Pelham School Committee 12.3.20

001okay all right i will call a meeting to order at 6 30 and we'll start with roll call attendance ron menino here sarah best uh kenny present brenda brenda present and margaret margaret present and hall present um all right first item on the agenda is to approve the minutes we don't have them yet so we'll just take care of that in january next up is public comment i did not receive any public comment so we can skip that um so we are ahead of schedule and we're up at your update dr morris sure i'll be i'll be quite brief i know miss wedding jones has um more thorough updates in in her part we chatted about that today um i really have just um there we go i'm sorry about that um so just two

002quick ones one is that uh we had a really successful flu clinic across the district today so it was advertised it was at fort river school which is as you know very close to pelham it was sent to all all families in all the districts and we had 50 students come and get vaccinated today uh it was so successful that we are looking to have another clinic perhaps next week um and perhaps indoors because it's getting a little dark a little cold by the end and if you look at the forecast as as you know i'm not a uh i'm not looking forward to the one to two inches we may get on saturday you know i know many people will rejoice with cold and snow i'm just i'm not that person so um we

003are looking to perhaps do another one um and we're trying to figure out what site would be the best um so uh but really thanks to robin supernod who's taken over jill consolino's role as the nurse manager nurse leader in the district for organizing that and all the communication that went out um it's not that exceeded our expectations because we know many people already many of the children already got vaccinated through their pediatrician or through other places so um but apparently there were people who said i i want to do this but i couldn't do it this day um and so we're trying to meet demand so thank you it was also facilitated by uh a parent in one of our districts um who was connected to cbs who um was the kind of primary

004took the lead on it so really important and we're appreciative uh i think the only other one before i can't turn it to lee would be um you know as as you know we pelham's gym uh is uh has been a good spot in terms of ventilation we've had successful um the soccer program that rented it as that's been going smoothly and we have a request for um pretty regular use by amherst recreation which is what people think of as lsse but they've changed their name so i'm trying to try to reiterate that everywhere i go that they're they're now amherst recreation for basketball skills clinics for students in grades three to eight um certainly would be uh pelham students would be eligible not just amherst students but financially for this district it would bring

005in multiple thousand dollars which would be great pelham students are well represented in the soccer clinic as well i did ask the soccer program not for names but just like any of these kids from pelham because you signed up with your address and there's a unusually large representation from pelham if you compare amherst and pelham students who all received an email inviting them to participate uh you know pelham's roughly 10 percent of that population and they're much more than 10 of the population of students who are participating in it so we're really pleased that not only is it bringing in financial income to the district but also that it's um it's seen as a resource that pelham families are availing themselves of so those are those are my only updates the rest i think go

006through um before i get to mr mino's question we'll be represented in the agenda items that we have tonight but i think there was a question if that's okay with you ms hall okay yeah go ahead ron i was just wondering why the agenda item on originalization was added to tonight's meeting we'll talk about that when we get to that agenda item how's that okay all right then uh if it's okay with the committee i'll turn it over to lee a talk uh has a much more thorough list of updates from the school okay hi everyone um so i'll start out with the same frame i used last time students staff and families and i'll share that earlier this week i was doing my rounds of the virtual classrooms um it's a little different from

007walking the halls and popping my head into classrooms but it feels similar in some ways it's starting to feel more and more familiar and i went into four classrooms like right in a row and afterwards i walked out of my office and i said out loud i love elementary school every single class was laughing together they were all doing totally different things the sixth graders were learning about um the phases of the moon and they had all created visual representations with their own explanations the fourth graders were they're learning multiplication and they were making visual arrays um the third graders were labeling continents and oceans and i um on the spot took a breakout group and had to remember where all of the oceans were located to double check their work and the first graders

008just went on a virtual field trip to the national portrait gallery and they they were able to articulate things that they noticed about artistic choices that adults i know couldn't couldn't do so it was really amazing to just do a little whip around and see such incredible learning happening online um there's also been a lot of collaboration the favorite tool right now is jamboard so our kindergartners created a set of mindful strategies using jamboard and they shared it at our most recent all school meeting right before thanksgiving so they all had added their mindfulness strategy and a picture and i think the favorite one is the shark meditation where you lay on your bed pretend you're a shark and just thrash your body so you can picture a kindergartner demonstrating that um our monthly all-school

009read is the day you begin by jacqueline woodson and yesterday i went to fifth grade and did a read-aloud of that activity it's all about how sometimes you walk into a room and you feel like you're really different from everybody else so after we read the story we broke out into small groups and we tried to find like 10 things that we all had in common so some of the fifth graders and i like mexican food and fancy things that was those were some of the things we could come up with um and as part of our black history month all year long project the second graders are learning about the montgomery bus boycott and they created really amazing representations of some of the things that they learned so they did a celebration of the

010end of that unit or the end of that part of the unit right before the thanksgiving break and then the other student update i have is that we are starting up our paw prints student run newsletter after the winter break so check your inboxes starting in january it'll be for fourth fifth and sixth graders and our tech teacher jay sri krishnan is going to be running that with some great help from parent volunteers i'll share a little bit about what our staff have been up to so we've been doing some professional development this month around a universal screening tool for social emotional learning support so we were lucky to receive a grant tied to some of the kobit relief funds we've noticed an increased need around social emotional learning just generally and so we're really

011taking the same approach we would take if we were noticing that students in our school were struggling with reading or math we're going to do a universal screening to make sure nobody slips through the cracks and provide targeted interventions and supports so our staff have been getting up and running on getting to know what that tool is going to look like and how we can use it to best meet the needs of our students and we're also working on our book study of onward we had i think what folk said was the best staff meeting ever yesterday we had one of our parents um kristen famagetti who is a yoga teacher and reiki practitioner and mindfulness expert come and share some strategies with us about how we can do some relaxation and stress relief and

012mindfulness with our students and with ourselves yesterday so that was great you may have seen in the pelham press this week that i did include a summary of an incident that happened before the thanksgiving break and so i outlined what happened so essentially a sign was added to the front lawn of the school that was not it was not placed there with permission from myself from the superintendent from any of you from the town of pelham so we did consider it an act of vandalism um and i thought it was a good opportunity to articulate to the community why we have the signs that we do in front of the school so we were very intentional with our pto leadership about putting a black lives matter sign in front of the school at the beginning

013of the year because we feel like that aligns with our values and our mission this year and our staff felt really strongly that it was important to share that with the community so i outlined that in a letter to the community this week um and it's actually opened up what i think is an important dialogue with staff with students with some families about race in our community i think we've we started having a lot of conversations over the summer um and and they've continued to evolve as the year has gone on so we have a few opportunities to continue that dialogue in december our second grade teacher katie thurston is going to facilitate a discussion of the podcast series nice white parents and so that will be a continuation of our book study group for

014families and for staff to join us and we're also shifting the format of our community coffees so i received some feedback from families that screens are in hot demand from nine to three in everyone's home so we're shifting from our morning community coffees with the principal to an afternoon tea time in the hope that more families can attend and also trying some smaller groups of people so that families who have children in similar grade levels can come together and connect and then the other parent update is um that we had our first virtual open house in november uh which went off really well it was really different from doing an open house in person but we started out with a live synchronous session just nor dizzy our school counselor led that along with me and

015then we had asynchronous videos from all of our staff and teachers which was really great so um those are all the updates for me students staff and families i know that was a lot did i create any questions with all of that any questions yeah all right thank you so much um all right next up the fall 2012 yeah we're the last one i can get for fall 2020 update right this is the last meeting of fall for this group um and i think you know lee did a lot of the update of what i would have said uh in terms of the work that's happening i think just to be explicit about it um you know i'm we're i know we're talking about metrics later but we are not close to hitting uh the

016metrics required for under the memorandum of agreement for return to in-person i think it is worth mentioning here that i have received a phone call from the department of education inquiring about that because pelham as of last week the town by 10 results come out on fridays uh has had fewer than five when it's fewer than five cases the state doesn't release the number uh but the town of pelham has had fewer than five cases throughout the entire pandemic um so they did inquire i think they are looking at towns that are not um back in person who are not in yellow or red or or even the green they're just in the gray which means too few cases so you know i shared the information that this is not a decision that's independent of

017the bargaining unit and the bargaining unit for the pelham public schools the same as the bargaining unit for the emerson regional public schools they have the same agreement and so it's not governed by pelham specific metrics it's by a much broader set of metrics whether they choose to follow up or not is anyone's guess but i did think i wanted to com or i did want to communicate to the committee that did receive a call specifically about pelham and the lack of in-person education occurring at pelham school this fall that being said i want to emphasize something that lee was indicating before is just the growth that we've seen in our staff members and making the best of distance education i'm not trying to glorify it i'm not trying to get into a debate about

018that i think if we want to do that we could talk about that a little later when the agenda item is on that but i do want to uh regardless of how one feels about the return to in person uh the the the staff have really risen to the challenge of trying to meet the needs of the pelham school students and then create community even in a virtual setting and just want to share my appreciation for the staff and leave for her leadership on that and that's i'm going to be really brief tonight the chair told me to be blunt and brief tonight so far i think i'm doing okay i mean in context it made sense when you say it like that it sounds bad no i was all in on it as miss

019kenny said before we've already had another meeting that was pretty actually i had an amherst joint at a regional meeting on tuesday night so i'm good with one brief okay well that's how i roll anyway ron go ahead somewhere in the past we had an exchange of emails talking about enrollment i think you indicated that after the update we had nine net students who did not enroll in pella what is that number now and how is that divided between school choice students and pelham right i want to check in with with lee i don't think there's been a change in enrollment um in the last five weeks since we've met previously has there lee looks like she's frozen sorry no sorry i was trying to unmute okay i've been a change in the past numbers

020and so what we can do is we can certainly bring back in january um the the enrollment sheet you know by grade level the one you've seen before by grade level with how many school choice students there are but the last time we spoke i believe was 40 or 41 school choice students that were in pelham school and that is unchanged since the last time we chatted well the nine was an improvement from the indigen initially right it was i think we were thinking it was 35 or 36 school choice but when all was said and done it was either 40 or 41 and for some reason i can't remember which of the two that was any other questions okay let's move on to the budget update then sure i'll pass it over to dr

021slaughter um kind of uh two parts to this one is just closing up fourth quarter of last year and then going over first quarter of the current year um and doug would you like me to do some presenting of that those um slides or those it's not slides the the documents yes if you would and and in the packets page five is quarter four of fiscal 20. so why don't we start with that we'll uh try to close up uh fiscal 20 and then talk about uh the current year so it'll be i think it's page five in the packet so it's uh one after that that one right there that's the one so for all of the um you know uh difficulties to sort of close out last year hold on one second i'm

022sorry for the people who uh are on the call this product has a new feature if you hover over the bottom right of the screen and click on that box that has or kind of that it'll make a whole screen view of it which i think when we're looking at slides in the future now and in the future piece of information it makes it much more viewable so um mr menino's shaking nodding his head that he's able to see that but i just wanted to offer that for people who are viewing certainly if you're viewing in the public you're on youtube and the same kind of uh box is there to share full screen whether you're in your phone or a device questions just one get back to the original screen uh you do the

023same thing it's in the bottom right of your large screen if you hover over it it'll say exit full screen and it'll get back to this thank you doug sorry i just wanted to give people an opportunity to follow along a little better than they would have otherwise you know that's perfectly fine um so i think what i'll draw your attention to here is is the rightmost column which talks about available budget which isn't really truly available now because the fiscal year is closed but but what i want to point out is how our spending ended the year relative to what our budget was like and so what we see in this is that the special education and the and a little bit of payroll were over uh what we had budgeted for the year

024um and both are kind of related in the fact that uh the the overage in payroll was was related to some needs for for some students and uh and likewise other uh expenditures for those those students increased our special education costs um however not to such an extent we couldn't uh you know uh come out with a a balanced budget or quite frankly a little bit of a surplus and if you notice the bottom right corner is about 67 000 in surplus uh that's primarily because uh under the student or the support services line which is right in the middle of the of the page there uh there's about 69 of of um unspent available budget and that's primarily related to uh charter and choice tuition uh that we didn't end up owing so we

025had budgeted uh anticipating uh some students that were going to be in charter school that had been in the previous year likewise with choice and in both circumstances uh well in charter we didn't end up having any uh tuition charges and in choice less than what was budgeted and so both of those contribute to a little uh residual that will be returned to the town when we sort of put a bow on the end of fiscal 20. um other than that i think you know all things considered uh you know the fact that we kind of most of the budgets came out pretty close to what we anticipated is is quite frankly uh somewhat amazing to me uh to given the sort of uh unexpected nature of the second uh the last quarter of the

026year um but nonetheless i think it put us in decent shape we did end up utilizing the the full uh amount of school choice funds that we're anticipating which the last time we spoke and i presented information to you i had indicated that we would and i did uh in that circumstance you use the full uh 315 000 worth of school choice for for fiscal 20. um so that is included in here and and has in a sense reduced some of the payroll costs and and some of the other costs to keep them on budget but that's why we have school choice money to help us uh support our school and the programs that we offer through it um i think i'll pause at this point and see if anybody has any questions relative to

027what they see on this on this chart mike can you stop sharing oh thank you all right good any questions for dr slaughter no okay you want to move on to talk about quarter one and while mike brings that up it's just the previous uh page or so on that um you know as you glance at that grid at the top uh it's a it it seems as though you know by and large it's pretty uneventful and yet i still have two areas that are highlighted in red i'll i'll get into that a little bit as i go through this um but in general you know our spending to date um in in fiscal uh fiscal 21 and again quarter one ended on 9 30 which was very very early in the school year especially

028with the 10-day delay in students starting school but nonetheless you know things are generally on track if you if you look at the percent of budget used you'll notice that payroll is is at 10.7 that's very low i mean it's uh it's typically about 15 so we're a little um i'd say ahead of what we expected in in that regard if you look further down and you see like administrative services which is 62 which might be concerning normally because you're hoping that a quarter of the way through the year you'd be at about 25 percent on the on the sort of uh use of your budget uh in that in that area and likewise with facilities management you see this to some extent uh there's some purchasing we do at the beginning of the year

029or encumbering of money that we do at the beginning of the year so we do our software licenses at the beginning of the year a lot of like in facilities we will open and encumber money for our heating oil and our electric bills and some of that sort of stuff and so that tends to sort of boost that number and make it look a little bit higher than is is perhaps uh what you'd expect in that regard um but you know so far i think our budget's generally you know doing pretty well um all things considered we will see you know we've not done much transportation so our transportation costs which are showing zero right now is mostly because at that point they had the bus and company hadn't billed us yet um uh so

030that's why it's actually a zero but but uh there will be bills coming but uh we will have some savings there because the the cost for transportation is less because we're we've done uh very little in-person schooling um it won't be zero uh but it will be uh somewhat less than than what we perhaps budgeted and that will probably help us out in some of the other areas of of this budget the reason i mark the two areas of special education and facilities management in red is mostly uh because you know while we have uh some support from the federal government regarding uh you know the things we need to do for uh the pandemic and and to uh operate and and function well within the within the pandemic both from a safety standpoint and

031an educational standpoint there's a lot of unknowns there and we have a number of things that we're going to apply to be reimbursed for through the the cares act and through fema not all of that will be uh considered eligible expense and so those types of things will end up being uh end up hitting our budget those two areas are the areas where that's most likely to show up and so that's why i've highlighted them with a color of red we're hopeful that there'll be a second cares act that comes through uh hopefully soon but you know fairly soon just because uh it will it will help us to continue to support the school's operation and the programming that we need to do to support our students through the spring if that if that doesn't

032happen things are going to get very very difficult as we go through the year because there'll be expenses that we're going to need to take on uh you know to to meet our obligations uh both moral and and uh legal relative to our students and and and so that'll put a real strain on the budget if there's not um some additional support to help us out with that there are going to be some savings throughout the budget as we go through the year and so those will help mitigate those extra expenses in other areas but but you know if there's not additional support from from outside it it will get difficult as we go through the year and as a result of being prepared for that uh you know we have frozen our budgets um

033obviously we're still spending on essential things so if if you know we need uh materials to to teach the students you know so if we need art supplies or we need uh you know textbooks or or books for a particular class or or a unit that's happening we're certainly going to buy those things so we haven't froze the budget to that level but but we certainly any any spinning that at all discretionary uh or optional we're looking at other ways to to to uh support our our students and our faculty in that regard but we're taking a cautious approach at the moment and hopefully we'll get some news um you know from the federal government about a potential additional uh you know stimulus package that might support our school as as we go along um

034i think it at this point i'm trying to think if there's any other thing i want to mention i think i've hit most of the real critical things um oh one small thing i will mention here uh at the bottom of the page there is is a note about the health insurance uh you know due to low usage especially especially during the last quarter of last fiscal year our insurer has uh has given us a uh a 50 premium discount in the month of november so both our our staff that have health insurance got half off their premium and so did the district that'll create a little bit of savings and help support our budget as we go through the rest of the year um and so i just want to mention that as an

035explicit uh plus relative to our to our budget um but i think at this point i'll stop and see if there are questions relative to what i've been talking about all right thank you any questions yeah margaret um i actually have a couple questions um are do we currently have any out of district placements for special ed or any in-house you know in in-home support that we're doing um on the second question i'm not sure if we have any in home uh i don't think we do um uh there is a student that is placed in the amherst district for some support for special education which we budgeted for last spring so as far as our budget is concerned it should be supported fairly well in that regard okay so the second question is do

036we know yet whether we have any charter school students i mean i assume we probably won't because they'll want to be in person but well no i forget that do we have any do we know if we have any charter students i was looking at that today but i was looking at the the regional schools uh estimates from so they they put out an estimate in in uh i want to say late september i look specifically at pelham i don't think we do i don't have i don't have any indication that we we do but i haven't looked at it specifically maybe dr morris might have okay usually just if i could add to what dr slaughter said i usually get that right before the winter break is the the fall counting and recording so

037i have it on my calendar to check in with doug to take a look at that um holiday gift that we sometimes get um at that time of year but uh the the early report is really speculative this is the december typically the one where um they've done account at all the charter schools they've cross-referenced it on addresses and that's letting you know so that's we get to january i mean like i have in the past if we if we get that information for the the break then i'll send that electronically to you otherwise i'll bring it to our january meeting okay and the third question i have um is about rural aid because i was reading an article that adam hines his proposing pretty significant increase in the rural schools aid does palin too

038if you want dr slaughter so um no uh well we do get rural federal rural reap grant aid but in terms of what you're talking about from the state their formula it's it's a little surreal so in the past couple years none of the four towns of the region uh get it but the region does um that makes any sense a compilation of percent rural and there's a calculation of what rural means in a school and poverty so none of the three at least in the past i know pelham has not ever received it but the real school did because between the combination of pelham shoots very leveraged students at the region and then the poverty frankly that mostly resides in the town of amherst it actually hits the metrics so to speak but the

039pelham from a wealth perspective does not because there are not enough students who qualify as low income if i could just follow up on the previous question i just fortunately because it was something i worked on today i just checked in pelham the estimate from the basically the end of september uh had no stu the state didn't predict any students from pelham being in charter school this year so that's good news in that regard whether it'll hold and will will be determined um the other thing i would suggest is that's that end-of-year sort of uh accounting that the state does that's a little more accurate has to do with the sims or student reporting it's in october that all got delayed a little bit this year because of the complications of in person not in

040person how do you do attendance all these other sort of aspects of that so so while i'm hopeful they'll still be able to generate those numbers for us at the typical time it may get delayed just a little bit or i'm concerned that it might because they had to push back the deadlines on that can i just ask one question doug on the support services and facilities management where we're hoping for some cares act money or other money what what what's the scale there what types of amounts are we thinking that's a really good question um so part of the so part of the difficulty is you know there are things that uh so for example in in the facilities management so some of what's in there are things like we bought ppe so we

041bought uh mass and gowns and hand sanitizer and that sort of stuff and so you know they said go out buy this stuff and charge it this way and then they kind of changed the rules after the game started uh so it's a little difficult as to exactly what will or won't get reimbursed or not reimbursed which is you know kind of horrible but everybody's in the same boat but the difficulty is we sort of are going to sit on some costs we don't know how big that number is and so that may be one of those things where a second stimulus package they are better at articulating rules on the front end uh so we we can you know sort of identify more clearly what uh things that we're currently doing we can continue

042to support that way what things we can shift to that et cetera so it's it's a little difficult um you know it's you know it could get really bad i don't want to be you know i don't want to sugarcoat things um i'm hopeful that that won't be the case i mean you know so i'll i'll say that but i won't get more specific i think it's a little bit too speculative too it's okay to be blunt in this meeting we've already established that it's fine i'm hoping it doesn't look really bad but you know you'll know uh you know if we know it's going to be really really horrible we'll we'll be in touch yes please do yes yeah understood okay thank you any other questions on the budget update no okay all right

043thank you dr slaughter um all right next up is capital planning and so on on this one might if you want to i think that the excel sheet is probably a little too much to look at right now the memo so traditionally um you know we sort of create a memo from from the chair to the finance committee in the select board relative to some asks that we have um unfortunately at the moment i'm i'm still chasing down some details which will probably change this request list a little bit um it may eliminate some items and or change dollar amounts a little bit um you know from a technology standpoint the the network switches uh is one that that relates to uh the potential to connect in with amherst is expanding its uh we're actually

044creating and replacing a high-speed fiber network throughout the town uh and then they're going to ultimately uh because they have some you know water uh resources in in pelham they're gonna run some of that high speed network into pelham which allows the palm school to potentially you know connect into that and uh but the the timeline on that's a little unclear at the moment which will change whether or not it's imminent that we need the network switches or not and so i need to have a another conversation with uh uh our is director jerry champagne a little bit about uh how we might want to approach that and then uh and so that may change how that looks in this list versus uh you know how the computer replacements look um the other two items

045the school security upgrades uh there's a there's a door on the on the library side of the building uh that the you know sort of physical mechanism that opens it with the card swipe is not working properly and additionally just uh that system is is showing its age it was secondhand when we got it um and so there's a control panel uh for the school that we we need to replace that's what the school security upgrades are um and then the interior renovations and upgrades uh we had previously uh we i say we you guys and and the town of film had and authorized some spending to do some painting and some uh some some other uh uh i believe furniture purchasing uh the remaining amount of funds that had already been appropriate are not

046quite enough to do the paint uh work that we need to do and so there's an additional ask this year for for some additional paint um so i'm thinking the priorities two and four will likely stay unchanged they may change which priority they are once i get a little more information from from the information systems director but but the other two are likely to change given a little bit of information i got this afternoon uh regarding the the timing of the town of amherst plans relative to their uh installation and implementation of their high-speed fiber network um so as a result that's why i wrote the memo to you guys to inform you and start to have you thinking about these things but i think we're going to probably have to follow up with the

047finance committee and and potentially select board in pelham perhaps just a touch later we'll we'll share this information with them obviously and and and move ahead once we have a little clearer um a little clearer picture um i'm happy to take any questions people have about those those four items um and i'm hoping to discussion about how we might want to proceed relative to uh informing this finance committee and select board about our request um if i could add one thing before we get to questions uh that priority one um is a really large priority from a teaching and learning perspective uh i think one of the challenges that we're facing uh is that in many of our other school buildings in the town of amherst uh we have many teachers coming in and staff

048members coming in to teach from the building for a whole host of reasons some people it's because it's a better environment than their home in terms of distractions but a lot of it's because the wi-fi or they're in a wired network that's much faster than what they have at home and that's not true at pelham it's actually the opposite is true where you know pelham teachers see coming to work coming to come in to do distance learning as a last resort because even the wired network is slower than many people's home network so um you know i think as dr slaughter said that's something we have to that's connected to the town of amherst i'm not going to get into the long history but essentially uh there was an agreement that the town of amherst

049had that they were going to replace and do their own fiber loop instead of using an existing one from a utility company and this is getting that online and because of the proximity due to the town line uh that the town of amherst where the school is located this would have a huge impact not just in this distance learning era but actually in general for pelham i've been countless uh not not recently obviously but countless um faculty meetings over the last five years where i'll go in either to check in or i'm presenting something with either dr slaughter or formerly you know with mr mangano when we come and talk about budget with the staff and it really is a problem um so i just want to note that it's network switches the title of

050it which is appropriate and accurate doesn't really tell the full story of the importance of that uh from a teaching and learning perspective but yeah that's all i wanted to do if i may just add one other little thing about that just to that point it also you know when that uh network is available and and we can potentially connect to it connect to it um it it changes the infrastructure needs of the school um so you know there's some things uh that are either ongoing operational costs that we have relative to the current setup or uh hardware that we have that changes in a way that's ultimately uh more cost effective so it's it's kind of a uh but it but it is going to be dependent upon the town of amherst and their

051timeline for implementation so that's uh you know gonna kind of shape this it'd be nice if we could do it sooner but it may it may have to get pushed a little bit depending on the town of ammers uh time horizon and timeline to get their work done all right thank you yeah ron go ahead i understand that currently every pelham student has a chromebook when we go back to normal really normal and all students are in person would that uh eliminate the need for chromebook cards so i think that um no not really um uh so in in going to one to one with everyone having a chromebook i mean what we've traditionally done in the younger grades is the the machinery like the chromebook stayed in the building in the cart uh and

052they weren't something that kids would take home or take back and forth and so that model may return um because i think you know to to have you know first graders toting around a chromebook i mean physically they can generally do it but there are a lot of other factors involved with you know you know kindergarten persons and and second grade third grade even you know as far as uh attending to that piece of machinery getting it home and back and holding back that sort of thing so it's likely we'll probably return to a similar model that we had before where uh those types of devices are gonna stay at school most of the time but i'm sure there'll be times you know if if we have inclement weather and we decide you know let's

053say it's two years from now and it's inclement weather uh predicted and we decide to uh uh be prepared for them you know for remote learning for a day or so while a snowstorm goes through um you know that they could you know be something that the kids go home with on those days i i think that you know we've we've all gotten up the learning curve on how to do some of that sort of stuff um can i ask a question i've had conversations with john tricky on the finance committee um and he's asked about the um the ada report that was done i think two years ago now um and asked about whether or not any of those items could be ticked off this year have we looked at that to see if

054there's anything that would make sense to take care of certainly not you know a priority above say network switches but is that something that we could consider so in last uh at the annual town meeting in june one of the uh capital items was a ten thousand dollar ask and was was granted by the town of fallon 488 compliance and work uh so we do have a resource of ten thousand dollars um currently in capital spending and and uh that's part of the we didn't want to ask again this year just from the standpoint of can we uh yeah we don't want to stack up a bunch of money to have it just sit and not utilize it so uh ten thousand dollars in place um there's some some ada compliant uh uh tables or

055both inside and outside a picnic table outside and an interior table uh that have been purchased uh with those funds and and there are additional items like that that are on the facilities director's uh agenda to start you know using that that for um so we're we're gonna be making progress on those ada compliance uh topics and then uh if you look at the kind of grid you'll notice that the ada compliance uh in subsequent years it doesn't have something in in 22 uh but i believe in 23 24 25 it has a 5 ask each of those years um you know the out years 23 and on we haven't looked at as closely yet but but nonetheless we did keep those those subsequent years and the need for continued efforts in in improving the

056ada compliance and and facilities at the school you know are are in the plan for sure okay great thank you um and then the only other thing i would say is that we are having in town the capital planning meeting on december 16th um so you know i don't i don't think we have to have everything completely final by then but i know you're still waiting on some information is this is it the type of thing where it's like a matter of weeks or we're talking about like well no more in february no i think quite frankly um you know uh given what i learned today relative to the town of amherst plants uh i'm gonna have a conversation with the is director probably not tomorrow but probably early next week uh and then uh

057i can can sort of re-adjust this this memo and and send it to you the um the thing i will say is this is that the number of items you know those four are going to be the four and so it'll either be that or less so i may pull something off of this list uh from the standpoint of the the uh you know the network switches isn't something that's going to happen or or that we need to reserve the money at this moment because it you know the timing of the of the uh the work that the town of amherst is going to do that you know if that comes off then of course the everything else moves up one um you know obviously uh i'll have that conversation with the is director like

058i said probably early next week we'll try to get you know i'll get the results of that conversation kind of composed and sent to you it'll be i think the the thing i would share is that the committee can know that this is a is a fairly complete list and it may get smaller or dollar amounts may get smaller it won't get bigger as far as an ask of the town relative to these these capital items but i can get you a refined list prime middle of next week okay that's great thank you any other questions or comments on capital planning no okay all right next up health metrics and memorandum of agreement so we had put this on the agenda because we had one meeting where we couldn't really talk about it at all

059um and so i that i know if there's not an update to share although mike i don't know if there's any if you want to tee this up or if it's just if committee members have have questions yeah i think it's really just that um what i showed earlier that i did you know the only update is i got contacted by the state about this um and um yeah i think pelham does have uh you know checked well doctors thought i was talking and they come out on thursday so pelham has seven cases right now uh over the course of the pandemic um and so they inquired as to as i mentioned before why pelham wasn't didn't have in person happening and hasn't for a while i shared the information with them um and that's

060sort of where we are you know in the town of amherst they had a community chat today and then one thing i shared and it'll be uh repeat information for i think some people at the region because i think i might have mentioned this the other night is um i do definitely have gotten some community feedback of like can you just override the moa and so i respond that my job is to implement the policies of the school committee and the contracts that have been agreed on by the school committee and not just apa but all of our bargaining units and and from time to time they'll be disagreements of interpretation of those contracts that's not a unique to pelham or amherst thing that's everywhere right um i think the language is really clear on

061this particular topic about you know return to in-person um and uh so that that's sort of where i sit on it um but you know i think what i'm learning is i can't say that enough places to enough people it's i think i have to you know keep reminding folks that that's my job is to implement the contracts and by that i'm not absolving myself i was part of the negotiation process but uh the kind of the the idea of just ignoring that and saying forcing everyone to come back won't be a successful strategy legally um and it's also i think um got some real challenges ethically in terms of what was agreed to and implementing a contract that was agreed to in good faith um so uh you know i think my you know

062my thoughts on in person and the importance of it i've been well spoken anyone can go back and watch the plethora of meetings um starting in june uh the joint meetings um so i don't need to repeat myself there and i think people know where i sit on that question um but the reality is that that is the moa that governs this current year uh 2020 2020 to 2021. um you know the regional school committee i think i could say this here did ask the apa to potentially renegotiate some metrics um there was one letter that was sent the answer was no there was another letter that was sent that was to my knowledge not responded to and so that's the current update of where we are that's not a blame thing it's it's just

063a factual recounting of at least from my perspective where we sit certainly the regional reps um can add anything if they'd like to add anything but that's i mean in terms of correct me if i'm incorrect in any area and then we can open up for any questions people might have okay thank you ron go ahead when do we create an moa for fall of 21. um i think that's a question that the school committee may take up the regional school committee is talking about not that particularly but talking about the next the next school year it will be on the agenda for tuesday night which is the next meeting of the regional school committee um so i think if there's any information to share back either miss dancer miss kenny or myself can filter

064that back to you or you can tune in you i know you've been on the region tremendously ron so um you know you don't have to participate you can just watch this time and if a member of the pelham school committee has some item they wish to be included in that moa what if the proper channel of communication i would recommend that you communicate that um well there's two ways it could be done one is that it could be a group conversation um i think that's a little complicated because that's communicating things around negotiation uh so my more specific advice is either to communicate that to me or to miss kenny uh miss kenny is on the negotiating team for the region and you know because of my role i'm connected to that so that

065would be my advice unless miss kenny disagrees with that okay and we will know when that time we will i will know what when that is appropriate to make that communication like next month you can do it later tonight if miss kenny will chat with you no no i will not but uh you're welcome to try uh but there's no uh there's that's not something super imminent i don't think you know i think though just to be really uh to be more serious about it uh i think it's highly likely that we'll have a vaccine available to adults well before the start of the next school year um children i'm less certain about the trials for you know especially for elementary age children there's no current trials that i'm aware of for children under the

066age of 12 there are trials for 12 and up that are happening right now but in terms of the adults the staff not just apea but all of our staff members you know i think it's highly likely that a 90 plus percent um [Music] effectiveness vaccine uh will be available before the before the next school year um so i think that will be something that the committee and the community will have to consider as we move forward so things will definitely be different one way or the other uh with that but if you have thoughts please do share them with ms kennedy myself or both of us thank you thanks just to be clear i'm not trying to i should note uh exclude miss dancer miss dancer's not part of the negotiating team and because

067of a conflict of interest which she shared publicly she's not part of the negotiations with the apea so it's not that i like miss kenny more than miss answer it just missed answers not the appropriate person for that information to flow to so there is no inviting among anyone on this meeting okay oh beautiful backgrounds for both of you so okay better thank you um all right thank you any other questions or things folks want to bring up on the health metrics for the moa okay all right we'll move on to regionalization um so ron just to get back to your question of why this is on the agenda um well i guess i mean dr morris you want to talk about i guess why it came up and then okay go ahead so at

068a recent meeting of the pelham school committee this fall we talked about a potential impending fiscal crisis that the pelham school district is facing the reduction in school choice students some other variables have us really concerned about the future of pelham school or has me i won't speak for us has me very concerned about the future of pelham school uh one of the things we talked about in that meeting was what are the alternatives that we could look into and what i suggested i still believe is there's no new alternative we have the same set of conditions the same variables we had in the past in conversation with chair hall we thought it'd be worthwhile to at least start talking about where we left off with regionalization because if the committee wants to pursue that

069and the town wants to pursue it we would want to map out what that might look like if the school committee is not interested in that conversation and we're done with it um but uh what i'll suggest to you now is i don't have any clear information that uh our fiscal situation's any better than the last time we met nothing has convinced me and i think dr slaughter hedged a bit right i think rightfully so um but there there's no uh oh yeah we won the you know school district lottery and you know there's this new income source i think the rental of the gym is a nice new income source it's probably a temporary nice uh you know short term i think you know next year if vaccines are here and we're we're moving

070somewhat closer to uh return to in person you know lssc or amherst recreation doesn't have to rent pelham gym anymore um i'm not sure they will because they get to use their gems for free in amherst right um so uh you know i think anything that we've patched together is rather short term and the concerns are not just short term but longer or medium term about the fiscal health of the district so what i asked ms hall to do is to put on the agenda at least have an initial conversation and i can be more explicit in a second as to one thing i shared at the amherst school committee meeting on tuesday is uh to make a very long story short um the amherst district is in in a process with the massachusetts school

071building authority uh there was some thought that the msba the massachusetts school building authority does give essentially reimburses at a significantly higher rate if your part if a district is part of a regionalization effort so there was some thought that oh well if the districts want to regionalize now would be the perfect time because you know an additional five or six percent on a 70 million dollar project is a pretty large incentive for the town of amherst to to take this um very very seriously if the town of pelham was interested what i shared on tuesday night is unfortunately from the msba perspective the towns would have had much needed to be much further down the road of regionalization for that to be considered in the msba process in essence a year ago actually very

072close to a year ago this process ended um the towns of emerson palmett many of you were at that meeting or at least some of you are at that meeting i know you were mr menino and middle school upstairs in the library and that process ended and and if that process was continuing that's really what the msba is looking for districts that want to regionalize their fur far down the process and this weeps into it uh you know they felt like if this is something the towns wanted to do the town of amherst should drop out of the msba and reapply when there is more clarity i will tell you that the amherst town of amherst is not going to drop out of the msba process uh and and wait to see about regionalization if

073they're going to reapply so that's the the not so good news perhaps around this at the same time i'll be done in a quick minute i'll stick with the i'm doing well with blunt i think i'll try to get to brief at the same time there's a significant revenue source that comes in if towns decide to regionalize in massachusetts and i included in the packet and emailed to you separately and the 86 page report thank you for all the six people who met a tremendous number of times to put that together and and that report really documents what the savings would be uh or new income shouldn't say savings what the new income would be uh you know and also really is clear about what are the two stumbling blocks that are the most significant

074ones one is how the new income is divided between the towns and the second one is governance those were two areas despite you know working with a frequent meeting schedule getting support from um consultants that we got a grant to pay for um that the groups were had trouble getting to consensus on and so you know i think for this committee to consider is a you know is it worth kind of bringing up that conversation again uh we have a lot of the data a lot of it hasn't changed in terms of what you know new funds would come in and b what process moving forward would the committee you know want to take in terms of talking to the town of amherst and and taking next steps if it's a committee's not interested that's

075great but i did feel like given the fiscal situation when we were in at least having the conversation tonight was a worthwhile use of time okay thank you that's helpful and i think also just important to be very clear it would not be a new starting from scratch regionalization effort it would be starting from where this last conversation left off um and so it would it wouldn't be the whole thing all over again i just think that's needs to be very clear yeah margaret [Music] um my recollection from that meeting was that amherst pretty much said we don't want to do this um after an awful lot of work and i find it hard to to me it seems like starting this conversation again is probably not going to get us anyplace different unless pelham

076wants to give up some things particularly in the governance area so it's just my two cents worth a bit i wonder this may be somewhat related because i wonder if this the survey that was done on families who left the district do we know what the results were just for pelham i know we had it for the region and do we anticipate many families coming back in pelham yeah so let me say that two things so the first part of your question i think is accurate i think in fairness to the amherst you know i wear multiple hats um so i tried to keep my pelham hat on but that was like one of the first meetings of the amherst town council when they were just elected and they just changed their form of government

077so i think there was some apprehension from that um and uh about it and that may still be true but i i also just the context matters right that it was it were people they were a group of people 13 people who were elected i think it was like the week before or something they were installed like the week before jumping into a conversation about a pretty massive governance change so i don't know if there was a scenario by which any group of new group of 13 people would say yeah let's keep doing that and i think you know to be blunt there was also a lot of vocal resistance from the town of pelham at that meeting um so you know that mattered and i think influenced the mood of that meeting i'm not

078criticizing it but that's how i remember it and that's i looked back at the meeting minutes and that that that's reflected um i think on your second question um would i haven't it'd be pretty identifiable if we disaggregated for pelham because it's a pretty small number of families who left but i do think there there is an interest in some families uh in coming back you know the tricky thing is in terms of the choice numbers which is some of the driving figure on this choice families when they homeschool that that that's that's not actually quite how it works right they homeschool with their home district and they'd be leaving the district um so there's not necessarily i mean theoretically there'd be a seat waiting firm but it's not as natural a flow because if

079you're requesting home school you request it from your home district not your choice in district so i think there are some limits to what we can gather from that survey for pelham particularly on the topic of school choice students yep brown i believe there were two main financial incentives one the transportation piece and then the other piece the reimbursement of the cost of the new amherst building to clarify you've said that piece where the they would reimburse more for the amherst building is off the table that's no longer available that's correct because the timing um you know when they're making a decision about enrollments which is happening this month then they being the msba and they see that a process ended a year ago and there's no signs that it's being resurrected they're saying if

080you want to do that you know you're not ready to to really regionalize which is true i can't argue the logic there so that's off the table but the regional transportation that about 245 000 a year that would still be um on the table so to speak and when do we get to express our opinion as to whether we should re-engage the regionalization discussion at this meeting right now go for it oh well i'm against it um the assessment method i've always argued that one one group is going to be subsidizing the other amherst will be subsidizing pelham or pelham will be subsidizing amherst unless the assessment is the exact amount that we're going to spend on the pelham school and the formulas weren't that the formulas were formulas and sometimes the formula would charge

081uh the residents more than the cost of running the pelham school and sometimes it would charge the town of pelham less than the cost of of running the pelham school in addition the transportation aid i reread the report today because i anticipated this there was a lot of hedging in that report uh there there was more than just a newly elected board from amherst who weren't willing to commit to a regionalization uh the the the bulk of the transportation savings went to amherst it didn't go to pelham the voting i forget what it was but like like one vote or less than one vote uh for pelham uh it was insulting uh and then i read further on in the report debt i'm not sure how to interpret the debt thing will this new regionalized

082board be able to incur debt against the will of the pelham electorate will they be able to pass some kind of debt uh issue that the town of pelham doesn't want to engage in and we only have less than one vote to vote against it um we have a problem i've heard this from a number of people pelham's always had a problem we would somehow be able to muddle through one way or the other especially with the pandemic i think it we we may we may have to have this conversation next year uh after the after the uh temporary impact of the pandemic passes let's see let's see how it settles out i'd be willing to consider this maybe next year but not this year and there are a lot of other reasons but that's

083it okay thank you yeah mike go ahead um so this isn't to uh try to disagree with you ron or argue with you ron but i'm going to show the slide about the cost savings and actually the problem with the cost savings is pelham always makes out the problem is that amherst doesn't always make out um and so i want to show that and that's a real problem in terms of getting amherst to engage in this is that the savings primarily go to pelham which doesn't well so let me show the slide and i can walk you through the numbers there we go um i'm going to go this way so again that button where it makes it larger is going to be really important on this one because i there's a limit to how

084large how clear i can make the numbers so um so what you see is the negative numbers indicate cost savings um so if you look at any of the years you can see that the bulk of the methods used would have six digits of cost savings for the town of pelham uh and pretty minimal cost savings for the town of amherst um and in some years actually it costs more uh you know for fy20 some of those formulas would have amherst actually paying forty thousand dollars more uh and pelham saving hundred twenty thousand dollars i have a question so can i just can i finish on and then so you know i'm not gonna get into all the five assessment methods because i think that's uh perhaps beyond my capacity tonight but what sean who

085worked on this a lot was trying to do i was trying to find a more fair method and it was just very very challenging to do and even if you look at alternative three which if you scale it looks probably appropriate for the size of pelham size of amherst you know i would argue that for the 17 000 of savings that's probably not enough to make a difference where you you know all the loss of autonomy that you'd have so i think ron's larger point about how to finance how the financing works is very accurate but pelham always saves money in all the scenarios it's it's amherst that doesn't always save money or doesn't always save enough money to perhaps make it worth it for them i was interested in the divvying up of the

086transportation savings there's what 260 thousand dollars in transportation savings how much of that goes to pelham how much of that goes to amherst yeah so this chart is trying to show that okay i don't understand the chart i guess yeah so the chart is showing um the estimated changes to the cost associated with assessment methods um so in every single method in every single year that it was studied pelham would end up being assessed less than it currently is paying for educating its students the challenge is alternative three you know the savings are pretty low and in methods one through four that sean developed um the savings are significant for pelham um but they're not that significant for amherst you know i'll say i'm gonna stay with sarah's thing about being blunt for sixty thousand

087dollars a year amherst is not going to regionalize right that's just not enough of a cost savings to make it worth all the changes that would have to come into play so i think your larger point ron about the finances being a problem about how the cost savings work equally is a very good one um and you know and it was one when it was looked at two years ago uh and a year and a half ago that we weren't able to resolve but it wasn't because pelham wouldn't save money uh in fact it was often because amherst was saving so little that the incentive for amherst just wasn't there to engage in it and that still may be a problem well we'll leave it at that but my point is maybe pelham should the

088costs go down but maybe the cost should have gone down more with with an equal i i read the the assessment protocols i'll read them again but i still don't understand the main gain is 260 000 for transportation aid how much of that aid goes to pelham how much of that aid goes to amherst and these numbers don't show that but i'll look at them again so you know i think that's a really important question i'll try to answer briefly that you know it's not really that the aid goes it aid goes to the region right there is no amherst there is no pelham it's like the regional schools where there's an assessment offered to each town and the assessments uh that that 200 some odd thousand dollars of savings of new of new of

089new money uh this chart is showing the impact to each the town and amherst in the town of pelham of how it goes the town of pelham and methods again the two alternatives and the two statutory methods would make an enormous impact positive impact on the budget of pelham the challenge is they make such a little impact on the town of amherst i don't think it's enough for the town of amherst to perhaps engage in the dialogue which i think is one of your other points right so let me ask a question at town meeting we vote for a talent for a elementary school budget correct are you saying that for fiscal 19 under alternative one that ask would be 311 000 less yes okay okay yeah um and and it wouldn't be the only

090variable i'd add is it would not be voting on an elementary budget it'd be voting on an assessment to the regional budget but it would have huge positive implications for pelham i'm just concerned you know using your number that in that year amherst would pay fifteen thousand dollars more what's the incentive for them to reach i agree yeah um i think we should look into this i think um it only has even a slim chance of success though if we're we're willing to give things up that we weren't willing to last time around um i mean and certainly the details in that report are really important but um i guess for me when we have our finance director and our superintendent in october coming to us with um some pretty dire budget predictions and no

091real indication that anything is going to change in the immediate or distant future to make those things better um you know i i think there's only so long that you can muddle along and figure it out year by year i mean we dipped into a lot of the choice revolving fund last year um and doesn't that's not really getting any bigger this year and um i think if we just keep if we try to keep solving the same problems with the same answers they're just going to stop working eventually um and i think you know from what doug presented tonight we are not currently in a budget crisis but we want to be able to make have choices before we get to a crisis because when we're in a crisis then we have far fewer

092choices um i feel like at least if we are willing to explore this now we might have some options that wouldn't be available to us if we waited too long margaret clicking in the wrong place um it you make a good point i is this something that also would involve the finance people in town um and i'm wondering if the affordable housing that's going to be built in town is going to have an impact a positive impact in terms of money for the school i mean we don't know who's going to rent the apartments but certainly some of them are being done with the anticipation that it would be family so i don't know if that plays into anything at all i mean i think it would be great if it did the the practical

093reality just of that in particular is that it takes a really long time for new housing to go in the ground so i just don't think that we i don't think we should make any decisions for what this committee does based on housing that may or may not be built and ready to be leased up in you know so i mean great consideration it could be but i think timing-wise we have to be making proactive decisions long before that are you raising your hand i can oh okay sorry yes go ahead three questions would you please make a list of those things you want us to give up i think we gave up everything in the original uh uh a proposal i don't know what's left to give up but would you make a list

094and share it with us well i mean i can say right now governance and money in the spirit of just being well we get we gave up we we accepted one one one vote i i don't no that wasn't fun mike you can probably speak to this more eloquently so so two things i don't know if that question was directed to me and so i'm not asking you to do anything i'm just trying to present an option for you to perhaps pursue i think when i was saying the money and the governance those were the two in my opinion heavily unresolved issues that you know we didn't have an assessment method that ever got recommended they looked at a number of and i think there's four different governance models there was never recommendation and so

095you know if the committee wants to pursue it it might be good if amherst is willing to and i have no idea full disclosure absolutely no idea what they would to actually have a group that says okay we think this is the method that could work in terms of the finances we think this is a fair approach towards governance and then see how people respond but in terms of what i'm asking you it's just whether you want to pursue this and and even what um this document is has a bunch of choices without even a recommendation and i'm not trying to criticize the group that worked on it they just never got there because it sort of uh it ended before they got to a recommendation place um but i think one of the hard

096things from my perspective is without those two things even with with clarity of like what a group would recommend it sort of just stays in the stagnant place i'd almost rather if the committee wants to pursue it someone a group get together if amherst is willing and say we think these are the two is the best way to do the finances we think is the best way to do governance and you all say no that's terrible it's not going to happen as opposed to where it is now where like no one even knows what the real plan would be and again that's no critique to the people who spend a tremendous amount of time putting this together but you know i think there's not actually that much to respond to because there's not a recommendation

097that's clear on either of those items my second question you said we can build on this but don't we have doesn't town meeting have to appoint a special committee and the town of amherst to appoint a special committee and then basically formulate a new report isn't it well is that true well i mean i think eventually that there would it would have to become more formal than it is what we're talking about now is just trying to get a read just on these five committee members here um to find out what folks want to pursue i think from there it would make sense to have another stage of a more informal exploration into this to see you know we're not going to have the town vote to create a board here if amherst is like

098well we're not creating our board so have fun at your meetings you know so i think we would have to do something informal first and then if folks in pelham wanted to engage and if in amherst they did then we would have to get more formal yep go ahead my third question and it it really depends on how what the impact of our discussion and that is this ultimately has to come to a vote and it wasn't clear last time whether it was a town-wide vote or whether it was a vote at the um annual town meeting uh because it would make a difference uh in terms of whether i could well i'm only one person so i mean it can't hurt me to to discuss it more but i don't see well point is

099it going to be a town-wide vote or an annual town meeting vote meaning if we pursue this and if ultimately it comes to that point where let's assume the committee recommends uh regionalization amherst recommends regionalization it won't happen unless the town of pelham chimes in does the pelham just help him chime in through a town-wide vote or does the town of pelham chime in through a vote at the annual town meeting yeah go ahead mike yep i believe it's a vote at the annual town meeting because the town meeting in pelham is the legislative body that would make such a vote it would have recommendations um from school committee select board probably finance committee as well um but uh it's it's not it doesn't involve an override or something like that um where it would

100occur at a town-wide level that's my current understanding those are my three questions all right great thank you yeah doug go ahead so recalling my uh service and town meeting in amherst so because pelham is a full town meeting and not a representative town meeting um it's effectively like a an election so it's i think in the eyes legal eyes of the state uh either is equal um and so uh town meeting uh having a vote or taking action is the same as having a uh a ballot question that you have in it okay so it's the same i think any okay i mean i understand racially there are differences between how people approach that and whether people will attend town meeting versus go to the polls but from good i'm going to go with

101brenda first and then margaret go ahead brenda um i think that it would be worth exploring regional regionalization and kind of moving this along because also yeah there's not specific recommendations and maybe if we had specific recommendations or um at least consulted with amherst to see if there have been some changes in the economy that would make you know uh this more interesting to them or they would want to think about it i don't know how much the school committees on both sides have changed maybe there's just different players uh different conditions i just think it's worth looking into certainly i have uh lots of concerns uh as a as a town resident but i think considering that this has been an ongoing conversation since i moved to pelham it just seems like moving this

102process along so that if we get into a tough position we're kind of ready to move forward i think that's that would be wise a one quick question so if town meeting is you know the timeline i guess thinking about if that would happen this year if that would happen next year or and also wondering is there is there an expiration date and when these funds would it would go away for or do you feel like the the government wants to continue to have small schools regionalized and that may be that funny may be their continuing yeah my perspective is that that funding will be there continuously i think the percentage reimburse that sometimes we do see variations on that um the current administration is very high on regionalization they frankly are pretty explicit that

103they wish lots of other districts would regionalize i don't know if you've noticed what's going on in vermont i mean they've taken that to a new level where they're forcing regionalization on districts there's been no talk of that in massachusetts i think the capacity to pull that off in a state this complex and large is probably not going to happen anytime soon vermont has a very few small number of districts so it you know their superintendent conference calls with their previous decoded with their um commissioner were generally in person like everyone just got together it's like 38 people in vermont or something like that and that doesn't happen in massachusetts so the scale's really different but i do think the commitment's there there's actually a state law that any reduction to um the regional transportation

104line has to be met with a similar reduction to chapter 70. it's not always implemented with fidelity as dr slaughter could tell you and mr mangano before him but but it was put in because um vulnerable but i think in the last couple years and it came up earlier there's actually been a real response to a lot of the work a lot of concerns about rural schools pelham is a member of the rural schools coalition her husband anyway um that group is a little disorganized at the moment um but you know it's gotten a lot of advocacy that's been successful uh in the last few years so i think it is a reliable funding source whether it's worth it you know in terms of the loss of governance which is very very real and um

105i don't want to minimize that uh i think that's a question for you all and then eventually for the towns to to think about and you know i think what's in the report and i haven't said functionally is that we we do function that way it's not like we have meetings and lee is excluded because she's the pelham principal and the amherst principles are getting together you know we have we function educationally uh knowing that there are differences not just between capella and amherst but between the elementary schools in amherst indian ovens itself um but you know when we're having conversation you know for instance this you know this whole pandemic leah has been an essential member i'm going to compliment her because she deserves it thinking of like the schedule and some of the

106instructional design it's not like ooh pelham's doing their own thing on the side and they they're not included in the meeting we function in a way that we want want folks to be connected to to each other so you know i think i don't want to minimize the educational piece i think there's some concern sometimes that big bad amherst is going to come and you know change up everything that's happening in pelham first of all there's no interest in that or frankly capacity at the moment to do that as lee and i were joking earlier but the reality is i'm the superintendent of pelham just same as i'm superintendent of tim sheen's the curriculum director in pelham just like he is in amherst and so you know i really do think it's a governance and

107finance issue and not those two things influence education i don't want to say they're disconnected but i don't have teaching and learning concerns um about you know regionalization it's really around governance and finances yeah brenda just one more question it could be in the um the document forgive me if i missed it somewhere but i remember one of the concerns amongst pelham um community members was the use of the physical building and i don't know if that if that i didn't see where that landed in the stock yeah so i do think there's an element about what the enrollments would be like would pelham continue with the same pelham resident plus school choice or would we change catchment area lines to include a students in for instance neighborhoods and amherst that are very close to

108pelham so i think that is an issue you know i think financially frankly pelham would better off staying as is um because you'd lose the school choice revenue if if kids from neighboring districts in amherst started coming but that's certain certainly something that would have to be worked out for me um that's a doug doug did this in a previous iteration of his job looking at catchment area and enrollment lines it can be a really cumbersome process that i think is only worth engaging if we're pretty confident that the finances and the governance we have agreement on uh but you're absolutely right that would have to come up you know i would tell you this isn't a formal recommendation it's off the cuff um but there'd be a lot of incentive not to shift lines

109very quickly because of the loss of choice revenue that would come from that margaret go ahead um i guess i would not be opposed to some informal conversation i don't think that that could hurt i guess i wonder what role if any somebody like john tricky our finance director plays in that conversation it seems to me like he's got to be involved or somebody from the finance committee has to be involved yes absolutely i mean i think i think there does have to be a really a threshold conversation with amherst like if we want to play ball do you want to i think if they say yes then for sure the first call needs to be to john tricky yes any other thoughts oh yeah ron i second the involvement of john trickey from the

110very beginning of this discussion great all right um sarah best i don't need to put you on the spot but you don't have to say anything but if you wanted to share anything just because i haven't heard so no pressure though no i would be interested in at least an informal conversation um you know looking over this i while i recognize calm as in you know an unfortunate situation um i don't know that it's gonna get us anywhere like i i i absolutely think it's worth having a conversation like a conversation is not going to hurt anything at all um but you know the same issues that were there before are still going to be there they're not going to have magically disappeared um so but yes an informal conversation and see how that goes

111i mean it doesn't hurt to talk to people so on both sides like not just um hey amherst do you want to come play ball with us but the rest of our pelham team you know how do they feel about that um you know it sounded from reading this there is you know not a lot of warm fuzzies that happened but the conversation is good especially especially now like um i think dr morris pointed out like we already function in many ways as a region with the elementary schools um you know like like the moa we talked about earlier right like that includes all of the elementary school teachers as well not just the regionalized middle in high school um so there are already pieces and parts that operate like that so sure see how

112it goes great so i in terms of next steps i think i will just reach out to the chair and amherst and start that process and then report back as i no more i don't actually know entirely what it would look like so i will figure that out and then report back to everyone um okay anything else on regionalization before we move on okay um sarah oh yeah margaret one other thing and i mean this is maybe just a little detail but doesn't the town own the pelham school building i mean is that is that something that was an issue in the regionalization yep so there if i can answer that one yeah yeah there that you know and the town of amherst owns its buildings as well so they would have to come to

113agreement about how that would work and that's true in in other districts like acton-boxborough which lee actually has experience with that was probably the most analogous district in terms of one more rural town and a larger town regionalizing and there's a couple different scenarios that one that towns can use when they look at that issue um so i think you're right to note it as an issue that would need to be resolved and also the debt payments that come from you know there's still a couple years left i think four years left on pelham uh from the construction that happened at the beginning of the you know in the early 2000s and then you know amherst is certainly going to take on a whole lot of debt for whatever the project it decides whatever it

114ends up being so i think you're right that that is something that would have to be resolved um in any agreement all right anything else all right um i have eight warrants so refill your coffee cup and bear with me okay um i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of negative dollars and 173.40 cents for the warrant dated september 9th 2020 and this was all payroll and i signed this on october 28th i authorized my my signature to payables in the amount of negative 173 dollars and 40 cents for the warrant dated september 23rd that was also all payroll and i signed that on october 28th i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of negative 173 dollars and 40 cents for the warrant dated october 7th 2020 that was

115also all payroll and i signed that on october 28th i authorized by my signature to payables and the amount of fifty eight thousand three hundred seventy eight dollars and fifteen cents for the warrant dated november fourth twenty twenty all of that was payroll and i signed that on november second i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of 42 747.93 for the warrant dated november 12 2020. uh this included general fund expenses of 29 and sixty six 932.66 revolving fund expenses of thirty nine dollars and eighty cents grant fund expenses of twelve thousand four hundred eighty nine dollars and eighty six cents and other f uh oh gifts of 285 dollars and 61 cents i signed that one on november 13th i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of 26

116952 000 and 12 cents for the warranty november 16 2020 this included general fund expenses of 19 459.98 grant funding dollars 1 fourteen cents and i signed that on november 16th i authorized by my signature to payables and the amount of fifty seven thous fifty seven thousand seven hundred fifty eight dollars and eighty two cents for the warrant dated november 18th 2020. that was all payroll and i signed that on november 13th and finally i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of 58 000. 570.8 cents for the warrant dated december 2nd 2020 that was all payroll and i decide i signed that on november 30th any questions no you don't have any questions um all right we do not have any gifts to accept so i will take a motion to adjourn

117i move that we adjourn the meeting and boy you did a great job of sticking to the timeline on the agenda thanks no i have 802 you wrote 405. not bad well it helps when you're blunt is there a second second all right and i'll do a roll call vote uh ron we are adjourned thank you so much everybody enjoy the rest of your night you