NMRSD School Committee 2022-06-13

001all right thank you um all right so roll call do we have dave dave's joining right now and so was in tom okay so isn't susan all right do we have dave i can't hear you tom june yeah jess here lisa yes randy yes susan here and i'm here dave is your audio working all right um our next scheduled meeting of the north middlesex regional school committee will be held at 7 pm on monday july 18th uh consent agenda we have approval of minutes payable accounts payable warrants payroll warrants and a handful of donations dave yeah jess yes lisa yes randy yes susan yes tom yes i will vote yes that's unanimous thank you on to uh public communications we had one person um submit for public communications uh patrick mcphee from ashby i don't

002see that he's on craig all right okay and we will proceed on next is a chairperson's report um i don't have much other than to uh just recognize that this is both the assistant superintendent milligans and uh principal uh hanley from barnum brook's final school committee meeting as uh dr hannah is retiring and uh miss milligan is moving on to uh other pastors so um i didn't know if either of you not to put you on the spot but if either of you wanted to say anything or if members of the committee wanted to say anything or members of staff or administration wish to say anything this would be the opportunity i know from my point of view can you hear me craig can you hear me yes okay i know from my point of

003view i've enjoyed working with the spectrum school district uh for the last eight years and if it wasn't for the opportunity to be closer to home with my my children i would probably still be here for the next eight so i'm very pleased to have been part of this journey and i wish everyone the best and i know that i'll continue to be on emails and text threads and everything for the foreseeable future to make sure that it's a smooth transition for dr barbour reese so thank you for my perspective uh same same for me you know i started my teaching career at spaulding in 1999 and being back at barnum after being the assistant principal there for a time uh has been great um the people they're great um the parents very supportive um

004you know especially these last couple years which were difficult i think for for everybody um not just people in schools so um you know i appreciate all of your support and um you know i will be there through the end of july so when they hire a new principal um i hope to meet that person and welcome them to our school so thank you susan i saw you come off from here you want to say something yes no i just wanted to say um thank you both of dr hanley and um to um mrs milligan um i think tara i've known you back from the spalding days from pto meetings from uh we won't count the years i started to do the math and it got too complicated a lot of carrying numbers and so

005but sorry to uh see you leave um but um i wish you the best of luck in the the next step in your life and um nancy uh i've enjoyed working with you um over these years and um have uh appreciated um i worked more closely with nancy than i have uh to tara um certainly i've known tara for a long time but um and nancy i've appreciated the passion with which um i've seen you um in this role and uh that lucky district uh that gets you next but i get but being near the kids thing and feeling like you can make a difference in your children's education so i wish you luck and i will miss you and good luck in the next step thank you all right anybody else all right i'll

006echo the sentiment um i enjoyed working uh nancy with yourself and and dr hanley as well uh both my kids went to varnam brook my youngest just uh just wrapped up or is just about to wrap up his uh his tenure there so uh perfect timing so i appreciate you uh uh hanging in there to my kids left um and uh and nancy again pleasure pleasure working with you and um look forward to seeing more great things from both of you as you move on fine there's no hard feelings you left right before my third game which is probably a smart decision not what it was tom tom i have a third too so maybe it's both of us that might be right all right well thank you and congratulations um uh superintendent working onto

007your report sure um thank you and i'll be brief i just obviously where's my where it's a report just want to open with thanking um both nancy and tara for being valued members of the administrative team um i value both of them professionally and personally and really wish them the very best moving forward nancy moving on to windham new hampshire and tara moving into retirement so again valued members of the team you will both be missed thank you for all that you have done um the only other piece we have we have um both we have two people leaving and we have one person joining and hopefully if we're back in person in the fall you'll be able to meet this person but i would like to welcome mr ryan demar who has been the

008academic transition coordinator at the high school a student supervisor at the high school and has also coached multiple sports at the high school as the new assistant principal joining the administrative team at the high school i see that ryan is on the call i certainly do not want to put him on the spot right now but we'll certainly ask him to say a few words to the committee come the fall so welcome to ryan he's really been a fantastic um addition to the high school i think he's in his third year in the district i believe second or third year and he has really stepped up because we have been down an assistant principal for several months now and he has really stepped up into that role informally and has really helped out um principal

009mcmahon assistant principal smith and athletic director dawson in multiple excuse me in multiple ways so thank you mr demar um and again we'll have the opportunity to meet him hopefully in person come the fall um but that's it for me uh and i love other things to add throughout the meeting but for my report that's it unless you have questions for me not seeing any so thank you superintendent um no old business on to new business we have um first up recycling at the high school and uh principal mcmahon in uh infor students i believe we have are going to give us a brief presentation greg i'm here i'm having some some video issues as we speak but i could hear and see just fine and i know that i just i met my students

010prior to the meeting so i do believe at least three or four of them are here excellent but i'll let them do the talking and uh here to support them but i know they're ready to rock excellent great well we'll uh we'll turn it over to them and uh maybe need to put some lights on tim it's a little dark over there i'm sorry hey tim i just need to know um i'm sorry i can't access their names can you just rattle off their name so i can admit them uh mallory merrill darius daniels megan boucher grace nickerson okay and there's somebody else who am i forgetting guys chime in um i don't think there's anyone else hannah morehouse yeah hannah morehouse thank you yeah i don't i didn't see unless she joined i did

011not see her in the attendees craig i'll go back in the dark now i apologize for the video stuff all right welcome uh mallory darius grace and i thought there was one more i'm missing apologies [Music] so just some quick background um this group of young students came to me uh a few few weeks ago as part of the civic action project that worked on this year uh in us2 which is the year we kind of decided we're gonna at least tackle the civic action project for now uh this group of students is from the apus class mr sullivan's class they initially met with me informally to discuss recycling at the high school uh and then took things a step further and come up with a very nice detailed uh presentation about their expectations and

012goals and uh hopeful outcomes that they want to speak to you guys about this evening uh i don't think they expected the process to go this quickly uh they brought stuff to my attention i shared it with craig and others and here we are this evening having to do a presentation uh they have made some corrections and the slide deck you received last week in your packets they've made some amendments to that since uh since last week uh just an update to some um i think some clarifications but uh generally speaking this is a uh a pretty cool initiative uh that is entirely student driven and really in my opinion kind of down in the spirit of what the civic action project should look like so uh again we're still in the embassy stages of

013this process in general but uh this group is indicative of what we have to come it's both uh refreshing and challenging because they're gonna put us on our heels a bit at times but that's the main goal is to see action through their um civic responsibility and i think they're doing that uh in a very impressive way early on so uh that said i will be quiet and i don't know grace are you gonna take lead on this all right i'll be quiet um hi i'm grace nickerson i'm with mallory moral and darius daniels and we'll be speaking on behalf of our civic actions group tonight we've created a presentation i haven't shared with miss ibe but um i should be able to present to myself have it grace is it letting you share or

014do you need me to share it no i think if sure that'd be okay great thank you you might not be sharing the latest version if you're doing it from the packet that's true um [Music] i can share the updated one with you yeah if you could i'm trying to figure out why you can't share it though oh here we go now you should be able to share are you seeing the share option now at the bottom or no um [Music] sorry there should be a highlighted share screen button oh yeah yeah okay i just turned it on for so it wasn't there before don't worry there you go perfect okay can you all see that yes yes so for our project we chose to target recycling at north middlesex um we are interested in

015change because due to the benefits of our education we hope to promote a healthy learning environment and set an example of environmental sustainability starting to educate our students at nm on how to be environmentally friendly we'll create a sustainable habit that can ultimately protect our planet in the future which is our larger end goal we hope to promote a healthy learning environment because we have struggled with waste management and littering on our campus in the past so we hope to combat these issues with our presentation and we also would like to set an example of environmental sustainability to spark further change among the state level and other schools in the district potentially we are targeting recycling reduction in education for recycling we'll be advocating for a more efficient recycling program for paper and mainly plastic

016products at nm reduction we hope to advocate to reduce our ecological footprint by reducing paper and plastic waste on them and we want to educate the students and staff on the beneficial ways that we can reduce this footprint some pros and cons that we've come into along the way pros consist of will obviously reduce the footprint and the amount of solid waste produced by nm and it will become more cost efficient as the system improves over time some cons are it will require students to take time out of their day just to make sure items are recycled correctly and clean thoroughly in order to be effectively recycled and it will add more cost into our yearly budget for waste management okay i'm going to pass it over to darius now thank you um so we

017think that we should care about this issue because we researched some statistics and found that the average u.s student produces 640 pounds of waste per year which compounded over 12 13 years of schooling has a huge impact like on our climate and just in massachusetts alone we produce 8 million tons of pr of waste per year and we want to start decreasing our ecological footprint and that could be a school is considering that they are a large contributor of this new waste can you go to the next slide please grace all right and so we've uh we took some claims from the uh policy that was made at the high school in 2020 and it states that all district personnel are expected to support recycling efforts throughout the schools and a system to document recycling

018amounts will be created and implemented and teachers are encouraged to include educational lessons on recycling and the curriculum where appropriate and uh as students we've observed in our three years that these like have been loosely upheld considering we provide recycling services for paper and cardboard uh because we work with harvey services but it does not utilize the company for plastic removal and we feel that now that kovid is taking a downturn that we can sort of focus more back to creating a greener environment whereas we're not funneling money into keeping our schools safe from the virus and stuff can we go to the next slide and so some things that like we've seen just in our school is that we have recycling bins that are flipped over to prevent use at lunches like sitting outside

019in uh by the garden the past two weeks that we've been outside the recycling bin has been flipped over and we've not been able to use it so for those who feel like they want to recycle don't have the opportunity to recycle plastic and we only dispose of paper and cardboard products but we do have recyclable plastics we just don't have the means to recycle them currently so now would you like to take it from here okay hi everybody um through this process we hope that m continues to use recyclable utensils and containers in addition we want to spread awareness of the importance of recycling and finally we want to implement recycling on our school grounds okay grace um here's so our project is heavily run on students and we hope that students will continue

020this throughout the years we help to assist our facility team to take some work off of them because i know it's in addition to their already work and we just want to help out as much as we can finally um students want to recycle at our school however it's not always available to them and this is what we're trying to create so they can um recycle and finally here's our plan of action so we hope to get one two yard dumpster which could be placed where all the other dumpsters are in addition um in our cafeteria we have six trash bins and we hope that gaining four recycling bins will help the needs for our recycling and that would only be fifty dollars roughly so our whole plan in general is under 500 dollars which

021is kind of doable and we really hope that you would consider this thank you thank you thank you all that was that was fantastic um and i really appreciate you holding us accountable to our own policies so i was very pleased to uh to see that in there um does anybody from the committee have any questions or comments before i get to mine june um i just wanted to say a really nice job you guys putting your information together and i am completely in support of this it's something that has been kind of mentioned before that it is in our policy but it doesn't seem like it's um acted upon as much as it should be so um and this is how you start to change the world it's it's little steps like this a

022little bit at a time and if we can start this at the high school we can expand it to the other schools and then go from there so i absolutely am in support of this and i think you guys did a great job thanks june susan why don't you let me go last i'm always talking sure randy uh first off uh one being the policy subcommittee chair thank you very much for reading our policies not everybody does um especially as students i really commend you to take a look at what we're supposed to have in place uh before suggesting what we uh should be doing um i think it's a great um a great initiative that you're trying to start here um my question is you have mentioned in one of the slides that um

023to take you know that's an extra burden on the facility uh management and that uh there are things that can be done by the students what what kind of things were you thinking about uh implementing on the student side of things um well next year we're we'll be reintroducing block into the high school so our group that worked on the civic actions program we plan to start try to restart um an environmental club darius can speak about that after me he knows more about it um and we will help with whatever tasks need to be done with the recycling bins whether it's emptying them we've already started um we've created many infographics and posters which we've put around the school just to kind of educate the students so people know what to expect and how

024to treat the recycling bins that all sounds great i look forward to seeing what can be done at the high school and then rolling it out maybe to the other schools as well thank you randy uh susan yes and again thank you for bringing this to our attention i i didn't realize that there wasn't a very active recycling program um at the high school and um and and like uh like was previously mentioned thank you for pointing out that you're not seeing the policy that we have uh translate into real life the um i thought it was interesting that there's a system to document recycling amounts um so i'll be uh interested to see how that's implemented by the uh district leadership um and the people that are assigned to by the division to uh

025i'm stumbling all over that but you guys know where i'm going and lisa i would like to ask if we could put this um amount requested on the next on the agenda for the next finance subcommittee meeting um and i have a question beyond the 500 would we be incurring um other costs to just to to empty those barrels by our waste management company and take them away we're not to necessarily empty but to take them away and process them we uh we did some research into waste management and so harvey services currently has the uh paper and cardboard products that we are recycling and we compact that and send it off to them but waste management does office uh offer a plastic recycling service that is already incurred in the school budget we just

026haven't used the plastic recycling yet we've only ever recycled paper and cardboard thus far so what we our contract with release management includes the opportunity to recycle plastic so doing this plastic recycling doesn't cost any extra from a removal from the premises that's what it had said when we had looked up our building grounds uh through the waste management website so okay yeah so it's um so it's really just the 500 as an incurred cost and that's a one-time um for the research you guys have done you're not seeing any recurring costs uh each year from a contractual standpoint to remove um the products it's already seems to be built into the cost and um i'm sure we'll double check that so um i i just had a curious question does every classroom in the

027high school have some sort of recycling at least for paper or cardboard yeah every classroom has a bin only for paper okay and those are used this is our goal of our project was for plastics in the cafeteria mainly okay okay and i was curious you noted in there that um one of the cons is having the students like clean them thoroughly is there a place do you see that being feasible or does something have to be done to make that more feasible um well we were just um that was mainly to touch on like drinks need to be emptied out before they're recycled which can easily be done in sinks or like water fountains and any containers that have food in them just need to be dumped into the trash before the actual container

028is recycled which i think is easy enough to implement okay so they're not sitting there with a sponge and dish open scrubbing things and okay that's what the picture i had in my head okay yeah that's all that needs to be done i understand that and um oh i also had a curious question um and maybe this isn't something that you guys would have the answer to but you mentioned the utensils and containers from the cafeteria being recyclable um you know some places you go they hand out metal forks and they run them through a dishwasher i don't know the environmental impact of the dishwasher and the metal forks versus plastic and there might be reasons we don't use metal forks but just to toss that up i mean people talk about how much water

029it takes to recycle things but it also takes water to dishwash things so i don't know yeah so one of the main things that brought was brought to our attention is that it wasn't like the plastic forks in general it's that they were individually wrapped with plastic too and in addition to them okay didn't know that either um i'm looking work real quick here to see my head i made notes from the prior slide conversation but i think i've asked them all thank you no your um your uh slides they were enlightening and i appreciate it and um thank you and i i wish you luck in making sure this gets followed through and we have a part in that um you're asking for us to look at funding so i appreciate you um coming

030to ask us i'm not just saying well i hope someone pays attention you guys took action i appreciate that thank you susan uh principal mcmahon thanks craig again some of the visual complications but uh i can hear and see just fine but uh as far as the uh the costs go and i think lindsay haynes probably speaks that a little better than i could but i i'm not entirely certain that there wouldn't be an additional annual cost um that could be more of an oscar hills question perhaps but i know that our students looked at that carefully and based that conclusion off everything they had available to them and that included asking me uh and me not knowing the exact answer as well so um i don't want to speak on their rehab i shouldn't

031want to defend them in the event that there is more expenditures that are not up front um you know that's certainly something that i don't think i've looked at other schools and comparable rates what they have as far as recycling goes with regard to plastics um there seems to be an annual cost but it could be embedded in an existing contract with darius had said so i think i think we would need clarification on that piece um and you know to speak to what grace had mentioned as well as far as disposal of and cleaning of um you know again i speak to the plastic bottle piece only you know um we would need you know and and the students recognize we need some sort of either uh access to the water fountains to to

032encourage students to dump bottles out so whether that means placing bins next to water fountains it's a possible solution for that um but yeah they definitely have uh have slow rolled and thought about those those aspects but again that financial piece i'm not entirely certain about but i know that darius in in the group has definitely a good pulse on it it's a low figure if there's an annual fee and it's likely embedded in an existing contract that's awesome and mr mcmahon when we when uh it's on the when the finance subcommittee can look into that along with nancy haynes i think that we would want to be clear about that before moving forward with the initial of course so um but i um just appreciate you guys thinking of that and i belie the

033the place where you guys dump solids that are trash trash you know the half uneaten sandwich i would think that the um the half bottle of gatorade that didn't get drank could also just be dumped in there doesn't have to go to a waterfront or a sink i don't think but i don't know that just tossing that as a suggestion to look into so i would um i think it'd be good if we could clarify just the cost the financial aspect and then um i mean i personally would like to see this as a pilot program in the fall um if possible and get this get this moving and and maybe do it for the first half of the year and have uh students come back and and kind of report back on how things

034have gone and and have students been receptive to it and and maybe recommend recommendations on next steps whether it's hey this didn't work and we've got to regroup or it's worked so well we want to expand to having bins in the hallway for water bottles as people are going to and from class or other schools or what have you so um if we could get the finance subcommittee to just confirm the details of the contract and then what the actual cost would be and and if there's if the money's there for it already um again i'd like to see it kind of start right in the fall and let's let's not hesitate on this one it seems like a quick win got passionate students willing to to put some work into it um it's a

035perfect story in my book [Music] any you're muted susan unless you're talking to your cat no no i'm muted but you know it's probably for the best for y'all but uh and we can go through all that in the finance committee and um nancy we can even see if there's funding left uh for this school year's budget uh at least for the upfront uh we can talk about that further in finance subcommittee yep um i don't know if we necessarily need a motion here because it's i think it's really just finance related and then it's more day-to-day [Music] my only question or concern knowing that there's two and a half days left in the school year and then fall will be here before you know it i just want to make sure that if if

036there is money available and it is something that the team is interested in in doing a pilot in the fall what is your sense on being able to actually do that come fall knowing that not a lot of school time between now and then and i don't know principal mcmahon if their support you and your team could offer to keep things moving throughout the summer or students could be involved somehow um yeah i think i think this has legs to go through all the summer craig as far as logistics you know i think to your point once we figure out the financial piece of it uh rolling it up in the fall would be ideal timing um you know which i was talking earlier to sister mitchell smith about our class meetings we have in

037the fall youth are not utilizing flexbox the first week of school and as part of that welcome back meeting just discussing recycling in the commons uh it really wouldn't be a major change in any sort of um policy protocols we have it's not mandatory but certainly i think what our students are presenting tonight every step in the right direction would be a positive one so uh we could certainly get behind piloting in the fall uh gathering data you know the first semester coming back to you guys in january see where we're at um and you know it wouldn't be a heavy lift in our part uh to help them get started i think the you know the logistical piece of where the bins go and how do we you know ensure that we're not seeing

038a lot of other waste in those receptacles i did mention to the group that um they might need to be monitors uh for a while at lunch and get some of their friends to build a team that's able to be available at all three lunches and kind of facilitate that but based in our meetings thus far i feel like they're up for that challenge and we'll support every way we can in that capacity but uh i don't expect it to be simple but i certainly think that we can make some headway and i think this group is made motivated enough to set the precedent as you know rising seniors to set a model for their underclassmen so yeah i can get behind that all day great i appreciate that i'm gonna go to louisa next

039yes i'll work with them to make sure that we can get this done we'll find the money and we'll work on it and make sure that it gets implemented this fall all right sounds good i appreciate that lisa um susan you have a quick final word well um i was and nobody seconded this if this sounds silly i was going to make a motion to add this to the agenda for the next finance subcommittee meeting to um review the annual costs and to um i'm trying to find the right word uh total cost of ownership is probably yes that's a great way to say it's uh to assess the total cost of ownership thank you that's my motion just to put it on the finance subcommittee meeting agenda yep another second cost of ownership all

040second all right so the motion is to basically refer this to the finance subcommittee um any other comments on that motion all right dave yep jess absolutely dude yes lisa yeah randy yes susan yes um yes and i will vote yes with many thanks uh to mallory uh darius and uh grace i really appreciate you stepping up uh coming in from the committee putting your ideas forward and uh and seeing it through so expect to see uh some more great things from you guys so thank you very much thank you thank you guys and you're free to stay if you want to listen to more of this exciting meeting so you're also free to drop if you've got other stuff to do they have finals tomorrow craig let them go please okay fine you can

041go you can go go study good luck tomorrow good luck come back for the summer meetings yeah there you go all right um next up school committee goals update um i think randy and lisa were the two kind of spearheading our goals so kind of want to get an update on where we're at coming up on the end of the year you had one too craig don't be getting out of oh did i professional development i was more talking about the compilation of our goals document and just going over what our goals were and the status of them oh i misunderstood thank you sound worse i can't tell at least not where randy's trying to talk or not or gathering thoughts sir um i would have to apologize i did not get back in touch

042with lisa um [Music] to go over we had met and uh discussed this but i don't couldn't find my notes on it and i just never got back to lisa so i do apologize lisa uh did you find the notes on when we were talking about uh what the uh goal should be i know that we talked about doing like a summer retreat with one of our goals and doing the newsletter was another of our goals i do apologize everybody i just been kind of um very very busy with a lot of different things and this got dropped yeah i i did nothing on my goal so there's no need to apologize so maybe we just say that we'll do better and we'll try this again yes lisa and i will get back together find

043our notes and at the next school committee meeting we will have our update that sounds good appreciate that and i will also do better um thankfully the students weren't here to hear that that part um we just model what our solution is right there you go uh it makes mistakes yeah absolutely we have a plan going forward pick yourself up and carry on um all right next up we have the uh valley collaborative board of directors uh appointment um to appoint superintendent morgan to the valley cooperative board of directors for the term july 1st 2022 to june 30 2023 so moved second all right is that serious and that's the snowmobile it was thank you any questions or comments on this one does uh superintendent accept this uh i i do i don't think there

044are any options i think it has to be the superintendent all right thank you i think one of them allows a school committee member i don't remember which one it was keystone does okay i'll strike that comment from the record susan all right seeing no questions uh dave yep jess yes yes lisa yeah randy yes susan yes tom yes and i'll vote yes so that is unanimous next is the keystone educational collaborative board of directors and to appoint superintendent morgan to the keystone educational collaborative board of directors for the term july 1 2022 until june 30 2023 any questions comments on this one all right dave yes jess yes yes lisa yeah randy yes susan yes tom yes noble yes so that is also unanimous next we have the keystone educational collaborative lease and this

045is to have the committee vote to authorize the district enter into a three-year lease agreement with the keystone educational collaborative center beginning fy 2023 fy 2023 would be the first year of the lease and then we says two optional one-year extensions i don't know super well do a second and then uh we'll talk about or so move sorry hello you beat me right uh superintendent do you have any uh background on this one um sure and i don't know if um if miss haines wants to add as well because she's been dealing with um with attorney fosket on this lease uh but it essentially allows us to um annually so it's it's an annual lease where uh that could be extended up three years unless i miss speaking nancy please let me know um we

046basically have to let the keystone collaborative know uh by august 15th if um so a year in advance so i would have to let them know this august august 15th that they would not be in the property fy24 so it's giving them a one-year notice in advance provided that we do that we could we could get out of the lease if we had to if we absolutely needed the property for a reason that being said i do know that keystone is looking at other options they are only utilizing the elementary school next year and they will not be utilizing the second floor it's wanna cook i do think they are trying to get a location that is closer to the majority of their students in the leominster area that's what they've done with the middle

047school and i think they're actually hoping to do the same even though squawanna cook is a great property for them for many students it's a long ride for them to get to squanacook and they are trying to get something a little bit closer so again um we would be annually letting them know august 15th if they can utilize the property not that coming school year but the year the subsequent school year so it's it's certainly um a good amount of notice to let them know so it's like a 12 month notice basically yes and they're they're reducing their footprint my brother going from fir they're on first and second floor right now they're going down just to the first is that correct yes their middle school program which is smaller is being moved to leominster

048okay so we'll just be elementary school next year um on the first floor all right any questions from anybody else i just have a quick question um in um just out of curiosity do we also provide the furnishings in all those rooms and did they bring on their own tables and chairs and stuff it's their tables and chairs okay thank you and um i mean they they may be using some of our furniture but the majority of the furniture is furniture that they brought in okay i was just curious about that then i was curious about um their ability to make improve they're making improvements in the area but i was glad to see in the lease that um any major renovations they need to get approval from the school committee to do so they

049don't substantially alter the place yes i mean overall they've been very easy to work with um it's been a good space for them the staff has been um has been very easy to work with the executive director and board has been easy to work with so so overall it's it's definitely a it's a win-win for the district and to win for for keystone as well in the students they have nice big classrooms that are you know that that are you know that are in really nice shape for them so that's certainly a benefit for those students thank you are there any um changes to the builder any anything required that we need to do as they vacate the second floor is there any i don't know if there's any partitioning that was done or anything

050like that or is it they just move out of the rooms and they're all set um on the second floor there was nothing done to my knowledge nancy are you aware of anything i know that they they did do some some minor construction um on the lower level but nothing's permanent it's all um it's basically um movable partitions to create office space that's my understanding okay and they'll be accountable for returning it to previous conditions is that yes yes all right any other questions or comments from anybody all right dave yes jeff yes yes lisa yes randy yes susan yes tom sorry first and zoom yes thank you and i vote yes so that is unanimous next we have the craig i'm sorry do you have june june moved and susan seconded uh i had

051june and lisa lisa okay thanks [Music] um next we have the food service breakfast pricing for fy 22-23 i don't know who's going to speak i can probably take this one please that'd be great so we have um the option to renew our food service contract um for another year with fresh picks um last year was their first year they're proposing a break even program for next year um with the exception of a 10 increase for the breakfast program and right now we're currently at 1.50 for breakfast and their uh proposal for next year would be at a dollar sixty for breakfast um just as an aside we still yet don't know for sure whether we're gonna there's gonna be a continuation of the usda free lunch right now it looks like it's a no

052but there are still some things pending so still could happen but right now we have to plan as if it's going to be going back to the regular national school lunch program um for next year so i'm hoping um with the breakeven program that the slight increase in the breakfast um it's not not a change in the lunch prices although looks like we might be needing to do that in a future year i don't think this is a year to do it keeping it a minor change like that is i think going to be good for families and good for the program just for my own clarity so this we're just approving the breakfast price change correct is the correct student breakfast student practice yes yes breakfast is not yeah adult adult numbers are not

053changing i mean they're so they're so small anyway generally but and then from uh you'd mention nancy the contract renewal is that coming up at a future discussion or where does that sit i guess we have a contract with them already um a five year it's actually a one-year contract with four optional one-year renewals and typically the superintendent's approved the renewal um in the future years as long as it's within that five-year total that the committee approved okay i mean i think it's i think it's gone well this year it's been obviously a challenging year with um nobody expected us to be doing the volume we are doing um but of course we didn't expect the free lunch program to extend this quite this long in general it's been good for the program we get

054higher reimbursements this year than we would typically get for for lunch lunches that are served so that's really helped um solidify the program i think at least for this year and potentially if there's some funding in a future article we're going to talk about capital plan um to do any updates that might need to be done we may have some funds to do that um which is it would be a good thing fantastic [Music] sorry i did reach out to both lisa and noon um who were on the forget the name of the committee i'm sorry it's the food service review committee um and we had a short discussion and that you know what we emailed and they both were in favor of continuing another year it'd be it'd be good i think what and

055it could just be like an informational item out to the committee but to to see what if there were any high running issues that that have come up that that freshpix has been asked to address or just kind of a status report of how they've performed over this this last year because i know they're kind of a new vendor for us [Music] um susan let randy go first all right randy i just had a quick question as far as the history of the prices for the breakfast because my memory serves uh we haven't always raised the breakfast when we've raised the lunch in the past and we also really haven't had much of a breakfast uh in if you go back a few more years there wasn't much of a program there what how how

056often have we raised uh the prices of breakfast i think we very rarely have raised them we raised them last year before it was going to be usda free lunches to a dollar fifty and i think before that it was like a dollar thirty and it had been that for many years i can i can get the history i'm not sure how long but quite quite a long time and again i mean i think we've been it's been underserved as far as the number of breakfasts that have been sold and one of the uh areas that fresh got was the breakfast area as being um an area where they thought they could increase participation okay that was good enough for me just kind of sure and knowing that there were quite a number of years

057that we had not raised it thanks randy susan i mean just a similar question i was just curious what was driving the lunch going up so it looks like we i mean breakfast going it looks like um according to the chart here we changed lunch prices four years ago but we changed breakfast last year so my assumption in looking at those numbers was they felt breakfast was way too low they were going to raise a little bit each year not to be such a big but that was a story i made up in my head after looking at the numbers i didn't know if that had been or something some other story had been told to you nancy i mean that sounds about right i i think they looked at our pricing and they looked

058at how much it cost to produce um a breakfast meal for students and they and i think in fairness to them i think they really did some upgrades in that area so right providing a little bit more of a substantial meal um right and that again dictated the increase in the pricing yeah it seems reasonable to me that it is a low price and um if we need to raise it it would be nice to raise it in an incremental fashion um so i mean i guess the the motion is to raise the student breakfast prices from a dollar fifty to a dollar you ask questions or comments on the price change and i'm hoping with free meals being served for that time period that maybe someone who hadn't participated in the past started participating

059and uh found it convenient found the food better than they thought it was going to be and we may so um i think it would be great to start the day off with a good breakfast all right so the motion is to increase breakfast pricing from 1.50 to 1.60 dave dave are you still there all right jess yes june yes lisa yeah randy yes susan yes tom yes and i will vote yes so that is unanimous i guess we'll have dave as an extension uh next we have the strategic plan update assistant superintendent milligan and the principals thank you i'm going to start and then turn my camera back off it's a little bit choppy on my end so i'm just going to try to maintain bandwidth um so uh we're going to provide an

060overview from our mid-year report to our end-of-year report i know at the mid-year uh it was asked of us to go through all of the action items so we're going to do that quickly with all of our principals and our leads for each of the initiatives so i'm going to start with initiative one the consistent and rigorous curriculum looking at overall the entire plan something that we do each year is we look at the completion rate our completion rate or our in progress rate is running around 71 percent of this plan with 30 about 36 percent complete and about 35 percent uh moving in in progress um and then our next steps are steps that are continuations that will be bring forward and that's about 29 of our plan so initiative one really focused on

061the the ela rollout and the math curriculum pilot along with common assessments uh our major focus area is timing and revising their assessments um what we found in the strategy one one is that further exploration around internal capacity and external providers to collect the common assessment data as needed we're looking at ixl as a platform that's going to be looking systematically at ela and mathematics k-12 next year along with a pilot for science and history social studies or we're going to be looking at other companies such as ed site or otis that will be able to collect all of the teacher information within our district and help create a data platform that's going to help us really create outcomes that we can come back to to see how our students are doing in relation to

062all of those areas for the initiative 1.2 the math pilot rollout the district has formed a committee this year they looked at three distinct programs and that they we are going to be implementing um illustrative math at the k-8 level next year and that's going to tie back into our our learning management system of learn zillion which was taken over this year but both of our ela and our math programs will be on one platform for the teachers and then our strategy 1.3 really focused on the first year implementation of our new k-8 ela curriculum expeditionary learning or el education and that implementation culminated on our last pd day in may on may 27th nancy oh she really got lost um if you have if we have questions would you want to do it like

063one initiative at a time get the recap of the initiative and then ask the questions or wait all the way to the end what you prefer um i'd rather just get through it and wait till the end if that's all right okay before nancy comes back got to go around with qr code on their phone and listen to a student narrate what the task was and what they had to accomplish so it was a nice culminating activity that we hope that we can bring forward in future years on that last pda and really highlight all the good things that students are doing in the district such as the civics action projects that you've heard from our high school students just recently um i'm just going to ask kevin cormier or lisa come on if there's

064anything else that they'd like to add to initiative one consistent rigorous curriculum nancy i do have like an overarching question before we move to the next section but i'll let you um have the team speak sure kevin at least there's anything you want to add to that i don't have any videos so i can't i can't see anybody no i was letting lisa go first i think you did a pretty good job but uh if there are questions so you have a question on section one okay you know i had a general question i don't remember what the original strategic plan looked like which which parts were in place the framework and what is filled in as the year goes along you know is it the the 1.1 as it was what was at the

065beginning and then the so completed everything [Music] from our plans in september and we categorized them either and um in progress or next step not started as in the middle of the year and all we did was take every action item in categorized where they fall at the end of the year so you can see on the document that you provided what was actually completed [Music] okay so yeah since we lost nancy maybe kevin our lisa could so i was trying to determine was all the bullets under completed and in progress and next steps were they all identified at the very very beginning and you're just kind of sorting them into those three boxes depending on what the status of those were generally yes um sometimes if we were midway through one of them in

066progress like if part of it was completed we would break it out a little bit more finally and completed um just to kind of say you know in progress can mean like you know this whole you know giant thing might be in the middle of it or you know steps one two and three are done but step four is where now we are in progress so it really kind of depended from section to sections of what was able to be parsed out versus what is a larger task that's being done but it was all identified at the beginning i get the whole splitting yeah it was all identified at the very beginning and uh it's a matter of sort it's not um and there may have been like i know when i was filling out

067the math one um something might have come up to augment one of them throughout the year and it became a complete or became in progress as as i saw towards my role oh this is now a thing um that i'll report on that it was done uh but in august i might not have known was a piece of it so yeah i know i'm famous for putting a to-do list together and if i did something extra i'd add it just so i could have something else to cross out so that's i was trying to understand the methodology here thank you that was my only overarching question i had some specific questions but um craig suggested we wait to the end all right ran did you have a question or wait to the end as well

068sorry of course all right nancy i don't know if you're back um let's go on to initiative two i believe in the meantime i can ask lisa and kevin my more specific questions from initiative one sure we can do that while we're trying to get answers back there was an acronym cia uh i wha remind me what that is curriculum instruction and assessment okay that makes sense and um and then also there was a note about a k-12 specialist coordinator could you remind me what's kind of the scope of what um that person's working on that was on page two yeah that um that is bike day so um where the stem will fall under me and he managed to fall under lisa some of the the specialists didn't really fall into either category so

069we stipe into the position to oversee graphic arts and and um health and wellness uh things like that didn't fall necessarily under our purview but also needed some coordination along the year but it wasn't necessarily a full-time thing so because i think of specialists you know we're in elementary school you go to physical education you go to computer you go to the library but um then middle school has a different spin on specialists but i didn't know how specialists fit into the high school but you answered when you said graphic design i don't know if um you know choir or band falls under specialists right that also does okay so it's anything except for reading writing arithmetic and science and social studies world language what is world language fall currently it's under specialist but it

070will come into humanities in the next couple of years okay thank you for let me see we're waiting nancy's not back yet i don't think nancy's back oh she is i'll be quiet answer you're good or i can't tell if your video is working [Music] i'm thinking no i i think that we're on initiative two anyway um kate gajeka and i can start and go over 2.1 which is meeting the needs of all students is that okay to move on to that okay that does it sounds good all right so you know there were quite a few accomplishments this year with regard to initiative number two so specifically there were some intervention blocks from grades k through eight that were established and they were designed to gather data in both math and english language arts

071the effectiveness of those intervention blocks was really analyzed and continues to be analyzed however based on that data some targeted intervention can be implemented next school year for both individuals and groups of students with regard to intervention blocks at the high school the high school is really ready to implement a flex block next school year and this block will run classes that were requested by both staff and students and this is you know an ongoing initiative that will continue to evolve evolve really based on the requests of those students with regard to mental health you know it continues to be a concern and a targeted initiative area for the district as you're aware the district applied for a grant to support those students that are transitioning back from hospitalizations the district did was not approve

072that grant it was afforded to some higher needs districts across the state however i am happy to announce that the grant has been extended and the district will be applying for that grant again in the upcoming month despite not being afforded the original grant the district applied for our mental health team has really utilized um two services interface and care solace based on feedback from families feedback from the mental health team the the district's going to move forward with care solace next school year that really seemed to allow the mental health team to have some better communication with families when they were utilizing that the mental health team also established some regular meetings with administrators um monthly meetings they're going to continue to do that next school year and and they'll be putting those in

073place um hey am i missing anything i would say no i don't need three um yeah i'm needed um i don't think so i think that's pretty much sums it up we already shared previously a couple of months ago i think in april um a presentation that you all had on the intervention program so you were able to see a lot of the data that was collected how the interventionists are working with the classroom teachers and we're just finished our third diagnostic of i ready last week so we're just at the final stages of really pulling all the data together to see how the kids did at the beginning how they did in the middle and where they are in the growth um i can tell you we had a a brief meeting with i

074ready last week and our kids made so much significant progress from where they started the year to where they're ended so we're really excited about really looking at the effectiveness of this intervention model this year and how we can continue it next year i don't know if that would uh weave me next for a sec 2.2 thank you jason yes yep okay great so we'll continue on um so 2.2 establishing the degrees social emotional learning strategies and efforts to create a safe positive learning environment and so this is something that we've really had to rely heavily on coming out of a pandemic as we've been trying to maintain connections with students and as far as what is in progress right now currently as i'm talking with other principals in the distrum as you can tell

075here in the document by just looking at possible exploratory opportunities and topics that uh all students could benefit from uh looking at results um you know meeting to determine uh you know what we could uh what opportunity opportunities we can afford and uh basically just looking for opportunities for education and student leadership for our kids k to 12. continuing on as far as let's see uh the high school um there's some time in progress right now as far as providing some plc time uh to create some workshops as far as things like financial literacy uh interview skills uh changing attire which actually i did a couple days ago um and uh and you can read on but as far as the middle school we're looking at uh you know peer matches and mentor ideas uh

076we would love to look to start creating opportunities for student leaders to be identified in particular 8th grade we've piloted a program where we've been matching some 8th grade student leaders and putting them in related arts classes those special specialty classes that were mentioned a moment ago to kind of help provide kind of positive role models for the younger kids in particular we focused on grades five and six other things the middle school has done is also school counselors getting into classrooms working with students and supporting them there and also just kind of establishing and helping out with all of our work with patriot's time also as far as talking with ann and katie at the elementary level encouraging student participation in things like student council uh buddy reading has started i think he was

077telling me that it was established a little bit more with the third grade and preschool perhaps uh but i know that fourth grade and first grade were involved as well um i don't want to speak on that but i know that there was some progress there and currently as far as what we're doing for next steps is we do want to proceed with some kind of mentoring program we're identifying uh and looking to focus on that transition from elementary into middle uh and how we're able to partner some fifth grade students with a uh a pure leader in the eighth grade uh and what that would look like uh not only during the summer but over the course of a school year we still have some uh some road to cover there uh but we

078are looking at we've already met as a faculty to talk about core values uh which we would um focus on you know our school core values when uh looking to you know partner with kids and and develop those leadership opportunities um and then lastly as far as another bulleted item as you can see you know teachers are building meeting to work on building an action plan regarding secondary staff making some high quality social connections with students checking in with them that's where you start talking about a student advisory which we are going to be looking to do at the middle level as well and so we we have a ways to go but i think this year there's been a lot of good work done to establish you know some ideas look at what resources

079we already have and how we can enhance them thank you the next step would be strategy 2.3 and that would be and from oil gaff good evening so lori smith from the high school and i worked on this um 2.3 and so the first part of it it's broken into two parts and the first part was um offering um parent workshops and guardian workshops information nights and our goal was to offer at least of three a minimum of three and we offered a total of seven this year which was wonderful i know i attended one some all of us attended one or more um and the one i attended was on uh managing how to create safe and welcoming schools for all students that was by jeff peretti and i can tell you on that

080call it was the day before i'm a holiday um that we had off in the month of november and we had at least 25 people on the call um we had students we had staff we had parents and it was wonderful to see so we have them all listed out so as i said anywhere from 20 to 30 people attended we are looking to get a survey out to parents to see if those were helpful if they want to do them again i know i talked to brad brooks i'm director of special education and we videotaped them um so that if parents weren't able to come that they are able to still listen to those and we're just going to get a feel for what's coming next what parents are looking for and then over

081the summer our team will look at getting those people on board to present those topics next year i think they were helpful for parents and parents could opt in or out of any one of those depending on the school age of their children at home um the second bullet um was to prove uh was to provide ongoing access and update our mental health which is underneath the blue tab on our school website um so there's a special tab there there's two bullets under there um and it talks about there's there's lots of things how do we help students how parents can help students um it also talks about the care on solace that um margaret was talking about so lots of information if parents want to um log on to that i know we also

082any information that's coming out to us we try to put it on all our facebook pages and weekly newsletters so that parents have access to those um so our next steps as a group is to find things that parents are interested in and we'll work on this summer to locate um presenters for that thank you everybody i had 3.1 um wait a minute wait a minute what about 2.4 sorry forgot about 2.4 let's go okay um so 2.4 is that nmrsd will guarantee that race practices are eradicated and diversity equity and inclusion are embedded in practice for our students faculty and staff some of this has already been completed you can see the high school had already completed their trainings and the middle school and elementary school they're scheduled with firefly and so those things

083are are coming i know that the elementary school teachers are very much looking forward to those trainings um so we have some things that are in progress um i can't see this let's see um you know obviously all of our schools do strive to have a welcoming community for all students um we are still looking for looking at determining what what are the best resources for students um training for district staff is is already scheduled um you know we're going to be looking at policies um and you know they've determined that we're going to look at i think three policies um to make sure that they are um inclusive for all students um brad did you want to chime in here brad and i are on this one all right morgan brooks brad morgan no

084i can keep going you know i could talk all night so no okay um so you know like it says we're going to choose three policies to examine get feedback from students um around those policies um and incorporating diverse perspectives into the curriculum we're going to be doing um an audit of our english language arts curriculum so that will give us some some signs and there are there are some basic things around that that you know we will be looking at in terms of um you know what students are exposed to in the classroom the the el curriculum i have to say does have a lot more um diverse you know readings for for students so that is already kind of in place um and i didn't know if kevin wanted to weigh in on

085this too kevin cormier um because he's heavily involved in the in the committee sorry tara i just got sound back oh well i'm almost done um you know this is this is a topic certainly that we are all um you know very invested in and that the district is invested in um so you know for all of our students i guess we'll take questions at the end so uh evan are you done tara all right thanks sorry for jumping ahead of you there um so i did uh 3.1 which is jumping into our culture and community part the strategic plan uh the outcomes that we were hoping to achieve were to improve communication with the community and beyond and to increase awareness of school and district activities through the use of social media and news

086outlets we we've always had a smattering of schools that use social media but we really wanted to make sure that we standardized that through uh the entire district so we did establish social media accounts for every school uh schools primarily do use facebook but instagram and twitter is used as well and those are great resources for seeing what what is happening in the in the schools um we did other things too we did start working on a whereas where are they now alumni spotlight that information has been shared with the community and we've collected that information from the community uh that information can go out in newsletters um the district also invested in a platform for making uh newsletters a little more um catchy and be a and with the ability of um gathering data

087from them uh so that platform was actually called s'more and you might have noticed that from a lot of the school-based newsletters that uh they kind of had that that look and feel that's a little more engaging um so that was fun and that can be sent directly out to parents uh through connected which does allow for you know the ability to receive an email or to get a text when one of those emails is sent out and then we're continuing to engage communication and to update our mission and core values using images you know consistent imagery uh from all the north middlesex schools and like i just said um the stats that show engagement through this is are pretty compelling um because you know we're able to kind of see which way our parents

088are interacting with with these newsletters that's it for three point one and then lauren 3.2 yeah please yeah for 3.2 we were focusing on culture and community and um nancy spoke about this but i think the connection was breaking up a little bit um one great example of something that her curriculum team with kevin and lisa one was able to do recently was the friday before our um vacation we had a celebration of student work at the high school and it really was amazing and it was a great opportunity for staff to get together in one common location and to really celebrate the hard work of the students celebrate the hard work of staff um and it was a nice culture builder as well um so that that was a really great event that um

089we look forward to continuing on in the years to come another item that we had success with this year was creating a transition plan so one goal that we have is to create a smooth transition for students as they move from preschool to kindergarten from elementary school to middle school and then again from middle school to high school and part of this is to have a nice smooth transition for the students and their families but and also to help retain these students so that they don't go looking for you know a private school we want to keep our students here in the district um so we created a transition plan at the beginning of the year and then through the year we were able to tweak it a little bit and so in this plan

090we created opportunities for students to go visit their school that they were going to be attending the following year so students went to their new school and had tours they met students they met staff and they learned about the programs that are going to be offered to them and the students really enjoyed these visits i knew when the elementary school students came over to the middle school they just they loved it and when the middle school students went over to the high school they came back and they were ready for high school i mean it was really a great opportunity for them um also we made sure that the schools that students were going to be going they also came down to visit so the high school came to middle schools and they with their

091performing arts teams and they put on shows for our students um they also came down to help us during stem week which was really nice we were able to have the robotics and stem teachers from the high school come to both middle schools for two days and do some activities with our students and share about the technology robotics programs which really help the kids get excited about going to high school and learning more about these programs we also had parent information sessions for all levels so the elementary middle and high school had great nights to provide parents with information about the transition and how to help make their child be successful in the coming year and then another addition was for staff to get together and to talk about the students and student needs so

092that we're better prepared for these students and making all their needs met when they get there so we're going to continue we've made a few tweaks to the plan but we're going to continue this next year i think it was really a great success another part of our community building part of our plan was to support the care and of the grounds and the our buildings so all of our schools have created a group of students that is in charge or has a part in keeping the grounds beautiful and the students really take pride in this and i think that that that's so important in our beautiful facilities and we also continue with our adopt-a-spot program currently we have 14 adopt-a-spots within the district where businesses or families have taken on an area that they

093are in charge of so we're hoping to grow that as well in the next um coming year um we have we've created some flag banners at the school to try to um hook on to that you know nm pride and to really show our pride in our buildings so that's what i have for 3-2 i have the dubious honor of 3.3 uh with mr brooks as my supporting cast but uh i do think all kidding aside lauren and evan have articulated some of the really some of the key highlights but some of the things that i could speak to with regard to i think community um outside of the school itself and what we've done to kind of almost kind of incorporate marketing into some of these aspects of community events uh for example um

094and i could give more precise exams if you'd like but you know throughout the course of the year we've really tried whatever talked about using s'more as an app to to really spread our wings a bit with regard to getting marketing out there and letting people know about the events we've had um some really good communication with middle school high school with regard to not just the visits which have been effective but also program of studies uh our guidance teamwork or the guidance team the middle school to help facilitate a very smooth process with regard to course selection um heading into freshman year uh in addition you know with regard to increasing uh staff faculty community events uh those who attended graduation uh were able to view it we had over 25 of our high

095school staff volunteer for that event this year in addition several staff followed to their efforts for project grad um as well as other events like the uh the very highly viewed musical we had this past spring three basically sold out shows and then our cancer awareness day which also took place this spring featuring combination of athletic events as well as overlapping with some community events going on inside the school as far as outside opportunities to work in the community this year we hosted earth day on campus massive turnout i think it caught a.d dawson and mr uh oscar hills by by uh surprised with the amount of parking needed now we know but uh next year we'll probably minimize our parking because we're actually using across the street for that which is a nice problem

096to have um with regard to that it's going to be some of the bullets we highlighted we uh populated district counters with all events that's been a bit of a challenge to be fully open we're meeting tomorrow actually uh the ml schedule albeit lovely software is not the most friendly accessible software so we'll work with jeremy hammond on that to see if we can kind of streamline uh a better means of getting all activities uh visible for all viewers and all community members uh in addition collaboration outside of the school day uh with people member community media uh on several events uh on the campus including graduation uh nm cares as well that we've worked with in several capacities we'll continue to work with them in years to come because we've found some really good

097outcomes with them with regard to increasing faculty presence at community events uh there was a bullet mentioned in progress before uh with regard to added qr codes for water distribution uh we're working with life touch right now our current contract with them concerning photos we do the ideas with them every year they have capabilities to get a bar code in the back of all student and faculty ids what we'd like to try to explore is if we're able to use that as a means for students and staff to get into games meaning if a student has money on his or her account they can use their id simply to be swiped at the door or the gate of an athletic event or a play we're not sharing the technology yet but we did learn last

098week we hosted an mia event our girls lacrosse team hosted a game and the mia has a method that they use to sell tickets online and scan at the gate uh granted with a significant markup we would probably get rid of that part of it but um otherwise we have seen an increased amount of staff uh at a variety of events um and this is we got this data through plc's back in april um you know some reflection of high school staff in particular events they've been able to attend uh in their desire to see more access to those events as well so again i don't want to uh be redundant with what lauren and evan already mentioned but certainly um a lot going on in a good way and i do think that we

099are finding i think project grad for example is a really tremendous community partner um you know communicating with that group of tremendous volunteers on a very frequent basis i think only enhances what we can provide our students so so i think we're going the right direction uh with many of these aspects on the 3.3 here but again there's still there's still definitely some work to do and i think we've done a lot of reflecting as a team it's what we can do better for next year both within the district ourselves as leaders but also how to get more stakeholders involved in the outside so that kind of symptom 3.3 mr brooks anything else to add to that my friend no i think you did a nice job uh hitting all these saline points there mr

100mcmahon thanks all right um mrs cuomo got to have a question so i just wanted to jump on the end of what tim had mentioned so one of the um things was to use um the national honor society so i worked with laura messina and i would say 10 to 15 students went to all three elementary schools back in the fall and all did their hours their required hours in all three of the elementary schools so i appreciate that work that was done thank you thank you um susan you're muted again you're still muted soon uh i think so i think someone's muting me i'm just kidding um on page eight there was a bullet related to um growth and i don't know how possible it is but we do are there's a presentation that

101nancy milligan gives on the fall about mcas scores and sometimes that includes ap scores but um if it's possible i would love to hear about our year-over-year growth scores as part of that presentation the next question i had was page nine in block number oh three talks about there was a survey done this spring left two bullet one so i'm just curious if you're um if you're starting to see the results of that survey to be able to provide some feedback i don't know if that's been analyzed yet sorry about that uh bear with me here i'm in the i'm in transition dad taxi here i'm in the truck um so as far as i think we're on page eight in is it in the in progress surveilled stakeholders regarding possible exploratory opportunities is that

102what you're referring to right it is in progress wherever it went oh susan between programming opportunities to be offered yeah that is april may 2022. yeah susan i can speak to that briefly uh i know at the high school um we actually kind of turned it a bit and we leveraged our plcs in the month of april to work with staff on kind of bringing their ideas to the forefront with regard to flex block for next year and i think that's what jason spoke of with regard to you know things like um financial literacy uh resume building you know and everything again in between so we're still sorting through that right now uh i'd be happy to share that out later this summer we go through all the data but yeah we have a good

103amount of feedback from all four of our plcs of the high school that uh we're trying to organize in a way that's somewhat like job prep versus life skill you know and try to categorize it but yeah we got some great feedback from staff on that yep okay thank you um yeah and i would i would say oh go ahead i'm sorry no i was going to move to the next topic i'd like to hear jason i was just going to concur at the middle level i know lauren can speak a bit uh if she uh would like as far as the massachusetts but uh we also as far as how we were able to get some feedback from staff there's more talking with our teachers than it was surveying um so it was more

104uh conversation than just getting feedback from them uh that we can uh share out that is in progress right now um so just to add to what tim was saying okay sounds like lauren he got it covered you didn't have any extra comments the next comment i have was evan are you talking about the social media no tick tock kidding and one comment i had on the transit from the high school i had a kid now this was nine years ago and they were really enamored with the tech because they felt like the tech had all these choices and their impression of high school was just more middle school they didn't fully grasp our marketing at the time and our talk to the kids about what was offered um this kid didn't understand that there

105was all kinds of choices in a program of study they just thought it was just more middle school where you take these classes without much choice so the text sounded more interesting because it sounded like there was a bunch of different choices so just you're right susan and i think that that was part of our goal in having like the robotics and stem and tech teachers come to our school and they brought robots and they brought all of the great things that they do at the high school to our students and they had them play with them and work with them and they got them really excited because i think the tech does look appealing when you visit and you see all the shops so i tried to bring the high school shops you know

106so to speak down to the middle school to show them right okay cool yes yeah i was going to say it's nice to know that there's choices in english and social studies but yeah when you're working in the texture competition yes um and then i had uh oh i was curious do you know how many adoptive spots are remaining i think we can have as many as we want i think there i know there's plenty you know at most schools okay then um and then i i guess um one of the um at least at hawthorne brook maybe it's at this distance too that we do lose kids at the seventh grade to go to our charter um so i don't know a strategy we could look at to uh retain those students or whether

107we already start losing them in sixth grade um and whether there's other factors other than just programming i don't know a lot about that i just remember hearing that seventh grade is a typical loss susan is susan vega speak one second to that we actually spoke to quite a few parents at eighth grade parents of pokemon studies night and they reflected that they're making determinations again this is a general kind of qualitative feedback but uh feedback that was such that they're intimating that the decision to go to the tech is happening as early as grade five and six so that's going to impact some of our programming next year with regard to you know talking to lauren and jason bringing our band and choral groups down there and featuring other things like that stem hitting

108grades five six seven eight in different ways different capacities you know if that means giving free tickets to a football game on a friday night to all grade five we want to really try to market um really starting grade five and six but yeah i think i think waiting till eight is actually playing ourselves behind the eight ball that's what we've learned best couple years so yeah i think um seven makes more sense but we're gonna try to go five and six as well and i think um the there's what is the name of the school that uh that opens at seventh grade parker school yes parker that's it i think i've heard one of the reasons kids stay here go to parker is our music program yeah i believe that and and one thing

109just to expand upon what um tim was just saying when the the high school did come down to perform for us we didn't just have the eighth grade in the audience but we had all the students in the audience um and similarly when um vernon brook came over we had third and fourth grade come over so we are trying to extend it um younger and younger and i think this year we really did i mean beef it up i mean tim came over he you know the band the chorus we were over there his you know athletic department came over um every month there was some connection with the high school which was great yeah i've heard more than one time that parents have made the choice to stay because whoever they were thinking about

110going to couldn't match the excellence of our music program that that's why they chose to stay um the i have a question completely unrelated to this so uh i'll put my hand down and uh be recognized at the end of the meeting all right randy i just had two questions um the first one is in section 2.4 um so that is in uh on page 12. um part of the next steps was to examine policies for racialized practices uh to examine them and gather feedback from students around these policies i just wanted to make sure that if these are not building based policies that the school committee is kind of brought back up as well as if anything that you find requires some changes to the district policies that again the school community be brought

111in to look at these policies and what you found uh so we can take a look and see if we can improve the district-wide policies along with those um other policies that you're looking at so i guess i just you know i wanted to make sure that the policies you're looking at um the question was are they building based policies uh and what what what's being done there or are you looking at the district-wide policies randy i can speak to that this is nancy that was something that came up in one of our infinity groups last year is looking at things such as dress code policy which is really not a policy per se but things in the handbook that may favor one group over another so as we started to think about everything that

112we implement in the district and we think about the intended outcomes and the unintended outcomes those are some of the things that were examples of so the word policy was used but i don't think it was necessarily in the most formal way it was to look at what practices across the district and a better word might be procedures also yeah and i think also when you're examining those do keep in mind um that we have policies that really kind of work their way down the policies are at the top end of any of the procedures that you have in place so do think upward so if you find something um and make sure that you know that if it does go upward that we're aware of the changes that need to get made because obviously

113we know our policies aren't perfect and we want to keep them up to date with what what the district wants to do and keep you know any problems that we find we want to make them uh better for everybody and then my other question was going back to the math program that is coming in uh and this may or may not be the right place for it but i'm curious what is different about the new math program uh k to eight um that's going in i know my daughter gosh it's probably 15 years ago uh came in and they had just started singapore math i know i was part of probably four or five years after that looking at the next math program that came in which i think was the big ideas uh that

114we're using now um and then obviously now we're looking at a new math program so i'm wondering uh what is different in this math program that makes it better than what we've had before is it just better aligned with the frameworks uh are there new um techniques uh that have developed in the education world as far as math goes at this new program is incorporating sure actually uh both of those things are true so i'll i'll back up a little bit the big idea is we're barely using anymore because it is not currently aligned we were using a 2010 version of it after the shift in frameworks in 2017 it really does not serve uh anything that we're doing right now so we we've been on kind of a path to move differently uh over

115the last few years anyway um so over the course of the last two to three years um there's been some significant shifts brought forth by a lot of research from nctm and the association of two year colleges the association of four year colleges basically saying um the their sort of tag is that the status quo no longer works um so we um brought in a couple of different types of programs for teachers to to test out we got some feedback we looked at iready data midway through the year to see effectiveness and illustrative um really just kind of graded out the best across the board and what makes it different it is more uh they call it problem-based learning so rather than just worksheet after worksheet after worksheet which research is showing is not effective

116any longer given advances in technology it really does start to fundamentally change the ways in which students sort of grasp math as a concept rather than as a as a process of calculation because ultimately what's being um the the most important thing that students are going to have people do is not to find the number but it's to make a decision based on the number of the value or the or whatever it happens uh and so this is really starting to build a lot of more discourse a lot more differentiation is built directly in because if you would just attack a problem if you have a student that is seeing it one way versus a student scene another way that will bring in some discourse and some discussion and you know give multiple ways to

117attack problems in multiple ways to sort of see different ways to do things and how situationally one process might be more efficient versus another and i've gone into you know multiple classrooms over the course of the year and seen some absolutely amazing things out of students by some of the teachers that are piling this i would be remiss not to highlight uh karen richford over at ashby for some of the work that she's done has been it's been mind-blowing to just go in there and just watch fourth graders have a level of discourse that i in teaching seventh and eighth grade for 15 years didn't see as regularly as i saw fourth graders do um just halfway through the year doing this program so i was very very encouraged by what i saw there and

118i know that we have such talented teachers in this district that it is it is a shift it's a mind shift it is a slightly uh higher degree of difficulty to implement at the beginning um but again knowing what we have to work with in this district i am fully confident that we'll be able to you know meet whatever challenge comes our way you know be able to work together collaboratively uh we have all sorts of training and the information implementation team uh is gonna be put in place uh we're gonna be working very directly instead of in the past where a lot of this professional development was just sort of math content teachers that's going to really incorporate special ed teachers in there to to make sure they're part of these discussions and how

119to reach all the students and it really you know when this does kind of hit the ground after a year or so when we really kind of get everybody's teeth into this i think you're going to see some some really great progress and ultimately it's going to better prepare our students for what is going to be asked of them later and and so one of the like one of the bullets that i had on uh on mine was in october i spoke with a college uh math department over umass lowell it kind of got an idea of you know who who who are the students that we're producing versus what are the students that they're expecting and that was a lot of what they were saying it was like they can they can get to

120an answer but then they don't know what to do with an answer uh because we just have not worked with them enough because traditional education and math has not really highlighted that for students it's been a lot more about like answer this problem answer this problem but not that and now what and how do you know and if i change this how does this change your decision making process and this curriculum really does hit a lot of those um it is as far as ed reports goes one of the highest rated uh in the country curate also rated it very very highly it's the example curricula used with the chiefs of core which is what we base a lot of our vertical professional development and all of our alignment of standards from k-8 when we

121did that work a few years ago so it really does have its roots and a lot of what we're doing already it really is just kind of taking that next step out there and it's going to challenge our teachers it's going to challenge our students but ultimately it's going to produce better results okay i think that's absolutely wonderful it does sound like it's a great path uh to start going down because i know at least my youngest always asked me what am i going to do with this why am i learning this math how do i you know what am i ever going to need to use this so i think that's a great thing if we can start teaching that you touched upon just the the second part of my question with this is

122reaching out to the umass lowell math department i think that's a great first step and i think that's a very good college but we do have students that go to more rigorous colleges such as rpi um i know we've had students go to harvard um in the last couple of years and some of the really more demanding um have we thought about reaching out to those math departments or any of these colleges that are much more math intensive uh majors like engineering physics and making sure that we're not um ignoring our high achieving students that we're giving them what they need to make it into those really um competitive schools no and that's certainly a good point i went with umass lowell one for its proximity but two that is um quantitatively where more students

123go so i'm trying to figure out how do we hit more of our students and and really it's about you know those statistics about the number of students who leave and then need to take a remedial math course uh end up taking a course that does not give them credit but does give them debt and they're like one-fourth is likely to graduate so those are the sorts of numbers that you know we're trying to hit first make sure we're hitting that broader base of students the next step is as you suggest like go reach out to some of those programs at schools that are specifically you know a stem pipeline and then what is that next step i have uh done enough sort of independent research that the results are fairly similar and it's a

124lot of the same things i know uh robin uh can attest to what her son is doing this year at clarkson is very problem-based like so these kinds of um situations where they're not just throwing again a textbook and do problems one through 20 and just make them harder just to challenge you they're really about what is the use case of this what is the context of this where is the collaboration come in and where you know how are you working together that if your group can't figure out what's going on here we'll bring in another group to look at it and sort of like that peer collaboration that peer thing so all of those things are are happening at that uh first year of college level and so again this is really kind of

125pointing towards that and it's much less about get a pencil and paper and figure out how to factor uh because they'll never be asked to do that once they leave the halls of our our building so you know what what can we do to kind of bridge that gap and make that easier for them and it turns it basically comes down to by de-emphasizing the the robotic process and really emphasizing the true deeper understanding that should i mean there's there's really no argument against that being helpful no matter what that next step for any student is because it's that deeper comprehension of math and relationships in the in the numbers and the patterns and all of the things that are going to be the application later on um and so so it can't move them

126backwards because the technology will take care of calculations for them it's that analysis after the fact that we really need to start hitting a little bit harder okay thank you very much all right any other questions or comments on the strategic plan all right i appreciate everybody's time to provide that update very detailed and uh much appreciated right i just my question um is for lauren before you tell everybody they can go but i want to finish this they're related to the strategic plan um no it's related to the donations i just missed asking it earlier okay you make a quick we got a lot of other stuff to do so yes um no lauren in the um in the donations it was there was a reference to um very nicely sized donation for an

127outdoor learning center i was just curious what the outdoor learning center is it sounds interesting but yes you'll have to come see it we will invite you in the fall for sure um so something that we really wanted to do even before covid was to create an outdoor space for students we have a beautiful facility but we don't have a playground we don't have a place for students to go and enjoy outside um so we wanted to create an outdoor classroom which can be very expensive but it's an area that can be used for students to sit and have lunch they could have be out there with their teachers and have a class um they could use it you know on graduation day to be out there um but it's actually a space behind our

128school and it's almost done um we're very fortunate that a family and people who would like to be anonymous um has made a nice donation to make this possible and we're very grateful for that so it's part of our 20-year anniversary will be 20 years in the fall and so we are planning a 20-year celebration for the school and the outdoor learning space will be part of it so we're excited to to show that off in the fall we still have some work to do right mr worth we had um planting going on and the community has really embraced this we have many community groups working with us to accomplish it so it's been a fun project that's cool is this like roughly the size of a normal classroom or just to get the size

129in my head no it's quite big large like a gymnasium size like this at distance gym yes that's okay yeah cool yeah yep if you're it's right in the back of the school so if you drive around the road you'll you'll see it it's under construction but it's looking good nice thank you and thank you to the anonymous donor definitely all right thank you they said you have something real quick yes it's a very nice area and the kids were very motivated my daughter came home and said she planted stuff in the back and they loved it and the kids enjoyed it so thank you for putting your time into it thank you all right moving on if there's nothing else on that superintendent evaluation so um i'm still missing evaluations from a number of

130committee members so we're not going to do the formal uh full evaluation review tonight um but we will do that as soon as possible for those that have not kind of turned in your homework yet um if folks could get me stuff this week uh if i want to get that compiled and out to the committee for review for those that did turn in their homework on time uh very much appreciated i'm starting to compile that um but uh again missing missing a few more so i need to get that put together um and then we'll go through the consolidated comments and uh and do the actual review piece but from the superintendent's contract we do need to talk about the compensation piece that by the 15th which is wednesday so we have to do

131that tonight and as long as there aren't as a collective committee ratings below proficient um then uh then the contract calls for a two percent increase so i've not seen in the in the evaluations that i've received um anything lower than proficient i want to give those that maybe have already turned theirs in or have not so not to call anybody out um if there's any concerns that that the rating may swing one way or another i'm not sure that it could average wise but um if not then we need to proceed and just vote on the uh formalize the increase for the contract all right so seeing no concerns we will proceed with the uh understanding that the rating would be proficient or above for this cycle and we just need a motion to

132um approve based on that rating of profession or above uh the two percent increase per the contract for the superintendent's contract effective july 1 2022. so moved i heard jess but i saw susan's lips move so i'll give it to jess and i'll give susan a second i don't i i didn't say anything but i'm very happy to step in a second if you need me to sure right any questions or comments so um we are just voting to confirm this is proficient or above and the contract automatically kicks in based on that voting correct yep but we need to have that discussion for the by june 15th for the for the language in the contract that you sent me so and the feedback i assume the feedback you've gotten so far um we're headed

133in the direction of of that anyway correct yeah absolutely i think every reading from every person so far has been proficient unless i've missed something but again i'm still missing a handful so i'm gonna give those folks a chance to say their piece and now get that compiled into the into the evaluation we'll run through those comments at the next meeting all right no further questions or comments and just for the record dave did drop around 8 30. um so chess yes yes lisa yes randy yes susan yes tom yes yes so that is unanimous um i don't know uh miss haynes do you need anything further than that vote um from a financial perspective or i don't know who this goes to the only issue is that after with the subcommittee review are you

134talking about the transfer right i'm sorry no i'm talking about the um sorry i moved on no that's fine if you could just um i think um the committee's vote would be fine okay perfect then we're good um moving on to subcommittee reports a lot of people dropped off with that yeah um nobody wants to hear my financial stuff huh um i don't know lisa anything from accelerator repair not yet no no all right um building committee we're closing that out any day now i hope at some point um and that puts us on finance lisa all right and then i'm going to give it to nancy to talk about the transfer and then we'll motion uh yeah we're at the end of the year um this transfers to um essentially the the largest component

135of it is to move funds into the out-of-district placement lines um there's been a significant increase in placements which we i don't know if brad brooks is still on or if he's not but we we ended up discussing that at length um at the finance subcommittee meeting and we had the option of uh we have the option of taking some funds and applying those for tuition costs for the next fiscal year so what i've done so far is request from some of the um collaboratives their summer tuition bills and since the um the original motion included a transfer of of 200 000 into out of district the finance subcommittee asked me to look at doing some an additional 200. so we would have those funds available in that line if we wanted to do a

136prepayment if all of the um the expenses aligned and we could we could um use that for offsetting what we already know was an increase for next year for out-of-district placements so it's very close to what's in there but there's a couple of different versions and you want the packet um let me see if i can give you direction on which one it is i have it nancy okay advised one the revised transfer on so are you ready for the motion crack okay i move that the committee vote to approve the fy 22 budget transfer 7941.71 to be added to administration 16 000 to be added to pupil services and 400 000 to be added to payments to out-of-district schools 219 thousand seven hundred and forty five dollars and twenty cents to be transferred from

137in um instructional support and 204 196.51 from insurance retirement and other for a total transfer fur of 423 941 dollars and 71 cents did i get it correct yes okay second thank you tom any questions or comments on the transfer essentially our out of district contro our investor school costs were higher than expected and we're going to do some prepayments for the outages for school costs because we didn't plan we didn't know about the increases when we put together the budget for next school year is that correct okay and the increase cost for clarity right were because of additional students utilizing those services not because the cost themselves went up is that a true statement that is correct though some of the costs for next year are not released yet and i there could be

138some minor changes right the biggest chunk and the biggest reason is more students right all right so you know other questions this is to approve the budget transfer as presented jess yes [Music] yes lisa yes randy yes susan yes tom yes yes that is unanimous next up the capital plan review and approval and then we did a capital plan everyone has the summary of the capital plan for fy 2023 in the packet is there anything anybody wanted to discuss on it or did i need to read all of these threads oh you don't need to read every single one but if anybody has questions you can certainly talk about specific line items and the the money for this is already in the budget correctly we're not approving money we're just agreeing as a committee what

139we want to spend the money on correct okay right are these are the projects that are proposed for this next year right now right and it's it's subtotal based on whether the money is coming from the general fund from the building project slash borrow for grants or from revolving funds with half of it coming from the general bond roughly all right do you have any questions on that capital plan all right so chess yes yeah lisa yeah randy yes susan yes tom thompson yes thank you and i will vote yes that is also unanimous craig i do have one comment if the next meeting we could in july or have a special meeting in july to focus on ashley and give a direct plan to what we are doing as a school committee to the

140town of ashby and to the residents so everyone knows what is going forward is that okay yeah we're gonna get that schedule that's the way i will um i think between the evaluation our normal meeting and that um we may need two meetings in july so i'll send out a poll to see what folks availability is thank you you could use a google survey thing yep um all right anything else on finance lisa we are good uh tom anything on uh negotiation it's gonna be good nothing at the moment thank you and policy randy uh really quick we have uh three policies for first reading we have jjh-r student travel regulations uh this is we had made the exception for the uh baseball team i think it was um and basically we just put in

141a line saying that at the discretion of the superintendent uh uh i'm sorry and if you lose me i forgive forgive me i just got a message that my internet is unstable um but anyway uh so we put in a line on there uh that discretion of the superintendent that first uh um district owned vehicles uh in the local area they would be approved for either overnight or for uh late night travel um with kf and kf-r1 both of those policies we put in uh comments about no pets allowed on on school property at any time and so for the community use we want to make sure that especially dogs but other animals are not allowed on our grounds or in their schools those are the two those are the changes that we made to

142those so i would move that the school committee approves the following policies for first reading as presented jjh-r student travel regulations kf uh school facility use uh and then kf-1 school oh sorry a rental in person personnel fees no it's not the fee schedule it's just the uh facility use the dash one is the community use of school facilities i'm sorry the titles are slightly off um the schedule is the e1 so it's just the kf the kf-1 and the jj h-r uh any questions or comments on the policies for first reading all right jess yes june yes lisa yeah randy yes susan yes um and i will vote yes anything else on policy randy all right thank you uh any other business from anybody then i'll take a motion to adjourn second thank you

143tom thank you so uh to adjourn jess yes yes lisa yeah randy yes susan yes tom yes yes so we are adjourned thanks everybody have a good night