School Committee Meeting 9/8/25

001Second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> With that, we move on to school committee chairperson comments. Um, I know it's been an interesting start to the school year, but also very positive. I think the kids are happy to be back. The teachers are happy to be back. Um, and hopefully the next week is interesting in better ways. Um reminder that uh the mask mass mask fall conference is coming up in November. So if anyone on the school committee would like to attend, we should let um Kim and Dr. Cohen know so we can get registered for that. With that, we'll move on to community comments. Is there anyone in the room for community comments? Anyone online? >> See answers. >> All right. And with that, we'll move right on to student comments. >> All

002right. Hi everyone. Happy to be back. Um, so to start off, we had our senior sunrise on August 26th, bright and early. So the senior class all went out to the front field to go watch sunrise right before the first day of school. Then on the second day of school, NIT Deco, we hosted our annual DECA cookout with the help of the Upton Police Department. So that was a nice day. And then after that, we had our club and activities fair on the front field. And so that sort of runs into my next one with this Thursday, we're going to be having an a trial run of our extended break. So it's going to be one long break for the entire school. And that's going to be so club and activities can meet to try

003and get the freshman and sophomores more involved in the club and activities. And then finally along with the fun senior events begins the tumult tumultuous journey of college admission. So um we've been having meetings with our school counselors to talk about the entire process and how they can help us with that. So yeah, >> it's exciting. Nice early start to >> I saw a lot of pictures from a cookout. >> Oh yeah, it was it's great. >> It's a beautiful day. Doesn't the front field have >> Yeah, it was more of less of a sunrise, more of seeing the sky brighten, but it was rename it. >> Um, and I just want to note that we will be I have a draft email that will go out to the junior class um to request applications.

004And we usually do this the day of when we have this meeting in September. And then we'll have a couple weeks to hopefully have some applicants and then meet with potential next student rep to join Sean here um for this year. So I'll keep you posted on that. But I'll be sending that email out soon. >> Moving on to new business starting with the out of state field trips model United Nations. here. >> Hi, I'm Brian Malone. I teach history at Network Regional. I'm also the model UN advisor and um I'm here to request uh you know permission to take my model UN club to University of Connecticut conference which is being held uh November 7th through the 9th uh 2025. This will be our third year attending and the past two years uh students

005who have attended have absolutely loved the uh conference. uh modeling when is not like a debate club. It's more of a resolution club. So the students uh will meet and uh work with other uh students from various schools from the New York, Connecticut, New England area um over the weekend. Uh we plan to like we have uh booked one of our buses and I have about eight students attending myself and another chaperon um will be going as well. What days did they fall on? >> Uh, November 7th through the 9th. >> Yeah. And we the students they they should not they wouldn't be missing any kind of school work. You know, if they do, it might be the last half hour of last class. Much to their sugar. All right. Any questions? Is there a

006motion to approve the out of out ofstate field trip request? >> Make a motion to approve the NIP model UN team field trip in November. >> Second by Vicki. All in favor? >> I thank you. I appreciate that. >> Have a good time. And moving on to the Spanish Exchange out of state field trip soda. >> Hi. Uh my name is Alisa Sto and I'm one of the Spanish teachers here. I am here to request for the third time uh approval to take uh the students on the exchange program to Spain. We are lucky enough to have um the students from Leyon visiting us coming next week on Monday for two weeks and we are hoping to visit them in April. Right. Is there any discussion on the um exchange program 2026? >> Is that

007during a public vacation week? >> Well, be due to the fact that we have the music trip and they trip uh the dates that uh work best for us is from April the 2nd to the 18th of April which that will be two weeks before April vacation. It's pretty much the entire time right before April vacation. Then it's right at the end. >> All right. So, it's 12 12 school days and then they're out for vacation. How does how do the kids do like Let me ask you two questions. What is the impact educationally to the kids that go? What is the educational impact of the kids left behind? Well, for the students that uh travel with me, they they've been pretty good at keeping up until now. I have never had an issue. In

008fact, I invited two students to come tonight, but they had games to talk about that. Uh when I left last year, I left all my lessons planned and I was able to keep up with them uh through Google Classroom the whole time I was there. But we have so many so right after that we have AB tests and then we have the music uh trip we have deca and I was trying to find the best date that is not going to impact all the groups at the same time. So >> what is the overlap with the the banter? Uh they leave on >> student student plus >> uh well right now uh because we haven't had approval yet. I only have nine kids interest on the interested on the trip. So that I know right

009now just two students were overlap with the music trip and I think four students with DECA but right after that we have AP chess as well. So it's uh the dates are tricky, >> but this is a similar time frame to what we did just this April >> that we had last year due to the same reasons. It's always the same thing. >> Any more discussion? I will put it out there as I think the only parent of two children who have gone on strip like the the educational benefit is is pretty tremendous. >> It's awesome. It's really good. It's just it'd be great to see it over vacation in my opinion. And >> you know I kind of get to the point where you got the you music trip but all right you get

010two good things. Life's all about choices >> and sometimes you got to suck it up buttercup and take a choice. >> Y >> um but it's you guys know my feelings. I talk about all the time. It's It's not only the kids going, it's the kids left behind. You teach How many kids you have? 120 different kids between all your classes. Something like that. >> 85. But yes. >> Yeah. So, you know, threequarters of them get less of an education because you're gone, you know, even if you have the best substitute in the world. It's just that's my opinion on these things, right? And then we pull them out for three or four days for band and the Italy trip's gone, the DECA is gone. I mean, we I I swear to God, we ought

011to just close the school for two weeks instead of one week to make a vacation. But >> this is the travel plan. >> That's the travel plan. Yeah, just call two weeks vacation. So, >> that's fine. >> I don't disagree. I think it's an awesome opportunity and I do see the point of um you know, losing you and during that time. Um, so given we've set precedents here prior, um, out of curiosity, is there any way this would happen in the second half of the year opposed to, you know, overlap or so close to working on the other field trips? >> Do you mean after April vacation? >> No, no, like the after, you know, sorry, February, >> February, March time frame. Different time frame. Uh, We talked about that. Yeah, we we talked about

012that and it kind of conflicted with the school over there. Not so much with us, but at the timing for that. >> All right. Any further discussion? >> Is there a motion? >> I'll make a motion to approve the trip as presented April 2nd to >> 18th. 18th. >> All in favor? >> I >> thank you. >> Oh, let's go. >> Uh, now we're moving on to superintendent administrative reports. Oh, I'm going to give a few updates first just on the opening day and then after I do that, um I'm going to have Officer Okconor come up and we'll talk about some safety protocols and kind of reflect on last week as well. But I'm going to start. Can you would you do you have access to a presentation that you can put that up

013there? We had a great opening day with staff. I think we saw all of you just prior to that. Um, wait for the presentation and let me know if it's not working. Okay. All right. So, what I decided to do is I'm just going to quickly go through some of the slides. It's not all of the slides from my opening presentation to staff, but I wanted to give you a sense of what we talked about. So, if you go go to the next slide. I'm going to kind of go quickly. Um, yeah, perfect. um on what I did was I I read a book to kindergarteners at the end of um every school year and I pick a different theme and I am cutting the whole presentation down because you don't have that like you

014don't want to listen to me for 45 minutes and as much as you love you know to learn about everything we talk did that day but um it was called imagine a world and full of wonder and I read it to kids and then I asked them to imagine a world so the first round of all the bunch of pictures and it's not really it's only giving you the top one, but they imagined a world full of uh rainbows and they imagined a world full of jelly beans raining. And the last one that on this slide which made everyone laugh is they imag someone imagined a world full of math tests. All right. So then we go to the next group, next slide and there were three that were imagine a world full of teachers

015and I talked about all the all the teachers look the same like all on different slides like this. So it's pretty funny. So, we laughed about that. But then the next grouping, they imagines their world. Um, this one says, I ended with this one, full of friendship and kindness and also I love my teacher. Um, and that was from actually a Spanish immersion class and uh I thought that was amazing. But we um talked about there were a lot of imagine world full of love, full of peace, full of diversity, full of you know teamwork and a lot of positive things. So you can see a lot of what we talk about even in our schools about being kind and caring and respectful and all of our values show up at the end of the

016year with our kindergarteners. Um so then we moved from that um you can go to the next and then I little tour. Well, I don't know what's happening. See what's happening. Took us on a tour and in the tour um that next slide that we're going to hopefully shows up is thanking the team uh for getting team me. So, it's like our district office folks who work the whole summer, our admin assistants that get the buildings up and running, our custodial staff. We kind of talked about this. um our new school resource officer um the whole the whole team. So we talk about that if you go to the next slide and then I introduce um everything's slow today. I introduce all of the new hires and I get some when I meet with all

017of them when they come in. I'm like the last person in interviews. I ask them all a unique fun fact about all of them and then I share all of their I warn them that I'm going to do this in advance. I say at the opening I'm going to share some fun unique facts about Yeah. It's a really pat it's going to be really for all change for us for a while. That's pretty big. And we were also Yeah, sure. >> Uh I'm sure this is a majority that's probably answering my question, but we couldn't get it online for the first day of school transitioning two weeks. >> Yeah. No, we decided it was uh originally last spring. We thought we could do that, but what ended up happening in the transition center plans it

018it just I I made like an executive call like in at one point in August when we met that as a team to say we did like a test run test run in August and then we identified some issues and obstacles that we wanted to still work through. So the last couple weeks of August they >> please enter the meeting passcode followed by the pound sign >> on that opening day like It wasn't It's only been We're only like a week and a half in to the start of school. And so we said after Labor Day and after we're able to like roll it out with communications, we'll kind of take it slow, but we couldn't go too far. And because people are starting to submit last week and don't want to go too far,

019but we wanted to make sure we resolved a couple of the issues that came up. It's always a goal to get everything done by day one, but it it didn't didn't work out. But they worked on it for months and months and months. >> You are somebody back there. >> So, are we still live right now? >> We are. No, I had backup. >> You had backup. >> For some reason, this just decided not to work today. Sorry. >> Any other questions on that transition? >> Um before we move on to the district safety protocols. I we had a conversation about the um opening school meeting. I know we transitioned to four hours PD to start and you said you were going to get surveys for people. Have you compiled that data, gotten any? Um,

020I mean, I don't know if that's that's not She's gonna talk about PD, so I don't know if you're >> You want to save it for >> Yeah. Yeah. Can I just make sure that I'm clear? What kind of day like what kind of feedback were you looking for? >> Nothing in particular. Just generally. >> Oh, yeah. >> Okay. >> Yeah. We always have surveys after a few days. It's good. >> Good question. Um, are you able to show the WCVB clip, Sam, that's in here? the one with Brian. >> Yeah, the one with Brian. >> Yeah. >> So, we were on the >> on a normal day. >> We were on uh two news stations on the same day. So, I believe Fox covered uh the lockdown, which we'll talk about in a minute.

021Um, but we also, not to be missed, I know I sent it to you, but I I do think it's a huge highlight for the district that uh they reached out and we followed up with WCBB News, Channel 5 News, and um, Jennifer Egan was here, and u, we decided to focus on highlighting MSCO. We do a lot of highlighting here at NITM, and there's a lot of great stuff going on there. And all I said is, you need to talk to Ryan Rogue. he knows a lot about this in schools and um did an awesome job. Um so if we're able to show it just so people at home would be able to see it, I'd love to be able to highlight that. >> If not in the Mend Upton School District, they've keyed

022in on AI. >> This is called Magic School. Director of digital learning Ryan Robu shows us a program eighth grade students used to generate a starting sentence for an essay. >> It gives some options for opening statements and then they can use that. They were using that to go back and then go through their writing. >> The teacher can see all the prompts a student put in ensuring the work they turned in was their own. >> You can see how students are using it so you can help support them. like you realize someone's having a really tough time, you know, starting their writing off, that's probably a good time to go have a conversation. >> So, that was half of the clip and the other half you can see it's on our if we can't

023get it up, it's >> cliffhanger. >> Yeah, it's it's in the news section right on our website. So, I made sure that it was there and I shared it out on Facebook, too. So, if people hadn't seen it, that's >> could see it. Yeah. But if we can can get it up to be able to see it, >> maybe it's just >> not exposing them to the technology would do them a disservice. If we're not giving them the tools to be responsible users of these tools or teaching them how to use AI, then we're not doing our job. >> I'm scared as a parent. >> Samantha Dubois, mother of three boys, wonders how it will impact education. >> I think we're going to need like a decent amount of safeguards because it's new. >> Great

024point. Hey, Chat GPT. Are there safeguards in place in Massachusetts schools regarding AI? >> The answer. Last month, the state issued guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence in kindergarten through the 12th grade, focusing on maintaining academic integrity, human oversight, preventing bias, being transparent when it's used, and protecting students. Ryan Robu says every program used has a data privacy agreement with the school, >> which ensures that their personal information is not being sold, that it's not being used to train these systems. The challenge ahead keeping up while keeping the best interests of students in mind. >> Every day the goalposts move in terms of expectations for AI. So we have to be adaptable >> in mend. Jennifer Egan, WCVB News Center 5. >> That was pretty pretty neat. Um and uh someone had asked if

025that came about like from our press releases and it didn't. it just they reached out and it was something that we could they were all doing it back to school and we said yeah we have people who could talk about that it worked out really well but um just really proud of the work and it was I'm a huge uh fan of WCBB so I did fan girl a bit and I was like so nice to meet you I watch her every morning ever since I was a kid I've been watching she yeah so that's why I didn't volunteer myself to be on and had him do it because it was very exciting. >> Do you know who our AI provider is or what service we use? >> Um there are there are several like

026platforms that meet the safety um uh regulations across the state that um but there only a few that we're supporting right now. And we have an AI Ryan will be spearheading an AI um do you call it a team or I can't remember the word he used but a group to kind of think about how we as a district should kind of support AI and its use and f in which tools to focus on. >> Yeah. So that's a a big focus of our work um this year in that group and I just attended a AI conference for women that we got through one of our associations with boxability edub um at MIT this weekend was great was good was really interesting um so we'll come back to that topic for sure with more details

027when he presents in a few weeks from now um but if we I could shift to the district safety protocols. Okay. So, can I come up to finish up here? Uh and every year um we meet and we had just met myself and both of the SRO's last Tuesday. Last Tuesday. >> Yeah. Like it was like this 21st. >> Yeah. and we met to go over our whole um safe support schools emergency planning like document which I usually share with you as some of the evidence every year of what we do for planning um in it some of that just to give a sense because part of it is I know you're familiar with a lot of what we do but I want to kind of use this as a moment too just to share

028some of the high level really quick with the community we have mandated training modules numerous modules that our teachers do and we kind of add to them every year. For bus safety, we have bus evacuation protocols um that the bus company coordinates. Um we for fire safety, we have drills like we have to do one in the first three days. Um and we did that in all the buildings and then we have to do them in each of the semesters. We sit and we do the calendar for the year on that. We're responsible for having multi-hazard evacuation plans. So we coordinate things usually at the end of the year um for different types of scenarios and evacuations. We have medical emergency response plans that we submit to the state every three years that we update.

029We use cowboy first alert and ray of panic button. There's two different um and we buttons that we use like in each of the towns. Uh and we have training at the beginning of the year for new hires that the SRO will go through that. We have safety drills for Alice. Um, and as in the last number of years, we've been adapting them and adding another layer as we go through um, each year. And we have quarterly meetings um, with me just across for our safety meetings, but also at the at the buildings. Um, in addition, medical trainings, behavioral health, anti-bullying, anti-hazing, um, surveys, seal, trauma inform, cyber security. So, every everything we're we're collecting in this document that I have here of timing and making sure we're planning out meeting deadlines for the whole

030year. So, we had just met recently um on that. Um, now I'll jump to last Thursday just to give a a quick highlight. I want to begin with just I'm keep coming back to gratitude and thanking everyone um beginning with officer Okconor care and the chief and the police and when calls came in to them and rapid response and clear communications you know with us and working in conjunction and you know she can speak to kind of and answer questions a bit too on the day but I can't thank them enough the fact that we have SRO's in our buildings and anything happens like she was right there in the building and that I can't tell you how much like when you have a potential real situation like what that's like but also every day

031just building connections and knowing that we can trust trust her um and trust you know officer Ellard too who I'll introduce at a future meeting we have a new sen um but also like our leaders I mean to I can't describe to you the weight that was on me. I still like when I think about it, I get kind of like this. I can feel it like in my face getting red. So, but like cuz it just the potential of anything ever happening, the weight is just so much. But like the action of the team coming together, the leaders, the quick action checklist, the protocols that we practice, um h how many quick decisions you have to make and coordinate and communicate with students always first and foremost is just that is like their focus

032in the building. Um, so I I just I can't emphasize and then our staff just I was talking to some staff after and then even today who were at the high school in particular and the fact that like because we had run so many protocols, safety protocols, they did exactly they you had to you have to make decisions but they knew what to do even though everyone felt uneasy and we had a lockdown here and we had a shelter in place at so when the call came in and I received it. I was in an out of district meeting, left it right away. I came immediately back. I knew I couldn't come to Nitmug because we were in a lockdown. So, I went over to Memorial who was in a shelter in place because I

033knew I'd be really close and it would be easier for me because um Cara was communicating there as well. And um so I was over there and kind of helping um them and also kind of coordinating with communications once I was back in the district. Um I'm going to pause there. So I don't know if you want to give like some highlights. We had a debrief with the chief and care and like all the administrators on the following day just to kind of go through everything. I don't know if there's any like highlights you want to give that day and then we can kind of open up to questions. I know. All right. If that sounds good. >> Absolutely. Yeah. >> I just want to say thank you guys for having me here. Um obviously

034that day was an uneasy day for everyone whether it was a parent, staff member, student. Um I know that that comes with challenges and especially after recent events. Um just the day prior UMass School had their incident. um they had still been searching for the suspect and just that week prior there was the incident in Shbury. So there was a lot of uneasy events going into it which that alone heightened parents no matter staff members, students, no matter what the incident was. Um and although we had an idea it was a hunter who didn't have any ill intent, out of a precautionary measure, we decided to lock both schools down until we can verify that. Um, and that was our safest option to make sure that we could get everyone inside the school. Um, those

035that were in the proximity. It was further down the street. Um, if you guys are familiar with where Glenn is, it was past that area, but still close enough. The caller who had called it in said that they were on Pleasant Street walking towards the school. Um, so with that information alone, we're going to make sure that the schools are safe. Everyone's inside lockdown. Um that is why we put these two schools in a lockdown status. Um whereas Memorial was a little further out and and those are smaller children and we want to protect them and keep them from getting that information if if it's not needed. Um a sheltered place is pretty similar to a lockdown. They're still able to move freely in the classroom. They're just behind locked doors inside the building. Um,

036and within a second, if I told Wendy that she needed to have them um, huddled in a corner or um, turn lights off, she could do that within two seconds. Um, so that's kind of where our heads were at with why we chose to do what we did with schools. Um, I know it can be high anxiety around it and everyone's kind of wondering where's the information coming from, when are we going to get it. I was communicating as quickly as I could, as much information as we could, but we didn't want to give false information or kind of give you guys anything that wasn't the 100% truth. We would want to be like, oh, like everything is good, but we were still uncertain, right? So, we wanted to be as transparent as possible. And

037I know that that can be kind of frustrating as a parent or staff member being like, well, we don't know what to do, but your my priority is the staff and students that are inside of these schools. And until we can make sure that there is no threat to the schools, we will keep them in the status that we need to keep them in until we can confirm that. Um, and I know that social media can play a a significant factor into all of this too. um with everyone having phones especially between two high schools um that added another layer layer of challenges um just with the miscommunication just like I mentioned because we were only providing the absolute facts of what we knew at the time. Um but some students may have misheard something

038and then they thought that there was someone in the building or then they were sending that to their parents and then they were posting that on social media. So then it kind of gets everyone even more riled up um and thinking that there's something different going on than there actually is. So we thank everyone for being able to adapt to kind of the information that they got on a moment's notice. Obviously we hope to never find ourselves in a situation like that and every situation isn't black and white. Um, but the staff did an amazing job just being calm enough to be like, "We don't know what's going on, but like let's lock down. Once we get information, we can get that information out." Um, as she said, we use Rave, so we can try

039to communicate with all of the staff. Um, Rave also notifies police and EMS whenever they send out a notification. >> Rave is an app. >> Yep. >> Um, so Rave is an app that we use at our new staff orientation. We make sure the the new staff get it as well. Um but that's to communicate if there was a real emergency we can use that app um or we use a staff assist feature where we can get messages out to all staff members um in a timely man uh manner. So those are kind of the things that we use and we know that there was a lot going on that day in such a short amount of time. Um but we appreciate everyone's cooperation and if you guys have any questions I'm I'd be more

040than happy to. And one thing I'm just gonna add before I go to questions. I I received a question from a parent after who said, "I I wish I knew exactly what I'm supposed to do." >> And so I sent her a list of what to do. Um Wendy Bell did because it was one of Wendy's, it kind of gave a little update and I told Wendy and I told the team, I'm going to send out a district in my next district newsletter. I'm going to send out some guidance because after the debrief too, not only were we impacted of trying to manage what was going on internally um by like out, for example, I'm at Memorial, parents started showing up to memorial to dismiss. The phone was ringing off the hook. So, we couldn't

041it was hindering kind of what we needed to do for operations. Um, and people even went to MISCO to dismiss and to Kluff, even though this was something that was very localized potentially to right here. Um, and I will be doing that. So, I wanted to say that that is something that I'm going to push out, but I wanted to make sure before I did. I know I could have done something right away I did to the but I want to make sure that I'm checking to with the police to see if there's anything else. But we also heard that so dispatch for the police also call call coming in and I don't know how many are on the police force. I didn't ask that question but they're all out. So if you think of

042like the the manpower impact for communications, it it can make things even more difficult and slow down like being able to communicate with one another and and and deal with that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's something else to that we can add in as well. >> And by adding, do you mean adding it to that that kind of crisis alert email saying please refrain from calling the main offices? Please refrain from showing up at schools >> when um for the first I'm going to put it in a newsletter kind of as like proactive guidance. So it could be something that we could as training parents about different things to try to do that in advance proactively. In that moment, I will have to say it was it it it was hard to get

043like not knowing the full accurate info um to get some of the info out. Want to make sure it was accurate, but then I was about to put that message in and then we got the message that it got everything got reduced. And so then we were able to communicate that out. I we were about to send out messages at that time because so many were coming in. I was a rep memorial. >> Um and so I I think it depends on the situation, but when I went to do I'm the one who sent out the district like alert later on. Um there were minimal characters like in that SMS. could put a little bit more, but to get it out as fast um as you possibly could, you kind of like tried to send

044it out quick. And because BBT had sent theirs out earlier, I wanted to be parallel with language to what they had. So, it didn't cause more confusion by having different types of language, but I also needed to make sure I was putting the right thing out because they didn't re they were in the middle of dealing with it, too. They didn't tell me I'm about to send this out like this is what I'm sending. There wasn't that communication. So I know a lot of that was in that gap too of like on social media and then the phones and students. So it led to I don't even know what was on social media. I we don't have time to look at social media like we were dealing like with phone calls and all that. Um

045but I know it definitely added this other layer to it. But if we can and we did as quickly as we could emails to let people know. >> Yeah. >> But other questions? >> No, I I think I saw a lot of people saying they got texts from their kids and I think cell phones in classes. I know high schoolers have them and it it can add to the crisis instead of help it. So is it do you want to make any comment on kind of communication? I know it can it can help relieve some stress the parent. You get a text from your kid, you know they're okay, but at the same time, if communication starts flowing and mis misinformation starts flowing, then things can spiral out of control pretty quickly, >> right? And

046phones can be such a great tool in terms of being able to have that communication. Um, but then they can also have that negative impact of that misinformation. And we actually talked about it and we followed up that incident with a crisis meeting with the counselor's um principles at at the high school. And we had talked through step by step the whole incident and kind of what we can improve on and how we can if there it hopefully there is never another incident. Um what we can do to improve that. And one of the things that we had talked about was educating the students more on communicating things during um significant incidents of if you don't know the information then we shouldn't share it with anyone. Um so we did talk about that educational piece

047of of talking to students about it and making them aware the use of cell phones and things like that. Obviously, we know that it's inevitable they're going to communicate with their parents and you're already in such a high state of anxiety that sometimes they do say things that and that goes for anything. They say things that they don't mean all the time. Um, but >> kids know. So, so we understand that, but if we can prevent some of that, um, especially sharing it out to social media, um, and it's even for parents, too, because parents want that information, too, but then they go onto social media looking for guidance, um, and then a lot of misinformation comes from that. Unfortunately, we would love to say we can prevent that, but there is just certain things

048that we can try to minimize, but um I don't know that we'll ever be able to fully prevent that from happening. Um but we want to be as transparent and we'll communicate with you immediately as soon as we can. um as soon as we know the situation's safe. Um just like Marin had mentioned in terms of getting communication and guidance out with you guys in terms of um what to do in that situation. We did have a lot of calls whether it was every a lot of parents were calling each school and and they're not answering the phones if they're locked down. Um, and that's only drawing more attention to to the long list and then dispatch. And often we only have one dispatcher, so she's trying to field all of these calls, but then

049they end up going out to other towns and things like that. Um, we also had parents showing up to the school, which we understand the concern and we understand that everyone wants to make sure their kids safe. It's just unfortunately coming to the school in the middle of that. If if it was any bigger, we would have had the roads blocked off. Um, but with that then it's pulling officers away to try to see who this person is coming on school grounds and then so that's taking away from what we're actually trying to do and who who we're trying to locate. Um, >> I'll open up for questions. I got one last pun. Um, >> I know Upton had a conversation about switching to regional dispatch a while back. I don't know if they ever

050decided to go that route and how would that have impact on call management? uh >> as far as I know we're not switching over to regional dispatch um at least within the very near future. Um I think fielding calls might have been a little bit more challenging for the dispatcher. I regional dispatch makes it a little harder because they don't know the area as well. um having a dispatcher in our community is I personally think better to be able to understand the area and understand what's kind of going on. Um they would be able to field more calls. Um however, >> we want to prevent that and only the people involved in the emergency to call so we can get that accurate information out to the public or to the officers to to um be

051able to stop whatever threat is happening at that time. >> Thank you. Any other questions? >> Just have a curiosity question. >> Sure. >> Um, have there been any lockdown drills, fire drills, or anything prior to this incident >> this year? >> Yeah, that's the kids so that staff and students had a chance to practice before. So, at the high school, um the second day when we did the fire drill, um we had they do a presentation where they during their advisory period, they go over the protocols, um and then they walk to their rally points of places where they're supposed to go to if they do evacuate the building to meet. Um memorials was actually supposed to be next week. We're just talking about kind of ways to incorporate that, but we don't we

052know that this incident was a lot for the staff members. So, we might um we're just looking about how we want to go about that, but we like to do it within those first like two weeks of school to make sure it's fresh in their minds of kind of what to do in a situation. Um and in terms of staff members, all staff gets Alice trained. Um and we go through the PowerPoint. new staff members that came in this year. We did that um at their new staff orientation. So, we try to get everyone informed and then we try to utilize RAVE so then when things like this come up, we can make sure that everyone has the app and we're able to communicate with them. >> It seemed to be a really seamless process.

053I was curious to know >> what they said was because we moved some of the pro that protocol overview and that wasn't there for but up for that second day they in our debrief they were saying that really helped that we had just done that. Yeah. So they're going to continue to do that probably on that second day now at least at that you know at the high school level. Other questions comments? Yeah, couple thoughts or just comments. You know, I guess first off, thank you guys for everything you did to get through the day. And I think number two is if there's small silver linings and everything you you got to practice and you got to do I won't ask you more details about the debrief, but take that opportunity debrief the heck out

054of it. Nothing's perfect, right? And so you'll have dozens or a dozen takeaways. So what you'll add to your policies um you know or whatever. Um like you know, two other comments just real quick is it was amazing. I will say how accurate some of the data that flowed between the kids was. Um having a son that was actually across the street texting with the kids that were here and like after the fact like well geez you guys actually had accurate data real time. Um I'm sure there was just as much inaccurate data as there was accurate data uh that flows through. >> Um I won't bring it up right now but one of the questions I will ask you later is does this make us rethink at all? um as a school with a

055single administrator. You know, I was just kind of playing that through my head throughout that day is we got three administrators with Chris Schmidt at NITMON. We've got a whole bunch at Misco with you guys. We got two at Memorial. Do we feel we've got the right coverage at KLF with other we talked about having other head of teacher reading or whatever something like so something for another day, but I'd love to drill on that because that's kind of the first thing that came to mind. And I think you know I'll just quick analogy I'll just share if you guys don't mind because I got asked a bunch of times I think being on the school committee hey you know do you think communication should have been better or whatever and um you know as

056a as a private pilot and pilot off you know whenever there's an emergency your rule is always 88 navigate communicate and anybody ever watched like the Senberg movie as soon as communication was useless he stopped talking right because there's nothing you can do and you guys as administrators and police were much better off acting than you were trying to type in email because if you could do anything that was more useful in helping to make the situation safe, that's obviously what we want our team to be doing uh before worrying about email. So I think >> appreciate that. It's hard to describe some of the internal things that have to take place of >> thinking in that moment who's outside >> we need to get the schedule what classes outside we need to get communication

057outside to get students in and then you know and it's communicating to the administrative staff right in the main office and then it's communicating externally to district office to me to the the other SRO like all of that every one of those is a minute isn't two minutes and it's like trying to handle internally and then once we have enough information like we do the external and then you know I'm I love to overcommunicate as you know actually so I'll overcommunicate the heck out of it right after a while but um the timing it you know if I were in that building at that exact time that that happened like you know BBT it's one building right so you know we might have been able to get messages out a little bit sooner to the

058community But I mean we will get it out as soon as possible. Like that is always we want to bring calm and communicate and be transparent. That is our constant goal. So I appreciate that. >> Yeah. Absolutely. There's >> Yeah. >> Two dozen administrators in that building. So it's easier to do that. >> Yeah. >> Anyone else? >> Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. >> Of course. >> I appreciate your time. If anyone ever has questions, feel free to reach out to me. Um I'm always available and here for that memorial. So >> thank you. >> So next up we have Cheryl updates. It's welcome back to school from teaching and learning. Uh, a couple of already really cool things to highlight from the beginning of the year. Um, and what I

059wanted to start with honestly is um, something that has already been announced, but I think um, Baris, uh, shouting out a little bit more. Um, our award of the, uh, Student Opportunities Act grant, which was highly competitive. And the original grant was with the acquisition of the um $100,000 this year, this fiscal year, that brings our total to $550,000 through that effort. Um, but one of the things that I thought was worth um, got it all set was worth sharing with you is that the grant was competitive based on what we had accomplished to date through the grant and our plan for the future. And so those two things weighed in the balance. And as winners of that, I I thought that it would be nice to share with you some of what I shared

060with um the grant committee about some of the things we had accomplished uh we've accomplished so far and what our next steps are, what that plan that winning plan was. You can switch. So, we're going to start with this um those these are the main points uh SLOA and how that recognition um actually we've uh we've been recognized for some of the improvements we've already made and the plan moving forward. Um part of the plan is actually related to the PD that we had. So, I'll use that as a segue to share a little bit with you about the PD and also the use of data systems which factored in the PDA as well. Um, so I just gave you this slide background, so we're going to skip right over it. So here we go.

061Um, what you have in front of you are three graphs that show some of the accomplishments to date. The Student Opportunity Act grant is really focused on enabling, it was a competitive grant for districts to put together a strategy for addressing the needs of students who aren't uh served all the time. And what you had to do first is do an analysis of the data and identify student groups that you felt like need you needed to focus on. And ours were students with special needs and English learners. And in the last two uh uh three years, so this is between um 2022 and 2024, one of the things we noticed is that there was a significant decrease in chronic absenteeism um among those populations. And uh that well surpassed the state and even students not

062in these categories, the increase uh the the decrease was there as well. So that's good news. Everyone's decreasing. But for these two populations, the decrease was even larger. I was also able to show that our tardies have also decreased for these populations. And so again, for all students, you see that there's a decrease in tardies over the last three years. But for these two populations, there's a significant one. In fact, for L's, it went from uh an average of eight tardies to an average of two. Um, which is pretty impressive. And so those two barometers I think speak a lot to what you hear in these meetings about our ability to get to know our students to make them feel valued and celebrated and to make coming to school like a place they want to

063be. Um the third graph uh speaks to academics. And so what you see here I I don't really like the visual because it with just a few data points it looks a little wonky but um what you see here is an increase more in the first year for um uh students with special needs and in the second year for L's uh where our math scores from uh for for grades three to eight have increased. um significantly six percentage points uh in of an increase for meeting and exceed standards and 11 percentage points for L's and meeting and exceed standards in that area in math. And so I will be the first to say that we haven't made uh we haven't uh shrunken the achievement gap in some areas too and those are the areas that

064I was able to kind of say we need to continue to work in these areas as well. But this math data I think was really um it it speaks to the implementation of new curriculum resources. It speaks to professional development that we're doing with um staff to make sure their scope and sequence and they're following uh the standards progressions are there and I I thought that it was worth sharing. So we'll now go to the next step. >> Hey Sure. One question if you don't if you don't what's the y axis on the first chart. Is that 10 20 30 >> on the first chart? Yeah. >> Um, let me see. I'm having trouble seeing it, too. >> Oh, it's probably a screenshot. >> You probably can't see the outer part. >> I just >>

065It's 10 20 30 40 at the top. So does I don't want to answer too far but I will ask the question. If it's 10% does that mean the average student is out of school 16 days >> in 2022 mind you right? >> Well no I'm looking at 2024 so that blue bar is at about 8%. >> Call 9 whatever but in 180 days. Yeah. >> So this is these are just uh those students who are chronically absent >> over 18. Okay. It says all students. All right. >> But it's in the category. There's a whole another category we can look at that attendance. But this exactly these are the kids that like were missing a lot of school and there's a barometer for that. And this was the decrease in chronic. >> Thank you.

066Sorry about that. Um if you switch to the next slide SL. Uh so here we go to our next steps. Um we are working on curriculum uh uh identification and selection uh with our ELA uh team and our AS and our Spanish language acquisition team as well. And we expect that they'll have a recommendation um by December for new resources. This I think is will be significant for ELA programming and that's an area that I think uh we've seen some amazing growth in as well but we need to see more consistent growth and having resources that uh folks are using and learning to use together I think will really help with that. Um the team is excited about this too. So there's kind of like momentum behind it which I think is um helpful um

067for uh our strategic use of data. We'll be continuing to um to uh make efforts there and um and there's some platform features that I'll share are we're already working on and then professional learning. So, we're um uh using the lever of both data use and professional learning to be able to attend to these student opportunity act goals. So, here comes the idea of the learning paths. I don't know if last spring you remember me saying that we had this idea that was I was kind of excited about, a little bit nervous about. Um so, I wanted to share with you where we landed. um what we decided to do this year and I think about a comment a question that you had Matt um several years ago or or maybe it was just last

068year I can't remember but it was kind of like whoa that was a lot that's a lot for professional learning is we identified a standard goal and we instead created the uh differentiation through the different ways that staff can get there and so the goal is really to focus on that idea of improving student performance um and doing it while we're reducing uh uh the performance gap and to be able to think of strategies that will do that well. So we're asking teachers to be able to think about first of all find a path that they're interested in exploring and if you can switch the slide. We identified six of them, four that align with our deeper learning framework and two that we really thought that there would be an interest in and that there's

069a lot of work going into already that we could uh encourage uh educators to learn more about and create these actions then that uh are an ex that are an action that is aligned to the learning that they're doing when they're doing the exploring. And so what we're doing actually is creating almost like a a deeper learning experience for the educators where they get to go and explore their own pathway. We're asking them to take action on those pathways. We're asking that everyone have some common things which I'll share with you and then at the end we'll have these a presentation of our learning where the last PD day they'll come together and they'll share what it is they learned what they took action on and why they think or see that it made a

070difference. So if you go to the next slide. So we laid this uh map out for them where we start in the beginning and right now is the explore phase and we will uh utilize PD time uh that is districtled to help them kind of think about what path they're going to do and also to explore the paths and I'll show you that in a second. Um they have their teacher directed day in October. They also have another district day at the end of October where we're asking all educators to make community connections. So it's again it's connected to our deeper learning framework work but this time they're like doing it as a part of their own professional learning and they can do it in many ways and we'll support them to do that. Examples

071might be to go visit schools that are implementing curriculum that we're already implementing so they can see how it's being implemented or to go to and meet with a department from a different place that is to share strategies about how to service uh English learners. Um so and it could also be making community connections that could apply to their own units. Right? So, we want to bring in an industry expert to a unit. They could uh make a connection that way during this time. Um, then in March, we're going to have another time where we bring everyone back together and we do a reflection protocol. So, again, tied to our framework and having the experience where everyone is reflecting on what it is that they're creating and they're making it better and they're thinking about

072how they can improve it. And we're also at the same time hopefully helping them think about how they can do that in the classrooms with their kids. And then finally May 8th we'll um we'll uh celebrate our learning by sharing it with each other. The whole framework is guided by the UDL framework as well where we have u multiple ways of staff engaging with the content. We have multiple ways of them representing um their learning to folks and uh expressing their learning as well. And this is I don't know if you can do this Sam, but if you click on this video Oh, great. And if I like go like this, will you just click again so it pauses? Okay, pause. Maybe not. >> All right. Awesome. So this is the website that we developed

073and what happens is educators click into one of the paths and they are they see a theory of action. That's why this path is important. They have a number you can you can keep going soon. Then they have a number of professional practice goals that they can use within for their own or incorporate into their own professional practice action steps. And then what we have after that is a series of resources that will tell them information about why agency is so important, how you can use it in your classroom, and also gives them some ideas for community connections that they could make and for action steps that they could actually take. that's kind of starts it at the top. So, you can feel free to look at the paths that we're creating and it's also

074resources that we fully intend to continue to build uh asking our our teachers and our teacher leaders to think of the resources that they think are the most poignant for each of the paths. Um, so if you go to the next slide. Um, so I'll pause for a sec and see if you have any questions about that. So you asked about feedback. This is a good time. All right. So our feedback for the first day was um pretty positive and it was positive because of the design basically which is not surprising right this like we can talk about learning experiences like this for kids and it's no different for us. Um, so the idea of having choice, the idea of being able to collaborate with colleagues or do something independently, the idea of being able

075to look and kind of explore and discover on their own with these links that were kind of pre-assembled for them, they all really liked that stuff. Um, some of them actually felt a little bit rushed during the day, like there wasn't enough time to collaborate and stuff like that. Um so that was feedback that we will take into consider for the union. >> Uh well right or just redesigning the day in a different way. Um because sometimes I do tend to bite off more than I can chew, right? But um it uh the they liked the content and they like the idea of having it laid out for them for the whole year, right? So that they have a goal and something to work towards. And so it's not something else. it has the potential

076to weave into their professional learning goal and actually their stu their student learning goals as well because of the focus. um some of the feedback that we need to think about in terms of making things better is they said that it and it wasn't it's not just feedback um that um when we had everyone logging on in that second part of the day to the data systems we weren't able to handle it and so the system was very slow and so we have to think about that either you know um talk about how we do it or maybe we have people doing things at different schools but it it just kind of got overwhelmed by everyone. Are >> you self-hosting these services? >> Say it again. >> Are we self-hosting this stuff or is it's

077not in some cloud provider? >> Um, >> like is it a site that they go to that's on the web or is it somewhere hosting? >> It's on the web. >> I mean, it's only a couple hundred connections, >> but it was like it was like simultaneous. >> I can't tell. I don't know. Is it? I guess you don't know. Yeah, we'll leave the tech portion >> triage there. You can help us with that. >> Um, so I don't know. >> So I don't know like exactly the technical explanation for what happened. All I know is that it was like I was trying to use it too in the same time as everyone else and it was we were waiting and we were waiting. So that I think is solvable though and it's not you

078know it's not a commentary on the um programming. One other thing they did say in relation to the data systems is they want more support with it. They said you know we this this site is really cool but it was really hard to navigate for the first time by ourselves as they were working in teams and stuff like that. So Ryan and I will be working on some of that stuff. And if you go a little bit um and this is one that actually if you can pause I'd love that. Um so start it for now. I'm showing you this student explorer and open architects which is a whole new platform and so we use the afternoon to let educators explore. If you can pause it now. Awesome. So um the platform shares with every

079educator um uh by level elementary, middle and high school and rostered for teachers. It shows their students and statistics about the group in these spaces and also and it's uh on the left hand column are every individual student that a that a teacher has. And so what we've been able to do with Open Architects, and I think this is unique. Honestly, I don't know of anywhere else that's doing this right now, is we've been able to link important artifacts that help our educators get to know our kids that often the kids have created themselves into the platform. And so they can go right to the platform. They can listen to the students recording of uh what's in a name. So them saying what their names are. they can go to the platform and they can

080um uh see their uh um scholars profiles if they've made them. And this year um a couple of the schools are trying to do a a million words or less where they're reaching out to parents and they're saying, "Tell us about your kids in a million words or less." And they can go right to the site and click on what their parents have. um and they will be able to once we get those what their parents have um suggested. So, this is something that when we start the year with orientation, we're really emphasizing like we want to do as much as we can to get to know who our kids are, what makes them tick, what they're interested in, and it's really helpful right there. Of course, if you click again, this is just where

081I'm showing the little links. As we scroll up, we'll see all the rest of the data. We'll see standardized tests from the past. So, they have them right there from last year. Um, and uh, panorama data. And also down at the bottom over here, um, there's an interest inventory for high schoolers, which, you know, we talked about in u in orientation. It's like as you're getting to know kids, think about how what you know can really influence the class. And so these uh interest in skill inventories can help you figure out like who sees themselves as really organized and we might we be able to do that like you know spread that out in a class so that like different kids can kind of have different roles. So that's a big way that we're using

082the data systems. And if you go back just one um sec no worries. Um we're also um there are two other features that I just wanted to note. but we won't get into them today. One is called key insights. So the platform now does analyses that are like the types of questions people often ask and they're just done for the teachers so the teachers don't have to like figure out how to do them. It's really cool. and um the interventions which this platform the student explorer will allow us to enter interventions and create intervention teams so that um educators can kind of work collaboratively through the platform and we have we'll have a record of effectively what's working and what's not working as we try to help kids um either receive the appropriate interventions or

083extensions as the case may be. So that was our PD day. >> That's great to say. I mean it's awesome use of PowerBI. >> Yeah. >> And so so >> I know makes me want to get in there and start stoming through data. There's just so much data rich. It's awesome. Um I had two thoughts. The first one the uh on the tardiness chronic eps and performance increases. It's good to see our changes but it it's hard to digest without seeing like delta verse state average or something. Um, it's still very meaningful, but maybe the whole state was down 3%. So, it's really 5%, you know, but it's still very, very good data. >> I'll put the state averages on. They're they're higher or lower or higher as the case may be for each of

084the points. Um, otherwise, we wouldn't have gotten any points in the grant because they would have seen right through me. So >> good for us to >> get >> but also good that we got the the grant. >> Uh any questions, comments? >> Did you come up with a learning path or was that something that was provided by Dusty or you you just created this? >> I can't take credit for it. I I wish I could honestly because I think it's so cool, such a cool idea and I feel so privileged that I've had the opportunity to kind of build it. I feel like it came from the voices of teachers first of all who are always saying we want to be able to explore the things that are interesting to us and we want

085to be able to have it like know what we're doing from the beginning and be able to work in collaboration with colleagues and then the leadership team they like they kind of came up and said well what if we did this and what if we did this and they came up with this idea of paths which I think maybe their truthberry has done something like this. So Wendy had a sense from Shrewsbury about like that concept, but the putting it together with the deeper learning framework and the things that we're working on um I think it's come together in a really cool kind of a way that um hopefully has legs. So >> really creative. >> Thanks. Okay. >> It honors that not everybody participating in PD is a classroom teacher, too, which coming from

086another district is something I've always appreciated about your PD is that I can look at this and see how I might find something that's relative to my direct daily practice, which is really cool. Do the educational assistants participate in this as well? >> So, um, interventionists were all at the first PD, but they're not at everyone. ABA techs are at every PD and the PAR professionals are at the ones that are full day PDS. >> My other thought was um it's really cool that teachers can come in here and learn about kids and they have to be proactive about it, but they can figure out how to engage with any specific student potentially. And that's that can be meaningful. It can be a big big game changer. Yeah, we um we kind of previewed it

087when we had orientation and we have a number of people that come from other districts and they were like, "Wow, that is so cool." Uh because you know some it's hard like that's the first thing you want to do as a teacher is really get to know your kids and if you have some of these things where you can like get glimpses and ways to spark conversations and some of what Maryanne was just sharing today because uh they were um guest facilitating our our first PLC for the new educators. They were sharing some of the most amazing things that parents have um shared about their kids, both their things that they love and like how to kind of like, you know, uh respond to them and stuff like that. It was just really awesome. >>

088Cool. >> Anything else? >> Thank you, Cheryl. Fantastic. All right, moving on. Jay, finance and operations update. I >> think you have one more. >> Did I Oh, >> I'm already scanning. Come on. >> You don't know how hard we did. >> We did. Yeah. >> Look at that. >> Just wanted to make up. >> Yeah. I want to talk about him again. First, I want to compliment Eric. He's got a great shirt. >> Thank you. >> I like your >> You didn't get the memo again. >> I never get the memo. >> All right. Uh, first thing we have to do is amend the budget. Basically, is to reflect the increase in state aid. Majority of that, it's about a net increase about 150,000. Most of that is in the middle is in the

089um chapter 70. It's about 145,000 there. a tiny bit in additional transportation. Um, we probably need to go through all of these motions on this, although the only motions that are different from the motions from the certification in March are motion one and motion four, but I believe we're required to re go through everything. So, that would be the first step is to get this done. I don't know if there's any questions on that. Are there any questions on the proposed motions? Would anyone like to do the honors of making said person? >> I've had like three years of pushing people. >> I had to go to town meeting. >> You showed up on >> All right. Should we if we don't have >> zoom in one whole shot just read them all through. >>

090All right. Motion one to set the operational budget to amend Upton Regional School District for 2526 fiscal year at 42 million $321,375 that consists of general operations limit. Motion two to assess the town amended 11,46,828 that consists of all minimal local contributions 8,861,322. Non-discretionary charges are $787,51. Discretionary charges are 1,398,05. Motion three to assess the town of Upton 14,672,492 that consists of the following. Minimum contribution is 11,682,753. Non-discretionary charges are 1,77,290 and discretionary charges are 1,912,449. Motion number four is to appropriate 13,52,555 for the state aid except for the following. Chapter 70 funds is 13,252,594. Regional transportation budget is1,725,253 and charter school tuition reimbursement is $74,28. Motion five is to appropriate 1,550,000 from the following school district sources. The Upton shared technology is 40,000. Uh transfer in from revolving accounts is 325,000. Medicaid reimbursements 85,000.

091END appropriation is a million. Interest is 100,000. Then last but not least is motion six to appropriate $2,752,996 from the falling nonoperational revolving accounts. School choice is1,400,000 and circuit breaker is1,352,996. >> There are six motions on the table. Is there a second? The six motion second. Seconded by Matt. All those is it roll call or just uh >> no just majority vote. >> Um all those in favor >> I motion carries and moving on. Okay Jay. >> All right. So we'll talk about closing out FY25 which I pretty much have done. I'm in the process of doing the end of the year report which is another one of those fun exercises. I'm about a third of the way through. Um, but so I was FY25, but I think you all back since we got our

092END certification or did you get that in between this meeting and last meeting? You should have all gotten an email from the Department of Revenue with our certification, which is the first step in closing it out. So, if you look at revenue versus actual, you can see we actually took in almost $900,000 of additional revenue from what we had budgeted at the time uh when we certified the budget or amended it probably around this meeting a year ago. Uh, state aid was a big one. Transport, actually, I'll break these down. I believe the next slide exactly what they are. We got about an additional 280,000 in state aid. Local assessment obviously didn't change at all, but district revenue did increase by over $600,000. Um, transportation, we got an additional 251,000 approximately. So, they apparently had

093extra money toward the end of the year because we got an extra payment at the end, which was much more than I anticipated, but that's great to know. Uh, the charter piece was up a little bit, but I'm pretty sure the charter tuition also went up by a corresponding amount. So, I don't really call that net, you know, the net is probably zero there. The technology, we budgeted 35,000 last year. You just read through the motions. We budgeted 40. what we actually charge them is 50% of the salary plus 50% of our cost of the health insurance. So it varies. I believe the employee went on our health insurance about maybe in October or November of last year. So there was an additional charge there. Medicaid we did really well. So we got 140,000 out

094of Medicaid. But the big one that really brought us in additional money is interest on our bank account with Rockland Trust. That came about because we called them up. We were earning like, you know, 0.1% interest, which seemed ridiculous when you've got $12 million in the bank. So, we called them up and asked them if they could reevaluate it. They put our interest rate at 4 and a.5% for we went from maybe making $1,300 a month in interest to making a little over $40,000 a month in interest. >> Yeah, >> it um brings in a lot of extra money. Now, this year we only budgeted a h 100,000 because again, I don't know where where interest rates are going. So, it will be a cushion if we have extra money coming in. It's kind of

095what I call being more conservative than what I anticipate. But right now, I think the last I only reconcile reconciled July so far, we had about 38,000 in interest. >> So that adds up to additional revenue, which helps us out a lot. >> On the expenditure side, what I tried to do is break this out by the various funding or, you know, fund codes that the state uses. So in salaries, we actually saved about $185,000. Now, why does that happen? Because when the budget's done in March, we don't know that people might retire, people resign, other people come in, some people leave, we don't get to replace them for a period of time. Things change over the course of a year. So, we had a savings there. Our contract services, we overspent by a little

096over 300,000. Those are mostly specialed contracted services that we had to bring in to provide, you know, student needs that we have to fulfill. Something we do anticipate. We always try to budget enough to cover that, but things happen and it's hard to encounter that. Supplies, we we saved about 124,000. Other that's health insurance. That's um well actually I have the definition of the next one. There's a variety of categories that are under that ' 06 code about 350,000. The other one though that does anti that does hit us and affects END is what we call prior year expenditures. The Department of Revenue now requires us if we get a bill after June 30th, we cannot pay for it out of prior June 30th money. We have to pay for it out of the next

097year's budget. They make us reserve it out of END so it gets taken out of END and gets put right back into the undesated fund balance gets paid out of there. I feel personally the way we used to do it was much better because it kept the the funding the expenses in the fiscal year. >> But do doesn't want us doing that. They love the way we're doing it now. So, I guess that's a good thing that they're happy with the way we're doing it. But that's an expense that isn't budgeted and there's no way to budget it because I don't really know what that number is going to be until we get into August or the end of the month. Bottom line is we basically revenue to expenditures or I should say budget to

098expenditures. We basically didn't spend about 900 bucks. Um, now I'll tell you when I filed for END, I wanted to leave that as a negative number and therefore we would not use as much school choice money because I feel like the money in the school choice account gives us more flexibility than an END. And do said no, we can't let you do that. So that we didn't lose the money, but the money ended up in END and not in school choice. So originally I was only using $400,000 of school choice. I had to go up to the globe of 900,000 in order to make again when DR tells you to do something you do what they say. Um so the other category it's technology expenditures leases on you know hardware software software you instructional software

099health insurance all employee benefits dues conference and travels account that's what's in that six account and I kind of explained a little bit about what the prior year you know what that means um just for reference this year that number that prior year expenditure is about 128,000 um the reason it's much lower this year is because we shut off ordering at the end of May so that we don't get bills coming in. The bills we get in July that are June bills are usually utility bills. Electric bills, gas bills, maybe they picked up trash at toward the end of the year. Those kind of things. Every now and then a beer a bill shows up that just, you know, we sent this to you in February, but we sent it to the teacher and they

100never sent it to us or we sent it somewhere else. Things like that. So, it's a lot lower this current year. Um, school choice, if we look at that account, we started out with about 2.4 million. We're ending up with about 2.2 million. Um, again, that's because I had to use $900,000 in salary there. The appropriation for FY26 that we just went through was 1.4 million, which is quite a chunk of the closing balance, but keep in mind, we should have a profit of around 700,000 in our school choice from tuition versus our expenses out. So, about half of that is what we'll have to actually take out of this account here. And again, we'll have flexibility depending on how the year goes. um circuit breaker, you're basically allowed to keep a year ahead. So,

101whatever we get in FY24, we spend in FY25. Whatever we get 25, we spend in 26. The one thing that we did get, the payment came in in the middle of July was 168,000. That it said on the on the sheet I got that it was an FY25 supplemental payment, but then Desi said, "Well, no, actually, we're going to call that 26. You can carry it to 27." That's a good thing because that gives us some extra money for 27. I expect circuit breaker to be around this 1.3 million again that we'll be able to carry over to 27 plus the 168 which should be close to one and a half million. That should help us as far as using reserve funds and being in a better place when the budget has to get put

102together. Um the accounts that we do for transfer in for revolving these are the four main accounts and these are all programs that we run that show a profit. You can see the total end balance in all those accounts is a little over $1.5 million. We've appropriated 325 out of that. I'm pretty comfortable that that's not going to do a lot of damage to those accounts. We've always had it at 150. Um we had to go a little higher this year because, as you know, we had kind of a tight budget. We were dipping into our reserves. Um undesated fund balance, that's basically the money you have that's sitting aside. The um 1,681,000 is what we actually have in our undesated fund balance. It's a little bit less what was certified for E and D.

103And I'll explain that in a second. Out of that is a million dollars that's appropriated for this year's budget plus 128 that we had to reserve for the prior year bills from FY25. Um we had one hit on our they call it a hit the department of revenue does when they make a reduction in ED. It's if you have any accounts, especially grant accounts that are in deficit and you don't think you're going to get the revenue by September 30th, they consider that a reduction on your END. We had this one grant. The 51,000 was money we were supposed to get from the federal government. Ironically, we did get that like the day the certification came in. Again, it's not like you don't have the money. It's just timing is everything. I couldn't put down

104that we had it or I thought we were going to get it because who knows, especially when it's federal money. So the certification was 1,630,000. I was fairly happy with that. Would would have been 1 million like one 100,000 in that range had I been able to keep the money in choice, but it's still here and we can still access it if we need to. And then I'm giving you a little bit of END history um just so you can see it. I did this basically I started working here in FY 10, you know, 2009, but FY10. We started out about 1 million in the negative. We've got to over 1.6 million in depositive. And you can see it kind of has varied over time. Our high note was FY22. That was as we're coming

105out of the pandemic, we were at almost $2 million in END. 1.6 is really good. And I can tell you when I met with S&P in order to get our bond rating, I think I sent that to you, it was in one of Moren's notes that we sent out. We were rated at double A plus, which is really good. Um, I'm told that hardly anybody gets AAA, which is what we wanted, but we didn't get that. Um, what he said over and over in that call was what we look at more than anything is what you have for reserve funds. We want to know what you've got, you know, outside of your operational budget because we understand you're only going to get what the towns can appropriate. Um, I think it's a good thing that

106we have the choice account, the transfer in accounts, you know, those various programs ently good solid shape and we can hopefully get through this year and try to maintain that. The goal to me at least is to not have to do like go for operational overrides. If we can avoid that, we want to do that as long as we possibly can. Any questions on FY25? >> It's good presentation. Yeah, I mean I think we came out fairly well. I was, you know, fairly happy with the way things turned out. I'm working on the I did the year report which is not a balance sheet. It's just reporting to Desi where you actually spend all your money. Um it's just I mean basically you have to account for everything in some fashion on this and once

107I get that done I'll share that with you as well. >> No questions. Jay, thank you. That was a lot of data and information. It was all good. Lots of numbers. Yeah, >> the numbers look good. >> I'll memorize, you know, I knew everything >> at least right now. >> I think I'm staying around for the borrowing, too. >> Two of us. >> Oh, do we? >> All right. So, >> let's get into the borrowing. So, we met with S&P. We got our bond rating. That was all very good. We have now successfully borrowed a little over $9 million, which we did as a not as a short-term band. But we did that because the interest rates are relatively good and the feeling is that they're not going to drop down to that 2% that

108I would love to see them at. What we are going to do in a year is probably do a one-year ban to finish the project because ultimately we don't want to borrow more than what we need for the project. So we want to, you know, we will fine-tune that number when we're all done. Then we borrow the balance that we need. Um, we're working with Hilltop Securities, which is a fairly large financial advisor, municipal advisor firm. The borrowing went out. It goes out to bid. We had, I think you guys have been shared with all the various paperwork. I think it's linked in here. We had five or six bids. I think Fidelity Capital Markets, I believe, was the winning bid. Um, it shows in some of the paperwork you're going to sign and the

109motions you're going to do that we borrowed 8.7 million because they have what's called a bond premium. The bond premium is money they sort of incentivize you to make them more attractive so that we will accept their bid. So we're actually getting a little over 9 million, but we're actually technically only borrowing 8.7 million. I have a much more detailed explanation. I was sent I'm not going to read it because it's you got enough stuff on your minds at this point. Um we do have to approve the borrowing. Uh we did set up set up a separate checking account for the capital projects with Rockland Trust. Um they again are going to give us 4% interest rate on this account. Um because that's what I asked because otherwise I would have done it through our

110sweep investment account. Um but this way it keeps everything separate. So I'll have to set up a separate account within the book so that we can track it all. It's a better way to do it I think in the long run. Now you'll notice we're going to earn 4% but we're only going to pay 3.7%. That difference and I don't know what that's going to amount to but over $30 billion that's money that we get to use. It's called arbitrage. It's money we can use toward the project or we can use toward into the general fund or anything like that. It becomes money that's just bonus money. And that would be the goal was to earn more interest and you pay interest on a loan. Doesn't always work that way. >> Sounds like a pretty

111sweet deal. >> I was hoping for 2% and 4%. I like bigger numbers. But um so that's where we are with the borrowing. Um they just asked me today for the account the routing number. So I think the money should be coming relatively soon. You guys have to take a vote tonight to approve the borrowing. I have to send back about 80 pages because on uh council and lawyers, they love paperwork and banks love paperwork. I've got a stamping with our embossed seal on all the paperwork and everything's signed. I believe uh Jim and Big is the secretary. She signed it. Joe Leu signed it. So I'll be sending that in. I believe I have to mail our copies. >> Excellent. Is there any conversation, questions, comments? >> Is there specific language that we have

112to >> Yeah, there's a motion. Uh, it was it's linked into the uh background notes. I think we have a printed copy. Um, it's still in my folder. Did I leave it with you, Jim? Let me see. I may have it here. I think you want to pull it up. It is linked in there. It's vote certification. I put it in this morning. Let's see. >> So, do they have to read that document? >> Unfortunately, I believe you do have to uh >> Yeah, I don't have it here. It must be >> Well, they have it linked. It says school district. >> How many pages is it? >> Don't want to believe you have to read. >> Hopefully. Still got some water there. >> You know, they didn't tell me that you had to read

113it. two and a half. >> Maybe you can just say I move to uh authorize the vote as written in the warrant like we do at town meetings. That's always a nice >> and then if they tell me that you had to actually do it another way, we'll uh back >> they come on YouTube and watch the video. >> Yeah. >> All right. Any further discussion? >> Is there a motion? So move. >> Wait, I'll try the motion, but do we make a motion to approve the $ 8.7 million loan amount per the warrant printed in tonight's meeting agenda? >> There's a motion to approve the borrowing as written in the board of the regional schools committee. Just the title. >> Uh vote of the regional school district school committee. >> Is there a second?

114>> Second by carry. All those in favor? >> I. >> And I am going to need Does somebody have that printed motion? Because we're going to need to have sign it. Let me make sure that you already signed it to be sure >> because otherwise would be chasing you down. >> Did I sign? Yes, that's >> Yeah, that's it. Let me see if it was signed. >> Madam Secretary, I feel that it was a unanimous vote. Five to nothing, right? [Music] >> We need another result. Yeah. >> No, I think it's just this >> just that I just It's overkill that I haven't there. You're gone. >> All right. >> Thank you, Jay. >> I think I'm done now unless you got more. >> And I can just add just related to this building committee,

115we have a meeting coming up, but the uh what's it called? The RFS for the OPM was posted and applications are due on the 19th. We've had many people who have expressed interest and asked for the application and then it'll be reviewed at that building committee meeting and the building committee website is up and on the website and as well as an update page where we'll continue to do updates that it's a separate web page but it's linked off of the capital project page for people looking for updates. I've got about 25 requests for the uh RFS. So, I think that's good sign. Sure. >> And also saw that in your newsletter provides >> and so now it's all starting to get we'll continue to update that every few weeks. >> Other subcommittees, budget subcommittee

116has a meeting scheduled for October 8th, one month from today. Budget season is coming upon us here. policy subcommittee who is um >> so we started to look at a couple of new policies um to get on the books um peri so one is related to career technical um education and the other is related to um these competency determination guidelines um based on become and pass going away. Uh so we um the former I think we need to um have something together by November 1st. The other is due by the end of the year. So we just started to look at that and um we have a few policies that we're bringing forward for a second reading tonight. Those are CHA development of regulations, CHCA approval handbooks and directives and CI temporary weight of responsibility.

117We travel near way back time machine to May. We had these for first reading then. So they are now coming forward for second reading. So you would need to >> um are these pretty much uh as referenced in the >> Yeah. If you look through you can see the change like so the first CHA it's just like updating it's just like >> bring bringing it in alignment. >> Yeah. So you can see that the changes. Um, >> right. Uh, is there a motion to approve the uh policies CHA CHC CHCA CI? >> So moved. Second. >> All those in favor? >> I motion carries. Uh, negotiation subcommittee is not a negotiation year. Nothing scheduled there. Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee meets for the first time October 14th and capital planning is kind of in uh focusing on

118building committee this morning. So no capital planning subcommittee meetings planned other matters not anticipated by the committee within 48 hours? None. Um, future agenda items, district action plans for 2025, 2026, and school improvement plans. If there's nothing else, then is there a motion to adjurnn? >> Motion to adjourn. >> Is there a second? >> All those in favor? Motion carries. Meeting is adjourned at 8:47.