Concord School Board Monthly Meeting 3-3-25

001good evening we're going to call to order the March 3rd 2025 monthly meeting of the school board Miss Meer will you please take the role Miss B here miss Campbell here miss Hastings here miss Higgins yep Mr Richards here M Robinson here miss Sadowski here miss Walsh here and I am here we are all here and we have a forum wonderful um second item is approval of the agenda um can I get a motion so move moved by Miss Campbell is there a second second second by Miss bue discussion amendments deletions all in favor of approving the agenda I any opposed any extensions motion passes next is the consent agenda which includes minutes from January 29th Communications and policy meeting the monthly meeting of February 3rd Communications and policy of February 10th the special board

002meeting of February 12th budget sessions on February 12th February 17th and February 19th and executive committee on February 17th can I have a motion to approve moved by Miss Campbell second second by Miss bu you guys clean it up um any any amendments good all those those in favor I all those opposed motion carries and our first item of business is to welcome a student from ABA Downing Cordelia DUIs or Duo I always get the wrong one who's going to talk to us about her D Bo D Bo we pronounce it wrong half of our family says it du boys half of it says it du so I needed the other half of your family here tonight and Cordelia is going to talk to us about um her experience with social emotional learning and she's

003joined with by her mom I think and fern siden the director of student and staff Wellness great so just to get started the award that Cordelia won is indicated um on the slide um it's called a c award and it's given by the collaborative for academic and social emotional learning and um the spe the award within that was called the Timothy uh P Shriver award for outstanding youth leadership and um this is Cordelia with Timothy Shriver who um is the head of the board of directors of that organization and by the way from Chicago Y and she received this award [Music] I got this award in November at Castle's secl Exchange in Chicago and I got this shirt too my mom got it my brother has a matching one want to say who your teachers

004are they're in the audience my teachers that are in the audience are Mrs Spencer and Mrs Jer [Music] the cafeteria uh manager M wheeler I also saw oh I got this award because I testified at the State House to stop a new Banning seal and also going to Capitol Hill to talk about seal more and give a speech thank you to Mrs Dutcher and Mrs Spencer because they taught me the most SEO thank you to miss P my teacher now for teaching me about shoes love and bucket filling thank you to Mr blind for schoolwide seal stuff I want all the grades to have seal because now that I'm in second grade I don't have seal class which is really a bummer because I really need it cuz I'm always mad at [Laughter] home I

005feel the same the world okay all right so so she had U mentioned that she wanted to show we do have a um the video of her testimony um that's not showing the to okay what why can't iess stop this one sorry I'm trying to quickly move okay here we go there we are it was just working outside I promise I don't know why it wouldn't be working new so kids couldn't get social emotional running or classes anymore I did not like that because helps me stay calm and be happy kindergart first with class every six days just like Jim and music I like it and so do other kids they taught me what I could do when I got mad at school or at home one thing they teach us is to use the

006tool bar you get M first [Music] that means you take three slow deep breaths then you rewind that means you think about what happened and why feel last you cut that means you make a good show another thing we learned about is five fingers breathing that means you tra up when you breathe in on your finger and Tra down when also got to go outside for some of we learn about being kind on the had a really fun time with Mrs play workor classes also every sixday we learn fun Grand games and how to be kind while we play it's one of our favorite class we also learn about Choose Love at school some of the parts of Choose Love are courage and gratitude for courage we made aign if a grownup ever saw you

007do something that was great they'd give you a sticker and you put it on the sun gratitude means that you're thankful for something you made a gratitude tree everyone in the school made a Le mine said for made all c a bunch of others said for my family also the whole school rooms about being respectful it's one of the things on the sence of the school it needs to be kind to us thank you for taking the time to listen to what kids think about please vote against hos 147 thank you very much Celia [Music] well thank you so much Cordelia can we see if any of the board members have any questions for you okay are you okay with that does anyone have any questions for Miss Robinson I do Cordelia that was a

008very brave thing that you did and consequently you've been doing more Brave things yeah what technique do you like to use to help yourself when you're like feeling really nervous and you have something Brave to do I don't normally get that nervous I can tell because I just did my fifth play a few days ago congratulations so practice a lot Friday yeah yeah fantastic well you've already got it built in then we can all learn from you right are there other questions for cilia well thank you so much for coming tonight and sharing it and for your work at the legislature and in Congress and I hope some folks there also learned about five finger breathing I'm going to try and use that myself [Applause] can I just say how great that reading was to

009yeah that was my reading teacher I'm very impressed what am I looking at here right exactly well done that's an AB A Downing kid baby congrat teachers um next we have uh the crtc for this month's learning celebration um principal fer [Music] it's a tough act to follow but we'll try on the other end of the age Spectrum we have high school students here and I thought this evening we would present um Kate Amaral's position and the focus of her position is at this crtc to be a CTE Center you have to offer three things one is college credits the other one's industry recognized credentials and the third part of that is work-based learning we could not receive Perkins grant money unless every single one of our programs had all three of those components so

010Kate has done an amazing job overseeing all three of those programs and um I don't want to take up too much time but Kate is also a conquered graduate lives in conquered her kids are in conquered Schools she's in the conquered leadership program right now uh and she's Paving the way for what I believe is the best work-based learning program in the state we are the model I have um I received phone calls and emails from other CTE centers asking how we were so successful and I truly believe it's through Kate's work that these students have been given this amazing opportunity so that's enough for me and Kate go ahead take it from here sure hello I'm Kate Amaral um the our work-based learning is like Miss Valor said is an essential component of what

011we do um it's really important for the students to get out of the classrooms and get authentic exposure to the careers and the professionals doing the jobs that they're interested in if you think you want to be a teacher you really don't know until you step foot in that classroom and that really goes for any job so we do really want to get the students out um so they can start um seeing what those jobs look like what the day-to-day is like what the skills are that they're going to need we want them exhibiting the professional skills that they have gained from our program and we want them to start building their Professional Network um this doesn't happen without a lot of active buyin from the business community in the greater conquered area and we're

012really grateful for the business Partnerships that we have um that we've developed so that year toe students can go out and have these experiences and all we really have to do is reach out to those business partners and those community members and ask them hey are you guys interested in having students again this year and often it's a resounding yes and they create some really great experiences for our students um so um work-based learning is an element in all of our programs um but we also have what's called our crtc plus program which I handed a flyer around in recent um probably like five to seven years ago we were able to start accepting sophomores into our programs what that means is they can take a crtc program their sophore in their junior year and

013then we had to decide what does that senior year look like then we still want them to have access to our resources to our business partners um to our irc's and our college credits um we don't want them just kind of after they've gained two years of technical skills and everything that we have to offer to just kind of go into the abyss their senior year um we also want to offset that concept of graduating early no we want them to still be in our schools and utilizing our support systems and our resources playing sports going to prom um so the crtc plus model is a way for them to kind of stay connected with us and utilize our resources um but purposefully and intentionally take steps into their future um so it's an ELO

014model that this that is credit bearing but it's um really in the students hands to create what that looks like and it often comes out of that work-based learning experience that they have in their second year of the program and they just expand upon that um so really I'd like you guys to hear from our students um so because they can talk a little bit about what their specific experiences has have been really the the options are endless and it's all in their hands to make it what they want to make it um so we can start with Lauren and you can tell us a little bit about what you're doing okay all right hello I'm Laura Loren I'm in the construction trades program um I was very fortunate to um be accepted for my

015sophomore and my junior year so as a senior I'm able to have a internship at North Branch construction a construction management company um and it was a really great process um they interviewed me with all of their head people and um they confirmed what um the timeline was what they wanted me to do um and what was really important to them was that I also spent some time in the office um I was envisioning just being out on the field and um learning stuff from there and that's all I thought I wanted to do in construction I thought I wanted to be a basic Carpenter maybe a project manager way down the line um but my first couple months in the office were really enlightening and I realized I actually liked it a lot more

016that I thought I would um so I'm now looking at different positions still in North Branch but maybe not uh your basic Carpenter but maybe like a project engineer um so it has really helped um me realize what I want to do um and I was able to find that out much sooner rather than possibly getting stuck in a job that I didn't want so it has been very helpful for me in that wayant right Marcus Marcus is a junior currently in criminal justice so he's planning out what his crtc plus is going to look like so I want you to share that us um so my name's Marcus day um basically criminal justice has helped like pay the pathway for me um so as a junior this year I start my internship with the

017conquer police department and then next year um I'll have another opportunity to possibly do another internship ship with conquer Police Department for a semester um to just really gain a lot of experience and really uh try to like set in stone if that's what I want to do for my career um and then for my second semester it also introduced the opportunity of working for the jail or going internship for the jail and then getting uh the possibility to work for them as I'll be 18 um so that was really good and then in addition to that um I'm also doing the teaching assistant so I'll be in I'll go back to the classroom sometimes and help our uh criminal justice teacher uh Gil bwin uh out um with various things like grading um uh

018just helping the kids out in the classroom with completing presentations and uh wrapping up work and then I'll also be um taking college courses through crtc plus um in advancement towards my criminal justice degree through nhti and yeah so all in all like criminal justice has really just kind of like created a pathway for me that I wouldn't be able to access if it wasn't for [Music] them my name is Cody Haskell I am a junior and I'm also in the criminal justice program and crtc has really helped me pave the way of being a colle officer so a collection officer is basically a guarden in prison and my dad has been a collections officer for 17 years so I kind of wanted to follow his path so CTC has really helped me with that

019this year this Thursday we were starting a internship with Cong police department and then next year same as Marcus I will be going to NCI taking those courses through CTC Plus getting my associates and criminal justice I'll be helping out lovely teacher Miss odwin with a teaching assistance if she's out of the classroom helping out make sure nothing happens if she needs helping with grading help with that and I'll also be um starting internship with coner Peace Department next year unfortunately I'm not old enough to do a internship with the jail or the prison next year but I I was talking to an FBI agent about maybe doing internship with him awesome hi my name is eviana Ramo I'm a senior this year and like the rest of them I started crtc when I was

020a sophomore my sophomore junior year I did the two years of Criminal Justice where I was able to do an internship with the courts where I went around to different courts in the state and got to sit in on meetings help with them we ended up going to the supree Supreme Court and doing a mock trial um that was a really enlightening experience for me and for me my senior year this year instead of taking kind of building my own path I decided that I wanted to also work in the emergency services field so I I skipped year one and I'm now in year two of Emergency Services where I'm getting my EMT license and through this I've been able to um work in the field go to different ambulances around the state and work

021with them have hand or patient contacts where I'm physically putting my hands on patients and helping them with everything they need and um being able to mix those two things that aren't normally together for me it was really important because I wanted to go into I knew I wanted law but then I found this medical law thing which is a very Niche thing that not a lot of people talk about where mixing the two everyone helped me so much during crtc y'all are killing it I know I wish I had something like this when I was your age like how many of us have held down a job that we like didn't really want I've had like 12 so like very proud of all of you this is so cool tip of the Hat teach

022yes and this is um heavy on criminal justice obviously today just because that's a program that has greatly expanded its work-based learning opportunities in the last few years thanks to a lot of hard work between um Miss Bowden as you guys have talked about of really establishing those connections in our community we have some really really great experiences that the students get to have in that program um but in addition to to Laura who's doing a a a program with North Branch we also have a student from our construction train traes program who's at long Champs and has his electricians apprenticeship license already um and so instead of coming to our class for second semester and building the shed he knew he wanted to be an electrician so he's going and working for long Champs

023three days a week as an apprentice electrician um so not only do they have one foot into their future they really have both feet in while they're still in high school they're receiving credit for high school credit for it they're being paid Flor is being paid at North Branch which is great we want we want to see that happen too um and they're really starting their career um we also have a student who works at Bobcat he was an automotive intern at Bobcat it turned into an an internship and now he spends he's a Bose student who spends three days working at Bobcat a week and um that's where he's going to work after he graduates so they're really um really kickstarting their careers um and we're seeing more and more um from all of

024our crtc programs but we're just super excited to see what Marcus and Cody do next year with their crtc plus and we're really proud of Laura and eie as well so so yeah that's kind of just a glimpse of some of the stuff we do but like I said it it can be anything Miss Higgins so an observation I have that is a bit breathtaking quite honestly is all of you spoke about what you think you want and going and doing that and being very assertive about it and then either not going a direction you thought or having a chance to try something different and having these big aha moments that show you a bigger understanding of what you love and wow maybe I like the office better maybe I'll do this instead of this

025WOW connecting law and medical stuff I mean hugely connected in the big world and you wouldn't know just doing one of the other so it's not just learning how to be an electrician or learning how to be a cop or learning how to be a prison guard it's learning every view of those things so that whatever you do end up choosing you can look at it through the eyes of the person in the office or the person in the ambulance or that to me that the most impressive part of the the whole presentation is that every single one of them got to see their their their passion through five different lenses that's awesome absolutely Mr Richards yes I have a question for you so and by the way congratulations these are all very impressive very

026good great achievements that you should be very proud of um I want to know because you've been there for three years some of you for two years what is the thing that you think would have made your crtc experience better and if you had us you know give you something or give something to crtc what would it be do you have anything that comes to mind um so me personally one thing that I would think about could you speak into the microphone a little bit Marcus thank you oh is this better yes you're doing great so one thing me personally that I would say is um expanding like the class times just so that when you go to do your work based learning you're not limited by an hour and a half cuz you can

027like you can accomplish a lot of things but if you're able to set a larger margin of time aside to be able to go and maybe get like three hours out of your uh work based learning you're able to accomplish a lot more there and build like a lot more um relationships there um so I just think it'll help make you more successful if you were to be able to be there for a longer period of time good thought I really like what Marcus said and I agree with him I also like getting more appreciation to our teachers they do more than a lot of people realize and it really helps a lot of children with their future and really pay those ways for those kid and be a very big part of the community

028nice thank you for sharing your insights that's very valuable for us and I appreciate you being willing to do that Miss H uh I got a question from the the workforce perspective I'm wondering if you hear from employers after the students have come to to work with them and or be apprenticed with them do they find that these students have skills that match what they're looking for better than just applicants off the street I would assume they do but what are you hearing from from employers yes absolutely we get a lot of um feedback is an essential element of work-based learning and the elos so we do send a midpoint survey and we send a final feedback survey from the employees and we do consistently get that great feedback about um them coming with um

029you know a certain amount of knowledge about tools and some technical skills um but um I don't know if you guys are aware we have our professional skills rubric that's 40% of our students grade um so we do put a lot of focus on those professional skills in the two two years that they're in our program which are communication collaboration self-direction and Innovation inventiveness it used to be Innovation um so um there's a lot of focus in those two years and that's actually a lot of the feedback that we get from the business Community is actually that professionalism that they bring to the workplace um which is great that's what we love to hear um and like I said we're able to go back to these businesses every year and say hey we're starting another

030round of internships are you willing to take them again and that's really our biggest kind of way of hearing that resounding yes is their way of saying of course we want those crtc students back in back into our businesses is there anything that that they would like to see your students come with a little bit more of that that we as the school district should be looking at providing um good question um again that scheduling piece is really important that Marcus brought up more time with the students is something that they they ask for just as much as the students ask for um and um yeah and more students they're they're happy to have happy to have them great thank you all very much how many students do you currently have in crtc plus so

031doing their third year yes so we have 15 students doing that which is a pretty large expansion we've really only been able to put the focus towards it since my my position was at um so it was consistently like one or two kids the first couple of years and now we've really boosted it up um and so it's exciting to see so how many students come in as sophomores do we very small percent very small yeah yeah because because of the weit list um yeah I bet because of the weight list we give priorities to Juniors and then we don't want to overlook the senior but we do recognize to complete the whole program you need two years so we almost allocate the same percentage to sophomores as we would to a senior but priority

032is always given to the Junior and so we're looking for a sophomore who in those essay questions on their application can really kind of show us an intentional three-year plan um and it really helps us kind of make those decisions about what sophomores we can take Mr Richard I have another question for the students because I like asking them this but I I'm familiar somewhat familiar with the crtc program one of the things I hear is that our crtc our crtc students have um very well-developed uh professional and um let's say like everything from putting together their resume to speaking to their desires and their skills to being able to communicate so I I hear you have a very good ability to communicate with employers or potential employers do you think you have a better

033advantage of that than the average high school student and should we be looking at giving them some of this skill that you have acquired I'd say we spend a lot about especially when we started our internships I know for criminal justice we dedicated a week of our classroom time to building a resume to figure out how you draft an email to try and get a job we were made as the students to go out and do those things the teachers didn't reach out to these businesses for us this was something we had to do ourselves and I think it really makes a difference when you have the skills to communicate with someone yourself and give every chance that you can present yourself in a um positive light and a professional light and I think the

034teachers spend a lot of energy and time making sure that you have those skills to be able to do that the four of you certainly have developed those skills very well so you should be very proud one thing that I don't know if it's just limited to the construction trades program um is that we have um spur and that's where you get your grade um for the quarter and the way that my class um was done is that you get a grade for every single job sheet that you do um whether it's Electrical Plumbing welding um carpentry is a little bit different because we make a shed um so it's hard to like have certain aspects of that and you're more disg graded for the overall shed and your overall collaboration um but we get

035all of our grades and then we go and we meet with our teacher it's a one-on-one 5 to 10 minute conversation that is held as if it was an interview I shake my teacher's hand every single time I go in that in his office um and it was so nerve-wracking I think the first time I accidentally said nice to meet you um uh but that has really helped because we um we talk about why I got the grade that I did and um I'll be like I I think I deserve a four in electrical because I got um job sheets on this and I've helped out my fellow students on this and stuff like that and if he um says oh well actually I would rather give you a three because of yada y y

036we're able to communicate and go through our grades so it's really helpful to know where I'm at and what I need to improve on while also giving that professional um environment that um has really enhanced my um skills thank you thank you yeah thank you all so in criminal justice sorry about that so in Colonel Justice uh each year we have a unit dedicated to interviewing and we interview each other we watch uh examples of bad interviews and good interviews and take what we learned and we this year we had um uh police with Sheriff's Department uh lawyer they all came in and we in interviewed us and told our teacher how we did that is with both years oh that's really cool thank you for telling us sure yeah Marcus do you have anything

037um I was actually just going to say the same thing that Cody said we have uh these business partners that come in like the sheriff's office um we had an attorney in there and then just having that live interview where we have to um it's oneon-one and we're kind we're isolated and then like presenting our resume and articulating why we should be why we should have that job um and really just trying to like show um just how like good we are I guess Mak sense you're good you can say it um so those like using that it really just helps like develop all of our professional skills I'd say thank thank you superintendent Laura um robotics is kind of related to um the work that you do can you share with the board uh

038your experiences uh because I understand you're the captain of the robotics team at conquet high school so could you share a little bit about what's happening so I started um the ret robotics team when I was still um obviously at remet but I was also able to start at the high school team when I was in 7th grade um so I'm a senior and I've been on the team for six years I've been a part of leadership for three years um and I've been this is uh my first year being the captain um the previous two years I was the assistant Captain um that has also helped me um a lot it's it was hard being pushed into leadership um as a sophomore and I was the ones that were bossing seniors around that was

039a little daunting at first um but it's something that I'm very grateful for and something that has definitely pushed me further um and that was also helpful because I went into it being like all right I don't I don't know how to do all this math I don't know how to make a design but if you give me a blueprint I can make that so um I wanted to go into mechanical and so that's what opened my mind up to carpentry um but but since then now as the captain I don't do much on that sub team anymore I help direct and help um do the mechanical side of the robot so I'm the ones that's directing the mechanical team but also now the electrical and the cad which is our computer um Ed design

040so everything on the robot is built um in on the computer first so Laura how did your team do this weekend uh we we went to the semi-finals um and that is really great for us because um that gets us a lot of District points to hopefully get to District Championship um I have not been on the team when we have gone to districts um we have um struggled to get into playoffs before um but we were picked by the third Alliance and made it to the semi-finals um and we only have two competitions so getting those points are are very very very important congratulations love Laura I don't mean to embarrass you but I just have to to share that it's because I think it it's in large part because of who you are

041but also because of the education you received here in congre Laura was a third grade student of mine a few years ago and it CS full circle it does and I will tell you that if anybody had told me that Laura would be here speaking as eloquently and professionally as she is today in third grade this was a little girl who was afraid of her own shadow she she didn't she wouldn't read and reading group um she was just a little she was a little scared but look at how you have grown and blossomed and I and and I'm sure all of your other educators are just so proud of you all um and the remarkable progress you have all made and can't wait to see what you all do in your future congratulations I

042meant thatr yeah thank you all thank you for coming tonight thank you thank you yeah that was so cool love I wish this is all we had to this is all I I wish the meeting could end out yeah motion to a j always in our world anyone of you can make a motion do how are we doing on batteries bro it's just always a fight huh energy recharg eat them for breakfast lunch and dinner I was really worried yeah well she's okay she's okay okay kids are going to be making so much money when they get out of school are you kidding me like and they're getting their electrician license man yeah yeah we're going to move on to recognitions and reports and sticking with our student theme uh we're van and Aron uh

043hi everybody we're switching up today and I was going to go first so I hope everyone enjoyed their vacation at CHS the senior class has officially booked the atrium at Eagle Square for our prom and the Mount Washington dinner cruise for our class trip I got married at the atrium it's a fun place yeah it looks really nice and it should be really fun so last month seniors had our senior scholarship meeting for all of our CHS scholarships and our CHS common app and many students are hearing back and deciding on schools they schools they will attend for next year and making decisions for their future coming up in March are the district concerts with the band on the 18th the choir on the 19th and Orchestra on the 25th uh last month NHS did

044singing grams for Valentine's Day with pretty bad singing at least from my group but they were that was a blast they were really fun and then spring sports are also starting soon with preseason practices already starting and some of our winers is going to playoffs indoor track athlete Grace seaw qualified for Nationals in the 55 meter dash and we have three athletes who are looking to qualify this weekend for Nationals and boys and girls ice hockey are both in the playoffs starting this week on Friday thank you have a great [Music] day good evening everyone I hope you all had a great vacation CHS had a successful winter carnival on Friday before break and the senior and junior class will be collaborating together for hosting this year's talent show the event will be held on

045March 27th in the crystal molth Auditorium and tickets will be $5 at the door please come and support for my report this month I would like to highlight a huge issue that is happening within our community um there is racism that is happening within our schools and I believe it is a public threat to our Public Health as a student of color I know what it is like growing up in experiencing racism within our schools and as much as I would not want any kid to go through the same experience as I did I know that's not possible but I would like for them to have the confidence and courage to speak up about their experiences and educate those around them I believe with Dei diversity Equity inclusion being removed from several establishments I believe

046that is now to be the most important time to educate all schools including students and staff with Dei anti-racism education kids at the elementary and middle school level have been asking for this type of education to be brought up and taught to help bring awareness and understanding to their peers and teachers bringing in Dei education will strengthen our school district this education will make a progress towards a positive change that will make a difference and a longlasting impact thank you thank [Music] [Applause] you which actually brings us into our next item which is the district de update superintendent and I I I thank you for your words I think we all know um that uh those types of efforts are under attack but uh that makes the more valuable because the kids feel under attack

047too so mhm thanks Aaron um I just let me start I think I'll go right to the equity the equity piece I wanted to report to the board about the work that the uh districtwide Equity committee is is um currently underway um the equity advisor advisory meets uh over at runlet uh and it's made up of uh staff uh teachers administrators uh students attend and folks from the community uh and also outside of the community people who work in the area of in this area and so the committee has decided this year they've focused on four areas uh and and created subgroups for each of those areas uh the first one is around Equity audits we think that at least the committee the folks reporting out feel that we need to do more work around

048what our Equity issues are for instance let me give you some examples we want to look at co-curricula is is uh the the participation uh representing our student body and that's at all grade levels including Elementary I think your point was well taken Aon um we also want to look at um our policies we have a incredible number of policies we have a committee of the school board that works on policies but are they reflective um and do they are they written with a lens on equity and when I talk about Equity I'm not just talking about and our committee doesn't just talk about um um brown and black people they're talking about youngsters with um special education needs they're talking about youngsters that have poverty or are homeless youngsters or are students lgbqt students

049so um when I when they use the word Equity it it does represent all of those folks so when we look at it and when we do these audits we want to see how that reflects on all students and their participation one other piece that I think is critical is our curriculum we've been doing curriculum work as you know we've done some math we've done uh some social studies we want to look at all of our curriculum curriculum areas ensuring that it's um has a an equity lens to it and we're addressing all of those needs so that's the first goal committee is working on it the second was professional development and you know we've spent the last five years actually offering a lot of professional development to our teachers and to our administrators and

050um I think it's time that in in terms of things like cultural competencies um the helping teachers understand the impact of homelessness what trauma does to kids and you know youngsters and students get trauma in many ways so we've done all all of that work with our teachers to make sure um that they understand how to deal with those I think many of you know we've done work on restorative justice particularly um done very well at the high school we have the A Train the trainer model and we're now working at the middle school so that um everyone knows how to use and employ uh the the restorative justice and that professional development continues but my last point on this around professional development was sort of what you just said what about students needs in

051understanding these things you know we sometimes are reactionary to the students when the issues um rise and there's a crisis instead of doing more preventative kinds of work with our students so I agree with you I think that we need to help our students have a deeper understanding of what RAC racism is and the impact of that that as it relates to them as students and humans so um that's another area that that professional development committee is working on the third area is to reduce barriers and stigmas so there's another group of folks on this committee working on things like connections to the community uh Transportation huge issue in our community you know what we find that some students aren't able to participate in after school programs because they don't have a ride home and

052so there's no way to get them from point a at the high school home for wherever that wherever their home is located um but even some of the parent nights like when there's concerts I think van you mentioned the concerts coming up um sometimes our parents have a hard time getting there they don't have transportation how do we impact that in a way that um will support that issue for parents getting to school events the um in addition to in in terms of reducing barriers and um and stigma we want to relook at discipline data we did that a couple of years ago we looked at all the discipline data we wanted to see if there was Deltas between different groups of youngsters and so I think it's time for us to do that again

053that was probably two years ago that we did that and um I think it's important that we look at it and that's one of the things that this committee would like to look at we also wanted they wanted to look at the language line we have a language line so we can have good communication with our families but does everyone know how to use it is everyone comfortable using it is there some anxiety about using it and so we have a team going around and and helping our teachers and staff be able to use the language line and be comfortable using it ni um the other the last piece um that this the group looked at was this students particularly um have expressed a concern about a safe place um to communicate and share with

054each other and we've talked about that but we really haven't created that kind of a venue if you will or place for our students to feel like they can do that and of course it has to be done with someone who can help facilitate and articulate those conversations so those are the areas that they're looking at and they're working on the last one is my favorite it's because I like that committee and it's family and Community Partnerships um and it's really all about right now our committee is looking at Early Learning giving everyone a chance in the community all kids a chance to look at Early Learning opportunities you know we saw a new uh uh family center open up uh on jenning's drive we had a ribbon cutting a month or so ago and

055uh families love it they go there they bring their children uh there's teachers there the kids get to experience activities and play and all that structured play and um so we want to do more of that um so that our communities are really connected to school and that gives our youngsters coming into school a little bit of an upper hand when they're coming in and starting kindergarten so that's one of the areas we also want to um connect with crtc so that we have more of the students from the Career and Technical they come in and they're going into Elementary classrooms but we haven't seen a lot go into Early Learning classrooms you know the preschool classrooms so we want to they our committee wants to connect with that with CRT to be able to

056do that increase in home visits the research is really clear home visits are very powerful tools to um support Partnerships with our families and our community and we do some of it but to the degree that we would like to this committee would like to see more of it um and uh again ongoing parent education we do have some of that I think you see I I know that um out at milbrook um uh Katie has some parent groups uh that they will be talking about different language and helping with language and so we want to do the committee is recommending that we do more so I just kind of wanted to give you an update about what we're doing and um I think it's been really good work and I think people really feel

057connected to the work and I think one of the points you made and we we discuss this in the city and Community relation uh joint meeting with the city which is you know we are auditing ourselves and it it is not about giving one group special treatment it's making sure all students have a place they can belong and have access to the opportunities we offer being able to participate in an after school club or an after school sport that gives students a leg up in their education in applying for a job like belonging to a team you know when you're 15 and don't have anything else in your resume that helps because it shows you can work with other people so I think you know continuing to make sure all students across all income race

058ability levels have those access is something that is very important questions for the superintendent I I will periodically keep you updated on the progress of that committee and I appreciate um Cara MERS on that with us and and um and and brings the insight for the board so it's really a it's a very good committee I really like it Kim um and Kim and quinsey have done a lot of work in facilitating that so I'm pretty happy with it um I I was going to start out as um I wasn't trying to like you know how they always say that people like to change the living room furniture around and everybody nobody likes it right your husband or your wife gets mad because you Chang the furniture that is not why I did this tonight

059this actually came came about the change in this room actually came about a recommendation from Homeland Security and um we had all the schools get visits by Homeland Security you know that right we've talked about that they give us recommendations to strengthen the safety protocols in all of our buildings guess what we've never done it here at the seu office and this is a public building with lots of people in and out of this building all day long and and and into the evening right early morning till late at night and so um Matthew um invited Homeland Security over and met with our staff um they reviewed all the things we did and then they did a tour of the building um talked with us and made some recommendations one of the recommendations was when

060we talked about Schoolboard meetings and they asked how it was set up um they realized that there was no access points for the Schoolboard and um so we flipped the room um we think it's working out okay I think they have more room in the audience it seems to be a little more spacious um and then it also gives uh you a chance you have exit points and our visitors have exit points so um they recommended that we do this so um we still have some technology to fix but the the board behind you is working we think this one is just needs a little bit more time Jack is that right yeah there Splitters coming yeah so we'll have be able to have all of those uh screens up and running for you so

061you can watch whatever comes up whatever your heart desire yeah whatever you want to watch so just so you know why and we did get a full report by the way there were other in other uh suggestions as you know I always keep security recommendations confidential because obviously that's our way of um enhancing security here in the building uh you okay with that y okay um so just to follow up on our Career and Technical kids aren't they awesome they're so awesome so great um well as you know there's been a lot of discussion about Career and Technical at the state level and there seems to be an interest in it uh they're interested in it uh they have uh struggling a bit with the purse strings so um that which is unfortunate but uh

062the governor is visiting uh Career and Technical Center on Thursday nice on Thursday um the 6th of March at 10:00 so she's going to visit and uh by in invitation from our principal an Fowler um put just she put it in she sent it into her office and next thing she knew she got is that right in you just yeah when she was beinged office there's a lot of bills coming up you might want to visit so she'll be there and i' obviously You' like to attend way to jump on it dude proud of you um that's so great we hope it'll be part of her I haven't seen the budget yet that just came out today she's also speaking um the Chamber of Commerce has an event uh at 11:30 on Thursday down at

063groni and she's going to be it's a State of the State kind of address so um we're going to we're going to have some folks attend that um so we can hear what she has but that's certainly a big huge piece tonight's a perfect example of why this is such an important part of our our programs here in conquer so um good I want one more item and in front of you tonight I I left um I left a contract that I would it's with great school partnership you can see it it's at your table and it's a contract that we've been working with we've been negotiating with it's the best word I for that although it's not really negotiations but what do we want this group we are looking to to help us with

064our Equity work and um we uh doing the work like the audits helping in looking at um the professional development that we have helping us examine curriculum and policy it's a lot but the we we this contract is for no greater than 70 but we're only asking for the between now March and June $23,000 for them to begin the work so um they will um meet with some folks they'll have some focus groups and they'll begin to look at all the documents I mentioned discipline before they'll be looking at the discipline data we have that already it's just a matter of pulling it off of our our program so um I wanted to let you know that um as we move forward with all of the work around Equity um that I would like to

065move forward with the contract with great schools partnership I will say that um Manchester is also working with Great Schools partnership and have to to to for my understanding has um had great results working with them um we've been Kim has hosted a number of meetings with them and uh we're pretty happy with what they can do for conquered so the second part will begin in um in July and we'll have the second year of it which will be an an additional uh 40 45,000 45,000 of the contct contract so that'll get us up to 70 the 70 is total for the rest of this year and into next year okay okay go ahead Sarah you know I was GNA have questions about this stuff um so this is really strictly a policy audit so

066it's going through the way that it's that I see it's sort of March of 25 to June of 25 is conducting a policy review audit um which will include and then support facilit for policy review findings to the advisory committee so this is looking like okay and then we've got September of 25 to June of 26 is that second piece right this is not instead of no a Dei professional dedicated to our district that's a great that's a great question because we've been working on this for five years right this this work um back you know right after the George Floyd case right back in 20 right I came here had just uh be begun the the process and so we've been working on it for a while I I feel like it was time

067for us to take a pause do some evaluation and Analysis what are we doing what's working what isn't working and how can we improve and that my goal was to then take the data especially the data that we'll get in June to be able to put together a proposal for the board because you're right um I I think that um um I think Erin said it um she took the wind out of my sales tonight um that's okay that's all right it was a really super proud of you yeah I love it um but that um we we know where we want to go we need to understand that you know we know that that Middle School piece was really important and is important and we need to address it so but this will give

068us the data to have us more targeted in our response to the needs of students cool do you mind if I follow up to that um actually never mind we're good thank you very much appreciate it other questions yeah speak Miss Cara Miss Cara yes um uh Miss Cara uh so this is the first time seeing this contract are you asking for us to vote on this contract tonight given that you have a start date of March 15th is my first question to be honest with you um in my role as superintendent I do have the ability to bring on people to so you don't really need to vote on it this was my way of making sure that you were informed about what we're doing um I have contracts that I don't you know

069for assistance in terms of um we've done a special ed uh review We did an mm MLL review um and this will be the data that I felt like we needed as a team to be able to what's working what isn't working and how can we improve um just one more I finally remembered what I wanted to ask would this also sort of intrinsically lead to a more accurate job description for an IND District role that would be like more manageable for an individual exactly exactly so I'm going to get that feedback that I'll be able to bring back to our committee to help craft that job description that best suits the needs of our kids and our staff too because I don't want to you know we'll always have new staff always need to

070do training um we'll continue to do restorative practice the elementary teachers elementary schools want to do restored practice so they're interested in it you know can only do so much oh I got you thank you very much for the transparency can you talk about the bidding process yeah um we did go ahead Tim you did Kim did that um we formerly met in person on two occasions um a gentleman from massach uset who does this work and then I had um a zoom zoom sort of interview with another person and then we had a face Toof face with this particular organization so out of the three um and doing reference checks this one was Rose to the top this particular organization other questions Miss maker um just I apologize I'm not familiar with great schools

071partnership are there materials that the board can be provided so that we know more about the organization their history in the state their history with this work yeah I will I'll get that for you I'll have it for you for Wednesday thank you thank you great thank you um superintendent do you have anything else no I'm fine great done um next we have Donna Reynolds with the presentation on the breakfast and lunch program yeah to do anything to this or just talk I think you're good yeah good evening everyone I first want to introduce Donna wheeler she is our head cook at Abbot Downing [Applause] school and we are here tonight to dispel some myths about school breakfast we want to show you that school breakfast is healthier than sometimes peers um I'm going to

072pass around some a couple handouts to start the first handout is just some fun facts about school breakfast thank you and there's also a comparison chart on there that compares an item that we serve at breakfast which is a cinnamon toast crunch breakfast bar compared to the same item you would buy in a store and you're going to see that um the version that we have is healthier um and that's the way with a lot of the breakfast products we have they're things that the um the students know from seeing in the store but it may be you know like a a high sugar cereal that they see in the store but we have a healthier version of that and the biggest difference is everything that we serve is whole grain Rich um which most

073of them in the store are not and then you can see from the nutritional profile you know lower in sugar lower in fat lower in saturated fat so on and so forth um I also the second handout that we have is a school breakfast count um year to date so I am going to just tell you a couple more things we have some samples for you tonight and I will turn it over to Don um in a few minutes and she will tell you a little bit about what you're sampling tonight but we're going to start passing those out while I tell you these other few things so um Studies have shown that students who eat School breakfast on a regular basis they have higher levels of achievement in reading and math they score higher

074in standardized tests they have better concentration and memory I'm thinking maybe I need to eat more School breakfast they are in general more alert and tend to maintain a healthier weight thanks Donna our breakfasts um consist of um five different items so we have uh milk we have a grain item we have a fruit we have 100% uh juice and protein at breakfast time is optional the focus is at breakfast is more on grain um regulations around that are changing for next year um but I think that I'm going to turn it over to Donna and she will tell you a little bit about what you're sampling don't eat it oh I took a bite sorry too late into the chocolate I'm sorry I just grabbed any old thing cuz I was so hi y'

075I'm Donna wheeler head cook at ABA Downing school I whoops hold it closer to me so I've been in this service food service for 25 years here at conquer for 10 years I came with Donna Reynolds because I stalk her go wherever she goes so this um when I came to Abbott Downing the breakfast program was very poor we were serving maybe 253 kids now I serve between 100 to 130 a day so with that we offer our breakfast program which goes from 7:30 to 7:45 which is only 15 minutes but that's that's the time a lotted and then I keep breakfast open until 8:15 for my students that come in late and then at 8:15 I clean up and put out our snack bags and we're going to show you Donna there's the snack

076bags I'm going to just pass them around you can look at what's in them these snack bags have um we we change them every day there's different snack bags they can have yep yep we just pass them around and they are a grab and go style so the children can come down go through the line pick what they'd like to have there are five components they must have three out of the three they've got to have a fruit or a juice or both would be preferable and then they can be on their way off to class they're in and out scan their cards boom and this this helps keep our numbers going higher and so I can do like 40 or 50 breakfast and then I can do another 50 or 60 grab and goes

077it's great and these are some of the things we have the bread that you are sampling is bread that I use for breakfast and for snack bags one is a cocoa bread MH the children love it we heat it one is a banana bread oh I just ate the banana one yes they're very very very good the next one is a zucchini bread okay and then because it is National School breakfast week I served today um they had a cheese omelette and a half an English muffin they loved it and of course they get a choice of fruit juice milk and we always I always try to serve fresh fruits every day they get three or four choices and then tomorrow is Smoothie it's a Tropical Smoothie so it's a banana which are the older

078Banas that they don't want to eat because they're brown and spotted and um fresh pineapple you guys the best strawberries can they come every week every month every everybody loves a bag of something oh my gosh look at this the little smoothies they're very good I don't know if you're going to be able to drink them with the straw I was like the straws are a little little small to suck it up but I haven't eaten dinner yet I was going to say this is incredibly helpful right now but just so you can see what it looks like this is a balanced nutrition nutritious um snack and breakfast they've got all the components even at home most kids aren't having a completely balanced meal they're they're whipping down a cereal I was so thankful we

079had school breakfast for my children they didn't like to get up and have breakfast right away they like to get up wake up and then they could go in and have a decent breakfast at school I serve cereal every day eight different kinds of cereal they can choose from which is their their top priority they love cereal doesn't matter what I'm serving cereal is it that's that's what they love the most any questions can we all come for breakfast I would love you to come come anytime drop in we'd love to have you see how it goes these kids move fast because they have to by the time they come in drop their coats drop their bags come through the line they've got 10 minutes because that's what's allotted that's what we have to do

080so I try to help out by extending our program with a snack bag so how um sorry I didn't see is this something all of the schools are doing or is this just Abbot down no other schools are doing it too it's just um it it took a little while to get it going you know what I mean it like I said it five years in is when I started seeing some real real results are we encouraging all of the schools to to do something similar to this yes should I go back to the mic come come to the mic thank you so all of the elementary schools now are doing a grab andg go breakfast other than milbrook so that would be the last one that we phas and they've got a pretty strong

081breakfast program you know right at the start of school so um Broken Ground School started one this year and we're actually doing uh the school breakfast challenge there it's sponsored through New Hampshire hunger Solutions and um it's you know it's it's something to increase School breakfast and you know the awareness of school breakfast and um with different promotional um things that they help us with and so we started a grab and go there to try and increase you know our breakfast counts there the head cook had come to me last year and was concerned because her breakfast counts had gone down a little bit so we needed to you know and they all serve the same kind of things same kinds of things but we don't have a standardized breakfast menu like we do at

082lunchtime just various reasons for that it's just you know different preferences at different schools they all have H you know the same list that they have to choose from with the whole grain items and so on and so forth and offer the same components but each each schools is a little bit different and are breakfast breakfasts covered by free and reduced yes yes any student qualifying for free reduced meals is eligible for breakfast as well and we try to get that word out there but it it still there are people that don't realize that that their child you know can get breakfast if they qualify for and actually um students who qualify for reduced price meals get free breakfast so that was implemented I don't know three or four years ago so that's a great

083incentive for breakfast yeah okay great Richards go ahead Jim okay no I was just going to and you've answered some of it I was going to ask how much of this is Grant funded and how much of this do the students have to or parents have to pay for or how much do we pay for I think it's an outstanding you know don't get me wrong I'm just asking the numbers because I think the breakfast is an outstanding thing that we're doing for kids and probably one of the biggest impact items we can do it's huge because a child a child can't learn if they're hungry they just can't they're they're fidgety they're all you know what I mean they thank goodness at Abbott Downing I've got great support from Mr blend and the staff

084they are phenomenal if any child seems a little antsy they send them down to see me and they have something to eat and sometimes that can make the difference you know it's important yeah far better to send them to you than to a principal or principal I'm not getting that's probably a big effect that makes a huge difference yeah yeah Miss uh Robinson and Miss Higgins oh okay um I just wanted to say that as far as the Broken Ground program is concerned it is gaining in popularity because my daughter is started having breakfast without telling me and then it's and I was like why are you $40 in the hole and she's like breakfast mom but what I appreciate about having it available to all students is their stigma reduction and utilizing resources so

085the more popular it gets with all of our kiddos the better it is for all of our kiddos so thank you so much for the hard work and for really putting in five years is a long time to want to see results on on something so thank you for your dedication to our district we really really appreciate it both of you thank you so much thank you so the other piece is you look at eating from a cultural standpoint and we eat when we're sad we get together at Thanksgiving you go home and meet your boyfriend's mother and she sits you down and feeds you especially if she's Italian um and so for children I taught at Walker School for 15 years and these were kids that often came in not having eaten breakfast so

086they started their day sitting around a table eating good food with their friends before they headed upstairs to class or down the hall to class or whatever there's a podcast on the difficulties of school lunch programs B based on the the regulations that come with accepting money and there's a whole episode on the lunch ladies and what a vital role they play we talk about coaches and music teachers and theater directors the people that feed kids at school have a huge impact and I could see it in in little Cordelia finding you and being so happy there you were you know she's my best customer oh yeah I'm not surprised so so the other piece to this this is massively important because this this nourishes the body it also nourishes the heart so fills the

087bucket seal so to speak um that can't be lost either you know there's a lot of reasons we do Sports it's not just to make good football players it's to teach those boys how to be on a team or girls and I think this the other piece to this is you and all that goes into the delivery of the food so I just want to point that out appreciate that um can I ask about the runlet numbers yes I was actually going to mention that which tricky which seem low yep um is are these consistent with previous years pretty much okay so um I can tell you that I have talked to um Jay um about doing some type of Second Chance breakfast grab and go breakfast you know breakfast after the bell and he's

088on board with that so we're we're working on that um in the past it just hasn't been an option there but we're we're working on that well I was curious because I know he has started moving kids right from the bus as soon as soon as the doors open into their classrooms and into their advisories and I was wondering if that was sort of taking the time that kids would might have gone to the cafeteria before um it possibly I'm I'm not positive about that but I do know they get off the bus and they come right in if they're getting breakfast again it's quick like in all of the other schools there's not a lot of time but that's definitely a school that needs Improvement for sure M um well thank you to both

089Donas this is a very important for for Food Service um for all the students this kind of goes back to what the question that I had before runlet was I'm seeing in these numbers a signif what appears to be quite a significant number of abbid Downing students who are accepting of school breakfast maybe that's because the grab and go program as well as Donna being there so whether it's personality whether it's the program's been there longer um what the school is doing differently compared to other schools that may help to improve School breakfast numbers and certainly looking at runlet was one of those questions but um I think that's also something important to consider yeah M Hastings I'd like to ask Administration if you could somehow look at timing as well I know 10 minutes

090doesn't seem like a lot um and I I appreciate that these are grab and go so you can have some at snack you could have some at recess you could have some during the day at different times but um being that it's a most beneficial meal and that it's a chance to get your day started in a in the right way it would be really nice if we were somehow able to offer students all students um whether it's if you choose not to have breakfast maybe you're doing something else during that time but a little bit more time to start their day um well and I think 15 minutes is probably generous I spent a lot of time over the years popping popcorn in the crystal Malla cafeteria during breakfast Friday Friday and um you

091know it's 15 minutes if the bus arrives exactly on time and the student or the Walker arrives exactly on time the do is open at 7:30 so from that moment it you know and then the first Bell is 7:40 so they're like cleaning them up already um you know and and I say that as a parent my kid love School breakfast like I saw the charges to um and I was just like if you just tell me so I wouldn't cook right yeah yeah exactly but that's the point of the grabbing go eating in the CL um I do think the time and how we look at that that that we value that time and give give students maybe a little bit more time to eat their meals I mean this is this is a

092lot which which is great but um and I also know this the restrictions on time and there's only so much time during the day so I I know there's a lot of moving parts to that but I would encourage us to look and see is there a way to extend that EV bit you talking about extending the school day I would not I'm not saying yes or no to that I think there's something to said your lips to God's ears Kathleen right well Liz and I spent a day watching lunch at run because we I had heard from a bunch of students um that they felt like they didn't have enough time to eat lunch um y yep yepa I mean it was interesting there was certainly kids who had were had plenty of time

093but you know it was you know they're eating int you know they're trying to fit going in outside so you know they are eating in 10 minutes there was a lot of time that was still left for those who wanted to continue to eat compared to how many actually ate very quickly just to get outside right but that's what I'm saying is it'd be nice if there was a little bit more time for both because both components are important to the education I know I know professional when it comes to compon yes that's true but we could also see the staff's point of view with those kids are still going eat in less than 10 minutes right yeah but if they have to sit there for 15 then maybe they'll eat for 15 no they're

094not going to eat because the average American it takes them 14 minutes to eat their meal takes your brain 20 minutes to actually for your stomach to tell your brain you're full so it's not going to change that's been my problem this whole time sneaker I'm I'm curious about the snack bags and um if you've noticed any uptick in food waste are are there any well like the Apple I'm thinking about that red apple can you hear me yep okay so here's the thing they're not packaged like that they they choose themselves okay so they don't have to have all these are all the components that are allotted to them they have to have at least three but they can have all okay so that's how I get away from waste by them choosing that's

095all they they choose everything themselves from cereal to the hot offer which could be the breads um and then they choose their which fruit they want they choose what juice they want they choose what milk they want to give them a choice so that they'll eat what they pick just like we do at lunch we offer them a beautiful array of fruits and vegetables that they and still they tell me there's nothing good here I like and I'm like well pick something I I've heard a lot about that sun butter and bagel meal they do like they love their sun butter and jelly love that's true love it it's a it's a favorite it is a favorite it sounds awful I have to say actually it's delicious it's pretty good I will attest yeah Liz

096you had on the topic of waste though if if I were to take this whole bag maybe this is school by school I don't know if I were to take this whole bag back to the classroom and eat two of these items yeah can the student then save the rest in their backpack in their cubby or is that they can if it's a milk or something that will you know or a yogurt item they can they they need to eat it within um four hours or or some of those for safety right so as long as it's not a right um perishable item like the sunflower seeds whole Apple that's why I try to do whole fruits there are some you'll see that we have sliced apples that we get from the government which they

097love and it's quick and easy especially for some of our little toothless children or children that are losing teeth they have a they have a hard time time with biting an apple but they can choose they can choose what they want and um it's great and the and the cuties I call them the Cuties are quick and easy to peel they love them yep and then you can tell who's eating them because the whole cafeteria smells so wonderful it really smells good but they choose Thank you really smart thank you very much such a treat can I just mention really quickly so this just happens to National School breakfast week so where schools across the country celebrate the importance of breakfast and so we celebrate here by doing like each school does you know a

098special meal or or two during the week of breakfast and we also were asked to we were invited to um cater um the invest in kids advocacy uh legislative breakfast this Wednesday so I'll see you guys there oh okay familiar face yeah um and they wanted us to go all School breakfast items you know normally when we do catering events we do different things but they wanted it all School breakfast related so we'll serve the banana bread yes that was top on the list now that also contains five grams of protein that was my question in each one of these breads there's five grams of protein yeah brilliant like I said it may look carb heavy it it may but there is there's great nutrition in this you know what I mean and remember they're

099consumers as well they're they want what they know they want to you know the cereals they see in the stores we can give it to them but we give it to them with a healthier choice I love it it's so good thank you both so much what good stuff huh good Stu yeah right Jack the budget Finance report sorry Jack's [Laughter] busing where's my he's gonna have to wind up [Music] first 38 um I'm going to scroll down to um page 40 and highlight those same ones so the people Services see that's a million1 19 but there's 1.6 million incumbered so there's still 633 th000 of that encumbrance that's potentially could free up remember it's very volatile as it relates to uh the student services um I'll scroll down a bit to the cell phones

100you might see that that's red but that's probably going to go positive because right now we're encumbering two vendors we've switched from AT&T to Verizon um just because the service was better and I was able to get a better opportunity there so we're just in the process of fading them out so right now we have two vendors encumbered and then um when you get into out of District placements you can see that 503 that is uh for committed dollars to other institutions for outed District placements um I don't think I I don't have anything else in the expenditure side that I think is an issue at the moment um actually let me [Music] see yep um I'm scroll back to page 40 one of the things we'll begin keeping an eye on is repairs and

101maintenance services um as as it relates to our facilities mostly because um Now's the Time there's going to be things that are going to break and it will start accelerating so that one might wind up being a larger number but um you know keep that in mind with a flat budget we did not increase that size either so to to that end Jack question to Matt is are we seeing um more uh leak associated with the heavy snow load and the free CLS freeze CLS right now we're seeing about the same but all depend we have rain later this week so um we don't know but runlets our biggest concern with roof leaks okay and have we seen any heating issues that we were unexpected this year because of the I wish you would ask

102me that question after heating season um sorry I change so far so good we started out a little bit rough we had some repairs and some issues um I'd say in the last month and a half or so it's been it's been pretty good but I just I know we still have more winter coming so I just want to get through it okay and with the amount of precipitation how is our sinkhole on I'm monitoring I'm monitoring that on a daily basis there's no skating on that we wouldn't let you do that anyway van do you have a comment on those sinkle they've avoided a hope the inle I hope that uh that design I talked to the engineers that design should be done in about two weeks and then I'll be ready to put

103it into a bid process and go out to plan for that to happen the summer all right thank you other than that I have nothing else unless you have a specific question but thank you Jack but your presentation wasn't nearly as impressive as the last one see I knew I should have did food with my presentation you can always don't you have a bag of money for us or something would be well you know I think just speaking in the last one and the budget um the federal budget draft bill would drastically cut um School nutrition programs potentially so it's something we we definitely to keep an eyee on um and be prepared to speak out about as if we know more about how it might affect our kids um but okay and then on

104page 46 is just the proposed budget work sessions we did that at the 5:30 meeting but just to reiterate we had tonight's meeting and then on the 5th we're we're going to hope that you can pass a budget for public comment again that's just a budget that you where you're thinking and you want feedback on and then the two public hearings the first one March 17th at 6:00 at milbrook in the multi-purpose room and then Wednesday the 19th here at Central uh is the second public hearing then you'll have an open session for that based on that feedback and other things that you have thought of on the uh Monday the 24th at 5:30 that's just a work session and then on the 26th we would anticipate that you finalize your what I'll call your

105preliminary fy2 26 budget because you do have the opportunity again to touch it in October and this will probably be a year you'll want to strongly consider that considering the unknowns at the city budget level at the State uh by anual budget and the other people they call the federal government so but and you need five votes to pass that budget on the 26 you'll need seven to make any changes in October okay okay if it's an increase in appropriation thank Jack um next uh we have four first readings from Communications and policy Miss maker good evening everybody um the policy and Communications committee is bringing uh several policies to you tonight on first reading so there will be no motions required um I'm going to go ahead and introduce them um if you have

106any questions um you can bring them to our our next policy meeting which I believe is on the 10th um or you can bring it up tonight if you uh so choose but we have plenty of time between 1 and second reading um to uh look at these um I will also be letting you know that we do have some amendments that we will be bringing to Second reading for the policies around discrimination because there have been some language recommendation updates from the New Hampshire School Board Association that are pretty much technical in nature but we want to be consistent with what is already being recommended so we're going to go ahead and make those changes between first and second second reading so you'll see some redlining uh at the next phase which is the

107next month that we will visit each other in April um on page 47 you will see uh conquered School District policy 544 regarding weapons on school property the current policy for some reason has red text in it um I think that might have just been a hold over from a previous uh policy change um but that is existing language so please ignore the red text um you will see a new draft which now includes um uh an updated policy that addresses both weapons and firearms on school property as well as safe weapon storage education these are updates that were initially recommended by our Committee Member Liz bushe uh the committee uh looked at the recommendations the superintendent took the recommendations to the administrators and um this is what we have come up with um what

108you will see as far as changes is we have added some technical updates to the policy to make it in line with the general format of our policies so we've introduced a purpose why we have these policies in the first place so we've got a new intro um new standard practices we're trying to create definitions sections in our policies so that there's always somewhere to point to when we're trying to talk about terminology so you'll see a new definition section um these definitions largely reflect what is already in the RSA um or and or federal law and or recommended by the New Hampshire School Board Association if it's otherwise uh undefined um we had a really entertaining time going through what constitutes a weapon um and I will just say ahead of time that slungshot

109metallic Knuckles billies and stilettos are real um we just didn't know what they were before we drafted this policy uh so we learned a lot along the way um you'll see some stricken language we really didn't strike things so much as rephrase them um you know so the stricken language is actually sort of built back into the new language which is in red um you will see a new section to um that just makes consistent what our policies are uh for H for what it means to be a gun-free school zone um while also being broad enough to still be consistent with state statute on what is permitted in terms of weapons on school property um if you have any questions about that please speak to the committee um the final piece uh in Rome

110three is a new section on safe weapon storage education um I Believe Miss bue has handed out some uh pretty cool literature um on safe storage the conversation around this is that we view safe storage of weapons as a a wellness measure just like any other health and wellness uh education that we provide to our students and families um it is tested and statistically uh robust um to provide this education both in our student handbooks and to our staff um it's just a a health and wellness issue uh I'm sure miss bushe could uh reflect on the statistics for gun injuries uh and fatalities in the United States but we don't have to ponder on that tonight unless you have any questions um and that is I'm just going to quickly mention that this is

111just um information from the B smart Secure Storage campaign this was just one of the resources um that was presented to us by um the pediatrician who spoke to the policy meeting so this is just an example of Education that could be provided nice I do have a question uh Miss merer and policy crew um we had an incident in conquered High not too long ago where a member of the public or many members of the public were carrying firearms into the school um the school was rented uh for separate purposes does this policy give our administrators greater um autonomy to address issues like that so the policy that's more relevant to that discussion is our facility use policy which we have recently updated to be explicit that weapons are not permitted on school property

112um as we also know uh state law Trump's school policy so that if somebody exerts their right to carry a firearm per state law uh what we are empowered to do is what is language in this policy and reflective in also the um facilities use policy and I'll just read it members of the public who violate this policy may be reported to local law enforcement authorities if possession of the weapon or firearm is used in a threatening harassing or intimidating manner so it empowers us to contact law enforcement uh to handle the issue if it's an issue thank you what does the gun freeze School Zones Act say about um members of the public and weapons on school property I know what state law says but yeah that's within a certain number of feet of

113the property so I guess my question is you want me to get state law Trump's School Board federal law usually Trump trump State usually usually usually but not in New Hampshire no that's not true we're not exempt from the United States enforcement of that law is well I understand that local authorities can't enforce the law but that wouldn't prevent us from reporting someone to Federal authorities if we chose MH and and I guess I would like to see language that makes clear that it is a violation of federal law to to carry weapons on school property more clear than Yeah well yeah it's school zone it it's listed in this it's you know pursuant to the provisions of the US G Frey School Zones Act I I I don't know that you know I feel

114like we should make our principles you know decide when someone has is intimidating or threatening enough I would like them to feel empowered to say federal law doesn't allow weapons on school property all right um the conquered police may not arrest someone but you know we can call the FBI why not well I see Kathleen go ahead yeah I mean obviously the policy does say gunfree school zone act weapons and Firearms are not permitted on District property it's clear it's the first sentence however because of the state law it it interferes with that language our principles take a very aggressive point of view if they see somebody coming in and they have a weapon they ask them to remove themselves the weapon and put it in their car or whatever if they're entering the building

115most people and even the case of that time we rented the conquered high school they complied somebody approached them said this caused some anxiety we had students in the building caused anxiety would you mind please removing the weapon from the facility and they put it in their car so Mo on and I've had other principles tell me that someone came into the building with a weapon me somebody came in with a knife that was quite a I mean it wasn't like a little pocket knife it was a big knife had it in there you know want a strap or whatever yeah and uh They removed it so every time the principles have asked doesn't say that in there so maybe we need to strengthen that I think you know our policy should be we should

116inform them that they are violating federal law and if they refuse to comply with federal law then they might be considered threatening intimidating or harassing so I I would leave that up to the principal you're right I think I maybe we should give make a statement about the authority of the principal to request that the weapon be removed from the grounds I think that's an appropriate line to put in there but it has no I will say that the between first reading and second reading the committee will accept any amendments proposed amendments that we can discuss um this has not been a simple discussion to have we have had to have you know sort of hyp hypothetical situations played out um and tested by our uh Karen Fischer Anderson our attorney on staff um the

117language that you have before you is the result I would say of a compromise um where we are firm in our adherence to the gunfree school Zones Act while also acknowledging that we can't necessarily draft Something In conflict with state law so um anything that comes to us I would say please make it explicit and not conceptual so that we can send it right to Karen and she can give us her feedback and and we do when we have some of these controversies or language and how it's interpreted then we do use Dean your your you know your school board attorney to review it and he's often will review a policy for us to make sure that um we're in line thank you I'm so glad you've Revisited this thank you any other questions great

118all right moving along um on page 52 you will see policy 161 regarding non-discrimination and Equal Opportunity Employment the current policy is eight nope five pages long that includes an appendix with a list of contacts um as well as legal references on page 57 you will have a new policy 161 um we are offering to you what is called a repeal and replace of policy because the policy uh was pretty meaty as it was the updates that were recommended to us again by uh the New Hampshire School Board Association by Karen fiser Anderson as far as being more explicit about our process um you know the pathways for people who uh are seeking remedies um it was too difficult to sort of chop that into the existing policy uh there was a lot of redlining

119and it was very difficult to read so what we decided as a committee is that we're offering it to as a repeal and replace um so you're not going to see any redlining it is a fully new policy uh but it is thematically the same and updates essentially you know existing policies that Karen already utilizes um you will see uh it is again laid out in such a way as to have an introduction uh a robust definitions section um procedures remedies notices contacts um it it's pretty uh robust so rather than go through the whole thing tonight I offer to you that you uh read it uh let us know what you think if you find any misspellings it is not my fault um and then on starting on page 65 you're going to see

120a plan an anti-discrimination plan which is now associated with this policy it's really just an abbreviated form of the policy just to make make it for an easy read for those who might just want to look at what our plan is around uh Equal Opportunity Employment discrimination harassment and who our uh investigators and title n coordinators are um you'll see at the end of that plan is also now an appendix that includes contact information for anybody who might want to seek uh assistance through many the many organizations that offer assistance for these issues this is great yeah um continuing on because it is in the same Vein on page 72 you will see a new policy 1611 uh which is the discrimination and harassment grievance procedure so this policy speaks specifically to the procedure for

121reporting um grievances of discrimination or harassment in the district so again just an extension of what is offered in 161 as it's new you will also not see any Redlin um this was necessary because we need to be able to give people language around what the steps are what the appeals process is what the you know what um protections are against retaliation things like that so while those things may have been already in practice now we have it on paper nice um would anyone from the committee like to speak to any of those policies great are there any questions before we I think that's it for us tonight not until we read it okay thank you y yeah thank you to that committee that's really impressive work everybody tip of theet we will now um

122have up to 30 minutes of public comment if you're interested in testifying there's a signin sheet there please uh write your name and the other information as requested please limit your testimony to under five minutes gotta can I start and then sign in yes yes but introduce yourself please all right I'm Brian Bardo um I'm fairly new to conquer I moved from Danbury Connecticut four years ago um um my wife was from Newtown Connecticut um two of my friends were murdered as Andy hook I know you do the choose this little girl who is here said talked about the Choose Love movement um I just want to let you know conquer is a gorgeous place it's a bucolic lovely place um you unless you've gone through it you don't know the horror and the terror

123of being in a community God bless you students are you living a life there we don't live we i' never live you don't know what it's like to hear on the phone or to be at home and have your wife say Brian come here a minute there's a um there's a shooting at Sandy Hook and you watch news and a few minutes later they say we don't know what it is we don't know what the amount of we don't know all we know right now is that the principal is dead nor and I looked at each other and said that's Dawn Dawn hawr was my friend we worked together as special ed teachers for seven years in Connecticut um another one of the teachers there Lauren rouso I knew her before she was born I

124knew her parents well um and this is a gorgeous commu committee Community here I've met a few people here at the Justice faere a few weeks ago um don't let your guard down every single child every single teacher is important because I don't want to have this Community go through several months of everybody going through in in um going to get uh food going to supermarkets and people crying and hugging each other because it's you can't believe what is happening Newtown Danbury Connecticut are as bucolic as this place is don't think it ain't going happen here cuz it could don't drop um Sandy Hook promise and the chose love movement are both really really good good things to keep going show the signs um personal feeling is that several of us from their Community if

125Adam Lanza weren't allowed he was still under the Board of Ed he was 19 I think he was still a special student know the signs see what's happening those two programs are really good um because any too much of this is happening now and it's a place where teachers parents children unfortunately have to down and it's more real than being my age and Diving under a chair to stop the atomic bomb from crashing out it's a real thing thank you very much that's about all I have to say thank you very much thank you much we please make sure you sign in um and if you want to just scoot over if there's anyone else who wanted to testify [Music] Steve mikitz W 10 and I just like to say I appreciate what this gentleman

126just said our grandchildren would have been at Sandy Hook High School where not for other circumstances at any rate um since the special board meetings of January 15th and January 22nd which invited public testimony there have been two regular monthly board meetings including this one where the proposed middle school project has not been on the agenda this despite the board's stated intention to move the middle school project forward at the South Street site as expeditiously and inexpensively as possible in that regard I have four questions for the board as part of my public testimony this evening what is the projected status of school construction Aid to support the middle school project number two what contingency plans exist if no school construction Aid is made available number three have you passed the work have you paused

127the work of the current Architects pending any new Direction the board intends to take with respect to the middle school project as requested at the public meetings and finally would you kindly make available to the public in a format that that is understandable and transparent and accounting of the tax monies expended to date on the development of the Clinton Street and Broken Ground sites and plans as well as what might have been spent on the South Street site thus far I thank you for your prompt attention to these questions I know that there is no obligation to provide any answers this evening but remember we are all in support of a safe comfortable well-maintained and affordable middle school for our children and staff as soon as possible possible uh I have no email but my

128telephone number will be on my signature next to my signature or perhaps the information requested could be posted on your website or be available at the building committee meeting this coming Thursday I appreciate your time and effort thank you thank you anyone else like to testify [Music] scar good evening uh Jeff Wells Ward five welcome back from vacation um you in the school district combined with the Board of Education currently I believe hold over $27 million in eight different trust and Reserve funds I assume these are all funded by our our taxes while maintaining some reserves for emergencies uh certainly is reasonable this raises a serious question why does the district continue to increase our taxes while stockpiling millions of dollars so year after year the district increases its budget 3 to 4% pushing the

129tax burden higher for conquer conquered residents at the same time it continues to grow these Reserve funds instead of using them to provide tax relief or whatever if these funds were were truly for emergencies why are they growing instead of being spent wisely to reduce Financial pressure on the taxpayers so my question is when will this accounting practice pause or stop I I don't understand it and maybe you can bring these up in further um budget meetings going forward when will the conquer School Board finally pass a flat budget and not the the usual two to three to four% every year and provide tax relief instead of automatic increases it's time for accountability and responsible budgeting that puts the taxpayers first thank you thank you thank you would anyone else like to testify good evening

130my name is Claire mik litz I live in Ward 10 and I just want to say I'm a Vermont retired teacher and a longtime volunteer here in conquer and I was so pleased tonight to see that we're talking about the whole child um I'm an early childhood specialist and it was nice to hear about um social emotional learning about the importance of nutrition and um thank you very much to the uh speaker who is talking about about Sandy Hook promise um as Steve alluded to our um middle son Doug is a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary lives in the district Adam Lanza was a neighbor many of the children who died were neighbors um he mentioned Lauren rouso Lauren rouso actually Co taught with Doug for a year when his regular co- teer was out

131on maternity leave so I would Echo the fact that we really need to look at every aspect of what's happening in our schools I know that some great uh safety improvements were made at Broken Ground and I just hope that as we go forward we'll continue to keep the um safety and well-being of our children at in the in the Forefront so I thank you for all you do and thank you for this opportunity to share some comments would anyone else like to testify seeing none I'm going to close public comment um next we're moving on to Personnel um page 8082 School administrator nominations for 2025 and 2026 so I'm going to take this piece um and so I'm very pleased tonight to present a slate of our administrators for our buildings our school buildings

132I I I'm proud to be able to bring their names forward um there isn't a time that passes in a day um that these folks don't step up and and do whatever they can whatever the issues are um dealing with uh you know dealing with the life of a student and the life of living in the city and with all the challenges and uh I really am proud to bring them forward and um for me and I think John and Kim and Matt and Jack the rest of the team Terry we can all say what a great group uh it is to work with and um uh conquer is very lucky to have them so with that said I'm pleaseed I'm going to read a slate if that's all right for you and just read

133their names okay to be put into record but I'll start with Timothy Herbert principal at conquer High School kylen chalasis assistant principal conquered High School James corkrum assistant principal conquered High School Graham prow um assistant principal at conquer High School um Ian Fowler conquet high school Career and Technical Center principal um Steve lari the athletic director for the district but also at um conquer High School U Michelle Speckman who is the director for student services at conquered High School uh we move on to our Middle School our Jay Rashard our Middle School principal um [Music] Kim easen our assistant principal Shawn White assistant principal at runlet Middle School Cynthia liscus director for student services at the middle school um covering our elementary folks starting with Mr blind Anthony blind principal at Abbott Downing uh Jamie

134V uh assistant principal um Michelle Vance principal at Bow Britney mahany who is the assistant principal at biva Meadow Kyle Ruchi principal at Broken Ground Nancy coffin the um assistant principal at Broken Ground Christen Gallow uh principal at Christ mlli assistant at Christa is Lindsay NY uh and um Kathleen scapa better known as Katie um principal at milbrook um uh school and her assistant or the assistant Michael McLoud um at milbrook so I I am happy to place their names in nomination for the 20 uh 526 school year is there a motion to move the Slate of so move moved by Mr Richard second by Miss Higgins uh any discussion hearing none all in favor I all opposed any exensions motion passes thank you very much I you will you will continue to feel that

135you have a great team uh supporting the kids in the district they're the Dream Team yeah um the the second team that I I'm happy to bring forward and um again I um you know I think you know this you know you decisions aren't made in isolation you need a team around you you need people that are um speak their mind that um share their experiences um that have the knowledge uh that have worked for years with children um whether it's children or it's the money down with Jack or it's um Matt in the in the in the build and um Terry joining us now with communication they all bring something to the table and um I just again I feel privileged to be able to work with them I guess that's the best way

136to put it and um they do have a reputation of being the a team and uh I understand why so without further Ado I'm pleased to place the name of Matthew Cashman as director for facilities Terry karate for director of Transportation uh John Dunn better known as Jack um business administrator John Fazio our assistant superintendent for student services Karen fiser Anderson our student safety compliance officer Michelle Garen our director for Human Services Donna Reynolds our food service director fiden who is our director for student and staff Wellness uh um Terry wolf our director for uh communication and Kim yot our assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction and ass assessment my pleasure to place their names in nomination for the 2526 school year is there a motion to move the nomination so moved moved by Miss Higgins

137is there a second second second by Miss buet discussion all those in favor I any opposed any extensions motion carries thank you Miss Garen uh spring coach nominations yes in your packet on page 84 we have two um recommendations for some coaches but we did get two coaches come in over the school vacation week that didn't make the board packet which is what Mr Dunn just handed out so we do have two for hand the hand carry okay as well as the two that are in the packet correct so we have runet Middle School inal flag football and runlet andal flag football as well um on it that in the board packet and then we also bring forward for runlet middle school girls a lacrosse and boys B lacrosse um is there a motion to

138approve SP for spin coach nominations so moved move by Miss B is there a second second second by Mr Sadowski any discussion all in favor I any oppos any extensions motion carries thank you thank you to the coaches other business starting with enrollment reports um your enrollment reports you'll find them on page 85 and 86 in your packet um just kind of monitoring um the slight ups and downs um as we enter into spring season you'll see a few more ups and downs before we finish out the year but um fairly steady we did see we have seen over the course of time um some a drop of you know 16 stud students since last um last August at Broken Ground which which was a little surprising to me it started out back in August

139at 291 and um you you it um um right now it's 289 wait a minute yeah and last June it was 305 so you can see that you're seeing a switching in the numbers so just we keep an eye on that see what's going on that's housing related yeah we do hear a lot of that Pam that's a great point and people don't have housing or their rents have increased and it's caused some you know difficulties for families to meet that rent so we've seen a few of those uh cases um people do the best they can our social social workers work with the families but uh we did see some of that does anyone have any other other business I did look at enrollment the only place that I can kind of keep my

140eye on is Diva Meadow um that um SEC first grade class is close to your um your um policy on class size but um they're managing as we get near the end of the year I'm hoping we can hand stay in that 22 and 23 that's high for first grade but it's really the only place that's really looks like it's you know getting close to our class siiz policy um Miss if I could ask Miss Hastings um I think we've all gotten some Outreach about the PE requirements and Alternatives and I'm wondering has the instructional committee looked at this we've talked about it several times um over the years lots of times over the years and and we've talked I we we we've talked about this a lot and there's um and actually Tim came

141in he's here so we might ask him to come to the table Tim um and uh get called up yeah know stay it wasn't us that changed the requirement it was the state right it wasn't this group it was Tim can you talk about history on um exceeding state minum requirements in PE it was it goes back to like 199 early 1990s and it's around the time where there's a big push from programs that I would like into like NFL play 60 or trying to get students outside and active yeah so at the time the board agreed that that was going to be something they wanted uh high school students experience to include is of each year they're there some sort of healthy activity for balance so the board exceeded the PE requirement in that

142area but they also left in the flexibility of being able to do things such as a PE ELO which formerly known as a community athletic certificate so you could take uh something in the in the Community such as you know swimming or compete compete in a local swimming club at the YMCA or things like that that could also count as a p PE credit so the whole sentiment wasn't necessarily that conquered high school was going to hold you to 1.0 of our courses but you would have an four years of activity being active physically do we cap how many elop P credits do do we cap them um we typically that seems to be the the complaint we're getting typically the we still have to hit the state minimum requirement standards on PE so we

143have to make sure we're hitting those competencies nationally recognized standards not some of these elos will hit the physical activity part of it but your nutrition your balance um your Healthy Living pieces that come into play Barb you want to chime in on this I'm sure uh those are the standards that you're not necessarily not necessarily being able to guarantee are going to be recognized by NCAA or other institutions field hockey or whatever yeah things although they they they're reputable physical activities are they hitting the standards we're required to teach to so there's requirement freshmen have to take what used to be Health but it's a it's a combined class now with a health and PE classroom and two activities so an activity is PE where you change and you and then there's a health

144two component and one more school all of the choices after that are really amazing choices so that's one full credit and then the half a credit can be done in a variety of ways in a a slew of ways but the reason why some people may say we hold to that one credit of being conquered High School courses is because we still have to hit the minimum standards required of us okay so it's not that we are trying to throw up barriers or anything to complete experience we are making people do extra and that's and not counting their extra activities well their EXT activities account for the extra PE we require it's the state minimum standards that we hold people to okay thank you that's helpful and I'm going to just forward that to you

145to respond to the number of um student the the enrollment in the PE classes at the high school is huge yeah there are no classes that are team out so for the majority of students any student that can't do think of all those students that can't do extracurriculars they can do all these amazing things at school with the PE program I think the complaint sorry go ahead well having had some experience in this uh the the information brought to our attention is absolutely correct in my opinion um if you're and I will ask our students put them on the spot and they can jump in if they want to say it but many of the CH many of our students who take AP classes which are extremely Limited in when they are available as well

146as their other classes can't fit PE in and it's there you know there VX options and all a large and what seems like a significant number of our students can't take PE because we don't offer enough or we don't offer it in correct times and they end up being really put behind the a ball and I think that's what this is coming up I I think you bring up a great point there are certain courses if you want to take I mean when we run an AP course that we're not running eight sections of an AP course we're typically running one or two so you're limited on when and who's qualified to teach it how many we can offer so you do there is a balancing of what you're going to take when you're going

147to take it and uh you know decisions that you you make as students whether I'm going to take uh you know am I going to be part of the marching band and that's going to be part of my PE credit or am I going to take a PE class down the road and these are all balancing Acts including crtc you know earlier when they asked for more time I cringe because there goes some AP opportun unities there goes some opportunities for other electives and things that are offered at conquered High School opportunities period uh so every time you know we try and do a Singleton or a specialty type course like an AP course I I put into certain certain um students take it and it is only limited sections we can offer because the

148demand of the other courses that uh that are required or you know are having more enrollment numbers uh it does pigeon hole some schedules into tightness and that that's just the reality of our schedule period it I don't think it's because of our exceeding the PE requirement I mean we exceed in math requirement we exceed in social studies areas that we were challenged by the board to increase our graduation requirements 24 credits so the we exceed in more areas than just the PE it's you know and I think the p is the one area we have the most flexibility to meet the requirement than any of these other areas we exceed it yes but I'm still concerned that someone has to make a choice between AP Chemistry and taking a PE class to be able

149to because there's nothing else available I think we either need to come up with more PE classes and more times or that we give these ELO opportunities better P ELO 160 completed last year but in addition to that uh it's one of our smallest departments and we turn away over 500 enrollments every year between between all our elective classes and PE and life studies that would fulfill those requirements so and this is I I'm assuming not the year for me to asked for another FTE in that department so I you well a solution I'm asking for solution I have a question um Can a student do um a you know a quarter credit for their sports team and also do an ELO can they in their because I have a parent that claims that was

150one of the other the programs when it comes to ELO we have a coordinator who sits down and works with the students on it and and the the commitment is full the students going to be fully committed prop come with their proposal or they can do one of the candid elos that we have uh you know um trying to think of something off top of my head we have a karate studio yep that that's a very good like pretty canned ELO that would meet your PE requirements it's when you try and unpack that and say I want to do this or this it gets a little dicey because of the way it's it's been uh put together to fulfill that requirement okay so and and we're also uh challenged with these courses these credits these

151statement requirements are expected by NCAA so when students go on to college if we're not hitting those State minimum requirements those those standards that we say we're hitting uh my my CHS Sports recognized because it's rigorous Varsity Sport participation or even JB participation uh people understand what what that is but when we start getting outside of that we do get challenged sometimes and I do write every year a number of letters clarifying what an ELO might have been to the NCAA whether it's in English writing sports or other content areas so that's something we always try to be mindful of we want to expand the opportunities for students to really explore an education but we don't want to put up any challenges for them once they leave us seas and and and again the p

152is not the only area we exceed and and it's probably get the most flexibility meet requirements than any other department yeah Miss H how many students a year do you think you are dealing with that have this AP we we get more of the AP music program conflict and we and crtc if you want to do those three it's a disaster okay it I don't know how else to put it it's a challenge drtc takes up two blocks in your schedule so period one period two every day you you do that for 90 minutes it's two two periods off your schedule so right there quarter your schedule's gone uh band requires you know a commitment and it's both in and outside the class I think our coordinators do a great job with it um but

153we can only run it certain periods of the days based on the the size of the classes and when we have the room to do it and and and a few other factors that come into play when you start putting that in and then you get to what I we're talking earlier these Singleton I think the most a the mo AP stats may be the AP class we offer the most of um and it may be three sections of it you start getting down to those courses and it's hard to offer a ton of sections when we have to offer 11 sections of Algebra 2 right or we have to have to offer 11 sections at algebra one there there State minimum requirements so when we get into those sort of those sort of areas

154where they come you know the specialty courses it's not a really good name for it but I'm trying to think of a way to describe it uh it is a challenge and it's not just with the PE it's it's with our music program it's if you want to complete a crtc course um and some students are like make a decision I can get a college dual enrollment credit for that course and that runs at the same time as an AP course you know which one are they going to do yeah and not all our AP courses are dual yeah a college credit VAR so it is it is a it's a challenge and it's Balancing Act yeah I'll also add that it's incredibly rare for a high school in New Hampshire to not exceed state

155standards in all options it's actually part of what makes districts competitive in their for their graduates so on like very very few schools actually stick to the state minimum so we're actually on Trend with best practice so I'm gonna ask b or Ain that do you have do you have peers or do you know are you have people where you know you you see it every day do people have trouble scheduling PE is it a problem I personally have never had any um trouble scheduling PE and I don't know many people who have had trouble scheduling PE I mean I know some people I have some friends who have some trouble scheduling PE and it's kind of going along with what Mr Herbert said with like crtc and then also being part of the music

156department and also wanting to take AP classes because C like Orchestra it happens during a certain period of the day same thing with like crtc and then if if you want to take AP classes that's also going to be a struggle but they usually are able to take PE classes on VX or find a different way by talking with their counselor I think and and Mr Richards de to the solution earlier Aaron just hit the nail on the head how we've worked through this is the earlier a student indicates their desire to take such courses the sooner we come up with alternative plans if we need an alternative plan or encourage freshman sophomore year it's possible to complete your requirements and if you want to do an ELO you can put the ELO off until

157later on in your junior senior year and it wouldn't interfere with taking a or participating in the band or participating in crtc so that's been the solution just early indicator that that's your intent thank you thank you both thank you yeah thank you Dr Herbert yeah thank you we're always being ready to be under the you hold so much information in your head s amazing uh calendar meetings so let's look at March um you look in your on your calendar and so uh tomorrow I want to remind everyone tomorrow I'm starting I think at 5 o'clock over at the community center is the kickoff if you will of the districtwide art show fabulous fabulous work so if you can take it's I think it's like 5 to seven like that I was over at the

158community center on Saturday and I got to see some of the projects and they're very cool yeah yeah so they've already got it up and the staff has already put it up but um they uh they do a great job so if you can sneak over there and see it and it's going to be up for a month by the way right through the month of March so if you don't make it tomorrow night um maybe when you have a few minutes stop by and I think you'll appreciate all the work that's done uh on Wednesday we have um negotiations at 5 and um budget session at 5:30 I think Jack brought that up um on Thursday night we have our building committee uh so we have an agenda with that group and uh we'll

159be looking at some of the work that the Architects have done and give the building committee as sort of an update about where we are and what's happening so and a good Q&A so I'm sure there'll be some questions our Architects and engineer will be available and have some good discussion with our building committee so that's on Thursday night at 5:30 uh the following week uh we have um communication and policy on Monday night 5:30 and iite right now have put a hold on the 12th uh Wednesday the 12th um you indicated that you may want to have another session of budget we make that decision uh probably after your meeting on Wednesday um then you have two public hearings the week of the 17th one uh the first one will be held at um

160milbrook um at 6 o'cl and the second one will be held here on the 19th um here at central office at 6 o' so you will have um the those two public hearings good chance for folks to come in and ask questions about the budget we'll do a presentation and then certainly open it up for question and answers um uh Jack will post those um meetings they have to be posted publicly they have to be given 10 days posting um before we can hold the meeting so that's why there's a break there that you saw around the work F the next week is executive committee at 5: and a budget Open Session this is an opportunity for you to after listening to the community hearing what the input is from the folks that attended your

161public hearing you may want to discuss some of those items and U make some adjustments followed by Wednesday night um at on the 26th to kind of finalize your budget um and um and as Jack indicated to you we need a vote of uh five people to um agree that that's the budget that you want to uh live with for the 25 26 school year and then um on the 31st we have a second uh communication and policy um You probably ask why well we just it just doesn't end we have so many policies we spent a lot of time on Title 9 and discrimination and that the group that Cara presented so nicely tonight um we have a lineup of policies to follow up on so we'll do that on the 31st and there

162is a lineup that's true go ahead thank you superintendent I did have a question about the building committee meeting on the 6th I heard from Mr Micha litz in his public comment about the questions is that the place where we'll be able to talk through how we communicate with the Comm the community and like what's happening with building Aid I know that's still all really in I mean we have discussed it at this at a board meeting there is no bilding Aid in the budget and none anticipated and none anticipated this point we you know we are based on our vote we have directed to begin planning for runlet um I think within the next month we will see if there's any movement I don't suspect some in the legislature um and then we will

163make a a decision about whether what we want to do I think tomorrow night the building committee is going to look at renovation and look back at the original reports on renovation versus construction you know you know there was you know when this process started the first question was can we renovate and there was a report done there was a board decision on that time that actually has been reaffirmed several times about renovating not making Financial sense um but we're going to go through that discussion again at the building committee um I was anticipating once we got through the budget we would have a new discussion as a board on um what we would like to do um you know right now where we had left it is we would make a decision on whether

164we were moving forward when we saw the final state budget we can move that timeline up but given the budget um didn't throw this discussion given the our budget schedule didn't throw this discussion and there are you know even if building Aid was funded were not expecting a an impact this year because we'd still be several years away from bonding so it it wasn't so thank you for that yeah and they um we uh you know you gave the Authority for them to continue to work on the design at the site do you remember that we now we did stop some things we said no Landscaping don't do any of that just make sure that building can get on the site how it will be positioned um with all the you know the other things

165that you need to have on the site with the parking and no sink holes yeah no sink holes um and and you know one sing I know well you know we do worry about Bo Brook don't forget Bo Brook runs right through there so we just you know down by the RO yeah well it's yeah not quite anyway we're going to review all those things on Thursday night with the committee um and so some of the questions that were asked tonight will be um repeated again at on Thursday night okay thank you can I jump I have another question on this too actually um feeding off of this and based on one of the questions that were asked today regarding the reserves um I want to make sure I understand this correctly because I think

166I do and I I just want to make sure that folks who are listening to and audience to hear this the reserves and part of the reason why it is aside and we have used it to help balance off the tax um impacting the previous year so we think about the increase in transportation that we have seen the reason why we weren't hit as hard as other districts because we did rely on those reserves and we did use it to balance out where we are today so we've seen other districts where they are 2 million you know above their budget but we have the reserve we could fill in anything to cover that Gap so the taxpayers don't feel that impact the other thing I understand is the reserves this will help us with the

167renant decision because we do have someone not a ton not enough but a little bit to help offset some of the costs once we decide what we're doing with that so I do understand a large a lot of large amount of money sitting in a reserve however it is going to very much be needed in the upcoming years especially when we think about an increase in transportation costs increase in um what's going to have a runlet etc etc am I wrong in my thinking no no not at all thank you no the other thing that affects is your bond rating so you could add a quarter if you wiped out those reserves you could probably add wipe out a quarter to 3/4 maybe in 1% yep I'm in bing you're dou a minus you might

168drop your rating yeah it it's a domino and money has continually helped I mean like you're 2.45 million so you need about 3 and 1/4% tax increase to make up that 2.4 right now and it mitigates it it allows you to get through these times and you know that you've always made the moves when you sold Walker School the money went into the facilities and renovation trust fund when you sold Rumford it went into the facilities and renovation trust fund when you got the one shot of State Building Aid because of the steamed to gas cuz the state didn't believe it was an emergency not having heat and hot water in the school but that's just a side note you took that money put it in your facilities you didn't artificially lower the tax rate

169to come back next year and get beat up by it correct I would I'm just gonna make one more statement I do apologize but I have again just to commend Jack and the work with the reserves I think many of you know I've been in government banking I work with government entities across Maine and New Hampshire conquer is actually seen as best-in class with our reserves and what we've done with that to help offset the tax so I just want to say great job and thank you Jess yeah I often use the um you buy you buy a car you pay it off so even though you've paid your car off you still pay yourself a car payment so that when that one dies oh look I have cash to buy a new car it's

170not exactly the same but everyone that listens can understand that planning yes exactly so what we're doing is we're we're giving ourselves a car payment so to speak so that when something falls apart we don't have to rebond and pay interest and all yeah it's the same Miss Murphy did we need a just want to make sure you saw April sorry spring is sprung um um I'm I hear that spring is coming uh we do have in April another building committee meeting first Thursday of the month we've been trying to stick to that a Schoolboard meeting is on the 7th and communication and policy like I said that's the committee of the year and um the 14th is the negotiations again we're in as you know we're in negotiations with several of our unions so

171we hope we'll have some updates Finance uh as well at same evening and then City and Community um at um on the 16th at 5:30 following week executive and instructional committee getting back finally I know I know I know we have a list my long for you too and then Capital facilities um that was a request we we haven't had Capital facilities for a while but there's a lot of other things going on in the district other than the middle school so we want to Matthew and his team want to up update you on that and by the way the last week is a spring break so and um yes I do need a nonpublic under under Personnel under personel yep A3 C uh is it C it's C you don't have this memorized I

172know I should have it memorized I'm sorry I used to have paper hanging put it back it's in here so do we it's I'm sorry it's not C it's B I will move that we enter non public under A3 uh section 2B I second that second by mrowki any discussion no all in favor I any oppose a roll call yes Richard yes Robinson yes yes and I a yes just waking you up baby yeah but we will not be coming back after we will just be juring girl hell yeah