BMRSD School Committee 3 10 22

001good evening i'll call to order the blackstone novel regional district school committee school committee meeting today march 10 2022. um let's stand for the pledge of 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 and we can do introduction of members i'm tara larkin i'm um a millville millville representative amanda gilman novel tammy lemieux blackstone tim howell blackstone kai sacco blackstone madison blackstone matt erinworth assistant superintendent jason defalco superintendent and next is student representative updates okay so we have our drama club they're performing on may 10th and that is the musical of princess and the p we have our mock car crash which is the week of prom we learn about like the dangers of

002drunk driving we have spring sports that start on the 21st which is tennis softball baseball track and fields we have internships seniors fourth quarter and we have seven inter senior internships that are at the elementary schools the re sports team won today so that's exciting it's their first to win some sore thumbs and then our friday advisories we have two coming up where we do like team and community building the 17th and the 25th the gsa their connections conference is next friday the 18th when we have the professional development day and at the high school and i believe all schools right now there's a sock drive and food can drive going on sophomores have their english mcas coming up on the 22nd and 23rd yes and then we have the nhs doing our annual empty

003super on april 13th our bowls are looking pretty good so it's exciting you should all buy a ticket it's very exciting and that's it excellent thank you ladies thank you thank you and i did forget um our remote members go ahead you guys thank you you're smart to run girls like we've learned next lesson have a lovely evening it's aaron and carrie i don't know if carrie's on you i know erin's on erin are you there here she comes oh there's harry there's carrie yeah i'm here i am here okay just introdu um i guess say your name in town uh error in banaco millville carrie godda blackstone all right thanks ladies um and uh we have the public hearing for our 2023 budget um yeah i'm giving it to jason all right uh good

004evening everybody nice to see you all um and to those of you at home that are tuning in we are this portion of our agenda is to uh have our formal public hearing on our fy 23 budget and um let me just quickly mention as we start to work our way through this that if you were able to tune in and participate um in the joint meeting we had last week with the boards of selectmen the finance subcommittees the capital subcommittees of course our school committee and the administration from the towns and the schools you have seen this and so i want to make sure to say that up front because the information that we're going to discuss this evening is is 99.9 the same so if you've had a chance to tune into this

005uh you have seen this information already the only kind of nuance that we're going to talk that matt and i will talk about tonight is just the open piece when we get into uh the town assessment aspect of that so um if the committee is okay i'm going to walk through this just a little bit quicker only because it it truly is the same information and again if the public has has tuned in to the joint meeting they've seen this already so i don't want to belabor it but of course um the budget for fy23 is anchored in our district improvement strategy this is our last year with our current strategy and i do want to publicly thank the school committee and our steering committee i'm not on the steering committee the steering committee is

006made up of our staff across the school system that have been hard at work on developing our next version of our strategy but the school committee has also been very focused on this work and i really appreciate the workshops that the committee has so actively engaged in to help really give us the feedback we need to to ensure we're on the right track so a big thank you to our steering committee and to our school committee for the work on that um again it's always important to talk about uh the who of our work and these are the 1500 plus blessings that we have in across our system that we are very lucky to care for not just the academic needs but the whole child needs each and every day this is an overview of

007our student enrollment and our demographic breakdown and again we've walked through this so i won't spend much time on it but just to give the community uh another sense of the budget that the student enrollment rather excuse me that the budget is built around this is really important to mention our state determined measures because it really talks about uh from our perspective the return on investment you know we are really clear that our fiscal plan has to match our our student plan our instructional plan we call it a few different things and in this situation we just want to highlight a few data points that are important to note um currently our state did not issue any new accountability ratings or accountability levels uh because of covid last year but prior to that none of

008our schools are in any level of accountability which is good that means that we're making all the progress we need to that we're moving in the right direction it is not mentioned here but it is also important to note that the last time that we were issued an accountability status our goal rating was making significant progress toward goals so we're really happy about that and of course we'll see where this spring brings us and we'll talk in a in a bit later in the agenda where we think we may end up or where we may land based on what our interim uh assessments are showing us and those are part of my goals and my evaluation so we'll delve a bit deeper into that as we move forward through tonight's agenda so with respect to

009the process as many people are becoming familiar with we start off with our fy 23 timeline that gets approved by the school committee then we ask each principal to identify the needs that they have for their school and also we asked them to focus specifically on what they needed to do to make sure that we maintained the remediation of both academic and social skills that we know we're still seeing gaps in from the covet pandemic which nobody has masks on now so this is hopefully we're coming out of it but we do know regardless of whether we're wearing masks or not the impact for our kids is going to be pretty long lasting and we're going to continue to try to remediate those effects so afterward the building principles and the cost center managers go

010and they meet with their staff and they work together to figure out what the needs are for either the school or the department then we again focusing on both their school improvement plans their instructional focus of their school and anchoring all of that work as jason mentioned to our district blueprint 2.0 which i know jason will speak to a bit further later in his evaluation jason and i then meet with each one of the cost center managers and we go over line by line what it is that they are requesting and they justify the needs to us and we give them the approval as to whether or not they're going to present them to the school committee then we jason and i once it was all compiled actually took probably close to 15 hours or

011so going through the budget line by line we had a five-year spending trend that we reviewed for every single one of the lines and then we also compare that to what was budgeted in the past after we do that jason and i had you know removed a few things and discussed some things with the principals or call center managers we conduct our budget workshops publicly that gives the school committee and the public an opportunity to hear what is prioritized according to the instructional leaders and then once again after the priorities are identified we then went back with the school committee and went line by line again and saw where it was that we could potentially make adjustments in order to get the budget to a place where it would be palatable to the towns so

012part of the work is not just relying on our state in local funding from our towns but also to make sure that we are diligently going after every grant we can that aligns with our goals um and so as we talked about last week uh to date we've been successful in writing over two million dollars worth of grants and we're going to talk a little bit later this evening about um the math program but we were notified yesterday that we will be receiving up to the eighty thousand dollars for our math program um that was another grant that we had written so we are really happy that we will be able to offset the cost of our of our new math series our k-12 uh with an 80 000 um grant from the state which

013we're really happy about um and so that is not on here yet we were just notified of that but some good news and some other places we're writing we will be writing a summer programming grant um which we have summer dollars available through our esther money but every dollar we can get to help supplant that and i will use the plant because it's the right word we can then use that esser money somewhere else um so that's we are still working hard to find additional funds so in the fy 23 budget what you will see is there is a focus on closing the gaps and advancing the district again we are making sure that we're able to implement our new blueprint for district improvement we call it our blueprint 2.0 we're trying to minimize the

014non-academic barriers that these students are coming in to to us with especially given all of the circumstances that we just referenced earlier we are going to make sure that we're implementing and supporting the k-12 mathematics curriculum while we're still reviewing a social studies frameworks and deciding what we need to do with that k-12 curriculum and another big piece a lot of this funding will come from grants but we want to make sure that we sustain this within our local budget also is our career development programs and pathways that is a tremendous piece of the work that we are doing to make sure that we are offering all of the students what they need to be college or career ready we also as part of that speaking of the college readiness i don't want to miss

015building our dual enrollment pipeline which will be a tremendous i believe asset to the district so that our juniors and seniors can start accumulating credits for college and they'll have some before they even leave us and in just a bit we'll hear from miss phallus who's here to give an update this evening about the dual enrollment program so we're really excited on the middle school end the middle high school end of that uh pipeline um and then just briefly on resources and staffing and again i won't read all these but you can see where we have looked to continue to prioritize the work that's needed i think the two probably most important pieces regarding staffing is looking at the 0.6 history teacher at the middle school to make sure that we can bring back those

016equitable class sizes we can round out the teaming model and structure that we have here and then the additional building substitutes that would be shared between the four schools from a from a facilities perspective of course what is also in the budget is addressing the asbestos issues that we have at the high school so those numbers are included in our assessment uh which matt is going to review uh briefly yeah you've got it a little bit bigger on your slide nine there i will apologize in advance for the size of the numbers um both the print size and some of the actual size sizes of the numbers so what you can see at the top of the the left hand of the chart is the expenses that we will be incurring what you'll see is

017our school choice sending tuition and our charter school sending tuition right at the top as we've said before one of the reasons why we are working so diligently to keep our students here and or bring our students back is this is a tremendous expense to the district as you can see we're paying over 1.5 million dollars in students that are exiting the district the all other number that you will see there is the is the total of the budget that was developed at the district level no i'm fine i have it in front of me sorry is that can everyone see okay we're good thanks so the all other number that you see there is that budget number that the district developed both for our in-district costs and some of our out-of-district special education costs

018but those two top numbers that you see the school choice and the charter school that's determined those numbers are given to us by the state and that money is just taken right out of our chapter 70 funding below that what you can see is all of the various areas where we are trying to supplement the general fund so we have been very clear every budget season that we're going to maximize the use of every fund that we have and you can see that in this budget we're proposing applying additional circuit breaker funds for 175 thousand dollars additional sr2 funds and sr3 funds the reason why that says the 23 plus 22 rollover is as dr defalco mentioned there are things that we were able to identify this year shift back to the general fund and

019that allows us to roll those esser funds over and spend them to try to offset the cost of the fy 23 budget i won't go through all of them but below you can see all of our various state revenues and our entitlement grants the the other section where you see estimated offsets from user fees and tuitions those are other revenues that the district brings in including our athletics fees our music fees and we also have some rental income that we make from renting our classrooms to other programs and that will bring us to the balance which is remaining and that money gets split up across the different areas and is charged to the towns so what you can see to the lower right hand side is the breakdown of the assessments which i know is

020the bottom line that everyone wants to get to for blackstone this year you can see the minimum local contribution is seven million five twenty five seven 714 the exclusionary 1 million 361 261 i won't list them all but you can see how it's broken down for each town the total for blackstone coming out to million 695 154 and the total for millville coming out to 3464 302 i do want to point out a little section in the middle of the right hand side which is the minimum local contribution you'll see there the minimum local contribution listed for this year and you'll also see the minimum local contribution that is listed for fy 22. as you can see the increase to blackstone was 480 000. 865. i'm sorry 480 865. dollars which is a increase of

0216.83 percent which is tremendous it's the largest both of these increases i won't go through the numbers um from millville the 153 five oh nine that's again they're both over six percent increase the increase that we saw from fy21 to fy22 was in the one percent range so this is where you're going to see a large portion of whatever the increases to the budget is directly from mlc which the state determines and the district really has no control over if you look the bottom line on the left hand side the grand total percent increase for blackstone over the fy 22 budget is 4.58 and for millville it's 3.89 that is significantly higher than just the operating increase because both towns have capital payments that will have principal payments due this coming year so that's why

022there's a bit of an additional lump in that section but with respect to the operating costs of the district minus the capital the entire increase to blackstone comes out to a 3.03 percent and a 1.01 percent for melville you can see something highlighted underneath which is what jason mentioned a little earlier these capital numbers that are included in these assessments do include the asbestos work that we already gave a cost for it's about 225 to 250 000 worth of work that we identified for the towns already those costs are built into the actual capital costs in this assessment what you do not see are the costs that we've been discussing as with the capital improvement plan boards of each town those costs we are going to be looking at as a smaller group and identifying

023how the towns want to try to address them i started receiving emails back from the town administrators today thank you both for people that are volunteering from the town boards to participate in that process and the other piece is the opeb we can discuss briefly that was certainly a big talking point for the joint town meeting if anyone was watching that for the fy 22 year we did budget to allocate fifty thousand dollars into that opeb account uh we did say last year that we would put fifty thousand dollars into opeb when our end became certified for this year i am happy to say our end was certified this morning so i have that number to share our e d was certified at one hundred 550 six dollars and i can also say it is

024lower than it really should be we are in the process of going through one of the accelerated repair projects with msba and we're still waiting for a reimbursement for them that was delayed so on our excess and deficiency calculation the department of revenue reduced our e and d by approximately three hundred and ten thousand dollars because of reimbursements that we're waiting for from msba so that in actuality would point to our end being in an area of about eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars so with that i have a meeting scheduled tomorrow with rockland trust and we are going to be setting up the opeb trust account and putting in the fifty thousand dollars that we discussed last year and this year and similarly at the joint meeting there was a discussion and a request

025for the district to recommend an amount to the towns and we in that discussion decided that we are going to recommend to the towns that they contribute a hundred thousand dollars this coming year for opeb and we are going to ask that they contribute a hundred thousand dollars for the years to come until we at some point determine whether or not we're going to raise that contribution and those con and those conversations will happen as a as a group which has been really productive recently and the hope is we will eventually build up that trust fund and one day probably not in recent years or soon to come years we will be able to pay for our retirees benefits off of the interest that is accumulated in that trust fund and [Applause] our next steps

026well we only have one i was going to say the one last step is kind of cut off on this slide i don't know if it shows the same way on television but we've gone through our opeb conversations we've gone through the joint meeting about the capital improvement plans we're going to continue to work on both of those items and we're here for our public hearing and we will be hopefully certifying the budget on thursday march 24th is there anyone in the public who would like to speak goodbye please tell us who you are and where you're from and then just remind us about the budget hi my name is melissa i'm from blackstone comments on the budget oh no this is the fuzzy yeah okay we'll have a public forum in our regular meeting

027oh okay so we kind of have two meetings going on at one side but my apologies yeah so this is the for discussion uh you opened of the public hearing yeah so for discussion on um the budget moving forward to the towns because in our next meeting we will certify the budget we will approve a warrant item for stipends for school committee members and a warrant item for opeb contributions from each community so if anybody has any questions or comments about either of those three things any of those three things it's not either that's a any of okay um i don't are we live streamed we are jesse are there any comments on online i don't think we're taking comments okay and aaron and carrie are both on okay no no okay so i'll entertain

028a motion to officially close the public hearing i so move all those in favor all right hi and did you also open our meeting at the same time so i actually only opened our meeting not public hearing oh not something but i went right into that yeah okay now we're good oops my apologies we're good till the end so we'll open and close our public hearing all right so did you do consent agenda a no yes all right and we have we have warrants they were emailed to us and we have minutes from february 10th i'll entertain a motion to approve consent agenda a okay second all right moved by amanda second by tim any discussion all those in favor of consent agenda a say aye aye thank you aaron carey aye thank you okay

029um any any abstentions any nays okay we're good okay so now we'll open our um public forum part of our meeting so now that you sat down you can come back up again do we have things to sign what's over there okay hi how are you hi my name is i have a child at the high school a child here at the middle school and a child at millville elementary i have a couple of concerns my daughter who was in high school has had a very rough year due to the lack of teachers staying and what really gets me is the teachers telling these children why they're leaving and their reason is because the school department is not paying them enough money to be here my daughter is since the first quarter going on her

030sixth teacher that has left this year as a freshman so for me that's very concerning hopefully you guys can take that into consideration for any kid you know especially with transition issues things like that the structure not being the same you have one leave you have one you know come go whatever you have to get used to that all over again and it's kind of frustrating you know having one or two i get it we're going through a pandemic but six that's a lot that's a lot and i really don't think adults should be discussing or telling any child why they are leaving that is between them an administration and my child should never have to hear that it is because you know your school department won't pay me enough that's not something that i

031want and it's not just one it's it's it's numerous since the beginning of the school year that you know my daughter has made me aware of and she she tells me about everything i mean she's even emailed you i didn't even know she was emailing you about this festive situation she was like all worried about it because my uncle's a plumber so she knows about that stuff she's very you know advocate for herself but it's really taken a mental health toll with so many different teachers having you know come and then get used to it and then okay now you have another teacher coming okay now you're losing this teacher and now you're losing this teacher and she's had three classes where for the quarter she's had to get i think they put a p

032just for pass so any work that they've put in it doesn't even go as a number as a grade it's a p that's frustrating when she's sitting here and she's trying her hardest to get honors or high honors that child cannot get honors or high honors when they have a p on their on their report card for that quarter so i think it's very unfair for them um and if you know if you guys can take into consideration when you have your meetings with your teachers to you know at least speak with them tell them it's not appropriate these kids don't need to hear adult stuff it's it's not you know something that needs to be done so that was my my first concern um my second concern is a very big one with the

033tech department so i will tell you that since sixth grade i've had this issue the chromebooks from me as a parent i don't allow my kids on certain things so when these chromebooks are not blocked from certain sites and they are allowed to go on whatever they want whenever they want it's an issue i had an issue here at this school my daughter's chromebook was taken from another student in lunch and that student went on to pornhub that's very disturbing for me my child did not know what that was until this happened until i got and i didn't get a phone call from the principal i had to call her after saying that you know something needed to be done this is not my first time bringing this to the middle school administration i haven't

034had a problem high school wise or anything like that but when they start and they get them in sixth grade they run with it and nobody is paying attention to what they're exactly going on i mean they can watch netflix they can go on you all kinds of youtube videos i mean that that one thing that just happened with my daughter it's concerning for me you know that's they should only be able to have access to things that are involved with school and anything that is school related especially i can't monitor 24 7. you know what i mean it's just not possible it just shouldn't be available to them so i'm hoping that maybe that can be addressed as an issue because even you know i'm like okay i call you on the site you're

035in trouble i take the chromebook and she comes to cool school and borrows one well those are all available everything they can still go back on those sites so how can i discipline my child if there's nothing you know we have to work together here do you understand what i mean i'm baffled by this one she's getting on those sites at school there was a there was a boy who took her um her chromebook and and um doctor dr laporte did address it the child did have you know disciplinary watch the cameras seen the child take it and did go in the history and yes he was on there and she and we had talked about it and she said that there are a lot of times that they can get on to these different

036sites i mean i'm really struggling with my eighth grader this year very very hard i adopted her you know she um she's she has a very high iep so she sees other kids doing things she's she's a big follower so if she sees that it's okay that these kids are be able like for instance i'm gonna give you an example um she's able to open up a zoom and chat with people from around the world this is not okay i don't need people finding out where i live technology is a thing of today where anybody can find out where you live through the internet and that's a concern of mine i have a four-year-old daughter i i just don't feel comfortable with everything being so wide open and her being able to access this these

037zoom accounts um the google emails she came home had four assignments missing these are class room work assignments why are classroom work assignments not done well i go in and i look in her history google email these kids are chatting all day on google email i have the names i have screenshots i have everything you know they are in class doing this and i get it there's 20 something kids to one teacher they cannot and i and i get that because i'm one of you know four kids and i can't even keep up half the time so and i understand that they they don't they they just probably don't even know that they go on this but if the classroom work is not getting done because you have this boy and this boy texting you

038through your google email and it's coming up but why are the teachers not recognizing this does it not pop up i'm i mean i'm not really too you know like i don't know how it works with their google emails i don't know how who sees these i don't know what they use them for all i was aware of was that they use them because that's how they get their assignments so when i see that there are conversations being emailed back and forth between her boys inappropriate conversations things like that how am i as the parent supposed to you know take and discipline my child or correct my child if it's not being corrected here so i hope you guys can understand where i'm coming from i really just needed to you know let that out

039because my other daughter i mean believe me she's she's no angel she's tried to get away with watching netflix because they can get on netflix i mean they can get you know on all that stuff but she learned in sixth grade because she knows i don't i don't play around you know but the other one kind of tries to get away with a little more than than the other you always have one or two um she learned really quick so um i just i don't know this one's really being slick and and getting by and and i'm i'm just i i'm i don't know what to do anymore as a parent i i i need the school's help i really really do i need the school's help with that aspect of of the tech situation

040i'm happy to give you a call tomorrow to talk through that that's perfect i just wanted to voice my concerns i wanted to let everybody know you know what what was going on and be aware because you guys you know are not aware of it so as long as i can make it aware and i will speak to with you tomorrow okay thank you so much thank you very much anyone else okay scholarship for the class of 22. yes impulse um jill thoughtless and while miss phallus is on her way down we were going to recognize uh they weren't able to make it tonight but i would please come but i want to just give a um a quick shout out to our cheerleading team that won our dvc championships and um many of the

041we invited the cheerleading team here this evening but many of them actually are are preparing for a dance competition yeah as it was described or explained to us from uh from the coach actually um but um the coach did share that they are really grateful to have been offered the chance to come and meet with the school committee and they you know she wishes that she could be here and sort of so does the team uh and they're really grateful for the um for the support from the school committee so i just wanted to share that before yeah congratulations they made it to states but didn't qualify beyond that um so for your consideration we have um two scholarships totaling two thousand dollars for three recipients so our first is the will be called the

042church of saint paul twice treasured thrift store scholarship it will be a thousand dollar scholarship and they're looking for a blind selection which means no names so they're not going to know who it is with that with their essay and consideration with academic achievement leadership qualities and of course volunteerism which i think is super important and makes perfect sense with this scholarship the second scholarship is the frederick j stone memorial scholarship there this is actually two 500 scholarships for a total of a thousand dollars um if you drive into the high school you may notice the name frederick j stone um and he's looking um he was a member of the school board for 26 years he passed away in 2019 and his love for education is something that they would like to continue with

043and this is going to go to a scholar athlete so we are looking for you approval we um just to give you an update i asked um miss pourier in our counseling department to get me a number we've got currently twenty thousand six hundred dollars in scholarship money which was for the class of 2021 last year that is something that we are looking to grow so if anybody out there listening or committee members or a business and would like to sponsor uh you may be hearing from us because we think that's something that our graduates deserve and to represent a business from the community is very important so we hope that you will approve the new scholarships and i'm hoping i will be here many more times there you go thank you say yes please

044we're all hoping you will be here i it's incredibly generous on both parts of of both i was really excited to see the st paul won because that's new and different and certainly the family of mr stone it's remarkable um but does anybody want to make a motion to approve these technically three scholarships right second move second okay nope that's okay move by amanda second by tammy is there any discussion or questions these will be more than one year they're expected to be correct yearly yep the um the thrift store is evidently doing quite well um and they i know the the the church the saint paul's church is very active in the community and has been partnered with the um school department for a number of different things um so yes they're looking to

045have that do do we have a process for students to submit an essay or we do we have a we have a um what i would guess i would call like a common app and then certain scholarships ask for other certain pieces so for this case the we're working out the details with the stone memorial scholarship but they are asking for an essay it may be something that they want specific to student athletes we will cater to whatever their wishes are but we will also um that essay is also a part of our scholarship process great um as us all the emotions still open then i got something else to share and that these are available in naviance is that where they find all the scholarship stuff isn't it that's a good question well once

046that once it's approved it will go up and that information will go out to the senior class yeah anyone else all right motion on the floor to approve the three scholarships all those in favor say aye aye aaron kerry hi thank you aye aye thank you any any abstention any nays all right so approved i just want to give another side on this scholarship piece um in also talking with miss pourier who's we're working on expanding our book awards for our juniors we have already increased um this the number she was going to get me a whole list but she was she she was asking if we had any connections to stanford university so if anybody has any connections to stanford you need to be recommended for their book award but while we you know

047the harvard brook award we're adding um she's we we came up with six different universities for her to contact today um to increase with so we're really hoping to look and to expand the opportunities for our junior class that's great stay tuned thank you thank you thanks joe thanks i'll take a book award i need a book award do you have any students like do you have to go to the school to use the award yeah well yeah it depends what it is right like assumption i think the harvard book award do you have to go to harvard but a lot of the book awards aren't monetary yeah the harvard book award is not monetary it's just an award but there are some assumptions gives yeah avery got okay see i learned something new you

048can teach an old dog um okay a statement of interest to the massachusetts school board authority so going to take a moment to well i don't know tara maybe you want to do this but highlight what we have done as a capital planning committee in terms of review of an assessment of our current facilities and a discussion to move forward in renovation and repair and the process to renovation or repair or replace and the process to do that does not require but it's certainly recommended that you submit a statement of interest to the massachusetts school building authority who would partner in that endeavor and pick up a percentage and that percentage will vary depending on the project in the year and the monies available but a percentage of the project project so that our communities

049do not have to foot the entire bill of a new building project whether again renovation repair or replace i know that a lot of information has gone out a lot more information will go out this is the second third or fourth step in a very very long process this is not having a school committee approve a statement or approve submitting a statement of interest does not bind a town community to anything and does not bind anybody financially to anything it's expressing that we have a need and this is one way of addressing that need if approved there are multiple steps that include a feasibility study and then a project vote and we'll go to the towns multiple times so i know we had at the last meeting some family members come and express interest about

050their taxes increasing this is not a tomorrow this is not a next year's bill this is a process and seeing and giving people time to plan and coordinate efforts this is simply saying we believe it is time for blackstone millville regional school district to enter this process by submitting a statement of interest to the school building authority and with the background research that we've done and the work that has been done i believe we can very much show need and so we'll see if if the building authority agrees with us but i did i miss anything no i think you captured it at all so enter so do saying that i'll entertain your emotion do you have it no you gotta you gotta read it's fancy okay um i just wanted to add to that

051what do i do after the motion i'll do it after promotion okay i moved to authorize the district administration to submit a statement of interest for a core renovation project to the massachusetts school build building authority msba this statement of interest will focus on the district's need to address the physical conditions of the bmr high school thank you tim okay yes go ahead um i just want to remind people that while we put together a plan this the subcommittee met for over a year we came up with the plan to renovate the high school which impacts um renovate the high school and use the um middle school which would might require a minor renovations as jane was pointing out the process if we're accepted goes into the feasibility study which actually looks at all four

052of our buildings like it will look further at the possibilities that we have the configuration so what we suggested may not be the final plan i know there are people conversations on for it or against it so just a reminder that if we're accepted the feasibility will will prove out our thought whether that's a good plan or not so i just want to make sure people understand that side of it yeah it would even look to see if there's acreage of land in the community not being used to the best thing and it would make a great whatever so so if anyone wants to donate yeah donate a big piece of land now so a feasibility so what the building the capital group has committed or has has developed in its plan will shape some

053of the discussion in the feasibility study but will not shape the result of it that will be done by the the company that is hired to to do that actual study the work of that study so it's almost like doing some of the work over again but with an end with a specific end project in mind that will be developed by the study so this is just um to see if the state thinks we're we're we're as needy as we think we are right so um and i do know that we have the support of the millville capital planning committee they voted in their group to support this as well so we appreciate that and i know that the blackstone capital group has heard it as well and and added to the discussion and so

054i think lots of people have information and will be sharing a lot more so as we go through the spring and the summer and as we hear from the building authority we will certainly be scheduling open houses at the high school so people can see what that facility looks like sessions in the senior centers sessions in the library if there's a church that would like to have us come talk or a elks club or any kind of organization in the community we are happy to put together a small group to come and talk and answer questions and question and answer sessions we we have a job to do but we all have to do it together so i hope people will support this motion and i hope our community will support this effort does anybody

055have anything else karen or kerry because both of them are on the building committee right okay i just wanted to add if we are accepted we would know in this july so a little bit of the timeline as you started you you did mention but 2027 would be the earliest that we if we if it all is approved and you know everything goes it would be 2027 that it would actually come come live and affect taxes so there's a there's a lot of time for all this planning just every it's not happening next tax you know this town meeting or no so it's time to prepare and time to prepare and plan plan yep anyone else all right there's a motion on the floor to submit a statement of interest to the massachusetts school building

056authority um all those in favor say aye uh anyone opposed any abstentions okay so moved okay um i don't know do we have this on the um on there i don't know i am not well um we i think um it was requested it was requested that we develop a an organizational chart and so that um has been done um and um it was also requested that it get color coded so you kind of see who's a who's or what i was i was getting ready to walk through it but i know that dr defalco is gonna wanna unless you'd like me to start oh no good but whatever sure so um dr defalco and the leadership team have been working to put this together so that people will understand the organization and i know

057that one of the things that may look very different is what people might be thinking is an upside down structure a lot of times you'll see an organizational chart that starts with the superintendent and then branches down but this is very intentionally designed in a different way because our leadership team is aware that we are at the base of this work and our jobs are to support those that are working closer with the students so if you follow this chart it begins with the school committee as governance moves to the superintendent then it will move up toward the assistant superintendent and then branch out into some of the different areas we have our building leaders the principles on the left side we have our some of our operational pieces of the work toward the center

058that you will see we have our nutrition director facilities director i.t lead those come under well above the assistant superintendent and then to the right you'll see the director of learner support services and some of our student support needs and services moving upward and again the entire purpose of all of our work gets to the ultimate piece of this chart which is at the top which is the students and everything that everyone underneath is doing is intentional to support the growth of the students in this district and i wanted to be clear that this chart was designed differently in order to demonstrate that and it is color-coded as you mentioned the blue individuals are they are employees on contract 12 month 12 12 month they are 12 month contracted employees the individuals in orange to

059the left are unit b members the yellow individuals they're not individuals but the yellow departments that you'll see are unit a members and the pink up top are the unit c membership in athletics and enrichment no that's great matt thank you for that athletics in richmond are not unit b but they're kind of a unique they're they are stipended positions for unit a but we put them off uh the building principles because they are working directly with the with those individuals are the are the yellow on the left and the yellow on the right the same yellow because it's the school psychologist are they not part of unit they're all the same yep they're all united all the yellows a yellows okay where the building principles evaluate um you know all the individuals in their

060buildings jill all does the direct coordination and support work for the school psychs team chairs bcbas etc so we listed those under the district director of learner support services but all the yellow is unit and the educators box are just classroom teachers so the but all the blue are 12 months but some of the pink are 12 months too aren't they correct yeah correct yep yeah they're signified by uh the union or individual contracts so they blew our individual contracts anybody have any questions thank you thank you and next on our agenda is the proposed school calendar for the 2022 school year which if approved by us tonight will be posted on the website tomorrow tomorrow it starts with the unit a staff and and staff returning on the monday prior to labor day which

061is the can't see it because it's green and thank you very much 29th of august with professional development days being held on that monday and tuesday the 29th and 30th and the students returning and starting first day of class on wednesday august 31st that friday september 2nd and monday september 5th would be the labor day weekend holiday so for planning purposes for those folks watching at home students would begin the academic year on august 31st um there's a bunch of holidays in the fall because there always are and then start again the second semester on january 3rd and the academic year would end june 14th what's the line through the 15th 15th it's a happy day 15th is a half day the half day on the june 15th under october the 10th is highlighted as

062the holiday which makes sense the monday but on the writing it says the 11th so just a title oh yes thank you thank you for that i should let tammy have the typo [Laughter] we'll fix that thank you okay anybody else have any any questions concerns october spelled wrong on the calendar piece oh yep thank you i think nothing wrong with akko wolber okay something new there's a couple spelling errors where i just put it out there we'll fix all the spelling errors i think in dinger and i can't even say it is there an eye i think something's missing it's so small i can't even oh yeah yep it's missing an eye somewhere okay we'll fix it that's gonna let that was just me i was like i don't know maybe i sold it

063wrong i'm like is there even an i like i can't see it is there ever even going like this i can't see it so no matter look good to me did we only have one day back to school this year we did okay yeah so we fixed it so they staff are back kids wednesday students wednesday thursday i remember thinking there was something funny this year yeah two days at least is makes it worthwhile for students yep and then the staff development days of the august 29th 30th november 4th and march 17th so when you have two labor day two days marking labor day what happens for people who work full years do they get two days for the labor day how does that work the 12 months so no the 12 months so the

064you the um friday the second friday september 2nd unit a in unit c 10 month and unit b have that day off the rest of us work the district's not closed on the second correct we're closed on the fifth so all the 12 month employees um if you go back to your org chart all the blues [Laughter] are working that day and the 12-month pinks let's just unit c unit a and c the 10 month individuals that are up on the second hyper real holiday it's june 2nd oh lord wow june 2nd that's okay that seems early yeah oh god oh i love that okay looks good that's you wearing juicy i'll make a motion to approve the calendar all right is there a second any more discussion okay move by tara seconded by amanda

065all those in favor say aye aye anybody opposed oh sorry guys i heard an eye um all right any abstention so moved thank you did we do the field trip um nope then we go into my report oh yeah it's in here yeah yeah it is yep yep yep got it okay all right we're going to hear a brief update this evening from again from ms fowles jill thanks for being here uh she's just going to give a quick overview on our dual enrollment middle high school dual enrollment program long time no see i know so the eighth grade what i'm calling the eighth grade academy that's the jewel enrollment program um on february 16th tanya from the middle school and i held a parent information session and shared with the parents on the call

066the zoom call with an overview of the program which included the participation of students in spanish one and algebra one those are currently programs that they have at the middle school however they do not receive high school credit we tossed around a number of different courses science being one of the ones that we really wanted to engage in however there's a science mcas and there was too much of a difference in the curriculum instruction with math there's really only one major unit that there would need to be a pause to teach it to be able to hit the mcas for math so that was our thinking and we have so now they will actually receive the high school credit for the work that they've been doing all along after the presentation all seventh grade families

067and students received the slideshow with a link to show interest it was a google form it asked the students not the parents the students to fill out a show of interest to describe themselves as a student how they view this opportunity as beneficial to their future and when faced with a challenge in school what steps do they take to overcome it so that was the little the initial interest um we had a march 4th deadline we had two 23 students who inquired who filled out the form um completing step one step two was teacher recommendation which has been completed um we had 18 students complete step two they were asked to go to their counselors to again have that little ownership similar to what they would go through the process if they were looking at

068other high school opportunities and uh 18 of them completed that step we are now going to look to schedule interviews with each of those students and we will notify them of their selection in our inaugural 8th grade academy dual enrollment program before april vacation that's awesome so a student who is accepted into that academy would with that class stay so if they're if they're 18 it ends up being 18 let's say they're taking algebra one is it in a class together or can they end with ninth graders they will in this case it will be a one cohort because we can have that as one cohort they will actually take spanish one first the first period of the day and followed by math the second period of the day they will have that every day

069of the week they will not participate in our drop block we're still working on that technicality but they won't participate with the drop block and then we will then they'll be able to come back to the middle school at like around 9 30 5 ish and then they will assimilate into the classes here that's awesome that's awesome anybody have any questions that's awesome yeah and i just want to give a shout out to jill and tanya because they've worked really hard to figure out because the schedule's a different job and a lot of those aren't like on the inside of it don't necessarily see like oh it's not a big deal they just start there and go there like not really the schedules are super unique and different in each building and the times are

070off a little bit too so getting that that kind of merging back into the middle school schedule it took it took quite a bit so i know that you and your team and tony and her team have done a ton of work on just getting that piece right so i'm super appreciative that you've done that so that our students can have the opportunity to do to do that those uh kids in this cohort will actually have more time on learning it's awesome because we start earlier and they end later so just don't tell them and also for the parents that are tuning in that you know the students that didn't apply it actually works out well for them too because those groupings will be smaller sure sure because the 18 or however many that gets

071selected um and that is a really good thing uh as we start thinking about language exactly how we start thinking about the different levels of interventions and things we want to do and that also allows on the on the back end for them as juniors and seniors to really concentrate on a pathway that they're looking for that we're working really hard on at the high school to create these pathways and have some clear opportunities if i'm interested in x i should take this this and this um or also engage in our qcc enrollment right so and speaking of pathways ms phallus and i will be meeting up tomorrow morning at 8 00 a.m at norfolk aggie to be delving deeply into their animal science program to see just what it's all about so you got

072a lot of interest there study that closely don't buy a horse don't come back with them oh no i've done that once i'm not doing that again any questions for miss valla yes uh what how many years of spanish are available at bmr we currently right now have four for in-person instruction we also offer ap with our virtual high school thank you that's not to say that we wouldn't offer ap as well i happen to know a teacher who is very anxious to to have that opportunity to do so well the 18 go all the way there you go and i asked that question because you know for the more prestigious colleges they want to see three years or more if you can fit them in so two for you know the typical standard college

073but uh three and four for you know an iv or uh yeah some of those for the harvard book award well so so with that consideration i know we've had a hard time with oh sorry filling those spanish spots so i wasn't sure where we're at for how many years available so what then that will mean that they will already have spanish one and two so if they only wanted to do the requirement for graduation their requirement for spanish would be met after freshman year which would really open up all of that however that also offers if you wanted to take three years of a language you could have that completed as you saw at the end of your sophomore year which then opens up all so that's that's really exciting for those students who

074have this opportunity do you have a contingency for students moving into the district over the summer um i do not it would probably be close to that based on the numbers but that's something we can consider um i did mention because we have like i said there were 23 students so there were seven students here who didn't who didn't who didn't go the second step so there's the question of whether they they meant to and didn't so i sent that email actually today so we'll find out more the reason i ask is there's you know other other systems out there other states where they have gifted and talented students that are in a progressive track like this they move into the district the door gets closed on them they stop learning excellent point yep i

075think we could talk about what what a potential on-ramp might look like for them particularly for new students that's kind of an asterisk so yeah thank you for bringing that up anyone else okay thank you very much have a great evening thank you um mr rodriguez if you could join us up front uh sarah our district social worker is here to talk a bit about the comfort zone camp and give a little bit of an overview of what this is and what we are looking to do um it's actually not a camp that's run by us but it's one that we are we have recommended and referred students to in the past and this year we've had quite a few students who have experienced real significant loss and we want to be as supportive as

076we can to these families so sarah do you want to share sure hi hi everyone um so comfort zone camp it is a camp actually someone from one of the schools i believe it was this school actually told me about this program i looked into it because as jason just said we do have a lot of students that have lost a parent some have lost a sibling some have lost a grandparent or a caretaker so this camp is a free camp and they are offering two camps this coming year one in june and one in september it's an overnight it's three days and two overnights eligibility is kids that are age 7 to 17 18 if they're still in high school and basically the kids are are pretty much going there they're hooked up with

077what's called an adult mentor and they are um involved in support groups they're learning coping skills they're talking about their grief experience while they are there again like i mentioned it is a free camp two kids so we have been fortunate enough to i've had all the schools send the flyer to the families of those kids that we have identified that have had a loss um to see if families are interested in sending their their child to this camp and at this point right now we do have three but i i'm hoping and expecting possibly a few more to express interest in this camp um it is quite a distance it's it is all the way in on the cape and sandwich um so we would like to send our students it is a free

078camp but i think the barrier that we face with sending some of these kids is transportation for these kids to get to this camp and so on that note what we would look to do is we would look to utilize our van and and transport the students on that i think it's the friday afternoon yeah down to sandwich and then go back on sunday and pick them up so that you know with with the transportation barrier the students wouldn't necessarily be able to go so we want to try to provide some assistance to the families that opt in who have already lost quite a bit to try to at least take that barrier out of the way and so we would look for the school committee's approval to um for the overnight trip because it

079is an overnight even though it is an hour you know it's not a school uh camp but it is a trip that our students would go on with parental permission of course but also look for the approval for our van driver so we can send it we can take the students down and go back and get them and um i will entertain a motion then i'll ask my questions okay how about you second i'll second all right move by um tammy seconded by tim no he was tara oh it was oh sorry all right thank you um saving my comments the families who have expressed well first first question how many seats does our van hold uh the new van we can hold up the ten yeah ten so we could go up to ten

080okay so we would be approving this for up to ten no more than um but the families who have expressed interest so far the three they understand that there won't be a bmr person down there with like they're correct bring them so they have a great weekend so what i can tell you is the three that we already have i've made the referrals i myself made the actual referral and within two days they're contacting the family directly and they're talking to them through that whole process what is actually unique about this camp is they also have parent programs and parent camps and they have a lot of stuff that's going on online as well for kids that can't get to the camp anyone else have questions nice i think it's wonderful all right there's a

081motion on the floor to approve an overnight program i don't know what you want to call it but for students in the district up to 10 and to use a district van and van driver to transport the students to um the camp and to pick them up um on the return sunday all those in favor say aye hi thank you anyone opposed any abstention all right great thank you thanks sarah and if there are others that are listening and please reach out to sarah she's marvelous and she will hook you up as they say and sarah great work on this thank you yeah thank you pretty cool uh karen right on cue for our just a very quick video karen i printed out the agenda and we haven't talked about covet in a while so

082you know i know it's everyone's favorite topic so i went through the handbook from beginning to end and updated to more fit the current protocols and best practices so a lot is getting eliminated not everything quite yet but um a lot of it so i put together the sheet just to kind of summarize what if you have any questions as far as more detail on everything just let me know so in the first one the chorus stuff um can can be eliminated the band i just changed never to not because i don't know personally sharing instruments just where you're blowing into it just is not a good idea yeah number two eliminate the in-school close contact and contact tracing language for number three eliminate the original policy and protocols and replace it with the new

083masking requirements and i eliminated the transportation requirements since that has already been voted on in number number seven we've not been sending letters to providers because majority of people are testing at home and it's not necessary in the home monitoring i suggested eliminating the travel language also number 10 eliminating the travel protocol changing from that staff and students must wear masks to um they may again eliminating travel language adding that mass should be worn until symptoms are fully resolved eliminating the social distance there was no number 15 and then b yeah and then the closed contact protocol not questions available karen can i just clarify the the a1a in the court the yellow stuff that's eliminated that yeah yellow is the lemonade green is okay i just wasn't sure because everywhere else it just said

084eliminate yeah i wasn't sure why that was so special have you have you since the um optional mask usage have you visited most of the schools i have not been over to millville i think but i've been in the other three are 50 50 20 30. i've been in all four you're like 95 five yeah yeah 95 not wearing right so and at five percent at the most so i'm actually i'm i'm glad to hear that not because i want everybody to have a mask off i want everybody to have a choice but i had a conversation today with an administrator from a different district who said in the high school about 80 percent of the students are still wearing their masks not because they feel the need to wear the mask or not for

085a health reason but it but they're wearing hoods and masks and i don't have to engage and nobody has to know what i'm thinking feeling and it's another way to just kind of escape and so i'm really really really glad that's not happening no we are not doing that you'll see kids twirling them like snapping each other with it you know but they're not no they're not doing that yeah it's a small percentage yeah good okay some kid's still wearing them on their chins but that's not new we just want to tell them to pull them up they said wear it so they weren't really wearing it but they're just like chin hammocks or whatever they yeah well or the makeup's not good though maybe they have a breakup save on makeup that way right

086not having a good day just put on the mask anyone else questions does this need us to approve yeah all right move that we accept them as written as written second second all right any other discussion all those in favor aye aye hi thank you anybody opposed all right any abstentions all right thank you karen you're welcome there's not much else to change karen so let's you know no i mean probably the next step will just be eliminating the the handbook go good protocol there you go number 15 won't be the only one that's not there there you go let's hope right thank you for what you've done once again oh thank you thank you thanks uh the next sight of my report uh i touched on a little bit briefly earlier if you recall

087back to our workshop with our elementary principals and our math district-wide math committee in january um they had done a major amount of work in the past year and a half to get to the point where they were putting a recommendation to to forward to the school committee and i thought they did a really nice job of explaining why they had selected uh the programs that they did and let me just do a quick highlight on those for grades k through eight we have looked at moving forward with the um hmh hope miffenhall court math program called intuit math and for the high school we have moved forward or they've moved forward with the recommendation for savis and we've had multiple conversations with staff members we've had multiple conversations with both of the vendors and

088recently had had a really positive conversation with the department of education um and some good news and we'll talk about the proposals in a minute but the department of education has agreed to fund approximately eighty thousand dollars um which they will actually kind of the nice thing about this they'll pay it directly to the vendor we don't even have to worry about it we send them the which i already have uh we send them the proposal and if it's approved by the committee they will cover uh the eighty thousand dollars or up to eighty thousand dollars uh of the actual costs for the k-8 program yeah that's yeah which is really great um so let me just kind of walk through how we got here um and how we got to the 80 000 mark

089it's kind of interesting so a one-year uh uh cost for intuit math grades k to eight is actually about eighty-five thousand dollars um and there was a consumable or um annual cost of about thirty thousand dollars that the district would have to pay um we don't and haven't negotiated deals like that we don't do one-year programs and we're not changing programs every year and we don't do that so um there was a lot of back and forth but through some some strong negotiations we got the intuit math to a six year just like we've done with our other programs zero reoccurring costs for 145 uh thousand dollars and that's the and that is the proposal that's in front of you um or 149.99 608. thank you um so the um proposal then i forwarded to

090the department of education what so it's kind of interesting how it works the department of education will pay for one year of a program so that's where the eighty thousand dollar number comes in from so we actually send the department the one year estimate they gave us and they pay the one-year estimate but because of how we negotiated that's more than half of the actual program so we're in really good shape as far as that's concerned they will not cover the high school program and again the high school is set up the same way it's a six-year program cost with zero annual consumables just like the k-8 so these are one-time expenses we will not have to pay for anything the only thing we may want to do and we found this with wonders uh

091because we're in year two uh we've bought and paid for additional staff training um but even that the wonders program have they've been really great about hooking us up with with their vendors and providers that actually don't work for them and we've got training at a fraction of a cost of what it would have cost us to go through the actual vendors so we're really we've had some really good um relationship building there and some good luck setting up that training so i just say all of that with the notion that we could get into you know this time next year and the math uh teachers at the secondary level and the elementary school teachers say you know what really could benefit from a couple more days of training so we may have to go

092back and do that but that isn't usually a heavy lift and it's not typically very expensive the way we've done it so what i would look for from the committee this evening and just to give you a sense um for the two programs the total cost for six years with no reoccurring costs is 222 484 dollars but we would not ask the committee to to move to spend that because we have the 80 000 that we're going to pay towards it so we would actually need 142 000 484 for both programs and we set aside 150 correct we did so we're actually under that yes we are under that amount gentlemen okay so um i have questions but i'll entertain a motion to approve 142 484 dollars i so move thank you for the math

093curriculum anybody second second all right i do okay any discussion or questions yes go with the digital license are these is the material updated on a regular basis or is it just locked in for six years with content that gets stale no it's updated there are times though where you might have to pay um what is it like a upcharge i'm not sure what the right term is for that um but no the material would be updated okay next question is how do we deliver it it's digital so is that something they pull up on their chromebook uh is there a requirement for a workbook in addition to this yes so it's both so there is a workbook there is a like a hard copy text and there is a digital a digital side i

094will tell you having a having a 10th grader at home that uh has savvis as their core program i found his textbook for the first time and it doesn't even have a crease in it so i'm mentioning that because my sense is a lot of the students will probably use the online components to it but there is a text and workbook that comes along with it so my question does anybody else have any carrie cara so i am just curious because i am envisioning algebra one that i take as an eighth grader check uh geometry that i take as a ninth grader check algebra 2 i take my junior year check pre-calculus i take my no wait that was algebra 2 is my sophomore year now pre-calculus my junior year where's calculus yeah we don't

095have it in the program it's not part of the program we have a calculus we have account we do oh yes yeah and i believe jill you can speak to it i think most of the kids that are taking calculator in the ap calc yes right it's a pre-ap calculus program that is not and that is not interesting say that i'm sorry say that again um yeah so there is no calculus for somebody who doesn't want to take ap correct wow so that's calculus a and a calculus b c [Applause] [Music] is it updated is what updated the calculus how old is that textbook or well no no no it's called it's called it so if they're following the college board it's updated annually by the college curriculum that is essentially mostly digital okay so

096there really is i think that's where tammy was trying to go oh is that where you were trying to go as well yeah i just want to make sure that hey i wanted to make sure we had calculus right exactly when we talk about trying to get into an iv i mean we can't get into yeah well and particularly where we're we're up charging if you will are our eighth graders and if math is something that moves them we don't want to end them at pretty calories we have pre-calculus or in junior year or in junior year yeah no i agree my own question is technical did we miss proposals we're okay yeah no we're fine yeah like the minute they know that i explained to the both vendors that the school committee was meeting

097this evening and they were they understood they were oh for the date yeah for the proposal expiration yeah so they know too they'll be looking for the email tomorrow i'm sure but uh or later this evening so i i just thought of another question and this is uh if we go with this how does this fit into our uh proposed uh dual enrollment with the quinsigamond this is our math curriculum which is what we're looking at going with but we have students that we're looking at juniors and seniors or just seniors for right now doing a dual enrollment between high school and quinsigamond college the community college so how would this play into that the scenario math wasn't one of the classes i don't think one of the courses they could take math 101 and

098102. and i'm looking right on the i'm on the sigmon uh website right now to completely trying to send your question i believe that that is different than the calculus are you asking how does this prepare the students for that or are you asking what's the difference in the courses like i'm just looking at this i'm trying to see the parallel with this and that particular program because what she's talking about in math 101 102 is more mostly a preparatory math leading up to college algebra so if our students take or go through our program say an eighth grader goes all the way through the program then they will have a calculus based education and not need that from quinsigamond which were champion championing in that direction so tim i love that you are so

099optimistic that high school students leaving high school in massachusetts or in with this curriculum don't need even developmental math or math i know they were but they will i know i i remember my days as an english tutor and yeah in school people could not identify nouns and verbs but my but so but to to answer your question without being facetious if you will um i have to believe a student who would dually enroll and take math 101 and 102 is not a student taking the pre-k you know because if i'm taking ap um calc i want to get my credits that way absolutely so i might take the english one on one and one of them my sense is they wouldn't take the math course that's what i was looking to again yeah yeah

100and i was going to say i mean i know at ccri they you take the accuplacer to tell you where you are at math right which dictates what math you would take if you were enrolling at the at the college level anyway so and i don't think pcc is any different i think it's the same i would imagine let's not go there okay any other questions 100 and 101 are college algebra so that's what i figured they were college algebra calculus and that and they both i will tell you that both of those at quinn cigan do transfer to any other four-year institute so they're not ones that only get credit there they do transfer that i do know which is good um anybody else anyone else anybody on zumba zuma zuma zoom have any

101questions okay motion on the floor to approve the math curriculum with the two different um contracts and i can't pronounce that one so you see them in front of you um all those in favor say aye hi thank you anyone opposed okay so moved the teachers will be absolutely thrilled thank you that's that's awesome and and yes we do thank the math curriculum committee for the work that they did i know they looked at a whole lot of two plus two it was a long journey for them i'm really proud of the uh of the team on that they're gonna be psyched thank you then we can get moving with the securing of the materials the training the rollout now the real work begins so thank you for that um speaking of the real world

102real work here we go my mid-year evaluation um looks like justin's getting that on the slideshow so first and foremost thank you very much to tim and aaron um who sat with me and and had kind of did some pre-work to think about the layout of this the material how best to kind of frame out the evidence um and then uh before this arrived to all of you tuesday they then met with me again uh actually on monday and walked through everything to make sure that uh the way we laid it out and the information we had uh made sense i do want to mention you notice this is not a binder i just want to bring that to everyone's attention and that is much appreciated yes and what hopefully you also saw was i

103tried to use fewer pieces of evidence and link it to more things so you can see some of the focus indicators uh i use some similar pieces or same pieces of evidence with that and so i actually want to walk fairly quickly through some parts of it because i want to spend more time on the student performance information because i do think that that's uh probably not probably but is the most important as far as looking at if all of the work we're doing is actually making a difference on student learning which i would pose uh strongly this evening than it is and then it's the truth is in the numbers right i was going to say we'll see that so if you will so we'll talk through that but just to remind everybody very

104briefly of the focus standards for this year and this the school committee approved back in october and again the idea is to take a a fairly large rubric and really just kind of drill it down to a few things uh to to for me to focus on into work uh through this year with our team and as much as and i shared this with the leadership team i sent them this last week as a draft as much as this is an evaluation of my work it's a really an evaluation of the team's work because this is the work that we are doing as a district um i just have the pleasure of having the evaluation done publicly so well they can come and have it done publicly yeah so these are the standards that you

105will see reviewed this evening our my first goal my professional practice goal is anchored in our district strategic plan very briefly that we will have a portrait of a grad we will have our um you're getting in my head jill with the portrait of a graduate we'll have our district blueprint 2.0 anchored in our portion of our graduate done by the end of the year and for the evidence for this goal very simply it is essentially an overview of the workshops and materials to date and the school committee has very much been participating in that and i actually just want to say this at my mid-year evaluation meetings with all of the administrators on our leadership team and just most recently actually i did matt and jill's um and we kind of chuckled at the

106end of each of the because they could have just been our standing meeting that to me is a really good indicator that we're just working together uh and i will say that the meeting with the principals was the same because we meet every week we're doing learning walks we're in the buildings we're talking about the progress their middle of year evaluation meetings almost felt like just a general weekly meeting that we have all the time that's a good thing that means that we know the work or in the work and we're partnering uh together through that there are no surprises exactly how it should be so again i hope that as we're walking through some of this you're like yeah we've already talked about this stuff right if i'm doing my job right that's how

107the committee should feel next is our district improvement goal around and we were intentional about the language the academic accel acceleration which we're going to talk about the student performance numbers soon and the evidence is listed on slide 7 that walks through this and i do want to just highlight a couple of things because this was a really interesting goal for me uh and for our leadership team this year we are doing so much work in this area and we are we are spending so much time in classrooms and data meetings looking at student work meeting with teachers and talking about student performance meeting with teachers and talking about teacher performance and looking at all the levels of intervention that we can provide and support we can provide on both levels so what what is

108included in the packet this evening is evidence of that work but what what you probably notice in looking at that as i tried to provide a balance um a couple of evaluations back uh the committee had given me some feedback uh that was like you know don't go so heavy on agendas and like tools and like people actually want to see examples so what i provided to you this evening is a little bit of a balance where you'll see some tools that we provided around tiered supports for staff and then what you'll also see though are real examples of data meetings and i thought it was important to do that of course they're redacted there's no teacher names and student names but i thought it was important to do that because i want to show

109the committee the authentic work like this is actually what this work looks like so in addition to the student performance data in your packet you do have evidence of some data meetings and some different tools that we're using to help provide support to our students and teachers with that i've taken a book out of the map page that yes the smallest type you tell me a lot in google sheets it's all good for our focus on diversity equity inclusion and that all means all um again you'll see uh and i it's interesting because you will see that the first three pieces of evidence for this goal are actually student performance outcomes um and it should be because this should all link back to helping our students grow um and so um we did i did

110use that evidence here as well um but there are some other pieces that i really wanted to highlight this evening of work that we're doing in this area after the student achievement evidence you will see a example of a student shadow protocol and what the district leadership team did is we decided that if all means all and we can't just talk that talk we have to walk the walk and in order for us to do that we need to go out and see what is a student experience for our students who are and we define it as kind of living on the margins so students who might be lgbtq and out students who are maybe students of color students who are special needs english language learners students who are living in that free reduced lunch

111kind of threshold and what we decided to do was to split up each one of us spent a day shadowing a student and and we had a protocol that we created together that we followed individually that protocol and then came back as a leadership team and huddled up and had a so what now what conversation what did you see what did you hear what did you learn and what do we need to do about that what we thought was going to be a one session kind of leadership team debrief turned into three and we're still talking about it frankly um that is how much we have learned about going out and just shadowing a student that uh is not a um you know kind of a typical if you will uh traditional what uh what

112conversations were had with the students before you showed we didn't chat we didn't tell the student we did hello we did not want to tell the student because we didn't want them to show up any different than they would any other day so this was all anonymous um and we did not discuss any of it with the teachers either or the families no we just didn't want the teachers to act differently with those students not side by side if you were student a i probably sat in that corner so they didn't necessarily know they were shadowing and where in the classrooms all the time honest to god so it really like wasn't uh they didn't be a principal for the day and sit in my chair this is just watching he went in and sat

113in the back and we just we observed behavior okay um and the teachers did like the teachers knew what we were doing and actually were really helpful frankly in like the debrief um of the of the protocol they were really really helpful um because we don't know the students like they know the students so they were able to give a lot of really good insight and it was fascinating it was absolutely fascinating to watch their interactions with each other to watch the interactions with the teacher to watch the interactions with the material to watch the change in student behavior based on the setting they were in to watch students like our english language learners i shattered an english language learner student in second grade and how this student was constantly trying to anchor everything back

114to his home culture and talked about it at nauseam all day with anybody who would listen and this student has been with us for two years not new um and it's in it was just so interesting to gather as much information as we could and to really delve into that and so the leadership team really kind of anchored in this notion of it is just as important how we show up as why we show up and i actually think i accidentally emailed that email to you all and i thought it was the leadership team but um and we just had such deep enriching conversations about how we can work best to support all of our students and so that protocol is in there the other protocol that or or resource as you know i'm on

115the i'm on the state the mass ready it's called the mass ready team and have presented multiple statewide conferences have led multiple trainings around diversity equity inclusion work this is specific to racial equity diversity inclusion and what i included in your packet is actually the guide um that i was part of developing um and have spent a a significant amount of nights weekends etc putting this together but also training the worcester county superintendents the blackstone valley superintendents and recently at our winter convening the entire superintendent association of massachusetts and so we are putting a lot into this because the individual and the uniqueness of each one of our students matters every single one of them and it's important that we're ready to support each unique student so i wanted to show the committee what that

116guide looks like and the other is kind of a neat exercise that we're doing as you know our chargers for change group at the high school our social justice group has been doing a lot of work in in this area as well and they came forward to our leadership team with a proposal so you'll see in your packet as a piece of evidence 60 different i think that's actually 63 but different unique children's books that are all focused around diversity equity inclusion belonging and asked if they could if we could purchase those texts um we said maybe not yet let's read them first so the leadership team uh jill and members and her advisors myself matt jill pg we all kind of huddled up we purchased one text and we split up the 60 books

117and we all read you know five or six books um and had an opportunity to kind of debrief with each other uh because you got to be careful um you know i have seen schools get into a lot of trouble over just buying stuff and not reading it first and if we're going to put books in our libraries and in front of any of our students never mind our youngest you know learners we need to make sure we've read them first i know that sounds kind of intuitive and like why wouldn't you do that but believe it or not that doesn't always happen so we spent a lot of time reading through all of these texts and processing them with one another um and then what will uh happen in the spring and there'll be

118a lot of lead time and information out to families and teachers and but the the high school students actually want to go into the elementary classrooms and read them and spend some time with the elementary students reading to them and i will also mention that at our community reading day last week some of these texts were actually in the mix and we some of them have already been read which were really they're really really powerful in stores so still a lot of work happening in our dei space the next district improvement goal is around capital planning and again because of how we're doing the work it was all this is all evidence that you know and we just voted this evening as you know to submit the statement of interest so that goal is clearly

119moving in a very good direction and this smaller capital planning work as matt had mentioned earlier uh is underway with that team that cross team from our joint committees and boards to put together those priorities with that so what is all of this leading to and that is truly how we envision this work all of this work is is supporting and driving our student learning i want to take a few minutes and just walk through our our star data now i want to preface this with we know this is only one data point we get it it's just one not the end all be all but i will say it's an important one this is our interim assessment it's what we've determined as a district we would use as an ongoing assessment but i want

120to share that what happens in between this beginning and middle and the middle and end of year are additional plcs or professional learning community meetings data meetings where authentic student work is being looked at so i i want to i want to underscore that because we're not just stopping the work with this like this is just one piece and not for anything this may or may not equate to it improved outcomes and mcas i don't know we're not sure um but i do want the committee in the community to know and a good example of this our next round of of data meetings we're meeting with school-based teams looking specifically at student writing and we're going to use the slice protocol to sit down a group of adults that will have 100 samples of writing

121that we're going to split up and we're going to actually look for patterns trends and next steps to help inform where do we need to go with that particular assignment so we are going to the granular level of actually authentic work but as far as star goes i wanted to highlight this evening both the performance as far as achievement and also growth and i won't read through all the numbers because they speak for themselves but as far as our english language arts results go you will see by mid-year where we are with our proficiency or meeting and exceeding numbers and you'll see the differences in terms of growth and achievement and i want to highlight with the exception of grade six which i'm going to talk about sixth grade in a few minutes every single

122grade level is moving in the right direction some more aggressively than others but how many times in our four years have we sat here and you know like three of the grades made progress and the others were flat or didn't move it or went backwards frankly so and i want to remind the committee in the community we are in year two with our new core programming and so while i will be the first one to say programs don't teach teachers teach we've got to give the teachers the right tools and this to me says we're moving in the right direction if you look at the next slide we'll see the same for mathematics and again while we do not have our new core program but we will thank you very much for that this evening

123again with the exception of in this case it was both 6th grade and 10th grade you are seeing a a forward momentum forward progress and again some more aggressive than others as far as achievement but you can see that the district is moving in the right direction largely the next two the next slide speaks specifically to the um not meeting results for english language arts so you can see where some grade again some grade levels are moving more assertively than others some are more just flat frankly and only moving a point or two i will tell you an interesting piece of work that's happening now with this just so the committee is aware the students that are in this not meeting uh column are not necessarily the ones that were in the beginning of the

124year not meeting columns so what the teachers have done working with the instructional coach has gone through those unique class lists and identified the exact students so they know who's moving and who's not and providing through our rti model our response intervention model additional interventions um for them we just had an rti meeting district-wide rti meeting this week to look at where our programs are and where we need to go i will tell you the elementary schools are really accelerating their mtss the multi-tiered system of support model and are almost at a place where we're nearing proficiency of what this model should look like the middle school has made some great growth and we'll talk about that in a minute in terms of getting their model right and the high school just has a totally

125different setup because of mcas and because of that being a competency determination for graduation and students that need that double dose so it's just a different model altogether and you can see the results from for mathematics as well and again we know we have a lot of work and math to do and that work is certainly underway and we're excited about having the program the new core program in the hands of our staff the real story i think is told here uh starting with our growth slide on slide and i realize i'm moving fairly quickly through the numbers but i know we'll go back to questions i want to remind the community or anyone that's tuning in that the growth target is 50. i also want to remind the community that the star test while

126mcas is a state exam star is a nationally normed exam and is used by thousands of districts across our country our results are in that same bucket so they're in with the sixth grade student or the third grade student in los angeles public schools that took it or you know westchester county in new york or wherever so we have you know whoever's using this our kids are in that bucket that's important to note because of our growth rates so the average growth is fifty you can see clearly the number of grade levels that have far exceeded the expected growth of fifty second grade third grade fourth grade fifth grade 7th grade 8th grade 9th grade 10th grade again with the exception of grade 6 every grade level in ela has accelerated beyond the 50th percentile

127in growth and in some grades grade two grade three grade four grade five grade seven grade eight have far exceeded the expected growth rates that's how i know what we're doing is working the story is told in our growth achievement matters i'm the first person joe and i have this conversation all the time achievement matters proficiency matters but at the end of the day we're not going to get there without moving here math it's a bit of a different story we know we have more work to do you can see the math growth is a little more a little more scattered grade 2 is at 47. grade 3 is at 63 again grade four grade five excellent growth a grade six is you know is struggling um grade seven and eight is over that 50th

128percentile marker which is which is very strong for for middle school we've sat here many times where those numbers have been far lower than 50 frankly and we know grade 9 and 10 we need some work done which one of the one of the pieces of evidence in your packet this evening underneath our acceleration is a data meeting that we had after the beginning of year results at the high school where i will tell you jill probably jill fowles probably said all of two words that meeting was driven by her instructional leadership team for the first time in my four years which was incredibly impressive not only did jill not have to speak but that team was all there and they drove that conversation the next few slides focus on our students with special needs

129and we did something a little bit different with this this year we actually put the numbers of students yeah um and i think that's important because we've sat here and we've kind of talked around this issue before with yeah but that's three kids and three kids you know can make the percentages look really skewed so what we did was we included all of the students that are in individual education plans and ela that took our assessment so you can see grades 2 through 10 all of our students that took the tests on i that are on ieps for english language arts and then we put the specific numbers of students not meeting so we really wanted to give the committee a sense of how many students were talking about so when we look at grade

130two for instance uh what you have 36 percent meaning exceeding and beginning of the year to 18 middle of year right which is problematic we understand that when you look at the not meeting numbers that's 27 it's three students so while we're working to move those three students and by the way those three students may have still grown and when you look at the growth rates for special ed they are just these students you are going to see some major improvements across the district which is really really to be celebrated so this gives you a good snapshot of the actual number of students not meeting expectations in english similarly with math this will tell you the specific numbers but again i want to look at the growth so if you look at if you look

131at slide 21 these are the students with special needs that we just looked at those those same number of students as far as their achievement goes look at the growth rates this is why we included this in our diversity our equity diversity in inclusion work because we are being very intentional about how we are providing services how we're looking at data how we're supporting teachers in the classroom look at the growth 70 issue in third grade clearly it's much lower fourth grade 62 76 again we have a challenge in grade six we're going to talk about in a few minutes grade 7 62 and look at the high school grades nine and ten seventy seventh our students are going in the 77th percentile nationwide of growth grade 10 and the 70th percentile [Applause] there is

132so much here to be celebrated this is english language arts look at and look at mathematics again concerns with second grade we talked about that with the achievement numbers grade three came in right at the 50th percentile rate on average growth but look at the rest of the growth grades six and seven is a challenge we're working through that and again we'll talk about that in 10th grade drew in the 91st percentile so there is a lot of data here to celebrate before i go into the the next steps i do want to just talk briefly about the sixth grade and i also want to talk about what we did with the data um i actually um it took some time but i think it was really important to do i emailed every single team

133in our school system k through the high school in each department to talk about the results and to really express my gratitude for the work they're doing in this area because this takes a major amount of time effort and energy and while some you know tuning in might say well that's the work of the teacher that's not the work of every teacher this is happening because of the work of our teachers you can go to any district around us and i am telling you for certain you will not see the level of work that our staff is doing and we are getting results we have a long way to go still but we are getting results so we thought it was important i thought it was important to to reach out to each one of

134our uh grade level teams and our departments to just share just how appreciative and humbled i am by the work they're doing and the results that we're getting now for the sixth grade team we've done a few things and i just want to run through these um to share with the committee we have reassigned our interventionists in how we're how they're allocating time we've reassigned them to spend more time with our grade six students and staff uh to provide assistance um to the classroom teacher and one of the things that i think the middle school has done and matt is partnering side by side with the middle school and i think it was a really good next step that they have decided to put in place they're reversing some roles so for instance our ela

135who's very strong is taking on the humanities classes for patti so she can do the interventions in ela with her students which makes a lot of sense and so we've done some creative matt and the team and tanya here have done some creative work to even just kind of reverse some roles to to make sure that our interventions um are going to get the traction we need so we've done some creative kind of uh scheduling and rearranging with that we also have put an additional planning time for our sixth grade teachers um so we've given them more time with the coach and tonya has laid out that schedule to provide additional opportunities for them to come together as teams and do some co-planning and to work with the instructional coach specifically around that we also

136opened up after school extra help sessions and have been very intentional about that we opened up the tutoring opportunities after school to our other teachers so we actually have mr hickey if you remember mr hickey was a fifth grade teacher so the sixth grade kids know him so he's actually coming up in the afternoons to help do some tutoring and we also have partnered with sylvan learning center to do some tutoring uh targeted tutoring in both sixth and seventh grade um and so we're really excited about that opportunity so we've tried to get as creative and innovative as we can to provide more tutoring opportunities after school jill pg is working with the teachers around ex looking at it possibly expanding ascend math to those that would really benefit from looking at that and i

137know the coach is reaching out to jail to have those conversations to look at what we could do differently and then we are going to be working with the team to do some progress monitoring to see how the students are moving forward with their growth and achievement so i just wanted to touch a little bit on some of the work that we're doing around grade six to help support the work and just some high level next steps underneath my professional practice goal the steering committee will continue to take the lead to finish off our blueprint and i know the committee is very much involved in that to work continue to work around our accelerated learning we're going to continue with the data cycles with the classroom visits those feedback sessions looking at the rti or

138response intervention data and continue continuing with those cycles and also moving forward of course with the new math program and starting that work now our equity district diversity equity inclusion work we are now we finished our last session with teachers21 and we're now looking at how do we bridge this and take this dei work into our instructional leadership teams and do some one-on-one coaching and support with them and with the principles and then of course the capital planning work will continue as we've discussed so for the record i did that in 20 minutes for the record any questions we're not done with our questions no but i got through nope you guys picked on me today i'm not asking any questions nothing carrie aaron aaron what are our next steps or tim what are our

139next steps for us as a committee because we usually give feedback on this so well we can give feedback we can for us as a committee we sit back and watch and wait and see what's going on and support dr defalco and the administration what we're doing and we we look strategically at the blueprint that we're we've helped that so that we can make sure that that gets pushed forward as well i don't know erin are you with us still i know if she had to leave uh she said no did you sure jane i don't think aaron is still on okay okay i didn't think so thank you we can't see them i know you today we can't i don't know why jessie aaron might be in the waiting room jesse is erin in

140okay i was thinking maybe she got stuck back in there let's see maybe she's there now aaron are you here sorry about that is that immediate are we doing any mid-year survey thing that we have to do as a committee to to give response or that's just at the end uh that would just be the end and i'm sorry i have not if jason just finished i was not i was i was innovating again nope um we knew that so i didn't hear what you were talking about but usually it's just the end reflected unless she's thinking you want the feedback from um the mid-cycle yeah i i thanks aaron and tim for for that because i think what would be helpful for me would be able to get feedback from the committee on uh

141if if the committee feels i'm on track if there are pieces that i'm missing what that might be i always i always i do and actually at my end of year i'll report on that like i will just give the specific feedback you all gave me and what i did to try to address that i'm pretty sure we did i thought we did that last year yeah yeah i thought that's really hot that's where we said maybe too many more tables but let's see this instead i think that was that mid-year we did a so that would definitely be helpful yeah okay we will look for something and get that back [Applause] and then we usually report out at our next meeting anybody have comments they'd like to make now or additional i for one

142am very much appreciative of the work i think probably 20 minutes was doable because i really felt like we were in this work um and that that felt good to be a part of the team that well i know what he's talking about now as opposed to what does this mean what does that what does that mean i don't get it so that was a nice feeling i just i i think that the the data especially for i think like second third grade those years where when we think about what the past two years have been like the data's not horrible which means where we're driving the instruction home pinpointing the students who need the extra intervention so so the various programs that we have run through kovid really has remarkably built a good foundation

143for a lot of our k to three which um obviously you know sets us up for success for the rest but um and they were all in person and they were in person i mean that was the work we did to try to get them in yeah you're right i mean the sixth grade is really interesting yeah i think you just want to dig a little deeper there but um because when you think like they were already through the third you know into third grade which is that key time sixth grade is an interesting area time it has been fascinating listening to um colleagues of ours talk about you know we got to go dust the plan off and we got to kind of figure out how we're going to restart this or reset this

144or and you know i just have sat quietly because we're not i mean you can see our teachers are our teachers are killing it they're doing a really great job um and tammy you i think you said a really important word about that like those targeted interventions but also part of our rti model particularly at the elementary school has enrichment for the students that don't need that like they've got it the kids have got the material they're good they're ready to be extended and enriched and so we have enrichment groups at each of the grade levels which is awesome well and i wonder how much those early summer pieces or late summer but early start pieces invigorated people as well so like i think all of the pieces are there slow and steady but but

145but moving ahead not not regrouping and going backwards moving it forward moving the work forward anyone else all right well thank you for the effort and the work you do we are all the better for it thank you thank you i've got a great team um and the just the last item on my um agenda or under my part of the agenda is just if there's any more discussion on the fy 23 budget we just put that as a placeholder in case we wanted to loop back to anything from the public hearing there may not be that much yeah but well since there was no public hearing it makes it a little easier no there were no public in the public hearing just because i didn't open it right no no no public in the

146public here no i do i would like to say how much i appreciated the work of um the joint committee meeting i was really pleased with the representation from both towns and the willingness to cooperate as a as a true district of one so i know that there have been some tense conversations moving up to that but i thought that that meeting went extremely well and voices were heard and voices were listened to and progress is happening so i'm looking forward to moving the budget to the town floors okay okay that concludes my report all right mr aaronworth certainly thank you and i will start by saying you got less than 20 minutes now okay oh okay from a personal note i was thrilled today when we received our certification for our end which we

147were anticipating but it's a it's a great indicator that we were able to navigate those difficult financial times and land in a stable place and i will roll that into this fiscal year as well and say that as we're coming down towards that home stretch it appears that we are in a very fiscally sound place as well just on that matt you mentioned the 300 or so thousand it's certified at the 500 000 right so the additional would only be like next year when they certify correct so when we so typically if there's anything that was left off of that it will end up rolling back into enb for the for the following year [Applause] with respect to our revenues on the total revenue report everything has continued to come in as expected um we

148did have a slight delay on our assessments but i we were in touch with our towns and they were super responsive and that's all all settled again there's only very sporadic payments so we have to make sure that we're we're all on top of that and it was it was um everything is coming in no concerns about any of the grant funds coming in and our chapter 70 funds have been coming in again as expected i mentioned before that our medicaid program is showing that we're above where we anticipated collecting as of now we are ninety thousand dollars over where we had budgeted for and i believe that we will bring in at least another hundred thousand dollars on they introduced an additional um covid administrative reimbursement piece because of all of the health and

149services that that needed to be done through that stretch of time and we put in for administrative claiming and we're hope we're hopeful that we're gonna see another large chunk of money come back for medicaid we are going for every penny we can get every penny yeah on that on that note i also um shared with uh dr defalco that i did receive notification we still need to finalize some of the steps but i do we're we're receiving another i may have mentioned this already the uh another 79 000 from uh fema reimbursement for our covert expenditures so 79 79 000. we were anticipating somewhere between 50 to 70 75 000 and and i was able to get additional funds claimed from some things that were denied in our last claim because they change what

150it is that they consider is eligible so some of the things we had already received is 70 i think it was a 75 000 reimbursement from fema but a lot of those things that i initially had claimed for they they said they weren't eligible but then they since became eligible and then we reapplied and we we put in another claim that has been approved to stay on top of that so when that money comes in what where does that go like what where does that go it's a general rate it is a general general revenue it can go into a revolving revenue it's it's a reimbursement so the money is already so it's a reimbursement so it's not there's no guideline on how to use it because you already used it yep okay correct thank

151you that's our van that's our van [Laughter] yeah we went and bought it last week oh you did we did yeah i brought a purple one uh no i don't believe it's purple it's uh it's um champagne or silver or something yeah i i do recall though walking into uh anchor nissan with a 60 somewhat thousand dollar check a bank check not a personal one so we bought didn't we we approved we bought we bought we approved it yeah that's what you guys wanted us to do yeah so we did not finance we went out and bought it out right and so we just and now we've now we've getting that so we don't have to even worry about it from where we were going to take it i told you we're writing things for

152our things that we're spending and we already have money for because we're trying to free every penny that's so funny that i literally just wrote that yeah and now it's being seven deed it is and we want to make sure that it's registered as a 7d vehicle so there are certain things that need to be done to it so jill can drive it right joe yeah i know i'm going to be jumping behind the wheel yeah i'm sure i'm sure we'll all be behind the wheel at one point hey you're going to make me run over 20 minutes [Laughter] so no it's it was an excellent experience and everything is running smoothly that's awesome thank you if you look at our total expenditure review it's very similar to last month's review some red marks where

153they were last time they haven't really changed much but if you flip over to the back side of the general fund you'll see where the totals stand as of march 2nd still the only place where we are looking at any kind of red number is in the 5000 series which is the benefits which we knew from all of these additional employees that we've had with us that some opted for other benefits and we'll be more than fine to cover that that loss with all of the other areas that were anywhere near the red similarly our grant fund expenditures are running as expected we've been receiving the money and we've been spending the money and again we may see the s or two encumbrances and expenditures we may see some changes in that as we made

154the decision the last time to shift some of those costs over to the general fund i will also say that change was not put into effect when this report was ran and i spoke shortly thereafter to monique who so on the next report that change should be reflected in the numbers between the general education teachers and some of the esser grant spending but it will still be in an excellent position [Applause] as always we submit the personnel changes for your review i'm sorry are there questions on the revenues or the expense um and just in case folks are wondering the unit a um members that had resigned have had exit interviews if anybody is curious about that so i can speak to that at some point if people are interested [Applause] i will move on

155to the the facilities uh with i'm sorry you did that quite well under 20. yeah so from the capital needs update jason already mentioned we have met with the capital outlay committees from both towns we discussed the capital needs at our joint town meeting just the other night and next steps we're in the process of getting that moving with respect to we have just now gotten the green light to submit the statement of interest which jason and i will be working with dra they will be pretty much detaching themselves moving forward so that we can really make it a district run process and um you know then it won't muddy the waters with respect to the work that they've done and because we may be looking for a design company as we move forward we

156hope we'll be looking we hope we will be right that will depend on what they say regarding our statement of interest but we are getting ready to prepare and submit that and again similarly i will be reaching out to those individuals who were named by the town administrators and we will be putting together that i've been calling it a capital working committee to go through the capital improvement plan and identify where the towns want to prioritize those other things that need to be done whether or not we end up getting accepted into this msba program the facilities update you have a report in your package and we can say the baseball and softball the dugout roofs are ready to be installed and we are ready to be taking care of the fields um everything as

157of now seems to be going on schedule and that we in our intentions are to have both the baseball and softball teams playing on our fields for this upcoming season again those are the intentions as we move closer to the season and determine the conditions of the field and how wet the ground is we do have to still mount cement footings into the ground to to hold the dugouts so the ability to do that as we move forward will be something that we're watching closely to make sure that we can we can stay on top of it we have been in touch with the towns though already as a backup and we've been told that in the event that we need to change the field usage that we have we'll be able to do that

158when um just this is not in your report necessarily but when does when do spring sports like when do the tennessee people need to be on the tennis court when did they start you said the 21st 25 i was going to say the 21st the 21st of march is usually the beginning i can tell you that personally i know that in my head because my son is trying out for baseball there you go and the tryouts be not here but those begin march 21st so we need lots of warm weather for the tennis courts to be ready march 21st we do so with respect to the tennis courts uh we were informed that the we were originally informed that everything would undoubtedly be done by the start of the season which occasionally you're given misinformation

159um as of now the the cracks in the in the court have been filled so the the court is in a playable condition but the company has now informed us that their need they need to wait until the evening temperatures remain above 50 degrees before they could put the final coat on they've been finding that they were having some problems if they try to apply the paint and surfacing before then so now they've kind of taken a step back and they're saying we want to make sure that we're they're standing behind their product and their work so they need to wait until that 50 degree mark so that may mean that the the courts won't be finished until sometime into the season but again i've spoken with the athletic director and there should be based

160on his assessment of the courts no reason that they won't be able to play so but do we know once they seal it is there a you can't play on it for three days you can't play on it for a week or we steal it you play on it in an hour i believe it'll be they'll be able to seal it and then i don't i shouldn't i won't say the timing of it right um but the plan will be if we do it during the season it won't interrupt see the play it will either be done over the course of a weekend to let it cure or we'll try to arrange it so that it fits into the practice and game schedule thank you yep the for track and field the removable poles and

161netting are going to be installed we got the footings in so you'll see some nice new cages coming up and that will hopefully be a nice piece to our athletics program with regard to the boilers i know that everyone was aware that the heat went off we discussed that at our last meeting they have fixed that problem they installed the new springs and the pressure gauge outside one of the there's some additional um there's some additional information where some of the one of the compressors used to run the pneumatic valves suffered some damage however they're looking at it already and we're prepared to fix it there's another compressor so there are no issues every we have redundancy on a lot of our heating systems and and compressors or pumps so that if one does go

162down we have the opportunity to get it repaired and things will not stop working you can see that mes we williamson pump came over the last break and they installed the new septic pump that was on back order and now everything in that situation is returned to normal running conditions and the we're still waiting for riverdale to come back and rebuild the circulator pump at the middle school that is under warranty and we have reached out again to them and [Music] i don't have a recent update scott was going to be speaking to them today and getting an update as to when again the information that we have is with all of the difficulty acquiring materials at this point in time it's the kit to rebuild the pump and the materials that they're just waiting

163on it and lastly as i'm sure many people are aware there are still potholes at the front entrance to the middle school we did actually have millville actually was extremely helpful their dpw jumped and did try to put some temporary patch in the front but then we since had some more freezing and that stuff has cracked we're working with both towns to see if we can get some temporary fixes however we're now starting to come into that season where the weather will hopefully be warm enough and i'm hoping that within the next few weeks we'll be putting down a more permanent seal and when i say more permanent it is a longer term fix however it's not certainly permanent that work that needs to be done on that driveway is part of the larger capital

164improvement plan and that will be up for discussion of this working group that we are putting together there any questions regarding questions matt i have a question about the baseball and softball fields we are not able to use the ones at the high school i had a middle school parent ask me will we have a shuttle from middle school players to get to roosevelt if that's where baseball on softball's practicing absolutely we will make sure that we have made sure that any student that wants to participate in in in a sport or also we've been doing the same for the drama program middle school students that have been participating in that we made sure that they have shuttles to get to where they need to go okay thank you yeah voice from afar startled me

165a bit there but it's an excellent question so thank you yes they did roosevelt even shorter here roosevelt from middle school just run there that's your warm-up that's your training all right well we may not provide a shadow for those students that need the exercise the high school kid run too though so it's not like you know so the last piece of the facilities is the facilities request that you have in your package and uh yeah and the other if you recall the last meeting there was conversation about sparkles and bobby pins or something and when we were gonna let the individuals know we did let the dance company know that they were fine to we gave them the thumbs up so they were great so just wanted to give you an update on that

166before you looked on this one so you do have the application for use and that will require action but just a question just because um on the back page it says there's no fee used on the front page it says seventy dollars so just clarifying a discrepancy user fee will be charged and they don't mark if they're group one two or three i mean i would say that they're three right there three profits i think it's organization has checked no one accident because it's written on the front yeah it seems that she knows that seventy dollars yeah the dance companies typically do pay at the fee because they are pro they are from a show i bet it's competition i think so they're by rehearsing and then they're going off site for a competition so

167it is a charge and it's the seventy dollars yeah you can see it here okay [Applause] any more discussions all those in favor say aye aye opposed abstention bobby pins and sparkles it is there you go thank you facilities all right are there any school committee members that have any um topics [Applause] well just a reminder at our joint meeting we accepted amanda's resignation sadly sad to say and so that means that in millville there will be two school committee positions available no one submitted papers for the open seat in millville so if anyone is watching and has interest in serving on the school committee it is an incredible experience working with a wonderful team um i would encourage you to maybe talk to your friends and try to be written in because whoever is

168written in as long as they have a minimum number of votes would then be selected to fill at least one of the seats and we will be working with the board of selectmen in the town of millville and the millville representatives on the school committee to fill amanda's seat at least for a year until the next election period so if anybody has interest please reach out if you want to be elected to a four-year term then please write your name in or have your friends do that if you want to serve at least a one year term and then decide reach out to the border selectmen or the millville school committee representative erin kerry you guys have anything all set thanks jane um okay i will entertain a motion to um adjourn to executive session

169we do have a quick executive session not to return to the meeting to adjourn from executive session but we need to do that in roll call by the way executive session for the purpose of discussing um negotiation processes um so amanda yes yes yes yes carrie yes aaron yes okay and so we will try to call you um via phone because we i can call both of them okay so we'll do a little i'll call both of you okay and uh so this meeting is adjourned to executive session not to return ever nope