Ashland School Committee Meeting

001that it should be synchronized right okay Lori hey Jim how are you I'm well how are you I was at the same concert but um thank you how are you cheers good evening this is the Ashland school committee meeting for Wednesday September time flies when you're having fun right September 13 2023 I'll start recording the um and reading the vision statement um and the action Public Schools is a forward-thinking district the academics when the action Public Schools is a forward-thinking district the academic September 13th tonight I just put it on pause here someone have their notebook their audio on for their uh in the meeting someone have their notebook their audio on for their uh in the meeting yeah that over and over again try it again all right let's take two right nope no

002take two we're still getting a loop try it again all right nope no take two we're still getting a loop we're still getting a loop technology usually works a lot better than this why yeah test test try it all right take three all right so the vision statement from the Ashland Public Schools is the Ashland Public Schools is a forward-thinking district that cultivates the academic and social emotional growth of each student through a supportive collaborative Innovative and challenging environment students will develop into self-motivated resilient lifelong Learners who Embrace their role as responsible contributors to a global Community this meeting is being recorded by waca cable TV start with their order of business just to review for tonight it's the call to order which is what we've just done opening procedures which will be the review

003and Adoption of the agenda having a moment for a public comment if anybody wishes to do that and then we have items of new staff introductions why the room is full and then we'll have a report from the upper Charles River Trail committee update from Tony Lewis review of policy ke regarding public complaints approval of minutes from our summer Retreats of July 17 and July 25 warrant approvals assistant superintendent report our update superintendent update member updates and then adjournment so I'm going to start by just asking each of the members to introduce themselves say they're present and indicate if they're okay with the order of business and for folks in the room we'll also introduce one of our members who participate remotely today Paul why don't you go ahead and start Paul Kendall member and

004chair of the Mendes building committee Tina fraternities member of the school committee I'm good with the agenda Aaron Williams member of the school committee secretary visit the agenda and I'm Mark Terry the vice chairman I'm also okay with agenda Lori I am Lori tosty I share of the school committee and I am okay with the agenda thanks Lori I'm Mark um all right so uh first item on our agenda is the get that loop again let's just keep trying to go forward and see if you can fade it away um first item on the agenda is public comment is there anybody here who wishes to make a public comment seeing none in the room any on Virtual not seeing any there we'll close public comment um so first order of business is new staff introductions

005Mr Adams how would you like to to do this let's go in reverse order for a change all right Kelly I know stay on your toes thanks good evening everybody good to see you happy to introduce several new staff with us tonight or several new staff tonight um first we have Paul Kane the head who is not with us tonight he's our new business teacher it has a green light okay so Paul Kane head is our business teacher and again thank you for that new position we're really excited for it we have Sarah Dwyer who has joined us from English we have Dorsey glue who is here with us history teacher um Griff you know stand stores and wave welcome uh Griffin marshand is a new math teacher we have Natalie mazzini who's here from

006history uh we have Ryan Page a new English teacher um we have Jimmy Phipps who's a new ESP ABA Jen Roy who is a new ABA and will vidy who is a returning history teacher from a sub last year thanks good evening everyone so we have new staff and we also have some staff who aren't new but are new to our building first staff member was Caitlin Gentile she's our new 7th and 8th grade science teacher annik bertsman is our new French teacher uh formerly at the middle school Marilee Mullen is a long-term sub teaching Spanish Eric langmeyer is here and Eric he is our Drama teacher Kelly Berman an ESP but is serving as a long-term sub role for our special education Andrew Nickerson moving from Warren school is a new school psychologist for

007us Corey Jones is our new school nurse Kyra Knox is our new special ed team coordinator at the middle school Lily Orr and Lily Orr is a new ESP at the middle school and Kelly introduced Jen Roy so it's been a great start thanks everyone thanks Dave thank you good evening we have four new staff members of the Mendez two are here that I can introduce in person the first is Kate zumita who's teaching third grade and Michaela Evans who's also teaching third grade we have Brook moveitz joining us as a new special educator as well as Tim Crowley returning from you're here who's here returning from um a quick leave welcome thanks we have a large group of war in school hello thanks for having us here tonight we're in school so far we

008have 14 new faces for our staff or some of those spaces are either transferred from other schools or changed their positions tonight five of these individuals were able to join us in kindergarten we have bellobachi who's here tonight also in kindergarten Caroline Moore we do have a new from one of our bus drivers who's now working in our kitchen as well Anna Brennan our new assistant principal Erica lenares our new social emotional learning teacher Sarah McPherson who was married last week two weeks ago now so she may have been seen a Sarah dearville prior to that one of our teachers that was one of our dual position esps is now one of our special education teachers Ruchi Pathak new special education inclusion ESP Sweeney Chong new kindergarten ESP Jordan Lapointe new kindergarten ESP Allison McCarthy

009new ABA ESP Catherine Mason new ABA ESP Elizabeth Mumford new custodian who transferred from the Middle School Rich Pelletier in on October 10th we will be having our new bcba begin Caitlin bowsk we're still looking for a few more people if people would like did I miss someone Jim oh Natalie you're in the Middle with a big check mark I'm sorry I don't know how I just did that I'm sorry and I was just talking to Natalie while I was finishing my dinner uh Natalie Montgomery is another one of our staff members where last the last few years she's been serving as an ABA ESP and she has been one of our summer school teachers done an outstanding job and this year she is one of our teachers for our substantially separate programs as well

010Natalie I'm sorry for the Omission as we went through Jim thank you stay safe thanks Pete and last but not least our new members of the pit crew supporting our littlest Learners over at pittaway tonight we have Tiffany Berry our full-time SLP here with us so excited that she could join us and then we also have Brenna melinson as a special education teacher in one of our specialized programs uh supporting a long-term sub position for the year we've officially recruited two of our subs and converted them over to employees Melinda shuey and Luisa Silva as esps so we're excited to have them officially full time with us and then we're also sharing gen Roy as our bcba with the middle and the high school as well sir thanks you get everybody okay so just want

011to welcome you again as Lori and I had a chance to meet a lot of you on your first day or first couple of days but really want to welcome you again hope that your experience here is phenomenal we look forward to seeing your contributions to to all of our students learning um and certainly we wish you the best of luck and you don't have to stay any longer thank you for coming and thank you all for coming in have a good night thank you so why don't we our next order of business as people are clearing out is Tony Lewis from the upper Charles River Trail committee Tony want you if you want to take a minute to get yourself situated while they're all clearing up congratulations Brittany thank you for coming in yeah

012yeah we have you introduce yourself on we'll have you introduce yourself on the microphone okay Mr chair I could get your Indulgence um can I I just wanted to do a little intro for these folks yeah why don't we just let her hand down foreign yeah thank you thanks for uh seeing us um my name is Rob Scheer I'm the current chair of the Ashland select board and I've been involved with the upper Charles Trail for I don't know more years than I care to uh to comment on in public but uh and while Tony's setting up I think I just wanted to give a a brief overview kind of the big picture stuff um which antonian Tony Lewis is here to go do the presentation also Judy Rosenthal who gave out the material um

013so you know as you know we've been busy with a lot of major projects in town the Mendez school being one of them you know a lovely a lovely building and we've also coming off a number of other big projects the public safety building 126 135. so I guess the big the big news is that the town has finally making this a priority project so many of you know that this this goes back many years a lot you could look at those notes and a lot of you were involved you know four five six years ago when we were really talking to the school committee and it's been a big gap and I just kind of wanted to explain that a little bit but we're now in a position to to move forward this has

014been now a priority project and with with support from the select board in the in the town manager so these guys are going to go over stuff and review things and they're going to talk about the three options so just you know when we put when this Trail was being put together it was important we thought it was important that the trail go to the high school or go have a presence of schools for a variety of reasons one of them being a safe route to schools and you know General Public Welfare of having a multimodal trail I think most of you are familiar with the benefits of such a trail so I just wanted to um you know say that um and I think as you go through this I would just ask you

015to think about how how can we what's the best way to move this process forward because there's a lot of you know the devil's in the details with this kind of thing and I'm sure you'll there'll be a number of questions and concerns about how these Trails interact with school buildings and school grounds so um one of the things I would be suggesting is that think about a working group to come out of this process and you know whether it's from the school committee the facilities manager the principal she's still here yeah very good that's great you know to kind of look at these details and like what is this workable can we go here can we go there I just say the from the point of view there's some difficulties with the right-of-way so

016just to set the big picture and Tony's going to go through all this but we're approaching now this High School from the direction of the public safety building in which we're working on acquiring more land around the public safety building for that very purpose for a number of other purposes and then the trail is going to come up to the um basically to behind the softball field and one of the major questions is it going to go right there or is it going to go left and then how does it how do we get to the right of way that goes to Cedar Street which the town is also confident we'll be able to get access there because of various tax reasons that that right away may be available so that's really I guess the

017Crux of the the issue that you know we have around the high school and I also just wanted to say briefly that you know the trolley Brook Trail is completed on Memorial Drive and that has a potential for a strong intersection with the um uh with the middle school and so we should think about that how it might work there right now it just goes down Memorial Drive you know to the Dunkin Donuts and crosses around voyager's Lane so you know it's just that's kind of a a separate issue but I wanted to throw that out there because that's another potential valuable connection so you know thanks for your yeah two procedural things as a show of introduction um so they understand from your comments the sort of tonight this is really just an update

018for us you're not asking for any votes or anything at this point I don't yeah I don't think so I don't see that happening because we're really what I think we're getting into now is the process like trying to lay out a basic Trail route so then we can move on to the design process and I should also say that we over the past few years identified substantial funds available to do this work so that's really you know a hopeful optimistic sign as we're ready you know our two big priorities now are root control and working out issues with with public property like where's it going to go so and then we really move ready to move on into concrete work in the next few years so and the other question was just you handed

019out a a nice color-coded chart fair to assume this is somewhere on the town's website for I believe it is it's been there okay all right great so you want to great well thank you without further Ado Tony take it away thank you thank you let me just pull up my popcorn site first and then I can pack if it's easier Jim might be able to bring it up and share it yeah thank you if you can use my flash drive because that's the most common oh we don't want to start out you folks have a technical system I want to turn off the notes and I I think all right I was thinking about this but the PowerPoint is this would be kinda I'll go back and forth you can ask questions anywhere as

020we go along and all that because you're actually activated bro there it goes and choose Adobe is there any way to turn off known I guess I'll give me a difference here okay yeah this is the PDF so no the PDF is not the PDF is I got the actual PowerPoint presentation that's been modified a little different if you I like to use mine okay but thank you for that okay so uh we'll we'll need the updated though uh one for for our records absolutely absolutely so whatever you're doing tonight can someone activate the PowerPoint because I'm I'm a beginner at PowerPoint all right so let's let's do the slideshow for now um so I don't want to show notes you know check notes oh there we go and then what you want to do

021is go to zoom here share your screen we're going to share this yeah you know how to do that or not right just just start the slideshow participate this piece thanks Paul I used to oh so that's showing this I try to get rid of the uh slides from the screen the site my mind I got it in slight view it's a presentation View I think is what he's looking for yeah it might be easier to do this we'll stop the sharing and then we'll share the whole screen and we'll be it that way instead of getting cute thank you for understanding dude I'll try to get rid of the notes too that's right yeah it's fine okay well I'm Tony Lewis and you met Judy Rosenthal and we're both from upper Charles committee and

022Doug Costello also was on our subcommittee and he helped with the presentation so with the subcommittee that's assigned to uh update the school committee that's why you don't see Joel in other art you know uh at the Charles Trail committee members so I'm going to go right to the next slide [Music] okay good thanks am I speaking the microphone okay thank you okay the purpose of this meeting has announced that the astronomical Charles Trail is now a Time priority project a big smile on my face and Judy's face thank you Robert announced quite a bit about it but now we can really stop dragging our feet method we're dragging them intentionally but our hands were tagged now we can really go to town I know the Middle School in in the town public safety building

023they got it completed because they were priority projects and uh I I'm really impressed with the building I was over the building the Midland School Saturday wow me as a taxpayer I'm an old guy and I don't know if the kids you know that the girls they used to go to school a long time ago but I feel it's I feel proud to be nationally and it's with my money to have that facility you know thanks for all the hard work [Music] um where I want to we want to provide an overview of the uh planned uh when I say you will never see art it's Ashland apachal's Trail I put Ashton up a child's Trail so the rule across the Ashland and and thirdly evaluate and decide on the best high school Trail route

024option no no but no but just get a get a better understanding so you you will be able to do it later okay there we go this map shows the uh that's kind of like the map you have in front of you not exactly but it's it's just a newly version of it but that shows the whole Trail excuse me going from from Hopkinton State Park going going east can you see the map there you know through the big through some property there eventually going by High Street down to sirius we don't know whether we're going to go north of Sears or South the series but it's going to hit up at the MBT Access Road uh this Mouse uh here it is so okay that's basically it's serious over there but you know you

025can see it okay good so Cirrus is here see they're gonna go not for serious apartments and the red line you see is the MPT access road now known as Memorial Drive and uh you can either go you go up towards the train station or you can go down to 135 pass the you know to the Dunkin Donuts and it's going to go right the trail see the green line where it says above the Ashland Middle School it says green line then there's that's where the future YMCA is going to be and they've been very supportive they gave us some land of easements along the property so they're very supportive of the trail and uh it'll be a good resource for the time when it happens so the trolley for trail you see the green

026line is already existent that was completed November 21. uh and uh I'll show you some pictures of it pictures of it at the end and then what happens is when you come to trolley I call this trolley book Junction I'm not I remember Memorial Drive Junction you hear me talk about it uh because it seems to be a main point where that you can go to downtown by the trolley book Trail or I can go down in the Memorial Drive through voyages Lane through the Ashland State path just the green line on the over there Cold Spring there'll be a boardwalk over here and then you come to Main Street and um and then there's a near thin wall there's a Cold Spring Book there's a there's a pathway that exists and it's kind of

027overgrown as most of the trail is and uh it look it'll connect to Chestnut Street so I'm going to show you more on the next slide which is a little a little bit larger um so I'm going to leave any any questions on the left hand side because I'm going to I'm going to give you another map from here I'm going to show you from here East but is there any questions from from there left okay everybody okay okay I think we're okay focusing okay thanks for the property okay so now this is a more zoomed up view of from the root for Memorial Drive Junction to Sherman line and basically we really want to this is part of phase one of the trail you know going from Sherman all the way to an MBT

028access road and then there's there's ways of getting all the way to Hopkinton State Park as shown in the previous map you know okay but that's but it's like a blue route see the blue route over here way up next that's that's this was added after the fact because we want to get we want to connect from Sherman to Hopkinton and this will give us a way without building a lot of those off-road paths we can we can get there because the supper Charles Trail and everybody knows about it it's a it's a five-time regional Loop that you know Holliston that goes to Milford I know if anybody's been on it or seen it and then goes Hopkins and Hopkins is working on it and then they're going to eventually meet us in uh Huffington

029State Park and then we take over and we go all the way across town to Sherman you know we're going by the dike Trail and all that you know I'll show you more of the uh in detail in a second but what's going to what's good about that is not only will you be able to connect to the um not only will you be able to get Dr apachal's Trail going towards Halston and then back to so from Ashland deck Trail to Sherman along the train tracks are trying to get it with CSX they're trying to negotiate that and it's the Jack Lewis and some of the other ones that are working on it right but what is it yeah okay okay and then also gonna have the East Coast Greenway and all that but

030now we're going to go um any questions about the map or the route I'll give you I'll give you yeah I think I think we're we're you know being in the school committee I think we're interested in seeing yeah but sort of what you're looking at around the high school building or any of our other buildings so that we can sort of you know get into the the idea of where we where are we involved and how do we move forward so we don't need to discuss we don't need to discuss that then so we can go yeah I don't want to call if anybody else I mean please yeah no and now you'll have this whole thing yeah so this wasn't included I could this wasn't included in the PDF file that I sent

031you because it was sort of we thought that you didn't need this but this is the uh this is the route that was recommended by author design at the Consultants that we had this is part of the final um I think we've seen this a while ago this was yeah earlier yeah okay but we didn't have it in a slide package but it's more uh an emission so basically this is the preferred route that was as of 2017 right as recommended by Alta the consultant and um I don't know if I have to trace through the property whatever it is but basically I think we understand like yeah most of us have spent more than enough time at the high school yes I mean we know that you're you're coming up on the yeah so

032one is below one goes below here and it comes right out there's a little spot and then it cuts across the property and um and then it goes down it connects to the uh goes by the baseball field and then it goes to it'll eventually end up in the uh Power Line so what's your opinion of of this particular route I mean your left chance that I just trying to get your initial opinion and we can look at all three options and then we could go back and forth yeah so I I and I bowate um the email that he referred to in the spreadsheet that they sent uh I I forwarded to to everyone during the meeting so that way now is that the one in our packet no no no so they had

033they had a spreadsheet where they kind of went through the communication things and it referenced an email I sent back in 2017. uh so I just sent that I just sent the actual uh email thread to everyone um yeah so so now we're referring to it I sent it out didn't send it out before for obvious reasons but uh just from my perspective I I voiced a lot of concerns back there about bisecting the property with the trail um and I think a lot of the responses were uh we we would need to in order to try to address those concerns would need uh the consultant come on and see what could be done uh I honestly I can't see myself personally supporting one that bisects the uh the property I think some of your

034other options I think addressed the address that and uh I would be more in favor of those just because we do need to control the property right there's certainly circumstances in general we don't want random the random public being part of our campus during school hours right and then there's events whether it be a fire drill or any kind of other event where we need control over that and I I think it's just it's ad even if we could figure out a way to shut down the trail it's just one more logistical thing to deal with at a time when we should not want to be wanting to add things to people's plates because something's going on right so uh so from my perspective I don't think I could personally support something that bisects the

035property but I think some of your other options are okay come come you know address that I think still think get us right to you know right to the property and maybe there's even a way to even if you come up on top to then have a little offshoot that makes my my daughter I live in the neighborhood behind high school and my daughter walks and it's not a great she does it she enjoys it but there are some kind of iffy sections to get down so but we could address that whether or not with an offshoot or something like that so as far as the the proposed route I wouldn't be in favor over it because I I think it presents too many logistical challenges and it may be something I couldn't even foresee

036um so so I I like to you know personally I'd like to more explore the other options I'm going to go back and forth anyway so you can see all three and then we go back and forth any way you want yeah I'd love to see all of them oh this is my first and it sounds like this is a conversation that originally originated before my time on the school committee so you guys have had conversations but before I'm curious to see all of the options so that I can have a more well-rounded feedback thank you I'm very thankful that Kelly's here because you know we've we had a lot of meetings with not a lot of meetings but we she was very concerned and interested and supportive and no so she's coming out to

037share what she knows about it you know and I should have said that I'm fully in support of the trail I I you know I live in the neighborhood where I know you got a lot of pushback from some I'd be happy with being behind my house so it's not it's not nothing about that it's uh so I I fully support the trail and want to see it uh so I see it in place is Tony I mean I think you're looking to get our reactions to different Pathways why don't you put up the other options sure and then we can talk about them all at once I think we've had an opportunity to view at least something that was circulated in advance to the meeting yeah so we have a sense of what those

038are but well this isn't this was in your packet right right High School Trail option number one basically it comes out it'll come up from one activity five you know from the cemetery it'll eventually go to 135 and then it will come back through that there's some DCI property and then the the staff and property and then eventually come up behind the uh uh softball field now every time I watch that it's like a jungle in there I mean it's it's like my question you needed a machete in other words yeah right yeah if you're illustrating so I think what Tina's asking is along the football field Tina yeah so like from the base yeah there's a paved path that goes in the same road as the blue line but so are you talking about

039that using that paved path or is it up there's like a big brick wall that then there's Woods up there oh that's that's option b i mean option two right now that there's a stone dust path that goes along where that blue blue line is and this would be that's the bleaches you know there's some overhangs that's behind the bleaches in between the Big Stone yeah but the stone death path right on the other side of that fence is where that blue line is right now right roughly down at the bottom part is what you're talking about right Paul not the pave part which is up by the football this is the this is the fence that's the hope of the woods yeah that's in the woods the other one I think is the yeah

040yeah thanks I walk both options with Tony I would encourage that maybe we could do a walk and then you can really see it be out in the field what I loved about option two was if you're up and you're imagining you're on the trail on a bike on a bike or walking you see all the beautiful fields in front of you it was such a great View and then I can just imagine the children playing there I mean it was really something so just think about that in terms of what you would see that's sort of like the premium seating for the football games but it's it's it's close to the school but it's not real close to the school yeah this this is I think a better variation for Paul's concerns which I

041share yeah no and yeah and I think it also then can leverage so I'm in the community obviously that behind there and as you bring it closer it's going to be easier connection uh for for walkers from our our neighborhood and even you know to the other side of that you you connect other side we also have uh the condos uh uh that are right basically backed up VR so it really is it's more of a connection than it looks like there because of of all that one question I have about these two um and maybe uh I believe that they're looking at expanding uh the cemetery into isn't there an expansion yeah isn't it going that and I just wanted to wanted to make sure that that's cool this is coordinated and still a

042viable option with whatever plans are going on um whether it's coordinated yet I couldn't say but um sounds like that I can assure you we will people are well aware of the proposed roots and so you know that's a good point I'll make sure that that yeah and more just get get it on the radar so that if we really love this option it remains an option and that there's those two plans good point does anybody else have immediate reactions to so the two options we'd look at one which effectively is much closer to the fields runs kind of along the field boundary as to one that what's the distance into the woods is that 50 feet into the woods 100 feet um you've done that second Loop just for ballpark I mean is that

043where because we currently have a trail there's a trail that goes to the top of the that goes to the the cemetery is that kind of roughly where that option two is at that that trail that's there it's like this see this here come up here see this Pat it's like a path somehow I might be over the ground more now but when you come back here this takes you to the stone dust where this one here goes up into the woods okay so so the so the first the the first one really was right behind there yeah I guess option two I would yeah my fruit media reaction is that's too close to the fields right yeah okay um because you're going to have whenever we have things going on now you're introducing bikes

044that are coming by and people just coming out of the bridge it's too busy it seems it seems like it's not going to be good for either the bikers or anybody using the trail or the people at whatever event any sort of idea this would be multi-purpose right you're gonna have conflicts there with people doing different things it would be nice to get permission to do a little engineer and in that certain spot to represent it to you you know without even designing so that's yeah I mean I think we're a ways away from that point but from what I understand I mean we're not we're just going to try to get to an idea here tonight where we say okay this is the presentation how does the committee want to have his voice heard

045in this process which might be by having a subcommittee it might be asking missing her to take out one more thing on her plate um or or what have you um but we're not like we're not getting into the wheat no punting the weeds of of this process I don't think tonight right okay so do you want to see either one you want to see three options are you back again or you want to talk any further about that I mean okay yeah so so it was it was the preferred route and then these option one option two are the three options um with what they are I mean to understand them yes yeah and I'm just going to pause I don't know um Lori is wants to say anything just because she's on the

046screen somewhere behind the image here she is did you want to chime in at all um well I I really am needing this refresher because it has been so long since we we've talked about it um I mean I will just say I I don't have an opinion yet um without really digging deeper into this and of course I would want to talk more um either in some kind of committee form or with Jim and or Kelly um I think generally speaking along the lines of what what Paul said I mean in general um using school property for anything other than School purposes that's going to you know draw people too near and people who you know were not inviting um and have no control over um or property that we may want to use

047in another way at some other time I I think those are the the overriding concerns so I would want to you know really hear more about the other options and why they may or may not be uh you know doable so I'm I'm not ready to say for sure you know which way I would go on this but I certainly would prefer to have an option that doesn't interfere with with the use of of school property thanks Laurie um I mean do we want to move into the discussion I don't know if you had more stuff you wanted to to share have us consider I don't want to jump ahead of you but um I was going to open the conversation up to sort of how does the committee want to move forward and in

048terms of its voice and as well subcommittee or are the Liaisons to others but I don't want to jump there and if you've got other you want to share okay um so so just real quick uh one question as it relates to of the property boundaries it is option two on school property or is yes okay so it is I can show your interactive map if you want yeah so no do you simply yes or no it's fine I just want to confirm that it's still on school property this is one spot that gets close to order and so maybe um the other thing I would I would ask is anytime we're going to do something on school property and it's pushing it closer to uh essentially my neighbors uh in there so the people

049on catarit I would reach out to them uh just to make sure that they're even if they have a concern I want to make sure they're they're heard right so you you know obviously it looks like we're coming pretty close to that house now that house is also right where we enter currently so I don't know that it is a drastic change but it is a change and we're in potentially introducing um you know more people that that close uh I don't think it's a noise concern because I can tell you even from where I am which is just down uh off the off the screen there is uh I can hear the I can hear the football games oh wow so uh so I don't think it's a noise concern but I I would

050really like to make sure that whatever process includes communication with them particularly if we're saying if we're going to endorse something um whether we invite them to one of our meetings or ensure that that they've been heard through through you and you get their feedback that's what I would also be a good neighbor yeah I heard that the Riverwalk there's some similar scenarios there and they really did a nice job landscaping and fencing It Whatever It Is Enough so we could we in other words whatever we need to do it's worth spending the money to keep that particular person happy you know that was gonna be my line of questioning around the fencing piece and whether it would be similar to what's at Mill Pond and the I think it's nine foot you know Green

051stockade fencing and and whether the pitch of you know if we're thinking that little walkway that's behind this Stadium in the pitch there if there's any security concerns of being up at such a high angle yeah but I yeah I I appreciate you bringing all of these options in front of us I would not want anything um like the one that's in front of me on paper bisecting the field and the school the traffic way there is too busy already and so I don't believe that adding bikes to the situation would be um the right move and also you know there's school safety issues that we usually talk about in a subcommittee that's not televised that we need to be considerate of the environment we're raising our children in now and as others have said

052the you know you go into any of the buildings you have to sign in and the closer they are and to our buildings without having a sign in without being their cameras Etc that's all a concern I was going to take a little video of the option at two and bring it but ran out of time and the weather didn't cooperate but I mean whoever wants to see that trail yeah I'll be glad to take them you know and uh I'm in the same neighborhood that abuts that and I do walk up there and I I heard somebody say earlier I mean it is a beautiful walk up there to be able to look down and see all the fields and certainly when I'm walking there it doesn't feel like it's you know too close

053to school property um and certainly I think the concern the further up you move it is uh as I think it was Paul who mentioned is just the neighbors and making sure that it would be done in a respectful way that doesn't bring you know unwarranted noise or light or more traffic than you know they would anticipate so but I I certainly would agree that it's a it's it's a nice walk up there thank you so um I want to come back I want to give you a chance to kind of wrap up your your comments if there's anything else you wanted us to to hear tonight but if you're all set then I would look to the committee members for some discussion input from Mr Adams um missing car as to sort of how

054do we as a committee want to be engaged in this process moving forward if I have about two more minutes sure two more minutes I'll finish my slides Yeah so basically on what I like about what I like about option two is basically after you get past the you know we would try to keep as far as away from the softball field as we could but when you when you go up this uh this hill you know the the split you could either for ADA Compliant because in other words because you want to try to have to Trail as much ADA Compliant as it's possible so basically what we could do is most of the trail would go uphill like the Walkers and all that and bikers would go up go up the hill but

055if we had we could make a thing like no we could have a sign of that Junction you know Ada or whatever whatever it said so people know that it's all it's set up for Ada and just have no bikes on it we could do all kinds of science to make it you know work and we'll also have signs that say you know respect school property and all that um so so are you just to clarify would you be suggesting that the regular path kind of go up the hill um towards option two which you were just talking about but also have it open as an option for to have a more compliant like ADA Compliant or more accessible on school property yes yeah and personally on the bleachers yeah I mean I'd certainly support

056that I mean I think we have an obligation a more obligation legal one too to make sure it's ADA Compliant um you know I my mind goes to the details a little bit about you know how do you really make sure that people are going the way they should go but I think that's that's a weed for you know down the road and there is still a grade on that path too right I mean if you if over the same distance you need to get to the same point you know why is one better than the other and how are you going to make 188 compliant and you know if it's got to meet up back to the trail at some point um how are you making 188 compliance right yeah so uh so again

057Devil's into details and I think uh you know so I think those are all all the future conversations of like hey you know once it sounds like the consensus is hey let's let's have you start to explore option two with whatever input and involvement we're going to discuss right so I like what I hear from you in everything else and you know I want to thank you for your time on that but I have a couple of pictures of the trolley book Trail I can show you who hasn't been on it has ever been I don't think I have been yeah well from when we leave in the Middle School just crosses the austrated across the street and just walk down and go down to mcgonquin to the state park and all that so we

058have a bridge over over the Little Brook in this part of the trail and then we have the toilet portrayal is heading up towards Memorial Drive okay the fields are basically oh right over the trees on the right hand see how the trees went down a little bit on that previous picture this is kind of in my backyard and I don't use it yeah I understand right down the hill so this picture I took yesterday and basically you can see it you can see the crosswalk the trail comes out on the right and the this is the side path that's on the Memorial Drive and you can see in the distance your middle school and it it's it's like field goals on TV you look further than they really are I'm like you know so

059but that's where your middle school is so that'll kind of excited about that I can't wait to have another slide which was with pave Pavements or whatever it is with something on School uh that's failure thank you there you go all right thanks Tony thank you all for uh forget the desired outcomes I was going to have desired outcomes but so why don't we um turn it I'll just look to the committee members here first and Lori if you want to jump in please do or I'll come back to you and ask at the end but um thoughts about how you want to proceed how involved you want to be you know do we want this to sort of be an administrative driven kind of process Kelly give me the like no um you know

060yes I mean so from my perspective as it's not necessarily going it's not going to affect the operations I mean I don't think we need to put more on on their plate I would I would I would keep it on our one of our plates to to engage just because uh it's really now about the the peripheral land use and that's kind of us and and not them it's not an operational thing if this was you know if this was going between say the the ball fields and and these football fields we are allowing that bisection I'd be like okay now we want to make sure that Kelly or John or or or or Jim or somebody was but this and and feel the theater chime in Jim and and Kelly I don't see it

061being something we should add to their to their list but that's just my two cents no I would agree I mean I think it it's it I agree with you obviously with the appropriate input um you know from from the administration Lori anything you want to add in there no sorry no I had nothing to add other than you know I guess I'd be looking I don't know what we would be talking about until we have more details about you know what it what it would look like who's maintaining it how the neighbors feel that sort of thing so um I think people who can give that kind of input should be involved yes I think a couple thoughts one is the maintenance one is and sort of who's going to be responsible for for

062maintenance um I assume this is a separate exercise it's going to be a I guess a town owned pathway the town will be taking control of what it is um obviously at least one of these models sort of overlaps with property that we take care of now but I think yeah go ahead Rob so you've got the same issue here that the whole Trail has and so the town would be responsible for maintenance I don't think you're going to put that right enforce right yeah you're going to have it you're going to have a written agreement at some you know should this go forward there's going to be you know this will they'll be you know a written agreement I don't think we're going to be keeping things informal as we actually are doing something

063we'll have agreements with all the landowners as well right aways and who's doing what and all the liability so you'll have the same kind of these are the same kind of issues we're gonna have to solve anywhere on property sounds like you're keeping this Mead fairly busy with that yes yeah well um hopefully in the future yeah that's and the other question I guess I have for you is sort of the structural we're talking about how do we how do we voice our input is yeah what is the most effective way from the way this project is being approached sort of bigger picture for us to be talking about this one little piece do we sell subcommittee you know that's my suggestion as a working group that would include these folks probably Tony and Judy

064or other people from the committee to work directly with whoever you're choosing I would think about maybe the facilities manager you know that someone who's got some our other principle I don't want to well I can't volunteer people but you know uh somebody with some technical administrative expertise or resources to work with maybe a few members of the of the school committee you can't do more than two I would think because the open media my recommendation would be only one so I former subcommittee yeah that would be my thought too I don't know that we need a full subcommittee but having continued conversations and being involved in the pieces of the conversation that would impact this part of the trail I don't think we necessarily need a full subcommittee um to do that I I

065don't know what the format looks like if it's you know potentially a member being invited to to one of your meetings when these issues are being discussed well I think we could I see it is on right it rolls right I see it's taken this is a separate so you'll have a committee meeting I think separately from the rest of the upper Charles Trail or of course and coming back with the with a root recommendation first to you folks so you can get all the all your questions and concerns out of the way of saying well we can agree to something that generally looks like this and then we can get into the kind of nitty-gritty to how to make that happen and you know the other thing is you start looking at these you'll

066see the pros and cons and the weaknesses and the problems with each one so you know it is a very difficult process because we don't have an abandoned rail line like most other people do we're trying to do this you see it winds and we have all sorts of issues there's one there there is one over by Olive Street but oh is there that's interesting yeah well the trolley Brook Trail actually that was the trolley line and it goes the Old Trolley line goes towards the middle school so anyway so that's my suggestion yeah sure yeah that was a Hopkins and Railroad and a lot of that railroad right away was built on and so we lost a lot of that stuff even across the Memorial Drive that's well that's kind of wet or whatever

067it is but there's a lot of stuff going towards Hopkinton so it goes right behind the Skilled Nursing Facility oh yeah that's there yeah and we we have an implementation team that was consistent at the time management assistant time manager uh plant the town plant on the system Town planner Joel and me and Rob do I miss anybody that's good so I don't know if if you want to have that person join the implementation team because Mike says that's that's not a bad name implementation team for the trail I think are interesting that was going to be my question I'm asking how y'all are organized now whether you're in some type of regular me meeting process where you know a member could be invited into your process to hear about the part of it that

068pertains to us so that that member could then come back and make recommendations to the school committee on the implementation team when if that person joins that that team we would make sure that so we won't waste the person's time we would try to schedule school stuff first and then enjoy the day and we'll just continue yeah and they can see if they want yeah I mean from my perspective what this really sounds like is we would you know creates the wrong word but we would just designate somebody as a liaison to this and whatever at whatever point in time there's conversations that's the person that's your point person for this group they would attend we do this for other groups she's for ashpack our uh our special education uh Coalition and so we do

069the same thing here and whoever that is attends your meetings provides the feedback bring it back here and then can coordinate all right they're ready for coming back with the route and by that point it should be I need not that this has been a hard conversation but it should be easier conversation because we've we've had that liaison and and that communication back and forth the only thing I would add whoever if you're selecting one member I mean you're prepared for I think some underground work where you're actually walking there and trying to answer you know trying to determine different things so that's why I was thinking maybe you want a kind of a larger group to kind of share that but that's uh if that's what you're prepared for I think these folks would

070be happy to work with whoever that is and kind of work through those issues I'm always Larry forming subcommittees because it's it's just more complicated um so I think I'm hearing consensus for identifying a liaison type person um which would I guess be like the liaison to the upper Charles River Trail committee and then we'll figure out what that means as Paul's saying as it goes or that person well is there anybody who is not comfortable with that approach okay so if not somebody wants to be that person I can be I've obviously I know you're almost done with that building I'm not sure I'm almost done with it yet um I mean I've had I've had the most dialogue with them about it and so and I'm probably the biker in the group as

071well yeah okay at least for I will be again sometimes at some point so this this wasn't formally on our agenda but um you know it wasn't something we recently anticipated coming up so if someone wants to make a motion nominate Paul to be the upper Charles River Trail committee liaison accept that motion I'd move so moved all right so Tina's moved Aaron seconded um roll call vote because Laurie is remote Paul hi do you know aye Aaron aye Laurie I and I for me thank you everybody for coming in uh it's an exciting project today thank you for all the work you guys appreciate your interests you see Rob's disappointment by the way I knew it was going to be all right thank you thanks for coming in guys all right next item on

072the agenda thanks Kelly um is policy ke public complaints and this is a recommendation I'll speak to it I know Lori might want to add a little bit but just um you know the one in the room so we had a recommendation from our Council to amend policy ke public complaints by adding a paragraph that addressed a better addressed Anonymous complaints in a particular um amended it to recognize that there as much as our policy is that we don't act on Anonymous complaints there are some circumstances as required by law where we we really have to um and I wasn't part of those conversations but I would say that as we represent school districts I often render the same advice which is to say look so it makes complaint for example sexual harassment it's Anonymous

073you may not be able to go very far with it because you can't get details if the complaining party isn't there but do what you can to investigate it because you have legal obligation too right and so I think this is the type of scenario the paragraph is intended to address Lori anything you want to add to that because I think you you or Jim either one of you because I'm not sure who was in touch with our Council on it it was me Mark and and I I guess that just flows into the next part of the conversation we do have a policy subcommittee and the only reason why and I'm on it but so the only reason why I did not bring this to the policy subcommittee first is because normally that would

074be where we would you know spend some time drafting policy to bring back to you for your recommendation but our attorney already had the recommended language and to facilitate a speedier process I thought we would just come directly to the whole board if for some reason anybody thinks it needs to be entertained first it's subcommittee um and it just didn't seem necessary to drag that process out any longer than it needs to be thanks Lori to any plot Jim anything you wanted it okay um so any discussion on the topic any concern about the policy yeah I mean so uh I agree with Lori that I think expediency let's let's we have a clear uh Gap or risk in the policy let's address that I guess one thing with the policy uh I wonder whether

075it makes sense at some point in the future to look at it to it says we will not right but I'd I'd also like to be able to to the extent we can if something is brought to our attention even anonymously if we were able to also investigate and find out you know what I mean so for me at some point it might be making sense to say we you know May you know it's it's our discret and our discretion we could do it because uh keep the keep the stuff by law but it seems very restrictive that if we get some serious allegation anonymously that it seems our policy is telling us we can't even see if there's an objective way to get more information on there which you know and and I look

076to you to see if there's a if there's a reason we shouldn't start to look to to add that or not um but I just it strikes me as very right it's very limiting saying we will not do this and I'm like well what if it's a serious allegation that might be true and we have a way to look at it that yeah so I my my reaction to that is I think most of the time if you're really talking about a serious allegation you're probably talking something about something that does require action by law I struggle to think about sort of what could be serious that wouldn't be covered by that um I would say more generally if that really did come up um we always have the right to set aside our own

077policies I vote um and I think the third Point sort of thinking about just the general world and how things come up and and the reason for having a firm policy um is that if if we have the May there it does compel us potentially to evaluate it even if we go into an executive session to say we're not going to do anything and I am seeing a lot of clients dealing with um disruption in their community that they're people who are being targeted whether school committee members or administrators or what have you and there's this demand for they just shoot things out from the keyboard from a random email address they make up and are expecting action and I think it has been beneficial in many cases to say we don't handle Anonymous complaints

078like that and so I think it does in some ways create a important barrier protection and more often than like the five of us were elected official they can vote us out right but for Jim for Mike for Chris for building principles um I think if somebody's going to accuse them something they ought to be prepared to stand behind it and if we have those circumstances where it implicates a legal obligation then the policy allows for that so that'd be my thought Paul yeah and I think you you saying that you're hard-pressed to find one where it wouldn't be legally obligated and that's that's where I Look to for your expertise on you know because I read that I'm like okay so what not knowing what the what that list would be sounds like for

079the most part there's there's not there's not the Gap that I'm that a layperson looking at that might right yeah I mean just to give some examples of things I think about um you could have a complete sexual harassment you could have a Title IX complaint a title six complete which is is typically racer religious discrimination deadline being gender those all have some statutory regulatory background in them that really compels you to act because we're protecting all our kids or we're protecting our staff um and acting on any of those takes a good deal of information so you can't do it on a hunch right and it creates a liability for the district if we don't at least investigate those are the kind of things I think about typically people like well I'm just going

080to shoot this off the ones that are kind of like you know the stratum shouldn't have done that or Kelly shouldn't have done like you know those those are typically complaints their opinions framed as complaints and and um we're better off saying you're entitled to your opinion now um so that's that's my opinion on it yeah I don't know I think you're convinced me okay I'm just so was this did this come up as because our Council noticed a gap in our policies like is this part of just a regular review or yeah Laurie do you want to speak to sort of what precipitated this I just had to call our attorney about a circumstance that I became aware of and in that process we determined together that uh as a matter of fact masc

081had already uh updated parts of this policy and somehow we that didn't make it through our process but in any event the attorney had additional language that she wanted to add anyway so drafted something that would really put us in the situation pretty much as Mark described where it would cover the most serious things where you know you would feel like um you know you weren't doing your job if you didn't have an opportunity to follow up on a serious allegation what we don't want I think in response to your question Paul is sort of that slippery slope where we're now in the position of determining like what's important or what's serious enough to be further investigated everybody who writes to us I'm sure thinks their situation is is important and serious and I'm not

082saying that it's not but uh it does put the burden on the school committee then to be the judge of that and I don't think that's where we want to be and I think also policy in general that you know part of the purpose is to encourage behavior and I think the behavior that we want to encourage is for people to openly address their concerns with us and that gives us a a public way of handling it and a process that is transparent and I think if we if it's too loosey-goosey that's where we run into why did you explore this but you didn't explore that and how do we know that you didn't take our city you know I just don't see I I was concerned um enough to make sure that our policy

083allowed us to investigate those situations that really do need to be investigated and I'm not saying there's something that might fall out of that category but to Mark's Point um there are other ways that we could deal with that if if a unique process is needed okay anything else a solution instead of resolution is that like just a legal because that's what the attorney chose to use for words it's not a yeah it's no it's not legally significant in my mind okay all right is there a motion I moved to accept policy ke as presented second and roll call vote Paul aye Tina aye Aaron aye Lori aye and I for me thank you all right um next item is approval of minutes from the summer Retreat let's just take them one at a time

084July 17 2023 minutes anybody have anything on those motion to approve so moved hi Paul Katina Aaron Lori aye and I for me uh July 25th anything on those motion a second slipping their team I'm all about keeping consistency though aye Aaron hi Lori I and I for me all right warrant approvals Paul all right hold on one second just did these between July 1st 2023 and September 13 2023 I Paul Kendall authorized by my signature payables in the amount of 480 177.46 this includes general fund expenses of 400 566 dollars and 30 cents revolving expenses of 68 996 dollars and eight cents in Grant expenses of ten thousand six hundred fifteen dollars and eight cents we haven't yet heard from Mr Adams or Mr Kyra tonight which is unusual Mike you have anything for

085us we had a great opening uh really been a successful opening and I'm sure that Mr roundings will talk about the new Mendes school and his update so I won't steal his Thunder there um but in terms of some of the work that's been done over the course of the summer uh since we've last met publicly uh 36 summer curriculum projects took place um this this summer ranging from pittaway all the way to the high school I believe every subject matter was covered as well so really happy with the work that was done by our teaching staff over the summer to just improve our our curriculum instruction for our students new hire orientation took place thank you to a few of you who came to to meet our new staff at that day we had

08622 new teachers with us led by Jane geine and I uh also Jen Cutler I had a great presentation to share with them and now our our first year program goes on all year long our first meeting our first monthly meeting with that crew is going to be next Wednesday and we're also continuing to partner with menden Upton Regional as well as Milford for our year two three program and that will start next month um our first three days the staff was great lots of PD happening one of the highlights I think in terms of the administrative level was that we we had a traveling Road show we called it Christy Arnold Jen Cutler and myself visited all the different schools to present a variety of topics to our our staff ranging from obviously SEI

087strategies and SEL to talking about some of the goals for ours that that are within our strategic plan that we've been talking about as well as making folks aware and more aware of the bcap responsibilities and Decap responsibilities District curriculum accommodation plans and building curriculum curriculum accommodation plans to ensure that all students are getting what they need all the time and finally we've got several new curriculum programs that are up and running already at at Warren uh there's a program called ST Math which I think I talked to you about briefly but teachers are using that with our students and we were trained on a little bit this summer that's really to help all students but more most significantly will really be great for our El Learners um I ready K to eight is going

088to be instituted now for Math and dla from K through 8 to make sure we have great assessments Tool uh and information that will allow us to again serve students where they are we have implemented now investigating history at Mendez for all grade five it's a new history program that's deci approved and there's been some significant training that's happened for our grade 5 staff ultimately we'd like to see that grow Beyond grade five but this year we are only using it at grade five amplify science is a new program at the middle school which you're very excited about and also based on some conversations with some Middle School Math teachers we have um determined that we want to Pilot what's called IXL at the middle school which is again another wonderful online program that allows

089teachers to present not only enrichment students but also some remediation for students in all areas actually we're piloting mainly in math but IXL has provided us the opportunity to to utilize it for all subject areas throughout the Middle School thanks Mike any questions for Mike Jim thanks and actually I can speak to the IXL just as a personal experience my son used it as remediation and additional supports and it was really a powerful tool for him so which was was really happy to hear that the Middle School's doing this so opening went well uh with the exception of we finally got summer last last week and uh leaving tonight it may be leaving this evening but um it was certainly was um challenging in some of the buildings to find cool areas and uh you

090know I thank the staff faculty staff the students and for uh no pun intended weathering the storm here or pun intended I guess um the grand opening of of Mendez uh on Saturday was was excellent well attended uh thank you to everyone who showed up I bet we had 1500 community members to go through that building I know there were what six of us giving tours from about 12 15 through 4 30. uh non-stop none of us took a break it was uh and these are about 15 18 minute tours and you just come back and grab more no longer than that mine weren't I just I had groups of a hundred you said blue wall yellow walls yeah right blue yellow um certainly we're still continuing to work with mushroots um you know it's

091always I've always said we need about a month to get schools underway so we can figure it out there's still a lot of construction in town there's certainly when you know lightning strikes and and things happen um you know everything happened thank Pete uh he did a really nice job of communicating uh for the Warren buses last week it was it was a challenge for sure um next meeting I'll give an update on enrollment just a brief preview we're up about close to 40 students from the end of last year but that was sort of expected with a graduating class of about 175. uh kindergarten class is at 220 now that first grade class that we thought was going to be a you know where are all those kids it's still in that 170 to

092180 range it's not they're not showing up um so I feel pretty comfortable now at least thinking that that is stabilized but the kindergarten numbers are up significantly the registration office and transportation office it's still constant it's everyone's coming in um you know daily to get a bus or to register for school and it's uh hopefully we'll settle down in the next week or so so I would say those are really the highlights of the beginning of the year I think staff feels a little more normal for some reason this year it's been it felt more normal than it has in the past three to four years um and and I very positive I actually had a kindergarten and a first grade teacher say to me when we were walking the building uh you know

093yesterday or the day before these kids seem more prepared than they were two years ago right so that's a that's a nice sign it was a good um comment to hear from a teacher like this this group is already further ahead than last year's so which is great thanks Jim um welcome to member updates so to start the end of the table Paul yeah I mean if we opened the building uh it was successful I think our biggest push right now is getting that playground done before the weather makes it prohibitive because we can't pour the rubber surface when it gets cold so that's the that's the push now uh we did what's up no I want to comment on that someone asked me about that earlier if you remember the push we had um

094for the high school field right to open it for Thanksgiving day we had we this is a real concern with the with the rubberized surface we had to redo the track right the the following year because we pushed them so hard that the weather was not conducive to actually the drying process and and um so I I totally understand when they were talking about it the other day in our meeting that this is critically important to make sure the weather is perfect for this or otherwise it's not gonna it's not going to settle properly but what's the like low temperature you can't go below is that I I don't know the details of it I know that the time is tight uh and hopefully you know September was hotter in the beginning of September was

095hotter than the summer had been so maybe uh maybe October or November will be mild and and we'll be out and the weather will cooperate it's not cooperating with us right now getting some of the but the structures are going in right now the first structures are are the polls are in and getting installed so and uh even despite our all our weather it was nice and cool and Mendez all week my daughter you know oh I'm sure I'm sure we all heard about it yeah yeah what was you know when I told her what's going on she wasn't too happy with me so my daughter apparently was given a tour by Mr Adams and said why does the high school have air conditioning it just doesn't she wasn't happy Tina yeah no I mean

096you know the my only update was also attending the the opening and I don't have anything additional to add other than well done it's a phenomenal building and I think the opening went incredible uh it was it was a really a great day for the whole Community not just the school system and it was really nice to see okay um yeah the opening I got to see my principal from fourth to seventh grade he was in attendance and that I got a selfie with Mr apachella which was awesome um no very well done uh the only other comment I had was I loved the change in transportation and getting the bus routes via email and that was a I think a great Improvement okay thanks um Lori anything great opening day great day for the

097community so I'll just um elaborate first I want to you know express my appreciation for everybody who's involved in setting up the opening day it was nice to see Paul finally being uncomfortable with people publicly thanking him for his efforts as much as we've tried and I hope that was more effective but I thought the the whole day was was really well set up the except for the mic cutting out um and I thought just I'll finish the story on that after that um so that was one the other thing I was gonna say and Lori skipped over this but Lori and I both went to sort of the first orientation day for the new staff so some of these people look familiar to me and yeah I just thought I wanted to commit Mike

098and Jim for the small part that I saw at the beginning just their introductions and really setting positive tone and sort of welcoming them to the community um engaging them as people without without immediately getting into whatever else the logistics were that had followed about where you could try debadge and all this kind of stuff and it was neat to be a part of that and then to really just see people on their first day and then um on the first sort of full staff meeting that again you know Jim just did a really nice job setting the tone welcoming everybody back full Auditorium I think it was all staff right I mean every everybody who works the district and Lori you know said a few words as well so it was just it was

099it's a really exciting time of the year I think for everybody involved and it was it was fun to share that and to see them in the fact that's all I have so if nobody else has anything else we have a motion to adjourn so moved second well all right Tina hi Erin aye Lori hi and I for me we are adjourned have a good night everybody good night thank you Mark thanks