001um this meeting is being recorded your image or voice may be broadcast we're going to start with the pledge of allegiance the flag is right over there okay we're going to move on to public comments and first we have katrina um i first just want to say thank you for allowing me to speak and i'm just going to read an email that i wrote to every almost everybody here um i do first want to say before i read this that i'm not placing any blame on anybody i just think as a community we have a duty to do better for our children regarding security i don't think the burden is fair to be on teachers for security any school employee and then rely on the police department when they're not set up for success so
002my name is katrina lawton i'm a mother of a third grader at boylston elementary given the recent school shooting of texas and the current state of our society and requesting an armed security guard at the school at all times while children are in the building this is an immediate request the security at our schools is not sufficient in this current environment placing our teachers and staff in between children and the shooter is dangerous and very irresponsible we need a trained officer or veteran at each school to properly protect our children and staff we can't afford to wait for meetings or legislature we have a duty to protect our children and the staff while inside the buildings we need to protect them like we do politicians banks and federal buildings i wish i didn't have to
003be up here i wish it wasn't like this but the sad reality is it is like this and we can't wait we have to make sure the officers the staff are ready and prepared because unfortunately this is the environment we live in this could happen and it can happen in our small world thank you katrina jessica david third grader at bes as well um so on may 24th the four president members of the boys and berlin regional school community voted to pass an amendment to the evcf or face coverings and kobe protocols this protocol amends deci massachusetts dph cdc current recommendations by removing a mass requirement on days 6 through 10 of confirmed coded positive students and staff it also promotes the requirement of unvaccinated closed contacts from quarantining for five days and masking until
004day 10 from last exposure every medical provider's return to school note requires masking until day 10 following deci massdph and cdc i confirmed last week with massachusetts dph epidemiologists that no new data has come out since december 30th 2021 when cdc changed their foreign policy to five days quarantine and five days mass if over 24 hours asymptomatic the cdc decreased from 14 days because omicron showed how viral shedding closer to 10 days rather than 14 for delta variant omicron still sheds virus beyond day five if mass are removed more students of staff would become exposed and sick with coconut my own daughter press deposit on antigen day eight even with mild illness for only one day how does the hypothetical emotional toll of a student or staff member wearing a mask on day six through
005ten outweigh the emotional and physical toll of another student or staff member being out for at least five days and then any additional toll of an at-risk relative is then exposed and gets sick my daughter wore her hand in five she would expose six days in a row at least from six other cases within her class she wore her can any five she missed softball she misposted her softball she missed her recorder concert that she worked so hard to achieve her little black ribbon on her recorder because we can't wear mats from school when did the individual freedom of a confirmed positive coveted person outweigh the public health of the community i live in massachusetts and not texas because i recognize that public health is sometimes more important than individual freedom last weekend there was
006five thousand sixty covered cases in massachusetts six people died six sixty worships hospitalized 67 in the icu and 22 intubated thank god the covid is a usually mild disease for children but we cannot lose sight that we are a community with individuals that can still become very sick and die a childhood friend i grew up with in boylston attended boylston elementary school in toronto was hospitalized for a month and intubated but thankfully survived and now she lives in the trinity scar is her worth the life force any less than an individual wearing a mask for five days after being affected last meeting the school committee cited the fact that in school contact tracing produced very few positive cases within the school i have to make a very important point that factors with a mass mandate
007there was very little spread in school with a mass candy the schools of the community have no such protection during this recent surge within the wisdom berlin regional school directed and cannot be used for reason for the amendment to the last policy it is extremely dangerous for the school committee to remove these mass requirements on day 6 through 10 and for the unvaccinated exposures it goes against the cdc massachusetts dph and deputy guidelines it puts our students at understand risk and it puts our staff at risk and our community our school nurses were not involved in the decision to make this amendment to dusty policy they were not present for the subcommittee meeting on may 18th near the may 24th regular school committee meeting when the amendment was voted upon the nurse's letter back in
008february was also ignored when the mass mandate was coming down and their pleas for different policies were ignored our town's local boards of health were not involved in the forming of this policy in fact no person to my knowledge in the healthcare field was involved in the amendment passed by the school committee on may 24th please feel free to correct this assessment i encourage parents and treating members to let the wisdom berlin regional school district know that politicians that go outside the cdc mass department of public health and destiny are not acceptable it puts our children community at an unnecessary risk for personal freedoms thank you jessica is there anyone else that would like to make a public comment um we're going to move on to communications does anyone have a communication that they would
009like to share did you raise money i would just like to note that we did receive a letter from the nurses late this afternoon to please look at that it's in your pocket i also was told by a parent and wanted to share that the girls varsity lacrosse team coached by dev draper eric rubino and laura banis had a playoff game yesterday and they came in second in our league and finished as a runner-up in the class b cmada tournament the team plays hull tomorrow at 4 15 here at tohonto in the first round of the miaa tournament come support our girls and go green this is a very young team with grades 6 through 12 playing and only one senior with a lot of heart bella yuba who graduated on sunday kudos to the
010coaches and to the girls who despite being a really young team have done amazing things this year is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented discussion all in favor as well opposed motion to approve the consent agenda as presented passes okay we are going to move on to mr conrady yes so you have my report um i'm just going to run through shown there the first item is related to the regional transportation uh revolving fund and um with um school committee approval you'd like to place at least fifty thousand uh potentially in more revolving fund we get a reimbursement from the state for this we've in fact budget budgeted to um put this in the republic fund and have it as an offset transportation expenses next year so you know we need
011this vote to support the fy23 budget it does require school committee models to vote to deposit the funds there which is why it's on the agenda there's no questions on that one the second item i'm going to defer that will be presented at the first school committee meeting next year annual authorization student activity accounts essentially the same list of funds there might be one additional account added the next item is authorization for evolving funds these are all existing funds i did highlight changes there's recommendations on limits to funds and um there's a there's one highland fund that's been spent down uh revolving kindergarten reform that we no longer use as well so later in the meeting during the business items that request that this be approved it's essentially the same as last year's we do
012have um you know pandemics created some financial challenges for families i had this in my report last year as well um we are recommending that we clear our balances as at the end of this this year via a combination of write-offs and partial payments as well as donations related to balances load this is primarily in preschool we're fairly up-to-date in the after school program so we seek your approval to do so i will say that bounces won't just be removed we'll require families to respond and provide some demonstration of inability to pay but recognizing there are cases and we will we will have um parents who do document that they cannot have some financial challenges we wanted the flexibility to write them off or to solicit donations he did receive some donations last year so
013that's your question yes i think that's really powerful um what is the balance um it i think we did some recent payments i'd say it's probably around 5500 to 6 000. um that's not necessarily a long time period yeah it's just from this year right uh but it doesn't take that long so um you know i'd request and recommend the vote but for flexibility on that the alternative would be we could tell families and they can no longer attend which we've tried to avoid during the camden so you know that's the guidance that was provided we don't have a good we have programming as a district to do that we do with athletics have the ability to treat five teenagers students for special ed can attend for three because they're um at the age of
014three there's that they can have iep services that were required by iep services um so there are some students who attend their free because they're specialized but regular students it's on a lottery basis we have to be more that want to go than you know there are eligible spots at this point if we that if that's an idea industry could think about it you would probably need to then budget for the general fund to absorb some of that or adjust the rates of families is this the first time this has happened last year as well we didn't charge um there's no question for the questions i'll move on to the last day so this is um something i wanted to leave the district for a lot we've invested in a lot of things in recent
015years that were important from an educational standpoint and we found ways to kind of manage financially my strong recommendation is that the first thing that's put into the budget the next next few years are reductions in the use of split choice funds so that the goal is for so the district has to make plan to spend more money in school choice than we take in particularly berlin memorial is not an issue we have a very very healthy balance of school choice funds there at bes it's diminishing in part because the school is filling up with resident students and we haven't reduced the expense accordingly for various reasons schools have had a lot of needs and then in toronto it has a very healthy surplus but we do budget to spend it down each year and
016prove like a savings we've been able to avoid that um my recommendation to kind of stabilize things is listed there but it's you've been created i'm not gonna leave it here but it's basically if we if we make adjustments to how much school choice we're using and i'll leave this for my successor and job as well we should we should look to reduce our school choice usage um in boylston elementary and to honda and and get to a point where the revenue that we take in is equal to the expense that we plan into our budget yes the expense of the diversity is coming out of schools are those school u.s expenses related to external placements well are they covering other financial budgets those are covering teacher salaries the places that you're talking about is
017a separate line it's school choice commissions so that's not practice and those irons that temporarily are fairly small we don't have a lot of students going out of district who are net revenue generated for school shows we have more students that might come here that's referring to some of the special placements we have that were particularly expensive this year those are out of district special education so that's that's the heads up on school choice so you know you are planning next year eyes to be careful to make that a priority um similarly the town of berlin has kind of highlighted this it's not a requirement but other post-employment benefits for retirees we pay for those costs out of our budget and the idea would be that over time this is a there's a both that
018trust that's created when that gets with enough money in it that can generate it's from its income money to pay for these retirement benefits so we've created the trust we've started to fund it what i've mapped out here is a plan to fund it at higher values so that at some point you're not spending the current budget to pay for benefits for people who don't work there anymore that should be from the terms in general intergenerational equity you should be paying for those costs during the lifetime of the employees while they're here it's not a requirement there's a lot of districts and towns that are moving towards getting higher funded this plan has some significant increases but i think they're it's mapped out in a way that that you can do this and still invest
019in educational resources over the next 10 years so that's a longer term one the school choice one i think can rectify fairly quickly so i just wanted that to be out there and you can have it because i think somebody's stepping in it's kind of it's going to be amazing things to do so when i look at these and see you know the healthy balance that to hunter you know whether person's very small balance of what a small boundary at bds are we required to keep those funds within the school that we've listed them could we call from one fund to help support our government that's a good question i would say i feel like from an equity perspective when these were separate three separate districts um the town of berlin accumulated the funds in
020berlin memorial school so those i think yeah i don't think i want to steal burlingame i don't think that's my okay we're waiting for some people so we're going to move on to ms fitzpatrick who is going to give us an update sure um so you have my report as well i have a few things to report on the first is that the special education parent advisory council awarded a small scholarship again this year um to a student that met those criteria a student that attends aspect did um with the scholarship this year which is why we didn't care presented at graduation this weekend but if you want to share that information with the committee um on to preschool um historically the berlin preschool has had two sessions um a monday wednesday friday morning session
021and a tuesday thursday morning session um for this school year we had an increase in students with special education needs and we added a third program in the afternoon on monday wednesday friday it turns out that was a one-year need only we um on on my next item on may 24th jesse announced that the end of his school year and at the end of the continuation of the programs that run through the summer such as extended school year and the acceleration academies that will mark the end of the state one school testing program so they will no longer be providing at-home testing um through the schools or symptomatic testing supplies or any other districts that are using other versions of testing such as pool testing et cetera will be discontinued and there's a recommendation for
022districts to continue to do symptomatic testing in the nurse's office through arrangements that are made through the district i updated the vaccination data for you one more time for through the end of the school year for all three buildings and um all three buildings have seen you know an ongoing increase in those vaccination rates for students as well as the final report here on the participation from stafford students in the athletic testing program the last distribution of those tested kits is going out to families this friday and we did have the opportunity to order additional supplies again for our extended school year program and the acceleration academy that i'll be running this summer so additionally testing tips will be provided to the families that often at the end of the school year at this time
023i would like to tell mr conrad that if he would like to exit the meeting we'd like to thank him for his service [Applause] okay so we are going to move on to reports and our first report is from superintendents indeed okay thank you i wanted to talk a little bit about the security plans that we've had in the building and things we've done i do want to say this you know the security of these buildings is they really are the responsibility of everyone on a day-to-day basis it is responsible um so i'll start again we wanted to talk a little bit about some of the security measures we've put into our schools and i do want to emphasize that the security in our buildings is the responsibility of everybody it's the responsibility of administrators
024it's responsible teachers the central office and the school committee and on a day-to-day basis it's the school committee probably has the least amount of responsibility in those buildings either something happens within a day it's the teachers the administrators we're going to have to work that solution out at least until the police get there so i know please probably talk about that later we've been working on security measures for our buildings before i got here when i got there cal had been working with a crisis management local crisis management team and put a lot of measures in the place so we'll go over some of the things that we've put in place and some of the things that we have for the future and then i think if the officers want to speak that would be
025good on all of the windows that roughly two inches up from the on the ground the top we have this 3m security film that we've put on um that means that anybody who tries to smash through those windows um it had taken four or five minutes to get through and if you if you want to go to youtube and just look that up they have pretty impressive demonstrations on how effective that film is we put buzzers and cameras at all of the entrances as well as change the locks on all the doors from the keyed systems to swipe card systems we also trained staff from the alice training and we you know before we did a big training right before the pandemic and we will continue that next year students are familiar with the protocols
026again we need we need to continue to work on that to make sure that they and the staff know what to do with emergency um the administrative team and all of the first responders in both towns we need biannually to discuss just whatever is going on in the community anything that's happened in their world you have to remember that as educators this is really not what we're expert at doing and so having the first responders bring those ideas to us and suggest solutions in our building is very helpful as a matter of fact the idea of 3m film came from the first responders that was a couple years ago we've added tabletop simulations to our our crisis management team meetings and these are exercises in which the principals sit down and first responders is that
027various um situations that they that the principals then have to respond to in real time and as they go through them the first responders um give them give them other you know hurdles to get over and so they just go through those responses and rather than just rather than just having a plan and talking about it it gives them a chance to practice what they're what they're going to do in a real situation this year this committee signed an mou with the both police departments that allowed for sharing of information so that'll also be helpful we have sros in each school they are full-time police officers in both towns and they work in our schools pot we've also numbered all of the outside glass in this building so that in an emergency first responders from
028the outside will know what room is which because they're not as familiar with these buildings any questions about that so far before i talk a little bit about things we're gonna we have we have planned okay um based on the budgeted funds we are going to add some additional security locks to bms and to handle this year currently at bes if you've ever gone in the building there's one you have to be buzzed in one door then there's a vestibule and then there's another door there both of them require you to be buzzed in so we're going to add those two solutions to both toronto and to uh to bms in addition that 3m film that i just talked about that we have on the other windows will be added to the inside of that
029vestibule which will which will in effect track trap somebody in there and they could push out they won't be able to push into the building uh we'll continue the tabletop exercises we carol and i met with the first responders monday and talk to them about designing starting to design a tabletop exercise for the sun so they're working on that but some some version of that now and we'll present it at our summer meeting we have crisis manuals and all of our schools we're in the process of updating those and those those will be done shortly in addition um if you can't congratulation you noticed uh there were more offices than usual so we would continue to have additional police presence at our uh at update and our big events and that's always that's always helpful
030it's always at the turn so um carlos anything else you want to do do the officers want to say something from our standpoint the the best uh uh upstairs with the school department and then with our principles um there's a free line of communication um i think it was diane that started it where uh we uh the police department lots of schools know whether it's the element of school [Music] if we're dealing with kids that they um if the school isn't sharing information with us we're not sharing information school we're always getting half a picture and then maybe some of these kids get overwhelmed but we have that kind of free fall information uh that's really helped us uh on both levels um adapting it is part of our job that's kind of what we
031do there are obviously terminal incidents that happen at these meetings we uh share knowledge uh we uh chief john eric uh go to barbados you know we have these meetings with our colleagues to figure out what the new best practices are it's like in education there's always this constant changes um unfortunately we're progressive where we do change sometimes um so one of the things is the flip books will be discussed um i don't know if you guys are familiar with with them within their emergency booklets are in every classroom um they have a list of different scenarios on there um what i think would i talk about for the july meeting is make sure we go over and we update that um but i think one what's important here is the the just uh free
032fall communication that the school has between the police department please contact the school also uh office about video officer building or security as as chief and nunciat who sent out the two resource offices in our buildings and um chief china i i was wondering if you could just we did our meeting on monday you talked about alice girls being a skill set and the importance of them not necessarily here but in luck in life and i thought it was a great point and you know part of the issue we've had um you know we do we've been doing fire drills since forever and i don't think the school's burnt out since the since the 50s and there's so much stuff in them now they're not built they're non-combustible materials but we continue to do them
033and there's there's reasons for it so when the same thing has to happen yeah well i think the major thing is that when we do alice stranger it says the school shooter training and i think we should get away from that that's going to be a life skill it's an active shoot training just last weekend alone there was ten active shootings in the united states you know um when we do the fire drills in school you know i remember ever since i was a kid and they still do it you bring that knowledge home to your own pups for fire drills and i think that the active shooter training we have to stop saying in school shootings it's active shooter training it's a life skill and i think we really need to start incorporating to
034the kids lives and i think it's going to help them pass school into college and then into adulthood as well i mean chances of it happening here very slim but you know you start you can go to the garden for a concert you can go to blood stadium you have the tweeter center or that's what you're spending but just life in general you know traveling vacation las vegas uh anywhere so i think we have to stop calling it like alice training school shooter drills they should just be active shooter drills it should be a life skill yeah i think one of the one of the components that was kevin um forgetting is that that these active retros it's all about education um so so i i think that that got lost over time where uh
035people are just going through the motions because they've been told they have to go through the motions but the the goal of this is to slow everything down and educate our staff why we're doing an educator our students what we're doing by educating them we're preparing them for life but we're reducing the anxiety and any concerns they may have what that is talking at least to the elementary school kids talking to them it's not a fear of doing the drill and at least there it's a disruption to their routine and then not knowing what to do is given is giving them the anxiety so if we slow it down and we take the time to explain it i think it'll be one of the more successful program but we're setting them up for their futures
036because unfortunately it's a part of our reality and on opening day usually it's really the only time during the year when we have all of our staff in this room and representatives from both police departments will be here um talking just about what the two chiefs just just mentioned that it has to be a skill that they take with them again to reiterate what chief shotgun said schools are still very safe places but you know this week i was watching the tv just this weekend i saw the video just on a street corner where the shooting broke up and it's more likely that that's if it happens that's where our kids will be in those kind of situations we want to make sure that they're safe in those also and so i think i think
037they're right i think the messaging about all of this has been in the wrong direction it's probably because it's only after school shooting that we talk about this stuff publicly and we really should be talking about it all the time so we're gonna we're gonna step it up and do more communication and more training and along with making a a golden state that that stuff we have control over um how many times a year i i know they did it this year because my son came home and talked about it before the texas shooting he didn't like it but how many times a year are you proposing the kids do like an alistar we're gonna propose that they do three times a year without a proposal we're gonna require it to be done three times
038a year that's how many times five dollars are done in the building and you know again we gotta get used to these things you know my personal beliefs aside the principles personally society they have to be done and so we'll we'll we will we will do them this year they'll be required and you know this will be on the scene for each of them i've got a question yet i read that it's you said uh there'll be extra police for major events one that i'm at [Music] i believe we have two other graduation years we had four so anything where we have the public public i just want to point out to the boylston people the berlin representatives know what we're doing in the schools and see if they're very active and we're proud of
039the life there and their families and the superintendent have pointed out the two chiefs but what you haven't seen before and i'm very proud of is chief sharpener new chief and chief and under are communicating on a daily basis this didn't happen before i've always felt like an outsider and now we're included and they're meeting weekly and talking about strategies we share information we were at the one in boylston that never happened before we came up there with our own representatives to see what can we do to help and share information and it's very important to us so the fluid between the principles and the superintendent have increased so much more prior to the recent incidents we saw this when we saw the change in regime and we were looking forward to this and it's
040very open and what i like also is he introduced we're police officers but i know also i'm a parent first as all these gentlemen in uniform are and our kids go to public schools and we're very confident how safe they are we watch the numbers and we're well aware of that so we really care about your kids and your staff as far as the drills the teachers and staff can be doing internal things it doesn't have to be a complete alice drill every day learning a life skill looking at the room and doing things and we work behind the scenes with tactical things that we can't share obviously but we keep the superintendent informed of the principles and it works very well together and i'm just proud of the cooperation more than anything that i've
041seen in the last six months prior to these major incidents and and you must see that too uh from the superintendent's point and the staff get so yeah just thank you all for being here and being part of this conversation tonight um i guess you know from my perspective you know we can't solve the problem of guns on a local school committee right and at the end of the day though there are two things i think we can impact one of them is the physical facility and securing it the other one is a police presence right um my understanding is that if we currently we have school resource officers that are assigned part-time to the district to the schools and will be there at varying times at the schools um is consideration being given to
042a more permanent full-time presence in the schools and if so whose decision really is that because budgetarily that's a sounds like a town decision to be at that point one when i uh i think i shared this story with chief when i got here when i first arrived at 2018. i had a visit from a select book and i've been talked about um having a full-time i can't remember what happened in 2018 but i'm guaranteeing something that happened in school wasn't it we i had him when i was a building administrator um i'm in favor right now um but it didn't it didn't go anywhere it would require and please jump in it requires full-time offices so the schools would be open to it it's something that happens at the top level and with the
043police department yeah so so speaking of speaker boyle said um i get i guess you kind of gotta ask yourself what are you looking for um a lot of districts have one sro that oversees all the schools and that's a full-time position um what you're gonna what do you ask where are you asking for police in every school for safety and security or are you just looking to have a full-time passive role that oversees all schools but those are two very good things one reply just one full-time position that's in the school one required two um two positions um but ultimately that would uh further spoil something that would uh that's not something we could uh kind of just figure out in our budget how much is already set for the year um i'm not
044that familiar with budgets uh but i'm guessing that for us they'll have to uh go to a special power meeting or something if we want to get tonight down for the august um school year i know uh a neighboring community it has a regional school system seventy percent of the officer's salary comes out of the school department budget and thirty percent comes out of the town [Music] um yeah yeah so if we were to make a boylston regional school district uh school resource officer we'd probably do that 70 would come out of the school budget 30 percent come out of the town um i'm sure between chief ninjado and i we can if he doesn't have anything lined up we can supply it and vice versa and we can we can accommodate that i'm saying
045the only way we get the seventy percent to cover iron is for both of us in the first place so it's all about money yeah correct correct yeah it's not fair to the town of boylston to have to pay for everything from breakfast so that's why they come out you know i love to say it but it depends on what step they're at if they have a degree or say things they did i mean a rough figure today it basically costs 100 000 a year per officer so it'd be a 70 000 bill there's money coming available because of recent incidents there's packages there's emergency is being transferred and maybe a district like this that doesn't have an established sro position which is very common in the state may be open to getting grant monies
046or monies uh through that as it becomes uh federally available there is emergency packages going through but i mean we have a very open communication we have an officer that just went through the brag training and i've already told chica luziado that she's more welcome to come over here you know at our expense because it's our students as well so you know we're into sharing as well and so we can get something concrete and solidified what's interesting is to think about today that we were building a police station in an elementary school today this time we probably vote from the same place right so that they're right next to each other because it seems like from what i understand most is the response time and the sooner you get there the less likely it is
047that more people die right so you know given that we don't have that that's one of the things the alice program covers is um it it doesn't take a lot of time to hurt a lot of people um but you know the figure of pocket three to five minutes right um so so so you know so it's something even having it next door but i get i get the rationale behind it uh but a lot of carnage can still occur in that very short amount of time um you know so i think they i i can get the number but the way alice breaks it down um there's a figure of amount of gunshots uh depending if there's a gun that's used amount of gun shots uh what target uh statistic target ratio is um
048it's a very large number and a thirty second period again again they're not during these incidents they're trying to cause the most damage they're not they don't have a target in mind um you know what that's a thank you i mean that's a good honest evaluation of the situation i don't think it's something that people even even educators realize i remember the first sro that i ever had as a building administrator it was like a thousand you know okay you know you're gonna have to keep yourself safe for a while because we're not gonna be able to get in there it's not gonna be a snap in the thing anymore so that's the employment of just the teachers and the administrators being able to keep the building safe until someone gets them so it is
049everybody's responsibility so i work uh prior to hearing work of the delhi police department who has a very great uh sro program with checkered hell um and what we found is that the school he has a school resource officer acts as a deterrent but having that school resource officer available to the students the staff on demand to close out some of those red flags um is really beneficial and what this sro found is a lot of times this was the only opportunity kids had to talk to a law enforcement officer without having to go through an adult and he was got a lot of good information that the staff wasn't even aware of because they just went to the sro so that's kind of the sro is more than just a higher gun in the
050school they provide that bridge between you know one of our more vulnerable populations and law enforcement i bought the principles here tonight they weren't scheduled to be here but they didn't comment so is there anything anything that you want to add about your building so if you have any questions can answer questions too and and i understand that we can only control what we control um but a lot of what we're talking about are reactive things right and it's hard to hear that this is a way of life that we have to prepare for and just get used to it might be a reality and that's what we have to do with it certainly so certainly don't want to put any of the officers on the spot today but if there's any way that maybe
051you could talk about some of the things stuff like this happen to proactive um without divulging um protocol they use but maybe in the future just a if there's any way for the departments to maybe talk about some of the principles that you use to just kind of keep an eye on the communities and take a more proactive approach and you share that with the community that that might be a helpful local perspective so that's one of the that's one of the great things about these crisis meetings that the uh super accountants talk about by annually is um what we're able to give recommendations so one of the recommendations i i met with last week with carol um was that you know we've got a stack of controlled access points where i know it's difficult
052you can't compare our elementary school to uh two very different animals they are in our school doesn't have kids running up to the cameras coming and going as they please just they're older and they it's just different but i i one of the recommendations i'm going to be giving is we have to have a controlled access point meaning everyone goes to the front door everyone goes out the front door unless there's an emergency um and that that's a that's a way we can slow down um entry come in after coming out but that's what these meetings are about sharing this information getting different perspectives um and then again instituting best practices for the safety of the schools i think that's a great idea um thanks for sharing that you know i don't know maybe this
053is an idealistic thinking but even at a higher level uh the problem is if somebody wakes up and decides they want to go kill a bunch of kids in school and so you know to whatever extent apartments can maybe share what what measures can be taken and what they do to try to manage that but not now certainly but we again everything we do is proactive is about help so i'm asking you as a parent if you see something say something you know if you see that red flag if you notice something the school bus drivers the janitors we're all in this collectively i tell the kids our job in our dare program is all about help the conversation with the fifth graders last week was prior to the buffalo instruments that person needed help
054just like somebody sitting next to you may need help and that make me more proud of handing if you've got them help that's not tattletailing that's not getting him in trouble that's help if we slow down you leaving the committee here and write you a ticket you didn't crash i tell the kids we helped you you know so everything we do is proactive so the tactics will always be secret you know people can figure them out but everything we do is help and communicate it communicating with the staff when a bus driver tells an officer hey i noticed this you know all right i'll tell the school psychologist and we're not there to spot there's a letter of understanding we have very strict guidance and rules as to what we can report and not report
055and we share information to get the best help for that student or employee or visitor that may need help so everything we do is proactive i think one of the more proactive things the school department has done was hired those actually those extra counselors um this year it wasn't last year too right then but this year we've seen like a very high number of uh um people suffering from mental health emergencies at least to me it seems that it's been an overwhelming opportunity with having i mean nationwide we have a mental health crisis and it's probably politically correct but we can pump these kids full of drugs immediately uh physicians can pump these cases on drugs immediately but to get in and see a psychologist or a psychiatrist or women wasted waiting weeks months so
056even if those red flags are not overlooked we're still waiting weeks months to do it puts the school in a hard position because they see these they see these problems they have the counselors there to deal with it but they didn't deal with it in school and if there's no place to put them out there that's it that's a nationwide problem that unfortunately it's all a fear yeah just to be clear but you know my comment wasn't to suggest that there are proactive things i absolutely know there are and i would encourage a conversation about to whatever extent we can with the community where we can feel engaged and not and complement the reactive procedures that we're putting in place but also know that we aren't just you know fortifying windows uh and waiting right
057and it sounds like that that stuff is happening in whatever scene we can show the conversation right yeah no i mean transparency transparency transparency right um you know i think again that i i've kind of gotten some feedback that some of the parents aren't happy with the alice program itself um but again i think a lot of that is due to the um a lack of familiar familiality with the program i think it's one of those things that if we educate parents on it they're gonna they don't understand why uh why we're using that program good points about mental health we need to go further and say we look at his incident it's men's mental health it's a young man and i'm interested to look next to what we can do in the high school
058in particular tell him other programs we can bring in the things we can do in particular for young men who try to help those who so i think his name is jake he was a former psychologist here he runs a uh a uh a um a mentoring group um the kind of thing the kind of quote that to help help with those um you know but it's more there's more you know we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about you know the mental health crisis um you know it really is it's those students that feel isolated that don't feel connected um to their schools into their community um you know research shows that you know um a high percentage of you know these individuals that perform these acts are um those that are feel isolated
059and not connected um it's so programs like like the um mentoring program um you know as well as the addition of another school adjustment counselor um can only help but i think it has got to be a community effort including parents because again the schools can only do the schools can only do so much and um you know students that we have been able to to flag we have very good communication between the parents and the counselors um so the student you know did have a difficult night or did you know get up and and apparently something that was a little bit off you know they're on the phone or they're on their email and saying hey can you check in um you know but it's that type of communication that is so um important
060and keeping can't stress it's enough looking at the kids social media that's it's so important because oftentimes it is communicated through social media thank you officers for being here i think uh where i initially came into tonight i was going to ask you slightly different questions that's what happened but from hearing you talk you mentioned parents and anxiety i think that's a lot of questions we got over anxiety you mentioned mental health you mentioned office of video uh for the past six months you're very proud of the two towns coming together and communicating more than you've ever seen yeah that that one comment to me that was sort of the surprise in the wake up i mean the entire district's been regionalized since 2019 like right and it's only within the last six months that
061you're saying and notice of change in communication between the the two towns coming together to take care of one school district one set of kids so that's what really stuck up to me and sort of changed my mind tonight i think i was going to ask you you know what what of the events from last week in texas do you see that that's making you change your mind or is there any lesson you can take over that makes you change the way you approach school security and all that but i think i just want to say it thank you for coming here and speaking letting telling me as a parent hopefully it's helping the other parents and uh i would like to see if the school committee wants to have them back here we are
062here just to sort of continue to build that community one of our goals this year was community engagement and trying to get drop off a little bit but i think this is a perfect example of where we can build that community through the committee through the two departments the one school district that you've had so hopefully next year maybe we can talk about having that again more regularly if there's a budget issue that needs to be picked up to figure it out that's what i want to say thank you thank you my dad i just want to add uh chief of nozzle and we meet with area chiefs frequently and we meet with chiefs that would actually have the promise of response here so it's not just about berlin you know clinton and sterling you
063know we have everybody because we're all on the same team and we call the blue team and we all help each other so it's not it just doesn't end with merlin worlds and it's all the worrying towns that we also invite uh for our coffee mugs and and school safety is probably one of our priorities um okay i wanted to say a special thank you because not just for coming tonight but because you put yourselves out there for all of us and i'm so grateful for all of you i mean i i just think it's it's wonderful that you know you're coming here you're speaking to us you're making us feel better we're all parents we all have kids in the school and we have the same concerns that everybody else does and i know
064i feel really really good after hearing from you everybody has work to do but it's just really nice to know how much work you guys are doing behind the scenes and even besides this just thank you for everything you do for our communities very grateful one thing i will add on a personal note um someone if someone asked me if i had this conversation at home with them have these have these comments have these conversations they they're i'm sure they're hearing rumors you might as well give them facts um and hopefully reduce some anxiety where unfortunately this is an unfortunate part of our lives have those difficult conversations with them tomorrow's field day in berlin we'll be playing kickball and the fire department will be there helping and including two years ago the highway department
065they come down they're part of the community and they come down with the clouds and trucks and everything like that so we're interactive and i have to go back when i say six months i felt the change in the two chiefs let me be clear about that five years ago john and i started working together close ties with diane it felt good the last few years to be able to call her and know her you know it was always the mason dixon line for me when i went up the other road where did the kids go and it was different rules of thought and the towns didn't work as close together the schools did and we did get in here and we did work together with his staff so i just want to say the
066administration changed and they both have a clear message as parents that it's important about the kids in the schools and they encourage all their officers that have different likes and traits to be involved in school so let me not just six months but we've made a lot of progress um in that time and if you really want to invite us back the superintendent will warn you i can go for a long time all right at this time i'd like to release the principles go home and see your families oh oh and the officers too thank you we appreciate your time hey just remember he gets a four hour minimum yeah salary you're gonna play in the four okay we are going to move on to the superintendent evaluation and what i'm going to do is
067i'm actually going to kind of go through the process um you know for us as well as for the public for the first time this was well this was the first time for the majority of the board completing the report this year we did not do the summarization um as we i was concerned it could lend itself to bias additionally while past reports were impressive completing the evaluation as an individual can take actual days involved in this process are any or in my case all of the following review the year's agendas minutes subsequent notes review of the superintendent goal updates watching past meetings to review delving into the rubric and actual writing itself it's a very timely process very worthwhile and i can tell you that the members gave it their all considering all of
068this because the summarization is not an essential part of the evaluation but rather a beautiful extra it's not in this year's report knowing how much work this was for the members as well as the added hurdle of the new rubric after the superintendent's goals had been presented amended and accepted i want to thank every one of you genuinely for the immense amount of time that went into understanding the task as well as completing it and especially for the thoughtful comments this is a very busy time of year in everyone's lives and i know the hours that went into completing it so thank you so now i'm going to explain the evaluation process i watched chairman spencer's presentation from last year he did a wonderful job laying out the process so i'm going to model what
069he did after my explanation i will begin by asking superintendent zany if he has any comments or questions for the committee pertaining to the evaluation all answers and questions need to be directed to the superintendent from the committee there is to be no discussion or deliberation between members because there is no motion on the floor however you can engage with the superintendent when that open question and answer period ends in order to deliberate i will ask for a motion and that will be to accept the final report as written even if you feel that it needs to be amended we cannot discuss it until the motion is made seconded and we've gotten to the discussion portion if during that portion an amendment is warranted the motion for an amendment can be made during the discussion
070and voted upon when we are done i will ask all in favor of accepting the school committee superintendent evaluation report as written or with amendments if any and we will vote i will then ask for a motion to approve the overall rating of whatever our choices for the 2021-22 superintendent's evaluation performance are there any questions okay before i hand it over to the superintendent i just wanted to share a few notes that i took um we didn't have a summary but i went through and pulled out what i could from people's final thoughts superintendent saying has many strengths he's an effective leader he's a good manager he's surrounded himself by highly confident leaderships uh leadership team he's worked effectively with town officials for budget approvals what was mentioned over and over again is that he
071prioritizes student learning and he always has the student's best interests at heart and i think that's really really important um he kept current with desi which was constantly changing he was on call for crises completed his goals despite everything changing and such upheaval he works tirelessly he puts immense time and energy to complete and deliver on goals the budget was complete and approved despite all of the changes in deci guidelines and the resignation of the chair during budget season was not easy for him and he got that extra counselor approved when it was questioned by a lot of people and so kudos to superintendent for standing up for that he has straightforward communication with the community the suggestions that came from the board were to work on community and community engagement together with the school
072committee because we need to engage more to alleviate his burden some people asked if he could work on his communication style with parents some people asked for more student voices and they proposed that we follow the equity survey as suggested in the fall for the students some people want equity to be taken the equity work to be taken in-house to re-allocate financial resources on the unique character of the bbr phoebe rsd without inside influence and we have created a new budget and finance subcommittee and we know that they will work together with superintendent zany we're hoping that something that we can look forward to in the fall there were five members and the overall rating was proficient and with that i will turn it over to the superintendent i did have one question someone who
073ever said bring equity in-house does that mean not have for us to do it here or and not have um teachers21 yeah yeah okay i think we would talk about that we actually talked about that as a budget item today and we didn't put aside a little bit just in case but we we're committed to know the these the style we use as a train to trainer style so when we brought them in the whole goal was at some point we would we would not need them anymore so we think we're at that point now we might bring somebody in just to talk to the staff just one or two while presentation but we think we're on our way we think we've done enough we've got enough people involved now but we can continue this
074work so make it our own there's a lot of the stuff they do it's just general equity stuff and it's our goal to make it our own and so i think i think we're at that point now so feedback yeah the problem was basically it was mostly a budget issue given all the problems the last two years have seen the assessment scores this year i was hoping whatever money could possibly be to getting those kids back should take precedence over thank you could i have a motion to approve the final superintendent evaluation report as written second discussion yeah we've heard some um we've heard feedback at times or the school committee feedback that it is essentially a rubber stamp for the superintendent i think that if you were to read the comments we made we
075appropriately gave constructive criticism to him i think jeff would probably disagree with any idea that we are a rubber stamp for what he wants to do but i just wanted to make that coming we all all five members that completed the evaluation didn't rate him as proficient which is the standard across the state um with with some variance from one thing to the next but i think generally speaking there was a lot of consistency across everyone's rating as i had the opportunity to read them and feel really confident that we've made the right choice as i've all right um so we are in the motion all in favor to accept the um to approve the final superintendent evaluation report as written i'm and i as well opposed society um okay it passes we have approved
076the final superintendent evaluation report as britain um could i have a motion to approve the nothing surprise but can i have a motion to approve the superintendent evaluation rating of proficient for the 2021-22 school year second discussion all in favor ivan i as well opposed is there anyone that will abstain all right the motion to approve the superintendent evaluation rating of proficient for the school year passes congratulations thank you thank you for your hard work it's not an easy job i as becoming chair quite suddenly i've had an insider look at what goes on at central office and god bless these people i mean they work tirelessly there's things coming at them sideways all the time and they still get all the work done they care so much about the students and no matter how
077things are said they still show up for the job and i appreciate that i really do would you like to give us um an update on teaching and learning positive things that are going on yesterday i did want to mention a follow-up to bob's presentation before we spoke about the future budget priority building financial stability and sustainability [Music] um so a couple good things happening around the district we are go for the summer acceleration academy again this year all it said we were missing one or two folks last week i have everybody in place now getting the nurse we have the buses set um to go and we're very excited about that this year we'll be running our acceleration academy from august 15th it's monday to friday august 19th we'll be inviting students um specific
078students in from grades k one and two those are current students in the district from both berlin and boylston elementary so i'm i'm grateful for that keeping in mind that's sr3 funds and we're focusing we're targeting that money on what we feel are the most we're going to get the most out of for that kind of short period of time although we're lengthening the time of the day that we're doing that before we did it we ran the program from about 8 30 to 11 30 12. we're running it until 2 o'clock in the afternoon so we have extended time we're building in math and ela support for those children as well so that'll be an invitation only to begin with unless we don't have enough numbers but we're limiting the classes to about 10
079to 12 students each so um you'll be hearing more about that because invitations are going on as well i don't know if anybody have a question about the academy at this point okay okay so there's one thing you already know the right we also have a special educator on board and we have five parent professionals joining us we have only 12 kids per grade 12 total 12 children per grade level that's what we're looking at is an ideal classroom give or take the numbers here are there if we have 15 students we'll probably take them but we don't want to exceed that by too many many students because then that will take away from the intention just to really target those children who need that additional support who face greater gaps in their learning and
080we want to get them ready to go um for the school year i'd love to see some kind of hearing failure i would love to do we did run a parent survey last year with the program one was funded to a specific grant for that program but we could certainly do that again and thank you for saying that because we'll get we're doing this for grant funding we're not sure how long the funding will be available to us but if we can figure out a way to do that through some other grant that's where we definitely want to continue but it's especially imperative now to run this kind of program i think in the summer i wanted to just do a quick shout out to jessica gallagher she has been handling our internship program she's
081been putting together a database this year for us she ran the panels the career panels at toronto for grades um 10 11 10 and 11. she's going to be working hopefully again with us next year on that supporting the council when they shift positions in the counseling office and we have that college and career counselor in place we'll be taking over the internship program the following year but for next year's week we intended to focus this year on those panel discussions bringing these folks in from different fields in stem and other areas to kind of fight the fire of the children to see what they potentially could be and do next year we'll be having that as well we'll be offering shadowing opportunities i know some teachers are very excited about doing field trips out
082into the stem field jessica has reached out to some of the corporations that are community members who have invited our students to come in for that purpose so you know funding for field trips but that's okay but we we have the places where we'll figure out a way to send them there so um so that's great and then the following year we'll start this internship internship program for the seniors so i'm on looking for target opportunities through those problems because some don't have offices that just dedicated to schools you know where they have an education they have yes i can send you um the email to jessica she's been reaching out i put something in my my newsletter and i know diane had been putting something into hanto today if you have a contact or
083you know anybody in the community other than the ones we've got you can send that to send that along to us but we keep advertising to send that information to us so more we can add the better opportunities for the students the other person i wanted to mention tonight is mike real mike real is a parent and tahanto he has been instrumental in bringing the grade 5 connects challenge to both the elementary schools each year for the past several years we had to hold off with one year because obviously the president but mike is enthusiastic he brings his team from thermo fisher dynamic and we are involved what he does he gave the teachers in the fifth grade all new kids connects kids this year because he felt that those others were a little little
084worn used they were a couple years old but he's like here's brandon kids and we're going to be running that on friday june 10th from 9 to 11 30. if you are around and you want to stop by boylston elementary school they switch between schools each year please come by and see this it's a great the students practice a challenge during the spring they work on what they're going to do they have to do an engineering plan then when they get into the building they everything is disassembled they have to actually assemble the product that they've created they have and they have a specific problem that they have to solve with that product they have to do the engineering plan they have to display that and then they're judged on what what and why they've
085done what they've done so it's it's so cool yeah so please come by if you're if you're able to do that and then finally i just also want to mention our parent camps have run again this year for incoming kindergarten students at both elementary schools and toronto will be hosting their parent camp for incoming fifth to sixth graders and that is thursday from five to six thirty so i should have gotten invitations for that as well i heard the kindergarten one was wonderful everybody that's great thank you we had copenhagen i know unfortunately i know we knew that but you got your back oh no i didn't [Music] yeah everybody i spoke with said it went really well and it was a really um positive and productive thank you i'll communicate that with the principal
086thank you okay thank you carol i'm mr mara the director of technology the technology department will give us an update good evening so um i have just one item in my report i just wanted to make you all aware that in the fall when we distribute chromebooks this year we will be offering a an insurance program for again it's optional for parents that would like to for 20 feet per year it'll cover accidental damage so crack screens depth any kind of major damage um it'll help again hopefully allow the cost of having to replace a quick problem because full replacements around 300 but you know this insurance program only 20 dollars more information i'll be sending something out in august to the middle high school parents through school messenger with more details but again i
087just want to make sure you guys were aware of the program um and again in my repo i talked about you know we got four um different offers we went it turned out we went for the one that also had the best price um but it wasn't solely that i looked at turnaround times what was covered lack of deductibles and any extra fees so that parents felt know if they choose to take this insurance it'll be a twenty dollar cost for the year and that's if they don't get hit with any surprises you guys have any questions i have one quick question how many um yeah so um it's about um five to eight percent of the number of chromebooks we have so um we have close to a thousand now at this point so
088you know it's somewhere around 50 to 80 that we see damaged um you know some are you know purely accident fill in um dell will cover um some things and they won't cover others um we're just at a point and when we first rolled those up to everybody we needed to do it quick we needed to not worry about were we ever going to recoup any losses but you know now that it's been two years and i guess it is hopefully going to be less of an issue we can um of hold the line a little better and if we don't we won't be able to sustain you know so what's the other thing we're used to dealing with textbooks and um a way that they don't get his 300 billion okay we have a
089negotiation subcommittee update um basically our last meeting was cancelled um there were members on both sides who couldn't attend so our next meeting is our next meeting is wednesday june 22nd from 8 to 1 pm um the school committee self-evaluation is very close to being done i hope to have that done within the next day the superintendent evaluation did take all of my attention um and then mr wilbur do you have an election subcommittee update for us after that based on the result because right now it says next book money meeting is august 31st but is that negotiation committee or negotiations but if they're election subcommittee update would be that nomination papers are available can be picked up from either the boylston top clerk the berlin town clerk or myself they are due back to
090the town clerks by july 26th at which point they anyone interested in running for the seats will have to have collected 42 signatures from residents of berlin and or boylston um and yeah this will be the last school community except for the potential negotiation world this will be discussed because by the time you get to august 31st they would have been due back and been certified with the state so july 26th is the due date to return them but they are available now thank you adam he's done a lot of work mr topman as well um but really impressive thank you for picking that up and running with it and getting everything done so efficiently we're going to move on to our business items at this time i'd like to entertain a motion to approve
091the 2022-23 school committee meeting schedule second discussion so my only thing is we have to add a meeting for this one that christie just said would ever be for this year that's not for the school year that's it okay good question any other discussion all in favor aye aye i am an eye as well opposed motion to approve the 2022-23 school committee meeting schedule passes at this time i'd like to entertain a motion to approve policy ac the non-discrimination policy including harassment and retaliation could have a motion i think and we were concerned for that one school you know i myself have not been able to give the time to really read through this and understand what the changes are from what is in place now so unless there's a legal reason to have to
092do it yeah i would actually agree with that i've read it and dissected it and i think that um thank you julie appreciate your time if an individual member committee wanted to review it and send their thoughts to the subcommittee they could do that without violating any kind of community law we can look at it each other agenda and then policy can okay so adam has made a motion to table okay so okay so yep so we have to vote on that motion that's opening correct um all those in favor of sending the policies back to the subcommittee all those opposed okay okay okay thank you to table bcd on the agenda so paul's ac policy academy calls and jscj capable of three items [Music] all in favor of tabling policy ac policy acab and
093policy j-i-c-k until the next um school committee meeting second i'm sorry i'll close it's gonna launch it motion to table those three policies passes um at this time i would entertain a motion to approve the seal by literacy coordinator job description but i have motion second discussion all in favor as well opposed motion to approve the seal of bi-literacy uh coordinator job description passes so christy in listening to mr conrad today are we voting for the regional transportation reimbursement and the annual authorization of student accounts yes yeah oh not the student accounts though not the other yeah yeah yeah so okay so we're going to vote on i'd like a motion to approve the regional transportation reimbursement second discussion all in favor as well opposed motion to approve the regional transportation reimbursement passes we're going
094to skip the authorization of student activities we will do that at the first meeting could i have a motion to approve the annual authorization of revolving funds second discussion all in favor aye i'm an eye as well opposed motion to approve the annual authorization of revolving funds passes i would like promotion to approve the unpaid balances go to the district and acceptance of donations second discussion all in favor as well motion to accept the unpaid balance is owed to district and acceptance of donations passes i would like a motion to approve the elementary literacy tutoring job description second discussion motion to approve the elementary literacy tutor job description passes um so i was going to say that our next meeting is august 17th if needed um but we were hoping to meet on the 31st
095but it looks like we may meet before then depending upon what happens at teacher negotiations so we'll let you know let me know otherwise we will see you on hopefully august 31st but we'll see before then as well could i have a motion to adjourn second all in favor i'm an eye as well this concludes our last meet of no this concludes our meeting unfortunately not the last one thank you very much