Regular Meeting 6/8/20

001all right so i'd like to call to meeting call to order rather regular meeting 1345 of the wachusett regional school district committee we are operating tonight remotely under governor charlie baker's executive action altering the massachusetts open meeting law of course tonight we are recording as we are live on uh channel 194 and streaming hopefully on holdentv.com for tonight's agenda i'm gonna take a couple things out of order uh we have with us uh the representatives from senator warren's office and they can only be with us for a limited time so i'm gonna give them an opportunity to address the committee and website a few questions and then we'll return to public hearing and the chair's opening remarks so diana are you uh on the call i know that aim amy should be ken amy are

002you on the call this is abby from cinderella um on the call but um i can go ahead and get us started and if she joins um we can fold her in thank you for joining us yeah sure thank you thank you for having me um so i'll just say a few things and then happy to take a few questions um so first one to say thank you for for having me and um and reaching out to us um and we want to say first that we're thinking of all the families of george floyd and brianna taylor and aman arbory and all the others who were killed by police violence and systemic racism in recent weeks and we want to commit ourselves with you to working for change and working toward anti-racism in all parts

003of our society including and especially our schools and i want to thank you all on behalf of senator warren for everything that you all are doing to support your students during this difficult and uncertain time we know you've been mobilizing to get meals and resources to your kids and now you're in the position of trying to make very difficult decisions with limited information um and senator warren also knows that a huge part of the uncertainty of the next school year has to do with funding um and she wants you to know she's fighting in dc for at least 500 billion dollars in aid for our state and local governments with at least a third of that going to schools so you don't have to make excruciating decisions about layoffs and furloughs at exactly the time

004when our students are really we need more support than they ever have been and she also was fighting to quadruple title one funding and increase idea funding by 12 billion dollars so that we know the students with the greatest needs students with disabilities low-income students have had in many ways the hardest time during school closures and during this pandemic and we want to make sure that they can get the extra support that they need regardless of what school looks like in the fall so thank you for having me and i'm happy to answer a few questions if we have time great would people uh like to raise their hand in the chat and then i can recognize you uh remember weeks and every long belial first i just wanted to thank you um very much

005for taking the time to be with us tonight i know it's you guys are stretched enormously thin right now as we all are um and i guess i want to just keep conversation in this part of the meeting kind of focused on that funding that um senator warning warren and other senators are working on right now um i guess my question one is do you have a timeline in mind as you know in particular massachusetts we don't have a state budget right now which already puts kind of us in a in a crunch of being on a 112 budget and then there's just the question marks on how low the state funding will come in at so we're really faced with you know at the worst case scenario laying off over 100 full-time employees before

006we even know what the numbers are so i was just curious as to if you have a timeline and when we can expect more um from washington yeah it's a great question i wish i had a better answer for you um so the house has passed a package which includes quite a bit of funding for state local governments the heroes act the democrats have been pushing to do similar work in the senate um majority leader mcconnell has not been as enthusiastic about um doing another relief package um so we've been we we are pushing on it we understand the urgency we know budgets are due july 1st and you know the school year you know start doesn't start in september it starts now um but um we unfortunately i i don't think that there are

007active negotiations going on at the leadership level um which means that we'd be looking at july if not if not later um so um unfortunately um it's not great news on that front and i i in my previous life worked in the school district and i understand how you know that this budgeting process is um is not um you know you can't wait until september to make these decisions um but so we're trying to escalate the urgency of that as much as possible um and i think you know um our massachusetts delegation is fully on board with that so i i don't have someone i can tell you to call but um but that that's kind of the dynamic of what's going on thank you very much can you remember along the wheel linda you're

008on mute sorry about that my question was very much in line with member week's question um i think what i would add is just to make you and the senator aware that uh there's a uh a statutory deadline in the mass general laws that requires us to make decisions about laying off what are called non-professional status teachers um by june 15th next week so so layoffs are imminent um and i think it's important for you and for the the senator unfortunately to know that and i think that also something i would ask just as an individual is i've heard rumors um that there that both sides have at times tried to bring in issues that are not directly related to um covid funding etc and i would just urge all involved from both parties to

009put those aside and just focus on getting the funding um getting the funding done because it this is a very dire situation so thank you certainly we'll pass that on and thanks for the information about the deadline yeah every question bob yeah hi thank you um so much for your advocacy um in in this regard as you know that this just hi this pandemic has just highlighted the inequities that we see across districts we are a regional school district we have five towns passing a budget is very hard we run on a very lean budget to begin with there isn't a lot of extra you know fat to trim off we were in the process of trying to simply uh make some minor gains to inadequacies in our budget this year and now that's blown

010out of the water so anything that can be done at the federal level to speed up this process to bring relief to these towns especially one like ours that is in some regards a little bit more unique because of the regional uh the five town regional school district uh uh issues that we face um it's it's really of of dire need here so thank you again for your advocacy certainly hear you loud and clear on on the urgency and especially on the equity pieces you know knowing that the students who are most in need of services and support are the ones who are going to be affected the most by cuts remember haynes thanks uh just to pick up on laura's point a second ago the urgency applies not just to this year but subsequent

011years as well because as she rightly pointed out the gains that we had hoped for a few months ago those are really trying to make up for a lot of lost time over prior years lots of lost time and what's going to happen if we take a huge hit this year not only does that mean 21 shot but we're going to be trying to bail water out again for a very long time to come so it's not just the coming year but if we can dampen the blow in 21 that means when we can have the potential to recover more quickly in subsequent years absolutely yeah we know the projections are bad for the coming year but they're much worse for the year after and we also know the last recession it took 10 years

012to kind of dig out of the hole and get school funding back to where where it was and we sort of just made it back to the 2008 levels and then you know and then we're getting this and we also have been talking about in our office and in terms of you know the students you know if you're in third grade right now and you missed years of instruction or not i'm sorry months of instruction um because you weren't able to access distance learning and then you know potentially next year some kind of hybrid um you know we're talking about 10 years of academic impact too on our students so that's certainly the lens that we're thinking about this this through and we certainly appreciate you all thank you um bring that you know bring

013it up to our attention thanks all right well i very much thank you for uh joining us tonight chris you're welcome to sit and listen to any more of of the meeting i do echo remember longvaleo's comments though that you know while a good bill money-wise was sent from the house of the senate it was really a doa bill that the house sent to the senate they knew there was no way that bill was going to pass so we encourage bipartisan work there's a huge sense of urgency um on these issues but i uh i thank you very much for for joining us um and this is i just wanted to quickly hop in i couldn't give myself my apologies but thank you for um having us on on the call in any way i

014can be um of help the senators regional director for western massachusetts um so if anyone needs my contact information um please feel free to reach out to me and me as well i work in the in the dc office such as it is these days but um on the policy team so either one of us is happy to answer any questions that come up and that is a great resource for any kind of um you know state issues as well thank you so much thank you guys thanks for having us okay so going back on to our agenda our first item was public hearing um i have a lot of public hearing that's come in before i remember who just unmuted themselves so you're 14 from line id so you can go back on mute

015or okay so um so i have a number of public hearings have been called in to written into the questions wrsd so i will read through these we'll have the public hearing now then we'll come back to public hearing later most all these are from students in our district so these are ones that were sent to the questions at wrst.net specifically for public hearing again i have 13 of them um so i'm going to read through them so first if students were minors i did give them the option although i have their name and address of not giving it online the first is from a freshman at the high school she notes as a freshman i haven't been at wachusett long so i haven't experienced much in middle school however i did every week the

016kids at the back of the bus would be saying the n word and making all sorts of disgusting jokes about black people i was utterly appalled by this behavior but i didn't know what to do because they weren't targeting any particular students they were just being racist we can't sit back and say this is simply middle school boys being middle school boys something needs to be done i suggest more education i think ignorance often allows people to justify this behavior if we teach more about whey privilege and treat racial discrimination with more serious clear punishment i think that could help the problem the second public comment this person did wish their name to be included by brady dall in holden mass student notes this year i graduated from watching regional high school during my four

017years i witnessed many acts of racial aggression inside and outside of the school when it came to disciplinary action there was practically none no assemblies to address videos that have been spread of students saying racial profanities nothing i found it rather odd that the school admins had yet to send out an email addressing the george floyd situation the black lives matter movement came to my attention that daryl mccall sent an email to parents and staff have failed to send the email to students as well i find this wildly inappropriate additionally no watchusa admin has come out and sent an email to students who have been actively protesting regarding the situation in daryl's email to parents he mentions how the admins read a book in order to learn how racism affects students in a school environment

018i ask you this should school officials really need a book to teach them how racism affects students at school it is common human knowledge and should be a requirement in order to administer over a student body matchusa please be more vocal when it comes to these matters and please take action thank you the next uh turning into use tanvi mandrakar um she is uh notes uh hello there we are st school community members i'm a graduating senior this year over the past four years of what you said i have noticed there are some things that need to be addressed in regards to race as one of the few people of color at wachusett i feel as if i had experiences that most students have not had and i would like to share one of them

019in particular my freshman year i was heading to fourth lunch after my choir class when an administrator approached me and told me that i needed to go to class and i had already had my lunch period during third lunch however he mistook me for another student who was also a person of color like me he assumed that my name was the other student's name and did not hear me out when i told him my name was tanvi and that i belong in 4th lunch instead he assumed that i was lying about my name and my lunch period and accused me of skipping class i know there are only a small number of people of color at watch use it but the fact of this administrator and some of my teachers consist constantly mistook me for

020another person of color just because we have the same color skin tone has made me feel extremely uncomfortable i truly believe that none of the staff have malicious intent but rather ignorance and unconscious bias there are definitely changes that need to be made like educating and diversifying staff bringing awareness to situations like mine and catering towards students of color for example one of my friends at shrewsbury high mentioned that every february there is mandatory assembly for the whole school in honor of black history month although i enjoy my time at wachusett i truly hope future mountaineers can have a more diverse and welcoming experience thank you for hearing me out the next one is from a student in holden they say i just wanted to share a few stories of some encounters with ignorant people

021in the school the school district does an amazing job in educating their people on the issues of racism however i feel like there's more that can be done with only a few students certain issues small but vital are thrown under the radar for example last year my junior year a girl who also made racist comments on social media interrogated me and my friend she asked why i didn't vape and weren't friends with all the black boys at school she assumed that since i was black i ought to be out there and crazy and that is just not right a person should get to know me in order to know who i am and not make assumptions based on the color of my skin uh the next comment comes from a student from paxton um she

022did not respond about whether she wanted her name used or not so i'll exclude it for now i graduated from wrhs in 2018 and have since gone on to college where i learned how much i sorely missed out on at wachusett my educational race gender sexuality and religion was entirely based on elective classes and teachers who chose to include these topics in their curriculum as well as my choice to take these electives wachuset's decision to not require core classes to include curriculum on these topics is a huge disadvantage for students going out into the world i think it would be beneficial to have more core classes including content that helps educate people in things such as race religion and other topics that are often passed over in school my first teacher who was a person

023of color was a college professor i estimate that i had around 43 teachers in my entire grade one to twelve let's use that experience and that one of them was a person of color no substitute teachers that were not white i can't even recall a teacher that i saw in the hallways that wasn't way we all know that the high school in particular focuses on giving students a well-rounded education i'm curious as to how only having white men and women teaching students provides a well-rounded education i won't speak for others but i hope you understand the volume of racism sexism homophobia and anti-semitism that goes unpunished and unnoticed by staff at wachusett i sincerely hope you take to heart the things that you hear today and ask yourselves what you can do to improve the

024experience of every student at wachusett because there is serious work to be done and future students deserve better the next email is from dylan nguyen of holden i'm dylan nguyen and a rising senior i would like to detail my experience with race of wachuses as a vietnamese american and son of vietnamese refugees when i entered first grade i was labeled as an english language learner typically ell was meant for students who come from multilingual homes however i came from an english-only home i was just a shy child the other peers in my ell class were either children of refugees or other children i was subjected to five years of extra testing and the knowledge that my teachers were actively judging how i speak and write while my other caucasian friends struggle with english during elementary

025school they were never subjected to the ell program when i reached fifth grade i learned what racial slurs were and heard them come out of white students from middle school till now there has only been a handful of cases i have seen in a student punished for speaking yelling out or posting a racial slur and when they do they are slapped on the wrist and allowed to go on with life without consequences i have had friends who have been called racial slurs or have gestures such as eye pulling directed towards them these cases will never be reported because the administration makes it difficult to see any results from it this unbounded racism and ignorance is not genetic it's taught wrsd has played a part in this ignorance in elementary we're taught that columbus and thanksgiving

026were great things we are taught that the civil rights was completely peaceful and was led only by a couple of straight black men that the us government didn't try to harm them in my entire academic career i read only a handful of literature by people of color in any of my classes i didn't learn about african and asian culture and school until ap world and ever so briefly in ninth grade world history our mostly white suburbia has unfortunately created a world that is severely disconnected to reality if we do not reform our discrimination policies and increase diversity in our classroom we will continue a perpetual cycle of blind ignorance and hate if we wish us the equity and kindness in our world we have to look back our past and understand our mistakes there's more

027our next student who is her name not to be included she's a student says i was nine years old in elementary school some students in my class made fun of me for having braids in my hair and for the fact that i was the only person of color in my class being a person who has been part of the wachusett school district since i was in kindergarten the bullying and comments have always stuck with me to this day i had felt very alone and sad and felt i had no one to talk to when you're so young those memories and moments can really have a negative impact on a person because i know it did for me in high school going to a big school was overwhelming in itself but going to a big school

028as a minority was even more overwhelming i had felt better knowing that i wasn't completely alone like i was in elementary because i wasn't the only black kid anymore and we could all relate to one another but even with that there was still a good amount of bullying that i had faced and the administration did not go about it well at all i feel as though the administration needs to do better and stick up for people of color need the support of the administration especially the guidance department more than anything reason being because not only do the people of color deal with being the minority at such a huge school they also have their academics and their sports and extracurricular activities as well i'm speaking up because i don't want the future minorities that are

029going to go to wachuset to deal with the things i dealt with i don't want my little sister feeling how i felt the racism and bias in our community needs to be addressed now or never our next student which is their name to be used kimberly union and princeton starts with a quote from acclia gross founder of equitable schools inc in order for you to teach your kids the truth about these racist systems you must first acknowledge that you and the white students you teach are all beneficiaries of the suppress its oppression lean into discomfort and take the necessary actions to address and dismantle the thoughts that perpetuate these systems this work is ongoing it requires a lifelong commitment to introspection discomfort and accountability and will force you to re-examine the world in which you

030and your white students have safely lived for so long to your school committee and let you the community every single choice a school board makes not just now when it is too large of a force to be ignored should be informed by diverse opinions students must learn about what is happening right now and how all american history has led to the necessity of this movement during my four years i watch you said about about 16 of my novel length required reading pieces over four years of english only two of them were by non-white authors raisin in the sun by lorraine hansbury and beloved by tony morrison and i have students who didn't read either these books both hold strong senses of happening in the past and were discussed as period pieces this is not a

031critique of my teachers but the whitewashed version of what makes literature a classic and considered of equal scholarly merit students need a broader world view of and more works to pull from there must be a curriculum that attempts to teach about racism in an unbiased way students draw a lot of influence from their teachers one thing that should be mandatory is anti-racism training for all public school teachers and administrators the district should have regularly scheduled assemblies or workshops with guest speakers to address issues of racism whiteness and other forms of systemic injustice and violence i know this last call is not an easy one to make but to act in solidarity take police officers out of schools and instead have outside security guards who have gone through anti-racism training most importantly keep updating yourself and

032listen to black and diverse voices for all years to come reach out and stay connected do not let one person speak for the district or shape its opinions this is supposed to be a world ultimately shaped by education and we cannot tolerate ignorance at every level and she'll include that we'll include for the record a document from clea gross our next student um mona samoda notes i was 12 years old when my classmates told me to go back to where i came from i was 16 years old when the dmv license instructor failed me because of my own skin color i was 17 years old when a student in my class said look i'm black now just because she had a tan i was 14 15 16 and 17 years old when my classmates use

033racial slurs the racism and bias existing in our communities needs to be addressed now or never our next student also asked that her name not be used although i have it she says she's a graduating senior from wachusett regional high school from holden is not my responsibility as an african-american student to be reaching out to you for at least a statement to be released regarding the national problems that we are currently facing the deaths of george floyd brianna taylor ahmad aubry and several others due to police brutality have devastated the black community and initiated efforts across the country is it too much to ask let's use it to send a generic email expressing support navigating for change for its black community while watchuset may push for strong academics i would say it has failed us

034when it comes to addressing discrimination and discussions surrounding race in our own community racism exists at watch use that and i and others have even had these experiences both inside and outside the classroom a majority of this racism stems from ignorance non-black students and sometimes teachers often do not understand what black people go through every day and part of from the curriculum this lacking black perspective why is there only one black teacher in our entire high school that boasts a teacher-to-student ratio of 1-15 why isn't there someone i feel comfortable speaking to after experiencing a racist act i've been called the n-word by a non-black student and i have listened to people ignorantly assume things about black people while always feeling like i'm outnumbered do you know how much stress this has put me through

035how much discomfort and disappointment i've gone through because i feel like an outsider this is not okay and what you sit's silence surrounding the current events has emphasized this sentiment our next statement is from sarah shay your school committee at the news of george floyd's death and the resulting protests have been sweeping the nation i have been examining my own implicit biases and blind spots regarding race in america well i appreciate the education i received at wachusett for so many reasons all of my teachers were always enthusiastic and had their students best interests at heart and my years of watchusa prepared me well for the academic demands of college i feel that some of the blind spots i have about race in america are a result of the fact that discussions of race were largely

036ignored in many classes in watchuset because the majority of the student population at watch houston is white and white privilege exists in america the students at wachuset never had to consider how their race affects their daily lives unless they are directly confronted with information that demonstrates the effect that whiteness has on their lives in my experience of what you said the closest thing to an examination of race in modern america was learning about the civil rights movement in u.s history too but even then we were never asked to consider how racist policies like redlining continue to have effects today we simply learned that there were protests in the 1960s and black people earn more rights while there are some classes to watch you sit in which race gender religion and class are analyzed more thoroughly

037such as other voices in american literature contemporary american culture and women's voices these classes are electives and thus if students do not wish to engage with this material they do not have to and thus fail to learn about systemic inequalities that continue to exist in america today this needs to change as the only way that equality can be achieved in the future is if everyone does their part to dismantle the systems that exist to perpetuate inequity and if people do not understand how these systems work or that they exist then they cannot work towards a brighter future as such i ask you to examine the curriculums of the required classes at wachuset and incorporate deeper analyses of the effects of race gender class and religion in america both throughout america's history and continuing today so

038the future watchusa graduates leave with the knowledge they need to help make america a more equal and just place our next student gloria from holden says i was six years old when i was bullied because of my race i lived in a predominantly white community in belgium and there was barely anyone who looked like me in school did not have straight hair or pale skin which made me a target to bullies i was made fun of because of my hair constantly told that i was not attractive pushed around countless times these things made me feel really isolated and insecure in my identity as a black girl i vividly remember this one instance where i was punished by my teacher for something i had not done my classmate who was white insulted my teacher saying that

039she looked like a cow as i turned to tell him that he could not say such a thing my teacher assumed that i was the one insulting her i explained to her the situation but she would not believe me none of my classmates came to my defense so i was punished and my caucasian pure wasn't at that point it clicked to me that i had no credibility whatsoever in the eyes of my teacher because of my skin color blocked her from actually listening to me these are just some of the fragments of my experience with racism there have been so many as a kid i wish that the adults in my school paid attention to what was going on no one seemed to care but it but it doesn't have to be stay that way

040as a community we must keep our eyes and ears open to injustice the racism and bias existed in our community needs to be addressed now or never our next student says from rutland says hi i'm emailing in regards to the school committee meetings tonight and i wanted to testify some of the racist incidents or inappropriate actions by police on campus that i personally have seen at school over the past four years i've attended the school there were two students i knew who were very notable and they constantly use the n-word with a hard r on a daily basis there were several incidents i myself witnessed during lunch where one of them would occasionally scream the slur at the top of their lungs during every instance of this happening either no discipline was used or a

041monitor administrator would verbally scold the student with no further action often when administrators during lunch were monitoring they would occasionally follow students into the bathrooms if they appeared to be suspicious they looked like they were going to the bathroom to sell drugs vapor do other activity which was not allowed i remember that they would follow the black latino students in the bathroom to check in so much more than the white students with emphasis and so often times they would station the inbuilding police officer to go and stand in the bathroom for some set period of time with a gun mind you watching the students while they went to the bathroom to make sure that non-allowed activity was occurring my i have more uh next student says i was two and i learned that the peach

042color we use when coloring was called skin color i was seven when i found out i was pretty for a black girl i was 16 when i got my hair cut short and my parents told me that i couldn't wear the hood on my sweatshirt when i was driving so i might be mistaken for a black man and get shot i was sick when i began to think that straightening my hair was the only way to make it look pretty i was 17 when i realized that my curls are beautiful i was 15 a freshman when i walked past a group of kids at a football game who said the n word as i went past i was 10 when i found out that all my people eat is fried chicken cornbread collard greens watermelon

043and kool-aid it's 11 when i said something to adult and they told me i must be out of my cotton picking mine i was 12 when i learned the slaves picked cotton i was eight when i heard that in 1492 columbus sailed the ocean blue i was 11 when i found out that he got his destination he pillaged raped and left those he found for dead i was 14 when i found out that only black people can say the n word but then it's racist i was 16 when i realized that the argument was stupid i was 11 when i found out black lives matter i was 11 when i found out that all lives matter i was 11 when i found out if i believed in black lives matter then i was racist because

044how could only black lives matter i was 15 when i realized that argument was stupid i was 19 when i found out that i was scary or intimidating i was 16 when i realized that argument was stupid um i'm sorry i'm losing my track here i was 16 when a teacher explained to me that it was not a matter of if whether or not i was scared or intimidating but rather a matter of who was scared or intimidated by me i was for when i wanted to bleach my skin so i could be pretty in white i was 17 when i truly am fully realized how beautiful black is i was seven when i found out that to be i had to be the sassy friend of the group i was eight when i found

045out that i should be good at braiding hair i was three when people started touching my hair i was 13 when i started telling them to stop i was 16 when there became consequences for those who didn't want to listen i was 17 when i found out that people touching my hair because i felt good or looked cool was racist i was nine when people started to tell me how much older i looked i was nine when people started to tell me how mature i was from my age i was 15 when i realized that i was so mature for my age because subconsciously i'd realized i didn't have the privilege of having that same childhood innocence and ignorance as my fellow fair-skinned classmates i was 12 when someone first asked me for the past

046i was loved when i found out the fact that i lived in the house and the suburbs was shocking i was 11 when i found out the fact that it was both my mother and father who aren't divorced with shocking i was 16 when my uncle told my cousin who was five to come home from school crying she didn't want to be ugly anymore she wanted to be peach so she could be a princess i was 17 when my nephew was six had a nightmare about cops shooting at him i was 16 when i found out that what weight fragility is i was 15 when i found out what way privilege is i was 17. when i found out that our criminal justicism is based on racial oppression i was seven when i found out

047what police brutality is i was 17 when a girl in my class asked what the cross burnings were i was 17 when she didn't understand why that was offensive i was 14 when i found out who jane elliott was i've been hearing from white people over the past few days that they are burnt out from all that has been going on in the media regarding the race issues of america it's been non-stop and bad and saddening and they don't know what to do and there's so much happening i like to say that if you're listening to this as a white persona and you feel yourself feeling the same exhaustion the same disheartening feeling then cry me a river there isn't a bone or cell in my body that feels any sympathy or empathy for you

048if you're exhausted after two weeks and you're looking for someone to complain to please take it upon yourself to lead people of color especially black people out of that mess we're not the same person and i can understand that we have not lived the same life and everybody had the same struggles but being worn out after two weeks of media heavily focusing on one of the most institutionalized prevalent issues in our country issues that i and many other black people have had to encounter since early childhood issues that personally i have dealt with for 15 years of my life and will probably have to deal with until the day i die your 14 day weariness is frankly pathetic but she is a regional high school is a school filled with majority racist ways students and

049staff who sit back and let the injustice occur with the exception of only three teachers i know of when i say racist i don't mean students who are ignorantly microaggressive by racist i mean students who engage in covertly racist behaviors that they either know or wrong or are told or wrong that instead of growing as a person continue with such behavior that they know is racist but doesn't help is the students of color don't know what they can do about it because either they are not taken seriously the person they tell is uninformed it doesn't know how to handle the situation or they do tell someone but the situation isn't dealt with correctly so the racist behavior continues only in rare occasion do i see racial injustice happen and the proper measures taken to actually

050help the situation and the fact not only scares but disgust me as it should you as you all know the curriculum has been so bleached out that i'm sad to say that when i finally read a piece of literature by a black author that wasn't about the struggles of black people but just a regular story i was 17. and up until that point i didn't know that those kinds of stories existed in my memory i cannot recall one mathematician or scientist of color i'm sure they exist but never heard of one man i don't know maybe they don't what i'm saying is that the curriculum needs changing and inclusion of people of color different genders different religions different backgrounds if i hear one more straight white cisgendered male being an important pinnacle american culture i'm

051going to lose my mind jane elliott in my opinion is an amazing woman and if you don't know who she is when you go home later you should research her see the experiments she does in order to make privilege get a sliver of a taste of what it's like to be a racially oppressed person her tactics why many have been labeled as harsh or his bullying but i'm glad she does the things she does the way she does them because the hatred doesn't stop when you get tired the hatred stops when the system is changed or you die whichever comes first i'd like to leave everyone with this with the clarification i do not apologize for my aggressive tone i have sat complacent for too many years and stay quiet on too many issues or

052to beat around the bush and to fill my open letter with euphemisms to to to to excuse them so those are the voices of our students and our graduates um i wish that those voices were in their own voice and i'm humbled to have been the person who reads them um i so again thank you for sharing and again i'm sorry that they have come from my for my voice and not not yours but they have to be heard all right i know heidi lahi also requested to speak at uh public address ken is it possible that out of respect for our students and their voices i could defer are you going to have a second public comment later in the meeting that's that's the plan um okay then i would i would like to

053do that out of respect for those students uh their experience and their courage thank you all right thank you um so next item on the agenda is um chairs opening remarks um i don't know how anything i can say really to follow that but we need to continue on our meeting um so tonight is our my final chairs opening remarks as i'm term limited from continuing as chair in the chairs rule after uh four years so i hope you can indulge me just for a moment first i want to thank those who have served on the committee and are not on the ballot for re-election although there are many empty seats and we know where he lives so we can write you in uh scott brown mike dennis amy michelowski steve godbelt melissa ayala have

054served the committee with distinction and spent many hours volunteering their time for the good of our community i'd also like to thank our senior student rep brianna and wish her the best at rpi thank you all we've accomplished a lot over the past few years highlights include tuition-free full-day kindergarten occupying the new mount view in a new turf field and a budget to taunt with the towns that led to avoiding 112 budgets for the past three years fortunately we in the whole state will find ourselves in the 112th this year we saw progress in school and emotion social and emotional learning with new problems like bright at the high school and the addition of middle school counselors these games were driven by a strategic plan created by many community stakeholders and strategy and foreign plans

055for staffing tech pd and textbooks and our district and our local advocates and legislators led the way in pushing for foundation budget and funding reform which resulted in the student opportunity act that held such promise that said this year has been rough it started with the triple e threat which changed the nature of our fall semester and feels like about 100 years ago then in march our lives were appended with coba 19. some in our community have lost their lives including detective sanji who we all mourned last week leaders have lost their jobs have lost time with family have lost their sense of community and potentially have lost some degree of hope that we can return to normal the same time recent events have reminded us that the old normal was also one defined for

056many by racial inequity discrimination and injustice i appreciate the superintendent's call to action he sent to families last week and i really appreciate our students voices tonight they're our students voices as a district we've had to do more to recognize how implicit bias and racial inequities affect equal access to education and how existing structures and curriculum may need to change to provide that access to all we need to ha we have to do more to teach our students to black lives matter that those in a position of privilege have a moral obligation to recognize their privilege and do the hard work to promote equal opportunity we need to send our students and ourselves on a path to words and actions not just to words the same time we also need to help our students discern

057and learn how they best use the power of their words in ways that spread love and change and don't spread hate there's a lot we can do better the district and the future of our communities depend on it we also end our year my last meeting as chair with one of the hardest meetings we're ever going to have we face a statutory deadline of june 15th through administration to deliver pink slips and non-professional teaching staff we may not be able to retain commonwealth faces a potential six billion dollar deficit next year and that pain will be passed on to towns municipalities including regional districts like ours if we don't see federal support we may lose everything we've gained and then some up to 10 percent of our staff in a time where our kids have

058more needs than ever needs to make up what they missed this year social and emotional needs from the traumas of this year and missed education services foreign most needy students we also end our year where no real idea what the future will bring district has formed a planning committee with a variety of stakeholders but it's hard to fill a budget when we don't even know what we're doing next year is it in school remote a hybrid this is not 10 students per class like we heard today the virus in our actions is the press that are in charge of our timeline we must plan for all contingencies and that's not easy work we also mourn the things that may appear trivial to some facing life or death situations in our world that every loss has

059a right to be mourned by those who experience it our high school seniors lost prom well spring sports plays recitals and a traditional graduation their futures are also more uncertain than in recent memory and who knows what colleges or employers will do in the fall elementary school and middle school graduates left their schools without a walk through without a ceremony they didn't get to tour their schools for next year and if they start on campus they'll do without much of an in-person orientation their parents miss those events next year's juniors probably held at the worst our graduating seniors did get most of their senior year juniors most likely will not we need to make sure we treat them especially as we did this year's graduates because they have a tough road ahead including a summer

060with no traditional college tour so you're not in inspiring final chairs remarks this is our time to decide how we emerge from this crisis there is much we took for granted even just being in community with our neighbors and loved ones hopefully you emerge in this experience with a new appreciation of these values perhaps with this time for additional reflection we can emerge better willing and able to help our students discern how they can make a life that will bring good justice and value to the world perhaps we emerge with a newfound commitment to walking with the excluded and turning good words and the good actions perhaps we realize that our mission as a district is a journey with our youth and use their energy and passions to fuel our own perhaps we have a

061newfound commitment to caring for our common home and realize that without a focus on environmental sustainability the next pandemic or war for food and water species extinction is all but guaranteed as a committee i hope we move forward with a newly invigorated hermeneutica generosity trust that our colleagues have each have the best will in their hearts regardless of whether we agree with their positions until they prove us otherwise and tonight we have a wicked long agenda ahead of us and we're at 7 44 but it was important i think that we heard and heard the voices that that we heard um we will have another public hearing at the end of the meeting um there's as more comments may come in um all right so uh so all right so remember silva asked if we

062can comment on the first public hearing we can under the superintendent's report the public hearing usually isn't a give and take but if there is common students the fact that people wish to make they can do so under the report um next item agenda is the student's representative reports uh rihanna if you have something for us yes i do but leah do you want to start uh sure um so on may 28th we had music awards that were broadcasted and you can watch him now on holdentv.com there are academic awards coming up on wednesday and they can be viewed on the website and this friday is officially our last day of school but it is monday from mount view due to the extra day that they had off so happy last week of school and

063then um we also last week had some of our events for the seniors so i don't know if any of you made it out but we did have a gorgeous led sign in the center of town um last thursday and the school was lit up in green and white and so i know my fellow seniors really appreciated that and then over the weekend we also had the rolling rally parade for the seniors i i saw a couple of you there and so i really want to thank everyone who made that possible for us i know graduation didn't really look like it was going to happen and you everyone has still made it something special for us seniors and so uh coming up a week from wednesday on june 17th there will be a virtual graduation

064ceremony uh for the seniors i believe at 6 00 pm i'm not positive on that so i may be wrong um and then the seniors will be picking up our diplomas on june 18th and there's been a large issue as you've heard that's really come up in the past two weeks many students have approached me and i knew it was absolutely necessary that i make this statement and i know we're running a little behind so i'll try to keep it as brief as i can and so i'm sure all of you have heard about the protests and marches after the murder of george floyd exactly two weeks ago from today many of our own students have joined these protests using their voice to demand justice against police brutality and to support the black lives matter

065movement and many students alumni alike have also spoken out about their experiences in the wachuset district and i also want to truly thank every student who shared their story tonight to really show what it's like for those of us who don't live the same lives and so this isn't an issue that i recognized on my own you know i don't spend every day of my life being judged for the color of my skin i don't live my life pretending to be someone else just to seem normal in our community i'm not afraid to go for a run to go to walmart to walk home or just to be in my own home i don't receive hateful comments and derogatory slurs from strangers i don't face harsher punishments i don't live my life afraid to speak

066out but i'm white according to the massachusetts department of elementary and secondary education exactly 2.4 students in the district are black thirteen point eight percent are students of color the remaining eighty six point two percent are white since the protests began two weeks ago many students as i mentioned have spoken up about what they face the experiences they go through just every day just because they don't look the same as that 86.2 percent how they have to be friendlier so they don't seem intimidating or how they feel singled out by their peers and authority figures alike and one student even said i grew up in a white saturated area there's certain things you have to do in order to be able to adjust to that kind of environment you have to pick up different mannerisms

067just of survival in order to exist i don't see how they face harsher consequences than their white counterparts my friend and i did it together he got a detention i got suspended i'm black i don't see how teachers tiptoe around certain subjects like slavery and racism for fear of being racist how they have to prove themselves before people are willing to trust them another student said i know my fellow people of color in the wachusett area make up a small percentage but this problem existing in our own community is important to everyone it needs to be addressed now or never others just um outside of that community have spoken out about what they've seen but never experienced one student shared that they saw one white guy call his best friend the n-word because he thought

068it would make him seem cool another i see racist acts daily yet no one calls them out for their unjust actions and we'd all like to think that it's not us or not our community that we could never be that way yet we failed to recognize and address the racial bias in discrimination within our own schools it's been two weeks since the protest began today was the first day i heard any administrator acknowledge these events when mr g posted a short video on instagram that's 14 days of radio silence about an issue that every student has seen across the news or heard one of their friends mention and yes i do recognize that an email was sent out to parents but what about our students are high schoolers ages 14 to 18 too young to

069talk about racism how about middle schoolers you know he just 11 to 13. do you think they're unaware of what's going on or are elementary schoolers do you think they can escape being taught how other students are different just because they don't look the same because i sure didn't racism in our district is a systemic issue and if it weren't such a taboo subject we could have conversations about it but kids are afraid to say black or person of color for fear of being called racist they can't even recognize how their ignorance is inherently racist and if we as a district didn't ignore their history then maybe more students would understand that black lives matter doesn't mean that all lives don't matter maybe they would recognize that every day black lives are threatened by society

070in a way that the rest of us might truly never experience or understand maybe if we had these conversations in every grade and of with students of every age then my classmates wouldn't grow up hating others for the color of their skin and there's obviously so many more things to address than i have time for right now but we as a district need to do better than this we need to teach our students what racism is and that it's okay to talk about it and we need to act when discrimination occurs not sit by and watch we need to stop ignoring their history if it's something that's never occurred we need to help students teachers and faculty members alike help them recognize that unconscious bias exists and we need to make them aware of what

071students of color face especially when that 86.2 will never feel it themselves and the biggest thing we need to do is educate educate ourselves educate the teachers faculty and educate our students and i wasn't able to really recognize most of this until i had someone else approach me about this whole issue and if you don't mind um our former student representative dj would like to say a few words about the issue i'm not sure um a bunch of you remember him just one minute remember remember has a point of order so remember the boy mentions that spring says the public comment has already happened is what he's saying in terms of this is supposed to i suppose be rihanna's report is is this going to be brief yes so so can i for one you

072know would have no problem um you know making an exception uh given that this is part of rihanna's um uh presentation and quite frankly um i'd love to hear from dj i would also echo that point and i don't care if it's long or short make that three of us and many others i'm sure yeah many others okay so i as as truly is as chair i'm going to make a ruling to allow it if people want to make a motion to rule the ruling of the chair they they have that option um yes i i deeply appreciate um you allowing me to speak here tonight and i also appreciate the support that i got from the committee which i served on for two wonderful years um i'm sorry that i haven't kept in touch

073this is the first time that we're being we've been reintroduced since i've gone off uh since i've gone off to college and been away from the watchers community of last year um but i did want to address uh some of my thoughts and some of the things that i've already said on the topic of racism and specifically racism in the wachuset community um last week when i was caught up in all of my thoughts about how to fix structural racism and how to how to end police brutality in the united states of america i i came to the stark realization of start remembrance really that um where i lived 97.3 white the day that i moved um 10 11 years ago when i came to this community from worcester um this community really um it

074misses the mark on racism a lot of ways and i went on instagram and i didn't expect it to get a lot of attention i really just wanted to to give my thoughts on what was going on and also fill a bit of a void that was left by what she said administration as far as there not being a statement out about what was going on and i just gave my candid honest thoughts it wasn't prepared speech or anything um shared a little bit of my story with people and it got a little bit more attention than i was expecting a lot of people viewed it and a lot of comments were saying about how um nobody realized that racism was such a such an issue in the community that wasn't something they really have

075to think about and that is something that i understand as it is i was i was the one that said incredibly uniquely non-diverse community which is unfortunate um but i i understand that people wouldn't necessarily know much about um other cultures when they aren't exposed to them but i also said that that's um that's a bit of a failing from the school district and its education of students um i think a lot of what i have to say about about that about the discrimination i have faced uh as a student i think a lot of that was covered in the public comments uh i can echo a lot of what they said um i remember when i was in fifth grade i was we had kindergarten buddies and it would refer to the apricot the

076peach colored crayon skin color which is something that seems benign to a lot of people but is actually incredibly offensive and damaging because it teaches from a young age that this is what this is this is the standard that white is the standard and brown is brown but apricot it's letting them know uh subconsciously what what the way the way things should be um so that for me i hadn't i went to computer of course i haven't fully experienced that from the start of my education so it took me back um even though i had already experienced some microaggressions from my peers you can just decide for me um but continuing i i got a lot of people asking what they can do a lot of white folks asking what they can do and to

077be quite honest i don't have all the answers i i'm 18 years old i'm figuring my life out right now um i i'm only coming to a lot of these realizations about the community about um about what i can do to help um i think that i'm only coming through these realizations because i attend howard university which is a historically black college historically bike university in washington dc um and various you receive a full and comprehensive education and you are required to take an african-american history course before you uh finish your matriculation before you graduate and i'm learning and i took an afro course uh this most recent semester and i was learning that um the way that african american history study is not um it's not the same way as i learned in one

078where everything that watches it is through um a white lens and we learn everything from a white perspective and like like i had said previously that's that's a feeling um it's a failing through students because it ends it leaves them um lacking a diverse and full opinion on a lot of things and they don't they don't understand things um as well as they could and they could end up going going to college or going into the career field making having just ignorant assumptions in their head because they just simply don't know anything about the rest of the world around them and i i say a lot of this sounds like harsh criticism on the school district but i don't think that all the criticisms can fall on the school system itself um while it is

079very important to raise and educate you to be um inclusive and understanding of lots of different cultures i think part of it um part of it starts at home if you have parents in the home who are not accepting of other cultures and other belief systems and that's going to end up being uh damaging to a child and i'm not i don't mean that every one of conform to everything that i'm saying but what i'm saying is there's some things that aren't a matter that people in this community um that people in this community believe and hold on to very tightly and that ends up um that ends up rubbing off on their children the way things are in this area is often described as a bubble people would always say that end up being

080kind of a buzzword while you're in high school and i i would hear that and i'd just be like yeah okay sure but then i went to school um far away surrounded by people who look like me instead of people who do not look like me and i could fully understand how the term bubble is perfect to describe this community because um it is a it's a fragile understanding the fragile concept of reality that is in no way um representative of the world [Music] but just to echo what rihanna was saying education educate yourself um on on what to do about this i'm i'm learning myself on how i can how i can articulate how people can do better um um as far as race goes and it but i think about things like eliminating

081school choice that that seems like it's just that you know boy would play district decision but what that really is in the state of massachusetts 86 of black and latino families owned homes in just five cities um with none of on that them so eliminating school choice ends up becoming extremely exclusionary even if that's not meant and that further limits diversity in an already but it's just it just goes to show um kind of a possible area of improvement um and i i have i said in my statement last week that i i still call myself proud have gone to watch this i'm a mountaineer for life i said um i enjoyed for the most part my time here but the entire time spent at work season had david daily microaggressions and just undertones of

082racism and a lack of empathy and what i described as a deep sense of fullness because i think as one of the other public um public statements that said um you're really the number of uh people of color at the school incredibly low that there's nobody because nobody around you telling you that it's not okay and everyone around you thinks that what's happening everyone around you thinks that um touching your hair or um making certain comments about how aggressive you are saying that people think that saying that type of thing is doing those types of things is just okay you think about it's normal and it's because of the lack of a fundamental lack of understanding and a lack of empathy uh a subsequent lack of effort because there's just no there's no frameworks by

083which these folks can understand it because there's no there's simply just a majority like a vast majority white uh community and it it pains me that it takes for me to reopen my rooms for takes for students of color to share their stories young people share their stories of pain and hardship growing up for people to fully understand hey maybe just maybe we're doing a couple things wrong we need to improve and hearing those hearing a lot of the public um the statements from the boat the other students are absolutely heartbreaking because honestly we all students of color watches and you don't you don't hear about it from other students of color and that was the first time in mass that i've heard a lot of kids sharing their stories like that and that's that's

084hard because that's what i have to go through um there's there's a bit of guilt um for me when i sat on this committee as city representative for two years and i didn't i didn't bring up any of these issues which were still prevalent which are present but at the same time i understand that this is not my burden there's no student's burden to repair a broken school system um and i i do say that but i i feel a responsibility because i want one i want my choices to try for all students i don't want i don't want anyone to feel excluded and i i i really just i really think that what she supposed to be doing a lot better um we i only had one black teacher my time on and i

085go to college hbcu and it's all black teachers or black professors and black students around me it's just it's something that i didn't realize how much i need to receive that perspective and to perceive that sort of affirmation for me as a black student but for a white student who doesn't experience um any other viewpoints or other perspectives something that that really teaches them it gives them a full and all-encompassing education that they need to be successful in the world to be empathetic human beings not just not just good students but good education good human beings with a better understanding of reality i don't know how else it would have come and like so many others have said um change needs to happen now or never i i don't like leaving the option of never

086on the table so i would really really appreciate something we're done um by this district like as as soon as we can to address the needs and issues that this community faces so i guess that's i guess that's really all that i have to say uh but thank you thank you all again for listening to me and thank you uh mr mills for allowing me to speak all right rihanna leia's thank you dj um randall do you have anything else to report no that's what we have thank you so um i thank our student representatives for um for their service this year again i wish rihanna the best as she has off hopefully off to college and not locally to college and uh yeah i don't i don't think you're joining us next year but

087thank you again for your your service as well and we hope to see you both um in the high school thank you for having us all right thank you i'd like to move this into the superintendent's report and then if people want to address some of the students representatives of comments they can do that while they go we'll go around the table under the superintendent's report just to move us along um i want i'll turn the floor over to superintendent mccall thinks he wishes to highlight highlighter report then i'm going to turn it over to recognize first member lavoy to speak to evaluation and then member dennis the frame financial statements um and then we'll go around the table and they'll get their own term for their own comments as as well so daryl uh

088thank you thank you ken um so first and foremost you know i'm just going back um thank you to the committee members and you can for sitting on our committee and being a part of the educational system here in wachuset it's it's greatly appreciated um you know it's been good to work with all of you um you know i've i've appreciated the candor i've appreciated the support i've appreciated the the questioning uh you know everything that comes along uh with being a school committee member and i think this is a no-frills position for a school committee um people put a lot of hours in it's a large committee it's a it's a time commitment and i know many of you um you know when you speak with me just understand how how long the hours

089are associated with this and i i wanted to let you all know that i appreciate that um i want to talk you know just briefly about uh you know some of the items that have been brought up this evening um you know first and foremost uh when you know you know again i think ken you said it well but you know the passion um i think that the pain um the the feelings that all the students shared with us this evening um are ones that i i feel um it's this is this is a tough situation for the entire country right now and i think um you know there's there's a saying um i think globally act locally so i i what i'm what i'm admiring about this entire situation is that um people are

090compassionate and they're they're and they're passionate about what they're trying to do um you know we're as a school district you know we don't condone violence we don't support uh anything um that isn't about making change but doing so in a way that is you know peaceful but um straightforward and again we want to ensure that um you know we're supporting uh you know change and ultimately um we all need to do a better job at that you know i can tell you i i did in you know um the letter that was sent out last week um to families typically i send letters out and they just pretty much always just go out to families and again that letter um is something that i felt was necessary to go out as the school district

091leader which is what i said in in the message as well as um you know some of the things that you know i i'm dealing with as a you know a white male um in this situation in terms of what my responsibilities are and i think that's what people have to understand you know we do have responsibilities you know i can tell you i had um mixed responses to that letter um i had um you know emails that were somewhat threatening and from from some people and you know i had emails from people who said they cried when they read it because um they they want change to happen so it really ran the gamut uh in terms of in terms of the responses and it just tells you how uh challenging an issue i

092think this is um dj you know i got to spend two years with dj on the school committee i think many of you you did as well and yeah you know it's you know racism is something that we've lived within you know in this country for over 400 years it's still here it's still alive um it's still something that we don't deal with well with and you know from you know my vantage point and again one of the things i pointed out in the letter is that you know this is something that's been you know in my mind for a while now and you know in order for us to really start to address these issues you know i really feel so it's pertinent uh for us and really important for us to focus on

093making sure that we understand what our unconscious biases are which is why uh you know we're reading that book with the building principles and and looking at how we can have a better understanding of you know our blind spots i think someone you know a couple people mention you know those terms that that's exactly what this is about and you know for us as a school district we do need to do a better job we do need to be able to support all students it's not just the 86 caucasian it's it's all students and that's what we have to do in in the world globally so um you know i when i i taught in amherst in a multicultural multinational um school school for um six years and uh it was probably one of my

094more diverse places you know i'd ever taught in and um it gives you a very different perspective and i think one of the things we have to do a better job at is looking at uh the fact that you know even though we're not a necessarily diverse community we still have to talk and teach about diversity um you know racial injustice all all the items that are um coming to the forefront of discussions over the past couple of weeks so um again i want to thank all of the the students for their remarks um i i hear you i hear you loud and clear and i want you to know that we're gonna work hard at making this um this district um this community uh a place that's uh accepting um you know and again

095this is something that every community i believe in the country is looking at right now very very closely and it's it's necessary it's it's been a long time coming so um i wanted to thank you um all for those those words um you know in reference to my report uh there are um you know a couple things that we ended up talking about at business of finance that um you know i think um remember dennis will speak to a little bit this evening but we we will want to review um our budget scenario uh situations we're not at you know as we heard uh senator warren's person talk about today there's nothing that's going to be coming from uh the federal government any time too soon so we are forced to you know take action

096in terms of what we need to do and we have a mass general law that you know ensures that we notify people um who are non-professional status teachers by june 15th you know of whether or not they're going to be coming back next year so we have to take those steps um and we have to let those people know um in a timely manner and that will happen um by the end of this week friday um monday um at the latest so again you know this is as ken mentioned this is probably one of the most challenging meetings uh you know that we'll be participating in because i think it's emotionally um draining because of the challenges that we're all facing um so i think we have to think about this in a way where

097okay what can we do to move forward with a budget that supports what we've been trying to keep keep moving um and again you know it's been 10 years since we had uh our last recession we're back in one and um you know the gains that we've made um you know i'm i'm hoping they don't they they aren't erased so um you know i'm just thinking if there's anything else ken um would you want me to start talking about the the budget reduction scenario that i did at business of finance um well i think you should highlight whatever you want to highlight from the report so then the committee can go around mike my goal was to have you matt and mike highlight the things that are in the report that we need to talk

098about and then go around the table and people talk about those things so why don't you take your turn uh it might make sense matt for mike to follow up on that just for the thread and then have matt talk about the evaluation and then we'll discuss all those things and on mass as around going around the table yeah and can um i i have um a couple of things that i want to present to the committee as well in terms of the the rubric and the evaluation template so just keep that in mind as well yeah um we'll do that let's let's just let if it's okay with that that daryl might just lay it out and we'll let you let your thing out matt and show what you need to show and then

099we'll go around the table perfect okay so uh what i'll do is uh just bring your attention to uh the document that was sent to business and finance and it was um in the attachments and it is uh the you know it's basically the draft reduction update from uh june 4th and that's the document that's broken down into a variety of tiers and as uh you know i did talk uh through this with uh the committee a couple weeks ago when we spoke and as we have been looking at the details associated with this we spent a great deal of time meeting with the building principles talking with small groups of principals great not grade level but um elementary middle high uh also um bringing individual principles together so that we could you know really

100go through and look at um the the implications of what the reductions mean and um you know where where you know you hate to say this but it's where the the least amount of um concern will be in reference to um reductions we don't want to reduce anyone we don't want to take any person's job away um at this at this time but the the options are are um you know really minimal uh once you get past tier one so as we started talking about some of the different things that we did with tier one our tier one reductions um you know were basically close to three million dollars our our goal originally was to try to reduce our budget to about a 112th budget which is is a budget that is the same as

101fy20 there'd be no increases and um you know that dollar amount is close to 4.3 million dollars yeah i'm sorry just to interrupt you for a moment i think for people watching who don't have this back in front of us be useful this was being shared as you talked about this um what page are you on in your attachments i apologize um i have i have my i have my whole document open can you share it as you talk you are yeah so i just have to find it again i'm trying i apologize can i believe it's page 84. thanks laura okay sorry this is hard because it was on the 84th page okay so let me you want me to share it thorough you're right i'm i'm trying i i i can do it

102that's fine it's not working okay are people seeing um yes the page 84 yes i hear it's well let's see yes yes okay people are saying yes that they're seeing what you're saying okay okay so this is the first page of your thing tier one okay go ahead sorry for the interruption don't worry ken so on on the first page of the document um you know what we'll what we're basically showing is what the what the first uh tier one reduction would be so tier one reductions are all of the items that we um were trying to put it in that weren't necessarily associated with people with with actual positions with the exception of the new positions that we had put into the budget for fy21 so there were reductions associated with textbooks operations maintenance

103people services our new positions we have uh usage of excess and deficiency um in this tier as well we have carry forward money from school choice and also circuit breaker contracted services we have a transportation stabilization transfer and also summer school running remotely there's a little bit of a savings there so by the time you're you're done um with tier one we're at about 2.9 million dollars a little above that so as you as you kind of look down we're still in need of about 1.3 million dollars to get to that 112th number um once you get in ken if you can uh scroll to the next page okay work so on on this page we have our uh you know again this is tier two and the tier two reductions are done um in

104a way that you know again we we worked with admin over the past of several weeks you know really defining what these positions would end up looking like so when you look at the tier 2 chart right there we have the reductions broken down by position and then if you scroll farther down to the bottom of that page we have the reductions pre-k through five reductions and that chart shows where the reductions would occur so for example ecc would reduce five paraprofessionals naquag would reduce one teacher three paraprofessionals and of 0.5 other and other could be anything from custodian to uh speech and language assistant to clerical um we had to kind of put everything in into that position so we have um you know pre-k through five can if you could scroll down to

105the next page page three we have our k-8 middle school reductions and those are again based teacher special ed teacher pera aba and other and one one note on here is that there is a reduction of the strings teacher which is a 0.8 position and that would be an automatic reduction right here as well under the high school we have three teachers in regular education one teacher in special education two paras and two other positions and those are positions uh custodial and um i believe clerical that haven't been filled yet so when we're looking at a total number associated with uh these reductions some of these include retirements where we're not going to replace those positions so those positions will be observed through attrition um you see a total number down below and this is

106something that a member had asked for you know what the breakdown would be so this is a breakdown for the total number of teachers in regular ed special ed paraprofessionals abas and others we're now at if you go down to that bottom of that page on page three we're at about 1.6 million dollars in terms of tier 2 reductions it's it's about three hundred thousand dollars over um so it's um putting us in a position where uh where we have a little wiggle room a little uh leeway in terms of what we need to look at um as you and ken if you can just scroll down to the next page we have tier three reductions in the middle of that page and tier three are more items so we would reduce our special education

107tuition costs um uh you know really by looking at um making some modifications to some of our support that we're trying to um save on instructional support operations and maintenance also so there's another dollar amount savings here um once we get to the next two pages tier four and tier five the next couple of pages excuse me uh you know that's really the next kind of area where if we're looking at what a possible 20 reduction might be in state aid this year which is you know even under what it was back in 2008 in terms of the percentage amount we're actually looking at massive reductions across the board so um you know on the bottom of page or in the middle of page seven ken you'll note that by the time we get through

108tier 5 the total running reduction is almost 10.5 million dollars so as we have kind of gone through this process and talked to business and finance about this um we've been as um kind of detailed as possible in terms of looking at this you know we will have um non-professional status teachers that we do know that we're not going to be able to hold on to um you know in tier i believe in tier 1 or excuse me tier 2 we have about 13 non-professional status teachers in tier 4 and tier 5 we have 24 and then 15 so in total it's about 52 non-professional status teachers that's a huge number um and it's unfortunate and this is um something that i don't believe any one of us ever would have thought we would be

109dealing with um even four or five months ago so um until there are funds that are established at the state level through federal funds um you know we have to take the the necessary steps in order to ensure that we're able to continue to operate this school system on a 1 12 budget through through the year um you know ultimately if it's through december and the commissioner comes in and sets a budget that's you know that's another way for its work but um again we're looking at um you know taking these steps in order to ensure that we have the funds to remain viable uh you know in september we've had many conversations as well about um you know some of the costs that we don't even know um about um that will be coming

110down the road i believe member ottmer brought that up at our meeting at business of finance we're not sure what those costs are going to be but they they could be extensive um and we're gonna have to look at how that might play out so um again this is our um you know this is really what our next steps are in reference to um what our reductions would be around pink slipping people all right remember dennis you want to have anything else add briefly frame the conversation of course we'll have a lot of emotions downstream i i do i do you know thank you ken and daryl um you know very quickly though first i i um as i think one of the first committee members to to speak after um uh what we've heard

111um during public session and the students um student representatives um just wanted to address those students very quickly by saying it took a tremendous amount of courage um to speak out today um you know you've opened our eyes and uh to quote uh rhianna um we need to do better and um and and i i sincerely hope that we will turning to um business and finance uh ken as you mentioned there are several motions on the agenda today um and i want to there's a lot of information that that daryl just presented and i want to try to put some of that information in context for for all of us and for those who may be watching um the business and finance committee meeting has been meeting uh and discussing almost exclusively contingency planning for

112fiscal year 21 uh for the past two to two and a half uh months and as we talk about plans you know i we i think we've tried to talk about it in having three main components on to having a plan you know first is identifying the size of the problem um second is identifying how do we close the gaps and i'll refer to those as mitigations and and reductions and you heard a little bit about that tonight and then the third is the timeline and understanding what is our timeline what is our calendar because that is crucial um to the decisions that need to be made between now and and when school starts for for for 20 20 21 um in terms of the size of the problem you know i think that the

113administration now is modeling you know anywhere from a 4 million to a 10 million dollar impact um quite frankly we don't know any more now than we knew two and a half months ago in terms of whether it's closer to the lower end or or the higher end um other than whenever we seem to get news it tends to be a bit worse than the last news that we received um so you know the higher end is probably just slightly higher or elite higher probable uh than than the lower end um in terms of mitigations and reductions um that the barrel is laid out let's talk about mitigations because a lot of that relates to the motions that are on the agenda today um you know in a typical year we will run through the

114budget with our revenues and expenses usually we'll have some type of fund balance and any dollars that are associated in that fund balance uh could be made and certified as part of our e d um an attempt to be creative and be able to leverage funds that are not being expended this year there are a number of instances where charges are going to be reversed out of revolving accounts and into general fund expenses allowing us to build up our evolving accounts that we can then carry forward that allows us to be able to use those revolving accounts revolve those funds in those revolving accounts for next year um there are three i think primary revolving accounts are our circuit breaker uh school choice um and transportation stabilization and you know the plan that i think

115is is creative and it makes a lot of sense not only for our district but for many districts is is to run our balance um you know to to to down uh and to leverage uh to the extent that we can uh within the rules um to to use that model so rather than roll it into end for next year and have it recertified and wait for that process to happen uh we're looking to move uh that around in a way that allows us to leverage those funds for next year and that is probably somewhere in the ballpark of about a million dollars right now um there's uh other mitigations that are underway um negotiations with collective bargaining units there's been some discussions around fees as there is been some impacts in the tiered model

116on middle school athletics potentially high school athletics there's also a motion on the table for end use for next year by the way the motions that are that are on that regard transfers um were uh recommendation from business finances was unanimous that uh that they'd be accepted uh in school committee probably doesn't surprise you um for end a little bit of a different story um with the ind the motion to um access end for next year for the sum of 450 000 uh failed to be recommended by the business of finance uh committee by a vote of two two to one uh so it failed for lack of a majority um i think uh for the dissenting opinions or or i guess with dissenting opinions but some of the concerns were really two-fold uh one

117this is a prudent use of our funds for next year and two um are are some operational concerns about how we do that and what the budget implications are and we can take that up as this take up that discussion as the motion uh comes up um but the last is is timeline and and calendar and you know again we've um have continued to look to the administration to help us in business finance and help us in the full school committee understand uh what are those threshold moments in time when decisions need to be taken you know we know some of them we know that threshold decisions need to be taken by june 15th as it regards non-professional status teachers we know that there's a threshold of july 1st which is when without a approved

118budget by the towns we would go into one twelfth budget uh we know that we have um you know we're going to be opening school or at least attempting to re-engage in school um at the end of august but there are several intervening things and factors that need to happen before then and and one of the things that we want to make sure of is that when we're faced with a tough choice of making decisions about what's the best worst decision we don't want to fall into the worst worst decision and and to me that would be where we go into the school year at a certain staffing level on certain resource level and find for one reason or another that we need to pull back once we're in flight so it's very important to

119me and i hope to to other members for us to continue to to work with the administration to understand what those different timeline triggers are as we plan forward and and understand you know to the intersection of what reopening looks like and at what point do we need to start factoring in the cost for reopening um into our into our budget which we haven't done yet um and and you know and understand what resource shifting might need to happen to accommodate that um you know again this is not a situation where you know on one hand uh we we may have um hopefully some specific guidance from desi but we need time to react and you know we will need the district will need to be planning for what reopening can look like um so

120that that valuable time as we start to approach the beginning of the year is not done in the scramble um in in reacting to to what comes out of bessie um so that's that too is a lot of information um hopefully we've we've framed some of the motions or i framed some of the motions for you and you know look forward to continuing the dialogue thank you so i said before we go around the table um another timeline thing mike mentions timeline is superintendent's evaluation we're way behind on that so i want to make sure that remember lavoy has a chance to start framing our conversation right now about how it's going to look and then we can go around the table so matt are you able to share what you need to share i

121should be able to ken let me see if i if i can can you all see my screen yes all right so first and foremost i want to um thank the members of the subcommittee um remember mitchellowski member weeks and member mills i know that the subcommittee has really put a lot into making this an easy process for everybody on the committee to complete the evaluation and i have to thank barry square as well who has put together a lot of what you're going to see so i'm going to make this brief make it quick so tomorrow rebecca is going to distribute with the members of this committee dr mccall's evaluation narrative and his evidence for that evaluation and what you're going to get is a document this is the document and it defines the

122actual standards of what we will evaluate dr mccall on so you're going to see these standards right here and right within this document there are a couple of links one to the online evaluation questionnaire and one to the evaluation rubric so i'll just kind of come to the rubric first so when you look at those standards they're going to align to each of these elements within that rubric real important because as you go through the evaluation which i'm going to open up right now it's going to no notice that it's yourself you'll hit next here and as you go through this evaluation the very nice thing about this is each of these standards and what it means to meet the criteria is defined right in each of these buckets of unsatisfactory needs improvement proficient exemplary

123so you'll you'll pay close attention to what is defined here in each of these buckets and align that with dr mccall's narrative and evidence and then be able to rate that and then move on to the next element and at the end of each of those elements you'll have you'll have the ability to put your answers and this will just guide you right through the completion process a couple of key points of next steps tomorrow rebecca will distribute this um the the hope is that everybody completes this as quickly as possible but take your time do it in a in a way that is useful um because this will be compiled where your your individual evaluation will be part of the official file ken will put together a composite evaluation but as a subcommittee we'll

124need to compile some of those results for him so you'll get this tomorrow and the due date will be monday so having the full weekend the weekend to do that the last thing i'll say is i want to thank the the members that are departing this committee you probably unless you you do get um written in which which could happen um you probably won't be there when we vote on on ken's um on the the the narrative that ken has written but this is certainly your opportunity to to put together a nice evaluation if this is in fact your final meeting within the community so that's all i have for you all right thanks matt um it was important we got that in because it's a very timely thing that we need to do as

125a committee before we become a different committee soon um so what i want to do now i don't have my little cheat sheet here but i'll call up the the roll um so i want to go around the table and give people an opportunity to talk about a yammer second before i have call melissa first we'll go alphabetical and you know i ask people to uh speak their mind but be succinct and be ready so we can get to all the nine motions we have to go through all right so um remember ayala do you want to start us off sure hi um first i just wanted to of course uh thank the students that spoke out um in the beginning of the meeting um i applaud them for coming forward and bringing racism into

126the bringing racism up um that has happened to them in the past and um i i just can honestly say i hear you loud and clear um for someone that grew up in a very diverse family i've i lived through it through others eyes is the best way i can say it so i totally get it i totally have seen it i wish i were older back then to be able to have helped who i've seen um have such difficulty it's it's just heartbreaking to hear what they had to say um i think that's really all i have um for right now and thank you i want to thank the committee for uh everything that they do because i know this is my um my one and only year for now of uh surveying um

127but i hope to come back when my three-year-old is older and i have more time so thank you for that and that's all i have right now all right thank you for your service melissa um amber brown hi um boy this is my last meeting um this is one emotional meeting first i want to say thanks and say how proud i am for all the students that did speak out tonight um that it does take courage to do that i also uh want to support dr mccall's letter to the community i thought it was uh well put and definitely needed to be put out um the to ask a question in regarding um the non-professional status of the 52 are we looking at uh at pink slipping 52 of those are we looking at like

128the worst case scenario um going forward so kennedy minor okay so scott yeah so we we have to look at it in that manner because we have uh an obligation associated with mgl with june 15th so if we don't notify them um prior to that time it's it's it's a different situation for us so yes we we have to do that i mean if i again i um brookline uh pink slipped over 300 people um gosh a week and a half ago and i i know other communities are are in a very similar situation um to us uh that we're kind of going through so yeah it's it would be all 52. okay and if for some reason funding is not as bad as we think of tier 5 we can bring some of those

129people back in the fall definitely definitely and i think that's one of the issues that we're looking at is depending upon when this you know when funds if funds uh come our way and we have the capacity to then bring people back on board we will do so okay thank you thank you okay member dennis tone for your own comments thank you again scott for your service we know where you live to rich in though you know me no i think i i covered it i'll i'm good for right now thank you okay uh remember about or is steve at the meeting and it's steve's last uh meeting with us i don't see steve on the list um remember gustafson lay are you there yeah yep can you hear me yeah if you can't just

130raise your hand and i'll go back to my phone because that's also logged in if i run into problems um so yeah okay trying to think um this is a really hard day i have to say um i think my heart hurts for our district is hearing all of our students experiences um and um i was going to initially say thank you to the superintendent for his statement because i did tell him that earlier in the week i was quite impressed by that statement and that we're being proactive in this regard and really trying to talk about these issues um i was hoping it would have been put on the website so the whole community could have seen it the same time that all of his parents saw it so that was my one comment

131on that but i i do want to in response to the students um just say thank you to them for sharing their stories we have really amazing students um i'm saddened by their experiences um this is actually a topic i've dealt with quite a bit in my own life and experience i used to teach students how to think about some of these issues um so it saddens me that so much of that is going on but i i hope that we'll be able to continue the discussion moving forward and not just leave it here this weekend um and i hope that our community will join us in that effort i know not everyone is supportive of that path but i i wanted to voice at least my support for that direction um on and i

132do know that there have been some programs in the district that have addressed some of started to address some of these things so um i know the middle school at mount view there was a an initiative through the celtics organization that um the playbook initiative that we were fortunate to have i think about 50 students involved with and they worked with students in worcester and it was a it got cut short by the kovid but they did start talking about some of these issues and the idea was that they would bring back some of those conversations to other students at their school as as leaders so there are some pockets of things going on to start conversations and i hope they continue um the other things i had to say are about the budget which

133i hate to say at this point but i will i'm on the business and finance committee so i've been thinking about them for a while i won't go into detail i have um one note that i'm sure we will get to later in the discussion and perhaps heidi will have something to say but in the report and at business and finance um the one disappointment i have is that um thus far we're not able to consider any negotiations with the union because they're waiting for the federal funds apparently that's what we were told um and to me that's a little bit disappointing because there's a lot of things that we could do with that two million dollars that would save a lot of positions theoretically and now we're i don't know if that perspective will

134change but that was relayed that we weren't discussing those as of business and finance on thursday because obviously you need both sides to be willing to discuss that um so i hope perhaps with the new federal information that those continue discussions can continue i had a question for the administration about if we are in a position where we can look to restoring funds if if different funds become available or things in our budget as it is we end up with more funds left over than we thought if there is a plan and process for restoring items in terms of priorities for which ones you will restore first or if you have a plan for that because i think that's equally as important um you know for example the counselors that we were going to add

135that i think may be essential when we come back is that something we could look at adding before you know before certain other positions and i don't know what your thoughts are but i i'd like to know that you have a plan in mind for restoring positions if we have the opportunity to do so um and my um last thought was um about oh there was a discussion of the extended school year and summer programs and i had some thoughts from cpac on that which i'll save for later um but i know that's changing because there were new guidelines that just came out i think yesterday or today so um so i will save that for a later discussion but those are my thoughts for now um i just hope we continue the discussions that

136are ongoing and i i i hope that the federal funds will come through but you know obviously i'm not optimistic that they will come through um before this the uh the school year starts and i think we need to be mindful of that and i hope that everyone in our community including including our teachers our staff um everyone is willing to um pursue every option we have to you know try to not reduce this as much as we are having to right now um and i wanted to also thank dan and his team and all the administrators who've been working very hard on trying to put those pieces together so that's what i have to say thank you jerry i think there's a question there about the restoring yeah the storing pieces yes right so

137um you know right now as we literally just completed this you know we're going to come back to it now and we're going to be looking at what the restoration process would be you know and again that's going to be it's it's almost it's going to look very bottom-up if you think about it that way so um that's fine okay um i i really was curious since a couple people had actually asked me as well this or since thursday when i reported on the budget and finance meeting um you know if we were to see additional funds through some process will that go toward restoring positions or will it go toward restoring you know like the four thousand dollar four hundred thousand dollars we took out of the textbook line for example they were hoping

138it would go toward positions um or other priorities so i think just once we get through this week that may be equally important to have a plan for that thank you okay remember haber um i had a question about restoration as well uh very similar to malaya so i will let that go um do we have i know obviously we're waiting for funding from everywhere and and no one has a budget but there's teachers and paras and everyone else in the district who wants a timeline so do we have any idea of a timeline uh on what they're looking at you know in all honesty in terms of um you know one of the one of the ways that we're looking at this um you know we're all kind of in um you know state

139of flux in terms of what the timeline is uh you know we do have the the mandated time frames associated with our july i'm sorry or june 15th time for non-professional status teachers but all the other ones are are pretty open in terms of timelines for that so we have already identified you know specific positions that we would um take care of in reference to uh letting them know whether or not um they would be coming back but again we don't want to do that um too early because at the same time we're not sure when all this will will kind of play out okay someone's there's anything else sherry or okay so uh member haynes thanks i too very grateful for the students who spoke up tonight thank you for that and i'm grateful

140for daryl's letter that he sent out grateful for that as well as well said and there's so much we could say about that so much has been said tonight i'll simply say we have a lot of work ahead of us to do there um to hear those stories we have a lot of work to do and and i i am confident that the people in this community are are ready to i'm just looking at the reactions as i heard those letters well i think we're ready i think we just need to do it not just as what's that dismiss it after this after this week um with the budget stuff uh mike uh was correctly talking about the um uh end funds and i i i i don't disagree with him i agree with everything

141he said uh the the point that um i would say with the uh that money as far as wayne whether to use it or not uh my feeling was to actually make that part of our budget simply because trying to save jobs and that's really what it comes down to this year's this coming year is going to be brutal and anything that we can do to help our kids which in this case in my thinking is is trying to save jobs is is worth trying to do so that was kind of that was my take on it but absolutely the other side is valid as well so um that's a tough one the question marks about what what is that what is going to be the cost for reopening the state projects at the end

142of this month they will have some rough draft on what the guidelines will be for reopening the buildings i don't know if it's actually going to come but they're telling us that maybe at the end of this month at least have a rough draft on that as far as state money goes we don't know what baker will open up in terms of the rainy day fund and as far as federal funds go that is a very large question mark i appreciate the efforts uh by our uh representatives but as we know it has to go through the white house and unless someone on this committee is personal friends with kid rock and can ask him to go to the white house and lobby uh i i would say our chances are uh questionable at best

143but on getting any help from them so that's kind of that's kind of how i see the financial picture i think that's i think that's about all i got thank you all right thank you remember ember library there are you with us we'll come back to bob oh there we go bob all right yep all right so so i really really appreciate the student comments um and they were heartfelt and um difficult i'm sure and and if anything we we need to hear from more folk um and i know this has been an item that's been on the manage management agenda um and it clearly is a problem for the district um and we we need to continue to deal with it um i really appreciate member brown's comments about the pink slipping and and

144and that we have to make those consequences known to educators i mean to uh our legislators because i i i don't think they understand the impact they they haven't thought it through um and that's both on the state but especially on the federal level and then you know lastly um leah's comments having to do with with negotiations i'm wondering if there's a way to make those uh negotiations um conditional so that they understand if uh if this then that and and that there there may be ways to sort of get support um with with the unions um if if they understand that depending upon what happens with state and federal funds um you know we we have a plan and and the intent is to try to be supportive on the other hand um they

145understand that uh there are maybe needs to to give up on a number of things so that they can be um helpful to the district and the kids especially um and even to their fellow union members and that's it thanks remember chris hi thank you um for the time to speak um my my heart aches tonight um i appreciate all those students who uh who spoke out um or wrote out their hearts and their experiences and um you know prior to this meeting i was concerned with some of the things that uh we were hearing out in the community about recent events and some of the pushback that i was hearing from outside forces and i felt my heart was feeling like what a missed opportunity that we don't have our students in-house in school

146to help them through this very troubling time to have them share their concerns their thoughts their emotions and take it outside of their heads so that they could kind of make sense out of it that's what good education does it allows for the free thoughts and flow of information and and we missed we miss that because we are so isolated we don't have our kids in classes but the things that were said tonight by our students make me wonder if those if that free flow of information and thought would have happened had they been in classes uh it's clear to me tonight that uh there are many who would ask for our help in looking at curriculum adding diversity adding representation uh of diversity to our our student not not our student body but our

147our staffing uh uh community uh the people need to see reflections good reflections role models of who they are in the adults that are around them and i just hope that when time comes to restore ourselves back into schools when we have time to restore our staffing levels to where they need to be where they should be that we remember these calls for change and and act thank you all right thank you remember the boy all right um a couple of points that i want to address um i'm definitely concerned that we have not considered or have factored in the cost for reopening into a budget at all thus far i think that that's um concerning because reopening is is probably something on the horizon and we should be thinking and we shouldn't be waiting

148um the other thing that i'm going to say and i'm going to be very very candid about this is i don't believe any teachers should be pink slipped i believe the kids need teachers more than ever right now i think we're hearing that with everything going on in the world i think as a school committee member it's our responsibility to ask our administration to do more about revenue there are streams of revenue we have a phase two opening up in the state that allows for youths to practice you have fields at the at the high school that could be leased out to gain revenue there's an abundance of alumni from the wachusett regional high school that could be reached out for donations there's a community of businesses that could be reached out to support education

149impacts the entire community and generations are going to suffer because of the lack of education right now and now to think about taking out teachers is the last thing that i would ever even talk about right now it is disheartening to even hear that people are already throwing in the towel and saying when and if we can bring them back it's our responsibility to advocate and continue to push administration to advocate for more money from the community build those relationships and i know in the past administration and said they're not comfortable doing that well guess what we heard from students today that spend their every day not comfortable and it's our responsibility to make life better for them and that's all i'm going to say all right so remember along the way thank you um

150so i want to thank the students for sharing their stories i really appreciate your willingness to talk openly about these these painful experiences and and your courage in coming forward i've heard some say that because our school has a large majority of white students that we don't need to address the issue of race but i think your words are very clear evidence that we do and i hope that people will hear you with an open mind so thank you and thank you also daryl for your statement i'm glad to hear that you've gotten support from some members of our community and i'm sorry to hear that you've had such profoundly negative and nasty comments as well it's one thing for people to disagree but it should always be done respectfully and civilly that's what we

151teach in school and that's what adults should model and i am especially as a member of the business and finance subcommittee where we've been talking about these things for a while i am just sick at heart about the prospect of layoffs and other cuts to our budget as i mentioned i do hope that our federal legislators will put everything else aside and just focus on getting the funding legislation done just get it done i agree with member ember that we should encourage the unions to engage in negotiations that take into account different scenarios if then than that as he said that's a good idea and if there is money to be found in our community as as member lavoy suggests i'm all for um seeking it out um so um we get to the point

152where we have um motions on various budget issues i have i have a couple ideas but i will i will hold those ideas until until that point thank you hi can you hear me yes great um yeah so i echo everyone's comments about um the uh gratitude that i feel for students that were willing to share their personal experiences in our schools and the sadness that you feel for any student that is struggling with um you know having feeling as if they are alone and they don't have people that can support them so that i do wish in the future whether i'm back on the committee or not um that they you know this is something that the committee will dig into through education subcommittee and that the district leadership will look into with the

153teachers and the school administrators to make sure that it's a priority um you know as my as i've listened to folks i do many of the comments that i would have made about the budget have been stated by some that the one that i couple things i do want to reinforce one is that i had written down that i did hope that there was a way to negotiate in i don't mean better faith but in on good faith with the union around um structuring and agreement to save jobs um so that there could be a wage freeze to ensure protection for positions and perhaps some sort of balanced reinstatement of you know wages and materials or supplies and new staff assuming that we get money back and and i would hope that that would have

154been part of you know sometimes one of the challenges i felt as a member of a large school committee as i and i think i've said this to daryl a number of times i feel out of touch with the ins and outs of what's happening and when there are monumental things that are happening in the district um you know it it's makes me uncomfortable to not really know whether or not that's been part of the conversation um i think that that is it um the last thing that um i would say to daryl is that i do hope that um you can lead by example with regard to wage freeze i think that it would go a long way for your staff to commit to freezing your wages for fiscal year 21 and i think

155that though it might not be you know the five million dollars that we need certainly wouldn't we be lucky if it were um i think that that would be meaningful to staff so i'm not sure if that's something that you've already expressed to them within your cabinet or through your own communications but i would really strongly urge you to take a stance on that early so that you can be part of the solution to the problem all right um ben are you back i remember mitchell had to step off call for a moment i will come back to him if he wishes um remember ottmar yes thank you um like many of my other colleagues i just really want to express my kind of the on the gratitude i have for all the students that

156demonstrated the courage to speak out um and to share the challenges the frustrations the hardships that they've had to endure um clearly we we can do better and absolutely we must do better um heart some of it's hard to kind of think about where to begin with that um some certainly hearing the voices that kind of come up from the grassroots as well as some things that may have to come down from the top um kind of really two ways you can go about go go bringing about organizational change kind of changing an organization's culture in this case the organization being our school district um and so i think there's kind of we'll have to go with this kind of from two places kind of working from the top from us to the administration down

157and then also really amplifying and echoing those voices of our of our students that haven't been heard that haven't been able to share their stories um and it's kind of hopefully when those two meet in the middle we'll find ourselves with a better district thank you okay remember silva okay um so let me see where can i start first of all i was grateful that i had my camera off because i was crying in ocean i want the students to know that i hear you and i felt your words you are brave and you have the courage to share your experiences i'm a proud alumnus of this district i was the darkest skin color in my school my first experience in a massachusetts school was being picked on for my skincare [Music] i was called

158chocolate milk such a delicious drink but it was said in the most despicable way i hated it but fortunately my experience at wachusett even though it's majority white students teachers neighbors i had a very positive experience i'm grateful to my teachers and administration for such experiences that i still live with and learn from unfortunately my kids did not share the same experiences they were bullied and experienced many micro and micro aggressions due to due to their religion and skin color administrators did not take it seriously it was always brushed off my kids lost faith in confiding in teachers about their experiences in fact many of you know that my daughter was spit on by her classmates during her eighth grade graduation an administration did nothing i was crying in ocean because as the student's testimony

159was being read i was imagining all those days my daughter cried to sleep tried hiding her unfounded shame of not being white as a parent not knowing this pain and not being able to help her i have a multi-racial family and my daughter said to me once because of you mom i'm not white i have had it hard because of you daryl when another discrimination issue had come up a few years ago instead of being supportive you had suggested i look into other schools for my daughter and what use it wasn't for her i too read your letter and i'm very happy that you have realized your white privilege and i honestly hate that term because as i have told you many of my white teachers friends mentors are dear to my heart and are

160very open-minded and loving but recognizing this issue is in the right direction but as one of my african-american friends said and i'm going to quote her because i think it just illustrates the frustration she has i don't necessarily agree with how she said it but it illustrates her frustration she said we don't need some white tom dick and harry to make some coins political correct phrases we need action basically being a bystander is no longer acceptable 14 days for the letter to be sent out this was far too late i had presented four years ago about unconscious bias to learn that it has taken this long to investigate this topic is very concerning about four years ago i had offered this district trainings by an organization i co-founded enjoying good it's dedicated to allowing the

161stories be told by the people who have experienced them not by some organization that does a generic presentation and speaks on behalf of the minority groups when i had offered these presentations there was a lot of pushback and as linda mentioned daryl you had told me the exact same thing that linda mentioned that this wasn't an issue at what you said because we don't have much diversity here but with the help of some open-minded community members principals and our congressmen thank god to congressman mcgovern yes who are all white by the way i was able to present to our school administrators and we are blessed with having some of open-minded principals who are who opened their schools to me so that it presented some of these issues and shared mine and my kids stories i

162have asked to be able to address our students but i was never offered this opportunity for the fear of the community's reactions i would like to address our school committee for a second and in making this comment please know that i take responsibility that i have not voiced this before when you are in a minority group you have to pick and choose your battles and not once was i ever asked that if a school committee meeting was being held on one of my religious holidays if we don't set an example in the school committee that we understand diversity how do we expect the rest of our schools to do so and i'd like to let the students know that i want to give their voices more volume i invite you to share their stories and

163offer comprehensive education through enjoying good and my tv show perspectives daryl i would like to work with you and work with having these students share their stories with all our administrators principals and students it's the only way forward the only way forward is education and i don't know but i could not sit and listen to those testimonies without crying thank you all right remember smith first i'd like to thank asama for sharing your experience thank you i'm i'm i don't really know what to say except thank you for sharing that okay um i'd like to echo the appreciation for sorry for the many perspectives that were shared this evening by our students your voices matter you can affect change as you begin your journeys into adulthood i encourage you to continue to speak up and

164encourage you to consider roles in our local government and to consider careers in education thank you for sharing pieces of yourselves with us second i'd like to thank the members of the committee who will not be returning it's been a pleasure learning from you and serving the wachuset district with you third iaco member lavoy's concerns about the lost about sorry about the cost of reopening the desc has released guidance on the safety equipment and ppe that is necessary for reopening and i'm concerned about how we will pay for this i'm also concerned about reductions in staffing looking at the guidelines from d-e-s-e although they're written for as if we were going to open now they're telling us that the classes will have to be smaller at 10 students when we were listening to the tiered

165cuts today and earlier in ed subcommittee about the class sizes i didn't i wasn't sure if that was being taken into account so creativity and collaboration will need to be utilized thinking thinking that we will return to school the way that we left it is not prudent we left with large classes and i don't think we'll be returning in that setting and to conclude i'd like to say a huge thank you to chair ken mills for his steadfast leadership over the last four years you have served as an excellent example of a chair for school committee and you've led us with integrity thank you well thank you christina and thank you also for your services as vice chair it's been fantastic next member is member weeks hi and thank you all um i also wrote

166down my comments tonight because i just needed to keep myself focused um when i had my turn to speak i wanted to thank dr mccall we have implored you time and again to take bold leadership decisions through your tenure as superintendent and through your message you did just that but i'm asking you to not stop there i first implore you to direct your principles to do the same by addressing their particular communities for all grades k through 12. i myself was disappointed in seeing a regular push forward in my kids grade one in three curriculum this final week of school where there is a massive opportunity to even have a virtual teachable moment my husband and myself faced our own white privilege last week when we had the opportunity to choose how when and what

167to tell our two sons about the murder of george floyd and the systemic racism people of color face in our society we got to choose and as we made that choice we were met with the flabbergasted eyes of an eight and a half year old who said to us wait martin luther king jr stopped racism that's what they taught me in school we must stop whitewashing the curriculum abraham lincoln freed the slaves martin luther king jr march to stop racism and then we come to today we must teach even our youngest students about scientists mathematicians and authors of color as well the struggle that people of color have been through from the start of our country to today in echoing what our students said earlier we must start hiring teachers paraprofessionals principals and administrators of

168color to reflect not just the diversity of our district but the diversity of our nation as i've said in years past we must consider school choice in the coming years to open our doors in our building to an even more diverse community hearing our students say tonight it's now or never it has to be now and i implore the administration to continue their bold leadership skills even in the face of truly seemingly unsurmountable odds i thank you for my time tonight i remember woodland hi all um uh my heart is pounding i have to be honest um awesome thank you wait i had something written but what you would share um it's just something that skipped my generation my dad i won't go into too much i come from a multi race uh oh a

169mixed race family um with a dad who often would say that he married my white mother so that his kids would be white um i grew up in a diverse suburb in new jersey and so when i moved up here i was shocked at seeing the blind spots in watch music so hearing the students words tonight i am not shocked to hear what they are saying i am also not shocked that it seemingly once again is laid on the shoulders of the people who have worn these wounds to rip open their scars and share them again so that we can what ignore it again i i'm it's a time as old as as time at any rate i also see this as a few things where too many in our community see the exploration of

170diversity as a zero-sum game that it dilutes something of our district's character um and that's not what teaching diversity is and in a broader way i think that this is the ramifications of such a stem focus in education where humanities are left by the wayside as something extra as something other as something that we don't really need because it doesn't really get jobs and so here we are left with a bunch of platitudes about how we need to do better and i do appreciate the words they are important to say words matter words have meaning they need to be stated but in the end it's the humanities where you are exploring perspectives of others looking at how to use lenses in other ways to explore um the unintended consequences of actions how it ripples out

171and today's humanities should be not just rehashing what the old white men have already said but should be looking beyond that to seeing all of the perspectives that are that build what has come before us um so that's where i want to say daryl i do very much appreciate the statement that you set out to the community i did not realize it didn't go to students um i think that is one thing that should be rectified but the i was very glad to see that statement um and glad that you took an anti-racist stance um that was i think very powerful and something obviously our community needed to hear because those blind spots still exist where they don't understand how to take perspectives of other communities of other at any rate i have two questions

172that are kind of ticky tacky i guess um one is about the question of end and i don't know if this is better served for later um but it's a question about timelines [Music] where if it's if it's not used now will it be certified again in time for when we start seeing the problems with the 112 cash flow um that was one timeline issue i wasn't quite clear on if uh if we start seeing cash flow problems potentially in october would we be able to see that money again in time if we don't use it for uh now or for this motion now so linda i can probably respond to that um and dan you can jump in if you like or mike uh the and the um indeed typically gets certified um earliest

173would be january um maybe february it's been it's been that late um a couple times so dan is that correct um e and d can be that's correct but but e d can't be certified um as early as uh uh the middle of the fall typically what the department revenue does is uh they address uh the requests from all the municipalities and then they they address uh regionals there are two important tasks that we're about typically in the fall one is getting the end of the year report done in september secondly we can certainly address excess and deficiency right after that um and that would be a several week process uh we we could have it done by november 1st which would be aligned with uh where we think we're going to hit hit the

174road hit the wall i should say with the cash flow a slight clarification you know i think there's a requirement that we submit end for certification no later then and i think that's the spirit of what dan's saying but no later than the end of october um so you know it's one of these things i think what he's saying is that if if we're able to um not bring it right up to the deadline the sooner that we could submit it and have our end of closing activities completed um the sooner in theory it could be re-certified and available okay um i believe that is actually my only question thank you all right thank you we'll have to have a more thorough discussion of that once we bring up the um emotion as well uh

175remember young thanks um i know we're getting late in the evening i'll try to make this quick um thank you everybody who has shared tonight um you know asthma linda dj every other student that did thank you very much um it's been i mean educational both personally and i believe both for the district and the group so thanks um i did want to comment on a different aspect of the report tonight um you're in the report it talks about some of the reopening stuff and the task force i am a part of that task force i'm on health and safety subcommittee of that um and one of the big things that we looked at um we met separately over the weekend in my group uh it's predominantly doctors and nurses and myself so i'm a

176little out of place but um the big thing that we got is you know looking at the deci guidance that came out last week you know the ppe supplies that we need to look at we need to order that now i mean we need to get on it um if there's some of that money from this year that we can spend on it you know can we get that out there um the there's you know the we had a discussion in the group um there was i believe k mentioned in the deci document that would be available to the districts and i mean to a person everybody just laughed about it it's it's woefully under the amount that we're going to need so we need to we do need to really look at how the

177budget interacts with what the reopening plan is going to be um you know and as we hash that out towards the end of the month in this task force we really need to consider it um additionally something i haven't seen mentioned um in any talks of the budget and the 112th budget that i know from previous 112 budgets we've had to look at pretty consistently is issuing a ran a revenue anticipation note to cover that cash shortfall that we usually hit in october i believe october is when we'll hit it this time to you know and ensure that we're looking at any costs associated with issuing that ran um you know it it'll help us get past that but it doesn't come free so we need to that's just something we need to consider um

178and ken um you know for all your leadership over the last few years uh thanks a ton you've done a great job um i mean one of the most even keeled steady leaders um you know keeping this giant ship upright um you've done a really good job so thank you very much um that's it well thank you adam i think i'm going to try and make my last meeting really long tonight is this direction we're going right um the two quick things off of adams i guess i was going to pass but one we probably won't get the new business but triton regional school district sent around um a resolution that i'd like us to talk a look at at our next meeting who's over our next year hopefully we can consider that about asking

179for um unfunded mandates to be funded in terms of coveted related expenses so hopefully we'll get to that and i don't know if dan wants to talk about the rand the rand deals more with cash flow than it does with um with not being able to spend over the 112th limit we used to have those when we had issues with cat with actual cash flows because our towns only paid us less frequently they do now they pay us quarterly now um dan do you want to clarify the if iran could or couldn't be useful with respect to the 112th issue um through the chair it could be useful um i i have had several conversations uh with mr dunbar uh uh treasurer uh we we spoke as recent as uh today about this uh and

180um he uh still feels that we we are in a decent position not to go down that road um i will follow up again with him tomorrow and uh we have jim coming to our next business to finance subcommittee uh subcommittee meeting in a week or so so we'll talk further then and can we um just just i think try to clarify you know i think when we talk about cash flow that a revenue anticipation note would address it's basically like a small loan um taking out a small loan to cover cash before we have the cash deposited into our bank is a little bit different than the 112th expenditure restriction and so i think that's what you were intimating and i just want to make that clear when we are in 112th budget a

181budget will be set by the commissioner most likely equaling our level of funding from last year potentially less any reduction in state revenue at that time whatever that number is if you divide it by 12 we are restricted to be to spend that amount with the exception of two things um with the exception of if we underspin in one month we can carry that forward and spend it in the following month and we can add to that limit funds that we use from revolving accounts as as i understand it so those are two separable um but related uh questions the question of cash flow i think relates to the timing in which and it's it's this day and age it's certainly um not unreasonable for us to be thinking about that but the timing in

182which that we would be receiving payments um from towns and and potentially from um from from the state great and going forward so the next chair knows not to emphasize this is my last meeting with chair um that does require action the school committee so the school committee has to approve um the that the business manager can go out and get solicit bids for iran so we would have to vote on that um and then he can go out and do that for us um so we have a lot of motions eventually we're going to need one to extend the meeting so do you want to start working through them um so our first first take asked for someone to make a motion to authorize the superintendent in schools assign the memorandum of agreement between

183wrsd and wrea amendment to memorandum of agreement cobit 19 closure so moved move remember weeks is there a second second it's been seconded um so mr dr mccall can you walk us through this motion sure i just have to open up my microphone um so again this is a a third uh amendment to the moa that we have put together with uh the seniors union um you know the first part talks about our evaluation system and this is uh something that districts are doing throughout the state uh where we are um basically saying that they'll receive the same ratings for uh 2019-20 as it did for 2018-19 um in terms of professional teacher status teachers for non-professional status teachers they're going to be rated based upon their mid-year formative assessments um stipends we have agreed

184to uh 10 payment of spring sport coaches uh again that's for the preparation and the work that they did uh prior to everything beginning uh back in march uh we talked about six time personal time accrual time um so as of may 1st uh their time would be deducted as they typically would be because in the prior moas it was not that way and then high school coverage um we are really looking at if there is coverage that has to occur during this time frame it's one-fifth of a 1 900th uh pay for those teachers all right we uh rather than go around the table i just want to have people raise their hand in the chat and any questions or comments on this motion did we make the motion yet we did it was

185made in seconds okay so seeing none uh we have to take a roll call vote since we are in operating remotely so we'll do that alphabetically remember ayala yes robert brown brown yes dennis dennis yes i don't think god val is at the meeting rebecca is that the case um uh steve's gone okay um gustafson yes paper hey very yes ains yes timber maria christian bomb question bob yes my boy yes smith smith yes weeks yes woodland yes yes all right so that passes the next item on the agenda is for someone to make a motion to authorize the superintendent in schools to resign the memorandum of agreement between wrsd and wreaa 2020 2021 school year furlough days they're a maker of the motion it's almost moving for haber and second by member brown um

186so the superintendent can you lead us through this sure so uh for this next uh way this really comes back to um what we've been working on with the union around furlough days so um if the weightless basically reads is it if the fy 21 budget adopted by the towns is less than 99 million five hundred eighteen thousand eight hundred and sixty five dollars the wr w rea agrees to the following so what they would do is work one less day they would work 182 days versus 183 days we will they'll still have the opportunity to have no cost pd equal to six hours that the furlough day would have provided um so it basically um puts us in a situation where it will save the district about 235 000 uh in total all right

187um remember brown do you have any follow-up on that as uh chair of legal you may not um yeah i was in uh the meeting with dr mccall and the uh union leaders um they we did ask um for a lot of different uh cost savings to save jobs um they did agree with uh this one furlough um for now um they they kind of want to see uh what is coming down the pike um what the um that you know the state is going to come up with money and everything like that um so that was very nice of the union uh to agree to that uh it does save the district 200 thousand dollars which is roughly probably like four jobs um on if you look at the average so it's all good

188all right so somebody said that fast um okay sorry i had to rebecca because she was typing really fast um so other people want to raise their hands in the in the chat remember mitchellowski i just wondered if somebody could speak to how they came up with the dollar figure that's cited in sorry i couldn't get my bar to come back up to uh unmute myself uh yes that's a good question amy sorry i didn't uh speak to that that dollar figure was the original dollar figure associated with uh the tier one reduction when we we put out our first uh five-tier model uh the draft uh two and a half weeks ago so that's that was the the dollar amount so what they're basically saying is we we would want you to do all

189of these items in reference to non-personnel you know reductions before we would then make a decision to reduce that amount and again a budget is different than the budget being funded right so there are kind of two different two different questions about how what budget is passed and what uh and if there's a mechanism to fund that budget um all right so i don't see any other i'm sorry remember lavoy do you have i just have a follow-up to dr mccall's answer there um am i hearing this was uh if we do this we'll do that did i hear that correctly uh yes this isn't if we do this we'll do that so if it gets to this point we will you know the teachers will move from 183 to 182. thank you for the

190clarification okay are there other comments about the uh the motion on the floor all right sting none will move to a roll call vote again alphabetically so remember ayala brown brown yes yes dennis yes i'm sorry i'm on that there it goes augustus and yes hey yes james yes denver yes christian balm kirchenbaum yes yes mitchell i'm sorry ben dropped off i remember atmar yes silva yes smith smith yes weeks yes woodland yes and young yes all right so the next thing on our agenda is if someone wishes to make a motion to authorize use of 450 000 of certified excess and deficiency funds from the excess and deficiency account as a funding source for the wrsd fiscal year 201 budget due to expected cuts in fiscal year 21 state education aid from the commonwealth

191of massachusetts due to the covet 19 crisis so it moved so maybe if i remember haynes is there a second second it's been seconded by the member woodland christian mom i'm sorry just all now um so as we made and seconded uh daryl can you and dan walk us through i think for me i think it's still a little bit fuzziness and how it's been presented about timing implications um you know definitely there's a conversation we have to have about pros and cons but can you and dan make us clearly understand process and implications and then we can discuss pros and cons so there are two deadlines the first deadline is to um identify a sum of money um for the fy 21 budget prior to june 30 of 2020 regardless of the sum of

192money in this case here it's 450 thousand dollars if the committee uh chooses not to act on this this evening then the opportunity to use access and deficiency at the start of the fiscal year um is next until until we have our fy20 end certified and that would be probably let's say in november december of of 20. if the committee chooses at that time to use fy20 certified excess deficiency dollars it may but it will need to follow the same process that we used a year ago when we looked to have two hundred fifty thousand dollars used for the field uh we would need to inform the towns at that time if i decide to use a sum of money let's just say it's 250 um we would give them 45 days noise to which

193to respond in which to react to that and if they chose not to respond to that then at that time and let's just say it's december january of 21 we could use the certified fy20 excess and deficiency for the fy 21 budget and we would be looking to use this these dollars here as the motion states as a revenue stream similar to the use of medicaid and interest income um as well for the uh 21 budget so daryl do you follow up on that yeah yeah i think dan explained it well you know in reference to what we're looking at is just having the the capacity to um tap into these funds at this time um you know again i think it would be nice to be able to um you know we've never had

194um and i'm just just a question i i don't believe we've ever had um our access and deficiency um certified uh earlier then maybe december or january it's it's typically not early but as dan said once he gets his end of the year report done he would get going on that it would just be something that would again it's it's also turnaround time associated with the state it's not just on us so once we finish it um and we submit we then have to wait for the state to certify it i see some hands and i i recognize i remember just in a moment uh remember the boy had a question and a qualification of what dan said um he asked is it by june 30th or by the end of june 30th mac do

195you want to ask that question um yeah and it said by june 30th so is that we meet on june 30th so i'm trying to figure out is it by the end of june 30th or by june 20 the end of june 29th it'd be june 30th june 30 so the end of june 30th so tonight is not the night that we necessarily have to take this motion up uh we'd like to because this will help us to uh navigate the the 21 budget um in the various tiers that we're working on i think uh i think mad may have happened what happens to me all the time of clicking that stupid hang up button that's next to the mute button that happens to me all right the first time so dan can you quickly

196just repeat that it's really important so we'd like to have this resolved one way the others this evening um in preparation for uh july one but this is this is also contingent upon the state reducing funds which we don't know that they're reducing correct uh that's correct i mean we we've made an assumption that uh state aid is going to be reduced uh approximately 20 percent uh which translates into approximately 6.2 million dollars based upon the fy 20 figures all right so the hands are starting to go up so member dennis and member mitchellowski and then we'll open it back up thank you ken so um you know again this uh this motion the motion to recommend the passage of this motion to the full school committee came up with business finance and it failed

197uh the motion by a two two one vote um just to give some background right now our end is at approximately 960 thousand dollars after the transfer out for the field turf replacement that the committee authorized from last year um is uh is taken into account um we by policy uh in massachusetts have set a floor for the balance that we would carry which is one percent of our operating budget and where we are even today is less than one percent um we have certainly in the past have had years where we have built um some type of reduction of e d into the budget um in those years oftentimes we were anticipating a carry forward that approximated the same amount that we were reducing the budget by that is not going to be the

198case this year rather than carry forward funds from e d into the next year we're looking to bring those forward and use them as part of revolving accounts that i talked about before um as i see it there are two two issues um for for us to consider with this motion and the first thing the first issue is is it the right thing to do and and what i mean by that is this i talked before about um not wanting to find ourselves in our worst worst option and to me again our worst worst option is to find ourselves in a situation where we start the year and we need to make uh resource or staff reductions in mid-flight that has a tremendously detrimental impact to students and the kids um if you believe that

199there is at least a chance that there can be some type of resurgence of this virus that results in us incurring expenses mid-year that have the downward impact of having 9c cuts mid-year depleting our end at least by half up front reduces our ability to adjust to that activity and to give perspective 50 chance means your guess is as good as mine if you don't think that um then you would ask yourself is this more than a one year problem if this is a two-year problem then we've identified a number of different mitigations that we're attempting to look at for this year and and absolutely i i am hoping that you know um state funding comes through federal funding comes through and and our impact is not as great as as it could be and

200has as we've discussed but if you believe that this could be a two-year problem then when we start to look when we find ourselves on june 8th 2021 and we're having similar kinds of conversations now we have even less money to draw down upon where we're looking at additional cuts because our cost of living potentially colas our benefits and insurance have all increased and now the problem has been compounded i would rather us see us trying to fill this gap if we can um by looking at our transportation settlement for example and looking at lowering the percentage by a very high degree to try to fund that gap as opposed to drawing down on our rainy day fund for what is sure to be turbulent times ahead that's the question of whether or not this

201is the right thing to do the question i come clear i'll interrupt you for just a second with a point of order um remember ottmar made a point of order motion to extend to 10 30. so that's a motion that member atmar has made um is there a second to the motion to extend till 10 30. second second member long beliel um let's quickly uh go through the votes so uh ayala brown [Music] brown yes dennis yes god bow it's not here gustafson yes haber hey brian james yes ember yes the boy lavoria leo yes michelowski yes yes mitchell don't think ben's here atmar maria silva yes smith smith yes weeks yes woodland yes young yes okay that passes so um mike you have the flare again sure just quickly on the second point and

202it's how we operationalize this my understanding uh you know we asked this question in business finance we were seeking to get some clarification my understanding from from looking at the deci site and and also even reviewing our policy is that if it were the will of the committee that this is the right thing to do at this time um there's a question of whether or not we would need to have e and d identified as a revenue stream in our budget prior to going into 112th budget and if that's the case i believe i would not claim to be the expert but i believe we would need to pass a revised budget to specifically build e d into the budget as a revenue stream which is not on the table for tonight so again some

203some issues that that we've talked about from the last committee and just some some perspective and i know that there'll be some other perspectives as well thank you just from a process question from mike's question um dan or daryl can you answer his last question that i don't know the answer either about the events we built into the budget it is my understanding in speaking with the desi that if the committee votes a sum of money uh prior to june 30 out of e d that that can be used for the fy 21 budget independent of a revised budget so just you know again and i think that we want to make sure that if that's the case and if that's the will of the committee that we are very locked down on that process

204because if i go to the faq document that was released in mid-may uh by the destiny is on their website question may the regional school committee have proven increase in the amount of emd used in fiscal 21 budget school committees that wish to supplement their budgets or account for decreased assessments or state aid due to curve at 19 may want to include or increase the amount of emd in their proposed budgets e and d underlined for emphasis must be included in the school committee's proposed fiscal 2021 budget underscore for emphasis prior to the setting of 112 budget and underscore for emphasis prior to member approval um so you know again um that's you know probably um information that's been put out by the deci in written form about three weeks ago and we would just

205want to make sure that we're doing this the right way if that's the will of the committee all right remember michelowski then gustafson then atmar yeah i had a quick question um because i may have a follow-up question after listening um is there any sense of when the transportation contract will be resettled i mean i think that it's you know it's just unfortunate that we're um we have our backs against the wall to degree and there are just not not even the unknowns of next year i understand nobody knows that but i think even within the circle of things that we loosely control um you know so the decision to reduce 75 to 50 or some percentage lower or not pay the transportation i don't i don't think we shouldn't pay frankly but um you

206know that could offset this end utilization i'm i'm very um uncomfortable with leaving such a small amount of excess and deficiency i think that it leaves us really vulnerable um the other question i had um for dan or daryl is when aside from turf field uh was the last time that we used dnd and the relative i know that there's not the past doesn't predict the future but i'm just curious if um how frequently it has come up in our past that we've had to use end those are my two questions so take the second question first the district used ind approximately two years ago as a revenue stream approximately 150 um out of the fy 19 budget i believe it was 19 18 or 19. secondly with respect to the transportation contract as committee

207knows there there was a settlement uh presented approximately 75 percent that would pay a transportation um i after last thursday's business and finance subcommittee meeting i did reach out to mr earning wine and we spoke briefly on friday and as he stated he's not in a position yet to to renegotiate uh because there were still several communities of the 13 that were part of that 75 settlement that had not either returned their signed contract or um had made payments through the end of may i did reach out to him again today unfortunately we were not we didn't connect um uh here's my first phone call tuesday morning and i'm hopeful that dni can come to some agreement uh this week that the other communities that he was waiting on um have signed their agreements and

208have also made payments to the end of may at which point i know that he'll be willing to sit down and have a conversation but that's still several days away member uh gustafsson you have two questions um the first is related to what dan just said um because i don't have my notes in front of me um do we if if he were i know we talked about in business and finance about a 50 ish change there if we are able to get him to consider that do we have a dollar amount for that for the difference between the 75 and the 50 so we were talking approximately 1.3 uh million dollars uh um in of that we were going to pick up 300 000 um so um you know 600 you know it's uh

209it's half of that i'm trying to flank i'm sorry so so the three hundred thousand dollars is the difference between the two or so the three hundred thousand dollars would have been the savings um on the 1.3 um at uh at 75 percent um if if he if he agrees to so we'd pick up another 150 there were votes now that if 25 of 1.3 million is three hundred thousand and change that another twenty five percent of one point three million would be another three hundred thousand dollars probably totally 650 thousand dollars [Music] so 325 is what we were we were assuming in in part of the tier another 325 000 i think he answered your question emilia so it would be 325 000 additional that we would get if we if he considers the

21050 thing i i just didn't have my math in front of me we've had that discussion before um so then my related question which it's merely a thought it's not a question if that's the case i mean i i personally i i'm one of the no votes from business and finance because we didn't have enough information at the time about lots of things i personally think that 450 000 is a scary amount to take half of our excess and deficiency however i think it may be financially prudent to take a smaller amount given our situation um you know i don't have an exact amount in mind but you know 250 000 maybe and then knowing we can add more later because we have these other moving factors that was my personal thought on the matter

211i don't know a process for doing that but that was my personal thought with these unknowns with the transportation and with you know some other things that we hope might come to fruition um you know down the line um you know perhaps the union is willing to have some more discussions or there's other financial things that come out differently than they are right now um i thought that was kind of the middle ground that was my thinking but that's what i will share i don't know the process for doing that though so suppose the process could be to make a motion to amend the motion on the floor um and i'm willing to hear the rest of the discussion but that was like so remember atmar so my question really kind of does tie in

212a bit with uh remember gustafsson's in that just something i wasn't i'm still not entirely clear on is that if this motion were to pass are we required to take 450 000 out of excess and deficiency or we're able to take 450 000 out of excess and deficiency that but we're not required to take that amount out and so that's i think that's something that um would kind of help clear up what how people may or may not vote on this so you'd be voting 450 000 to remove from excess and deficiency as a funding source so i think just to just to clarify further um ken if i might um again the ways for us to access excess and deficiency is if we are intending to use it for next year then it needs

213to be in the budget as a revenue source which means we're using it i mean you know you can decide as a practical matter to put money aside freeze that line but that's not the intention here right the intention is if we're putting in the budget i think we're going to use it because we're trying to save you know we're trying to save jobs and that's that's the spirit behind it it's just a question of whether this is the right time and and these are the right um uh circumstances but so yes you either bill it into the budget or you have a special notion um if we were in next year that we were running to a deficit or some special circumstances arose where we needed to access our funds and we would need

214to do that once they're recertified if we were in next year i mean i guess to kind of just to follow up i guess so i'm clear so like if this passes and we say we're taking 450 000 out and then tomorrow the bus transportation says all right yeah we'll cut you to slack at four at 50 percent and so that's an extra 325 and so we look at this number we say like oh well we'll just take that 325 and put it back into excess and deficiency so we're really only taking 125 out like could you do that or would it be you have to codify it as 450 and then we get we write a budget for it and then tomorrow we get 350 325 from the contract so we write that we

215have to rewrite our budget again so i'm taking a stab at that so i i think that it's again it's my understanding from from my reading certainly will defer to experts who know this better but it's my understanding that if we if we vote to access access and deficiency as a revenue source for next year we need to build that into the budget prior to our budgets being set for 112th budget i would decouple that a little bit from the transportation issue i use that as an example but i will also say that we have 1.3 million um in in uh access that we can roll over a dollar for dollar next year we're under no legal obligation um to to um pay anything now whether we believe as a committee that's the right thing

216to do is is a topic perhaps for another day um but as time goes on um this is our decision about how we're using those funds and whether or not we think it's appropriate to make some form of readiness payment to the bus company for next year and what the amount of that payment should be so i don't i guess what i would hope that the committee should not be should not feel that we're hamstrung by a lack of willingness to for for the vendor to negotiate with us so that we have certainty on it um i think that we for ourselves need to set some parameters around you know what are we willing to do over a period of time um and and and let that drive it so i'm just a biochemist who

217sometimes calls names in alphabetical order but my understanding and i hope that dan and daryl can can give the expert opinion on this is that if we vote today to do this we have the option to put it in the budget when we issue a new budget now i understand what mike's saying i understand what the website says i understand this is different than what that that website says my understanding is we vote this in we have the option to put it in the budget to defer um uh to defer loss in revenue sources in in next year and if we don't we don't until it's recertified um dan darrell can you give us like a process of of what this does or doesn't mean so what this means is if we if if the

218committee does not vote on this this evening um then um we would um negate the opportunity for the start of the fiscal year to use approximately 450 thousand dollars uh in excess deficiency that would mean that we would have to identify either further cuts in in the budget or again given the fact the transportation matter is still unresolved uh that we have no resolution um with uh with a transportation i also want to point out that whatever we do with aea transportation that we would also do with our with our sped provider as well um via 50 or what have you um so and so if we pass on this opportunity this evening or if we pass on the opportunity on june 30 because certainly by june 30 uh there will be resolution um on

219the transportation matter that we could revisit uh next fall at the earliest uh the use of excess efficiency for the 21 budget uh using uh the process that i spoke about earlier so just to follow up on process um again so you said what would happen if we don't do it i guess my question is what would happen if we do vote for it and i want to follow up on member the boy's question from way back when do we have to vote on june 30th to do this or do you have to inform dor or whomever by june 30th because that's a different thing right and i think that was the spirit of that question and i'm still not quite so sure i know the answer to it so we would not need to

220in informed dor of this decision uh in terms of the vote we just need to keep it uh documented um in in june 30 would be the deadline so we could vote june 30 if necessary okay so no other hands are up in the column um the uh as chair i would rule that if we if we took if we vote on this motion now this requires 15 positive votes uh unless the superintendent or doctor or mr d disagree with me because this is a matter related to budget and use of end which requires two-thirds majority of the seats on the committee um so as such uh it would require 15 votes in the affirmative ken yes yeah i had a question i had my hand up i'm no that's okay i actually had two

221um the first is that um okay from what um the question about whether or not we need to have this in writing or is this this whether we have to have a new budget actually physically passed to use this um is that something are we allowed to pass emotion with a contingency that it would only take effect if we can clarify that in writing because i i do think being on business and finance that there is some urgency to deciding this question tonight versus the 30th because it's in the tier one and if we don't have that reduction in the tier one that's more jobs we have to cut by next week or friday um because of how the plan is structured so i do think there's some urgency while technically we could wait to

222notify desi until the 30th i think that's why dan was hoping we would get this done tonight um one way or the other because it does impact that um and then my follow-up question is that i i'm a little torn because if if we do need to pass an actual revised budget that's a much more complicated process with a lot of unknowns than if we can do this without that so i wondered if it's possible to add a contingency statement of some sort uh so two things to that question this is just my opinion as chair not as a member i think if i hear what they're saying about wanting it decided tonight if we're gonna i would feel more comfortable if there was a contingency that we would consider a motion to postpone until

223a time definite when the information is had that's an option um of course you have the option to make whatever amendment to the to the emotion that you want um that is valid um the other question of i'm just losing the threat is getting to be 10 14 i'm sorry i might come back to me in a moment um and bryanla do you have uh another question uh yes please all right so from my understanding are these funds specifically already have a place if they're approved like are they specifically going towards staff or transportation or is it just going towards the budget in general it uses a revenue stream similar to the use of medicaid similar to use of miscellaneous revenue um ken this is linda i've actually been trying to type in the chat

224and unfortunately my chat i can't seem to type in it okay so i'm sorry um i i've been thinking along the same lines as member gustafson um that it would be helpful to to have a contingency or alternatively to uh vote if could we vote for a smaller amount tonight and then if we want to vote for more on the 30th we could vote for more on the 30th um if the bus you know the bus contract doesn't work out um something like that i mean people can make a motion to change the motion on the floor to reduce the amount in terms of i the the future chair will have to decide about rules of order about having a motion that is similar in substance to emotion that we voted on the previous meeting

225um that might require a motion to reconsider i'm just getting late on my uh in my uh brain at the moment for robert's rules um i guess my thought was that we could vote for the 250 000 that um member gustin suggested tonight and then we could just vote to increase that if we needed to on the 30th is that something that would be in the realm of possibility i i i don't know i think that's something i'd want to i mean what you can do tonight yes you can amend the motion if we can hearing a second motion to change the number i'd rather have council weigh in on that then or unless mr deedy or the superintendent have an opinion from their expertise i'm not hearing that jumping in uh i yeah i'm

226not sure in terms of you know revoking the motion at the second at the june 30 meeting no i'm not sure yeah okay um lily i'll hold you for a moment that's okay um remember young yeah um i mean for me this comes down to something just really simple we're looking at tier one right now and we're looking at tier two cuts which is people in the classroom when we're looking opening up with reduced classroom sizes already like and it's it's going to be extremely difficult so we've either got the option to do this and people or not do this and cut more people that's that's the only thing i'm looking at or we can do a smaller number and cut more people than are in the plan right now the way i see it

227if we if we do this now and then we get the transportation money that means we can cut less people that's it i mean you know we start at that tier two and we start adding stuff back in if we end up with more money so you know and then as we go up then we can start adding back tier one if we get more revenue stream through cares act and other things but we're gonna get a lot more expenses this year as well that aren't even in a budget yet so that's definitely yeah all right so i have member dennis the member lavoy and then if only i'll go back and see where you're at with your question thanks ken so you know i i i i go back to i think the point

228that you made that if if there is the entertainment of some contingency whether that is seeing how things settle with transportation or understanding if there needs to be a corresponding budget move and having that firmed up um or if there's just simply a discomfort with the level um those to me are are probably reasons um to to um move this decision out to our next meeting at june 30th and so i would offer the motion to um defer to a time definite which would be june 30th meeting so remember dentist has offered emotions to the floor has been seconded by member lavoie which is proposed tone to a time definite we got this wrong once before i'm gonna really try not to hard to make a mistake in this meeting so this is a motion

229that is gonna make it disappear on the june 30th agenda so this is not a way to kill the motion this is a way to just push the decision to a future motion this requires a simple majority to vote so right now the question on the floor is the motion to postpone definitely to or to a time forward as you as you might say to june 30th um so if we get back to the main motion we'll return to members of the bullying gustafson who had comments on the original motion right now i'll entertain questions on the motion on the floor so ken if i can just address this and make sure that your motion of course yeah thank you so you know again if we move forward with this motion and not trying to

230just kick the can down table i think people appreciate what we're trying to do here but it seems that we need resolution on three items so let's just be clear on what those are um number one by june 30th we should have some resolution or proposed resolution on the transportation settlement question number two there should be some resolution and extreme clarity on what we need to do procedurally if we want to be able to use these funds in one twelfth budget for next year and what this procedure should be and then number three is perhaps based on one and two um what is the level if the administration believes it's still prudent at that point to to move or or draw down end what is the level that they are comfortable in recommending based on

231those two first two items thank you and item two is the one we really need you know which we've been asking for for a while um just to make sure we're clear about that um so are there other people who um want to speak on the sub motion to postpone definitely or to a time forward uh remember haber i guess my question is if we do this then we're for that 450 000 are we assuming we're cutting more teaching staff of the non-professional teachers which we're going to have to do by the 15th so therefore by the 30th there's no option or is that 450 thousand dollars gonna go towards a different cut that yeah i guess that's not my question where is that 450 000 is going to show up in which further part

232of the tiers so i guess the the question just to frame it if that's okay i don't want to over explain it but you know the the the june 15th thing we're going to talk about that's all the tears right so it's not like we're only doing certain tiers by june 15th and that's the only deadline that's june 15th is is the the non-professional staffs non-professional staff non-professional status staff um but daryl i saw you come off and on are you on for that question i was just stalling um you know again i was you know thinking about just kind of looking at the the 450 again that would probably have to you know we'd be looking at staff um we'd be looking at um you know non-pts as well as uh pts so it

233would be a mixture of both ken can i i'll offer a clarification there and i think i don't think what's what's coming across clear and and part of it is and i think it's a great question but part of it is not without having a timeline for what triggers what actions it's hard to just think about this right but the prophet on june 15th as ken mentions um professional status teachers are are going to be put on notice um and so when you talk about you know you know well what you know are we just stuck in tier one or tier two i believe that that is across all of the tiers as ken has mentioned um and and so you know that doesn't align with the dollar values in simply tier one or tier

234two and so that's what makes this a little bit confusing um the fact of the matter is that uh whatever a hundred whatever those those uh reductions are um they that uh needs to that whatever reductions that need to be made beyond simply going the 112th budget are our decisions that are going to happen i believe later in the summer in terms of how exactly our um staffing looks like in when we have the total picture um so to be to make the statement that 425 is before june 15th the timing factor there um really is a misnomer it's a non-factor yeah i i would agree with that perspective just one thing to correct you might i think was just a misstatement you said it's non-professional staff that would be june 15th you've said professional

235staff in there um we're gonna have a point of order um for remember weeks before we continue down the list uh remember weeks would you like to you have a point of order um yeah i would like to make a motion to extend the meeting to 11 p.m it's been moved is there a second second remember long beliel seconds it uh ayala yes brown bronies dennis [Music] yes mitchellowski yeah rachel i'm sorry about ottmar yes silva no mills yes smith smith yes weeks yes woodland yes young yes the motion to extend passes go back to my list linda woodland uh sorry i actually take back my question it was answered thank you all right remember lavoy we want to make a motion to move the question all right so we have a motion to make

236the question is there a second um to the motion to move the question second this is not debatable and requires a two-thirds majority which is how many rebecca [Music] we have sorry about that we have 16 present so it would be 11 yeah 11. okay can i have a point of order can you just clarify which motion we're voting on just i think i know but just in case so we are voting right now a member lavoy's motion which is the primary motion to move the question and the question that he's moving is the um is to postpone to a time definite and if this motion to call the question essentially passes then we move to an immediate vote on the primary motion okay thank you all right so um ayala uh no brown john

237yes dennis dennis yes god uh gustafsson no uh haber no james no amber bruno christian bomb yes yes mitchellowski no hills yes mitchell i'm sorry atmar omar yes silva no smith smith yes weeks yes woodland yes and young no um so what is our call what is our number rebecca yes eight no so motions to move the question i believe require two thirds majority so that fails so we go back to the motion on the floor discussion order on the floor i think uh i'm sorry linda you linda woodland you had weren't we're going to pass right remember lavoy did you have something else or was it a call of question i just wanted to to make a point of clarification that i think people are confusing that this 450 000 is going to save

238a job before june 30th and it's my understanding that no decisions are going to be made on on cuts and furthermore um i think when um deputy um director dede was asked the question where this would go he specifically said it would go into revenue he did not say it would go into salaries or adjustments for any specific personnel so just want people to be clear about that that it's going into revenues right that's that's that's correct i remember michelaski yeah so you know i i think i share frustration of a lot of the committee in that we are i feel like administration has been slow to provide us opportunity to have these conversations at a time when we're not always backs against a wall to have to make a decision right up against a

239deadline or a last minute and i have that frustration and i share that if that is the feeling of other folks however in thinking about um the impact of pushing this decision off even for two more weeks or three more weeks until we have our next meeting those are real dollars right right i mean it's on we don't have an answer about transportation or we don't have a better sense of where other things may be landing but to get us to the point where we would be able to um seek a number where daryl was going to be cutting with regard to pink slipping teachers by the 15th that's still going to happen um and now we're going to have to find additional monies to get to that revenue spot so i would support the

240use of e d though i am very uncomfortable with it my thought would be that as a committee we could really guide the administration if transportation came in higher than anticipated or something came in higher than anticipate to help we would guide the administration strongly to um end with an excess in the next fiscal year that we could then recertify to build e d back up for future issues like i think that there's there is a timeliness to um making sure that there's as much information for as much frustration as i feel not having the information to make an educated decision as a school committee member i think that we are hand stringing or hamstringing the administration to a degree if we don't give them the information they need about the funds that they're really

241going to have in the best degree that they have so those are my two thoughts all right member christian bomb uh if there's no other comments that are going to be made i'll just uh i'll just lower my hand okay so linda ken yes um i'd like to move that we and help me with the phrasing here i'd like to move that we amend the motion on the floor uh to uh to change the amount proposed for to take from e d from 450 000 to 250 000 unfortunately that motion right now isn't in order because the motion on the floor is the motion to postpone to a time definitely sorry that we're discussing so if that fails then you're free to make that mo that motion um okay thank you sure so so um

242the motion on the floor again is to postpone to a time definite being june 30th um there's no other hands i see so that said this request is a simple majority because we're not voting up or down the original motion um so we'll start again with member ayala dennis dennis yes gustafsson no hebrew yes haynes no amber no christian bomb yes my boy yes mongolia yes no uh mills yes mitchell i'm sorry atmara amari yes silva no snoop smith smith no weeks no woodland no young yes ooh okay um wait for the secretary to tell us the vote ten to eight ten date what i'm sorry ten in favor eight no all right so ten favor to postpone the motion to a time forward uh being june 30th so this will reappear as a motion

243as written on the um june 30th meeting agenda and it can be debated if it's brought to to the floor it can be debated amended at that time so the next item on the agenda i believe is actually written in an incorrect way so i'm going to change what i ask someone to make and i'll ask daryl's clarification on this um i will ask him to make a recommendation that the superintendent to recommend that the superintendent determines notify staff of reduction in force due to expected cuts to fiscal year 21 state revenue due to kobe 19 crisis by june 15 2020 it changed that language what's on the agenda because he doesn't actually require a permission to do this um it's been tradition to to take these votes so is there a maker of the

244motion to recommend the superintendent to determine and uh notify staff of reduction in force due to expected cuts of fiscal year 21 state revenue due to coba 19 crisis by june 15 2020. so moved it's been moved is there a second second all right and daryl is my understanding correct of that legally yes it is ken so i did speak with naomi about that um a couple times so um so i've lost track of when the hands went up i think lumber cursion bomb this was the previous motion right that's correct so remember lavoy i see a hand over long below i'll see you i'm muted um so boy long below so um it's my understanding that teachers are already notified of this so i'm not sure why we're having this conversation right now superintendent

245do you have a i have no idea about that um yeah i don't think teachers were notified because we haven't actually had letters that have been drafted and sent out yet to any any individuals okay i'm reading a post right now in social media that says there is a list generated in principles sat down with teachers today so i i'm just i'm against emotion where actions are actually already happened really take the power out of the school committee's hand to have a conversation about something where action is happening behind the scenes okay that's news to me thank you for sharing that with me yeah i can point you to it it's on social media thank you all right remember haber i'm sorry i remember longville i'd recognized you did you have no i don't i

246just was unmuting this okay um remember haber uh just as you said that she saw that she read the same thing um and again the spirit of why we put this motion on the agenda was just because you know we authorize budgets we cr we prove creations of positions it feels their responsibility to have a conversation which we've had of course about um pink slips even if it's not our authority to give uh remember gustavsson well my my question is um again through the i wonder if what was just said is happening across the district or perhaps there is one school that has done this and i think there's a difference there um we've seen throughout this process that there seems to be one or two schools that are doing things ahead of time um

247in this whole remote learning process i won't name names but there have been a couple they've been in the same towns consistently that are doing things or telling their families things ahead of schedule so i wonder if it's one or two schools then i think it makes sense to still go ahead with this because the rest of the towns are not doing that um so i guess that's my clarification i don't know where that leaves us but it's a question so just can i just get clarification that it was one school in particular the one principal shared information with today that would be consistent with what's happened throughout the remote learning where there was one school in particular that we were hearing new things so in that case i think it would be prudent to

248still continue with this process for the rest of the schools and very unfortunate that that has happened again so i would i would put that back to you darryl that hopefully you can perhaps have a conversation with that principle yeah i'm assuming it's the same school based on the people that have seen it i have a pretty good idea of which school probably is and i would hope that you could perhaps have a conversation with them about discussing things before their public knowledge thank you uh this is member long believe now i do have a comment which is i agree with member gustafson um and i just want to note that it's not official until those letters go out so okay so um is there any other discussion on the floor is this is a

249brutal vote that we've uh discussed it quite a bit remember weeks oh i'm sorry i didn't mute myself okay okay all right seeing now this is just a motion to recommend so this requires a simple majority member brown um i'm sorry you're just meeting yourself probably to vote remember ayala yes uh member brown brown yes dennis yes gustafsson yes paper yes queens yes finger yes no mongolia yes michelowski yes yes atmar yes silva yes smith smith yes weeks yes woodland yeah and young yes yeah so that's i wonder this was the worst meeting we'll have um next on the agenda is authorize a budget transfer 4718.41 cents from the debt service appropriations to the people service appreciation dennis moved week second um remember dennis can you quickly um restate what you said before so these

250are and you know dan can certainly speak to more detail if folks need it but the spirit of these moves um the majority of them you know there's often times at the end of the year um we need to have fun balances um not end in a negative number one uh but number two um one of these moves are uh in an effort to um move funds to where we're journaling out of uh revolving funds and back into uh general funds um so um the at the end of the day the net effect of this is for us to not ending about a negative balance and to be able to accrue as many dollars into revolving counts uh to be able to use for next year as we can all right mr deedy do you

251have anything to uh this particular motion or this series of motions um this motion here is uh to address uh uh the deficit in the pupil services appropriation uh what mike is referring to uh will be uh spoken to in the next motion yeah i was really thinking about the collective motions that's correct are there questions from the floor about the motion on the floor seeing none it's requires simple majority on the raila brown front yes yes gossip yes haber yes yes smith matthias yes woodland yes yes let's approve the next mission is the florist remember to make a motion to authorize a budget transfer thousand one of eighty one thousand one hundred eighty one dollars and thirty three cents from the debt service appropriations to the benefits and insurance appropriations of emotion it's all

252moved haber moves second and there's a second um from a recursion bomb um dan again this is the first example of what mike was speaking to a moment ago we're looking to build up uh the balance um and benefits insurance uh to make the adjustments between uh school choice and general fund thereby building up a carry forward in school choice for 21. another question seeing none uh [Music] yes smith uh yes yes yes woodland yes young yes okay so that passes the next item on the agenda is for someone to make a motion to authorize a budget transfer of 150 000 dollars from the salaries and bet stipends appropriation to the benefits and insurance appropriation of their emotion so moved move remember second the second i think we remember christian bomb um so dan and

253again the same as a previous motion to transfer these dollars from savings and salaries and stipends to benefits insurance so again to build up the balance in there okay thank you is there any further conversation about the motion on the floor um seeing none i remember ayala you know brown brown yes dennis yeah yes haber lcs yes yes smith smith yes weeks yes yes and young yes so that passes next time the agenda is for someone to make a motion to authorize a budget transfer of six hundred thousand dollars from the transportation appropriation to the benefits and insurance appropriation solved to move by remember their second second second remember leo dan anything uh there was an uncommon balance um in transportation um uh through the end of may of six hundred twenty thousand nine hundred

254twenty one dollars and so we're looking to take six hundred thousand that and again to um uh move into uh benefits insurance to help us make the adjustments between school choice and the general fund and carry those dollars forward out of school choice and this isn't related at all to any conversations with the bus company uh no are there questions or comments on the floor seeing their member at gala yes brown brown yes dennis vanessa yes paper yes yes yes christian yes i had a question um we are voting um i'm sorry i'm sorry i missed your question matt i apologize i was i i didn't see it but you did start asking that before the the scroll call went so i'll allow that i just had a question on um that number what is

255that we're transferring money out of transportation what is that excess what what caused that accident um we haven't made payments obviously due to our spend provided that our home to school providers um since um since mid-march um and and i apologize that 620 does that does i apologize that does reflect the the adjustment to the home to school i apologize for that so um there there were dollars that were um adjusted the encumbrances were adjusted to reflect the 75 payments so i apologize for that so i'm going to i'm going to eliminate the vote we started taking since the question came up in the middle of that just in case anyone wants to follow up on that question again that's my fault is chair i didn't see the question it was asked in time um

256is there a follow up on remember the way's question is kind of my question too all right someone's microwaving um so uh so i see no further questions i think this time so i just want to restart the vote just because more information have been passed um and briala hey member brown brown yes dennis dennis yes guy belt i'm sorry gustafsson yes haber abra yes ains yes amber jimber yes christenbaum smith snapchat weeks yes woodland yes and young yes so that motion passes um next item on the agenda is a motion to authorize a budget transfer of 250 000 from the undesignated fund balance to fund code 30 project 1002 line item wlt452 to cover the field turf project through motion so moved mongolia moves is there a second second behavior second stan i think

257this is a different type of motion can you make a can you explain it is uh this is the end result of our excess efficiency work uh this uh this past winter uh we took a hit approximately 250 000 because when we uh did the work last year we we took money out of e d we did not allocate it to a particular capital account um at the advice of the department of revenue uh we were told that if we do not assign this 250 000 to to a uh to to a fund um that we would take a second hit of 250 000 uh when we have our fy 20 um dollars is certified through the end process does people follow up on that mike was this discussed at business and finance yes it

258was okay there let's scroll my screen over to make sure i see questions this time uh are there questions about the motion on the floor all right i'm seeing none um so remember ayala i'm sorry i didn't hear you melissa was it yes yes okay um brown bomb yes the boy lovely yes yes mitchellowski yes middles yes satmar yes silva yes yes yes weeks yes yes and young yes all right so next time agenda is unfinished business we don't have any officially unfinished business although obviously we have a lot of work to do um secretary's report i'll take a motion to pass over the executive session minutes i do hope that our next chair figures out a way with the secretary to get these passed in a timely manner even in a remote world but

259we haven't been shared those minutes yet so next item is approval of the 134th regular meeting minutes of the wachusett regional school district committee held on may 26 2020 and closed the called meeting to have a motion i think member dennis had a point of order ken i'm sorry remember dennis do you have a point i gotta scroll down just it's real quick you know we're in double overtime um we had um someone who uh was signed up for our public session okay um you know my it's been a very long meeting um you know i'll leave it to your prerogative ken but i would suggest that we move we skip over the agenda to second public section um and um perhaps uh skip over the rest of the agenda for this evening if uh

260there's nothing that's that's so terribly critical i will uh accept that in principle in the chair unless someone wants to make a motion to over roll the chair the uh the one item that i think i do can't pass over before we get there is under the ad hoc subcommittee to negotiate the superintendent's contract because we voted on this and this was signed so i feel we have an obligation to release this to the public that um two meetings ago the school committee voted to approve a new three-year contract with the superintendent um and uh this was only executed last week um so we do have an obligation to to report this so this will start replace the old contract and start this july 1st there is new language for evaluation there is an element

261of buying back vacation time uh echo member mitch lasky's hope that the superintendent will consider a leadership position to um uh to to freeze his wage but i look forward very much to continue working with the superintendent i'm glad that after many many conversations this uh this was done um and and completed so um otherwise i do agree at least take out of order the public hearing because i really apologize to heidi and appreciate her putting off after first for so long um so uh remember not remember lady you probably feel that way um how do you want to have your public hearing sure thank you very much can you hear me okay we can okay um i i actually i'm not glad the meeting went so long but um i have difficulty shifting uh

262to this these comments which were prepared hours and hours ago following that those student comments it's clear that we have a lot of listening and learning to do as staff and as a community and i appreciate both the students and the committee members who shared their pain with us so that we can understand and begin to realize just how much work needs to be done good evening heidi leahy 166 bullet street holden outgoing president of wachusett regional education association i'm here tonight to address comments made at the june 4th business meeting in regards to the district's financial projections and the disappointing response from the eight employee unions in terms of concessions to address the crisis in wachusett most often the word unions plural is code for one union wreaa wachuset has eight unions total the

263educators are 55 percent of the 970 unionized employees we are aware the decisions that wrea makes on behalf of our members impact all of the other unionized employees on the cheapest plan the proposed change in the health insurance split would have raised the increase in employment premiums annually from 129 dollars to 398 dollars on an individual plan and from 341 dollars to 1055 dollars on a family plan that number is only the increase not the premium total a starting para educator in wachusett earns 16 204 dollars a year a paraprofessional with 20 years experience and longevity earns twenty two thousand seven hundred and ten dollars a year cafeteria workers doing four hour days earn nine thousand two hundred and thirty one dollars a year while the highest paid earned eighteen thousand one hundred and fifty

264dollars a year salary concessions made by wrea would increase the pressure on the other bargaining units to agree to similar cuts further eroding their already inadequate salaries we stand arm in arm with our sisters and brothers who are all essential school workers have you forgotten that we have almost the lowest per pupil funding in the state that translates into people working harder in watch you sit year in and year out do more with less has been a refrain for decades now in public education and it has certainly been true here educators are givers we dedicate much of our lives and our emotional energy to our students we spend personal resources to enrich the learning environments and we buy materials the district does not provide we live in the communities pay taxes and support local businesses

265we volunteer in many capacities and in many different organizations the funding crisis is not up to employees to solve without full funding we staff and students will be feeling the loss of four hundred thousand textbooks seventy thousand in operation and maintenance and the loss of 26 new hires intended to improve student support and reduce class sizes without full funding we will be trying to overcome all of the losses and resources and the effects of remote learning and the trauma of the pandemic as we cope with whatever social distancing looks like in schools this is a national catastrophe that requires massive governmental investment combined concessions while devastating to the personal finances of individual employees would not be enough to prevent the coming disaster or save the jobs of our colleagues but i would invite any of

266you who wish to make a fifty six hundred dollar contribution which is what my losses in salary and earnings would be to feel free to do the same to save the district we will not be complicit in even suggesting that schools can safely reopen and fall and educate children under these financial constraints we are not going to perpetuate the myth that exists in the towns that schools have enough resources to do the job and we can give money back we intend to fight for the funding that is going to be needed because we know we are essential workers who hold the keys to reopening the economy for working parents children and families need and deserve fully funded public schools thank you all right thank you i just also wanted to thank you for your service

267over the years as war wreaa president i know it's an awful lot of work um so we're almost out of time i know i'm going to take one more thing out of order bender guston has an important thing from cpac if we can get that quickly um i will send it in writing but they sent me a concern statement the officers had a meeting this week and had concerns about the district summer services and the plan to offer one-third of the services as well as remote learning which has not been successful for all families um and if their plan for the summer they did ask that i relay that and i will send it in writing as well just i know you're working on summer service plans so that may all change so all right

268so our options at the moment is if someone wishes to make a motion to extend the meeting we can entertain that and go through the rest of our agenda but we would require such a motion to extend the meeting past 11 o'clock can move to adjourn second rattler makes a motion to adjourn which has been seconded so the discussion on the motion on the floor uh sting none member ayala crown dennis yes ken great job thank you forgot about it oh he's gone gus justice and yes heber abreus haines yes yes and you've been terrific thank you thank you mitchellowski yes thanks ken uh mills yes uh hatmar marius silva yes uh for you ken so we can go to bed smith matthias weeks yes and many thanks ken yes woodland yes and thank you

269ken thanks and young yes all right he says there was such finality and such enthusiasm we are adjourned thank you all for what's been a very difficult night thank you good night thank you evan if you're still there and rebecca it's been a long long night