Concord School Board Monthly Meeting 6-6-22

001hi everybody welcome to the june 6 2022 meeting of the conference school board i'm looking at a full room and it's either wonderful or awful when there's a full room out of school there's not a lot of middle ground so this is exciting um the first thing to do is uh take attendance so i'll have a wonderful gina uh ms higgins here mr cotton miss hastings here ms walsh here mr weinberg here and i am here so we have three three members who are not able to be here um at least at this time this time correct um i'd like to send some good get well wishes to our board president mr richards you have a new replacement so everyone sends you healthy vibes happy 30th anniversary to brenda hastings and then we'll get on

002to the actual meetings so the first um item is approval of the agenda so let's have someone make that motion [Music] show move can we approve the agenda okay we have moved by gina seconded by mr cotton all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed any extensions excellent okay our next agenda item is our consent agenda um which includes regular monthly meetings capital facilities no minutes city and community relations minutes and instructional committee may 16th um the meeting didn't occur no it did then the notes are in here all right so uh could i have a motion to approve the consent agenda absolutely by pam is there a second second seconded by brenda all those in favor please signify any opposed any abstentions all right okay we have this is where the

003fun part starts and why why the masses are in the board tonight so i'll be uh inviting wonderful kathleen to sort of take it from here we're going to look at distinguished tweeters right it is an exciting night tonight and we'd like to kick it off tonight with our principal vance she has a distinguished educator and he was not able to be with us at the last board meeting and she really wanted to be able to take a moment and honor his work so i'm going to ask michelle to come up and and do that for us [Music] so do you want to wait and then we can do um we can wait a couple more minutes yeah oh that's true sorry michelle i didn't realize that would be great and so we'll take we'll

004move right into the district retirees and i think that um he's here [Music] welcome come right up perfect on it perfect hi we're here wonderful we have our beaver middle school family with us tonight welcome everyone thank you okay this evening it is my pleasure tonight to recognize beaver middle school's 2022 distinguished educator characteristics that describe beaver middle school's 2022 distinguished educator include his ability to seamlessly connect with both adults and students an unabated enthusiasm coupled with unrelenting patients and a student-centeredness that is reflected in his compassion and transformational leadership style always reflective and collaborative mr parsons embodies the ideals of beaver medical school that are seeped in unity diversity and peace a selfless role model and wellness leader whose actions influence and inspire those around him to make choices that are healthy for their

005minds their souls their bodies kevin exemplifies the essence of a gifted educator since mr parsons joined our school team four years ago the profound impact that he has made in our school district and state can only be described as distinguished beyond his many duties here at beaver middle school kevin is thoroughly engaged in the community at large as current vice president of physical education for the new hampshire association for health physical education recreation and dance he is a liaison with other professionals in and around new england to speak about health and wellness issues topics that are simply indispensable during the pandemic having diligently coached the runway girls middle school team for the past three years and presently this year did the same for the concord high school boys team boys tennis team we when we

006were fully remote mr parsons wanted to stay as connected as humanly possible with his students he created videos for students that taught them how to play games do activities and daily workouts at home he collaborated with colleagues so students could see numerous spotlights of our staff members and hazel our therapy doc students staff and parents looked forward to his videos each and every week these videos became the rage at beaver medical school and some of them received over 1 000 hits when we moved into a hybrid model students were taught outside and lifelong memories of playing kickball with umbrellas became reality the time spent creating and sharing the timeless video speaks to kevin's desire to engage with the community to the fullest extent possible since we have returned to in-person learning mr parsons has been

007the coordinator of numerous after-school programs and last summer he saw he oversaw two different camps that serviced over 50 students as we all know the pandemic has really impacted mental wellness mr parsons targets these concerns by working closely with our title one summer coordinator to provide social and emotional learning and mindfulness activities that focus on body and mind wellness mr parson goes above and beyond to build positive respectful and goal-focused relationships with students students know that mr parsons cares and comes to school every day to help them work towards their individual achievements a difference in students confidence to take risks and to learn and grow from their mistakes has been witnessed by myself and his colleagues this is directly connected to how mr parsons designs his lessons and embeds social and emotional components that build

008student self-esteem and acceptance that everyone is learning something new each and every day students complement one another and they show good sportsmanship by shaking hands after a game pure joy is witnessed when mr parsons is teaching and students are learning playing and having fun together he has added physical education ambassadors to our leadership opportunities for our fifth grade students our fifth grade ambassadors are thriving and developing relationships with students as they help them in the unified class that they might never have connected with in their own class making sure that every student's individual needs are being met is a top priority for mr parsons on top of teaching 18 grade level classes he has also provided our district's emotional behavioral disturbance program with adapted physical education he's advocated for students in the ebd program to

009have their own pe class weekly and ensures that all of the activities allow students to practice teamwork and social skills when students in the program attend physical education with their general educational classrooms mr park excuse me mr parsons has spoken with their special education team and any other assistants to make sure the transition experience is successful his commitment to beaver middle school is boundless as our previous pto president shared this quote with me kevin is always willing to go above and beyond to help in any way that he can as a member of the pto we always know that we can count on him to help at any event he has been our dj at our dances he's also made sure to join the students for the ski club and enjoy time on the slopes

010with all the students his compassion and attitude makes all the kids time in physical education special he's always looking for ways to improve the quality of a student's life he has been part of the team that has taken on the responsibility for leading school-wide events that include our monthly all school meetings winter carnival turkey trot field day walkathon and the color run his endless energy and joyful participation and all of these activities is a thing to behold mr parsons holds himself into students to high standards and expectations he provides students with learning environments that are student centered and personalized to meet their individual needs his intentional actions and support set students up for lifelong success i'd like to end with a few quotes from parents staff and students he has made amazing connections with the

011students and you can see the excitement in the students faces when they see them [Music] mr parson is the reason that physical education is so special without mr parsons i would never be able to catch a frisbee i always remember i will always remember skiing with mr parsons during the beaver middle school ski program when mr parsons first came to the school i was nervous for the change but that first day was like he had always been there he teaches us every sport not just the ones that he likes for example we get to play field hockey and lacrosse and he makes games fun for kids mr parsons is always willing to try new things and he has lots and lots and lots and lots of patience he deserves to have this award when i

012feel sad mr parsons is always there for me sometimes we run into each other outside of school and he always says hello to me and my family and that makes me happy mr parson always makes learning fun educators often have an unseen influence on the children that they teach and they work with i'm not sure if kevin realizes how far his influence actually goes he has attended many games that my children have played over the years and he always makes sure to tell them that he saw them play and give them some specifics these comments capture a glimpse of our distinguished educator who remains a humble yet gifted educator who deserves to be recognized for all that he brings to our students and our adult community at beaver medical school we are a better school

013because of you kevin [Music] i enjoyed watching your dream class thank you i appreciate it thank you oh [Music] so can i go so so i think our our next uh group is the obviously to tonight is special it's recognizing our retirees and so i would like to start if i could with a team from the high school uh it's a interesting night for them they are they're they've all split up their principal is up at awards night and so uh joining us is uh colleen and tim to give out the awards for the retirees so you want to step up and [Music] hi everybody we have quite a few retirees for the high school um and so we are going to start with elaine lamond elaine lamond has been a truly dedicated program assistant

014in concord high school's advance program she has done it all elaine is well known for being a wonderful support for any students taking chemistry especially so much so that we really should consider providing her with an honorary certification in that area prior to retirement her wonderful rapport with students provides exactly what they need to be able to attend to academics even though they may be facing some emotional or social barriers along the way elaine will be missed by all the students and the staff with whom she has worked so closely with will miss her terribly but will always feel lucky to have had her as a member of their team congratulations elaine lamont i just want to let everyone know that in true pandemic style our clocks have not all arrived yet trying to tell

015you that there's a delay in every aspect of this but this is what we try to get to they're they're being shifted next we have lynn garvey lynn garvey has served students in the advance program as an educational assistant for the past 20 years and has seen several iterations of that program her unwavering commitment to students has been a constant throughout her tenure her pragmatic yet gentle approach has been the key to her ability to reach our most disenfranchised students these students come to know her as someone they can trust and rely upon her relationships with some students extend beyond their high school careers as she continues in some instances to maintain authentic and supportive relationships on the toughest days those who have worked closest with her would probably be able to reflect on the

016an incredible amount of laughs and silliness with her colleagues that have gotten them all through lynn may be a small in stature person but she is leaving some big shoes to fill still we are certain that we will continue to cross paths as she is bound to continue to serve youth in some capacity congratulations lynn garvin um the next one and she is not here i believe this evening is lis blaise french teacher at concord high school but i will read a few notes on her behalf lisa blaise on behalf of the concord high school world language department and greater concord high school community we would like to congratulate mrs lise blais on her retirement from the concord school district ms blais began her career in the concord school district in 1987 when she was

017hired by runlit junior high school then principal chris wrath as a world language teacher during her tenure in the district ms blase has taught a variety of language courses including french latin american sign language and also holds an ell certification her 35 years as a teacher in concord and 40 plus years of teaching in total have left an indelible mark on her community she is going to be impossible to replace and we wish her luck as she begins the next chapter in her life thank you lis blais for your years of service and the last one that i have this evening is for a colleague of mine i am honored to speak about diane watson and she is also not here this evening diane has been a member of the chs english department since september

018of 1990 she is completing her 31st year at concord high school this year diane began as an english teacher at a time when english teacher success was measured by the number of novels or publications one might have produced or by one's ability to not only recite sir gawain in the green knight but to recite it in middle english while these feats were honorable diane watson was a newer english teacher who recognized english content was not more important than understanding adolescent behavior and needs diane could and can cite every underpinning of transcendentalism but more importantly she cares for every student who comes through her door she is attuned to their emotional and academic needs a balanced approach she has embraced fully every transition we have made pedagogically to fully support the increasing social and behavioral needs

019of students she has been a true professional colleague and mentor diane watson will be incredibly difficult to replace congratulations diane [Music] all watson good evening um i would like to recognize on behalf of the height uh concord high school social studies department uh fatma um she came to the concord high school social studies department in uh 2002 after a brief career and teaching at the college level few people know because she's very humble that she has a doctorate in economics anyone who's had the privilege of working with mashikhta can attest her dedication to her students and her ability to make a rigorous content accessible and engaging to all students she from the moment she arrived at concord high school she played a pivotal role in changing and revitalizing the economics curriculum and has been an

020in-house expert for the course while most people think of economics as simply made up of the stock market and industry mishika takes the content to so such a deeper level and shows students that economics truly touches everything we do she makes it fun and has a great sense of humor we wish her the best of luck and hope she finds lots of time to read travel enjoy the next phase of her life thank you for your dedication to your students the next person i want to recognize on behalf of the school counseling department is karen slick all right and most of us know karen as a school counselor but she's so much more at concord high school first since 1987 she has was employed by a school district originally at rutland middle school before making

021the transition to concord high school she has no doubt in the past almost 40 years of her career had a you know a pivotal role in the lives of the youth and many of us in this room today she started 30 plus years at concord high school and has been a fundamental building block for so many students parents and staff from college decisions emotional supports and good times and in bad she has been a constant person who will celebrate your success and lend a shoulder to console you during difficult times in addition she has worked with her fellow counselor to take on social emotional needs of our students this includes lessons in the classroom on mindfulness personal wellness taking part in mtssb systems of supports leading the leading the charge on the restorative leadership team

022she has been committed in these efforts around students well-being and has not let up one bit in her final weeks at the school karen you'll be greatly missed your presence the order you bring to a room you have no doubt been a fundamental building block in the lives of so many people thank you for your tireless dedication to the concord community and congratulations on your well-earned retirement [Music] the next person i have to recognize is anna marie de pasquale [Music] on behalf of the yellow department of concord high school it is great pleasure that i have the honor of recognizing you tonight friend and colleague for years of service at the concord school district anyone who knows anna marie is familiar with her larger-than-life personality and unwavering energy she brings into everything she does whether

023it's working with be the change club national honor society or meeting with families in the community anna marie has always been truly committed member of the concord high school faculty she always celebrates those around her and highlights others success whether it's a colleague student or community member anna marie has spent so much of her life advocating for the marginalized populations of society she's worked in cities such as chicago washington dc and fortunately for us here in concord each step of the way she's been a champion for the underdog in the concrete community she has been an advocate for students and families whose voices often go under unheard due to language and socioeconomic barriers she works tyler tirelessly to ensure our families have the community support they need anne-marie you'll be greatly missed next year congratulations

024on your well-deserved retirement we have one more uh john hubbard's not here with us tonight but i sort of wrote his like up wordle five quick things here uh john hub hubbard 21 years in concord uh he start a real gentleman um you're going to ask a lot of people concord high when they need something they go to john hubbard that's probably one of the reasons he's leaving be honest with you john's uh program migrated from a construction tech program which was stick building building houses to a program called construction trades which is really getting kids exposed to electrical and plumbing and masonry and the program's enrollment went up two and a half times after that move to get there john hubbard in his about age 60 or so give or take started taking courses

025and he was three times the age of most of the kids in the course but he learned how to do these things and brought to his classroom and one of the coolest things about being a crtc and i'll wrap up in the snow teacher is you can go around concord and go to job sites and go to contractors and go to plumbing sites go electrical sites and you know you see john hubbard's graduates everywhere you go so great guy and he's earned his 21 years we wish him well so could we invite um paulette fitzgerald up to do the fox room [Music] okay i'd like to start with um sharon gallagher sharon could you come on out sharon has been with the concord school district for 22 years 11 of which have been at rutlet

026middle school she's done amazing work to support students who have significant learning needs she's an advocate for her kids she will do whatever she can to remove barriers to their learning she's calm kind caring once sharon starts working with a student they become more confident and their behaviors improve sharon has a wry sense of humor and seems to enjoy the middle school way of life we will miss sharon greatly we will miss her wisdom collaborative nature and her passion for helping students sharon we wish you all the best and we hope that you enjoy your retirement next diane barlow diane started teaching at rundle middle school in 2004 that's what i was able to find she has seen many changes and she has had different positions within the math department but regardless of her teaching

027assignment one thing is always true mrs barlow cares about her students and how well they are learning math diane has always gone above and beyond outside of the classroom as well whether it's arranging the annual holiday re-gifting program or being on the building safety committee diane is always willing to pitch in oh pto rep too i just thought of that she has also served as a curriculum leader for our math department diane has a way of observing what is happening and figuring out unique ways to make it better whatever it is at the start of remote learning diane initially underestimated her technology skills and she collaborated with colleagues and in the end she rocked it so as diane prepares to head into her retirement we want to thank her for her many years of service

028her wisdom and her sense of humor we thank her on behalf of the many students to to whom she has taught fractions and irrational numbers and algebra and finally because she is now a whiz at technology we know that she will know how to keep in touch good luck [Applause] so we'll start with our elementary folks and we'll choosing would you like to start [Music] broken ground has two educational assistants who are leaving us neither of them came tonight they're a little on the shy side but i'm still going to read and recognize them the first is bernadette kneer and she's been at broken ground for 15 years she's the consummate professional with an amazing work ethic and dedication to broken ground she arrives each morning very early before seven to get her steps in

029before the day starts bernadette is caring and compassionate in supporting students she has a great sense of humor and is always finding ways to support the teachers and staff each and every day she's a wonderful listener her whose family is at her heart and soul bernadette we're going to miss you very much at broken ground but we know that this next chapter will give you lots more time for those two granddaughters who are so special to you our second person is rebecca sims and she's been with us for 25 years she started in other schools and then came to broken ground becky has a bright smile and a warm greeting each day she has a great sense of humor and quick wit she's one of those amazing people who takes the time to care for

030others when it's in their time of need she's an amazing stream seamstress and quilter and makes beautiful gifts becky's so committed to her students that she supports them and is so exceedingly patient with them day after day we always can pick that perfect student for her each year we'll miss you definitely becky but broken ground knows that your sweet grandchildren who you're hoping to see more of will be the beneficiary of your extra time we also have two people retiring and they are not here but i will share a few words about them um pat steiner has dedicated 38 years to working with the students of the concord school district she began working at rumford school in 1984 then worked with the functional skills program and then at the preschool at eastman before she landed

031at dame school in 1997. at dame school she began her work as the student support program assistant which she continues today at millbrook school pat has touched the lives of so many children and staff members over the past almost four decades she is caring empathetic supportive and we will miss her very much we wish you all the best in this next stage of life and our next retiree is janet corkum janet corkum began her work in concord 30 years ago as a program assistant at beaver middle school she worked there for eight years before she went back to nursing school to complete her degree while getting her degree she continued to work part-time at dame school janet left the school district and spent some time working at concord hospital but came back to work for

032the commun community she cared so much about in 2009 she has been the school nurse at dame and millbrook school ever since from major illnesses and injuries to small cuts and bruises janet has dr dried many tears over the years and cared for so many students she will be greatly missed at millbrook school we hope the next years are filled with lots of time for family friends and fun we wish you all the best [Music] i hadn't seen the agenda i thought i was going to be after sorry we are going to miss uh these lovely three ladies that i'd like to just speak briefly about um deborah snow major is not here this evening but deborah's deborah snow major began working in concord in 2008 she joined the beaver middle school team in 2012.

033this september debbie is looking forward to being a stay-at-home grandmother and witnessing her granddaughter's first day at preschool one moment that will always remain in her heart is during her very first year at beaver meadow school and she is a speech language pathologist when she introduced the alternative augmented communication voice output program to a fourth grade student who has autism it will remember it will remain in her heart forever as she watched this student was able to truly communicate for the very first time debbie we wish you all of the best and you will be missed at beaver meadow school wanda da nan core wanda dinonkour has been a member of the concord school district for 39 years of those 39 years she has spent 37 years in preschool as a speech speech-language pathologist in

034september she is looking forward to spending time with her first grandchild a little girl who is due to join their family at the end of july a memory that stands out for her is the morning during remote learning when our preschool families drove up to the school to pick up their learning packets and much of the preschool staff were standing outside of the school to greet them what a wonderful thing it was to see those sweet little faces beaming out of the car windows after not having seen them except for on the computer screens for several months we are grateful and will miss you [Laughter] audrey knapp [Music] audrey knapp started at beaver medal school in the fall of 2011 and started in the district in 1996 26 years ago part-time in preschool she added

035the elementary school to her role first at walker school and then at christa mcauliffe school approximately 20 years ago she is looking forward to traveling with her lovely husband visiting her children more often and spending time cycling running swimming dancing and sleeping late in retirement she's going to miss the amazing students and families that she has had the privilege of working with as well as the wonderful educators who give their all to the children each and every day you will be greatly missed and we are very grateful that we've had this time with you and last but not least altruistic intelligent collaborative and thoughtful i only begin to describe heidi fife after teaching in the elementary classroom for 17 years heidi became a district literacy leader for two years after completing reading recovery training she

036then transitioned into the role of reading specialists for the next 20 years with the last decade at cms heidi has been an outstanding mentor to the entire cms staff but mostly to me leading us in important conversations about literacy resources and most effective approaches to reading and writing at the elementary level heidi is highly involved in the larger community she shops and shops and provides clothing to families in need and she has volunteered her time in local shelters heidi has certainly changed the lives of many kids and families and she has changed mine as well congratulations heidi on long and distinguished career in the concord school district i will miss you heidi so i'm filling in i guess um for anthony glenn over at abbott downing and so that's a surprise but i've been doing

037some filling in these last couple of weeks i spent a week at um at runlet middle school let me tell you something i think i'd rather be here but i'm going to fill in for anthony because we want to acknowledge acknowledge carol bay conte is carol here come on up carol i don't have all the good things to say about you because i don't have the speech in front of me but you know um the 23 years of working in the district and devoting that amount of time in elementary school i know what that's like having been an elementary teacher so kudos to you and thank you for everything that you do we appreciate it thank you um janet moffatt i'm not sure is j janet's here so according to my notes 25 years right

038awesome as a school nurse at abbott downing and have you been in other schools you must have been all abbott downing conan abbott downing okay so you're you're gonna fill in the blanks for me thank you very much uh can you only imagine what it's like being a school nurse for that long and and um talking with and seeing the kids every day and you know we always say in our business that there are frequent flyers and it and you say well they just want to get out of class but you know it isn't just about getting out of class it's about interacting with the school nurses and kids they this they gravitate to people who they know that care about them and take care of them whether it's a special being date or i

039i know that most of them don't like the dreaded call home because then they have to go home if they're not feeling well but um i think the parents don't like the call home more than the kids what do you think the kids like it too but anyway thank you so much for your work at abbott down we appreciate it and and pat marl's here i think i know she is so 36 years as a speech and language look at abbott down he goes 23 25 and 36 did you win the prize tonight you did um and and you know last week it was a month ago you were with us because pat was awarded the distinguished educator at abbott downing uh for the 2022 school year so um you have left the long legacy

040at abbott downing and i know that everyone appreciates the work you've done so congratulations and good luck on your retirement thanks so terry do you want you want to step up and talk about some of our retirees from the bus thank you very much i have two um come on up katherine sorry cat i'll introduce her as she likes to be called catherine ela special needs transportation supervisor katherine came to work for the district in july 2010. she jumped right into an industry that was new to her successes came quickly because she is a strong leader is organized and has a great work worth work ethic a year later the district was desperate to save money she was temporarily laid off undeterred she drove a big bus until her situation restabilized and she was reinstated

041to her job as a supervisor in december 2011. with an mba in her portfolio she could have made other choices but somehow she knew this was her calling catherine is always kind caring and competent she always leads with her heart and starts every encounter in conversation with optimism her philosophy is that somehow together we will find a way to produce the best outcome possible in the world of transporting children with disabilities such a positive approach is invaluable catherine is a staunch believer in fairness and truth that is why she is so good at fielding complaint issues the complainant may be wrong the parent may be unreasonable the driver may be having a bad day in every case catherine listens hears and responds with an understand with understanding anyone can be patronizing or make false promises

042catherine does not make everybody happy but she does make most people satisfied they are heard respected in an effort to be made to improve the future finally and i hope i don't tear up here working in a small office with someone for more than 10 years means your experience you experience a bit of life together there were many happy sad and even tragic moments it was comforting to know that katherine was always there to share with and support us all i've written most of this recognition in the present tense first because she still has a couple of weeks left in her contract and i need her full effort but seriously it's going to be very difficult to consider her someone from the past thanks for a job well done catherine got one more so warren

043cutting junior aka ed he's a big bus driver and he currently drives bus eight he's sorry he can't be here tonight it's not that he had anything more important to do but he's a modest man and not terry terrible terribly comfortable being the center of attention that and coming out this late would put him past his bedtime seriously i met head in early 2009 a few months after i started as the just the director of transportation at the time i was looking to hire bus drivers i needed to find special people to operate 100 000 vehicles and transport totally priceless riders he was my first hire he was he had awesome references 14 years as a ceo of an insurance company and 26 years in management of blue cross blue shield they said he was

044excellent in every category on the form matter of fact they took one of the reference letters and made a copy of it and two people responded because they both wanted to chime in on it he doesn't know it but i consider him the gold standard of drivers other drivers would be measured against his example however recently health issues have slowed him down a bit and he understands his own limits he's stepping down at the right time ed is kind caring gentlemen i've never gotten a single complaint about him having a bad day and taking it out on the kids he's the kind of employee you forget about because he gets the job done without incident every day it's been an honor and privilege to know ed thank you for your service and mr dunn is

045going to do the retirees from the central office first start with kerry kellogg because she's not here kerry started with the district in october 2001 in the business office carrie was responsible for accounts payable accounts receivable he conquered trust grants but kerry retired in october 2001 with 20 years of service um we'll start first with mr prince come on down you're the next contestant well i know what they called your first week on the job so larry started with the district in july of 2008 as the first human resources director he was instrumental in forming many of the policies agreements and processes in place today larry retired in january of 22 with 14 years of service [Music] shirley hamlin that's you shirley started with the district in june 2006 in the business office shirley was

046responsible for accounts payable they procurement card expediting checks managing big daughter big dollar lotteries and the sunshine fund shirley retired in april 2022 with 16 years experience yes we did yes i did betsy coons betsy started with the district in october 2001 in human resources in 2005 betsy became the human resource manager and was responsible for developing the salary and benefits budget as well as issuing employee contracts among many other things betsy retired in december 2021 with 20 years of service that's the central office staff now it was somebody had to draw straws to figure out what to say for steve rothenberg nobody had him steve started with the district in september 1994 he graduated from umass amherst with a bachelor's degree in business and from leslie college with a master's in elementary ed he

047held various positions in the district including elementary teacher at walker school technology literacy coordinator assistant principal and most recently the crtc director steve retires at the end of the month with 28 years of service adam cheer i think that's it that was well done uh my good friend gina here has some statistics to share i just want to people to look around the room for a second and acknowledge the people that are retiring as much as we wish you all the best in your future endeavors i am terribly sad that we are losing over 170 cumulative years of experience the district will be the poorer for that loss as we try our best to try and and fill some enormous shoes so i i i appreciate that you're all retiring a lot of you are

048spending time with your kids your grandkids um but i don't know how we replace years so thank you all for your service we'll take a brief recess and give our retirees and their families a chance to grab a piece of cake and move on out that's the boring part it was delicious all right we are back i'm ready to continue the business of the board meeting uh that was a really wonderful wonderful reception it's fun to see people move along in their lives um so what comes next is uh the student representatives report so we go from the people that have been around for the longest leaving to the future here um so is that she's good to go next kathleen yes yes good evening members and community members this is our as this is

049our last month reporting for the 2021-2022 school year i look forward to giving my last report the week of may 23rd the school held its annual 8th grade tours which allowed students to get a feel for the school before transitioning during this week the 8th grade parent night was also held this gave upcoming high school parents an insight into the curriculum chs has to offer the grading system other programs and most importantly they got to tour the school where their child will be for the next four years at the end of may on friday the 27th was spring fling this was a day-long event held at memorial field this is a new tradition that combines events from winter carnival such as club tables and games that typically occur earlier in the year in typical winter

050carnival fashion each grade got a period to go down and enjoy the festivities and many students also volunteer their time to help run games and club fundraisers students are also able to get their yearbook and do signings the same day the be the change club held its annual international night where food music dance and culture were shared with the rest of the concord community chs senior news includes the last day will be june 10th and underclassmen will get out on the 17th this gives them an additional week for remediation and enrichment promo will be on the 16th and graduation will take place the 18th regarding the thousand tree project friend grace and i have picked our tree a service berry as well as our pollinators we're currently working on outlining our spot to dig mr

051cashman and mr roon have been very helpful with this project and i would like to extend my thanks to them as well as those who donated to this project it is always nice to see the community work together to create something beautiful we will hopefully plant the tree sometime in june and we have decided to hold off on planning the flowers as their planning season has passed i'm excited to know that every that even through this project is not even though this project is not over i have two great people to continue this project next year i would also like to take this time to thank everyone on the board i have truly enjoyed my time as a student representative for the past two years this opportunity has allowed me to explore possible career interests

052and help me further my understanding of what it is like to be a leader i look forward to seeing how the system continues to grow thank you janita you've done a wonderful job it's been really fun i remember janine when she was this big and just just arriving and being with her family her mother and i were roommates like 100 years ago so it's been fun to watch you turn into such an amazing young person so good luck so i think it's appropriate for me to take a moment on behalf of you and the board to acknowledge uh jenita and the two years that she's been with us i mean it's so great every and i love having the students on the board i know you have appreciated it but we hear from them every

053month we hear about the activities the events at school and honestly when there's policy issues that come up i'm happy that they share their thinking around how you should think about policy and the way it affects students so for her to spend two years with us every month for many hours i might add some long some nights longer than others and you know knowing that she probably had homework or something um that you know she had to attend to in the morning i felt bad but she she always hung in with us and was a great representation of concord high school so i personally want to thank her i admire her i admire that as a young person she can speak her her thoughts and share them with adults and be very confident about what

054she does so i wish your luck i you've told me where you're going to school next year where are you going i'm going to go to connecticut college and i'm going to study botany awesome awesome so congratulations i have a little something for you [Music] so i can't forget some of our other folks they're not with us but we also have a little something for them and i want to thank um finn who will be back with us next year finn brown he's at awards nights tonight up at the high school so he could not be with us but like janita he shares their activities and events and his thinking and just last week i had a chance to see finn he presented at the belmont memorial day celebration it was on npr and it

055was something that he had written in his english class with mrs crumeine in her class in the book that they wrote and it was phenomenal and npr picked it up and um and so congratulations to finn and we appreciate it and we have something for him and i'll i'll catch up with him at some point i'll find him up at the high school we also want to thank chris reynold chris chris has been here for a long time doing all of our video taping our recording of all of the school board meetings that includes budget meetings that includes committee meetings and i don't have to tell you folks how often that is and um he has been here he's reliable and does his job and is able to troubleshoot when we have problems i think

056he's even helped you a few times jack and he's just been a great addition chris is graduating this year and going to carnegie mellon for to study music and uh if you had a chance to see him in this in the play once at the high school of course they were all fabulous but it was really even more meaningful to me since i knew chris and and and and got a chance to talk to him here at the board meetings but uh just another um wonderful example of the students uh at concord high school so we have something for chris too and i can't forget his dad because on occasions when chris had a musical or an event at the high school he couldn't be here his dad mark came in sat in took care

057of him i hope he didn't complain about the hourly rate rate of wages but we can talk about that later um but uh they uh mark came in and covered for chris when he had some event at the high school so um big thanks to both uh uh dad and tucson for their work here at the in the district so thank you i just have a couple of things because i know you have a busy night tonight so um just a couple of things that i wanted to share with you and uh first is that i am really pleased to announce that the concord district and the cea which is the teachers association came to a tentative agreement on wednesday evening after a little bit of a long session but deliberations that resulted in a

058four-year contract with the teachers and for me as a superintendent what this says to me is is that we continue to support our professional staff and making sure that we retain our special our stu our teachers we also know that by having a good contract we also attract new teachers because as you saw tonight we had a number of people retiring we and as gina so eloquently said we have to fill those shoes right so we're um we're right now in the process of doing that so by having a good contract we attract really bright young people who want to come to concord and work so i was very pleased i think we both both parties are now have a the task at hand will be for them to meet with their membership group and

059they will hold a ratification meeting once they complete that then the board will have a chance to go through all of the aspects of the contract and you too have an opportunity to vote on that contract before it's finalized but i think you will be pleased with the result i know i am i'm very appreciative of the team that represented the district sitting next to me jack dunn of course with just ran all the numbers all the time for us which was really helpful michelle garan our hr uh director who also helped us sulozi was our building principal representative on the team and and and larry prince came back and stayed with us because he knew the process so he was a great resource for michelle and we had a terrific team you had a

060chance uh last week to meet with kathleen peel who helped us from a legal point of view but we had a terrific team and i'm very very happy with it so we'll hear more about that one quick comment just on the whole process so brenda and i have sat on both sides of the negotiations process as educators in the district and now as board members and it's long and tedious tons of extra hours um important work but often times you know you hear the you hear the negative parts because it's exhausting and tiring and um both sides of this both the and the cea and the csd people spend a lot of time working this out so it's nice it's it's as someone that sat on both sides of that fence it's nice to know

061that it's come to some sort of agreement i just want to acknowledge the hours that go into that thank you yeah um so then the the other document that's in your folder tonight and i'm not my intent tonight was not to spend a lot of time on the draft strategic plan but to just try to walk through some highlights for you so that you know we're gonna come back with you probably the july meeting and but i just want to ask you to take some time we've been working on that i want to i want to thank board members bob cotton and brenda hastings who've been who have been sitting on this committee john fabrizio has been on it mary wilson myself um what would i forget john katie scapadi our principal representative as we

062took bam and pm and pam mccloud right look at the pm yeah pam wasn't at that um and and the team really went through all of the data that we collected remember we had almost 20 focus groups throughout the winter months meeting with parents and teachers and staff and community folks and and administrators throughout the district students i had i i took the chance to meet with all the students at every school it was fabulous feedback from the from our students and so they took we took all of that data and tried to find areas where there was a common theme that ran through the feedback that we got so if you look in your in your packet tonight you'll see that we have isolated six goals that really um we received a lot of

063feedback on they were on safety which is very apropos for this time communication which um has been a priority for you as a board right school facilities i think we actually have some people here to join us tonight to talk about school facilities later on in the meeting and as you know we've been working hard on that it isn't just the middle school project though it's about all of our school facilities we will also look at the multiple tier systems of support that's all around the work that we're doing around social emotional learning uh and supporting kids academically as well as social and emotional learning curriculum which is uh the foundation of our work right so that's what we use to provide the teaching and the learning that happens every day in our schools and

064the in the sixth goal was around diversity and equity and i think we've heard a little bit about that today we had a a meeting with anna marie di pasquale who shared her thinking around some of the work we are doing tomorrow morning we have interviews with uh five applicants who have sent in applications for the diversity position in the district so we are we are working on that as as we speak but those were the six areas that people wanted us to focus on and remember your plan is for the next three to five years so please take some time review it we're going to be asking you to help us extend those goals to um if in your packet on this on page 32 you'll see a little matrix and we're going to

065use that matrix so every goal will have objectives and we'll be following an action plan how do we measure that action uh time frames outcomes who's going to be responsible for those for those activities that we want to conduct and by the way the most important thing what's the results so i think we'll have that tool for you to be able to use over the next uh three to five years wonderful that sounds like and also another example hours and hours yeah it's it's been great though it's been good work and um we'd hoped to get to you a little bit earlier but you know with with just pandemic and covid and trying to keep ahead of it we were a little bit delayed in trying to get our groups together so this is something

066that we should put on the agenda for the july meeting for the july meeting right so if you would do that that would be great have any questions or comments before we go along actually two questions not directly related for kathleen one is on safety i think is the um follow up on the recommendations on a school safety officer and what our plan we were going to do some more looking at the training for safety coaches right um so we have um we have applicants from americorps that were um that have have applied for the job we it happened right after the colleges had graduations we saw an increase in the people that were interested so we they do the training for us with that but of course we need to be involved so that

067they understand our system but there were recommendations from the the discipline review committee is that the committee you were talking about so those will be embedded into your your strategic plan because there were things that in those recommendations that we haven't done yet um you know you can't do it all in one year but something that we want to address the and the other just just as a point of reference i had a chance to talk to chief osgood actually this morning and we talk pretty frequently and i have another meeting with him i meet with him pretty regularly and so we would like to be able to discuss safety issues with you uh in july and we have a date i actually put a tentative date in when we get to calendar tonight maybe

068we could talk about that chief osgood would like to join you in those deliberations that would be great yeah and we'll go over matthew has also been i asked matt to prepare all of the protocols and safety measures that we take regularly in the district to be able to update you now some of that will have to be in non-public and the reason for that i think most people realize that that you can't advertise how you deal with these things and then expect to be able to make sure your students are safe so but we will we will be doing that in july because it's an important topic and my second question we had talked in the fall or summer as we were updating the volunteer policy about the district acquiring a fingerprinting machine i've

069heard from several parents whose clearances have disappeared from the system and they've had to go you know one was running the ski program and then came spring and was no longer a cleared volunteer so i i don't know what if we're having system issues but i did want to circle back to that machine you know people are driving to tamworth and dover to get fingerprints right and then we heard we found today that the state police are really backed up so even with the parents that are wanting to do things like field trips and they haven't been fingerprinted because they haven't been active for over a year then we have to re fingerprint them so jack did look at the machine to have a machine here but then there's still a problem with transmitting those

070fingerprints to the state police so they were trying to work that out we had them superintendents had a meeting on that so it's still kind of hasn't been resolved so what when i asked about this jack told me that it was the cost of the machine what was the machine's cost i mean the district used the i mean the district used to do this in-house i mean i did it at the district office so there were two issues with that not only was the cost but it was a delay in getting it i mean there was a six-month delay in terms of getting that machine so we we need to talk about that because the there's such a tremendous delay uh at you know most people go down to the the state police office down

071off of um loudon road so that that has been problematic for us um one of the topics that we have for this summer work is around volunteers volunteer training because we haven't done that with pandemic we did not do volunteer training so that's on the docket um for this summer to put together a plan and a you know a little curriculum if you will around the training that we would do with um our volunteers and we will also try to get this fingerprinting thing squared away okay so they're on our agenda would it be worthwhile to encourage parents to get fingerprinted this summer for the coming year [Music] i think it's always worthwhile to encourage them i think my experience has been that people generally don't go to do it until there is something that

072they want to validate cheer for right but if we explain that maybe that it's been a slowdown and being able to get those through that if we encourage them to do it over the summer i have a end of the year a little letter going home at end of the year my just reminding them about um lunches for next year free and reduced and you know that all three lunches are no longer going to be available it's going to be you know yeah next year so uh that program will um stop as of june 30. so i have some items that i want to share with parents i will add that to them and just i think advising them if they do have some free time in the summer and they want to scoot over

073to the state you know state troopers office to do that i think it would be wise but you're right they do tend to wait and then you gotta wait for the results gina so i just want to reiterate um that we appreciate our volunteers very much we there's a lot we can't do without our volunteers but this the slowdown and the the the delay and the lag is not up to us that that's not we don't have any control over that so um we'd like to encourage we we want to encourage people to come and volunteer and and and be in our schools and and see what we're doing and work with our kids but we as a board and we as a district don't have any control over that whole delay and lag process

074and they even changed it up at the department of ed now the bus drivers terry's not here but all the bus drivers go through the department of ed now to do their fingerprinting and all that process and then you know we'll be getting that information uh via not sure who yet but um regarding our bus drivers because again they have to go through all of that so um there's been a lot of ups and downs with that whole process uh just one further comment on on pam's uh issue with respect to safety and and i just want to mention also that that also is covered in school facilities and possible alarms systems and those kind of things that i know matt has been working on pretty pretty carefully so that's that's definitely a an important

075and actually the first goals under school facilities as well i i think on friday when my i sent you my weekly uh update um i attached a letter from the governor's office and governor sununu talked about safety and reminding all of us about the appropriate actions to take and making sure that we had all the protocols in place i felt confident that the concord district has those things in place but he alluded to additional infrastructure money now you remember there was a 30 million dollars worth of infrastructure money back three or four years ago that i know that concord uh received over a million dollars in that infrastructure money i know the district i was in had 800 000 and it was awesome because it meant cameras and doors security and all of that and

076so in the letter if you take a look at it about the third paragraph down they alluded to the fact that there might be money to do the infrastructure again so we're watching that carefully i've already alerted ellen desmond the grant writer and matt and we'll we'll have a meeting this week to talk we want to be prepared if in fact that grant money comes through um kate first i apologize i am not completely sure that i understand the scheduling and length of time of the summer programs that we have and which are funded by essa etc but i do know you were talking about the food no longer being free after june 30th and we do have summer programs so i'm just wondering about access to food during those programs um and um you're

077saying and he's saying yes i'm so sorry oh the cat program yeah cat yeah they come in our schools yeah we have a program over the summer it's called i apologize my first summer doing it so i kind of do it but it's called the cap program and they they are a local community program that provides um food for all of our students this summer because of our qualification for title one and for what we're doing that we do provide meals in the summer so such as like in the elementary school level if they qualify for the summer program that's the esser funded one no that's title title one funded that's title one funded yeah i apologize yeah keep track of it there's a lot of great one funded but we do have summer programs

078that are us are funded correct no our programs are title one funded or funded through special education like through our operating budget i thought it was to address learning loss because of covet or my misunderstanding see we have title one funds for that over the summer it's not misunderstanding because i think in the past we've done some things like that to boost it but this summer we have submission title one funding okay to be able to offer for all of our students and we have those lists um already generated and cap is under the title one yes cap comes in because of the social economical status of title one we're able to tap into programs in the community and use those awesome and kate by using title 1 in the summer program and idea to

079run those summer programs we're better able to keep that essa money flowing next year so that when we have extra tutors or and we have we decided to keep our coaches we decided to keep our paraprofessionals with the young kids so by by making sure that we were using all of the different grants we were able to utilize that for a longer period of time and that applies to all the summer programs across the district awesome thank you my last comment and it's always you know i like to end with a student story and um we went to deerfield about a month ago to do a presentation that's an annual thing we go to we meet with the deerfield school board and we present the data that we have our programs all of the things

080that happen at concord high school as you know our deerfield students about 160 students from deerfield attend concord high school and so every year we do our annual report this year we brought about a dozen students from deerfield they were all deerfield students they were fabulous they were able to articulate all the programs from the from the uh career and technical center programs uh to their regular programs to the after school programs their the the drama the music uh the athletic opportunities and the things and and the the very broad array of courses that they have at concord high school and it was fabulous and i said well all the administrators were there all the concord administrators were there i i was there and um jim richards was there uh pre uh his knee surgery

081and um and i said when we left there was probably no need for a single administrator to be there because the the our students did such a great job at articulating and so next week we've been deliberating with them to extend that contract of course dear field has to vote on it at their march meeting it will become an item on their warrant i know you're not familiar with warren articles but they well you are but in the same sense as a as a town but um they will be um looking at our at the contract um both pam and jim have been working with two of their board members uh to extend and have a long-term contract with dfield to continue to have uh the uh deerfield kids come to our school so we're

082pretty excited about that and we think but i have to tell you that and janita i think you would agree with me the kids were fabulous so anyway that's the end of my report i'm sure you've heard enough from me hey i hate to go back on such a happy note but that's okay in reference to the governor's letter obviously i think if there are funds available for improving school security we should do them but i speaking just for myself i hope the legislature will do a little more than make us harden our schools even more well i i would agree with you there has been a significant surplus this year in funding and at the state level and i think it's time to not only help us with some of the security but i

083would agree with you um we could use some extra funding to help us with some of the issues around social emotional learning the kids you know the kids really um the kids really took a hit and they still are you know we have kids that are still get coveted we have missed some of our teachers have been out even to this day we've um as you know i give you that report every every week i update you on the numbers and so every bit of that has impacted our students so i would agree with you that there's a lot of money there and i would hope that they would spread it out to our schools to help us to continue the essa money is going to run out we're through our all of our esser

084i think we're we're really down to essa 3 which is the last one and that's good till 2024 but um i think it would be huge for us so if you know any legislators you might want to tell them to um or maybe you want to testify and share that i think it's important all right thank you kathleen anyone else jonathan from back on the same topic from what i remember to in 2018 was the infrastructure money was appropriated to schools who had like infrastructure deficiencies too and i remember the high school at that time had a lot of deficiencies so i'd i'd be curious to see where that money would be appropriated as well and what the kind of leveling of that would be as well if it's even substantive at all well we

085won't know we um there you know we haven't seen any grant and we haven't seen the application um you know we're we're into app we're into grants i mean we just got information about the electric buses so we're we're on that i mean there's just so much going on you know and um but i haven't seen that grant yet all right thank you kathleen it's nice to know we don't have much to do [Music] so uh next on our agenda is public comment and this section of public comment is on agenda items only um so it would just be anything that you see here on the agenda when the meeting is over we have another open a time for public comment um and that's for any issue so if somebody has something that they want

086to speak about on the agenda now is the time otherwise sit tight and we'll try to keep the meeting interesting [Music] so i don't see anyone coming up now all right thank you all right so now we're moving on to personnel um so we will hand the mic there we have an extra mic over here [Music] all right first on the list um you'll notice um leave of absence requests those are in your google drive for the board there are two eve of absence requests from staff some moved second so so pam moved that we accept the requests seconded by mr cotton all those in favor of it there's a soft voice coming from the left seconded by jonathan thank you all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed any abstentions so

087the motion passes seven minutes no okay i just stopped running yeah sorry i'm having wi-fi okay yeah we did too initially [Music] okay moving along then okay next on the agenda is the administrator's confirmations for runway middle school we have shawn white for assistant principal [Music] and then we have kimberly eason for the other assistant principal position at runlitt middle school i have cynthia liska for the director of special education at runlitt middle school and then we have laura landry for the assistant principal at abbott downing school wow big changes at red light next year um do i have a motion to approve the nominations so moved is there a second all right so moved by mr weinberg seconded by mr cotton is there any discussion or questions on this all right all those in

088favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed any abstentions all right the nominations pass thank you next we have the existing staff um leave of absence transfer transfers and a few there's five pages if you want me to read all of them so moved so do we have a motion to approve the staff nominations moved by uh pam walsh seconded by mr cotton all those in favor please say goodbye signify by saying aye [Music] and then i just have new teacher confirmations i have a social studies teacher at concord high school christina shaughnessy a new digital learning specialist at abbott downing danielle lacko sparkly classroom teacher at beaver meadow danielle brazley and a classroom teacher at broken ground school sarah bankston [Music] all right do i have a motion to approve these second second

089so moved by mr cotton seconded by mrs all those in favor please signify by saying hi all right any opposed any abstentions all right those confirmations also pass and one spring coach nomination felix mensah for co-ed track supplemental coach for concrete high school so moved it's moved by mr weinberg is there a second second second miss hastings all those in favor please signify by saying aye all right i actually had a question okay sorry isn't the season almost over they started the season without a coach though so he's hired us but like if he's made it this spring in the beginning okay thank you so much yeah that's fine okay thank you all right uh next on the agenda okay it's your turn now we'll have communications and policy updates and uh policy to review

090and vote on and another couple of first readings okay so i handed my team no second second readings i apologize that's okay so uh the first up is policy 435 whose the wages bounced back and forth a couple of times because of miscommunication um so what we have now is the policy um 435 it originally came for a first reading and in fact i think it came for a second reading and then there was a question about it so we sent it back to committee for revision it came back uh last month there was some confusion about it so it went back to committee and then it came back um so this this is now the final policy that we have the there have actually been no changes in the end to the policy it

091is the same policy that we had before word for word but net but some updated legal references um and so now this is the final review of the policy no lyndon's telling me i'm wrong [Music] oh okay so nothing has changed whatsoever i thought we updated a legal reference um with the rsa but um so nothing has changed whatsoever and we need to approve it for just having been reviewed [Music] so okay so i'll is there well we need to make a motion a second then we can discuss is there a motion to approve the brenda just moved someone vibrant the second by mr weiner okay discussion does anyone have questions let's start with kate you're the first one i see um i apologize because i don't want to i'm sorry brendan made the motion

092and it was second to by jonathan yes okay sorry i'm just a minute behind and taking notes i don't want to derail us so i apologize um but i do so i know there's a balance um with policy that you're not necessarily micromanaging what people do and there's a level of trust but with this one in particular i worry when i read it that it could be misused and i think like i um i'm saying that that could potentially be true of a lot of policies but this one in particular is concerning to me i i see you're confused by that yes give an example so this policy only refers to partisan polit political speech that happens during the course and hours of employment yeah but can you define that oh yeah sorry we've been

093through this a couple years i know i'm so sorry i apologize partisan means that they would be actually speaking in favor or against a particular political candidate during the which is prevented during the times that they are actually teaching in the classroom or doing their school employee duties it does not cover times that the teacher would be out doing things on their own time on the weekend not partisan so it has to do with during the course of their duties as an employee and and it mirrors the language required by the state statute um so for some kind of elaboration it wouldn't preclude someone for if the first in the nation primary was here and the presidential candidate were to come to the high school and after hours they were to have a rally or

094event for example concord high teachers were given tickets actually to attend if they wanted to for various rallies back in 2016 when this existing policy was still instated and that was allowed so individuals would still be allowed to do that because they would not be on working hours so they would still be able to practice that if that's helped settle [Music] and i feel that this is more specific than just mentioning candidates it's more endorsing them and endorsing them as a representative like congress school district says vote for mr smith you know or that kind of thing it's i think it's not like don't talk about this isn't talking about candidates it's saying representing personal political views as those of the district right what's the personal political view do you think that discussions of certain

095topics are political what are those categories more like as representations of the district right but i am trying to to say it's so vague that it i think that it's so i i think an example and obviously there are employees who are authorized like kathleen to go testify before the legislature if we have a position on an issue but if a teacher goes and testifies and says i oppose school vouchers or i support school vouchers or i oppose the divisive concepts law they are free to do that they can't go in and say on behalf of the concord school district i am opposing this bill or supporting this bill it's really about taking a position that for the district right but this is the policy is applying to what teachers do and say in the

096classroom correct because it is saying as they represent the data and it is saying that they're representing their personal political views if they represent those as representing the district which they will be doing while teaching as employees they could say that in a debate on current events that they think [Music] let's stick with divisive concepts is a bad law because it could hinder these types of discussions as their personal opinion they couldn't say the district believes that this is about employed and then currently working while teaching their class so that's representing the district's views and when they say that they believe that that's a political point of view and so that's why i'm just saying that the wording of the policy is makes me uneasy [Music] i apologize i know it's hard because i'm not

097trying to derail the meeting [Music] but but kate if you look at the policy if you look at the third paragraph down they really define what they're talking about in terms of the partisan political activities i think that really would help you um it means that you know they can't be posting uh circular's vote for you know mr smith or whatever um us are soliciting funds which is a another political activity so i think it defines it pretty well as as to what this what the committee was thinking about when they brought this forward but the second paragraph the policy itself the first bullet point one says representing personal political views as those of the district employees should always take adequate precautions to distinguish between their personal political views and those of the district um

098it is implying again that the political views are what's being as those of the district i think that and that's and that's the difference i think a teacher can engage in a debate with their students and say my personal opinion is and that's different while teaching while on yeah and have it not be distinguished as that of the district while they're being i mean in fact kind of i'm saying it's not the districts if they say it's my personal i mean i do think we all know that given what the legislature did last year there could be complaints to the department of education against some teachers and that's for doing that and that's a [Music] fortunate but i think the intents of this policy is to make clear that they that we still encourage them

099to engage in discussions on current events and just this is the line the law draws about what they have to do yeah i for me unfortunately saying employees will not advocate their personal political views you know it has those in the district it just says employees will not advocate their personal political views or engage in political activities as defined in this policy when speaking pursuant to the employee's official duties during hours of official employment right meaning pursuant to their like so i'm i'm speaking to you now as your teacher and this is what i think as opposed to this is my personal opinion to me that's how i understand pursuant to the employees official duties so i'm not teaching you that being a democrat is right i'm saying as a person this is what i

100think so let's talk about you know we learn both sides so i can't say that you know me as a i'm t this is what i'm teaching you in class i'm teaching you to be this way or believe in this you have to be neutral and separate the personal part from representing the district that's all i don't feel that it's hindering what you say it's who you attribute it to you couldn't under this policy give a test and say only an answer that agrees with my political view is correct because then you would be using district resources to push your agenda push your agenda on students just personally believe that this policy may end up being misused but ali get he was saying out of trust that it won't because i do i do trust

101my community i will just i can see why you'd say it would be murky i can see that yeah it does seem as though it could be it's that paragraph that one paragraph doesn't seem to fit in with the second paragraph and the third paragraph seem to contradict each other a little bit i know what you're saying last year as well there was a committee put together from like the high school as well that was reviewing this policy and and that was another um that that paragraph i i do remember there's just it's a hard thing to phrase just legal with all the legal references wise um and it's not black and white yeah definitely not all right anyone else all right then so this is this is a policy that we need to have

102a vote on so um so all those in favor of passing policy district policy 435 please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed any abstentions okay one abstention thank you that's a good discussion [Music] all right gina once you've been done okay no i talked to you okay i should chat more and give you time to so the next policy up is the second reading of policy 621 which allows sorry i'm going to try which allows um or creates the opportunity or the policy to create the opportunity for extending learning opportunities um for our students so um that is up for a uh approval before the board as a second reading and approval [Music] so i would um sorry above ah okay so second okay so it's been moved in second and that we

103rather than just considering this a second reading that we vote to approve this um policy tonight um i do feel strongly that supporting our students and finding other ways and places to learn makes much better rounded students and i'm glad that we have something in place to do this um are there any questions or is there any discussion here okay so all those in favor of approving uh district policy 621 extended learning opportunities for high school students please signify by saying aye aye any oppose any abstentions okay that policy passes [Music] okay and policy 672 um earning of high school credit um so this is a again a sec second policy second reading and a approval of policy number 672 which has to do with awarding credits for people who are trans transferring in and

104also for demonstrating mastery for credits towards high school graduation [Music] so if it's the second meeting or are we at well at the second reading okay that's fine yeah um does anyone have any questions on this policy this is primarily uh pertinent to trans students transferring in and out um okay then is there a motion to accept policy 672 moved by seconded by jonathan all those in favor of approving district policy 672 earning of high school credit please signify by saying aye aye any opposed any extensions excellent okay nicely done gina thank you um number eight on the agenda ad hoc committee at our equity advisory group there's a committee meeting report who am i looking to for that i see you do you want to start with the committee meeting report no go ahead

105you can bring us up so so for the interview process we had a group meet last week talking about what the screening process was for the deijb position which stands for diversity equity inclusion justice and belonging and kind of discussing what we are looking for in an applicant as well as making sure that the process um has continuity and each applicant will be asked the same questions um we also discussed kind of the delineation between the roles of bow and concord and how the role will look as as they work in two different districts and as we work to build a position in office around this individual the interviews will begin tomorrow as kathleen talked about with about five people starting at 8 45 a.m we'll be beginning the first round remotely um virtually and

106then probably we'll have some finalists that we will see where it goes after that [Music] dad [Music] yes um is the intent to uh share equally with bo i mean 50 50. do we know yet um we haven't finalized that yet um we we have a great obviously have a greater need than bo so we haven't finalized that depending on what their their days it may be a 60 40 split that's what we're looking at right now i think it's a good way to get as much yeah i agree um i think this is a good way for us to start um start slow they're going to need a lot of support we know that um it's a very different position they're very you know there's positions like this in manchester um exeter oyster river

107just finished the hiring process and conquered and i think it will really address will help us the equity committee our advisory committee has been really supportive of this and when we our last committee meeting met to talk about next year this person will be really helpful in facilitating our advisory meetings too so but you're right we um and you know we're going to watch it and i think bo understands that at some point and and hope maybe next year depends on the board i mean you know i don't want to be presumptuous here but um that we would need we would go full time and another item to note sorry as well um this is currently going to be grant funded but the board should also think about how we might want this role um

108for long term and and where then the funding would come from excellent okay um i know that [Music] we are it's my understanding that we're classifying this position as a central office and administrative sort of position correct or am i incorrect in that so that again kate um that this coordinator position would be categorized as an administrative position it would be out of central office correct yes and i think that's important i think the um central office can give them the kind of support they need but clearly the role will be in the buildings with our faculty and with our students that's clearly where we want in the and the advisory which is made up of teachers and principal and community people so um i think that's an important aspect to it that would be

109overseen through the central office yeah they would report um they would report to me got it so i know it was a concern um the salary for that position that it was um on par with the other administrative salaries and i just wanted to check in with you about that and make sure that it it is comparable i believe it is yeah okay i yeah i just was checking in because i know that that had been um a concern that had been proven i heard i heard that but um when they said it um they were looking at what we originally had as part-time but it's not part-time anymore so it does match the yeah the other full-time salaries awesome and then just my last question was i was just hoping that um maybe michelle

110would also want to speak to it i know we talk about um the work that the district has done when working towards hiring a diverse staff and that's especially something that's important to communicate i think to these applicants they want to know that the district has been working towards this goal already and what we've put in place to help support them in their new role um so i just thought you might want to talk about the things that we have been doing in our hiring processes [Music] so we um i have reached out to several different people in the community as far as trying to reach a more diverse population um i used to have communications with the city of concord i have joined the diversity workforce coalition it's um actually i have a meeting

111on friday with them and um i've reached out to some of the individuals i'm i'm not going to be able to say his name correctly right now i'm sorry clement commented um and trying to reach a more diverse population and um sharing our job postings getting out we did um join a nationwide job posting application on online application system that reaches out to more nation nationwide versus ed jobs which just goes to new hampshire population so we are trying harder to get to a more diverse population thank you so much for your work awesome [Music] anything else that needs to be added i commented on questions anywhere awesome awesome i love listening to the good work okay number nine agenda out of other business new hampshire school board association delegate assembly saturday october 1st i

112don't want to think about october um so would this be you i guess so um i don't know if people will remember this school board assembly used to be in january um they decided last year to hold it in october because they want to be able to get ahead of an abreast of the legislative uh bills that are being offered instead of trying to work behind the times um they want to be sort of get on top of things as the fall legislation gets started so the assembly was moved from january which would have been for many years to october last year i attended and jonathan was the alternate i don't know who wants to attend the assembly i don't have any vested interest in necessarily being our assembly um delegate so i don't know

113if jonathan would like to go as the primary delegate i don't know if if somebody else would like to go as the secondary um it's it's coming up we need to appoint somebody to go um registration is open i believe for the um for the delegate and the secondary so we need to to have that sort of in our mind i'm more than happy to attend but also happy for someone else to just let me know i was gonna say i'm i'm i would go for the experience of seeing the process and participating and so jonathan since you since you went last year as the alternative do you want to go as the uh i mean i don't know send the youth yeah send the kids [Music] don't stay outside [Music] capable hands the bringing

114forward of the resolutions when they finally get them all together and then you all can have fun at the assembly or well if they're the only two people that that want to attend so resolutions wise the new hampshire school board association is accepting resolutions right now as well if anyone has any that they would like to submit thank you all right agenda item number 10 proposed calendars of meetings and we have a couple of specific ones we need to put together for july right you have your two calendars in front of you you have june and july so in june you can whoops sorry before that can we just take a quick look at the enrollment report sure [Music] no it's not on the adjustments not on the agenda it's in the book it's interpersonal

115yeah um you know i've continued to be concerned about the beaver meadow class numbers throughout the year and i'm not seeing them go down and when i compare the christa mcauliffe fourth grade numbers at 17 and 18 to the beaver meadow at 24 and 26 i would really encourage us to perhaps either bring on a couple of new teachers for beaver meadow third and fourth grade which both have significantly higher numbers you know we're talking nine we're talking about nine extra kids in a classroom at beaver meadow in a fourth grade classroom versus a classroom at christa mcauliffe that's two reading groups that's all kinds of stuff so i don't know if we need to move people from buildings to fix that or if we just need to bring on new staff but i'd really

116be unhappy to see those numbers like that again next year well remember your fourth grade's going to fifth and you have an extra classroom teacher so that number will immediately um be reduced but i third grade will go to four but the third grade goes to fourth and you know i think i said to you during our budget deliberations that you had set aside contingency for superintendents so when those numbers got to that point you're absolutely right brenda that we have to pay close attention to that okay and we will we're monitoring enrollment right now um like for instance her numbers are way low on uh kindergarten right so will that free up a teacher do you know what i mean right i haven't hired that teacher yet because of that so but once that

117happens and i have it's a little bit more solid then i'll bring that back to you probably is there any way to look at these enrollment numbers before school starts oh sure sure i'll do that in august no later than august all right and that's all the schools july will be too quick i mean your board meeting is july 5th it's too quick but the august meeting is definitely the time when we'll have much more uh solid numbers but perhaps it's time for the instructional committee to take a look at our class size policies um [Music] because i mean beaver meadow is most of the classes i think one looks like it's over but i think it's 25. well yeah and there's one class that is 26. so technically they're complying but i think we've

118all expressed some discomfort with that big class so when looking at our calendar of meetings we have an instructional committee in james that have a set agenda already no that's the 13th right there's an instructional committee on next next monday is that someone that we can discuss absolutely we haven't said i haven't brenda and i haven't sat to talk about the i have a couple of items but nothing that's depressing i mean then we then we actually kind of get sometimes august all now we're scrambling to find a teacher right or someone's told oh you're not teaching third grade this year you're teaching fifth grade be nice to have a handle on those yeah that would be good okay thank you thanks brendan [Music] all right so now moving along so um so anyway you

119have um the charter commission is going to meet uh tomorrow night uh they wanna they have received feedback from the attorney general's office relative to the charter and with recommendations and so i was contacted by them and i will be present tomorrow night i was hoping that maybe mr cotton would join me i don't think jim can make it so no he can't he actually sent an email at five o'clock okay i haven't seen that um i'll be happy would you go i'll go to um the chair asked us to be present so um and then you have city and community relations and jonathan and i are working on an agenda for that for wednesday but really in preparation for farmer's market for market days and we also i want to alert you to the

120joint meeting that we have with city council and our school school board committee on the 24th that's a early morning meeting at 7 30. we'd like to do it here and in person and we'll have coffee to keep everybody waiting time are we starting the business session 7 30. when we schedule this just school doesn't start so 7 30 so for those of us who are 24th oh well camp still starts yeah i i guess i they've done that 7 30. uh they've always so i kind of stuck to it but yeah i hear you pam be a little bit more sensitive to that um the following week is the week of the 20th now we have you know the last day of school for the kids is on the 17th um that'll be a

121full day graduation on janitor um we'll be celebrating janeta when she walks across the stage to get her diploma and you know you all have your your gowns for the graduation if you're able to be there on saturday at i think 10 o'clock right 10 o'clock the following week you have executive committee on monday communication and policy on the 22nd we decided to play a little catch-up with policy so we're going to meet two wednesdays in a row on the 22nd and the 29th but i wanted you to save the 23rd for a public hearing i think that it's been a while since we've had an opportunity to hear from our constituents across the city around the project so i was going to ask for you tonight to consider a public hearing on the 23rd

122and to have it at runlit because i always think it's and barb you said that to me it's always important to get the families into the building to so that at least they can see it you know um for those who haven't had a chance we've had a couple of you know uh occasions where we have had walk-throughs um but this would give us another chance so i am i and i mentioned it to uh jim too that and he thought it would be really good to have a public hearing on the 23rd i agree the hard part we sit here and work work work and do all these things and we what we do isn't always immediately accessible or easy for everyone right not everyone gets online and looks at it so when you

123have a public that feels that they're not listened to the more the more opportunities we can give people to speak the better i agree and we've had good we've had good um representation on some of our meetings you know and so it's been pretty good we've had last one we had in person over at runlit and then we had a we followed it up with a zoom meeting we'd like to do an in-person on the 23rd at six o'clock at um at runlit and are you envisioning voting on the building aid application that night or um well we're going to know better on the 15th where we stand with the capital facilities on the 15th of june so we're going to have discussion there so let's see what happens in that meeting but we're waiting

124uh we should get the results of our the numbers the the costs uh estimated cost we'll we'll come in on the 13th so we're really it's close um the only problem with runlet is that it can't be aired live you know so people can't watch it from home and that you know something like this i i actually think and the space is not good for people to hear like it's really hard to hear in there i mean i appreciate doing it on site but i i think like if we want the public to be able to participate in in a variety of formats and to be able to hear well then we should do it here or at the high school yeah i was going to say that or the new activity room well we

125don't have the capability to air it on tv yeah we don't have a portable system that you know can move around so um but i don't disagree with that i mean we can we can move that on tv options well it's here or the high school yeah yeah or the auditorium well then i would say i'm a colleague i could talk just real quick about tv options yeah real quick yes that would be great so as much as we missed as much as we missed chris it's it's nice to have the cctv hero himself here at the meeting yes pay no attention to that man behind the curtain all right well we'll see if my board fires anybody i think just important by a couple things um it is difficult to live stream from other

126school look sorry speaking to the mic now it is tough to uh there we go it's tough um at runlit or any of these other schools because we've worked with pama cloud before um just getting live streaming working at the high school sometimes with all the firewalls it's very difficult um unless we wanted to just stream from like data on someone's cell phone which you could do um the other thing is if we're talking we're talking june 23rd right um that's immediately a scheduling conflict for concord tv if we're helping with an on location even in the auditorium um that's the first day of market days i believe um one of our staff is already on vacation that day so the 30th just a heads up with that 27th but if you were thinking about

127doing at least at the concord high school auditorium we have live streaming ready to go so if you were able to find a different day and you want to do off site we could do a live stream from the auditorium or anywhere at the high school so the gym somewhere like that the gym also has a new sound system so you could potentially do that as well okay if the purpose is to have people come to run but she was bringing up the live stream piece so now we have a balance if you wanted to live stream at runway we could make it happen but it would take a lot of coordinating and we're pretty stretched in as is what i'd like to suggest is that maybe um if we're going to start at 6th

128that we could start at uh 5 or 5 15 to have a brief tour of rundlett for people who want to see brooklyn that's what we did one time before we can be either here or at the high school um and i would suggest that maybe we try to do it on the 27th that there's a conflict we expect people to meet at run lit and then travel to another location the 27th doesn't work for the superintendent um i i'm at the conference the superintendent's conference but i'm back for the policy committee on the 29th so i could do the 30th which is a thursday we've done meetings on thursday that's fine although it's awful [Music] yeah at that point the application is going to be pretty much i mean they don't have footnotes what

129about um what about tuesday the 21st [Music] so it's ahead of marketplace so it alleviates the cctv issues because they're down there it's just that actually looks good that actually looks good want to switch it then to the 21st all right and where well i don't i guess i don't see why we would do it at why would we do it at run i mean at the high school that was so livestream could happen if we needed to do that if we needed this space right oh if we needed space yeah just because i don't think but i think you could probably just do it here that's true yeah you want to just do it here yeah all right now to address your issue i think we should do some more visitation so let's matt

130and i and paulette's [Music] scheduling is not easy but as you know and this time of year is particularly difficult but the 21st 6 o'clock here and we'll because we want to get it posted and advertised and then i will work with paulette and matt and the team here to come up with some other days to tour run lit because i think that's important that they see the school yeah me too i'm so sorry in the evening yes six in the morning well i was asking because there's nothing on the 24th that we're moving there's no 6 p.m on the 24th or moving from is that what the date we're moving it from it's a friday 20th 20th from the 25th it's not on this printout right no no we would just we're getting it

131i apologize now just to throw one more little wrench in the works is there a reason we can't do it after the executive committee meeting on the 20th and that's a normal school board that's easier yeah it would we could do it on the 20th after the executive committee which is only usually a half hour that's uh oh it is the it's a federal it's a federal holiday yeah we shouldn't do that i don't think that's a good idea on the 20th right the 24th 21st sounds amazing [Music] all right i i'm going to move forward to with the 21st 6 o'clock here to a public hearing so that you can again hear from your your community okay you're going to have to take 50 steps to first i know i know but you know

132i anyway no that's good all right let's just i'll keep going the 24th don't forget we have a joint meeting with the city council um the fall and farmers market john we have to kind of tighten that up but we'll work on that right we do have you scheduled for the 25th yeah okay to have a table um the week of the 26th i mean the 27th the only meeting that week is on uh wednesday at 5 30 on the 29th another policy meeting it's not on your calendar so please write it in policy meeting 5 30 on the 29th somehow i missed that and we will defer until after capital facilities whether we're going to i think so consider the building aid application on the 20 first or at a special meeting after that

133right okay thank you okay that's critical that you have that done in in well that's why not having it i mean part of the application and and july um you know again time for vacations is it really difficult to schedule but you have a school board meeting on the fifth you have another capital facilities meeting on the sixth i think that will help us wrap everything up farmers market that week um you you've been um kind to consider some weeks in july so that the staff here can take some vacation time they haven't taken a lot of vacation time including yours truly and so the week of the 11th um i'll be away but you're certainly more than welcome i know that jim likes to have a meeting uh with you to discuss my annual

134review which you do in this this time so and i have those documents for you to do um following week executive committee again policy farmers market on saturday and uh it's pretty quiet month where are we gonna put the special meeting the special meeting on safety that's right hold on i have that i did i did i did put it in i did i just put safety meeting i actually didn't put a date in should we do after executive committee on the 18th 18th um i think that works [Music] if we're talking security physical security but i know we've pam has been working on the audit of our cyber security is that something we could discuss at the same meeting potentially i'm not sure it will be done if it's done we'll bring it if

135it's not but she is working on it cyber security has become huge as you know and we have now moved to double um multiple authentication um for everyone you're we're next you're next um the teachers have all been informed we're ordering what they need if they need a key fob or they've just put the the app right on your phone which is the easiest but some don't want to use their personal phones and i get that so but we're working through staff right now but um you um we'll be getting the the little lesson on it next [Music] and then i just trying to clarify so july 18th the safety is that going to be a public meeting or is that 91a that's going to be under 91a thank you gina yes because of the

136information that we will share with you i think at some point we should either put on the an executive committee we can talk about it put it on the public so that the public has an idea of what it is that we're doing how we're responding the potential for additional funding all of that stuff i think needs to be at some point discussed in public once you do the 18th meeting we'll we'll then be ready to meet with the public to let you know especially as we get closer to school people want to know what it what all of the protocols you have in place so yes i think it's great we do that uh kate so we won't be ready for the cyborg but perhaps later you know later on in the in maybe

137in august okay okay um i just i apologize it's really hard actually to self-advocate i have adhd and it's really difficult for me to manage the schedule as it pertains to school board meetings when we do things we manually change things in this calendar i definitely appreciate all the hard work that goes into all of the different ways we manage the schedule and communicate and work together to show up to these things but when we think about accessibility for me i i don't have the same problem making meetings at work we use outlook and every meeting change and schedule just gets changed on my calendar kind of for me as we talk about these meetings i can just click and change and we don't have meeting invites for every meeting that happens so i can't

138manage in a google calendar to do that there's a lot of manual entry which i unders i understand isn't the end of the world for a lot of people but if i don't tell you that it's really hindering my ability to do this then i can't expect to to find a bear a bridge to that over that barrier um so i do find yeah so let me address that directly because i also have adhd yeah um i called pam pam worked actually with my husband who's a computer guru to get it it shows up on my phone now so there's a way to do that if you touch base with pam i'm sure she can help you figure out how to work it for your calendar and not every person that becomes a school board

139member will have their own personal smartphone as well so yeah right but whether it's on your computer or whether it's on whatever she knows how to i don't know how to do it all i can tell you is it shows up now so you may want to ask her so that it shows up on whatever it is that you use to keep track of but it's not every meeting or event it's not so it's not it's also systemic it's ha it is a process it is a unfortunately a coordination and process that i think we could get better at i'm probably not the only person impacted by um and i am a part of a company where i experience that um you know accommodation or um efficiency so i just know that it's possible and

140that's why i bring it up right and that's why i suggested reach out to pam and she can help you but i think you're suggesting that as a group as a district we work at maybe looking at a different way of posting our meetings um yeah because even if i follow the calendar that's on the district website i don't end up here when i'm supposed to be all the time so i've learned that that's i have to coordinate that and and this and what's in my email and the things that do get sent as invites and then the things we we talk about and change after and i understand that is how the world works and you can't always expect for accommodations to be made but it's not um yeah so something i often times

141i've missed meetings and had no idea they were occurring and i'm the only one not there or i'm chairing the meeting that i'm not at so i enlisted the support of gina and jim and i get a text message hey are you coming oh my god i forgot so then i come so that's another that's just so now the world knows gina's the only reason but um but no it's good to bring this up because we all function quite differently and uh we all want to make sure that we're here we're supposed to be but yeah i will take care of that yeah i i'm sure there's also personal responsibility that's the part of the communication but i felt doing it publicly as well is good because it it shouldn't be as scary to say

142what you need and absolutely i think you're not alone in that some weeks i have something on my schedule for three different times and three different days and that the superintendent's weekly letter said one thing and the district calendar says another we're in court trying to coordinate child care and work at the same time you're like okay yes i apologize [Music] i had something to bring up in terms of it could be capital facilities as well as city and you know community school board and city so in the process of the middle school project and all of that that's coming up um we need to take a really good hard look at our playing fields and our recreational areas that are used by our students and i know i grew up here it's been a

143city school thing forever um but i think in terms of moving forward with a lot of our projects um this is an in for an important piece of information so i'm not quite sure i mean i have a cup we have a couple of capital facilities meetings um i think it would be good to get a real handle on from parks and rec on who does what where and where our students actually play their games and who manages and runs the fields that they use and should we endeavor to make a change i was actually raised at the city council meeting this past week um from their side yes right right so i i think that's a excellent thing for us to talk about them on the 24th awesome awesome that was my question okay

144is that everything for calendar yes it is all right okay at this time we will entertain um public comments so this is an exciting part of our meeting tonight it's always good to hear what people have to say i will remind everybody who's speaking put your name make sure you put your name on you know sign your name on the piece of paper that's on the desk introduce yourself um before you speak and we like to keep like a five minute sort of minimum if everyone took 20 minutes maximum make sure you speak into the microphone well that's nice um you might not hear it loud here but the people at home can only hear you if you're really talking into the mic the one other piece of advice i will give you is if

145you have a speech prepared and the person before you said everything that you were going to say what's best is to sit down and say i agree with everything frank just said um and if you have other things to add to it that's fine i will keep careful note of who's thinking what and we really want to hear what you have to say um so i will leave it up to you to decide who goes first just make sure you sign in and introduce yourself and we shall begin i'd be happy to sign in [Music] i have [Music] lots of lefties well it's very lucky for me right now yes it is hi my name is nicole fox and i'm speaking on behalf of rebuild it runlet a group of district families and other concord

146residents who are very engaged on the topic of replacing renlett middle school we've come together in the last few weeks with the support of the concord green space coalition we have a variety of concerns related to relocating the middle school to the center point site on clinton street including safety traffic open space and habitat community equity and costs we are aware the district is preparing a school building aid grant application for the july 1st deadline we do not wish to delay the middle school project and we agree with the district that the existing school is beyond its useful life and it's in the students best interest to move forward that said we are asking the district and school board to stand by their statements made at the public meetings recently that a final site determination

147has not been made we have reached out to the department of education to better understand the grant process um they confirmed the district statement that the application is not site-specific however they told us that any deficiencies listed in the grant application to be corrected will be binding and in order to not potentially lock out the use of the existing site we are requesting that the district not include any references to site deficiencies in the grant application we believe the full evaluation and comparison of the two sites has not been completed to a sufficient level to know um conclusively whether one site is better than the other or not some of the evaluations we feel are necessary to make this assessment include a full review and accounting of the size of the existing parcel we have

148previously provided information to the district and the board that the district may have been relying on some inaccurate tax record information regarding the existing site's acreage we also feel that a safe routes to school evaluations for both sites need to be conducted traffic studies including speed and crash data and costs including those for additional infrastructure the city would have to maintain in perpetuity we have provided the district and school board with responses to the existing site concerns that were raised at the public meeting in may as well as other concerns noted related to safe routes to school concern one i'm not going to go into all of the details that were in what i have already sent you i'm just going to hit some highlights concern one was an inefficient and dangerous vehicular traffic patterns

149the existing runlit site has access to four separate city streets that could be utilized in its site design to improve traffic flow the centerpoint site will be located on an already congested intersection on a state highway that has experienced 14 crashes in the last four years concern two is that the site doesn't meet the minimum size requirements for middle school [Music] as noted earlier we have provided documentation to the district that the actual size of the existing parcel is likely to be 30.6 acres and not the 21.2 acres as reflected in those tax records this would leave more than 19 acres for the middle school not the 11 acres previously thought and even after excluding the three acres of wetlands on site the available land exceeds the minimum size by more than 50 percent concern

150three is site development limited by the location of the existing school wetlands and abbott downing school the concord school district has already successfully completed a similar project on the same parcel when abbott downing was built to replace the conant school on site and the long-term benefits of a walkable neighborhood school we believe vastly outweigh the temporary challenges during construction which we fully acknowledge there will be concern four is traffic the traffic volume on clinton street is more than twice that of south street moving the middle school to clinton street would only further increase the traffic on this busy corridor and no traffic studies have been completed to identify the impacts and additional infrastructure that would be needed concern five is site access the traffic flow challenges at the existing middle school could be improved if

151the school were rebuilt closer to conan drive and utilize the multiple street access points already existing at this location the center point site would only have access off of clinton street which already experiences congestion and concern six is safe routes to school the characteristics of the streets in the south end are far safer for children than clinton street the evaluations of the existing runlit site um that the district has already had completed are outdated they were from between the years 2008 and 2013 so some actually predate abbott downing school and no evaluation of the clinton street site has been conducted yet it's obvious that the traffic speeds are higher on clinton street than on south street which is inherently much more dangerous for vulnerable users like pedestrians and particularly children in addition the school would

152be much less accessible to students being located a half mile further away from nearly every student and while a half mile in a car is not particularly it's not a particularly high barrier it is a pretty significant barrier for pedestrians beyond these issues we have a few more representatives who are going to speak regarding some other concerns related to relocating the middle school i thank you for your time and consideration of our request to exclude all site deficiencies from the grant application thank you thank you [Music] just 23 seconds over well that's right i was watching [Music] um [Music] good evening members of the school board and superintendent thank you so much for this opportunity to speak and thank you for your service to concord and i got to tell you this is a lot

153more welcoming experience than being at the city budget hearing last week and i thank you for that it's important meredith cool i was getting that point thank you meredith my name is meredith cooley i have two elementary students here in the public school system um and they will be at least i'm sure one will be run during the rebuild i'm here representing the concord green space coalition we are a grassroots all-volunteer community group working to protect promote and improve access to green space and concord an effort we feel is incredibly important for the future of congress children a group of residents reached out to the coalition in may with concerns about the middle school location nervous that the district was moving fast towards the center point relocation plan they felt urgency to inform others about

154their concerns with the proposed plan and implications for the existing green space in that location among other things we reviewed their arguments consulted local experts and decided to empower them with the tools to advocate and organize around a better solution and we launched the rebuild at runlit initiative dozens of residents were planning to come tonight but we wanted to be respectful of your time and were respectfully informed that the rebuild was not on the agenda tonight so instead we organized a small group to speak today to be very clear our intention is not to oppose the rebuild in any way or to slow down the district from obtaining grant funding as nicole said we are here to urge the district to submit the application for the school building aid grant without listing any existing site

155deficiencies ultimately we request that the district rebuild the middle school at the at the current location the concerns are many and i'll let others dive into the details like nicole just did but overall we are concerned about cost to taxpayers we've successfully rebuilt schools on site we've come in under budget and on time why not work off of that successful track record increased traffic congestion on clinton street intersecting streets child safety related to placing children on a busy commuting corridor losing the walkability bike ability of the existing location the implications related to physical and mental health and equity of access to school openings conquered up to suburban sprawl at the center point site and importantly irreparably destroying green space that supports the last north-south wildlife corridor in concord we have received an overwhelming response from

156the community with almost 300 petition signatures that include comments and concerns that means almost 300 residents have entrusted their concerns to the coalition and i take that responsibili responsibility very seriously and sharing their voices and concerns are what we are about i'd like to read a few of the comments now if i have time um i just picked some of the the shorter ones just to share from ward 7 born and raised on south street went to conan parker rjhs and chs and chs grad keep the middle school in the middle where it is where it is and rebuild if necessary love the current location of middle school and value the land and wildlife on clinton that's from ward 8. from ward 5 i think preserving access and walkability for students is incredibly important rebuild

157run where it is ward 3 i chose to live in concord because it was a small quiet safe town my quality of life is being destroyed i understand there is a housing shortage but redevelop existing lots stop tearing down all the woods and green space in concord to create low-income housing they are destroying our town again i'm sharing voices we don't ward 7 we don't need a middle school on clinton street is way too dangerous for student travel ward 5 building on the present site is the obvious answer the city already owns the land promotes walkability the proposed site on clinton street will add to traffic poses safety issues and destroys valuable habitat ward 5 keep communities walkable promote healthy habits and a cleaner environment ward 2. we the city of concord recently rebuilt elementary

158schools on their original grounds they are now very workable and beautiful schools runway as we know it needs to be replaced rebuilt i realize we only have one middle school so housing students during construction will be difficult but not impossible i support keeping run middle school in the same location i support rebuild at runlit for the safety and walkability of the old site this this is ward 5. this is also a matter of equity for our students word six preserve walkability green space and stay true to the master plan or 10 property taxes are already too high for people on a fixed out income we can't keep spending recklessly and be able to keep our house the property is now on it the property it is the school is now on is the best place

159and should stay on that land clinton street is busy all the time and combine that with hospital traffic and it is accident waiting to happen [Music] ward 10 i'm a senior citizen who lived in concord for 50 years i live on a very fixed income and fear that i will lose my home because of the ever rising property taxes i completely agree with a new middle school is that a new middle school is long overdue but if it can be built on the present runlet site for less money than i'm in support of this i award seven i live near runlet and i see the vibrancy of kids walking and biking to school runlet and abbott downing or the heart of the south end let's keep the middle school in town not on a busy

160car only corridor ward one huge proponent of rebuilding runlit and saving as much open green space as in concord as possible we aren't getting any more and we need to conserve what remains while i understand that rebuilding runway in place will be challenging then more challenging than just building new net new i think it's the right solution for concord and long term okay so i'll leave it at that but i did my best everybody who's watching on um tv so and that was that's just a small sample and i'm leaving this with you all so you can read through them it's nice to hear the different places that you those comments are coming from the different words yeah not all one and it's every award is represented i believe um lastly i just want to

161thank you for having another public hearing for on on june 21st thank you thank you meredith thank you thanks [Music] thank you [Music] um thank you very much i hope everybody can hear me i've been to a few of these meetings so i think i know everybody at the table in front of me i just want to thank all of you for all the hard work that you've been putting in through the years i know it's not been easy and again i also want to thank the whole audience here tonight um i my name is linda mead and i live in ward 7. my husband and i have lived in new hampshire for 36 years we moved to concord in 2017. we bought the house in 2014 but it took a little while to get

162it get it up to par but anyways i'm supportive of everything the people have said so far tonight and i'm not going to belabor everything i'm not going to go over everything i agree with what they said um i just want to say that i've been a nurse practitioner for 30 years and the biggest challenge for me in my work was working with children and adults who were overweight and obese okay these are people you know is challenging for me but it was frustrating and sad for them so it was very hard and we know from a study done in 2020 by the national survey of children's health part of hhs it showed that children aged 10 through 17 years were reported as overweight or obese is now at 32.1 percent in this country one

163out of three and the prevalence of childhood obesity obesity has tripled since 1970 and obese children become obese adults with all the health related chronic severe health related problems diabetes heart disease you name it right right down the line and once you're obese it's very very hard the stigma is awful people live with it and again very very hard to treat and so from what you know all the data that i looked at on your website i went through all the data which was great especially the recent stuff and on it it talks about kids riding their bikes to school and the master plan that concord has for vital communities vibrant communities right we want walkability we want access for everyone safe streets safe routes and clinton street for a new school doesn't provide that

164i think you know i've driven down going to work every day down that street from beau and i'm telling you getting trying to get to work in the morning people were speeding all the time and i don't think if i had a child in school elementary school middle school i wouldn't want them walking or riding a bike on that street and what's the goal don't we want people to be healthy don't we want to promote that don't we want to promote more exercise and health in this country and i don't think this plan would do that i think leaving the school where it is in a community with all these narrower streets where kids walk and there's quite a few that walk to school i see them because i ride my bike everywhere and i

165see them walking and i see the some of the improvements that are happening in the city right but i think we need more intersections that are safer to cross for kids i need i think we need again better sidewalks which i think is happening i start to see it but i i think we need more and i think the money that we would put into the infrastructure over on the clinton street should forget about it divert it put it into the city roads bridges and sidewalks to make them safe for all pedestrians of all ages that's my hope okay and i think that would be that goal and that vision and that foresight would help everyone people now and people in the future for everyone okay so that's it short and sweet i cut it

166down how's that thank you you're wondering i can leave this to you i have references too for everything but i'm not going to belabor it so i'll leave that there okay [Music] good evening my name is reagan bissonnette and i am very glad to be here this evening thank you all for your time i love living in concord i have a kindergartner and i'm very happy to have him in the public school system here in concord so um glad to be able to talk a bit about this so when i first heard about the proposed new site for the middle school um i actually thought it sounded like a good solution you know it's not that much further from the current school uh you know there's there was more space to build on but once

167i better understood some of the implications of the walkability of students getting to that new location as well as what appears to be the misunderstanding over the size of the current middle school site that you already heard about i got very concerned about some of the the equity issues related to this proposed new school site so in particular i mean as you know runlet is surrounded by a number of homes and neighborhoods so there are many ways for students to walk and ride and bike scooter to school whereas this new location has very few homes nearby very few neighborhoods nearby which is going to result in the vast majority of students needing to either get to school by car or ride a bus you know i actually whenever i pick up my my son from

168his after school program on fruit street if i go to get him early it's really fantastic to see so many students walking up and down that road from the middle school with their friends to head home you know one day i saw one kid walking one kid biking another kid skateboarding you know all together and then the other direction the high schoolers are streaming down that street so you know that gets a lot of traffic from from students who are socializing and taking the time to to get to and from school together so why does walkability matter i mean there's a number of reasons why students being able to walk and transport themselves to school is important but i'll touch on three first there's a tremendous amount of research that shows that walkability to schools

169improves traffic safety it results in better air quality enhanced personal safety and better student academic performance you know in particular there is a safe routes partnerships and change lab solutions report on the walkability on walkability to schools as it relates to diversity and equity in u.s schools and that report talks specifically about the fact that a truly integrated neighborhood with walkable schools could really help counter the wide gaps that we see in academic achievement between schools that are serving children from lower income families and schools in more affluent neighborhoods you know the second thing i'd like to bring up that was already touched on is that with childhood obesity it is an all at an all-time high many health advocates are advocating for walkable schools children who can safely walk a ride to and from

170school can build up physical activity into their daily routine and locating schools close enough to children's homes also means that those children can then get to the school grounds to play on the weekends or after school as well as you know get to after-school activities more easily and then third there's just tremendous community value in having schools located near homes which creates the livable neighborhoods that i think so many of us enjoy here in concord so if if we were able to rebuild at runlit we would help avoid that urban sprawl that would basically be encouraged by moving the middle school further away from existing neighborhoods you know an active travel is associated with greater community connections and social interactions i mean anecdotally i can share that my family met far more people in our

171neighborhood in the first few weeks that we started walking our son to kindergarten than we did in the five years that we had been living in our neighborhood and driving him to uh you know pre-k program so while the middle school does draw from students all over the city of concord i think it's really in all of our best interest to at least to make sure that the middle school is built on a location that's going to enable the most students possible to walk and ride to and from school so thank you very much for your consideration of rethinking rebuilding at rundland thank you reagan [Music] i'm a track coach right [Music] good evening everybody my name is peter hollenberg um i i do appreciate all the work and everything that i've heard today uh

172in particular the work that you want to do regarding safety i mean i can't imagine what what is happening in some school districts right now so i appreciate that it was fun seeing some of my kids old teachers and nurses retiring today as well so miss barlow was a ferocious teacher to both my two kids but they are excellent mathematicians right now one's in college doing very well so it's great and miss moffat was a wonderful nurse to both of them um i've been a concord resident for 28 years most of those years spent in the south end very near the school so both schools are very close to my heart i understand that runlet's been on the chopping block for a while now you guys have tried to to form partnerships with uh with

173other organizations and i can only appreciate the price tag uh associated with uh putting a new school together and so i know it's not an easy task um one when i did hear about the center point uh contract potential uh that kind of got me a little concerned um so i you know a big part is the walkability we've heard a lot of people talk about that just last week i was coming up on alison street and i came up to south street and i saw these kids walking northbound and i was at the crosswalk for about two minutes it was really an insurmountable amount of time for me to to sit there but i saw all these kids walking in group as a as a you know cluster and i thought maybe i should

174take a video of this you know for for and then i thought to myself that's probably not a good idea so i started counting and then i saw kids on the other side walking as well so there was an awful lot of kids out and about um i can appreciate also pulling into this wonderful city of ours on clinton street and seeing a shiny new school um on on the on the right side or left side and um but as we can hear just the infrastructure the feasibility the walkability would just be so difficult um my bad the last school board meeting i went was in 2008 there wasn't cake and fruit over here so uh i think i'll probably be coming a little more often but it's when we were deciding on the elementary

175schools and my kids were both going uh both at conan at the time and both went through the rebuilding of of kona to abba downing and it was it felt like such an easy process there was there was no disruption to their schooling at all and to have the schools finished so quickly under budget is just i think something we should try to work on um you know it feels like last century in 1999 i was actually a school teacher at runley and i know that school had 1300 kids at that time i know that number is down to about 900 now i think 1300 was too much because we had to have a cluster of 8th graders go to the high school and i was one of those teachers and it felt fine i

176think we managed through that we were able to we were i think i was part of the summertime cluster or the springtime and we were able to go to a memorial field and play and what a you know treat for those kids um so i would just say that and you know my whole sixth grade year was in a portable classroom and i felt very special being in there so i think we can make things happen like that um the idea now is to reduce reuse and recycle and i really think that runlit as has a core structure we can work around uh the gyms the uh the multi-purpose room i think the cafeteria i think there's there's capab you know we'll let the engineers and the architects figure that out but i think there's

177there's enough room on the fields to uh to kind of work around that and i know that people on springfield street those that are but the the fields there are probably unhappy about that i believe there's 11 houses there one was on sale last week it's no longer on sale as of tonight um i don't know how half of those streets are really covered by trees so i don't think there would be much uh disruption to them so i would just again kind of support what everybody has been saying here and just kind of rebuild at runlit and i appreciate your time thanks so much thank you peter [Music] just ran a four-minute mile nice job i know i timed it earlier that was the satellite program at concord high i remember that yeah yeah

178good evening uh my name is ted wing i'm a concord resident um i'm here to speak to you about my experience as a community gardener out on birch street which would be pretty much adjacent to the back side of the proposed new school i have a daughter who's graduating or who's finishing 8th grade and i can't advocate soon enough and quick enough for changes in that in the middle school top to bottom it is horrendous i have a third grade child who will be at renlet and i can only hope that his experience that he will have at that school will be one that is enriching and dynamic for him when we went to tour the high school it was uh pretty awesome and we're really excited for what that will be for my daughter

179uh so fully supportive of a new school i would strongly ask that you reconsider building runlet at its current location for the past 16 years we have gardened at the birch street community gardens my children have grown up there it is what they know we have had our child in a pack and play out at the garden and that's been just a tremendous opportunity and experience for her the garden provides calm provides quiet it's a place of peace it is a place where we have built community i will say that from the conversations i've had with fellow gardeners out there the potential to have a middle school on the back side there is just absolutely devastating it's a place where we can grow organic food we can eat healthy we have an opportunity to really

180instill values in our children and give them an opportunity to understand where and how food comes from and the amount of time effort and energy that goes into that when langley parkway was finished back in whatever was 2006 the amount of increased traffic that we saw coming down uh clinton street the amount of increased traffic that we saw coming down birch street was really unsafe it was unsafe for our children who we have a plot that is right on uh bird street so cars whizzing down on that dirt road at 40 miles an hour if you've driven on that road in the middle of summer you know how big those potholes can get we have people who are driving recklessly on the grass we have called the police for help in slowing down traffic um

181it works sometimes but it doesn't work all the time unless they're out there uh as was mentioned i think the green space is an incredible opportunity for a wildlife corridor it's where we see deer we see songbirds we see birds of prey all the time it is a wonderful wonderful opportunity and one that we ask that you continue to prioritize it's a special place if you've been out to the community gardens there are people who are out there taking photos it's a place where they can come and they can get their time if you haven't been out there in the middle of the summer i would encourage you to come out come see the dahlias that we grow and our garden plot it is just a phenomenal place we're also really concerned that if the

182school gets built there and the only access point out in and out of that school is on clinton street that birch street will get paved it is would be simply a matter of time there are not enough exit points and accessibility for that school not to have another way out and whether that is pushing your way back back into the ironworks you know finding a way to push back that way or finding an access point back over to birch street it's just a matter of time it is not something that we advocate for in terms of putting that location putting the school in that location and i'd strongly ask you to reconsider rebuilding at renlit thank you thank you [Music] is there anyone else that would like to come speak i really want to thank

183you all for coming you know i was talking to kathleen earlier and and every other school board in the state sits before a city and a public vote and we're tasked with making huge decisions the nine of us and uh there are times when it might might seem like we just sort of do whatever we want what we want to do is what's right for the community and of course there's always differing opinions we have um i would encourage you to come and listen to our capital facility meeting discussions that we have we don't have time for talking during those meetings but it's if you can't hear on tv just come sit during the committee meetings and listen um and take notes and and all and please also share everything that you've said i haven't

184checked my email in a couple of days so she doesn't remind me so i forget um but um it's really really super helpful i hadn't even really pondered birch birch road i've run 100 miles on that road through the gardens so these are all things that are really important for us to consider and please come to the public hearing and that's a great place where you can come in numbers and really say what you want to say but i appreciate it i went to runway and uh that was a long time ago it was kind of a new school then so um anyway um so i just want to thank you all for coming it's super helpful for us as a board what we need to do now i believe um actually um i'm gonna

185take i'm gonna give us like a three minute potty break um it gives you all time to get out of here and then we can reconvene and head into [Music] thank you so much [Music] make um thank you wow okay we're back after a little break um kate's not back oh i take that back we're back from our little break so what we need to do now is um under 91a uh section three for non-public sessions all right so 91a 3 2 non-public sessions we will be doing um a the dismissal promotion a compensation of any public employee or the disciplining of such employee or the investigation of any charges against him or her unless the employee affected has the right to a meeting and request that the meeting be open in which case the

186request shall be granted and section d consideration of the acquisition sale or lease of real or personal property which if discussed in public would likely benefit a party or parties whose interests are averse to those of the general community so do we have to vote on this yeah it's a roll call okay so we'll have a roll call vote on going into non-public ms higgins mr cotton i don't think we have an emotion sorry i need a motion to go in move by jump mr weinberg second by pam now we're all called back aye mr cotton aye ms haystix aye ms walsh aye mr weinberg aye ms west hi and i voted hi all right then shushu now