MGRSD School Committee 11/23/2020

001c you could unmute there we go just unmuted myself debbie i know but now i don't hear you if you could talk uh can you hear me now still now i am unmuted according to my yeah i still don't i see you oh can you try again somebody i think turned down our monitor of course can you hear me okay have a great meeting i'm gonna be here but hiding thanks it was nice to see you me too and congratulations again thank you so much thank you wait a second i have to welcome jose you you there you are the reluctant candidate it's debbie nice to see you oh they're both there she wasn't reluctant i need to get t-shirts made i am now how are you julia i'm good how are you i'm missing

002baseball i'm missing being outside yeah the winters are hard for me it gets it gets dark so early it really does and my mediterranean blood it doesn't handle well i'll be honest we have um converted our dining room table into a ping pong table by putting a net across it baseball was much better i just hear constant ping so i hear you are you jake oh you're on mute that's probably for the best let's think big picture that's probably for the best i'm fine it's nice to see you both yeah what's that what's the artwork over your right shoulder oh let's see that is a painting that uh a student who's a friend of mine from pittsfield high school uh did over um the springtime and summer and her teacher thought that i she showed

003me all the artwork that her students did and that one was uh very evocative of a book cover that i really like a book i was reading when our oldest son was born it's actually a jar catching fireflies if you could see it so one of my favorites yeah that's great and i've never seen you anywhere but on your porch so it's uh you know 50 feet above that very spot so i can pause recording but everybody so just so everybody knows um this is recording i don't know if you mentioned that jake and joe i did not mention that i'm not sure i realized it so thank you sorry for being late to the party and um jose and julie i just put in the chat box i don't usually like to use the

004chat box but i just threw in there the alphabetical order of the school committee members because when we do do um votes we try to do it alphabetically by last name thank you it took me a while to figure it out which is why i stuck it in the chat box thank you for all your work christina oh you're welcome and joe we haven't heard his voice yet but oh hi giving you a shout out i'm just i'm appreciating and listening blue as soon as christina said it was being recorded everyone went quiet sorry i can pause the recording and then just somebody has to remind me to unpause it because i notoriously forget to start the recordings hi carrie i just let everyone know i put in the chat box the alphabetical uh order

005of the school committee members to make it easy when we do roll call votes hi stephen hello i don't i don't see it in the chat christina i don't see it either that's weird did you do it to everyone yeah let me try to do it again okay now it just popped up okay okay if you're not on the call when she puts it in the chat you don't see it thank you julia i'll keep doing it as members pop in i guess i should have waited and stephen i've got my my dodgers hat over my uh my right shoulder that's for you so can i do a shout out to my son's i think independent study where he has to watch a baseball game today so he chose the 2004 game for red sox

006yankees comeback nice so i enjoyed that homework assignment immensely great choice so where's the dodgers hat oh there it is i see i see there it is there it is you have two titles now i think right now in the city what's the other title two titles in the city i think we have more than two i think we had a good spell when they when they first moved over no no no no no i'm saying currently i think currently all right i thought you meant historically yes no no no no no lakers and dodgers this charts too now we're waiting for curtis and michelle there's michelle so if i can ask christina which way did you bet stacy what's that which way did you bet stacy did you bet that we would be done

007yes okay excellent yes very positive outlook excellent hi michelle so yes oh there's curtis hi curtis uh jake is everyone here on your side um just going through the list i mean we're all on the same side but you know what i mean i know what you mean um i am seeing i just got an email from one principal who said they are struggling with internet tonight we have two of the three right now so uh oh we have all three so we'll hope that the internet uh holds out for for all three and i see uh jackie wells on who is uh one of our guests of honor tonight so great i think we're set sounds like we're set to get going um curtis and michelle i just wanted to let you know i

008put in the chat box the alphabetical order of the school committee member so when we do our votes it makes it a little bit easier okay i would like to call the mount greylock regional school district school committee to order it's monday november 23rd 2020 5 pm we are meeting remotely via zoom per governor baker's order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law mglc 30a section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting you can watch the tv broadcast on willynet tv channel 1302 in williamstown at mount greylock regional 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

009lifelong learning and personal growth um next up on our agenda is welcoming our new superintendent jason sorry can i pause here sure i believe that the reorganization meeting the superintendent actually has to call the meeting to order um we went through this today and per our policy um that isn't necessarily true the chair can call the meeting to order i will turn the meeting over to jake when we go through the reorganization process okay um i wanted to welcome jake to it this is an odd situation in that um the reorganization is happening when we have uh our new superintendent coming on board so that's why the agenda is laid out this way um so on behalf of the school committee we'd like to officially welcome jake to the district you started november 2nd um

010and i know you've been visiting all three of our schools and working with the administrative team and meeting with school committee members and reaching out to our town community leaders thank you so much for joining us we are delighted to have you on board and look forward to many years with you at our helm um and now i turn it over to you uh thank you christina as you know i'm very honored to be here very thrilled to be here and have been welcomed uh warmly at every single turn so thank you and um these these reorganization meetings when the superintendent has to take over uh i've been a superintendent this is my 16th year every one of these meetings has been slightly awkward i'm just going to enjoy the 30 seconds when i am

011at the absolute height of my power uh before a new chair is elected um so at this point uh i would ask the uh elected school committee members if someone would like to nominate uh an individual from the committee to serve as chair of the mount greylock regional oh i'm sorry we're not moving into that we're doing the superintendent's award first aren't we right opening night jitters my apologies um uh jackie thank you for uh putting on your screen thank you for bearing with my nonsense there for for a minute or so this this is the night when we are giving the massachusetts association of school superintendents uh award of excellence and uh it's it's just a total honor and a complete pleasure to get to do this um i my last school committee meeting

012in pittsfield got to give this to a student from phs and from taconic uh lexi and ben who uh were wonderful young people the first time i saw this given was by my boss when i was the principal of lee middle and high school uh jackie that was in 2002. so that was some time ago um i don't even know if you were born in 2002 quite yes thank you for my moment of the day where i feel like a relic uh and maybe a few other folks as well but the person who got that award was a young man named paul choi who uh went on to cornell university uh coincidentally and um in all of the times that i've seen this award given or actually had the pleasure of giving this award there

013is a there is a really thick thread that runs uh through the story of every student that i have ever seen receive this award in my work in the berkshires and that that thick thread is woven together uh of of someone that it has a deep intellect uh a wonderful sense of curiosity a strong character a work ethic which is in the 99.9 percentile uh but but tying that thread together binding it all together is uh empathy and kindness and a real dedication to using the the powers of intellect and of curiosity and of character of hard work using that to make the world better uh not just making your your own life better but creating a better community in whatever community you're in and uh certainly as um we we i get to be

014educated about who you are jackie and see who you are and read about you you you are certainly a part of uh all of those wonderful individuals tied together by this amazing thread and so uh jackie reimer wells i am going to now embarrass you for a few minutes by reading some of your accomplishments and uh then uh we will ask you to uh to speak for for a few seconds or or as long as you would want to but on behalf of the entire mount greylock regional school district community it's certainly on behalf of the hundreds of members of the massachusetts association of school committees um you are just so deserving of this award and uh i congratulate you i'm going to do this in a couple of parts i'm going to read part

015of a letter that was written uh by ms miceli over at the high school from the school counseling office and this is just a few highlights that she wanted to make sure that we shared about you if mount greylock ranked students jackie would surely fall within the top few of her class with her 4.5 gpa and no grade of less than an a an exceptional student she has taken a combined honors advance placement program of studies complete with 10 advanced placement classes that span across the curriculum additionally having exceeded our mathematics course offerings jackie is currently enrolled in a williams college multi-variable calculus course she is recognized as an ap scholar with distinction and national merit commended student and she was inducted junior year into the national honor society epitomizing the requisite qualities of academic

016excellence integrity and citizenship most recently jackie was awarded the coveted superintendents award as well as a well-rounded student who routinely exceeds expectations in their contribution to our school community one of the many examples of jackie's presence on the peer resource team of this is jackie's presence on the peer resource team for the past two years members of this class are chosen by faculty and by peers as a select group of around 20 students that meet daily to plan special projects provide mentoring and academic tutoring for middle school students and to assist with peer mediation and transition activities her peer team teacher writes jackie has been a leader for this group she is a hard worker very motivated and kind to everyone she interacts with jackie is one of the few students who comes up with

017a peer team initiative and sees it through until its completion described by faculty as completely dedicated and talented jackie is also a three-season athlete cross-country running cross-country skiing and track and field a three-year member of the student council and a reliable contributor to the school newspaper with her healthy with her healthy mind healthy body mentality jackie has supported mount greylock green efforts as a member of the youth environmental squad and enjoys all outdoor activities including hiking snowshoeing and gardening generally i hear from most students going applying to college this is this is something that that your school counselor ms miceli does not generally hear from students uh jackie applying to college and she finds remarkable it's that you want to be engaged and involved in your community without surrounding yourself with only like-minded people as

018i said you're curious clearly and open and broad-minded these both speak to her empathy resiliency open-mindedness and unprejudiced concern for others the consummate student and individual in every way jackie cares deeply and gives her all to everything she's involved in one only needs to spend a short amount of time with her to grasp that she is self-determined generous in spirit and emotionally mature if i were a teacher a coach a sibling or a friend i would want jackie on my team she is an extraordinary role model a leader by example an active listener selfless and loyal it is a privilege to recommend a young lady of this caliber as an early decision candidate to cornell university i will add jackie that's from your recommendation letter i will add something that your principal is kind enough

019to share with me you were a greylock top scholar in ninth and tenth grade these are better in every course from ninth grade onward you're an all-state athlete twice in two sports cross country and nordic skiing uh varsity scorer on state on three state champion teams two nordic ski tiles titles and one cross country title also three times score on the state runner-up teams nordic junior year and cross country 10th and 11th grade you're a berkshire all-star in cross country and nordic skiing in track you set aside competing as an individual during the postseason meets the focus on giving your best effort to your relay teams leading to a new school and county record in the 4x800 you're a three sport varsity athlete in every season offered from 7th grade forward you're also a world

020snowshoe the world snowshoe federation junior world champion in january of 2019 i don't think i've ever met a world champion jackie this is i'm actually uh pretty fired up here about this tonight uh and jackie completed hiking the new england 100th highest mountain list in her ninth grade year at the time she was the youngest to complete the list uh jackie again i think um even though i'm i'm among the newest of the members of the mount greylock regional school district community i think i can very safely speak for every member of this community when i say what an honor and a privilege it is to to know you to honor you and i am sure that your teachers from uh preschool oh my lights just went out sorry i need to move a little

021bit um from from preschool and kindergarten to this very day uh are are so glad that you were in their life uh and i am sure that every student you've enter ever interacted with feels the same way and so jackie with with many congratulations and thanks for being you to you and with congratu congratulations and thanks to your parents uh for raising a truly extraordinary human being for for a daughter i i offered you the massachusetts a super association of school superintendents achievement of excellence award and i don't know are you in school tomorrow i'm not okay i will catch you after the thanksgiving holiday and i will actually give you the certificate and we can maybe meet for more than like the 15 seconds that we spoke out in front of the school as

022you were going in a couple of weeks ago congratulations jackie uh thank you so much i really am honored to receive this and you know so grateful to have been welcomed into the greylock community and to be a part of a community with such amazing teachers and inspiring peers as well um that have pushed me to always contribute and it's truly an honor to be part of this community and a joy to be involved in it so thank you thank you jackie thank you for joining thanks your thanks to your family for joining us tonight and uh congratulations and and if i if you are like every other student i've ever known who got this award you probably have a few hours of homework left before you retire for the evening so please don't feel

023the need to uh to stay on this meeting but congratulations and and thank you for uh for just being you thank you so much so christina should we proceed with with uh moving on with the you know okay so at this point i will now enjoy my most powerful 25 to 30 seconds of the of the year and i do thank jackie for joining what an extraordinary young person and joined by hundreds and hundreds of other extraordinary young people in the school district i would like to ask of the elected school committee members on the on the meeting this evening if there is a nominee to serve as chair of the mount greylock regional school district school committee uh julia thank you i don't know how it works normally the chair recognizes us um i

024just to start this i first i want to say um how excited i am to be here as well with this committee um and i i would like to nominate christina as chair i am really excited to serve with all three of our returning members but i also know that over the last period of time we've had a lot of turnover in various places and i i think it would we would benefit from continuity of leadership somewhere so um i nominate christina i'd like to second that okay so we have christina conray is nominated and seconded um christina are you willing to stand for uh mr miller i'm sorry steve dr miller i i was just going to also um nominate christine i just want to make sure that she was willing to serve and

025just second what julie was saying about the importance of continuity as so much is going on normally we do try to alternate between the two towns it doesn't have to be a perfect alteration year after year after year and in exceptional circumstances i do think that this is a compelling argument thank you thank you uh christine are you willing to accept the nomination yes i am willing to accept the nomination are there i believe at this point we i i it's my obligation to ask if there are any other nominations for chair i'll take a little teacher wait time and seeing none and the nomination for christina connery being uh moved and seconded uh is there any conversation before we move into a vote okay we will be doing this because we are online uh

026as a roll call vote for the chair of the mount greylock regional school district um and so i'll be asking you in alphabetical order yay or nay uh julia bowen yay christina connery do i abstain i think i abstained from voting for myself when you're the only candidate but you're the only candidate so i can vote for myself okay yay jose constantine yay curtis elfinbine hey kerry green hi michelle johnson yay and stephen miller yay with much appreciation and i am very grateful to hand the meeting back over to uh to to the chairperson christina thank you all thank you thank you everyone and as always i i do appreciate your support i i know i'm relatively new even to the school committee um myself and i do appreciate it um and we'll we'll go

027through the the next two items the vice chair and the secretary and then i i do i would like to take a moment to thank our new members and introduce them to everybody else on the call um so vice chair the role of vice chair has traditionally gone to a member of the school committee on the other town so if so i'm the chair of lanesboro so um we would be looking for a nomination from the town of williamstown for vice chair jose yes i'd love to nominate carrie carrie green i think uh i do i need to explain but i i i think her experience in the district both recently and in the past i think uh now i think puts in an offensive well personally for me in a great position to uh

028to lead the newbies like me and to help you through this uh through this period i'll second that okay i have a nomination for cary green that's been moved by jose and seconded by julie um carrie do you accept the nomination uh sure i do thank you for the nomination i appreciate that okay any further discussion okay all in favor roll call vote alphabetically please don't i miller i okay thank you carrie you are our new vice chair uh the next item is secretary and um i do want to point out that um in this position this position is in charge of note taking for anything outside of our regularly scheduled meeting so we do have um we do have an individual that takes care of the notes for these regular meetings but any special

029session and executive session minutes would be recorded by our secretary uh i would like to accept any nominations for the role of secretary i would nominate steve miller um who i believe also takes copious minutes anyway so i would uh offer him that opportunity and ask that he might consider it second okay i have a nomination for secretary for steve miller from julia bowen seconded by curtis um steve would you accept the nomination of secretary let me just stop taking notes for a second and say yes i will happily okay any further discussion all in favor roll call alphabetically please bowen eye tony eye constantine eye health and vine eye green eye johnson i okay stephen miller is our new secretary thank you stephen and it's true you do take great notes and i don't

030know how you can participate in conversations and type at the same time but it's fantastic um thank you carrie and steve i do want to also officially welcome our four new school committee members we have and i'm gonna do this alphabetically because this is the only way i can think of it i think um julia bowen from williamstown so you guys can see julia up there in the corner jose constantine from williamstown curtis elfinbine from lanesboro and michelle johnson from lanesboro i also of course want to thank um carrie and steve for offering your time and commitment to our school district and to everyone we really appreciate all of you stepping up to serve it means an awful lot i know it's a it's a time com commitment and um but it really does show

031your dedication and thank you very much okay next up on the agenda is public comment and i we did receive one public comment through email which i will read in the meantime if there are any members who would like to um submit public comment if you raise your hand once i'm done reading this public comment that i have we will call on you if you could state your name the town you're from and try to keep the item of the agenda you're speaking to and try to keep your comments to under three minutes that would be appreciated so the public comment i have is from sheila and david parks of lanesboro and they're speaking to i actually don't have the item number here um but it is as it relates to the fields proposal dear

032members of the school committee we are writing to you because we are concerned about the school committee's recent decision to move forward with the artificial turf option without following through on a previous decision september 2019 to include proposals for a natural grass field or other alternatives we were unable to attend this meeting but understand that the majority of the public comments were from community members who were against the artificial turf option or at least against making this decision now in a little over a week several new members will be elected to the school committee this may substantially change the opinions and decision-making within this body pushing through a vote so close to the election while ignoring previous commitments to look at other options and with parents and community members voicing their concerns seems forced and

033dissent dis ingenuous we have serious concerns about the safety of artificial turf for young people in terms of injury rate on artificial turf versus natural grass and environmental air quality issues potential existence of p bass in the plastic grass and other contaminants in the rubber infill heavy metals phs's etc the air quality issues could cause health effects in the short term for students with asthma and compromised immune systems it is entirely possible it could also have long-term effects that will not be fully known until these students are adults there are also serious environmental concerns related to the surrounding land and water with potential long-term leaching of pfas and heavy metals into the ground water and the green river which have not been adequately addressed by the school committee committee or turf proponents additionally although recycling

034has been mentioned as an end solution to disposal of the turf and infill once it needs to be replaced there are no recycling facilities that currently accept artificial terp for recycling it is irresponsible to saddle future generations with this amount of trash to safely dispose of lastly there have not been a convincing and thorough cost analysis for the long term with artificial turf obviously it will need to be replaced in the future it requires maintenance just as natural grass does side-by-side comparisons of the long-term maintenance costs for each option need to be attained and shared with the public we urge the school committee to step back and honor their previous commitment to other bids and options we ask that they seriously consider the potential long-term health effects on our most vulnerable population thank you david

035and sheila parks okay i do not see any other hands up or public comment so we can move on to the next agenda item which is approval of minutes uh we have four sets of minutes that were in our pocket for approval and um i will i will go through and ask for a motion motions for approval on each for each date so do i have a motion to approve the october 8th 2020 minutes miller i so move and i miss al seconding miller moves do i have a second second green seconds any further discussion um i have a comment but also um do we want to talk about the comfort level of folks approving minutes if they were not participating um or on the school committee at that time this is the weird transition

036time when you're it is happening to approve minutes that you and you weren't there yes yeah and it is um it is a strange especially since there's only three members so if people are uncomfortable voting then we're not going to be able to approve these votes so if yeah go ahead stephen if we have three in favor and for abstain does that still count as passing no no it doesn't must be four votes okay yeah so i mean essentially the the current members do not have to attended the meetings if they've read the minutes and they have some level of comfort based on what they have viewed within those meetings they can participate in the vote um if there isn't comfort level and we want to push this to the next meeting and give them

037time to review the meeting um more in depth they're welcome to do that julie julia sorry that's right i would just um i i will say i started trying to watch the meetings and i did finish this first one so that and i feel like i could support that i could vote in the affirmative for these minutes but i would otherwise appreciate the time to look at the watch the meetings um and i think that would be valuable for me anyway okay thank you so for the october eighth minutes i have a motion to approve from miller in a second from green do we have any further discussion on those particular minutes carrie yeah i just have a comment on page five um under number nine phase two field projection um project discussion so this

038isn't necessarily a correction to the minutes but um in the middle of the paragraph it says s miller reiterated that the monetary gift from williams wasn't meant to relieve taxpayers of the two towns but was given as a gift for the needs of the students since that was said in public multiple times it's something that mr miller has stated um i'd just like to say that that i think that should be noted as a matter of opinion because it actually is not factual um the gift was given to offset costs um from the two towns for things that were not included in the project and i don't think that should be um there stated as a as a fact so i don't know how to i don't know how to note that uh maybe if

039we just put it in the minutes of this meeting that i've requested that that be stated you know stated as mr miller's opinion okay would that be an addendum to the minutes or just a part of these minutes a part of these as a noteback okay okay can we put a note back into that as a comment after the fact like a footnote in the previous minutes a preferred note if anybody's trying to find information it would be more useful to have that in the last set of minutes than in this one so how about putting that as a footnote we can definitely do that okay do we we don't need to change the motion we just the the minutes we'll have a footnote along the lines of your suggestion okay any further discussion on

040the october 8th minutes all in favor roll call vote please owen i conrey i constantine elephant by an eye green eye johnson abstain okay that motion passes okay do i have a motion to approve the october 16th 2020 minutes so did we want to postpone that for people to watch well i guess what we don't know is if everyone's had the average how many how many members have been able to get through all of the meetings so we can we can absolutely if if i'm hearing from the majority that they haven't had the opportunity to get through all three of the meetings then let's we can definitely postpone these until the next to our next meeting so it sounds like the majority would like to move though so um we can do that so we

041will move the october 16th october 22nd and october 28th meeting minute approval votes to our next school committee meeting do we need to make a motion to do that no but christina the october 28th minutes was that was curtis's appointment right so we could approve those i think the majority of people were there and yeah they're not out of the way so i i would move to approve those minutes of october 28th okay carrie moves julius was that julie uh okay sorry okay any further discussion i want to note that it's labeled may 28th instead of october 28th within the heading so we just need to make that edit any other discussions on october 28th um sorry yes i i don't want to be a stickler per se but i'm a um just a bit

042of a rule follower on these things um having just that through my 15th version of the open meeting law training i learned that the author of the minutes has to be named in the minutes and i didn't see that okay um so we will make sure that jamie art who was the author of those minutes is recorded thank you for having participated in that okay so with those two changes um all in favor of uh approving the october 28 2020 minutes o and i connery eye arsene hi elf and vine hi green hi johnson i miller i okay thank you the that motion passes okay our next up on our agenda is the athletic director update so i will turn it over to lindsay thank you very much for having me um stacy did put

043a couple okay a 16 page document into your packet but i realize you probably have not had the time to look through all of it i won't read everything since you do have it and can peruse it's your time but i just wanted to summarize a couple things especially because we have some of the community members on the caller that will be watching this later so there's a couple parts here but i first wanted to give a little bit of a summary of what's happened so far both athletically and in the co-curricular programs here at the school so the first part of that document was just a quick summary of what some of our clubs have been doing so far this year because while we are we're remote for a while and our hybrid and

044not everybody is here we still have some really active organizations and some amazing students and a lot of the things that are being done right now are very community community initiative based which i think is amazing so i think it deserves some some time at the meeting um but just kind of briefly our largest organization right now is our echo who did they did publish a written version of the echo in late october uh but they're also maintaining their uh website with articles frequently so if you haven't had the chance to look at that there there's some really neat articles and very relevant for um students and members of our community uh new this year we have a debate club that was proposed by a students that missed the eighth grade debates um that they

045were a part of back then and so mr blackman is actually advising that and the students are meeting every other week to prepare for a debate and then they debate on it the next week it's it's all virtual right now and eventually they hope to be able to debate against other schools but right now it's just within our school preparing and and debating lots of election stuff recently but some neat topics we have two different performance groups happening right now um we thought we were going to lose our normal fall festival so we created a just a a fall shakespeare theater program that we have 20 students participating in and we're combining a mixture of virtual meetings with in-person meetings so today i actually watched the the cohort a group after school and so they're

046focusing on shakespeare's scripts and doing different things like that they meet virtually wednesday and then thursday the cohort b group comes and meets but fall festival ended up having something for seniors specifically so we have six seniors that are participating in a virtual shakespeare program through shakespeare and company and their both groups are hoping to have some form of performance that week of december 14th um likely virtual but they don't know if they'll be live and people are watching or if it will be recorded ahead of time they're still working out those details but it's kind of exciting that we still have that met a lot of our students involved in things like that we have three mia ambassadors this year as well as a member that serves on the mia student advisory committee and

047that first group created a pen pal program between the elementary school and the high school and we're just getting started with that but the principles of the elementary schools have been very helpful and they're finding different classes and teachers and students in the elementary elementary school and some of their interests and we over have over 50 students at mount greylock who have already signed up to be pen pals and they're going to write a letter to those students and the teachers have been nice enough to help organize that at the elementary schools to to get letters written and sent back to help create a mentor program during this uh crazy time so we're gonna match up students as best as we can with some similar interests and the second part that that group just created

048basically today is doing a hat for a hat program they are making little tiny tiny hat ornaments and selling them and for every purchase they will donate a hat to a local shelter or a local agency that may need winter hats and socks so for for every hat ornament they sell they're going to donate a hat um to a local program which i thought was pretty neat as well our students organizing change group is doing something similar they made some amazing homemade thanksgiving cards that are being given with thanksgiving dinners and they are donating 500 from a fundraiser that they had to help approximately three families um receive a thanksgiving uh meal next week this week sorry i'm losing a week um and then they're working on a maskathon fundraiser to do over the winter

049break in which the students will actually be making masks and they're going to ask for donations to make those masks and then both the masks and the donations will be given back to those who may need masks in the area and then our youth environmental squad three weeks ago did a neighborhood cleanup where students were encouraged to with gloves and bags and safely clean up the area around their house or their street and collect garbage in that area and they had i think about 12 to 15 students who participated in that they're not sure because not everybody asked for those bags to be picked up some just said okay we'll put them in our own garbage but that's just some of the stuff that some of our clubs are doing and i did include the

050number of members right now which is not as high as normal but still pretty impressive for everything going on so before i got into the athletic side i did want to just kind of share a little bit of what some of our after school groups are doing a mixture of virtually and in person trying to to make the most out of everything and give back to the community as much as they can so um athletically um i on behalf of the 220 students and families who were able to participate in one of our fall programs i thank you for supporting that in the fall i know it's a different committee but thank the committee in general i sent out a survey this weekend and have had amazing feedback um so far of the benefit of

051those programs um i summarized it in that document for you but we ended up with three competitive programs boys and girls cross country as well as golf cross country ended up with six races and they practiced about four days a week for the eight or so weeks and while they they wished the races were a little bit more competitive because they went off in waves of just their pod and so didn't necessarily get to race head-to-head uh with students in the county they were all very appreciative of getting to have that opportunity and so were the families we ended up with nine golf matches uh four of them at wabika and uh two three or five of them off and other golf courses around the area so one of the reasons i'm bringing that up

052to is i want to publicly thank wabika because not only is the situation difficult they took a group of our students and and basically hosted them for the fall and one of the events that we hosted was an all day saturday event which i'm sure they could have received a lot of money themselves in by selling tea times and things like that but yet they allowed every single school in the county that had a golf program to come on a saturday afternoon and have a safe socially distance match with their masks on and everything so i want to thank mike and eric and all of wabika for for helping us out all season but specifically with that event golf surveys were very very positive as well and then we had the five practice programs that

053ranged in in length depending on what they were but still had overwhelmingly positive um results from the survey just basically saying thank you for allowing them to feel some normalcy allowing them to get out and run around get away from the screens it's amazing how long some of these kids are spending on the computer between what they're doing during the day and then what they're doing after school so just for two hours to be able to run around even if it was only two or three days a week helped our students immensely so i sent some specific numbers but ended up being about 220 students that participated in one of the fall athletic programs i think we started with 223 and three had to leave for for various reasons none of them negative against the

054program just decisions that had to happen for those families um so that is what we have done the mia met last friday the board i should say to vote on all the recommendations about winter programs so i guess that's the the probably the biggest discussion item is our winter athletic proposal i included on that sheet just briefly what the traditional programs are but also what we are hoping to do this winter uh berkshire county has decided that we will not be offering ice hockey this winter originally there were only three teams one didn't have a facility and as we're not traveling out of county for safety reasons it didn't really make much sense to have just two hockey programs um in the area and it is a difficult sport facility-wise so ice hockey berkshire county

055decided that we were not going to be offering the mia wrestling committee has actually postponed the wrestling season to the spring in the hopes that that will be possible so no school in the state will be offering any sort of wrestling this winter which also makes sense um given the required modifications and safety and things like that traditionally we co-op with our alpine ski in our swimming program we don't we haven't had students in the last three years but when i sent out the survey we did have two students interested in alpine skiing we didn't have any students interested in swimming but after much discussion we didn't think it was the best idea to be sending students to another school another community just adding more to everything going on we felt we could maintain safe

056programs here at the school and hope those two students will participate in something here but will not be sending students for alpine skiing or swimming we would like to offer a competitive nordic ski program and a competitive basketball program however so those are the two that we are hoping to do they will look nothing like they have in the past um nordic ski will be similar to cross country but there's a few more restrictions out there one of the biggest impacts on our program is traditionally we ski a lot in vermont that will not be happening so all of the practices will have to be here at mount greylock which means we're going to have to limit our numbers somehow either limiting overall or limiting the number on each day so saying okay this group

057is going to practice on these days this group is going to practice on these days as we don't have the ability to run into the building if conditions are not good outside with the weather we want to make sure it's a manageable number of students out on hopefully the snow for their sake but otherwise they do some running and training and conditioning outside but we do think we could safely offer a nordic ski program very similar to our cross country program the county thinks saturdays are most likely the best opportunity to have contests and we are the first school committee meeting so i can't say what other schools are definitely in definitely out but in discussions it looked like five or six schools overall might be able to offer a nordic ski program so there

058would be some contests again they would be different it used to be that all six schools went to one site at that point there were 10 schools but all went to one site and raced together that wouldn't happen it would just be two schools racing at one site at a time for this program and basketball is the other one that we are hoping to have um the state has provided modifications on both of those sports i included them in the packet just in case you wanted the specifics of how many times things had to be disinfected and all the different changes in the games as well as the eea has some pretty solid guidelines for us to follow but looking at the county we think there might be six schools able to host basketball this

059winter we don't the first possible start date is december 14th and i think it would be possible for us to start on the 14th the county has made a decision though that we do not want to have any contest until january 8th at the earliest earliest so that gives about a month of time where our students are just here with mount greylock students practicing preparing training still being active but it will get us past the thanksgiving past the holiday break the winter break and things like that and see what things look like in january before we are competing against any of the other schools and the other suggestion that came from the berkshire county athletic directors is possibly having weekly school matchups so in other words our boys basketball team would play the same school

060as our girls basketball team and the nordic ski team would compete against that same school that week so in any given week there would only be two schools competing against each other and we just thought that would limit some of the changes for each of the students and therefore our community as well so i realized that was lots of information but if you have any questions please let me know again i think it's really important for the kids to have some type of outlet to get away from the screens to be active our main goal is is that the practice side of it to start with just to to get the kids doing things but we are hopeful if things are looking good in january to have some competitions as well fingers crossed yesterday i

061agree curtis thank you carrie um lindsay do you need thank you for all of that information um and for the co-curricular information as well do you need a vote from us um around the winter sports or officially it's only if we are remote that the school committee does but i wanted the school committee to weigh in regardless because i think it's a good idea and i think there's there may be a chance that we end up remote and so it i just thought it would it made the most sense to to present it to you now and have everybody weigh and you did vote in the fall um even in the same situation but like that's up to you guys i guess it would be helpful i think to be able to to move forward

062if you could [Music] so what our vote in the fall for the fall sports was it to continuous sports even if we went remote uh we we were remote at the time when you approved it right so it was you just voted to accept that my proposal of three competitive programs and five practice programs and i had given you the weeks and things like that they'd be very similar this time so you just you voted to accept the proposal you didn't put any restrictions on when remote one hybrid that we could definitely add or make them very similar to the schools themselves um but but again that's our thought had been um while remote and hybrid well at good things it depends on well why why we are remote um for i think that kind

063of changes whether we should be meeting athletically or we shouldn't be meeting athletically there was a few weeks that we just started out the school year remote but it wasn't for any particular reason except to prepare and that it was okay for the kids to be meeting obviously if there's an uptick in cases here and we've had a few weeks um in higher risk areas then maybe it doesn't make the most sense but we could also i could work with the superintendent and the principal to make those decisions along the way as well okay so it sounds like we're um we need a motion to approve the slate of winter athletics is that correct well we're just talking about basketball and nordic skiing right yeah and basketball seems problematic because um it's well it's the

064first sport we're talking about that would be indoors first of all and if we were to go remote then how would we justify having indoor practice if we're not using the building otherwise we did in the fall remember because we had volleyball and the only reason we had volleyball yeah we had volleyball practices we didn't have competitive because there wasn't enough schools in the county to make that work um but the entire pioneer valley had competitive volleyball so we did practice even on remote days so wednesdays the volleyball team comes into practice okay so that's not an issue all right well then i would move to support the winter sports program as outlined with the um restrictions as presented okay i have a motion from carrie do i have a second i'll second miller seconds

065any discussion michelle um i have a question about um i know there were some training programs for the i think was the football team uh in the fall are there any of those programs happening for the sports that um aren't going to have a season yes though it isn't athletic specific um we traditionally offer something called mgoat that mr pratt can tell you a lot about since he created it but we are hopeful to offer that program again so it won't be sport specific so it won't be an ice a program just for ice hockey or a program just for wrestling but a program for any student who wants to do a fitness program and brian gill one of our physical educator wellness teachers is hoping to run that again um so that might be

066something we come back to uh with later but that's something we hope to offer on the club's organization side not athletic just anyone opening to fitness and brian being willing to do that was fantastic i felt because it's somebody who's in the school system who understands both the athletic modifications and the school modifications so for example our wrestlers whose season got moved to spring they would be able to participate in a couple days aft after school of fitness related activities um that followed all our guidelines and then i i only have one other comment which is that um i i understand what you're saying about volleyball being held indoors in the fall um but there there weren't as high number of cases in the county as there currently are um and we only see that

067going up with the holidays so i do have some concerns about having an indoor activity with the level of coveted cases that we currently have in berkshire county and um you know obviously we have none that i'm aware of in our school um and that i would think would significantly change or what it is the question would that change whether or not they'd be able to practice i think it depends on the the close contacts and in that aspect um and i think your concern is one of the reasons we thought to not have any contests until january 8th at the earliest just to to see where we are at that point because our students who are here in school and then our students staying after school is one thing adding the competition to something

068different um so i think it's something that we will look at again in january and if the cases are too high or if we're closing school because of cases then it wouldn't necessarily make sense to to bring a team into our gym from another school at that point well i'm actually more concerned about our students practicing together if we close our school to in-person learning okay and then having i think it makes literally no sense to close the school for learning and still have them practicing if if i could weigh in uh lindsay and michelle and christina with your permission uh we lindsey and i spent some time together today discussing all of this uh this i think a a yes this evening is a yes that stands for this evening with current conditions i

069mean at this point we don't know we we probably know the status of most of our neighboring school districts in berkshire county and who's in and who's remote and for how long we may find extremely different conditions on the ground uh as we get into december january and even into february so i i think that that this body and certainly our administrative team particularly mr chutes and ms von holtz and i would be checking in almost daily uh and using not only the the guidance of local health officials but also our common sense about how how much we expose uh students to if we're in a fully remote situation and i don't know that any of us would argue with your logic of it doesn't make much sense to be bringing kids in for potentially

070close contact indoors if we don't think we can even have five or six students and a teacher in a classroom so we we this uh a yes vote on this tonight would would not be set in stone for the remainder of the winter season or the school year it's all like everything else a very situational uh situationally specific thank you jake jose just a quick question lindsay i think i if i remember correctly at the very beginning of your presentation or somewhere there was a question that was asked about whether this committee needed to um vote on this on this plan tonight is that and you and i think your response was no we don't need we don't need to do that right now no you don't need to if we went fully remote then

071a school needs school committee permission but if a school is hybrid then school committee does not need to weigh in in your sense just to follow up if we postpone probably is not the right the right verb here but if we don't vote on the plan right now would that give you and and this committee a chance to um to evaluate the you know circumstances that we might find ourselves in in the future and and to better give you feedback or to better evaluate the the current plan or a modified plan or or so on honestly i would prefer a vote mostly because it will take a lot to get things up and running i meet with the kids i meet with the parents i send out registrations that have all the modifications and the

072regulations and things in them i just don't want to end up in a situation where where a few days away from that and we don't have time to do that properly and things get postponed i would much rather have the time and even if we decide hey we're delaying for a little bit at least that part has happened so families know what to expect students know what to expect when walking in um but honestly that's my just personal opinion that to to i guess i would like to if it's a yes to be able to move forward and prepare all that even if it changes and even if it we don't end up getting to to go as far as we are hoping um i'd like to be able to start meeting with students interested

073start getting those registrations and start making sure everybody is clear on what will be expected of them if they participate in one of these programs um i also should mention that one of and i i will say this is kind of more person my personal opinion what we're seeing a lot of is for the schools that did not offer something in the fall the students and families created something and while that's fantastic to me it's not as well done as if the school were doing it i would much rather the school have jurisdiction of what these students are doing after school then if we say nope we're not going to have any programs we're still going to have 40 kids that go create a program on their own and aren't necessarily supervised and monitored and

074are still doing the exact same things um so i worry because i think mount greylock could do a better job than a group of kids in the community um just my personal opinion i know this fall we had soccer and there was a group of parents in the williamstown soccer club that created a soccer program and i'm very appreciative of that because it it allowed our students a great opportunity um but too many times did i hear uh officials might not have been doing that correct because there was nobody there or fans weren't doing what they were supposed to because there was nobody there to monitor it that wouldn't happen at a school um so i i would me personally i would rather have it under our purview so we can say yay or nay

075as it goes and cancel on days that we shouldn't be practicing um but yet still give the kids the opportunity in a safe manner rather than having them go create it on their own when they can okay any further discussion hearing none all in favor owen i connery i this is almost like a coin flip for me i'm torn but i i'll say i huh is that a dodgers cap in the background there it is indeed it okay that motion passes thank you thank you very much and we'll keep you updated and as the superintendent said he jake and i will be in constant communication if things need to adjust thank you would uh would it be possible to add an agenda item to the special meeting on december 22nd just to check in on

076the progress uh on the belief that practices would start on the 14th is it the 14th is that right yes i can add the 22nd to my calendar great thank you thank you okay next up on the agenda are principal updates and it looks like we start with mount greylock regional middle high school hey good evening everybody so i i have three points that i want to bring up during uh during my time here so the first each point contains a couple subsections here so the first part is about teaching and learning um first off i just want to acknowledge the the struggle and the frustration that our families are are enduring um i mentioned the other day to families in a note to them that although impressive we're definitely not surprised by their resolve

077um just as our our students and families are invested in the education of their of their children the staff is also clearly dedicated to providing the same level instruction that our school community or our school committee and community is a is accustomed to so right now we're still in that hybrid model we're positioned to successfully transition to to remote and back at any given point in time and pretty much in any any manner currently we have 128 students enrolled in our remote instruction so that's out of our our 530 students so that's about 28 more than we started with if we do transition i'd like to maintain an in-person student support center and life skills program program in the building and so uh that would be one of my priorities if at all possible and

078feasible to to maintain those two programs in the building so with all that said we we're continuing to strive for a balance between academics and wellness in this setting and where the district is and the the building is revamping and retooling our survey to focus it and narrow it to send it back to family students and staff asking for feedback and just like we made adjustments adjustments before with the original results and generally speaking we seem to be headed in the right direction but again uh we're looking to to strike that balance and we're not there yet but we are making good progress so i urge everyone to please participate in that survey when it does come out and and um complete it to the best of your ability because we do look at them

079the results and we do make recommendations off of those results another point under teaching and learning and testing the testing goes on the state is still planning mcas testing so right now we are scheduling for a late january early february 11th grade math and ela that is still scheduled um still scheduled to go on so they have there's a there's another date later in the year but it's as far as the the most recent report we're still going to be testing in january psats are also on for late january sats are to be determined so this is this information will be put on our website it'll be in um our newsletters that are sent out to parents as well so the final part in the my teaching and learning section here is community building so

080first for staff it's uh it's we have to make an effort to stay connected as a staff and it's not because we're not um people are not trying or it's not because of um uh well it's because of social distancing right so everyone is no one's in the break room no one's in the work rooms no one's in the the lunchrooms so we we've started to um we're starting to make conscious effort to remedy remedy that and one of the practices we did early on in the year was have a basically an optional a voluntary staff meeting in the morning where folks get on and just just talk and chat and colin or i will give any brief updates but that was pretty successful we're going to start that back up again families can join

081the the administration saturday mornings at nine even though this past saturday it was my turn to host it and i forgot i apologize for anyone who did try to get on so we do coffee coffee or tea with with me or with colin at 9am via zoom and then for the students not necessarily a compliment yet but an announcement that the mount greylock pep club is coming out of retirement we're currently seeking an advisor it'll be open to all students the goal of the pep club is basically to spread school spirit and connect students and staff what used to be organic um in kind sort of events the pep rallies the red out days it's it's easy for that to slip through the cracks and it is so important right now for that to happen

082so we are bringing that club out of retirement and we hope to connect a lot of a lot of students speaking connecting students i want to give a plug to our junior class who's hosting a virtual trivia night coming up this saturday parents and families can join so i believe an email already went out i'll send another email out tomorrow with a reminder but that should i can't play because i looked at the questions i probably wouldn't remember them anyways but uh it should be a real good time second part of my little principles update here is i just want to mention some of the school council efforts the the council is continuing to analyze our the sip to forecast any possible budgetary implications so i our last meeting we identified two of the goals

083that we thought would would drive the bus for the near future where we might see some budgetary implications and that was the um the dei goal i'm sorry the seo goal the social emotional learning goal and the data goal so we'll continue to collaborate with our liaison and like and get on the school committee agenda for that but i just wanted to put a plug and for that that likely we see two areas specifically two goals where there would be some some budgetary implications would would really help us achieve those goals and last but not least i just want to mention some accolades so recently the msaa launched a leadership initiative and they chose a couple schools in well they started they're starting in the west starting in berkshire county and working their way way

084east choosing a couple schools and interviewing students and staff to get some raw footage from from those folks about their thoughts on leadership in general so we we had quite a few people volunteer uh volunteer their time to me outside in the cold with uh with two reps from the msa so i look forward to seeing that we also are in the final stage of uh our three-part first greylock talk series about voices in the community first we had uh christian who's a all three were williams students christian talks about his life growing up in jamaica and um the next was wilson and his time growing up in hong kong and next we have a student who um grew up in turkey i believe so they have been very well attended and very interesting first

085part of our first mini-series of greylock talks and last but not least cohort b orchestra performed this year's first greylock plays performing various pieces in the lobby the other morning as students and staff arrived it was inspiring it was calming it brought us back to what life used to be it was exciting to see what kovit can't stop us from doing personally my favorite and actually the only one i knew was the game of thrones theme song um it's a piece by um oh shoot i forgot the composer's name but it was performed by mr o'connell chris mcinerney oscar lowe declan rogers owen patropolis caleb lowe cameron turner dylan navares and grace winners and if i could i don't know if i can but can i share my screen and play like a 10 second

086clip um if that's okay with the madame chair you absolutely should be able to let's see if i can find you to give you permission to do that um and if not i will uh we'll post it on the website and joe are you a co-host on that that's a that's okay jay oh i got it i got it i got it sorry my mouse just died i don't know why isn't it working i should be able to just thank you jake right here we go jake while you're doing that what was the acronym you used msaa uh the massachusetts secondary administrators association ms aaa so let's see if i can play this [Music] here [Music] oh bravo so that is all i have pending your pending your questions you that was awesome any questions

087from the committee okay next up is lanesboro elementary school and that is nolan pratt hi everyone uh welcome to all the new members of the school committee glad to have you on board i'm not as organized in jake and i don't have three sections i'm just going to go through all the updates and hopefully i'm a little quicker no offense jake um so as of right now we have no positive cases in any faculty staff and students which i think is an important thing to say um which means that our community is taking the correct steps to keep the students in school with that being said the administration and school nurses we are consistently in communication talking about every single thing that happens to make sure we can still stay open no matter what um

088so right now we have 168 students in person in the hybrid model 86 in the am 75 in the pm and then seven a.m pre-k students we have 19 in the remote academy and then we also have 64 students that attend the support academy opposite of their session so if they're in the am session in the afternoon they'll be in the gym or the library spread apart and um in the support support center uh working with paraprofessionals to complete asynchronous work go see their special education teacher whatever they need to do in that time that being said the students are acting very safe they wear their mask all the time it's amazing to see i know there was a big concern going into the school year that four or five and six year olds won't

089be able to wear a mask they do a great job for the time that they're in the building they practice some social distancing and if they get too close they're quickly redirected and the students know exactly what to do they want to be here and they're taking all the correct steps to stay here the faculty and staff are ensuring safety as well they're making sure students hand sanitize or wash their hands anytime they come into the building if they are going to have a snack outside or whatever they're doing it's being done in a safe manner because of our paraprofessionals and our faculty and staff the custodians are sanitizing the bathrooms like every 15 minutes i see glenn the head custodian go around with his ionizing sprayer he sprays the bathrooms down it keeps it

090super duper clean um so that's what we're doing to stay safe last week we started our first round of parent-teacher conferences um it was all virtual it's the first time we've ever done that parents had a pretty good time getting into zoom rooms um ms madness our school administrative assistant fielded some calls of parents who couldn't get in quickly problem solved the best way to get on to the parent teacher conferences is using your student's chromebook we've had it it's no no issues with that so you can hack onto your hop onto your students chromebook to see the parent teacher conference do that um and as of right now people are still signing up for the december 2nd conference but we have about 20 students that haven't been accounted for in sign ups yet so

091on the first day of on the first day of parent teacher conferences that morning we held our second virtual assembly this was the wyvern assembly which was um so new school committee members raise your hand if you know what a wyvern is two and they're both from lane throw the wyvern is the lanesboro mascot it is actually so game of thrones jake has it wrong they're not dragons they're actually wyverns um dragons have four legs vibrant have two but so our school mascot is a wyvern um so what we do is we bring kids in we talk about the history of the wyvern the history of lanesboro the history of the school talk about what we talk about traits that a wyvern represents and how they can demonstrate them throughout the school and um we

092also bring in someone to teach someone that went through lanesboro and talk about their experience we actually have a special education teacher um who works who went to lansboro went to mount grayla graduated from mount greylock i might have had him as a student he actually came in and talked about his experience um as a wyvern and it was like the students loved it um so from that we also are doing the wyvern of the week which is every week we uh nominate three students to be they get certificates for demonstrating the traits of a wyvern um and we've added some special traits like practicing social distancing um being kind and completing all of their asynchronous work so students that are going above and beyond to be kind getting their async work done their in-person

093work done and practicing social distancing are recognized on our instagram the lanesboro pto page and in the weekly newsletter so other things are happening are upcoming we are revamping the life committee the life committee is the lanesboro initiative for excellence it died out in about 2018 and we have some old uh previous members and some new members coming together we're going to meet the week after the break to talk about what the what life committee used to be and we were going to revamp it and start getting ready for the next school year so hopefully we hit the um 20 122 school year at full steam if you don't know what the life committee is about it's like the sea fund at mount greylock or wessie in williamstown another committee that we have started is

094the diversity examination group in lansboro i sent out a letter to the families and community members and faculty to sit down and start a group to look at our curriculum to make sure it is equitable and diverse um so we are starting that we have about six people signed up so far hoping to get around ten to really dive in to see everything that we're doing across our curriculum to make sure it's equitable um recently we have filled all of our power positions so running the support center and having pairs in the classroom has been tricky as of last monday we finally had all our positions filled so that way we are now we're running full steam ahead and the school is running very smoothly it was running smoothly before but with all the pairs

095now it's it's a delight one thing that i think is important to note is that across the board behavior incidences are down um the small class sizes and the different structure we have i've had very few referrals to the office or any type of disciplinary issues at all i think that could be contributed to the small class sizes and maybe because school students some students are only in school for half the day the remote academy i only have you know the remote academy is a mixture of williamstown and lansboro students those teachers were thrown into a brand new teaching environment and they've been doing their absolute best to make it work i know they're putting in the midnight oil we met last thursday we're going to change some things up for everyone that's listening every

096thursday we're going to do pickups now and the teachers will communicate what to drop off and what to pick up we also have a pickup drop off tomorrow because thursday is thanksgiving um if you're in the remote academy you should already know about it if not please contact me so we're constantly working with the remote academy teachers to make sure all their needs are being met to keep moving forward in that brand new style of learning i'd like to give a shout out to i would like to give a shout out to the lanesboro empire police department who held a safe halloween for all of the students um it was a drive up trick-or-treat they sat in the school parking lot and allowed all the lanesboro students and children to get a safe to go

097to go trick-or-treating in a safe style um lastly the pto just completed their local for coco fundraiser um in lieu of the holiday store which we could not do this year um so the local for cocoa fundraiser was a fundraiser people could buy mugs that said lanesboro on one side with the wyvern on the other side says go local for coco i think we're gonna have an instagram media page for once you get them you can tag us on instagram we can post it all over the social medias um so look for those mugs maybe you might see some in your households and lastly i would like to plug if you can still we have a lot of parents filling out the screener last minute if you could please fill out the screener by 8

09815 it allows us to get the students in the building quicker and i think that's important to having a great school day so i know that was long-winded and fast because that's how i am questions michelle nolan i just have a question how many kids did you say were in the students like what are their full day so there's 64 full full day however and legit like so it's half it's about half and half in the morning and half in the afternoon we just we have the kindergarten and first grade in the library on the opposite sections so it's fantastic we have a lot of students that need support getting the support they need and do you have um recess in them do you have do the kids have recess in the cohorts yes so

099when they go out to recess they stay with their grade level and they go to different patches of pavement or grass depending on the day well thanks other questions all right well thanks for having me thank you nolan and last but not least we have our update from williamstown elementary school and kristen thompson hi everyone um i gonna start off by saying i cannot believe uh it's already time for thanksgiving it feels like from june from when i got here to now has just gone by incredibly quickly um but i am i'm thankful to be here and i appreciate all of you i'm going to start off by kind of echoing a little bit of what mr pratt said in terms of um our families are being very proactive in terms of making sure that

100kovid you know stays out of our schools so we can have our keep our kiddos in school um lots of our families you know we've had some some situations that have popped up but have everyone has erred on the side of caution and are being proactive rather than us having to be reactive and we really appreciate you know taking those extra measures you know so we can have our kiddos stay in school um that being said that as mr pratt said again our students are probably the number one um reason why we are actually maintaining safety and they are um maintaining their social distancing and their sanitizing and you should see how quickly they are able to come into um the building now i mean they they know they've got the list they know if

101they're not on that list that you know they they just shoot right through they grab their hand sanitizer and they're on their way and the day starts um so really proud of them for that and our staff for really making um this process you know an everyday routine and and streamline it um we also had parent teacher conferences the first half of them last week they seemed to go really well um uh rebecca leonard our tech guru at west was able to find a um one of the add-ons for google for the teachers so they were able to create their conferences on a google form with a choice eliminator so when they were scheduling these all the choices were immediately eliminated first for parents and that was a really great way for us to organize

102these so thank you to rebecca for that um we recently had um our first pto meeting and it was really nice to touch base with the pto and for me learn who they are and and what they do and they were incredibly supportive of many of the ideas that cindy sheehy my assistant principal and i had and one of those ideas um came to fruition and it came to fruition pretty quickly we have um we love our west staff signs posted out in front of the school and we really wanted to just you know lift our staff up and lift our teachers up to show them that you know we love you thank you for what you're doing and so thank you to the pto for supporting that and really just streamlining that process as

103well they went up quick and driving in there every day it's just a little reminder that you know what we do matters um we are i am happy happy happy to announce we are finally having a school council meeting um the week after thanksgiving so we are going to be focusing on the new draft of the sip and making sure that we have a more condensed focus on what's going on right now in our world so focusing more on how covid is impacting our curriculum and instruction and that sort of deal so we're going to really be focusing on that i am also very happy to um say that we are in our um final lap um with our reading specialist um we are ending that that process right now and we'll hopefully have um

104our actual finalists um within the next few days and starting um as soon as possible um we have we do have pictures planned um for um our students we are doing it in in the spring um in march the i think it's march 13th um but don't quote me on that i know it's in march though um and um for the reading for the sorry the remote academy i just wanted to say that nolan cindy and i have been meeting with the teachers and the three of us have been meeting regularly as well and it's just been a really interesting fun process and you know mr pratt takes the lead on a lot of stuff because he knows we've got a lot going on so we're very thankful for that i'm very thankful for the

105teachers who have been very flexible um especially and the families for for the drop off i know that drop off has been was a little crazy at first but we think we've got it streamlined and that's with everyone's input so thank you for that um and just i guess just the last thing is you know just shouting out to families and teachers for you know keep moving on keep go pushing forward because we do this together and what we're doing now can only you know we can only get better and go better from here so thank you thank you kristen any questions from the committee for kristin um i just had a comment i hadn't heard that cindy was given the assistant principal so congratulations to cindy oh i'm so sorry i thought i can't

106remember me one meeting from the next so i apologize but yes my new assistant principal is cindy sheehy she was our reading specialist at west and um let me tell you since she's been on board only good things have been happening and it's been so great and we're really really blazing a path and cindy is is such a positive addition and super supportive thank you okay next up on the agenda superintendent updates thank you christina and thanks to our principals for uh for those reports um so the the first thing that i want to speak to tonight are the mount greylock regional school district retirees um we missed somebody uh over the course of uh of last year and then we have two folks one of whom just retired about a week or a week

107and a half ago and one who is leaving us in about two weeks so maureen jennings who worked in the mount greylock regional school cafeteria serving meals to kids for 26 years retired on january 22nd 2020 so we we wish maureen a a late but but no less heartfelt very happy and well deserved retirement linda waldeka was a mount greylock regional school uh paraprofessional for 33 years and linda retired on november 13th and was sent off with what i heard was a pretty magnificent car parade by her house in cheshire and 33 years of serving students through her uh work and mission as a as a paraprofessional she deserves every ounce of uh wonderful send-off that could be offered her so congratulations to linda and ellen kaser is a mount greylock regional school social studies

108teacher uh ellen has been t will have 18 years of service and she is retiring december 5th so really on about a two-week countdown uh to to ellen's retirement um so ellen thank you for your service to the students of mount greylock regional school for almost two decades and and all told these three women have served children in these communities for 77 years uh i'm not sure that there's uh you know that paraprofessionals and teachers and cafeteria workers don't have statues built in their honor or plaques put up generally but i can tell you in terms of making real impact on the hearts and minds of of children over a combined 77 years we we should all in our heads and our hearts be putting up a plaque for these fine fine public servants so

109thank you to all of them and congratulations and many many years of a happy retirement moving forward i don't know christina if the school committee takes any action on that or if we just uh or if anybody wants to say anything okay and any anybody that's known me for any amount of time knows that i can fill any amount of silence ever uh with gusto so uh my report tonight is really broken down into two parts the first part we're going to talk about how we want to handle snow days this year and then the second part is really just an overview and an update of of what we're what we're doing and what we're thinking related to operating school during a pandemic so i sent you in advance the snow day plan i will

110not uh crush you nor anybody from the community watching by reading the entire two pages but i i will tell you just in very short we had a good deal of discussion about how to handle snow days as some of you know in the past the commissioner of education has approved this notion of blizzard bags which are uh pre-prepared pieces of work that went home to students in advance of snow days and this allowed districts to say to families please complete what's in your blizzard bag for this date and we will count that day of school uh that struck me you know we have a in a normal year we have 180 days to educate student students every one of those 180 days is precious and important and we need to treat them as such

111so i could never bring myself as a superintendent to jump on to the blizzard bag train however this year with the adeptness that our students and our staff are are showing with remote learning we did opt to to pursue and take advantage of the commissioner's offer to look at snow days as remote learning days however we we know that for some families and in some districts maybe even many families a snow day is kind of like a gift from out of nowhere uh you know those of us of a certain age probably remember listening to the radio or tuning in to the tv station and just hoping and praying that the scroll would show our school or that the dj or the morning news announcer would announce our school uh so we we opted to

112pursue splitting the difference so between now and february 19th which is the end of winter break we would like to treat any snow days called between now and february 19 as remote learning days principals will make the call let families know and that's how we'll be handling that um in addition to that any day that would traditionally be a two-hour delay type of day that gave road crews and the weather a chance to better cooperate to allow safe travel to school and from the parking lots into the schools those days as well will be treated as full remote learning days we will not be holding two hour delays we felt that was just another one more set of gears that needed to enmesh in an already kind of crammed full gearbox as we try to

113get our work done this year for and with students so between now and february 19 snow days will be remote learning days delay days will be remote learning days as well and yes i do feel a slight inordinate amount of pressure being the superintendent in the home of the greylock snow day so you know that is certainly will be weighing on my mind uh on these early mornings after the february break we will look at the next two days which could be weather-related days as traditional snow days that will be made up at the end of the year so for for anybody in the community that's watching uh and we will be communicating this to our families uh with within the next uh few days or early next week but but just our logic behind

114that is that uh the final day of school per the current adopted school calendar we're just looking at is wednesday june 16th um we understand the ramifications of going into the next full week with school were we to have multiple snow days we know that families have vacation plans we know that students have work plans some of them we know that in some cases summer camp has been paid for in advance and um but we we so we don't want to move into the to the week beginning um june 21st so we are going to treat the the first two weather days after february 19 is traditional snow days stay home enjoy the day do whatever you do on a snow day and then any days after those two days are used if those two

115days are used we will be back to remote learning days uh so this this sort of allowed us to split the difference to some degree to to uh honor our desire to not go too deep into june with uh with school that really the core of our conversation was is a remote learning day more valuable for student instruction or is a day late in june when nobody wants to be in a building a more powerful day instructionally for students and our our administrative team our consensus was that the remote learning days are a better investment of instructional time and energy than a day as we approach the the last couple of weeks so that is that is our plan for snow days i don't know if by tradition you need to vote on that uh

116and certainly we would welcome that and welcome that as an endorsement but we certainly wanted to make you aware before we communicate that to our uh the families that we serve kerry so it might be worth noting and correct me if i'm wrong about this but the the commissioner of education um is giving leeway just for this year is that correct to school committees and administrators to treat snow days as remote learning days this is not setting a precedent for the next decade but is really at this point just to be determined over the course of this this particular winter is that that's absolutely correct carrie this is a uh 2020 2021 only permission by the commissioner to do this he has entered ended the pilot that allowed districts to look at blizzard bags this

117is a one-year okay because it just makes sense in the context of of of this year and we you know again we've been discussing this for the better part of three weeks with with our administrative team and also with the mount greylock educators association uh to to make sure we had um voices heard and it also hurts from some members of the community on on you know the value of of both a traditional gift from the sky snow day and and the gift that is not having to be in school as it approaches 80 and 90 degrees outside but you're correct this is this is for this school year only okay i i i don't believe we are required to have a vote on that um so we'll just michelle did you have a question

118yeah i have a question um i was just waiting to see if anybody else did so i i'm worried about the two-hour delay for one reason and that is that um parents of the younger kids who require supervision um it would seem if you piled all the two hour delays on top of the snow days in some years that's going to be a lot and i feel like when you know our kids aren't full in person already to um add that additional burden onto the parents is um it's just a concern i'd have i you know i'm not saying we we don't do it but um i i think that between that and in potential power outages that could happen i know there it said that when there's widespread power power outage it would be

119a traditional snow day but we do have some people who live in the middle of nowhere and it doesn't take much for their internet to go out so um i may i may be looking at some other people on this committee in that particular scenario so i those are my concerns about increasing the number of remote days that we have i'm sure there are plenty of parents who would argue that um more remote days is is not is not what they're looking for yeah we we would certainly agree with that and thank you for making an important point that that really it will be a judgment call on how many people are are without power based on our early morning uh information that we have access to um anybody that's on the school committee that's

120out of power i think you're just on your own um you know if you chose to live wherever you live um but uh but but seriously yeah we're i think somebody somewhere in our deliberations uh it was suggested to me that last year perhaps mount greylock had five or six or seven two hour delay days uh as a region and so um we we will you know the last the last line of all of this uh and on the second page that the school committee has access to is that we can revisit all of this as needed and if needed and i would suggest that that is one of those areas that that we could potentially be revisiting if if we're you know i i think we probably all have a number in our heads

121at which point are our trigger for okay this is just ridiculous kicks in um and uh so we we will be keeping a very close eye on that joe just to point out one reason why we thought about a two-hour delay a traditional two-hour delay is not being practical is that if if we're going to be learning remotely that is unlike a traditional delay in that staff need to be teaching remote students during that time that that delay would be happening and so the logistical effort to get people from teaching transition to being in school was one of the things that that weighed in favor of declaring it to be a remote day so i think it's just important to keep in mind as a nuance of our current reality thank you yeah that's uh

122as you know michelle and curtis you understand this too and and you know everybody that works in education even higher education um you folks among us and then parents there are just um getting through winter sometimes feels complicated enough and then throw in all of this right now so uh thank you joe for that clarification and this is um i hate to keep using this as a response we used it for you know the concern you expressed about basketball which which is a concern i think we all likely share to to varying degrees snow days delay days all of this sort of falls under that that umbrella of we're we're building a uh we're kind of acting as cartographer on this even as we're we're driving the bus down the road uh and trying to

123figure all of this out um if there's no are there any further questions on snow days delays um okay so i will move in then to uh really the the covid learning updates and the principles um thankfully did exactly what i knew they would do which is uh to update you on some of the finer points i'm going to approach at least tonight and i'm happy to send with you what i'm what i'm going to be sharing with you here this evening i'm happy to share this document with you so if you can bear with me just for a few minutes while i go through this and then certainly as always questions and concerns my custom as you will see is to always begin uh important conversation gratitude and i would like to thank the

124entire mou greylock regional community for such a warm welcome to the new person who sort of barged in in the late fall in early november the central office team has simply been wonderful to work with and i'm very grateful to you lanesboro elementary williamstown elementary and mount greylock regional school very warm welcomes uh i observed a class today for about a half an hour it's like watching the teacher teach three students in the room five or six at home one who was in a car watching on a phone and interacting as she was driving as she was being driven home from an appointment it's like watching a master dancer um interpret a a complex piece of choreography uh as the teacher did this with with subject matter that was quite frankly way over my head

125but it was just very uh impressive uh to observe and and thank you to all of the teachers and all of the staff for allowing me into their worlds to see this at work thank you to the mount greylock educators association thank you to the incoming school committee members who we're seeing on the meeting tonight and to the outgoing members and to our students i've met probably 40 or 50 at this point had a great conversation about the uh the merits of the three movies in the home alone series with a group of third graders at williamstown elementary the other day just so you know our consensus was that home alone part one and two were good uh home alone part three was lacking sort of like the godfather uh you know when the kids

126get a little older they will see that and so and then thank you to the many families that i've had an opportunity to interact with through some of the communications that we've sent out i also thank our our colleagues in public service from lanesboro and williamstown for their openness to share their time and thoughts with me as i work to earn their partnership and their trust because that's what's good for the community and that process will continue and i don't use the word honor lightly i may use it often but never lightly it is an honor to be here and to start building our powerful long-term relationship together i think it will benefit students and staff and the entire community and i'm very grateful for the opportunity we're pleased to report that for now we're

127remaining in a hybrid learning model that it does include wednesday as a remote day for all learners we will continue in our hybrid model after we return from thanksgiving if our agreed upon metrics within our memorandum of understanding with the teachers association continued to be met and that is a concern just like the rest of the commonwealth every week as our metrics tick up we grow a little more and more concerned and a little more wary about a host of things including will we be able to continue in-person learning we remain dedicated uh no matter what to three pillars that really have to define our work during the pandemic the first pillar is the social emotional and academic wellness of our students the second pillar is the physical and mental health and wellness of those

128who serve our students our entire staff and the third pillar is the health and safety of the communities that our students and families and staff are all vital parts of at times the work of honoring these three pillars appears and indeed sometimes is contradictory we are guided by expert recommendations from scientists and medical experts however we also must allow our experience and feelings as parents caregivers children ourselves to somebody's children ourselves to inform our medically and public policy-based decisions we confer with each other and with outside experts daily outside experts frequently as we continue to chart the map that will successfully lead our students our staff and our community through doing public education in the time of pandemic the dangers of covet 19 are clear and sadly they're right in our face nearly 1.4 million

129global neighbors have died due to covet 19. the united states is approaching 260 000 deaths and the commonwealth of massachusetts has lost over 10 thousand of its residents over 19. just for a little bit of context berkshire county is home to about 125 000 people total as i said the dangers of coronavirus are right in our face and they're always also in our minds and in our hearts as we do our work all of this said our entire school community is mindful of other dangers and risks that are embedded for students and families within the pandemic there is a reason why communities across america invest millions and millions of dollars every year to educate children in their community children and young people need in-person school the parabola project which is a joint project of a

130radney labs the learning accelerator brigham health at brigham and women's hospital in the harvard t.h chan school of public health suggests that we have to consider other types of risks as we all consider the broad topic of risk during the pandemic nutritional insecurity loss of parental employment lack of access to essential services reduced detection of child abuse and neglect social and emotional impacts and the loss of learning and the creation of learning gaps all constitute a host of other risks that we expose children to through the loss of in-person schooling and that's really the balance that we are spending most of our time and most of our energy on is the cove at risk to health and happiness as a family and the other risks that we know are present and some of which we've

131spoken about tonight so given all of this and given our delicate balancing act that we're all doing as individuals as families as communities and as organizations i do want to share with you tonight you know what we're thinking about here in the mount greylock regional school district central office and in our schools primarily we're thinking of two things what can we do to better support student and staff safety and mitigate coveted transmission risk within our buildings right now and in the future and secondly how can we best support students academically socially and emotionally if and when we need to move to a remote only instructional environment uh thanks to the work of many including uh joe bergeron on screen here tonight and tim sears are our facilities director we have moved forward with the purchase

132and installation of mirv 13 filters in all buildings and so far our systems are handling these filters we closed access to shared playground equipment last week as we saw numbers continue to perk up we are constantly examining how to make lunch safer for middle and high school students and the staff who serve those students lunch is actually one of our greatest areas of concern this includes our concern around lunch includes planning for for a hypothetical reduced in-person schedule that eliminates the need for in-person lunch service but keeps an in-person component to the school day we we're working on that because we feel it may be necessary in the future likewise for our two elementary schools we're looking for ways to promote the safest eating situation possible for students in the student support center at lanesboro

133elementary and we are planning for improvements at williamstown elementary that would allow for a lunch included student support center there should the need arise and again joe i think we'll be speaking about one of those improvements later on here this evening we continue to constantly examine cleaning and purification products and protocols as well we're tracking the number of school uh school community members who are in a contact-based quarantine we've had no positive cases within our schools thus far but we we track very carefully the the contacts of a contact that that does not constitute a reason to take too much action but we still think it's vital information to know and of course we keep our eyes on several different sources for covid19 data some of which are new to me thanks to members of

134this this community in the lanesboro and williamstown community sharing resources that they have and we work with neighboring school districts to ensure that that we at all times understand the emerging county-wide uh picture because we we all know to some degree berkshire county is in some ways like a geographically large small town and of course we work consistently to pursue and remind folks of the basic lessons that the pandemic has taught us wear a mask keep six feet of distance between yourself and other people be thoughtful in gathering getting together and in traveling and pay attention to the frequency of hand washing and hand sanitizing and the quality of hand washing and hand sanitizing we regularly provide messages encouraging the entire school community to please consider all of their friends and neighbors health in making

135decisions about where to go who to be with and what to do we work to model and promote the notions of social responsibility in choosing we over me as these are the attitudes that we really have to have in order to allow us to return to a fuller model of in-person learning and as somebody new to this community this school community and these communities i see a strong sense of that we over me on a daily basis in the way that our students and staff and families respond to masking respond to filling out the health questionnaire every day respond to the notion of staying put for thanksgiving rather than flying traveling etc even as we plan for and look for ways to get more students back for more time including our nuanced student populations and

136youngest students for whom learning gaps are the riskiest we also continue to plan for strategic in-person learning reductions these are this is one of those areas where it seems like we're really contradicting ourselves but we really want to maintain in person for as long as we can even if that means reducing the the days or the hours of in person in order to get out from under some of the practices we're concerned about like eating lunch we plan for how to best provide fully remote instruction and how to transition back and forth in the smoothest ways possible and in ways that uh sorry i think i need to read less and move more um just let me get my lights back on uh we are we are planning to make these transitions that we assume

137we're going to have at some point uh smooth for all involved as smooth as they can be particularly because we know what we're what we're asking of parents as we make these transitions and ask them to get through this school year uh we continue to examine how we can best support the vital work of supporting social and emotional needs for our students and our staff and we examine how we can best support the the vital work of diversity equity belonging and inclusion is this is foundation to really everything that we want to be and want to do as an educational organization this work is ongoing and it will of course be ongoing for uh the remainder of this year and beyond no matter what form we are gathering in to learn we continue to meet

138weekly as an administrative team we continue to meet weekly with the mount greylock educators association executive board and in both of these settings we always err on the side of being open and honest and having open and honest exchanges of concerns worries ears ideas best practices and plan together because we know that frequent and consistent communications and clear and honest communications are always important but they seem to take on a a heightened sense of importance during challenging and downright frightening times uh i am as always as is our entire administrative team very grateful for the feedback that we get in formal ways and in informal ways the give and take that i've had with with families of our students has been vital in helping me understand how to plan and how to facilitate planning among

139our team for some of this work and all of this feedback whether it's a phone call or an email helps us to to be better and to do better and to stay safer because really that's that's what we really have to be about this year making learning happen in the safest way possible and that's uh that's my update i'm of course happy to have uh questions and i apologize for the length of that uh of you having to listen to my voice thank you jake any questions from the committee julia all right it's not actually a question i just wanted to express um my gratitude to you uh the complexity of this situation and stepping in at this time cannot be understated how difficult that must be uh and to come in and have such

140a clear vision for how we need to operate as a district with the priorities that you've outlined um is a real gift to us so thank you thank you the the the team that has been assembled here uh it is complex but but uh walking in and becoming a part of this team is is is what is going to get us through thank you julia anybody else carrie yeah i just also want to say thank you to jake and to the entire administrative team and to the faculty and staff at all of our schools you know it's it's um comforting in a strange way to hear um the broad view given so uh succinctly and um carefully and thoughtfully and it i get the sense that our district is working together um under really you

141know strong leadership that is participatory right that you know that you are you the broad you is working together um collaboratively and as a team and that's the only way that we're gonna make this happen so i appreciate being you know a part of a district like that you know and that's what we're that's what we hope for so thank you for helping to make that happen thank you thank you carrie jose yeah jake i'll second everything that uh carrie just just said i think it's it's uh and you've heard me embarrass myself to you in terms of how grateful i personally am that that you're you're a part of our our community now um the question i have for you is and it's more just uh um almost a request about the um you

142know my my heart melted when you you brought up the the real mission to improve our efforts and diversity equity and inclusion um and you know the number of families in williamstown and lanesboro and our surrounding communities that uh they've experienced several you know um who clearly want to want to see us make an improvement on this front um i think there was an editorial just last week in the echo commenting on this um you have a sense of how how you'd like to involve you know diverse voices for our community to help us support this mission yeah i i i do and thank you for the for the comment and thank you for the question i i found that um you know and maybe it's the the literature degree that my parents were good

143enough to to pay for 30 years ago it leads me to believe this way i think it starts with with leadership and and when i say leadership in this case i i'm going to model this myself because it's vital for me selfishly but i think it's also the way to lead our community in these efforts it starts with meeting individual people individual families and hearing their story it involves a lot of um as my dad used to say on rare occasions he was the sweetest man but my brothers and i all knew when it was time to just um sit down shut up and listen and uh that is that is really one of the ways that i approach my role it's it's going to start with my modeling listening what what the lives and

144experience of of individual uh neighbors is and using that data and then working to generalize that data and and have other people who are in leadership in this in this organization uh do the same thing and and i'll do it as an individual we'll do it together and and and then i think we um and i wasn't quite prepared to roll this out so i rolled out very lightly i think that the work of diversity and equity and inclusion and when we speak about that here now we include the b which is belonging that's why that's why getting to know people and getting to know their story and listening to people uh is so vital and it's why constantly checking as a leadership team and as individuals as we comprise that leadership team our own

145implicit uh our own implicit bias our own um blind spots that we all carry with us uh it's vital without a sense of belonging without a sense of somebody saying i not only am i here but i belong here uh i'm not sure we ever move to inclusion and equity uh and and i would say that this work is so vital for everybody involved that i am going to be suggesting in future that we get professional help to help facilitate it uh because it is uh doing this work in the right spirit is vital but doing this work in the right spirit uninformed by expertise can do more harm for individuals and for the community than it does good and i don't see this as work where we can some of the work of what

146we some of the work we do we can have a false start and we can retreat and retrench and sort of re-roll out uh because this work is so foundational to who we are and what we do and it's so foundational to making sure that everybody that we're here to serve knows that they belong you can't afford a false start you can't afford a wrong start you can't afford we can't afford to do this incorrectly and then and then and then ask for a do-over so that's that's a long answer to your kind of easy question starts with me as a new member of this community listening and learning uh but but then it it has to mushroom out to to really encompass the community jake um did you by chance attend the keynote from

147the mascmass joint conference this year it was a virtual conference i did not i did not the morning keynote was amazing and um it was someone who does bias and diversity training in schools and i'll get the name and i was hoping it was recorded but i think it was proprietary but that's it possible it just made me think of it when you said consultant i was also the wondering about the dyer committee in williamstown i know they had reached out to members of the school committee to see about conversations with the administration at the school i was wondering if you had been able to make any kind of um yes yes i've been in touch actually a a few weeks before i started uh initialized that contact and and we have uh one of

148the folks who helps run the dire committee we we've we've touched base on another matter we've not touched base um on on revisiting uh my beginning to to be a presence there and and how we can continue and carry i don't know the the the keynote that i did see was um the uh mass inc awards in mid-october and the name of their keynote speaker was uh dr amante jackson and um from an organization called deep and uh i am that's where the b in belonging diversity inclusion equity and belonging uh i was utterly you know one of my colleagues from pittsfield was being honored that day for some work that we had done i was knocked out of my seat by the 14-minute online keynote that dr amante jackson delivered and so we have

149reached out to them to discuss uh helping us wrap our our our our heads our hearts and our arms around uh our entire approach to this including a measurable strategic plan uh moving forward but i would love to get the name of the keynote for the m-a-s-s-m-a-s-c conference julian um two quick thoughts um one just as an additional plug product or jackson i've been working doing a lot of work with her in my profession um i not to my benefit like we've been working together side by side and delivering other trainings and i i cannot speak highly enough about i i completely concur with what you're describing um and i just want to put in a plug um if that wasn't one but i want to put in a plug that the school committee um

150be involved in some of that training um because i think we could all benefit as well from that excellent thank you for both of those curtis uh i just wanted to share in in the conversation of the the challenges of raising our game in terms of diversity and inclusivity and belonging uh that the uh lanesboro school council is looking to form a curriculum diversity group that is going to focus on the academic curriculum and ways to integrate social justice racial justice uh humanity and diversity within the common core standards they're just now taking uh applicants for that group but i think that it it will serve us well in the long run to maintain that dual focus of the social emotional uh portion of belonging to our group and the academic strength of bringing more

151inclusivity and representation into our curriculum at every possible turn i think that's a great great group and i'm also curious if i can be on that group and on the school committee now that i think of it is that a thing i can do i don't know the the chair could certainly appoint you as a liaison to that uh to to that group and and i you know curtis you make a i think a really i don't think i know it's a powerful point you know there's there's the things we do overtly and there's the things we are very public about and that we speak about and that we act about um but the curriculum what we invest in in terms of materials that we use to instruct and then some of the ways that

152we choose to present that curriculum that's a an incredibly powerful message to students and to the families of those students about who we are what we value what we believe in and our our is our dedication to the aspirations of every child in the classroom uh is is that equally distributed and we believe in and and will work toward the goal of every child in that classroom reaching their their their highest aspirations so thank you for mentioning that and i i would be negligent not to say that our curriculum director ms bruchner uh is is like you know a dragster at the starting line revving the engines getting up to ridiculous rpms ready for the light to turn green on that um for anybody that likes drag racing metaphors that was for you but that's

153that's where you know we're very fortunate to have that level of leadership well thank you and uh to the chair i'd be happy to serve as a liaison and could contact the group to see if that would be a thing great yeah we are actually going to do a lot of um subcommittee and liaison conversations at our next meeting but absolutely it's fantastic okay any other questions for jake until we move on to our next item great okay so next up on our agenda is appointing the district secretary jake did you want to take lead on this or joe yeah i will be happy to let me find the right document uh to do so would you like me to fill the dead air while you uh joe i would i would welcome that and

154i would encourage you to keep on filling actually general law as a regional school district is required to have a district secretary which is different from the school committee's own secretary um typically the district secretary is the superintendent of schools for the regional school district given that we have a brand new superintendent um it makes a lot of sense to go on ahead and if people are amenable move a motion to appoint jake mccandless jason mccandless as the district secretary for mount greylock regional school district anyone like to make that motion i moved shall move so i have a second julia curtis i don't know who wins we'll say julia second any further discussion all in favor roll call vote alphabetically please owen connery i constantine eye elephant eye green eye johnson i thank you

155and steve had to step away for a little bit but he will be back that motion passes thank you so moving on to appointment of treasurer and assistant treasurer joe did you want to talk about this item too or jake you know you can go this this is a uniquely regional school thing so i will ask uh joe if he would mind filling in the blanks on this one sure so our our current and um as far as the administration is concerned uh hopefully future treasurer and assistant treasurer are donna neri as treasurer and brenda rondo as the assistant treasurer within a regional school district the the treasurer serves a pretty important person a pretty important place being literally the the check and the balance for um money being spent and money coming into the

156district um they are independent separate from the the business manager who who might be pushing an agenda of of internal sorts whereas the treasurer is supposed to be that person who is who reports to the to the school committee as far as um revenue in money out and serves the will of the school committee in that regard so tonight what we are putting forward is um if the school committee is amenable to move that donnery continues to act as a treasurer and brenda rondo continues to act as the assistant treasurer for mount greylock regional school district thank you do i have a motion to approve donna nary as treasurer and brenda rondo as an assistant treasurer julia julia moves do i have a second second curtis seconds any further discussion all in favor o and

157i conrey i constantine eye elf and vine eye green eye johnson i thank you that motion passes next up is to appoint our records access officer um joe what is the best way to explain the records access officer i'll be happy to take this one since that's great the recommendation is that joe fill that role uh you know obviously really all of our documents that that we create are our public records because we are a publicly funded organization and subject to open meeting law and a host of other mass general laws so districts are uh required to appoint a point a single point of contact that serves as the conduit for for records requests the freedom of information act requests from uh from our colleagues in the press uh and other types of requests sometimes

158it's uh researchers sometimes it is the press and it can be individual uh citizens and residents so um we would recommend that joe serve in that capacity thank you i have a motion to appoint joe bergeron as the record of this officer sure before that that seems really unusual to appoint the business manager or business administrator as the records officer we've had the district um i don't know what stacy's role is stacy was doing it i thought for a while and then our human resources person was doing it for a while um it can be a tremendous amount of work at times and i would be very hesitant to put that on to joe given all of his other responsibilities carrie i would agree in most circumstances and i think the the completion of those

159tasks when they are large tasks certainly jonathan knopper will be assisting um we we have stacy we'll be assisting carol uh another member of our central office team here will be assisting i will be assisting rob wonneck uh from from technology will be assisting uh i really requested joe to consider serving in this capacity he is he has this unique qualification of having been in your seats once upon a time and in the chair's seat once upon a time has a long history in this community and i would totally agree that that this is this is unusual uh but i i do promise to you and i as i promised to joe uh to get him to consider this that this is joe will serve as our point of entry he will not serve as

160the lone person actually completing any tasks associated with this position that will very very much be a team effort julia all right i'd like to prove that we appoint joe uh records access officer okay do i have a second i'll second that thank you curtis any further discussion i'm sorry go ahead michelle does joe want this job yes i'm i'm i'm a okay with doing it um i i think it's it is true that that in the current state of the district i'm often in the best position to know where information might be found or who to speak with in order to get that information um and that means that oftentimes those routes end up going through me just as by default anyway so i think this role is one that i feel comfortable with

161there are other business administrators in the state that serve this role and in berkshire county i believe and and so it's not although it's unusual it's not um it isn't as though it's a bad thing for someone in my role to do so just correct me it sounds like you're essentially the gatekeeper it comes into you and then it will be filtered out if it's not i mean i would think if it's a cumbersome task then it would have to be shared the the gatekeeper the point of contact the person who's responsible for making sure a response happens and that it's as accurate as the district can make it hey any further discussion julia i just wanted to echo i i don't know if it's normal or not to carry's point but i feel both

162confident in joe and i have seen it a lot it is um i don't know the whole state but i know it is thank you okay all in favor oh and i panry eye constantine eye elephant eye green eye johnson i okay thank you that motion passes next up on our agenda is business administrator update so i will turn it over to joe yes thank you all and i apologize for the lengthy a through g here tonight um this this will not be the norm um right now we're in a situation where we've been operating without not only a school committee but also a finance subcommittee for the last three plus weeks so we have a backlog of things in some situations things that are time sensitive that we need to try to get through

163the norm is for the finance subcommittee to review most or all of this prior to it coming to the full school committee so or in some situations for the finance subcommittee to actually its members to handle these processes all on their own so this is not this is not normal but it's not normal for good reason this one time the first item on the update here is the warrants review and approval process currently the school committee has authorized the chair of the finance subcommittee to sign all warrants with the expectation that there will be a schedule of finance subcommittee meetings timed to the payroll schedule to provide a forum for a discussion of the warrants prior to signature that is a motion and a practice that the school committee put into effect in the spring

164given the current situation the state that we are in without a chair of the finance subcommittee able to perform that duty for the last few weeks one of the things that i would like to do is to ask the committee to move a motion tonight to and the first part is identical to the practice of the committee in the past the second part is in addition to that practice which is authorize the chair of the finance subcommittee to sign all warrants with the expectation that there will be a schedule of finance sub-committee meetings timed to the payroll scheduled to provide a forum for a discussion of the warrants prior to signature if the chair of the finance subcommittee is unavailable due to extraordinary circumstances another member of the finance subcommittee is authorized to do the

165same the chair of the school committee is authorized to sign warrants if all members of the finance subcommittee are unavailable that motion if moved and passed would allow us to deal with the situation where the chair of the finance subcommittee was unavailable but we still needed to get warrants signed in a timely manner and if all three members of the finance subcommittee were unavailable the chair of the full school committee would be able to execute the warrants still holding that there would need to be a timely schedule as timely as possible for the finance subcommittee to complete a review of warrants per the normal procedures so if the committee is amenable to that that was something that i wanted to propose given our current circumstance but it's certainly not something that the committee needs to

166do if it does not choose to do so curtis can i ask is there a specified window of time between uh the initial ask to the chair of the finance subcommittee to sign a warrant and when that would revert to the chair of the school committee to do so like do you know what i'm saying i i did not get down to that granularity within this possible motion i can speak to past practice as far as what the timing has typically looked like for the chair of the finance subcommittee in signing warrants we have tried to schedule finance subcommittee meetings every two weeks to align with the warrant cycle that exists for both payables and payroll we try to make sure that the finance subcommittee is able to do its discussion and review of the

167warrants and then the finance subcommittee chair executes those warrants immediately following that meeting if at all possible thank you would yes carrie so it sounds like this extra provision joe is for cases like this where you know we're transitioning from one well cases like this but then also cases where the finance subcommittee may not be able to meet in any given month or uh or in one two week stretch or there's the warrants aren't available and or for whatever reason so i mean there are maybe a few contingencies it sounds like it's not something that we absolutely have to do but i don't see a problem with it so i would i would support the motion that joe proposed okay would anyone like to second the motion second okay moved by green seconded by curtis

168sorry i keep switching back from first names and last names i apologize any further discussion all in favor owen i connery i constantine i open vine eye green eye johnson eye thank you that motion passes right so the next item is warrants review again that this is a process that normally the finance subcommittee would be doing this and the finance subcommittee chair would would execute them immediately following with items one through three there payroll and a kind accounts payable over the last three weeks have been uh pretty standard i i don't think there is anything to immediately call your attention to the mgrs school building warrants i will call attention to that indicating that on september 24th that warrant and its details was reviewed and recommended by the sbc finance subcommittee during their meeting on

169september 24th so that one has been reviewed by the school building committee's finance committee and recommended to the full commit full committee for approval this warrants review process is not something where where you need to vote but it is open for discussion as to whether or not you have any questions about the warrants that were placed into the packet for review no questions should i keep on moving on in the agenda yes sir all right uh finance subcommittee reorganization um as the chair indicated earlier the plan is for the majority of subcommittees and liaisons from this committee to be determined in early december during the december 8th meeting the finance subcommittee is one subcommittee that we need to have up and running before then if at all possible so that is why that subcommittee is

170on this agenda tonight and then i will hand it back to you so once again my my mouse just died sorry about that um yeah so i would like to make a recommendation for the makeup of the finance subcommittee um i would recommend carrie greene i would i don't know if i i believe i can recommend her as chair and the reason why i would recommend carrie as chair is she is she was a part of the finance subcommittee in its iteration um just recently and therefore she's really the senior member of the finance subcommittee uh i would like to recommend our new member michelle johnson to the finance subcommittee she has a really keen eye for budget detail if you've ever gone to a lanesboro town meeting or even our own school committee budget

171meetings you know of her keen eye and input there and i would recommend stephen miller who has served on the finance committee multiple times in the past so would someone would someone like to make a motion to move that carrie michelle and steve be the members of the finance subcommittee i would gladly do that okay julia moves do i have a second second curtis seconds do the members that are here accept the nomination to be on the finance subcommittee um yeah i accept is there anybody else who wanted to be on the finance subcommittee even julia's tone i'm except i'm guessing no [Laughter] no from julia curtis or jose no no then i yes i accept okay thank you any further discussion all in favor oh and i connery i constantine i opened by an

172eye green eye johnson eye thank you that motion passes we have our finance subcommittee set up all right so the next step was the school building committee slate update um as you all know we still have a mount greylock regional school building project that is [Music] rapidly approaching the the closeout phase as a result we need a school building committee still uh within the school committee the reason this subcommittee of the and it's not a typical subcommittee but the reason this committee of the school committee is on the agenda tonight is that the msba specifically asks that we try to get this done as quickly as we can so that it gets into their record books for who the current school building committee is as a result you have in your packet a proposed school

173building committee composition uh the only changes to this slate are the new committee members replacing the school committee members who have departed and the new superintendent as the local chief executive officer and representative of office authorized by a lot of construct school so if the committee is willing they can move to accept the slate as presented or modify the slate in some way i'll move this late as presented carrie moves do i have a second julia seconds any further discussion fall in favor oh and i connery eye constantine eye elephant by an eye green eye johnson eye thank you that motion passes all right next up uh williamstown elementary school williams capital gift use approval early in the month we were planning on using this for a couple different uses that i think dr mccandless

174alluded to during his conversation with the committee um but but we have since simplified this so what um but for to to close that loop one of the projects that we currently have underway covet associated is adding ventilation to the dining area of the williamstown elementary school cafeteria um it's uh it's a topic that we carry pretty significant discussion on uh throughout the summer the cafeteria was designed at williamson elementary school so that it essentially the dining area piggybacked off of the extreme ventilation in the kitchen as opposed to having ventilation of its own that was a little bit of a peculiar design choice especially given our current state of being very interested in how many air changes per hour are we seeing through that dining area so in the interest of time earlier this

175month we did find other covid related grant funds to be able to push forward with a product project to try to get the ventilation work going as quickly as we possibly could what that leaves for this agenda item is only a bit of cleanup from an authorization that the school committee had made in october of 2019 on october 8th of 2019 the school committee had authorized use of the williamstown elementary school capital gift from williams college for jamrog hvac which you have an invoice here in your in your packet totaling nineteen thousand two hundred and ninety dollars the work uh jamrock did that work they submitted this invoice um in late september and we are only now getting this before you here in november and so in the interest of getting them paid and us

176being able to close out that project that had started in 2019 the school committee had authorized the use of the funds in 2019 now this is similar to the way the warrants process happens this is just authorizing the check to actually go out the administration is indicating that that work was completed jam rog did a great job and we're ready to move forward but what would happen here is the school committee would move a motion to accept the invoice as presented and to pay jamrog hvac 19 290 out of the williams college capital gift to williamstown elementary school can i ask what what did they actually do what was the project uh the venmar wheel is uh it's the replacement of a the component within the hvac system that pushes air through the ductwork and

177again that was a conversation and an authorization that the school committee had carried on on october 8th of 2019 which predates right so it was pre-coveted this was just something that had to get done and this is a invoice that's been sitting around and needed to get processed okay yes i will move that this be processed as needed wait carrie moves do i have a second julia seconds any further discussion i just if there's a quick answer this would be great if there isn't um for a later discussion then once the school committee has approved an expense to be incurred um we also then have to approve the bill getting paid like it feels like if we've approved the expense and the administration signs off that it's happened they should be able to pay the

178vendors the process that's in place here is parallel to the school committee approving a budget at the beginning of a year and then needing to authorize disbursement of the funds throughout the year with the warrants process that cycles twice every month so it's a it's a double double bit of accountability there i i would add we don't actually know the cost until we get the invoice right so we're approving the expense but then we're also approving the fact that it may have cost what was estimated it may not have but we're still paying it thank you for those explanations any other discussion all in favor oh and i connery i constantine eye elf and i rene johnson i thank you that motion passes all right the the last weighty item uh mount greylock regional school

179multipurpose building closeout this is a request for payments from the williams college gift to mount greylock regional school for the purpose of constructing the multi-purpose admin building that was constructed between february and september of this year this series of invoices detailed here in total brings a close to that project so these are the final final payments on that project they are all in line with the commitments that the school committee had previously made and and i'll also add that the dj tierney as our general contractor on this project they dealt remarkably well with the two-pronged pains that that covet brought both in keeping their staff safe and and getting them through the project and all of their subcontractors but also the the crazy things that happen with their supply chain they they made numerous adjustments

180on the truck on the fly trying to make sure that they got all the materials that they needed to on site to complete the project in a somewhat timely manner um they didn't do it somewhat timely they actually did it ahead of schedule and and it was really amazing to see so i have a lot of appreciation for tierney's work locally and and their contributions within this project specifically so what i will be asking the committee to do is to authorize the disbursement of a total of 149 866 dollars and 62 cents from the williams college gift to mount greylock regional school as described in the request for payments in the packet material so moved carry moves do i have a second second curtis seconds discussion carrie yeah i'd just like to thank joe for

181shepherding the this project to its ending i think you weren't quite wasn't quite clear what was happening when at certain times and you just dove right into it and moved it along to completion so thank you for the time and effort and energy that you put into that in your organizational skills very much paid off thank you carrie thank you joe any further discussion all in favor aye connery i constantine eye elephant eye green eye johnson eye you there steve he looks frozen yes hi thank you that motion passes thank you that was a close to a really great team effort um tim sears robonook the custodial staff and they've all been it's amazing the degree to which they take care of these buildings and the construction of these buildings as though they are their

182own um they they bleed for them they sweat for them um the the the custodian who takes care of this building right now is always the first one to walk around and say did you notice the you know and and it's like the littlest things the the smallest little details and that that dedication to taking care of of everything that we have and all of us is it's inspiring daily so i'm really thankful for the opportunity to be a part of that team so fy22 budget timeline um this is something where uh dr mccandless and i have been working together for the last few weeks oftentimes we have been focused on what is uh directly in front of us instead of what is looking out uh farther weeks or or months but i think we're

183we're just about at the point now where while we still continue to do that incredibly um carefully we are gearing up to figure out what our budget timeline can be in this year uh especially as we're dealing with all the uncertainty around what the next school year might look like what the what are two towns capacities to contribute will look like going forward um we're going to try to put our heads together over the next couple weeks prior to the next meeting of the school committee to be able to walk into that meeting with a timeline that we think we can really hang our hats on that will respect all of the needs that we have in terms of incorporating the school council's review and feedback on draft budgets collaborating with talent with the towns

184in in the appropriate manner and trying to get the school committee as versed in all of the details and the trade-offs that that we might make uh as we try to put a budget forward for fy22 so you'll see a whole lot more from us from uh on december 8th but right now we want to at least touch on it tonight to not let it let it pass into december without at least putting that note on the budget development for next year carrie would it make sense joe to try to review something at a finance committee meeting between now and the december 8th meeting yes that would be ideal okay so we can be in touch about how that the scheduling yep great any other questions for joe on that okay i think you're off

185the hook for now joe next up on the agenda is the masc annual meeting update and i'm going to turn this over to carrie it looks like there are some interesting votes i don't know if you want to summarize some of what happened yeah i don't necessarily i mean you have all the resolutions um in in the packet um what i really wanted to mention is that um in all the time that i've been on the school committee this is the first time that we've actually had a delegate um to the masc m-a-s-s joint conference so that's the massachusetts association of school committees and superintendents joint conference it's usually held in hyannis we often send people to attend the conference and go to the various workshops and it's very valuable but going as a delegate

186this year um it was really interesting because i had an opportunity to serve on the board of the masc so i knew a little bit more about the legislative agenda of that particular board and i would just say that it's something that um i i would recommend are putting it on to the master calendar in september let's say the resolutions are usually i think the resolutions are published in august um often they come to the committee one by one that we can vote on them and support them but once they're all published by the masc it would be great to have the committee our committee talk about them and give direction to whoever the delegate is next year that they could bring it back to um that that delegates assembly and if a committee wants

187to propose a resolution that is always an option and if a committee wants to amend a resolution that is also an option so it's just um you know it's a way for us in berkshire county to be involved at the state level and we call upon the masc for training um but it's also a way for us to give back i think to an organization that we really rely on uh for support at various times so that's mostly what i wanted to talk about great thank you okay next up on the agenda is the mount greylock regional school fields proposal from perkins eastman next steps and i apologize joe i am going to pass this back to you momentarily sure so uh october 16th the school committee had um passed a motion that that requested

188the administration reach out to perkins eastman and get a proposal from them that would allow the district to move forward with the process of putting a synthetic turf field based project out for bid with the brockfill product being an integral part of that and with the track being an ad alternate on that project and so the request was that we go out we asked perkins eastman to submit a proposal that would allow the district to go through that process that would involve doing some refining of the bid package that had gone out last fall it would involve taking the district through a a rapid value engineering process to potentially be able to remove some items from the project and then allow the district to get that out onto the street for betting within what perkins

189eastman deemed as the the peak season for getting good prices within bid responses of february march of this coming year so based on that motion and vote i reached out to perkins eastman they they started working on the proposal for reasons that i do not completely understand despite repeated follow-up they just submitted that proposal this afternoon at 206 pm or thereabouts and i immediately forwarded it to um to the committee um so it's it is uh late arriving and i apologize for that but it's i also did the best that i could under the circumstances um so that is what is in front of you here as a late addition to the packet today that's my update thank you carrie so i wonder if we want to send this to the finance committee for review

190um [Music] i definitely think that the committee needs more time to digest this document we we did receive it it didn't fall into our you know at least 48 hours of review so there's validity for everyone including the finance subcommittee to to to look at this deeper is anyone is everyone in agreement michelle yeah i can say i i didn't see it till right now yeah so can we actually take a minute and schedule a finance committee meeting next week um since so steve you're you you were appointed to the finance committee is that okay i saw that from christina yes that's absolutely fine okay um so does next thursday work for people joe did you want to keep it on thursdays or did you want to move it to a different day of the

191week thursday works works as well as any other right now so that would be december 3rd oh i thought we were talking about this thursday no we're not talking about this thursday i think that's dedication december 3rd works okay michelle what is your time frame like um uh four o'clock is probably the earliest i can do if that's what you're looking for okay i don't have a time constraint in the evening just four o'clock i can make any time work okay is there a time that's particularly good for anybody so joe you you usually leave around that time for 4 30 or i am i am totally open to whatever the committee okay desires here let's say december 3rd thursday december 3rd at 4 pm will be our first meeting and we already know that

192we have this document and is that enough time to start talking about a budget timeline it's definitely enough time to to talk about a budget timeline i'm not sure how many actual numbers yeah yeah i i would have but um yeah but but talking through the the necessities of the budget process this year okay great so i'll work with you to get an agenda together and then we'll get a zoom link out to our members great okay thanks thank you okay next up is discussion on reserving a portion of the gift for the mount greylock regional school renewal fund this um joe i don't know if you want to talk historically about this piece and why it's on the agenda right now we have discussed it numerous times at this point but i don't know

193if you want to give a history or um what your thoughts are on that uh reserving a portion of this gift as a renewal fund has been one of the consistent verbal commitments and efforts by the committee over the years since the gift was was originally pledged in 2016 and given in 2017. the amount to reserve has it started as 1.5 million dollars that conversation has become more fluid over the last few years to be honest just to represent the the way the committee has taken those conversations [Music] and at the end of the day one of the positions that i think is important to keep in mind is that the this gift is the only way that the district has funds that are invested in anything more than a bank account the college is

194management of its endowment and the way that grows over time is something that is incredibly valuable and should not be squandered because it's a it's a rare gift for any school district to receive but that's that's my opinion but it's grounded in the facts around the college's endowment and um what it means to have a gift of this sort was that what you were yes thank you carrie so i would just add to that um that the um the original thinking when the gift was received was that there were you know lots of different things there was a list of 10 items um a number of those were incorporated into the the building project this gift was really meant to be for things outside the scope of the building project to alleviate the necessity of

195the towns having to pay for things when we brought the parking lot into the project for about a million two um the thinking was that that amount could be set aside as something akin to what the williamstown elementary school had in this williams gift that was given also when that building was built because the college couldn't participate in that project they gave this gift it ballooned because of the williams endowment and is now being used is now being tapped for capital expenses um so i think it actually started out as like a million two and then it was a million five and then it was a million and there never really was a decision i mean there was a recommendation there was a formal recommendation from the finance subcommittee um for a million five but

196it never made it to the floor of the school committee the school committee has has opted to delay an actual vote on um put setting money aside we don't technically have the power to you know tell a school committee in the future that they can't touch the money i think it it's more a commitment that the towns have both asked us to make a show of good faith right to say that we are committed to not using up the funds to treating the three point is it 3.7 million that we have left you know with respect that we um commit to um you know setting aside enough money that um you know ten years from now there will be significant dollars to use whether it's for the fields or the building or um you know

197a new roof or any any other large capital expenses so one one position is to say we're gonna we know we can set aside we're pretty sure based on the estimates we can set aside a million dollars now and just say we're not going to touch that and that's going to frame the phase 2 project the fields project right that whatever we spend we're not gonna go into that million dollars that we're setting aside another or a million two or a million five whatever that is another way of thinking about it is to not constrain that fields project but to wait and see how those bids come in um you know maybe we really want to do that track as an ad alternate and maybe that's going to start to infringe upon that million reserve

198that we said we would you know put aside so to not constrain um until we actually have have paid all of the bills and then whatever is left from this fields project if we go forward with the fields projects we that's not a guarantee if we go forward with the fields project whatever is left won't be touched and to really try to you know ourselves and future committees um to leave that until it can you know grow into a substantial resource for the school we do have other funds we do have you know school choice we have um tuition funds we have the um um blanking on it i always blank on it the the other fun that can go up to you know e and d in thank you excess and deficiency i could

199keep coming wanting to say desi but they're all they all have different purposes right um and so they're they're these various pots of money and i think what joe was referring to is that this is the only one that will grow this is not one that's going to sit and you know be there for when we need it um so it has been a a a discussion point for for many many months and i'm happy to just leave it for now i mean not not actually vote on it tonight but it is something that i think the the town bodies of government are kind of waiting for us to make good on that commitment at some point um that's the feedback that we've gotten from the select boards and one of the town finance committees

200jose as you can imagine there's a lot of catching up that i have to do but the um question i have is is uh just uh to make sure i understand what a vote potential vote would mean is it does it mean that it's a commitment by this committee almost like as you said uh um carry a almost a good faith uh a statement of good faith that we uh plan to reserve a portion of the gift for future capital expenses and and renewal renewal projects is that is that what this vote would mean it's not necessarily a binding vote it sounds like it's not even binding for this committee or any future committee but it's a it's a um an act of good faith statement is that is that the way to read this

201i think it is a show of commitment joe i don't know that's my understanding we would be voting to set this money aside we would be assuring the towns that were um that we are acting in good faith and we're being responsible especially in present condition you know but i don't know if cary if you have a different understanding or joe that is i agree with carrie any decision by the committee is one that a future committee could alter from everything that i know so i i don't i don't have anything else to add there yeah just a follow-up sorry christina go ahead okay um do you have a sense or could you could you maybe this is something for the the finance committee um to report back on and what what a number should

202look like in terms of what is held in reserve you know something giving some appreciation of what three to six percent or whatever the typical endowment appreciation rates are of what what would be an ideal number to cover five 10 20 years into the future capital expenditures renewal projects are you asking me that question yes sir okay just want to double check uh i i think in order to get a finer potential point on a topic like that we will need more time internally um the fact that and and this is something that we've been spending time on over the last couple months amidst everything else the fact that the mount great lake regional school build was a phased ad renault we do have a number of parts of the building the renovation that are

203legacy um you know our boilers in the area surrounding them um there are decent chunks of that area of the building that are renovated not not brand new um that factors into it um the high levels of automation that we have within our building you know it's it's state of the art um it also means that we're already encountering challenges and costs that people were not encountering with buildings that were constructed 15 or 20 years ago what we need to do at a minimum i think over the course of this year beyond what has already been done and and there was a lot of legwork already done is to really try to take a look at our our planned renewal for major elements of the building and what that looks like and and i think

204that that will help the school committee know what it's in for in terms of the the roof in x years um flooring and y years you know things that are wear items things that we already know will go along with what we've learned about the building over the last few years and operating within it and seeing control systems and other and other elements going far earlier than any of us would like them to so that's a short answer or that's a long way of saying no i don't have a great number for you at the moment steven i think i saw your hand up next yeah i was just going to say that i do like the idea of postponing this until we have more information about other stuff while it may not be binding

205to future school committees i do think if we set aside money that is something that future school committees will consider very seriously and the last thing i want to say is that we've had a little bit of a drip drip drip drip drip where we have been using these funds to pay for a lot of things over the past couple of years and so when we're trying to decide how much money to set aside it's important to remember that we've already used this gift to pay for a lot of things that have been happening okay so pr sort of process question do we continue to in you know br do we bring the two items that do we just keep bringing these two items back to the next agenda until we haven't find them to

206finance just send them to finance okay well i think you know the the previous committee had put this um the the whole fields project thing into the finance subcommittee and this also seems like a fine i mean we don't have a long term we don't have a long term finance subcommittee as opposed to uh you know it's all in in one committee right now i think maybe it's worth thinking about um how we wanted it rest but to start it in finance or to to send it back to finance and keep it all together right now seems to make sense um especially because that's where the original motion still sits um for that that 1.5 and i think we should go back and look at that motion i think you know um jamie art who

207was the chair of the finance subcommittee at the time and regina delago who was on the finance subcommittee jamie made a reference to the fact that they really did a lot of calculating to determine that number it didn't just come out of thin air and i personally would like to go back and look at the minutes from those meetings and the notes and why they came at that number in particular what the rationale was um because i think that's one of the things that may have fallen through the cracks um with all the the various transitions over the last year or so okay so we'll kick that item to the finance committee too and if you have something you'll bring it forward to the full committee great okay anything else on that agenda item [Music]

208jose all right just uh a request maybe um just just making sure that's trying to find the right words here but i think if if joe or maybe the finance subcommittee someone could report back to us in terms of what you know expected you know in terms of the legacy costs you know in terms of the maintenance of of like legacy parts of of the current building and and you know what what we can reasonably foresee is as future renewal and capital improvement cost what they what they might look like um i think would be helpful thank you okay next up on the agenda upcoming meetings so our next um regularly scheduled school committee meeting which is not actually happening on our regular day is december 8th and um it's a tuesday and then we

209have a special session school committee on december 22nd which is also a tuesday we're working around um holidays which is why they fall on um not their typical second thursday and fourth thursday of the month okay i do not have any other business um so i would ask for a motion to adjourn a movie a turn t moves and michelle seconded any further discussion hearing on the all in favor connery i constantine eye elephant eye green eye johnson eye happy thanksgiving thank you everyone we are adjourned at 8 19 and i'm only slightly behind my predicted end time of 7 30. very optimistic thank you everyone so much i hope you have a great evening happy thanksgiving everybody you do curtis