001Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the School Committee of a meeting of March 26, 2026. At this time, I will call to order and ask everyone to rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next up is a roll call of members. Jane Reggio, town of Millville. Tara Goddard, Blackstone. Erin Vinacco, Millville. Matt Catalano, Millville. Chuck Dunston, from Blackstone. Tara Larkin, Millville. Uh Dan Keith, from Blackstone, and Tara Scobie will be joining us shortly. Her son is pitching right now, is that what you said? He is, yes. Kristen Dinardo, director of finance and operations. Jill Peloquin, interim superintendent. Excellent. We have no student up
002there. Welcome. Okay. Okay, uh we'll move over to consent agenda A. Uh warrants, I'll take a motion to approve the warrants. So moved. Motion made by Tara. Seconded Seconded by Chuck. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? [clears throat] The ayes have it, it's unanimous. And next up is to approve the budget workshop minutes from 1/22/26 and 1/27/26. So moved. Motion by Jane. Second. Seconded by Tara. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. >> Aye. Any opposed? The ayes have it. Next up we have a public forum. If anybody wishes to address the committee, uh please come on up and uh have a seat at the table and just give you us your name. Hello. Uh I am Nathan Burden, class historian
003of the class of 2028. I'm here to talk to you all about the attendance policy and the mental health of students within BMR. As many of you know, mental health is a big issue with teenagers and attendance as well. As stated in the high school student handbook, students are allowed four unexcused absences per quarter. On the fifth or more absences in the same quarter, a student will be assigned a FA, which is a failure due to attendance. If a student's average is below a 50, he or she will receive a lower grade, which means in one school year, you get a total of 16 unexcused absences. While yes, this does seem like a big number, having unexcused on your unexcused absences on your record can be extremely stressful, especially if someone's trying to get into
004a good college. Based on a school-wide survey of the high school I conducted, 59.8% of students who answered uh state having unexcused absences on their record causes them stress. Moving on, in the handbook state excused absences include college school visits, medically documented illness or injury, bereavement or family funeral, major religious grievances, court dates, and severe family circumstances. Note that nowhere on this list does it mention mental health days. I want you to keep this in mind for later. As well, in the handbook it states all excused absences need to be supported by a doctor's note or legal notice within five school days upon return to school. Was it never put into thought that some schools some students do not have access to doctors because of many different One of them being that health care these
005days are way too expensive. Based on the school-wide survey, 71.9% of students who responded said they do not have a therapist to speak outside of school. I also surveyed what percentage of students struggle with mental health. 38.1% of students who responded say they said they struggle with mental health, while 36.1% of responders said they did not. The rest preferred to not to answer. However, 51.35% of students who said they struggle with mental health and also do not have a therapist to speak out to outside of school. 59.8% of students who responded said they do not feel comfortable speaking with a school counselor about mental health struggles and or family circumstances. Comparing these results, 32.76% of students who responded that struggle with mental health and do not have a therapist outside also do not feel comfortable
006speaking with to school counselors about mental health struggles and or family circumstances. Additionally, when it comes to attendance, the handbook also states there are no sanctioned skip days at BMR. Student-organized skip days undermines the educational process. The school will not accept parental excuses to participate in skip days. Students involved in a skip day will be considered absent unexcused. I want you all to pay attention to the wording student-organized skip days. While yes, skipping school does undermine the educational process, I believe that this there should be additions to this, such as skip days are to ensure that our mental health mental health help positive within students. They should be allowed and allowed to be taken. Worrying so much about attendance strains you so much, especially if you on your mental health. If you want to take
007a break, why does it have to come with consequences? So, you're supposed to tell me the students who do not have proper professionals to speak to or do not feel comfortable to speak with one to get proper treatment can't catch a break for a single day. From personal experience, some weeks I feel very burnt out and don't feel like doing it work for a day and I'm not allowed to catch a Sorry, I wasn't thinking. Moving on, in the guidance of developing attendance from the Mass Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, it states at the school level schools can create and use a tiered system that promotes attendance awareness for all students. Early interventions for students who are beginning to show signs of chronic absenteeism and specific individual interventions for students having the most trouble
008getting to school every day, including active and culturally competent communication and engagement with students and families. Additionally, the tiered system of support should include clear ways of addressing the reasons that students may not be attending school consistently. For example, increased mental health needs resulting from the pandemic, impact of bullying, homelessness, and disability, and highlight non-punitive measures to address any such attendance barriers. In this expert it states non-punitive measures. Going back to my last point, why should we be punished for needing a break a day? We're all human, everyone needs a break, especially if it's making impact on mental health. Quoting this from the Mass Department of Public Health, in 2023, 647 total suicides occurred in Massachusetts. 15-24 year olds have the highest percentage of history of suicide attempts at 27.6% in Mass alone. Doing some
009math here, that is around 180 people. Putting this into perspective, my class has around 105 students, which is almost half of the students in my class. In 2023, 15-24 year olds have the highest rate of self-inflicted injury resulting in emergency department visits. If school actually cared about our mental health and these numbers I just stated, it shouldn't care so much if someone doesn't go to school for one day to catch a break. Mental health is a serious topic and should not be ignored, especially the mental well-being of teenagers. Mental health struggles are only going to grow, especially with all the current uh things going on in the world right now. School shouldn't be the one to restrict us from deciding when we need a break. We us students should be the have control over that.
010With that in mind, I have a proposal to change the attendance policy. Either use a tiered system as I explained earlier to address the reasoning behind unexcused absences to allow students to take some days off for mental health measures or change the or change the attendance policies to state that students may take some skip days for mental health, such as changing the policy to allow three unexcused absences with one free excused absence per quarter, while still meeting the required days in a school attendance in the school attendance criteria. While I do understand this will take time, I do wish to set a deadline for this. I'd like to see some changes by the time I graduate from high school. I wish to positively shape the mental well-being of future students who may go to BMR.
011We deserve a school that measures success not just by how often we show up, by how much we are truly doing. Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you. Anyone else wishing to address the committee? Can I just Can you just forward that presentation to the superintendent's office? Yes, I have copies of sheets. >> And thank you for your effort in in your research on that matter. Okay, moving on. Um we're going to I'll take the agenda out of order um and go right to a report of the superintendent, item C, spring athletics update. Um thank you for allowing us to take We have a few things that we're hoping to take out of order. I We have a lot of families and and students here tonight to do some presentations, but we want to start
012with our our athletes are here. If you want to come on up, um and I know that our AD is going to be joining us, but she said she we can get started um with our with our athletes. So if you want to want to come up, you can all come up. >> [laughter] >> Come on over. Come on down. You can pull up your chairs. Come on up. So Elizabeth was hoping to join us. We had a little bit of a swap of a baseball game, so she's finishing that up. Um so we wanted to get started with um, some of our updates from from the past season. So, she um, has just a little note I'm going to read to get started. So, we want to celebrate and recognize the outstanding successes of
013some of our fall and winter sports teams and athletes. Here with us tonight are our coaches and some of our team leaders for girls varsity soccer, football, and boys varsity basketball. Each of these teams put in a tremendous amount of preparation, time, and energy in their seasons and as a result, they each won their respective CMAC divisions. >> [applause] >> I'd like to have each team come up. Well, I know they're here and share a little bit about the work they put into this year and the and what the season meant to them as student athletes. So, first, um, We've got basketball up here right now. >> Okay. Now, I'm going to have to find where it says basketball. Um, so, um, we want to celebrate our most recent CMAC champions, our boys varsity basketball
014team and we have JV coach and assistant coach Jeremy is a full service here and his players are Carson Kenoyer. We have Jackson Dutton and Ish Diaz. Correct? Am I missing anyone? And Jake Haynes is here with us. >> Okay. Perfectly. Jake. All right, so we'd love to hear from you and how your season went. All right. I just want to say first guys, good evening and thank this is thank you and those of you who don't know me, I'm Jeremy Folster. I'm the boys JV basketball coach. I'm here on behalf of coach Uglow who apologizes for not being present tonight due to a work obligation. He would like to thank the school committee, our athletic director Elizabeth Berard for the opportunity to bring the BMR boys varsity basketball captains here to be recognized for
015their hard work and dedication this season resulting in the winning our conference, the CMAC D. And here to speak about it are captains. Let me introduce um, Ish Diaz, Carson Kenoyer, and Jackson Dutton. So, I'll let them do the talking. Great. Uh, this season started off a little rocky. We had a brand new coach. Uh, we brought in a new system and a way of doing things. Uh, there was a bit of a learning curve. We also faced less ideal situations of having so many games early on in the season. We had little to no time to prepare as a team. We had seven practices, two scrimmages, and then we were facing five games in 10 days. It was a crazy way to start the season. This busy start to the season led us to
016losing some early games that we wish we could have got back. At the halfway point in the season, we had four wins and five losses. This seemed to be a turning point in our season. It was when we It was when we really started to click as a team. Over the next nine games, we would win seven games and lose just two. Both very close games we caught and we call qualified for the Clark tournament and and the state tournament. And some accomplishments this season that outside of qualified qualifying for the Clark and playoffs include going seven and one in our conference to finish first. This is the first time the BMR boys team has won the conference since the 2006 season. We beat Hopedale, which we haven't beat them since the 2018 season. And
017we beat Sutton both our meetings this year, which coach Uglow looked at all the way back to the '06-'07 season and couldn't find a time where beat them twice in year the year. But, overall, we had a very successful season with only losing two seniors this season. We are looking to bring him back a large part of our team and continue the success next year. Some goals we have for next year are to bring back a Clark tournament championship for the first time since 1998. Thank you. Thank you. I did have an opportunity to attend a couple of games. They were amazing games. I love seeing the boys were very aggressive on the court, which is always a good thing. They was They were great and very exciting games. They were great. We're looking forward
018to another great season next year. Congratulations. NICE JOB. >> [applause] >> ALL RIGHT. UH, SO I GUESS WE'RE GOING FOOTBALL. OKAY. UM, so next, um, we want to honor our football team and we have coach Jamie Capp here um, with his players. We have Carson, Ish, Jake Is Jake here? Jake and Is JJ here, too? Unfortunately, he's not here. >> Okay. All right. Let's hear about your season. So, first of all, thank you for having us here. This is the second time since I've been a coach here that I've had the opportunity to do this. Unfortunately, I'll let these guys fill in some gaps. They were not the original group that was supposed to be with us. Our captains unfortunately couldn't make it and I had something prepared for them to read. So, last minute
019switch up. We started off 0-2, a little shaky. We played a team the second week that was just overpowering us and the team and was one of those games where you left wondering how the rest of the season was going to go. The team had two options. It was either, you know, we could kind of just embrace the fact that we might not have the best season or we can continue to fight and that's what these guys did and it started at homecoming and beating Montachusett. Jake had a huge touchdown play. Um, Carson had a bunch of plays to keep our hopes alive in a lot of our CMAC games and Ish was a cornerstone to our defense coming back out for a senior year to play outside linebacker. So, anything you guys want to
020fill in? And ultimately, 4-0 in our our league this year and we were an early exit in the first round of the MIA playoffs, but these boys didn't give up and they played their hearts out and that's all I can ask for as a coach. So, very proud. Great season this year. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Spring sport? Yep. Do you do a spring No. Okay, well, you should cuz like obviously you're on a roll, so. >> [laughter] >> Thank you. Thank you. Run some track. It's good for you. I've tried. I've asked them. >> [laughter] >> Perfect. Hey. No cowboy boots though. >> And last but not least, um, our girls varsity soccer. They're here to speak on their season. We have coach Kevin McCourt. We have Brian Burke and players Ella McCourt and
021Grace Buzzell. Yeah, thank you for having us as they've said. Um, I've been with this team of girls for three and a half four years and we had some pretty low E seasons in we in the DVC, the Nipmucs, the Hopedales, the Suttons, they were they were good. But, these two girls kind of led this team for the last four years and we graduated one senior last year, two seniors this four seniors this year. So, we've had not a high turnover rate and they really kind of helped build the program. They do all the team building things that gets all the girls involved and I think that's growing the program because this is the first time I think in BMR history we've had three full girls soccer teams. And I think with losing four girls
022this year, I think we're gaining probably twice as many. So, the program is just going to keep growing and they're good at that. Like I facilitate it, but they run the show. So, they've done a lot of work behind the scenes to get this program where it is. So, they'll give you a little rundown of how things have went and we did have a very successful season. Yeah, thank you guys for having us tonight. We're excited that we were the CMAC division E champions with an in league record 7-1 and this was the first time ever in program history that we won our division, so that was exciting for us. Yes, on top of that, we had five league all-stars. Marin Berry, Natalia Morais, Kaylee Burke, Taylor Trask, and Macy Rodenhiser. So, that just kind
023of is a testament to how successful we were and how proud of we how proud we all all are all are of our girls. And then we also had two Central Mass all-stars. Marin and Natalia also qualified for that, which was awesome. Um, and overall, that was the 7-1 record in league and then our overall record was 12-5-1. So, 12 12 wins, five losses, one tie. Yeah, and like Kevin said before, we've had some rocky seasons before. Um, just last season alone, we had 22 assists, 31 goals, and eight goals scored on us. Um, and we basically doubled both of our assists and goals this year. We had 40 assists and 61 goals and then we kind of cut our goals scored allowed allowed on us by half and that was only 43. So, I
024think that was a great testament to us. Yeah, and not only that, but those goals and assists were shared with by a lot of girls on the team. It wasn't, you know, there were if obviously our stars, but each girl contributed to the offense and the defense. Everybody had stats. If you look at the stat sheet, it wasn't just these few girls. It was a full team effort in all the games, which was really exciting for us. Um, a few highlights of our season were definitely our senior game. We played Montachusett Tech and it was a comeback win for for us. We won 3-1 and that game was really a testament to how hard our girls work and how much they care. Not only did the upperclassmen really want that win, but when we went
025down, you saw how much our underclassmen wanted that win for, you know, the girls who've led the team. Um, and that was really exciting. Yeah, I think another one of our favorites was towards the end of the season. We had an under the lights game, which is always super fun for our girls. Um, it was Bellingham senior night and we've always had kind of a rivalry with Bellingham. We've always been super equal with them, kind of come up short years prior with a goal or two being lost by and this year we won 4-2 and one of our eighth graders that we pulled up that game scored a goal, so I think that was kind of a nice moment for all of us and it was a great game and we got Dairy Queen after,
026so I I mean, both of those games, I think we were losing at halftime. And so, they and I said this to them at halftime. I don't I don't sugarcoat. I said, "Listen, we can hang our heads and just keep going the way we're going or we can forget it, dust it off, and and they did it. They flipped the switch in both those games. It was some energy on the field. Um and it was a total team win both times. Mhm. Yeah, and though all these stats are important to us, um what Grace and I are most proud of um is the place we're leaving the program in. As Coach Kevin mentioned, um in seventh grade, that's when Grace and I both joined the program. There was probably only about 20 girls in the
027program as a whole. We were both pulled up to the varsity team because there weren't enough girls to even field um a JV team. And now we're leaving the program behind with over 50 girls, a middle school team, a JV team, and a varsity team. So, we're really proud of that, and we're excited to see what they continue to do. Yeah. That's about it. Thank you guys for having us. THANK YOU. CONGRATULATIONS. >> [applause] >> OKAY. AND WE CAN FINISH THE REST OF OUR UPDATE WHEN our athletic director arrives. All right. We'll move to um item B. Yep. So, our next one, again, thank you for moving us up. We are going to be talking about our middle of the year student performance data. Um we've brought this up. I know we did our beginning,
028so we have asked our teams from our buildings to come up. Um we're very happy to have our staff here and very excited to have our students also help with the presentations tonight. So, we're actually going to start with Millville Elementary School. So, if Millville wants to come on up, and then we'll be putting up the slide presentation um that you can see on the screen, and once you get settled, we just want to make sure you all take a moment to introduce yourself. All righty. So, hello. Everybody mind introducing themselves? Sure. I'm McKenzie Gill. I'm kindergarten teacher. I'm Harper, and I'm in third grade. I'm Daisy Greenstein from third grade. Karilyn Gonsalves, first grade teacher. Linda Maro, school adjustment counselor. I'm Christine Sheafer, principal. So, we have a little bit we have preschool in
029here as well. [clears throat] So, we're going to kind of go through some stuff quick, and then the girls have a little bit they want to share about writing and stuff that they've been doing. Um Okay, please start. I was going to pass this around with each present. We asked the um schools to send because we're doing writing assessments. So, they have some samples in here, some of the student writing just so you can get a sense of the rubrics we use and some of the writing samples. We'll start down there. So, um the MYIGDIs assessment is our preschool assessment. So, our preschool three and four-year-olds take it. So, all we started with just our four the first year we did it, and the teachers actually found a lot of valuable data from it. So,
030the two assessments, it measures early literacy and early numeracy, and you can see all the categories that it breaks down into. Um this is just a kind of breakdown of how they did. The alliteration is not assessed until end of year, so that is why that is blacked out. The green is a student's on level or above. The orange is a student's um like partially meeting, and then the red is below grade level. Um as you can see, this is so that we give this only two times a year. So, that's given kind of like October It's like very large window. So, it's like October to um to November December, and then the next one starts up right after February vacation, and it goes till like the end of April. So, they test each child
031one-on-one, um and they do all these subtests. So, um some of the strengths that we found is our students um have can say rhymes like cat and bat, but they have a hard time necessarily They have a hard time recognizing them. So, we've got the strength of the rhyming. Now, we've got to figure out how to get to it where they're when we're reading it and recognizing it on our own. Um this is something I wanted to share with you guys. So, which one doesn't belong is a strength in the aspect that our students can think outside the box. So, the first example is you can't see it, but do you want to hold it up a little bit? Want to go up there and show them? Yeah. So, you'll see three pictures. The top
032one, there's a bird, a tree, and a goat or a lamb. Um so, anybody have a guess as which two go together? Which one doesn't belong actually should be my question. The branch. >> The tree. The what? >> The goat. >> [laughter] >> The tree. Okay, well. The Well, actually, so the >> [laughter] >> Well, so that's our kids that can think outside the box. It's the goat because the kids will say the bird goes in the tree. So, the bird and the tree go together. Do I have to pick one? But the answer wants the bird and the and the lamb or whatever that is. >> It's more of a sheep. >> And then in the bottom picture, Harper, what's Can you show me that one real quick? Oh, yeah. So, there's the winter
033scene. >> [laughter] >> Um there's a winter coat, and then a beach. So, which one would you think wouldn't belong? Wait, what was the first one? The It's a winter It's like snow winter. >> argue with myself, though. So, the book wants [laughter] the The book wants um >> [snorts] >> actually the beach one that doesn't belong, but our kids are thinking that it's the two landscapes or the two landscapes together. So, those are kind of tricky, but um but overall, they're doing well with them, and we love the fact that they're thinking outside the box. So, that's only two of them. All right, Harper. >> [laughter] >> Um some of the things we are working on is um the one-to-one correspondence. >> [snorts] >> Um it's getting there, but we're still working on that.
034Um and then some of our next steps. So, we're coming up with rhyming. That's the next unit that they're coming up on. So, they're going to be working on a lot of that. Um working on some more higher-order thinking. So, we've got the basic levels, and we want to get more of these birds and the trees going together. Um and then um we're working on student ownership. So, even our preschoolers can take ownership in their learning. And that's one of Those are a couple of things that we're working on there. Okay. Next, we have the I-Ready reading assessment. And what you can see at the top is there are two bars. [clears throat] The bottom bar is our BOY data, so beginning of the year. And above that, you see the MOY data, middle of
035the year. That's for the whole school at the top. Underneath is a breakdown by grade. But we are looking and seeing that our students are making the trends that we want to see. We're seeing a decrease in students that are in the red and the yellow. In the red, there are two categories of There's three or more grades below. We have two grades below. In that yellow, we have the one grade below. Green has two ranges of early on grade level and mid or above grade level. So, we are seeing overall and within each grade level that our students are moving in the way that we want to see them moving. We had 11 students at the beginning of the year in three or more grades below, and that moved to only five in the
036middle of the year. Uh for two grades below, we had 76 students, and that decreased to 31. Um for the yellow one grade level below, we had 191 students, and that decreased to 137. Our early on grade level increased from 59 to 108, and our mid or above level increased from 34 to 90. So, we're really, you know, celebrating those trends that we're seeing. Um and for teachers, we're able to also see breakdown by domains that the assessment looks at as well, so we can really see the areas to target. We should also note that our grade level only grade three can be three grades or below. So, um so that is that's why that number is a lot smaller, too. Um initially, because we can only have, you know, 100-ish kids depending on the
037grade size. Um but so, it still went down a ton. Um our next screen is a breakdown of our special education students and our EL population. And [snorts] the same thing we're seeing in both of those groups is that students from beginning of the year to middle of the year are trending with a decrease in students in the red and the yellow and a growth either from get red to yellow or yellow to green. So, we're seeing that in both populations. Um we have more work to do, but it's been really nice growth that we're seeing to celebrate. So, this is the um BOY, beginning of the year, MOY, middle of the year for I-Ready [snorts] math. Um as Carrie said, the bottom row or bar is your BOY, the top one is your MOY.
038You can see um just by looking at it that we have taken over a lot more green of um mid to above level or early to on grade level. Um we're seeing a lot less of percentage in the red, which is your two grade levels below or your three or more grade levels below. Um I will highlight just a couple of the percentages for you. I'm going to go from the um K I'll go like specifically [snorts] grade level K to three. Um we'll start with the green dash bar line. Um at the beginning of the year, it was 1%. It jumped up to 40% growth. [snorts] So, it's good. Um and then for the for first grade, you have 0% in the on or mid to above level at 0%. It jumped up to
03920. [clears throat] For second grade, you have 3%, and then jumps up to 15. And then third grade, 2% jumps to 11. Um I won't really focus, as to Christina said, on the red areas because for our grades it's a little more tricky coming from three or below grade levels. So, I'll look into the um yellow column for you. Um, in kindergarten it started at 84% in the um yellow and then jump or went Yeah, went down. >> Yeah, that's right. Went went down um and to 33% for first grade it was at 87% went down to 68%. Um, in second grade we have 61% jumping down to 53% and then in third grade we have 61% jumping to 53% as well. So, still making good growth. Keyword there, growth. Um And the important thing
040too is remember kindergarten start a blank slate when they come in to us. So, they have a lot of unlearned or unknown skills yet and this is so they're really getting into the numbers and the letters and all of that and the teachers are working. So, that's why we see that big huge growth at the beginning of the year because they're coming in with nothing and they've learned so much in just a few months already. Um, this next slide is your ELO population and your special education population. Um, again I'll probably I'm just going to stay in the green slash area and then I'm going to actually go to the red slash area as well. Um, for BOI you have 6% for the ELOs um jumping to 0%. So, they are completely out of that
041scary red zone for us teachers. Scary. Um, and for your green dash we had 0% at the beginning of the year now we're at 6%. So, they're just switching mics for a second. Um, for your special education population you started at 9% in the red for beginning of the year jumping down to 2% which is great growth. Um, and then in your green slash area you have 2% where they started in the BOI jumping to 16%. Keyword growth. Fantastic growth. So, [snorts] um in K to 3 we also give Dibbles. Um, so Dibbles is a assessment for reading as well but this is checks on fluency and how quickly they can read and identify letters or read sounds or blend nonsense words. Um, so as you can see the growth I'm not going to read
042you all the numbers but you can see um we do the our above level is one of our areas that they're kind of staying the same or similar. So, we definitely started a couple things in and I'm going to go over the next slide. Um, grade two and three are trying something in WIN. Um, our librarian Jessica Barbedo has been doing a literature like a book group for our students that are above um grade level and she takes them and they're doing they each read something different. Um, grade two is reading Dolphins at Daybreak and grade three is reading Mr. Popper's Penguins. And then they're also doing research projects on it. So, second grade's doing a research project about um dolphins and then the um third grade is doing a research project around penguins and
043around that book. So, they're kind of tying in some fiction and non-fiction, they're doing some reading on their own and then coming back and discussing the book. So, they're trying a little bit different to hopefully help boost some of those numbers but overall um they are also trending towards the way we want them to be. As far as um looking at strengths going forward um in regard to growth, it we like to in general have be 50% or above growth from beginning of year to middle of year and um we are in the 70s in both reading and math in both areas which is really good. See that. Um, in regard to student ownership and independence that's something we're always encouraging and hoping to improve um as they take more ownership and independence in their
044work as they get older and um they're a work in progress like we all are but um they're getting there. That's a good thing. And um as many of you know we received a DESI grant for online tutoring and currently we have 54 students participating in the program um and the students appear very engaged. They look forward to their sessions every day. They're making connections with their tutors so it seems very successful at the same time. Um, as far as areas for growth we are currently analyzing our writing prompts. There are areas that need to be worked on at all grade levels so that is something we're taking a closer look at. Um, students are able to learn an individual individual activity when they have one but as far as generalizing a skill from one
045activity to another or different tasks is something that they're still working on. Um, and we are also working with um teachers our regular regular teachers, our L teachers and our special ed teachers continuing to work together to support students in all settings. >> [applause] >> Um, for our next steps in both ELA and math um again we're talking about that engagement and ownership of learning. We've been really working um on increasing that with our elementary kids. Uh, we are doing training with Dr. Sherette to really work on individual student writing feedback and goal setting with students. We are also working on using MOY data to pinpoint the individual small group and whole class instruction that we are doing. Uh, we have had some professional development with LAN and we've been working on creating those higher
046order thinking questions that are going to raise the student learning ceiling so that we are making sure everybody's getting to their full potential. Um, I'm picking up that bullet point four. Um, we are integrating more spiral review um into math instruction to ensure that students are still using that those concepts that they've learned at the beginning of the year all all throughout the year even at the end of the year so they're not just doing it once and then kind of clicking out forgetting it. Um, which I'll give one example just for at the K level that's us at um WIN time. I'll incorporate those older skills that we've learned into our um centers during WIN so that they're still incorporating those in into just academic learning. Um, and and then the last bullet point
047is number five we're connecting classroom skills to real life connections. Um, that's like observing plants and then keeping a daily journal of what they look like for like a real scientist or creating a how to book for something that you already know how to do and then sharing it with a classmate that might not know how to do that thing. Writing. All right, so the last is our writing assessment. We only have MOY up there because our we switched our writing. So, we have done narrative for many many years and we actually the MOY we did response to text so even our kindergarteners were able to do a response to text writing and you'll see that in there. Each grade we kind of did a different almost like animals. [clears throat] So, you they did
048a chickadees, you guys did penguins, second grade did sea turtles and third grade did beavers, right? So, um so they did different animals and facts about them. So, then they had a prompt to respond [cough] to that animal or that they had read about. So, this is kind of a little picture of our work that we've done and then I'm going to let the girls now talk cuz you've heard enough of the adults. We're going to let the girls talk and they're going to tell you a little bit about their learning to write and writing more in third grade. Josie, you want to go first? This year for the writing prompt we learned how to write using a certain order. First we start off with the TTQA which means turn the question around. After that
049we have three details from the story we read. Next we do our conclusion which is the end of ending of our writing. Also, this year we learned how to answer the questions step by step. So, like first review the questions then read. But while you're reading the story you would highlight the answers as you find them in the story. When you get to the questions you can go back to the stuff that you highlighted and it makes it easier to find the answer to your question. Last but not least we have our transition words. Our teacher [snorts] does not want us using to use boring transition words because the she wants the reader to get interested and want to read more of it. That's all I've done so far on how to write for a
050writing prompt. All right, and Harper. >> [snorts] >> What I learned is we should read the story more than two times before answering the question. Um We write the story first and then what I use is I write the story first and then I use SWAG to check my story again. Can you can you both tell them what SWAG means? Starts with an S. Starts with a capital letter. Yeah. The W stands for write neatly. The A stands for a space between words and the G get um stands for give punctuation. This year we learned how to make a T-chart if we have good notes it will make writing a lot easier. >> How did you learn to make a T-chart? So, for MCAS could you make a T-chart on the scrap paper? What do
051you do? So, we fold it paper and then we fold it into like a taco kind of >> put a line up top and then put it on line paper. And then we and put a line right down the middle. We write the two subjects on top and then we just write the That sounds right. Yeah. They're ready. >> [laughter] >> All right, you got a couple more. We also learned how to highlight in the story [snorts] to help us find important words. And then instead of using happy stuff like that you can say like ecstatic. >> [laughter] >> All right, so our last slide I was going to enclose it briefly. >> [clears throat and laughter] >> Our next steps for writing include um using age appropriate checklists and exemplars to support student writing.
052Working on increasing student stamina for writing in all subject areas, giving up as many opportunities for practice as possible, and lastly working with our reading consultant to identify ways to incorporating writing across all subject areas including specials. >> [clears throat] >> And that's it. Any questions? >> [laughter] >> Can I get that? What is it? SWAG? Yes. SWAG. >> [laughter] >> We called that in third grade. So, S stands for starts with capital letter. Okay. The W stands for write neatly. >> [laughter] >> Okay. people up here who could use that. Taking notes. A stands for a space between words. Space. Okay. And G stands for give punctuation. Thank you. I'm going to I'm going to put this on my fridge. >> [laughter] >> Everyone can learn from it. Everyone can have some swag. >>
053Yes. SWAG. Use your SWAG. I love it. Probably Aaron is ecstatic about it. >> [laughter] >> I learned something new. Not just happy. >> [laughter] >> Does anyone have any other questions for our Millville team? Well, we came in this meeting without SWAG, but we are leaving with [laughter] it. Great. I have a question. Go ahead. Third grade did beavers? Yes. Is there a >> [laughter] >> Is there an opportunity this spring with the very first writing that I hope I have the chance to see American beavers someday. I just want to say that you could probably make that dream come true. >> [laughter] >> Put it out there in the universe. I read it. It's in the book. Yeah. Whoever wrote that one. Right in the back of the school. I think I think
054they both I think I stole one of their samples. The first nice spring day walking in nature you can see the [snorts] beavers. >> There's a nature trail out there. Yeah. He said when I You heard it here first. >> [laughter] >> Can make dreams come true at Millville Elementary. I just want to say I'm glad to see that I know i-Ready's new for for this level, and it seems like there's been a lot of progress made. It seems like at the beginning of the year a lot of that might have been due to the newness of it. I know specifically in the kindergarten, I know there was some concern at the beginning of the year. It looks like they've overcome that, so looks like you guys are on a And we actually tested kindergarten
055beginning of the year. We did a lot of small groups or like one-on-one when they were navigating it. Now, they did it all together, and they were able to do it as a whole group, and like they really did a nice job. We put extra adults in there, but they were able to do it as a whole group, which was awesome. >> [snorts] >> Anything else? Thank you very much. Thank you. GREAT JOB. >> [applause] >> ALL RIGHT. WE'RE GOING TO WELCOME THE MIDDLE SCHOOL TO come on up. And I'm going to begin. I They have some work samples as well, so we'll pass that around for you to take a peek. Might not be as exciting as beavers, but >> [laughter] >> Before you get started, introductions would be great. I'm Megan Murray, fourth
056grade special education teacher. Um I'm Halo, and I'm fifth grade. I'm Adrian Flordia, I'm in sixth grade. Dawn Heiko, fourth grade teacher. Jenny Ramputh, principal. Okay. We'll be nice and Sure. >> [laughter] >> Um so, we're presenting to you our BOY and MOY data. Our focus area is same as Millville, reading, writing, and math. We use our data source is i-Ready in writing. We did do respond to text beginning of the year and middle of the year based on our MCAS data from last year that we realized that respond to text is where we need to work on. Um there's three Well, we have many takeaways, but three major takeaways is strong growth across grade level, intervention students make significant progress, and continue to focus on need on skills gap and rigor for high you
057know, higher level student that we realized. So, when we analyze the i-Ready data, we didn't just look at grade level, we look at by teachers, and we also Well, for sixth and seventh grade, we look at by period. >> [snorts] >> So, we noticed certain period might be struggling, and that's where we wanted to make sure that we kind of look into why what one of the one one of the groups is high level group is not growing as much as the other group. So, one of the things that we asked i-Ready representatives when they came to PD day is help us. How do we make sure the rigor is there based you know, using i-Ready resource, >> [laughter] >> and it was very helpful at the PD day. Um Megan and Dawn will move
058on to talk about the data. Um so, overall just like Jenny said, there was growth, you know, from grade four all the way through grade seven. Most of the biggest movement happened with the students that were in the below grade level sections at the BOY. They made the greatest jumps um at the MOY. Most of the intervention grade five intervention students, 41% of them are now on grade level. 66% of the sixth grade is on grade level, and 40% of the seventh grade out of that below grade level. Um The ELL students, that population again made great growth grades four, five, six. If you look at grade four, 60% of them made over a year's worth of growth between BOY and MOY. Um so, some [clears throat] things that we had here, intervention students, they
059were the ones that were really meeting their goal, and some of them even exceeding their goal for the year by the mid-year point. So, you What can we say about that? The intervention is consistent and it you know, across grade levels. So, it's working. Um the other populations, the ELL students along with special education students, that instruction is strong because they are making that growth. So again, how are we going to challenge the higher students? That seems to be where we're sitting at this point. Um this one. So, now jumping into the math, um similar to reading, we noticed growth um across all grade levels increasing from in grades four to seven. Um there was a strong performance in the numbers and operations and algebraic thinking categories. So, something we noticed that we need to
060focus on is geometry, which remains an area that we need to target. It comes at the end of HMH, I'm pretty sure from grades K to 12 probably. Um it's one of the end modules, so we tend to hit it at the end of the school year in June. So, that's something we're focusing on now. Um all of our students maintained or improved placement, most of them. There was key domains like foundational skills that a lot of students improved upon, and that was across all the different subgroups. >> [clears throat] >> Um A lot of the students moved from early to mid or above grade level, which was great. Um again, intervention was a success. 12 out of the 21 students closed the gap to less than one grade level below, and 90.5% met mid-year
061growth goals, and 86.7% advanced to at least one grade level at least one grade level. Um this is kind of the enrichment part for math, which is just for our grade six. This is looking at. This is kind of going to increase that rigor. 14 out of the 16 students now are at or above grade level. All right. So, writing. >> [cough] >> So, things that we've worked on this year, so strength in genre awareness. So, like we said, we looked at the MCAS from last year, and we noticed that that writing always comes with response to text. So, read a passage and respond to it, and that seems to be where students were falling short. So, we put a lot of focus into that. So, our BOY BOY writing was a response to text.
062MOY writing was response to text. And I can tell you as a fourth grade teacher, we have done a number of response to text >> [laughter] >> since the BOY. Some things something different that we did this year again across grade levels were we met as teams first, and instead of me correcting just my own classroom, we took all of the fourth grade writing, put them all in a pool, and divvied them out between the six of us. And we calibrated like picked a low, picked a high. Okay, we agree that this is a low, this is a high, this is what it needs to look like using the rubric, and we did that, and then took that model across the grade levels. Um so, five, six, and seven, they [snorts] all did the same
063sort of grading BOY and MOY. That way things are more consistent. >> If I can jump in, sixth and seventh grade not used to doing that. So, what we did was we had I had Dawn and I came to walk to kind of lead that work with 6 and 7. We all sat together and we calibrated first, we pick out four or five writings, we all score the same writing and then we have a conversation. Why did you score three? Why did you score two? So, a lot of go back and forth. So, we calibrate. And once we're done with that, that took like a period. And so, we had to meet again and put all the reading together writing together and we score them based on our rubric. So, that was very We did
064it twice. We We plan on doing that at the end of the year as well. So, just again some things that they need to areas of growth critical thinking. That came up across the board in all grade levels. So, explaining. You know, they They've gotten to the point where they're very good at Yes, they can cite the text in paragraph such and such it says this. Well, what does that actually mean? Mhm. And so, getting kids to think that way. And just being consistent with the grammar and the general mechanics. All right. All right. We now turn over to our student leaders. You're going to share about your writing. Hello, [snorts] everyone. We are Halo Kelly and Adrian Flaherty and we are both part of the student instructional leadership team at Harnett Middle School. And
065we are here to share how different approaches help us succeed in school. This year our school's main focus is to improve our writing skills by writing across all content. School-wide we use the RACE strategy stands for restate the question, answer the question, cite text evidence, explain your thinking, and restate and conclude. Which is a writing strategy we use to strengthen writing paragraphs. This strategy makes sure we have at least five sentences in each paragraph and we explain our thinking. An example of how students in our school have improved in writing is by getting inspiration by other students. The kids who like writing and are practicing daily create their own stories. They share their stories with their peers and most times they get inspired and write their own stories. Then those students share their story with
066others and it starts a chain reaction throughout the classroom. Our teachers like seeing us write creatively in our free time and they inspire us to write different various kinds of genres. One way I've improved my writing this year is when my teacher does a text evidence BTC. We find text evidence as a group and justify why we picked it. Then we are able to focus on the explanation independently without the pressure of finding the appropriate evidence. We also use a rainbow checklist in ELA that helps us make sure that our writing is strong. It has helped me make sure that I have all the correct punctuation, indentations, capitalization, and much more. BTC or building thinking classrooms is an opportunity for students to work together as a team and solve different problems between all content areas
067on a whiteboard. In math a strong point of BTC is that students can talk out problems instead of being stuck at their desks without any help. This helps others socialize with people who they wouldn't normally interact with and it is a great way to help kids get to know each other better. Our first interaction with BTC was with math. We We work with our groups and then take meaningful notes which help us make sense of the math on our own. Sometimes the notes are guided by the teacher to help us. I love that we use BTC to help kids that struggle with working with problems independently. We use BTC as an opportunity for kids to socialize with each other and get everyone talking. This strategy helps everyone with multiple valuable work skills to get ready
068for the real world. Thank you for having us tonight. So, our next step all content area focus on reading. We want to target student [clears throat and cough] one, two, three grade below. Increase small group skill-based instruction and push rigor on the above grade above grade level students. Writing focusing on critical thinking, elaboration, strengthen organization and editing routines and math will target gaps through small groups, increase focus on geometry and use data to adjust our instruction regularly. As you can see the two pictures we have up there is a picture of two 7th graders using building thinking classroom. So, we started last year toward the end of the year and we're in full implementation this year in our school and we also adopted the writing rope. Our writing rubric is based on these five ropes.
069It's critical thinking, syntax, text structure, writing craft, and transcription. Any questions? You'll notice in your packets too there's some additional pages because there's a store data story for each grade. So, it's just additional information that they they summarized for you. I will I do want to mention that during our the ILT our leadership presentation, the students actually had us get up and as a leadership team and do a question for the building thinking classroom. So, it was really nice to to work on that. So, if anyone ever wants to come in you want to see that in action, we can definitely set up some time for that. So. Any questions for our middle school team? I think I'll ask a question. For the next steps under reading, what are you doing to push the rigor
070for the on and above grade students? Do you have a With the So, on the I ready you know, I had I mentioned earlier that during PD day we asked that question. How do we push that? So, actually on the I ready they have called a my path. So, each student have their own my path. Okay. So, you can adjust that. You want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so we had that question for the I ready consultant that came in. And so, the students that score high, let's say a fourth grade student falls at the beginning of the year in a sixth grade. Mhm. Right. So, in order to keep that student getting those skills that are going to take them higher and higher the my path that each student has is
071set for them. Mhm. So, using that on a more consistent basis is which something we need to do is going to get them to that next next step. It exposes them to the higher skills. But and but they access that how? Online. It's a It's part of I ready. >> our RTI student will spend time working on their my path and teacher will do like mini lesson focusing on skills. So, our RTI we group student by their level and their skills. So, student will focus on that that area. So, it's part of I ready. It is. It's kind of happening They they don't even have to be identified say outside of I ready, but I ready is identifying them as >> is identifying on and above. Correct. Kind of moving the Okay. >> the lessons
072that we use during our RTI groups we're pulling that's all right in the I ready program. Okay. So, it's not only they have their my path individually, we also they also have resources based on the score. It's just I'm I'm happy to hear this cuz for years Yeah. it's been talked about. It's like what are we doing? And this kind of feels like it's it was something built in that we didn't even know It's like a bonus. Maybe. I think one more thing though, you know, we've been working with our coach Mickey from uh I always get it wrong. TNTP. TNTP. >> [laughter] >> You know, we always say, you know, we're so worried about kids and we're so worried about that they can't do. But so, we kind of water down or level down
073the curriculum. We should be using the same curriculum and scaffold down for them. Scaffold. >> is what we're really really pushing teachers doing. We also learned that you really shouldn't be teaching grammar in isolation. They has to be authentic to our students. So, one of the things that we want to do is using student own writing. And you know, kind of work on Okay, let's look at this piece of writing. You know, what do you notice on some of the mistakes and have a discussion with with students. So, we want really want to push for that. I wanted to mention too you mentioned this. So, we talk about RTI. We're supposed to be response intervention. It's not just intervention, it's also acceleration. Mhm. So, it's kind of not named correctly almost. Yeah. >> So, we
074have acceleration math group and we also have like the reading that based on their reading level and making sure that they we're pushing them to the next level. >> you using their I ready scores to identify them for those groups? Mhm. Yeah. I Our kids take I ready very seriously as they take MCAS very seriously. So, their score valid and and meaningful to us. Any other questions for our middle school team? Thank you Thank you very much. You did A GOOD JOB. >> [applause] >> AND IF OUR HIGH SCHOOL TEAM COULD COME ON UP. >> [laughter] [laughter] >> AND HERE'S our high school binder. I'm Joel Polizzi's talking. >> [laughter] >> I'm pinch hitting tonight and if I don't do well, she told me I'm going back to the minors tomorrow, so be easy on
075me. I'm Lynn Scott, I teach 8th grade math. Tracy Ducharme, high school PE wellness. Okay, so I'm here to kind of give you an overview of where we were and where we are with reading. So, we can break it down by 8th grade, 9th and 10th. [clears throat] So, 8th grade, um some positives, we saw an increase in the green levels from about 24% to 32% and that's in the two green, which is either above grade level or at grade level. Um and then we saw a decrease in the red levels from a 41% to about 32%. So, there is some good progress there. Um there is still a significant number of students in the red, so we're still looking to do continued interventions. Um moving up to grade nine, um they were the star
076of the three as far as showing the most improvement. Um >> [snorts] >> students in green, um increased from about 28% to 44, which is a nice range and then in red they dropped from 38 to 24, so um there is the targeted instructions are, you know, having a positive impact and that was the grade level that kind of did the best. Um and then finally grade 10, um >> [snorts] >> moderate growth, okay, small increases in the green, um a slight reduction in the red um from 47 to 41%. However, this grade level um has the highest percentage of students in the red right now, so there is um definitely an area of ongoing priority there. So, that's kind of we are where we are as an overview with ELA. Um with math, it's
077very similar. We saw increases in the green in all three grade levels and decreases in the red in all three grade levels. Um I do want to mention building off the middle school, the whole math department also read building thinking classrooms over the summer. So, we are also using that uh especially in math other and we're bringing it the last PD day the whole um high school staff was trained on it as well. So, we are using that a lot more and I'm definitely seeing some difference using that. And and I think other subjects are using it as well. >> are using it also, but um I'm speaking for math, so >> [clears throat] [laughter] >> but other subjects are as well, but definitely in math. Um I know it and you know, and the
078kids just said it's a great way if those quiet learners want to try to stay in the shadows, they can't this way. Um and it also gives me a great overview in the second who's got what, who needs help, what do they need help with and I can just take a look around the room and get that data and that feedback right away. So, I find that very helpful. So, I think that is aiding in that as well as the my path um from I-Ready because it is individualized and they can get that practice that they need based on that. And our reading percentages, I think you'll see throughout our whole process here that our ninth grade really is the grade that really made some great improvements. Data is broken down into five competencies. The
079highlighted yellow numbers represent growth from BOY data. Uh we're pretty pleased with the ninth grade in particular. It showed real growth in the reduction of students below grade level. Comprehension data shows two-thirds of our students at above at or above grade level. Um from the beginning of the year, students were 54% including a yellow one grade level below, so they're going showing some good improvements. We know our ELLs population continues to need support. Um now that we have a full-time ELL teacher who's doing a great job, we're going to be able to push uh her into some classrooms to support students. We anticipate seeing some improvement, some growth in comprehension for those students. And in math, you can see um all the yellow areas are improvement. So, all the areas in 8th grade, all in
0809th grade and two out of the four in 10th grade, but even the two that aren't, they're both at 81%, so it's still um pretty high. And every category is above is almost at at least two-thirds, so I definitely some good growth there as well. And again, the L population is the one that um does need the most improvement there, but overall, we're happy with the growth that we saw. And our areas of strength, areas of opportunity, I think some of our strengths overall growth of 59% reading, improvements in all categories in reading domains, improved in most categories in math domains. Opportunities obviously uh overall growth score of 33 in math. Again, our ELL students uh need more support in math. We're looking for additional inter uh interventions during extended time. Um but we're pleased
081to see students moving in the right direction, but as always we want to see more growth. Um geometry [clears throat] is an area of concern. I think you'll see throughout this process. Both math and ELA departments have examined data and are working to make adjustments. Uh with the I-Ready training that happened during our last PD day as as was mentioned, we have uh many different uh subject matters in departments using it to help support students who are grow below grade level. Anyone below grade eight level has access to my pathway as you guys have heard a few times now. Um so, it's also kids below level, but as Aaron mentioned, it's also used very well for kids that are above level. So, we can get them to reach to their potential [snorts] also. Uh we're
082using data to identify which students are enrolled in a quarter long math intervention program also. Uh we just worked on that again this afternoon. Um some of our next steps, uh we we want to start looking beyond math and ELA being responsible for the data and bringing it into all subjects. Um PLC time is being used to discuss student work and what the instructional moves will be based on student outcomes. Uh our faculty meeting PD has been focused on high quality questions and tasks and we've conducted learning walks all aimed at improving student engagement and ownership of their learning. So, within the last three weeks or so, um every teacher has done a learning walk in different subject areas. Every department member will team up with another department member and go see someone else uh
083teaching in in class. So, they're not just not just Lynn and another math teacher going to see math, they're going to other departments to see what's going on. And that's happening throughout all the departments. Yeah, which has been very helpful as well. Um and as MCAS approaches, I know for math especially, we're going to be doing a lot of that spiral review uh especially geometry uh >> [laughter] >> which we you've heard is has been a weak point for the throughout the district, so um in 8th grade it's taught right at the beginning of the year, so I definitely want to spiral review that before the test comes up so that we we get that practice again um before it comes onto the test, so that'll start um next week actually and um that's my
084next steps, I think. So, just looking at the writing assessments, um all classes grade eight, nine and 10 have shown growth in their writing as well. Um and attributed to graphic organizers using sentence stems um and just kind of overall supporting the kids. Right now as we are in the middle of the second semester, students kind of have their writing scaffolds removed, so they're kind of going more individual and trying to gain [snorts] more independency. Um So, hopefully they can use their own strategies and produce the, you know, good quality of work, so what's worked, like you said, the graphic organizers, annotating I know is big especially with the English departments. Um feedback, we kind of brought that up in PLC just, you know, the more we can give them um where we're seeing opportunities
085for growth is just kind of looking at the analysis piece, you know, getting students to dig in deeper um with the text. And then obviously, the more independence and that's going to be happening with the scaffolds being scaled back. And with the feedback, we've seen a lot more personal feedback, one-to-one teacher to student instead of just writing try this and try that. Kid doesn't feel it's that good, so yeah, okay. Right? But if you have the conversation like this is what I'm talking about, take a look at this, take a look at that, we've seen some improvement going on with that. And and that's trying to be and that's happening in all the departments, really trying to to get more one-on-one feedback, so the students I think using extended time too for that for that.
086>> you can you can pull a kid up to your desk and you can you can have a conversation, hey, when you did this, I want you to try this. And they they get it right away instead of reading it and having to try to make their own decision as far as what we're talking about. But that's really helpful. Um these are just three sample prompts that the students are given um based on different texts, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. Um so, the prompts are there and the focus of the ELA department um is really pushing literary analysis and basically two to three times a quarter, they're they're kind of using um >> [snorts] >> these different prompts to improve their writing skills and then the department
087will use their PLC time to kind of review um rubrics and kind of collect um calibrate their grading and things like that. So, their goal is to get a three or higher for each kid. And next steps in writing, consistent practice, warm-ups, class discussions, examining language structures. Um as mentioned previously, expanding the responsibility of ensuring strong writing responses does not solely fall on English. Um we want to have writing taking place across the curriculum. We are using writing opportunities in social studies, science to examine informational text and share feedback with students as well. And that concludes that. I just wanted to mention two things that you brought up. One of them was um the feedback. So, when we were collecting the information, I had Hillary Robar she had sent me the some of the samples
088that you're seeing now. She's our English department head. And one of the things we talked about, which I'm glad you brought it up for feedback, is teacher are giving feedback. Remember um Jenny mentioned that they were calibrating to be able to score on the rubric. We also want to work on calibrating on the kind of feedback, right? We're giving, so it's consistent and it's focused on those areas. That was the one thing. And the other thing was geometry. So, in the I and this isn't the first year we've heard this, but after our last ILT meeting, we talked about having kind of a discussion and bringing those math teachers across grade levels together um with our lead coach to talk about when are we doing it, how are we doing it because it's a theme
089across the district, geometry as a whole. So, that's something that's going to be our next steps as well as an entire district. Um but I think everyone saw it. Middle schools saw it. >> Everybody mentioned Yeah, everyone mentioned it. One of you might have mentioned geometry. Right. So, that's something that we need to focus on, I think, not just as individual buildings, but as an entire district. Other questions for the high school? I don't have a question, but I'll I feel bad that I talked to everybody else. >> [laughter] >> It's okay though. It's okay. I know the whole office is like 12 minutes. I just want to point out I took longer than Jen. the the binder, the writing samples that were shared with us. Something that had was like very vivid to me
090was the two binders that came from elementary and middle school. They're all handwritten. And we kind of transition in high school to And I just I don't know if there's any opportunity for it, but [snorts] watching my kids now in their career, I think not losing the pen to paper is important. I don't know. Yeah, I I it's so hard I think a lot of I think I think they do that at first, but their final draft of most things >> Is it paper? No, it's on the computer. It's on the way. So, all their all their beginning stuff when they then they have the teacher look at it and they get reviews and they have to go back and fix things and do things. It's all on paper. But like, you know, I mean
091kids in college They hand it in. Everything is on the computer. There's no handwritten anything anymore. But you need to write it out. Our kids are doing the handwritten thing, but their final presentation Is on the Well, their final product isn't is is is typing on a on a Chromebook and she cuz it they can share it and you can correct it and highlight and get it back to them. Yeah. It it kind of It makes the process really easy for the teacher and student to deliver work and get feedback right away and stuff. >> Sure, you can read it. Yeah. [laughter] Yes. >> true. Yes. But you can read it. You Hillary [clears throat] mentioned at our district She did. I was going to say data team meeting data meeting that she is a
092big component of pen and paper. She So, she is definitely using not just she, the whole department is using that as well. And they're even like they have posters around the room and there's sticky note writing posting on that. So, I'm happy to hear that. There is a lot of writing pen and paper still happening at the high school level, but like These kids know that's what they know. It's their final product. When I went to college, I got a typewriter to go to college. It was awesome, right? Right. My own typewriter. Yeah. Now they get >> [snorts] >> Now it's but they're probably when they're in college, it's probably not even typing. It's probably voice Yeah, probably. So, I'm just saying as long as But I'm happy to hear they're doing all their other
093drafts on paper. I will say that I think I I know my daughter and some other kids they they get the iPad and they're actually rewriting their notes on the iPad. So, they're writing, right? And and then they can turn that into a a voice on the way home from the car they can listen to they can listen to what they wrote. So, it's I mean there is some there is still writing, but I think that I think I think we're in the realm of going to the fact where everything at high school level and college level for sure is going to be turned in just as a Google or here's a thing I'm sharing it with you and it's just right? It's just easy for everyone. But Lynn, I'm glad you brought that up.
094I was going to mention that. >> lose the paper. You lost my paper. No, I didn't lose your paper. She did talk about that at the leadership meeting that. And she's also saying that when they're writing, she's saying I think deeper thought like rather than just the typing. So, yes, that's >> Well, just for example today we had MCAS again. So, we had yeah we had eighth grade today and 10th grade makeups. I had about eight kids finishing up towards the end of third period [snorts] and the kids were actually we give them a piece of paper and they were actually writing out their essay before they do it on a computer. So, they are doing some writing. They're getting all their thoughts down, organizing it, getting it right before they put it on a
095computer, which was really good to see. Anything else for our high school team? Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> [snorts] [laughter] >> I'm each other. Um so, that was the end of our middle of the year and I know if we could go back before Elizabeth came in. Um Elizabeth, if you wanted to come on up and finish your spring update. So, just to know let you know where we we left off. Um [laughter] Each of the teams got a chance to speak. So, um For fall and winter. Fall and winter, right? So, >> the So, you can go on to the CMAC stars all of that. Okay. Um Hi. I guess I'll start by saying I just came from one of the most exciting high school baseball games that I've
096seen. Um so, it was a very back and forth game throughout. Um the last inning where the home team obviously, so we had the final chance to bat. We were down 5 to 3. First two batters came up. They they squared the ball pretty well, but they got out. Um so, there were two outs, no one on and you would think a team would get defeated, right? Especially early on. Um and they battled back. So, the next three batters got on. Bases were loaded, two outs. Ben Fletcher came up. Um and he hit like I call it a pooter, but a little like blooper over second base and somehow three runs scored. Um so, they walked it off and they won 6 to 5 >> Oh, wow. for their home opener. So, that was I
097mean it was wild. And for some reason something told me to record [applause] it and I got it on camera, which was even more exciting. Um but yeah, so Okay, who they playing? They played Keith Tech, who My understanding is they've always battled them. Yeah, we've always battled them. We've always bumped a little heads, right? Yeah. But it was great. Um so, very very exciting. Um other than that, to go backwards a little bit to finish with winter. I know my coaches came and um some fall coaches as well. There's a lot to celebrate um with those two three teams actually that came today. Um But we had a lot of athletes from our winter that made CMAC all-stars. Um and I think that their work it was a privilege to watch. I got to
098watch them at practice. I got to watch them at games. Um and they put in so much work to work on their crafts individually, as a team. Um and they just became better people on and off the court, on and off the mats. So, it was it was really special to see. Um So, for girls basketball, they competed in the CMAC D division and it was Natalia Morais, Marin Berry, and Adriana Gerard. They earned all-stars. Um boys basketball also in the CMAC D. Lia Jackson Dunton, Carson Kenoyer, and Cody Fletcher. Um they they did fantastic. And then for cheerleading, too, we had two um which I think their work gets a little unnoticed. It's not as out um in games and things like that, but they worked so hard. Um they got better every day
099on the mats. They came to every basketball game. They were the basketball team's biggest fans. Um and that's Ella Barbado and Sophie Sophie Lafraney. So, they earned um CMAC all-stars for cheer. Any questions on the CMAC all-stars? And their certificates are coming, so they'll get those um and they deserve to be celebrated. We could invite them We could invite them. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Invite them to our next meeting. Well, maybe when you have their certificates >> hand their certif We definitely could do that. Um I'll talk to the coaches cuz I I know they want to be a part of it, too. Um and then for spring. So, bird's eye view, we had 161 student athletes that are participating this year for spring sports. Um starting with middle school track, we have 38 students on
100the team. >> [snorts] >> Um and that's from grades 5 to 8. Um which I'm excited about the fifth graders. I think it's important for them to learn this this like field event skills and how to run and how to hurdle cuz I think we're going to see as the program progresses, it's going to really help when they get to high school. Um They'll compete in five CMAC league meets, one away and four home just because there's not a lot of middle school teams that have track, so they'll get a lot of opportunities at home. They'll compete in a middle school championship and then for any athlete who qualifies, they'll get to go to the middle school states um for the MIA. >> [snorts] >> For middle school JV baseball, um there's 15 student athletes
101on the team and that's from grades 6 to 8. They're going to play in nine middle school games and five junior varsity games for this year. Um and nine of them are home and five are away. So, you'll notice the ratio of home and away. I've really put a big emphasis on it and I'll continue to um as I move forward cuz this schedule I didn't necessarily create all of my own. Um I want to make sure it's split. Kids should be playing home just as much as they're traveling. Um so, you'll notice that it's it's starting to get more balanced. For middle school softball, they have 14 student athletes from grades 6 to 8 and they have seven home and seven away games. Um so, again, middle school baseball middle school softball, they all
102have 14 games for their schedule this year. Um softball, they're a little bit younger and less experienced, so they're going to have 10 middle school games this year and two JV. Um Moving on to varsity track, we have 52 student athletes competing this year from grades 8 to 12. They will have five CMAC B league meets, so they're in the CMAC B for their pod. Um and they'll have three away and two home meets. So, how it kind of lined out is their first three are going to be away and then their last two will be home. Um they'll have a CMAC B championship. Students who qualify based on their their times will have an opportunity to compete at the meet of champions for the CMAC. So, a lot of times their CMAC B, they're
103only going to see those same schools, but if they qualify, they'll have an opportunity to see all of the CMAC athletes and really compete against the best of the best, really. Um and then again, those who qualified, they'll be able to do the states meet of champions and then New England's. Um and of course, throughout that there's some invitationals that the coaches are watching and they'll make sure that the kids based on their times can have the opportunity to go out and compete in a much bigger pool of athletes across the state. Varsity baseball has 16 um kids on the team, grades 8 through 12. They have one scrimmage and then they have 18 regular season games this year, 10 home and eight away. Varsity softball has 17 student athletes from grades 8 to 12
104again. Again, they had one scrimmage and 18 regular season games, eight home and 10 away. So, I don't love it, but um we'll work on making that for next year that switch. Um then girls varsity tennis, I was a little worried and on the fence. I didn't know if we were going to have to look for a co-op or if we were going to be able to hold a team. Um a lot of upperclassmen chose not to come back, unfortunately. Um but with my coach and myself, we did some recruiting, you can call it, out in the uh school community and we got nine student athletes to come out. Um so, we have a team. It's a great group of girls and they will have 18 games, nine home and nine away. And then the
105last piece I'd like to share, so I've been working with the town um for baseball and for softball and both my So, similar to what basketball does with the little big shots, right? Um baseball and softball are going to be involved with the little league and town program this spring. So, baseball is going to work every Sunday with the town T-ball program. So, the boys, the coach, myself are going to go out and we're going to, you know, they're going to start to be a a part of that program. I think it's important. It it all starts at that level. So, they're going to get out there, give back to the game and do that. And then softball is every Friday night they're going to do town little league. Um so, they're going to go,
106I think it's 6:30 to 8:00 at Roosevelt. Um and they're going to again give back to the game, teach the youth and start to start to build it. Hopefully, we see those kids, oh I, you know, the seniors there teaching them, now they want to go to the game and just really start to build that sense of community. Um so, we are doing that this spring as well. Any questions? I just want to thank you for your social media presence because it's so nice even when you don't have a child playing on a certain sports team, but to know what's happening with all of the kids in the district. It's great. Thank you. And it's phenomenal what you're doing with the local the town leagues. >> Yes. Like that's just really started picking up in
107the last couple of years. >> Yeah. And by volunteers and and Elizabeth who's pretty much started it from scratch was asking for all the help she could get. So, with your expertise and bringing the students in there it's just preserving the future and it's all about, right? Yes. Yeah, I mean, I know for me I grew up in in Blackstone and Millville and little league was huge when I when I was growing up. We had like 15 teams and it was a big draft night and it was so exciting and it's nice to see it coming back. So, >> Yes. we're looking forward to helping build it and being a part of it. >> very, very much appreciated. >> thank you. She also rides a mean ATV around the the fields to help I know,
108that's why I look like this. I spent like 4 hours out there on the field today. I've never driven an ATV before, but I got to say it's kind of fun. >> [laughter] >> Um I'm getting there. Um but the fields, I in my opinion, they look better every day. If if you asked me 3 weeks ago if we'd be out today playing, I would have said April vacation. I think I was sharing with Jill and Kristen, I'm like, I think April vacation, really. I made a whole gym schedule preparing for them to be inside for weeks and they're outside. So, I mean, it's amazing and I think we're a little bit ahead of the game cuz I know a lot of athletic directors haven't even been able to get their kids on fields. A
109lot of them are utilizing football turf fields. So, we're ahead of it in that regard. So, it's all good things for the athletes. I would say thank you, you're ahead of everything. Um your your game switches, the weather, everything. I know, I was driving in and she's like, Kristen was like, it's raining this morning. I'm driving in. I thought it was going to be beautiful. I'm like, give it time. >> [laughter] >> Like I've become a weather a weather woman. But um you know, I'm glad we were able to get it in and I think eventually the season will get backed up naturally with with rain and stuff like that, but if we can be proactive um I think you had everyone outside even just that first week of tryouts where you were prepped for
110Yeah. weeks inside. >> Yeah. Understandably prepped for weeks inside cuz you couldn't even see the fields >> Yeah. when the snow was melting. >> warm days that allowed everything to melt. I I it's crazy. We won't question it. >> And I will say a big shout out to Elizabeth and Scott, they worked their tails off to get those fields ready because they didn't what they look like now was not what they looked like last >> I had the videos, the photos. I was [snorts] getting them what, every half an hour? Here's this is what's going on. They're Scott and Shana, I couldn't do it without them. They're they're fantastic. They're amazing at what they do and I sent I sent Scott and Shana a picture today. I'm like, our version of Fenway. Like BMR's [laughter]
111Fenway like, you know, so it's exciting. It I we take pride in it. It's it's what shows BMR. So, um yeah. Is the ATV BMR's or is it Scott's? >> No. I think it's not. It's his wife's actually. >> [laughter] >> I put it in reverse today for the first time. I was a little nervous, but it worked. Yeah. Hey, but >> [snorts] >> I think they were borrowing the band's golf cart at in one season, maybe football season. So, it is something that We've already had that conversation. Yes, [laughter] already started to have that Maybe not ATV, but something that you know, maybe a therapy alternate or is that what an ATV Is it a four-wheeler or is it a UTV. What is that called? >> Yeah, it's a UTV. Is it a utility
112vehicle? Like you have room to put stuff on it? You're not like On this one? No, this one's like a it's a legit ATV. >> [laughter] >> So, maybe a UTV Yes. or something durable like the police But not something that is pulling up the grass. It's an intimidation factor. >> [laughter] >> I mean, it would be helpful in terms of getting water jugs on a hot day to the track and ice to the baseball field, things like that. Cuz I know next year's budget is a year away, but just keep that in mind. >> [laughter] >> It might seem like something we need. It's actually already been discussed. >> [laughter] >> When I found out that it was Scott's that we were using, I'm like, so this isn't ours? So, it was a discussion
113of what do we do if we don't have that piece of equipment to be able to do these things. So, we did talk about it this week. Mhm. So. Thank you. Thank you. Of course. Thank you very much. We're just going to make sure whichever one we buy is purple and yellow, right? Right. Purple and gold. [laughter] Right. Are you guys resourceful? Uh that was for the Yeah, that's okay. >> [snorts] >> Thank you. Have a nice day. >> Jill, while we're on the superintendent um Sure. might as well finish up, wrap up yours. I was actually going to dive into my report. >> okay. Dig in here then to find where we are. Um [snorts] if you go back to the first uh blueprint 3.0, I believe I've already shared this with you, but
114I just wanted to give you an update. Um we've been working with TNTP. We also refer to them as the learning acceleration network. Not only do we have our charger um our blueprint 3.0, but if you look at this two-page document, um it will have our blueprint here. What we've also done is we've created, and I know I talked about this before, but I wanted to give you a be able to see this, our blueprint focus areas one-pagers. This is already been presented to all the um all teachers in all buildings during their faculty [cough] meeting. So, it's not just somewhere hidden that no one knows exactly what our direction is. So, you'll see there's one for curriculum and it talks about what the teacher actions are, the student actions and what our classroom should
115feel like. We have two for instruction um which talks about the deep learning through um the questions and tasks and uh student ownership. And then we have a one-pager for the whole child and the community. So, these have all been shared. Everyone knows the direction that we're going and within, you know, different departments, it may look a little bit differently. Um but this is a way to really hone in and be more specific about the direction we're going over the next few years. So, I just wanted to share that with you. That was an update. Um I also have, let's see, the next one is a civics grant um that we have in here um for your consideration and approval. This is not um a monetary grant. What it is is um we will be
116getting um the program and the training. And I believe our eighth grade is already using some of this program now this year. Um but they reached out. They actually they reached out to us. We applied um and uh it's the Democratic Knowledge Project. So, again, it's not money-wise, but it is and it there's a lot of um uh review and check-ins to make sure what's going on, how are students feeling about the program, um staff, what are they doing as well. So, it's part of the 1 to 8 Foundation. So, like I said, they're using pieces of it now, but this will give us access to the entire program. Is there anything you have to do here? It's a grant. We need Okay. And and and uh I didn't realize you had two more items
117in the folder. Yeah, I was going to >> [laughter] [snorts] >> Okay, any questions on the grant? Um all right, a motion to accept the grant? So moved. Motion made by Jane. Second. Seconded by Tower, uh Larkin. Any further discussion? I'll just make the point we don't live in a democracy. We we live in a republic. So, well, I was going to make the point it was almost my initials, they're just in the wrong >> There you go. they're just in the wrong order, but um Okay. So. A little bit off target, but >> I I appreciate that, but I don't I didn't know Seems like the same thing that eighth and ninth democracy in there. It's just democratic knowledge project. No, it says it everywhere. But this is what eighth and ninth grade are
118doing right now like with their civics projects and everything. Eighth grade. Yeah. Yeah, but it's eighth grade. Yep. It's eighth grade. >> Yes. But ninth grade does the project as well? Oh, yeah, democracy. This is an eighth grade curriculum. Okay. This is eighth grade civics. But ninth grade is also. Okay, so so I'm not crazy, right? So eighth grade does the does the civics. That's that's [snorts] their class. That's their their social studies class. And then they both do the project at the end of the year. Is that how I understand it? Cuz it seems like this is part of that project that they they find a uh unit six is student led civics project. You're talking about that end of the year. >> Yeah. That like Is that what this is? That or whatever.
119This is the whole This is the curriculum for the whole year. Correct. Yes. Eighth grade. Eighth grade. For eighth grade. >> Yes. But ninth grade does the does the Yes, absolutely. They do it as part of their program. But this This is separate. Got it. I read the first paragraph. You're absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. We can give them that feedback. >> you can chalk it up to Harvard. Harvard doesn't Harvard doesn't know we live in a republic rather than a democracy. So But that's okay. Must be all that funding they lost. Okay, any further discussion? All we have a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any oppose? The ayes have it. Unanimous. And then just an MSBA update. >> [clears throat] >> I didn't know Tara Carey,
120I just have a few things if you I didn't know if you wanted to start or do you want me to Go for it. Okay. So I just have I think we've already shared that we've moved on from feasibility to the schematic design, which again is refining our plans and will give us a kind of refine our numbers as we move forward. We're continuing to focus on not only the work on the schematic design, but focus on our community outreach. We've had so far two community presentations and for folks who haven't seen them, you can definitely go on our website and you can find both of those community presentations. And we also which were November 10th and February 25th. But we can also find now on the site and I do also I did include
121these in my community update the last two weekly ones that our school building committee meetings are now videoed. So if you want to go on and get an update and see what's going on, we had one on February 11th and one on March 11th that were recorded. So kind of you haven't had a chance to follow along, this will be a good time to to try to catch up. But we are working really hard to get more information out into the communities. Oops. Anything else? Or Jane or Chuck or I can be quiet, but work behind the scenes. >> [clears throat] >> Okay, thank you very much. We'll go back to uh school committee portion of the agenda. Um We're going to pass over to the next agenda to the next meeting for the full
122of the executive session. Perfect. Okay. Um and we'll go over to um uh the Billy Salome Memorial Athletic Scholarship. So in your packet, there's kind of a summary. I think you know that um our administrative assistant at the high school lost her husband this year and Billy. So they are we are looking to but a group reached out and Linda will be involved with this as well that they'd like to have a scholarship in his name and they were just some of the um who they would like to give it to and they're going to be doing some fundraising and This is just an information on the scholarship. So just >> I'd like to say something about Billy. He's He was an amazing athlete. Uh he was a few years older than I, but he
123was like a senior. I was eighth or ninth grade. And you know, he was just a good person. Um I was shocked to hear of his passing, but um just outstanding athlete. He has the long jump record, 21 ft 6. It's like 50 years now. I don't know if it's 50 years yet, but 76. Yeah? 76. 50 years this year? Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. So we just like your approval to you know, for this scholarship and I know they're looking to start it this year. I'll take a motion to for the school committee to approve the presentation of the Billy Salome scholarship. So moved. Motion made by Aaron, Tara seconded by Chuck. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any oppose? It is unanimous. And next up we have the KTG
124Law Group LLC going to give us a quick explanation. >> Sure. So you'll see there's a letter in here that our current [clears throat] firm of Long DePietro and Gonzalez is transitioning to a partnership and LLC named KTG Law Group. All of the everything is pretty much the same, but they are going to be moving over and this letter was sent out just to engage the school committee to continue to maintain our contract with them or agreement with them, but it will now be the KTG Law Group. So where are Long and DePietro? So they are they are they are involved, but not not as much. So KTG gets Kelly. Her initials. Yes. I'm trying to figure out who the other two people are. Long [laughter] No, it's Michael Oh. TJ, yes. But they are
125still involved and the rates are all the same. Everything's explained in there. So they are doing some work. Um But she doesn't anticipate any changes with the with the work that she does today. So same attorneys, just restructuring of the >> Correct. Yes. the partnership. Correct. Same prices. Yes. So do we need to because we usually um I believe at our next meeting we will appoint or appoint adopt. It's usually Long and DePietro. It's usually So our next meeting we will appoint them for the year. We're going to appoint KTG. Yeah. Do we need to do anything right now? with the I think we're adopting the we're amending our appointment essentially to that we have this year for the for the duration of this fiscal year until we make that appointment. >> From March 1st
126through July July June 20 June 30th, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think we should. >> I know what you're asking. I was thinking the same. Yeah. Is it till Is it the fiscal year or because we appoint our legal at our next meeting after elections. >> After elections. Yeah. So I don't know if it's fiscal year for this or But when we do all of the yearly stuff, it's after elections. Yeah. So it'd just be March 1st through Is it Yeah, I'm thinking selectmen it's usually the fiscal year you make your appointments for the next fiscal year, but yeah. Yeah, so it would be whatever that duration is. We do it every year. So it's a it's a annual appointment. Yeah. So I'll make a motion right now that from March 1st to the end of
127till the next appointment. Till the next appointment. >> Yeah. Um the law firm has been updated to KTG Law Group and our relationship means remains the same. Is that Good enough. Okay. Second. Motion made by Aaron, seconded by Carey. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any oppose? The ayes have it. [clears throat] And now to policy updates. So Matt, feel free to jump in anytime you like. But in your packets, you have three and I know these have already come to >> [cough] >> So they're coming back after more discussion with the policy and uh subcommittee. We also had an opportunity to meet with our athletic director who gave us some additional information on what some other schools are doing. Um so there are three in [snorts] here
128and we have one for the relations with the parent booster organizations, the KBE. If you look at KBE, what's in red are changes, but I want to refer you to to number three just to make it clear. So you know that we already got um legal counsels um um understanding of this language. By saying all parent organizations, they absolutely understand it as it did include booster organizations, but to be clear for everyone, we actually included that language on there. The rest for number four, that came from um uh MASC. So we're going to we have that one to look at tonight. We have GBEBC, which is gift and solicitations by staff. >> [snorts] >> Which again, the only red lines were what was there before and then we'll be looking at JJE, which is student
129fundraising activities. And we included the the email that I we received. You've already seen this, but we just put it in there again just in case you wanted to refer to it. The previous information that we received IS IN THERE. DO WE NEED A MOTION BEFORE WE DISCUSS? UH WE CAN any any discussion on these any of these uh Discussion? Well, you we we can take a motion uh and then can have a discussion however you want to do it. So, the floor is open. I'll go first. I'll tell you what. I'll I'll I'll ask for a uh I will do them individually, right? Cuz there's three. All right, so I'll ask for KBE. I'll ask for a motion to um approve um policy KBE as written. >> So moved. Motion made by Second. Um
130Tara Larkin seconded by Jane. Discussion. >> [snorts] >> I want to point out that the red in number three the booster organizations that has been a decision to add that. That is not in the MSC MASC version of this policy. So, why are we adding it? Correct. So, it's not it wasn't because it was understood >> Right. up at the top and that's why I think someone asked that at a school committee meeting before. It is understood when we got legal counsel understanding that where it said all parent organizations, it included boosters. So, so there wasn't any confusion at our policy meeting. It was um asked to include booster organizations so there would be no misunderstanding. That's the reason it was added. I still I >> [snorts] >> I don't agree with this policy. I
131think we have such a hard time getting families that want to be involved and that want to take on the burden of providing things for a lot of our students that the district is able to provide. [snorts] >> [clears throat] >> That all this is going to do is dissuade all of them from wanting to be involved. And I think my recommendation for a lot of those groups then would to not refer to themselves as booster organizations anymore and to refer to themselves as fan clubs or friends of And run by the students. Yeah. And they can continue to do the great deeds that they do for these kids um without these additional hoops that they need and cost because some of our groups fundraise such a small minimal amount of money that is turned
132right back around to the kids um that I just think this is a waste of money for those groups. Yeah. I completely agree with Carrie. I think we're tying the hands of the parents Mhm. coaches, and families that want to do good for the kids just for that little bit of extra that we can't put in our budget. >> Do. Yep. And now we're going to say, "Nope, you can't do that." Not down from your going the 501c3 expense of doing that and filing every year to to number four, which is a whole new piece and I know it continues into all these others. Um if they're wishing to conduct raffles and games of chance, must comply with all applicable required federal, state, and local laws and regulations including but not limited to the receipt
133of all necessary permits and filing of all required reports and schedules. And I know these others follow that. By approving this, we're wiping out all of their fundraising. You're going to you're going to go back to bake sales and car washes and they might have enough money to >> we're already doing that in our budget. to have like franks and beans banquet at the end of the season. That's It's It's but it's the little things too like being part of a team is feeling like a team and when a group can give warm-up shirts so every kid takes that court looking alike and feeling like they belong. Like those are things that are not ever going to fall in our uniform budget. >> No. We struggle to fund uniforms. Never mind any of those extras.
134So. So, in practice it's already been used the I mean they've already followed this to one of the PTOs did have a bingo night. >> Mhm. And ahead of this they went and got the [clears throat] permits and all that kind of stuff and I I don't think that what we're seeing as the financial burden on that part it it was $10. To get the to get it and they're good for I believe the rest of the rest of the year. So, I don't So, just to And that is something that's not just encompassing schools. That's actually the state coming down on all organizations across across the board. Raffles and games of chance are being scrutinized so that part I don't think we really have a a choice. And now as far as you know
135putting in the booster organizations, when we sat if I recall correctly when we sat with um the athletic director, it was heard by her advisement that we do a athletics booster. Um you know, she's seen that work in in other schools um successfully. So, I don't know you know, if that's if that's the case if that's the the way they go with it. But I I will say and I'll say it like I said before if we're collecting money on behalf of the students and it's going back to the students, that's exactly what it's supposed to be doing but it without some sort of separate entity almost watching not watching over it but being you know, having you know, so it's not going through a personal account, so it's not being held in someone's home,
136so it's you know, those monies that the 501c3 status and you know, an entity will take away a lot of that ability if there's second set of eyes on it. So, you know I you know maybe it's a question of the parents being involved and you know, I'm sure they are and they they you know, it's just a case of putting it together but um this was all this is already it's not like we're outside of MASC. We're not outside of that. It's just that we're putting in specifically the booster organizations because of the fact that there was question around it. So, if you look at the memorandum it clearly states that all parent organizations are booster organizations. I I have very mixed feelings about this because I do think there's value in kids fundraising.
137Um however there's state and federal laws and regulations and I think we are amiss if we set up precedent that doesn't follow state law. And if we really feel that strongly about it, then every single one of us should be at the legislature day that's next week and I bet you um not one of us is signed up to go or I'm guessing not one of us is signed up to go. Um we have ways to change laws but I don't think we should look for ways to skirt the laws. Um and again, I think you can get creative. I think you know, parents will continue as a groups of parents just to give and donate and buy the the t-shirts for the teams and um and there's value [clears throat] in the student athletes
138trying to raise money and be creative in that and I think we just have to be creative in ways that don't violate state and federal regulations and I think we need to have policies that reflect what those regulations are. So, to Jane's point, I actually Googled yesterday does Mass General Law require boosters to have a 501c3? And the answer is no. So, if what we're saying is that we want to stick with state law we're trying to put something in place that is not a state law. It's a requirement. Well, it's not a requirement. Right. But But we we're But it essentially be requiring But then you're limiting how you can raise those funds. But it I'm just talking about the 501c3 piece right now. Not even the games of chance piece because there are
139there are always around that. But you still can't raise You still you can't raise funds. The way I understand it, you can't raise funds for a not for a a not-for-profit or nonprofit entity if you don't have a 501c3 status. Is that If you're If you're expecting your donors to be able to have a tax exemption. So, what happens when someone looks for a tax exemption? You don't. You Yeah, it's It's just It's just known that you don't have it. If they don't have it, they don't donate. So, nothing stops, you know, parents from purchasing um you know, warm-ups and all that kind of stuff and I don't think And this doesn't have to do This isn't the part that has to do with um students raising money. This isn't you know, this has more
140to do with how the booster clubs and the parent organizations raise money. Uh I just think in the essence of there's PTOs and and whatnot that are doing the things that are organized and have built that and they go through that every year. They They They're the ones they pay the fees for the 501c3 status. They you know, which is again nominal fees. Um you know, they make sure that they're >> nominal though but when you're talking about a group that is only hundreds of dollars as opposed to thousands. No, understood. Understood. That's why according to the AD it would make, you know, more sense to have athletics, you know, [snorts] booster and she admitted herself that it would be, you know, she's seen it work where, you know, it's you know, line items for
141different you know, it's just budgeted the way that it's supposed to be budgeted between the teams and all that kind of stuff. So, um I don't know. It's It's tough because it's it is it's for the it's the money's is to go to the kids. And this is what we want this is what we're doing is raising money for the kids. I just think there's a big difference between a parent organization and a booster organization. PTOs years ago it was MESPA. Haddam Middle School, the high school had one tried to take off. They are run for years at a time typically by the same parents. You're looking at sports boosters. The kids can't participate now in fifth grade. You're you've got middle school teams, you've got JV teams, you've got high school teams. The parents
142aren't The kids sometimes don't play the next year. They They're not in it for years like they are at a parent organization where your child's in elementary school for that many years and you might have younger siblings underneath. >> Yeah, but the same could be said for >> It's a bigger turnover to get a committed parent to keep that 501c and in the process. You have to have a board. >> turnover in every organization. There's Correct, but it's the commitment and longevity is longer with a parent organization versus a booster. >> mean I think that's a It's an argument that >> [snorts] >> doesn't really hold any water because anybody can Anybody can leave any organization at any time. >> a much larger population of parents that you're also able to target for And you're
143talking about one season a year as opposed to a club number two. Right, which leads back to the athletic director's advice of, you know, an athletics booster. >> don't have that in place. I was just going to say that hasn't happened yet though. >> Right. So, but I'm saying if that's if that's something that should be worked towards. I don't know. I mean There's also there's so many questions that revolve around even that cuz you know, we we've all known that games are an hour and a half away. So, if the boosters decides Monday morning they realize that the playoff game that afternoon is an hour and a half bus ride and they want to go pick up a case of Gatorade. How does that work if you have an overall athletics booster? Does it
144have to go before the board? Does there need to be a vote? It does. But it does. That's organizational stuff that I mean we're not here We're not here to micromanage how they run the organization. We're here to We're here to No, we're not. We're not here to >> We kind of essentially right here micromanaging. >> And I think you're being disingenuous in that because you're you're making an argument that's just not real. Like I've run two organizations in this. I've run two two separate organizations and both of them are 501c3 status. Neither of them have we ever had an issue with changing over of people with raising of funds with with following the the things that are supposed to be done. To be obstinate in the fact that you just don't want to do
145it because you don't want to ask parents to do it. That's not the purview of this board. That's parents out there that should be doing it. And if if we vote whether which whichever way, it's either going to be done or not. But to sit here and say that we just don't want to do it. So, don't put That's That's just That's childish. All right. Excuse me. I just want to add that My my apologies. All right. I think we can maybe move to vote on it. Well, no. I don't want to I have some questions as well. Aaron, do you have something to say? No, I was just going to say it's not even I I don't I disagree. It's not fair to compare parent organizations to boosters. I don't I I know your
146Boy Scouts. I don't know what other one you're involved in. But I've run two scouts. If it's if it's a year-long group of people, it's a very different than 18 game season. >> sports >> Sure. season. It's just very different. So, I disagree with And And nothing is childish. It It What I I apologize. I I I take that back. I do apologize, Cara. I did not What we're saying is we're we're putting an obstacle in front of them to do good. Like that's it. They They're not going to be able to find This isn't going to happen tomorrow. So, guess what? There is no fundraising for baseball this season. We're putting it here putting a hard stop to it. But >> that we should also if this goes through, we should also be cognizant
147of the fact that this needs time and this shouldn't should not be taking effect tomorrow or I would say even before you know, I mean I could We could make an amendment. >> Right, but we can make we can make an amendment to it and you know, change that's that's what we have the ability to do. Um But it's just it seems as though that there's some that have to play by the rules and some that that don't. And if the PTOs are, you know, then they don't have to go get their 501c3 status going forward. You know, or they can drop that and then they can Is that the case? Well, if the red is what's new it it says the PTOs have to have it. They all already do. So, there there's nothing
148changing for them. Am I Am I reading that correctly or is this whole I I thought number three was here. >> this correctly in our thing originally. So, I don't know what we originally had because for years our PTOs were not 501c3s for years. >> Oh, well. MESPA was. MESPA always was. >> No, it was not. Absolutely was not cuz we couldn't take a playground donation because we weren't a 501c3. I don't I think we were. No, we weren't. I honest to god, we were not. Well, They are now. The BMR >> at some point and they had to. So, I mean You know, it So, the other thing that comes up is liability. So, and we talked about this in the you know, before is at what you know, if they're raising these funds
149and if there's you know, and it is like who who is now responsible for that? If it's not a legal entity, if it you know, Say for a 501c3. I mean, if if that doesn't >> [cough and clears throat] >> That's the the sticking point. I don't know. But if it's not a legal entity and they're conducting activities or anything like that, then that falls on the school as a as the liable entity, wouldn't it? I don't think the way I understand it is it wouldn't fall on the school until it's in that and we accept the red. The way I look at it is like the liability right now is is on that parent group, that booster group. But the wording that we put in there will change that and I feel like then
150it does make like you said the second person Yeah, I think I disagree. We'd have to have our ask our lawyers. But if you say I am raising funds for the BMR softball team. And I Anybody got a softball player? Mhm. Okay. So, I'm raising funds for the BMR softball team. I've put BMR on that list. I've made BMR liable in some form. Or if the you know, I think that's the That'd be the the logo like the Yeah. It's It's tricky. It's It's an institutional thing. If I I can't I can't as somebody in my classroom >> written consent, you know, to do so. So, I mean Like those big GoFundMe I can put the BMR on the page for that. But then I'll get the money. But it you know, if it comes
151down to a um financial issue and they're you know, I mean I've heard of Girl Scout troops where they fold because >> baseball program in town has collapsed. There was some embezzlement Correct. And now the parents decide, well, who is responsible for keeping you know, and there's no booster club behind There's no legal entity behind it, then it falls to the to the school. Does it fall to us as the you know, as the district? I don't I don't know. But I Reading number four, I I don't have a problem with number four. That's the law. Correct. Right, that's just the law. Number three um all parent organizations and I know boosters is the new shall obtain a 501c3. Mhm. And I just want I'm going to use what I know in in my experience
152>> [cough] >> The [snorts] girls that are at Dunkin' Donuts asking for a few bucks for a for the field hockey or soccer or or I know that cuz I I'm driving by there. >> Donuts? Then that's not a game of chance. It's not any of that. They're they're asking for a donation to support that their league. And if that's run by a nonprofit a file registered with the state of Massachusetts, they can get a bank account. They can do all those things. Right. They're not participating in a game of chance. A 501c3 But they are also then subject to federal income tax if they're So, that's their responsibility. If it's a if it's a if it's a non a nonprofit organization with a board of directors or president, vice president, that's going to be
153all recorded with the Secretary of State in the state of Massachusetts. That's of That's That's That's what we're creating here by having boosters have to have a 501c3. >> no, no. 501c3 is a whole different animal. Now you are Now you're registering with the federal government on a 501c3. And they have to file their taxes every year under that. Like you just said if they But so they might have been a $10 permit 501c3. So, that's a different That's a So, it might have been a $10 permit fee to to have bingo. >> Right. So, now for for an for a nonprofit LLC, for example, um um like the the the the baseball league that that um our athletic director is helping. What's I I think of her Elizabeth Elizabeth. thank you, was helping. Um
154I know I I helped set that one up for them. And actually and and I've reached out to attorney Dan Doyle and any of these paranormal organizations, he will help you he'll set it up for you guys for free. He will for no charge and I think it's a hundred I think it was a hundred dollars filing fee. And then you just annually you do an annual annual report which on the you can do it right online with the state. That covers um And so that allows you to get the bank account under that under that organization. I set one up for the 9/11 memorial that we have in front of the town hall. It's me it was me and two other people. Like so that allows you to have your account. So anybody giving
155us donations cannot write it off cuz we're not a 501c3. Um Uh but we're allowed to um use that money for that purp the purpose of the purpose of the the nonprofit. Um and we're not collecting enough nearly enough money to pay federal income tax and things like that. It's not a you know, when you see the federal income the 501s uh I mean sorry, the nonprofits the big the ones that getting millions and millions of dollars that they're they're um they have paid staff. They have a whole workforce that behind it. This is not what these things are. So my my issue with this whole thing I have no problem with number four because that's I mean this if the senior center wanted to have bingo they have to go to the state and
156get all these licensing and this. So those are games of chance. That's gambling. They look at it as gambling and and But my issue is personally is the all parent organizations shall obtain a 501c3 because if we're asking for that but who's you know, the first line is um it has to be officially recognized by the building principal who will file a copy it was with the superintendent but it's it's who's main who's monitoring or maintaining typically even when I in a in my own business if I have to give a certificate of insurance and this and that um I have to provide that every time it expires. So it's automatically you know, so that's a whole that's a whole other um who's monitoring the these organizations and and the requirement of a 501c3 would
157be in my opinion for what these small organizations are doing is is overkill. You know, um the status of having to be a nonprofit status um in in legitimate organization is much easier and less expensive. And [snorts] we do have an attorney in town that will facilitate that for these organizations. I feel like we already asked our attorney to review these but I'm sitting here now and I'm listening to you and I'm reviewing these all again. And KBE contra like if we approve that as written I understand what you're saying it's state law we have to follow it. But if you look at GBEBC in the red it says by state law and regulation raffles and games of chance may not be organized by schools of the sponsoring or spot as the sponsoring organization. Employees
158are thus barred with this is what we talked about it's like teachers can't buy the tickets. But basically this is saying we can't even But number four is saying you have to get the permit but over here it's saying you can't do it. No no no this one's just covering this one's just covering staff where this is all the parent and booster groups. Oh. One's in yeah. And okay and then JJE is the student one saying students and student groups are barred by state law and regulate they they all contradict each other. Like this where they're not going to be able to do this anyway. With the way this policy's written. No. JJE says students and student groups are barred by state law and regulation from organizing raffles or games of chance. They can't even
159raffle off like prom tickets. Like they can't raffle anything off and I think Carrie made a great point in one of the meetings where they you know and this is not just from you this is came from someone else who was running something was that they went to the state and the state said well if you do it this way and you put these words in there then nobody has a problem with it. Games of chance are barred games of skill are not. Right. So you can go and shoot a shoot a free throw shoot a half court and so it's kind of Yes. silly in a way that there's ways so why have the Well what I'm saying is we're we're analyzing number four you have to get the permit but we're in this
160it says you can't do it. They cannot have a game of chance run by staff or students. We that was very well vetted but that was but but the PTO or the organization so the nonprofit that has to do with registered with the state of Massachusetts they >> [clears throat] >> who can do it if they get the license through the state. the BMR band show home show and they are doing a 50/50 raffle and they did everything right. They got their permit and everyone in the stands is buying a 50/50 ticket from a parent. Except no it says part part sales or purchasing of. That means from a parent or a school an employee. So Yeah, what is the name of it? No how many parents work in the district and how many students
161are play are buying 50/50 raffles at basketball at band. It says unless it's from uh sponsoring organization. So they can. The band's doing great. The band is doing Unless doing so as a member of a sponsoring organization >> [laughter] >> Students and student groups are barred by state law or regulation from organizing raffles or games of chance, participating in sales of or purchasing tickets of such games. For students fundraising activities. Marching band member is selling a ticket and I am a classmate of hers I can't Correct. No you couldn't sell it either never mind. >> [laughter] >> But this is so hold on. Let me just I think I have I think I have this for you is that student council cannot have a um a game of chance or a raffle. So they can't
162raffle off prom tickets. Uh the the yearbook committee cannot raffle off a free yearbook without cuz that's a game of chance. student groups. Right. But there's some provision that was found in other schools that if you do something of skill then that negates the game of chance. And this is like I'm with everybody on the game of chance. I've I had to go pull a permit I But it's one paragraph up competition. Fundraising activities may not involve competitions among students. That's one paragraph above our red line. >> [sighs and gasps] >> Students may not be rewarded with additional prizes. We're still talking about KB KBE. Can we just stick to KBE now? They all run together. They contradict yeah. So you're going back and forth again. I don't think they contradict as much as they
163just I don't think they contradict they think it's just it gets more more and more more and more micromanaging so The the thing is it's very clear in all of them the students are not to have no part of any type of game of chance. You know you know, JJE is from organizing raffles games of chance or participating [clears throat] in sales or purchasing of such you know, this and and also they can't come in and sell the Super Bowl. They can't come in and sell raffle tickets to a teacher. Sell them or buy them. Sell them or buy them because they are other than some of our seniors underage and underage gambling is illegal. That's right. Still. But if you have a student there not allowed. >> [laughter] >> They're this is true. So
164there some that probably could or should be allowed but they are not because they're still registered students. Yeah. And we're you know, even if we pass these rules will there be students and who will buy them? Will there be But if a teacher loses their job that's what I wanted to know. No cuz the teacher that loses their jobs if we pass this policy and they go on says if it's part of the parent organization and they're a part of it they can buy it. So Christina can buy her 50/50 at the band show. Yeah but nobody else can. But yeah I was just going to say but then others can't. So like a science teacher can't buy something from a basketball student or something but but they can buy it from the basketball boosters.
165But then we have some who can buy it from band because they're on it. They shouldn't be buying it from the students cuz they can't sell it to begin with. Cuz we approved JJE. of that booster or parent organization not to have the students hustling the tickets. You have to you have to I think the majority of the parents are the ones who are pushing it anyway not the students. So it's different clubs it's the different groups. Right. So if NHS It's like family buying it. On KBE my my I think that it's number three the most restrictive thing is if shall obtain a 501c3. >> [snorts] >> That's that's what I have an issue with. So Cuz I'm not against groups having the 501c3 as their own protection. But I don't I'm against us
166requiring it. It's pretty basic the 501c3 is essentially for if you if you're not making if you're not anticipating bringing in over 5,000 a year and if you're not um if you're not offering the tax exempt I I give the girls basketball $200 even if they were 501c3. I can't write that off anyway. Right. So it's not nearly enough to write off. Mhm. So and then you're not >> And you have given before. Huh? You have given before. I can't write it off. >> but I'm just saying you have supported them. >> [laughter] >> So it's it's It's not a right yeah. And and [clears throat] Like like the black stone Memorial Day thing I'm sorry the semi-quincentennial we got some big big checks that falls under the town's things those are write-offs but those
167are some of the checks are the those are substantial. We you're you're getting most of it's five, 10, 15 bucks a whack. So >> [snorts] >> I think that's the heavy lift on that. I Four is the law. So whether you put parents or any of that is illegal. Four I it's the law. So And it's the 501c3. That's that's And then the rest of the language in in in in on on on GBEBC is that's the law. That's that's what was put in here is simply the law. And it's repeated essentially in in JJE is The first sentence is the law. We're we're making it policy that employees are thus barred from participating. >> That's the law. Yeah, that's And we asked the By state law regulations raffles games of chance may not be
168organized by schools sponsoring organization employees that's the mass general law. I mean I can >> negotiate the MGL? Look it up if you want. Looks like MGL 268. That's Or 271. I thought we did 271. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 271.7A. Where did you see that Oh, right there. >> On the back. And so it's 271 section 7A. Yeah. All three of them reference that same I was off while we were looking it up. >> [sighs] >> But I know I Not to kick the can down the road but I does does anyone else feel that it shall obtain a 501c3? Can we say should? Well, it doesn't even have to be all organizations should but it's not forcing their hand. Shall have a Whatever the language is for the nonprofit status that requires a bank account
169that >> that one word makes a huge difference. You're not forcing their hand. You're amending. Yeah, shall obtain. >> on should? The handout from the law firm page four under C the first sentence it's basically the 501c3 is to legally conduct raffles or other chance based fundraising activities. Yeah. Which you can't even do anyway. So it's like they can. You can but So you only have to have the 501c3 if you want to do those types of fundraising but if you're doing basic fundraising you don't need to apply to a state 501c. With a permit to do that fundraising and in order to get the permit you have to have Yeah, you have to go to the town and the town provides you with it. Yeah, it's the town. Everybody's got to I think I
170said this before it's It's for raffles? It's completely unacceptable. You can't do it. Absolutely not unless someone gets a fee and then it's okay. >> [cough] >> Um [snorts] Is there a waiver for the fee for 501c3s? No. [laughter] Just saying. Yeah, I know. I know. I know where the The law's there so the state gets their money. >> Yeah, when the PTO When the PTO went down to get it I know speaking with them they it was it was kind of like a I think you have to be a 501c3 for a minimum of two years before you can even apply for the permit. That was the other part. Yeah. Apply for the permit to have a raffle? Yeah. Oh. So all those groups would be Yeah, >> [clears throat] >> in the past
171few years. Motions were made just for KBE. Can I make a motion to amend number three >> [snorts] >> with the current motion that's on the floor? Are you I don't know You say how you're amending it and then >> No, no. We have a motion and a second to So this is just KBE. >> can somebody can move to amend. The people who made the motion have to accept the amendment. >> Well, it's still on the floor. Um So I'll make a motion to amend on KBE number three to all parent organizations should obtain a 501c3. So that's eliminating booster organizations and changing the word shall to should. Can I just Uh I just wanted to say about booster the only reason that's there is because if you look at the language in the
172front because that was asked before and we didn't get parent organizations do that. >> I made the motion and I don't accept the amendment so it doesn't matter. All right. This will get a little deeper but while we're talking about it all parent and so Erin has a motion that was second yet but I'm I'm going to discuss right? Doesn't Erin's motion not matter because Jean said she doesn't accept it but Oh, okay. I okay. All right. Um If the any change is going to be made like that all parent and organizations {slash} booster organizations shall obtain a 501c3 status if they then then add the game of chance raffle this that and the other thing in order to you know to do that in our district. If you're going to have a booster organization
173or parent organization is going to have the things required by law to have a 501c3 if they're going to have that type of fundraising they have to have they shall have a 501c3 status. And and the difference is and I'm going to use the girls basketball they're not having games of chance. They're raising they're asking for donations. That's the and that's the majority I think of You don't have 50/50 raffles during their games? I'm That's so common. That's so common. Boys basketball Not anymore than I I guess we're not having them. You're going to be at Dunkin Donuts more often than I can speak to girls basketball. This year at one of the games they did um it's called chuck-a-duck. There is a target that is put out in the center of the court. You
174purchase a rubber duck for your chance to win and you have to throw it like all everybody in the stands throws their ducks at halftime at the exact same time and the person who gets their duck closest to the center wins the prize. That is a game of skill despite being a game of chance. Right. Just we uh in a neighboring district they did a 50/50 raffle to raise money for uniforms. Yeah. In order to win your 50/50 raffle when your name got pulled you had to sink a half court shot. Yeah. Okay, so let's count this as a game of skill. Mhm. Right. So like organizations are getting creative. I think there was another one if you say instead [snorts] of saying the tickets are X amount of dollars if you say suggested donation
175is >> Yes. And you're like then why have why have all like it's because and that stuff is coming I'm sure the advice is coming from the people that you're applying for the permit for. I have a question. So if it if the motion were to pass on all this, right? So we are kind of taking on some of the liability. Who's going to tell these parents boosters about the changes? Yeah, who's policing Who's going to meet with all these people and tell them hey you can't do this you can do that. Who's going to do that with each individual group? Cuz now that's going to be on the school. >> do. So It does say um the district does play an oversight role. Yeah, so the school's going to have to If these pass
176this the district will have to have some liability and now take on that task. >> Would be would be oversight. Yeah, would be an oversight. Um Because what's going to come up is if you target one group or I shouldn't say target but you stop one group the district's got to make sure they're giving this rule to every group. So every time uh like say say the baseball group every time you talk to that set of parents when they change next year when the other kids graduate you got to talk to that new set of parents or they're not going to know about this and they're always changing. You I mean there's I Unless there's >> This isn't an insult to anyone but I don't think there's anyone in this district that knows every single
177bit of fundraising that's going on. Who knows that the kids had a car wash It's almost saying that we now need to Right. I do think with as we're discussing this policy and we've we've spent a lot of time talking with Elizabeth, the new AD, about how can we do this where we're not discouraging families from from doing this fundraising. It is a true part of our culture and what what we'd like to continue to do and how do we do it so that we're staying within these limits. And trying to set up this one booster. And if we do set up one booster, how do we set [clears throat] it up so that all the different teams can be part of it cuz I do think setting up a different booster for tennis, volleyball,
178for I think that is not going to happen. I think it would take a not to say that it won't. I think it would take a lot for every group to have their own separate booster and that is prohibitive. It it's just not going to work. So if we can come up with a true plan of creating one booster club for the athletics department where you have different you have to have a board and it's from different teams because it is a short season. So you may have teams, you know, the football team, the baseball team, the you know, you have somebody on the board that is part of how this booster works and we're doing fundraising for all the different teams out there so that there is some help for cuz there's some boosters
179that they're doing a ton for their teams and yet you have another team that gets nothing. Kristen, do you agree? I do agree with you. But we're not there yet. And these are going to stop a lot of things. And I do I think this is going to create conversation to get there and how do we put it like you said like with you know, as parent nights, do we discuss this at parents night? So so everyone's aware of it. I do think we have to have a full plan of how do we get there? Before this will make change. >> it's before or after, I do think this is creating conversation that needs to happen cuz change does need to happen. The way we're doing it is not is not correct. In like [snorts]
180lawful, like there there's some stuff that we could get in trouble. Um that we're trying to cover ourselves as a district. What do we have for problems now? We have established clubs and fundraising. The basketball team the track team has barely a small. And all these other teams very small. So the where's the problem? If [snorts] people want to create a 401c3, they they do it. But to force everyone all these little groups in into to say we we just have one to cover everyone it's like I don't know that's the right way to go. Where's the problem now? What what what's going wrong now? What's happening now that we're [clears throat] getting in trouble for. You just said There's >> If you do something wrong in the IRS audits you, you know, you you
181have you take care of it. You're responsible for that. So why is the school getting involved with raising money for t-shirts and sweatshirts for that one the tennis squad? It just seems like it's complicated. Well, this wasn't presented by Well, it was presented by us by the policy committee because these were recommendations from the MSC. It went through the policy. It wasn't something that we said let's just start doing this. It was MSC policy updates that went through the policies committee. But Kristen just said there are things that we could get in trouble for. I don't know. >> I just I I think every you know, I think we need to be careful for our liability. As far as if anything goes wrong anywhere with any of the groups that are out there. If anything
182happens, I worry that we're open to People are donating thinking that they're donating to the school district. Um and I think we just want to make sure that it's clear as to where the money is going. I think it'll be less clear when it's one large athletics thing. Like she just mentioned that she kind of went out and recruited nine people to play tennis. That's wonderful. But are you going to tell me that the boosters wouldn't be like who's who's going to pay for their stuff? Cuz they didn't do any fundraising. They were just asked to play tennis. But now we're going to say, you know, support these nine with your boosters. No, I think you need to wrap I know that's a bigger picture, but >> football team raised all the money >> that
183are building this camaraderie and coming together. Their parents might be like, "Hey, let's [snorts] go raise a little money so we can get the matching hair bows." Like that's okay. >> you decide that wasn't the intent of that booster. So there was a discussion in policy just thinking how all of this how could this make work? And when Elizabeth came, we asked her to go out to other schools in the valley to see how were they dealing or how were they addressing some of these issues. So what she brought to the policy committee was there are schools that have one booster. And within that one booster, there are representatives from the different sports that are there. So for example, if football brought in this much money within that booster account, they would be the football
184fund. If soccer brought in so much money within that boosters, they would be a soccer fund. That's how she explained it to us. The policy committee asked us Clubs have to report and who's in this board? Who's this? Who's managing that account? It would be the officers of the 501c3. So the the money wouldn't be in the school's pocket. Okay. No, cuz the school can't. So it it separates it from the responsibility of the The district has a website like they So here's the school's Here's the school's leverage. They're not going to accept any other boosters other than that made that that one booster that is covering all. That's the leverage of the school. We won't then we'd say we're not accepting >> Well, unless they have their own 501c3. Some schools [snorts] she did
185say some schools have their [laughter] own. Because the program she said I think there was another sport that The only I'm I'm the only thing I'm hung up on is the number three shall obtain a 501c3. And the implementation date. Like when >> Oh yeah. Because in the district oversight, it says as a matter of best practice, districts should require proof of 501c3 status. I don't have I like the word shall to should. Huh? Should. I don't have any issue changing shall to should, but I have an issue taking boosters. Then we're going to need It's in the first paragraph. >> Should require shall require only if the if the if that parent organization of boosters and the and the definition of what what what what triggers that requirement. Which means games of chance. You
186know [snorts] what I mean? Yes, thank you. For. District oversight then goes on to say though such as car as part of their process for approving fundraising activities. So does that also now say that someone in the district needs to be approving any fundraising that any And that's the thing. Well, the other one says that. We're not going to police it. All gifts and donations to the district must be accepted by a vote of the school committee. Not to the boosters, not to the That's right. That's standard. That's what we do now anyway. Yeah, what we should be doing. Yeah. And this is just the guidance. This is like the summary of our attorney. They are not the actual Yeah, unfortunately our our attorney summary focuses on games of chance, which we asked for. Which
187is Well, we asked booster like should it it just is booster and parent the same thing in terms of this regulation? She did say yes to that. And she said yes. But but everything in her letter, you read the entire letter like focuses on games of chance. Because that's the biggest issue with the boosters. That's the biggest Yeah. So [snorts] just so you know, this letter, I just want to make sure it's clear. This memorandum came to MASS. This email was specifically written for us based on our questions. Just so we know. Yeah. I just didn't want you to think this was specific. This was to MASS that we shared. She said this is a another document. >> Perfect. >> This is the email that came directly from the office based on the questions you
188had. I mean, having booster organization on three or not, it's in the first paragraph. It says it includes boosters. So We agree it's there either way. Which is just strange because it I there's another policy. I want to say it's like KJA KAJ something. I don't remember what the exact letters are. That specifically talks about boosters. The in the law of boosters would be you'll see boosters under the nonprofit. Um we're saying regulation. So it's I think this is just clarification. Um If we're lumping Here is mud. Boosters under this one, then we also need to look at the other policy that specifically covers them. Another policy specifically just covering boosters. In our online policy K A J K something like that. It's in our online. Cuz this is relation with boosters, but that has
189another booster. I printed it before. Let me ask >> effective for the next school year? Yeah, so so so say that they >> uh use the example of the the booster club at Duncan Donuts. When they raise that money, does that money go back to the district or does the booster club purchase for that They purchase. >> Yeah, they we purchase. So we raise, we purchase the warm-ups. We raise, we put on the banquet. >> You pur- Okay, so you purchase the warm-ups for those individual players on that team that you >> every team. I'm just using that >> just for that example. Yeah, so it's not that what you're purchasing the warm-ups. So that's not going back to the district at the end of the day. The student or whoever the student keeps them.
190Yes. And then you and then you >> They've gotten basketball bags out of it. They've gotten warm-ups every like a lot of teams have gotten the warm-ups to look cohesive out of it. They all get a banquet. They've gotten awards out of it. Like we buy MVP awards. Senior gifts are given out of it. Everything that the district does not purchase. That that group may want to Yes. Yes. Of course, having different boosters makes it more competitive cuz one booster gets warm-ups >> not really though. It's not really though cuz it's typically typically it's a different set of parents for every team. Like my kid might be an athlete, but that doesn't mean he's on football, baseball, soccer. You know what I mean? They're all smaller groups. No, and they have been those concerns. It's
191like this group didn't raise enough to have a banquet, so they're having it at the school where this one had a lot of money, so they're at a restaurant. >> Yes. But it's like Yeah. That's your parent >> That's the organization, exactly. That's how the football team has their jackets, too. They bought them. >> They bought them. Okay. For each student. I think they get them at a certain year. Yep, they get varsity jackets, yes. They're purchased by the boosters. Basketball does the same thing. They get nice warm-up jackets. They don't It's all something >> It's all positive stuff. It's all stuff that if it stops, all the students are going to be like, "Where is it?" Okay. I think we'd be very surprised to see that it it how much it wouldn't stop though
192because we're talking about the same people who are doing it. Like it's the parents. They'll step up. Like we step up, parents step up. It's what we do. Not many. Some. I believe [laughter] I get it. Not many. It's hard to get them. You're not the only one. I get it. Believe you. Believe you me. With clubs. Okay, so Number one on KBE, organizations will be officially recognized upon request of the building the principal who will file a copy of the organization's papers with the superintendent. The organization's papers is the organization's papers I would assume from the Secretary of State. Mhm. The state of Massachusetts. Okay, let's see. >> That's if they have a 501c3. No. No. No, that's a non-profit. It's just a non- That's the easy way, right? All right, number two, devote
193to open all parents, guardians, children enrolled designate organization One more. Okay. Number three, all parent organizations {slash} booster organizations should obtain should obtain if I'd say I'd say change the shelter should a 501c3 status, file appropriate paperwork with the appropriate authorities, and make proof of such status available to the school district administration. So you can just change that word to should right? [snorts] As someone just pointed out earlier because number four you can't do that unless you already have a 501c3. None of those things in number four you can do without a 501c3. So this So this doesn't we So if we change number three to should um All right, well, a 501c3 is not even a state. It's a federal. Yeah. It's a federal federal exemption. Yeah. It's a tax law. This is all
194tax law. >> [snorts] >> or shall obtain um um shall obtain a 501c3 if they intend on fundraising under the provisions of number four. You know what I mean? So Otherwise, you don't need it. You're you're covered by the by number one with the organization. To to stand out there and and and ask for donations um for um soccer unif- soccer shin pads out front of um CVS All you all you need is number one. The state. The the state's recognized that the the the So A 501c3 puts a bigger It's a bigger burden on the non-profit. And these non- And these fundraisers, these boosters, or parents groups are not raising that kind of money. They wish they were. Yeah. That's where I am at with this. Personally, that's my So Is this if we
195don't clean it up though if it's not clean with that language and we allow it should and then when someone files with the principal and it goes to the superintendent, superintendent will could be asked by any one of us, "Well, do they have the 501c3?" And the superintendent says, "Well, no, they're not running this kind of operation." And they'll be like, "How do you know?" So unless the language is clean but it's not it's not a requirement. No. I I mean I'm I'm going back many many moons, but the the concept behind this was to tie parent groups to school groups so that we're making sure policies are followed. We're making sure organizations are organized correctly. Like it was never intended to penalize anybody. It's intended to say we recognize you as a group. We
196acknowledge that you're a group, that you're trying to raise funds for this, or you're trying to raise funds. And and boosters tends to be the term people use for athletics, and parent organizations might be used for the theater club or the you know, whatever the case may be. And I think we're caught up on like terminology. But the idea is the idea behind this was do we want to have relations with these organizations or do we want them to just sign up and do their own thing? Because that's the name of the policy, relation with parent and booster organization. Do we want to have them be recognized in the school district? Well, I hate to create work more work, but if it says if it if we change that shall to should and it's and
197it's and the organization is officially recognized upon the request by the principal who will file a copy then maybe if we if if it says should, then maybe we should have a letter that goes to that organization based on how they're recognized as a 501c3 or just a regular non-profit, what the expectations are from the district. Meaning the rules. You can't do this. You know, they should get a copy of these rules anyway if they're being recognized by the district saying this is what you can and can't do based on your organization. With with with the partnership with the school district or with using our likeness. Would that be a policy? No. All right. That would be like a procedure. Yeah. Of its own. Yeah. I mean so this is a motion This is a
198motion on just this policy right now. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I look like actually I made the motion, you seconded it, right? I'll make um a motion to amend my original motion for number three to change the word shall to should. All right. Motion. I like it. Carol Locklin seconded by Jane. So the original motion maker and second and both agree and made the motion to second. Any further discussion on that? I would just say with the caveat um in there that we when we do approve these, when it's approved by the that and something probably should be run through with Kelly or what have you to show the difference on or at least the rule They need to know the rules whether it's this or Yeah, when they're effective? Do you want to add
199that? To my motion? >> [sighs] >> Jane's not going to approve it. No, I No, that's it's [laughter] it's fine the way it is now. That can be a directive from the committee. Yeah, after the fact. So [clears throat] there any more discussion on that? Are we going to keep it as Everything else just I'm saying the effective date. Do we want to amend that? >> looks like on the next one it has a different date, so I'm not sure if that that the source And all these motions make these effective um I think it just matches what the >> the actual effective date, but do we want to make an effective date? So, can we make all these motions effective moving forward than July 1st for the next fiscal school calendar? Keep saying fiscal,
200but that ends the Yeah, the next school year. Next school calendar. Yep. Can I ask what the difference is between shall and should? Yes, you have For clarification, cuz >> so [clears throat] shall means You have to. You're not even going to be considered unless you have a 501c3. Should means it's recommended that you do. Now, if you only have the nonprofit filed with the Secretary of State of Massachusetts, that gives you the criteria. And what the school district should will be the next thing we'll talk like down the road we'll talk about is the school district's going to say, "Okay, with this status, you can you're not allowed to do fundraise, you know, you're not allowed to do raffle." >> tickets. You can't have this. >> You can't have that, which is the law
201anyway. >> Right. But it it allows you to go out there and, um, you can [snorts] get a donation. You can get a check for 100 bucks, 500 bucks. You can raise money at at local store at the, you know, what you do outside before for your jackets, sweatpants, so what, you know, what have you. So, that allows all that to continue and it's a lot a lot a lot much less of a burden. If three people wanted to throw together the baseball organization, you have a president, a vice president, and a treasurer, and you're listed with the Secretary of State. Um, that local attorney will file that for you, >> [clears throat] >> and then it's going to cost 50 bucks or 100 bucks. It's I don't even think it was more than 100
202bucks, and you're good. And then annually you just, uh, you have a annual report that takes you 2 minutes to type in and and and maybe a file. I don't even I don't even >> So, that'll change each time the people change. >> year So, so now it only changes it only changes if when you guys if that that group of people you can have like you can have 10 people on the board. You know what I mean? You can have a director of this and that, and you can have a bunch of members. But it only changes what if you guys would have vote to change it annually. And you then you just notify the state. It's it's it's very very simple. You just sending in, uh, I think you do it all online
203now. And and it says, "Okay, well, you know, Carrie, you're the president this year. Jane, you you guys had a vote. Jane's the president now, and Carrie, you're the treasurer." Well, Matt's the treasurer. Like whoever So, it's not it's very very simple. It's not difficult. If I can do it. And you know, it's it's >> [clears throat] >> And and And then so it shows every it shows you that it's a legitimate nonprofit LLC. You can be a nonprofit and not have a 501c3. That's what I'm saying. You don't have to have both. So, that's the difference between shall and should. Should you can be a nonprofit and not have not not have a 501c3. Shall means You got to have it. only can be the nonprofit type that has a 501c3. Yeah. And that
204is a lift. So, there's like a a little loophole here in Massachusetts that says technically a sports booster club does not need a 501c3 to sell raffles in Massachusetts, but it must be a qualified nonprofit that meets specific state requirements. And then it does note chapter that Massachusetts raffles are considered gambling, and that is strict under MGL chapter 271 section 7A. But the, um, if your booster club is not a 501c3, you can still legally hold a raffle as long as you meet these three core criteria. One is a two-year rule. You have to have been established for at least two years. Two is obtaining your local permit. So, you don't have to have the 501c3 to get the permit, it sounds like. It says it's $10 to $50 at your town clerk. Um, once
205the permit is issued, the state lottery commission is notified. You are required to pay a 5% excise tax on the gross proceeds of the raffle within 10 days of the drawing. Is that Did that happen for bingo? I'm not part of the PTO. I just know that they I know that they got the permit, so I assume that they followed the rules. Okay, that's a question for me. And then number the third criteria, it says you have to meet all three. Educational or charitable purpose. The law requires that all funds raised should be used exclusively for educational, charitable, religious, fraternal, or civic purposes. A sports booster club supporting a school team generally falls under educational or charitable purpose. So, Yes. >> 501c3 isn't Well, we've determined >> necessary to get the permit. That's good news.
206And I mean, I don't know if we have any newer organized under two years. I don't I don't I think most of what's around selling the raffles and such has been for more than two years. So, Yeah, we've determined that you don't need the 501c3 for that. >> So, where are we at? >> now like >> Not tying their hands. But you don't need a 501c3 to be a nonprofit. But what you just listed as the ex the the the loophole or the That's a license it's a licensing requirement. Um, so, in order to have that, you It's all about gambling. They all want their money. part of that regulation that the school would put together to meet that criteria, you would then have [laughter] to provide that to the district. If you are operate
207you So, you would And and I think the bingo that was most recent that what what the PTO did it. And they and they provided that information. They provided that information. Yes. To us? Yes, to the school district. To the district. I know, cuz I the person who ran it said that showed me that she had that if they had the license it this and that. I didn't even it was unsolicited. I didn't even ask. So, So, yeah, especially if you're advertising it and it's the state will the state had come has come to Blackstone before when there there was a raffle on election day. I don't remember that. >> [laughter] >> I'm sorry, I don't remember the motion now. It is changing should to shall or vice versa. And then were you doing it
208at the start of the next school year to give time? July for we can we'll I'll I'll take Well, first of all, we're discussing that, so we haven't got that far. The The question was the difference between shall during versus should. And so, should opens it wide up. Should allows you to do what you essentially what you're doing without the gaming stuff. The the um, for a simple filing with the state of Massachusetts. It also, I think, stops a cease and desist. Like who's patrolling all of this? Nobody's going to walk into a group saying, "You're not documented." >> [laughter] >> You know, this is this is, uh, we recommend you are, but you're not going to get shut down for raising money for your You you shouldn't be able to get by number one
209without being filed filed with the state of Massachusetts based on the current um, relations with parent booster organization policy. Where does it say that though? It just says organizational papers. That's >> You're assuming that it's They should be providing the the So, the the legal organizational papers of your nonprofit is the filing with the Secretary of State. >> Where does it say that? It doesn't say that. >> say legally. A copy of your organizational papers. So, organizational papers uh, it it that means you have articles of organization. >> So, you whether you're minutes the minutes of a meeting Articles of organization is something that's held on the state website in the Secretary of State website. Um, and it says whether you're an LLC, incorporated, or, uh, partner whatever you are, you have a different type
210of articles of organization, uh, in there. So, organizational papers I understand this to be It's actually saying >> I would be very curious to know if number one has ever Yeah. taken place. Yeah, so would I. It will at some point it did It says when they when they just accepted it, I would imagine. >> we may not have ever recognized as as principals may never have not have recognized any I would be surprised if the principals knew that this is their responsibility right now. I'd be surprised. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that the principals have recognized the PTOs, to be quite frankly. If anything, they only the PTO. And to know if they have a 501c3. Last time was probably 1967 with the black with the marching band, right? Yeah, something. I mean,
211any PTO meeting I ever attended had the principal attending. So, it was recognized. It's [laughter] also BMA. The They recognize what they are. Directors are there. Their names are on the minutes. In attendance. Okay, we move this forward. So, are we voting on the amendment? >> [snorts] >> We got a motion and a second. We're still talking. Everybody else Anything any other any further discussion? No. Okay. Um, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Wait, time out. >> Oh. Are we vote What are we We're voting on the amendment. Should to shall. Right. Should to shall. Perfect. Shall to should. Shall to should. Shall to should. But it leaves booster organizations in that line. Yep. But that's also the heading. >> voting on the policy though, just the word should and shall. Cuz that
212was the amendment that was made to change should to shall. Yep. And then we'll go back to the main We'll go back to the main motion of accepting Correct. If the amendment fails. >> Yeah, we're doing it actually We're actually doing it that way. All right, good. Okay. Okay, the amendment on the first motion is changing shall to should on line three after booster organizations. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Any oppose? Yeah. Nay. You are nay? Mhm. Okay. Just you? Just me. All right, one, two, we got everybody here. All right, passes seven to one. Yeah, correct. Okay. Now I'll take a motion. Um To approve the policy as amended. >> [snorts] >> And to approve that Sorry, I'm going to take a motion to approve the
213policy as amended with an effective date of July 1st, 2026. Is that another amendment? Nope, I'm just Clarifying. Yes. Cuz it's not already in there. So moved. Second. Uh motion made by Matt. Second. Second by Tara Lakin. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any oppose? Nay. Nay. Hang on a second. Show hands. All right, one, two, three, four. So the motion fails. Yep. Okay. Should we move on to J [snorts] J B E? Yeah, all right, motion fails. Consider because now we're Do we just Let's get through these two and then So we have what we had before. up into a corner which is also Requires people to have a 501c3 cuz it says shall. Just a parent organization. Yeah, but the top of the thing says parent and
214booster. Yeah. They're not going to With this With this it's not going to get by. It's not going to get by step one. Anyone that's not set file with the Secretary of State will will not get by uh step one. Yep. Okay, so this So this motion for KBE has failed. Yep. So it is back to the existing policy. All right, a motion I'll take a motion to approve um GBEBC. So moved. Motion by Matt. The second. Second. And that was that you, Aaron? Yes. Okay, second by Aaron. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. All right, what uh Oppose, please raise your hand. And I All right, motion fails four to four. You need to Who's taking the minutes here? I'm making notes for We had no discussion.
215Can I ask why? That's state and federal law. Yeah. So isn't the On GBEBC. So wasn't the first one that failed. Okay. >> [applause] >> Um motion to approve um JJE. So moved. Motion by Tara Lakin. Second. Seconded by Jane. Any discussion? Just to Jane's point, this Again, this is state law. Yeah. So what we're doing to accept it is just to be in compliance with state law. Correct. >> Is that how I'm understanding it? Okay. Okay, all those in favor signify by All those in favor raise your hand. Okay. >> [clears throat] >> Okay, those oppose? Four to four. Okay. Policy um All the policy votes have failed. Uh that is by the way, for the record, four to four vote on all of them. Okay, I think Aaron's got a comment and then
216I just want to ask >> think maybe we need Kelly to come in and we can have a Yeah. legal conversation with her and wrap this up cuz we're not I'm I person I must speak for myself. It's not that I don't want to follow the law. Yeah, yeah, I got you. I don't I don't I am not going to sit here and put something into place that puts a staff at risk of being fired for participating in maybe their child's fundraiser. Cuz there are staff that have kids in the band. There are staff that have kids on basketball teams or coming up through. So I just want to I just I need I need more explanation on these last two. Sure. That's the only thing holding I I'm not going to tie anyone's hands.
217And I understand that it's law. Doesn't mean it's not going to be enforced. It's just not in our policies. Nobody's losing their job because of something we did tonight. That's It's just a hard no for me. I'm not doing I'm not Well, but the counter to that is you I'm just requesting that we >> vote against the law. Is what you did. The law's The law's been in place, Dan. Sure, and so but since I was called the the can of worms have been opened. So so I need Kelly to come here and explain to me how it works. That's all. I'm I'm just requesting that we have her come in so we can I I appreciate her time in responding to everything, but we need to have a frank conversation. More clarification on the
218wording, explain the Yeah, and the agreement. Sure, and so so moving forward I would hope that KBE number one is reviewed and strictly enforced until we have that to prevent anybody getting themselves It Well, just the My question is when you look at our online policy manual, what is online for KBE has an entire top half that is not on this printed version. Also, I want to point out the word encourages in the very first It says it in To enhance communications between parents, guardians, and school officials, the committee encourages the maintenance of formal parent organizations, including booster organizations. So you can ask something to be enforced, Dan, but we're going to get real nitty-gritty on the language in this if that We're not We're not here to cause trouble. We're here to Yeah, it
219encourages >> moving the way they always have. >> them to do that under the law. Encourages. That's implied. Yeah, we don't encourage people to do things unlawfully. >> voting for the others cuz I'm not letting anyone get fired for something that's We don't encourage people to do things unlawfully. I didn't think we did until now. But it's it's We we This is I mean Moving the word shall to should was at We already voted. Why are we still talking about this? This is Well, listen, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We voted on several things and then you asked to speak. And we We You're speaking. And you're speaking. And so I can re- respond. So when I respond, don't challenge why I'm still talking about this. I'm responding to your your comments. And And And you
220can bring We can bring Kelly in. We can We can >> And that's what we'll do. It's implied that we are encouraging people to follow the law. And I'll leave it at that. Moving on. Next is um Okay, so are we done? Yes. Policies are done. Policies are done. Boosters, gifts, solicit All right, those three. So now where are we going? On the back Executive office. Yep, executive office. Um Kristen, now the floor is yours. >> [clears throat] >> Thank you. So um for the expenditure report that we have, the budget continues to be in a favorable position for FY26. Um thankfully, there are no major concerns to report in regards to the current budget. Um we've had some savings um including some salaries and benefits, but that has been offset by some other costs
221that have been either unexpected. We have had a generator that we've had that um some utilities are higher, some athletic transportation that has offset what has been um a savings at this point. But we are monitoring the the um expenses right now for the budget to see um as we approach the year end, but right now I think we're like I said in a good favorable position. Any questions regarding our forecast for this year? This is still without the E and D. Yep, and if you look at the last page, I did include an E and D calculation so you can see where we started the E and D and then we're with what I have as a year-end forecast. This is showing if we continue in the projection, we'll end the E and D
222with a 3.66%. The 3.66 is using the projected money into this year's budget. Into FY27. And no, we had money earmarked for this year. Right, so that's where you'll see that right now because we're in a favorable position I've taken out us using the excess and deficiency for this year. >> We still ended at 3.66. So, that is So, you'll see here with if we end up doing some purchases this year, we're trying to see where where we're going to end this year and what we need for next year as well if we're going to do some purchasing. And that might might fluctuate again as we as we continue this year. Sorry, Kristen. I was asking the other half of what what another member of the finance committee if I missed the missed the meeting.
223>> [laughter] >> It's next Wednesday. Oh. Oh, good. Cuz I was like, I think I missed it, too, then. Wednesdays are I mean, to my credit, I did show up when it was [laughter] canceled. Any other questions? All right. So, now onto our budget transfers. So, you'll see that there's 15 budget transfers in your packet. Um of the 15, there's seven of them that are for grant budgets. We had one new grant that came in. Um and as we move towards the end of the year, we are looking to see where our needs exist and transferring and moving some to those [clears throat] those um areas. So, there are budget amendments that are happening for those grants. Um the other eight transfers are for ex- expenses within the general funds. Um this includes we're consolidating
224some GL accounts um and moving money within departments to align with the spending right now. Kristen, what is S/W nurse? I can't make sense of those or that abbreviation in my head. >> Ah, okay. That makes sense. Yes. I was playing with like everything. I'm like, I can't come up with this. No, for the system wide. So, your nurses really should be charged to the actual school when we do our end-of-year report. So, the fact that it was in a school wide was not appropriate. So, we moved it to the proper line. That makes sense. So, now I know what to transfer. >> [laughter] >> All right. Any other questions for the journal entries? Take a motion to approve the journal entries. So moved. Motion by Carrie. Seconded Seconded by Matt. Any further discussion? All
225those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The ayes have it. All right. Now, we are on to facilities use requests. And then, by the way, thank you, Kristen. Yes. And on with the facilities use. >> So, we have two facility use requests. The first one is from Parks and Recs for movie nights on It looks like Friday, 5:01, 5:00 to 9:00. This, I believe, is really set up just in case Is this the one that in- where we're No. They are in the Derby. Okay. So, this is going to be the cafeteria at the middle school. And there is no fee for this. So. Do we need to have someone here for this? Probably. It's It's Friday night. No one's Celeste. Yes, we'll have a custodian on on duty already. Okay.
226I'm uh I was Do you want me to I was having a full conversation over here. >> [laughter] >> Movie night. >> night. Uh yeah. Yes. All those in favor of the Parks and Recs having a wonderful movie night during Derby Days uh signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Just [snorts] so you know, you won't have your um junior and senior. That's prom night. Correct. >> Junior and seniors of high school are not coming to Derby Days. Well, maybe they will come and watch a movie after. Oh, and also, the elementary kids have a their dance dance. So, they're not going, either. Oh. Is that at BMR? I do think that it was mentioned to them that they had some events and they decided to continue with it. I think they hope it
227is in the general public. Nice middle school movie night. And it'll probably be like a community. It's going to be a black tie public hoping Yeah. Right. Others. They got horse movies coming up. Yeah. All right. And so, this Did we take a vote on that? Yeah. Yes. >> We did. Motion [snorts] or second it, but we took a vote on it. >> [laughter] >> So, Jane, you you made a motion. Yeah. Didn't you say? Did you? No. No. I made that up. All right. So, this All right. So, I thought I heard a motion. I'll take a motion to approve movie night. Motion made by Jane. Seconded by somebody. Matt. I'll second. >> Okay. All those in favor of movie night uh signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. opposed? The ayes have it. Next.
228>> Okay. And this is the last one. We have the Scouting of America Troop 1 Blackstone is going to have a fitness event on Wednesday, April 29th from 7:00 to 8:30, where they will use the foot the fitness room at the high school. Um this here is also no charge. We do have a custodian on um on staff that day. Okay. Um What? It's not very big, either. It's not There's no elevator. Not an accessible room. It's just for the scouts, so, right? Mhm. Yes. I believe it is just for the scouts to >> will use. So, it's Are they all I assume it's their earning some kind of badge or something for it. Yeah. All right. So. I hope they're aware. Uh motion motion to approve uh facilities request for the scouts. gymnasium? Yeah.
229So moved. Motion by Carol Larkin. Second. Seconded by Chuck Dutton. Um any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The ayes have it. It's unanimous. So far, so good, Jane. Yes. I just Yes. I know before you go to school committee, I just wanted to check in. I know it's not on the agenda, but I I brought um I did put it in my weekly update to you last week. We had our scholar for the Worcester County um scholars recognition, which was Marissa Padarella. But I brought you all back um Awesome. Awesome. that she is in there. And these are all the other scholars who were recognized at the at the Worcester County. It was a great It was a great event. Did we make the booklets
230again this year? I was looking at the back. We did. We didn't design them. Very pretty. Marlborough designed them and we printed them. Imagine that, huh? >> [laughter] >> Yes. But I thought it would you know, to have it. And you can see just a couple pages in um Marissa is there. So, um they were you know, they all got up. Um walked by. It was great. It was all a lot of different schools there. A lot of different kids were honored and we got to learn a little bit about each of the kiddos um that were there. It was some amazing things that, you know, these these students are doing. So, it was a great day. But I thought I'd bring those back and share those with you. Thank you. I like your quote,
231"Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud." And And did you say it I'm sorry, cuz I was looking for it. This is Yes. Well, um yes. Our graphics department at the high school printed those. Okay. Uh our next school committee is April 9th, 2026. >> [snorts] >> Can I Can I just talk? What's that? You're not giving us a forum. No, I was just going to I was going to go back to that. Um >> [laughter] >> Um and so, I just getting that out there. Yeah. Uh school committee forum, anyone have anything any closing comments, school committee? Um I would just like to ask if we could make sure our student reps are back with us for the next few meetings. I don't I It's been a while. I know we had a
232lot of budget workshops that they weren't participating in, but um a lot of exciting stuff coming in and I know that they'd love to share um and with that being said, wondering I I if we could get more out on social media >> [snorts] >> um on our Facebook page specifically. Um I don't know if that could be student-run or student I don't know. Is there a way for them to submit things or um activities that are going on and in the district, things they've done in class or I feel like a lot of the group gatherings have been missing. I feel awful that Empty Bowl happened. I don't know if but it's usually something that we've done as a committee in the past and um it was kind of not on my calendar because
233I hadn't heard about it and a few other things came up that week for Even Lucas missed it, but and he and the jazz band plays, but um I think promoting that stuff on our social media in the past has been a huge way of communicating and I I I just think I'm wondering if there's a if there's someone that could start pushing that stuff out and I know the athletics have had a lot of stuff on there, but I think there's some other things missing in the past. Either upcoming events or photos of the events and all the good that's happening. All the good. Yeah. Is athletics like Is there a BMR athletics Facebook page itself? She has a She has an Instagram. >> Instagram. And is it pushing into our Facebook our district
234>> No. No, it's just an athletic one. So, it's a little dry. And it runs the whole Yeah, it's all athletics. It's very active. And with that being said, too, I know this is huge like we've had ups and downs with it, but the website and the calendar needs some attention, too. So, just you know, Jackie has been working on >> Yeah. our website The website is a lot. I wonder Why can't we have it run by graphics. Like, why can't they Why can't it be their year-long project to our school calendar and and not Facebook page, but not social media, but website. Just I'm just putting out suggestions. The website has always needed new pictures and new you know. Wait, the high school does internships [clears throat] where like juniors and teenagers like earn
235with a teacher and they kind of get like a project to work on. I almost wonder if >> [laughter] >> It's just a lot for Jackie. I'm not saying it even when it years ago was Bridget. I I she did a wonderful job with it, but as soon as someone isn't on it it's missing something, you know, it's almost it's just too much probably before one person. So Sure. Just suggestions. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I know >> [laughter] >> It's been a common It's been a common Jane Do we have a sense of how the Blackstone Valley Technical lottery will impact [clears throat] our class next year? Yes. Oh. The Blackstone is down. I know I can tell you Blackstone is down four students from last year. No, well, yeah, no,
236well Yeah. Do we have is it 20 total? So, the original number that came out was we had to provide them with um our enrollment over the past few years and originally it was up to 20 students. Um so there could have been 16 Blackstone and four Millville um max. Um and I I believe it was did it didn't I think it was only 16 students. Um that they selected from this Yes. So we're yes, they just had the lottery. We're waiting for all the final We have the numbers. We're waiting for all the final names. Um be able to provide you with some numbers. We also I thought the I'm sorry, excuse me. I thought the names were announced. They They have the numbers were drawn. So so we know who's going. And we
237also have students. Um usually um I think over the last few years when Chris and I looked into it, North Fork Aggie, there's a could be you know, three to five students who apply. I don't know how many get in. You know, it all depends. Um so we're waiting for those numbers as well. spreadsheet you guys presented to us, those school choice numbers were vocational in those numbers? So those were included in those numbers? No, only school choice and charter school numbers. Um vocational schools are not considered either. But we don't know yet. I mean, we're waiting for the final numbers who will get accepted. Well, who will accept going. And I'm still waiting for the final numbers on North Fork. One when those numbers are known can we just get a quick email update
238saying like how many are expected in this next school year and then kind of like including like the Aggies, Tri-County, like all of that and just kind of like what the last couple of years numbers have been just to see how [clears throat] we're trending. There was a lot of that social media commentary about that. Yeah. It was a different process this year. Oh, here's this [clears throat] year's process had a lot of social media discussion. This year was the first year of the lottery. Actually, we had a lot of social media commentary last year on this time when it around that stuff as well. It was a totally different process. Yeah, I'm just curious if it worked out totally different. That's I mean I'm just curious. So once we know >> were actual requirements.
239Even though it's a lottery, there are I forget what they were, but there were like three requirements. It's you have to basically give your application and show an effort in touring or visiting. You had to have your attendance. You couldn't exceed it's a pretty exorbitant number. And the last one was disciplined, which basically had to be on the level significant level to be >> [cough] >> No felonies. Significant. So was it kind of like if Joe Smith was applying, you get like three chances. And if you like Yes. Right. So like if your attendance was you could be down to like two chances. Yes. I explained it that way to someone and they were like I get that. And then my next question is do we still have a wellness committee? Because I would think
240that would be where to address the mental health. And we have we do have policies that require wellness. Which includes the nurses and the PE people. Do we have a representative on? I don't even know if we still have a committee. I I I'm not aware of a well I do know within our buildings we have our our staff that are our SEO teams in each building. We do have that. I feel like back then when I'm going back when I first got on it was during COVID. Wasn't there like a subcommittee? Yeah, it's um I mean it's contractual. It it it's state mandated. with services with services I know That's food services on it. They've reached out. There's been talk about it. There's been talk about who's on it and who's doing it. And
241students and Tracy was on it. All right. That was a good group then. Anyone anything else for Nope. I'm good. Good and welfare slash future agenda items. Anyone else? Okay. So we will be going into executive session. We will will not be coming out to adjourn. We will adjourn in executive session. I just would like to thank um the young man who presented this evening on in in good and welfare for his uh research. I would love to see the polling data. I'm very curious and looks like he put a lot of time and effort into into the um uh the athletes that were in front of us, congratulations. Um the students that participated with the um the uh three different school buildings. Um um their um uh middle of the year report. And um
242I'd like to thank them as well. And um at this time I will uh ask for motion to enter into executive session to conduct strategy sessions and for preparation for negotiations with the non-union personnel. So moved. Motion by Tara uh Scobie. Second. Second by Matt Chalalano. Do a roll call, Jane. Yes. Aaron. Yes. Carrie. Yes. Matt. Yes. Chuck. >> Yes. Tara Scobie, Matt Chalalano, and Dan Keefe yes.