001All [Music] right. 601. Call this meeting to order. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Guess I will start by thanking the staff members who took us on that nice tour of the schools. they're all shined up and ready for the kids to come in and uh it was nice to see that and hear a little bit more about what goes on in the uh classrooms and what we have planned for this year. So, thank you for thank you for the tours around the schools. Um first on the agenda tonight, we're going to reorganize the school committee. Two of our members couldn't make
002it here tonight, so we're going to table that till the next possible meeting so we can have everyone here. Um later on we're also going to we were going to talk about uh subcommittees. We're going to table that as well till we have the full committee present so we can all buy in and uh otherwise we're just going to nominate everyone for the most difficult committees. Just leave it like that. Uh second thing on the agenda is recognition. >> All right. Thank you Mr. Canada. Uh, so I just want to start off by formally introducing some new members of our LT team. Um, across the table from me to my maybe my far left, Mr. Brian Beck, the new junior city high school principal. Uh, Brian comes to us with a depth of knowledge both
003as a building principal, superintendent, and we're very excited to have Brian on board. Uh, so Brian is still learning the building, so I had to help Brian tonight with the tour, but uh, he's excited to get going and meet the kids uh, starting next week. Um, we have Mr. Murphy who's been with the team so he's in year two he's a veteran but to Mr. Murphy's left to my right uh we have Mr. Dr. Dr. Baldari who is our new PPS director. Uh Mike like Brian comes to us with a wealth of information, knowledge, experience. So we're lucky to have Mike on his team. Uh we had our our we finished up our retreat today, but our our Friday we we're offsite all day at a retreat for our LT team, talking about building ourselves
004up as a working team and what that means, what that takes um to be to have a successful team, but also success, excuse me, successful school year. And I think that uh these two members to the team uh really bring like I said a lot of experience uh a different lens to look at things. So I'm very excited for what they what we can do as a group this year. Uh I do also want to recognize uh not only our building principles uh we've had to make a lot of hires this summer as happens quite frequently and and they've acted very quickly to bring in new people uh conducting interviews oftentimes uh multiple multiple days a week throughout the summer. So, I want to commend you both for your hard work there getting our team
005in place. Um, I also want to commend and really give a shout out to Danielle Graham, who is our business manager, HR assistant. Uh but Danielle, not only did she take on that role this summer, she was she basically our supervisor in a lot of ways too in the sense that she helped me and she did most of this work and making sure that our building was on par with all our inspections and making sure that things are up to snuff with with making sure our building was safe for kids to return next week. So, thank you Danielle. Uh I want to thank Miss Grenovich to my left uh who has been the consistent member of the special ed team the last year. We've had multiple directors um and you've been a cons consistent force
006in keeping that office kind of up and running and uh as as Mike will tell you, she is a great asset to our district. So thank you. U and also Zach Barrett who's not here this evening, but Zach is our IT director. He's our oneman IT department. As has mentioned to the committee this evening, um, Zach has done a fantastic job of updating all of our technology. Um, as some of you may know and some of you in TVland may know that Windows is phasing out. Windows 11 is phasing out. So, we're in the process of of updating all of our desktops. We've updated our server. So, the whole the goal, the intent is to make sure that our technology is up and running smoothly for the start of the school year. and and Zach's
007done a fantastic job. And lastly, I want to give a shout out to our custodial team um who uh again have done a fantastic job as Tim alluded to. You know, we watched we did a tour of both buildings. The classrooms are clean, the floors are waxed, now they're focusing their attention to outdoors to making sure that everything is landscaped for our return. Uh but with a small team that we have uh they do a lot of great work and I want to commend them for all their efforts this summer and making sure our buildings look clean and are clean and are safe for our kids to return. So thank you to all those people, all those groups. Uh this is definitely a joint effort and I want to commend you all for your hard
008work. >> All right. Thank you. I also just want to thank real quickly uh John Maggario who had to resign from the committee but uh I appreciate his time here. It was a tough budget season and we've been in a lot of uh committee meetings together and uh you know I'm sad to see him go. But I also on that same note I want to uh thank Maggie Woodward who's now part of the part of the team and uh she got approved by the board of selectman last week and we look forward to working with her as well. Anyone that steps up for town committees and boards is an important part of a small town like this. We need people like that willing to put in the effort and do the work. And uh so
009my thanks goes to John for his time when he was here and for Maggie for her upcoming time on the committee. You guys have anything else? All right. Approval of minutes. So we have two sets of minutes in here that we are approving. Um I would like to do them separately because I have a comment on one of them. First one is from Monday, June 16th. It was a regular meeting here in the KA. Um do I have a motion to approve those minutes? I'll make a motion to approve the uh June 16th school committee meetings meeting minutes. Excuse me. >> I will second that motion. >> All right. Any discussion about this one? N. All right. All in favor of approving those minutes? All right. The second one we are approving is July 1st,
0102025. Um, I believe we called that one as a I don't know if it matters for the the town archives or not, but it's written in here as a regular meeting. I believe that was a special meeting. >> It was. >> We might want to note that. Um, can I get a motion to approve this? Then we can discuss. I have another note on that as well. Sorry. >> Uh, I make a motion that we approve the spoken meeting minutes from July 1st. >> Second. All right. Discussion. I I have one thing. I um I don't know that it was a unanimous vote. I need to check with the other members of the committee. It was definitely a majority vote, but it wasn't. I don't know that it was unanimous. And that's in section two
011right at the end. I just want to double check on that. Um, so if I could take a take uh some time and just ask because I know John's not here anymore. Dan's not here. He was also at that meeting. Um, I just want to make sure everyone's votes are recorded correctly and maybe we can table this approval of minutes till the next meeting and we can just just confirm that. I just want to make sure. Okay, >> you guys okay with that? >> Yes, sounds good. >> All right, so we're gonna we're going to table that. I think we could do I have to amend that to Where's Where's Ron? We need him. >> Yeah. So, we're going to uh why don't we withdraw the motion and we'll just table it till the next
012time. So, Matt, can you make a motion that we withdraw that uh previous motion to approve the meeting minutes from the special school committee meeting on July 1st? July 1st. >> I will second that. >> All right. All in favor of withdraw. So, it's withdrawn. I guess that's all you got to do is withdraw it. >> All right. And uh so we will table that till the next meeting. I I got to do a little homework. I've been hanging out with uh our town historian every so often, so I got to make sure this stuff's accurate. I want to be quoted incorrectly in the archives. So, I'll shoot you an email once I reach out to everyone. All right. Next, we have correspondence. Any correspondence from you guys? I have no >> All right. Public
013participation public. >> Just listening. >> All right. Moving on then. School committee reports. I actually have something for this. Just an update on um and then we can get to your yours first. Mine's a quick one and then you've got probably more to say. Um, we are ne still negotiating with the custodians right now. We we thought we were there. We have a little more couple more things to work out. So, um, as of right now, we don't have anything to bring to the committee to sign yet, but I believe we're setting up a meeting for next week to >> hopefully hash that out. >> Um, and that's where we are with that. The teachers, we're all set. It's just the custodians now that we're working on. Do we have Oh, we have you as
014a Matt your tuition. >> Yeah, Matt as a separate business. You could swap it if you like or leave it as a local business. >> Yeah, I think why don't we uh why don't we incorporate that into the school committee reports? Matt, you have >> sure update on that? >> Yeah, I don't I mean I have a little bit. Um so we've had two or three meetings since we met last as a committee, I think. Um we most recently just had one um this last Wednesday which um we had Quabin Regional School District, their superintendent came uh spoke with us about what their school district has to offer um for a potential tuition out uh agreement. Um so as of right now we there's two school districts who would be interested if that would be
015something we were looking to do. Um Quaog and Quabin. um East Brookfield and Spencer, they weren't. They told me right away they were interested in the superintendent. Uh but the more he spoke with their school committee, he said this isn't the right time for them essentially because of their opening a new building and doing some stuff. So he said if we were still looking down the line, he might be interested in something that um so our next meeting planned is for Wednesday, September 13th, if I have that right. Uh it's basically the second Wednesday. I think that's the right date. But we're going to be recapping uh Quabin's presentation and I can send that to you guys as well so you can look at it. Um and then just having a general discussion about what's
016next with our timeline if there's any other information you need. Um and then we're open to be back here present to the full school board by October's meeting at the latest with what we found. >> And those meetings are open to the public. >> Open to the public. Posted and all that stuff. >> That's all I had. You guys have any questions? >> Don't know enough about what they said to ask you the questions once we see the report. >> Yeah, we we'll show you we'll show you everything. Yeah. >> And there'll probably be a little bit of um at the September meeting for us, we can talk more about, you know, the school committee's next steps in that in the whole process too and how where we go from there. So, we'll probably know
017more after we talk again. Yeah, I think the big the big thing will be determining whether we need to have a joint meeting at that point, correct? And post that. So >> then you guys So it's I like hearing the reports from you, but I think it's good to have the whole >> Yeah, I don't I don't disagree. Yep. We could do definitely work on doing something like that. >> All right. Anything else? The financial reports. >> All right. All right. So, I've attached uh the financial reports both from Tyler Tech and also what we do internally. Um again, I mentioned this already, but I just want to commend Danielle for for her work uh end of last year with my work, our work on the budget, but also making sure Tyler was in a
018better uh place to start the school year. Um and I think you can see that very quickly that that things are where they should be as far as the budget is concerned. um uh we we are looking at making sure that line items are accurate um and that if we do need to transfer that we we we know that well in advance. So again I just want to commend Danielle for her efforts. Um we are very much looking at a system this year of of monitoring in real time our our grant allocations and grant draw downs um to better support our projections for the general budget. So if there are any questions I could entertain or or with Danielle's help entertain questions about the budget. >> I have a question. Do we have any transfers
019lingering from last year that we need to reconcile? >> Everything for last year's been finalized and done. >> Okay. >> We just received notification from Desi today that um our end of day report is due end of September. So they just rolled it out today. So that's our next thing is to work on our identity report for Department of Education, >> which is another heavy lift. >> Well, you got about a month and a >> I don't have any other questions. Do you guys have anything at all? >> No. >> All right. I have to download this because if I look at it in just the Google Docs, it doesn't I can't skip back um superintendence report. >> All right. So, I started off um as I typically do with a list of hires and
020departures. Um and I've introduced some of those numbers tonight, but we we've hired quite a few people. Um we still have a few positions open to hire um that we're trying to fill before the start of school. That is our our goal, our intent. Um, what I've listed as some of our opening updates are the same things that I identified in my newsletter to families about a week ago. Um, we, like I discussed at many times last year, we are phasing in our advanced manufacturing pathway at the high school. So, like I mentioned, every incoming freshman will take a project leader course. They will take the IED course as a freshman along with life science. And we've also added two more grades to our project lead programming which is at the elementary school. So that
021means that um grades two and four along with three and five will now be teaching STEM education in the classroom. Um my goal as I mentioned earlier in the tour is that by end of next year K through five will have STEM education within the classroom of teachers trained to do that within the classroom for all grades. Um so that means now that Project Lead the Way and STEM education is happening at all levels. uh we have a middle school program and now we have a high school program that's been phased in for this for this coming school year. Um we are also phasing in what is called democratic knowledge project. This is another 18 curriculum that we were awarded at the end of last year um or DKP is the acronym. Uh but this
022is the eighth grade service curriculum um that is being adopted by many districts around the state. Um this is a more current way of looking at how government runs uh in our country and worldwide. So Mr. Tiff is going to be going through that training I believe late September. Um so that will will start with Fidelity once he is is fully trained has access to curriculum in the fall. We are entering year two of our creative action and thinking lab or cat lab. Um Miss Channing Blank was the spearhead of this initiative last year and as you may recall we did show a few videos from our first grade our kindergarten and grade two I believe. Um this year we hope to do more music videos, more introduction to music programming, um music uh writing
023uh and our next step is to phase that in and introduce that concept to our middle and high school students. So uh Channing has has done a lot of this work uh on our own with our teachers. So we're really excited to have year two under under our belts started this year. And then as far as our professional learning communities, our professional development, uh we are going into year two with our agreement with Novak Education. um Novak Consulting, they're really at the forefront of UDL, not design for learning. And what we've done over the past year is really built a strong foundation of of making sure that our our classrooms, our instruction is welcoming. Uh it meets the needs of all of our diverse learners and that we're giving uh ample opportunities for kids to
024be assessed in multiple meanings, multiple modes. So, uh we're excited about this work. This work this year will focus a little more in detail on what's going on in the classrooms. We'll have some instructional coaching rounds with the members of UDL to really give teachers some some feedback in real time. So, this will be year two of our work with UDL and this was all uh funded through grants. So, again, a lot of the curriculum that we brought on um for our elementary and our high school students has been outside of the local budget has been grant funed through either 18 Project Lead the Way um ICP grant destination from the state. So, uh we're very excited about that and it's less of a burden uh for our local budget. And then lastly, I've just
025put a a graphic for you for your review. This again very similar to what I had in the uh opening day letter to families. Uh just the all the upcoming events that we have coming up in the next uh few days. Actually, this week is very busy for us. So, we have new teacher orientation uh both Wednesday and Thursday 8:30 to 2:30. We have grade 6 orientation for all our rising sixth graders. So, our kids who are transitioning from the fifth grade from the elementary school to our high school uh from 9 to 12 on Friday. that is led mostly by student council. Um they have a a list of activities set for our kids to really acquaint them with our school building. They'll meet some of their teachers. They'll meet Mr. Beck. Um they'll
026see the lockers. They'll see the cafeteria, the gym. Um but really get a tour of of similar detailed parts of the building. Um our opening day professional development for our teachers, we have two full days. Um this is the way it's been for a very long time in our district. Uh we have our opening day convocation um on Monday morning from from 8:00 to around 9:00 and then most of the work is back building base with principles, our special education director, our IT director so that we our intent our hope is always to get teachers up and ready to go once kids come back on Wednesday and they get almost two full days of of PD internally and they also get time to to help um get their classroom set up later in the day
027as well on day two. Our kindergarten open house is on August 26th, which is that Tuesday of the first week at 1:00. Um, we also have our preschool open house on August 28th, which is that Thursday from 12:15 to 1:15. So again, our preschool doesn't start until after Labor Day, but this is opportunity for those kids and those families to come in and see the two classrooms to meet the two teachers again and kind of see the space for their kids. Same with our kindergarten students. may start on that Wednesday, but this is another opportunity for some of our youngest learners to see our spaces before we start school. So, it's a it's a really exciting day. I know this Wednesday, Mr. Murphy and I will be riding the bus with some of our kindergarters
028around uh around town cuz this is a big deal for them, their first ride on the big yellow school bus. So, we get a chance to see them with their parents kind of do the the run, if you will, um for our bus routes. Um and as I mentioned, the first day of preschool is on that Tuesday, September second. So that Tuesday after we get back from Labor Day. So a lot going on. Uh but I but this has been posted on Facebook. I'll probably do one more reminder email for families just so you know of all the important dates. Today was also the first day of fall sports. We had field hockey I think at 2:30 to 4:30 this afternoon. I believe I saw some students uh for our our JB soccer team as
029well. So that started as well today. Um so we're excited. A lot going on. A lot to be happy about for our kids and our families. Any questions? All right, administrators reports. See who's who's first in my stack here. >> It's Mr. Beck. >> Mr. Beck. All right, Mr. Beck, you get to go. You get to go first. I obviously, having just gotten here, I don't even know my way around the school. school. I had to have the superintendent bring, but um over the course of the summer um you know, I've had the opportunity to to meet just a few people um and uh been spending much of my time interviewing, becoming acquainted with policy, updating the handbook, uh working with Courtney Airheart on scheduling and scheduling students. Um I do want to add a
030little bit of information about new staff. Um, wanted to let folks know that, uh, Richard Riggney, who had previously served as the athletic director, is once again um, back on board as our athletic director for this year. And, uh, we've added a high school science teacher. Quinn McHugh will join our faculty as a science teacher. He's a recent graduate of Worcester Polytech where he earned a degree in biochemistry. Art mentioned when we were on our tour that uh we have a shared art teacher between the two buildings, Holly Nordby, who I've had the opportunity to meet this summer, and she has a degree in art education from the University of Massachusetts and recently did her uh practicum, student teaching practicum in Pioneer Valley Regional School District. As to mention, we have the orientation for sixth
031grade students and the daily schedule will be slightly different this year. Um, as the advisory period is being removed from the daily schedule and put into a rotation and that's been added to the handbook. Uh, this will also be a period where students will be working with second step, the new social emotional learning curriculum. And I did also want to share with the committee that I was very pleased to um be visited last not this past Friday, two I think it was two Fridays ago. Um happened to just be coming back from grabbing lunch over at Hannifford and um there were a number of students in the building and they introduced themselves to me. There were seven of the eight members of the student council executive board and they sat with me in the conference
032room and we met for 45 minutes to an hour and it was great to finally see kids and um I learned a great deal from them about the upcoming school year and um their enthusiasm um and pride in this school is definitely contagious. So that was wonderful. That's it for me. right at the elementary school. Um so I highlighted four kind of major areas of our focus this year. Um the first one was the continuation of our PBIS program. So PBIS is the positive behavioral interventions and support program. It's evidence-based tier frameworks for supporting students behavioral, academic, social, emotional and mental health when implemented with fidelity and improve social, emotional competence, academic success and school climate. So at MBS, we are all stars. So we teach our students to be safe, to be thoughtful and
033kind, to be attentive, and to be responsible. We are continuing our incentive Starbucks program through PBIS, and it is not the coffee place. Um so it's to celebrate these positive behaviors. We've teamed up with North uh Brookfield Police Department for cruiser rides to school. We're going to be doing that again. Um, we have a great school store which we stock um for prizes for them to go buy with their Starbucks and we have experiential incentives such as breakfast with me. Um, there's also lunch. Um, we do uh chair rides to school. So, I've pushed kids in wheelie chairs with music playing so kind of shower them to class. Um, we do a lot of things to just make students feel celebrated for their hard work. So we'll be continuing that this year. Also our Dibbles
034um testing program that we'll be using. So we'll be continuing our work with Dibbles. It's the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills. It's a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of literacy skills. So we use the ETH edition. Mr. Rearen is our new reading specialist. They'll be implementing the new uh a new progress monitoring system and working with general and special education teachers to use the data from the testing to support reading across all classrooms. So, um the progress monitoring schedule, it'll be ongoing. So, students will be um targeted if they show um low scores in certain areas that Dibbles looks at for reading uh for literacy skills. Um, so it's going to be a constant look at this year for us to make sure kids are where they are and
035um getting the support they need in the classroom. And then inter reading is our HMH um curriculum for ELA. We're going to be in our second year of that. So last year was our kind of rollout year. Uh before that there was a pilot year that they did, but last year was our big jump in year. Um it's fantastic. So it's structured literacy instructional design centers on literature that spurs knowledge building connections with streamlined planning, improvement instructional design and comprehensive standards coverage. Um teachers have what they need when they need it. So we have workbooks for our students. We have the online program that our teachers use that coincides with the workbook. Um so we're very excited about our second year going into um into reading. And last is a new block that we're going
036to be having at the school this year. It's our win block. So it's new. It's going to be uh when stands for what I need now. So every day from 9:45 to 10:15, every class in our school will be in this block. Um it's dedicated period of time for students to receive targeted support or enrichment based on their individual need. is flexible block that allows for differential instruction addressing both academic gaps and fostering student interest. So students at this time could receive um crit delivery uh related service delivery, tier 2 and three academic interventions, targeted small reading math groups. Um it can be gradewide so we can mix students who are at similar levels, students who might not have related services. We'll have extension progress, writing workshops, online programming, and then we can also do
037some of our dibbles progress monitoring during this time. We really wanted to focus on keeping students in classrooms and we saw that we had a lot of service delivery happening where we're pulling students out. So, we want to focus on times where kids are in the classrooms with their teachers during curriculum time and not pulled out. So, this whole block will allow us to get better at that. three. All right. Is there any questions? Mr. Belts, sorry. Thank you. Uh first, before I begin, I'd like to extend my uh my thanks and gratitude uh to the school committee of North Brookfield uh for allowing me the opportunity to be here uh and integrate with the new team. Um my compliments to Superintendent McCormack uh for ushering uh the leadership team through a uh couple of
038days of learning and connection so that we can calibrate uh our shared vision mission uh and experiences. I was uh taken back by the fact that the four of us have nearly 80 years of administrative experience uh among us and um it was a breath of fresh air and uh my thanks to the two G's, Miss Graham and Miss Govich for their support in um giving us what we need uh every single day to uh you know to get our work done. I u think Miss Granovich is a Jedi master. Um, and I I'll talk about that I'm sure in the future. Um, I've been, um, you know, I had a really, uh, great start in my ability to connect with students in the ESY program that was taking place right down the hall, uh,
039from our central office and, uh, and meet face to face with staff in the program, but, also uh, when I I put out a message to staff members who were interested in in collaborating and giving me an opportunity to learn from them to come in and sit with me and uh, tell me about their experience. experiences in North Brookfield, their experiences with uh with their students, and um this is a place where staff members know their kids by name. Uh they know their families, and that was evident in the first conversations that I had with the first uh the first adults who entered my office. These are people who connect and people who care. Uh they don't see their kids as numbers. They see their kids as names and faces. And I think that's really
040important. Uh I submitted the entitlement grants for the district title 124 and then I I should have specified uh in in fund code 240 that's idea the special education grant and the uh early childhood education grants. We are waiting for the department to get back to us on our grant approvals. I did have to submit some edits to the title 1, 2, and four. Uh those have been submitted. We have until September 30th. I don't see any roadblocks uh in the use of that funding and um the funding will align uh with the way that it was used uh last year. Uh we are required by um our our title one grant and also by the department of education to engage our families in meaningful opportunities to have a say over what's going on in
041their school district, in their kids' classrooms. And um not just to meet that requirement, but because it's important, I've set the first meeting for our families uh for September 23rd, 20125. Uh it'll be at 6:00 p.m. And that's going to be held virtually. Not all meetings will be held virtually, but for, you know, when we first get started, we want to take down and remove any barriers to participation for families. And uh we're really hoping that we can, you know, aside from connecting with families about the programs that we have using our entitlement grants, we'd also like to form a parent advisory council um to give uh voice to the parents of children with disabilities. uh in in the orchestration of parent advisory councils, the parent advisory council is actually supposed to uh provide advice
042to the administration and recommendations to uh the public school committee. And it's my hope that we'll be able to formalize that group as we move forward. Um, I'll be meeting this week with a group of special education administrators that are really close to us and the objective is to find places where we can share services or resources to meet the needs of our low incident population students. And uh, also today I was invited to be a member of uh, of another uh, special education leadership team that's hosted by the CAPS collaborative. uh they meet monthly and I did accept the invitation because in this business uh collaboration is a key to success. Um doing things alone um limits opportunities that you have for your students and for your staff. Um, so the next steps are,
043you know, as school comes back into session and all of our staff are back, it's my hope that not only in in in in forums where we're we're doing presentations and meeting with people as we will on opening days, but that I'll have the opportunity to meet with faculty and staff individually. Uh, and I'm sure that I'll be hearing more of their voices about how much they um, you know, they love their community and and connect with their students. um the uh you know to get the facilitation of September 23rd's virtual session down, we want to advertise it as widely as we possibly can and certainly welcome uh committee members and and any uh community um organizations rep representatives from community organizations who would like to uh attend that uh meeting as well. Um, I'm
044going to, you know, look to participate in regional collaborations. Uh, I call these meetings brainstormer meetings because when, you know, when folks get together who do the same work, sometimes new ideas are formed that are beneficial to the communities that we we serve. Um, and then it said there to finalize the edits to the Title One grant submission. That's already been done. And, uh, we're, as I said earlier, we're waiting to hear back. If anyone has any questions, I'm happy to answer them now. and uh we've been trying to get the parent advisory council really getting some momentum going here. It's something that the town has struggled with. I and I feel there's a lot of people in town that are imminently qualified to participate in that and really contribute and I'm hoping that you
045have some success especially with the virtual starting just to get them in there and see what it's all about. And uh I wish you the best of luck with that cuz it's it's a very important thing to have the parents involved in in this sort of a a program and have a voice in what's going on. And I hope hope we can get that traction and and build some momentum on it is my my hope for this year. Thank you. Key to success is having parent leadership. Um and so we're we're we're working with some individual parents to get them connected and be a voice for other parents. Um sometimes with administrators it's you know it seems like you know why why connect with an administrator when you can connect with another parent who's experiencing
046the same uh types of conditions in education that that they have for their children. That's a whole question. >> Thank you very much. Thank you all for your presentations. So I like this meeting. know what this what the summer is built up to, you know, find out what's going on. Um, all right. It is old business. We had that in here as tuition committee update, but Mr. Grant already did that for us. Uh, policy. >> Just add one thing. Yeah, for next month we'll have a facilities update and also an athletics update. >> Okay. >> We were asked for an athletics update last year for this year. So, we do that monthly as well. >> Oh, yeah. I probably should have buzzed quickly through uh Mr. Barage's notes here for the technology update cuz he's
047had a busy summer. Um, all student and teacher Chromebooks have been cleaned, white, labeled, and added to a spreadsheet and database for tracking purposes. prototype server has been completed including setting up new DNS DHCP server as well as an updated modern installation of Windows Server 2025 with Active Directory that we talked about that last year when he started working on that. So I'm glad that he's through that process. Network attached storage server was also installed in the same machine. Sims report was completed. They encountered an issue where Elma assigned graduate status to all fifth graders being promoted to sixth grade which required extensive manual intervention. It's >> like graduating from high school. >> Wow. Don't tell them that. Um >> you did. I would tell mom. We didn't tell him. >> I would wonder if
048I got fifth grader diplomas across the desk to sign you. Um new PCs for classrooms have arrived. Uh he's been working, you mentioned that during the tour, he's working on upgrading the operating systems for those. Um we have a collection of broken or outdated electronics. Um he's putting a spreadsheet together for that. We saw a pile of those are from the library and students have been promoted to the next grade level and alma or are graduated as needed or sometimes graduated in excess of being needed. in concert with Courtney Airheart and Brian Beck. We have set schedule for the new school year as well as set classes. So, he's had a very busy summer with the computers of the school. I'm glad that server is up and and going. >> Yes. And when when he
049we talk about the new PCs, we're not talking about huge new devices. We're talking about a small little piece that we're putting in. Um and Zach was able to find, like I said, a workaround that saved us a lot of money with with these new devices. So, a lot of creativity, a lot of effort on his part to get it done. And we're excited about the the next we have policy. Do we have any? >> We do not >> no policies to discuss, but we do have some uh new business here which affects policies for us and for Valley View. So, first thing is the approval of the student handbook. you want to give a can you give us just for the purposes of our two or three viewers with the uh high level changes
050that >> yeah uh high level changes there weren't many I think there was some na name changes some title changes it was very minor right now um as we update if we update policy throughout the year we'll obviously change those but the way I explain it's kind of soup to nuts um everything we do in the school as far as policy around discipline to attendance um to to tardiness to absenteeism. Um it just get it kind of outlines all those pieces. It also tells our students and our families where to go to if they have a need around special education around 504 um implementation IEPs. So what point person what director what principal or or what super superintendent are you going to go talk to if you have concerns about uh this aspect of school
051life. So um Mr. back updated his welcome message uh for the 25 26 school year, but I think it's it's worth noting that there is time dedicated the first couple days of school to review parts of this with students. And I think the expectation is still that they return a signed copy that acknowledging they've received this so that if there's any gray area or any questions that they at least acknowledge they've seen it. Um doesn't mean they've memorized it. They know it by heart, but we want to make sure that we give students and families as much access as possible to this document. And once we approve this, the approved version will be uploaded to the website in case someone wants to get a jump on it. For for the record, it's a 91page student
052handbook. So I will not be reading it here tonight, but it will be available on the website if you'd like to go and read it. And I believe there are also policies in there that are outlined on how to object to a policy within the policy handbook. >> Yes, >> there are who you would talk to to do that. But if anyone has some extra time, wants to read the 91 pages, I will not do it here tonight at this meeting. Make a motion to approve. Make a motion to approve the student handbook. >> I will second that motion. >> All right. Have any discussion about the handbook? All right. Well, all in favor of approving the student handbook. All right, moving on from that, we have the Valley View Handbook. So, every year, um,
053if you're, if this is the first school committee you're tuning into, every year, because Valley View School is in our is in our town and therefore in our district, we as a school committee have to approve their curriculum um, as part of their accreditation to the state. I get that right? >> Yes. generally speaking. So, they are a private school, but they're in our town and therefore we sign off on their curriculum. >> Um, they did have a few changes which they highlighted this year, just kind of tweaking some of their classes. Um, I didn't see anything that jumped out as being of particular interest. They have a pretty diverse curriculum over there and uh they just really made a few minor tweaks to what they were teaching. >> This is this is really more
054of our studies. It's different than our policy, but it's just >> kind of outlines. It's what we do in March or April for our school, for our students. We just kind of look at theirs and >> yeah, >> they make changes every year. >> So, I'll entertain a motion to approve the Valley View School 2025 2026 curriculum. >> I will make a motion that we approve the Valley View Schools 2025 2026 curriculum as presented. >> Second. All right. Any discussion about that? All in favor? >> I and then we had on here subcommittee assignments. So the subcommittees as it stands right now are policy, curriculum, building, grounds and safety and negotiation subcommittee. Um the currently the negotiation subcommittee is engaging with the um uh custodians. Um I was while we are here I would like
055to ask if uh and we'll get the two of you's thoughts on it as your thoughts on it as well. Um Mr. Grant has negotiated before. John Maggario was on the committee with me previously uh for negotiations throughout the spring. I was wondering if I could kind of bring in Mr. Grant if you if you guys would be okay with that. Um, having been through the negotiations once before, if I could just hopefully we close out the custodians. It's good to have two and then at the next meeting when we when we reshuffle the committee, we'll talk about new um assignments here. >> I think that's a wonderful idea. >> You're good with that? Okay. >> Thank you. >> All right. He did offer to to do that. I'm not just drafting him cold on
056the >> If he's got the experience, you jump right in. >> All right. Uh I don't think tonight we have anything for executive session. All right. If that is the case, I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Second. >> All any discussion about adjourning. All right. All in favor? >> I thank you. Have a good night. >> Thank you.