School Committee Meeting 6/10/25 5pm

001And we're good. All right. Thanks everyone. I'd like to call this meeting of the BR Wilson Regional School Committee to order. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Thanks everybody. Um we're going to start with public comment. Uh as we all know, public comment uh limited to items on the agenda for tonight. Um no complaints or comments about individuals uh only operations and uh we try to keep three minutes. But if anyone else would like to come up public comment, please come on up. State your name and address, please. Sorry. Don't right ahead. My name is Julie Lee. I South Street in

002Maryland. I will be very brief because I know your agenda is long. Hello committee members. My name is Julie Lee and I have four kids at the home. I have one rising eighth grade girl, one rising ninth grade boy, one rising 10th grade boy, and one rising 12th grade boy. I'm here tonight because I believe in my kids school and I believe all kids here deserve the very best in opportunity. I'm here tonight to respectfully ask this committee to have a very real and thoughtful conversation tonight about school choice numbers and how they come to be recommended. What process is used to determine which grades give recommendations and which do not. I invited you all as you share in this robust discussion to consider that the development and growth of these young people does not

003solely does not rest solely in the academic classroom. It is further developed on our athletic fields through our visual and performing arts, in leadership and mentoring opportunities, and in the language and cultural fields. Without sufficient and well members, we will not be giving our kids the important opportunities that will help prepare them for success and thinking and compassionate people. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Yeah. Good evening. Um, my name is Amanda Babakova. I live in Clinton. Um, I have a daughter going into Tahanto this year who's been in the district since she started kindergarten in Berlin. Um, and I echo everything that Julie just said. Um, we are looking, you know, not for a magic spot to be created just for my child, but if there's room, if siblings or children already in the

004district could be considered. Um, my husband and I, we're not part of Clinton's community. We've only ever been in Berlin's community. I'm on the board of Link for two years. Uh, we do tons of volunteering. My husband is involved in soccer uh, wreck um, week. He's on the board of that. We do everything that's in Berlin. We attend everything. So again, echoing, you know, the opportunities for all children, but I'm here also to specifically ask if there's room in the incoming kindergarten class if that could be respectfully considered. And I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. Hello Jason Carol. Uh I wasn't on talking but um I wanted to be a third wheel and um reiterate what the first two people said because I I think it's good that uh maybe 100% of the

005few people that are here have the same view. Um I I have a much different perspective than Julie, but we're on the same page with this. Um, she has four kids out of the district early. I have one child who's out of Clinton. Um, she's always lived in Clinton, but um like the the woman before me from Clinton as well. Um, my daughter is a a brillian kid at heart and um she she's 14 and a half and she doesn't know anyone in our town. So um to her to Hunt who is her family and um all her friends are here and um like Judy's kids my daughter has flourished here with all she gets she has all straight A through all three years of middle school and um and I know the only other

006Clinton girl in our grade both earn the highest honors every I I bring this up because um about a year ago someone um shows concern about opening it up to like Clinton or some of the surrounding towns. Um I don't know in bigger cities you have you're at risk of bringing in kids to maybe bring down the the end test whatever but I can say the the kids that have come here from the town I'm in um are all on the honor roll every semester at Toronto. So um I just ask that you be openminded in that regard. Uh, and the other thing that is direct related to my daughter, she's in the eighth grade. Uh, and as Julie knows, the the eighth grade's fairly large. They're they've been in the mid 80s for the

007past couple years. Um, even though they were in the 20s in Berlin for a few years, but um, as some of you maybe all of you know, um, a lot of those kids are leaving to St. John's and Aset and some Wester public private schools. So, it's estimated to be maybe in the high 60s, but it wouldn't surprise me if we come in here in end of August and the freshman class is in the low 60s or high 50s. So because that's fairly new to all of us and I think due to um you know the misinformation that the ignorance that a lot of the residents had about the budget that they don't really anymore that caused people to jump ship when they shouldn't have. So I think that's one more reason we need to

008be thoughtful about the changing course at least for a year or two open the door again to school choice. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else here for public comment? All right, we're going to skip over one thing out of order right now so that Al can bring something up that's a little timesensitive. Thanks, Mike. Um, so first of all, um, please join us. So, first of all, it's my pleasure to introduce to you our new principal of Bolston Elementary School, Robert Pelzoski. I I know that many of you had a chance already to meet him either at Berlin Bolston concert last week helping us to rearrange the stage or at the BES talent show are at BES meetings of students, staff and families. So welcome. Um Rob comes to us with nine years

009of experience as a sitting principal. What I mean by sitting principal is is currently is a principal at Chaffy Elementary School. Um just a little background of the process it took us to get here to um for Rob. We had when we posted the position, we had 23 candidates apply for the position of wanting to be working in our school district. Um we vetted it down through a screening process that I know two school committee members were on as well too to 17 candidates. From there we interviewed seven candidates um were asked to be interviewed. We narrowed that process down to three. I say that thanks to the interview um piano and also to the help of that our lead teacher Briana Pasqual um we got our three finalists. Um, the three finalists had a

010chance to meet with admin, meet with parents, meet with students, meet with staff. Um, from the meet and greet, we actually had a chance to send out 479 emails to families and staff throughout our entire district to get feedback because that was something that we heard loud and clear from the community. Um, that went out to staffs, to moms and dads, and everyone from bees. Um, I thank um the 42 um staff and families that completed that survey. Um and from all the the 42 that responded was overwhelming for um Rob to become our our new principal of Bolson Elementary School. Rob officially assigned his contract and we officially welcome Rob to the BBRD. So welcome um Rob to to the district. Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here. Um I just

011first of all it's great to finally see what room I'm as any future principal does. they research and they watch school committee meetings and I wonder what this what room do you actually um yeah that's that's what we do and we watch all as much as it's just it's I'm on a data gathering course right now I'm just trying to learn everything I can possibly learn about bees um they have some amazing things going on the algo principal has been amazingly helpful to me she's worked with me um emailing helping me set up interviews helping me just shadow her for the day, which has been absolutely terrific. Um, her dismissal process is amazing. I I just going to, you know, take that and just bottle it all up and start to try to figure out

012where I go. So, I'm, as you can imagine, I'm on a complete research oriented mission right now as we speak. So, so thanks Rob. Welcome to BBRSD. So, let me ask you the question. Why BB RSD? You could go anywhere you you want with the the resume you have of nine years as a sitting principal. So nine years I've been in K2 and I was really really looking for something with older students. I think I did my best work with the older kids when I was in my Elm Park in myster school time at inner city school with K to six and I I and I just love the way that the older kids work with the younger kids and I really and unfortunately for me with the K to2 after they leave you have

013no control over their abilities over what they're learning over their scores and it was it's it's really something that I wanted to take and so when I in wide west it's amazing I 23 I'm surprised you didn't 43 to 60 because um research it's just your district is doing amazing things. The energy just the other night at the Korean concert the um the other night at the talent show I it's just exactly what I was looking for. It's um it's very similar where my student my children went to school and passed in and I'm really excited just to join be part of this. Welcome. Welcome. Thanks. told you I have to run because I am we are hosting an ice cream social for the second graders who are going on their way but I'm question

014anybody thanks a lot so excited okay next Sorry about that. So, some other staffing change I'd like to um inform school can make them aware of. It's um please know that I know there's been a lot of talk about changes and things taking place. Um I'm officially letting the the Berlin Bolson Regional School Committee know what is officially happening um tonight as well too. Um I haven't shared some of this information early because people have to officially sign their contracts. By the way, all contracts are being vetted through our attorney Sean Sweeney um which is something that we have not done before. Um, and so we're making sure that all they're they're going through him and making sure that people sign off on their contract before we officially announce. Um, and just for the logistics

015of that, for example, Rob making sure that we have his contract signed before we say to the other two candidates that applied, "Thank you for applying or not, thank you. We need to make sure we're doing this the right way." So when it becomes official, that's why I want to be able to share that information with you. So there is a process that we're trying to agree and again vetting all our contracts um through Rob. Next change that's taking place. Sally. Um, we're both happy and sad to tell you about some some movement taking place with Sally. First of all, congratulations to Sally. She's been officially appointed to the role of an assistant superintendent of Fata School in Lawrence, Mass. Um, with with what an accomplishment for her both educationally, financially, and her career. And

016I know Sally would like to say something and speak to the school committee as well too. Sally, sure. I just wanted to say um first of all, it's it's bittersweet because I've really enjoyed working here for the last nine years. Um it was it's been exciting to work my way up through three different roles here and to work with everybody. Um but you know going back to school to get my doctoral degree and getting the having the goal of becoming the assistant superintendent has been something I've wanted to do for a very long time and in the last several years of my life there's been some you know curve balls thrown at me. You know life gets in the way so I wasn't able to do it but um it's finally coming together and so

017for me to make a change this was a good time for me to do that because coincides with going to back to school and um I you know really enjoyed um meeting everybody at the new district and and uh and and the responsibilities that I'm going to be carrying out there. So I'm very excited about it but at the same time um it's bittersweet and I'm going to miss everybody and thank you all for you know being so supportive and helpful the years. Thank you. Thank you very much. [Applause] So, so we in education always want to advance and and here is a great opportunity for Sally as well too. So, we wish you well and congratulations to I personally Sally truly appreciate your help these past nine months. You've been an incredible support and

018will be missed by everybody. So, please thank you for that very much. So, so with an opening taking place at the curriculum position um at the secondary level, I am pleased to let you know that Renee Leandre um is uh dedicated in forwardinking education with over 20 years um of experience in in schools. Um she holds a master's degree in education with a concentration in reading. uh is licensed to in Massachusetts as a pre-K to 12 administrator, as a prek to 12 reading specialist, as a grade 1 to6 elementary educator, and a grade 5 to 12 English language arts educator as well too. Uh familiar with 504 pro programming, title n title grants program, um respected for her collaboration among leaders, style and and and commitment to our district. Um Renee is wellprepared as she's

019going to take on the role of director of curriculum and grants for grades 6 through 12. So we welcome Renee into that new position. We're thrilled to have her join us. Renee, congratulations. We look forward to Dev. Anything you'd like to say? Yeah, very excited. Um, I think it'll be a nice transition for me personally, um, professionally and I won't feel, you know, upset because I'm still working with all the same people. So, I think it's going to be a really nice, um, way also that we can transition the district to take a look at, you know, what fifth grade looks into sixth grade and start doing some of that work that we've been trying to do. So, I'm really excited about the opportunity. So, thank you. So, one of the things that we learned

020from every principal that interviewed for us, the new ones that were interviewing for the Boilston, was questions about our curriculum and where we're going with our curriculum and what does that look like. It was an eye openening to even us as as administrators when we're sitting there and they're asking us these questions that we still don't have the answers. So, adding Renee to into the team of John um will we give give us a good chance to take a look at all that and making sure that we're moving forward on that. Um any questions or concerns? Any thoughts? You left the singing off the resume. What's that? You left the singing off the resume. Oh, singing off the resume. Amazing singing. So, so any questions or concerns? And and here's my new book I'm reading,

021right? Rene Renee Brown. Claire is kind, right? Everybody, everyone knows that there's no other story here, right? We're really happy for Sally moving on. Congratulations. We in education want to our people to advance. Great opportunity for Renee. We're really happy she's still going to be part of the team. Still working with the team over at at Tahanu as well, too. So congratulations to both them. So we're really excited about um them coming on board as well too and the changes that would take place. Very typical this time of year in education go on school spring the amount of jobs that are out there right now for educators, teachers, everything that's out there right now. It's a big change that takes place. So we're really happy changing making some change but we're we're happy about those

022change and we'll be sadly missing Sally as well too. Lastly my last question. Sure. Um so are we backfilling Rene's is that position open? So officially wanted to make sure school committee knew right. So officially let you guys know tonight tomorrow lease is ready already been vetted the the job this again the important thing is to make sure I have contract signed school committee being notified posting the positions afterwards. I would never post a position and you say to me why is there an assistant principal job being open. So Lisa's been chopping at the bit right to post it but I said it can't happen until there are so many after we publicly make that announcement tonight. So I wanted to make sure that was happening. Okay. Lastly, um my last introduction for of a

023position um new is our athletic director. Um I I guess I really don't need to do too much of an introduction, but she since she's sitting here in the audience, ladies and gentlemen, our new athletic director is Julie Lee. Julie, can you join us on that? [Applause] Julie will be joining us as our new athletic director. We're finalizing contracts with Julie and she'll be officially doing some transition with Picaro. Um and will be joining us as of July 1st. Um, so we're very excited. So, Julie, any Come on. Any words? Come on. Because this school is gonna be asking you multiple times as an athletic director to come and present. Okay. Sure. Um, so thank you for the opportunity. Um, I've been here athletic arena at Tahondo for seven years next year. So, and all

024fall season, winter season, and spring season. Um, I know I have a lot to learn. I love to learn. So, I'm excited to do the learning. Um, but I think I have a good handle on athletics and I think athletics are just really a good extension of the academic classroom. So, I'm excited. I'm just excited to do it because I love athletics. I love kids sports. Julian, I had a chance to have a couple meetings. Um, lot of lot of competition. 20 something people applied for the athletic director position. Um, thanks to Lisa as well too. Sat on that interview panel with me. um as well as a dad um and and Rich Cameron as well too and um Julie is was our top candidate. It's also nice to promote from within as well too.

025We did with Renee and with Julie as well too creating that So congratulations and welcome. Questions for Julie. Congratulations. So excited for you for our district. Absolutely. Congratulations Julie. And and the last thing I want to just sort of compass on the staffing updates. Um, as you might be aware, um, for first time we were putting out reassurance letters from the district office. A lot of times they were coming out from individual schools and the reassurance letter and we're we're still in in the process of negotiating contracts and I know we'll talk a little bit more about that in executive session, but we send out letters saying to people, we're making sure you're coming back and the reassurance that you have a position. This way they don't collect unemployment, but at the same time, we're

026we're knowing what our staffing is. Um, as of today, we're we're looking at 100% of our teaching staff returning to Bolston Elementary School and about 99% of our staff at Berlin Elementary School um returning and we have a couple special education movements that's taking place as well, too. But we're happy to say that um we're we're in in great position for staffing. And again, if you you ever doubt, look at School Spring, the amount of positions that are open right now in the competition. But right now we have no um postings that we're playing because as right now everyone's planning on coming back and working our district which is a great sign for us as well too. So I wanted to give you update about that questions on any of that taking place with staffing

027updates. Again a lot of conversation out there I'll always make sure it goes from school committee first from school committee and there'll be a community letter that will go out to everybody tomorrow talking about Sally Renee Julie but wanted to make sure you saw first and then you'll see postings come right right after that as well too. Thank you very much. Thanks for going on about that. Yeah. No, thanks Al. Congratulations to Sally, Julie, Renee. Thank you very much. Um, not to rain on anybody's parade, El, but I have to be the guy that be the jerk. It's sort of my role. Um, I had no less than over the last couple weeks, no less than seven different people from all walks of life, parents, employees, administration reach out to me and say, "What's going

028on in the district? why we lose so many people. I heard this person's leaving, that person's leaving. They're leaving because of this reason. They've got complaints about this or that. As committee members, I just want to remind the committee, we shouldn't be out there participating in the rumor mill, gossip, anything like that. It ends up getting back to people. We just recently got over a pretty expensive settlement of a lawsuit for just that reason. Um being sued for saying something about employees or former employees. So, I just want to make sure everybody understands that as much as we love the people in these positions and that we think it's great being parents and having our kids at these schools, our role on the school committee is the business side of the schools. And as the

029business side of the schools, we're an employer. And as an employer, we have certain obligations and employees have certain rights. and the the variety of people who came to me and mentioned something about they heard this, they heard that, they heard something from this per certain person. These people would never reach out to me in real life. They they actually probably talked about me to some people in real life. Fair enough. Well, whatever. I own that. But the fact that they were comfortable enough to approach me that they were concerned about this given our history with recent lawsuits. I just want to make sure everybody's we shouldn't be talking about anything about any employee issue outside of the proper arena scope of these meetings. So I just want to make sure everybody has that reminder.

030If you're in the community and you're asking someone for the inside scoop on why is this person going, what's happening there, just understand when they tell you, "I'm sorry, it's a personnel issue. We can't discuss it." It it's it's truly is a personal issue, right? Sally and I were having conversations way earlier, but I'm not out there sharing that information. It's personal information. my conversations after the interviews with Julie, my conversations with Rob. I still have to make other phone calls, which by the way, again, I'll be presenting the school committee shortly, but we need some HR help. Right now, it's myself, Patty, and and Aaron as a superintendent for the other candidates that didn't get the Bolson elementary job. I still owe them that conversation, that respectful conversation I had to have with them,

031right? But I had to do that in a timely manner. All of that needs to take place. the conversations with Renee. I have to be respectful that I know everyone wants knowledge and information and I appreciate that, but I promise I'll give you in a in a very thoughtful, mindful way. So, I'm respectful. We're in an HR business. We don't really have an HR department, but we're dealing with a lot of human resource here and we have to be careful about that. And my job is to protect this district and not to get us being sued, right? And making sure that we're handling this the right way and having those conversations and sometimes very difficult conversations. There were a lot of highly qualified people for the athletic director's job. But I'm I'm not going to

032announce Julie getting the position of that, which we're thrilled for, without me having the the professional conversation with these people that didn't get the job. So the next time when a job might come up, they're going to reapply because they're going to say, "I was treated respectfully. I was treated the right way." Instead of them seeing online or seeing in social media or seeing at a school community, I guess I didn't get the job. I sat and had conversations with every one of those people to make sure they knew reasons why. And they want to know why. why didn't I get the job? How can I do better next time? So, that's the reason why I'm not sharing all that information till till it's able to share it with you publicly and being respectful to

033everyone involved. So, please any questions, bring them to me. That's I'm just trying to make this the right way. They the the golden rule with HR is if you make a mistake, it's going to cost you a lot of money. So, we're just trying to make sure that's not happening. All right. Thanks. So, now that that's out of the way, again, congratulations. It's Yep. Sorry. It's pretty it's a nice feeling to have sort of roll from one year into the next without a lot of disarray and no plan but like congratulations to Sally for moving on but there's immediately a plan in place to take care of that and congratulations Rene's plan in place for that and job posting tomorrow for the assistant principal job ready to go as well too. So and then to

034hear all the people who are coming back budget sorted out that's pretty cool too. Uh all right back to the top of the agenda please. Uh we are at the consent agenda. We have some minutes on there to approve. Can I please have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So move. Lori second. Yes. Would anyone like to discuss it? All right. All in favor? I. Anyone against? I'm so sorry. So Lyn Roast is sitting here taking notes, by the way, so everyone knows who's this one at the end as well. So she's our admin assistant. So she's being mindful about taking our notes. She's been subbing in for us. Everyone knows her in the community of Bolston for sure has done amazing work as since Nicole has left to become a mom. So, thank

035you. So, I just want to make sure you know who's sitting at the end of the table. Um doing her very best to take notes. It's been a pleasure working with her these last couple weeks as well too. All right. Motion passed. Al, thank you. Uh next up is the school committee reports that I'm going to go out of order here again and uh Beth if you would like to start about the scholarship. Okay. I just want not the vote, just the um you wanted to say something. I wanted to I wanted to thank Carol Young and Rich Mariani for their continued work reviewing all of the Moses Reed Tyler scholarship applications. There were 12 of them. A lot of paperwork to go through. Um they go through it really thoughtfully and efficiently and it

036was amazing to watch how much thought they put into each application and looking through them and they really helped me learning how to do it. It's the first time I've done it. They were very helpful. Um, and I wanted to congratulate the 12 recipients. Um, two were class of 2025 graduates. Um, Jackson Money from Tonto and Todd Matsy from Asabet. Totty was one of the first Asovet applications in quite a long time. Um, the other recipients were Gretchen Munter, Mario Day, Satie Michaelelsson, Aiden Clisham, Jamie McNamera, Patrick Clisham, Evan Schultz, Morgan Schultz, Jordan Money, and Paige money, and we gave out close to $21,000 in scholarships um of various amounts each one of the students. Congratulations. I read the P the the letter that was in there. This originally started with a $20,000 gift and

037you're giving out $21,000. That's some pretty good uh management from Yeah. It's impressive. 1930s or something, 1920s. It's really impressive when you look back into it. That's what how they maintained it. And you know, it's a it's a it's a small scholarship to these kids, but it's a it's a big small scholarship. And just watching the way that the kids are able to stack these small scholarships to make college so much more attainable was really it was eye opening and I appreciated learning it. My daughter's a junior but yeah it was it was interesting. We should do a case study on that Lisa for the personal finance. How many scholarships are left on the table? How to make $20,000 last for 100 years. Yeah. Seriously. And just for the record, I I have to give

038credit to Beth. Like MASS, MASC says your job as school committee members to take as much as you can off the plates of admin. She did it all from the thank you cards to the ending and come and get notepads and letterhead and stuff like that. So, thank you. You took that all up us and did it all on you as a school committee member. So much appreciate that. So, thank you. Nice work on that. Thanks, Ben. Does anybody else have anything? Uh, so next up, so Beth and I mean, sorry, um, sorry, Jess and Penny, you guys both asked me to put some stuff on here to talk about school committee, uh, goals and self-evaluations. Yeah. All right. Go ahead. All right. Um so some of the conferences that I've been to for MISC

039they talk about operating protocols. Um right now we only have our handbook um that is circ 2021 I believe um that's functioning as that. Um but I learned that MSC can come and work with us to develop operating protocols that we all discuss we agree to we sign with the superintendent as well. um just expectations and conduct um which some of the handbook certainly talks to um is a great place to start but there's a lot of examples available to us from NAF um of operating protocols then are the basis for the self-evaluation um and so that is something that we have done in the past we got something from MASC and kind of um personalized it to our committee Um, but I think it was hard because we were kind of going over based

040on like kind of rough goals and not specific ones that we had faced at the beginning of the year. Um, so I think you know as a committee we always want to do better and better things for our district. Um, so it is important that we do a self evaluation every year. Yeah, I agree. So, I know I don't think we did it last year. We definitely didn't do it this current year that we're in. I don't know that we actually set goals for the year before that, but we did we did set goals. I think it was like the 22 23 school year maybe. Um, and then we did a full self-evaluation. I think that was the year before you joined the school committee. Yes. The one thing I worked on. So I maybe

041it was that year. I lost track of though like because we were doing carols and then we're doing the vow and then I don't recall what happened. Obviously, you know, carols happened, but I don't know if that ended up going out or we received results to Carol. No, we sent it. We I know what happened. We sent it out and but it wasn't working or something. There was Oh, a new field director. Yeah, we had a new field director. We have a different field director now, but it would be completely different. We did Jess and I did a lot of work on the goals like like not the goals but the the self-evaluation based on the two self-evaluations we had that I had been a part of in the past but I think you had

042been a part of one of them. Yes. And yeah survey monkey. The survey was good. I feel like we as a committee didn't do the the work of setting the goals ahead of time. Yeah. So then you guys were kind of stuck with creating this survey that was very general. And I think obviously it's not something we're going to do tonight, but I think it's something that we should put on our, you know, and I think the reason why we didn't do it last fall was because we had a superintendent leaving. We had to hire a superintendent. We were going to do a permanent search. So, I think there was just a lot going on. The year before, I can't remember if we actually set goals for ourselves or if we didn't. Um I know

043that we did it one year um and and then we did the evaluation at the end based on the goals but I think bringing in MASC I don't know how much that costs but I think it's it's part of All right. So I mean that's a norainer. It's part of the package. We did it in 2021. I've got the protocols up that we came up with back with Susan. Yes. Um is that a DAA policy? No, I don't know that it made it into a policy. It was just silver document that we had around. We probably should formalize it a little better. Y that's great. Um yeah, so if you I was thinking, do you guys want to work on something over the summer to help us establish goals when we come back in September?

044Um and then we can't really do a self-evaluation if we don't know when we're evaluating oursel with no goals. So that would be tough. But if you want to start that up over the summer and do something about it, I mean I did I did find so we did have a policy called BA. It's evaluation of school operational procedures and there are nine things that are listed. Um so maybe it wouldn't be a self but maybe self-reflection. Um so one is communication with public, two is school committee superintendent relations, three is school committee member development and performance. Four is policy development. Five, educational leadership. Six, fiscal management. Seven, school committee meetings. Eight, performance of subcommittees of the school committee. And then nine, inter agency and governmental relationships. Um, and so within that policy, it says,

045you know, discuss the results and formulate new series of objectives. So, so yeah, I've got that in front of me here. So, those are sort of topic areas. If we were going to do goals, we'd probably write something specific around one or two or whatever. Um, I mean, things we know that we're working on next year, of course, is hiring a superintendent. Uh, continuing to get the finances in shape, uh, financials, um, and a strategic plan. Strategic plan is is one, and I know we also are talking about, uh, at least bringing up the idea of maybe trying to get some amendments to the regional agreement, at least around the calculations of things, budget. So that could be a community communication goal or something like that. Uh so if you guys want to get together

046over the summer and come back with something in September, we Yeah. Yeah. I think we had a subcommittee last time. It was part of the superintendent evaluation subcommittee which I think is now Yeah. superintendent search sub I'm there so much going on with that so many changes. You guys just want to It doesn't necessarily need to be a subcommittee. you just want to work on like a project or something. Yeah. And then do you want us to like propose goals? I remember what we did with Susan. She had that list and she came up with maybe it was her and Lii, I can't remember. You guys came up with the goals and I remember because I remember the community involvement because remember we had that signup sheet where we had to go to PTO meetings

047and all that stuff. Um and and as soon as you So it's linear, right? You guys get to do your goals. Yes. So then I can do my goals. Then my principles and directors can do their goals. We all shouldn't be having different goals. They all should be linear. So we can't do our goals unless the goals of the schooling as a district are done. The biggest goal that you have that you they're written for you is supporting that strategic plan and hiring a permanent superintendent. You're lucky you got two of them, right, that you're going to be working on. But that will all be in line with us, right? As well. We're going to be supporting the the strategic plan as as superintendent as principles all the way down the line. It's got to

048be linear, but it starts with you guys doing your goals first. So, to Mike's point, if you do them during the summer, that'll be helpful for me to write my goals so that when I meet with principles, when we're doing our leadership retreat, they can start working on our goals as a group all the way down. And that their goals were reflective in our teachers. So, it's got to go all the way through. Yep. So, maybe we'll do that over the summer and then we can present that in our at our August meeting and people can discuss it and decide if they want to vote. I think we should pick three. I think like yeah figure it out over the summer and three goals and too many or too much we did three right yeah

049and the other part of that is you want to be looking at the evaluation system the self-evaluation afterwards how does that so if you're having goals how are you going to eval yourself on those goals so make sure you have that well that's the issue is because it was two separate self-evaluation systems and that's where we need MASC to come in because the first time we did it we actually wrote a self-evaluation it was an extremely cumbersome and tedious process do you remember cuz you compiled that that's the same thing that we've been doing. Yeah, we used there were two different survey monkeys. Yes. One of them was more generalized and then the second one we personalized. I believe it was Susan and I that changed some of the questions to make it more for

050this district. Why don't we why don't we do that? You guys I can just have that she has access to it, but I'll give I'll send it to her so you guys can use that and see just a document from 325 school districts that I'm doing. same thing. So you don't have to even reinvent the wheel. If you go on their district website, you'll see school section 325 and a mile. You know, and it'll be good to have input from people. I don't know if this is allowed, but to you know, to look at the BAA and see what you know people would want to send, what their three priorities would be for the school committee. So then compile that. Yeah. The official official hall of people look at BA policy BA. Why don't you

051guys go through all that and then yeah, whatever you need, email um you know, whatever it is, you know, our priorities would be or whatever um topics or or whatever and then yeah, August would be a good time to talk about that. Present that in August and then the committee can vote in August. Yes. Yeah. And then I can stop doing mine and then my principles when you just come come back and do the goals reflective of of what school is doing. All right. All line. Um I have a quick question before we finish. So what's your process for getting to come in. We just ask them because they look you know Facebook thing like we're going to go whatever town and yeah that's something we uh well I was going to bring up during

052the calendar discussion later too because there's a couple of notes or tweaks we might need to make that different things like that. Another um so another thing that's on the list for tonight that I want to talk about right now is school choice. um whatever the conversation ends up being, uh Beth I think has a good idea about getting some sort of consistent information about it for future. So Beth, I'm asking you if you want to put together some sort of project like we talked about earlier about getting all the data possible we can about school choice and just coming up with a a direction or a path or plan, whatever you want to call it. Um again, working with the administration over the summer. Uh Lisa, if you want to be part of that,

053too. I would love to. Yeah, you guys could work together on something and then come we have an earlier discussion next year and we kind of put a plan in. Yeah. Cool. That's great. All right. Cool. Um yeah, so that's what I had on to talk about there on my report. So we'll we'll go back to you. How about that? Great. So the only other thing I wanted to add is is two things. Um first of all, Tanto graduation. Uh on on Sunday, June 1st, 2025, we celebrated TanTo's graduation. Um 56 of our seniors graduated and fulfilled all requirements to graduate from high school. Um it was a wonderful event. Um we were very proud of our kids. Um I thank school members that were able to attend as well, too. Um this is a

054pinnacle reason of why we do this work every single day, every single month. Um and it was it was just a really nice event. Lisa and her team of Renee and Rich um did a great job. Um, kids had all, as Mike can attest to as well, too. They all had a firm handshake as they walked across that stage and accepted um their diplomas. We worked on it a long time, but we certainly were giving them um lifelong lessons. Um, so I thank you guys for the work. It was a really nice event that day. We're very proud of our kids. Um at the next meeting in August, I am going to have um our senior guidance counselor is going to be coming in um and giving us the direction of where those students are

055going, what colleges and universities are they going to, what job force are they going to, um what are they doing as they're moving forward. It's the one piece that we as an educational system don't have access to. They all say they might be going to Harvard or this, but once they go off to those colleges, we can't always track them afterwards, but it's important to see where our kids are getting accepted to and where they're going off after they graduate from TAT. So, thank you on that. Next thing is calendar. So, we're still revising the calendar. Um, so, um, first thing we'll I know Mike will talk during, um, executive session about negotiations. Um but right now our first day of school on the calendar is still August 28th. The first day for students is

056August 28th. Um we did find another issue after I cannot tell you how many people vetted this calendar including the people in this room. We found one more issue on May. Um it should be 20 not 21 days for staff. I'm not sure how we all we read it reviewed it and reviewed it but someone brought it to our attention today. So we're going to make another revision. So, at the next we'll get that out. I don't need you to vote on it again. I will just sort of bump everything. I can't tell you how many people looked this and we still didn't see that one um extra day that was in there. Um so, we will make sure that we get that out to you as well, too. But please know the official start

057of school is August 28th still for students. So, no change on the first day of school. We're not going after Labor Day. No, we are not. We are still starting in August. No, just saying. Just stop. August 28th. No change to earlier either. No change to earlier either. Nope. All right. August 28th our date. There is an issue with the May that will bump us out actually a day in uh in June. So, but we'll get that a revised count. That was literally just brought to our attention today. So, I'm sorry about that, but we'll make sure. That's just a tight ball though. That No, that's gonna get you to Junth. No, no. June June 17th, I think it is right now. That'll get I know I'm only allowed two snow days. I got it

058already. I got to tell you, you're going there, huh? started after Labor Day with the weather being hot in August and September and so cold right now. I'd rather go to school with cold June with no AC in these buildings than as you're sitting there wrapped up right now. Time times are changing. I don't know. Labor Day is time. Um and we do have to be mindful of June as well too. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Those are that's it. Thank you very much. All right. Cool. Next will be a director of finance and operations. All right. So, uh you have a memo that uh we shared with you on um sort of modifying our print services a little bit. Um so, uh what we're looking to do is to start using Follow Me Printing.

059I've been using it for a number of years. Uh you send print jobs to a workg groupoup printer. You have your badge. You walk up to the printer. you click your badge and um your print jobs come out. It's it's that easy. Um it gives you a lot more control. I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally printed something in color that was large and oh my god. Um and it's surprising when you see the actual cost of color prints. Color prints are about three times as expensive. Um maintaining and keeping up with all of the small printers we have is very very costly. Um, if you think about it, uh, a small printer is at least three times as expensive as a large work printer. Um, so you'll see we are looking to

060reduce the number of desktop printers from 63 to 17. That will not happen overnight. We are not tearing printers out of um, screaming teachers fans. Um, we are going to um, we're just gradually doing that. That's will be a strategy to that. It will it will a little bit we'll we'll work them through it. Um what will largely happen is we will um you know stop having those unmaintenance plans and as they kind of reach their end of life they'll move on and we'll continue to encourage. We absolutely recognize there are staff who should have printers and there are some printers that are necessary. My office has a printer that is specifically dedicated to printing checks, right? So we um print checks. Our big work group printer cannot print checks. So, we have a printer

061that's specifically dedicated. I the day I showed up, my very first day in the office, I handed um the former director of technology my printer. I said, "I don't want this. I'm 10 feet from a printer. Um it's not that hard for me to go do it. I'm I'm a big believer that if we're going to do something, we're going to lead by example and we're going to do it that way." Um so, again, we're not pulling these away from people. We're not um eliminating them overnight, but we're going to bring them down to a more manageable number. Ideally, we can use that money to help service students to help provide more resources to the district or deal with budget challenges they come. So, you know, as we go um we'll be a little more

062limber, a little more um fiscally responsible uh and um we'll get used to it. Yeah, we're bringing this to you guys as a school committee because it is cost savings, but it's not going to be the most popular thing that's taken place in our district. There are a lot of small printers, as you know, that people have and gotten used to. Um, but it is cost savings for us overall. Um, we didn't want to get that out to to teachers and and community until we had a chance to run it through you guys and making sure that you're aware we're the reason why we're doing things. We're not just randomly doing it to to do it. It's it's a cost savings. It's what we should be doing. We also need your approval to enter into

063a fiveyear agreement. So anything more than three years we need to take fiscal place. This would mean entering into a fiveyear. So uh Aaron what happens now when someone prints something so they they're at their computer they select a printer print it and then 20 copies of whatever it is is sitting there on the printer waiting for them to come collect it. Yes. Sounds like a uh security issue as well. There is some security as well. Absolutely. You trying to get it home grab the coffee first and then forget it's there. They get lost. to get mixed up with someone else's stuff. Correct. Yes. Patty and I spent some time sorting through our print jobs just and the color, let's be clear, right? The color is very expensive to us as well, too. And and

064again, to be clear, we're not the intent is not to take printers away, but to start weing folks off and let some folks optionally decide to make that decision at first. I made the decision myself day one that that's what I was going to do. It's close enough that I don't need follow me printing to be able to just get up and go get my prints. So, um it's not that big a deal for me. I understand there are people who are a little further and and that's why you want to have the badge access. You want to have it for security reasons um and things like that as well. I'm curious like sometimes if you're making, you know, so many copies of it takes a while for that to come out. So I well

065I guess because then it's going to add time to people's day because they have to come and swipe it and and wait for it to come out. I think it's going to save you time when you're not sorting. So I just shared that Patty and I ended up um she and I sent print jobs at similar times. Um our print jobs were mixed together. We had to spend time sorting through. So what's happening right now is you may have you have a bunch of teachers in this building. You may have 10 teachers all trying to print at the same time and they're having to go sort through them. The power of being able to do this is to go click and those prints come right and these prints is a problem. You can print you

066can print print direct. Um with most of these we can set paper cuts so that they can print direct if they want to. Um, I honestly ha having had that ability, I I opt out of it every time because it's much more controllable for me to be able to walk up to a printer, click edge. Um, the other feature that I think was helpful is right now we have to go through an address book or enter your email address to have something scanned to you. I could just um use my card, click scan, boop, done, right? Scan job done. So, you know, with as with everything, there's there's some pros and and cons, right? Um, a definite pro is is is the savings. Um, again, we're not pulling these off people's desks tomorrow. The goal

067is to sort of wean people off and educate them on the benefits. And if we have conversations and people really need printers, we can have some of those conversations. Um, you'll recall everybody had Zoom not that long ago, right? And at some point I at my prior district had to start pulling that back in. We had Google Meet, right? Like you guys can use Google Meet. We're already paying for Google Meet. Let's start pulling that back. So instead of hundreds of Zoom licenses, we ratchet it back to a to a serviceable number based on very specific needs. The other the other piece and I should be the last one to be talking looking in front of me right now, but we're spending a lot of money on technology, right? We're buying Chromebooks. like we shouldn't

068be running off as much as we should be running off. There are some things that need to be run off, but there's other ways that we should be using the technology that we're in right now, right? And our students should be doing that and there's ways of doing that without wasting paper, right? Some things have to be run off and other things we we're spending a lot of money on Chromebooks. We asked the towns to give us money for those Chromebooks as well, too. So, we want to look at that. To forget the great paper shortage scare of the end of 2023 at BES and BMS, right? No, sir. Yeah. that paper. Oh, yeah. Thought we did. I think Lisa had a question. So, at first it's going to be kind of like a a

069wash costwise, right? But how much do you estimate it'll save over time? Um, I I I couldn't tell you that the hope is that we become the big savings is like from a a dollars and cents from day one, all of these printers that we have out there are going to cost us about the same, but we get the benefit of the technology. So, it's really going to be a wash from a a direct standpoint in terms of when people have this paper cut software. You very frequently see savings in paper and toner costs over time because people just like me, I will print something and and inadvertently print 50 copies of it. Oh my god, I printed 50 copies of that. I need to delete that. So I can go in, scan in, delete

070it directly from the printer or delete it from my desktop. Um, and then print properly. Um, so it it gives you a little more of that control so you're not sort of racing, oh my god, I just printed 50 copies of that. Um it also gives us a little bit of control and this is something you know the the intent isn't to sort of loom over people but we can you know see where most of our print jobs are coming from one department one situation we can have conversations about do we really need to print off this many copies of this do we really need to print off should we be using you know our technology instead based on what we're paying for so we can have sort of constructive conversations about that rather and

071you know going, "Oh my god, we're out of paper because ABC and we're not going to limit like there are districts that teachers allowed x number of copies, right?" And and we're we're not doing that. We're telling you that right now. And we actually work for districts that did that, right? To to help conserve, right? We're we're not doing that. We're just trying to be more costefficient without having to buy printers, helping to buy the ink, having to buy the toners that go along with that stuff as well, too. I'm curious, is it any thought to have students have access to some of those printers with their IDs? They do have IDs. I don't know how they use them, but you know, in terms of like printing out notes or power to take notes on

072that. Um, no, but we could I could entertain conversations around that. Have I mean, if I I'm guessing there would be some additional cost associated with that. I've seen districts that have sort of a student access printer Um many colleges have student access printers in places um for students. So it's it depends on I be very careful. I I worked for the rock subsidiary and I collected the overage bills from school districts. I be very careful with putting kids have just printing stuff printing in color very very expensive. You have to be very careful why that's presenting very solution and then tracked and the default is color right the default set for color right so so this also lets us control the default I hearing ad say I'll say that again former district um we

073moved over to this and um I I was probably the biggest culprit I would hit print and everything would come out in color and once we had it we were able to switch the default to black and white And you know, Aaron Osborne the biggest culprit of accidentally printing everything in color and you don't really appreciate that single that email that you print that looks like it's all in black and white with the single hyperl email address that is charging you for a color print and you're paying for the color just for that tiny little bit of blue ink. So Aaron, with these badges, if someone were to go to a printer and try to send an email about someone to someone, we can then track where that's coming from using a using like maybe

074they're scanning something at a printer and they're going to email it to themselves or someone else. We we know who that is. Um I I mean I suppose we we could I mean, you know, it would it would sort of give us sort of personal level. I don't think, you know, I I don't ever we don't have the time or the energy to be sitting there monitoring that. But if there was a reason, if there was a reason to have to like the same uh we gave access to students and they decided to do a prank and send a copy of something to a bunch of people, you'd be able to track down what printer it came from, who sent it at what time. Correct. Okay. Any other questions? One other question. So, just thinking

075like a lot of teachers say they don't have time for a bathroom break. So, are you going to have like printers on each floor in each of the wings so they can run down rabbit between? Um, so I mean we've added one here. Again, we're not getting rid of printers and we're we're open to conversations. We're keeping a number of printers um available. We'll have conversations about how that happens. Um rather than just again pulling them all. They're not all pulled day one, but there going to be conversations about can a team of middle school teachers share a smaller work group printer that we hang on to, right? rather than having every single teacher have an individual printers next to them that's color that's you know so at first it might be a little bit

076higher cost and then over time as you begin to get rid of because you're going to have this cost we're going to get this new copier and then we're not forcing people to change their habits we're asking them to do it over time so people might still be using the old machines even though we're paying for the new one contract right now that's all packaged Right. The ones you see are Yeah. I mean Ah, I see. So then when that those are done, then we'll start phasing those out and you'll just have the big ones. I think it's way better for my business. It's ext. It's significantly cheaper to maintain the larger machines. Um we have a smaller machine now. We had a larger machine. It lasted for 10 years. It cracked the bed. We

077bought a cheaper, smaller machine and the toner is like 10 times the price. So I am in full support of this idea. I like it 80 pages in there. Yeah, exactly. And the toner it's so much cheaper to maintain the machine. Uh just in sort of to conclude uh this five years should match the life cycle all of our our multi-function devices. So at that point we'd be looking to sort of renegotiate a new lease with either Xerox or or look at at other options. Um there are multiple there's a state contract there's an MHC contract for copier it's a very become a very sort of commodity based industry um so you know our intent wouldn't be in five years to start looking at the next four years to start next technology please have a

078motion to authorize the director of finance and operations to enter into the reference 5year lease contract with Xerox resulting in a monthly cost of $2,650. So all right. Would anyone like to comments? Good. Any final comments, questions? Thank you. All in favor of the motion? I. Anyone against it? All right. So that motion does pass. Thank you. Is that all you had? That's it. Perfect. All right. Thank you. Director of curriculum and grants grades 612 and Sally and Stevens. Thank you. So over the winter we had Pam G and Z Janetti which are uh who both work for teaching learning alliance come in and do a presentation to outline the process that they would use to work with our district to create a new strategic plan. Um and we just have haven't gotten a chance

079to vote on it yet. So, um I did submit some materials to the drive for you to look at which were basically u just a review of everything that they went over over the winter. Um in short summary, basically they will um come in and work with Renee and Al and put together some focus groups to collect feedback and input from stakeholders about what we people feel that um is needed for the strategic plan using surveys. um they're going to be working on creating new missions and visions, core values, and then putting together the strategic plan. Um so, but this time um we need to have a vote on that so that we can get that process going. Uh in the project proposal, it gives an outline of all the steps that they're going to

080take and also the cost. Um if you need that, I have and we still have that discount rate that we're getting that they were giving to us last year. So, we want to be able to lock that in, right? higher. The the other part you you everyone needs to be aware they're going to do a SWAT analysis, right? So for people that aren't familiar with that is they're going to do our strengths, our weaknesses, our opportunities, our threats. It's called SWAT. They'll do that with school committee. Right? You want to talk about gathering some good information that you'll be able to use for your goals. They're going to do with the advent team. They'll do that with the um teachers. They'll do that with families. They'll do that with communities and really get out and

081reach and say, "What do what do you guys think as a whole are our strengths? What do you think as a whole our weaknesses are? What are our opportunities and what are our threats?" Our biggest thing as a school committee is making sure that we get people to attend those events, right? They're going to be after at evening events where we're going to ask the community to come in and come participate asking the parents. We really want to make sure we have input, right? There's a lot of people making a lot of noise, right? And then when it comes down to the part that we really need their input, we're not seeing that. So we really need to make sure that we really push this out and they have a nice way of doing this.

082This was very helpful for us, right? When we did this in previous districts, um it's really eye opening to get to really hear what you sometimes hear from a small amount of people and what you get to hear from the whole community of what they really feel about that and that will help drive our goals as well too. Um so we're really hoping that we can get this started. This is Rene's goal, right? So one of the things that is her her first goal is is working in developing and getting the strategic plan in place. The goal is to have this next year right so that the new superintendent comes on board publicly. The superintendent Hampton Wolverham said to me on his last my last day in June said the biggest gift I could have

083got was having a a completed strategic plan handed off to me and that will be our goal that we're going to do for the new superintendent coming on board next year as well. Al so what uh do you need a vote on this for the money? What's the vote going to be? Um, oh, sorry. So, the total cost, um, I have is 18,750. So, what we're asking the school committee, I'm sorry, I should have we should have made that a motion. So, we're asking the school to school committee to approve $18, 750 $750 to begin the process of doing a strategic plan for the Bur and Wilson Regional School District. This is just the beginning of the process. This is not Is this going to Is this soup to nuts? is going to include a

084finished dish soup to nuts. And by the way, if you if you look in the the broken down Yeah, I see it. If you look also they they gave you examples of what final ones look like, right? Um Canton Public Schools, right? They have their completed one here as well too. There's a number of different ones what it looks like. Um and that's what we'll some examples of what we look like as well too. Was this in the budget? Was this in the budget? This was not in the budget per se, but it was not. So, where's the money going to come from for this? Um, we can work some things around to make it work. This is a priority for the school committee. I mean, it this is a priority. You can It's a

085small amount for thing to consider taking um taking from school choice if if that became necessary. Um, I mean, if this is going to develop the strategic vision of the district and sort of set things going for the next five years, um, I would think, you know, things like school choice are a place to make investments from when you can. Um, so that's, you know, and respectfully, it should have been that budget years ago when our strategic plan came to an end, right? Or the work that has been done. It should have been something that was always looking at. But this is a priority and this is what we feel as I'm I'm looking around at my principles and directors that are sitting in this room. We want this. This will be our north star.

086This is what we need. We need input from the community on this. But this is what we're telling you is the priority and this is what we need to do and this is the cost that's doing it. So this is why we're here. It's okay. Just make a quick comment. I also a lot of that presentation um that evening three months back when they made that the strategic plan can really help us push forward our budget right because they set those goals up so that then we can see really what we're needed and and and then it's clear for for the public to vote on as well. So I think that would and I and I also want to be careful here. So if if I I'm stepping out, Erin, please tell me. But working

087with contracts in new contracts, there is some cost savings there that we're we're getting. Um I'm trying to be careful here, right? Um so that we're going to be able to get this amount of money as well, too. Uh so maybe we should just put a motion out there and then we can talk about it and vote. So I please have a motion to authorize $18,750 to do the strategic plan as presented. Will that work? That work? All right, Lori. Move it. Jessica second. All right, questions. So Al, I wanted to thank you for this. Um I thought this was a really important point that you made in your interview as interim. um you've been talking about it since you were hired that basically we're ruerless like you know we're doing great work here but

088we need a direction and we need to know where our focus is and um I think this is also going to help us as you point out secure a full-time superintendent who's going to feel like we're we have a direction that we're going in and you're going to settle a lot of things like we're all going to settle together so I'm appreciative of that a lot of times our community and people on this board respectfully are have ideas like let's try this this year let's try this this year our fiveyear strategic plan if it's not in that plan. Great idea. We're going to put it to the side until we accomplish the goals that are in our strategic plan. A lot of great ideas, but we need to have a direction that we're going in

089as a district. And it's not just school committee's agenda. It's the entire community's agenda. I'm curious. So, I was looking at the add-ons. You could do it with one of the portrait of graduate for 20 grand. And so, we did that. Obviously, we're not doing that, right? But I hope that is going to be incorporated because there was like 30 people involved in that. Yeah. Pam is aware that we had worked on that already and said that we could incorporate it into every last step. So it's it is part of that whole okay also like a guiding like because that is right for the grand is kind of our what we want for our students here with yeah it'll be integration. Yeah she and I have awesome and then what timeline? So because there's community

090involvement there, we have superintendent search there hypothetically a cell phone policy that requires community engagement as well. So I didn't know are any of these going to be in concert with each other because that's like a lot of community involvement for parents to show up. It's really interesting. Right. So in in in Him and Wilberham when I left we did the strategic plan as I was exiting to make sure we had one in place so they can work together really nicely um and make sure that when you're having those community focus groups you can gather that information as well too. So really be helpful right? So one of the questions SWAT analysis right what are the strengths weaknesses opportunities or threats with administration right getting that feedback from community getting the feedback from school committee

091what are the strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats with school committee as well too right across our entire district that will be helpful for us as well too. Yes sir I I will say that um uh portrait of the graduate when we were at Hampton Wilham dovetailed uh very nicely with the strategic plan. it became part of it. There was even conversation about, you know, portraits of the students advancing from elementary to middle school, from middle to high school, right? What are the things that these multiple elementary schools, you got two elementary schools from two very different towns? What are those core skills and and things that a student should have when they're going into high school? How do we identify those? So, you can sort of backtrack from that port of graduate. And with Pam,

092we did discuss that perhaps a better name for it is portrait of a learner, right? It's really not the portrait of a graduate anymore. It's not a portrait of a learner. That that's the new So the other part is they're going to look at also like our NESD numbers. I know Mike every now and then mentions those NESD numbers looking at that, right? What are are we okay at our elementary schools? What are increased numbers? What's it going to look like five years from now? Are we looking at those population rates? And are we going to be able to if we're taking school choice? and what does that look like as they go through our entire school. So they'll look at all that information as well too that it's a huge it's a re huge

093self-reflection for us as a district. Okay. So is so like Tracy will be involved. So I'm just I don't know. So are these events going to be like one event multi kind of use because it seems similar that Yep. Yep. Again we got the calendar already set for the superintendent search. We're a little behind on this strategic plan because we're hoping to start it earlier. Um, but one of the things that we're going to do with the strategic plan is voting when we have our leadership meeting um as admin um which we have planned already the dates. One of the things that will take place is um they'll come in and do a squad analysis with us. So, we'll get that happening at the same exact time. But I can't make any promises to um

094the company until we're sure that we're you guys are going to approve this. Who? So, who would be the strategic planning committee? Because it says there's going to be six three-hour meetings. I mean, that's a huge time suck like to I think that's what you're trying to say just about having if it's either it's got to be completely separate people or it can't be done at the same time as that we're doing superintendent search because it's going to be too many or like the super like when we're having the interviews and all that because that's again multiple probably five or six three hour meetings. So, I guess are we as a school committee, are we going to divide and conquer that where we have a group of school committee members that are going to be

095doing this and then another group of school committee members that are doing the superintendent search and certain community members that are doing the strategic plan and certain community members that are or like or like I think what she was saying is can we overlap? I don't know how you would overlap doing superintendent search and this because it seems like a little bit of it is overlap at least the community events like I don't the community events. Yeah. Or you have to have different community members. You have to have a diff because you're never going to get people aren't going to be like, "Yeah, I can do 12 three-hour meetings this fall." Like, nobody's going to be able to do that. It's interesting you say that because he's laughing. I'm looking at Aaron over there because

096we had to do an election because so many people wanted to be part of the strategic plan. It became this whole political thing of so when you put that out, who wants to be on the strategic planning committee, you'll see many, many people in this community. So, it's not just school committee, right? We're going to ask people possibly from the select board, from Fincom, from the chiefs of police. Everyone gets to be part of this or have the opportunity to be on it. It was a huge thing. I was trying to narrow down people. What's that? 36 people. 36. It was how' you vote? They they voted. I mean, they all would vote. No, no, we had 36 people. 200 and something people wanted to be on this committee. We narrowed it down to That's

097great. I mean that is amazing. I don't think we're but so all right. So fun. So yeah. So you'll have a committee and then if we have a ton of people that come out for it then some people can do the superintendent or whatever. And they'll do they'll do stuff out. It's not all going to be like you got to be face to face too. Some of those meetings will be but a lot of they're just going to send stuff out to you and gather information as well too. We probably don't need to get into that details if we haven't even voted to either. So I'm sure it'll come together. Any other final questions? They're trained in this work. That's the work they do. Yeah. I just wanted to make like, you know, before we're

098saying, "All right, we're going to spend 18750." It's not in the budget. You just kind of want to make sure it's well thought out. Be mindful that we're having the same people. Yeah. I think uh you mentioned contract safety. 35,000. What? It helps. We pay 35,000 to hand. We're getting a discount here because she's a colleague of ours, right? And so she was a former superintendent giving us the discount from a couple years ago, friends and family discount. So we negotiated selling and I had to get down to this price. All right, cool. Can I take a comment? I just think about how enormous the principal search committee was and I mean you were picking names at that point. So I I have a good feeling on this. I agree. Yeah. All right. Final comments.

099Anyone? All in favor? Anyone against? All right. So, that motion passes, Sally. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Sally. Uh, on to uh subcommittee updates. Does anyone have subcommittee update for success in technology? Yes. Sorry, a lot of things. Um so we were um at the last meeting and it was a little while ago um but within the cell phone and social media and schools toolkit from the attorney general um part of their recommended process is to um to appoint an advisory committee. Um, and so I know like through some of our policies that's, you know, there's a process for that. Um, but I didn't want the subcommittee to, you know, take unilateral action without kind of discussing it within the full committee um to go ahead and try to to do that as well. Um,

100because there's community norms, but then also an advisory group. So just set up, you know, like a outreaching community and like come and hear someone from each of these places that have the three different policies to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. Um, and to hopefully move towards a policy. Would it make sense to wait and see what how the legislation turns out? Is there any Well, that's I was there anything active right now? There are bills being considered right now that are slated for this as far as I know. Yeah. Yeah. I saw a whole list of all right. I think it's important. I mean I've always felt that this is something that we should be looking into and when you look at all the other states that actually have fans on

101cell phones in school. Um, I I just think it's an important thing and I'm glad we kicked the can down the road on this. I know the students aren't going to like it, but we just had a friend who was at a different graduation who said that the cell phone bucket was their favorite thing because they actually interacted with other students. And when I think about students that we lose to St. John's, there's a brotherhood there. And the brotherhood is based on interaction. It's face-to-face time. It's the memories they're creating. We can have that here. Um, but it's it's the it's the connections that are being lost because it's so easy when you're uncomfortable and think about your teenage years, they're uncomfortable to be like this. So, and the data is there that it creates

102more depression, anxiety, and suicide. And since 2013, you know, the anxious generation author pointed out that scores have gone down since the invention of the smartphone. So, you know, the data is there to support it. um you know and in terms of the community norms even if there is something passed at the state level which yay um I I think the you know wait until 8th should be discussed too because I think you know the fifth grade at bees there was a parent group that wanted to have kind of an you know bullying with the police thing and and so that was grassroots and because kids at age 10 and 11 don't have you um great judgment because of the you know frontal cortex. So um you know and and even with my sixth grader

103we gave in because all of her friends in fifth grade and she was being left out right but if if there was a wait till 8th or at least a community discussion like this is really bad like let's just not do it and and created those community norms to try to avoid some of the mental health issues that at least in middle school. I think Laura's right. we have to stop kicking the can down the road and we need to just stop talking about it and do something. I'm not sure what's like how to like kickstart that. Do something for it. So, I mean it's a great great packet. If you haven't read it, please do. Cell phones and social media and schools from the office attorney general Andrea Joy Campbell. Um, so I guess

104I I don't know. Is there a suggestion to do something tonight, Jess? Uh, I just want to discuss it on the full committee level. So like you know we can have a subcommittee meeting and try to gather it but I just wanted next next agenda item then next next agenda as an item to discuss cell phones people can come and weigh in. Is there a blanket policy that we could um to Mike's point put it on the agenda and then so that like with a policy so that we we discuss it and then we leave that next meeting with some type of district policy about cell phones. I I think we need a policy in place. I think to be part of the uh strategic plan and and I think you you we've talked about

105this you you really got to get the parent input on this as well too. That's gonna be So I'm gonna tell you a part of this which after you're done right us shutting off the email connection for the amount of parents that are emailing us because they don't have access to their kids by email, right? Because during the day is is incredible, right? And so we're we're gonna I'm going to talk to you about that in a second. So we really better make sure we get parent input on this and making sure they're on board with this because they're going to be the ones that need to support this. But Al, some of those parents are complaining about that because their kids actually don't have a cell phone. So, I mean, like I think selling

106point, right? Like, oh, I can, you know, and and to their point, if something is canceled, it's not like it was when I was in high school where there was a pay phone after school. I can call my mom and say, hey, something can or better yet, the school is sending out like a mass email. Like, there's so much on the kids shoulders. Like if a sport is canled, is the school notifying the parents and the parents or is it on the kid to notify the parents because that's just been the norm because the kids have had the phone and they have the TikTok. Can they have whatever these apps are? We don't have cell phones on the agenda to discuss tonight. So I don't think we should get too many details about it, but

107we can certainly put on the next one. And by that point, one of the bills is going to be by the education committee. So we'll have some result and could is there like a way to find out if we could bring to that meeting a policy like maybe that is that you guys subcommittee if there's a like a like MASC has these policies right? Yeah well we have a policy meeting set up for the summer or just a laundry list of things is that one on there like it is now there's three different ones that one could discuss yeah that different schools have I I've reached out to a few different schools. So we'll put something together for the next agenda for cell phones. Um yeah, I agree with Lori. People will be able to

108then come in and talk about it and then probably what's going to happen is part of that wider conversation about the plan. Y that sounds good. Do you think we could reach out to them for chance and see if they have like a little presentation to sum up their little tool kit or Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just you know. Yeah, I I like that idea. And then Mike, good point. Then you have an open forum or like a you know, make it known like if you're a parent and you want to talk about cell phones, like come to the school committee meeting and we'll have public comment. And if we're able to do it over the summer, hopefully that's more accommodating for people's schedules. Any budget facility? No. Update? Uh do you want to talk about

109the parking lot? Oh yeah. Um so actually two things. So we've been working with um uh Matt Mikum from Boilson. He's he was a select board member. So, we have um we've been working on um adding some parking spaces to Tahondo and currently uh we have to get approval from the DCR um in order to add spots um and it has to do with the percentage of pvious versus non-pervious surface. So, right now we're kind of in the phase where we're waiting on an engineer to provide some deliverables to the DCR. Um, and we're trying to figure out, I think, um, who is going to do this for us. Um, but I think we've got somewhat of a green light uh, from the DCR to move forward. we just need to provide certain deliverables in

110order to get the final actual approval. Um and then we can and then we have and then it falls back to the committee where we have to figure out how to pay for this. Yeah. I Allen, Aaron, I think this needs to become a priority because I've been at a couple of community events here at Tanto this past week and you've got grandparents parking on the side of Route 70 on the grass. Not only is it not only dangerous for them getting out of their car, but I was trying to leave the parking lot and I couldn't actually see and almost got t-boned by somebody driving 60 miles down the highway. So, we need to make this a priority and we also need to start I don't know what we need to start doing, but

111we can't have people parking on the side of Route 70 in front of the school on the grass because it's a safety issue. Do you have any idea how much again back to the budget and like like how much this would cost us? So right now what we're where we're what we're looking at is and as soon as so right now there were two obstacles. So the first hurdle was getting the DCR to okay letting us add more spots because we're near wetlands and um they're worried about runoff and this is so far out of my accounting realm brain. Um but it's called a reservoir. Okay. Yeah. All right. So, the reservoir. So, they're concerned about the runoff, right? So, we can't have you can't just have we couldn't just come through and pave all

112this, right? There has to be like the grass which absorbs the the runoff. Um, so I think right now the agreement is we can do this gravel, which is going to be more difficult and and probably more costly to plow. Um, but it it might not cost as much to to lay down. So once we get over like the DCR of rubber stamping this and saying go ahead BB RSD, you can add 75 spots. They cannot be paved. They have to be grabable. Give us all those specifications. Then it's totally on us. We got to put the project out to bid. So that'll go to Aaron and um you know, we have to we kind of have to figure out. So like as far as a cost perspective, I have absolutely no idea. Right now

113we still have like multiple deliverables that the DCR is waiting on. And they're not just deliverables like something Al can do. It's something an engineer needs to do. We need sketches, we need drawings, we need, you know, estimates on things. Um, so we we're working with we have two volunteers from the town of Boilston. I believe they both live in Boilston. Um, who've been awesome. Um, but again, they're volunteers. So, we're we're kind of waiting to hear back to see um if these people are able to, you know, if it's realistic to expect these people can provide these deliverables for the DCR um you know, either for a cost or not for a cost or if they're just unable to provide them and we actually need to hire an engineer to do this. So, as

114soon as this would be kind of a multi-year capital plan kind of thing. So I think in year one we look to go capital plan to get it to die then design engineer to put the the plans together prepare it um get a cost estimate and help us get a bid package together um then you know once we have sort of that rough estimate then we'd um we we'd put on our cap you know that would be on our capital plan for a smaller amount I don't you know we could figure out what that's going to be then we have an actual estimate we'd go on our capital plan the goal now. Yeah, I think we may get to just in terms of approvals. It's going to be a longterm long process. This isn't going

115to be a do it tomorrow or next summer, but we need to take it from the volunteer stage where it's people outside of the district. We need to start getting district. There's so much we agree. We all know that. But there's so many other things that my mind I'm sure you're going there Aaron too, right? First for every additional spot we add whether it permanent or not, we got to add additional handicap spots. So, we just need to keep that all in mind. That's part of the um that was one of the asks from the DCR and like that engineer has to provide that with how many if for if it's 75 spots we're adding how many of these need to be handicapped front is going to be all that's exactly because you can't have

116handicap spots back there or I think what when I met with the woman who was sketching it out she said because there was like that sidewalk right there that some of those right there could be because they could be spots for the fields so that we could do some handicap back there. That would be for the So, there's options, but we have to get this done because I don't know if when the school was built, they didn't think the community was going to grow this large. But if we're going to host community events here, like I know there's a dance recital here, there's other things that we charge for. We got to provide those customers, you have the safe place to park. You step out in your car and like my clumsy ass did the

117other day, you trip getting out of the car and you fall in your face. You're falling head first into Route 70. Yep. Yep. This is an existing This isn't a new It's not a new thing, but I've been parking on Route 70 for five years. So, just so you know, like it's important and it needs to get put into plan. Yes. It's going to take years. But it's not like emergency. It's happening this year because somebody's been in No, it's not emergency, but it's been we've been talking about it for three years and it's time to get real serious. Yeah, the next thing I know um Matt Nikum is once he he's been a huge help at getting the approval of the DCR and making the connections that we needed to kind of get the

118approval. So once that's done, I think the big point is then it becomes the district has to own it and you know obviously like all of the steps that Aaron said. So whatever timeline it needs to be that's Aaron's realm. Um but yeah, this summer it be nice to have that. Have to be have to look at lighting insurance, right? Lighting the curbs. You have to put those curbs in. You're going to have to put like because it's gravel. You're going to have to make this process longer by using volunteers like you probably need to get. Yeah. So, correct. Correct. 100%. Final story is hail and air to take care of it. Yes. Yeah. So, they were just going to do the you know the volunteers like this is their career. So, we were going

119to do the decency of saying like hey are you guys going to are you able to do this? We'll pay you if you can. We need it by the you know at this point in the summer. And then we were he was gonna circle back with me and if they can't then you're gonna have to get we'll have to find someone for the summer that can Oh cool good update Lori uh superintendent ser subcommittee if you don't mind we hold off from talking with that until we talk about the dates. Uh there is no policy subcommittee update and then we just talk about so on the business items. Um I think what do you think about leaving school choice to the last one and sure get through some of these. Um, so could I have

120a motion please to appoint Jessica Douglie as the Boilson representative Boilson master plan implementation committee? I believe that's what you need. Oh well, in case anyone else wanted to do it, I just want to leave it open there. Yeah. So the motion is to the motion is to just like anyone and Megan, are you interested? No, I've already done it. Not for now. We'll talk about it next year. So, the motion is seconded by Lisa. Oh, no. Jess, sorry. Lisa moved by Lori to appoint Jess to the master planning committee. Would anyone like to question her on this? Are you okay with it, Jess? And then if whatever I I just um whatever. Hold on. We should vote. No, I don't know. No one else in like to do it. I'm happy to do it.

121I um there were some documents in the drive that I just um some emails previously were were not replied to in terms of things that we could I could actually talk about at the meeting and contribute. So there's things that we could possibly do as a district and and cross off of the boil to master plan. So the document says boil mastermind implementation committee. Um it's from the email that I had sent out last year. Um and so there's things that we might be able to that already exist or a student could work on. Um and you know different volunteer opportunities for possible tax waivers. So, I mean, I would I'll happily send the email out again um to see if if admin and and other school members could take a look to see if

122something exists already or something that someone wants to work on or they know someone already working on it. Um so, we can say it's in progress on the master plan or not. So, I can send that out again. um Lisa and I went through the big green grid that you might have quickly flipped off of. Um and so there there are things that are listed within each area that you can peruse that might be relevant to us as well. So, if I can email those two documents out to greater community um so we can take some action and proxim on that. Anyone have any questions? All right. All in favor of the motion. I I Anyone against? Yes. Congratulations. All right. There you go. Thanks. This is the MPI tracking sheet that you're talking about,

123Jess. Yeah, it's the big green and white thing. Don't flip through it. The the document says master plan review students success technology May 31st that talks about possible things that we might want to do, but then I kind of I went down 16 different items specifically like how it would relate to those. So things that we could do. So, I'll send out those two more easily reviewed documents to see if anything grabs anyone's attention. I mean, we have like the noing signs out of dees and to my knowledge, at least it was when I looked. Um, so there are things that that likely exist already that we can just cross. I'll email. Okay. Thanks, Jess. Um, that the Mary Hoffman award, what do we need to motion? Are we buying something or are we reimbursing

124something? Um, I already purchased them, but I Julie for the mayor of Hoffman. The motion is just to approve the use of the $50 from the test. Yep. Okay. All right. So, could I have a motion, please, to um approve the use of funds for the Marian Hoffman Award in the amount of $50 given as two $25 gift cards to the 2024 25 Mary Hoffman Award recipients? Second. All right, that and Lori. Cool. Uh any questions or you want to say anything? No, I'm not familiar with this one. Okay. All right. [Music] Do you have anything to add about Julie? Why are we doing this? Um, this is given every year to two fifth graders at the bottom established by an educator from um award every year. I tried to look it up in the

125drive and I don't have access to that file for some reason. So, I just knew that I had to and I bet she doesn't get the request access thing anymore. All right. So, that's the motion there. Does anybody have any other questions? All in favor? Anyone against it? All right, that one passes as well. Thank you. Um, all right. So, school committee dates. Um, before we make a motion to uh approve this, we should probably talk about it a little bit. uh because I don't know if we necessarily have the ability to set dates for uh like we're going to have to get together various superintendent search nights and days. We know the general timeline of that from Tracy. Um so right now all that's on here is uh the schedule is the uh like

126we usually the main meetings typically second Tuesday of the month with an as needed meeting. Uh on here we have the budget hearing in March again like we did this year. Uh seemed to be happy with that. We had better information at that point than February and they still hadn't met yet. Of course we can revisit that if we need to during budget talks next year. Um, so I was thinking we might just put some asterisks on on the bottom maybe and just note that uh, you know, we've got some work to do over the summer for things. I don't think we necessarily need meetings for that search because he was uh, just getting information to Tracy. Uh what in September and November we're gonna have to have we don't necessarily probably need to make

127them meetings if it's not going to be a quorum of the committee going to tour districts and and meet the candidates and stuff but I don't know if we wanted to add them there as notes just that we'll be doing stuff or we don't have to we can just leave it like this. You look like you have I have a lot of questions. All right. So I couldn't print this off for some reason. I know some of the documents with with Aaron for but I was looking You don't have the access that Aaron talked you out of um but some of these are Monday dates. There's a few months in there that are Monday. There's like three different months in there. So I don't know if I was delusional is possible but um printed out

128August 18th is a Monday. Mon November 11th is Veterans Day. That's a Tuesday. That's probably one of them. Yep. Wait, Jess, what are you talking about? No, the school committee calendar or the superintendent search calendar. School committee calendar. School committee calendar. So, actually before we Yes, you mentioned the 10th versus 11th or whatever. Um, the MASC conference is starting that Wednesday, the 12th. So, she would not be able to be present. There was a question mark on November 10th, school cleaning meets finalist announced on November 10th. So, that is one I was questioning that she pretty much said, "I'm going to be at the conference." That's so shocking. Um, because it's a great conference for all school members. Um, but I just wanted to point that out that particular date. But then there's a few

129other months that were Mondays. Which ones? I couldn't December 8th Monday. Yeah, that month. As the 22nd, so those need to be changed to December 9th and December 23rd. do but that 23rd will be as needed. Yeah, that's all. Yeah, I just noticed there was three January January is another one 13 and January is okay. Okay. February. Yeah. February. February 10th should be for February. 94. 104. Sorry. April is correct. Is wait is March is not right. Right. March is wrong. March. December. 10th and 24th as well. And so is June. I was just going to say I think June 8th is Monday. Yep. Y. So June needs to be 9 and 23. So, February, March. All right. How about uh instead of going through December, February, hold on. How about instead of going through

130all of them right now, um are we going to need the July date for anything that's on here? July 22nd. Yeah, it's it's listed as needed, but I can't think of anything right now that needed July. All right. Uh so, what if we just set our August date? That is also a Wednesday. But what if we just said hold on and Julie seriously the cell phone lady [Laughter] Julie the biggest proponent of getting rid of cell phones in each class has a cell phone rating. That's your new athletic director. That's why I ran so fast. Uh what what if we did this? What if we just we don't have any scheduled dates after tonight. So what if we just get our August meeting on the calendar and then we can do a revised calendar? That

131would that work? So is it just the 26th or we thinking the 12th to get our goals? Um well so we can talk about what do you want to do? Can we just amend it saying amend the dates for Tuesdays of months? We we could, but that's going to take a little bit more time than we probably need to spend on it right now. As long as we can get our next on here, it's scheduled for August 12th and as needed 26. Yeah. So, if we just voted to approve that for our next meeting, we have no meetings scheduled right now. Yeah. Um, of course any as needed anything that comes up, we can do other meetings, but 12th and 26 are both Tuesdays that surrounds the back to school. So, we can set that

132and then we'll work on this l we'll get you a current element. I first No, first of all, I apologize. We'll work on May as well. If ever I need an administrative assistant, which by the end of the week, I'll have someone appointed like I've been doing. Yeah. Lyn's like, "That wasn't me. I didn't do that." What's that? We know, Lynn. I didn't do that. No, I It's me. I I own this. I'm trying to run a district and do a calendar for school pretty. So, I This is me. Sorry about that. One more hat. I just Yeah. Sorry. You were looking at 2025. Could have been. Could have been. You were instead of 2026, you were looking at it. It could have been Could have been anything. We have time. Let's vote on that.

133So, uh, could I have a motion, please, to set the next school committee meeting, uh, scheduled to August 12th, 2025 as an as needed meeting date and August 26th, 2025 as our regular meeting date? Lori, Lisa. Okay. Good idea, bad idea, questions, comments. So, you don't So, July 22nd? No. Uh, do we need do we need it? No. I don't I can't think of anything right now that we need it for. I'll just be back from last. So that's all right. So motion all in favor. I All right. Anyone against? And I will have an agenda on that date for you with updated um 25 26 dates for you guys. Sorry about that. Yeah. Yeah. Um do people still like Tuesdays at 5:00 PM? I am fine with it. I'm just putting it out there

134because I don't I I don't know how everybody feels. I mean it's more like the administrative team and everyone you like you like that. I think when the um when the school committee switched over to that five o'clock start there was a lot of appreciation for you know for that. We agree and the principles like that there wasn't a lot of parent appreciation. I know it's so hard. So, I mean, you know, we want to encourage transparency and and participation and so even if we delayed it to like 5:15, it would allow people to finish work. I I I appreciate that. I now we have remote so people can pay attention, follow through. I I just need you to look around at this table, right? People as you guys included, right? It's they're they're long

135days. Um and the early we start sometimes we we we're already into almost two hours, right? And we still got some stuff to do. So I I know that the admin team appreciates that five o'clock start team start time. So someday if we can get to a more streamlined, shorter meeting, we're trying. That would be a time. We're trying. We're trying. We are. I guess it's almost seven and no one knew walked in, right? I mean, good point. Well, we could do a public comment at the end. we could tell people like we're doing public comment at seven if you know look we're always still here at seven so I mean that's another or six even 6:30 um or someone emails and says that they're interested in making a public comment and they can't get

136there until 5:30 maybe we do things that don't require votes before and then be accommodating I think your public comment at the end I think is probably good you could frontload things that aren't being deliberated so reports comments. I appreciate that. Yeah, I don't know. Split it like Yeah, we can find a way to be more accommodating without moving the time of the actual meeting. And I think that might also encourage people to attend because then if they say something at the end too, maybe it's their expertise or whatever, it wouldn't. We did do that a couple times and nobody came, but we can just put it on standing. How about how about we put a standing agenda item at the end of the meeting for public comment? Yeah. All right, that works. Could we

137say for 7 p.m. or you want them to do the public comment before you vote in theory? That's Yeah, let's say 6:30. Just push the end. I know it's so hard to tell people when to come. So, yeah. How about instead of the end, we'll just put it before business that Right. Yeah. There you go. That's fair. All right. Cool. All right. Uh, okay. School choice. Um, let's have a look. Do you have something to say about school choice for us now? Um, so the last proposal that we gave you, I I hope you have a copy of that. If you don't, let me know. Um, we we really took some time working with the the high school um, and middle school. Um there's no room right now um at the elementary schools in terms

138of referencing um from the both principles saying there's not any extra space. Um I do know we had a parent that made a public comment um about having a sibling underneath school choice. Um you do have that ability to allow a sibling to come in. Um you're looking for kindergarten in Berlin for next year. Our numbers in kindergarten for a total of 25 students that will be in our kindergarten next year. That's divided by two teachers. So that'll be 1230. Yeah. Roughly roughly around there. Yes. Um so just to to on that public comment that was made. Um I know that wasn't a recommendation we we gave you here, but under school choice law, you can um have a sibling come in um with that. So we can make that specific to the existing sibling

139or existing student. Yep. As a guest of the superintendent. No, no, no. Let's be very clear about that. like guess the superintendent are a whole different perspective and that is not school choice. We have to be very careful because by law we cannot say guess the superintendent school choice. This is under the laws of school choice and Aaron jump in if I'm off on this that you're allowed. You can do is you can open the seats and then you can give preference to so you'd have to open a seat. You know you could say we'll open two seats in Berlin, right? Which wouldn't drastically throw those numbers out of whack. And then you would give preference to siblings, right? Whatever number. So when we motion for that, do we mention preference to siblings or is

140that something? Um, you can I I would motion that. Do we not have a policy about siblings at all? No, we don't. We don't. It No, we do not. That remember we talked about that before is that our school choice policy is missing that little caveat that siblings get or maybe that was something that came up when I was chair. I remember somebody else asked about a sibling. The thing is, if you open it up to siblings, we open the seat for the kindergartener. I'm fine with that. I think it's the right thing to do because you have a very small class in Berlin over there for kindergarten. One kid isn't going to make or break it, but you're going to they're going to come out of the woodworks because I remember last year there

141was multiple other people. Oh, well, I have a sixth grader and I have a ninth grader already at Tahanto and the sixth grader really wants to go to the Hanoto and it's like, well, no, we can't open up any seats in that. So, it's just like it's such a gray area. It's such a fine line. are your siblings is what you want. You want them those are families like you want siblings. That's that that's the perfect school choice student is the siblings. I totally agree. But if we already have like for example this right and it can be sibly prioritized siblings pending the class size is below x amount. Yes. like right now changing the having a policy going forward that we're going to say we like our goal is to have class sizes of

142X and if we have below that we open it up prioritizing siblings as first. Yeah, I I am fine. I think that's work that needs to be done right in terms of but for tonight um referencing this mom in that kindergarten in Berlin just giving you that information. Um the rest of the information we we work with Lisa um Squa obviously principal of the high school and these are the numbers right now that we're looking at for we're we're moving forward with you guys to give a vote on that for this year. We're we're we're getting late. It's it's June, right? And we got to make sure um we haven't had an increase at all in the amount of people that are interested in school choice since the last numbers I gave you which were

143grade 63, grade 7, grade 82, grade 92. So that's all that has shown an interest so far and whether they're still interested I have no idea but we have to um make some sort of decision tonight. Um can we take this in parts then? Can we talk about kindergarten first? Yeah. So can I have a motion to open one spot in the kindergart incoming kindergarten class at Berlin Memorial School for one seat with preference given to an existing sibling. So second questions, discussion. I think it makes sense. I think keep the families together and because there's 12 students per class. Okay. All in favor? Wait, just have something. Yeah. And um I mean it's tough because the elementary principles aren't here to comment because there probably other siblings in existence. So I don't know. if

144maybe we can continue this conversation over Zoom or something and once we get the principles of you know bees BMS principles input like are there people they know that there is room in those so so the the lack of better wording the word in the street is if there's anyone interested in school choice they to email me so the only email that I received is from this this mom today or I think it was dad today maybe that's not the It was me. That was you. Sorry. Um and I actually have it right here as well. Um but I have not received any others so far. But I think to Jess's point, once we announce it's open, we may get applications and they may be siblings. So if we have only one spot open and

145we get three applications that are all siblings, they have preference, but then we have to hold the lottery for those three preference slots, right? So that becomes a bit of a challenge. We we did we did it last year. We took a chance. I think there was like two or three staff people that had children. We opened up like it was at bees. We had like one spot for the kindergarten and two in second grade. And it ended up working out, but I completely agree that it might be different. I I have no idea. And staff ch children of staff is different than school choice. Yeah. Just a guess of the We were using the wrong term. We were using the wrong term on that one, but we did open those spot, right? We opened

146those spots up last year and those kids. So, so we have to deal with the information we have in front of us. I think it's okay. I think I I feel comfortable taking that doing this. Yes. I'm just saying I'm just we're seeing that, you know, even though only one person's emailed you that likely Cindy and John have knowledge of siblings that would like to come to our district, but after prior years of conversation gave up like, you know, I know sixth grader. The second part of this is dependent on class size. The rest of those classes at B are for sure pretty big. One there's one there's one small there's two small ones at BMS. Yeah, bees is like at capacity. All right. Uh so we'll take a vote. If you want to change

147something, you can vote. But all in favor of the one spot at kindergarten I. Anyone against it? All right. That passes Al. So now to Tampa. So Tohanto right now the recommendation from administration is in grade seven um four school choice spots open. That will bring us to 84 of total of 80 I'm sorry is the number we're really looking at. Um when we're looking at the four classes in the teams of the middle school. Lisa feel free to jump in anytime. Um in same thing in grade 10 we're looking at that number from SE will give us a total of 77. Um again that round number trying to get to that number of 80 um where we're able to allow um four in each grouping of those four groupings that we have and having

148that equal number in there as well too. Um our one concern I know people are asking about is that grade nine and why that number is is low. Um we're we're still we have some concerns. We're getting some preliminary MCCAST back scores back and some things we've seen in the past. We really want to make sure we're focusing on those kids um and making sure that they're successful and not leaving us later on as well too. So, we want to keep that number low for the time being. Also, as a reminder to everyone, we made cuts at the high school, right? We made cuts, teacher cuts. So, we have to be careful about opening up the doors of the high school when we made those cuts. Lisa and I had a conversation today, right? So,

149if if we nothing will change, right? whether if we add if we if we our schedules are set right now with the numbers that we're looking at. So, we just want to be careful on how much we open up those school choice numbers at at the high school. Um, but this is what we're recommending at this point open for conversations for you guys. Um, so right now we have um we have 14. We have eight going to Asabet and um six going to private. Um five of those are going to St. John's. Um and then one of them is is like just going like it's an overnight. It's a very different experience. So does that mean that we're at 66 now? No, weren't we at So we're at 68. We went from 18 from 80

150to Right. You just said if you look at if you look at that row it's um see there's 70 and then 12 that's 82 but our projected number is 68. So that is the 82 minus the 14. Yeah. Oh the current. Okay. Sorry. So there's the current is um 70 residents, 12 current school choice um which is the 82 which is currently but then there's 14 students who are leaving. That's bringing us to 68. I'm not comfortable leaving that at 68 at all. I I pulled all the numbers. I've gone back to many years of watching the way this this class will continue to drop. We just graduated 56 kids from one class that continued to shrink the whole time. They went from they came in with 85 kids. They went to 81, 77, 65,

15167, 63, 59 was the number on Massachusetts website. 56 walked. I believe you said you thought three were dual enrollment. So, some of these bodies aren't even in the school. Like, that's not a high school experience for those kids. That's not fair. That number is going to go down. If you look at the current class, the fact that they started with 65 kids their freshman year and they went all the way down to 56 walking across that stage. That's not fair to the kids that are here. They deserve to have classmates. Can you remind me the number of I guess I don't have you have the number the number of um requests um to go into grade nine? Yep. grade nine right now is two and we haven't announced it yet. So those are people

152that have preemptively asked. Yep, you're right. So there might be more. I I think we should our goal should be 75 for that. I think the goal should be 80, but I'd be willing to say 75 for that class for grade nine. for grade nine. How many school choice kids are? We actually couldn't accommodate 80 um at the that we couldn't accommodate um can you explain 80 80 students um as in grade nine because of the cuts that were made we wouldn't have spots we wouldn't have available classes for them. Yeah. I was going to ask if you could explain why that is. Yeah. At 80 we would not be able to. Right now we have there's a you know there's a Spanish one class that has 26 kids. That's not excellent. So we we

153can't we cannot accommodate 80 kids in ninth grade if we not right now. This is the work we got to do earlier and talk about it during budget season and make sure that we're not we're having the correct staffing. So the ninth grade will pay the price for our inability to do this earlier. So, so hold on. So, I asked Lisa to explain why we wouldn't be able to accommodate and I think I know why you're saying that they'll pay the price or they'll it's being taken out on them, but exactly what is being taken out on them or like what do you believe is paying the price? that their class is going to get smaller and smaller and the kids that have the means to go somewhere else while they watch their class get

154smaller will leave and they'll go someplace else because their parents have means and the kids that don't have means are staying here with a tiny class and it's inequitable as far as I'm concerned. But you're saying that that they're paying the price as if being left behind at the Hanto is a bad thing. when you're we're trying to we're trying to uh change it, but it's not going to change in one year. No, I know. We have a lot of work to do to keep these kids. We had you know 2017 2018 there was 594 kids in that building. I mean the the 14 kids that left you said eight are going as so Yes. So there's nothing we can do about them. Yeah. They would go to Aset for whatever reason. It's a different

155school, a different thing. Yeah. Um and then St. John's is alumni, right? It's their alumni. Yeah. And there's plenty of kids here whose parents went to St. John's that stayed here because they like it. And so like we need to like find a way to capt when people enjoy have solid friend groups and and that's part of why St. John has a strong middle school. That's how they get them in. and maybe they can't play a sport in 10th grade because but they played it all through middle school and they didn't get cut from any teams and they had these great friendships like the if and we are able to have these bonds where they have more than like a choice of 25 boys in your grade that's really hard that's really it's a hard

156experience for these kids and I feel really badly for that class I think it's tougher being in a small community when you have a small But it also comes with territory, right? Are you watching your class shrink around you? Like is that our goal? Watch our our school shrink. There's 522 kids. When we talk about So when we talk about the class shrinking before us though and the solution to that though is you're suggesting school choice which is kids coming in who these kids in the class didn't grow up with, they didn't go through middle school with, they didn't go through elementary school with, they didn't play breakfast sports leagues with, they didn't do all that sort of stuff that when when you live in a town, you you connect to a town and community.

157You grow up from, you know, a little kid to community events, church fairs, wreck sports, uh, our rec sports are very small. So these kids, they do play with these kids. Like not even sports. My daughter's friends from dance school choice didn't hear in sixth grade. She can play sports with them. What I'm saying though is the idea to replace the kids who leave with other kids and they're just automatically going to have friend groups and this and that is a great thing if it happens, but also it's not a guaranteed thing if it happens. Not a guaranteed thing. So these kids deserve a chance to have you can't guarantee they're going to be in AP classes. You can't guarantee they're going to be athletes. We can't guarantee anything. but more like a a solid

158number of kids that maintain all through high school gives these kids a much better chance and I just I much better chance of what of maintaining groups and friendships and having a good experience. I mean also opportunities, right? So if there's not enough kids do a drama club or not enough kids do an AP bio class, I mean then it's going to be cool. So I, you know, I mean, growing up at Dhanto, we had school choice kids and and they participated and, you know, they melded and ninth grade is a very appropriate time to introduce students into the community um for the four years of high school. So I, you know, I I I I hear the limited class space. Um, I guess I don't know why at least two can be added in.

159Um, I don't know. It it just seems exactly there's it's a shrinking pattern as they get to to 12th grade. And there's kids still making the decision about whether like there's some kids that have not committed to St. John's that that might still be leaving that we don't that that 68 could be 65 by the time school starts. I don't see the harm in bumping that up. Anybody else? I think you're making really excellent points and I really feel that. And I guess one thing though that really does stick in my brain though is what you said also that it's the MCCAST scores aren't good and so if we strain the you know the student teacher ratio that that could really negatively impact that grade. But we're just giving you these recommendations right that was

160the ob the school committee has asked us to do. We we we went through the data. We looked at our numbers. We give this to you and then you guys have to make a vote. So just know how we stand in terms of this. I I I I hear everything you're saying. I agree with all those points, but I also look at whatever's happening here, right? Our ninth grade shrinking because they're going somewhere else going somewhere else. What's happening somewhere else that we're taking those ninth graders from their school and shrinking those schools as well, too. So it's a whole domino effect that's happening, right? So we're drawing from somewhere else, those ninth graders. who are we drawing those from? I I appreciate the the woman that sat in front of us here and said,

161"I have all these connections. I'm sitting in, you know, Clinton and all that, but we don't get to say we're opening up school choice. We did for siblings just for residents live in Clinton, right? We don't get to just do that." When we open up school choice, I just remind everyone it's a blind lottery, right? So, we don't choose the athletes. We don't choose the kids that going to do an extracurricular activity. It's just a blind lottery. It's also not a way of us u providing more kids in there. So we can have and I've heard this said so we can have kids get different experiences from different cultures and stuff like that. That's not why we do school choice either. We just have to be careful of that. It it's a certainly opportunity to

162make some some additional funding in here as well too. Um but I I just give you all that data to think about when you're making those decisions. So I mean we're graduating 12 school choice kids next year and we are not kicking in a lot of school choice kids. Like what is what's going to happen? And I know seven people from Berlin alone that have school choice to NOVA. So at one point it's the ratio cliff where we stop allowing kids in and we are paying out extra money. How many school choice funds are we used in the budget? Um we put $850,000 towards it. We did we're we're close to certifying keep saying that but our END. So the in essence, you know, my hope is that that we would in in future years

163be effectively cost neutral on that 450 is about we take right now 435 450 and we wouldn't spend more than that, right? We would maintain that balance. You know, the goal is to maintain some sort of savings account. there were um you know a big issue where we had to pay for an expense about a district placement or something like that. We want that money in the bank to do that with um you know and this is choice is is is a challenge that's kind of plagued this uh particularly I mean I come from Western Mass and we've had massive population decline. So, it is in Western Mass, in many places, it is a battle between towns to just steal each other's school choice kids. Um, there are districts that are 50% school choice. Um,

164I would never in a million years advocate to get close to 50% school choice, but you know, they do it in many ways. They're because of population decline, their chapter 70 is flat. They're trying to maintain programs, right? So, we're talking about cutting a Spanish program, things like that. If we had a few more school choice kids, could we maintain that Spanish program? We knew we had more money coming in, could we? So, there's there's definitely that side to it. Um, but then at some point, that school choice amount has been fixed forever. And this is the conundrum that Western Mass is facing, right? So, that's never going up. So if your if your costs are consistently going up, operating costs, and you're trying to maintain programs, effectively something's eventually going to give on that

1650% increase on that big school choice number. you have this big, you know, call it $500,000 in school choice that while all of your costs are going up, that's staying flat, right, over time, unless you continue to increase numbers and then you end up being that district at 50% school choice, right? So, so there's some challenges. I think I I I'm so I'm not trying to to pick sides here. I'm just trying to say, you know, there's some there's some pitfalls in the long run on on sort of depending too much on choice, but there's also the how do we maintain programming and you know that AP classes that um I've been in districts where, you know, we've had to um uh eliminate athletic programs and things like that in the past where there just

166weren't enough numbers there. Um you know, it's an eye openener. have to start thinking about some of that stuff. So I double-edged sword in a lot of ways. Um but a lot of times in western mass became a necessary evil, right? That's why we're back to this is recommendation school pretty let us know where we want. I think to your point Beth, we we need to probably look at this a little bit earlier next year, right? and have a policy of like this is what we do and that it's predictable and that families can plan and know that maybe my kid's not going to get in next year, but if the numbers change, if it gets below 80, then my child will be prioritized. I would I would want to be careful talking about policy

167and so people can plan because that type of talk starts to sound like what people do for private school. Like I know when my kids here I'm gonna go to private school at 8th grade or n whatever it is. If we have we've got to be cognizant of taxpayers paying for Berlin Boilson kids. If we're going to start promoting the idea that families in other towns outside of Berlin Boilston can plan that we're going to go to Tahanto and it's not going to cost us anything. we can stay in a lower tax rate town. We just have to be careful about the language we use for that because that's going to upset some, you know, local town people. Um, I would local taxpayer if I knew that I was spending all this money on the

168fixed cost of running a school that's like not running anywhere near as really maximize these schools. like we don't want to fill them to the brim, but we we owe it to the taxpayer to have a strong school system that is graduating class that are not 56 kids. But on the other side, that language starts to suggest that Tanto is not a strong school if there's only 60 kids in a class. And that's as damaging as the other way. Um, what about the idea of increasing class sizes, friend groups, and all that? This is not an overnight fix, but what about expanding the region? Like adding another town to the district. Yeah, I think that's might be the direction that we I mean I don't know how we maintain we're I mean we're talking about

169buildings getting near capacity. We're going to need help there. The problem is that like like I crunched all the numbers for the the middle school. This is off topic, but we have three grades in the middle school. It's 50% of our school like those and then it goes So we like we put the middle school like in the corner. We treat them like high school kids. Like we never re really I feel like we should have really taken a hard look at what we were doing when we moved the sixth grade up to the high school and really found a way to like I think we never recalibrated from that. And I think a lot of the decline after middle schools might have something to do with the fact that like we need to maybe

170take a hard look at how we explored something like that um a couple years ago with Carol remember um rearranging the buildings and y things like that. It was like a year and a half ago. Didn't go anywhere but so it was an idea. So just so% building a middle school. Yep. where we we're looking at the schedule for middle school, right? And we're making some changes at that middle school level, right? And for the amount of time and we really uh spent some time, Lisa and her team um looking at it. It's a it's a project. I appreciate like that's it's been my complaint since my daughter was in sixth grade that like we that's sixth graders or we just threw talking freely the middle school into the high school and said here you

171go, right? We we really did. will give you a little bit of wing instead of creating a separate schedule that should be for the middle school that's operating in the high school and the high school operate. So that's something you're changing this year. That's some that's why two years ago we started talking about culture changes, why we fought for the additional assistant principal. That's why we're not getting rid of them. That's why I asked that question. It's not a perfect fix. Just one example, we talked about this, right? So, our sixth graders that come here are following the same schedule timewise as our as our high school kids. If you're a sixth grader in any other public school in the state of Massachusetts, you're elementary school, you're getting 90 minutes of ELA, 90 minutes of

172math, 90 minutes of all your core subjects if you need to have that 90 minutes. That's what they're getting at Burlington and Bolston. When they come up here to the high school, they're now at a 47 minute schedule. It's a big change every day. So, we're we're looking at that and that's a big shift to take place as well. But you need some staffing for that as well too, right? And I think I think the um the biggest staffing thing that we have to look at is our elected teachers. We share elective teachers and that's it's it's funny that you would think that that was the driving force. I like you know between you know February and now I breathe the schedule and the driving force behind the entire schedule are the elective blocks right

173it is elective blocks not for high school it's the elective blocks for middle school and making sure the middle schools have their elective blocks that's the driving force around the whole schedule and we our elected teachers teach mostly middle school students and so if we want to have and then kind of what's left over is are the opportunities for the high school and so if we want that separation which I think is developmentally appropriate to h it would be appropriate to have them run on a different schedule. We have to have different elective teachers. Yeah. The staff can afford it. Yeah. That's this is always conversation, right? We we hear that people are not happy at this or happy not happy this we're sort of hearing stuff out there underneath back to being strategic plan

174when we're having those SWAT analysis, right? And saying what are you? So, if we're hearing that people want that to look differently, and that's what we're hearing, then we're going to come to you in the budget wise and say, "Okay, we need to hire more staffing because that middle school's got to operate by itself even though it's in the building. It can't be working on the same schedule at the high school." And that's truly what we should be doing for our middle school kids. And maybe if we're doing that, which we should be doing, that will entice those kids not to want to leave here when they're going because it will be a different experience in middle school than it is in high school. Right now, it's the same experience. So, I'm graduating up. like

175they well I already in sixth through eight I don't need to it's not a different environment so now they're looking for something different so maybe that's the reason why they're going to St. are or they're going somewhere else. But we need to work on what we have here before we're we're branching out. It should look different for our kids. 90 minutes in most sixth grade classes in the state of Massachusetts for ELA and math. They come here, they have 47 minutes every day. Yeah. I also I while I completely hear what you're saying and I agree um with the the small class size and you know the opportunities like the year we made budget cuts we cut how many heads from this building um I just I have a hard time adding more in than

176the recommended number. Um and you know it's one of those things where you can't have you can't have your cake and eat it too, right? If we and I'm saying we like as a school committee, as a community, if we want to cut heads from Tahanto because we want to keep our budget lean because we want to run lean because we don't want our taxes to go up, then we're just going to have a small school. If we want to expand and grow and flourish and keep our, you know, try work harder to keep our kids, there's a cost just like anything else. There's a cost associated with that and we can't be cutting heads if we're adding if we're adding kids. Yeah. So the idea you're talking about the idea of if there's extra

177space in a classroom fill it but not just take it in and then need to hire so that money is not helping anyway. We don't have the money and and like again we we decided and and you know not to pick open scabs about the budget but we had very strict from both towns this is all we can do. So we did what we could. We made I feel like we made some pretty equitable cuts. I mean, Tonto did bear the brunt of it because of the the two towns sharing in a cost, but you know, this is where we landed. So, even though we have more physical space in this building, we might not have enough resources to educate these these students. I think that's what you were trying to say with the like

178we can't do this. We don't have the resources. We make the we would never make the cuts at the elementary level, right? Because we're looking at those numbers, right? Even adding this person, well, it's 13 and 13 or whatever, right? We don't want to be above X number for elementary schools. People don't really understand that secondary schedule, right? They really don't. I'm sorry. I'll get that. Um, so when you're making cuts at the high school, you're thinking, "Oh, we're just making a cut." They don't really realize the impact that it's having across that entire school, right? We cut positions this year at the high school. We cut an athletic director position. Now we have a segment. Julie's got yman's work to do with this right now. Incorporating the middle school and the high school, right?

179not on a full-time position, right? So, I want to be careful about opening up and saying, "Bring more athletes in when I don't have a full-time athletic director at this point because that was a budget cut we decide to make as a whole." Will that come back next year? Absolutely. Possibly. But just got to remember that as well, too. She's a stipen position. Uh I think Jess something to say. I just I just wanted to make a um almost like a point of clarification just because I feel like what I know what people said and I know what their intent was and I just want to make sure the perception is is clear. Um when you go from middle school to high school here you don't change buildings. So it so a lot I think

180a lot of kids think oh it's just the same but there is a distinct difference between the middle school and the high school school. And I often wish those middle school kids would try the high school because, you know, I can't think of a school that I could have sent my daughter to or she would have gotten a better education. And my son is not in a school, but it's due to COVID and simply educational loss during that time. And so we had to retain him and regrade him. We couldn't do it here. He would have been here as well. I believe firmly in the school. It offers a fabulous education, middle school and high school. But I think sometimes kids in middle school think it's going to be more the same and it's it's

181completely different. So um very high standards and I've been really h So I just wanted to say that because I know we talk about like to your point like they think I've already done I know what the art room is. I know where the gym is. It's not a new um but I do think we have a lot of work to do with with retaining our kids and making connections and making sure that they value those connections and want to stay because those connections are so important. are just I'm curious how like in the past few years how many classes have not been able to be run because of enrollment in those classes? I don't know. I know it's it's put you on the spot and I apologize, but um just no like um there's

182there's been very few classes that had um that didn't run. I don't know of any. I I think it might be because it a weird elective slot. There might be a chorus. So like a so a chorus section couldn't run or a band section couldn't run. Art sections and that. So it's mostly elective se sections that couldn't run because we're surfacing the middle school, you know, and then and then they're blocked in. they're like very blocked in to where they're offered. Um, so would you say that's staffing? Sorry to interrupt. Like that's more about we need more resources issue. We we definitely need more resources issue. So, it's not So, we're not offering um AP bio this year because we cut a science teacher and that science teacher has to do a anatomy and we

183are going back to a model of perhaps we do a flip-flop AP Chem, AP bio, AP Chem. That was it for a long time. And not only that, but hiring. So you staff you staff the middle school with full-time art and music and those electives. Then you really don't need a full-time person possibly in that high school depending on their schedule. So you got halftime arts and elective people. It it's it's doing schedules is is absolutely incredible. And just one last thing what Lori said. I've spent probably a lot of time here at the high school as as Lisa knows the kids are really happy here. You need to know that that I've never been in a high school and I've been in a lot of high schools in my district. The kids are really

184happy and engaging here. And I I'm looking out in the people that work in the cafeteria. The kids are happy and respectful here. So, the kids that we have, we're doing good work with. I mean, I attended the the um the cat fair. The cat fair. Wasn't it amazing? It was amazing. Amazing. Like, you know, you go up to a set of kids, you're like, "All right, give me your spiel." and they, you know, tell their research and their, you know, all their efforts and they show their poster and how they want to, you know, pass it on to the next class and and, you know, and and, you know, I have the same experience here, you know, growing up too and and getting really foundational education and inspiration to be something for someone to

185do something. So, it is an incredible education and I have two kids that, you know, I plan to have them here, too. Um, you know, I earlier we said that asked that we could do nothing about those spots and I know that we've mentioned pathways before and that certainly would be appealing to students to stay. So, and one of the capstone projects was um trying to get I think WPI classes or something, you know, and I I love that creativity, you know, come and present, you know, and and so I I think that is something in the strategic plan that hopefully that we could, you know, expand opportunities without necessarily expanding staff. And wouldn't the incredible opportunity be the pathways created at the elementary schools? Right. So Berlin has one pathway, Bolson has another pathway

186and as those kids progress through elementary school, then there's the pathways that are taking place in the high school. So it shouldn't be just looking at middle school, high school as where the pathway start in in Worcester, right, where where I spent a lot of time in, they have them at the elementary levels. They have them by quadrants. One's an arts quadrant, one's a one's business, one's health and human services. Like these kids are getting exposure even at prekk like this is the focus. And then when they come up to high school, then you're making decisions about where they might be going to colleges after that because they're starting those pathways at the elementary level, not just at the high school. So, we're keeping those kids as they go up. That's what true pathways are

187all about, but it costs money and it's going to take a lot of time. And um if I may um um to Jess's point, we have expanded like so we have hadn't had like a wood shop class for ever. Mhm. Um but now we have two manufacturing classes and so that's we've kind of followed the path of you know what are what are the kids interested in um what are they wanting to do and they love that class. So we we've moved towards that. We've brought in the um the Python class. So we we are shifting and moving. It takes a while because you have to it's it's almost a year out. You have to plan. We were able to implement this um the Python class very quickly. Um we also have a backyard sustainability

188class where they're they're learning all kinds of things about agriculture. Yeah. Agriculture and sustainability and got to see the garden over there. You got to see what they're planting and growing. It's incredible. So we we are doing that. Um but it's it's baby steps because we have to shift. It's like a big shift like how is this going to fit into the schedule. So they say it's like moving a cruise ship, right? It's not a speedboat that we're just cru cruising through the ocean. It's like moving a cruise ship. It's got to take us a little bit of time. But we need to know like what is our focus? Is it agriculture? Is it like all this stuff? Not to be a broken record. We just need to know what direction we're going in. What's

189the focus of this district? Sorry. All right. Okay. So, we have a recommendation four and seventh grade and three and 10th grade. So, I'm going to ask for a motion to uh approve school choice seats for four and seventh grade and three and 10th grade as suggested. If we have that motion on the floor, we can discuss and do whatever else we want. I heard Megan move and second. Okay. Lisa, can I just ask you a quick question? You mentioned that the middle school was um kind of like they were driving the electives where we're adding four to seventh grade. Is that going to complicate things? No, because those those are already those are already in place. Okay. So, those are they're already scheduled and I I know how much room they there are. So,

190all of those classes are a 24 limit. Gotcha. So it it just oh believe me is like can you repeat the grades and the numbers that you already have the application? Sure. And this is that that apply right whether it's still current or not right. So grade six three grade seven three grade eight two grade nine two. Okay, this was as of a couple weeks ago. So, so for grade seven, I know personally know of two children that are leaving that are counted in the 76. I would we can that's a lot of speculation that we don't have actual confirmation of. Right. Motion on the floor is to add these people um withdrawal forms. So, we h we have to I don't to this day when this was made um I don't know what's happened

191this past week. So, we have So, I'd have to see with the counselor. We get withdrawal and enrollment forms. So, I don't know. We might have newly enrolled students as well from people who've moved in town. So we we can't take anybody out of powers school until we have withdrawal forms. Okay. But you don't know if you have withdrawal forms yet? No. No. Well, yeah. So, yeah. So, there's a motion on the floor. Would anyone like to add anything that hasn't been added already? The discussion. Yeah. Lisa, you mentioned that Spanish is at 26 right now. Are there other classes that are high in that um um incoming nth grade? So I don't I don't have all my scheduling stuff with me. Um if I if I knew I would have I have a back

192of scheduling stuff. I I have all the data there. So um we do have two seventh graders coming in. We have newly enrolled seventh graders coming in. Looks like one so far has done paperwork for withdrawal. Thank you. So that's a plus one to these numbers then essentially for seventh grade. Any new enrollments for any other grades in the high school? Um new enrollments. Yeah. For withdrawals. Um for for the high school there are aside from the ninth grade there's that one seventh grader 11th and 112 but those but the 12th grader is that's not yeah so we'd only be interested in the numbers since this sheet I mean the the asset numbers will probably increase by two withdrawing um they just haven't had their formal acceptance, but they're they they have been accepted. It's

193the parents just sending back the paperwork. Um but that that asset number will probably increase by two more leaving that have already been accepted into asset. Absolutely. Motion on the floor is for but we don't have their we don't have their withdrawal. Right. Motion on the floor is to add four seats to seventh grade and three seats to 10th grade. Any final comments? One could amend the motion. Yeah. Can I amend? Can I make a motion to amend the motion? Good. I would like to add So, we're down to 66 possibly for N. So I would like to add four seats to grade nine and two seats to grade 11. So there's a motion to amend motion to add four seats at grade nine and what was the last? Um two grade 11. Okay. I'll

194second that so we can discuss and we can amend it one more time for Robert's rules. Okay. So Lisa made some adjectives that you don't hide your tail while I I know I don't and that is I No, I don't I don't um 11th grade like school choice. Who's school choicing in 11th grade? We have to be super super cautious. You do you really have to understand I tried to school choice my kid out in 11th grade. So, and I consider her an excellent student because if the budget didn't pass, I was pulling her out last year. Yeah. But All right. So, that gave you a How about four at ninth grade? No, that would be fine. That could despite the Spanish 26. Spanish is not a requirement here. They're not all taking it can

195be offered another it can be who by who? By whom? when it would be another study hall or something, right? So, that's just about so and then these school choice kids that come in, we're going to we're going to pick their schedules for them. Like they're not going to have options, right? We're gonna So, if Megan says, "I want my child to be school choice." We're going to tell you you you don't have much option. We're telling you where there's openings, right? That's how much Well, no. For school for school choice. a school choice that they have to like everyone's schedules picked and get That's right. Lisa, would you have less agit if there was only two slots added to the right? Um I I um your recommendation was zero, right? Yes. Two. Two would

196be better. But do you want to continue that sentence or like do you if spots were added to the nth grade what would be your comfort level I guess what the number that if spots are added in nth grade so we've done okay this is this is a difficult thing only because I've been doing this schedule so and I don't have the sk it really is dependent upon the schedule so I let me just go in hypothetically. You've been working on this for over a month because we got it in May, right? So things are, you know, things are things are changing and I would I we built the schedule around this. So let me just look at the only thing I want us to be cautious of. The elementary principles told us what their

197school choices number were and everyone was okay with that. Our high school person is telling us a principal that does all the scheduling. Well, we added a seat. We We did add a seat to elementary school. The one, right? And even that, right? We're not sure. If John was here, I'd be picking his brain about another seat, but he's not here to talk to you. That's the only reason that I'm not complaining right now. And and we also have to just be careful at that kindergarten level. What What's a comfort level for you guys at the at the elementary level that you want your kindergarten numbers to be at? And in Camden, Wilham, I'm not to keep repeating that, but they had another school pretty vote. We don't want any more than this is our

198number for our so what number are we comfortable at the kindergarten because we also we cut some things from BMS kindergarten last year and that created some problems this year that's right in the Paris right in all of that piece so what's the number we're comfortable right now we're at 13 are we comfortable with that you know public school has 27 in their kindergarten class right now that that's not good either so what's the number we're comfortable with you could also bet people that enroll over the summer and move in look at the project people just like yeah that's True, but I always sit there and we head and we say people could come in. We never account for people that are leaving when that's the more likely. We have a motion on the table

199right now that's been amended. We need to vote on the amendment. Yeah. Or do something else, but someone has to speak up if they want to do something else. Yes. Because we've been 45 minutes on this conversation. I'm sorry. But I if and four is causing me more a than two would I no the a is with 11 and 12 that that that becomes that can become difficult. I'm sorry. Yeah I'll drop the 11. You have to make amend. No. So but I we can only do one more amendment. So I want to respect you. I mean, you know, I think minus two more aspect kids that then make me even more want to add at least two slots for that nine slot and you have two who have already applied, right? So, so I'm

200I'm Lisa, I would I was comfortable with your original request forcing you to jump through hoops without your information in front of you. I'm not comfortable with what you said about 11th grade. I'm not comfortable with I was comfortable with your original but if you're if you spent all that time and work on on coming up with that to force you to make a snap decision without your information be tough for me to understand. Can you be free to say zero if you want to say two or four? I'm comfortable with my original. I'm comfortable with my original. Uh there any further amendments or comments on this amendment? We're amending the original motion to adding 49 and 2. All right. Uh, so let's take a vote then on the amendment. All in favor of adding

201uh four and ninth grade and two at 11th grade. I uh anyone against? I uh I'm sorry. Very sorry. Uh we're back to the original motion. It's four at seventh grade and three at 10th grade. Any further discussion, comments, questions? All right. All in favor of this motion? I. Anyone against? Okay. So, that motion does pass. So, four seats at seventh grade, three seats at grade. So, we're going to move first thing tomorrow morning and do a lottery. So, I'm going to need someone from school to help us do those. Even though if the numbers might not be all the same, we just need someone to help us draw those those applications out. We'll also make sure that we're we're we're putting this on spot so people can know that we have school choice available

202and if we bleed out several more students at the ninth grade we can revisit it a third or fourth time. Is there a date? There's a timeline. Yeah, I mean we should we should make it available and then post a date that we're going to we'd have to look at the law, but I think I mean we we have an obligation to open it for a window of time for applicants. We added I think to say that we're doing it last year. We can't just draw it tomorrow open for people. Right. Out will sort of Yeah, I need to look up the necessary but it's procedure logistics whatever needs to happen. We'll keep you updated on this as well. Do we want to add back that July meeting date? Uh if you get more if

203you get like an if you get more information on that then we can add it back. Okay. All right. Uh so we put uh this used to be on there. It was off for a while but it's back on uh for future agenda item ideas. Anybody have any? We have the uh the cell phone stuff we talked about already. Definitely the cell phones we talked about. Julie said we're going to have the goals for August. Yep. our goals for August and then operating protocols try to okay I think I think the parking lot needs to be on there always just as always just to keep ourselves updated about that parking lot and the other thing is the Tanjo fields there I mean it's the town of oilston is kind of starting on that they have

204the funding so the school's not going to have to pay for it but it's probably something that we should get an update in for off so now that Julie's officially our athletic director just walked out the door. She She's on She's on that project as well, too. Yeah. Um All right. So, now we've got an executive session to enter in for a couple of things. Uh one of these things we're going to work out is try to work out the contract with the candidate that we hired for the interim superintendent for the 202526 school year. Uh so if everyone remembers we chose to interview several candidates recently for the position of interim superintendent for next year and we chose Mr. Ganam specifically because of his uh knowledge of the detailed and intricate nuances of our

205regional agreement and budget and a very complicated and fragile regional budgeting process in relationship with our two member towns. So, uh, considering the state of our financials and the level of involvement of oversight from Desi this past year, uh, we thought his knowledge of the situation and his skill in handling the district relationships was a critical priority for hiring the candidate for the interimm position. So, we're going to enter into an executive session. Uh, we may return to open session if we need to take a vote on um the contract. Uh, we we could. So that option is there for us to return to open session. Um, but we're going to enter an executive session with possible return to open session pursuant to mass general laws, chapter 38, section 21A, purpose three, to discuss strategy

206with respect to collective bargaining with the BBEA, CDA, if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of public body and the chair declares. And also uh pursuant to mass journal laws chapter 38 section 21A purpose two to conduct strategy session in preparation for negotiations with non-UN personnel and to conduct contract negotiations with non-UN personnel in terms of superintendent of schools. Sure. Um did we need to make any decisions on these green dates for the superintendent search time? Uh well we talked about that during the calendar vote. We can uh yeah, we talked about that on the dates with community. I mean just the November day, but I don't know Monday versus Wednesday, but I don't know like because those green dates are like her question. I don't know if we

207need to give her an answer. Well, maybe when we vote on the calendar in August, um we could have Tracy like actually provide us a calendar because like we're going to need to mark our calendars like who's going to need to vote what like for the entire fall. So remember she talked about part of that was uh you know we couldn't necessarily lock down specific dates until we knew who it was we were going to visit and things like that but yes as part of that discussion for the calendar that was included in there. So in August we should probably have more information about what those would be like my schedule comes out three months in advance. So I mean yes I can block things in advance but it's really hard to get 10 people

208or 20 people day. So I Yeah. Um, but you already took time off for the MC. Yeah. Um, yeah. I don't know what to say. Uh, I'm trying to find the file right now. So, Jess, if the schedule comes out in August, that's not going to And you have to do something in September. That's not going to be helpful. Is there any way Tracy the green dates are for November and December? Yeah. August. August. Yeah. Um, so I mean things easily create a block and then just add, you know, then open it if if that's not the day. It was really hard for me to move people. So yeah, I have some issues with work too that I got to work out in my schedule. I agree about that. I think we need like solid

209like, okay, on this day this is what we're doing. I know it's going to be a pain in the butt for Tracy to do, but if we get that like in July or early August, like I mean November 10th, we can agree to that's just when we're announcing the finalist. Um it's the I think you're probably referring more to the walkthroughs, right? Visit. Yeah. So just just for reference, that's going to be coordinated whoever your finalists are as well too, right? So what we did with our finalist or the principal like we had to work in around their schedule as well too. And and how far away are you? like are your three candidates going to be all sort of local or are they going to be on other ends of the state that you

210can't hit all two of them at the same time or all three of them at the same I think we talked about this and you said we were going to prioritize like give you like right of first refusal for what worked in your schedule. Did we talk about this for the last few days, but I I don't want, you know, I feel like this sounds uh I mean, yeah, it's going to be trouble for me, too, because I have uh some some client travel issues, but uh I don't know what we can do about it right now, to be honest. I I know when they do superintendent search, they try to make it so I'm going to visit your district on in the morning and your district in the afternoon, but that's if you're close

211to each other. If you're three miles apart cuz someone's at North Adams and someone's somewhere else, right? And that's even if you you stay within the state, right? There are people that might be applying from Connecticut and Rhode Island. Well, there's six of us, so we're gonna just have to divide and conquer. And hopefully like on whatever day Mike and Jess are busy like all one of us is going to be able to go. But she is okay. Everything in green, the full school committee attends an interview. So the full committee is not a bill. That's not possible to achieve. So, but I don't think you can pick those dates without having the candidates. I think that's like the full committee has to be on those. Oh, yeah. I get what you're saying. Do you

212know what I mean? Like to Al's point about like you have to be able to go with their schedule where they are. Uh Jess, let's talk about it a little bit further with Tracy. I mean Zoom or something. I don't know. We just have a phone call with Yeah, we have to talk to her anyway for the um search uh for the the stuff we're doing. So, let's ask her about that. I agree. I would like some dates. Yep. All right. So, we have a motion on the table to enter into executive session, which needs to be moved by Jess and seconded by Lori. Um, you had to roll call it. I know. I'm just uh that was a lot of discussion between making the motion and getting it approved. So, you just read off.

213Yeah. Are we good? I'm going to read it again. Uh we're going to enter executive session if possible. return to open session pursuant to Mass General's laws chapter 38A section 21A purpose 3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining BBEA CBA and an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on bargaining position of the public body and the chair so declares as well as pursuant to master general laws chapter 38 section 21A purpose to to conduct strategy session in preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel and to conduct contract negotiations with non-union personnel and term superintendent of schools So moved Megan second and Lori Megan I hi Lori I Lisa hi Jess and also I thank you we are now in executive session so going into I gave m shut it off because Joe had

214to leave so still live here everything's live congratulations Oh, he's on his own for that, right? just shuties out like That's