MGRSD School Committee 10/22/2020

001[Laughter] uh hey robert and how are you master turnover i'm good one more meeting and i'm done no this one and then the whatever the the multi-meeting thing is for a new committee member just so everyone knows this is a recording and you will oh yes oh it's been too long yeah i gotta say geology we have to stop meeting like this chain shirts hal you really are gonna miss this you will just true you're gonna enjoy the quiet in florida for a month and then you're going to wish you were back in the fray the guy that kept hitting his hands with a hammer and the reason he did it because it feels so good when he stops there's a good country song about how you're gonna miss this and it's it's more about

002like kids and stuff but i feel like school companies are the same way yeah there's something to that that you know but that's something too although when i retired i never went back you know i never went back into school or anything rob you don't know anything about that um no no it's all right the peanut gallery is done now i have no problem with bonding and separating you know sent those kids right to college and even know about it how can you miss them if they won't go away i currently have a 35 year old who moved back home yeah i have baby rob what who has me been i have a five-year-old who said that when coronavirus is over she's moving away where's she going joe she doesn't want all the rules i

003love it be clear about that [Music] oh you mean jason okay how welcome aboard dr mccandless is here thank you he's in the house i am in a house so um when the next meeting starts you've got to remember just report it back from decimator one all right so this is the thing we're missing some members channel here with you do you think we can hear the willingness crew do they know that we can hear them almost all the meetings go out over is that rob that's willingness [Music] christina should i go ahead and mute them are you trying to call i'm muted so joelle you're not muted i guess i'm not muted so you don't have to hear my cozy corner order i'll meet myself i recommend the wings so uh we have a

004slight um delay uh christina christina's uh internet connection dropped she'll be back in just a moment in order to start can you sing while we were wait rob i would like to read i'm in the office so i can't i did i did not bring my guitar here with me i should have brought it it's just i don't have a piano either although i have to tell you that my favorite way to start the day was listening to the mount crealock band this morning as they played outdoors behind the school it was just the best way to start a day they sounded great is there perhaps another school member school committee member who could step into uh right now it does not seem as though is steve here he's the vice chair he could just

005start yes i'm here do you want me to start things oh yeah christina's back we just have bad wi-fi so i keep the video off okay i am so sorry um my internet is ridiculous and i am now trying a hot spot that is too much that it belongs to my children so let's see if that works i apologize everyone's here thank you i would like to call the mount greylock regional school district school committee to order it's thursday october 22nd 2020 and it is now 6 03 pm per governor baker's order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law mgl c30a section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access the school committee meeting at mount greylock regional school district our mission is to create a community of learners working together in

006a safe and challenging learning environment that encourages restorative based processes respect inclusive diversity courtesy integrity and responsibility through high expectation and cooperation resulting in lifelong learning and personal growth next up on our agenda are principal updates although allow me to introduce just to start so we can sit make sure for those of you who don't are not looking at the agenda i just take a quick opportunity to describe this this evening we're going to start with the principal updates which are for the school improvement plans which are going to be started uh the order will be the lanesboro williamstown and then mount greylock then we're going to do home school numbers followed by special education ell and title 1 updates and then a school reopening report focused on the survey results so that's basically the

007the how we're moving forward and we're going to start with the school improvement plans and although guidance on disney website in regard to school councils incorrectly states the school committees approve uh the school improvement plans that's incorrect mgl's chapter 69 section one all and 59c as well both as well as cmr 2.03 section 7 clearly put the responsibility of approving plans in the hands of the superintendent after consultation with the school committee so there we have it we are beginning with lanesboro now am i allowed to share my screen or no indeed okay i know some people like the visual can i have access to share the screen please yes i thought that was all set up here we go all set up now excellent thank you so we have four goals this year um

008and i believe they are all equally important but you have to put them in order because that's how people like things um so the first goal is to continue to improve the technology curriculum and pedagogy to increase and sustain student engagement in the remote learning environment there's a lot of words on this page you don't have to read them all i broke it down to some steps that we were taking to keep it concise and quick we're going to work on professional development getting teachers training on google classrooms cso ixl alexia because we all these great platforms we can utilize in person and remotely we're also going to collect data i think jabal is going to talk about the some of the data we collected already to see how the impact of remote learning went

009and how we were doing in the hybrid model and then the last thing we're going to do is continue to reflect and create asynchronous learning opportunities for students to succeed when they're in that async asynchronous part of the day should i stop goal by goal and take questions or wait till the end all right i'll wait till the end goal too is we're gonna focus on creating a social continue to work on a social emotional curriculum meeting the needs of all learners specifically students that have experienced or continually experiencing trauma with a focused on focused attention on the coven 19 impact so at the beginning of the first 10 days when we had professional development our school counselor did professional development for the staff about how to talk to students that have had impacts they're

010going continually going through the impact of coven 19 we're also going to do a universal screener for all students to make sure no one falls through the cracks socially emotionally and then we are also having classes meet with our counselor at least once a week as a whole group she does see students individually and small groups but now every student has at least 20 minutes of face time with a counselor this year our third goal is to develop an anti-racist curriculum um for our school and the goal is this we're gonna get stakeholders from the community teachers and caregivers to come together to talk about what lanesboro needs in curriculum to teach diversity acceptance and being culturally aware i think it's going to start this is going to be a longer process we're going to

011build it from the ground up to make sure it really has an impact at lanesboro with the community and within the school but this year we're going to focus on getting some presenters in the school to talk about anti-racist ideas and appreciating diversity we're going to look at text and curriculum to make sure that it is appropriate for the age level and then we will continue to practice restorative justice as we go through um lastly data-driven goal so i want to have a data-driven goal however we did not get a lot of data until last friday the um 16th all the students completed the track my progress assessment on this by the 16th we have preliminary preliminary data and just like all these other goals the school council need i want them to have a

012say i want them to see it before i present it to anyone so we have some preliminary data but the school council has not seen it yet so that is coming out that will be added as we move forward throughout the school year so i just spoke really fast for a short amount of time do you have any questions i have a quick control here all right let's hear it uh on your second goal what what is on your second goal what instrument are you using it is the b-e-s-s um i don't know what it stands for i left the guidance counselor i think so in the the wellness committee over this summer that was started like that was working together for the reopening um of the schools talked about having a mental health screener

013and it was selected to be the bess which is probably some acronym for something so that's a great question i don't know i'm sorry let's put you on the show do you want me to chime in quick sure um it is um it's a pearson standardized assessment and it's the basque which is a behavior assessment scale for children and bess stands for behavioral and emotional screening system so it's a universal screen that can be administered to children ages 3 to 18 years old and our school psychologists are spearheading that thank you ellie i also had a quick question on that goal um it says that students meet with the school counselor as a class once a week as needed how does that how is that working so it is it's so as a class we

014just started on so our remote wednesdays our counselor sees each class for 20 minutes um she says it's great she hasn't had this opportunity to see students like this in the past and now she does so she's loving it i um since we were only two weeks into the hybrid model three weeks the third week we just had our third wednesday i say it would be hard to gauge how successful it has been in helping the social emotional needs however what we have seen is on the first i think it was the first couple days she put a form and she told all the students like hey if you need to talk to me this is exactly what you need to do and we've we've been watching how like that form is getting filled out

015and seeing the increase so at least they're comfortable talking to her which i think is the first step and having so having that weekly interaction helps build that comfort level to have that happen so that's where we're at thank you other questions all right fantastic i'm going to stop sharing and hand it off to whomever is next thank you nolan our next up is kristen thompson at williamstown hello i'm gonna go ahead and let me just make sure i have the right screen up okay i do um i'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you so this draft was actually created by last year's school council we are in the midst of a few elections and ballots to create my the the school council for west so we're continuing to do that

016so i haven't really had a chance to um get input or have more of a focus on um how we can continue completing um the school improvement plan but this is what i do have and as soon as these elections are are done i plan on convening the school council as soon as humanly possible so we can get this draft completely taken care of and get it put into place um so our first goal at williamstown um elementary is um student support so we're making sure we're going to assess and address the emotional needs of the whole child within the stu the the school community we want to make sure that we're recognizing to the inevitable truth that um psychologically and emotional healthy students teachers administrators are going to be better prepared to meet academic

017challenges and i think that's really important especially in the time that we're in so we're going to be surveying students um to get a sense of their general um i'm sorry i have to move over here um to meet their needs where their desires at what are we wanting to do we want to research some mental health screeners use in massachusetts districts and maybe adopt one for the the district basically we're just trying to create the visibility of the school the school's social emotional needs and addressing them monitoring supporting them and creating opportunities for students to participate in sel programming as you can see some of this is still definitely being worked on here goal number two is we want to create a respectful inclusive school environment where students staff and community members recognize appreciate

018and accept the diverse attributes and identities of each other so we want to really cultivate a thoughtful reflective environment um where our our our citizens are also thoughtful and reflective and so that they're prepared to engage when in a diverse society when we we send them out in the world so we're looking into expanding some some trainings we're looking at teaching tolerance which is a curriculum that has some social justice standards in it we're going to do a curriculum review to look where we can expand in a more diverse range of voices and experiences that are incorporated into the curriculum we're going to be surveying fifth and sixth graders as far as their interests go their interests goes um in the world and community issues i think this is also a very important um piece

019right now with what's going on in the world um and also um seek some some input and collaborate with different groups to promote the evolution of the diversity equity and inclusion goals moving on down goal number three is um our curriculum goal and we want to develop and align curriculum to new and revised state standards um and as you can see we're we're still definitely working on that we're creating some curriculum maps for social studies i i know social studies is an area that we really need to to take a deep dive into we want to review the progress of some of the curriculum that we do have and work on vertical alignment with grade levels and then coordinate two meetings for teachers in grades six through eight across the region which i think we

020already have one set up um we'd like to increase math proficiency among high needs students and um we're going to be analyzing benchmark data and this is we're going to be some area that i'm going to need some help kind of filling this in a little bit um one thing that i can say we have done is that we have hired a full-time math interventionist to work with kiddos um in k-6 and look and we're also going to look at how we can assess the effectiveness of the new intervention programs that we have and we're also going to evaluate the status of teaching and writing in in k through 6 and engage in transition to a new writing program we like to participate in the formation of a district literacy plan and then also re

021research and choose writing programs and definitely getting teacher input on that as well and our goal number four which is proven to be even more important in our current model is our technology so we really want to continue a strong commitment for integrating technology into classrooms so we can maximize maximize what we're doing and um we've been we have been doing this i think naturally just due to the state of our our model right now so we are since we're in hybrid learning we're going to provide more opportunities to survey families and students on the experience that they're having which i think we're getting a little bit of feedback on today um we have chromebooks for all students um to use in school so that's when we can kind of check off the list and

022then um as we we're continuing to provide professional development for staff on applications we're doing a lot of zoom we're doing a lot of classroom and seesaw um and then also being able to provide some training for parents and guardians on that as well so we can better support them at home and um the last one is expanding some digital citizenship lessons for students in three through six um so that they can use social media appropriately um we have i've been in touch with rebecca leonard on how we can do do some of that and we know that brain pop has some of that um as a resource for that right now so we can kind of start utilizing that and then um and this one also kind of ties back into our social emotional

023as well i'm looking at being um um providing education on topics related to social media online gaming cyber bullying for faculty students and parents because we want to um make sure sorry make sure that we're we're making everyone aware and um to have the resources that they want um i am on it on that note i'm pretty sure that some of this is gonna change with the new um with the student or sorry the the school council in response to to the situation we're in i think a lot of the social emotional may go and focus on covet and how we're addressing that with covid and um i think really this is going to form because it was made with last year's student council it's going to be molded as soon as we get our

024new student council or sorry i keep seeing students cool council um and um really mold it into something that's um present you know is more is updated and more of a present call to arm basically university [Music] i'll stop sharing all right so i guess i'm up good evening everybody i suppose i will share my screen like everybody gourmet looks very similar to everyone else so the monk relax school council developed this improvement plan based on discussions throughout last year and this summer the goals identified here are mostly the same as they were in the year prior and we've determined that they're essential and that's why we want to keep them and follow through with them we're ready to support any additional efforts of the district's plan and are ready to adjust as appropriate to

025ensure they're aligned with district efforts or with any efforts that come up based off the current environment [Music] there's we have five goals this year the first one is academic based to ensure that the ninth grade cohort meets their math standards so this might seem self-evident but it's important to uh realize for us to realize as a as a school and as a staff and as a community that we are academic focused academically focused and we identify areas that require additional support or different support and dedicate resources to them appropriately goal number two is dei focused here we have to create a respectful inclusive school environment where students staff and community members recognize appreciate and accept the diverse attributes and identities of each other so it's just some of the there's there's a lot of

026goals and measurable outcomes here two that i just want to know is that we are um we have begun our school-wide read of stamped and we are beginning we're continuing staff and student training with a with a priority a variety of resources and we are also including a a new greylock talk series where students from williams do live interviews during directed study sharing their experiences there's the dei goal the third goal is focused on the arts to explore potential new opportunities and awareness for arts education and programming this is important this year because um contrary to what i said for the first goal that it seems self-evident that we are academics based and focused it's also essential that we put forth the same amount of effort into the arts to ensure that our students are

027happy healthy and well-rounded here i just want to point out that if there's any parents interested in supporting the arts at mount greylock they should reach out to me lindsey von holtz or cecilia hirsch cecilia is the um the leader the president of the friends of the arts group which is essentially a booster club acts like a booster club but for the arts so um again central goal i'm out of order here goal number four is a social emotional wellness goal to expand and deepen opportunities for social emotional wellness to pervade the school community so here we're much like nolan mentioned we're also using the bss screener and a variety of other assessments to to take the temperature of our students and to support their their social and emotional learning the fifth goal which is

028a goal that was added this summer i don't know why it's showing up and there we are is database so this is the goal that kind of helps us measure and capture where we are currently with all of with all our other goals and to see how effective we are in moving forward so this this goal is essential to ali to all the other goals so before i wrap up take any questions i'd just like to take the time to recognize the efforts and contributions of two school council members that likely attended their last meeting this past week they've both added so much work to the council that that has affected our students and staff tremendously more than they'll likely ever know so please join me in thanking julia bowen bowen and michelle johnson so

029thank you so pending any questions that's all i have for this evening thank you very much jake uh i'm taking the part of the homeschool presentation homeschool numbers which are actually quite similar to what i had reported several weeks ago but here is the screen for you to see uh as you can see we've got yes these are very similar to what i what i shared several weeks ago that our totals for 2021 are up on the uh up on the screen and you can see the difference between 2019 and 2020. there are tremendous increases in the number of students from year to year between 2019 and 2020 to 2020 and 21. uh the reasons for this are manifold there certainly there's a lot having to do with covid was part of this uh and

030basically all the choices that parents made in regard to uh you know essentially the what's what's we're facing with the pandemic so these are the homeschool numbers are there any questions rob i just have a question of how these numbers don't include families who have removed their kids from the district and enrolled them into say boarding schools or virtual schools or any other they're just they're they're still in the district but are choosing not to be learning with mount greylock remote or hybrid is that correct that is correct essentially if a child enrolls in a different school either a private school or in another public school essentially they are they're not counted of this uh homeschool numbers are those those families who make application based on the homeschool the rules on the mount greylock website

031about how to apply for homeschool uh do we have numbers do we have numbers on the other set that wouldn't be captured here in terms of i actually have some numbers i was just getting this because we are at this point we are preparing for the october first numbers and what i've been saying is is that just as a reference point uh and i haven't con i haven't completed this but we are down from the number of students that we had last year but i don't think it's appreciably higher essentially we were at 1160 that was the total uh district population according to last year give me one second i'll give you my other number so this is 188 i actually had so as i said 1160 was the what we have so from that

032number we this year this is not the final number because it's still being worked out but i received these numbers from the administrative assistants at all three buildings and what we have right now as of yesterday when i got these was 1097. so we are 63 students down from what we were last year and if you think about it we we've increased it's clear that your speculation is is correct the number of students who have gone to home school does not add up to 63 or that that difference in number that we've got uh although it gets fairly close but i'll be able to present on that i actually i can probably get back to you on this in a little bit if i do some math with the numbers that are here but does

033that answer your question yes thank you my pleasure if there are no further questions it's time to go to our next presenter which is patrick priester with special education ell title one he's got a lot on his plate this evening thank you rob all right um let me share my screen all right do we see that there you go pat okay thank you from the beginning all right uh so welcome to the mount greylock regional school district special education update october 2020. so the number of iaps that we have in the district i believe we pulled the numbers uh october 15th from from east bed we have 166 ieps we're down 10 from last year at this point and some of that could be reflected in the home school numbers and and we did have

034some kids graduate last year that were on iep so i'll give you a brief look at that uh we're down nine at mount gray lot um one from fiscal y 20 at west and we're about even in lanesboro so break it down by school these are the numbers per grade level we usually have one teacher teach two grade levels in the high school and then one teacher each for seventh and eighth grade and we also have one teacher that does life skills that are included in those numbers of students and ieps if you look down below you'll see the projected caseload of our ot occupational therapist speech and language pathologist and physical therapist at the high school so we do have a number of um caseloads there in lanesboro you can see the numbers across

035fiscal y20 we have a pre-k teacher we have a one teacher for k through three and one teacher for fights is worth four through six and we have also have a life skills teacher included that cover those numbers and as you can see below you can see the number of occupational therapists speech and language pathologists and physical therapists and williamstown um the same um we have the fiscal y 20 numbers across the bottom there and you can see the occupational therapist speech and language pathologists and physical therapy caseloads and our next slide is the percentage of ieps in the district pretty much overall remained the same last year given their numbers and you can see that uh not much change from fiscal y fiscal year 20 to fiscal year 21. um as far as 504

036is across the district we have 108 we have 40 at west 8 at less at this point and 60 amount pretty long just to give you the 504 numbers by grade level for west and less and our total numbers on the right you can see usually kids don't get identified in kindergarten for 504s i'm sorry pre-kindergarten and then they start to get identified as they get older um same for the high school you can see the numbers here for 504s and here's the percentage across the district we have eleven percent of williamstown we're down a bit in lanesboro to four percent and mount greylock 11 and across the district 10 of our students are on 504s um english language learners update state law requires that students in our public schools who do not speak english

037or whose native language is not english and who currently cannot perform ordinary class work in english receive instruction that is specifically designed to assist them both in english and learning subject matter content these students are often referred to as leps or limited english proficient students or they're also referred to as english language learners or ells in the mount greylock regional school district we have uh six in williamstown elementary we have three in lanesboro and one in mount greylock and all potential ell home language surveys were researched six tests were administered five student receiving services five on monitor uh pre-k k tested as limited english language proficiency um we our pll teachers get we got all required correspondence to families and parents uh she's attended the belt meetings and um department of education webinars and the

038total number of students uh receiving ell services in the district are 10 and that's plus one percent of our overall population title one update title one is a target assistance program is one in which the district uses title one funds in private sorry in school to provide supplemental educational services to students who are failing are most at risk of failing to meet the state students academic achievement standards and they can also be a dish identified through their free and reduced lunch status and we'll go through those numbers so our title one um numbers by disc chicken while we do a free and reduced lunch at the high school our title one number mainly reflects on it to receive title one services in the elementary schools and as you can see the brownish bar there is

039the frame reduced lunch numbers and the title one numbers are the orange ones the orange bars so across the district we have 174 students receiving free and reduced lunch and 82 of them receive title 1 services title 1 by grade you can see how the numbers break down by grade there so the orange bar is lanesboro and the brown bar there is williamstown so you can see all numbers right now we have 99 students receiving frame reduced lunch in williamstown we have 75 and lanesboro and we have 51 students in williamstown receiving title 1 and 36 in lanesboro as far as our staffing update in williamstown we have one pre-k teacher one case with two teacher three uh three through six sped teachers one developmental sped teacher one english language learner teacher two speech and

040language pathologists uh one is shared with the high school to cover that the case load there we have one occupational therapist one physical therapist one social worker one school psychologist and 20 pair of professionals at the time that's that number's a little above last year used to reflect some of the needs we've had this year in supporting the students especially early on lanesboro has one pre-k teacher one k through three sped teacher one four through six bed teacher one speech and language pathologist one occupational therapist that's there i believe uh three days a week one physical therapist that we share among the three schools um and one s school psychologist and 13 paraprofessionals so that's the staffing update for sped for west and last the next will be greylock um like i said we we

041get there's one sped teacher in each grade level in the middle school for 7th and 8th and then in the high school one teacher covers 9 10 the other one covers 11 12 we have one life skills sped teacher one speech and language pathologist one english language learner teacher that we share with williamstown one occupational therapist one physical therapist one school social worker one school psychologist and two para sorry 21 paraprofessionals and in the office of people services we have one director of people services acting and one special education team leader that's unfilled and one assistant to the people services as far as our special education update current out of district placements we have five students uh cheer focus modeling is ongoing a lot we have our data collection portion is due october 30th and

042they will be coming out to visit in the spring to look over our files circuit breaker was completed in july uh 240 262 grants have been submitted and accepted um the mount greylock regional school district remote academy we have one sped teacher there and two paras providing services we've held three pack meetings over the summer fall so far that's parental advisory council in professional development uh conducted uh para orientation completed during opening remote pd days uh sped faculty met to go over cover 19 special education learning plans at cove with 19 compensatory services and i have more information for them to come and we will be providing crisis prevention intervention otherwise known as um holds training in the near future for our staff that require it and we're looking at hosting the parents right to

043know that we hold yearly we're just figuring out the intricacies of that now and getting information out of our office soon on that and that's it for the spat update unless there's any questions uh patrick i have a question yes uh we said 15 of our students uh ieps that's about state average give or take and 10 percent around fibro force would it be fair to say that 25 of our students are in need of service or is that the unfair to say yes our receiving services yes 25 yep across the district in some way shape or form now 504 doesn't necessarily mean you're receiving services you can be getting accommodations right but but it does mean that that is that there is a plan yes there is a plan in place for them and

044we also have uh district accommodation plans and building plans that we use uh individual bases for students to acquire it okay is that is our goal to reduce that um we went to a training uh back in february before the clove of 19 shutdown happened about mtss training and one of the overall goals is yes to lessen the need of special education services uh to fully implement it you know it's been difficult given the current climate when we come back in but that is the intent moving forward okay thanks carrie just i i did so going back to the team leader we don't have uh anyone in that position does that mean that you're the only one qualified to do team meetings i don't really remember how that works but that seems yes is that

045has that been problematic or um it's been busy but we've managed i mean teachers can run their own meetings on an annual basis um i i need to be there when decisions need to be made as far as providing more services or something that may cost money or making determinations as far as uh eligibility [Music] all right are we trying to fill that position um not currently i don't believe not correct i do have some help uh rob reached out to a former colleague of his stephanie case his former sped director in pittsfield who has come in two days a week have been helping me out guiding me on a few administrative things as far as the circuit breaker grants and the tfm and we've also reached out to quite a number of retired school

046psychologists and other folks trying to get more help for patrick and unfortunately uh at this point we haven't been able to find anyone that uh anyone other than stephanie who's able to come in on a regular basis to provide support and help but uh dr mccandless and i uh discussed this uh just this week we were discussing this and i know that when he comes in he will be moving to address the issue can ask a follow-up question christina so thank you patrick for doing the work it sounds stressful um so um is has covid um increased the caseload or or created challenges for delivery of services that have been difficult to anticipate i mean is that part of what you're dealing with yeah especially in a cohort model it's difficult and some in our

047related service providers don't have as much opportunities to meet with our kids that are in included settings like that go to normal classes that aren't pulled out um just with the cohort model just finding time to squeeze them all in has been difficult but we've managed to find ways to do that and subs have been an issue any other questions okay rob i guess it's actually it's time for an update on the survey that we was conducted this week and that of course is ellicott's and joelle bruckner are going to give you some their impressions of the data which is not entirely completed at this point but uh i don't know if those of you who did not see the survey those of you who don't have children probably didn't see it but otherwise they'll

048explain who was surveyed and the results or the summary of the preliminary results take it away all right so i'm going to share my screen now okay um good evening i am ellie kotz i am the director of academic technology and i'm joelle brickner i am the director of curriculum and instruction and i'm going to apologize in advance i normally have stellar wi-fi but i keep getting unstable connection messages so if i am glitching out somebody give me a signal all right um first we wanted to say thank you to all family students and staff who completed our first kind of temperature check survey about the first months of reopening school we really value people's time as it's precious always but especially right now and feedback the survey overwhelmingly has told us that we're on

049the right track in many areas which is gratifying um as we'll talk more about there was nothing shocking in what we've seen so far but there were a few surprises and that tells us that we have our finger on the pulse for the most part but definitely some work to do and we just thought we'd preface this presentation by saying that we love to stand here and share only happy news and positive information with you which we will but the goal of surveys is to receive feedback to help chart a course and we are going to be open and honest about those things there are definitely some areas we need to address and those will be top of mind for us moving forward all right so who did we survey we surveyed students in grades

050five through twelve and again these are preliminary results we got a few more results after we analyze the data so we'll give you a more detailed update moving forward we had about 223 responses from our students um so we got there's about 500 students ish so we did another push today our families pre-k to 12 we got 677 responses and our faculty and staff of lanesboro williamstown and mount greylock we received 91 responses um first our student survey at the elementary level um some positive aspects that we found were somewhat surprising actually um asynchronous learning time almost all students know what to do during that time and they know how to get help from school staff if they got stuck and again these are fifth and sixth grade students answering these questions almost all the

051students have reliable internet and they report that the hybrid balance of being in school and out of school is just right and students also reported a really high interaction with their peers outside of the school day students are definitely feeling overwhelmed about one-fifth of them said they felt overwhelmed they also reported that their families felt overwhelmed but more so and about a good portion of students felt that they weren't getting a ton of information about what's happening in the school building overall and you'll hear some common threads as we go through our results okay so there were some common threads with elementary and the middle high school some of the positives were that again um pretty much everyone almost all students report that asynchronous learning is positive and ellie mentioned that we were a little

052surprised by that it's not that we don't want that to be the case it's just the newest area for us and so we were really pleased and surprised that that seems to be being received well from students um most hybrid students are feeling very integrated in the community and there's a high level of reporting that they feel a part of the community the balance reports from the middle high school students so that was those were questions on screen time pacing content and social interaction with their peers is um was positive and it was more positive for hybrid students than those who are remote and another piece that we were pleased to see was that for the high number of students who are participating in co-curricular of some kind that even though they are really different

053they're still satisfying they're they're fulfilling the need that students want some of the challenges they're reporting um both remote and hybrid students feel that there's not really adequate time to submit their in-class work between classes so that's something that we'll be looking at um the middle high school students about three-quarters of them are reporting feeling overwhelmed and interestingly unlike the elementary school who said all my parents are definitely overwhelmed the high school students are reporting their families are less overwhelmed than they are um and another thing we thought we would highlight is about a third of the middle high school students are reporting that they're not really comfortable having cameras on for zoom which has been a requirement um for us and there's lots of thoughts about why that might be but some that can

054being on camera can bring out some anxiety in students so that's something that we're going to be talking about we're going to move on to the staff responses did anybody have questions regarding student you know preliminary trends all right we'll keep going okay so thank you to the staff who responded some of the positive highlights were that and these have been some questions that the committee has had so we're happy to tell you that student attendance is excellent teachers are seeing that students are engaged they're keeping up with their assignments and class work they know what to do and how to navigate asynchronous learning opportunities and teachers are reporting that though situations are very very different they overwhelmingly feel that they are able to create community with their classes some of the challenges are that

055the pacing and this isn't something else the committee has asked about before so teachers at both elementary which we'll talk about in a moment and middle high school are concerned about the content pacing um they are also concerned about time with students many report feeling that they don't have enough time with their students the elementary teachers we're on the elementary slide i'm sorry i just said seven through twelve but we're elementary the uh the majority of elementary teachers are reporting that they are not feeling like they're interacting enough with their colleagues there is also a concern about just meeting the needs of special ed students and there there's a need for time and support and so that's definitely on the minds of teachers now that we have an understanding of what needs to be worked

056on in that area we definitely have a place to devote our efforts and i also wanted to mention and i'll mention this again in a little while that i've been attending some statewide networking meetings i've been to three the department of ed has recently launched them um so i've been to the literacy networking meeting math and history social studies so far and they're with about 100 to 150 educators from across the state and these themes i had a meeting yesterday in a meeting today they are absolutely shared with our colleagues across the state so concerns about content concerns about pacing concerns about meeting the needs of students those are things that all educators across the state are grappling with responses for the middle high school um again echoing what the elementary staff said attendance has

057been fantastic students are engaged they are accessing synchronous academic support when they need to they are feeling like the teachers are creating an overwhelming sense of community which is really really nice to hear i think being together has been really powerful the new covid procedures are going smooth with regard to staff's response around the symptoms screener entrances hand washing and things like that some challenges again to echo the elementary school were about the pacing of the curriculum and covering enough content they are reporting that we heard the students felt overwhelmed at the middle high school but staff are also noting that the students are feeling overwhelmed they're really sensing that and the concern about meeting needs of special education students so that's really across the board and we'll dive into that a little bit later

058questions about staff responses before we move on to family responses okay families are responding and indicating that the coveted procedures are working really well all the procedures and processes that the flexibility of asynchronous learning time is working well for their student and for their family and that students have adjusted well that was an overwhelming majority and that included our identified special education students about one-third of parents are reporting that the younger students are having challenges with the asynchronous learning time we felt it was really important to siphon that out between the younger students and older elementary students because they reported they were doing a great job but we said wait a second why are families responding differently and we noted it was the younger students who may have more difficulty parents are noting um or

059family is saying that they wish they had more time with staff that students could spend more time with their teachers and that there's not enough interaction with their peers as well as families feeling overwhelmed so i think the family the family responses really echoed what students responded that is the same for the middle high school family responses so some of the positives were the asynchronous learning again parents are reporting that their students know what to do for asynchronous learning time um despite my issues this evening and christina's the internet 90 of um families across the board are reporting that they either strongly agree or agree that internet their own internet at home is meeting their remote learning needs um parents are reporting that their students have equal access to co-curriculars and that their students are

060reporting that they're satisfied with the programming they're mentioning that the covid procedures and processes are running smoothly and that in general the balance of screen time pacing content social interaction that's all reported as positive as well some of the challenges from the middle high school perspective of families is again not enough time to submit in class work between classes for students um they're also reporting feelings of feeling overwhelmed and for parents of children with identified special needs about half of them are report that they're not they're not adjusting well so overall and again ellie mentioned at the outset that we this is just the preliminary data our surveys are still open so if we'll we'll keep them open um through probably midday tomorrow and if anyone else would like to um take a chance to

061do them that would be great but overall the positives were um the time and planning for critical health and safety processes has paid off and they're working for us so we will continue to assess those and make changes as needed but we're really pleased that those efforts um have have done well there is a strong sense of belonging in the schools among students and i'll come back to that in a second um though it's not without its challenges asynchronous learning is going better than we thought it would be we're pleasantly surprised by the survey data we're particularly pleased with students reporting that they know what to do when they've got it under control so that's great um we're really happy that the co-curriculars are satisfying even though they're radically different and there a large majority

062of students and families report that they know where to go for help that students can get help and that people know who to contact if they need help so some of the challenges that this this um set of surveys brought to the surface for us and we're grateful for are one is communication and we strive to inform to seek feedback being as transparent as we possibly can and communication will continue to be a goal for the district we want people to feel that they know what's going on in the school in the district and then in classrooms so we'll continue to keep plugging away at that in terms of special education the feedback received from staff and families through the survey is critical in helping us hear concerns around special ed we are going to

063devote our time and energy heavily in this area over the coming weeks and patrick mentioned some of the challenges earlier it's kind of inherent with the schedule and the situation that we're in but we've got to overcome those challenges we are going to continue to have conversations about how to address concerns around pacing of content delivery and evaluate ways we can prioritize deep learning our connection as i mentioned earlier with state curriculum networks will be critical for us in this area as we are joining educators across massachusetts working to achieve this same goal and there are representatives from the department of education in all of those meetings and so they're hearing the feedback from the administrators and the teachers and um curriculum leaders loud and clear just saying you know there were a lot of

064people who are asking for the state to develop a new set of power standards for instance which we had in the spring which were to be used only in the spring but there are a lot of people asking for that again saying you know everybody's on modified schedules of one sort of another um and so we're hoping we're a little bit hopeful that the department of ed will respond in that way and then finally though a large percentage of students and families report feeling overwhelmed they also report high levels of feelings of belonging and as we've been thinking about this we're in the middle of a pandemic and times are hard and there's a general sense of anxiety everywhere so that's not the the feeling overwhelmed is not surprising to us at all however we're

065really heartened by the fact that so many people are saying they feel a sense of place and belonging and we are hopeful that that will allow us all to work toward emotional balance as we continue moving forward together and finally the goal of our two-way communication and i know a survey is one way of communication but then sharing that out and acting on it is really to share information establish an understanding of the information we've received and to build trust together we know our entire community is trusting us to educate their most precious belongings their children and we hold that dear and we are looking forward to taking this feedback and making a plan to move forward that's all we've got we have lots of beautiful graphs that are underway but we didn't share them

066this evening because we're waiting for all the final feedback to come in but at some point we would like to share them thank you thanks to the um everyone who filled it out to um and filled it out and i thought it was a good survey and that's very helpful hearing how you're thinking about using the information the special education part of it worries me as i'm sure it does you i mean we're obligated um we don't just really want to we're obligated to you know service these kids um in the way that we say that we will and i just i hope we hear more about plans to address that particular area in the future well thank you thank you rob do you have anything else under the school reopening report agenda item oh

067okay i know i i had anticipated uh more questions but uh uh i think there's uh i i just think it was we explained the school improvement plans uh we basically i think that this the the question that has come up repeatedly at school committee meetings ever since we started school was how are things going and i think that this survey was probably the best way of doing it because all the administrators have a sense of how things are going but this posing the question to students families and teachers gave a much greater much greater understanding of how things were going and as both ellie and joe hill said there will be more uh this this report will be fleshed out and completed but more importantly it's going to be the basis of the work

068that the administrators do over the next over the coming months actually in fact you would not believe the repeated requests from the principals and other administrators and the uh basically them saying to joel and ellie will you please get this done send me more send me more so it really is there the principals are eager uh eager to get this information because this is the first really tangible information that we've got of the perspectives of students and families and teachers about how things are going and the the ability to co to triangulate that information is particularly helpful and will be used as we move through this i know that this is going to be the topic of staff meetings it's going to be the topic of presentations going forward great thank you did anyone else

069have questions before we move on to the next agenda item again i apologize that i have my image up there but my connections started to get even worse than it was before so i apologize okay next up on the agenda is public comment and the committee has received three emailed comments so i will try to read those and um i guess i would say carrie and jamie you seem to have the most reliable uh internet for committee members so if i start to drop out if you could read them two of them are in the packet one of them came after the packet was produced and then anyone else who's in the audience that wanted to give a public comment if you could raise your hand we will call on you after we read the

070emailed public comments so the first public comment is on um agenda the artifact it's on the fields agenda item and it's from judith i'm not going to try to pronounce her last name because i fear that i will mispronounce it dear committee i've lived in williamstown thank you i have lived in williamstown for 52 years and although my three children graduated from mount greylock a long time ago i continue to be interested in decisions made with regard to the school questions raised about the environmental impact and the ultimate cost of artificial turf lead me to think that we are that we citizens need more information on both of these subjects i'm inclined to think that real grass would be safer and cheaper but i'd like to hear more facts please do not rush to a

071decision that has such long-term effects i encourage you to discuss these matters openly and publicly please read my letter at your next meeting sincerely judy of waterman place okay and the next letter is from wendy penner of williamstown on the fields dear school committee i was able to watch the last hour of the school committee meeting last week i was astonished to see a motion supported that advanced a turf field rebid and no action to advance a natural grass field bid and disposal costs i'm sorry in grass field bid as voted by the committee last september i also heard no discussion of how turf replacement and disposal costs will be covered down the line the rush to vote when at least four new committee members will be seated soon is wrong and does not help

072us move forward in a fair and informed way i urge you to wait to advance this process until the new committee is seated and a thoughtful financial plan has been created that includes assessing natural grass the next is from and this one isn't in your packet yet because we received it later it's from mark mcdermott of williamstown dear school committee forgive me if i am too late to submit public comment for this afternoon's um meeting i think this maybe maybe was for the finance and committee meeting i noticed that capital guest fields is on your agenda i and my children are in favor of whatever course of action is most likely to bring us to a conclusion in which a field of any sort is built we are much less concerned with whether the field

073is grass or artificial turf we are more concerned that delays have prevented and will continue to prevent use of whatever field is eventually made or even put into jeopardy us getting a field at all thanks for all your hard work mark mcdermott and i don't see any hands raised so that concludes public comment and next up on our agenda is the mount graduate greylock regional school msba building project signing authority yes this is like joe yes i can take that one um so signing authority for documents related to the building project whether they are signing off on financial documents or on msba documents um that is something that as of right now um was uh a co-signing requirement for both the superintendent as well as regina delago with her resigning from the committee we do

074need to um reassign signing authority so that we we have some documents that are that are in the queue to get signed very soon here um and my recommendation would be that the committee have the superintendent um have that signing authority but that's that's only my recommendation um so i would love for for the committee to figure that out and vote um someone to have that signing authority for the building project so sorry thanks when we joe when you say the superintendent do you mean the position or do you mean the specific individual holding it now because i know in the past we've had issues with people moving that we can't assign it necessarily just to a position uh from my conversations with the msba if it was assigned to simply whoever is in the

075seat of the superintendent that would be okay for their needs carrie did you have a question um i did but i'll just move uh that recommendation and then we can discuss it further if we need to so the recommendation made by the business administrator is so moved second okay the motion has been moved by green and seconded by art any further discussion okay hearing none all in favor roll call vote alphabetically please or i carter i connery i green eye miller i paranova eye okay thank you that motion passes next up on our agenda is the mount greylock regional school capital gift use and the first is um a report and discussion on fields related value engineering and bid options and i believe this is joe again yep i will provide the update um so

076uh i'm gonna take bid options first value engineering second um i i reached out to perkins eastman and traverse immediately following our meeting last friday they're of course excited to move forward they they did note something that i thought was interesting the athletics field bidding landscape is significantly better than last year with the bids that they're seeing coming in for projects being 10 to 15 percent lower which is presumably the result of the softer market related to covid for investments of this sort by by school districts um on the topic of of multiple bids because i know that that was that's a continuing discussion within the committee um perkins eastman's professional take was paying double for preparation of two of seemingly everything needed for bid is probably a waste of money um as far as

077they're concerned you also open yourself to bid protests around the selection being a political versus an objective process so once once the results do come in the idea that there would be political and subjective things going on to determine who won the the contract would create some problems for for the committee in the district um it also would decrease the quality of the bids that would be submitted because people's attention and their and their faith that um tying up their their time in the process of the bid and as well as some financial commitment there um would end up not being worth it so that that was perkins eastman's professional recommendation coupled with just the the reality the reality is around the procurement process um the cost estimates that they provided in july of 2019

078for a natural grass field during the f the public forum in july of 2019 um is their best take at what a natural grass field would cost until you get to that process where you actually see live bids coming in so trying to find a place in between there the the detailed design quote that they had produced in november of last year was was a little bit of a it wouldn't get you much farther than where you already are in terms of understanding the cost associated with a natural grass field in their estimation so the end result is that they're indicating and that again this is their professional opinion the best thing you can do is to make decisions around what you want and the budget that you have and then go out to bid

079for that and go forward with what you can afford within your budget so make the decision first as far as what you want then go through the detailed design construction document zba approval and bid bid administration perkins eastman and traverse are developing a formal proposal for the rework needed for updated design documents the construction documents the zva approval process and bidding and negotiation process that is something that i do not have as of right now which i think is the real um wrench here is that there isn't a proposal that they have provided that could be voted so in that way that that is a little bit of a stall um but again that the turnaround between last friday night and and right now is pretty tight so i i don't i don't put them

080that on them at all um they did note also that january and february are the ideal months to to hit the street for bids and given that there's about a six to eight week process to get there the district would be in the right window if it if it voted to move forward with a proposal in early november being able to get through that and then two two bids would put the district in probably the best window of the year in terms of the period of time where the experts running these companies are primed for committing plenty of time sharpening their pencil as best they can and getting the best contracts that they can for the spring and summer and fall of of next year in terms of implementation and that leads to value engineering

081i did review the value engineering feedback that the phase 2 committee had already put together i met with john scavlam i i also met with lindsay van holtz and and talked through it um i can speak to the the 12 value engineering points that were in your packet from last year but perkins eastman did say that that as they go through the process to get things ready the best time for [Music] re-evaluating and potentially committing to some value engineering and and moving some things to add alternate status is is probably once they've taken another crack at it as opposed to trying to hash through all of those details right right now only to see another round of value engineering options come out of the process that they'll need to start again with a with an

082approved proposal so that i believe is the update although the finance subcommittee did did take a couple of deeper dives on a few points earlier and i'm not sure whether i should comment on those things as well right now um i'm not sure we discussed much more than what you've already um talked about but i you know the the point one of the points is that you know we said that what the vote that was taken last week was that the value engineering would be done internally and then the committee could vote to request or send that to perkins eastman and traverse to do bring drop the bid documents but the advice that we're getting as joe reported is that we shouldn't um try to finalize any value engineering that it should be done during

083the bid document process then the other thing that we the next step was going to be to vote on you know the estimate that came in for drawing those big documents together but we won't we don't have that as joe said so that's going to have to wait until a future meeting um to be determined in the meantime we are still getting as you know we heard from public comment um some folks saying you know we we really don't want synthetic turf um we've told you this and one question that comes up for me and it shouldn't stop this process i don't think although the next iteration of this committee will have to make decisions about that but we could at the same time as asking you know if it would help the committee to

084kind of put the issue to rest we could ask the community whether or not they support synthetic turf i mean that's a pretty um direct question and i don't think it's ever been asked you know in a survey form i have a draft survey that i you know i'm happy to keep working on with input from you know whoever but that's one option is to do a very simple straightforward survey you know we're about to put you know put together another round of bid documents on a synthetic turf do you want to see a synthetic turf on the campus of mount greylock yes or no and then some follow-up questions that would help i think at least know that we're on the right track or or not um [Music] then again we don't have to

085do that it's just a suggestion we could also get an estimate on what it would take to put the you know grass bit together that's what we're being asked to do by people who don't want us to proceed um you know this process um but i think joe you were saying that we essentially have you know the estimate on at least what um perkins eastman and traverse um think it would cost to do a grass field and that's the 500 000 figure that's in that presentation and they've also done a um they've also done some uh some comparison costs but you asked them for for another document so do you want to talk about that as well the turf yes one of the one of the questions that i think we need to ask as

086we move out to 2-bit is so far we've heard we've heard the term brockville many times um that's a proprietary product it has certain characteristics that are that are favorable certainly but from a procurement perspective going out and specifying a specific brand of product is well it's frowned upon generally but it's but it's also something that that does not really give us the opportunity to state the types of qualities that we really want this product to have whatever is placed onto our site um and one of the things that i think would be helpful that that we do not have but the perkins eastman said they would happily provide just as a part of natural part of the process is to provide a matrix of the for turf the mat and the infill what the

087various products are on the market and how they compare in terms of upfront cost renewal cost lifetime um prior to renewal as well as a subjective review of playability um and that's something that they that they said they they think they have in a variety of pieces and they can provide it to us just so that we've got that as we try to figure out what specific language to include so the end result is we have nothing to vote tonight this will move on and the discussion will have more information for the next iteration of the committee so i i mean we can certainly have more discussion about this but there are no more there no there are no decisions that can be made i don't think tonight unless we want to solicit more information

088or more feedback from the community at this point okay would we be able to have or can i just ask a quick question would we be able to have enough information next week how much time do they need to prepare the documents dan said i don't think i'm sorry joe go ahead i was gonna say dan colley said that that sometimes sometime next week they could probably have the proposal done um but but that was you didn't put out a hard date on it i would suggest that we tentatively schedule a meeting for next thursday i don't think it makes sense to rush this through this is this is lunacy i can read the letter right i um sent to christina if it would be helpful and while i i declined to participate in the

089finance subcommittee's um you know efforts to to conduct on its own a rushed value engineering um process i don't think it makes sense for the school committee to do that with even less time i think this is this all can wait everybody can take a big deep breath and allow this to unfold in the coming weeks rather than trying to cram something in in a week it's just it's not the dude it's not the level of care that as school committee members we owe to the district and we out of the communities it's just not appropriate i disagree with everything you just said you aren't at the meeting this afternoon and we discussed it uh a lot let's take one thing let's talk about surveying i thought it was interesting when when we talked about

090the survey today when jolene she had a great line she says we have a survey to get feedback to chart a course that's why we do surveys we don't have surveys to ask people to make decisions on things that they may or may not be informed about that's our job if that's the case if that's the case let's get rid of all committees let's have no committees let's let's take a survey on what we should do with the police chief in williamstown let's not leave that decision to the select board let's do a survey on what we should do about the marijuana fields of the marijuana things in williamstown we'll be doing surveys all the time we are an independent duly elected decision-making body if all we're going to do is take a survey and

091then react to the survey my 12 year old nephew concerning this committee that's our job we did what we were supposed to do you know people talk about the new committee coming in i'm not i'm not uptight about that i think i truly believe that when people get all the objective facts and all the things we have discussed over four and a half years they'll they'll say that artificial turf is the answer i want to show you something you know the packet that that was made up that we all looked at this is my package this is what me this is my personal thing that i have looked at aside from all the things that the subcommittee has done all those things that we got that what that was developed by christina this is just

092my personal stuff more information is gonna do it i think that that we made a decision we're going to go with artificial turf we should we should move forward on that we should get it bid this thing about let's do grass are we doing one last thing okay a goal without a plan is a wish we had a goal to provide for the students and the community we have a plan we're going forward just to say something without a plan and say well we'll do it along the way is a wish we should go forward with artificial turf we should do whatever has to whatever needs to be done we should get our bids in and we should be playing lacrosse next spring on an artificial turf field i had a different takeaway on the

093survey i think since we we have a moment to pause because we don't have the information we need that it it's a valuable exercise to do a climate survey we're not asking anyone to make a decision that we've been asked to do we're just trying to get the feedback that people have been wanting to offer and we haven't done a climate survey around the fields or the track or anything in in that regard and i do think it has some value to let as many people as possible have a voice in that because what if we find out that overwhelmingly 95 of our community and our families and our students want an artificial turf field that's going to that's going to give us some direction what if we find out the on the other side

094of the fence that 95 of the community doesn't want to grasp an artificial grass field at all so i think the climate we have an opportunity kerry started a survey um and we could we could get that out and get some valuable feedback i think you know the the there is a there's a history of um commitment to sustainability and environmentalism in williamstown specifically with the center for environmental studies it's one of the oldest centers at a liberal arts college um where you know the town has made a number of commitments you know to be pollinator-friendly and to um you know with the solar array there are there are simply people who do not who it's not just that they don't want artificial turf they really have a vision for an all grass campus and

095one of the things that isn't clear to me is whether that vision needs to include like you you wouldn't just take phase two and sub in natural grass and say you know this is the project you could potentially repurpose some of the spending on synthetic turf and augment the playability of john allen field or things like that and i think that's what people are thinking of it's not just put in a grass field instead of a turf field because it it's true that we would not be and we had this conversation and i don't want to rehash the whole thing but you know as a grass campus doesn't solve the playability challenge what it does is it it commits us to a grass campus and that's what some people want to see we just don't

096know how many people and whether the fact that it's 95 or 5 should really matter you know and in that sense the people who are frustrated by this conversation i understand it but it's really a conversation about community values so when it comes down to it i don't think we can ever ignore the input that we get i think we just have to be very thoughtful about it you know we are proceeding to get the information that we need from perkins easement and traverse about what it's going to cost us to put together new bid documents we've said we're going to do that and that's what we're doing um we have that doesn't preclude us from also getting information about what it would cost to put together a bit a an estimate um it doesn't

097preclude us from doing a check-in with the community um you know we've gathered all the information in one website it's it takes time to go through it but you know we just don't i don't i don't have a sense of of you know whether the community i mean people have said the community doesn't want this but i don't feel like we know that i don't feel like we know whether the community wants this um and i don't think you have to know every detail of the project whether it's every detail of the proposed project or every detail of you know the counter proposed project that's out sort of out in the community to know how you feel about moving forward with synthetic turf you know it's a it's it's yeah i'll stop there i don't

098possibly know hold on al ally had her hand up first and then um steven had his hand up allie go ahead thank you um a few things i guess i guess first on the timeline here in the value engineering i thought that the value engineering wasn't it done last september or october i thought it had a 2019 date on it um so i guess i'm a little confused about and i and i thought that that was what joe referred to as what they reviewed and was going forward um or suggested to go forward with so i don't see how that's a rushed um that's rushed it's something that people have been working on for a year and along with trying to move this vote forward i think it seems well i guess i don't feel

099like rushed is the right word i think that it's coming down to the wire in terms of the election but i mean looking at al's big stack of papers there you know electronically or on paper or in our heads i think collectively we all have some sort of stack that this committee is going to essentially lose come the the next election and that's why i think it makes sense to have this committee that has done this research um be able to move forward as much as as we can given the the limitations that joe described um on a survey i'm totally for transparency and um and doing a temperature check on the community but i really worry about how we could structure a survey to make sure that people who are responding are not doing

100so based on incorrect information and if we were to do it now i think there's a real risk of that happening there are people in the community who are against turf and they still think that we're talking about chrome rubber um or they haven't seen the financial analysis or the you know the the estimates on the annual um cost of grass maintenance and the replacement cost estimate for grass and the people who haven't read the the due process report the trinity trinity engineering report um laying out some of these cost comparisons and i i if we were to do a survey i would just want to be absolutely sure that what we're getting back is really informed um because i worry that um people are talking to their friends and they're raising concerns and yeah

101if you don't know any better it sounds really horrible and scary but actually um there are some things that might make people feel better um one thing i just i just want to say because this may be our it's looking like it could possibly be our last time discussing this on the environmental side um i so i clearly voted in um in favor of moving forward with the artificial turf field um i work on sustainability in my day job um i am an advocate for reducing our environmental impact the the values that kerry had mentioned and i think looking at the environmental aspects of this is a lot more complicated than it seems on the surface um because there are a lot of factors to weigh here we can't ignore the fact that grass needs

102to be mowed and those mowers are big polluters the infill that we're talking about is made from sustainable wood this company has a cradle to cradle policy they're innovative i think there's a lot of value in supporting companies that are doing innovative things that will reduce environmental impact and move people away from crumb rubber and work on being able to develop these products that are recyclable um and you know there's there's there's a lot more we could talk about in that sense but i just you know going back to a survey i i just worry that in order to get informed feedback we would need to provide a lot of information that people are not likely to read and um and i just worried that if we did a quick gut check that i mean

103maybe that would be fine and maybe doing a survey would be enough to alleviate some community um anxiety around this but um but i do have some concern about placing the direction on the results of a survey that may not actually provide the feedback we want unless we're really really really careful thanks steve you are next okay i agree with ali i've discussed this on three committees if i have to i'll discuss this with four but we could have had these meetings we could have had these discussions any time since january as committee members we were asked what additional information do we need to be able to vote and we assembled those questions and we got answers to those questions we've had the information for a long time we keep pausing we're putting in tremendous

104amounts of time we have a tremendous amount now of expertise of people who've been looking at these issues for months if not years and this has been remarkably about to lose that and not only are we going to lose that expertise we're potentially going to lose another season of play we could lose the optimal time to go to bed uh the biggest thing that's changed for me in all these months is the playability issue as carrie has said if playability is your number one issue this is a no-brainer and with all that's going on now you'll remember we started the year with our kids able to go to athletic practices but not able to go into the school building playability to me is tremendous and we have the athletic director stating that the artificial turf

105meets our needs and grass does not and this is not just needs for sports but this is you know for the entire community for gym as well and and that's why i think you know this is not a rushed process we should have a meeting next week and we should vote on the documents then thank you how did you have your hand up yeah uh i i obviously i agree with what was said prior to me by both ali and uh steve some people describe said that i'm frustrated i'm not so much frustrated as disappointed and uh i'll tell you why when we worked on this and you talked about community input and listening to to what the community has to say i think the subcommittee should have gotten a lot of points for that

106we did listen to the community when we first started this process we were talking about chrome rubber and we heard what the community had to say we heard what what what people were presenting to us and we really came up with a with a real good what i think is a legitimate choice a legitimate compromise we can put artificial turf in and i want to want to go into the whole thing about all the advantages of it but we did that it isn't that we didn't listen we moved and i'm really disappointed that the people who brought that forward and wanted us to find an alternative to chrome rubber we did and rather than getting i don't say credit for that but rather than at least thanking us for that they write letters to us

107and tell us that we are what was the last one lack personal integrity i think we did a lot and we listened a lot and i'm really disappointed that people would would think that we didn't we've compromised and we're doing something that is best for not only the children and the population of mount greylock but for the community as a whole i'll say one lesson lesson when i started this process way back nearly five years ago i was put on the on on subcommittee for fields at that time chris stoner called me up and said hey al we're going to put you i'm going to sub committee you have 35 years of experience in education i thought that phase 2 subcommittee was going to be concerned about the ada in title ix that's that's how

108i kind of went into it i'm not a artificial turf guy i'm in favor of artificial turf because that was an evolution over four and a half years of talking to to people who know about things that we the questions we ask i'm in favor of artificial turf not because i started that way i'm in favor of artificial turf because of the input i've gotten from athletic directors from coaches from plays etc so it isn't that i'm stuck on artificial turf thank you carrie yeah so i'm i'm fine not doing a survey ally i really appreciate those comments um i think um you know one of course one question that will keep coming back to us is that you know we we did the committee did say that a year ago that it would [Music]

109um now i forget the language of it but it would bid both grass and uh synthetic turf in that sort of ad alternate package which we've i just want to say we've talked about it we've learned we cannot do that it doesn't work that way we've now talked about the possibility of doing you know bidding grass and turf that doesn't make sense or synthetic turf that doesn't make sense so you know i i really do understand the arguments for you know we've we've chosen a direction the committee has chosen a direction but i want to be very careful that we are doing our due diligence to the best of our ability at this point um and acknowledging that there are certain things that we said that we were going to do including community forums which

110we are not doing for a number of reasons that we've already talked about but we need to be very clear that you know and i think that's why jamie's point of let's not i i agree this has not been a rushed process but to rush to take a vote on a document it feels rushed to me right i think we said that we were going to get the tour get the um value engineering assessed and joe has started that process we also said that we would um get an estimate from perkins easement and traverse and we're getting that so i think i agree you know this these things have have a rhythm once you start them they have a rhythm and to rush the experts on getting the information so that you can get it

111voted by a certain time doesn't feel right to me you know you actually need to we're we're going the next committee is going to have to become knowledgeable knowledgeable about this at some point anyway it's going to have to keep the process going if it's um you know unless it votes otherwise so i think let's let's put it on the next committee meeting but we have to make sure that we stay on track with the timing the process um which is you know pretty tight right now in terms of staying on track with the compliance schedule jamie yeah so a couple thoughts in in the the lie behind my characterization of this as rush but it's a little more than just rushed it's it seems like a something that needs more more [Music] project management

112help than it's ever gotten you know if this were a building project state law of this size state law would require us to have a named project manager with professional experience running these types of projects to lead our way through things like the value engineering process in the bidding process and to represent us as a committee or as a district through the process and to give a independent objective assessment of the numbers that we're getting from design professionals and from contractors and from other engineers and to say yeah you know that calculation on the on the on on the replacement cost of a grass field might be a little high because it involves x y and z or the calculation on the on the on the replacement cost of the turf field might be a

113little high because you know there's another way to do it i don't know i'm not a design i'm not a you know a construction professional but i and i i'm supremely uncomfortable that things like value engineering decisions on the design of a field that we want to live with for for the next 20 years 30 years however long are best made by a committee of laypeople pulling together information on a day's notice and then trying to go with it it's just it just strikes me as a um as as rushing forward a really critical phase of the process right deciding what's in what's out how to best pull this together totally uncomfortable going in that direction i urge the next school community to take a hard look about what type of professional support will help

114them make the best decision and also to have a conversation with joe about about whether in the administrative team about whether this right now in this phase of the pandemic is the best use of their time and and um they have a fixed amount of time that they can devote to the needs of the school and and they're spending a lot of it on this on this fields project i get it i get it it's important to a lot of people there are a lot of other competing priorities for the school too so you get to find the right balance and also find the right way of supplying the professional help to make a decision that we're not going to regret regret down the line and i just will touch on one other theme is

115far more valuable than the amount of money in the capital gift account is this district's goodwill and public trust and how we spend this money and after what sort of process will either inspire confidence of our stakeholders in the community or it will erode that confidence in the in the members of the community we have we're an independent body as i'll mention but we rely every year in and out on the goodwill and working relationship with other independent bodies the boards of selectmen the finance committees of the member towns and we need to have conversations with them to so that they fully understand why the the school committee is heading in the direction it's heading based on my understanding in conversations with people right now they don't get it they really don't get it i

116feel like we're losing public trust we lost i think a fair bit of public trust after our meeting on friday and the way that that played out that's just my sense from talking to people and getting feedback after the meetings um but i'd be careful about that on a going for forward basis to make sure that the decisions not just what the school committee thinks is best for the district but it is after a process that the public feels like makes sense to them i don't think we're there yet if we don't do that as a district i'm gone i'm not i'm off the committee right if we don't do that as a as a district you're gonna end up with a really expensive amenity might be lovely right and the town might just represent

117it it might not be a gift that anybody is happy with or some people have within the rest just like him and that at that point you've given the other independent bodies that we need to work well with a bat that they can beat up the school committee with in budget fights year after year after year after year don't do that thanks jamie i think steven had his hand up next now all right yeah i was you know just reiterating that you know we're not rushing forward there have been requests to have a vote or to have a forum on the fields going back since january and you know to some extent i'll say that you know the school committee has potentially had a failure in terms of how we have presented information but we

118have collected that information the information has been there this is not something that is being rushed the real question is what is going to meet the district needs and we've heard point blank that the best solution for district needs is the artificial turf and so what's going to happen and again as i've said this i've been on three different committees that have looked at this over four or five years i'll be on a fourth hopefully not a fifth that keeps looking at this but what's going to happen is we're going to lose more seasons we're going to lose more funds on more studies and this is not who we're supposed to be doing you know let's finally do something and have a product for the kids in the district that they can directly use thank

119you hell did you want to say something uh i think we have great public trust uh i've gotten dozens and dozens of emails and you have to almost all the emails thank us all the emails say you have worked so hard all the emails say that we appreciate you what you have done they might not agree with us okay a very very small number of emails we got use words like you didn't do due diligence or or you or you do lack integrity we have we have a couple of them but the vast majority of emails that i read and i guess you do it too is just the opposite people thanking us and appreciating for what we have done i don't think we lose public trust at all i think we have people realize

120how hard that is and how hard we have worked on this so i i don't know who you talk to but that's what i see on on the emails that i get carrie um yeah christina could i just read a little bit of the email that i sent you um about the process and it speaks to this issue of of trust a public trust so my hope is that the vote taken by the school committee on october 16th will enable us to move forward with more productive conversations both within the school committee and with the greater community regarding actionable items we have the opportunity to set up a process that is transparent inclusive and informative as we move forward with decisions about the project and we have outlined the decisions we will need to make

121each step of the way there will need to be a vote on the value engineering another vote to send the bid package out another vote on the bids that come in these are all points at which the finance committee currently charged with managing the fields project and the school committee the only body authorized to spend money will need to have meetings that are open to the public and during which the minutes are carefully recorded they could presumably also be streamed um so i said a bunch of other things but i think you know we can't fix the process that has happened to date they're just so many factors that have impeded the school committee's ability to do what it has said it might do or do what it said it would do and we have

122to start clean we just have to start clean and i really do think that you know in choosing a direction as joe said the traverse and perkins easement they just need to know what we're gonna do community needs to know what we're gonna do and we need to move forward and i think let's do our best to do everything that we say we're gonna do the way we say we're gonna do it and get the best information we can i think having a project manager absolutely could have helped you know but we can't fix that so let's let's do it right you know moving forward i do agree that the administration needs to tell us if this is not a good time to be doing this i'm not hearing that feedback um but it it

123may be that you know it rob just hasn't been willing to to make that comment but did you want to speak to that rob um basically this is this is occupied i i don't see joe anymore all joe is working overtime on this this basically has been a non-stop project for him at least for two weeks i think actually three weeks is a better description of it and he's been we have end of the year reports to do with this time there's all sorts of things that uh that need to be done and uh so it has great i you know i don't know when a good time to do anything is given the pandemic but uh this certainly has occupied uh uh an in our inordinate amount of time in the central office but

124i uh i'm just feeling protective of the time of the administrators trying to get things done as you see i basically cut all the principles loose to go back and prepare for the work that they're going to be starting to get early in the morning i just yeah yeah that's that's my comment on that thank you i think something to note also in terms of uh rushing to pull put a another meeting on the calendar next week we have a joint session on wednesday night with the williamstown select board and the lanesboro select board to appoint the seventh member to our current school committee so i don't think it's even fair to the current members or to that new member to have a meeting after that um there's a lot of catching up that any

125new member coming out is going to have to do before we can um continue on it's so fantastic that all the information we have is available to them to start looking at now um but i just don't know how we're going to pull off a meeting next week and we don't even know if we'll have the information we need to have a meeting next week and we can't take up an inordinate amount of joe's time while you know we have our superintendent our interim superintendent moving out and our new superintendent coming in and too much too much good things but too much so yeah i don't i don't think we should do that either so um but we're moving forward right we're moving forward we're we're gonna get the information that we need and and

126we'll take it when it gets to us how um we're moving let's make clear we're moving forward on artificial turf that's that's what we're moving forward on unless i hear emotion otherwise that's what we're moving forward on so do we also have on this agenda the um endowment yes question we do so sorry nope it's okay so um historically um probably if everyone's gone back through all of our meeting minutes that related to capital gifts the way i have we have had um recommendations from the finance subcommittee i believe at one point and the maybe the phase two committee i i don't know steve maybe you can recollect but there was a there was a recommendation to set aside 1.5 million of the gift for future needs um unrelated to the athletic infrastructure but it's

127never been um it's never been voted by the full committee to commit that that those funds right and it's also important to note that we've been using the the gift from williams college to pay for some of these expenses already so i believe jill might have all the numbers i think the boilers for instance we've already tapped the gift for that is that correct that's correct we haven't one of the projects at mount greylock that was that was two years ago three years ago perhaps ow uh can you hear me i can't see anybody yes we can hear you um let's put to bed once and for all to this 1.5 thing the 1.5 thing money came up when it was discovered that we were going to roll over the parking lot into the building

128project wow what is that going to save us and we came up with an arbitrary number of 1.5 million that's where the 1.5 million came into it it was never it was never voted on it was never it was never uh set aside it was a number that was there okay so let's put away this thing that did that that that the phase two subcommittee or the original uh uh subcommittee for the fields came up with a 1.5 number let's put that that's just not true this never was there the the what we call the maintenance fund okay or endowment there was never a number put on that so let's stop talking about and giving false information to the public that that the uh committee on the fields said that we're going to set aside

1291.5 million dollars that just isn't true i think what is the case and what you may be thinking of christina was that the um prior to phase two the capital gift committee and the then school mount greylock school committee that received the gift talked about various sums 1.2 1.5 a million i think it would be very helpful to the community and to the town officials for us to take a vote on this i think it would also limit the amount of money that we spend on a project it would rain us in essentially we have an estimate that it would be the the value of the gift is 6.8 we've spent 3.2 um you know that would leave essentially 2.5 if you know when this this fields project goes to bid um and that means

130that we have a million dollars to put aside i don't know that i i did not remember that it was specifically for non-field related items i don't know if i support that but um i think it's worthy of discussion but putting a million dollars aside and limiting future committees um you know saying don't know again if we can limit future committees from spending that money if we can say don't touch it for 10 years i don't think we can do that but we can say we're not going to touch it for this project and hope that we don't need it soon we hope that it will grow sorry jamie i i think we should just let let this issue with the other issues on this project roll over to the next school committee there's you

131know we had we the 1.5 with no further spending on fields project was the result of that recommendation was the result of a very long conversation um with lots of kind of analysis behind it um by dan kaplinger and regina and me in a finance subcommittee meeting we all coming from very different perspectives came together and and agreed that that was a reasonable approach going forward and we brought it to the school committee and and there was crickets no one it was just a kind of thanks for thanks for your work that's very interesting um i think that that thinking about how to divide up the pie on on what's remaining um is worthy of a of a similar kind of conversation with you know tate that takes into account the kind of field you

132want to field improvements we want to make what they cost and and the amount of money that's that's left over i think that it it took some time but the three of us again coming from very different perspectives we're able to to come to a um a consensus opinion about what makes sense and i think it that approach based on kind of numbers and costs and estimates can help inform that um that conversation in in and could help build consensus about the approach going forward so i'd be reluctant to just pick a number tonight and vote on it tonight ow i hate this i i really hate this all those people that you mentioned none of them was here from day one so this let's start with that as a basis okay when we talk

133today at the finance sub-community i would have no problem saying 2-5 for the fields 200 200 000 since contingency and then what whatever is left over we put it in an endowment i would not be in favor of limiting us on the endowment reason for that as we as we saw with the phase one money on on the multi-multi-use building things come up and that that's why we should have a contingency fund and that's why we should leave a carriage thing of two of a million dollars it could be a goal i don't think it should i don't think it should be uh uh a boat we talked today also about just real quick if we just if we had a million dollars in the endowment or whatever you want to call it building fund

134whatever maintenance fund whether intent name you want to give it and if we do what we said what we're aiming to do if we could just set fifty thousand dollars aside thirty thousand dollars from williamstown twenty thousand dollars which is really a reserve fund transfer almost for the town budget and we did that for ten years in ten years we would have two million dollars in the endowment we had 500 000 in whatever you want to call it a reserved front of a rotating front the stabilization fund and then we can really make decisions i said it before money is a red herring we have the money we have the capabilities of utilizing the money and i i again i sometimes gets distressed when i hit people who should know these things say things that

135they're worried about long-term planning i'll tell you what i'll tell you what long-term planning is long-term plenty when we set aside for pension we don't we set aside pensions and we do it every year we know what we have to do you know what we worry i'll tell you what we worry about our finance committees what we worry about on finance committees is when we have a six hundred thousand dollar water sewer problem that we've been trying to to figure out for the last three years what to do and the state then comes in and says hey you have three months to figure out what to do and for every day after three months you're gonna be fine two thousand dollars and that's calendar days not not work days that's a financial problem telling us

136that ten years from now we have a six hundred thousand dollar maintenance problem that's not a financial problem it is easily resolvable and we have the resources to do it okay so it looks like we're not gonna take a vote on the endowment and there isn't a vote on the oh goodness i've lost the agenda here it is uh on the value engineering um and we can't vote to move to detailed design because we don't have the estimate yet so i think we're done yep we are uh so the next item on the agenda is other business and i do not have any so do i have a motion no no no you have you have more well we have thank yous to to deliver all right jamie and ally and al um are all

137leaving the committee after you know years of service and it's you know that's a a lot of a lot of you know it's a lot of time and energy to put into um something that has been quite uh quite demanding um the last couple of years so you know i haven't been on the committee during that time but i've been keeping an eye and it's uh it's been hard so thank you for doing the hard work um and thank you to rob putnam for stepping in and keeping us afloat and helping our principals and guiding our school committee and um we're ever so grateful for for your assistance um and thank you to jake for joining us early with dr mccandless um joining us for two meetings before you even had to um you know

138it'll all be fine that's what i'm going to say we'll all be fine it'll work out i just want to briefly second what kerry said and just add that we have been lucky to have so many members from the community willing to step up and serve in these roles for months for years and provide you know very different perspectives which are good to hear and open and discuss and that's what this is supposed to be and it's great that we can have these healthy discussions and hopefully you guys will continue to join us in zoom or maybe even in person someday and i thank you to joe also for all your work on this project um and everything else that you've got going on really appreciate it thanks thank you i moved to adjourn for

139old time's sake i want to be the one to second house motion for all time we were such a good one-two peer on adjourning over the years okay yeah have peace everybody in ancient tradition we have a motion to adjourn from terra nova and it is seconded by miller all in favor eye conory eye green eye debating abstaining in favor of old traditions but i'll go with miller aaron override okay that is eight forever now and this meeting is concerned thank you everyone hey cam peace everybody hey rob yes rob are you still there oh yes i'm here can you grab can you