Pelham School Committee

001okay i'm just gonna double check that we're in good shape and how it looks um to the public and then we can get started okay so we're good so uh mike morris i'm the superintendent of schools and i'd like to call this meeting of the pelham school committee to order at 6 35 and today which is tuesday october 27th for members of the public the reason i'm calling the meeting to order is the first order of business is to reorganize and so when uh when districts reorganize when school districts are organized the superintendent takes the chair temporarily until a chair is identified and voted in by the committee at that point i will gladly hand the virtual gavel over to whoever is the chair of the committee and they can take it from there generally

002for the committee the way this process works is that i will um take nominations one can nominate themselves or nominate others to uh become the chair uh after that the chair will take on and do the vice chair and secretary and all those other roles um i'll take as many nominations as there are before i ask the committee for a vote miss hall sorry i know i'm not sure and i'm not trying to chair no please do the roll call attendance because you called to order and we're virtual i have never chaired a virtual meeting i think that's true so thank you for the trip i'll just throw it out there so i'll do a virtual uh attendance so uh miss dancer dancer present look forward to being in person i'm with you miss kenny

003kenny present ms barlow barlow present great uh mr menino melinda present and miss hall hall present great so i'm not gonna repeat what i said but you all heard it the first time um about that so are there any nominations uh for chair this evening i nominate sarah hall okay so mr mino nominates uh miss hall is there a second second okay i think i heard miss kenny first um uh are there other miss hall would that be amenable to you i should say i yes yeah i don't know if that's right word or not but uh that's the one i'm gonna use um are there other nominations for our chair seeing none we'll go to a roll call vote miss stancer stancer i miss kenny kenny i miss barlow barlow i mr menino melina

004y and miss hall hall i okay well i'll turn it over to you miss hall and um to do the rest all right thank you the people have spoken um okay so really the only other reorganization we need to do because we don't have other um too many other things going on is just our reps to the region so are there any nominations for regional reps miss kenny i would like to nominate myself to continue as a regional rep i now have a child who attends the regional schools and i have been working on the negotiating team with the apea regarding the fancy covider and i would like to be able to uh see that through till the end okay all right uh yes margaret um i guess i will do the same thing and

005nominate myself um i would really like to continue um we're sort of in the middle of this and so can i just interrupt i'm sorry just as a point of point of order there was a motion made and there wasn't a second so either there has to be a second or the motion doesn't move forward so i i didn't mean interruption missed answer but i heard a move and i didn't hear a second so i don't believe technically the meeting could continue until either there's a second or not a second that is a great point kind of out-chaired the new chair all right sorry so margaret if you could pause one second all right so uh there was a motion for sarah best uh i will second that um we don't have to vote on

006that yet though okay so there was a motion and a second for sarah best all right i'm sorry go ahead margaret um i will nominate myself i also would like to continue on the region this year i feel like we're in the middle of uh with the covet and all of the other things that are going on i would like to see my way through that okay all right and just to be i mean i think it's clear but we do have two uh reps to the region okay any other oh sorry is there a second second okay all right any other nominations for the region well i've served for three years i stepped down which it was temporary but apparently it's going to be permanent there's only two people who can serve i guess

007i have no objection to sarah bess and margaret serving i just wish there were three members because basically i don't see any reason to be on the committee if you're not on the region but uh so be it okay i mean we we can have more than two nominations and then we would put it to a vote to the committee so it is completely acceptable for there to be really any number of nominations so i don't want you to feel like you don't have voice in that process okay all right any other nominations okay um and we can vote i guess if there's just two we can vote on both at the same time is that right okay um all right so there's been a motion in a second for sarah bess and margaret i

008will do a roll call vote um margaret stancer i sarah best kenny aye ron radei brenda farlow i and holly okay um the only other thing that we have that we don't have to vote for is just the um representative to the collaborative i do that now i'm happy to give it up if someone wants to do it the meetings are every other month um the big benefit was dinner when it was in person so it's really hard to sell it um virtually but if anyone else i mean it is like it is a good connection to other um school committees in the region and they do a lot of great work so i'm putting it out there i don't mind to continue doing it but if someone else would like to take that on

009that's okay with me okay that's what i thought all right um okay next up is public comment um we just had two um dr morris would you mind sharing those sure give me one second and i'll get it oh um uh i would just remind the committee if if they're not speaking to mute yourself because i think we're getting some background noise okay thank you um i know that chart was a little hard to see i can email that around to the rest of the committee so you can see the whole thing in the context of that one letter um so i will do that um next step is to approve minutes but we actually do not have those yet um so we will move on to the superintendent's update and i really you know

010usually we list this as superintendent principles update and uh because sasha was out last week i was doing some quick work um and i neglected to do that so this will mostly be principal wedding jones update but um i think the thing um two things i'll share is one uh all the staff who and i think miss wedding jones will speak to this you know did phase one i was able to visit three times while students were there over those seven days and just want to thank uh from my vantage point all of the staff members who participated in that we saw lots of happy smiling faces um and folks happy to be in pelham school and doing a great job with that we've also seen just uh really amazing work and and significant improvement

011in terms of the virtual work that's gone on and we'll have uh survey results that we can disaggregate for specific to pelham school and parent staff and uh feedback we'll have those probably by next week set for you to look at so that was the first update the second update is just that um miss wedding jones dr slaughter and i were able to meet with the staff this afternoon for an optional meeting to go over the same presentation we'll be making to you in a few minutes about some of the financial concerns and again want to thank the staff for just really thoughtful questions really good inquiry but we want to keep the staff members involved and engaged in all the work that's occurring and all the concerns that are being um that we're going

012to share and that we'll have to figure out how to move forward with we certainly they're a critical part obviously of the school and we want to make sure that we're tapping them for ideas resources um and just strong communication throughout so just want to thank we had a lot of people on that call ms sweden jones i mean i think it was the vast majority of staff for an optional meeting on a tuesday afternoon um so um i think that's all i want to share and i'll pen i'll pass it over to lee oh i think there's a question first i'm sorry yep go ahead sorry um oh i'm not sure it's appropriate at this time but last time at the original joint meeting i wanted to say that uh i have an opinion

013on whether we should renegotiate the uh cutoff point for calling off school and i was told that was inappropriate to make the comment at the time it when is it appropriate is it appropriate now to express my opinion it is item six on the agenda so i think that would be the time okay uh lee do you want to share some of your more specific updates in mind sure well it's nice to see you all um so when i think about school i think in the framework of students staff and families so i'll share a little bit about what's been going on with our students first so i'll just echo dr morris having our kindergarteners and first graders in school was extremely joyful so as a former first grade teacher i have really missed seeing

014the little in you know informal moments with students and it was really nice to see them playing together um two big highlights were miss giselle's annual release of the monarch butterflies which she was able to do with students in person and the kindergartners and first graders with a lot of turn-taking were able to create a big beautiful rainbow made out of leaves that they had collected so that was out on the field as a school we started having virtual all school meetings and we had one this morning it had all of the energy of a good party so we were using the framework of a responsive classroom morning meeting so it mirrors what students are doing every day in their homeroom classes but it's on a much bigger scale so we have time for some

015sharing and activity and greeting one another so this morning the fourth graders shared their states and capitals song so any of you who have had fourth graders probably still have it ringing in your in your head i've been dropping into a lot of remote classrooms to get to know students so ron and i were both in a third grade closing circle last week and played a played a drawing game with students but ron was a little more successful than me they figured out i'm an animal person so within like 10 you know 10 seconds they knew they guessed what i was trying to draw um our students are also engaging in monthly all school reads where the whole school is reading the same picture book so we partnered with high five books in florence to

016choose 10 books that were either written by diverse authors or about stories about children of color so for september our book to go along with hispanic heritage month was island born by juno diaz and in october our book was your name is a song by jamila tompkins bigelow so our staff have been really hard at work as you all know we've been continuing to grow all of our expertise in remote learning and i heard from a teacher this week who said i cannot get over how eager the students are to have discussions considering that we're doing it over a computer so what i'm hearing from staff consistently is they've been able to forge really authentic meaningful connections with students and are finding ways to engage students in in dialogue and and build connections between kids

017and flexibility is our mantra this year at pelham we've got our professional learning focused on two big things the first one is cultivating emotional resilience and educators so we're using a book called onward to do a lot of reflection and social emotional learning for the adults in our community and we're also continuing our work around anti-racism and professional development focused on anti-bias work and dismantling white supremacy which is a continuation of the work that staff did during the summer and finally we've been engaging our parent community in a few different ways so we have had two meetings of our pelham staff and family book group that are focused on anti-racist texts so we met in august to discuss the book how to be an anti-racist and we met in october to talk about so you

018want to talk about race and we're going to try something new in december we're going to meet to talk about the podcast series nice white parents so you're all welcome to join and i can share the information with you if you'd like to join us i've continued to hold monthly family forums a lot of those conversations have focused on logistics and operations and questions about remote learning and coming back to school and what all that is going to look like with lots of dialogue about community building and what it looks like in this time um and finally our pto has been hard at work we had a pumpkin patch event in october where all students were able to come to the school and pick up a pumpkin and a little goodie bag and we just

019wrapped up our spirit wear fundraiser and our book fair drive which is a fundraiser for the pelham library and we partnered again with high five books so it's really wonderful to be supporting an independent bookseller and also be getting some really great books into the hands of our students and families so that's really what's what's going on at school and i'm happy to answer any questions too all right thank you any questions for ms whiting jones all right well i mean i know that i keep saying it but just to start as a new principal the way that you have and to kind of be this together and on top of things when i'm sure it doesn't feel that way it's just really appreciated so we appreciate everything you're doing sarah best did you raise

020your hand yeah i don't have a question i just had a quick comment as a parent i wanted to say how impressed i have been with the teachers um the organization and the caring and like the actual like really truly getting to know the kids i've been just so so super impressed um so i wanted to say thank you yes i would echo that yeah go ahead brenda yeah i also wanted to echo that it's just really exceeded any expectations that i had for virtual education and even you know both of my children are are thriving and it's amazing how my my younger son even only seven can really um work with the teachers to be able to get where they need to go certainly i heard all about the fantastic all school meeting today

021and the song my kids already sang it to me so and i don't have a fourth grader but anyway just wanted to again thank you it is so wonderful to have you on our community despite the unusual thing i appreciate that and i'll pass along that wonderful feedback to the staff also thank you all right um next up is enrollment school choice some budget update things so i guess um dr morris i'll give it to you to start here okay yeah i'll give a little bit of an overview and i know some of you have been the committee uh for longer and seen the ups and downs on this and for others of you i think the historical context will be important to share um so um i guess i want to start by saying

022that and you'll see this in the data a couple minutes from now that uh for first some time now um pelham has been struggling there was a time not that long ago where there was over half a million dollars in the school choice um reserve account and uh that number was dwindling we got to a place a couple years ago where we were not only kind of even but actually adding funds in and now we're sort of pushed back to a place of concern in terms of how much school choice funds we're using so you know i do want to compliment the committee for making some hard decisions over the last four years that got us to a better place and and i also want to acknowledge how frustrating it is to do that work

023and have it not stick i share in that frustration i know dr slaughter does as well and mr mangano who i spoke to the other day he was asking about it too he works for the town of amherst now but um those of you who worked with him uh he was he was a large part of those efforts as well and i guess what we want to talk about tonight is two things one is the school choice and how that's looking the other is the drop in enrollment how that potentially could affect next year's fy 22's uh chapter 78 and uh we're trying intentionally not to set doomsday scenarios that's not our goal at the same time we felt like it was important for the committee and the community to have access to know that

024there are real threats real financial threats out there that we want to talk about and give the committee and the community enough time to to think about what to do with them um so it's not a last minute thing or it's not a big surprise but we know enough now that we wanted to bring this to the committee i think the last thing i want to say just to be really clear is there's no line at the end of this presentation that says and we're going to close the school that's not where we are i want to be really clear i know i've gotten a lot of feedback of like oh tonight are you gonna like suggest the pelham school can be close to school that's not gonna happen tonight uh you all can do

025what you want but i don't think that's your intention either uh in this at the end of this conversation and uh i think it's always the end not the or the and i do think this committee and the community are going to have to weigh some variables and and perhaps take some actions uh in the next bit so we don't have to have that kind of conversation that we can um do that you know um very last thing and then i'll pass it over dr slaughter and i said this to the staff as well as film's tax rate is is already pretty high and it's nearing the 25 cap so there's not in my opinion a way to tax our tax of residents out of the challenge that we see um you know i was

026going to get the the real number and and i i lost track of time hence me being couple minutes late to the meeting so i wasn't able to get it but i think it's in the neighborhood of 23 dollars per thousand evaluation we can get the exact number for you maybe even dr slaughter's presenting i can i can try to look that up but i want to be clear that this is actually the community is going to have to figure out how it wants to be sustainable and what steps we want to take i don't think there's um you know kind of a money tree at the end of this that's going to happen and that was confirmed with a conversation i had this week with the chair of the finance committee of pelham they're

027very supportive they're very dedicated to the school um they're ready to dedicate a significant majority of the town budget goes to the schools between pelham and the region and so we want to be realistic that i think passivity is not going to be our friend on this one and um that's about as much introduction maybe even more than it should done so i'll turn it over to dr slaughter who's got a very short slide deck and and we have some follow-up even from when with the slides were put together last week about you know some next steps we're thinking about on our end and then we hope to engender some dialogue from the committee uh about what what steps you might want to think about but i'll turn it over to doug that sounds right

028doug yes i'm going to try to share just what you need to see and not everything um me actually there we go hopefully that everyone can see that at this point and so sorry we can't see it yet [Music] as doug's working on that the palm tax rates about 22 dollars per thousand evaluation last year my apologies uh and doug if you can't bring it up i can see if i can i'm able to do that well it's telling me i'm sharing i'm not sure that it really is sharing um not sure why but yeah or the live tv version of uh catastrophe right um let me try this again any display of of us of a uh is that program yeah now we can see it right so what we have uh this is

029just a sort of first slide um and this is you know for mr menino's benefit i got the the new pelham logo on there so that's that's really for him at this point uh i'll begin with talking about chapter 78 a couple of things about that so recently governor released a new version of uh the budget uh basically he restarted the budget process like he usually does in january in that new budget uh he the projection for chapter 78 for for pelham was slightly higher than what we we were talking about last spring and so it's about 2 800 more so that's the good news for the current year if that tends to uh uh or holds true as they go through the rest of the budget process um just to sort of paint the

030picture about chapter 78 um it's based on foundation enrollment foundation enrollment is is the kids that pelham is financially responsible for so school choice kids that come to our school are not part of foundation enrollment kids that go out to charter or choice out and obviously kids that attend school in in pelham uh are part of that foundation enrollment uh the thing we're noticing is that the uh the enrollment numbers from this october which will be used to set the fiscal 22 uh foundation uh aid for chapter 70 uh that enrollment's dropped about 14 or so pretty significant drop in local kids uh a lot of different reasons for that um but that can have some pretty profound effects on on our chapter 78 coming into next year so coming into this year uh you

031know with the implementation of the student opportunity act and uh and the hold harmless provision within that uh school districts that that had drops in enrollment uh were held harmless and and pelham was as well the film fell coming into this year did not have a drop enrollment but uh the funding level was held steady from from fiscal 19 fiscal 20 uh into fiscal 21 however in past history before this do not opportunity act the the changes in enrollment tended to track pretty pretty evenly with the with the changes in enrollment uh tracked with the with the funding in chapter 78 so for school districts that had drops in enrollment they had similar drops in chapter 78 we don't know exactly how this is going to play out in in fiscal 22 uh depends on

032how many of the provisions of of the student opportunity act are able to be upheld as we move forward uh i think uh sprinting morris may have a little more information that he had a conversation with the folks at desi today but if those if if the drop in enrollment and the uh chapter 78 you know move in sync uh a a 14 drop is roughly a 33 000 reduction chapter 78 chapter 78 that we might see in fiscal 22 and that's we're just gonna have to see how this plays out um both in the current year with the current uh fiscal 21 negotiations as they finish the budget for 21 as we roll into fiscal 22. so uh that's a that's a little bit of scary news as we move ahead um but again

033we'll have to see uh how that plays out relative to our our fun our foundation enrollment like moving ahead of slide and actually doug could you stay with that one for one second i'm sorry um so the thing i'd add that and dr slaughter referenced this is that i had a superintendent did a conference call with desi today uh i think i mean you know it reassured us about fy21 not going um negative that the hold harmless i think will be held so to speak um jesse was pretty clear they anticipate that that won't be true in fy 22 in other words the enrollment drop will have an impact on the fy 22 budget for the pelham public school there was a lot of consternation about that we're not the only districts that seeing a

034reduction in enrollment although it's more dramatic here than perhaps many other places and i think the only thing we heard was that well if you see a dramatic increase from for instance october 1st to november 1st let us know but otherwise plan on seeing that number reflected in the fy 22 budget for your school district so that was not welcome news for me and some other superintendents to hear about but you know based on that i would anticipate there being some drop on chapter 78 um absent some other change from the legislature about how those funds were are going to be allocated so that was the update as of uh i think a 11 or 11 o'clock or noon conference call ahead today and before we go on because the other slides are more about

035choice i want to pause and see if there was questions from the committee uh about the chapter 70 piece um none of us can see each other can we maybe stop screen sharing for a minute oh wait okay i can alright does any do anyone have questions raise your hand prominently because they're very small uh yeah ron go ahead does that mean that the state support for public schools will decrease next year as an aggregate likely not i think it's really about distribution especially the student opportunity act was designed to offer more funds and more equity for districts that have a harder time raising a tax rate because of the population of residents that they have um those districts generally are not seeing a drop in enrollment it's much more suburban than rural districts that

036are seeing a drop in enrollment um so i think it's much more about distribution than total i think whether the chapter of 78 can go up or will it stay flat or reduced based on covert related budget impacts is anyone's best guess right now yep margaret good so the old harmless part of this you know there was that study being done about hold harmless and there were there were groups advocating to get rid of hold harmless is that is that reflected in this statement or am i not really understanding what hold harmless really means um do you want to take that one doug you want me to try uh you can go ahead and try all right so i think hold harmless is generally uh more directly referring to um not dropping funding let me

037see if i can start back so the state sets what's called a foundation budget and so that's based on a whole variety of factors enrollment the specific details in the enrollment for instance if you have a high number of ell students or low-income students the state may apportion more funds for that because of how they see how they define need and so pelham like like the region as well are well above foundation budget in other words the state gives us funds that if they were just going to scale back they could say well pelham the town of pelham's already giving you more money than you quote unquote need um and we're going to give you less money as a result of your town paying more than its share so to speak you know um there

038are a few communities um chicopee being one uh that not not now but at least a couple years ago they were at foundation in other words the city of chicopee was only covering the cost of what the state said it had to cover and those are mostly urban areas that are have high concentrations of low income uh people so what they've decided a long ago is they're not going to take funds away from communities just because the communities spend more than they quote unquote need to do in other words they weren't going to penalize communities for overspending i'm not saying that in a real way but from the state formula perspective overspending on their schools um that if you know they were going to set a foundation they were going to fund the foundation and

039that was the way it was going to work and so i think when they talked about hold harmless that's why it has such an impact on many communities like pelham who pay more than their fair share quote unquote according to the state formula but don't face any sort of negative consequences for that if you look at vermont for instance a very different funding model and every dollar you spend in vermont above foundation essentially gets read you know some of the that dollar gets redistributed to other districts so if you want to spend more than the state says awesome but they're going to redistribute some of those funds as well and um so you know i think when it's to hold harmless um that's more what it's referring to is the paying more than what foundation

040would suggest that the town of pelham has to cover to fund the education of the students of pelham doug how'd i do i think pretty well that privilege captures it i think all right all right i saw other hands brenda and then sarah best did you also have a question okay all right brenda first and then sarah best okay i just have a question about the 14 is that the number that it would be if the enrollment october 2021 was the same as this right now so i think i can take that one as well so the way that this works is that the current enrollment will will affect next year's budget so um the current the enrollment that was captured on october 1st that it goes into a formula that sets the fy 22

041budget so it's always a year behind so the funding you get the next year is based on the the student enrollment on the prior year captured on october 1st because otherwise they'd be adjusting during a fiscal year and that would be quite disruptive so it's not a concern for this fiscal year it's a concern for the following one can i just follow up um so does that mean if we had some of our families come back next year and on october 2021 that the foundation enrollment was greater than it might not be such a big decrease for the fiscal year 2022. so next year's enrollment would affect so so the enrollment that's captured on october of 2021 would actually influence the fy 23 budget it's always lagging a year behind okay um yeah sorry i

042wasn't clear about that i thought this is my first time around so thank you oh no no it's all you know complicated stuff for sure if i can just dab for a second on that the chapter 70 formula is pretty complex to say the least um and so that's part of why from the state level they they sort of use the october numbers because they have to essentially kind of crunch the numbers in order for the governor to put out a budget and then the house and senate to debate that budget and do their own work uh by the beginning of january and so in that you know uh you know the numbers are as of october 1 they technically get reported basically thursday's week is the deadline some districts will lag a little bit

043in getting those numbers to the state uh so the state has basically a month to kind of crunch those numbers into a uh what they think the the formula is going to produce for for the uh for the line share of state aid for for um for chapter 70 and so that's why there's that lag of a year um so if you have huge or if you have large peaks or or reductions in enrollment it can be really difficult because it it impacts the next school year so for example that 14 drop this year uh has a stronger effect next year but if those students all come back next year that's a potentially difficult circumstance because we got more kids but a smaller resource from the state innate um sarah best and then ron i

044see your hand so go ahead sarah best first um so i think i'm beginning to understand the way this works but um since a lot of this has to do with um covid is there any way to use cares funds to help with that is there i don't i don't know how it all works as far as like the school part with the town or all of those pieces but um is there is there some piece that can help offset that at least as an not like a long-term fix but as a at least band-aid for right now to help out um so oh go ahead doug please i was gonna say unfortunately no i mean the current you know cares act monies are for uh sort of more immediate spending and particularly to uh

045accommodate expenses you didn't anticipate relative to to this i do think that drop enrollment you know some aspect of that is related to the to the virus and its impact and and so potentially if there's a subsequent uh sort of cares act uh you know that could could help support us in the coming year um and you know also the state could also potentially you know take action relative to how they do chapter 70 this year's um you know i think their revenues are down so it's going to be difficult for them to do that i think but but uh it's it's unfortunate there's a lag like this there's not uh un unfortunately an uh immediate source to help us out again this drop enrollment right now isn't going to impact this fiscal year this

046school year it's really next year where this uh will will come into play and and we should get a sense of those numbers hopefully in in early january when the when the governor's budget comes out we'll make predictions of it before then but but uh we'll have a little better sense in early january and i think you know just to add to that um we will see uh whether this fares out or whether the hold harmless will like it did this year will cover you know changes in enrollment there was definitely i will say the commissioner got um a plethora of feedback uh on the impact this would have on multiple districts around the state because we're not alone um so maybe that feedback will go somewhere and this won't be something that we actually

047have to manage but i you know it's real right now and until someone says no it won't affect us i didn't want the committee to be unaware and then you know us get the governor's budget and then be surprised by it so this isn't a certainty when we get to school choice that's going to be much more clear as a where we're sitting at the moment and the numbers are really clean that way this one is more an early heads up on something that could be a problem down the road okay ron go ahead [Music] i think it's very important to try to estimate what pelham resident population would be in october 21 because just in case it bounces back this is a one year problem we're facing and that would be be taken care

048of in 22 and 23. so i don't know how we do that but it's very important for us to try to estimate what enrollment will be a year from now yep go ahead mike um so uh on that note we agree and we swirling right now is working on identifying who are the 111 students between the three districts who uh have why why have we dropped by that amount she's identifying who those families are um she's giving a survey and we're going to have direct phone calls for families asking three core questions one is uh why did you choose to leave the district this year the second question of where did you go we eventually get that in december and january school attending report but we don't wait and the third question is are you

049planning on coming back next year um so that we have that information exactly as you describe mr menino and can use that in our planning for next year so we agree and we're on it okay any other questions on the chapter 70 piece before we move to the next slide no okay all right go ahead thanks doug um so now we'll talk about school choice and how we how we work with that um different from the chapter 70 the child the school choice revenue we receive each year on the based on the number of students that attend in that year so it's it's a little more uh current uh so we can estimate or need to estimate it uh kind of as we go um in order to sort of mitigate peaks and valleys we've

050created what's called a revolving fund which allows us to carry funds over uh across fiscal years so we can can uh try to level out uh unexpected rises or drops in in expense and and use those uh those funds to help us uh carry through uh the big changes like we're seeing in enrollment this year um but it's essential as we as we use that sort of fund to keep us a healthy balance in that revolving fund to to uh preserve it over time and allow us to uh to manage our our finances well um and and superintendent spoke earlier a little bit i'll show you a slide uh that shows the sort of history of that a little bit you can see how we've had some some uh some times when it's been more

051or less difficult to to keep our balance in good health a couple of notes uh our actual revenue for fiscal 20 was below what we anticipated which resulted in a greater use of the revolving balance last year so that was that was a little uh disappointing news uh to some extent and then and then for this current year and i think this is important as we move ahead and part of why we bring this to you is that we budgeted use of about 282 000 from those full choice revenues uh in the current year given the drop we've we've kept in place or is has sustained for a second year in a row in school choice students the current estimate we have for income is going to be 225 000 or so and that means

052we're overspending by about fifty seven thousand dollars and so this is a second year of a significant uh expenditure above our income uh and it's and it's beginning to put a strain on this balance uh and as i go to the next slide you'll be able to see that a little bit more detail what we have on this slide i'll zoom in in just a moment i'll just talk to the broad thing at the top is more of what we were looking at last spring when we were doing budgeting and down below is is sort of where we are now and i'll zoom in a little bit hopefully we can see this a little bit better um if i get too big it may be hopefully that'll work so we were anticipating receipts last year

053in about the 300 000 range which is what i'm circling here um and so we were expecting at the end of the year to have our balance only drop by about nineteen thousand dollars uh which is what this change to balance is and we're expecting for the for the coming year the current year we're in now we were hoping to be basically uh even or or actually adding to our balance just a little bit um but if we roll down to this section here where we're looking at uh more current numbers in that regard what you can see here is that our use of of the revolving fund was much larger last year than anticipated so our balance at the end of the year was lower than we expected and as we come into this

054year again our our revenue estimates smaller than what we anticipated uh we corrected that uh based on on information from the state and and our the actual kids that are enrolled with us and so our impact on on our balance is again a negative one of about 57 000 and so you see this number here this 219 is essentially where we're going to end fiscal 21 with regard to our uh balance for for uh the school choice revolving fund and the difficulty is that we will not be able to continue to sustain ourselves in the same programs and operational structure that we have now because this balance will ultimately go away completely uh and and fairly quickly and so that's part of why we're bringing this to your attention uh so you can think about

055what options we have and and and steps we can take uh to sort of uh con you know mitigate the impact of this uh current balance situation um and so that you know there are options available to us and and so that uh needs to be discussed by you guys and the decisions are yours to make but nonetheless uh we wanted to bring these to you to look at um the other thing i'll point out here is if you look at this ending balance and perhaps this one here where we talk about the change to the fund balance the ones with parentheses are negative numbers which are you know impacting the budget in a negative way or impacting our balance in a negative way and so you see there were several years here we were

056building the balance we got it up to about a half a million dollars and we had a few years of really difficult times and we dropped that back down and so uh my predecessor you know in the in the subsequent years here started to rebuild that balance back up to a sort of safe and sustainable level uh but again we've seen a downward trend here in the last couple years and so we we need to uh consider our options and and think about what our our uh actions will be relative to to keeping and sustaining our program and in uh in pelham the way we'd like it to be and so i if i could add to that doug in just a second so you know one of the questions that came up when we

057were meeting with staphlo earlier is how long is this a sustainable so you know if we end if this projection ends up being true we don't see that much mid-year choice changes so you know i think this is a reasonable estimate at this point um it means that we've gone down roughly 140 000 in the last two years um if you project that forward um we'd be less than a hundred thousand we'd have less than a hundred thousand dollars in the school choice account at that point i would have really grave concerns about the finances of the district and then how that would influence frankly the finances of the town so i think you know doug used a helpful marker before of you know this is roughly a quarter of the fund balance being used

058each year you know we we can't that's not something we can sustain um so i just thought it was helpful doug when you said it earlier and i just want to repeat that here uh just about the impact of that and and i want to also acknowledge that you know there's not that there's no not new choice students um you know principal wedding jones has done a great job of outreach and you know contacting families uh the reality is in covid times we're seeing how many kids can we get in a class that limited you know some choices that we had so some of this is around people not wanting to change schools or change districts during a pandemic which seems quite reasonable some of this is about not really knowing and being able to

059guarantee what our program was was going to look like in terms of in-person or virtual and some of this was just you know a condition of the general where we are in the world these days in my opinion it wasn't for lack of effort it wasn't for negative perceptions of of pelham we plan to build this up as you remember when we discussed this last year i think we had a good plan to do that but uh you know there were some applicants we weren't able to accept because of seats in person and space and capacity uh and then there was a whole lot of people both in amherst the region and well not the region but amherst and pelham there were school choice applicants who said you know what i'm good you know i

060don't think this is the moment to change the community where i am at um so i do want to you know acknowledge that fact i also want to acknowledge that i'm not sure it'll be much different next year in terms of people's willingness to change schools uh for us to be able to guarantee exactly what this looks like i'm gonna tend to be a little pessimistic uh that will all be done and everything will be back to normal in march or april of next year i know some people maybe think that i pray that they're right i'm just not convinced that they're right on that front so um you know it does really bring up significant challenges uh as we think about the future of the school that we don't have um great solutions for

061and i thought maybe we just mentioned a couple things here and then opened up for dialogue um two two good two pieces of good news so it's not all uh this harsh news one is that at the current time we are not slated to have any charter school students we'll get the confirming report in december and then in the spring as you all may be aware pelham has had not the best history of those reports being accurate uh we do have about nineteen thousand dollars uh that you all passed in the included in the budget last year that was voted uh as a contingency and if that ends up being true that we do not have any charter school students that can be used to mitigate some of the the loss here the second is

062a more um uh atypical piece of good news so um the short story is that um gymnasiums tend to have not the best ventilation because they're not designed as such and they're high there's a lot hard high amounts of cubic volume so having good ventilation in gyms is not not the easiest thing there's also high interest right now in indoor spaces that have good ventilation for winter for athletics and other events we are doing our phase three air ventilation testing and well we don't have all of the final results we did get an initial result for pelham's gym which is actually fabulous in terms of ventilation um our facilities director believes the only reason it would be so high is because it's a gym auditorium so the hvac system was designed for many more students

063that would typically be in a gym class or participating in gym so we have you know i want to make sure i get feedback on this tonight and i think doug you could probably actually i can do it just take down the slide um for now or i can just do with this um so people can see each other you can leave it up doug and if people want to see it i can just pull it back on the screen um you know we have had some vendors uh some folks interested in rental of the gym depending how often it gets rented um it could be a pretty significant financial um benefit to the community i know it's an atypical one pelham actually is not unlike amherst in the region doesn't even have a facilities

064use calculator to rent um space so we get the good news we get to create it and supply demand right now is in our favor um i did talk about this with the finance committee chair this week and um quite graciously he said you know the schools are having these challenges that money can go to the schools whatever you earn you earn you came up with creative ideas and you're able to implement it with your staff um that's great right now there's a bunch of stuff in there but we have a plan for where that stuff could go um you know if you uh actually none of you've been to school except lee i should say but you know there's there's a little bit of human power that would be involved in getting this set

065up um but it could be um you know for you know maybe even optimistically if things broke perfectly right even more than four digits of income that could come in this winter um because they're really you know there's not a lot of indoor spaces that are testing well in this regard you know locally and regionally because gyms generally weren't designed that way so you know those are the two silver linings or good points we have is that if we can maintain the no charter school students that would be a huge help for the budget and then we may have this kind of odd opportunity to have some income in an unusual way this winter but that that's i think all we want to say i want to look at doug in terms of presentation and

066really we wanted to open it up for questions comments and and dialogue about uh and reaction to this information okay all right well thank you both as always thank you for bringing this up early so we can actually have conversations when we're not in a moment of crisis so i appreciate that um the school choice balance uh at the end of fiscal 21 um how many more years do we have until it goes below 100 000. the way i figured we have two years beyond the end of fiscal 21 before it was likely go below 100 000. is that correct assuming that it's a constant variable of uh you're like this year right so if you assume that same number going forward then that that would be an accurate prediction and at the last joint

067meeting in the region i asked could we provide it with the um this year last last year comparison of pelham residents in choice how many pelham did we have this year how many last year how many choice students we have this year versus last year is that going to be added tonight or well is that going to be added tonight and another presentation so the number of choice students is i believe on uh doug's slides it's that left-hand column that you could see so uh we're down from 58 two years ago to 41 last year to 40 this year 58 41 and how many 40 right now so we were hoping for a significant increase and it went the other way tell them students um that i don't have in front of me i wonder

068if in the dialogue miss whiting jones may be able to pull for us because i'd like you know basically they basically how many stellar students we lost this year yeah it's wedding good yeah so i for this year we currently have 72 students who live in pelham and 40 who are voice so 72 are pelham and 40 our choice so we so i think it'd be a reduction that would be a reduction of one choice student and eleven excuse me one choice yeah one choice student and eleven palm resident students from last year to this year so we had 83 last year i believe the foundation enrollment was technically 84. oh my apologies mr slaughter thanks for catching that but the thing with foundation enrollment is that there are kids that you don't physically see

069in the building sure there's a couple of those in there um and so i think this year it's going to be 72 ish in that regard so there's that that's that 14 is that dozen kids sorry ron will you repeat your question we only lost one choice student this year i think the way i said is that we have one fewer choice student this year than last year um it may be a net of a couple students who are new choice students and a couple students who aren't here so i wouldn't think about it as one student the net is one your student okay thank you um so can we uh partly for review for existing members but also for new members i mean this is a lot of information to take in i'm sure

070there will be more questions on that but also in terms of timing for when we're gonna so we have this survey that debbie westmoreland is doing so we can find out about who has left we have these this potential use for the gym all of these other things but then we also have this time frame for working through the fy 22 budget can we just talk about that really briefly set the table for what the next several months will look like sure so uh what's typical our typical pattern is that when early january our first meeting in january we will present an overview of the fy 22 budget um i'll be honest it's going to be a little tricky to do that this year without having the governor's budget because no one really knows what

071the governor budget's going to look like so i think it may be an exercise more than um it typically is um you know we may actually want to schedule that sometime in late january instead of early january given the uncertainty not just because of enrollment but just because no one really knows what fy 22 looks like in general i heard that loud and clear at the state level today so it may make sense to push that meeting back in february we generally do a detailed budget that has ads and cuts associated with the finance of it in march we typically um ask the school committee to pass the budget so it can get on the town meeting warrant in the spring i do think in the interim two months at least before we get into

072that process having some dialogue about what options may be out there that are worth pursuing or considering um i'm i'm being intentional my verbs i'm not saying doing but considering and exploring uh maybe worthwhile one thing i said this afternoon to the staff i don't think there's any new ideas out there right there's already been two working groups over the last 10 years that have explored this very same issue i think the very same solutions are uh potentially on the table that were on the table two years ago or two or three years ago and then seven or eight years ago that this was studied uh the question is whether the committee and the community uh feel like the time is right to go dig in on some of those more than we the committee

073and the community decided in the past um so i do think that's work that's separate from the fy2 budget but i think it is kind of the long-term thinking about wanting to explore or not any of those options sorry that was more long-winded than i your question required no no i i just felt like having a little bit of a global explanation was helpful too and just to be clear that you're talking about regionalization you didn't i mean i did not say that but that's one of the options that was talked about we also in the past have talked about you know is is it makes sense to shrink the school size and you know and and look at multi-age class i'm not advocating for any of these things to be really clear i'm just

074repeating what yeah i just want to say it for for people watching i think you all may know that i'm not advocating but um no no i mean for people who didn't have the history to know what things had been studied previously so those things were regionalization and i genuinely don't know all of them for my history regionalization i know about smaller school size yeah so looking at if there's economy of scale um that could have could be developed to you know if if the number of students decrease enough uh are there ways to reduce the scale of and costs in the school um so that was one that was mentioned there was a talk a couple years ago of doing something you know having a themed school um you know like stem came up

075arts came up um you know um that was one that also came up those were the three kind of tangibles that when i was looking back on my notes before the meeting that i saw reflected um that last one was more about how to attract more school choice students it went magically there's no funding attached to becoming a stem school but the idea was you know is that something that would draw i also think it's worth sharing my personal belief about this or a belief theory we just have declining school-age enrollment in western mass in general so i want to be really clear that i don't believe pelham school is a less attractive school choice option i'm not hearing that from families anywhere we are just seeing a trend of fewer school-aged children in hampshire

076and franklin county and that's not about private schools or charter schools certainly that has some impact it's uh especially this year with private schools it's a more general piece that there are fewer children who are school-aged in our general area so when we think about declining enrollment we're seeing declining enrollment all over the place particularly in franklin county but somewhat in hampshire county as well so you know i'm not speaking dubiously about that last option but i do think i'm not hearing people saying oh pelham schools in school used to be or anything other than wonderful things but when there are fewer school-aged children it's going to have an impact right um on how many students what the demand is for school choice and i think we've seen that over the last few years actually

077in a couple of the districts as well thank you and just to be clear i didn't mean to take us kind of complete tangent i just wanted the no um margaret and then ron yup hi margaret thinking about shrinking the school i mean i know this is not the time to talk about this but do we anticipate that the decision about moving sixth graders to the middle school will be done by the end of next year that's up to all of you and your colleagues in the other two districts um you know we'll get to my goals in a little bit and i think there is a desire from the committee's part to have at least a study done this year um i you know where that study goes and what decisions are made is

078really up to the the committees i think it'd be in everyone's best interest for that decision to be made um by the at least the end of this year or the beginning of the following one because i think right now it's just one of these lingering questions that it continues to the fact that it's unanswered i'm not suggesting what the answer is but the fact that it's unanswered leads to lots of problems and i'll have an amber school committee meeting soon and we'll talk about the problems around their building project and not knowing whether sixth grade's there so i do think one way or the other closing the loop on that and the next calendar year like you know by october of next year is going to be really important all right wrong go ahead

079well i had one question but uh margaret's point raised another question does that mean that if we move the sixth grade to the middle school that uh state chapter 70 money would go down i know that we we obviously spend more less money in the pelham school because we don't have the sixth grade teacher uh but does that mean that state aid goes down also yes yes it would go with the students to the middle school essentially and um not to reinvent the wheel but i was a member of that school options committee and i believe they made a report uh could we have a list of some of the crazy options that were part of some of the alternatives uh that were presented to save money absolutely could somebody make that list i don't

080know where that report is yeah the devil that will pull it up we'll get it out to everybody that's it and to be clear i'm not looking for doug and i and we aren't looking for a decision tonight it was actually just engender the type of dialogue that's occurring um i don't want people to feel like oh at the end we have to make you have to do something it's actually i realize but it'd be nice to be reminded of some of the choices so that we know what we can add or subtract from those choices yeah um brenda and then sarah best i wonder if we have any information on the school choice students that we've lost or is it that we're just not bringing in students at the kindergarten first grade level or

081what does that look like because we know some of those students may be people who are choosing to home school or private school because of remote learning there may be other students who just aren't coming in i'm wondering if um our preschool is still considerate of theater school and if that's if those numbers are impacting things um so lee i don't know you don't have to comment on that you've you've been here a total of uh you know one cycle one beginning of a cycle of this i'll give you my perspective but lee i know you've spoken to families directly so if there's anything you want to share please feel free to jump in um i do think what we're seeing and we're seeing it regionally not just in our district is as there's fewer

082students there's just fewer students applying for school choice across our region um just as the school age population declines in our area so uh you know we are still getting students from preschool you know we don't obviously the preschool's not up and running this year but um you know we're also seeing as enrollment as those grade levels go up we did have some high school choice grade levels that graduated up to the middle school and we're not seeing them replenished in the kindergarten first grade level so it's sort of you have to look at both ends of it who's leaving the district and going to the region gay for the region for getting that money but that doesn't help you well uh well only sarah best and margaret anyways after the vote tonight um but

083then when we look at the lower grades we're not seeing the same um same numbers come in so it's the attrition it's not individual attrition like we're losing school choice students but we're not maintaining the same same level of them but um lee if you want to add anything to that feel free to all right so i'm just looking at the breakdown by grade level and so there's a lot of variability so in fifth grade for example we have three choice students but in fourth grade we have ten school choice students and i don't really know what accounts for that difference um other than you know maybe there are a whole bunch of families who knew each other in a community with kids all the same age and said hey let's you know i'll go

084to pelham together um you know i think that's the kind of thing that would be really interesting to hear from families you know why why they are coming to pelham and how they heard about it and and just getting a little bit more information about um about our school choice families but to speak to your question brenda our current kindergarten has 19 students seven of them are choice students um and our first grade currently has 13 students five of them are choice so fewer than half in both of those classes are school choice right now so i can't speak i don't have the data about how many of those students attended the pelham preschool program i do know anecdotally it's been a really a really good feeder system for school choice um but i don't

085have the exact answer for you on our current students any other questions oh yes sorry i'm sorry sorry sir best go ahead um so i'm looking at the um the lower budget lines um so i see and like fiscal year uh hold on let me figure out where i was these are so okay so i have i wasn't part of the school committee so what was the difference that happened between uh what is that 16 and 17 because that's only one kid but it looks like a huge jump or one student but it looks like a big jump and the increase slash decrease of choice funds all the way at the side on the on the right hand side and then also it like i i don't understand how the numbers are are working out

086right so like there's some years where it looks like there's 10 students difference between like 14 and 15 there's a change of 10 students and but then you know in 10 and 11 there was also a change of 10 students and there was a lot those numbers were a lot bigger so what better so i can start so i understand the students who attend pelham school for school choice um pelham receives five thousand dollars for the sending district it also receives an increment if students receive special needs services so one of the things that you're going to note is that it's not an it's not a five thousand dollars across the board um and so you know because people so small we were pretty cautious it's a good question i'm not suggesting it but uh

087not asking or not talking about it but we're pretty cautious about describing that but uh depending on a student's needs it can have a fairly substantial swing um yeah nope that's fine that's enough that makes sense to me i don't need you to tell me what they needed or who they were or anything like that no that's that's fine that makes sense to me so so if a student comes with um higher needs they come with their five thousand dollars plus some additional supplement so for instance if a student had friends a prescriptive para educator that they needed in order to access the curriculum the salary of that educator would come from the sending district which would be well more than five thousand dollars yep no no that makes okay that so in those years

088were there oh i see is that what the sc reimburse is that um yeah and you could see a pretty significant drop from fy19 to f520 and that's just based on who the students were yeah no no that's fine okay all right well that makes more sense to me thank you the other thing i would add relative to this is that the the other piece of this and in other words when we go through our budget process um and we look at uh you know our state aid and our chapter 78 and our other financials as we as we put our budget together if we have the opportunity to lose use less school choice uh we will and that builds our balance and so some of the the other choices we make in other areas

089of our budget relative to our expenses and or our revenue streams that come in whether it be chapter 70 or others impact our choice of how much funds to use in a given year which which will uh even with a large change in students may result in a in a very positive or very negative result in our use of choice funds so that's the other piece that's hard to see on this chart because the rest of the budgets impacting our choices here on how many how much of our funds to use okay no thank you that's really good information and so um in that middle box where it says plan projected and then it also says additional what is what's that so in what is it fiscal year 13 and there it says you know

090projected plan 400 000 and then it says additional 57 1444. so it could be a circumstance where uh you know additional um you know reimbursements came available but were also needed within that year could be that we were in the fiscal year and we realized our overall budget was was struggling and so we decided to use school choice uh to support the budget in in an unanticipated way i don't know those particular cases right off hand no no no that's that's fine it was more a matter of like how does that come to be a thing i don't need to know like oh well we had to plan a garden that had needed 57 000 worth of roses obviously that's fine okay thank you i'm sorry can we just stop sharing so i can see

091people oh sorry about that no it's okay because now because i was muted and screaming at the computer so it's not working out for anybody uh ron go ahead uh two comments one about school choice we've got to continue school choice and current school choice it may be maybe i mean maybe misunderstanding this but i think about i think the significant portion of the diversity that pelham has comes from school choice that may not be true but i got the impression that school choice students tend to be the diverse students and second on enrollment trends there is a proposal to build a low-income housing project across the street from the school and it's programmed to have ten two and three bedroom apartments likely he'll have children i've seen estimates of as high as 25 new

092students let's say 20 new students that may be built in three years uh so i've come fiscal 24 fiscal 23 we may have 20 to 25 more students in pelham school which are pelham residents and get our state aid back that's it um can i just oh sorry go ahead brenda you can go first i'll hold my question so this is just a question because i'm new to the committee i guess i'm curious about our school choice policies and if we had families who were approaching us and wanting to come in even mid-year is that something we allow we do uh we do allow that has happened from time to time um you know obviously this this time you have a very small first grade which definitely has space no matter if we're in person

093or not at other grade levels it might be a little more challenging with the social distancing requirements that we have um but it does happen i think actually we had leah if i'm not incorrect it was right after the school year right two um that came in that technically where after the school year started um i just have a quick question just related to um getting data on the i know it's 111 across three districts i can't remember the number for for just pelham if those are if for any of those that are choice students could if they say at this point they plan to come back would they be guaranteed a spot i mean i know we would have a good problem if we were completely school choice full but if there was someone

094who opted out of pelham this year who was school choice but wanted to come back would that be automatic or would they just have to go in like everyone else next year it's a great question i know this was answered by people i work with and i don't remember the answer so i will find it out tomorrow and i'll email all of you okay thanks any other questions okay well this is clearly just the first conversation here so we'll be revisiting this probably at every other meeting that we have coming up um so yeah thanks just for the presentation for being on top of this and we will come back to it um okay next up on the agenda is the um question about the health metrics and the moa um so we put this

095on the agenda because the negotiations with the union are squarely a regional school committee responsibility um but we can still talk about it clearly there are you know if it's some specific negotiation element that's an executive session thing that we do not participate in um so ron this is your chance well i just i just want to make sorry dr morris go ahead if you want to yeah i just want to add one maybe two sentences of the framing uh which is that as ms hall as chair hall said this is our original issue um it obviously affects pelham but based on policy the palm school committee has and the amber school committee have granted its negotiation authority to the region um i just think i want to make sure i know you all know

096that but i think it's important for the public to be aware that that's it's not because you all don't care about what happens it's it's actually based in policy that the the region negotiates for all three districts i think the second point i want to make just a caution is i think committee members can certainly talk about this but they have to recognize that first point that this could be feedback for the regional representatives uh to bring back to the regional committee from pelham and it's it shouldn't be directly um comment shouldn't be directed at the teachers union uh in my opinion or the public but i do think it's a valuable resource and time that's why i put an agenda for the regional reps to hear from the pelham school committee if there's any

097feedback that's given but i just wanted to make sure it's directed in the right way um so that it's clear um and this happened with regionalization in the past has happened with any number of issues where it cuts between pelham and the region that uh the regional reps hear feedback from the the full committee uh to bring back with them as they're in executive session and and or negotiations on this issue but i just wanted to frame the politics and the governance of uh what it is we're talking about and who it should be directed to yeah well and thank you yes that's great and important to say ahead of time and also just as you know as a practical matter obviously we have two region reps um and so i feel like we are

098in good hands it's not like we have no voice in this it's just that for our purposes if you are the three people who are pelham only you just have to go through the proper channels um all right so ron go ahead i have no idea whether what i'm going to say is inappropriate or appropriate i know go ahead all i want to say is i support an increase in the trigger metric which causes schools to close that's all i want to say i'm in support of a higher metric higher sugar period some protocol i apologize nope ron that's exactly the kind of feedback that regional reps would look for from their committee on a whole host of topics so there was nothing in my opinion inappropriate about your comment i agree thank you ron

099um well yeah and i would i've provided some um some of my feedback and opinions to the chair of the region already but i would just in this setting i would echo that i think that the data and our brief experience within person suggests that we can do this safely at a number that's higher than 28 new cases per week so i would also advocate for that yeah margaret go ahead i also shared something with the chair of the regional committee um which is that i i don't know um as you may all not know i cannot participate in negotiations because i have a family member who teaches in the region so i cannot be part of that but what i passed on to the regional chair is that if there's any way to have

100the the ensuing discussion if there's going to be one be more transparent i think it would be a benefit to the students because the community is asking to know more about how decisions are being made so if there's any way to make that possible it i think ultimately affects our students if we so some transparency if at all possible i think would be really important at this stage or it's going to continue to be really you know coming at each other instead of trying to work together anything else yeah brenda go ahead i just wanted to share this what i've heard from some pelham families is that there have been concern about school opening and then closing and then opening and closing so that's another thing when you know i just wanted to to make

101sure that i said tonight that making sure that there's a plan so that these students aren't kind of ping-pong back and forth especially as they get assigned to different classrooms and such okay anything else on that okay well um the only the last thing i'll say is just well sarah vets and margaret i appreciate both of you serving on region but also sarah best participating in the negotiations and i know all that happens in executive session but it's a really big time commitment and doing that on behalf of the region and also representing pelham there is really important so we really appreciate that thumbs up um all right so next up are the superintendent goals so we've discussed this at the last joint meeting um partly in an effort to streamline the process of it

102and have as many shared goals as would make sense um and then so the next step would be just to take another look at these and then to the extent we feel comfortable to actually um vote to approve these goals for this year um so dr morris do you want to talk through this sorry i can't see anybody sorry i was muted oh well i'm not the only one who does that then okay go ahead i'll meet you now i'm good sorry so the first goal is about social emotional and wellness and really it's focused on the impact of the pandemic anti-racism curriculum that we're working on and getting implemented and the economic crisis that's affecting so many of our families the second goal is is really a unique to amherst public school goal but

103who knows down the road uh what this looks like or how it can connect to pelham but it's looking to collaborate with community action head start to see if we can open up more preschool seats particularly as it relates to income eligible families i could imagine in the future having conversation you know between emerson pelham on that front particularly as it would strengthen some grant applications we might work for to expand preschool access and you've had a successful preschool program now for some time in pelham the third one uh was really um came out of learning from the experience that we're having in in coveted times and not just going back to the way things were but actually learning about how things working and how we can improve our system you can see there's an

104explicit reference to later start times at the region i think there's similar learning that we've done at the pelham and amherst elementary level so that we can start integrating what we've learned into our normal course of action and not just oh we're good there's a vaccine and we're safe and we go back to the way things were but we're learning a lot every day about how to educate children and we wouldn't be learning it if it wasn't for this kind of virtual environment or even the in school where we're have desks and young grades but we're doing more outside education so outdoors education so we want to take the best of what's happening and making sure we're integrating it to improve our system over time the fourth one gets the topic that was raised earlier

105about sixth grade to the middle school finishing that study and getting to uh towards a decision and the last goal is about um very much what we talked about tonight um about fiscal systems and uh how we might talk about the current fiscal year and shortfalls as well as the fy 22 budget so so tonight we got a head start in pelham on that last goal um not not for the best of reasons but it's really doing a lot of that work and making sure that in this fiscally uncertain time that we're communicating uh with with i'm communicating with you and we're also communicating with the community about what's currently going on so that's the the quick uh down and dirty summary of the goals as they currently stand thank you so i i just

106have a quick question does it make sense for us for in pelham for us to include that second goal that's really amaze specific for this year or should we just vote them as is or should we eliminate that one i could go either way because they're trying to do things jointly i think that's fine although i i think it's i'm hard-pressed to imagine a very quick impact on pelham i mean i think down the road we could think about it depending how that project goes so it may make sense to omit that one and what gets voted because it really is disconnected from the this particular committee right well and just i'm just maybe just selfishly imagining because if we vote on it then we need to evaluate you on it and you'd be putting

107together artifacts and it would i think it would just be hard for us to even evaluate you on that so i i feel good about these goals i guess i would just amend them to just not include the second one so we would just have the the other four pelham only goals but i'm open to another approach if others really want to include that now any other comments or questions or anything else on the proposed goals all right well i'm gonna i'll make a motion to um approve these goals but to just remove um the early childhood education one from the list is there a second second all right great any further discussion okay i'll move to a roll call vote margaret stancer i sarah best uh kenny i brenda barlow i ron and you

108know why and hall i all right get to work dr morris you are going to be busy um okay the let's see all right last time on the agenda is a motion to adjourn um but just before we do that i will just say we haven't had a pelham only meeting in a while but i just i and i know other committee members just really appreciate a huge amount of work that is going into everything just during covid but also now with budget challenges and enrollment declines and everything else so the folks in this meeting but also all of the staff at the school and it just it it takes a huge amount of work to run a school district even when everything is awesome and you're just drowning in money but especially now so

109it's just so appreciate all of the work that's happening and lee if you could just pass that message on to all of the teachers and staff and everyone who is keeping the school running virtually or in person that we just really appreciate it and with that i will take a motion to adjourn from anyone i move to adjourn second all right no discussion on that so i'll do a roll call vote margaret we are adjourned thank you so much everyone have a good night good night