School Committee Meeting: May 1, 2025

001[Music] All right. Good evening and welcome to the May 1st, 2025 meeting of the Milford School Committee. This meeting is being broadcast and recorded by Milford TV and any copies can be obtained at the request of this board or through central office. We'll start tonight with announcements, correspondence, and distribution. Anybody have anything for that? No. All right, move over to uh invitation to speak which back there behind the poll. Pass on that which moves us right up to the 2025 20226 handbook and school improvement plan for Shining Star. Hi. Hello. Thanks for coming. Well, thanks for inviting us. So, we can start um as we have in the past with the handbook. Thanks again for the link on just the changes, which is incredibly helpful. Okay, joining me tonight is Patty Reid, classroom teacher and

002CTL. Hello. So, changes to the handbook. Um, minimal changes you can see on the outline there. um updated staff list, uh the preventative health screening, adding the wording of preK to the vision screening portion, the removal of the cost um wording associated with lunches at the preschool, the addition of the policy of the tobacco products on school premises, addition of the bullying prevention policy, the addition of the prompt investigation into bullying, and on page 133, updated important numbers. First, any questions on the handbook or handbook in general? I see none. So, we'll start with a motion to approve the 202526 Shining Star Handbook. Motion by Michael, second by John. All in favor? Thank you. on to the school improvement plan goals uh update and the new plan. Sure. So, I'll give an update on our

003goals from LA uh this school year. So, the first goal was focused on um curriculum mapping and creating common assessments on um SEAL and the that goal was met. The staff met during contractual time. A survey was sent home to families um seeking feedback. I'm sorry, this wasn't on the this was on our report card. Um we revised the report card down at the preschool and we wanted to get feedback from the families and the feedback was very very positive. Um 93% of the families felt that the layout was easy to understand. um 97% felt that the report card covered all key areas of their child's development and um 97% of the families that that reported out that the language was clear and easy to understand. So we're very happy with that goal. The second

004goal was the focus on SEAL and here the staff needed to finalize the scope and sequence and create common assessments for just the SEAL area and that was met. The staff uh created the common assessments to address the SEAL standards and um it's included in our curriculum mapping at the preschool. The third goal was focused on um building positive relationships with families and building the capacity for um more family engagement opportunities for our families and that goal was met. We had numerous family engagement opportunities for our preschool families that was very well attended. Um so we're happy that that goal was met. Um and we had a great art show this year that we want to continue to carry on over to next year. So, um, we're looking forward to that. The fourth goal was

005focused on, um, the MTSS process and creating some TCT time, um, teacher collaboration time, creating protocols, creating guidelines for discussions. Those things were completed and implemented. However, there was a portion of the goal where we wanted to look at um adding information into the empty into a dashboard either Aspen or Open Architects and we did not meet that portion of the goal. So, that's a goal that will transfer over to this year. Question. Yes, please. Thanks for the update, Corey. And I love seeing all the additional family engagement and also knowing the invention convention continues cuz that's one of the best. Um when was the report card implemented this year or will they be implemented next year? The report card was implemented this year. So midway they get a midway. So the report card was

006completed um the report cards go out in January and then they go out in June. We do them twice a year. Um so it was completed and the survey went out and we got feedback prior to it going out for January. For January. Thank you. Thanks Matt. Did you want to share anything for from feedback from the families on the report card? No, I think you covered it. They all seemed um to be happy with it. It was easy for them to follow and understand and just it was all positive. Anything else on those updates? All right, we can move on to the improvement plan. Okay. So, our first um the focus on our first goal um is focused on assessing students. So, the goal is that all preschool students strengths and areas of need

007will be accurately identified. So, at present, Shining Star uses the developmental assessment of young children as the primary evaluation tool for determining eligibility for special education services. Um, this is a reliable and valuable resource for assessing early childhood development. However, we've noticed that as the center continues to serve a diverse student population, including a growing number of EL learners, a limitation in the DY is that um it is not normed for dual language learners. So with the rising numbers in the in the preschool that warrants um us to look at that gap in um concerns with the tools ability to effectively inaccurately assess the developmental needs for children with from diverse linguistic backgrounds. Um so although the current tool is functional and continues to serve its purpose, researching new options for an accurate evaluation tool

008to address that area um is best practice. So, as a team, we want to review and revise the current tools that we currently have in place. And we want to research some we want to research and field test a reliable, developmentally appropriate special education evaluation tool to improve the accuracy. Um, we also want to rewrite the preschool readiness checklist that is currently in place and used as part of our screening process for um, students that are referred to for a special education testing to align with the um, format and objectives of the new IEP. So, that's the first goal. The second goal focuses on providing students with programming to meet their needs. The goal is that all students will be placed in the appropriate classroom at Shining Star prior to the start of the school

009year. Their progress will be continuously monitor monitored and assessed to ensure the placement meets the needs of their developmental and educational needs. Uh we want to create a transparent process for student placement by establishing a rubric to help guide the team in determining a developmentally appropriate placement. The transparent, structured, and evidencebased rubric will provide clear, consistent criteria for the team to assess students developmental, social, emotional, and academic requirements based on the criteria categories of a student's age, services received during early intervention, the child's disability determination, and recommended services. Okay. The focus of our third and final goal is what we are doing as a multi multidisip disciplinary team when students require supports to meet their needs. So the goal is that students will receive targeted academic and social emotional support through goals developed by teachers

010trained in the MTSS process and preschool dashboard procedures. So as I said previously during this school year a lot of progress was made in developing and refining the protocols for the MTSS process and um the next phase in this journey involves reviewing our data tools and inventory and selecting a platform to organize the data. This will enable the educators to effectively utilize a variety of data sources to enhance teaching and learning for all students in an effort to create goals in order to provide targeted academic and social emotional direct support on datainformed decisions. And that's our third goal. All right, questions on those goals? I'm sorry, I just have a couple. Cory, thank you for taking us through that on the platform question and maybe this is more towards Dr. Conigley. Is that not a

011district decision uh for the um architect? Yeah. Um that's what you're talking about, right? Yeah, it it it is and we're moving that way as a district. Okay. It's just not built out yet. That's fine. I just didn't know if you were making decision at Shining Star. So, it's we're making a decision as a district. That's why you'll implement a Shining Star, which makes sense. Okay. Thanks, Corey. And then I N never thought to ask this before. We've talked about dual language, which is super exciting. Is it also that we would potentially go to prek with that? I guess I was always thinking we'd roll it out for um higher grades, but it didn't dawn on me. Would that is that actually a consideration if prek is I have not had a discussion with Jen

012about that, but just as you brought up those assessments, it made me think of that, Corey. I'd just be curious to know if that's something that we're thinking about um in the beginning. Thank you. Okay, cool. excited for what's to come. Me, too. I'll start with thank you very much for putting everything together and coming in to present. I know it's a lot of work. Um, every year I ask the presenters, you know, it's the school improvement plan. You're looking for parental uh help. Um, how was that this year as far as from getting people to come in for for those meetings and giving input? Um, our PTO meetings are not very well attended. Um, I don't know why they're not very well attended. We do have, you know, one reason could be is that

013the children are three and four. Um, and they do have siblings and there are families that are very actively involved in Memorial PTO, Brookside PTO, Woodland PTO. Um, and we just, yeah, we don't have a we don't have a a lot of support um, with families coming to our PTO meetings. Okay. And just in regards to the the goal the goal number two um I guess to improve it's I guess to improve upon the current rubric. Is that do you find that you're having to a need to improve or so we don't currently have a rubric in place. So we have um we look at our data but it's um we want to make it a transparent process. So when we have families that are coming in for eligibility meetings, there's a transparent process as

014to what would um constitute a student coming five full days versus a student coming two mornings. Um it the process can sometimes be subjective. So we want to make it very objective, transparent, clear based with in evidence-based practices. So um we don't have one in place and we feel that there's a need to to create that. Sounds good. Great. Thank you. Can I ask a followup question to that? Sure. So, the rubric is more for admissions versus classroom placement. Is that how to think about it? Um, or would you also use it to allocate amongst We would it it would be part of um the conversation when students are found eligible for special education services, but it's also for placement. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Further questions, comments? Nothing. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I would

015I would like to say though our families do attend our family engagement opportunities. So that's all attendees, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's just and I always ask just to see about, you know, getting getting parents involved in some of these other not so popular types of of of um groups, you know, to and for them to know and and to understand, you know, how starting at that lower level, it it can continue on because again, each school has these school improvement plan committees to help u kind of foster what they may see from the outside and and to be able give them the opportunity to u speak directly to to uh staff and we would love to have them join us. So yeah, just one quick thing again, thank you for putting this together. Um this

016is actually a request from a friend of mine who is trying to register. She couldn't figure out the what the prices were and I'm looking at the website now and I can't find anywhere where the the prices are for uh registration. Okay. Well, she can reach out directly to our main office and I can talk to Tim and have him put up Yeah, I think that just be nice. Just one less thing cuz you know she's works full time and then you know at night she's trying to just do her research so it's hard to kind of look. Yeah, we can put it on our um our page on the the district page and also um I'm sure he can create a tab. Yeah, on the on the the the districtwide one. Perfect. Thank you.

017And we do still have openings for those that are watching. Not many. Few. No. Well, we don't know. No, not Oh, not watching watching. I didn't know. watching. I don't know how many people watching. The answer is yes. Um we have 27 remaining spots. So we have had 77 f we have a total of 104 spots. 77 families registered which leaves us with 27 spots. So cool. Excellent. Quick question. Does that get pushed out in the digital backpack that Tim puts out? Yes. I think but districtwide. Yes. Okay. But I can give him um ask him to do a little push out um for this next one that we do still have open spots. So, excellent. They won't be open. I'll make a motion to approve the handbook and the school improvement plan as presented.

018I'll second. Thank you. Motion by Megan, second by Brendan. All in favor? Unanimous. Thank you very much for coming and presenting. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Good job. All right. All right. So, that brings us to agenda item four, which is the MHS request for campus aid. So, obviously, there's been a bit of discussion around um around some information that this committee has heard over the last month or so related to campus aids. So, we uh we asked Dr. Utland to come and share a little more about the request and about just the general um safety standpoint at the high school. So, thanks for coming. Of course, so uh I'll take a moment just to provide the committee with sort of a a broad overview of the issue and then I'm happy to do

019my best to respond to any questions you have and and listen to your feedback as well. Uh so before talking about the um the request, I I think it may be helpful for both the committee and members of the public to understand what measures we already have in place um to promote um safety and security and appropriate monitoring here in school. Uh so from a staffing standpoint uh the vast majority of the adults who work in the building are teaching kids right uh we have a very small number of folks that are not teaching kids and who are available to uh respond to situations that may arise. So it's myself, our associate principal, two assistant principles and our dean of students. Uh we employ uh three campus aids presently um in addition to um a

020greeter who works at the front door. Um, our campus aid schedules are staggered. There's one day a week where we have three on duty at once. All other days we have two on duty. If someone calls out, uh, we're typically not able to replace that individual. We have our school resource officer, Anthony Bavoisey, who is here in the building and on campus. the vast majority of hours that schools are in session. Not 100% of the hours that schools are in session, but the vast majority I would estimate, I'd have to defer to Anthony, but I would estimate that uh Anony's probably on campus or in the building over 90% of the hours that school is in session. Uh in addition to staffing, we have a camera system. Uh the committee and the town has invested

021substantial funds in recent years to ensure that our camera system is operational and is regularly upgraded and that plays a very critical role. um and our ability to monitor a large and sprawling building and a large and sprawling campus um is particularly important if we have to do follow-up investigatory work. Uh our camera coverage is very strong. There are a few zones in the building where uh we would like to add additional capacity um but by and large our camera coverage is very strong. Uh we use monitoring software here in the building on our network and on our computers as well um that can help us detect any number of issues related to security or student safety and student wellness. Uh we tell our students on the very first day of school that they should

022really have no expectation of privacy when using taxpayer issued machines and when operating private devices over um taxpayer funed networks. Um, and so we're using technology that is scanning drive accounts, um, email traffic, uh, and web searches. Uh, and that's in operation 247. Um, and we are frequently responding to, um, incidents that are being flagged outside of school hours. Uh, in addition to sort of staffing and, uh, technology, we also do have our faculty serve duties in the building. Um we uh have teachers that serve on bathroom duty and who serve on lunch duty. Um as I've written about in my budget requests, our current our our current contractual arrangement is such that we cannot provide sufficient coverage for all zones of the building uh with teacher duties that we would like to and that

023is one of the um one of the constraints that I think has limited our ability to respond as effectively as we'd like to some of the problems that uh that we experience here in school. uh in terms of the the challenges that we are facing uh they are uh they're not novel challenges they're not unique to uh Milford they're not unique to Milford High School they're pretty old challenges uh but they're pretty persistent and very and very uh difficult challenges to eradicate in school uh so one is uh we know that we have students that are using controlled substances in our restrooms primarily vaping nicotine products um and we do have episodes of vandalism that occur in our restrooms and in other parts of the building periodically as well. Uh most members of the committee

024uh I think know that I served as an assistant principal at Hudson High School for eight years prior to coming here to Milford. Um in my professional opinion, I don't think that the magnitude of the issues that we face here at Milford are uh really any different than what I experienced up at Hudson. there is uh there's no publicly available data uh that's uh available schoolto school by which to you know give us the ability to sort of accurately uh compare what we're experiencing here at Milford High School to uh other schools and to tell you whether it's better, worse, or uh similar. Um, all I can speak to is my lived experience at Hudson High School for eight years as an assistant principal and I would not note any significant difference between the the

025frequency and the magnitude of the challenges that we face here and what I saw when we were in Hudson. And while um these are um these are serious problems and problems that I very much want to um uh address and improve upon here at school. Um, I also believe that our students experience here in school is a very very safe one. Um, I'm actually highly confident that our students experience at school is a very very safe one. I'm very confident that if our students and our faculty did not feel safe, this committee would be very in touch uh with that perception. Um, this is a very safe school. There are instances in school where people make bad choices. Uh and when you bring approximately 1,250 adolescence under one roof, that's part of the business uh

026that we do here in school. Um I don't wish to uh minimize um how upsetting it can be um when we have episodes of violence here in school. Um but when we do have episodes of violence here in school, which are very very rare, we deal with them decisively. We deal with them assertively. In my um time here in school uh over the past eight years, I cannot think of um a single episode where uh we have had any sort of spillover where there have been bystanders who were injured when we had two students involved in an altercation. Um, we have had a couple of instances where staff members had to physically intervene and um, you know, there's been some bumps and bruises along the way for staff and I'm very grateful to my colleagues

027who've gone above and beyond the call of duty to intervene and we've had students involved in altercations here at school. So, I I want to be clear that, you know, these are challenges that we face from time to time here in school, but this is the exception, not the norm. Uh, this is a very safe building for our students and our staff. With respect to the request for campus aids that I made in both the FY25 and FY26 budget request, um I do believe that uh in order for us to improve the quality of our students experience in the restrooms in particular, we need regular staff supervision in those restrooms. Uh I cannot provide more staff supervision with the resources presently available um under the current contractual arrangement. Um, I am very open to alternative

028suggestions and creative thinking for steps that we might take to try to mitigate the challenges that we're facing. But in my experience as a school administrator, I believe at this stage that the best strategy for us to um address these challenges here in school is with higher levels of staff supervision. And again, I I I do not know how to provide more supervision with the resources that we presently have um and with the contractual arrangement that we're we're presently working under. The last thing that I' I'd want to add and then I'm happy to listen to feedback and and answer any questions is um our budgeting process is a transparent, deliberative, democratic process that involves building leaders, district leaders, elected officials, and appointed officials. Like any process, it is an it is an imperfect one

029and reasonable people can disagree about what the proper outcomes are in that budget process. I know that my budget requests are one of many competing priorities that decision makers are trying to sort through and they're trying to figure out how to do the best with the resources that we have available. So, while I have every expectation that I will continue to advocate for these resources here at Milford High School, I completely understand why it is not possible for us to simply make each and every resource appear that we know would be a good addition to our school. And so, um there are the request for campus aids is one of a number of personnel requests that I've forwarded in the past couple years that we've not been able to support. And I know from my

030work with the committee both collectively and individually, it's not because people do not see the value in these requests. Um we are working under a constrained set of fiscal conditions and our decision makers need to balance a lot of competing priorities which I respect and understand. Thank you very much for all of that. Uh Josh, I'll just open it up to comments, questions, concerns. Michael, go ahead. Thanks for uh going Josh. Just a few kind of clarifying questions. Um, how much does a campus aid cost for the school season? Do we know rough estimate what we pay now? Yeah, like a rough idea. Uh, as you don't know, that's fine. I would have to defer to Kevin and Craig and when on that, but yeah, I don't have it at my fingertips, but it's something

031we can get to for sure. That's fine. Um, so how many hours a week do they work roughly? Our campus aids are part-time employees right now with the exception of our greeter who is a full-time employee. Yeah, but roughly how many hours per week? 17 hours per week. Okay. So, we have three aids at at 17 hours a week. So, that's really one kind of full-time equival well like one and a half full-time equivalents. Just quick math of my head. Um, so how many So, I was trying to think back to when we were in high school. Um, I think we had two full-time people wandering around. I was just kind of putting my head how many full-time staff we need. So, how many full-time staff do you think you would need or want to

032be at the level that you want want? Like like two full-time equivalents, three full-time equivalents. So, uh, so my my math, which you can read in the budget request, and I'm happy to review tonight if it's helpful, is I believe we need three full-time campus aids in addition to our presently allocated staff in order to provide an appropriate uh and comprehensive level of of coverage in the so double. Okay, good. Um, the the greeter is that person also how many hours do they work? Full-time. Full time. Okay, great. Yeah. Clarify, just a clarifying question. Yeah, we have three part-time now and you said just now three full-time would be your request, right? Three full-time beyond our current. So, not not double what we beyond our current allocation. Yeah, full-time equivalent. So, the three we have

033are 17 hours a piece which works out to be at 50 something hours, right? So, so three additional, three total, three additional. Three additional six. So, that's like not double what we have. Full-time equivalent is like roughly 40 hours or 30 something hours a week, right? So is it three? So we have three at 17 and he's saying we should have three at three more at 40. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think probably 30 whatever. Close enough. Yes. 8 to two. Okay. Um so um 35. Let me see here. Hold. Actually that's all I have for now. Come on. I was say don't make me look back and forth so many times. Yeah. I I've got a lot of unpacking on this. So, so I'm going to have I'm just going to try to hit

034a couple points. Um obviously, yeah, you went over your staff. Um I guess I'll look towards administration. I know we have two staff members over at Stacy um for for in a sense tr our truency staff. Are they over here ever over here at the high school? Yeah. And are they available to help? If you take them away from that, they're they're not doing what they're designated to do, which is work with families and students missing school. Yeah. So, they're not really like folks that are on duty at any building, but they're in all the buildings working with students and families and administrators around uh students who are chronically absent. Okay. Yeah. So, they're focused because obviously there are they're physically here in the building, right? So obviously there are kids outside of the classroom

035setting that are that probably should be in the classroom. So that's why I'm just trying to um say okay if are they is their main focus just on the truency side of kids not being at school or now are we at this point where if these students are not in the classroom and roam in the halls do we need them to be effectively being they're not doing that work okay but do should we that's no based on what their job responsibility okay all right and what what what the goal of that program is yeah um and going back I I agree with you I feel that the building is safe right? You know, um I've been in the building a few times here and there. I think maybe it's just the timing. I think that

036I do see a lot of kids moving around and I don't know I'm not going to judge that based on not knowing why. I'm just saying when I'm here, I do see kids not in a singular form, but in maybe groups of two to four moving through. I don't know if that's also an issue, but I'm just going to bring it up. Yeah, I'm happy to speak to that. Uh so uh it is uh it is appropriate that we're having people moving throughout the building, right? Uh going to the bathroom, going to offices, um going to you know scheduled meetings. So you know we're going to have uh we're going to have people on the move all the time, right? Uh it is uh when you know we have students who are spending more time

037in the halls than they need to to get to their destination, right? And sometimes they're meeting up with friends and taking a lap for sure. Uh never did that. that does uh while uh I don't want to um I don't want to minimize that, I also want to make it clear that like that does this is not a disruption to our instructional program. Uh this is not really this we're not seeing conduct issues emerging from this. When students are up for too long and teachers refer them for being out excessively, we we hold them accountable with consequences. The phenomenon that you've observed is students walking around uh with friends. Uh the the method by which we need to neutralize this which I uh will plan to be speaking to the committee about in June is

038we need to separate students from cell phones during class time. Um if we separate students from cell phones during class time what you have observed will be resolved. Okay. I hope so. Like coordination. Yeah. and and and to that I guess do you feel what's going on as far as you know because obviously as you said the the the vaping in the disposal in the bathrooms and clogging toilets like that's a problem right you know you know I shared I shared the pictures which with you and with the other committee members um and if Carlos is coming back to us as the as the uh you know the building facilities team uh or overseers we're trying to help him but he's saying once or twice a week. So I guess my question is do you

039feel is this vandalism happening at pass through or kids not in class with on hall passes to go for bathroom breaks? It's difficult to say. Uh students start accumulating in the building in significant numbers as early as 7:20. Um you know by 7:30 we probably have three or 400 students here in the building. um when school is dismissed at 2:25. I'd say from 2:25 to 3, you know, we've got a couple hundred kids going down to athletics and we probably have, you know, another 100 to 200 kids that are here on campus. Some of them seeing their teachers for help, some of them kind of hanging out with their friends for a little bit. Uh it it our bathrooms are cleaned once a day in the evening. Uh they're not clean during the day. Uh

040so the only time when we we very very infrequently do we get a report from a student who comes down to a house office and says hey I was just in the bathroom and you know there's the following problem. Um if we get a report like that in the first couple hours of the day we have some basis by which to try to use our security cameras and try to figure out like who is responsible for this. Right? If we get the report from a custodian, you know, on Tuesday morning that during the rounds on Monday night they encountered the following problems, we just have no basis by which to even begin to try to identify um who might be responsible and who we need to hold accountable. Um so um I back to the

041request for campus aids. I think having having staff in the bathroom on the in in the bathrooms on the regular, I think, is going to deter students from making irresponsible choices. I think it's going to help us identify issues in the bathroom much much sooner than we are now. And I think the sooner we can identify them, the more effective we can be at at responding and holding holds accountable. Okay. Anybody have any followup on that before I move on to another question? Can I actually can I actually respond to that, too? One one thing we're kind of looking at and I know when uh Dr. Josh have had a conversation about this is possibly putting uh electric hand dryers in as opposed to paper towels and that may actually be like a pretty common

042sense kind of solution. We don't see this problem as much every once in a while at the middle school, every once in a while at Woodland U, but we we we see it and I can't say it like happens all the time, but it's it's definitely more frequently happening at the high school. So that could be a solution for the high school. is just, you know, a no addition to personnel kind of, you know, you're limiting what can kind of go into the toilet that's readily available, environmentally friendly, possibly. I can't I can't verify that for sure. Just one point that you brought up, Dr. um and I think it's a point that I had a blinder to uh just the amount of kids before and after school that are around that I forget because

043I've been in high school for 20 years. um the the s the the the um the campus aids that we'd have they would only be from you know basically bell first bell it's the last bell right not before or after or we try to maybe stagger some for like you said 7:30 to 1:30 and then you know someone starts at 9 they go until 30 or something would that be a possibility it absolutely would be a possibility yeah and I would be I would be pleased ease to have some supervisory staff on duty before the start of the day and after the start of the day. Uh at 99 days out of a 100, the time before school begins and the time before school ends is fine, completely issue free, right? Listen, sometimes there may

044be some vandalism going on and some some vaping in the bathrooms, but in terms of problems that come to our attention, 99 days out of 100, we're in great shape before school and after school. And it's because the vast vast majority of our students conduct themselves responsibly all the time. I want to emphasize that point and that is true. That's not an exaggeration. The vast vast majority of our students behave themselves responsibly 100% of the time. Right? Given that sometimes it sometimes it does strike me like if I'm here at 7:30 in the morning and I'm one of maybe five or 10 adults on campus at that stage and there's you know three or 4 hundred kids around like all over the building you know like when I reflect on that it doesn't feel great

045you know but eight years into my tenure here I can tell you that well it does sometimes it doesn't feel great when I reflect on it we're okay Josh, is the in the in the hallways, is there can we isolate or through the cameras who's like when someone's going into the bathroom and when there's an issue? Can we like can we find a way to Oh, we Well, our cameras absolutely allow us to identify who's going in and out of bathrooms at specific times. But our cameras don't give us any information about when problems are occurring in bathrooms. But could you find a repeat offender if you were to be like, "This person always shows up on that day." you want to that bad? Well, so when again we are most frequently learning about problems

046in the bathroom with respect to vandalism when our second shift custodians are cleaning. Right. Right. So this is hours after school was closed. Right. So if they, you know, if we get a report like listen, we had a problem in the lower boise a bathroom, you know, that was detected on Tuesday night. I have hundreds of young men using the lower boy's bathrooms every day, right? Uh so there's it it's just uh it's a needle in a hay stack at that at that stage. Um certainly again we have a we have an excellent camera system and we use it to to very good effect. But um we need to have um we need to have some we need to have more information in order to use it for that purpose. Right. If we're going to

047be able to like try to identify who's responsible um we just can't do it with what we've got right now. Yeah. Thank you. Go ahead. Do you want to keep going? I Well, I have a few more questions, but I just trying to Yeah. I didn't I didn't want to steal all the time. Yeah. So, um so, um yeah, thanks you for coming. So, I of course everyone knows my wife's high school teacher. So, I asked her, you know, how does she feel in the past, you know, she's been here for 14 years, and she feels that the past five or six years have been actually the the safest that she's been in the high school. She feels that the administration um has had a um really strong zero tolerance policy for violence and behavior.

048So if not trying to kiss off you Josh just facts but thank you. Um you know so that's been good. Um however so I um was also thinking so it's vandalism right and so when I owned the tavern we had very similar issues right we had some vandalism in our bathroom with the chief of police and said what do I do and he said um something very similar to what you're saying is you have to do random checks. you have your staff just move in and out of the bathroom at regular times to discourage any any bad behavior. You know, I of course I asked about cameras and all that stuff and he's like, you're not going to find anything. The the best most effective way is to actually move people move your staff through

049that bathroom every so often. And so we did and it actually curbed a lot of the issues that we had. So I I you're you're what you're telling us it it tracks and um when I have talked to teachers about you know how do they feel in the past couple weeks in the building same things they feel that it's very safe. very controlled. However, whenever I bring in the bathrooms, it's always like, "Oh, yeah. We we we have a problem in the bathrooms." So, this seems super isolated, right, to the bathrooms. And so, I I I think being creative and trying to figure that out. I I thank you for coming in tonight and and listening to us, but I I think as a committee and as a district, we need to figure this this

050problem out. Well, you know, thank you. And I would, you know, I would just highlight that this is a this is a problem that's not isolated to teenagers and it's not isolated to schools, right? Uh it is it is this is a sad element of our culture that you know there are people who take pleasure in damaging property. Uh I can't explain it to you. I don't expect any of you to explain it to me. This is a ugly reality that we got to try to wrestle with, right? I don't think we're ever going to make it go away. Um, we certainly want to make it a lot more rare than it is right now. All right. Before you take off again, um, I just wanted to share off the backs of what Michael just

051said, I've talked to probably six to eight, excuse me, six to eight, um, you know, friends, close friends I have that work here to, similar comments, um, in terms of safety and security and and fighting and stuff like that. They said that there there is virtually none. um they're not worried about that. But similar to what Michael said, I feel like that's a knock on whatever attention. Sorry. They they've all said the same thing though. The bathrooms are a concern. I've seen pictures from facilities. I've seen pictures from contractors. It's it's the same pictures. I I didn't know they made so many different types of vaping devices, but I do now just from these pictures. Um so one thing that I would be curious to get because if we look back at the the budget

052request I believe it was right around 80,000 for the three campus aids. So just we see that we saw you know listed in the priority list it was um isolated it was low but obviously there were a lot of initiatives that you were trying to cover and a lot of very important things learning wise that obviously had to take precedent while we're trying to balance this stuff out. Instead of just looking at it in terms of $80,000 for three campus aids, I would like to know if we could go back I'm kind of looking at administration. Go back to when you asked for it last year, last two or three years. What have we spent on repairing bathrooms due to vandalism? Just to get some sort of reference point between bringing contractors in to unclog

053toilets and fix pieces that generally don't break unless somebody was rough with them, stuff like that. if we could just to get some some sense of obviously what are we losing in terms of taxpayer dollars repairing stuff that may not actually be damaged if there's more supervision. So that's my uh my only input here took away one of my questions. See well see there you go exercise because if we're spending X for canvas aids swap it in that right I I I regrettably can't can't speak to that. Yeah. You'll never quantify. You'll never quantify that. No. Sure. Projection. Yeah. After three years, we can quantify it. Well, he's been as my my point is it's been it's been being asked for for multiple years. I would imagine we have invoicing that says how many times

054we've had But we don't know the campus aid is going to stop x number of vapes going down the toilet. It might stop one. It might stop a thousand. We're never going to hundreds. We're never going to project that accurately. Yeah. But I think to the damage standpoint, is it done by an inhouse our in-house staff or do we have to contract out? And I I think that that part of it obviously would be good information to know, too. So, and and it's and it we're going to have to have Carlos and his team maybe start tracking this and and to try to fully understand the amount of time being put forth. So, I think you can quantify it a little bit. it it it's going to not be 100% accurate, but at least to

055understand like even even again the pictures that I sent out to everybody earlier, you saw those pictures and in kind of the the vandalism that went on and Carlos stating that this is once or twice a week. So, you know that at a minimum, you know, when Carlos and his staff are doing this, it's got to be at least in a sense an hour of their time to to to kind of get their supplies, move over, fish out these uh vapes and then clean up after themselves where they could be doing something else far more productive um and upkeep for our building. So, um from that standpoint, right? Yeah. I just don't see how many people are going to stop dropping them in because there's an extra campus aid that I mean yeah you might

056just make a more sneaky vapor. I don't know. Yeah, exactly. I guess to that point um and I don't know and I wish I I forgot to look before um yeah a uh a vape detectors in the bathroom. I'm not sure if that's ever been considered. I don't even know if they exist. Uh it has. Uh I have given it consideration. I've consulted extensively with principles in the region who have vape detectors. um uh in their restrooms uh many of whom have removed them over time uh in in based on my learning from other principles I do not believe we will get a good return on investment uh with vape detectors vape detectors are um my understanding and I don't claim to be an expert in this but from my communications with other principles in

057the region um you get an enormous number of false alarms um one of the most common in a high school setting is kids spraying body spray. Nice. Triggering um triggering alarms. Uh and what an anecdote that was shared with me that really made a lasting impression from a a principal at another school said that the detectors were going off so frequently, right? It was not possible for members of their administrative team to respond to each and every alarm. And over time um they almost became um like desensitized to the alarms. It was all day every day. They were getting alerts on their phone saying that there's an alarm here, there's an alarm there. You know, for the initial weeks they're chasing down every alarm. They're not coming back with anything to show for it. They

058can't get through any of their other responsibilities because they're spending all day chasing alarms. So, um, and what I've also, uh, been told from principles, uh, especially those who've put them in and then took them out, um, is that the it for the students who were in the bathrooms, it became clear to the students within a matter of weeks that these alarms were not going to result in a higher rate of interdiction. Um, and so it wasn't there was no deterrent effect um, that they were achieving. Now, it is possible that the latest generation of um sensors are better than the old sensors, and I wouldn't um I don't think it's an idea that should be dismissed out of hand, but I have discussed it extensively with regional principles in recent years, and I've not

059had anyone say, "Yeah, Josh, I recommend you guys do this in Milford High School. It's been good for us." Okay. Yeah. I mean, obviously, from based on some of the pictures and once or twice a week, it's an obvious problem, you know, and how do we mitigate that, I guess. What are you seeing uh from a frequency of actually catching students with vapes on vaping or vapes on their person? Um I'd be happy to uh run the numbers and get back to the full community via email with specifics on that. I would say anecdotally I'd say most weeks we're dealing with zero conduct referrals for vaping. Okay. Um I'd say that there are you know there's some weeks where you get one or or you get two. Um, we issue out of school suspensions for

060students that are in possession of controlled substances at school and students that are using controlled substances and that would be considered 100%. So, we're tough enough is what that was going to be one of my other questions like it's the and a suspension is tough. It's not I am uh you're not losing recess. I am uh I am sometimes beside myself in meetings with my colleagues at other high schools in the regions when I learn about the consequences that they are assigning students for using controlled substances in the schools. Um, our approach is very very firm compared to the norms in uh, Massachusetts public high schools in the region. Uh, which I'm neither proud of nor ashamed of. I, in my estimation, this is the appropriate response. As I say to our students at the

061start of the school year, you do not have the right to subject other students to controlled substances. um you do not have the right to deprive other students of the ability to have sanitary clean restrooms in school. And if you are going to choose to engage in behavior that deprivives other students of their rights, you're going to be held accountable in a firm way. Um it is it and it is what I call antisocial behavior. This harms others in the community. One last thing in going back to the faculty and the duties and just kind of more from the higher level, you know, like when I think about the elementary school, right? I think about it, you know, staff that has to cover arrival and dismissal. They're covering lunch. They're covering recess. Obviously, the the

062needs here at the high school are different than an elementary school. Can you speak kind of to a high level of what some of those duties are that you need teachers in? I guess kind of why you feel you don't have enough right now and maybe even to the point where they can't dive in and out of a bathroom super quick just to make sure that I don't we don't see this vandalism or the the vapes like we have and I hate to have professional staff members be these types of bathroom monitors but it's almost like we need to hit it heavy first right now and then maybe meter it back based on what you said you're coming with us in June. So we have we have teachers uh we assign teachers to duties in

063three different zones of the building. So um I beg your point that's probably not the correct way to characterize it. We have three different types of duties. So the first of which is our directed study and we have we hold a directed study which is the contemporary euphemism for study hall. We hold directed study in all seven blocks of our schedule. Uh so we have during the school week there's 28 uh periods when when class is in session. So all 28 periods of the week we have a directed study. And so during that directed study, I typically have somewhere between 30 to 60 students in the directed study. So we like to have two adults assigned to cover the directed study because it's oftentimes over well well well north of of 30 students. Um so

064that's that's 28 periods a week. If I put two in that's 56 duty blocks right there. We run three lunches a day. Um, and uh, when we have lunch, we've got somewhere between 3 to 400 students in our cafeteria, our calf lobby, and our courtyard. So, we do need to have some adult supervision down there in the cafeteria. We try to assign three teachers to every lunch. And when I I I'm happy to get into the minutia if it's if it's helpful, but No, don't. Uh, a teacher is assigned a lunch duty covers two duties, right? Covers two lunches a day, not three. So for we have 15 lunches a week. If I have three staff members on duty for every lunch, that's duties. Again, when when a teacher is assigned to one lunch duty,

065they actually cover two lunches. So let's just let's just cut it in half. Let's call it 20, right? So that's 20 sort of duty blocks that it takes to cover lunches. And then we want to provide restroom coverage. And that's um 28 periods a week. Uh ideally we want to provide coverage at our upper A restrooms, at our lower A restrooms. Um in an ideal world, we would also open up our restrooms by the cafeteria, which we do not open our restrooms by the cafeteria with the exception of the lunch block right now. And I would also like to open our restrooms in the upper sewing, which we do not open right now unless the only time we open those restrooms is when toilets are out of service and sinks are out of service. We

066need to open up additional capacity here in the building. As it stands right now with our current staffing allocation, we cover all of our directed study with two staff. We um assign three teachers to every lunch duty and then with everything that's left over, we assign bathroom duty. Um, I haven't calculated, but I would estimate that we have enough teachers right now to cover bathroom duty in upper A and lower A for approximately 75% of the of those 28 periods a week. We don't have enough to cover 100% of the periods. However, we are regularly having teachers who are not serving their duty because they're covering a class because we're short staffed that day and we don't have enough substitutes to cover our classes. Right? So, while on on our uh sort of our duty

067schedule, it might appear as though we're able to cover 75% of the periods for bathroom duties, in practice, on any given week, it's probably closer to 40 or 50%. Okay. Which means from the student perspective, the majority of the time that you're going to a restroom, you do not see an adult there. Yeah. I just I just I'm looking at a way of solving this problem. I I don't even know if three campus aids is even enough. I And I understand like based on what you're just saying right now, if you're looking for you want 100% coverage, you're lucky if you get 40% coverage. So, what does three campus age really buy you? And I and I think that it's an improvement. It would help. Um, I'm just trying to figure out how to, you

068know, what our best approach more of changing behavior as opposed to you, you know, having to chase the behavior, right? Um, and I don't have that answer. I just more of making a statement that way. and you know and how can we how can we as the school community help support you in your efforts to help create better behavior and again and I understand that it's a small group and I agree with you on that but it was still I see it in picture form absolutely yeah so I I would I would offer that um when we when we look for a solution I I I think if I I think if we define success as the 100% elimination of these behaviors in school, we will not achieve success. I do not believe that's attainable

069um in a high school setting. I do believe it is attainable to bring about a significant reduction in these behaviors and I think it's important to bring about a significant reduction in these behaviors. uh in my 15 years in administration, I think that the way that you reduce bad behaviors over time in school is by holding students accountable um in a firm and decisive way when they engage in harmful behavior towards others. Um you know, I'm I'm uh gratified to hear Mr. AJ and Mr. Zilly say that, you know, anecdotally, you've heard from my colleagues that um they feel that the building is safe. But I'm also gratified to hear you say that uh you know they've talked about sort of the past five six years as being the safest they've experienced. Uh when I

070came here 8 years ago, regrettably altercations were a more frequent occurrence eight years ago than they are today. The reduction in the frequency of altercations I attribute to the fact that the consequences that we assign when students engage in that behavior is firm and proportional to the damage they cause in the community. Um, I don't believe that accountability and discipline brings about fundamental changes in behavior overnight, but I believe that when you stay the course and you stay the course for a number of years, you rack up incremental gains each year and then you can look in the rearview mirror five years later and you can say, you know, five years later, we're in a much better place than we were 5 years ago. Yeah. Um, so, uh, I do believe that, um, that ultimately

071if we cannot find a way to hold those accountable who are behaving irresponsibly and behaving harmfully, um, they're going to continue to do so. Um, I believe that the solution ultimately lies in identifying those responsible and holding them accountable appropriately. Thank you. Appreciate you your answers to all my questions. Thank Yeah. Can I add one thing to that, too? the the consequence part um part of the youth center if you're suspended from uh local public schools you're also suspended from the youth center so that consequence does carry on as well. So I agree with you entirely that the proportional response it's not just at the school it affects your ability to hang out with your friends after school as well. So you know it's a really truly a community effort. So good and I and

072I appreciate the youth center you know uh sort of reinforcing that. Um, thanks. A lot of questions. So, um, going back to, you know, um, correcting behavior, which I agree with you. So, has, um, any specific groups of like students been identified as the the the the problems? I think you mentioned the the the men's bathroom the most. Is it primarily like boys bathroom? Is it like sports team? Is there any trend of you demographic? You don't have to answer it. Um uh I well I would I would say that uh the the problems that we uh experience in the bathrooms with respect to vaping are uh gender agnostic. So we get reports of vaping uh just as frequently from our young women as we do from our young men. Um with regards to vandalism,

073we do have reports of vandalism more frequently in the boys restrooms and the girls restrooms. Um, vandalism in our locker rooms with our sports team is I'm not aware of uh that being a an issue here at school. Uh, sometimes they need to pick up after themselves a little better than they do, but that's that's a different matter than vandalism. That's teenage boys. Yeah, I'm really focused on the vandalism. um you know, have you engaged the resource officer with the police to see if there's any um creative ways to um uh do some preventative or even you know um kind of have a talk with the the student body or even have ask the resource officer to you know uh do something I'm just uh being created there. So you know my my work with

074the police department uh and our work with the police department stretches across a lot of different areas of concern. um substance use um uh distribution of controlled substances and vandalism being amongst those concerns. Uh so we collaborate uh closely with the police department um particularly when it comes to issues of controlled substances here in school. When it is appropriate to bring criminal charges against students, we do so um in collaboration with the police. Uh the police play a a very important role in assisting us with investigations. Um and our school resource officer plays uh he very frequently is meeting with students and the guardians of students who we have identified as being at risk by virtue of their behaviors. So uh in addition to sort of being uh reactive from a law enforcement perspective, um

075part of the the concept of the SRO is that the SRO is something of a counselor, mentor, trusted adult. um who's really, you know, trying to work with students who are um who make a lot of mistakes, right? Um so we will we will continue to work closely with the police on this. This is um this this is criminal conduct. People are prohibited from bringing controlled substances into our public schools by law. People are prohibited by law from using controlled substances in our school. People are prohibited by law from damaging public property. Right? uh these are not just school matters. These are very much you know community policing matters and uh you know we will absolutely continue to work with the police hand in hand and trying to respond to this as effectively as we

076can. I think on I think on the preventative side in terms of trying to um enlist the police um I beg your part at the risk of repeating myself uh I think I think the way that we prevent this from happening is by identifying those who are responsible and holding them accountable. Well, that's where I was going with this is that, you know, is there a way to find at least a couple students that we know or some of the sort to to say, hey, you know, this is inappropriate. So, so we have we at at I to the best of my recollection, I do not believe that we've been able to ever identify a student who has been shoving things down toilets um and discipline a student for that. Uh and again, I'm talking

077about vandalism. Yeah, we we are we are regularly disciplining students um for vaping. Um but vandalism it's the instances where we've been a able to identify per perpetrators with vandalism have been the exception not the rule. It's been very very difficult. And they've also been outside the bathrooms, not in the bathrooms, you know? Yeah. You know what I mean? That's that's generally Sure. Yeah. I mean, listen, as I said earlier, we have good camera coverage here, right? So, if you're up to mischief outside of the bathrooms, it's going to be kind of hard to go on scene, but our students know that you're going to go on scene in the bathrooms, and you are going to go on scene in the bathrooms unless we have staff going in and out with a reasonably high level

078of frequency. Thank you. Thanks, Matt. So, thanks for coming tonight, Josh. It's really helpful to hear sort of the overall safety context sort of in consideration of the issue that we're addressing. So, thank you for that. Just totally and I happen to be with a friend this morning. Her son's in a different high school in the region, and she literally was just saying he talks all the time about what a concern vaping is. So, it's definitely not a Milford issue. As you know, and as you alluded to, right, we are presented with a ton of district priorities. Most of the headcount ones we did not move forward this year. And I certainly trust that you and the administration had safety been the concern, this would have been number one and it would have been addressed.

079So I kind of take that whole context in as we're thinking about this. I just would really encourage you and to work with the team to come up with these creative solutions. So whether it's removing the paper towels, whether it's, you know, really being strong in the first two months of school, maybe we do a trial period of aids for the first two months to see like if we're really diligent, you know, if we're able to sort of move the behavior away. The other thing I want to encourage is can we involve students more somehow, student government, student athletes, and really sort of create some momentum, you know, around the student body because it's it's a student issue. If they can't go use the bathroom, that's disgusting. And so, are there other opportunities, you know,

080to the behavior change that Chris was talking about that we could just think about. So, just ways to encourage. I appreciate that. I would share that. You know, when I made the when I first made the request for these positions in December 2023, that was in direct response to the feedback that I'd received from students on our school improvement council and our student advisory council. So I think most of you know that I'm I'm I'm meeting with significant numbers of students on a regular basis here at school to to hear from them about what are the what are the parts of their school experience that we need to address. Um, so the students have been quite forthright and bring it to my attention and in my conversations with students and I I don't I don't

081you know I don't want to sound um I don't want to I don't want to um suggest that there is not a role for students to play in the solution but the message I've heard from students is like we the students need you the staff to take care of this for us right uh this is not something that we feel we can or should be taken care of please help us. For sure. I think there you know the points we're making though there's a way to identify that small population of troublemakers and really hone in on being there when they're there following that like finding a way to just eliminate the problem as much as we can because to your point it's never going to go away entirely. So encourage the continued work on trying

082to improve it. Thanks. All right, John. Yeah, thank you. Um what I hear from all this and what I my my primary takeaway is this the Milford High School experience is a very safe experience. I mean I listen to everything you said. I jotted down a bunch of notes, but I don't want that to be lost on anybody. It's definitely not lost on me. Um, the other thing I think I'm taking away from this and I've taken away from our budget meetings is that, you know, if we were to place additional funds and allocate them to campus aids, it's I think almost certainly at the expense of equally or higher priorities prioritized initiatives. Somewhat safe to say 100%. Yeah. So, that's this is not our only challenge. It's just a challenge that's on the table

083tonight. I don't want that to be lost. Um, and then sort of separately to Michael's point about where where where's the trouble and which bathrooms can we get like a um a ticketing report on these? I mean, these must all be logged into our maintenance system. This bathroom, that bathroom coded that way. I'm sure we could. I don't know. I don't know if it's coded that way or not. We can we can check that. And if it's not, maybe we can change the coding, right? Add the code. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I I we can I but I would also highlight we have a very small number of restrooms open for students as is we so while I can't say with precision how frequently you know it's this restroom versus that restroom it's it's a short

084list of restrooms and and we're and regrettably we we've experienced problems in all of them. Okay. And what we could do, John, because I think some of these it's a custodian, you know, unfortunately just scooping out the stuff that's blocking the toilet and it may not even become a ticket that goes to our maintenance team, but I can have them flag those going forward just so we have a better sense of that because we may not be we may not be quantifying them as something like that that gets addressed by the maintenance team that makes I was thinking it was a maintenance item and you know we're bringing in you know plumber to fix the problem. But I think there's two different issues. I think that does happen. But I think there's also like a

085kid drops a roll of paper towels in the toilet or stuffs it out. Yeah. I don't expect that to be documented. I mean, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think some of these are probably just, you know, the the guy who happens to be in that section is just cleaning it up at night. Based on my conversations with our facilities team, I believe that uh most of the issues are resolved efficiently by our custodians. Uh there are there are instances in which either our technicians need to get involved or outside contractors need to get involved, but the majority are resolved by our custodians. Okay. Um, to kind of wrap this up on a closing note, one of my thoughts and actually me this one is that we have what, like six weeks left of school

086this this year or eight weeks, whatever it is, uh, short time span. Um, so I would encourage you to try some things in this eight weeks as a trial and then when we start meeting again in the fall time and we enter budget season, come back to us and hey, you know what? For a few weeks, we did try to have Craig walk through the bathrooms five times a day. That's the Mike that's the best idea you've come up with in all the years you've been in school and we noticed that there was a trend down in you know vandalism right so like if you could come up with some and I know you have a ton on your plate but if there's a way to come up with some um you know experiments or

087data or something we tried these three things and we think this one might might work most so we can actually start to plan it out um you know the last few weeks we have I will I will take that to heart and I will certainly try my best to see what we can do But I I also I do wish to stress to the committee four administrative staff for a school of,250 teenagers is we're a lean machine up here. This is tight. All right. Uh there's and responding to conduct issues is but one part of our work here at school. So I I respect the sentiment behind it. I also want to be transparent with the committee that I I I've made these budget requests because I do not know how to do better with

088the resources that we have. I am open to suggestions and feedback, but I'm telling you that I do not know how to do better with the resources that we have. And th this is my point just to to push is you want you guys are thin coming to us next year saying we need to spend $80,000 on this with no you know uh way of working and we're adding staff is hard for us as a committee to just be like yeah but if you if we can get something to say hey for three weeks we tried X and it it it worked a little bit. we saw progress and then that I I certainly understand the the value of demonstrating the proof of concept and showing that, you know, we're not just going to throw

089$80,000 at this and hope for the best, but we have some evidence to suggest that we're going to generate a return in the investment. I I absolutely appreciate that and would I would love to be able to, you know, provide that proof of concept. Thank you. All right, I think we're good. We're not going to fix this now. So, thank you very much for coming. Spent a lot of time with us on this, but I think it was helpful. It's important. Thank you for your time. Thank you. All right. So, that'll take us to agenda item five, which is a little bit of a change of pace. It's related to electric vehicle charging stations. I'll have uh Mr. Valori come on up. Um stack of papers. This get passed around. Yeah. John, did you guys

090get this? Yeah. Uh no. What is it? That's good. Thanks. So, while he while he gets settled, I'll um just thank Mr. Valori for coming. Um he reached out to John about a proposal to potentially have charging stations installed at the schools. So, that's what he's here to share with us because I believe it's a time-sensitive thing. So, it is a time-sensitive thing. Before I uh get into what I'm talking about, are there any questions that I can address before I get into my presentation? I can be super direct. Um, you know, so obviously we've passed we we we just had our budget hearing, so our budget is closed for the season. Um, this was not planned. Um, but I I see that it's it's reimbured, right? Um, the super direct question is the cost

091of this. Would this be the burden uh taken on by somebody else or would it be on by the school district and then we would be reimbursed for it? Uh two answers to that. I think we need the presentation first cuz well asking questions. Yeah. No. So great question. So the the answer to the question is it's two answers. Number one, uh my company in conjunction with what the state and the utilities are offering will be covering all the cost based upon the current incentive in the event that the school committee doesn't want to in uh take on any uh maintenance issues with it or additional uh manh hours, my company will own and operate it and we will put will handle everything for you. Uh the way I look at these charging stations is

092you're going to have progressiveness within the all the schools. Uh I know when I walk through Memorial School and Stacy School, I do see a lot of electric vehicles there uh just by the teachers. So it's a potential of a um revenue generation. So you the school committee will have a slush fund for situations like what um um Mr. Artland was talking about. Um and far above the school system during um classes with the teachers, it's good for students, parents when they're taking their kids to sporting events. I have two electric vehicles when I'm traveling to different towns. I am charging my car when I'm at the school systems. Um by by my donation, the school system will receive 100% of the profit. So whatever is generated the profit is very basic. Whatever you charge

093minus the electric cost that is incurred is your profit. In the event that the school system does not want to um man these things which quite frankly there is nothing to man I will do it and I will give the school system a 50% profit share. What I will also do which I find to be very different than most people in the EV industry is I offer a open um open book policy very transparent. So at the end of the year once my bookkeeper does all the books for the profit or the revenue minus the expenses I will provide it to the school committee and you guys can validate what the profit is. So long story short, there is essentially no cost incurred out of pocket for installation. All covered based upon the current incentive.

094Potentially whatever whatever additional costs are I will cover to a certain number. Anything else before I get into it? That was far away. Yeah, we should definitely get into All right. So the state of Massachusetts in conjunction with the utility both national grid Eversource and all the small municipal um municipal electric companies are really pushing um progressiveness with electric vehicles throughout the state of Massachusetts. We are on a incentive which is called the mass evap uh that is specific for the level two charging stations for people who are unaware of electric vehicles. You have a level one, which for lack of a better term, is just an extension cord, which doesn't do anything for you. It's like having a trickle charger on your lawn mower or a motorcycle. It's not going to do much. The

095level two chargers are what most people have at their house. Okay? And then the level three chargers is the superchargers, which most people identify as the Tesla superchargers. The Tesla superchargers um are proprietary toward towards Tesla. I can do the level three charges. Unfortunately, that incentive with National Grid and Eversource was filled up within 9 months. So, the few municipalities that I did present that to did get those charging stations. Um everybody else did not. There was a huge waiting list. So, I have a continuous waiting list for that. The level two charges, however, are, as I stated, perfect for the school systems, ball fields, Legion Field. You know, I've I've spoken to uh Scott Christopher about Balado or the Feno Pool, you know, stuff like that. Uh it's just anywhere somebody's going to be

096for two, three hours plus is a great opportunity. You're just going to park the car, charge, and go from there. Uh when you talk about maintenance, there is nothing. The level three charges, there was maintenance on there because you're dealing with three-phase power. Um what we're dealing with with the level twos is singlephase. Uh for what you guys don't know, whoever doesn't know what that is, just coming out of your house or the building. The only real problems you're going to have would be vandalism. And as we just heard from uh Stalin, there's vandalism everywhere. you know, could be in your neighborhood, in the school system. So, as long as we take care of it. Um, as far as requirements, like anything else, the DPW will have to plow, shovel, clean because most people here,

097I assume, have a vehicle, and you're not going to want to park your car if there's leaves and twigs and snow and stuff like that. But, this is a great revenue generator for the schools. With that being stated, I've kind of thrown everything out. I'm not going to have a long dissertation on this because most people understand what's going on with the evolution of electric vehicles. Y go ahead. I think this is a great idea. Um I definitely support it. I do have a couple questions just for clarification. And so the maintenance obviously you're saying is virtually none, but do you have any software issues in terms of that you have to have an internet connection for for payment, things of that nature that do require maintenance? And then hardware related to the computer in

098the actual uh unit. Um, so one of the things that I I guess I should have talked about before you got to that question is that some of the charging stations do charge a monthly or yearly fee. I have worked out a relationship with the charging stations in I don't want to use the word convince, but um we do it they now change their concept to a um fee per charge if you will. So, for example, if you'll see on my sheet on the second page, the charging cost is 50 cents. You guys can charge whatever you want. The charging station takes 10% of that. So, 50 cents turns into 45 cents. That 5 cents is now covers the credit card fee, the Wi-Fi connection, and also 24 customer 24-hour customer service for the person

099charging in the event something doesn't work. Okay. The charging stations are warrantied for 5 years. However, like anything else, labor is not. Does that answer your question? Answer the question. Okay. John, what's the basic proposal? You're looking to put how many stations at which school? Uh, we can put them at any school. The charging stations uh with the current incentive allows us to install two dual port charging stations, which allows four cars to charge at once. So, you're proposing as many as you want. you know, as long as the incentive doesn't fill up. So, that's gonna be the big thing. I know you guys are coming towards the end of your um season, if you would. Um, making a decision like this is going to be tough, but it's um four of my f favorite

100words, the letters. F re e. Who's not going to say yes to something that's free? That's strong. That's true. Um the other question in terms of placement um would you want it near the building itself or far away from the building or wherever it's convenient? So it's a combination of wherever you guys want it per se but um you do want to have it close to electricity because the longer run you have the potentially more cost it's going to be and like I said there's only so much I'm going to be able to absorb. Sure. Um, as far as identifying where you want them, I'm happy to walk the um the schools or the locations you want, we can identify that together. I do recommend two charging stations per port or two per school. Y

101so you get four four cars can charge at once. I am not going to say that you should put them in what's considered elite parking. Okay. So, you know, put it somewhere not off the beaten beaten path, but you don't want to have it front row, right? So, if I can just before we could even get off the ground on this, if we if we wanted to go forward with this, we'd have to go to planet board for site plan approval, right? We Nick and I have had that conversation in my day job role. Um, the town is already considering it at certain locations. I I don't know if the town's, you know, the town being the town hall, the highway department, uh, Feno, or anybody else is going to move forward, but if we

102do, we do have to, you know, revise, amend our site plans that are approved at each school, um, if there even is one for, um, our older schools. Um, so we, I mean, this isn't just, all right, sounds like a great idea, put them in, this is a cost. So, it's a bigger, longer process if we don't if we do want to move forward with that. I just wanted to make everybody aware of that. In in regards to John's statement, I want to let you guys know it's also not okay, I want to move forward and we install it. So, we have to we move forward, we do a sitewalk, we have to submit to the Mass EVIP along with National Grid um National Grid and Mass EVIP have estimated that the flow of charging

103stations being submitted at this point in time, the approval is going to be within three uh two to three months. From that two to three months, once we get the approval in, we present it to the school committee. The school committee will then have to sign off on it. From there, we can install within one to two weeks. So, in regards to your uh statement, I would say that if you wanted to move forward, we can move forward now. And I not saying right now, just identifying a factor here. and you guys will have, for lack of a better term, three months before whatever decision needs to be made. So, if we did move forward with everything and then once the pre-approvals did come over and then you said we can't do it here, but

104we'll do it here, we just throw the ones out that you don't want. I can tell you that the people that did receive the incentive for the level three incentives that decided against it have come back to me and have realized it was a huge mistake. Each one of these charging stations equates to about $50,000. I'm sorry, each grouping. So, two charging stations, four ports with all the infrastructure and equipment equates to about $50,000. Now, I'm not saying I'm giving you $50,000. It's all part of the incentive. Um, but it would be a tough decision to digest. Get the stage right there. Yeah, it'd be a tough decision to digest to not accept it and a year, two years you guys move forward and the incentive is now not 50,000 but 25,000. I don't know

105if I can digest $25,000 per location or per F school system and then you guys don't take advantage of it. If you look at the back page of this flyer I gave you is a rough estimate as to the generation or revenue generation you guys can receive. The low utilization is factored on six people charging per day for what they call an average charge. An average charge in the EV world is 50% of your when your batteries at 50 cent 50% you're charging to 80%. Which basically on most EVs is a half a day. I'm sorry, three hours. Pardon me. Depending upon your battery, one grouping. Yes, sir. So just at the high school, if we put four charge uh two charging stations, four chargers, you charge at 8 in the morning by noon time,

106whoever's charging has to get out. You can put what on there what they call an idle fee. Very normal for Teslas. All right. Um the idle fee gets very expensive. So it encourages you to get off. So if you have four people charging in the morning, four people charging in the afternoon, you're at that number. and then after school sports. It's a it's a really a great revenue generator and you're progressive. Go ahead. I think it's more a question for John. Sorry, Nicholas. Is this something the town's sort of considering? Like would it end up being a town sort of mandate or direction? Yes, it's um it's sort of subsearate. The school can move forward with it or the town can or both can, but they're not, as far as I know, they're not tied

107together. Okay. Thanks. Um so when you install say um what is the rough cost of the installation? It's very hard to tell. Um I'm sure there's an average. Can I Yeah. Well, you you know you you got the 50,000. So the 50,000 is pretty much So 50,000 is the is the incentive coming back from the state to equipment installation. Yeah. Cover permitting. Yeah. Okay. So up two, right? So, um, say if we said yes tonight, just for fun. Um, and the process would be, um, so we are would we be contracting with you to installation and then as far as the the incentive of the rebate, whatever you want to call it. So, you would go ahead and move forward. So, would that money come directly from the state to you or would it come

108from us and then we reverse you? I take care of everything. Okay. So there is nothing you guys need to do other than uh provide the electrical bills for the locations you want approve the documentation that I send over as proposal. When Mass EVIP and National Grid send over the approval, you sign that and then you're identifying yes you want to move forward and everything else is done by me. I front the money to buy the equipment, pay the contractors, then once it's all approved by the utility, I get refunded for whatever it may be. The reason I'm asking of the value, and this may be for a when question at some point, is that, you know, would this have to go up to bid, right? Um, so would we have to bring in some

109other people who could, you know, do the incentive and just kind of talk them through the process? you're more than welcome to bring it in um bring it to bid, but um the municipalities that have moved forward have confirmed and I was speaking to one today um actually questioning why other municipalities aren't moving forward or even calling him um in this municipality is chumps um because the way that they're viewing it is that it's a donation so there is no bid needed. Uh, furthermore, and I forget the um the article the article number, but I believe it's anything under $300,000 does not need to go to bid. And that's per location. So, where this is going to be about a $50,000 opportunity per location and also is below the threshold of a requirement of a

110bid. Yeah. So, so the the benefit to you is to us to say yes and you're the installer basically and you you you get paid by the state. That's where you make your money installing. Once it's installed, we now own it. Um if you want to, right? Um and then we have that warranty and then you know if there is something wrong, we would reach out to you to come fix it etc etc. But basically if it's a donation we would now own that piece of equipment. Correct. Again, I give you two options. You can own it, which I strongly recommend you do. If you don't want to own it, I'll own it and I will do a profit share of 50%. If I own it, I cover it. Very similar to your house that

111you have, right? If something breaks, you fix it. Right? There could be a warranty on whatever product you have, but you have to pay for the labor. It's going to work exactly like that. If you rent and I own the property, whatever it breaks, I have to fix it. That make sense? Yeah. Yeah, it does. I just uh I don't have experience with somebody else owning a piece of equipment on a like public land, right? So that's why I was Yeah. No, I get it. I'm just it's it's more of the the the the true concept of it, right? If if you own something, you have to fix it. You take care of it. If you I give everybody the opportunity, I'll own it. I look at these things as a great opportunity for revenue.

112It's also great to show how progressive the town is. Thank you. both. Mine's quick. Just just another consideration. These will have to be in a handicap accessible location. Yeah. Yeah. The the level the level twos are required for ADA compliance. Yes. Yeah. So, that means that they'd have to go out in front, right? Primary entrance. You have some you have entrances front and back for ADA like here at the school. You do, but I mean that's the primary entrance of the whole building. So, that's where it would have to go, I believe. Well, I think Yeah. could also get a variance from the for planning purposes though. Would you even consider putting it at the high school if the parking lot's not going right? So would this be a great project for this subcommittee to

113figure out recommendations? Probably potentially. I mean I guess my my questions and thank you for coming in to to present. I appreciate it. You know I guess first and foremost is is this committee the ones that has the approval power to to get that? I guess I'm not clear on that. Um so I think we should go back to uh to um the town attorney just to make sure that we do have that approval power. I guess first qu my other question to you would be where's the rest of the town in this process? Have you presented to other departments? I've presented to most departments. Okay. Um most departments are on board. Um John has been doing a lot. Um and I think there is one hurdle that we have to get past which he

114has already um talked about. Yes. So I think that he'd probably be the best person to talk to on that. But I can tell you that the majority of the departments that I have spoken to are on board and do want to move forward. Okay. Yeah. You know and I think overall I like the idea. I like the concept. Um, one obviously like I said is the do we have the authority? Um, we know at a lot of our schools the parking capacity needs to be strongly considered. Um, obviously if if we if if we know that staff has electric vehicles then we can accommodate them. If no staff, just say for instance, zero staff has electric vehicles and you put four charging stations at Brookside, we lose four parking spots and we're already parking

115everywhere that we can there. So, we got to be very careful of that. Um, I'm also and again this is all very premature and and if we go down this road, these are more questions that will get firm up answers. I'm just more making statements right now. uh just the whole process of where do we tap power from and how is that going to work and who's the responsibility right so the the power doesn't get from from inside the school out magically right so there is some infrastructure that's going to have to be worked through and and part of that process and we'll speak to that so you know Mike as you're saying maybe the facility subcommittee you know talks to that at a more detail without spending the time here um you know planning

116board yeah we are whenever we find that a parking lot's being redone, we ask the um that tenant that that owner to put in conduit for charging station. So, even throughout the town planning board, right, we're we're looking to uh kind of spearhead that. So, like I said, it's it's a good idea. um overall and I guess the you know that last part will be as when I think about parking capacity and then who truly determines where those spots are going to be right is that our board that says okay yeah we're on board with putting in EV stations but we want them here here and here or is it the vendor again so these are questions that I just want to put out there I don't expect answers tonight but we'll formulate that but

117again good idea Yeah, a lot of questions still. If you don't mind, I'd like to address pretty much every one of your questions. You don't have to tonight just cuz I don't think we're going to vote. I'm not looking to vote. I just think it's good. If you want to, I'll I'll defer it to the chair if you timing. I think it's good that you brought up the questions. I think we should talk about them so it's at least in everybody's ear. How much you retain of it is a total different story. Okay. So, if you don't mind, can you just uh regurgitate your first question and I can address it. All right. So the first question is uh let's see tapping power how that's going to happen. So tapping of the power what when

118we do our site visit we can tap the power either from the building or we drop a brand new line. Okay. Okay. Ultimately it's all going to be determined and confirmed by the utility but we can make the suggestion based upon where you guys want the charging stations. Uh but again that is primarily all covered within what I'm putting offering to you guys. Okay. Um and then yeah that might also be part of who determines the location. Primarily you guys. Okay. The the school committee would uh determine that. I will make my own suggestions based upon where we can pull power. And uh also we got to make sure and it may depend again where you're saying more of the site visit is can the school support it or are we going to need to

119come straight off the polls. So again that's that part of the process. That's all stuff that we do figure out. Um whether we can figure it out right then and there or the utility has to figure it out based upon the capacity issue. Um I have not come across any capacity issues with any level twos. So most of the time we just pulling it from the building or we're dropping a line. Okay. Thank you. Uh you did miss miss one question you did bring up which is parking. Um I live in the area of um Memorial School in Stacy. So I do walk my dog through the Stacy school and I can tell you if you just walk through that school you will look at how many muff how many muffler less cars are there

120and if you walk through a car and you don't see a muffler that is an electric vehicle of course and there are a large number. I haven't w I should be walking through Memorial School and just going back there but I just always go one way. Yeah. No, I understand. And yeah, and I think capacity is more our issue and less on you, right? That we have to fully understand that, you know, you're you're here to propose, you know, these EV stations and less worried about parking us. We're we're we need to make sure our staff is supported. So, that's why. One last question. Let's just say that we decide to purchase our own electric vehicles for student transportation. Can we get a better like would we would we basically charge ourselves the same rate

121that we charge someone else to charge overnight for exampuate the rate so that way when we plug in we're you can always do that. Okay. You can always do that. Um, one of the things that I would suggest if you do get um, electric buses or something, however you want to look at it, I'll have to get those. Yeah, I would suggest that we don't we do not do that and have different prices. Um, I'm going to joke with everybody here. Does everybody pay for Netflix? Do your parents pay for Netflix or do they take your password? The moment that you have a password on something like this, the password gets out. So instead of paying in this example 50 cents a kilowatt hour, you're paying 25 cents a kilowatt hour, which is the electric

122price, right? So unfortunately doing something like that, you start to lose control. I don't recommend that. um you know when there is a just call electric bus okay we put different charging stations at wherever wherever we house the buses and then at that point in time you can charge that's a really is yeah kind of like a separate thing you'd want to that's how I would recommend do it that's fair you know all right I just want to say thanks for coming Nicholas presentation's great I think it's 2025 this is a great direction for us to head as a community I'd love to make a motion for the facility subcommittee to consider moving this forward and bring back our recommendations. Motion by Megan and second by Brendan to have facility subcommittee add this to Chris's

123very short list. All in favor five to two facilities my problem but it's really Chris's problem now. Thank you. So just in regards to I'm happy to attend the facilities meetings and uh you know really be a big part with us. Um so thank you very much for having me. All right. Uh any other questions? My contact information is on the flyers so you can just kick me an email or a phone call or what have you. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you for coming. And Nick, just so you know, facility subitt is myself, Chris, and Matt, and we typically meet during the day. So, it's it's not going to be a Thursday night. That's perfect. I can make I can arrange my time uh to accommodate all the stuff you guys. Okay. All

124right. Thank you. Thank you. Feel like we need a drum roll or something. All right. I was going to say now on to this probably should have made this the first one. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Fail. All right. Well, this does bring us to item six, which is the introduction of the next Milford Public School Superintendent. So, um I'm sure the committee has other words, but they also very much join me in in having great confidence and excitement um in announcing the appointment of Dr. Craig Conigley as the next superintendent of Milford Public Schools effective July 1st, 2025. Um obviously, Dr. Conigi Dr. Dr. Kigley has been a lifelong educator here in the district. He's been here about 27 years now and has shown a deep commitment to Milford in the community. Uh he's going to

125be succeeding Dr. McIntyre whose leadership and continued support during this transition is also very much appreciated. So with that congratulations formally. Um open it up to anybody else who has comments, statements, thoughts. Well, the silence is great. Megan, go ahead. I'll just say we're thrilled, Craig. I think it's a great uh, you know, next step for us. Thank you, Dr. McIntyre, for all the leadership you've provided and really excited for what's to come. So, thanks for stepping up. I'll go. Good. Go ahead. Yeah. Go right around. No, I just want to um, you know, thank you for your interest in this. I have full confidence in this as you know, we went through we we we looked at whether or not to, you know, um, promote from within or look outside. And I just want

126to say you've been performing exceptionally here for whatever 25 27 years, 23 years. Um you've excelled in every role. Um and I just have great confidence in you. I'm I'm glad to welcome you aboard that in that as in the superintendent capacity. Congratulations. But uh that glad you were taking the next steps in the in the leadership role. Obviously, as John said, you've you've been a part of this district for uh many many years and you know and have served in in many capacities, you know, so looking forward to uh you know, this next next phase, this next era um and and you know, taking all that knowledge that you've built up through the years and u and extending it upon to the uh the students, the staff and and and here at school committee.

127So again, congratulations and thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Just a short congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you. All right. Let's go. Thank you, Dr. McIntyre. Thank you, Dr. McIntyre. All right. Well, we'll uh go right on to item seven, which is chairperson update. I have nothing, so we'll skip that one. Move on to the report of the superintendent of schools. All right. This is one of my I think last three. Um but who's counting? Uh so, three quick updates for the committee tonight. The first one is uh the MHS MSBA update. Um we've received the feasibility study agreement from the MSBA. Our town attorney is currently reviewing it and the MSBA board will vote on it at their June meeting. Uh you have a sheet at your tables that basically gives the timeline of the entire project.

128You know, at least a rough timeline of the entire project so you get a sense of kind of what we've done and where we where we're going. And what you can see is although the feasibility study was a significant milestone to get past like it's the first in probably a 12 round prize fight. Um so we're we're just starting the process. Uh but you know we're on time and we're moving forward which is great. Uh the next steps are the the feasibility study and schematic design um which will take place for most of the 25 26 school year and I think a little bit beyond that. um because we don't start until August of this year. I think it's I think it's August 14th was the date we talked about last night where it officially

129kind of kicks off. Um the first task of that process is uh selecting an owner's project manager and the chair of the building committee has selected a subcommittee to kind of take on that role. Um I'll be kind of leading the charge through that part of the process um in terms of you know doing the paperwork required by the MSBA. We'll we'll be posting it on the um the central register and then we'll be following a selection process. It's it's pretty pretty well regulated as is everything with the MSBA. But very exciting. We we're we're on to the next we're close to being on to the next phase of the pro project. everything that we've had to do except for that last signature is done for the eligibility period and um then we jump into

130the next phase of the process and and it seems like a long time when you see you know 2030 next to something it seems like you know we should be building a spaceport but uh you know it's it's going to come by quicker than you all think it goes by very quickly so I'm happy to answer any questions that anybody has or if Michael or Chris want to add anything based on attending the meeting just yeah quickly just Yeah, we're very excited. The the reimbursement rate was an exciting point um to at 72.5%. So basically the the monies that we put aside for feasibility which was 2 and a half million we're getting 1.8 back from the state which is great. So so that's a a real positive. U you know the the next date

131is that June 18 June 18th, right? That's the next meeting. So that's that's the one that we're really looking forward to. And yeah, that owners project manager that will be someone that when we go out and and will will in a sense interview and look for, you know, a scope, that person will work for us and that person will kind of be that the knowledgeable person to kind of know the MSBA process, but understand how to help us navigate that. So, that's going to be a very important person through the process. Um and and the clarity of knowing that we have somebody that that we we have with in a sense on our staff that we're paying that's going to be a part of this process to help us navigate because we know it's it's

132there is some complex steps to it all. All right. Thank you. All right. Next up, the MHS roof. Um we've received quotes from three vendors to complete the roof assessment this summer. Uh the goal is to get that done in July. The repairs are taking place for the identified problem areas um for the roof at the end of next week. We uh one of the delays was uh they're a new vendor and there was just some issues in bringing them on board. So, you know, they were they could get paid, which is understandable. They want that. They want they want that ahead of time. Thank you. Um but yeah, everything's moving along as it should be. Um there I don't know if anybody has any questions. I think we've talked about this a fair amount.

133Uh the next piece is the Brookside modular repairs. So the repairs on the floor and the connection between the new p major pieces of the modular edition were completed last week or during the school vacation week. Um which is one of the major projects. The second major project that was completed was the drainage issue was also addressed and completed. What's left are a few little minor things and these are always the trickiest to kind of get done because they're such small projects. Carlos is on it. I don't have a time a timeline yet from him, but the three things I think three things that need to still get done are the second access point on the floor and the electrical component for the crawl space and replacing um external door seal gaskets which have failed

134and you know need to be replaced. But those are the last three things. The two big things are are done which is great. Um and just you know these last three and once I have a timeline on that I'll just give a give a report out. very pleased with the progress that happened over school vacation week. That's what ahead unless people have questions on that. Any thoughts on that? No. All right. Thank you very much. We'll move on to report of the assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction and assessment. Uh thank you uh Mr. Chairman. Uh I just want to give you a brief update on access testing. We just got the results back. Um, access testing is what all of our English language students um do to for their assessment. Uh, that that happens over

135uh the month of January. Basically, um, we had 1,51 students um, participate in access testing this year. It's our highest number ever. Um, that's about 33% of our student population. And I'm also pleased to say that we had our highest number of L's meet reclassification at 228 students this year. Uh there were 44 students at between Brookside and Memorial. Um and and just to put that in perspective, typically uh for kids to um reclassify, you usually see it around Woodland, around somewhere in the 3 to six year range, I would say. um Woodland 139 students reclassified 46 students at Stacy and 16 students at Milford High School. Um it's important to note for the the public that on May 7th in the auditorium here, uh Jen and her staff will be going over uh how

136to read the access and understand the scores at the impact meeting. Um just some other related data. Um in dis this is I guess in regard to the declining Yale student population um that we've talked about before. Uh in December of 2024, so just this past December, we had six 1,67 students. As of April 1st, 1,557 students, decrease of 50 students um preK to 12. Uh at the end of this month, just yesterday, we had 1,536 students, another additional decrease of 21 students in just 28 days. Um with the current reclassification of 228 stu L students to felt in year 1 and the grade 12 graduating class of 55 English learners, that equals 1,253 students. Um we then had 34 students join us between February uh and then our incoming K numbers which are at

137this point 91. Um that's the total number we have right now. So um as of yesterday, the district anticipates 1,378 English learners uh for next year. But of course that's who knows who's coming in between now and the start of the school year. Typically we see um a number of students come in over the summer. Uh so that's just a quick update on on English language learners um so far. Excellent. Thank you. Brings us to the report of the school business administrator. Thank you. Um um before I um go into FY25 budget, I want to thank you for voting the budget for FY26 and thank you everyone to u guide me through um like um in my first year and um the guidelines of first thing I appreciate everybody's effort on that and um just

138from building the budget and approving the budget and everyone asked many smart questions and and Um that that's that's great. And um I also want to thank you uh thank thank the this principles and the district directors and they're super transparent and we had numerous meetings um and they are um they they they provide a lot of historical information which is very helpful um in building the budget. So um it's a collective effort and I really appreciate everybody. So um so this year FY25 the link document is um showing uh showing you the balance uh remaining balance is 452,000 and um it's it looks good. It's pretty healthy at this point. Uh because last um last report was April 1st. The balance was 650ish,000 and we have two months to go and the remaining the

139balance will cover um whatever the salaries is not uh encumbered um bus drivers, bus monitors um um tutors substitute and also the outstanding um facility maintenance and repair um requirement and also um out of district transportation and tuitions. Anything would happen during this two months. Yes. What do you think we'll end the year with? What do I think? Yeah, it's rough. Yeah. Um I don't know. Is this a game? Are we going to go over here? We're probably going to be We're probably going to be right there. $16. So, I want to give a little credit to to Kevin for the past year of pushing the committee and reminding us how tight and tight the budget is and tight the budget is. So, again, thank you for doing that and you thank you for keeping

140tight tight books and um I'm glad we're we're going to be decently okay and the district taking that to heart. Yeah. No, I think people took it seriously. Like, you know, the spending was very different this year than it has been in the past, you know, and and I think, you know, and I got to say, like, not only did Wend do a phenomenal job managing her first budget, but but she also did a great job communicating with all the principles and directors and having really frank and honest conversations with like, you know, this is what you have. You're over here, what's, you know, and and it wasn't it was very respectful and and I think, you know, people really uh responded to that, too. Um, and you know, I saw a stream of people

141coming into her office and you know, most of them left crying, which is okay. Uh, but but no, she did she did a great in all seriousness, she did a great job. um really kind of working with the principles and department heads to make sure that in a tight budget year and I think next year's going to be the same thing potentially even a little tighter um you know managing within our means you know we had a number of like we do every year a number of challenges came up over the course of the year and that's always going to happen the one thing that you can predict is that unpredictability you just can't say where it's going to happen but yeah so I would say she did like she exceeded my expectations for a

142first year in the role and this is a very complex district multi-layered um a lot of variables that you know a lot of other districts don't have to deal with so she did a great job excellent man just two quick questions uh can you speak high level athletics being in the red uh yes mostly because of the stipend so 54,000 uh was because um of the uh secretary salary was um um charged to this account but the the budget wasn't there. So 54. So I I should have for for the last round of budget transfers I should have transferred the budget but I didn't. Okay. I missed that one and the rest are because of the stipens was under budgeted. All the the coaches coaches stipens. So $150,000 worth of Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And that's

143for like postseason s that you're talking about or just in general? In general throughout the year, three seasons. Did we see that last year? So I I think the budget was lower than last year, too. Yeah. Well, one has done this year is tried to categorize things where the expenses lie. So I think you're going to see more a few overages in places because they were probably accounted for in other areas. And I think that's that's that's really one of the things I I should have included that that's one of the things she really accomplished is she's really connected. I don't think it's 100%. You wouldn't say that, but it's it's it's significantly better where the expenses are tied to. Yeah. I had lots of conversations and asking why c certain percentages had changed in

144double digits and a lot of that was just more from a personnel movement around which seemed just very justified. It was just yeah this one u point there. And then my only other question is the all the circuit breaker offsets are those estimates are those actuals and down the last your all the last bits. So circuit breaker offset tuition transportation the very last like four items five items are those I just curious if they were estimates or actuals they are close to actual. Okay. Yeah very close. All right. Uh so I applied three quarters because we only received three quarters so far. So I left out the left out the fourth quarter. So these numbers are three are a three quarter reimbursement and yes with Okay. So um if you see the tuitions u now

145they're in positive because I already transferred the three quarters and the we still have fourth quarter to apply to the um as offset. Okay. And it's very close to actual. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Anything else on the uh 25 budget update? Okay. And then the personnel update just for your reference. All right. Thank you very much for your update. This is your big moment, Matt. A big moment. Again, I'm not even going to pause this time. I'm just going right through it. So, the consent agenda tonight has uh a handful of things. We'll start with the warrants. There are nine warrants in the amount of $332,114.31. the approval of minutes from the April 17, 2025 open session. Um, that's approval and release. The approval only of the April 17, 2025 executive session. There's professional development

146totaling $7,94.80. There are two grants in the amount of $36,000. And then there is one gift for $1,000 from Alliance Energy LLC and it is for STEM programs. Make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Motion by Megan to approve. Second by Brendan. All in favor? Thank you. Subcommittee updates. Anybody meet? I don't think so. Oh, sick. Yes. Oh, yeah. We don't we don't give sick bank updates. Sick bank met update over. Excellent. But but I love your enthusiasm. He was so excited. That was his big moment. Very good. Nice try, so future agenda items. I think about like a I guess new business, which apparently not here, but um or a thought. Um I I know the past, I don't know, year or two, we've talked about doing office hours again. Um I'd like

147to try that for school committee. Um talk to Derek. He'd be interested. I have some ideas. I don't think we need to vote anything, but I'd like to work with at least Derek. If anybody else is interested, reach out to me. But I think uh I had an idea that, you know, we actually reach out to some PTOs and every so often, maybe every other month or whatnot, we do a school committee office hours and come to their PTO meeting and do something. I don't know. So, want to try some new things with just office hours. All right. Anything else? Cool. Uh, we do not have executive session tonight, so that can bring us to ending this meeting. And all we need is a motion to adjurnn. Motion. Motion by Derek. You guys got it.

148A second by Michael. All in favor. Unanimous. Thank you. Good night.