001[Music] winter yes nice good evening i'd like to call the april 13th meeting of the athol royalton regional school committee to order um just a general announcement at the beginning uh please be advised that uh you the meeting this evening is being recorded for future playback uh for aotv for the press for the district website and or facebook page so i just wanted to let you know the first line of business this evening uh pledge of allegiance [Music] of the mitch states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you the uh next on the agenda is the approval of minutes for march 16th 2022 is there a motion i make a motion to accept the minutes as presented okay any discussion omissions
002corrections seeing none all those in favor okay thank you okay public input there is uh one individual signed up under public input i did review the agenda uh to his requests and they do match so mr visco hi my name is frank visco i have two kids in the district um i just have a couple little things i wanted to bring up uh bring to the committee's attention um we had our you guys had a recent meeting on april 6th for reorganization and there was an article also written about it by the superintendent about no one attending it there was very little notification on any town pages um for that reorganization meeting and it was only posted on one site for uh on the 29th of march i think we might get a little bit
003more involvement and stuff like that with the budget and school calendars and stuff like that if we can get more notification out to community members um if anybody would like i have screenshots and printed out pages for anybody to see that uh from this evening that still they don't have those meetings on there and that information for those meetings also i want to as far as the the budget goes i i think that as a community before you guys vote on a budget you should really get this out to the community weeks prior so that the community can look at this and go over it themselves that used to happen in previous years but that isn't happening this year just so we can get an idea of what's going on um i think that should
004the community should get any information prior to a vote at least two weeks prior so we have time to review it as a community for any votes that are going on for whether it be certain programs in the schools or curriculum or budget or school calendar as you can see there's a big to do about the school calendar this year starting so early and very little notification and time for people to consider that as an option that's all i have i just wanted noted that i did not write an article to apple daily news so i don't know where that is coming from thank you thank you recognition student and staff awards oh i want to begin tonight with aces [Music] presentation to our facebook feed okay so our staff person of the month is
005preschool teacher jenna ames jen has everything you could want in a teacher she's a mentor she's a colleague she is just everything aces embraces she's passionate about her job she believes in all students and more importantly she loves all students she's a model for her peers we love to send our new prepare for para professionals check our room as she is able to model the best of instructional practices she is patient and believes in the best of us students and staff alike this year has been a tough one for staffing at aces it seems we're not always in need of subs and jen is always giving up her paraprofessional to help other needs in the building she's always the first to adjust your schedule and rearrange any plans as needed to help out we are
006so lucky to have her on [Applause] congratulations we have two fourth grade student of the month nominees and one of their teachers was able to be here tonight the other was not able to so i'm going to call up first um miss justine gordon who teaches fourth grader aces and she is going to be presenting to gwen coverage okay so i have had the pleasure of being gwen's classroom teacher for two years and i am so happy to nominate her for student of the month one is a leader in the classroom and demonstrates all of ace's core values being kind being safe and being responsible one is a student that works hard takes risks and perseveres through challenges that arise she is a dedicated student who strives to be the best she can be she
007is an incredible friend and classmate and whenever somebody needs help she is right there to help in any way possible she treats all students and staff in with respect and having her these past two years has been amazing and i will be sad to lose her two arms next year [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and i get to talk about john robertson john was nominated by two teachers so come on up you gotta hear all the good things that i have to say about you you ready yes okay so from his teacher she writes oh where to begin john is our resident comedian [Music] he is also our designated dustpan man he played a large role when our class won the golden dustpan award how we bribed them to clean their room um we all joked that
008the class did not win the award john won the award john's positive attitude and sense of humor keeps us all going even on tough days he tackles challenging material with a smile and encourages encourages his classmates to do the same he is a hard worker he is a great friend and we are lucky to have him congratulations thank you [Applause] next i'd like to have royalston community school come up for their presentations tonight we have one student and one staff our student was able to be here our staff member unfortunately had another commitment but our student i'd like to call up our fourth grade student nicholas chastain all right nicholas was nominated by his classroom teacher and fully supported by me she states that he's a hard-working student who's always respectful of others he's worked
009really hard this year and he's made great academic progress he always tries his hardest he's kind to his fellow students and he's respectful to all adults it's been a rewarding to teach a student that wants to learn so much nicholas also demonstrates respect on the bus on the playground and in the cafeteria he enjoys playing with his friends at rhesus he has a great sense of humor he's always kind to others and he takes the time to really think about others for example the other day when i wished him a good afternoon as i was passing him he stopped looked directly at me and said i hope you also have a good afternoon nicholas deserves to be recognized for demonstrating the tenets of rcs respectful cooperative and safe we're so very proud of him and
010i'm happy to honor him tonight [Applause] and our staff is miss mary gretchfield she is a special education teacher ms gretchfield is a dedicated special education teacher of multiple grades and with disabilities at rcs she's dedicated to her students and to meeting all deadlines associated with special education her kindness and impact are felt by all students as she supports many in the inclusion classroom regardless of their special education status she's also promoting the district bowl of belongingness and creating an after-school hiking club during which she'll be pairing older rcs students with younger rcs students to support each other to hike and to look out for each other so often the teachers as teachers the impact you have on students is not immediately known or acknowledged however miss gretchfield recently was given a window until the
011lasting impact she's made when she received an email from a student that she taught over 20 years ago this student stated you made a profound impact on my life and were by far the most influential incredible teacher i've ever had another line in the email demonstrated the spirit of belonging that we as a district are striving towards when the student stated you chose me to represent our class i was so unbelievably happy and that is a foundational core memory of mine finally the former student wrote if you can make an impact on your current students even a fraction of the size you were able to do for me the world will continue to be a much better place i can attest that ms crutchfield is in fact making that positive impact on the students of
012rcs each and every day so it's a pleasure to honor her tonight [Applause] next i'd like to bring up the athball royalston middle school good evening i'm going to start with our grade 8 um the 8th grade team is pleased to nominate elijah etienne for the student of the month elijah's positivity and kindness make him a pleasure to have in any classroom elijah is polite and helpful with teachers and he is friendly and encouraging with his peers he is the kind of student who stops to pick up trash in the hallway help an underclassmen find their way or offer a smile to someone having a bad day elijah's happy demeanor and small acts of kindness positively impact our school culture on a daily basis it is for this reason that the 8th grade team unanimously
013nominated elijah for this award [Applause] our seventh grade student claire mcmahon the seventh grade team believes that claire is not only our choice of student of the month but is also being considered student of the year in seventh grade claire embodies our core values here at arms which are perseverance respect and integrity her ability and constant strive to be a complete student is a testament of her student leadership excuse me her student leadership role here at arms teachers and students both respect claire's ability to go above and beyond in her academics as well as in her willingness to help others both in and out of the classroom claire has no difficulty choosing the right path even when others may stray in a different direction she will be the first to take hold of another's hand
014and with kind actions of emotional or academic support help that person strive to be the best they can here at arms [Applause] our sixth grade student couldn't be here tonight but i'd like to honor her reese nelson the sixth grade team is pleased to nominate reese nelson for student of the month rhys has worked positively and politely with other students and teachers across all of her classes in the sixth grade reece consistently serves as a role model for respectful behavior towards others in and outside of the classroom in addition to all of this reese also demonstrates consistent academic excellence across her classes for her positive and polite attitude her willingness to work with and help others and her academic excellence the sixth grade is in strong agreement to nominate rhys nelson for student of the
015month and our fifth grade is the 5th grade team is pleased to nominate abby mcnamara for student of the month abby takes her education seriously always putting best her best foot forward and as a friend to all she is willing to go above and beyond to support other students and is a model of the arm's core values of perseverance respect and integrity abby is a leader her quiet consistent presence offers other students an opportunity to remember the expectations of our classrooms abby is a true friend she's willing to accept any student no matter how different they may be from her abby is a scholar with strong academic skills and a go-getter attitude she is unstoppable but most of all abby is kind she has a heart of gold and a welcoming smile that makes all
016of who encounter her feel seen and appreciated the fifth grade team is blessed to have abby on our team we are extremely proud of the person she is and can't wait to see what the future has in store for this hard-working friendly optimistic young man [Applause] and finally our staff person of the month ms cynthia cindy is a veteran teacher in our district she's navigated the changes in the last two years like a champ and pressing even herself at the depths she has learned in order to give students access to learning cindy is a true lifelong learner and projects a model of growth mindset for her students she has risen to the occasion to share classroom practices at our staff meetings and leaned into professional development with our instructional coach and the state cindy is
017a teacher that always gets her work completed before it needs to be done including student success plans map nwa scores cfas they're always entered into the computer on time cindy has been working with her students with growth mindset teaching them that they can do things they didn't think they could do before and has found many ways to deepen her own learning and change her growth accountable talk is ever present in her classroom esperanza rising is a novel that has sparked interest in literacy and she has used this novel as a base to teach skills as well as writing and language miss patilla holds her students accountable for their behaviors and many of them love her class due to the structure and limits that she provides for them finally mrs futilla spends a tremendous amount of
018time informing families of their students needs and areas for growth as well as their successes she's a strong link for parent communication we are so happy she's part of our arms team [Applause] at this time apple high school so i'm going to invite up here aidan eriksen so i'm excited to introduce our two april students of the month um for their civic leadership aiden and gina recently represented our school at the statewide student government day in the words of their social studies teacher conor morrissey gina and aiden got on a zoom call with over 200 high school students and state representatives and senators and spoke eloquently and impactfully on several different laws currently in our state legislature that impact all of our students lives i was genuinely impressed by their employees and their willingness to
019get involved their their performance was authentically representative of the ahs pride way thank you [Applause] so this is a little bit unusual i'm pleased to have the honor to introduce uh five of our staff members of the month although it's unusual to include five staff members we would have been remiss to not include all of them in this recognition we have one of them here tonight so we are recognizing our five staff members for the different work that they have done in creating opportunities for our students that support and promote diversity equity and inclusion casey tashira planned and implemented what we called a challenge day for our ninth grade students drawing on her experience in another school casey designed small and whole group workshops that were focused on building empathy and compassion amongst this group
020of students our hope is to implement similar opportunities for other grades other staff members this month that we'd like to recognize lindsey salvarezza is the advisor for the a to z club where members of the lgbtq plus community and their allies are welcome to discuss issues that relate to their community this group is also an opportunity to meet and connect with other students in a safe supportive space jacob bensko is the advisor for our newly implemented diversity club this club meets weekly to recognize discuss and celebrate the ways in which our school community is growing more and more diverse the group has held and plans to hold book studies invite guest speakers from the community and work cooperatively with other like-minded groups that help make the school community even more safe and welcoming for all
021connor morrissey jeff whitney and jacob bensko planned an opportunity for world history students many of our 9th and 10th graders recently to watch schindler's list as part of the world uh world history's world war ii and holocaust unit the goal of this day was to help students understand acts that are in many respects not understandable and to help them build empathy and compassion for others [Applause] i believe that's it for this evening because of the short uh time in the season for the spring sports we'll have subway athletic uh students of the month next month i believe is that correct david okay and that concludes uh moving on to school committee recognition mitch you might want to hang on uh okay i wanted to recognize the members of our school committee who took time from
022their uh busy schedules to uh march in the uh river rat race parade that that would be uh tammy and carla and laura and nancy and our chair uh lee and i particularly wanted to recognize tim you came up with the brilliant idea of running of get handing out stickers i think we we ended up with 500 stickers or something like that that dave king helped to facilitate principal king and i appreciate that and they all went out uh and kids were delighted to have those athol bears stickers so a great idea and uh thank you very much for everybody for participating in the parade which was wet great um nothing here laura brittany nothing thank you elaine tammy um just a couple of things we did restructure and i didn't actually get to say
023to you last time mitch thank you for all you did being the chair um i know that it was hard work and it's sometimes extremely overwhelming and you handled it well and gracefully and we appreciate everything you did thank you thank you all right new business covet update okay we'll have andrea come to the podium good evening you have my report in front of you nothing has really changed in terms of the numbers okay and nothing has really changed in terms of the numbers a couple of things you need to know about the department of it did um send out a notice this week they're continuing with sending the test home for those families that have registered and it looks like it will be for the remainder of this school year and they said um
024in the upcoming weeks they'll make a decision regarding all testing programs for summer and moving into the fall but they are going to remain um here uh for the remainder of the year so people can continue to register if they'd like and also what we did today is next week would have been a delivery week so we sent out the test today for those families that asked to have a test sent home on the two-week window and that seems to be working well and we also have some extra tests in the center so if families are looking for them or they get a situation where i quickly need to get a test we encourage them to call the family and community center be either delivered to the school nurse or drive it right to their
025home so that's pretty much the covet update at this point in time thank you any questions thank you very much for your time uh athol high school program of studies dave did you want to say anything before people approved history we wanted to add eight people so that juniors would have an opportunity to challenge themselves in a higher level of history class and that was the only change in the program studies tammy um um there it should go with personal finance yeah anyone else is there a motion second second okay discussion seeing none all those in favor post abstentions okay thank you school choice folk yes so where we are at it every year the school committee is required to determine if they want to continue with school choice and let me explain what that
026means students who are already in the district due to school choice this would not affect it would just affect moving forward so the district could make a determination tonight to say no more school choice students in um as a district and that is your decision or to continue with school choice i will tell you right now based on my recommendation where i see our policy basically says that we have we would do a random draw of students for school choice based on the numbers right now the only two grade levels where i would recommend school choice today is at the 10th and 11th grade level at the high school the rest we are within the numbers we expect to be keeping low class size which is running between 20 and 22 and so i so
027i would say that to the school committee so you're aware i would also say to the school committee that condition could change between now and august normally what happened is i would make a recommendation to do a draw between now between the end of may and june i would say the school committee if you're going to do school choice we just have one draw before school opens to see if we lose any students over the summer because right now your numbers except for those two grades are really where you want them to be so my recommendation would be to continue with school choice knowing and understanding that you can look we would then do the drawing in august to see if we had space in other grade levels besides and then that that 10 and
02811. we could do 10 and 11 um before june but the others we would have to wait until august i believe or that would be my recommendation is there a motion carla another second okay discussion ted hey i know what again last year they did not um what happened last year with monday tech was ultimately more students were chosen who did not attend our district but lived in the town that attended our district that was the dilemma with monti tech so we did right asking for more slots they did not give them to us thank you elaine did you have your hand up then mitch oh no sorry i said it was uh based on a draw it's not a first come first serve basically it is not first first serve if you look at
029the policy the way it works is you do a draw but the draw is first to internal so if people apply from athol and want to move to another school that's the first if there is an opening at that grade level that's the first draw once that is completed if we still have openings left after the internal we would then go to the external but it's always a draw it is not first come first term that is a misnomer if you look at the policy it outright says it's a draw nancy then mitch nancy had her hand up first the only thing i would ask darcy is you're saying there's only two grades that we really can accept kids into are we opening ourselves up because if a family wants to choice in we're going
030to have kids in every grade level right how do you how are we going to keep our numbers down and still let people right because basically what i would determine or the new superintendent would determine there is no room so we wouldn't do a draw on that grade that's always part of the policy we only accept school choice if we believe there is room so if our class size is too high we do not have to do a draw for that grade level okay mitch uh council has a comment oh oh sorry yes so uh darcy's correct about this actually the state law requires school choice to be a random drawing if there's more applicants than positions or seats open the only exception to that is siblings so if somebody's already here the sibling is
031automatically the first choice yeah and then you go to random um what i normally see is that as darcy's saying you can vote we're going to accept school choice 10th grade is x number of seats 11th grade is this number of seats and then if you change it later you would have to vote again and pick whatever number of seats you want and the other grades so that's the way we play yeah mitch um i have a concern that we maintain an appropriate buffer uh at all grades my concern is that let's say second grade supposing we only have 20 people and so we say at the end of the summer that we have room for maybe two more and we get two more and then we get additional two or three students that come
032in in september or october and suddenly we have too many kids there's also the concern that once we let those extra one or two kids in that those kids are with us for the rest of their educational careers and it may be that that we have room for them next year but it may not be the case that we have room for them the year after that or the year after that but we'll be forced to keep them and that will again cause class sizes to rise so my inclination would be first of all to be very cautious on how many people we admit in 10th and 11th grade and keep those numbers down and not get them as high as as even we want them to be to allow some additional room and i
033would be very reluctant to accept any students at any other grades for fear that we would end up with too many students in the following years what i would say to you mitch is i think the judgment of the superintendent on that has worked up until now we've been able to stay because we have some sense of the town trends happening with people moving in so we can take a look at that to see what's going on um and i think what i would say as far as school choice is concerned there's nothing wrong with people wanting to be part of our district right that's a positive and so i would always say the caution is wait till longest because then by then we usually do have a good sense of what the numbers are
034going to look like and uh leave it to the superintendent to make their judgment on whether to move forward or not with it i think making it now and drawing now in may would be a problem because you have all this summer stuff that happens but i think uh that would be my my thought is to the way you regulate it so you don't end up with these bubbling numbers at a great level anyone else seeing none all those in favor of the superintendent's recommendation all in favor of the superintendent's recommendation which is to continue with school choice for the district opposed extensions okay thank you 2022 2023 school calendar so in your packet you have two calendars um as you know uh when we set the calendar the district puts together a calendar to
035be voted by the school committee we also present that calendar to the union uh for their feedback so tonight what you have are two sets of calendars one that is being recommended by the district and the other that has some augmentations that the union is looking for that we may not have necessarily agreed to so i don't know if molly's available and can kind of talk to the committee about the nuances of that appreciate it sure i'm happy too um so version a that's in your pocket is the version that we had originally put together and sent out to the committee there is one change in the version that you have from what was sent out about a month ago uh that change is that the first version accidentally left off january 2nd as a
036holiday um so that's been updated on version a uh version a is essentially um the same calendar that we just one second if you're trying to figure out which one version a it's at the bottom so you might be looking for it at the top it's in the bottom left hand corner just so you know which one version name which one's version thank you version a is essentially um a copy of the calendar we have in place this year so it's a very similar calendar start time ends time um and and so forth uh version b has some additional uh feedback that we received from the ata um they they sent that out with a lot of feedback from their members the main difference actually the only difference you'll see in version b are two
037things one is that it starts a day later and two they are backing up um the release for for winter break in december by a day so they've moved the half day to that thursday and are recommending that friday off and so therefore the last day of school is bounced back two days to represent the later start and the earlier um winter break i believe that's accurate without having it in front of me so i apologize and just so the committee is aware last year one of the conversations that the committee had was around the holiday season they did not want that the day two days before the holiday so that's one of the reasons why i wanted to bring it poor um to make sure that conversation that conversation happened so that was the
038main the main difference so we present you those two versions version a version b and in hopes that we will have one of those approved this evening i'm happy to answer any questions or it's pretty straightforward what you have in front of you but if there are any questions i'm happy to answer those or try tammy um first question is i see half days are moved to mondays that's something that's new in this calendar or is that all week because it's wednesdays now isn't it no it's been this is this year in fiscal year calendar has them on mondays as well so that's the same as this year um and then my next question was um the 24th is really early in august to be starting and i i know we did this last year
039we started a week earlier um but i still feel like august is that's like the heart of the vacation time for the kids and teachers are getting in their last days of summer um i was wondering if we could go back to the way we did it the year before not last year the year before where we started you know that wednesday before and i just was wondering what the thought process is of starting so early other than getting out earlier in june sure to be totally honest tammy when we were developing the calendar we weren't looking to make any major changes from this year so what we presented in version a is essentially the same calendar we have this year one thing to keep in mind is that we are getting out pretty early
040in june this year so there will be that um that amount of vacation time in the summer and i believe this one yeah the issue runs into tammy we we build in five snow days so if you look with the built-in five snow days that's the 16th if we go another and we've gone many years where we've gone way beyond five it pushes us down and we have to complete school by june 30th and so what happens is for every day you start later in august you are now going to push the last day of school down even further knowing and understanding if you don't have any snow days it's fine but if you do teachers could potentially get out of school as late as june 30. so that's that's the rationale for it um
041and especially in an area where they get so much snow and there was some feedback from members of the ata regarding that and the consensus from the ata if i remember carrie correctly um was looking to buzz that back a day and then change the the winter break uh that was sort of the overall recommendation from the ata that's sort of the consensus because i think they had if i could and i just wanted to give the committee a little feedback from the parents in the community um eighty percent or more of over a hundred people who have contacted me in the last 48 hours have said august 24th is just too early they feel as though we're not giving the kids that week that they should be getting and after a really tough year
042i feel as though teachers and maybe families would enjoy that extra week this year just as eighty percent of the community is saying it's too early and i did ask lee about the air conditioning situation in the middle school here and he did tell me that they put in a new circuit breaker for the third floor for some ac but we had a pretty tumultuous time last year with it being so hot in the school building that third week of august it's just something to consider because families just don't want to start that early mitch yeah [Music] i've gotten a grand total of zero parents contacting me about this it just seems like for a quite a long time now we've started in that last week of august and the reason we moved to last
043week of august is because that last week of june or the last weeks of june are so darn hot that we opted to begin earlier so we get out a week earlier i still see that as a valid reason for starting early so i'd still be in favor of starting early as we have for the last i don't know six or eight years anyway all right i think it's so i think it's way too early to start um especially bumping it back a whole nother week i know you were saying mitch had just mentioned about it being an early start for the last six or eight years but last year was the first year that it was this early usually we start the wednesday before labor day and 25 years ago or so we were
044starting the tuesday after labor day so we moved back a week then and now we're jumping back a whole another week is there a motion i'd like to make a motion to have the first day of school starting on the 31st of august is there a second on which version tammy i'm sorry on version a or version b i would probably say version b okay um it's already pushed back one day that was the only difference in version a versus version b winter holidays and the ones oh okay so you'd be looking all right the last day of school back i believe it's two or three i'm sorry i don't have anything no no three days yep and then the other one was the half a day on the b version was the half a
045day on the 22nd versus the thursday yep are we gonna do you guys want to talk about that half day moving up because i remember a couple years ago there was an instance when um there was another school committee member here who also agreed that we shouldn't be having a half day so early in december that parents are still working and i kind of tend to agree as a working parent that we really should go with version a for the holiday schedule but then we should really start on the 31st of august so if i could embed my emotion to start the first day of school on the 31st and um version a's calendar for the half day on the 23rd so basically still dealing with version b you just take out the half day
046on the 22nd if we stack with version b it would be version a for the holiday and neither version for the start of school i think it should be the 31st the start date and the winter holiday um in december are the two differences between the versions you can okay so the the proposed motion that's been seconded and amended uh is to start on the 31st and use the version a holiday and it was seconded is there any more carla oh do we need to specify if we're starting later we need to also end later and we should perhaps put that into the motion it's a good point yes correct i will move that motion to add starting ending later in june yeah nancy so do you also have to change the new teachers orientation
047in the professional development days if you want to look at this because you have professional development starting on the 18th but school's not going to start till the 31st yes so we would we could bump that back then to the 25th we typically do have the thursday before so we can bump that back to the 25th as well you're basically moving the whole calendar down yeah carla oops sorry that's okay if if tammy doesn't mind i would amend her motion to say that we start on the date that tammy suggests and rearrange other dates professional development and the end date to make them consistent um with the the number of days and the at the intervals that okay is a friendly amendment that's fine darcy um we can do this one or two ways we
048can vote on that or we could just revise the calendar bring it back next month when you have all the changes in it and then just agree to the one calendar it's your choice as a competitor i think that makes sense i would agree mitch i'm wondering um since we have uh teachers and principals here uh present i'm wondering um and i'm noticing that the union did not request at least their um their contract did not request a later start i'm wondering if we could prevail upon the the union head to comment on whether or not the teachers ever discussed starting later and how they might feel about it because i don't think it's appropriate because we owe a version and send it back to them we shouldn't get into public negotiations because i mean
049this they're going to revise this and send it back and and tammy withdrew emotion all right so they'll revise this and bring it back to us the next month i'll leave yes so that revised version likely darcy would have conversation with the union before that and then yeah yeah i think that's basically what mitch was saying so yes have we voted on that no she was through emotion can't vote on it she withdrew it you can certainly make another motion but she was through her motion also we're saying is send it back via superintendent and they can revise it and talk to the union okay high school pathways yes i believe it is cindy and dave coming up to speak to this while it is doing that i'll start in the interest of time thank
050you we are excited to bring some information um that dave and i have been working with our high school team in collaboration with mass higher mount machusick community college and fitchburg state we have been working to design pathways for our high school students to have more enriching experiences while at ahs and to prepare for life beyond graduation so on the screen you see there's a lot there's lots of alphabet soup in in this whole plant so high quality career uh college and career pathways hqccp um consists of really three parts but we're going to talk about two of them innovation pathways um in which we um are going to sort of lump our our career vocational technical education um plans uh particularly that part is more in the future in into that as well we
051already do have some of this in place uh cnc machining for example in partnership with starrit health career opportunity program or hcop as it's called through mount wachusett and haywood and so what innovation pathways is about is about really connecting students to explore um future career opportunities that are high demand in this region and to have them learn about and earn industry recognized credentials and so early college academy is what we're calling our dual enrollment program having students take college-level courses during their high school during their high school years this name change aligns with grant funding and some programming information that's coming out of desi and so we are gearing up to apply for those grants um in the in the future in the near future so for these programs there are five criteria that
052are required so equitable i won't read all of this to you but equitable access we are planning to have the college classes for example and the career exploration opportunities on campus or for them to be school sponsored field trips for example to see businesses in action we are also looking to provide tuition-free courses on campus and also to have uh we've been working with the colleges to have non-traditional entrance requirements those particularly the entrance requirements have been barriers to some of our students in the past the guided academic pathways that would be through our advisory periods and the my cap planning process my cap stands for my career academic plan and every student at athal high school will have a plan based on their interests oops sorry i went ahead i had my next card
053but i'm still on this slide sorry enhanced student support we are planning because one of the challenges for students who take uh college courses while they're in high school sometimes is that increased rigor that is included in college courses and so we are planning um tutoring that is part of the programming coming out of desi those are some requirements and um having office hours built into our partnerships with mount wachusett and fitchburg state to have the instructors available for office hours for those students and then connection to career i already spoke a little bit about that but a couple of the things that the my cap activities will include our intern and externships we already have some of those things going on with um steroid the steroid cnc program and the hp program as well
054as we have several students who are in our schools in district who are interested in education as a possible future career and then effective partnerships this is a critical part of these programs and these grant guidelines and as i mentioned we are partnering with those institutions as well as local businesses and that is ongoing so how will we pay for all of that um so as i mentioned there are multiple grants that we are investigating and that we are gearing up to they are very comprehensive and require a lot of planning and so we are um gathering all of the data that is required this is a process that is very clearly laid out by desi and by the request for um request for the plans to to apply for the grants and so we
055are looking at all of those pieces and making sure that all of them all of the criteria are in place so that we will be successful um when it is time to apply for these grants later on this spring i think that is it for me all right the the next part of this is a little bit more what's what's it going to look like at athol high school so in regards to the innovation pathways it has to be connected to high demand industries in our region so basically the focus here working with mass higher is that we target areas in our community that have a demand for for workforce so if you look at the list on the right these are the areas right now that have been identified with mass higher in other
056other data sources that are high demand so we could we could set up pathways in any of these areas advanced manufacturing obviously with steroids mexico other manufacturing companies in the area there's a need for that health and careers health is a big issue need around here both that and the social assistance education teaching force paraprofessionals that's a big need in this area information technology is up and coming and then that business finance so those are those are the things that we would explore and try to find partners with when we start looking further into how we would actually implement some of these innovation pathways at athol high school additionally uh with cindy and i we've been trying to explore other industries that would be creative and unique to us in this region so we have
057orange municipal airport around here possible aviation um even if we don't do innovation pathways maybe we do some tech oak stuff where students could actually get get involved with some of that i know bridgewater state currently has a program and cindy has been in contact with them as well to see how we might be able to partner with them and have some unique opportunities for learning in that area additionally emts uh mount wachusett has an emt program that might be something that we can explore to give our students additional opportunities so i'm going to give you basically a sample what it would look like if you were to enroll and you would have to apply to enroll to be in one of our pathways because we would there would be certain slots so let's say
058we had the health career pathway every pathway requires that you take two technical courses you could take more but the requirement of the pathway is to have at least two so when you look at that those those would be courses that would be offered at athol high school in the realm of health care and social assistance i just went on and i found a school right now that's doing pathways that's in the healthcare and they have connected psychology and anatomy and physiology as two technical courses that met the requirements they the second requirement is to take some high level courses so you would have to take two college courses or you would have to take at least two ap courses uh in the realm of their pathway so these courses would happen your junior and
059senior year additionally as part of that pathway it's in it you have to be involved in an internship so some on on-site career exploration and finish it off with some type of capstone project so that's the minimum there it could get more intensive than that we could decide we want to add more technical courses all of that requires us to have the staff in order to do it as part of the grant funding there's opportunities along with mass higher mass higher has some grant funding to possibly look at at opportunities to bring in staff to teach those courses in the realm of early college academy um so the criteria for early college academy if we if we were to get that designation is we would have to guarantee that our students that are in the
060early college academy would take at least 12 credits while in high school at no cost to the family um those students like like cindy said would have to receive support academic support right at athol high school to make that happen and you know as part of that you know it gives our students a great opportunity to ease their transition from high school to college a lot of our students struggle with that transition right now it'd be great to give our students more of an opportunity to take college level courses right at alcohol high school before being launched off into taking some college courses so some next steps uh the actually the grant application is going to come out very soon in regards to early college academy there's an orientation session tomorrow that cindy and i
061will be on um second step we're going to continue our partnership with mount wachusett fitchburg state that's actually i'm going to roll i'm going to do some slides in a minute it's already have some fruition there with some college classes that will be coming up very soon for our students and then creating models what will it look like within athol high school if we had this programming obviously we still have to do a bunch of training with our staff around the my cap process and then our guidance staff if we're going to do this we really have to get articulate about what we're going to do within our guidance and counseling curriculum to support all of this so this really needs to start with students in eighth grade understanding how athol high school can help
062them to get to their future and then start building their schedule as they transition into ninth grade so that they're in a position where they can be a part of our pathway or early college academy so just got this information yesterday i shared it with superintendent fernandez that fitchburg state contacted us they're going to give our students our rising 11th and 12th graders access this summer to five different dual enrolled courses the options include both remote options and an in-person option for a life science the the nice thing about this is these courses if our students took it this summer could count towards their high school graduation requirements what that could lead to is someone could have enough credits to graduate early could start their college career early or could open up their ability to
063do more lengthy internships in the second part of their senior year um additionally i do want to point out the you know the american sign language you can see up there that a student you know going off to a college has to have two years of a foreign language that gives someone a great opportunity right now we only offer spanish but it gives a student a great opportunity just this summer alone to take care of that requirement in a foreign language next next year at athol high school mount wachusett is already committed to offering these five courses to our rising juniors and seniors that are interested in it so speech standing up here and giving a speech is is what it's all about public speaking college writing statistics intro to sociology intro to psychology mock's
064schedule we're you know in the process of looking at a schedule but this is something of what a junior senior schedule could look like next year we would have advisory in the morning where they would access their advisory classes then they would access two at all high school classes between the time of 7 40 to 12 o'clock and then those mount wachusett classes happen every other day so they could get two of those classes in between the 12 and 130 time frame and you can see the component there of the tutoring center as a key element there the reason we put it right now on wednesday thursday friday because currently our teachers have staff meetings on monday and tuesday they have to they're required to stay until 2 45 anyway so our students have access
065to that um that's just brainstorming what it might look like for a student next year that's where we're at for the one thing i want to add is just to be aware that this is one of the ways we're using the sr funds um with the position cindy's come currently in we wanted to get here for a while but dave needed assistance he couldn't do it by himself so that has allowed us that opportunity and also to better understand the funding that's available to get there so that it's something that is free to our students so i can't say enough about that and i really want to thank dave and cindy for their hard work in beginning to launch this because as you can see next year we'll be offering up to 15 credits college
066courses the average college course at a state institution these days is about 1500 so if you take that and you multiply it that's a huge amount of money a parent could save towards their child's education the child could actually leave with one last semester of tuition um so it's very positive so i really want to thank dave and cindy for their hard work and putting this together i think the other last thing is most of those dual enrolled courses people have to go on to those campuses and we've got a unique opportunity where they're coming to us so our students that's the access piece our students can stay right here in athol can get on their bus come down the high school and get those two two college courses mitch um yeah i'd like to
067thank you as well i um i think it's important that the school committee acknowledges the uh incredibly hard work that you've put into this and the successful program that you've presented for us today i'm particularly impressed by both the the areas that you designated uh in this in this area that that um that you're going to provide some um some training in and i'm impressed by what's going to be offered this this summer and particularly impressed by the five or so classes that amount will be offering to our students in the fall but i hope and i'm fairly confident that you intend to publicize this really well with your students and to encourage uh their participation in it and i'm really proud of our district uh for moving ahead and presenting these kinds of opportunities
068to students and to families congratulations and kudos it really was a team member including laura's helped us a lot um again along with rebecca valecki and then the folks at mount juan tucson and fitchburg state and not to mention uh dave's advent team and the guidance team at ahs have really been instrumental in putting this together so it wasn't just a few of us it's been really a collaborative project through a lot of a lot of hard work super thank you all yeah sorry and if i if you already answer this you can just tell me there it wasn't a limit on the amount of kids as long as they met the requirements it was unlimited so anyone can get in for the summer um but the ones at athol high school will have will
069have a seat limit right they the future can only have so many courses so i think we'll have 25 seats for those courses for juniors and seniors thank you so we're not in the early college academy yet this is just courses that mount wauchus is offering our students for free not being in the early college academy yet thank you [Music] uh vote fy23 budget let me turn it over to leah um hello everyone so this is revisiting the budget that we had from um our meeting last week and the budget that we've been discussing and revising on since december i will say that the all boards meeting presentation that we presented back in march has been posted to the arsd website since march and so that is there going into the budget we have um
070we would like to request to vote uh the budget of 28 million and i have a bunch of different um reports that you can use to see the budget broken out into different categories um we do have the budget by function code that is required from desi which breaks it out into bishop leadership and admin instructional service other school services which is nursing and things like that operations and maintenance fixed charges which is where we have our copiers and our insurance for our employees and the debt and the programs with other schools which is our tuition so that houses our special education tuition as well as our charter school and um and out of district tuition as well so that's the budget by function code we also have the revenue report for the general fund
071which matches to our expenditure report we're just on the boat for the budget not your actual overview okay so i don't you guys don't want me to revisit any of these numbers because we're good from from the meeting last week okay all right i just wanted to give an overview of the budget in case there were any questions but i will um stop unless you guys have any questions um so yes i would like to request a vote from the school committee to approve the fiscal year 23 budget for 28 million 28 is there a motion nancy a mitch second uh motion made in second and discussion seeing none all those in favor posed extension okay thank you middle school supports i just want to give the school committee an update um at the middle
072school uh as you know with covet a lot more students are coming in dysregulated and so we've been trying to do some things to try to help with that so i'm happy to announce that we have hired two individuals as hall monitors for the building one has already started i talked to him day before yesterday he put on ten thousand steps walking through the building we already are starting to see some things calm down with that the second individual i believe if i'm correct will be on right after after vacation uh and the two of them will work in tandem one will always be on the floor one will be in a room so if an assistant principal is busy dealing with another child the student would go down into that room and wait until
073the assistant principal is available and then they would go up and see the assistant principal um so that should should help the other thing that we've done is we've added a bridge coordinator to the building this bridge coordinator will work directly with the students who we consider to be uh frequent fliers that are not um on an iep but our general life students and their families to work on some uh adjustments around behavior to try to build uh the child to the expectations we're looking for from the school and that individual will be starting right after vacation as well um in addition to that if you haven't if you haven't heard yet we began uh math tutoring here in the building um the gentleman that we've got is a veteran and he does have a
074service dog um it is a great dane do i have it right uh he sits about here on me so gives you a sense of him but the good news is attracting more kids to want to do tutoring because they want to go down and see the dog um so that's also been very positive i do want to acknowledge that the principals tonight presented their data and as part of that we are we have put into place a level of tutoring at the majority of our buildings now and so if you want more detail on that i can present it next month but i particularly wanted to highlight the middle school because of the number of items that we put in the place uh within the last month that was it thank you at this
075point in time i would like to give uh an update on and a report uh from the superintendent search committee and for the benefit of folks at home i'll just read the memo um to let you know the athol royalson superintendent search committee met thursday march 24th for orientation as to their obligations and responsibilities under the ethic laws open meeting law and related requirements they were also oriented as to the search process at this time search applications closed on friday march 25th 19 applications were received for the position the search committee received all applications via secure electronic means they reviewed all application over the weekend of march 26 and 27th the search committee met to create question topics in public session on monday march 28th they then moved into executive session to select semi-finalists for
076interviews seven semi-finalists were interviewed on the evenings of monday april 5th thursday april 7th and monday april 11th deliberation followed after the interviews on april 11th the search committee unanimously put forward the following slate of finalists for the consideration of the school committee and i present them to you at this point in time they are dr marlene deleo superintendent ware public schools matthew enworth assistant superintendent blackstone millville regional school district dr cynthia kennedy direction of intervention acceleration athol royston regional school district and dr john provost superintendent northampton public schools finalists are prepared have been contacted and agreed to host members of the athel royalton regional school committee for visits after after april break school committee members should plan to share their availability for such visits with masc field director tracy novik later this week finalists
077also will spend a day visiting the athel royalston regional school district after april break all finalists will be interviewed by the school committee the week of may 9th and the selection of the next superintendent of the district will follow so again i just want to publish i did it a couple of times the other night i would like to just publicly thank everyone and i'll make the names available uh to the press uh so they get some credit uh everybody has served on that search committee they were parent representation there was community representatives district personnel myself and member from cpac so i will make sure that they get that recognition that they deserve so this document will be released to the media and tracy advises me that all four have agreed and they are officially
078finalists for the district okay any questions on the letter okay thank you mitch i just want to say thank you to you for chairing that committee and uh thank you uh to the members of that committee thank you okay communications district enrollment again it's in your packet if anybody has questions feel free to ask um but our enrollment is holding steady based on last month in this month financial statements and approval of accounts for the year 22 budget i've just highlighted a few items uh to describe why there are some overages um overall in the account we are doing overall in the general fund we are doing fine um we still have about 600 000 total which you can see on page 10. um that will go down to close to 300 000 by the
079end of the year based on um some of the things that we want to purchase on the wish list at the school and some of the spending that we're experiencing this year does anyone have any questions okay um the next report is the grant expense report so i've just highlighted a typical rollover fund um as well as made some notes around some increases we received some small increases from the state for some of our ide a grants um so we'll see those numbers change a little bit but any money spent money um and i also wanted to highlight the sr3 fund which we got approved last month um we did make the one-time payment that the school committee approved back in october um to our staff so they were happy to receive that um any
080questions on the grand expense report for this year um and then for the the budget line transfer i did have one budget line transfer for this month um and that is to move money from this professional salary line seventeen thousand ninety five dollars um over the two different accounts one is other expenses we'd like to have um an ice cream social for the students and teachers coming back from spring april break and um one of the purchases for the wish list is a tractor for the district so um i would like to request twelve thousand one hundred ninety five dollars as well to be moved to our acquisition of equipment which um what's on the wish list that was presented and we've got it's three thousand it's almost three thousand less than what we thought
081it would be russell so the agenda says that there won't be a vote on budget transfers so the only way that could happen is if this is something that came up within 48 hours of this meeting russell this was not in the packet this was handed out tonight so it was unexpected is it something that needs to be done tonight i guess the ice cream social part yeah we would like to have that sunshine if possible um but we would like to have that done tonight i mean normally my advice is not to vote on things that aren't on the agenda unless you really have to okay um and legally the only way you can do it is if basically as you know this year we've been working on putting in place some things to
082help alleviate some strategies for our staff and our students because of it and so when we spoke at our meeting which is our exec meeting on tuesday we had a discussion that there was nothing really available for this month um and so it was brought up that we should go ahead and try to do a celebration not only for teachers but also for students for the ice cream truck and we knew last time we did this we didn't necessarily come to the school committee beforehand and we didn't want to be put in that situation so i asked you to bring it up tonight um so we wanted to do it right after because it's kind of in between when the kids have finished the el am cast and prior to when they stop them at
083them and also like i said to have something for this month to get close down that's where it came from and i'll say for the chapter we don't have to do that this month russell so what's your recommendation uh well it sounds like it did come up within the 48 hours that one piece yep so i you know if you voted tonight and there was a challenge to it then you would need to vote again at the next meeting would be essentially what would occur so my suggestion is is that if you're if you're planning to have the ice cream social piece i i would just expend the funds from another line item and then bring this back next month and we'll clean it up okay and that way we don't even have to deal
084with it tonight and the other piece too okay all right uh vote ap warrant approval yeah um nancy moves to approve the ap warrant is there a second and it is circulating someplace there so okay any discussion this is what we vote we vote this every month so all those in favor i'm sorry did you have a um i just we had uh we did the charting the course again well i did it again these ladies did it for the first time um part of that discussion um was that we shouldn't really know what's in the warrant when we're signing it so what is the standard protocol of knowing what's in that other than just putting our signature on it where where are we discussing what's in that so the warrant packet actually includes all
085of the bills and then all of the checks as well um so you can look through the packet there and um android do you also email it out um yes i just wanted to make it clear that the charting the course was very clear that we should not be signing anything that we don't know so um i didn't know if maybe there was a five-minute discussion that we could have starting at the next meeting about what exactly is in there so or you can give us the reports in advance so we know what we're signing off on i just want to um it was very clear that we have to know what we're signing off on and it's been standard for coming and put your signature on there and i have to say i'm guilty
086of that too so if we could know in advance what we're signing on i think that would be charting the courts to be happy so so noted and we'll uh put some sort of but i would appreciate approval this evening so that they can pay what they okay all right um all those in favor post extensions okay thank you uh fy21 audited financial statements um so for the audited financial statements we work with our auditor to come up with a financial statement which get reported to the fcc um every year and um this is part of the standard practice of sharing with the school committee um every year as well once it's completed um so i've shared it with you guys let me know if you have any questions about what's in there if i
087don't have the answer for you today i will definitely get it for you um but let me know if you have any questions about financial financial audited financial statements thank you july 2021 cash reconciliation um so the july 2021 um cash reconciliation is a new process um well reconciliations are happening every month but we decided to bring them again bringing them to the school committee as well so that you guys can see them and um we have them for the community as well this began because of the turnover that we had in treasures last year um so this is another control that we're putting in place to make sure that we don't have some of the issues that we experienced with the treasure turnover last year um so you will begin to see more of
088these um going forward but we're starting with july our current treasurer is doing is working through and um cleaning up the um cleaning up the records making sure that things tie out to our cash account our bank statement and so as she's getting through each month she'll be submitting um reconciliations to the school committee for review just so people are clear on what lee is talking about it's basically what our books are saying for money does it match what the bank is saying for money and so the goal is to make sure because prior to the latest uh treasurer getting in we were off or there was a problem where there seemed to be a big difference in what we had had in our accounts and what we were seeing in the actual bank account
089so we're going back all the way to july and going through each one to make sure everything matches so that is that's the point of the reconciliation so leaders are providing you those reports as we go through it thank you um and i will say it's not that there was a huge difference um it was more so that the treasurer um wasn't uh provided the previous treasures before this one weren't doing their reconciliations on a regular basis so now this treasurer has had to go through and complete the reconciliations um not just going back to july but um the treasurer turnover happened um back in beginning in um november 2020 and going through two we just had another treasurer uh we got a new treasure in november of 2021. so we've had a bit of
090turnover and now that the treasurer has to do some cleanup but um it's not yeah so okay uh tammy um do we have that cash reconciliation is that what you're asking us to look at going forward is there anything here that we're supposed to look at today um you should have the july reconciliation you should have had it in your packets so it begins with um citytown district of at the royal regional school district cash reconciliation as of july 2021 and then it it starts with uh total treasures cash and investments 4.9 million and then um the rest of the pages go through each of the accounts and how we tie out well if you look in your packet it looks like this just to make sure everybody has it and um the treasurer is
091available for questions if you have any on the reconciliation but we'll be scaring you we'll be sharing reconciliations regularly um and going forward it'll be every month once we get caught up yeah thank you what all right uh under reports of the committee uh just under the reports of chair i am working to put something together to send individually to you uh regarding subcommittee some people requested to be on the same subcommittee we were able to have a negotiations subcommittee today did policy meet tammy the other day okay so because they were still the a quorum of the original members so i will reach out to each of you just to kind of get that so we can get those in place uh by the middle of next week also steve um i just have
092a question for you i've i did receive some feedback from people that even though we're on lap that air circulator is there a way that that can be shut down for the time frame of the of the meeting yes okay because it does cause noise pollution on even when we're talking through the zoom meeting so i just wanted to bring that up yeah thank you even if it if or cycle it or whatever just to okay thank you budget did not meet obviously facilities did not meet this evening negotiations we met but i have nothing to report okay academic excellence okay i'll take up all the free time here the academic excellence and public relations subcommittees met last week and the academic excellence subcommittee focused on reviewing the equity training for the administrators darcy bringing
093us up to speed on what that equity training consisted of and the focus has been on the concept of dignity for all students and the ways in which you can assure that students are accorded dignity and there are a couple of ways that were mentioned that are in the minutes the professional development plan for next year focuses on inclusion and inclusive practices and there will also be professional development for support staff to address the same issues of dignity and belongingness and a set of pathways for learning for the special ed staff in which teachers can choose the um the pathway the lane they wish to focus on the area of their practice that they want are most interested in learning more about the public relations subcommittee talk talked about the media campaign and we were
094very happy with the two terrific articles that have shown up in the athol daily talking about what's actually happening in our classrooms that makes these classrooms look different from what they might have looked like 10 years ago and conveys some of the excitement of what's going on and uh we brainstormed or came up with suggestions mostly from darcy about recruitment and retention of teachers which were a very much responsive to the document that was submitted to the school committee a couple of months back talking about the things that that the teachers found difficult to cope with during these years of covid and so we talked about looking at ways to provide teachers with more planning time including the possibility of one full day a week for each teacher these are all possibilities that are being
095looked at um develop structures for more teacher and staff voice and to allow for more teacher autonomy in top common planning time and team time and i'm very much in favor of this this initiative i think autonomy is shaping up as a huge uh issue for teachers and many other professions where people are more and more controlled and directed and retooling ways in which we are serving students taking a look at different ways of providing the staffing for instance hiring fewer paras and giving them more and better training which theoretically should be a better deal for the students who those paras are assisting so that is a bunch of positive things that are going on in the system that we all that we talked about in those two meetings okay thank you uh policy uh
096policy met this evening um we have two items coming back to the table uh next month um it's a service dog policy and a substitute pay policy we are looking to our legal counsel for some advice on those two and we moved um five for first reads for may so you'll be getting those next month okay thank you committee member referrals we'll start the opposite direction ted i've uh been asked a little bit about some looking into possibly having an officer outside the high school now at dismissal time um it's always been an issue in and out of the parking lot there and even more so now with the new street lights okay thank you tammy nothing at this time elaine bonnie nancy nothing at the time carla mitch okay uh nancy i will entertain
097a motion to adjourn i make a motion that we adjourn nice second any discussion seeing none all those in favor