001Good evening and welcome to this meeting of the Milford School Committee. Today is Thursday, April 3rd, 2025 and this meeting is being broadcast and recorded by Milford TV. Copies can be obtained at the request of this board or through central office. We are starting tonight with student rep update. We have Vidy and we also have Emily Jansen's. Hello. Hi guys. So, I'm here again, but I have my friend Emmy. She's in [laughter] taking over for me when I leave. Um, Emy's going to do a great job. She's awesome. So, you're in great hands. Well, not you guys, but like the school's in great hands. [laughter] Uh, all right. You can start. Um, to start, spring sports are in full swing now. And the Milford High School Best Buddies Sweetheart pageant is Friday, April 11th from
0025 to 8:00 PM. So there's raffle baskets uh that you can put your ticket in and possibly get. Um and we have some amazing acts, a lot of singing, a lot of dancing. We even have some Brookside and Woodland kids coming over, which they're always so cute. Um and we're hoping for a full packed auditorium. So if you guys can come support or have your families come support, we would really appreciate it. Tomorrow is junior prom, which many of us are looking forward to. Um I believe it's in Worcester. Yeah, Union Station. Yeah. Seniors are getting their college decisions. Um and we're looking forward to all of our, you know, senior fun kind of end of the year spring events. And the after prom committee has been doing their annual flocking um as a way
003to raise money for senior prom. Um especially like the after prom party at pins. So if you see that, you know what it's for. It's hard to believe, but we're finally moving into term four, which is the last term of the school year. And AP exams are coming up. So, a lot of our classes are ramping up. We're preparing for AP exams. We're finishing up like our last unit or so. And lastly, sophomores just completed their um English MCCAST this past week. And yeah, we have no other complaints. Everything is going well. So, have the water feature stopped? Yes. [laughter] Well done. Thank you. Any more questions? Actual questions for them. [laughter] Just quickie, how many AP exams? Six. Only six. Yeah. Okay. [laughter] Good luck. Thank you. Emily, can can you give us a
004little bit about yourself, where you are, what you do outside of the school, sports or activities, things? Um, my name is Emily, but you guys can call me Emmy. [laughter] Um, I'm a sophomore here at the high school. Um, I'm involved in a bunch of different things. I play three sports. Um, I'm involved in the orchestra and then I'm also part of the school improvement council and the student advisory council. Thank you. I knew there was more to that [laughter] than just a hello who you are. So, yeah, I appreciate it. Look forward to having you come to the committee and give us updates. So appreciate you volunteering for the assignment. Welcome to another Jansen. So exciting to have the [clears throat] tradition continue. We're thrilled to have you. Um Bey, I made the assumption
005that when you got accepted to Harvard that would be your decision. Is that your decision or are you headed somewhere else? Uh no, that is my decision. Um I got into Princeton, but I'm going to Harvard. So awesome. We look forward to future updates about all your success. Congratulations. Anyone else? Just a quick hi Emmy. Hi. [laughter] Welcome. That's it. Thank you both for coming. We look forward to hearing from you and uh in your updates. Thank you so much. I think it's going on the way out. Yes, please. That's a requirement of that position. Yeah. Um announcements, correspondence, and distribution. Does any member have anything there? I want to welcome our new school committee member, Derek. Um uh I know I myself have been harassing him, asking him for about [laughter] three, four years
006to join the school committee. Um so thank you for finally doing it. So appreciate it here. All right. Rock anyone else? You want them done first? Everybody put their hands up. Yeah. Megan and Chris, I was just going to do the same. Welcome to We're thrilled to have you here. Looking forward to all the contributions you'll make. Welcome back, John. appreciate you being willing to raise your hand again and serve another three years. Much appreciated. Uh I just want to give the committee an update. We had made a motion to have the air quality tested at the high school. They were supposed to come on Tuesday. There was an issue with the state that will be here next week. So we'll have a couple update after that. Thank you. Yep. Quickly. Yeah. Uh thank you
007Derek for uh putting your name on the ballot and appreciate uh you being here and and joining us for the next three years. And uh John, yeah, as Megan said, thank you for uh one more round here of school committee. So, we appreciate your time, your involvement, and and obviously your your uh insight and experience. Thank you, Chris. I I guess I'd just add welcome, Derek. Um glad you glad you're on board with us, and thank you for the committee for supporting me and the community for supporting me. Craig. Oh, yeah. Um when I had the opportunity yesterday to visit Shining Stars annual invention convention. Um it was pretty awesome. When would you agree? Yes. Uh this year's Gre uh creations highlighted a chicken nugget food truck with a variety of dipping sauces, a bustling
008car wash, a giant Lego man, a pizza shop offering whole pizzas and slices, a car with seating for four, a candy shop, an ice cream shop with variety of flavors, an aquarium, and a farm complete with a bar and cow, horse, pig, and chicken coop. So, uh the invention convention down in Shining Star. I think today was the last day for it. So, um I believe in in this week's um newsletter that uh Mr. Kernan sends out, I think there'll be some pictures in there. So, stay tuned for those. Awesome. Thank you. The only thing I have just a reminder about the open meeting law training that town hall is providing on April 14th. There's a 1:30 time and a 6:00 time in the upper town hall. Um there's been some urges from um town
009hall in terms of uh town council and I don't know why I can't think of town administrator um to attend this um this thing that was put together by the HR director. So um I sent that out I believe to everybody. If anyone did not get it I can pass that along and uh hopefully some of us can make it. Thank you for announcements. We'll move on to invitation to speak. You speak it. Okay great. Uh invitation to speak is for public feedback to the school committee allowing members to listen to and understand community concerns. It is not intended for debate. The speaker should provide their name and keep their comments to three minutes or less unless otherwise extended by the chair. The full policy is under code beedh and it can be found on
010our website. Hi. Hi. Um I'm Helen Chaone. Um mom of four boys involved in Milford public schools for 20 years now. and I spoke last week uh last meeting and I got a little choked up about the topic and at first I was embarrassed but then I was like no they usually see me being you know a crazy lunatic yelling so I was glad you guys got to see I do have a sensitive side I'm not going to take three minutes I just want to say like I said at last meeting um I'm going to keep coming back until I get the three campus aids that Josh had requested for two years. One thing I didn't say at the last meeting was I want everyone to understand that this is so important and I know
011that it's important to you guys because it's about the safety of the students. You have kids that'll be coming to the school or are at the school um that work at the school, wives that work at the school. So, I think we're all on the same page. I want to point out the fact that I've had three children successfully graduate from this school. Never ever did they have an issue with anything violent. They were never bullied or beaten up. They never beat up anybody. I've never had a kid suspended or anything. My last son who's here is a sophomore is 62. I'm not worried about him. I'm worried about the students and the staff. And it's not administration's job to police the students in between classes and using the bathroom. Um, it'll this will cut
012down on vandalism of the bathroom severely. Danny has come to unclog the toilets several times. It's never for an organic reason. It's always vandalism because the bathrooms are just open. Kids leave for 7 to 10 minutes instead of two to three. Um, so once we get three staff members that Josh requested, that will cut down significantly. It won't stop it. I understand that. But like I had said at the last meeting, I came from Newton North High School with 4,000 kids and we had back then 30 years ago three staff members. So if that worked for a student body of 4,000, there's 300 kids roughly in each grade here. It's it's definitely going to help. It needs to be the right person. I would love for it to be a retired police officer and, you
013know, a stay-at-home mom trying to get back into work and having the same school schedule. I would love to be on a hiring committee when it comes about. And like I said last time, I don't need a a another job, but I would love to do it. And I would do it until 2027 when my son graduates. And nice to meet you, Derek. I you weren't here last time. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for coming. And I do have to leave cuz I'm Oh, I'll So, so, so good news. Tonight, we actually had a quick discussion about hall monitors and we're going to be actually scheduling another meeting, but we're going to dive deep into it. Oh, awesome. And I'm also at a class auction meeting right now that's happening and I had a leave
014to come. So, I'm leaving, but thank you. See you next time. Thank you. Have a good night. No, if I can just add I think Michael that follows on the announcements correspondence distribution. So, Thank you. I'd like to respond now in our policy what um for for invitation to speak. General chairperson update. We'll move on to that. Um I had two things listed here because I was uncertain of the update I gave on the roof last time. However, there is really no more update. I believe some quotes have been gathered on um doing the full roof assessment, but we don't have all of them. um hoping to hear that I believe next week. So there's really no change on the roof status right now. Um the budget update with the finance committee meetings, I mentioned
015them in the budget meeting, but I'll remind everybody now we have a capital subcommittee meeting on the 9th, which is Wednesday at 6 p.m. at town hall. And then the full finance committee meeting on the budget is also on the 9th at town hall at 7 pm. Um, John, I know you've told me this probably 12 times at this point, but if the entire committee wants to attend one of these meetings, they are allowed to. Do we have to dual post that if everybody shows up? If we're going to what? The finance committee. If we're going to deliberate, we should dual post it. I mean, if we're just going to go and and we should and I've I've talked to town council or former town council about this, we should post it because if we
016don't and we sit there and there's there's two different thoughts, but it's much safer to post it. Okay. So, if I say no, I think we should do XYZ and you say no, we should do ABC, it's a deliberation. It's much cleaner to host anticipate questions and but clearly the finance committee is hosting and chairing the the meeting. Mine was just going to be around Matt sort of how we're thinking about I know we're not per making any like immediate requests but just and it's a problem or it's uh related to the entire town certainly not just the schools but just how we're thinking about the capital plan and related to potential tariffs like a little asterisk four times whatever percent just so that we're not you know making all these immediate changes or whatever.
017So, just something that I'm sure will come up in the context of the broader discussion, but you want to flag that. Definitely. So, um I guess what I'll say is if anybody's planning on going, let me know. And if it seems like we're approaching four members for either one of those meetings, I'll just make sure that we get a posting out there ahead of time. Um otherwise, I know I'll be there, Michael. I assume you can. Um and administration will be there, too. So, we'll probably talk about that one more time on Tuesday at our potential next budget meeting. brings us to the report of the superintendent of schools which will be done by Dr. Conigley tonight. Uh MHS uh MSBA update. Uh all the materials have been submitted to MSBA. Uh we're still waiting
018on MSBA enrollment team to provide us with information after we met with them in January. Uh once the enrollment is resolved, the only item remaining is the feasibility study agreement which we also received from the MSBA team as well. Any questions on that? No. No. Thank you. Can move on to the report of the assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction and assessment. Uh we have in your packet there's a request for out of state travel. Um this will be funded this will be funded uh through title one. Um it's the annual conference of the reading league. This is for our curriculum supervisor of literacy. Um you can see the benefits that uh she'll she'll attain from it. Uh most I think especially um access to current research and and reading. Um, what I guess we asked
019for on this is just for her to be out of the district, out of state. Make a motion to approve that. Motion to approve out of state travel by Megan, second by Brandon. Any discussion? Just quickly, thank you for putting the benefits to the district in these u uh requests. Welcome. All in favor? Abstain. All right, we have six in favor and one abstension. All right, report of the school business administrator. Okay. Um, so, uh, if you click into the link of the 25 budget updates, it's current year, Derek. Um, every month we have like a quick glance of the current year budget. Mhm. Um and um just so everybody look at the B balance the the bottom line balance. Um so going into the fourth quarter uh we have about 665,000 left to spend.
020Um is making a face please. So, at the beginning of March, I told everybody to um put in their POS by the end of March, and I um I've been meeting with um some principles to go over their budget um just to see where they are. And um mo I believe most of the budget are in uh purchase orders in at this point but a lot of um expenses such as time time sheets are not encumbered in the budget. Um and as I render report the retro pay is not included in this uh report um for the TA's uh the that whole unit. Um so to answer um the John's question about the circuit breaker um the total circuit breaker including the the payback from the town um still doesn't cover the deficit of transportation
021deficit and um tuition deficit. So because of the high cost this year questions on that maybe just one or sorry you going to go gonna go with athletics. Uh no transportation. Go ahead. I [laughter] was going to uh A or B. I was Yeah, exactly. Well, I guess yeah, transportation. Uh athletics. Where why are we at a $200,000 deficit? So um 50 about around 50,000 is because I moved um so the secretary used to budget under principal's budget in two 2000 series and I moved the budget to uh under trans athletics. Okay. Um I I should have made the budget transfer last time but I I I missed that one. Um so the rest is the coach statements. Is that how you recall how we did last year? Were you did we go did we
022go over budget last year too? Exclude. We did. I remember because the question when we were cutting things last year was how are we cutting from athletics when they went over budget, right? And we cut from them. What was it? It was a significant amount. Okay. So, and then there was there was no plan as to cover that. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for remembering. I guess my question was more of a forecasting question looking ahead. Craig, you alluded to this in the budget committee meeting that we just had in terms of transportation potentially be increasing due to needs and people physically changing locations over the next few months. I'm curious how you think about forecasting that and just right understood. [laughter] Uh just curious how we should be kind of preparing or just um we
023we definitely should be preparing for that. Um, so we only have a quarter left. So we're not looking at like 40,000 transportation, more like 10,000. Okay. Is for one students. So yeah, it's hard to Is there additional vendors that we would need to be seeking out or do we have the coverage that we need to transport those students? Um, so far everything you see here are encumbered as POS. So, we secured vendors for those students. But you're talking if if people move if we start needing more transportation, can we have it covered? Um, it remains to be seen. Okay. Um, it's always, you know, it's always last second, for example, even on a field trip, uh, whether or not we're going to have a bus driver for it. Um, we're scrambling for for bus drivers
024just for those kinds of trips, too. Okay. Thanks, Matt. Yeah. Anything else on uh the budget? Okay. Um do we need a update on the the 26 budget or I assume we can pass over that since we just talked about it for an hour. Excellent. And next is the personnel change updates or information. I just [clears throat] had a question on that. Yeah. Craig, can you just speak to the is it the risk program? Is that what it's referred to? RSK. Yeah, that's um K. That's our kindergarten program, right? Ready set. Oh, that's what we Oh, sorry. Yeah, ready set K. That's right. Got it. Thank you. Sorry. So, incoming kindergarten. Got it. Got it. Thanks. All right. Thank you. Hold on, Matt. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. You have one. Um, and then when you
025see all those the new positions that you see, uh, it's obviously for 25 26. We're still working the budget. Um these are all in a sense positions that would be under the the level service those summers summer positions. Yeah. Okay. DSY extended school year extended school year. Sorry. Thank you for that. Same as ready K's summer program too. be nice. Can um possibly over the next few days, nothing too quickly, just uh the cost of the summer program. What what cost of the statements? Yeah, just again, doesn't have to be today, but it'd be good information to kind of have um I can pull this pretty quickly. again. It's not doesn't have to be now. Any other questions on personnel updates? Okay, thank you. Brings us to the consent agenda. So, I will ask before
026I start talking, is there any questions on the minutes that would require them being pulled out? I see nothing. All right. [clears throat] So, the consent agenda tonight is going to include the following. the approval of 13 warts, the amount of $851,593.50. The approval of minutes from the March 20th, 2025 regular session, the March 20th, 2025 executive session, that's for approval only, and also the February 11th, 2025 executive session for approval only. Professional development in the amount of $9,81340. grants. There's two totaling 23,000 and there is one gift in the amount of $6,770 from Center for Leadership and Education. Uh the purpose is for empowering teachers for leadership. Motion to approve the consent agenda. Motion by Brendan, second by Megan. All in favor? See seven. Seven. It's unanimous. Thank you. All right. Excellent. Let me
027just note that down. Subcommittee updates. Did any subcommittees meet in the last two weeks? I believe so. Thank you. Future agenda items. Um Derek, just so you're aware when you look at that, there's a long-term agenda on there. That's a link to that um that we put together as a group. We in the past have had a running list of things to talk about along with what administration has which sets up the different topics throughout the year. So we kind of put it together in one um I guess road mapap for the year. So we'll be updating that as we uh wrap up this school year. So um but during this window if there's any topic that anyone is looking to discuss further or want more information on this is the time to ask for
028that too. Chris has his hand up. Yeah, as I'm looking um this is something I brought up in the past just as as we transition uh superintendent wise and as we finalize our budget, I think that it would be great to try to tie our budget and initiatives and and come into the next school year with goals for our for our superintendent as opposed to coming into the school year in October with goals. I don't know how we can squeeze it in, but I uh that's that's been I remember last about this. So I have that on my list already. you have it on there. I I'm patiently kicking it on my task list waiting to figure out the slot that that gets shoved into. Right. Um so when we get closer to discussing goals,
029yeah, I think that that's when we will I think have that maybe that becomes a working session this year to get an idea of how we do it to build that format. But um I do have that. I think that's a great idea. Any other future agenda items? None. Excellent. Thank you. All right. All right. So, that gets us to adjournment tonight. We do have executive session to discuss uh three separate topics. The uh there's an MTA grievance. We'll discuss administrative contracts and also um superintendent contract negotiations. We will not be returning to open session. And this does require a roll call vote. So, I'll start with Brendan. Yes. Verbal yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm also a yes. Thank you and good night.