School Committee Meeting: November 6, 2025

001Good evening everyone. Today is November 6, 2025 and this is the meeting of the Milford school committee. So we will start with invitation to speak. There is no one here for that which moves us on to announcements, correspondence and distribution. Does anybody have anything for that? >> I do have an announcement. >> Go ahead. Um uh this afternoon uh our administrative team uh welcomed a panel of guests uh to talk about some of the ongoing immigration issues that our communities facing. Um we had Diego Low from the he's the director of the Metro West Work Center. Elizabeth Mats who's the chief uh civil in the civil rights division and senior adviser to the attorney general. We had state rep. Brian Murray and State Senator Becca Roush. They were here talking with our leadership team and

002uh helping us um just kind of go through some of our own protocols and processes and and helping us understand um how we can help families get into our schools safely or at least feel like uh feel safer coming to our schools. So just trying to understand the laws and making sure we had the right policies in place. So, we spent an hour and a half with them. They graciously gave us an hour and a half of their time to kind of talk this through. And um I think uh they gave us a lot of information that we hadn't had before. So, it was a a good time and we thank them for spending time with us this afternoon. >> Thank you. Anything else? >> All right. Thank you for that. We'll move on. Well,

003actually, we'll skip the chairperson update because agenda item four is basically the same thing. So, today we do need to discuss and appoint a member of the school committee to the MSBA's designer selection panel. So, just a brief update on on what this is. This is the next step of the MSBA process. And there's a 16 member panel that's responsible for selecting the designer for the new high school project. Um 13 of those 16 members, if I have the numbers right, are MSBA appointed officials. And then the town gets three seats. One of those three is an appointment by this board. Um couple of highlights of this. The purpose of this position is to uh essentially review and select the designer from the pool of applicants that will come into the MSBA for this project.

004Um my understanding is that time frame is that it'll start somewhere in January and be over by February. Um these meetings are morning meetings as I was told. Sometimes between 7 and 9:00 a.m. to 8 to 10:00 a.m. something like that. Um they are remote. Um, and again, the goal is essentially to be the voice for Milford to communicate with the MSBA professionals in terms of um, I would imagine taking the short list of vendors who are capable in terms of having the cycles in their in their work routine to be able to take on another project and then narrowing down one that I guess best fits the need and scope of what we're looking for. So, I will say before I open it up that um, Brandon and Chris both raised their hand for

005this. So, I appreciate you guys volunteering so we didn't have to uh try to force anybody into it here tonight. So, um with that said, I guess I'll open up um I'll open up the floor to any thoughts or comments on this. John. >> Yes. So, I have a lot of thoughts um or a few thoughts, but um maybe strong thoughts. So, I've sat on a number of design selection committees for the town. Um various projects of youth the the u the youth center, police um department, fire department, a few others. Um, but I I think in this role here, I think it's imperative that we have somebody that's, and this clearly comes down to either Chris or Mike, that's on the school building committee. Um, there's so much engagement there that, and with with

006all due respect, Brendon, I didn't know you had interest until until 30 seconds ago. But, um, I think it needs to be either it needs to be one of our school building committee representatives. Um, and and we have Chris here who's who's on the school building committee. He's uh coming up on a 9-year member here. He's an engineer. He's on the planning board. He's on the school building committee. Um, I'd feel very comfortable having Chris be our representative there. He's he's got the time and grade in my opinion. >> M Can I ask a clarifying question? Who picks the other two members? >> Um, the other one is this guy right here or someone >> that's a solid member. Okay. >> And then I believe the third is what's considered the town CEO. So that

007can either be the select board chair or >> uh brick but not I don't know who they appointed. >> Excellent. Thank you. Thanks John. Uh thank you both for being willing to serve. I know you both spend a lot of time here and are willing to spend more. So I really appreciate that. I'd make a motion for Chris to be appointed just you know aligning with what John said. I think it'd be really important to have kind of that continuity between the building school. >> I'll second it. >> Okay. Motion by Megan. Second by Brendan. Is there a discussion or more discussion I should say? I guess just quickly then well depending on how things go on the vote uh you know I I appreciate the support u you know said John had just said

008currently I'm on the on that board you know I I kind of ran for this third term knowing that this project was was coming along and and wanted to be a part of at least the beginning portions of of the project as we get into this at least this designer selection side and as Johnny mentioned you know certainly my role on planning board and and my day job as an engineer. Just want to be able to utilize that skill set, you know, and certainly know that we're know we're looking to find a, you know, an architect and that is going to look towards that school that we want, whether it's a 8 through 12, 9 through 12, but and definitely that comprehensive piece. So, with all that in mind, that's why I I certainly would

009want to be a representative for this board in the community. >> All right. Thank you. Um, I guess that would wrap this one up then. So, we have a motion by Megan, second by Brendan. All in favor? Unanimous. Thank you for that. We'll move on to the director of technology grants and communication update. Sorry, just putting that up on the screen. Sure. And we need to refresh that. >> Sean can help you if you need it. >> AOL over here. >> There we go. >> I can't even pull up the agenda yet. I haven't signed into Move Ma. >> All right. Thank you all for having me. Appreciate the opportunity to speak with you tonight. Um and just uh want to give you a brief update on on the you know the three departments that

010I'm overseeing. Um uh the first being our technology department. Um first thing I want to do is acknowledge um the team of professionals that I'm working with. Kevin Cullen, John Dilva, Edgar Hinton, uh Dave Maloney, Dan Nelson, Sarah Bole, Ryan Neesa, and Lisa Byer. Um it's a it's a lean crew. Um but it is a extremely competent crew of um talented professionals. They are hardworking. Um and I I trust them incredibly. Um I know that they are um they have students and teachers and families uh in mind with all of their work. Uh so they get right on any assignment that that's given to them. They tackle any problems right right away. Um, you know, one of our goals always is good, strong customer service and being efficient. Um, those are the two things that

011we pride ourselves on. And, uh, it's a great team. Um, in particular, I want to single out Kevin Cullen, um, who's our network manager. Um, Kevin is, um, I I know Craig knows this, Carrie knows this, Wen knows this. Um, he is one of the unsung heroes of the Milford public schools. Kevin knows everything there is to know about um our network and how things work. Um he's also has um the most longevity in our department as well. So he's got some of that historical institutional knowledge um that makes him invaluable. But Kevin is one of those guys that's a jack of all trades. Whether it's cyber security or um some type of software platform or whatever it is, it doesn't matter. Kevin is um he he's the go-to guy. He's really an outstanding uh

012um employee for the Mil Milford Public School. So, I want to really commend Kevin. So, all right. Um an update of where we're at. Um so, this year, uh we deployed about 900 or so um new Chromebooks uh for students. Um and inventoried and updated and reissued about 3,000 more. Um that was all during the summer. uh we did not purchase about 300 um Chromebooks that we normally purchase every year. We normally purchase right around 1,200 Chromebooks, but uh this year uh we have had a we had enough inventory and storage that rather than purchase new ones, we wanted to dip into that. We felt like our supply was strong. So uh we had a little bit of a savings there. Um about 225 new desktops and uh laptops uh for MHS, uh Shining Star,

013Central Office, and the F FRC were deployed for our staff. Um, one of the things that, uh, I'm I'm sure we talked about earlier just before this meeting, uh, is is improving our wireless security. Um, so we've made a couple of changes to our networks, um, just to make them a little bit more secure. Um, encrypting them so that they're not open. Um, the guest network previously was an open network. Uh, we wanted to make sure that all of our guests still had some some type of security uh, in their online dealings wirelessly. So, that's an upgrade that we've made. Um uh we're expanding our filtering to our Windows and Mac devices that are dis district issued. Um mostly those are located in our computer labs here at the high school. Um so we've improved

014the filtering to those devices. Um so that it's on par with what uh our students are using on their Chromebooks and what our staff are using um on their laptops. Um, one of the things that I'm really proud of in in terms of that cyber security is uh our basic cyber security awareness among our end users, among our teachers is really starting to take hold. Um, you know, when uh one of those fishing or spoofing emails get through somehow, um, my inbox the next that night or the next day is filled with this doesn't look right. Um, can you let me know if this looks right? Um, you know, I got uh you gotta look at this email uh call from Craig the other day because he got one and he was like he wanted

015to show me he was so proud of himself um for for not falling for the scam. Um so but our staff is starting to to understand like um fishing emails and and scam emails is the like that's the number one gateway into identity theft or um something that's a lot more damaging. um we know that we we can uh expose our network to something that's that's pretty awful and shut down operations and it and it could be really paralyzing. So I think people are starting to appreciate that. Um they don't always love the fact that their laptops reboot every Monday morning uh right in the middle of something or right in the middle of a meeting, but it's part of the deal. you know, the the two minutes or three minutes of inconvenience of your

016laptop rebooting is is at the end of the day, it's worth it. Um to keep our our our machines, our network um up to date and safe. Um part of that also was uh rolling out last spring uh we rolled out multiffactor authentication to um to our staff uh in terms of email, in terms of their Google accounts. So that way um you know it's most of us are used to that in our in our personal lives. It was something new for our work world um where if you're logging in off offsite that you know you've got to provide a code or have some type of app that you can verify you are who you are. Um our staff uh there was a little worried that this would be like a big change. Our staff

017really understood that this was a necessary step that we needed to take um and were really um they worked with us on this. Um there was a you know a few hiccups about p you know uh passwords and things like that but we got it all figured out. um and they understand that there there's a there's a reason for this. Um so they're on board. That was really appreciated. Um last spring um we uh expanded our wiring um our network wiring uh at the high school in in Shining Star in preparation for um one of the asks that we talked about um uh the capital plan where we asked for new wireless access points. Uh we extended the wiring to some of the dead spots at the high school and in Shining Star. Uh we

018were able to do that last year with the remaining uh -ate funds that we had on on hand. Um so that it didn't come out of our budget. Um really u and that was in preparation for the work that we're going to be doing this summer. So that way um our Wi-Fi coverage uh at the high school and at Shining Star is is going to be improved. Uh, another task that we've taken on this year is reviewing and inventorying all of our subscriptions. Um, we kind of lost track of that a little bit uh over the years. Um, new subscriptions are constantly being added whether it's at the at a teacher level or a department level or or a school level. We wanted to just have a a solid list of what are we using,

019who's using it, who's paying for it, how much does it cost. Um, and that way and the next step being we're going to be evaluating these. Are are these still effective tools for instruction? Are these still things that align with what um what our outcomes are for for students and teachers. So, uh, we want to get a better handle on the subscriptions uh because there was a little bit of everyone kind of doing their own thing and we wanted to bring it more in-house so that we had a better accounting of that. Um, our student use agreement was updated over the summer um and and rolled out to families. One of the the bigger changes is is we're a lot more clear with our charge and our fee procedures. Um, one of the things that

020we have had been doing uh was providing optional coverage for for families to buy for the Chromebooks, but we weren't ever really tapping into that because um we understand that kids are kids and sometimes accidents happen. they drop their device. Sometimes there's a little bit of wear and tear. Um, and we're able to uh fix those devices, make those repairs, um, do what we need to do all inhouse and not coming out of our budget. Um, we use our tech team here, uh, uh, with Dan Nelson and and his student tech team to accomplish a lot of those repairs. They do those as part of their, um, as part of their learning in class. um they drive to the schools, they pick up the Chromebooks, they bring them back here, they fix them, and they

021get they get them right back. Um so we weren't really charging families for anything. Uh the only time we we were really charging families is if the damage to the Chromebook was intentional or severe or significant. Um we we used all the adjectives we could think of to make it very clear like this had to be purposeful or this had to be significant. um or if the if the Chromebook was just lost, we were we were charging families. So, we updated our language and our student use um our student use agreement to to reflect that practice. Uh we're continuing to fine-tune and improve our uh inventory accountability. Um, we know that when we're talking about somewhere close to 6,000 devices across the district, um, including, you know, things like projectors and, uh, iPads and Apple

022Pens and all that stuff that we're never going to be 100%, but we want to be as close to that every day. Um, so we're we're getting closer all the time. Um, we're going through our records, making sure that when uh devices are retired that they're retired not only in physically, but they're retired in our inventory system. Um, we're making sure that when uh students or staff leave the district that their accounts in terms of what devices are assigned to them, that's all cleaned up and everything is aligned. So, we're continuing to improve that. Um we uh updated the AV system in the Brookside cafeteria um that was constantly kind of in and out. Um there were some issues there. Uh so we said, you know, come out here, fix this once and for all

023rather than having you come back every 3 months to to tweak this or tweak that. So the Brookside uh cafeteria should be good to go. Uh the same thing with the the Milford High Auditorium. um we had that rewired uh just to provide a little bit more um uh consistency and reliability uh as well as to make sure that it was up to code in terms of the electrical work there. So the the high school auditorium should be good to go as well. Um, and just a a kind of a quick update on on some of those ma those tickets uh that we use um in terms of technology issues between the first day of school for staff this year and Monday this week. Uh we had 1,823 tickets um that were that were submitted.

024Um and of those I'm sorry 1,823 tickets were completed and we had 20 still outstanding on Monday. So 1,843 had been submitted. Um an average response time of about 3 and a half hours um in one day of resolution time. So someone submits a ticket within one day their problem should be fixed and and if they have a device back in their hands. Now obviously some of those are they take multiple days and some of those were able to respond to within minutes. Um, so, uh, I'm really proud. Like I said, one of the things I led off with is is being efficient and good customer service. Uh, our team takes a lot of pride in that. Um, we don't like seeing unassigned tickets. Uh, we don't like seeing things that are on hold for

025a while. We try and tackle these things as quickly as as as possible because we know that's, um, good for teachers and good good for kids. Um, also as part of that technology work that we're doing, a work in progress, um, is we're trying to make our HR systems um, align with the the ticketing system that we use for technology, the ticketing system that we use for maintenance. Also making sure some of our HR processes are um are are digitized uh, so that we're not passing the papers and things like that and sending things through um, in our office mail. We know we can do that uh with a little bit more efficiency using technology. Um to be quite honest, that's a work in progress. Wen and I have been collaborating on that over the

026past year. It's a much bigger project than I anticipated. Um there's a lot more forms and a lot more um uh nuances to, you know, the different positions and the different tasks that need to happen. U so that's taken us a little bit, I shouldn't say a little bit, a lot longer than I anticipated. I I really thought that was going to be a quick turnaround and it hasn't been. Um, so I'm continuing to work on that. Um, and then one of the things I wanted to mention, um, is the our collaboration with the Milford Police Department and our SRO, uh, Anthony Bosei, especially at the high school here. Um, making sure that our network, our cameras, our rave security app, all of those are done in partnership with with with Tony and um, with

027the police department. Um, one of the things that we did last fall, I think post uh my meeting with you guys last fall was um we made sure our cameras were available to the Milford Police Department in their at at the police department um in their uh I'm blanking on the the word um where they receive the calls. >> Dispatch dispatch. >> Dispatch, thank you. In their dispatch room. Um so they've got a wall of cameras uh so that they can see into our school when needed. Um, so making that access available to them is was something that we were really happy to do. Um, because it's just going to make our schools safer. Um, want to update you on those town meeting articles that uh, thank you. You supported u moving forward that were

028recently passed. Um, the VMware uh, which helps with our um, our our licensing uh, for our phones. Um, the software that's been purchased and that's been updated already. that's already uh been rolled out. Um the next two years of that purchase um our $20,000 a year, those are going to be built into our operating budget. Okay? So, those won't be capital as going forward. Cisco is uh the Cisco phone servers, the physical servers themselves. Um they're being built out right now by our engine uh the the vendors that we use. Um those engineers are building those out. Uh so those servers will be upgraded soon. And then uh we'll be buying uh the access points and switches um the wireless access points. Um we'll be replacing all the all of the old ones. Um installing

029a few new ones in some of those dead spots I mentioned here at the high school and a shining star. Um that's going to be ordered probably winter spring. It's going to be staged by our vendor partner. Um and then we'll get that work done over the summer. So that's going to be a pretty huge project for us to to do over the summer. Um the town supported $120,000. Another $680,000 uh is going to be reimbursed by -ate. Um so you know all told that was you know about an $800,000 project which we're on the hook for for only about 120. So um you know that's a good that's a pretty good deal. upcoming. Um some things that we'll be working on that are no money. Um updating uh our data privacy policies and procedures,

030making sure that our subscription and software vendor agreements um are in place uh to to protect student uh and staff data. um continuing to to work on, as I mentioned, uh our subscriptions, looking at the effectiveness, how these are being used, are they still needed? Are there redundancies? Do we have two different programs that are doing the same thing? Um do we have, you know, two schools that are buying the same thing? Is it better to to buy in bulk? Uh that that type of thing. And then, you know, I think I've mentioned this to you guys before. probably the the issue of uh of our educator lifetimes is is is on the table now and it's very prevalent uh is what does AI look like in education? Um so looking at policy and procedure,

031looking at professional development and professional learning for our staff so that our staff know what it is and how to use it. Um and then where does where does student use fit into all of this? Um this is uh this is a major major deal for us um as educators. it will it's going to be the talking point in in education for for the next 20 years uh without a doubt. Um some upcoming things that do have money. Um so uh the monitors uh flat panel monitors like this one uh and new Chromebook carts to replace the aging Chromebook carts at Woodland. Those are going to be built into our operating budget uh for this year. So those will be part of our ask. Um, I am going to be looking to um add more

032cameras uh at Milford High, Memorial, and Brookside. Um, that's going to be in in our budget. Um, I don't have a final number for you. Um, obviously because this is still a work in progress and we're just at the early stages of our budget ask. Um, but the big one, just as a heads up, going forward, um, this will be for next year. uh the next capital request coming in October um replacing our whole phone system. Um one of the things that we're going to be doing um for FY28, so starting this work in the summer of 2027 um is moving all of our phone services to the cloud just to modernize our system just to make it a little bit more efficient. uh just to make it a little bit more secure as well

033so that our phone system is not um susceptible to physical damage such as power outages here at the building or water damage or whatever it is. Um you know and the and the phone uh putting it on the cloud will make it a little bit easier to monitor and um a little bit easier to um update as needed as software changes. Uh it also includes replacing most of if not all of the phones. Um all of the phones are somewhere between five and 10 years old. Some of them may be um available to use on the cloud. Most of them will not. Um one of the added features that we're also looking to do um as part of these phones and it doesn't really come as an expense. Knock on wood that might change. Um

034but our vendor has has shared with us um you know potentially having uh emergency kind of panic buttons on all of the phones um which will be an added layer of security and safety for our for our staff um so that they'll have kind of emergency buttons in the classroom um that they can press uh they don't have to worry about Wi-Fi or cell phone reception or anything like that. Um, we also feel like based on some of the um the laws that have been moving through various state houses um in different states, but we're also seeing here in Massachusetts that having some type of um panic button emergency system in schools. Um it doesn't necessarily say in classrooms just yet, but in schools available to teachers is going to be the law. So getting

035ahead of that might be this this is an opportunity to do that. Um, but even if it's not a law, if we can make our classrooms a safer place for for teachers and kids, we want to do that. So, um, this year's ask, you might be wondering, is about some of the phone stuff, you know, the VMware and the Cisco. Why are we buying that now if we're replacing the phone system in two years? We need a bridge. Um, getting everything engineered and ready to go. Um, and obviously you can see it comes with a fairly large expense. Um, we need to plan for that. We want to make sure we do it the right way. It's not something that you can just do overnight. It's not something you just say we're going to get

036new phones and we just go with it. Uh it takes a lot of planning and and and do that. Um and we've got this gap between where we're at now and when that cloud switch is going to happen. Um so the Cisco servers and the VMware allows us to get to that point where we're ready to go um and make that switch. So that's all I got on the technology side. So before I move to the other two areas, I want to stop there and give you guys a chance to digest all that. >> I just have two quick questions, Tim. First off, as an end user, the customer service level is amazing. So it is much appreciated. There's nothing more frustrating than like you get locked out of Aspen and then like two hours

037later you're back in. So just kudos to the team. Really appreciate that. >> I was curious, do you do cyber awareness training at all with the team? because it's gotten so sophisticated like they would take the eye and you know it looks like it's coming from Milford Mass. So I'm just curious. >> That's what one of the things that we do try and do is when we get when when we get largecale fishing scams that we know >> lots of people get I'll send out an email and and share with them >> the example >> this is what like >> here's how you could detect this as a scam. This is what you might look for like you know instead of coming from milforda.gov gov it came or.com it came from milford-ma.com >> like little

038things like that are you know instead of coming from cigley it came from Craig Conigley like that's not his email address >> so little things like that >> um you know and also just praying on some basic human behaviors >> you know offers of of new jobs with you know high salaries >> sure >> you know um just provide just provide your email address just provide you know, we'll send you a a signing bonus. Just send send us your bank account information. Like little things like that. Like if we can educate people just to look for these things, >> it cuts down on a lot of >> absolutely >> the issues. No, that's great. >> So, we try. >> Okay. And then the HR processes that you were talking about leveraging the help desk for,

039are there any data privacy concerns there or that's all encrypted or Yeah. >> Think even access to that like you wouldn't want a form to go in with someone's personal information that everyone who sees the help desk has access. >> Yeah. No. And that's part of that's part of the um >> challenge >> the challenge the the the security and everything being encrypted. That's not okay. But making sure things are routed the right way. >> Got it. >> So that like if it you know when I submit it goes to the right person and not to someone else by accident. We don't want that to happen. So making sure everything the workflow >> y >> um happens the right way. >> Um is >> and even visibility to the tickets is that managed? >> Same

040thing. Okay. Yeah. We want to make sure that the right people can see what they need to see. Um, >> great. >> So, >> just that that's part of it. Thanks. >> Yeah, just the the I I characterize it as a workflow. Making sure the right people can see the right things when they need to >> is proved to be a little trickier than Okay. >> I expected. >> Yep. Noted. Thank you for the updates. >> Thanks so far for the presentation. Tim, uh, question about the the phone system. I think we're being forced to the cloud. Is that like a pretty accurate >> um Yeah. Well, you know, one of the reasons that we had to, you know, update um our Cisco systems is because we had reached the end of life and they

041don't support these things anymore, right? >> So, a lot of the hardware um and and some of the software is not going to be supported anymore because the world is moving to a cloud-based system. Yes. >> So, with with that said, I mean, was it two weeks ago AWS cloud cracked? I mean like I don't see that as being a more secure method than like a more traditional system. So I guess what is being addressed in that realm on on the providers end that we feel confident going forward and spending all this money even I know we're being forced into it but I mean >> if the AWS server assuming that's the one we're using goes down again and we have an emergency will our phones work? >> Yes. So that's, you know, that's what

042we're doing for this coming year. Um Kevin, Colin and I have already started to meet with um some of our engineers um and some of our um our consultants that that you know that we're paying good good money for. Um is to kind of guide us in this process because >> it's not my world. I'll be the first to admit it. Kevin is a lot more skilled in this and and a lot more knowledgeable about this, but it's not his niche either. Um, so we're using some people who um we trust to guide us in this process of building this the right way. Uh we've also got a consultant um kind of on staff over there who this is his world. Um >> painful day. So when so there are time you know we've already

043we've already consulted consulted with Matt a couple of times like hey Matt does this sound right to you or are we are we in the right ballpark with this um >> because he knows it as well as anyone. Um so we feel like we've got >> between the three of us we've got a good solid brain between us. So >> awesome. Yeah. And I guess the other question just because this will come up with town meeting is this phone system are we able to then transfer over to the rest of the town as well and say can you you know would the rest of town government be able to tap into this as well say thinking about saving taxpayers some money potentially >> you know Brendon that's an excellent point I don't I don't know

044>> yeah I don't collaboration with the town it is what kind >> yeah um yeah we we tend to collaborate with the with the town it on things like payroll and HR processes um certainly with some of the security um as it pertained to like the police department. >> Um so we that those are kind of that's a limit of our kind of collaboration is those two worlds. >> Sure. >> Um but that's a great question if that's something that we can do on a larger scale to save the taxpayers money. That's a great question. I I don't know the answer to that. >> No problem. >> But I can find out. >> Awesome. I appreciate it. >> Yep. Thank you. Yep. >> Well, I just add there was definitely a disconnect between school IT

045and and town IT over the last 10 years. Um different outside vendors, different inside personnel. Um I'm I'm sure that a lot more could be done to to get on the same page. Um whatever page that needs to be, but um there was I can I can say firsthand I've witnessed an absolute lack of um collaboration. It's not a knock on any person or any entity or any company, but there's definitely more more bridges we can build. >> Yeah. And I I I do think we do um we do have a pretty good relationship with with I I shouldn't say pretty good, a very good relationship with Chris George and and his team um where it comes to the things that we do collaborate on. >> And the town still has an outside vendor that

046that does that fills in a lot of the gaps there. So >> um they used to be involved here. They're not anymore. I don't know why they're not, but whatever. more collab more more more there can be more collaboration for sure >> understood >> just my opinion I'm not the expert but >> and to be clear this is going to seamlessly go into the high school the new high school yes right so want to make sure it's clear okay >> yep >> it's definitely important to note that the timing of that >> takes an incredibly critical piece of technology >> away from this building so no matter what happens to this building other spots as long as the Wi-Fi is up or the network is up will not lose this home, >> right? >> Which

047is a big deal because if they're doing sections of this building at a time, as long as something's connected to the internet, the phone is connected. >> That simple. >> Yeah. >> What are typical tickets that you get? You got 1,800. What do you usually What you come across? >> Um >> on the on the Chromebook on the Chromebook side, it tends to be things like uh cracked screen. >> Yeah. um missing keys um that you know the hinge cut came loose. >> Um you know on the teacher side it might be um unblocking websites >> or um you know they they got locked out of their Aspen account or something like that might be something in in that realm or you know their device you know I'm plugging it in but the charge isn't

048taking things like that. Um it could be a little bit of everything. Um >> projector projector's not working, sound's not coming out of my laptop. So, it it's a little bit of everything. Um, >> but yeah, there's a there's a lot, you know, on any given day. Um, you know, we're getting quite a few tickets and and the guys are jumping on it right away. So, great. >> Yeah. >> Thanks for coming in to present. >> Of course. >> Always appreciate it. Um, you talked about some savings um for not having to or being a not having to buy the Chromebooks. Where do you see those savings being put within your department or do you or do you think that it'll it'll go elsewhere? >> Well, that was last year. Yeah, that was last year.

049Yeah, last year we just we didn't we didn't buy as many as we needed to. >> Okay. >> But going forward, um, you know, we we always buy a few more than we need. We don't go by the exact student number just to be safe. Yeah. >> Um, so we'll start to build up that stock again a little bit >> and at some point we'll be like, "All right, you know what? We don't need to we like for last year we didn't buy all of third grade basically." >> Okay. >> Because every year we usually buy 369. >> Okay. >> Last year we didn't buy third grade. >> So we just bought six and nine. >> Got Yeah, those savings were I guess did were you able to utilize those within your department or did

050they come back? And obviously transportation's always the one that's needs more money. So Just out of curiosity, >> yeah, we were able to um accelerate our replacement cycles for the laptops for staff. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> So, yeah, >> we were able to move things along in that >> way. Yeah, I figured I figured that was the case, but I just wanted to hear that. Um and then your tech team, I think it was great that you acknowledge your tech team. Obviously, you know, the almost 2,000 tickets, you feel like you're still adequ adequately staffed. >> Yeah, I do. Yep, I do. Um, you know, there are certainly there there are some really busy times of the year. Um, summer is a really busy time for us uh for for my staff. U the

051month of September and October are really busy times. Things will slow down a little bit. Um, and that's where we can um use our staff to do some of the preventative maintenance and be a little bit more proactive. um whether it's uh cleaning up devices, updating them, uh cleaning projectors, replacing bulbs, so they can do some of those other things that maybe aren't ticket, you know, responding to tickets and just be a little bit more proactive in in maintaining things, inventory, things like that. >> Always something. >> Yeah, there's always something. Yeah, but I feel like we've got a good number. Um so personnel is not is not a concern right now. >> Sounds good. Um then going back to like kind of the the cloud. So the phone base will go eventually go into

052the cloud. Do you foresee that with our data service? I think our we still have data service here on site. >> Do you foresee that being a cloudbased system also? >> We haven't got that far yet. One of the things that we have talked about is moving some of our servers out of this building sooner rather than later. Um just because it's not >> it's not always an easy process. Um but if we can get some um safety in spreading things out >> would be a good idea. Um because right now we have a a he pretty heavy concentration of our uh our data servers here at the high school. >> We have I believe it's one or two over at Woodland. We would like to spread them out a little bit more so that

053way if something happens, you know, god forbid to a building, >> um we we've got some backups and and safety or even safety and spreading things out. >> Okay. Yeah, that sounds good. >> So, so who who who's who's actually making that decision and timeline and and consulting in that that whole process because on the town side, we've gone to pretty much almost all cloud-based services. We had an incident six, eight, nine months ago on the town side that >> probably could have been avoided um if things were certain things were done sooner. I'm not an expert to to comment any further, but who so how are you who and how are you deciding let's go cloud-based on everything tomorrow or it's going to take a year or two years or these ones go today

054and these ones go in six months. Who who's who's in that who's involved in that process? I mean, obviously you are, but yep. >> Um are you consulting with a a vendor or >> Yeah. Um, >> yeah, we've got >> I mean the the cloud base is just it's it's where everything should be at >> allegedly. >> Yes. >> But I know it's a process to get there. >> It is. It is a process to get there. Um and and prioritizing a couple other things first, but it's definitely something that we've started to have conversations with some of our vendors on. Um you know, we've got a couple of, like I said, consultants that that we utilize for our phones, for um you know, for our our Google services. um th those people are involved

055in in some of those those uh discussions. Um but we've got a couple of good partnerships that we've had whether it's providing um you know network troubleshooting or engineering of of our network that we're talking >> is this going to be a capital item as it as it progresses or you going to do it in budget? >> Uh I don't know. I don't know yet. >> I think we need to address that. I'm not trying to put you on the spot but I know I just did. >> Um but something we need to >> address sooner than later I think. Anyways, >> I I the only thing I would add to that is I think it's probably going to be a mix of both. And the reason for that is when you get to cloud,

056a lot of the stuff just like the VMware licensing is a subscriptionbased thing where you're paying yearly. Um so you'll end up with your your budgetary numbers to pay for this stuff. But there also typically is a kind of a one-time heavy lift of how to get all of this from here safely to here where you tend to pay for mostly services of somebody like the consultant to come in and spend all this time preparing and moving data in a one-time kind of project. And that's usually the part that actually ends up costing the most money. So, it's probably >> I just don't want anybody to be afraid to address it because it it needs to go there, right? >> Oh, there's there's >> I'm not saying anybody done anything wrong. Um, but let's just

057>> there's a case not to, but in smaller businesses or municipality settings where your team is the size that it is and you don't have 15 highqualified engineers, you have seven people doing a bunch of things at the same time. It's it's the safest best way to go about things. Absolutely. >> Safest best way is cloud-based. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We're we're that's we've had some preliminary talks about going in that direction. Right now, I think our focus is, you know, the the on premises servers that we have and and moving those and spreading those out throughout our buildings. >> And I think to John's point and if we truly go that way is to try to get some budgetary numbers sooner rather than later so we can get it on the capital plan because

058certainly we don't want to surprise >> Fidcom with that. So whether that whatever the the scope of that number is, we should at least try to get an idea and a plan together to to at least again get it on that capital budget. >> Okay. >> Maybe just as follow up to that, Tim, I feel like when we used to get updates from Mrs. Angelini, there there's like an overall IT plan and strategy as well. Is that a document that we don't need to necessarily see it, but is that something that's still in play in terms of like the facilities plan planning out the next three to five years in terms of major projects? >> Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. >> Yeah. We we developed one um last year. >> Great. Okay. Thanks. >> Obviously, our budget

059is helping to support that. >> It's something that, you know, our our our department we developed um and obviously >> in the world of technology. Um >> it's out of date by the time the >> and you know also dealing with some some equipment and devices that maybe you know reach the end of life sooner than expected. It's always under revision and refinement. So um things do come up. So it's it's something it's a living document for us. Yeah. >> Thank you. >> One more shifting from uh I guess from the hardware side of it in cloud >> the AI side of it. Do you foresee coming back in with a more comprehensive kind of detailed presentation on AI? >> I can. Yeah. Um we've um one of the things that we're looking at doing

060this year is is forming like an AI task force um kind of a working study group. Yeah. >> Um, >> you know, the state this this summer came out with kind of like a a very very broad guidance document. Um, with with the the caveat that more guidance and direction is is soon to follow. Um, not that we're waiting on the state at all. Um, we've had, like I said, um, some preliminary conversations ourselves about doing something like what is Milford's approach to to AI? Um, where is that going to start? Um, you know, we've done some early work with our high school staff around AI and the tools that are available for them to use. Um, and we've had, you know, Josh and I have had some conversations about where the next steps will

061be for that. Um, but you know, it's such a it's an everchanging world. Um, whereas, you know, you know, the the tool that you show someone today is going to be completely obsolete tomorrow. Um uh so we're working on that. >> Okay. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Certainly there's the the pros and cons of AI, right? You know, it's I think a lot of people have a lot of negative >> connotation to the fact of it. It's a cheating tool. But when we think about AI has actually been around for a long time because of spellcheck, right? In its simplest form. You know, I use AI from an engineering standpoint to to help facilitate better design. So there are some good useful parts of it and it's just to understand you know and and have the you

062know students and staff understand that. So that's why when I say getting more a more detailed >> um kind of presentation so everybody is under understanding and we as school committee members understand what the technology department is putting forth for from the side of this is these are the bad spots for it. These are the good spots. We're helping student learning. >> Yeah. um it's not going to go away. So sticking our head in the sand and saying this is this is just a do any right >> isn't going to happen. >> Um and saying we're just going to block it forever for kids >> isn't going to happen and it's not good for them because they're going to enter a world in a workforce where AI is prevalent everywhere they go. >> Correct. >>

063Um so we've got to do something to prepare our kids for whether it's college or the workforce where they have an AI literacy. Um, and they know not only the the how to use it and how but the the the ethical uses of of AI and how to use it correctly. Um, so there's a lot of work to be done there. >> Yeah, definitely. And I know that's why it's very generic right now, but yeah, I'd like to definitely see us go down a path of uh some detail. >> Thank you. >> Yep. Um, good. Okay, next department. Um, grant update. Um, just want to acknowledge we've got a lot of people, you know, while, you know, grants might be under my purview, there's a lot of administrators and teachers that are involved in grant

064writing, grant submission, and I want to acknowledge all of their hard work and and what they do there. Um, they've secured, um, as of right now, jumping to the bottom of that slide, um, about 3.8 8 million uh for the district in grants. Um which is pretty impressive. Um it'll be, you know, we've got a couple of grants that are we're still waiting on DESI's final approval. Um it'll be about, you know, 3.9 million um soon enough. Um and the grants are both competitive and entitlement grants. Um you know, the competitive grants are obviously they are what they are. They're competitive. Um the entitlement grants, just because that you're entitled to them, doesn't mean they're any less work. Um and aren't any less involved. Um in many cases, they're more involved. Um, so they run

065the gamut from, you know, some of our early childhood work uh at Shining Star and Family Community Network, uh, to our work with our homeless families and homeless population, uh, genocide education at the high school, uh, career and technical education, uh, workforce planning, um, at the high school and things like special education, um, and our title one, two, three, and four, um, which supports a lot of what we do. Um, you know, it's a big chunk of money. Um, and obviously, um, my observations and thoughts, I've been asked this a couple of times. Um, there's a lot of uncertainty, especially around the federal grant funding and what that's going to look like. Um, you know, I shared with Craig earlier today on the plus side, there's been a reduction in some of the reporting and

066data requirements that that are coming from the federal side. um especially as as the department of education has been uh greatly reduced. Um on the negative side um you know our special education um our English learners, our economically disadvantaged, those uh students and families benefit the most from some of these grant programs. Um and they are, you know, at risk if these grants go away. Um just to give you a sense, you know, about 2.7 million of that 3.8 8 is is is geared towards our title one through four and IDA funding. So, um you know, professional development staffing, you know, if those things go away, that's that's a a big problem. Big problem. Um so, there's a lot of uncertainty. We'll have to see how things kind of develop and shake out. There's no

067clear direction um or timeline as to when we'll know more. Um, we know that things look good for this year. What next year looks like, uh, we can't say. Um, state grant funding appears to be holding steady. Um, but I do get the sense from some of the emails and, um, communications that are coming out from DESIE. Um, they're prepared for the Florida fallout. Um, they're they're there's some worry and some trepidation there. uh that if some of the federal grant funding goes away, what is the state going to do to fill in those gaps? It's just unknown. Um so questions on grants. >> Yeah, thanks Matt. So obviously this is not a Milford problem, Tim, right? Like this is just the current state. So I completely understand that. Could you just though speak a

068little bit more mechanically? So if we have a grant for this year, it's already been funded. So like that is not like how does the timing work in terms of when you actually receive the funds? Um I'm going to defer a little bit I'm going to defer a little bit to when on the on the the mechanics of the of the funding of when it comes. >> Um typically >> um at the state it's or state funded grants it's you know we expend them or they award the money we expend it and then we ask for reimbursement for that. Um the federal funds I'm going to defer to you when a little bit on that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um so the entitlement grants idea title one two three four >> um there uh they are

06927 months um grants which means we have this year next year and three months in the third year to spend. >> Okay. >> And so we received this that guaranteed us throughout the the 28 to seven months. Um the state grants uh the competitive grants usually um is one-year grant. Um, usually they close at um the end of the school year or uh September 30th after the summer. >> So, we're pretty comfortable. We don't have a position one where we've been awarded it but we wouldn't receive it. Does that make sense? That's okay. >> Uh yes, for the for the budget year. >> Yeah, exactly. Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Thanks. >> Just more of a comment. Um like you said, I mean everyone who's involved in the grant process, amazing job that you're

070doing. really appreciate it. Um, anything that we can do to help supplement that and support that going forward that you can think of? I don't know if there's a specific ask there from a budgetary perspective, but obviously let us know about it and free to >> help support that as well. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Quickly, thanks again for for this the presentation. You know, $3.6 million is is a great number to see. So, we really appreciate all the hard work that your team's doing. Okay, last piece, communication update. Um, communication survey uh from the summer. Um, we had about 600 respondents uh who 93% of which felt like communication for Milford public schools was satisfactory. Um, we've made a concerted effort to um make sure our online school calendars uh is up to date.

071Um people are putting events in there um of note for families so that they can quickly and easily find you know what time something starts or where something might be. Um Instagram and Facebook have continued to grow. We have a really strong following there. It's a good following. Um you know it's a it's really been used as a PR tool not so much for in uh information distribution. Our families told us that you know social media is you know some people are heavily into it others are not. They do not want to receive information about things necessarily coming from social media because they're not all on social media, but using it as a PR tool to highlight some of the really great things that are happening in our district um has been a strong uh

072has received some strong feedback. Um our digital backpack, you know, it's been a year in the making and people are starting to or I shouldn't say starting, people are relying on it. they know that this is a place to look for resources about um information about uh events, special happenings or you know registration, cub scouts, baseball, whatever it is, it's it's kind of a go-to. So, you know, when you in the past recycle things out of the kids backpack, it stays in peru uh perpetuity on in the digital backpack. um the weekly bulletin that goes out every Friday. Um one of the things that we've tried this year is is mixing in some different voices so that it's not just me communicating every week. Um so Craig has weighed in a couple of times. Uh

073Stacia has weighed in. Um so adding some uh different voices to the the weekly bulletin I I hope gives some different perspective uh to to what's happening in the district. um continuing to to emphasize uh talking points as the one tool um that we want people to use for uh texting with families and communicating so that it's not this teacher uses talking points, this teacher uses class dojo, this teacher uses Remind. It's too much for families to manage. So trying to get everything into one tool um has been wellreceived. We're getting closer to that. Um, talking points and text was by far the preferred tool for communication for families. Um, email was a second. Um, but families had indicated in their survey both last year and this year that they prefer to communicate with their

074kids, teachers and and school via talking points. Um, which is great. Uh, we added a central office talking points account. Um, so that way we can send out district-wide messages and announcements and reminders, things like no school days. Uh, we'll use it for snow days, things like that. Um, and again, one of our emphasis is to continue to push for a systemic um, expectation around communications between home and school. Um, we have too much variation between different schools, different staff members, different teachers um, around communication. We want our teachers and families to have that open line of communication where families are feeling informed. Um where teachers are feeling like their their messages are reaching families. We want that consistent back and forth. Um so pushing uh communication as um an engagement tool to improve student

075outcomes not only academically but social emotionally um is is is key. So, we're continuing to stress that. I think that's it. Oh, no, one more slide. Okay. Um, upcoming additional development of our website and content. Um, we're continuing to explore different translation interpretation tools and supports. Uh, one of the things that we're looking at as we're re-engineering our phone system is looking at our phone trees. Um, because our phone trees are primarily in English. Um, so making sure maybe offering some uh translated services for our phone trees. Um, we're trying to we're continuing to work on reducing our paper and you uh US Post Office mailings. Um, and continuing to develop our our our partnership with MHS and their um digital media team. um you know Jeremy Folster and Damen Godet they're doing some great

076things and um with their with their classes um seeing how that can incorporate into the Milford public schools communications. So that's it. Sorry Craig said 20 minutes. I >> 20 minutes attempt >> we're pretty close. >> Quick question quick question on that one. Yeah. So, it was all of our questions. That's all. Your presentation was like 12 minutes. You were fine. Thanks. >> Yeah. It was all good. >> I appreciate the good work. >> There we go. >> Exactly. >> We can't do that. So, yeah, appreciate those weekly bulletins even even without having kids in the school system. It's nice to be able to get that weekly bulletin knowing what's going on. Yeah. Kind of you can you can go through that digital backpack and as you said, just to see what else is going

077on throughout the community. So, it's nice. Um, is talking points, as you said, you're kind of focusing everybody to talking points. Do you foresee that being the best way to communicate or do you see us still going a path of of having like an an app on a phone where it would be the the uh Milford school public schools app? >> Uh, you know, right now I really like talking points. Um, you know, we've made such a good strong effort. >> I don't necessarily want to switch everyone over everyone else to to something new. >> Sure. >> I don't want to keep jumping around. I I want to stick with talking points. And >> one of the things that I'm seeing from Talking Points is every year that we've used it, >> they come out

078with um you know, new features and new developments that are really helpful for our community. >> Its own app. >> Yeah, it really is. >> I haven't used it. So, >> yeah. For example, one of the things that they've added recently is you know, we can send PDFs in English. Okay. And they translate the PDF. >> I mean, that's a really strong option for us, you know, when, you know, for teachers to be able to send out newsletters or curriculum updates >> and have that translated to families as well rather than having to send it to FRC. F FRC takes, you know, a day or two to translate it and then we got to print it out and it's there's a there's a time lag and a and a and a manpower cost to that.

079Um, the talking points is able to cut down for us. So, every year they add something new um which I really like. So, no, it's good because I know when we >> redid the web page, that was kind of the next phase that we had talked about, but it sounds like again that talking points kind of filled that that gap. >> Talking points is working for us right now. >> Sounds good. >> Yeah. >> That silence is good. I think we're good. We're good. >> We feel well communicated with, Tim, so thank you. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate it. >> All right. Thanks everyone. Have a good night. >> All right. >> Uh, the overunder was eight and that question push you over. Well done. >> Is this the NDA? >> I I had the

080old >> I didn't ask the question. You did. >> I said what is this? The NDA. >> We will move on to the report of the superintendent of schools. >> Um >> you got it. >> Due due to the last um presentation. The MTA is no longer available. No, I'm just kidding. They are no longer available. Um something came up and they they they asked they just They asked to push their part of the presentation the next um meeting which is fine. >> We can do that. Yeah, >> it's fine. Um all right, but uh I just want to go over real quick um the enrollment information uh as it stands currently uh and then compare it to where we were at this time last year. So you I everyone has in front of them

081um two sheets. One is says October 2024, one says October 2025. Uh important to note that the information in October 2025 is yet to be certified. So it's it's our SIMS data, but we have until tomorrow to certify it. So So um our principles are going back looking at it, make sure it's completely up to date, which it is. Um so as you can see uh we are last year at this time our total enrollment was 4512 students. Uh this year we're at 4,291. So we're down uh roughly what 220 students or so uh from last year. Um I think the major hit if you look at um English learner population last year we were at 1,588 and this year 1,348 so down 250 English learners. Um and then I mean you could see it

082in the immigrant population also last year 802 this year 551. Um so I think that the current um immigration um issues that we're dealing with as a as a state community nation has affected our uh our enrollment. Um you can also I also have the the annual F FRC log which honestly hasn't been horrible. Um to date we're right we're roughly where we we have been over the past um four or five years actually. Um in the summer we had 198 um students enroll which was the second highest number in the last six years. So, we kept steady, but what the difference is is we have a number of students that are unenrolling and we're not filling the seats in behind them. So, in the years past, the churn rates um we would lose students,

083but then we'd also have students coming in behind them. We just don't have those students coming in behind the ones that were um churning out at this point. Um so, it our overall enrollment is something that we're going to have to keep an eye on. um it's not and when correct me if I'm wrong but it's not going to hit us in terms of chapter 70 funding for next year but the year after is where we could see it actually start affecting um our chapter 70 funds um because uh we do get more chapter 70 funds for uh English learners um so it's something we're going to have to keep an eye on um all that said the number 4,291 um is still in the ballpark of where we have been for the last 25

084years. Um we've you know we've never really dipped down below 4,000 and never really been above 4500 4600. So we're always somewhere around 4,300 4,400 give or take and we're still there. Um so, um nothing really to be concerned about at this point. Um I think that what you'll see when when the um union comes back with the the class size updates is that um we do have some smaller class sizes which are good. Um I think our in particular our kindergarten class sizes at um Brookside are uh somewhere between either 13 and 15 students um which is a good number. Uh obviously it's a it's a good number for our teachers to work with. But then at Memorial it's a little higher. Our our dual language program is um fully enrolled. I can't remember

085what the number is. 22 I think um in each in both of those classrooms but then the other um kindergarten classrooms over there are right around 15 students um so that's our kindergarten the class sizes as that class grows um are going to get larger because we have more kindergarten teachers and first grade teachers and second grade teachers and so on and so forth. Um the other thing you can look at is uh on this report are just the class sizes. Um and you can see that that we don't have any let's see where's the right one. We don't have a a class size higher than uh I believe is our highest. In years past we saw class sizes a couple big classes around 370 380. Um, so we have generally um class sizes that

086are right around 325 if you um average them out. Um, which again is where we've been for the last 20 25 years. I don't know if anybody has questions about that. >> Looks like >> good. All right. Then the last thing I did want to point out is our attendance numbers. Um, I don't have a handout for you. However, um, we are I guess if you look at the chart, it looks like we're way above where we normally are at this point in the year. Um, but the chart that we have here really ranges between 94 and 96%. So, it's two percentage points. We're up. Um overall um our class attendance is is very good right now um and trending higher than it has in in the since co um in our K to K

087to 10 I would say K to 10 we're anywhere between our lowest is 93.9 and then we range all the way up to 96.2 too for um attendance numbers uh which is very very good. Um our high school which in the past was in the 80 like last year even in the year before we're in the 80 percentiles uh 85 86 87 they're um 92 almost 93% for our juniors and seniors which is again very good. Uh hopefully we can maintain that. Um, yeah, that's so very good on on attendance. Uh, so that's a bonus. >> Excellent. >> No comments or questions? >> I'm good. Thank you. >> All right. Great. >> All good. >> Thank you. >> All right. So, we will move on to the report of the assistant superintendent for teaching and

088learning. >> Great. Um, so I have two updates for you tonight. um one is around our year two one and year two mentoring and induction program and the other is just some examples of teacher leadership that I've seen across the district in the past um couple of months. So over the past two weeks I've met with our year 1 educators um which is all of our new staff that we brought into Milford public schools this school year. Um we meet as a pre-K5 group and then we meet as a 612 group. Um in those meetings we really discussed um gave them time to reflect on different challenges or successes and areas of growth um that they've seen in themselves and their students in the past two months of the school year. Um it also gave

089them a chance to make connections across buildings. Um, so our, you know, 612 group got to meet together and our middle school teachers got to talk to our high school teachers and just build different connections, um, and relationships, which I think is important in their first year so that they don't feel siloed um, in their classrooms or in their different roles um, in our um, in our buildings. Um, it also gave them an opportunity to kind of like voice what they wanted to talk about and what are some of the things that they needed support with. Um, our mentor coordinators were in attendance there, so it was great for them to kind of hear that. um because these mentor coordinators work with our um mentees and our um mentors um to kind of give them

090the support that they need. So the preK5 group is asking for some support around evaluation process and submitting um evidence moving forward. They're worried about the submitting of evidence to their evaluator for the first time. So our mentor coordinators are going to talk about that with them in November when they meet um together there. Um, and then in terms of our district-wide pre-K5 group, um, they really just want the space to to connect, reflect, and grow together. So, a little bit less of a formal agenda we'll have when we meet again in February, I believe. Um, because they just wanted the spa time and space to to process what's happening um, in their classrooms out loud with each other. Um, our 612 group was a little bit more concrete in what they wanted. um they

091really wanted some support on navigating the Aspen platform and where to find things and just help with some of the technical navigation. They they knew that Aspen could do things for them, but they weren't exactly sure the fastest and most efficient way to do that. Um so our two mentor coordinators are actually going to address that with um the team in November when they meet. Um, and then in February, our director of multilingual learners and dual language programming is going to come in, Jen Noranian, um, to support them in supporting our secondary multilingual learner students. Um, they felt like a lot of their training was focused on kind of elementary strategies. Um, and they really wanted some secondary support there. Um, so Jen has agreed to come in and kind of run a session with

092them um, to give them that support that they want. So, um, it's been a great, you know, two months so far. Um there wasn't any major challenges that were unexpected. Um a lot of the feelings were first year teacher type of feelings or new to Milford public schools type of feelings. Um so that was great. Um for our year 2 staff members um if they don't have professional status they're required to continue to stay in our mentoring and induction program. Um if they do h I mean not professional status professional lensure. If they don't have professional l if they do have professional lensure they can opt out. Um but they need to have 50 hours of mentoring to get their professional license. Um so one of the ways that we support them in doing that

093is we partner with Mend Upton Regional School District and Ashlin Public Schools. Um and they were provided with some training, a one-day professional development. We gave them some training around learning walks and what the purpose of doing a learning walk is, which is really um for them to be able to see effective instructional practices, talk about effective instructional practices um with the theory that then they'll be able to reflect on their own instructional practices and make some shifts and improvements in their teaching and learning for their kids. Um so we engaged them in professional development. They got into at least four different classrooms. They then had a debrief of the day. um they went to one district in um the month of November or really the end of October. They will go to one other

094district um in the month of March as well. And so we'll do something a little bit different with them. In March, we will bring in our year three educators to engage as well across the three districts. I believe we have like 120 teachers that we will kind of go through this process um with in March. Um which is exciting. And a huge thank you to the staff members of Milford Public Schools. You know, we hosted for a day. Um, but I asked teachers across our K12 classrooms to open up and allow these year 2 educators to come in um and see what they were doing for 15 or 20 minutes. And all of our educators and staff members were excited to have visitors in their room. Um, which was really exciting um that their doors

095were open. So, a huge thank you to them for for participating in that and and opening up their classroom doors and and being vulnerable. um with some of their colleagues. Um so it's been a good start to the school year with our mentoring and induction um program. Any questions about what I shared? >> Sorry, I just have one. So I think one of the unique things Carb Milford is the community and so I love the investment that we make in this program because I think it really connects people to the school district. So that's awesome. just at a high level, how do we train year one teachers on our MTSS >> or how do we introduce them to that? >> It's not done right now at the district level. >> The mentors receive training um

096at the beginning of the school year before they engage with our mentees >> and I am guessing that it is part of that mentor training. The mentor coordinators coordinate that, but let me just follow up. Um, thanks. >> But I would say it's done at a mentor mentee level. Um, each building is a little bit different of a system and a process. So, it'd be really hard to do >> districtwide. >> It'd be really hard to do concretely districtwide. We could talk theory districtwide, but the concrete steps >> differ a little bit. >> Thanks. >> Yeah, I agree. Uh, I think it'd be very challenging to do it districtwide >> outside of theory. >> Yeah. Okay. Um, and I wish I could say that we have it down to a perfect science at all the

097different schools. >> Yeah. >> Um, but we don't. And I think um >> I think that that at the district level what we have in theory um has needed to adapt at different schools. So, it's important that the the teachers are at the front line of um >> um showing our first year teachers. Just if you're new, I just meant more that introduction to it. Right. >> Yeah. I mean, I I guess I would add on there too as I'm thinking about it is like one of the major pieces of MTSS is our tier one instruction, right? In our tier one programming. You know, illustrative mathematics has been in place now for four years at our K5 level. They are invited to an additional day. Okay. >> To kind of get the IM programming >>

098y >> theory right and concretely what the expectations are from the district level. I know Carol Serski is thinking about like, okay, now that we have expediary learning in place at the K5 level, how are we going to get the train teachers that come in the training that they need because they'll be year one, right? But our K5 teachers will be in year two. >> Um, so in terms of tier one, there's definitely conversations around how do we get them >> great >> that district level view of the expectations around curriculum adoption. >> Awesome. Thank you. >> All right. Um, while I've been sitting in this role, I've been really impressed with some of the teacher leadership that's happening in our district. And as a as the district priority is collective efficacy, right, which is

099really around professional trust, building a culture of collaboration, um, and getting some shared leadership. I just wanted to kind of give you some examples of how I've seen that um, over the past couple of months here. Um, so one is around the mentor coordinators, which we just kind of named here. Um but those four um staff members really first of all ensure that like every mentee or every new hire has a mentor, right? So they work directly with their building principles um to make sure that that partnership is matched up as soon as the new person walks into their building. Um which is a huge technical piece just to make sure that two people are connected. Um and then they also support the mentors directly. So when there is a conflict between a mentee and

100a mentor, the first person that kind of deals with that conflict is the mentor coordinator. Um, and so they're navigating some of those personal relationship pieces. Um, and then they also support our mentees and our new hires. Um, they come to the meetings that I have, but they also hold their own building level specific meetings. Um, so they're really important when we welcome our new staff um, into our building. And so a huge, you know, thank you for them. Um, and a huge I think it's important for you to know like they're some of the frontline people that are building this professional trust and culture of collaboration as we're talking about welcoming new staff members into our buildings. Um, the second group is our curriculum team leaders or our CTLs. Um, this afternoon we actually

101had our second of five district-wide meetings. Um, precoid we were really pulling our CTLs together and um, we just haven't had a chance to do that um, since COVID. And so this year we're really um, pulling them together at a district-wide um, level five times throughout the school year. I kicked off the first one and I'll close out the school year with the last one, but the middle three um are really set for each subject group um to identify a member that will plan the meeting which will includes them creating an an agenda, facilitating the meeting um and focus on something in their content area, whether that's horizontal alignment, vertical alignment, but it gives them a chance to talk across school buildings um and grade level spans of of what's happening and how they're meeting

102the district priorities and some of the problems that they're working through. Um, I also see it as a chance for them to kind of practice their facilitation skills and their leadership skills in a safe space with colleagues that are also trying to do some of the similar work at their buildings. Um, so they have two more of those meetings throughout the course of the school year. Um, somebody different will facilitate the next one. Um, and so forth. At the same time, Carol Severki has a chance to pull our literacy, elementary, and ELCTLs with a really focus on the district priority of literacy. Right. So, it just gives more people the voice on that district priority and to ensure that the curriculum team leaders that are leading some of this literacy work um are also thinking

103at the prek12 level of what's happening although the um implementation of expedential learning is al happening at K5 currently. Um so they're also a huge piece because they um are subject kind of expertise on the ground while also taking on the role of of full-time teachers. Um and so they're doing some great work this year um with that. Um the next group is we have had for years STMath leadership teams. When I sat in the role of curriculum supervisor of math, I was really the one that was facilitating those. Um this year without the curriculum supervisor of math, just knowing that it was something that we have leaders in the buildings that could take this on, um we created an STM math leadership team facilitator. And so this person, which happens to be a math

104specialist at Memorial, Brookside, and Woodland, um these people are meeting with the building administrators monthly. They're looking at school level data together. Um they're really thinking about how the data informs quarterly meetings that they're having with the leadership team um at their individual buildings. um which is really driving some of the decisions around you know where are we on StMath progress how is our implementation um and then also some of the challenges and the fun and when GG dresses up and shows up and all of those types of fun events they're really coordinating um we know it's working because we are ahead in average goal progress in all three buildings compared to where we were last year um and so it's a great example of teacher leadership um being shown in the data and being

105shown in the usage Um there are two members of Shining Star who have collaborated to coordinate an escape the school challenge family night. Um and so they are going to they are putting together the whole event. Um families are spending the evening exploring math topics by solving riddles and they'll move room to room when they solve the riddle and then eventually they'll escape the school. Um so it's a really creative idea. Um it's a really great way to kind of bring families in to kind of play games with their child. Um but also focus on mathematics. Um so this was their their ideas. Um they proposed it to Corey Vasterson and myself and so we're supporting them um in developing this event and getting their colleagues on board to to plan and kind of facilitate

106it. Um that's happening on Monday, December 1st. So it's coming up. Um, and then I would just name like there is no way that I can sit here and name every group of teacher leaders. I know of a lot of other examples of teachers running professional development or leading TCT times. Um, I know a lot of our our teachers are taking some leadership on the MTSS teams. Um, they're supporting implementation of the new program and high quality instructional materials. Um, they're some of them are having challenging conversations around instructional practices colleague to colleague. Um, so those were just a couple of like groups of people that are demonstrating teacher leadership. Um, but there's a lot of great examples that are happening in our in our buildings right now, which is exciting to see because there's

107no way, you know, district leadership and um, building leadership can kind of run everything um, in terms of professional development and creating a culture of collaboration. So great examples in my mind. comments on that. >> Awesome. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> So, we do have the report of the school business administrator next. Um I see personnel update. Do you have anything else? >> Uh actually I do. Um I do have some updates that happened quickly and will have will continue to happen um quicker. Um, so the transportation bid it's under the review of the attorney Murray and um I saw him today and he said um yes he's reviewing that and hopefully we can post that um in the next week or two and um the budget subcommittee already u got

108updated on those and u before we posted it we will send it to uh Matt and um so uh we we can get the feedbacks and then we'll advi advertise it um hopefully in two weeks. >> Um yeah, and another um bid is the Stacy HVAT um OPM um RFS um because it's over 1.5 million um by law we're required to hire OPM to manage the whole pro program. So, um the RFS has been drafted and I will send it to again to attorney Murray um for his legal advice and then um hopefully we can post it next u adv advertise it next Wednesday and post the bid the following Wednesday. Um we're doing we hope to yeah we plan to do this project in the summer. So we we we probably do not have

109a long time. We need to hurry up to find the OPM and then the designer and then the contractors and get it going. >> Great. >> Any questions on this? No. >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right. So we'll go on to the consent agenda now. I'll ask quickly. Does anybody have anything for the minutes that needs to be adjusted or good to go there? All right. So, the consent agenda tonight is going to include the following. The approval of 13 warrants in the amount of 827,728.31. The approval of minutes from the October 23rd, 2025 meeting and professional development in the amount of $3,000 uh $3,39. A motion to approve. Motion by Brendan, second by Derek. All in favor? Unanimous. Thank you. All right, that brings us to subcommittee updates. Have any subcommittees met recently?

110No, >> not sure. Was budget before or after the last meeting? >> I think it was a Thanks, Melissa. >> Was it after you want to go, Megan? You want to give it a shot? Because I wasn't prepared. >> Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So, as Wen just mentioned, we did review the RFPs that are going out just in terms of um an opportunity to comment and provide feedback on that because those are really important. one gave a great budget update so we could talk about that and then we talked about next steps in terms of heading forward into contract negotiations and then annual budget planning. I think those were the main items. >> Yeah. And especially the annual budget where we've had so many um I guess unforeseen lane changes where our budgets really >> um

111you know a little worrisome. >> We also talked about capital and just ensuring I think this year we may be a little bit tighter on time than we hoped in terms of looking at capital items. So just having a better path forward for that so that prior to next fall we've fully vetted and everyone feels comfortable. So we have a timeline outlined for that. >> Yeah. And we talked about you know the justification substantiation so that when we put this capital plan together you know there's a there's a there's a blue highlighted thing where all the documentation we don't have it all yet but should be easy for anybody to follow. Anybody looking at the document can can see the justification the quotes or whatever else might be in there. Great. Anything else? Okay. Thank

112you. Future agenda items. Excellent. Well, that brings us to the end of the meeting. We have nothing else scheduled, so just need a motion to adjurnn. Make a motion to motion by Derek. Second. >> Second by Chris. All in favor? Unanimous. Thank you and good night.