can can approach this again in a in a in a future meeting i don't see any more hands christina um carrie thanks um just wondering when when would you um hope to post for this position yeah because i am

077such a long-serving superintendent and have the full dose of paranoia that comes from from that status i am i am always nervous about posting new positions prior to town meetings actually approving our budget um i i would see us posting this in early may as a proposed position so we so we can get people thinking about it and so we're not i feel like we're kind of behind now i don't want to be further behind but we will have language that does not guarantee that we will move forward with this if the funding is not available via our our two-town meetings great thank you thank you i'm just going to do a quick scroll through jose sorry chicken i'm glad i scrolled i thought i was hiding somewhere in your score on your screen uh

078you know i i you know given the the the time i've had with the document you know think that uh it all seems uh um appropriate and and exciting in all honesty uh if we move forward uh to a place where the towns have approved our budget and we have a final draft that we we post of the of the job description and the job ad what do you see in terms of well yeah what do you see in terms of next steps in terms of how you see uh an interview and a selection process playing out yeah but between now and when this actually gets posted we will be identifying the the um the resume review panel which will also serve as the uh as the first round of interview panel um it's going

079to be large i i i sort of cringe at the thought of welcoming somebody into a room or onto a zoom with with 15 or 18 people there as the first round but but i think to get the the group that we want and honestly that we need it's it's going to be 15 to 18 people um and they they will be helping with going through the resumes um i am getting some some professional help in in uh sort of directing and facilitating that work so we have a very clear picture of of of what we're looking for um we'll be doing just a little bit of training in advance of that right right now the three people that i know for certain that are on that panel are three middle and high school students

080um those are those are the three individuals that we we've kind of uh identified as for sures uh and then you know also considering is is this a two round is this a three round some of that's determined by by how many applicants that we get um and and really again getting some professional guidance around you know we we don't it's not fair to make this position do levels and activities that we don't ask of anybody else including the superintendent's position but it's also very important that this individual that the successful individual has a real opportunity to get to know us and get to know our communities and get to know our school district and and you know certainly we we enter into this knowing that we are being interviewed in many ways just as

081much as we are doing an interview um so so all i know for sure right right now jose we're going to have lots of help and it is going to be a process that includes many people i think that's a that's unnecessary yeah and then sorry julie just to follow up on that point jake uh that the the 15 individuals that are going to include i think in an important way the three middle school and high school students are you are you looking to members of our respective communities uh who might have professional experience in this area like in terms of how you imagine this this community or panel okay great we we would like we would like some professional representation um you know parents guardians caretakers obviously a community member or two who don't

082necessarily have um [Music] you know a a personal stake in this but who care deeply about their communities yes thank you you're welcome jose thank you julia um i feel like the one of the hardest things about this process is going to be attracting a talent pool um and i just wonder i it not i mean hopefully there's wonderful people right in this community who are appropriate to apply but how are you expanding the talent pool or is that also to be worked on but i just want to make sure that that's really yeah we all considered uh i i could probably name 20 or 30 people who have offered to get the word out on this on national and international networks um and and i think we're looking to to a couple of very

083specific networks to go above and beyond school spring um for for this one in particular but i i do there is clearly there's clearly an ability in our communities to get the word out into the the types of places where where professionals that are looking for these kind of this kind of challenging work in school districts will hear about it and and we will be finalizing that too as we move forward thanks julia hey i'm going to do another quick scroll christina do you see any i don't see any other music okay all right i'm gonna go back to the slide presentation thank you for that uh conversation folks and happy to speak with anybody individually about that um we we do want to and i'm going to try and get through this quickly uh

084school choice so just going to do a brief overview of school choice for folks watching at home for any school committee members that maybe have some some information gaps if we wish to continue as a school choice district and i strongly recommend that we do because we it plays maybe not a key feature but it is a feature of our budgetary preparations if we intended to continue as a district that participates in school choice we do not need to do anything this evening simply by not voting to pull away from school choice we are letting the state know that we are continuing into school choice and we will do that in a letter that we have no change in status um so the reason there's no vote on this is because uh i would not

085recommend that we leave uh being a participant in school choice and um and we we are going to continue that we are that we that we do stay a participant and that requires no action at all um just just a quick overview of school choice it was adopted by the commonwealth as part of the 1993 ed reform acts the district does have decision-making power over whether to accept school choice students in or not the district has no authority to say to a family or a parent or a guardian or a caretaker you may not choice your student into another district so we are one-way gatekeepers if we chose to be which which we're not um a district so a district can choose whether to accept a district cannot choose whether to send that is that

086is a a right that's maintained by families and guardians um the mount greylock regional school district and the two member towns uh prior to regionalization and then the the uh high school district of the middle and high school district of mount greylock all long time participants in accepting uh commonwealth school choice program participants from other towns the the the records at the state level indicate that that at least since 1996 and my guess would be that local records may indicate that it was even earlier at that although the ed reform act really didn't start um being put into action until 95 or 96 so it could be that we've been a part of school choice through its entire history some key things to remember about school choice once a student is accepted into the district

087via school choice that student now has a right to graduate from our school district just like a resident student for that reason choices made at the elementary level will impact the middle and high school down the road i don't even want to say negatively or positively i think overall it's it's a positive impact it adds to our diversity it adds to our geographic diversity um i i think i've heard steve make the point several times that and i would agree that a a high school that is not too large but large enough can continue to offer a wider array of courses for its high school students particularly another key point about school choice is that transportation is not provided a family must provide their own transportation if they are a school choice participant coming into

088our district in general a school choice student comes with a five thousand dollar school choice tuition attached interestingly enough that was the uh dollar amount that was set in and that is the dollar amount that continues um through until uh next year and and i am thinking probably 10 years and 20 years down the road from that our school district in following the the state law and the state regulations the govern school choice by a local policy we do two random selections for open school choice slots every year the first is as school is ending between the last week of school and july 1 we do our first random drawing and then we look at where our numbers are over the entirety of the summer and then our second and our last school choice drawing

089for the year actually happens the week before school opens i am uh somebody please let me know if anybody has a hand up because i have you all minimized so i can see my presentation um just julia it looks like julia has sorry please sorry i can wait until you keep going i had a couple quick questions but do you want do you want to ask them now just and i can tell you if i'm going to cover them or not and if i don't just answer them super simple question if somebody's school choicing from out you know outside on transportation can they get to a montgomery lock bus stop and still go in to montreal there are school districts that do that um that's a pretty common practice and the birchers if you are

090to follow the rules completely that the state lays out that answer is no um if if a request comes into a school district and it is something that's doable that you can get to a bus stop most districts would would work to find a way to make that happen but but technically the answer to that should be no um second question on the selection timeline and process yes um i assume that's a lottery kind of it is it is a lottery it is a lottery and it's um it's it's very straightforward names and a hat and drawn out in front of witnesses and and then do siblings have preference siblings do have preference i i would need to go back and look at our exact policy um but there there is some language that does

091direct the the superintendent to offer um sibling preference and i can find that policy and send it to you if you'd like thank you okay um for folks at home just just you know suggesting how we approach school choice and how i think school choice was initially envisioned back in the early 90s if you think of this as a classroom a very small classroom in a very traditionally set up classroom but for illustrative purposes it really works so you have a classroom you could have nine students in the class you only have seven students in the class this is the ideal situation for school choice you you have what are hypothetically two empty seats bringing in two additional students at five thousand dollars per student does not add to your labor costs it it does

092not add to your administrative costs it doesn't add to the facility's cost you don't have to buy extra desk it doesn't add to your utilities and it doesn't negatively impact the organization or the operation of of the school the district or most importantly the classroom so that's really what school choices was designed to do was to fill in those those empty seats um and that is exactly how we utilize school choice uh here in our school district i'm sorry i'm searching around frantically for a for a sticky note one of the hundred post-it notes i have on my desk to remind me of things um you could you could look at school districts in um in even in berkshire county that are that are 20 25 30 35 almost up to 40 percent um driven

093by school choice that that that one school district is is literally 39 point something of their entire student body or school choice students um because lanesboro and williamstown remain very attractive places to live and our own enrollments are holding steadier with students that live in lanesboro and then new ashford and hancock and williamstown we we don't have as many empty seats as some of our neighbors have and our philosophy i think is quite different that um i think really we we don't exceed seven or eight percent in any of our individual schools around the number of students that are school choiced in as a percentage of the total school population um and i think for districts that are demographically like ours size wise like ours that 10 to 15 percent is is a pretty good

094looks to me like it's a pretty good target across the commonwealth um just to give you because we discussed this at our last special school committee meeting where we were really focusing in on school choice for one of our member towns this is just uh over the lifetime of the region this doesn't go back and look at our three individual schools prior to regionalization if you can see um working backwards from from this current year of 6.3 of our population this year's school choice 6.4 going back to last year 7.2 the year before 8.1 the year before that if you really go back in time you would see that williamstown and lanesboro have a relatively small percentage of school choices their total population uh mount greylock regional once upon a time was was it was

095you know 20 of students attending the regional middle and high school before we were a a full region um but that's going back really you know 15 16 years ago you can see that this year we brought in 74 school choice students just for your information 39 students from from between our two towns chose to go out to do other school districts that does not include students that choose to attend bart charter public school or mccann and so you know this gives you we've we've been fairly steady with sort of our over under our ratio of students coming in to students going out um our percentages are have been under 10 for years and years and years and and we will remain there look at ursula had her hand up sorry thank you ursula do

096you want to go ahead sorry i put it down i was just going to ask if students at uh mccann were were considered school choice but then you answered that swipe so they're not that's not considered part of these numbers no no the way regional vocational schools work is those those are students that are tuitioning to another public school um so they're not part of the school choice number um the the dollar figures that follow those students ursula and for everybody else um because lots of folks don't know this the state actually sets the tuition rate for mccann the state sets the tuition rate for taconics vocational programs tends to be three to four times what school choice uh tuition rate is and there's really good reason for that it's um uh you know capital

097costs alone um for for regional school districts and equipment costs are massive uh to stay current with the technology that's out there so those those tuitions tend to be um you know literally three to four times what the school choice tuition is but those students are not included in this number um to give you a vision jake sorry let me just stop there for a second yeah the tuitions to um vocational schools are those those are paid by the town the towns that the kids are coming from whereas the students who choiced out that actually is paid by the regional school district that's correct to the other that's correct so so these 39 students that chose to choice out of our district this year that is a bill that we pay as a regional school

098district the tuition into mccann is a bill that goes to the town of lanesboro in a bill that goes to the town hall of williamstown to pay and that's that's state statute as to how that works and and that includes transportation from the town to to the regional school district okay anybody else before i move on i'm gonna do a quick scroll i don't see anybody but but please please just jump in um folks so looking at at the openings that we are i'm sorry steve can you say that again yeah i just wanted to say one quick thing first of all i do agree with what you said about what i said just here for the record and you know the second thing is you're similar to the incredible diversity school choice allows us

099to get when you have a small school district with the sizes we have for our grades this is extremely important so that we can have you know varied extracurricular activities that we can have teams that we can have classes at all different levels and you are just really i think worth emphasizing the curricular extracurricular social needs for something like this and just you put on the table working with other school districts to try to have some virtual classes as well right this is something we've you know talked about we have the technology to do this now to help increase these needs when we have you know small niches that would you really benefit from additional opportunities in various sections and i know we've you've got some shared sports programs as well i think it would

100be worth discussing some academics as well thank you yeah thank you steve um looking forward into into the openings that that we have on paper now that if we were going to hold the the school choice um drawing tomorrow these would be the uh the openings that would be on the table we discussed lanesboro quite a bit a week ago you know looking at two openings at kindergarten kindergarten is always a moving target because we really don't know until kindergarten starts and even a week or two in how many kindergartners we're going to have but based on information that we that we do have from our towns from from local census data lanesboro made the choice to open up two slots williamstown is opening up done you can see because of robust uh you know

101in town student population uh you know we're we're not opening up any slots of grade one or grade two in our elementary schools lanesboro is is proposing four for grade three williamstown's proposing two grade four lanesboro's proposing three uh williamstown's proposing two grade five lanes bro is proposing six that's a smallish grade williamstown again is proposing two grade six in lanesboro we are not looking at any new school choice openings we're looking at two new school choice openings for grade six at williamstown elementary school um working really to keep our early childhood classes at around 16 that's grades k one and two and looking at really we could go up to 22 or so in uh in our um in our upper elementary classes we've really tried to stick closer to that 18 number because

102we we may pick up students new to the area uh over the course of the summer and we we don't want to max out through school choice and then find ourselves with a with classrooms that are just more kids than we're comfortable with given our the staffing and the size of the classrooms um so you know just looking through at lanesboro this year no school choice sixth graders will be graduating in a williamstown so really no new slots opened up from sixth grade graduation later in june williamstown four students will be leaving williamstown and coming up to mount greylock who are school choice students this bottom row here um you know at lanesboro this year less than three fewer less than three percent of our student population or school choice at williamstown less than six

103percent our our school choice students currently at the middle and high school level looking at no new ones hey can you just stop there sorry for a sec sixth graders and we don't typically bring in school choice in sixth grade do we yeah um we get requests i i think in in the past i i don't know if they have typically opened up sixth grade in the past um cindy and looking at her numbers and assessing the collective need of the sixth grade felt that two was appropriate and what what i know from being in a neighboring district is um oh you know i think the people that would be most interested in fifth and sixth grade openings would tend to be people that are really looking at wanting to be at mount greylock regional

104school and that's no offense to either of our our fine elementary schools but but i think we would have families looking at oh okay i'm gonna i'm gonna apply for grade six because we really want grade nine through twelve or we really want grades seven through twelve so we i i sus we will get applications in those grade levels jake and i think there are quite a few unlike williamstown and lanesboro elementary schools the elementary schools end in fifth grade and middle school starts in sixth grade that is true um yeah like pittsfield public schools for instance um you know it's it's all of all of the schools have different configurations now and uh and and it's and it's tough to keep track of but but there are i we did have six grade applications

105last year we didn't take any sixth grade students any new sixth grade students but i do suspect we will get applications and and for many different reasons it just seems like a hard time to come into a school with only one year to kind of integrate into the school where most of the kids have been together for since they were born multiple years yeah yeah it is but it is developmentally speaking it's it's you know it's an option we want to make available to neighboring families i i you know it's really up to them if they if they look to make that fight and the different configurations of different schools that we would tend to draw from might really impact that it might it might be a year where students are going from a small

106elementary into a larger middle or a larger middle high organically and so if they're if their students are going to make that kind of a switch they would see this switch as being uh equal to or maybe even less than julia was your hand up yeah yeah i just wanted to say there's a there's another perspective on sixth grade for what it's worth that if you know if you can get into macroelect seven through twelve you can at least get to know a smaller group of students and be a part of that group before you transition into the high school so it's a different way to think about why to come in sixth grade that's true jose thanks jake uh this kerry's questions i think uh prompted prompted this question for me uh at a

107previous meeting of ours we talked about the the strategy of increasing school choice uh numbers for lanesboro to help support the the school budget there um but you you also highlighted there are a number of reasons to um you know support this this is the school choice program uh [Music] in williamstown those numbers that we're looking at there just hypothetically again if we don't fill those two uh seats at sixth grade we're not depending on that to meet our budgetary needs for the school is that correct or how does that does that play a role in this in any way that is correct jose where we're we're not um you know as we discussed last week if if if lanesboro doesn't have 15 new students come that is you know we will go back into

108the standing school choice account which is of right now is over a million dollars and and and pull those extra funds in order to make their budget work at williamstown these were these were really it's always a budgetary conversation but it was really more about wanting to flesh out classes a little bit further and then also thinking through to making sure that we have a vibrant sizeable uh mount greylock regional school so it's it's a it's the same conversation for 95 percent of the conversation but that five percent in terms of actually impacting budget is different okay the uh follow-up conversation that is just i think for clarity um the school choice account or or source of funds that we can tap into to help support our district budget the funds school choice funds for

109williamstown elementary and lanesboro elementary and the regional school they they must all get made a part of one account that they can be drawn upon to help support the three schools is that how the the funds get managed yes yes and joe joe can weigh in further on that if if you want further weigh in but that is true steve yes one thing i just wanted to add to the conversation about sixth grade is is one of the things which we actually began before we regionalized was talking about coordinating the curriculars a bit between the elementary schools and the middle high school and so that is another advantage of people coming in i can't remember if this was said explicitly yeah thank you thank you for all those questions and and comments um folks so

110am i okay to move on to to mount greylock yes all right okay thank you thank you so mount greylock you can see again and i i think it it it you know carries question about who who is coming and taking advantage of uh of sixth grade openings i think that same question is almost as applicable maybe more when you get into like 10th 11th and 12th grade however you know we do get requests and sometimes i can tell you probably we have had i've had at least a half a dozen conversations with families this year who for a variety of reasons live here have home here this is definitely their child's home in terms of social group in terms of school but for a variety of reasons cannot continue to live in williamstown or

111in lanesboro and so we we do want to always ask the principals not that they need to be asked but that's considered that we do have students that are our students that through life circumstances may need to move but move close enough that they could not have that disruption of changing school and so some of these spaces will certainly be used that way thinking through stacy and i looked through the applications we have thus far i think we probably have three right now that would fall into that category and i've had many conversations over the course of this year about those so over at mount greylock regional eight eight students will be graduating uh in june that are school choice students and so really you know covering for those eight and uh and bringing on

112one more these are where the openings are you can see as of this year mount greylock has 40 school choice students 7.6 of their total school population are are our school choice students and uh again i you know i i know there is is in in every school that is newly constructed there seems to be this magic number that the msba said is your um is your maximum number i really have yet across the commonwealth to see a school that is holding itself religiously to that maximum number you always want to be aware of how crowded classes are what optimal class sizes are but um my my take of spending time in mount greylock is that um you know we we could probably ultimately look at at 10 to you know maintaining healthy number of

113students coming from the districts that we serve as regional district towns lanesboro and williamstown the towns that we have agreements with uh new ashford and hancock that also look at maybe getting up to 10 or even 12 or 13 percent of our students over there either coming from tuition agreements out of state uh or um school choice slots so you know again i i think this our our district total represents a a modest a modest re-entry into school choice world after two pandemically fueled very sparse years of bringing new students in and and then we'll see over the course of the summer and next school year what rising interest rates do to the housing market what new housing opportunities opening up do to our student population and this is something we really talk about and

114keep an eye on pretty consistently and constantly over the course of the year um anything else on school choice just that was a i know you're all shocked that i provided a lengthy overview and i promised a brief overview um after two years together so i'll i'll apologize for that but um if if that's enough of that we'll we'll move on to the next topic and uh that is the we did have a request from the community to name a facility or field and thank you to coach paris for uh for being online to uh to introduce that tonight through the public comment section um the community request the person that made the request on behalf of many other people is actually on the meeting with us tonight john wenger and i wish we i

115wish we could have involved john in the opm conversation because he's probably served as an opm for about a half a billion dollars worth of building projects but we bit our tongues john and didn't put you on the spot like that but john sent a request to the school committee you consider naming our baseball field or newly improved baseball field on campus after coach steve messina steve retired in 2021 after coaching the mounties baseball team for 28 years i was thinking about his coach paris was speaking about that steve here earlier this evening i was thinking that the young guys that coach messina coached his first year are going to be 50 years old in like two or three years that's really really remarkable um i would encourage all of you to follow this link

116or just go into google and type in coach coach steve messina or mount greylock and messina um and and really nice article that that howard herrmann wrote um sort of summarizing not only coach messina's lengthy career but his many many accomplishments and um and uh and really in coach messina's own words talks about the fact that you know winning this winning that induction into new england baseball hall of fame all of that is really nice but what really matters after almost 30 years of working with with young men through baseball what really matters are those connections that he made each and every year with people who who who counted him as a friend and a mentor and a coach our policy on naming fields and facilities can be found at this length uh you know

117and really in short the processes that we we have the notion put out there we we give the community an opportunity to to weigh in on this uh and that weigh-in will will come by way of comments back to the school committee or back to me to be shared with the school committee um and then so we we kind of consider tonight a first reading we're introducing the idea of uh naming our newly upgraded field after a long-serving well-respected member of the athletic community and the educational community in general coach messina is a dean of students at wacona high school over in central berkshire and then in may on may 12th at that meeting that will really be a second reading to help you think through how this goes and that month in between tonight

118and may 12 is really an opportunity for the community to provide feedback to to the school committee to me to the principal to the athletic director all of which will be funneled to the school committee christina i don't know if you wanted to have john uh you know introduce this as the letter writer and the requester if that's appropriate yeah he can introduce it or he could read the letter that he submitted yeah yeah hi i'm john bensinger i'm a resident of williamstown i've been living here for 20 years uh as a superintendent of accountancy um indicated i'm actually a professional opm um we had the fortune that um uh i had the fortune of working with uh jake on um teconic high school we also um did lacona high school but nevertheless um i

119have been coaching at greylock for 12 years and my son came up to the program and i just um i thought steve was an extraordinary individual and um as uh superintendent mcanlis indicated it's it's more than just being a good coach and he was a fantastic coach but uh he really turned uh young boys in the young men and taught him respect um you know the usefulness of hard work and and i just i think um his years of service and what he did for the community over those years um justifies um some recognition and we just thought it would be a nice um nice way to celebrate his career by naming the baseball field to see the field thank you john so i i don't know if the committee has questions about process or

120or you know i i would encourage you to to take a look at the what was in i berkshires and the berkshire eagle uh around um coach messina's lengthy lengthy career and um certainly i'm i'm at your service to to answer questions steve yeah i just wanted to thank you for making this request your district is more than just the buildings it's the people who go in and it is you're wonderful to talk about you're putting in reminders as to how we're getting to where we're getting this is a wonderful time to be having such conversations i think we're doing this in a great way we're putting the information out there for the community to look at and just a nice way to honor you know your efforts by you know the people in the

121district so thank you thanks steve anybody else before we move on okay john thank you so much thanks for sticking around through this meeting to to introduce that and thanks to coach paris for being here at the beginning of the meeting thank you for considering this too as well oh thanks john um just real quickly wanted you to to you'll you'll probably get the school committee members in in 10 different ways uh between now and when the events actually happen but we do you know it's um when i when i think about this group of seniors uh and think about their academic social and school life starting as ninth graders four years ago um man they what a what what a what an interesting ride they have had to to to reach the graduation stage

122uh at mount greylock on saturday june 11. and um there's it's it's just been a you know ultimately one of the real pleasures of getting to work in a school and one of the real honors that that exceed almost everything else is is getting to know the students that are the school and i've had the opportunity to get to know quite a few of these seniors sometimes through through really good conversations and sometimes through uh 15 second interactions as we see each other week after week doing covet pool testing on early on tuesday mornings but uh what a wonderful group of young people and uh can't wait to celebrate them i think graduation is going to look very much like graduation has looked in years past pre-covet here at mount greylock and so we just

123wanted you to see you know may 31st is their last full day of class um you know they they are in that enviable position of not really having to make up snow days so you're welcome seniors uh wednesday and thursday jan 1st and 2nd are their final exams june 8th is their class trip june 9th is class night we're going to come back and revisit that uh in a second here around scheduling the june meeting uh and then friday june 10 friday june 10 is rehearsal students get their caps and gowns and their yearbooks and then there's the family picnic uh and then saturday june 11th at 11 o'clock in the morning is uh is really the big day the big day in the life of a school district uh graduation for our uh for

124mount greylock regional school class of 2022 so i just wanted you to have those dates and uh certainly jake or colin or myself or stacy or nancy mcmullen can can fill in any uh details that you will need about any of that uh and then the memorandum of understanding and i do apologize to everybody involved but particularly the three paraprofessionals who are named here who we really worked a lot on this to try to get this right we do have a memorandum of understanding the memorandum is in the packet paraprofessionals approached us early in the winter that there was really no hard and fast rule around when we go outside for recess when we're inside how we make sure that the kids are safe how we make sure that the recess monitors some of whom

125do two and three recesses a day are safe and uh so i'm really really grateful to kim shand from williamstown elementary alicia woodbury from lanesboro elementary uh and mary angelo roberts from over mount greylock um and then cindy and nolan joined us from for a good number of these meetings thank you for for to all those folks for committing their time and and for getting this right i do think we got it right um you have the mou you now have a month look at it and generate any questions or concerns you have that that we opted to after surveying all of berkshire county and looking actually at as many as i could across the state um that we kind of want to put into an agreement a written agreement that will supersede any of

126us leaving um to protect this for for future employees and future students that we're going to go by the real field temperature according to accuweather.com for lanesboro and for williamstown and if we're below 15 degrees we're going to hold recess indoors and so you will see this again uh on on the may agenda for an actual vote i apologize for completely my fault that we did not put the word vote on the agenda um as we were setting the agenda so um i i own that and i apologize to anybody involved i am really really hopeful we have no below 15 degree days between now and may 12th probably shouldn't have said that out loud because who knows but this is the practice we've kind of been following all winter in uh and with that

127i believe my presentation and my time uh is is finished and thank you all for your time and patience and covering a lot of ground in a relatively short time so thank you thank you jake okay next up on the agenda are the um anticipated open seats for the november 22 elections we've discussed this um as a committee a bunch but um it is in the packet this information that i'm going to provide is in the packet for the public um we announced this so that people realize that their their sort of the schedule of how this works um so in in terms of current members whose terms are expiring in lanesboro christina connery my term is my four-year term is ending curtis elfenbein's four-year term is ending ursula molloy's four-year term is ending but

128it's the remainder of her it's the last two years of the four-year term that um she came into um in williamstown carolyn green's four-year term is ending and steve miller's four-year term is ending so um nomination papers for um anyone interested in serving um as a member of the mount greylock regional school district will become available in the clerk's offices in um williamstown in lansboro town halls and at the mount greylock regional district office um usually those papers arrive towards the end of april and then the school committee elections are held on november 8th um and the candidates appear on the state elections and um one thing that's important for people to realize is that people from both it's sort of unusual in that because we are a regional district people from both towns vote

129for people from both williamstown and rainsborough um it's the only time that you'll see sort of that cross section um in towns julia yeah i i just wanted to make sure i understood um ursula's is she has to run for the last two years of a four-year term right yeah or hopefully she will but that that's what's open the last two years of a four-year return yeah so the way it's the it's when the regional district was created they tried to stagger terms so that we weren't getting seven members who had four-year terms and so some of the terms at the beginning were two-year and some of the four they were four-year and they were staggered so that there wouldn't be mass exodus after four years so the committee member that ursula came onto that

130was a four-year term but she came in and because we're running into the the next election it goes back on um but it's uh it will know this so would it be would i be running for two more years to finish her term or i would be running for a new four-year term starting this fall because i don't know maybe can answer that question better so um the when somebody moves off the committee during the middle of their term at the next whenever the next election is that seat that they were sitting in and the term length the term expiration that they had that seat then goes up into the election for whatever time is remaining right now sorry i couldn't hear you yeah so it's two more years so yeah there were two more

131but so in lanesboro you could choose to to run for that seat or you could choose to run for a four-year seat so you're not tied as an individual to any obligation or opportunity it sounds like in lanesboro there will be one four-year seat which curtis is holding now even though you came in at the very end of it and one two year seat and then in williamstown there will be two four-year seats in lanesboro there's two four-year seats and one two-year seat oh two four years and one to your seat yeah wow that's a lot of seats open yeah that's crazy so and the other questions on that before we move on jose does anyone need help with uh with signatures just just let julia or i know [Laughter] i was going to put

132everyone on the spot but i decided that was mean how many signatures do you need for another for a position like this i don't remember um when you when you go to pull the papers they'll tell you everything you need to know okay so now you wanted to say oh sorry she was on the order of 30 to 50 signatures does that sound about right i think so what i don't remember is if there's a if you need to have some money from one town and so many for the from the other town i don't remember you don't think so no there's no request i just don't think so it can be from either town but i think you have to have one form for landscape signatures and one form for williamstown sandwiches yeah and

133then you know it's always important to get more signatures because they they have to verify all the signatures and also um if you're undecided as to which seat you want to run for you can take out papers for both you just have to label them at the top two-year and four-year and then the town clerk will always tell you who else has submitted papers so if you're wondering which seats are less competitive than others just ask the town clerk you know which seat is open you know doesn't have anybody running for not that that really should matter but um just saying um you'll need a different set of papers you'll need to get signatures for each if you want to keep your options open thanks carrie okay so next up on the agenda is the

134changing the date of the june school committee meeting it is currently scheduled for june 9. there may or may not be a few members on the school committee who have seniors and there's also a superintendent who might be presenting at said senior class night so the request is to change the date to the wednesday prior so just one day before so from thursday june 9th to wednesday june 8. i'll make a motion for that okay julia make the motion mill a second miller seconds any discussion i you know in thinking i i just want to say in thinking about this i'm gonna i'm admittedly a little bit selfish on this particular change date and i was worried about setting a precedent but as i look at this committee which i think is wonderfully made up

135of parents who in the future may also have you know run into this situation i i don't think it's actually a bad precedent to accept well if we also think about this in terms of having your members of the community able to be watching what's going on right exactly thank you steve anyone else okay all in favor hi [Music] thank you that motion passes so our june meeting will be wednesday june 8th okay upcoming meetings we have a finance subcommittee meeting april 21st at 4 pm we have a policy subcommittee meeting april 28th at 5 00 pm and it's not on the agenda but our next regularly scheduled school committee meeting is may 12 at 6 00 pm i do not have any other items for discussion any any agenda requests okay hearing none would

136someone like to make a motion to adjourn so moved curtis moves do i have a second second julia's seconds all in favor owen eye conor eye constantine eye elephant by nine green eye thank you it is 8 11 p.m and this meeting is adjourned thanks everyone for your time i hope you have a great evening good night