Pelham School Committee

001okay we are live all right thanks okay seeing the presence of a quorum i'll call to order this meeting of the pelham school committee at exactly 6 30 and we'll start with roll call attendance ron menino here sarah best kenny present margaret st dancer present and hall present um all right next up is approval of the minutes um which i had sent around and are also posted for la at on last month's meeting on board docs um so any questions comments edits on those no comments margaret go ahead um i think that principal darlene needs to be added to the attendees okay thank you yeah okay all set um all right it was a quick comment by maylene that she's having some wi-fi issues but she did have a quick comment to make oh okay

002sorry a minute so um got it okay we'll wait a minute for her then are you all ready to hear me or yeah we can hear you go ahead okay great i just wanted to bring up the um the regional and amer school committee asked that i put the draft minutes in a pdf format that could then be accessible to the public um usually really close to the day of the meeting i wasn't sure if that's something the pelham school committee would be interested in um i essentially did i attached it as a pdf but to the administrative side of things so the public would not be able to see it but i just wanted to bring it up if that was something that the committee was interested in it's very simple for me to

003do yeah thank you i was actually going to bring that up with you separately so yes if you could do it the same way for pelham that you do with the region that would be great that way would work for us um and that way i think everybody who needs to access the minutes can and then we can still approve them and post them to you perfect sounds good all right thank you um okay anything else on the minutes all right and we'll take a motion moved let me accept the minutes all right is there a second second okay we'll do a roll call though ron um that was it you got it sarah best kenny eye margaret her eye and i i wasn't there i think i i usually i think i had stain

004if i wasn't there hall abstain um okay thank you um next up is public comment i did not receive anything um so we can keep going um so mike and mickey where are you who's mike do you want to go first sure i'll go first and then pass it to mickey i enjoyed i was up in pelham today so i got to see a couple couple classrooms uh hang out with mickey of course but also got to see technology space and see students working in multiple spaces around the building so uh just always nice to see pelham kids it's just you know the students in the hallway and and mickey knows every single kid and i miss darling and you know it's just seeing those interactions and seeing really the kind of the beauty of

005a small school is just a treat you know it's not that i don't like any of my other schools but it does feel different uh given the size and pelham so uh thanks mickey for hosting me just a couple quick updates uh one is that tonight was our last in a three-part series uh that was focused on equity and diversity and we had different speakers in i think no surprise one of my professional highlights in general um not just for this week of this month was being able to interview cornell west to be three weeks no two weeks ago today uh it was amazing and actually got to hang out with him beforehand so that video is archived on the youtube piece so people can go back and look at it last week i was

006able to interview dr j dr j matthews and this week i was not able to do it uh but jennifer ortiz was able to interview rhonda soto so um it was uh they were wonderful events and you know they they live on forever in terms of the recordings so um that was my first update second one of the things that we put out for folks it's really hard to teach in a mask all day and one of the things that some of our teachers in some of our schools have found is wearing a headset with a portable relatively small speaker did not blow out the room you know wasn't like oh my god you know people can hear me 10 miles away so we put that out and we did have some folks who were

007interested in demoing that and i think it really the feedback we heard across the three districts is it's helping students particularly students who may uh struggle more you know in school be able to hear more clearly when teachers are wearing a mask but are mic'd up you know that's been an intervention for certain students with special needs for many many years back when i was teaching i remember my second year so about 20 years ago i had kind of the technologies improved it was much larger device but it really helped all students what i found not just the one student had an auditory disability and so that's hopefully something that will grow but we made that available for folks recently the next update is i'm happy to share that the pelham elementary school received and

008it was announced today a 3 stars grant a mass cultural council grant that will continue the work with the hitchcock center and helen and there and environmental education so we're thrilled that we're able to enhance our curriculum with our good partners at the hitchcock center in terms of health and safety updates yesterday was the second shot clinic uh for um we had a number of five to 11 year olds including uh folks from pelham who took part in that so it was nice to see we had a lot it was really nice because they opened up a booster clinic as well so we saw some children getting their second shot and their you know one of their caregivers to get the booster you know sometimes with the kids still in the arms uh it was

009i know it sounds strange but it was a really nice event um and we actually are just about confirming that uh when we get back from break pretty soon thereafter we'll have another opportunity for five to eleven year olds uh in amherst and pelham to be able to receive uh their first and second shots in that sequence uh as well as boosters for adults in those communities so we we hope to get information out actually in the next 48 hours uh and uh like we did yesterday we sent it out to not just staff but also families in the community and i think we had 62 booster shots given yesterday um and 39 k to 12 shots and they squeezed in a couple of our 16 to 18 16 and 17 year olds who became

010eligible just so recently for boosters and they walked down because the high school they was at the high school so they walked down got their shot and then went off to a basketball practice or whatever they were doing um so it worked out really well that way but uh emerson pelham uh in-state reporting because they share a zip code are reported um together and as of last thursday is the reporting day so as of last thursday 64 of emerson pelham five to eleven-year-olds uh had at least one shot and 44 had their second shot and so that's about double the state average so kudos to emerson pelham and the students in those communities for their high vaccination rates uh and we want to keep going uh you know we want to see that number get

011up and certainly with omicron which i'll talk about in a second we want to see you know as many adults get their boosters as possible and so we're trying to schedule actually um on wednesday january 5th hot off the press not officially confirmed but in pelham i you know it's a trusting community i feel like i can say that and um the nice thing is that there's no school on the six there's three kings day um so for folks who are concerned about getting a booster and then potentially the impact of a next day uh being in front of kids it provides that uh opportunity to do that and it's it's done three to like i think last night it was three to six so people can scoot down right after the end of their

012work day in pelham in terms of the staff and then for families it's a pretty wide berth and wide window and it's a pretty short ride from pelham to the high school so it um it's worked out well um you know the state put out or there was a uh someone at harvard put out a comparison of positive cases among multiple districts across the state pelham and then amherst pelham and amherst pelham regional all did look pretty good in terms of number of cases per capita until i can't say it i'm going to keep on saying that we have no school-based transmission no evidence of school-based transmission in pelham or any of the other schools that i work for and we're going to keep up the same standard high standards of distancing of masking you

013know i sent a reminder to staff this week given omicron that we're really uh we got to double down particularly on the distancing part um and and i think it's only become more important if you look around the world you know it's it's unlikely that we won't see some similar trends in massachusetts and in western massachusetts as as the rest of the world is seeing in europe and africa and asia and other places we're certainly seeing higher numbers right now just even from mostly the delta piece and so the vaccination is incredibly important for us um but i think the long term it's we're at this inflection point where uh i think even a couple months ago we might have said we're not going to eradicate covet but we can get it you know there

014were experts saying we can get it to a manageable level at this point i think we're we're learning to live with covet you know that it's not going away anytime soon and uh we're going to have to adjust what we do we're not going to mask forever we're not going to have all these precautions forever but i think sort of the the optimism of last spring if you remember last spring when vaccinations were there numbers were incredibly low and it did feel that way even the optimism of pre-thanksgiving uh when we felt like we had a better handle on it some of that optimism is it's hard because it's not in the same place the new york times was a really good article i was speaking about with some of the our leaders in the

015district the other day where there's a numbness that has come right it's it's you know with the news and the increased cases and seeing what's happening how many times can people get optimistic and then have that that other feeling and so the good news and that's what i keep saying is all the strategies we've already put in place vaccination distancing masking the same things we need to do with any variant that comes so we've got our good systems in place we're going to double down on those systems it's certainly possible that we'll see an increase in positive cases as our community increases that's going to happen in in pelham elementary school as well if there's more cases in massachusetts or our surrounding area it's going to affect our school but we work really hard to

016make sure that our school doesn't have community spread as to the best of our abilities we can't promise it'll last forever but we've been school a while now and we've been successful in that regard along that dimension i think the two other quick things i will say is one is that the state regs and this was reinforced in a deci call i was on right before this uh continue to say that the um closed contacts the only close contacts who should be uh tested as part of our you know sort of district protocol are unvaccinated close contacts or folks who come to school and feel sick they're not close contacts but vaccinated close contacts um they can't our nurses can't give them a binex test because it's part not part of our protocol but we're

017particularly sensitive to the cost so the districts purchased uh a set of binex tests the quick test for paraeducators um so if a power educator is a vaccinated closed contact we can't give them a test like we would but we're just what we've been doing is giving them the test to bring home into themselves uh because we are acutely aware that the cost of those binx tests it's still despite what you hear it's still not inexpensive and for some of our employees who that may be more of a barrier for we want to support them in that service and that's been positively received and my very last comment is that we are ending our test and stay program for elementary actually for k-12 students as of the new year so test and stay as a

018reminder has been a program that we've accessed for unvaccinated close contacts they can the students can continue to come to school under certain conditions the family drive them they're tested right at the beginning of the day if their test is positive the parents take them home if they're able to stay and they do that for a week um it's based on a utah model last spring that showed lower than one percent of positive cases and in as close contacts that was pre-delta of certainly pre-omicron and so at this point where vaccination is an option for all of our students at pelham school uh we there's a risk cost benefit there's a risk to that the risk felt really worth taking when there was no vaccine available at this point there's both a vaccine available and

019there's you know a potentially more transmissible variant out there and so the risk no longer lines up so starting in january if there are unvaccinated close contact students in pelham they will have to quarantine which is what the cdc recommends anyway the cdc has not fully endorsed test and stay and as has as most states have not of we are looking to provide some online tutoring for students who are in quarantine or frankly just out because they don't feel well to go to school based on our protocols but they're okay to continue doing work so we are we have hired or in the process of hiring some retired teachers so we offer some tutoring and support throughout the day so students can maintain contact for the younger students probably looks more like you know an

020interactive read-aloud and some connections and tutoring for the older students much more on the academic side but we do want to support those students but at this point we we're unrelenting on our focus on health and safety and and with vaccines available um it's the cost benefit just doesn't add up in the same way it did um up until this point so that program will sunset in pelham uh after the december break and uh it may potentially mean we have more students in quarantine but with a high vaccination rate uh we don't we don't believe to be overwhelming and that is a lengthier update than i usually offer for the pelham folks but it's been a little while but i'll turn it over to principal darling for a principal's update also principal darling has i

021believe multiple commitments tonight so she will not be able to stay for the bulk of the meeting but we chatted and i got her input on the other topics we have this evening but with that principal darling thank you um yeah so i do have to leave after my update i hope that's okay i'll save for questions or comments um so lots of great things happening in in pelham it does continue to feel really great uh we're having our first all we're not having our first all school meeting but we're gonna have our first talent portion of the all school meeting where two students or two groups of students from each grade except for kindergarten we're gonna let the kindergartners watch it the first time so they know what we mean when we say talent

022um perform at our all-school meeting tomorrow which will be fun and exciting in hopes of showcasing all the talents that our students have and and getting to see each other you know we're just sitting at desks with masks on so this will be a great opportunity to shine and also the pto has been so generous to volunteer to bring hot cocoa tomorrow to the kids don't tell anyone um a little surprise it actually came today they messed up in a game today but they're gonna bring some tomorrow too um i've walked into you know lots of great things happening in classrooms one highlight was sitting in the fifth grade classroom and listening to really unbelievable discussions about a book that they're reading they're reading sophia's war and i'm i was just like blown away by

023their ability to understand the characters and make inferences it was just it was really cool um mr a the pe teacher is has taken on uh helping the kids select a mascot for pelham school which is really fun he decided to do it with the brackets like the basketball brackets for like march madness and so they're little by little week by week narrowing down who their mascot is going to be and he said the students are really getting really excited about that um i was so lucky to go into the art room a bunch this week and past weeks and i love how miss emily has set up the art room and having different stations and the students get to choose what they're gonna do and create and they're just like seeing what other students

024are doing they're not just kind of doing a scripted art which is really great one student is basically making a mansion out of recyclables it's like all across the floor and she's painting it and decorating it and it's just awesome so different ways for kids to shine for the staff um we've had some professional development from bright on trauma informed classroom and teachings with some really uh easy to bring to the classroom applications so that was really great we've got a bunch of committees going that are doing some great things the social justice committee we invited parents and community members and that's been really it's just been a really great opportunity to expand our thinking and having other people join um we have a couple interns working with jess nardisi our school counselor and one

025of the interns is has decided that we should have a book club and so we're going to have a book club that kind of coordinates with the social justice committee and so that's exciting i recently sent out a survey to to the families and um it was really nice to see how people are feeling overall i would say families feel really positive about being back in person their kids experience at pelham i ask questions like does your student feel safe does your student feel seen and most of the students feel safe and seen which is like the two one of the two of the most important things right everyone wants to feel like they're seen they love the small community and the staff the emphasis on kindness and our and well-being mental health um and

026then the negatives is they feel really disconnected parents feel really disconnected from the school they really wish they could be at the school for events so the school climate committee has been thinking about that and trying to have different events where we can have parents outside so the turkey trot was one of them and we have an idea for when after our first big snow fall when we're in school i'll give you a hint the students are collecting sticks and the pto is going to provide some carrots so we'll have maybe a little contest see who can make the best um i'm not going to say so we're trying to think outside the box and have parents involved because it really did come up as something parents were really missing and they they felt like

027there was great communication but they didn't feel as much of a part of the school as they have in the past so that's my update any questions ron parents do feel disaffected my daughter has a four-year-old in preschool at the montessori school in virginia and she says she's never been inside the building she goes to the driveway somebody comes out picks up the kid walks in she doesn't really know what the school is about they had grandparents day where we did a zoom meeting but i couldn't see anybody's face they were so tiny but parents do feel disaffected because they they can't get in the building yeah it's hard other questions for mickey all right vicky thank you so much for the update you are free to thank you see you later have a good

028night um just because you did your update mike and then we went straight to mickey can i just go back to do folks have questions for mike from anything in his update that we want to go back to okay all right just wanted to be sure um okay school committee announcements anyone have any school committee related announcements i should say this is not like personal life announcements okay um all right new and continuing business first up is the esser spending update and there was um a document in the memo if you want to pull that up um and mike i'll go back over to you this is just a i think hopefully a relatively brief update um some tech issues that are now solved so let me pull it up um there we go um

029and uh so in short the items that are shaded green are items that we have started spending uh funds on and the articles that are unshaded have not yet had spending happen and so um you know i think i just want to mostly highlight the areas where our spending hasn't happened because of where it has happened i think you know you can certainly ask any updates but uh hvac staff we are still looking for hvac staff so that's something that we um are aiming for there is as is no surprise to anyone a staffing shortage everywhere in every field uh and that is certainly one of them so we are fully staffed now at uh pretty yeah we are fully staffed at facilities which we're not at the me of the year but we haven't

030able to add sort of excess or additional staff members uh to that so if we do find someone we will start spending it on that uh the outreach for kindergarten preparation that really is thinking much more of next year uh once we get enrollment uh there so it's a as just as a reminder esser is a multi-year grant we have three years to spend the funds so it is something that we plan to do next year and the last one to note is that um at the bottom is that some funds will be used to purchase a new math curriculum for next year uh in my update um to the community on friday all will get you the community get a larger update about the math curriculum review uh which includes both the amherst and

031pelham schools so it's likely that we will move to a new math curriculum next year and sr funds will be used to supplement um that purchase and i think that i'm happy to answer any questions but you know unless people want me to go to line by line i certainly can but i'm happy to answer any questions on any items uh on here ron i saw your hand up go ahead a technical issue am i supposed to be viewing some kind of document because i can't see any document i can i can certainly project it it was in the board docs so you were just talking that you weren't yeah it's going to be hard to see i think on this screen because it's an excel document but i'm happy to bring it up if

032it'd be helpful for that another technical thing where what's the agenda for tonight's meeting because it's always going to be on board docs now so we're using that site for everything okay and how do i get the board docs again well so when sasha sends you all of the okay and she provides all the links in there so you just need to follow the links yep sorry i'm technological dinosaur that's quite all right don't worry about it um any questions for mike on that s or funding i just have one i so i think i've asked this exact question word for word before and i cannot remember the answer these these funds are these funds that the district is already holding and then i know we have the discretion i mean within certain bounds but

033is this like we can spend them as we need to or do we have to go and get reimbursed for things so no we can spend them once the grants have approved and our grant for this year was approved you so you have to apply with you know basically the the information that's in this document um uh once it's approved it it's not like fema reimbursement this is direct it has its own budget line and we spend from it and the money is live got it okay great thank you questions on s or spending okay next up um potential sixth grade move to the middle school sure so this will also be i think a pretty brief update um so the thing you know the two parts one is to update the pelm school committee

034on the progress for uh another committee i i work with and then the other was just talking about models that may make sense so um i did meet with a group of sixth grade teachers who are uh kind of agreed to continue to work with me on this and our next step is next month we have scheduled sessions with all the sixth grade classes in amherst and we decided to start with the current sixth grade students and ask them to help us with visioning you know because they they know sixth grade like nobody else right now they know what it's like to be in school and really uh sixth grade teachers from across the amherst schools came up with a list of guiding questions to understand what their priorities would be in other words we're

035trying to develop a vision uh before we develop a program because it seems like you know what often happens you develop a program and the vision fits into it and we're trying to be very intentional about this is an opportunity to revision uh what sixth grade looks like what do we wanna maintain that our students are experiencing uh and don't want to give up and what are they ready for that's new you know like world language electives all those kind of pieces how integrated would they want to be in a middle school environment we originally were going to follow that up directly with engagement with staff and families however this is going to sound like an amherst elementary update that i gave last night but i think it is relevant for you all to hear

036because the msba the state building process demands a lot high levels of engagement from the community in the months of february and january we're likely not going to engage other stakeholders until march because you can only ask so many people you're almost you can only ask folks to go to so many meetings on so many topics before people stop coming or the feedback you get is is less high quality than what you want so we are slowing the pace so that we don't overwhelm our community with um asking for too many things uh all at once so you know really the only update that way is we do have scheduled visits to the mr6 grades we do have guiding prompts that were developed by sixth grade teachers and we do plan to engage the larger

037amherst community in march on the other topic that we're going to talk about tonight which is what model might make sense for pelham if it chose to send sixth grade you know i did some thinking and the only way i could see pelham sixth grade being at the middle school is if it was a joint venture with the amherst public schools in other words i can't i can't imagine the pelham 6th grade program being plopped in the middle of the middle school as a solitary classroom disconnected from other items because even like you think about electives you think about the nurse like it had it would have to be some level of integration and connection with the amherst public schools um so i don't think a standalone program you know is probably worth considering um

038and then it brings about some other questions that we talked about last time because i've been thinking about financial there was a question last last month about what are the financial implications of that um now we're getting complicated because we've got three districts at play right it's the amherst pelham regional school district renting space and perhaps uh sharing parts of personnel with both the amherst and pelham elementary districts so my head started hurting a little bit and i started thinking about it and uh the tangible suggestion or next step would be perhaps for pelham if it wants to request a meeting at some point with the amherst school committee to have this discussion of you know sort of joint venture possibilities because this is where it gets really complicated so i'm gonna i practice this

039one i'm gonna try to be really clear so you have the amherst pelham regional school district opened the door for elementary school districts to send their students they would negotiate kind of like a space a rental fee agreement if elementary districts want to participate you have the amherst elementary schools that has voted with by their school committee to send their sixth graders in the fall of 23 to the regional middle school and they're going to work out that level of rental agreement um over the next year and a half for pelham i think there's there's multiple barriers right because you'd want to have an integrated program and try to work with amherst uh i think logically that's the only way this would make sense but you'd also have to be negotiating with the regional public

040schools about rental of space and potential sharing of staff like the nurse and custodial and and that sort of thing so it's quite complex financially um since i work for all three districts i'm going to be really cautious about not creating any perceived conflict of interest because i can't negotiate against myself which i wear different hats and tonight i'm have a pelham elementary school hat but that's probably as far as i can go without getting myself in a little bit of trouble on the conflict of interest front you know i did contact and get some advice about conflict of interest because it is a complex set of circumstances because i work for multiple districts and negotiating between them happens from time to time but on this scale it's not consistent with my experience but that

041would be the process that if pelham wanted to engage would be um first to in my opinion to engage with the amherst school committee to see if they wanted a joint venture made sense uh and then next trying to work with both the amherst and pelham re both the amherst and amherst pelham regional school districts about rental of space and and how that process will work so um i don't know if i added clarity or took away from it by explaining it but i've been i've tried to map it out and i failed like my visual only made things worse so i i bring no visual just oral representation of the complexity of this situation well yeah so don't worry and for sure we can do questions i guess i just would caution given the

042stage where we are to just try tonight not to get too far into the weeds i mean absolutely i'm sure folks have questions and i'm not trying to silence anyone but i'm just guessing probably that mike's ability to even answer a lot of these conflict of interest aside is probably limited so i'm just throwing that thought out there ron go ahead i assume we would not make a decision until all the debate and the discussion is done and we know what the budgetary implications for the pelham school are that's correct go ahead mike yeah i mean that's your decision to make that's me my recommendation the process really this spring as i i noted but i want to be more explicit about it is to develop that vision of sixth grade what sixth grade could

043look like and then for the summer work to be to take that vision and and make it a practical reality and map out the plans so in terms of that it's hard to do the cost estimating until you know what actually the program is we can't do the program until we're doing the visioning so we're starting with the visioning next month so you know that's where we are in timeline and amherst and and and again i'll defer to to the committee on what action steps and when you know the pelham school committee wants to engage in it but that's that's where we are sarah bass go ahead um i just wanted to say i really appreciate that the current sixth graders are being asked to be part of the visioning i think like you mentioned

044they have the best idea right now about what it is like to be in sixth grade so i think using that resource is huge so kudos to you know the grown-ups who thought that was a good idea to make sure that the kids had a voice too because i think that's really important margaret i lost my cursor i just would like to comment that in regards to financials i would also want to know what it would mean for the town to keep the pelham school going if we have a decrease in the number of students in the school so for me that's a piece going forward that i would want to know about yes sure can i say so in terms of doing a joint venture with amherst when you say that meaning that like

045amherst and pelham would come to some agreement as two separate elementary districts and then together would negotiate with the region is that what you mean when you say joint venture um yeah i was talking more instructionally uh oh wow okay and programmatically but i think your point is well taken and accurate as well but uh i was thinking about it more you know if pelham's just going to stay as a solitary classroom that doesn't have access to all the programming and you know the visioning that we're doing and how that gets realized and you're also right that it might make sense for a rarely used union 26 group to um a little outside its typical boundaries but to be thinking about this uh and in guards to negotiating with the regional schools all right thank

046you other questions comments on this knowing this is far from your last opportunity okay all right well thanks for that update i mean understood that there's a lot of work left to do and we'll just keep chipping away at this as we know more um okay next up is preschool and fy23 yep and this one i would like to come with a recommendation for a potential vote tonight which is to continue to not operate a preschool in the next fiscal year um i've talked to principal darling she's supportive of this measure um there's multiple reasons why we talked about it last time one the uncertainty of the world we'll be living in the second is the kind of the getting startup costs uh of a program that's not been running for a while the third

047every time i'm at pelham that including today that room is in full use um it's really you know i know for the other specials uh for the specials teachers as well as for small group intervention it's been wonderful to have an additional um you know it's not as big as the other classrooms but it's still a pretty decent sized space uh for students to work in and you know some of the other quasi breakout rooms we've used are really tiny throughout the school you might remember them even though i know folks haven't been in them but they're like kind of around the big bend and there's like two people can fit in there distance way and it's not not fabulous so i think it's really opened up it means the gym is truly a gym

048um and you know you heard principal darling talk about the art room and how uh the art teacher is able to set it up and that's true for a lot of the other specials you know today was technology and i saw how the technology teacher was using it um and the other thing is you know it's a tremendous undertaking to operate a preschool in terms of resources and i don't mean financial resources i mean really the human resources part and i think everyone is really maxed out at trying to do the right thing for students at this point in time principal darling had a big agenda for her faculty meeting today and in my opinion really wisely decided no we're gonna be outside we're gonna have some treats have some hot beverages uh and not

049talk about work for a little bit because people are working so incredibly hard and the staff are doing a fabulous job at pelham and i think you know we're at or a little beyond our capacity running a k-6 school and our preschool is wonderful it takes a tremendous amount of organization work for many people uh clerical staff principal guidance counselor um and at this point my recommendation would be uh to hold another year and maybe a year from now we're in a different place well we'll be in a different place hopefully we're in a better place and can reconsider this but the prospect of trying to open a preschool and all the work that would have to take place this winter and spring um and we'd lose the internal spaces we've had to me doesn't

050make a lot of sense you know i know one of the purposes of the preschool was to increase school choice numbers you know we're back up to school choice in the year where we don't have preschool uh and school choice is where we need it to be so i think you know lee last year and mickey's taking that on or have found ways to uh engender interest and participation in the school choice program stanza preschool and so for that reason i just i'm recommending that we not include preschool and the reason we're bringing up this now is that next month we'll be talking about budget so we want to make a budget that accurately reflects the impact i know ron i feel exactly the same um uh it's yeah um but we want to make

051a budget that is reflective of the programming that uh you all want to see so again that's just my recommendation but you know if the committee would like us to uh look to open it up again we certainly it's not a non-negotiable we can do that it's not my recommendation or principal darlings all right thank you um questions for mike or comments opinions on the recommendation sarah best go ahead um i really appreciate you making the burnout factor point i think that is a huge piece like you know we've all had different experiences with the preschool like my my own kid went there and it was phenomenal um and i thought it was a fantastic program and i'm sad to see it not be there but i think we need to honor our staff and

052recognize that they're fabulous humans but they have limitations and we're already asking so so much of them and they're doing such a fantastic job that to push them to do more seems uh unkind to me so yeah thank you yeah i mean i think i know it's been stated in these meetings before but you know this the the stated mission of this district is to educate kids in grades k through six and the preschool for a while has been a really really great add-on and it is too bad when it's not operating um but it is you know it is sort of this extra thing um so [Music] i i personally am fine voting tonight are other folks feeling okay voting okay um okay i will make a motion to not open the preschool in

053fiscal year 23. is there a second second okay any further discussion all right we'll take a roll call vote ron menino why sarah best kenny i margaret stancer i and hawley all right um okay next up something a little lighter rental of school space and so for this one there was um a memo that mike had put together that was on board docs um if folks want to pull that up um all right and mike do you want to just tee this up oh there it is um yep um i don't know why it's coming out funny tonight but it is um so the short story is that last year we did quite well uh it was the only game in town in terms of gym space that was rentable in our area um and

054you know thanks to generosity of town because technically the money goes to the town we were able to build our coffers with about fourteen thousand dollars this year the ventilation challenges in some of the amherst elementary schools have been resolved so there are less seekers there may not be many or any um but given that we are up to full staffing with our custodial folks uh you know i did talk to our facilities team and uh even if we get some income some income is better than no income uh it was also really a benefit to the pelham community i can't tell you how many students whether it's basketball or soccer pelham students were overrepresented in the participants as compared to when things are done in amherst i think people love being in their school

055if you remember a year ago we weren't the kids weren't in the school at all and uh being able to dribble a ball or kick a ball or whatever it was was really beneficial so we wanted to make the pricing competitive so that more folks would be apt to do it um the time that works with the after school program being done but before the night custodian leaves would be from five to seven p.m and so we feel like if we offer a competitive price at that time perhaps that will encourage or engender uh either soccer or basketball programs or even small group basketball and we got some interest from someone who does like small group training for basketball um but you know to me it's how do we get some income and use the

056space effectively after school hours uh without incurring additional costs so um you know really what this would mean is since we're not paying overtime for custodian we take out the administrative cost that goes to administrate not directly to administrators but to the administrative uh funding of it and since it's not overtime we don't have to pay that so it's a very competitive rate below what the amherst elementary school gyms would charge and hopefully that drums up business so uh entrepreneurship is not a course i've ever taken so i'm not very good at this but last year we were really effective and 14 000 a lot we're not going to we're not going to bring in that much but if we bring in a couple thousand in pelham a couple thousand goes a long way uh

057and so um because this is an adjustment in uh what we typically charge and it's kind of a very defined time period only five to seven uh i may want to make sure i brought it to the school committee for your consideration and potential vote okay thank you questions for mike sorry mike would you um stop sharing thank you questions or comments on jim rental ron two questions one are there any leftover germs from people using the gym and affecting the the regular running of the skull so uh the gym's air exchange rate uh without the two purifiers in there is over four air changes an hour so that means every 15 minutes every single piece of air recycles through the system with the two purifiers it's over six so that means every 10 minutes

058it's recycling air and so relative to germs you know contact you know surface contact is not as much of a risk for covet as was originally believed you may have remembered emergency room doctor with a ponytail in michigan then how to wash your groceries that had like you know 100 million views last year that has not proven to be in terms of covid uh the concerns that have been most prevalent you know to your point it is through air um it's a very well ventilated space and you know what we're finding is um it comes from close contact so you know who is in the room 10 minutes before has not seen not appeared to be a transmission risk second question this is somewhat facetious but could i rent the room for two hours and

059just sit there alone to feel a part of the school again uh you'd need insurance so i think no um you know i uh i think in the memo it lists that all other aspects of the rental process including require insurance legal protections for the district town would remain enforced you shut down that idea uh if you do have some uh insurance on that then that's something that you could do we actually in a serious note ron we did talk about opening it up beyond there but we didn't want to any potential even slight risk for liability felt like it was not worth it i i believe i mean just i believe the health precautions that the pelham school are engaging in are laudable and should be further enforced yeah and it's more just the

060financial limitations of letting allowing renters who don't have insurance and then someone trips over something and then it opens up liability for pelham not the person who rented it i do have an umbrella policy on my homeowners service does that count you can maybe check in with your legal counsel um so can i maybe i'm misremembering i i don't recall voting on renting it out last time around did we vote on it when it was rented out last year we discussed it and we use the same uh i don't know if it was a vote but it was we discussed using the same rental fees as the amherst pelham regional school district and the american public schools so we sort of recreated that um but pelham doesn't have an existing it pelham hasn't rented out

061space before so we sort of just mimic that and this is just an adjustment to the the fee rate but not an adjustment to the expectations or application that would need to come right okay yeah i mean maybe i'm just being really nitpicky just i guess to me it seems like something we wouldn't need to vote on i mean i'm glad we're knowing about it i'm fully supportive i'm fine it just seems like something we'd be like that seems like a district thing that you guys can take care of is that do you feel better if we vote on it dr slaughter would feel better if you voted on it well i will do it for doctor is there a motion i'm gonna make this motion for dr slaughter i move to approve the rental

062of the pelham school gym on weekdays during the hours of five o'clock p.m to seven o'clock p.m at a rate of 35 dollars per hour is there a second second any further discussion okay we'll do a roll call vote run sarah bess kenny i margaret stance or i and hal eye all right well thank you i mean it's great it's just extra right anything we get is a bonus so um okay next up is an update on the principal search timeline and process there we go um so uh yeah so um two things that i'd like to share about this one is that we're actually along with uh your colleagues in amherst and pelham um we've decided we being uh district administrative staff have decided to do a study of the challenges of being a

063principal in one of these three districts we've seen a fair amount of transiency across the districts for many many years it's my 21st year in the district it doesn't feel like transiency is any different than it was 21 years ago it's a lot uh nationally the trends are that there's more transiency in that role fewer people going into the role of principal and um so the way we did it is we interviewed excuse me we hired someone named rick rogers who's our principal long time principal retired he does a lot of principal coaching and he was recommended to me by my professional organization um and he interviewed i believe he ended up with 14 leaders some of those folks are current principals in our district some of those folks are principals who left one of

064our districts and then at the very very end he interviewed during cunningham and myself so he slated to create a report for a potential joint meeting or we'll figure out the way we want to do it he's going to present his findings sometime next month and both about why people stay what people really like about working here and also some of the challenges that come from being a school leader in amherst i've done it it's it's it's not an easy place to be a leader it's not an easy place to be it's not easy to be a leader anywhere these days uh given cobit and some other challenges but we do have some unique aspects to our three districts so we're hoping that that study yields results that we can use to aid us in

065our future searches by both by understanding uh who's been successful at staying here and enjoying the job uh what attributes that those members have as well as how we can support future principles moving forward so the first part of the principle search is i think that's going to be a critical linchpin for all of us to be able to us being collective like the larger community including staff and and families caregivers to be able to understand a little bit more about the role of principal and um so we expect that report to be out sometime next month on the part of timeline what we're finding is that is we'd like to start the search probably in early march a little later than we typically have started it and what i'm finding from talking to neighboring

066districts is everyone's starting a little bit later because of the uncertainty of the situation we'd love to do a search where people actually come to the school have in-person interviews meet kids uh meet the staff and you know we're not sure that january or february are going to be the ideal months for that with what we're seeing we don't know if march will be but the idea is to have a position posted in march process play out through march and april and have an appointment in the month of may i want to be clear that none of that precludes principal darling from applying for the permanent job that's um she's done a really nice job i know people when i was at pelham today came up to me saying oh can she can she apply

067absolutely when we hired an interim we don't preclude them from applying for a permanent job if they so choose so that's a general timeline we're thinking about one of the things that things continue to change i was on a conference call with the department today about kind of folks in emergency licenses who have temporary licenses and there may be some changes afoot coming from that that may we may want to come back to this topic in january so that's literally like two hours ago i got information that i'm not at liberty to share but might have bearing on this situation about how folks get licensed to be a principal in the commonwealth of massachusetts i talked to mickey like five minutes before the meeting started saying hey mickey this is what i've heard you know

068and um and so i think what i'd like to do is come back to this topic in january along with mr rogers report uh and then have an open conversation with you all about um you know what the path we'd like to take i'd like to make a proposal to you all but at this point we're still accumulating information both about kind of the larger picture of the role of principle in our districts as well as some perhaps evolving rules that deci may have around principal candidates so i i'm sorry i can't be more explicit but i don't you know get myself in trouble um i know there's looks like there's one person watching this uh beyond us right now and that one person may be uh you know contacting desi as we speak so

069i want to be cautious about sharing things in public that have not been shared by the people making the decision all right thank you questions for mike okay all right well so we more on this um next month then um capital planning usually this time of year is that usually where we have like there's the draft of the request we don't have that yet is that right that's correct this may be another one perhaps to come back to in the month of uh january i apologize that we're not quite there on our capital planning um we don't foresee huge needs we want to keep on working on accessibility and some of those other parts uh you know the big capital request that that we've talked about in the past is uh cooling of the two

070rooms that often get quite warm you know we do have a cost on that i'm not sure it's a cost that the town has capacity to bear um but that's the other sort of capital item that is sizeable and so what we can do is come back next month and be more clear about the capital requests but we're we're just a little behind on on uh on the capital front this year my apologies for that okay no all right that's okay um in terms of i guess so there is a capital planning committee which i am on because of my role on this committee um and so i will just provide that update at that time right and then we can follow up with john tricky and others as we need to yeah i think

071technology wise because of last year we got chromebooks so we're you know we're we're in pretty good shape you know because that was always should it be capital should it not be capital if you remember that whole uh discussion um so you know the capital needs you know primarily um are focused on um if we want to cool the those spaces in a way that doesn't reduce ventilation which is always the challenge um and uh you know that's going to be the big ticket item you know we had a couple years ago we had that costed out so we know what that cost is it's a really high cost relative to pelham and yet i don't know how long we want to have classrooms that get really hot in the early and latter parts of

072the season because they do get i mean i've been in the rooms when it's hot it's very very hot yeah yes true rob go ahead i'd like to remind you about four years ago or something like that during september it was 95 degrees in the shade i think it's a necessary expenditure okay anything else on capitol planning nope okay um warrant report i have a couple extras um because i wasn't here last month so i authorized by my signature um to payables and the amount of 35 892.13 for the warrant dated october 27 2021 and that included general fund expenses of 33 983 and 26 cents and grant fund expenses of 1 908.87 and i signed that on october 31st 2021 i authorized payroll in the amount of 62 907.45 and that was a warrant

073dated um november 3rd 2021 and i signed it on november 4th i authorized payables on the amount of 35 048.84 for a warrant dated november 17 2021 that included general fund expenses of thousand four hundred fifty two dollars ninety eight cents grant fund expenses of four thousand three hundred ninety dollars and ninety seven cents and other funds of 204.89 i signed that on november 19th i authorized payroll in the amount of sixty two thousand eight hundred twenty seven dollars and forty seven cents um for a warrant dated november 17 2021 and i signed that on december 2nd 2021 and lastly i authorized payroll in the amount of 63 812 dollars and 58 cents that was for a warrant dated december 15 2021 and i signed that on december 13 2021. gifts no gifts this month

074i will take oh yes margaret go ahead i should probably have done this during the committee announcements but i just wanted to say for anyone this is not helen business but if you're a pelham person who's interested in the regional budget information about the regional budget and how it's created there's a public forum tomorrow night from seven to eight o'clock and i believe that it's posted on the on this website the school committee website i think for anyone who's interested okay i'm gonna count that as a gift a regional budget forum that is it thank you no thank you for that margaret okay i will take a motion to adjourn i move to adjourn my second no further discussion okay roll call run menino i sarah best kenny margaret dancer i and hall i we

075are adjourned thank you so much everyone good night