Pelham School Committee

001okay you're ready to roll whenever you are miss hall okay seeing the presence of a quorum i'll call to order this meeting of the pelham school committee at 6 30 and we'll start with roll call attendance brenda in the present your best is our best present margaret margaret present ron money no present and hall present okay um all right first up is the approval of the minutes so we have the minutes from january 14th and the and february 11th um so we can start with january 14th any questions comments edits on those minutes okay i i move to approve the minutes of january 14th 2021 is there a second second all right roll call vote brenda brenda i sarah best i'm going to abstain because i wasn't there okay margaret margaret i ron ron i

002and hall i um okay then next up are the february 11th minutes um i just had one um change to those in 5d there's references to eliminating the preschool mr menino thought we were planning on eliminating because of the expense ms hall thought we were eliminating i wouldn't we never there was no talk about eliminating it i think if you just maybe update that to uh you know not opening it for that year because i don't think ron that's what you were asking and i certainly was not that's right okay all right that was my only change did anyone else have yeah sarah best um i just have uh so in 5a i think it's just a spelling typo i think it says queen but i think it's supposed to say queer um under the

003let's talk so focus of let's talk curriculum and the anti-racist perspective so i think it's supposed to be queer and then um meera's last name is spelled correctly the first time but then i think it's misspelled again oh misspelled in the second paragraph somewhere yes yeah the fourth line of that second paragraph yeah yep and then um in f we were talking about the capital plan um it says miss kenny asked about the changing of the infrastructure for the wi-fi the changing circumstances are depending on the infrastructure in the building which will continue to go on openly um but that it was about um that changes had to happen in amherst first before changes can happen in poem oh yes um okay yeah and uh sorry i'm just noting noticing another thing as we talk

004just the letters are out of order a b c f d e g h so if we could just update the letters too anything else that's all i had all right excellent catches um all right is there a motion on the february 11th minutes i move to approve them you muted sorry i moved to approve the minutes of february 11th all right second um all right we'll do a roll call vote brenda brenda i sarah best kenny i margaret margaret i ron ron i and hall i okay um next up is public comment we had one public comment that mike will bring up you all right thank you um and that uh that individual also wrote to clarify that the um preschool she referenced that was closing actually decided to stay open for another year

005i forget i forget the name of it now um is it called the gorge child care center it's on mongolia college okay there we go so they did decide to stay open for another year she just wanted that corrected for the record yeah ron i'd just like to say i love this format because i can enlarge the comments and actually read them uh i can't read them on the other platform but this one you can make it so it's totally readable i appreciate that yeah all right good um and sarah best you pointed out that that we might have skipped minutes oh okay yeah i think i think they're just mistaken because if you read down them there's the they're actually from march 1st they are from that okay all right um sorry no no

006don't apologize okay well we'll just go over those next time i saw the heading and i just didn't even read them so we okay we can approve them next month okay thank you for catching that um okay next up is fy 22 budget vote and so i'm going to bring doug in here i'm going to share just a couple pieces of information i think we omitted to have superintendent principal updates tonight but actually a lot of it weaves into this topic um so i'll preview just a couple of things and dr slow talk about primarily just one change uh positive change in our budget we're and then we'll be available for questions since we already had a budget hearing we're not going to belabor the parts but some things got a little bit better and

007we want to speak to those but one of the things that we want to share that is also good news is that we now have 18 new school choice applications for the next school year so that's really important we have 12 in kindergarten one in second grade two and fourth grade two and fifth grade and one for sixth grade for next year uh again we don't know how many kindergartens we'll get so we don't know if we'll be able to accept all 12 of the folks who applied for that um but at the same time that's really good news and kudos to principal wedding jones who's at a pto meeting which is why she's not here tonight for facilitating and doing a lot of outreach so that's really important and you know when they continue

008generally to come throughout the springs hopefully that number increases particularly the non-kindergarten number because at some point we can't have a full kindergarten of just choice students uh as nice as that would be for our budget it's we do actually have pelham students who attend the school as well so we want to make sure that they're they get dibs on the seats but that's a really good piece of budget news another good piece of budget news that well it's about this year's budget it certainly has an impact because these things are related is that the rental of the gym was highly successful this spring um so it was rented since december and particularly since january uh pretty much five afternoons and evenings a week and and our estimate i think dr slaughter will correct me

009but i think is roughly in the neighborhood of twelve thousand dollars that eventually when all bills will are paid will come in so that was uh really helping us out in this fiscal year and that obviously because of our choice fund will help us out in the next fiscal year so that's how i'm justifying that in terms of meeting law that we're able to talk about that because otherwise we're talking about pulling more from choice which would influence next year's budget um so you know i think was there one other uh no i think that our that's the two budget good news pieces that i have and doug's gonna share a third good news budget piece and then i will of course end with a less good news budget piece um about grants and federal

010government and things that are gonna be voted into to um in tomorrow uh probably uh or signed into law tomorrow by our president so uh doug do you want to do the third piece of good news and and uh about what's different in this year's budget particularly the ads cuts as it relates to the last time we were here at the budget hearing right so i'm going to uh do i have the option to share i do yeah yeah it works the same way as google me okay screen oh i have to select which one all right uh [Music] yes sorry i took a moment to select the right thing so i'm going to zoom in on this a little bit hopefully that'll make it a little bit more readable um the short story is

011that we we've got some some good news relative to um our health insurance uh and so uh we're going to have a what is called a premium holiday which basically means we don't pay uh nor do our employees pay for their health insurance premiums uh for one month and what that allows us to do is is to uh essentially bring back about twenty five thousand dollars of of of cuts we would have to make it's a one-time savings but it does provide relief to our budget uh and that then results in in fewer reductions that you see in the lower part of the screen and so uh previously we were looking at one more uh reduction of of a significant uh uh you know amount uh you know a personnel kind of uh reduction and

012so we we were able to eliminate that and and while we still have to make reductions here uh that's about a much better uh circumstance relative to to what we were thinking we're going to be uh dealing with so that that bit of good news is is the uh the reduction due to health insurance um sometimes we ask you know why is it a premium holiday as opposed to just a reduction in rates that they spread out over the whole year um that's a bit of a you know an odd quest it's an odd question for that we ask the uh the health insurance folks they they think of the rates as being one thing it's a structural thing and then they think of the premium holiday uh as a correction to their their balance

013they carry a balance of funds and when it gets too high they will offer a premium holiday to to reduce our burden so we've had lower claims than expected and so that allows us to to get this premium holiday which will which will help our budget in the coming year um so i think that's the that's the bit of good news there and and so it it means the the amount of cuts we have to make is as you see here about 46 000 relative to our total increase in in our budget and and so that will uh keep us on track with the guidance we got from from the um from your finance committee relative to the tax support that's available um we've got uh you know our the rural reap grant which has

014been one we've had over the years it was missing for a couple years it's come back to help us out those are all positive bits of news that help support the budget as we move forward so i think i'll pause there and see if there's questions um and just to be succinct you know about it you know it was able to restore you know the para educator position that was originally on here there used to be three positions cut there was these two part-time positions than a full-time position and so our number of fte that we would be reducing by uh went from 1.47 to 0.47 so uh that's been that's going to be really helpful for the school and supporting our students particularly in a time period uh that's particularly challenging next year um

015as students um and they'll get in the spring uh most of them will get in the spring but you know they've been out of school for a full year and having more adults and more support for students who may not have been a successful accessing distance learning was really critical so that that's the restoration that you don't see on this cuts list that you did the last time around um doug would you mind not sharing for just a sec so i can see if anyone has questions all right um any questions yeah ron i'm a little confused uh i thought the last time you showed this there was a forty six thousand dollar cut now is this a forty six thousand dollar cut or a twenty one thousand dollars so it's a little bit of

016both in some respects you can present and i can get a view using this where sarah can still see everybody but the majority of the screen is this is your oh okay yeah so i didn't do that before just to make it a little easier to read but i think at this point that way you can reference it so if you're able to share your screen again there you are and then yeah at least everyone should be able to see each other a bit on the left side yep okay thanks so what happens is because um it's what we have is a is a reduction here in the in the uh in the top part of the screen so so it it reduces our costs which lowers our overall operating budget by that 25 000.

017um that helps the overall sort of uh expense line to be smaller which is what we needed what we have in in this lower section with with this uh reductions are actual that's the actual cuts that you think of as as far as um personnel changes that sort of thing um the the the uh the premium holiday is is a reduction in our cost uh but it's not a cut in the in the same way there's no loss of service or change in in in what's being uh made available to the students with that or it doesn't add to what the students get but it does reduce our our our cost um whereas the the lower you know the actual changes in staffing do change what what and how we interact with our students a

018little bit okay let me ask the question another way if for so i'm optimistic if for some reason a pot of money dropped from the sky over the next few months how much extra revenue would we have to be able to offer the same services next year as we did this year at the pelham school uh in that circumstance if you know some lottery winner wanted to give us some money uh the 21 the 21 000 would restore all of the staffing and service levels that we have currently that would be a truly level services from the standpoint of what's happening in the classroom and in in the building that was my question okay thank you yeah sarah best um just to follow up on that but that wouldn't do anything for next year next

019year we'll still be looking at that 25 000 reduction correct because that holiday is a one-time day for this year only so for next year we would need a magic pot of gold that had 46 thousand dollars in it that's right if if if we received 21 000 this year it would meaning fiscal 22 the coming school year um we'd beat level services and then uh for fiscal 23 so when we're a year from now and we're talking about the budget for fiscal 23 uh yeah that 25 000 is going to be a uh an issue for us uh you know next year for our future right future doug can work on that problem you know we have changes in our health insurance coverage that save us money there may be other things that happen

020in a similar way where we have a cost reduction but it may also require us to to make smart choices but if we get you know 18 school choice students to the group that we have now that school choice may fill that 25 000. great we'll have to see how that plays out okay thank you brenda go ahead um could school choice dollars fill the 21 000 for the library para educator and the music staff for next year uh technically yes although i don't think we would want to suggest that as a as an appropriate action um the balance we have actually with 225 given the estimates we were making at the time um would be uh utilizing money that we would be receiving during next fiscal year so the the state of our balance

021is for school choice or such that uh 225 is just a little more than than uh essentially what we have in the bank uh and so we're we we tend to try to um you know sort of use fully savings to fund the budget and then we have new revenue during the year that we use for the following year um next year there's a very small amount of the the money that will come in during the year for school choice that will will support next year's budget um and so you know technically we have the 21 000 i think that puts us in a very very precarious spot relative to uh you know future years and and future circumstances that we might need that money to help support so if we had an extreme emergency

022of some sort um you know we wouldn't have school choices as a resource for us to help mitigate something like that okay thank you other questions before doug goes on um can i just ask one i guess this probably is for you mike has the staff person has that person been notified that their job is available yep and we've actually presented this slide uh or a version of this having an oral rendition of this slide i don't know if we actually showed it or not i can't remember doug um but last week uh at uh pelham this has already been shared with the staff okay it was sent to you i think a week ago and part of the reason to send it out is we wanted to give the staff a heads up that

023there was a change and there was lots of um warm feelings about uh that position remaining in the budget because they know how important it is um and a lot of kids to have that um extra support for students particularly as we look to next year so they're aware of that yep okay great thank you um okay doug do you want to keep going so i you know as far as um other things to share with you i mean that's the primary thing i'm gonna actually pardon the scrolling here i'm gonna go back to a a previous slide in the deck i believe um i'm going to zoom out a little bit so it'll be a little hard to read this is a little busy uh but this is is kind of a snapshot of

024of both the expenses here at the top that we're we're expecting to have and then some of the funding sources at the bottom and i'm sorry that it's it's a you know it's it's difficult to show the whole thing let's see if i can get a [Music] a view that's a little bit more visible to you um but the the reason i show this is that it it does show on this upper portion sort of what our expenses are there's a number of things if you look at this difference column or this change column there's a lot of these expenses that aren't changing at all uh or very very modestly um this 6900 we've spoken about before is is a shift of cap what was things we're purchasing through capital we're moving them into the

025operating budget that's a that's an additional amount of of tax support that the finance committee is going to support they know that they're not going to spend capital in order to to fund these uh this equipment uh in inside the regular operating budget um uh you see the you know the sort of dis distribution of schools uh amongst different accounts uh you know some of it's for classroom teachers some for some of the special education sports some of its uh health insurance because that helps uh defray the cost there 25 000 is the um [Music] the uh the rural reef grant that we that is returning to help support uh some of our counseling services in the building um and then um there's the what i'll also point out is this 12 000 right here

026that's the uh that's the rental um you know that's in the bottom section there i keep thinking that when i move my mouse on my screen you'll see that but you won't um sorry we the rental fees are are about five from the bottom there and so there's a 12 000 number and maybe i'll zoom in a bit more so we can show that a little bit better under the sources of revenue here that one more zoom so now i think you can kind of see that 12 000 showing right uh in that in that second column um and that's that's a new source of revenue for us and hopefully that'll be something that we can uh we can potentially have you know year to year to help support our budget in in the way

027it's going to be necessary for this coming year to help help support our budget um so i think at that point you know the overall budget is going to go up about 1.3 percent in the whole um you know we have uh you know strong tax support here from from the community this 46 thousand dollars of increase includes the 6900 uh if you take that 6900 out the amount that is increasing is about 2.5 which is typically what uh pelham can uh gives us guidance for for an increase in the tax support from from the community uh but there's a little bit higher than that this year because of the of the switch from uh capital operate capital budgets operating budget for some some chromebook purchases so that's a little bit of a difference there

028um so i think at this point i'll stop i think i pointed out the things that are most uh interesting perhaps or or different a little bit this year as far as sources of revenue um and and see if there are any other questions that you might have uh relative to the budget any questions for doug no i don't see any hands okay um all right and so mike you wanted to yeah so so maybe not wonderful uh news at the end of this is that um our standing from odessa conference call the other day that about the federal stimulus package that passed the house and the senate in washington dc um the concern i heard from desi is that the distribution will be based uh and it's a lot of money uh the distribution

029will be based on title one funding uh pelham is not a title one school so um does he express some concern that some districts will get an awful lot of money and then title one school non-title one schools under the federal formula will get absolutely nothing um so they said they're trying to work on some fix on that so i will update you when i receive it but um you know for folks who are seeing that saying oh great the schools will get a lot more funding right now uh non-title one schools technically uh would not get anything hopefully there's some shifting in that uh but i did want to communicate that because i'm getting a lot of questions about that federal stimulus package i will try to answer those questions on that i am

030not an expert yet it's you know i don't read the legislation i just have other people describe what's in it to me okay well we have some who are going to try to stump you let's go ron and then it's their best what is the title one school title one school is a school that has a certain percentage of low-income students in it there was a year or two that pelham did qualify um you know in a small school like pelham a couple students can swing that number uh considerably but last couple years pelham has not been a title one school the student population has not uh met the qualification criteria thank you sorry about that service same super easy questions margaret did i see your hand up or was that i had the same

031question thank you okay all right um oh okay well good news bad news situation then any any other questions on the fy 22 budget okay well it being a budget vote i will entertain a motion i think if someone wants to make a motion it could be to vote on the pelham fy 22 budget as presented um the region has very specific language about the motion one has to get so if you've been on a region you know that's like you know dr slaughter writes a very paragraph on it the municipal budget's a little bit easier i move that we accept the budget as presented second all right any further discussion all right uh brenda brenda i sarah bess kenny aye margaret margaret i ron ron all right thanks doug for all your work on

032this i know that was not the only thing in your professional life so appreciate the attention you paid to that thank you okay thanks doug have a good night all right good night okay next up in person return update sure so i have some some information i like to share some from uh uh lee um just that um the lee and jastha council will be giving optional small group tours to students to preview the building during the last few weeks of march uh and over the next several weeks all classrooms are planning to lead reflective dialogue help students generate questions or areas of concern and engage students in the planning process you know kind of like the hopes and dreams work for in-person learning uh to make sure students there are ready and acculturated who

033are who are returning so speaking of that um pelham there's one or two students that we're looking for a little more clarity uh in their responses but as it stands right now 88 of pelham students are returning to in-person learning uh on april 5th as such i know there was some conversation in the joint meeting about could pelham upper grade students start at the same time and some staff have asked that i don't think that's going to be possible because some of the remote students would need to be transitioning at the same time as their amherst counterparts because there's you know there's some reshuffling that's going to happen and you know could we literally have students come in on april 5th all fifth i think we could but and i know some families would be

034really disappointed to hear this but i do think it would be really disorienting for students in the who are choosing remote and many of them choosing it for really good reasons you know that's the family choice they made they may have health conditions themselves or in their families to have basically a week in limbo where there wouldn't really be a remote assignment for them yet because the amherst upper grades wouldn't have reorganized so they sort of wouldn't have school for a week and we can't do that you know or you know to put them in a remote classroom five days before the remote classroom ends because the teacher in amherst is going into person right and the classroom community is shifting it just doesn't feel right so i know that there's a strong interest and

035i've heard that from fellow families of everyone starting at once but i do think well it's a small number of remote families it would really be um they're already you know i'm already hearing concerns about you know cause anecdotally right tell them a small people chat right and people know that a lot of their friends uh kids friends are going in person so one more disorienting experience is just one more than we should we should do uh in my opinion for families who are have chosen the remote options so you know my recommendation is just stay with what we planned it will involve a waiver from desi uh which i plan to fill out with the permission of this group i technically don't need a school committee vote which is why it's not on the

036agenda of course i wouldn't have known that until they told us that a couple days ago so it would have been under 48 hours but but i don't you know it doesn't it seems like it needs to you know be discussed but not a vote of the school committee um i do i did have a conversation with someone at desi and they felt like this is when you're going from full remote to full in person with no hybrid you know some acknowledgement that we would want to do it with a weak gap of the younger kids coming in first seemed very reasonable to them they didn't commit to approving a waiver they hadn't been hadn't received but this is the type of waiver that desi seems to be immediately um towards um but i just

037for the remote kids it would be a really hard experience for five days and you know it doesn't feel right to me um you know because it would actually be a really awkward experience for that week plus the break week and then they sort of you know it would be a real jumble for them so i'd like to go forward with the plan as voted by the school committee of um the younger grades on the fifth and the intermediate grades um on you know grades uh three to six uh on april 12th you know our building's ready to go um you know one of the things we were trying out i think i mentioned um some streaming capabilities it wasn't great it wasn't great in some ways because it really pushed in the bandwidth at

038pelham school as you may know it's not the internet pelham is not high speed in the way that you'd like it to be but it also felt very awkward you know um you know talking to the is director worked for a teacher and i want to thank ms quinlan for being willing to come in and try it out you know it the technology is not great right and and it would force some a teacher to really stand in front of the room and do a lot of lecture and that's not the way we teach elementary school students and i don't think that's the way you all want certainly not the way i want our elementary school students learning so we did have a lot of concerns about it we tried it out it wasn't it

039wasn't a hit so to speak for us and so you know i think that's sort of our update um in terms of bus we will run two buses um they will both be far from full um but we will run two buses uh and we're working now with this number on a transportation plan of drivers and how to orient uh that so that'll come out over the next couple weeks about how to um how to do that so that's you know sorry it's a little scattered but that's sort of our update on in person i will say that 80 is higher than any of my other schools so uh whether you think that's good or bad is up to you but you know it is a notable thing that it's the vast majority of students

040in pelham chosen person and are excited to come back in so that's i think my update on in person but i'm sure there's probably questions because this is no small deal okay margaret go ahead um so it can you reiterate what's happening to the other 12 percent how are they going to go yep so uh districts wide so plural apostrophe at the end of the s between the amherst and pelham districts we will be working we spend a lot of time today to it looks like we'll have two classes at every grade level um between the emerson pelham schools who are going to form new remote classrooms for students who chose remote everything else will stay the same in terms of the structure of the day how much like they're still using google classroom or

041seesaw all those features will remain the same but with the majority of students in both districts returning to in person it it looks like we're going to have almost a remote remote academy as a way to think about it with two classes per grade level k to six okay okay thank you yeah and trying to keep the column kids together which is another thing i should mention that you know if there were two or four pelham kids at a grade level um unless there was a reason that they didn't want to be together which is possible but our intention is to keep the pelham students uh in one of the class one of those two classes at every grade level so that they always have pelham kids with them if there was one student who

042chose remote then that's obviously not possible when possible to do that other questions for mike brenda yes so when we started to go into in-person education in october there was an issue with the grades that second grade was gonna be with the kindergarten first grade and then they weren't because of a special ed teacher assignment and i wonder if that's going to take place um you know this this this spring in april yeah it's a little easier this time because that one the the problem was that kn1 right were uh there was idea to bring in two because our special education programming covers all three of those primary grades and it wasn't perfect doing just k one but it just it just didn't work out well um but now that we're doing k2 all together

043this is actually what we sort of wanted to do originally and we just there were reasons why we weren't able to pull it off that weren't about the special ed but we're much happier to have that kind of early childhood team come in as a unit for the first week and then bring everybody back then the following week it's gonna be a lot easier because what was happening when kids were in was uh some special education staff were seeing kids in person and then getting on their computer and seeing second grade students and then going back in person and uh you know i think during covert times focusing on the thing that's in front of you whether it's a screen or whether it's kids uh one thing is it's going to be much better for

044our staff thank you any other questions okay all right um next up is future agenda planning um my gosh i have not thought about the next meeting i think we should probably do an update on how it's going being in person well assuming we're not meeting the first week in april um that would be something that we'd want to do i think we'd want to do some work probably to prepare for town meeting i guess the question is does anyone know the date of town meeting oh i do um it's the typical date right like yeah early may probably the first weekend or maybe they've changed it since the first week the second week in may something like that right it's like it's not pride parade day but that's what was in my head yeah

045here i i have it right here it is um annual town meeting saturday may 8th okay um right so we probably have one meeting before then so maybe some preparation for town meeting um might be on the agenda um and you know i think probably getting a sense of school choice um like a more formal item since it's so critical for the operations those are the things that three things on my head in terms of um putting on there i don't know if there's other things that people want to share just related to school choice i think because it's such a focus especially these days it also seems like having a little better sense of like timeline so just school choice for next year but also school choice generally like when do we do these

046things i do sometimes get questions on like where can i find a school choice application you know that procedural stuff would be helpful ron i saw your hand sometime before the end of the year i'd like us to discuss the uh the sixth grade school choice students being automatically be able to go with their peers to the middle school again i know that an old topic and there are more pressing issues but maybe we should revisit that before the end of the year the statutory interpretation okay yeah um maybe mr mcgregor miss hall and i can have an offline conversation on that because i think i'd prefer to maybe start that way if we could i'll make sure we'll try to set that up before we have a public conversation um on the topic um

047it we might i might be able to resolve some of your concerns mr me know if we were able to talk offline [Music] okay um yeah brenda i guess i'll just bring this up because um i've been getting a few questions for families about the potential of aftercare programming happening in the fall and i thought i brought it up it's also also you know small potatoes comparatively to what we're dealing with but for next fall some of the prospective school choice families that's important to them and with uh talking about the budget and about continually considering to continue renting out the gym how might that impact that i don't know if it's a school board issue but i thought i'd just raise it since since it's in some parents minds yeah yeah i mean maybe

048we can have a topic just starting to have even if the topic is itemizing fall discussions that we should be having before fall you know because i think that's one i bet this group could come up with other things um so it might be i don't know how the group feels but just having sort of an open-ended conversation about fall and what that might look like and um i think that's a really good point brenda and i imagine there's there's other topics that people are on people's minds about what fall might look like great yeah sarah best and along those same lines since uh we're switching the times uh if there will be before school or what that will look like um and then i don't know it was it was brought up you know

049in the public comment talking about preschool for next year if there's going to be you know i wouldn't be surprised if jesse says that everything has to be in person in the fall if have it right like given how the last what three days have been with jessie um that uh if they're already going to be you know all the kids in in the building do we want to talk about the preschool again especially given the public comment we received today i don't know if it's too late or like we it already happened and we're all done but you know anything else okay well you know where to find me if you think of another agenda idea um all right next up warrant report i have two tonight i authorized by my signature to payables

050and the amount of forty thousand seven hundred seventy five thousand dollars and sixty seven cents for the warrant dated uh march third twenty twenty one this was general all general fund expenses and i signed that on march ninth and i authorized by my signature uh to payroll in the amount of 57 638.98 that was for a warrant dated march 10th 2021 and i signed it also on march 10th those are all my warts tonight no gifts to accept so i will take a motion to adjourn or i'll just move to adjourn i move that school community meeting is there a second second oh no everybody wants in friend just seconded okay um all right there's no discussion so we'll do a roll call vote brenda brenda sarah best kitty i margaret margaret i ron ron

051i and hawley we are adjourned all right thank you you