001school committee to order we will begin with the pledge allegiance one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i just wanted to remind everybody that this meeting is being reported in your image and your voice may be broadcast public comments [Music] there was much discussion about the school calendar and the half-day professional development as a nurse practitioner tcp professional development and continued education is for me to keep up to date with medical research and medical recommendations it also helps reinvigorate my practice and passion for my job teachers also have to stay up to date with new teaching techniques and also respond to testing results last school coming meeting we heard from all the principals from the ames web results and also the fundamental program that has helped close the gap to national
002standards to prevent them the teachers learned about those teaching techniques interventions during staff meetings but also professional development duties the principals and the superintendents also mentioned that half-day or two-hour tv sessions seem to be more effective because enable them to check back and see if their new skills are being effective and discuss with their peers how to improve last meeting the comment was made that the pd half days were robbing time on learning from the children and cheating the system i clarified with the time on learning and apparently the time on learning including the half day professional development days is above the state requirements professional development also helps your teachers hire job satisfaction because they're up to date on effective teaching teaching techniques this might be something to pay attention to when teacher burnout is
003at an all-time high the other issue i wanted to address was the hvac upgrade i sent an email to all the school committee members regarding this concern i know it was in the works question of funding especially for bes being the oldest building of the three schools aside from moving air quality is extremely important to the health of our students and our children there are also hot september and june days where teaching is impossible in the sweltering classrooms i hope hope it is over but we still need to pay attention to what the omicron ba the variant is doing is now 55 of our banking in the us and has already caused a large surge in the uk i hope and praying that does not happen in the u.s but ignoring the trends will not
004serve us well thank you any other public comments um has anyone received any communications that they would like to share i just wanted to announce that we still have an open seat in berlin um this position is a by the time you're sworn in probably a five-month commitment um and all of our seats are up for re-election in november for our regionalization agreement it's a great opportunity for someone who wants a short-term commitment or someone who's interested in possibly running for election in november if you're interested please send your resume to either myself or christy turjan and you can find our emails on the website is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented second [Music] approve the consent agenda as presented passes and we're on to our election presentation [Music] so so
005our intention this evening was to just be available over any questions running for the election or want to know more about the election there's been a number of questions i think since overwhelming since the regionalization happened um so tomorrow's enough before anyone who's here i have a couple folks here knowing whether they're here for this or not but that's open to that if anyone here has any questions on the incoming question i think could you give a general overview of what's required for the position yeah good question so i think um you guys could jump in here too you know obviously fairly regularly um you know i think it was more regularly in the last couple of years given some of the challenges that were faced but generally speaking right it's typically one meaning you
006know the role of the school committee is really critical it's first to set policy for the district second to hire and evaluate the superintendent in order to review and approve the financial budget for the school district so the other day those are the three primary roles we have that we find in the course of a meeting without a lot of other things but they all kind of roll up to one of those three responsibilities as as we as a group are responsible for ensuring the district is cooperated and that we are you know responsible for that folks are waiting for a timeline standpoint on folks who might want to take out papers we expect those to be available sometime this month we're waiting for the secretary of state's office to send the information downtown correct
007the district christie you're going to get something in the mail from the secretary of state's office i spoke with them a couple weeks ago they did confirm they got for whatever we sent okay so it's just a question and then once people pull papers they need to get signatures [Music] right no not yet i think that will be in the information yeah typically that's what we would hope yeah that somebody wanted to get either from berlin with one of the things that's a little unique i think about this particular election is that those who take on paper are going to have to choose whether they're running for one of the two-year or four-year seats there are two four-year seats in boylston and one two years ago in berlin it's the opposite to a distance or
008two here one in the season four here and that was done in a way to create a situation every two years thereafter so after this 2022 election in 2024 there will be three seats up for elections the three two-year seats that will be expiring those three vacancies will be for our longer term so from 2024 onward every seat will be a four-year term from a requirement standpoint unless you mean you really want him to be a resident of voter in boylston overall to take out papers so that's good to know as well any questions or comments on the role of school so i would say for anyone who's interested in learning more or potentially becoming a candidate feel free to reach out to mr popping or myself on the subcommittee for elections or obviously glory
009as well we're happy to answer any questions that you have um to whatever extent we can but we wanted to make sure we were here in the mail for any questions that might come up today even the papers will be available likely before our next meeting in may and so um that will be the opportunity uh into the towns the town clerk will certify the signatures you have to keep your signatures straight if you're collecting from both towns for all in one burling papers poison and boiling papers uh and then once they're certified you know you're responsible for them collecting them and sending them into the secretary of state for the names and that process that deadline i believe is but it's good to know that's not really stupid [Music] to get okay papers going
010to move on to the report section mr minion did you want to present or did you want to discuss uh so this is my first time uh proposing a field trip so i'm not sure what the protocol is uh but i believe everybody has dread the field trip itinerary um so uh it's a field trip uh which would take place on the 7th of may i believe which is a friday and myself and the 48 students juniors and seniors who are in my economics class uh to include um rebecca hart uh the daughter of one city members uh we would take a flight from worcester airport which leaves at 7 30 a.m and gets into jfk about 8 30 and then take public transportation uh into lower manhattan and visit um the 911 memorial and
011museum associated with it um we would be in the area of wall street um the new york federal reserve in years past have taken students to the boston federal reserve but because govit's federal reserve is not doing tours right now but we would walk along wall street and get a sense of that area um and then take public transportation up to central park and visit one of the museums and so um i gotta reach out to christy about you know what types of things you might want to know about this trip um and i learned that 37.5 of the students in the class have never been to new york city which is arguably the greatest city in the world um i learned that 87.5 of the students have never ridden the new york subway um
012which is an experience in itself um and we spoke about her she said did you might be wondering why take a plane instead of riding a bus um the blame is cheaper uh so the cost um fluctuates um you know and whether we once the trip is approved whether it will get off the ground um is you know dependent upon the price of the ticket at that moment um you know so the price when i looked most recently was 82 and a bus to new york city is going to cost um well over 2 000 um so you know it's just it's not it isn't really quicker in that uh we're going to be at the airport um probably at 6 30 to catch the 7 30 flight and then there is you know an
013hour-ish subway ride from jfk um over to into manhattan and a bus ride would probably take three or so hours as well um but there's an adventure component to it uh that um you know one of the things that i think we've talked about in um public education is making connections with young people and doing things that are notable and memorable um and educational and it strikes me that going to new york city with a teacher that i mean i've known most of these students since i taught them in seventh grade and have had a connection now over five or six years with them to do something unique educational fun you know out of the ordinary all that type of stuff uh strikes me as consistent with what our goal in public education is um
014so that's the gist of the field trip um i'm happy to answer questions if people have any questions yes i love it i regret it earlier today and i was excited to see the year offering this opportunity um my only question is given some of the recent challenges jetblue has had with their flights together what happened if you're going back to what you get uh so i'm gonna cross my fingers and hope that that doesn't happen uh you know that is it's it's an adventure yeah right so how would we how would we deal with that um you know one of the other goals of public education is overcoming adversity i don't have a specific plan for that uh that hasn't been my experience i fly jetblue quite frequently um so i don't have a
015good answer uh for what we would do um you know i would sense that if jetblue cancelled the flight that they would be under some obligation to provide some you know yeah you know a hotel or whatever um [Music] but i haven't really thought about that to be honest with you so i can't give you a better answer than that and hopefully that won't happen i would guess there's a lot of flakes back and forth from new york boston well sure so right i mean i think i you know i think that um i don't think that we would be stranded forever you know uh and it would be you know might there be an inconvenience that might be might we have to fly into boston traps and then adapt to that you know that
016is a possibility um you know like i said i fly jetblue a lot and i've had um very good luck with them um you know but we didn't need to down somehow and figure that so other thoughts yes i think it's great too like i've read about your financial discussions around why would you operate a low-cost airline costs and all that plays into it uh just are all the safety concerns with parents taking care of and liability issues taking care of the subway stories that you know about new york uh so um before i went further in terms of doing those things i wanted to make sure that the school committee was kind of okay and so um once that takes place if that takes place uh then there would be a permission slip that
017the parents would have to sign um you know sure there are concerns um about offense you know riding the subway um is it a little bit dangerous maybe you know but and i mean is it true that crime is rising in lots of places certainly um you know what i would sort of say to that is i would hope that the parents based on my you know long history of this school and my experience that i've had with um these children in teaching with some of them siblings uh that they would feel confident you know that i'm going to protect their kids and i'm not going to put them in dangerous situations um you know and it's certainly that you take you know when you go on the subway one of the things that i
018think um you know i went to high school in boston um and my experience as a 14 year old was being in the city and so when i think about the young people that i teach from berlin and boylston uh who aren't in the city you know having that experience of doing that type of thing um um and so hopefully the parents will say yes and if a parent said you know no i don't really feel comfortable with my child doing this then that student obviously wouldn't be able to go but i feel fairly confident um i mean i think that based on um you know the couple of people now the school committee have spoken about it that you seem supportive of it uh and your endorsement of you know the safety of it
019and my experience as a teacher should convince the parents and there are only eight kids that this is you know not um unduely dangerous i agree i think it's great i did a similar experience when i was a kid you're right it is eye opening changes your outlook on many things and i wish more people do more trips like this coming up yeah it's fun you know something something different um you know unscheduled time to do you know what strikes us you know uh and if the spirit moves us to the candy store right so if it's something different you know um i mean you whatever you're interested in you can find it in new york city [Music] a lot of people are like you know we're coming back or easing into things and there's
020so much to do and so many great things to learn and you're gonna i really think that this would be a wonderful opportunity it would be cemented in the kids heads and they would remember not only the experience but all of the things that they learned um i i appreciate the fact that you're willing to give up your time as well because that's a lot of personal time that's a labor of life it really is thank you i appreciate it [Music] anyone else having questions okay so what i was thinking is at this time um i would like to move the vote from item eight section k to now as do not pull mr minnigan here so i would like a motion to approve the 200 new york city field trip from may 6 2022.
021second discussion all in favor i'm ni field trip may 6 2022 passes thank you thank you uh thank you i appreciate uh having the opportunity to speak um have a great rest of meeting you thank you all appreciate it next on our reports mr zane i just have a couple things the only one that there's still a question about this good friday when i read the the association's comments about the calendar i thought they were asking well there was you know they were ask if if we could have good friday or they were actually i couldn't have gotten bored i was actually asking if they could be a full day of school and there was a piece in the contract that allows them religious help so it is up to you but i thought it
022was good just to bring it back and say i i misinterpreted um what they were saying so on this calendar it's a full day of school if if if you're good based on what the association wants if that works for you knowing that if they that they keep the contractually they can take a religious holiday if they need one on that day they're that they would be able to use it under friday so we've had we've had some good fridays in school and so on right since i've been here we've had it all and one you have school committing them about um one that changed and so we went to uh school so have there been a lot of absences that way or not that they could handle it nothing that sticks out in my
023head you can vote on it as is or you can vote on it to have a good friday a day off we'll make the correction but that we've made all the other changes so the only question is on that thread [Music] any more questions so i just wanted to make a couple things clear about this you know based on some of the comments we received um [Music] we this is part about equity working we we sent it out we wanted something that was as thorough as possible we sent it out just simply to current data we're not advocating to any programs nor are we doing that now or exposing any points of view so it was none of that um we just in a survey came from some online work we we went through and
024um i mean there were some takeaways when we looked at the survey and and so even though we wrote a cover letter a lot of people didn't answer the questions and some but probably you know up to you know 200 people responding and some of those questions up to 50 people would not respond to the question so i get the feeling that they there was a maybe a feeling in the community that this was being done that there was something else behind it like you know there was some kind of program that was going to be introduced as a result of it and so i thought we were clear about that so if if we weren't i'll make that point now there is no program on the horizon because of this is basically every question
025you see in here is everything we do we just want to formalize it you know if a kid is in need whether they're struggling with one issue or another we we try to address that issue so we just wanted to get the information so we could use it for some further work with them so what we'll do is we have the ability with the new survey tool that we have to break this down by school to break all these responses down by school and so what we plan to do next is to break it down by school meet with the team that's doing the equity work give each school their results and then look at maybe 10 different areas or issues that have been common because then if there are if the bds is having
026you know they go through their 10 issues to handle and then bms does the same thing we'll see if there's any commonalities because that would indicate that maybe those are the issues you have to sort of deal with um in the district and so you know some of these some of these issues that you can dealt with safety the child feel safe in school you get 12 13 people will say no and 200 respond well i might think it's safe but someone doesn't so those are things we should look at once we find a group of questions that we think in the district we have to look at then we'll start you know that'll that'll generate another survey down the line to ask people some more in-depth questions if your child doesn't feel safe you
027know can you give us some more information about that so um that's what the survey was about there's a lot of questions there's a lot of good information um do you have any questions about the survey that you wanted to ask i've been interested to know if the kids can take it okay so that's the uh i think about that yeah so the next year so so the work we're going to do right now is with the staff then once we find some areas some common areas that we need that we think we need to work on whether it be safety or whatever it is um you know there's a question in there we asked the kindness um about the curriculum the curriculum is fair and unbiased so there were some indicators in that somehow
028they don't they don't thank you so maybe that's an area we have to look at we do some work to make sure it isn't we introduce new instructional materials we do work to make sure it is unbiased um that doesn't slim one way or the other but you never know someone you know maybe that's any other kind of publishing once we address that we we drill that a little deep for parents we're going to do some work like that with students we'll put a survey together send it to parents make sure they're comfortable with it you know before we give them to students and this will also go to a superintendent's advisory which has parents and they're the ones that actually went through this first and helped us with these questions and they're all parents
029and school community so um we want to make sure we're not just putting this stuff together ourselves it's coming from the community so we will do the student some kind of student survey and it'll be next year we want to sort of unpack this ourselves first so before we do anything with them you know and that's you know don't give you the real last year yeah that's what i'm thinking i mean yeah well and some of the questions if you if you look at some of the comments the times would say i don't know what my student thinks about this so you know and that's a very honest answer from the parent and you know ask them i don't i don't know how they feel about it so we will get but it school by
030school results yes i think um for the school community we could break we i've had this you know it's just a push up above the house what did you guys think of the new survey each group each group answers you know major chances only one time so they don't get those unless you're one so it's a lot more flexible did you find anything else carol about it to you no i think that's exactly and i think you know one of the things we have to try to do maybe there's other students who they're not coming forward that we need to deal with there's some interesting answers yeah no you don't have any comments [Music] just one general theme a lot of these there are a handful of one two less than ten people who said
031something to the negative the fact that i don't feel compliment based on that race or be included i assume that's not the first time you're hearing from those individuals whenever they're being only one or two people you probably know them so they work with them to figure out what's going on without telling us or identifying anybody but that was kind of shocking is this the first time you're hearing about that or well any of these issues now we don't know who's you know we keep these anonymous yeah one person saying they don't feel comfortable or imagine they've come to you already no i haven't had anybody come to me and well i mean you know i haven't you know my regulars that i talked to uh you know what i'm like this is why i'm
032here yeah well you know one of the things that occurred to me when i read the results that some of these questions about um you know what gender does your student identify if you asked that maybe ten years ago they thought people would have just answered that question i think in the climate today you know climate content is polarized i think i think that's probably why you get people think well there's something else going on this isn't just trying to get at something else um so to the end of the meeting i wonder perhaps next time this goes out and give people a chance at the end of the survey to say i want to be number he said at the end of the survey you know maybe there's an option that you can say
033you know do you want you want to be anonymous or do you want to be contacted because because some people might want to thank christmas yeah good suggestion oh yeah yeah i hope some of these people though if they really do feel this way contact i don't know the situation was they felt strong enough to put it that felt that there was something that their child is missing off which would be they're talking to the administrator out there building to make sure that they're being hurt that's a good suggestion to put something there to say when you lost contact [Music] um but i didn't realize i still you know was in the community for a while they said you know that they're not going to come to you and they're just not just not going
034to come to you and say anything because you know in the country they just just doesn't have to i mean they'll be too afraid that there's some repercussions so you know you know maybe there's some of that too they're afraid there's going to be repercussions if they they speak up you know we this is baby steps since the first time we've been doing this work so we're still learning it ourselves and that's the last question on the survey how long do you expect for you know the data's compiled moves to the different schools they get to be in 12. so i guess before the needle starts to move well um so we have this we have a meeting which has scheduled for half the vacation probably early may it will um finalize uh hope i'll
035work on an equity statement which is my goals and and that meeting will also start to break out work for you know schools and so that would be and then so the goal would be by the end of the year to compile a list of you know out of the 10 10 issues in each school to the top 10 maybe compile a list of five that would be that a manageable if we could stop working on um so so we're hoping to have that by the end of the video i'd answer in terms of a student survey no the parents like i might answer differently next year my child doesn't have the same yeah so are you suggesting another survey like this at the beginning of next year or no i'm just wondering what now
036happens with that data right it's the point of because you want to do something like this right so now it could change significantly because those kids have now moved on all well that's one of the things we have to find out is is this school specifically is it something that maybe you know was it something that's happening here that's not happening in the elementary school in terms of equities that's all when you break it down by school you'll be able to see that is there something is there something that's happened in terms of faculty when they move up to the sixth grade and wheels that's what we don't know so we'll find that out and break it out by school so [Music] we didn't look that far ahead that's something you you don't even sure
037what you take out as a community yeah well yeah but i mean in terms of the same kind of survey oh yeah i'm sure you can make please yeah yeah i mean we were hoping to you know eventually distill the questions down and then start sending those surveys i'll just start kind of drilling down more um because you know it's not that everybody doesn't count but you have to start someplace so you start with the areas that most of where most of the issues come from so i've got the only thing i just wanted to add to your question julian you wouldn't know this because what they want to address with their their leaders that meet with us so yeah so could they could be starting to look at me if it's if it's a
038specific individual if they're seeing patterns i think over time or bigger caps and some of the areas that were often like with it we kind of think in our heads of course we're doing it all the time we're doing these wonderful things large all of ourselves and all of our children they're happy and over and then we see often it's like why questions like that because it often indicates that something like yeah most of the time it's good to hear this thing happens when someone made a comment that there should be a middle ground and i felt the same way that i was taking the survey as a parent because it was always off often rarely and never and there was no like you know i don't even know what that meant what my god
039yeah well if you get any suggestions anything additional survey wise people will tell you you shouldn't do that you want to keep it even because people will gravitate to the middle and then you'll get a lot of non-useful information that's good that's a good point because they don't want to create anybody any yeah no just if you have any other suggestions we'll we'll certainly implement that one adam that was a great one and if you have anything else just reach out and we'll keep you updated to put in place there was a requirement from jesse um you know it's based on four commitment areas really looked at closing achievement gaps cancer students and it speaks to the equity work that we've been doing as well so i think that i just wanted to see who
040they see what we were doing um in those areas in case you hear about conversations around student opportunity and we were expected annually to make any amendments to this and to update the state as far of what we've accomplished so far so i'll put that information in there the budget we're spending um the soa also helps us to get awareness requirements we have to do that opportunity i didn't know if you had any specific questions um on this i think i did sometimes in this in this act that we complete this plan we didn't tie in everything we're doing in the district for example in the equity area number one we didn't put in there for the state of 2020 that we're doing an equity survey because we didn't know we were doing 2020 but
041i had to do an amendment added that piece onto it for this year so they were separated like that so that's that's the srp if you have any questions about specific areas of that and then the other piece that we have to vote on tonight is the acceptance of the grant for literacy grant and accelerating the literacy that we get that i spoke about this last time that amount for our literacy program three through five and wait this what we're telling them we need for our funding is what the publisher said and we have to also have all of the materials in by june 30th so the next so today we heard from jesse that they did they put a lot of quotes that was accepted and so the next step is to put the
042p.o into order of materials so our teachers will have them in hand and training them to take place in june so a lot happens needs to happen very quickly [Music] truth is uh you have my report um the first item uh is the fy 22 q3 budget update i've summarized it there's a thousand line detail if you care to go through the summary by kind of categories in my school is shown on one page pdf and at the end of the year you'll need to approve the budget transfer so on a quarterly basis we just provide updates so you can see transfers between categories you don't transfer between schools there's no questions on that number one the excess deficiency filing was finally approved by the state they submitted it on italian they tend to prioritize
043tax rate requests for municipalities first was approved at 405 440. as of june 30 2021. kind of the regional school district equivalent free cash it's our cumulative surplus from the beginning of the school district to now we can use that to uh to help subsidize our budget we're using 250 000 in next year's budget i anticipate we'll have a significant surplus this year that will kind of offset what we're using in next year's budget um the next item is uh so there's no questions on the first two or three forward next time is the fy community budget we were able to identify some savings for restructuring elementary dla supports um and through that the savings was basically the amount that we had proposed as an above level service request 42006 2250 that savings however enforces
044we needed to apply to an unexpected out of district tuition that happened after we presented our budget to you that we became aware of after we last presented our budget to you this will cover a substantial portion of that placement not all of it but we have plans to offset the rest of it at berlin memorial there were no opposition increases so the savings will go towards reducing their budget good news that jeff and i received today we reached out to both towns and we were advised that we had support of both towns on our budget with this 42 000 reduction to berlin so um i did want to publicly thank the towns for their support um we had a fairly substantial increase you know more than most care districts i talked to we certainly
045had reasons for that and worked hard to manage it so later in this meeting this assignment we respectfully request your support for this and uh please be able to move forward after the challenging budget process um related to the budget i guess both years i want to give a shout out to carol for finding this uh this grant of 134 000. we don't as a small district often get these potentially large grants that are competitive and it was hugely impactful and helpful to whichever year this would have been applied to this is something that's been difficult to pay for but as much needed and so she kept her eye on grant opportunities and it's a big win for the district to get this type of uh this type of brand they're the biggest i've seen
046here since boston i could just interrupt you for a second you just said you often don't as a small district you don't get those types of grants but yeah i mean i feel like i've been here for one like a little over a year yeah every other meeting carol's bringing us some sort of grant that she got so yeah yeah not this large um but um yeah she has um i was able to to get grand too a couple grants um but 134 000 is kind of a different category yeah i'm saying that you're saying it's rare i'm saying i feel like every month i'm hearing about another that's coming in from here so i think that's awesome yeah yeah so we've been we've had some had a good run so i just uh he
047was calling out this one specifically because of the amount and hopefully we can keep it up i think you know sometimes you just kind of your name is district's name was heard and had confidence with people submitting the grants so certainly i think when they see carol's name hopefully we can stay on the radar hopefully the catchphrase teams people in the statement too so the next item is just an fyi bid for uh years in the gym in berlin memorial there's an equipment platform that's kind of straight pieces of plywood this is not what you can find it's a security risk we had approval of capital loss to our to bid on that we went out to did it came in a little bit higher than we expected um we had a single bid it
048was 202 000 credit reputable firm in state um they've met all requirements of the bid awarded a bid we have 130 000 capital funds that were included towards this the additional 72 000 come from ems just that combination of contractor availability and steel prices and tier prices have gone up so it is what it is price-wise that worked what happened um starting just after the end of the school year and i scheduled you completed just before the beginning was i mentioned to our school your number practice will be the right department director too that information is kind of requested as part of the budget process so i just shared that as an fyi to you so you can see how it responds providing information one piece of owner to comment tonight probably um we should
049talk about it more at a different time i think it's something that i kind of want to leave as a recommendation to the committee as i go there's going to be two things one is reducing school choice one is going to be providing funding for this open we've had very little funding over the years what it is is it's basically the cost of this other post-employment benefits it's health care costs for retirees um then we have an actuary that does a report on the the idea is that over time they want if you think about it we're paying for costs they're not benefiting students in the district these retirees unless they're retired here and there's no benefit to the education in the system the concept is that we should try to get an open up
050trust funded so that these this trust pays for these benefits and so we're kind of setting aside money during the lifetime during the work a period of employees to pay for these so it's not coming out of budget so that's the concept of trust probably will take you know 20 to 25 years to get to the point we could develop it to fund that the level we're funding it now is fairly small against news started about six years ago we had an opportunity to put more in his mind he was a supreme month of health care um he kind of took that savings and applied it so for fy23 the budget is to put in two and a half percent of um what we've budgeted for the daily benefits um we need to put two
051and a half percent into the old debt trust what i've proposed as a plan is to increase that two and a half percent by two and a half percent more every year until it gets to twenty five percent at which point it will be on seven thousand a year and i think at that point you can revisit the ten years but you're also going to have investment growth and returns um and i think that does it in a way where um it gets the district to a much better place um in the spreadsheet i provided last time kind of gives you a sense of where it gets to over time honest investment return and then you can revisit it i also think there's variability you can't predict what the market's going to do over the
052next 10 years if it takes off maybe maybe you know as much but i think to have a plan for 10 years is a good idea i also think that the way they calculate the liability is fairly complicated and sensitive to interest rates and actually as interest rates go up just the way they calculate the liability comes down so um i don't want to go too much more into the weeks now i'm happy that if you think it's worthwhile i think i have been a presentation on it or share something but um i kind of wanted to leave something for the school committee and the district they have with my recommendation and you can digest it so i don't know i'm not going to give you an overview of it now you're going to leave
053it there for now and if you think it's worth playing on the agenda it's fine in the future or i can just read a memo i think the um you know year-over-year increase to a budget from fy 23 to 14 will be up to 700 so it's not you know way out of the norm out of whack two and a half years makes it manageable um so that's kind of the most important thing i think from that report to berlin so that's information the next item is just an fyi you had the opportunity to provide free meals to students this year that has a noun that's discontinued by the usda [Music] and we will potentially need to look at our price name our meal pricing i know although i've had some communication and seeing some
054things that say the state is now considering potentially a one-year plan to help continue three meals for a year and there is some discussion i guess there's some at least push maybe from a couple of people that will look at it but there's not as much optimism federally that is at the state level too we don't quite know what the reimbursement rates will be but certainly in terms of impacted families i just wanted to kind of put this out there and be public if we get an update and get big news we'll update you at the next evening and she also shared a letter to the state that i sent to the director of nutrition services [Music] i think there's a petition that i'm going to lift the sun onto just asking for either the
055federal states who want to continue the program and then my long report here the last item is the student activity guidelines so based on consultation for auditors and i disagree with them but they say that the school committee needs to adopt our student activity i call it procedure manually but it's also meaningful but it's student activity guidelines that has special rules it relates to all the clubs most of them are at the high school like so the different clubs some of them have financial accounts they do fundraising there's a whole set of specific rules that apply these accounts and historically this is where that's financial abuse happens in school districts or just sometimes not intentionally just misuse spending these are intended for students and so this guideline is really developed following the state model so
056i basically followed that and adapted you know certain things just to make sure they worked for our district so this should get us to be compliant and again we were told that uh school day needs to kind of top this it's alone so i apologize for getting into your short notice this is the first replay tonight if you have any questions in between now and this meeting i'm happy to answer that there is a school company policy uh regarding this that's kind of one page i would i would recommend that even those procedures just leave a very brief policy and immediately as it is and just say add one that one sentence that says more detailed policies we developed at the school of the business office and have been approved by the school committee who
057just stick a link into this instead of rewriting the whole thing [Music] i think that we shouldn't have thirty five page policies and i think this is more procedural um i've talked to other districts who i've been hearing mixed answers from different districts some districts like well we didn't have to do that we just developed an animal and showed it to the auditors so maybe it's just not otters maybe they're being more diligent i don't know um so but you can only you know at some point and that's it that's my report [Music] um sure so i'm going to just provide an update on the at home testing program the testing program so that continues to be available to all the staff and the students in the district um it's my understanding that that program
058will be available through the end of the school year i haven't heard anything differently um and so i've just provided you with some updated numbers there um you know talking about overall averages about you know about half of our students are participating and about 75 percent of the staff are participating participating um and so that means that in a testing kit goes home every two weeks to the family or to the staff member and that gives them one test each week and the request is that they self-report any kind of positive results and of course we're continuing to do this dramatic testing in schools as well um so those of the numbers that participation is good it has sort of leveled off it had ramped up um after it had been in place or put
059into place at the end of january it rammed up quite a bit in february and march but those numbers are pretty stable now um i did add in the vaccination data i know christie uploaded a revised report for me today so we attempted to we really wanted to report this information and share it attempted to use the same methodology that we had used to collect that data using our new snap software program we ran into some technical difficulties in getting consistent results um between february and now so we did end up using a combination of snap data and nurse data to to provide these results and for the most part it seems as though the numbers um the vaccination rates are going up in all three buildings we do have this question mark um around
060the data around berlin memorial obviously we recognize that can't even be right but we've looked into it to the best of our ability and we can't really understand why it's reporting a a one percent roughly one percent decrease in that number but that's the data on that we have we'll i'll be happy to report on it again next time um and hopefully that little glitch is working um no changes to the reports um of vaccinated staff at the buildings as i had explained before that is done on a voluntary basis there is there aren't any changes there um and then just a quick report of the wellness committee um each year the wellness committee um comes together and they um really identify a focus area for the year and it's you know the second year
061in a row where it's really about the social and emotional well-being of staff and students following the challenges of a couple of years um they typically each year put together a little a project of some sort maybe selling another grant last year i believe that they they put out some um you know they added some furniture to the outdoor outdoor areas in all three buildings um this year there's an effort to put together a um the exact language is a team-building and joyful event for all of the district's staff in an upcoming month so just a very beginning um part of talking about that and putting that plan together and then this really connects to what bob reported on in terms of the food services update lauren is also part of the wellness committee and
062she had talked about that initiative of there's a state level effort to extend the free lunch program in massachusetts um and she cited that fact that i have in there that 26 of food insecure families don't meet the threshold for free and reduced lungs and that's really a huge motivation for these groups to be providing those universal free lunches and trying to get that extended in the state of massachusetts yeah the second last line there in the report says that physical education teachers have reported improvement in pe activities since masks became optional yeah so that that's good enough but my follow-up question to that is has any other teachers reported any changes in behavior or anything sort of positive or negative effects since that happens now so yeah and my comment here is under the
063category of wellness committee um which is um comprised of largely of pe teachers and so i did ask them specifically for their input um you know i have heard anecdotally amongst the schools that you know teachers are are enjoying being able to see their students faces and you know they feel as though they're able to communicate more clearly with their students so i do feel like overall um that's the impression that i've received from staff kids are smiling yeah those facial because because there was a kid that was a senior should she climb into the kid and talk to him like you'll be [Music] so good evening again as you see my report is very brief i really wanted to take just a few seconds um to just reiterate the thank yous that i put
064in there um was a long-term employee here who helps out with an mcas in high school she's invaluable to diane and sally in terms of the amount of organizations she does and kind of keeps a lot of that running without them having to have a lot of day-to-day interference with what's going on with mcat so again i want to thank dee um for those of you who live in boylston and were part of that wonderful like five second power surge that happened on tuesday you may have heard that definitely interrupted uh mcas it was quite uh quite the day from the tech department um so again i wanted to call out dave mccarthy um you know i think a lot of places would have uh just circled the wagons and called in all kinds of
065folks and um dave and i were able to handle um you know what would have been a major interruption and get everybody back running in 80 of the building within a few hours and everybody by the following day so um again dave is a fantastic employee i i want to just again help him out as part of keeping this going here with mcas um cdrc um again just a quick note um we were able to compile this event on time um this morning jeff sends me all the emails of uh you know that he forwards everything to me as if i don't get him done but um you know just keeping making sure that we're staying on track we are always probably one of the first in massachusetts that i always submit um and in
066my last report i kind of mentioned that they never meet their original deadline and there's always software issues um but this is middle and of course this year there was as well we were one of many uh districts trying to submit but um the software couldn't keep up with the amount of data flowing in so we did again submit on time we're submitted and certified it's over 4 000 pieces of information about our schools and our kids and the classes they take and the various breakdowns of um race and ethnicity in in various areas and again i i could not say that uh or with confidence that we would always be earlier on time if i didn't have uh bonnie horn um who does a fantastic job in compiling the data staying on top of
067um you know she's already starting because of covid we're going to have back-to-back years usually this is uh every other year but because kobe we did not report last year we are going to have back-to-back years and she's already starting um some of the data right for next year so um again a shout-out so sorry get any questions [Music] negotiation subcommittee um we had our first meeting on tuesday march 22nd and we're going to be meeting again wednesday and for the update on the superintendent evaluation subcommittee i actually have with um just a heads up to the committee that on may 2nd you're going to be getting an online link to the self assessment of the committee and it's going to be due by may 10th hopefully in an email for you [Music] and that
068we will have a report for you um that will be presented on may 24th um and at that meeting mr zane is going to provide a verbal update on his cycle progress including products and goals and performance and at that point he will begin filling out his superintendent evaluation any questions i want to go into business items at this time i would like to entertain a motion to approve the 2022-23 school year calendar second discussion yeah i just want to make sure i understand the changes that we're doing so i don't have of these are professional development days that were located on fridays and put them more towards the middle of the week we made that change to the good friday you know full day of school um [Music] i believe that's it that's definitely
069generally you just took chiropractic from what you said earlier the teachers had requested the good writing va full day yeah all day school i read it completely the other day and that's how i presented it to you and then so when i talked to him he said nobody so this county they're entitled to two religious objects individuals so they choose to take a certain negative one's holiday they can put into that correct so this is that doesn't include courses [Music] any discussions [Music] you know she kind of appreciated some of the balance that the full half days would give but the police are equally giving that kind of schooling life so thank you all right there's no more discussion um all in favor aye and i as well opposed the motion to approve the 2022-23
070school year calendar passes i'd like to have a motion to approve policy ebcfa mike second julie discussion all right all in favor aye all right i'm an eye as well a motion to approve policy ebcfa passes um i have a motion to approve the boylston police department in berlin police department the berlin wilson regional school julie second sorry discussion alan david hi i'm guys well i'd like to have a motion to approve the elementary literacy coach coordinator job description elementary literacy coach coordinator john description passes i'd like a motion to accept the school choice recommendations second sorry discussion which means that we partly because we're not taking in as much um and there's a little bit of a balance to what we're spending versus what we're taking in i mean over time you might not
071have an option if you keep and i think i mentioned last meeting that a view of the high school and the elementary school has different situations um we have this the scenario where we're seeing students who would expect to matriculate to 9th grade or choosing to go somewhere else and so there's a loss of students at home doing aids in ninth grade so i i understand in terms of how high school operates and those cohorts are set up that it becomes a value to have equal sizes across those um and so i can i can certainly get behind the addition of school choice seats for the hunter i don't even question whether or not if we were to have more churn than we currently expect is there an ability to even bring in additional students
072into how to do a later date with mine choosing to go somewhere else at this time but just repeat that so right now we're suggesting five additional school proceeds going into ninth grade if ten kids decide to not wear a ninth grade incontinence upcoming year can we increase that five to ten at a later date [Music] but if you if you do the live and you have kids online and then seats that you can you can back help so you would be able to do that so we were to hear that there were 12 applicants and we had five that we let in but they have we think we have one for seven more and then acceptance okay so i guess that's my opinion on that i have trouble in the olympic school one um
073i i have a lot of trouble having out of district placements at bes given the significant extent to which the bes budget is underfunded compared to bms i understand class sizes i look at this beyond class sizes they look at some of the auxiliary services that we're able to provide to students at that school i think about things like the adjustment counselor or the reading specialist and if we add additional students from other towns we limit the availability of those specialists to spend time with the students who are children taxpaying residents in boylston in particular and so it feels to me like we for a while now rely on the school choice funds especially dps in lieu of having what i think is going to become a continued conversation with finance committee and the people
074of boylston around but it's a bigger discussion and i think the discussion is you know for example boylston um the town is working on an investment and at some point there has to be a discussion in terms of things like building the district because you know letting in a few students from from out of the amount of building that's you know residential bill that's been done in the town that will affect it and the biggest factor is it's how unpredictable it is you could have one room and have one you know two people you could have five kids and there's no control over that so one of the advantages of school choices one is it doesn't really bring in some revenue and you have complete control over that and i would say that this discussion
075that you were talking about it has to happen but i think it's a bigger discussion and i think within a year or so it's one of those discussions where you we would have to have and it would and it would sort of balance on whether you're even going to accept school choice kids anymore at all not what are they going to take a couple of years because i don't think that really affects it i think the major focus has to be is it is the building is the amount of building going on in the towns so unpredictable that you can't even you can't even take school choice kids anymore because you don't know what's been happening i think we're there okay i don't know i know i think we're there because some of the bigger
076projects rental projects you know they those permits haven't been pulled yet and so that's that's about 18 months it's it's within three years that that discussion before those those things that the permits that have been pulled stopped becoming occupied um so the discussion has that i don't think it's this year but within a couple years you know it's it it's not just with us it's and it's not just school choice it's it's it's the rest of it the school choice is a small piece and it actually helps our budget it's the other stuff i i have to disagree you know school choice is a standardized program in the state you know everybody has it for the most part and matter of fact the program is designed in a way that is designed so that if
077you don't vote for it it stays so everything about the program is designed to be kept in place so for example if you didn't vote on it it would be the assumption is that it goes and if you and if you voted if you vote if let's say you voted to do it and then you said you know we've changed our mind you have to do that vote by june 1. the reverse case isn't true if you if you decided to do it and then say you know we don't want to do it i mean oh we do want to do it you voted not to do it they say you know i think we do you you have to the beginning of the school to do it so the whole program is really set
078up to its encourage free choice and and everything like an outlier with it have you ever looked at it doesn't do it we're not an outlier choice in and i'm not saying we don't have the discussion but i'm saying we're not an outline i know that in the state and you know it's one that we do use not saying the discussion doesn't have to be had but it has to be a bigger discussion than justice and it has to involve the time if you can't control what's happening in the town then you'll never be able to control your war yeah yeah i i i would say um longer term there's a difference between longer term and maybe a lot of returns is like not even that far like it might be down by 24. i
079i think that we're um reliant in a way on this right now we've already reduced it a bit i think longer term even i shouldn't say longer term but i think that for fy23 we already have such a significant gap and we've kind of factored in some acceptance of school students and that's not to say that it's not impossible to surmount it but i do feel like it would be helpful to take one more year of what the principal's recommended and would help prevent too much erosion and allow us to plant in next year's budget the best use of school choice um but longer term i agree with you like i feel like the state should have increased five pounds and it should have been increasing here but that you know that discussion has been
080going on for a long time so the chances of that happening that's that's an argument right i mean i i i don't disagree with what he's saying but i think that his boss says we do um in something with cups for july and the reason we have to have the discussion at the top is because if the money is in common school choice it's kind of something else what's the balance of the school choice funds that be has right now bes is the smallest of the three schools off the top of my head um it's in the ball park i can probably get up all my time back to say 300 we're going to overspend if we don't accept any school church students i think we take in 15 153 so it'll be fun pretty
081quickly um but you know ratchet it down in next year's budget and if you accept these you probably don't need to lose yeah you know i think the plan has to be if you if your enrollment is going up because we have development then it's a phase out you know how do we face this out so how do we face full choice out over over a few years and and then increase that i think it uses another revenue source the numbers i have in front of me don't look like we're facing a note though there's currently pes there are three no no no no correct the three school church students in bds right now they're all in fifth grade next year and we're being asked to approve eight additional students in the bds for next
082year so eight would be bored a thousand that would be those three will drop off and you have eight week 40 000 remember you don't necessarily need to take more the following year you have that 40 000 in revenue and you can reduce what you're spending and then that 40 000 will drop down over time districts like we had plenty of birmingham 24 kids in a grade two classrooms and twelve it's like it's not efficient um that's one of the draws was it i don't know about twelve in the class and there's people who i'm an expert on this but there's different studies that say something about you know is it good to have that small class size um and you know we could go look up five studies that you decided um i don't
083think that one you know any government 12 to 13 or 14 in class i don't think right no teacher there's no significant research that says at those levels there's a significant improvement if you're talking 26 27 28 that that's a different story but um not not with those there is an increment too i should have added you know if if there's needs beyond you get more than four or five uh more than five thousand is especially you come in for additional services for students additional needs it would get more than five and i just want to read you guys so i do a lot of the reporting on some of that stuff and helping out with the special edition school choices um i did hear that fear of what happens if one of these kids
084is in and out of district and and out of this replacement would pretty much be a dollar dollar um in terms of what we would get reimbursed so um if school choice kid came in and didn't end up being out of this replacement that that school choice money comes from the town lab so again if the placement was 125 would receive 125 in school choice for that kid not just 5 000. and then might even refer back i thought that we're planning to actually become another district student [Music] the programmatic responsibility for school choice student would stay with um without kids two or three years later um that's um that would be sort of the standard there are always exceptions but um that would be the standards that programmatically remain responsible theoretically if we didn't
085approve of the additional students at bes and didn't have that forty thousand dollars could you hear anything typically that's what you respond another forty thousand dollars to make a difference or that requires us to revisit the budget only we're could you make up for that by digging deeper into the assessment choice reserve well it probably wouldn't be [Music] is just a lower balance at a school choice fund and less time to um get school choice use the diet budget so the 153 000 that we're using the budget fy23 you might need to plan to bring that down to 50 000 period fy24 100 000 so that you know the town might say look you're gonna have a hundred thousand dollar increase in our budget we don't wanna support many more increases i just think it's
086it's the the pace of the production that is gonna be the challenge for the town of tourism yeah see i guess i'm most concerned about that because i i do believe that if the public in boylston are made to understand what the actual perpetual expenditures are at ees and how far below the state average and below the universe those are right now that they would be town support for fixing that problem more quickly than we might be thinking it can be fixed right now the perfect expenditure if eps is something around 14-5 it's eighteen five at bms the state averages are around sixteen five we wanted to get medias up to just the state average forgotten about another six hundred thousand dollars a year on the bes budget five thousand dollars at the time of
087school choice is not going to fix that problem and your project right this is a longer conversation in what we need to have more broadly in the town but i i struggle once again to try to continue to mandate this situation where we seem to have a structural not enough revenue coming in to be yes to make up for the fact that we've got new lots being cleared up right across the street from the school just this week yeah no i i don't i don't disagree with that but i still think i mean i i think that you can do both of these things at the same same time there's going to be a point where we've stopped this so let's have the discussion before you know we're in a place where um you know
088we take a revenue source that we rely on and just cut it out let's have a big discussion about this while we still can this is really the first time we've kind of had this discussion and we've been talking at least for a couple years when we do the enrollment is getting very difficult to predict and now we're having you know more rental units and stuff so i think what happened really the same discussion is just a matter of you know you're a great man but i think you know i mean you know i know bob feels the same way we have it right the the long-term discussion and say listen we're facing this out and here's why we're facing this sound so you know get ready for it or however you want um however
089you wanna you know present that to the top it also represents the safety net we don't have a stabilization fund like so you know aces had problems arising like financial problems rising school the last few years and knowing that we have a school choice balance as a safety and that is helpful we also have a special ed reserve that we only have 50 000 and that would be nice to build that up but i feel a little bit like at least the school that is there's something unexpected by moving forward one more year it maintains a bit of a safety net and then you ratchet it back as we go forward and those are discussions you know those are discussion points to basically say we want to have school choice it does provide that safety
090net but if building is going to be out of control we need to have room for our own students but those are legitimate conversations we need to have more people in the building as i look at these numbers it looks like we have three classes in every grade level except second might be two is that right and that brings up another point we we could you know one of the things did an above level services this year remember was a teacher at bes which we took out and basically said we can um basically move some teachers around for one year but that'll be one of the items and next year's budget will be the first thing on after this year um these classes will be too big to have like so we went from when
091i came here i think i think i don't think we had i think there were probably three classes two teachers and that within one year all of our classes will have to be teachers so you know that's the that's the other issue next year we need one teacher at least one regular ed probably another special edition one voice again and if i'm correct in maybe um janelle or charlotte or jack that teachers don't necessarily enjoy being bummed [Music] so bumping teachers at grade level but within one year that will you know that's one of those things that we'll have to change so now again we just did the 20 fy23 button already thinking about that by 24 issues that we know are you know coming down coming out of the fight here so i guess
092because as a result of the conversation here where i can i can i can get myself able to vote to add these seats i guess with two personal caveats of that vote one of them is that we as a district establish a finance and budget subcommittee next year for the school committee so we can be more involved in this earlier on and then secondly that we inform through over the course of the next year that the voice and finance committee in town that we're moving in the direction we're going to have to reduce and eliminate school choices coming into boylston and berlin based upon yeah and it is it isn't really the growth as much as the uncertainty right you don't you can't it's difficult to plan and as i said in the in my
093enrollment there are two factors that make um forecasts and enrollment difficult one is unprecedented growth and the other one is a small small district we have both of them and we have both those conditions so but i do agree and i know dr that discussion on school choice does need to happen with the towns and i don't know what the master plan is i don't know where they stand on and out of the building is the work of progress level i can see definitely we're a little see the same kind of issues as classrooms start to grow yeah i've already started to see that and it's a very it's a very small space there's not even a classroom as much as the common areas you know like the cafeteria is very small so yeah so
094we'll start this is more immediate there's more building going on of course [Music] i think that there's a strong argument to be made that the town of boylston shouldn't be given more funds for elementary even think about things like needing three hundred thousand dollars to whatever interest in that school to you know the comment that was made earlier we know what it's going to cost we just don't have the capital money but we have a 10 budget increase from wells elementary this year so that you know we talked about the gap i think 650 i don't know something like that and that that gap is closed i mean we're certainly getting closer to the media with this increase they're probably more than half that cap is closed you do have a potential big commercial development
095similar to thenx coming up with potentially two years you know last time that happened it was a decision to put some pictures reducing the tax rate and ultimately that's something that would be helpful to hear you know your perspective as a school committee i think having a subcommittee of the school community that's focused on this stuff will help us create a table for which to have those conversations with the selected with the town uh politically there are other people who are instrumental in what's in line with your responsibilities as well yes yes i'm sorry right nbes well yes thank you um i would like a motion to accept the mentor program job descriptions [Music] excellent discussion all in favor i'm an eye as well motion to approve the mentor program job prescriptions passes i would
096like a motion to accept the fiscal year 2023 revised budget [Music] thank you what does this need to be approved by the meaning is that's our special replication yeah a discussion questions all right um all in favor the motion to approve the fiscal year 2023 revised budget passes i would like a motion to accept the accelerates accelerating literacy grant funds second discussion i guess i'd just like to understand so what does that look like where are these funds coming from and how does that process [Music] i guess that's the best way to put it um [Music] they tell us we have to tell them [Music] my needs districts that are applying large urban areas tend to get very substantial funding when you look at our essa grants and we have we're up against districts certificate
097millions [Music] but that goes really fast [Music] um i actually don't know that i have anything to add to that you certainly have quite a bit more experience with it than i do you know at this stage you have a question for discussion all in favor [Music] to accept the accelerating literacy grant fund passes i would like a motion to accept the annual donation from energy north of 500 to bms for science or mathematics programs adam's second year mike discussion all in favor as well okay motion to accept annual donation from energy north of 500 to bms for science or mathematics programs classes and we already voted for this honda new york city field trip we have the first read of the student activity guidelines any discussion regarding that question um our next meeting is
098may come forth with the possibility of may 2nd meeting prior to that of meeting and could i have a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing strategy or bargaining with the dbea and not to return to open sessions this concludes our meeting thank you very much