001is i just spoke with one of the teachers out there mr uh minihan he was 12 when i started it so what i'll i'll be brief because i think carol's going to talk a little bit more about the program in terms of where we are now but we have a group mentoring program that we started that i started back when i was here after school and it was for those kids that really needed more of a bigger connection in their life and i brought some people in from the community a few teachers and we'd meet after school and we'd do activities there'd be a conversation and um there's always food because it was middle school boys we started off with just a boys program um greg picarello has taken over the boys program and is
002continuing to rebuild that program right now um but i can tell you just briefly what what i've learned because we we went and established a similar program at clinton and right now i'm running the boys program in mary's carol moosemark whose has a mental connection as well is running the girls program and what we hope to do is to bring a girls program here to toronto that's our intention i'll just say briefly two things what i've learned over the last five years since we started in clinton that it's really about connection it's about connecting these kids with mentors male mentors that come into the male group female mentors that come into our girls group and it's about connecting them with the community because we've done more things in the community we've bought in people from
003the community we have police officers and we've worked out ways to get two police officers into each of our meetings two two with the girls movement right right now there's one eventually we'd like to have two and teachers because we find that those people are really key people in working with our youth these are we target middle school kids boys and girls right now to start off with those are really key people because they can it gives the boys and the girls a chance to connect with somebody when they connect with a teacher on site here who's in our program it opens up a different world because we become pretty open with our conversation we talk about anything and the other end you know it opens up the door for the kids to talk about
004things as well um so that key connection is that community we like to expand more here within the community that we have up to this point um you know we probably ask some of the school community people in terms of who you know them but then support us develop relationships we have people from the community come in and talk to our students as part of our after school program we have our after school program go to their place and learn with their own time we'd like to establish those kinds of connections here um the second thing is real it's called a real mentors program and real stands for respect engage acknowledge and listen and those are like those are the tenants with which we operate that's what we try to teach the kids within our
005meetings that's what we try to uphold within our meetings or outside of our meetings is to help kids learn those skills so they can connect and build relationships with other people and um it's proven really successful kids keep coming back the kids keep going beyond middle school at times it's not for everybody but you have a good group of kids that have continued to come with us um we'd like to expand and bring the girls program here i want to say just a few minute words sure uh my name is mary sarah newsmoore and i was a teacher here at tahanto from 1997 until 2007. and then i came back for a brief all-star reunion year in 2016. um this was my first school and i had taught it several since but i always think
006of tahunto as my only school and i've told others that that have not been here which i don't have a problem with um so i feel like it's my home still we did as jay said we started a girls mentoring program on november 13th with a small group of middle school girls in clinton and have had tremendous success um it's just it's just been wonderful and amazing and encouraging and so i am hoping that we could do the same here at hondo for the middle school girls here um that is my hope and it would fall under the same umbrella of real mentors and it would follow the same basic model as the boys program that is already established here at tahanto so thanks for listening thank you very much next for public health we
007have jessica david um so dear western berlin school committee and concerned residents watching online um i promise tonight in regards to the letter they've written to that scene i first want to thank dr susan henry for her service she was always respectful and her position to represent her town and careful to analyze david to help her make those decisions it's very sad that we lost such an intelligent individual due to bullying within the community so like i said it comes in regards to the letter being sent and written to desi i'm concerned that the individual writing the letter will not represent the district with respect and a civil tone of note anyone including a newspaper reporter can request her resignation letter as is part of the public record along with many other communications to the
008committee so dating back to march 9th 2021 meeting there's been swearing disrespect to the teachers on their remote learning efforts and to mr zhang himself and also blatant disregard for current data in favor of personal opinion holding a seat on the school committee means representing the towns not your individual views reviewing the data and discussing her the open meeting law and then with respect coming to a collective agreement and then voting the school committee meetings have often occurred on zoom the past two years due to coven and it might have given the illusion that you as a committee were operating in a vacuum i would like to point out that although only 15 or so people attended the meeting last week over 200 people were upon zoom watching the meeting some parents were prevented like
009open infections from attending in person i am hopeful that a survey will be sent out soon from the superintendent that will allow parents to voice their opinions unmasked so that when the committee can review the data and not solely based on a few parents opinions my own included thankfully states surrounding us are viewing the data and the downward trends of cobin and ending mass mandates on an appropriate schedule connecticut february 28th new jersey march 7th delaware in oregon march 31st i trust jesse also to follow the ctc guidance of masking up indoors in over 50 phobic cases per hundred thousand residents or positivity rate of at least eight percent as of february third last thursday only five days ago 99.9 percent of the country did not meet the for this requirement to be removed so
010thankfully the last week has shown the continued decline in the cases something that was not guaranteed for the sub-daring of omicron threatening to stall the declining cases i hope that jesse will reinstate the mass mandate if we reach those benchmarks again i encourage parents and the school committee to continue discussions with respect and with an effort to remain civil as laura said last meeting in the end we're all neighbors and if i might add our children friends finally i end with a district-wide request that many people run this november for elections and even more show up to vote neglecting this voting duty has led to certain books being banned in other states and it is our duty to come respectfully and departing because i have patients still at the clinic jessica negley thank you we
011are going to move on to the next item on the agenda which is the consensus is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented any discussion okay all in favor all right as well closed motion to approve the consent agenda as presented passes we are going to move on to the reorganization of the berlin boylston regional school committee um at this time i would like to entertain a motion to elect a new chair i'll make a motion to elect lori hart as our chair all in favor aye uh opposed i'm an eye as well the motion to elect lori heart does share his asses thank you motion to elect megan grill as vice chair passes congratulations okay um i would like to entertain a motion to appoint a member to replace susan on
012the policy subcommittee secretary i spoke to christie about that are you still retaining it yeah i just wouldn't enjoy it thank you yes we thank you for pointing that out i appreciate it um so do we have this would someone like to appoint someone to the policy subcommittee um i would like to entertain a motion to appoint a member to replace susan on the negotiation committee i'll make a motion to um have glory hart be part of the negotiations [Music] negotiation committee passes [Music] district improvement plan just to talk about timeline we talked a little bit about this earlier so we'll stop collecting data and watch and we will actually put together a new transition improvement plan because it will run from 2023 to 2025 we'll put that together in the summer for a vote
013by this committee in most likely september there was some discussion of whether there was going to be a vote in december um by whoever the next committee is going to be but after we discussed it with the leadership team we we just thought we would be presidents to have this committee going on and you've done most of the work athletic fees typically once a year the committee votes on whether to change athletic fees usually the voters we're going to need preschoolers after some discussions we decided that this would not be a good year to increase athletic peace so we decided not to bring it up for a vote and so they would remain the same the athletic features remain safe for 22 to 23 school years and finally the enrollment report i think you have
014that so let me just try to go over this as quickly as i can um we usually do this once a year i didn't do it last year because gymnastics didn't really provide any accurate data but the nasdaq is a group that provides most of the data we use and what they use for their forecasting and the criteria you see their very great migration uh wholesale age group trends new construction past and north history health trends economic trend and school choice and they they don't always apply to us but earth rate certainly does migration typically the state does not have a lot of renters but with more rentals being built that will have an impact certainly home sales age group trends families with children between one and four years to be a little more mobile
015once once this child gets older than that they tend to try to find a home and settle down uh baby moments we do have something in the community they have to dial so they move new construction we have quite a bit of that going on past enrollment history the projection view is a five-year ruling average um certainly health trends again have an impact with covert and also the opioid epidemic has had a major impact on lot of young kids economic trends inflation um you know we have families who have moved out of suburbs because of prices of gas and rent move closer to the not city big of an issue with us but certainly school choices nasdaq uses a technique called cohort survival technique and it takes the number of students that will historically survive
016one the great and they use those percentages to come up with a a ratio which they then apply to the the next grades up it has a it has about a 99 accuracy per year for the first five years and and so for a five-year forecast the uh is accurate between 95 and 99 after that it just goes off the cliff so once you start looking out like past like 10 years and passed you can have up to a 30 to a 40 percent error so that's why we don't even though they give us they look out that far we typically don't go that far this technique uh is reliable but it's less reliable under two conditions one when a district has a thousand or less students and the other is when there's a lot
017of building going on we have both of those in our community uh which makes forecasting enrollment uh much more difficult so i'll start going through the tiles don't go through all the numbers you have to listen i will say if you look at uh berlin memorial um the the enrollment numbers have stayed fairly stable and part of that is because they have whatever mass they plan to program they've been able to [Music] not count us because they don't have official caps on building permits but the building in berlin has been much lower than it has been in boylston also if you look at the childhood birth rate and growth it's been stable it's gone up about one uh one birth per year and which is so the average the rolling arrows for birth and uh
018merlin over 24 it has gone up by one to 25 so it's not tremendous but it's it's certainly increasing and it will increase the wall with increased building uh the next piece of data i have there is uh the number of children born versus the k enrollment you see if you look at the graph it's a little easier to see these are usually just worksheets i use for myself and it's easy to explain them if you look at if you look at the number of children born which is the blue line and then decay enrollment which is the gray line and then what i did is i just put trend lines in there so you can see that the they're almost parallel so the number of children born and the number of children that then
019the 10k five years later is very similar so that's been um so that's been pretty constant in that time the thing that may change some of that is the uh the next set of data i show which is building permits it's been pretty low but in 2021 they it's so in 2015 seven permits 2019 11th period in 2021 48 now 34 of those have been 55 and older but you have to remember that i think it's one in five one in six grandparents take care of their children now so even though it's a 55 and older community there's still a possibility that we get children a development like that um 14 of those permits are single families and um 12 of those this is a 12 unit development going in right next to berlin memorial
020so one of those permits one of the 48 is for one of the houses that's going in there but they're all you know they're all big houses so you know you don't know you don't know it could you could get no children out of there which is unlikely you could get 25 and so the other 11 terms just for that single family development will most likely come in 2022 and that will affect by the time someone pulls a permit and someone occupies alice in roughly one to three years and if they have children when they you know when they get there it's basically five years so um we'll see how that goes fortunately uh one of the things we have in favor in berlin is the size of the school currently the average size of
021the classroom is around 14 students per class and that's fairly low so you we could have we could have up to you know 18 in the class it would still be it'd still be comfortable um it's you know it's not always what you want but there's some there's stuff some room to grow there but there isn't room for there is more than two classrooms per grade they just don't have the space so when it gets to that point which i don't see in the very near future um you know there's going to be you know it will have to be a different kind of conversation this is very long time yeah [Music] river bridge which is the uh problem complex that's that's completed and so far we have i believe four students out of that
022which originally they forecasted 29 then they forecasted zero and so four is uh as far as what we got so far and i think it's fully occupied besides the numbers any questions about merlin okay move out to boylston uh boyle since a little bit different but boylston has had um lots of building even even before i arrived here i remember you know it was an interesting thing when i my first entity was at pds and it was in the there's been a library in the media center and so on and i got there early to drive around the town and um i remember someone saying that the population was going down you know and i just driven up seaworldly and i wanted the job so i didn't say lord you know be driven up later
023on and but there's a lot of building going on there and it continues to be a lot of building in that area so if you look at the projections the projections and these are these are october 1 numbers for the roman nbs if you look at the projection versus the actual so that both october 1 reports you can see that the actual numbers um are always greater than the projections of um so that school is increasing at a much higher rate than berlin memorial if you look at the number of children born you can see that that's increasing too and in fact i didn't go i stopped at 2017 but if you go out to this year the the rolling ten year average so has been 35 this is the first year that the average
024is above 40. so you have a birth rate that's increasing and you have increased building permits if you look at the birth the number of children born versus k enrollment um you see a different picture that you see in berlin and if you look at the graph you see just look at the trend line if you see the trend line for k enrollment look at the slope of that versus the the the trend line for the number of children born which is which is increasing but the uh enrollment is far upcasing the number of children born so when you look at a trend like that you think to yourself well something's happening there because a lot more students are enrolling in k than being born in the town so it's either that we either want
025like or something with new construction either renting or they're into the new construction and if you look at the building permits in 2015 there were 23 2019 there were 42 in 2020 21 there were only 10 but if you when you look at what's projected for 2022 that's a different story because there are 63 method units that are going to be put in on the product of seaworld and right across the press technologies and there'll be affordable units and 47 market market rate units there are eight two families going in in the development and there are five to six single families going in so those are all going to equate to more children i mean there's no there's no question that that's going to happen i think i think there are three commercial projects that
026are also uh going into boylston so maybe that offsets it but when we see this kind of this kind of growth you know bob is ready to go off the roof when you see stuff like that when you think about it we we pay roughly to educate the child you know probably between 18 to 20 000 a year so each of those each of those children um you know they they represented an increase in our budget and that's the real point this is why we do this is one to forecast how much space we're gonna we're gonna need and to figure that out but it's all also for the budget because and i said this at a budget meeting so far and we met with the um with the challenge we have another top meeting
027coming up as long as the building increases at the pace it is especially with oil stem increases of you know two and a half and three percent become less likely to be met especially when you have increased special input because you just you just have too many kids and like i said each of those kids when you factor in instructional materials when you factor in salaries for teachers you know that's it's roughly twenty thousand dollars for students that's a regular student if it's a student who requires is it out placement you know something like that it could be between 75 and 300 000 and we have all of that range here and they could they could just move in and so you know budgets of you know two two and a half percent they really
028aren't realistic as long as you continue to build unless you have some kind of something that offsets them and then i just added the haunted numbers in there um again just so you could take a look at them but are there any questions on involvement so one of them is i know that rory you're an appointed member to the master planning community um to what extent do you know that they're having conversations about capacity planning when they consider the master you know i don't know i was actually just thinking that i should send this um to the group because i think it would be extremely helpful for them to have these objections yeah so the other question is [Music] size yeah they still have room i mean they still have some classrooms that aren't being
029used but um they're getting up there their their average classroom size is it's around 18 now so you know once you you wants to hit that 20 mark and and i know you know i've had classes at 26. people have it but it's not optimal and and again i always point this out when i took this job here and they did a survey in the town and uh the question he asked nothing questions but one of the questions was um what do you want the superintendent and the new superintendent to be able to achieve and the very first response was um low class sizes so it's a matter of fact it came up at least two more times in that survey result so it is something that both top value is a small class size
030so and the tops have been really great at supporting us i i i have to say both both house to make sure we maintain those but you know we always talk about surveys we always want to send surveys out but it was really clear when i and when i interviewed it was clear that that was one of the um you know that was one of the things that the town prides itself on that we have small class sizes and teachers are able to give more individual attention to students and certainly covert is you know pulling a lot of stuff out of the water but um you know before that that's exactly what was happening so we've got enough support from the town so far so you know this is a difficult budget and you'll see
031next week and well talked about it that you know special education costs really have really skyrocketed and not just in this community i talked to another superintendent just twice who who said the same things as their special education numbers that are really driving their budget more than any kind of plan and growth i think one of the things that these projections miss is a family like my own that who came to town to the existing home when our children were three four years old they weren't born of course and then they moved into the region because of the school and just the migration in and out because all the families do tend to sell and they're replaced by families like yourself who have kids so yeah and again because we have you know it's like
032our class our class our schools they're so small we look at that cash with us for example even this you know one or two students can consume the results and so when you only have a thousand if you only have a thousand students and you have a lot of building going on you have a lot of factors that you you know you really can't you know okay if you have one way or we have two that make an enormous difference in the capacity of our schools so you know we keep an eye on it and you know certainly school choice is one of the issues that comes up and and people usually the usually the rule of thumb the community starts to get a little antsy about community about school choice numbers when it gets
033to starts to edge up to about 25 percent of your population because because it translates to your graduating class you have a graduating class you know a quarter of them on from your towels anymore so it starts to become an issue we're not we're not there yet yes how long can these trends continue before you start thinking about needing new space new buildings um i had i had the principal to do projections a couple years ago when i have them they you know we have it's our past five years certainly like i said in berlin we have variable class sizes so there's not space but there's room to grow in the classroom boyles is just the opposite they have bigger classes but they have some more room to grow in the school so it again
034you know buying next year one of the things dave asked for is another teacher he doesn't need one this year next year would definitely be because he will have a big kindergarten class these classes come in over all 50 plus now and that's october one numbers by by mid-year they're closer to 60. you know when you look at all of these numbers um you know these october one numbers and they don't include the school choice kids and they don't know who the kids would come in not only do you need a teacher but i think that the parent professional demands the classes we have bigger class sizes also because everything is good i think it's important you know you mentioned the master plan um i think it's important i i'm sure they'll consider this role
035and stuff but the number of buildings you have such has such an enormous impact on schools um and and you know it's certainly the amount of taxes that the child gets you know if you have three kids in school that's that's basically sixty thousand dollars like well you know to educate those kids well if the town doesn't get that value it's not like one to one memorial school from the projections of the actual uh white cobra 2020 children right from 150 to 177 with bms but those are huge jumps yeah well you know they got any natural disaster they don't have anything that covered really what's happening but they haven't done a lot of research on the effect of natural disasters on growth rate and um it tends to suppress it initially and then um
036it increases um i don't know what happened with the enrollment enrollment um we did have a lot of kids school choice out and you know we had a lot of students that were whole school so uh during recreated the so that might have had an impact on it but given what the yell was it looks like it happened in both schools so my guess would be that it would be a covert related anything else you said in five years beyond five years before you're going to take a billion from the time you start thinking about it until it gets built is that six years ten years i i would say that um again our projections when you look at the 10 year when you're looking up to like 2030 and 2031 expected to have about
037a 300 350 student increase as a district but it's tough to tell i mean you'll only know really when when the you know the building gets under control and forward is over so i don't even it'd be tough to even guess that i mean we could we could if we had two fundamental kids you know that would be that's a lot of this it's only a thousand kids well that's my thought i mean i'm familiar with building it's not you know snappy things yeah i mean i think the numbers are projected to go up you know i've seen the graphs on it but well i think probably next year's enrollment project should be a little more accurate as we start to get past this and um once i know they are working on the master
038plan once they consider that we have to see for example in boston how we'll keep an eye on them and i i will look that up you know if you could just send me a reminder tomorrow i will look up the msba timeline from the time you actually applied to them does the town have to vote to build a new school or no that's what i thought because i know they just built a new school and i could have sworn it started years prior to the vote to make this point yeah you know because the taxes go up right some schools organized schools in 20 years before they voted before they had a positive involved right exactly so you could you might say we need it and the town's gonna say well we're not gonna
039give it to you and then you gotta make do whatever portables all that kind of stuff so i have one more question so it's a nonsense um looking at the projected and the actual so how those numbers uh obviously work with these data um okay how am i trying to think of how so 2017 is 18 it's the exact same number right and projected in actual and then in 2020 and 21 and then 212 we're done with all the exact same numbers projective and actually um six to twelve yet if we were to look at eight to nine we know kids are leaving the district so i'm just confused how those numbers can be the same when we're having i see the kids lead at the end of the year however the number well if
040you look at the right on the 2019-2020 and then these numbers [Music] that but it would reflect the kids that didn't transition yeah right and that's a but that's just i can get all of that all right so if you have something very specific i can find it thank you any more questions thank you thank you um a few amps to report on the first is just a donation from project red it's an organization that is mission to connect people in communities this organization has done a lot since the beginning of the pandemic in advocating things such as universal free meals across the state which is now in effect and we hope continues as part of their mission they also provide some grants to school districts and we received a small brand for staff appreciation
041they recognize how hard our staff is working and all staff across the state is working with green meals for selling more than you typically would so um so this money would go towards um i think it was going to be a police vest or some type of shirt for each of the staff members so that grant is something to vote on in the business items i just wanted to give you some background on that the next item is informational we participate as a district with about 20 something other districts in a collaborative bid for oil by grouping together this permitted one of the methods that's permitted for procurement in the state um by coming together as a group we get better pricing by being a part of this than otherwise because we're a small district
042we also um use a bid process because of the amount we purchased over the year is very significant we also want to be able to predict what we're going to pay for oil next year there's been huge fluctuations in oil prices and energy in general um so by going out to bid now in the winter we're able to then budget accurately for next year the bid was recently held the lowest bidder only bid on was disqualified because they didn't meet the terms of the bid the next lowest bidder was at two dollars and ninety cents per gallon uh it's a significant increase over what last year's price was which is just over just under 1.70 and however this is reflective of what's going on in the market it's not really a surprise in fact in
043the preliminary budget that i did i had estimated about the same increase that we have within within a thousand dollars so we will have an increase of eighteen thousand this is already baked into our budget um but i just wanted to give you that background on the collectors a little bit the last item i have to report on is access and deficiency filing which is finally coming close to completion i spoke with a representative of the division of local services today and yesterday working through some of the questions they had and i expect it will be certified very soon i'm hoping for next week's meeting i am getting a little tired starting over as a carryover item in each of my reports but i hope to have an update for next meeting we do need
044their certification in order to use env funds in our budget i'm budgeting to use emd next year provisionally assuming it gets accepted it gets accepted every year that is useful to have that certification as soon as we can that's the last time i have there's no questions thank you i wanted to start this evening first by thanking the superintendent's advisory council between that last thursday evening to go over the equity survey that we have put together with a great help on the council worked on the language for that survey and it will be coming out and we're looking at right after the vacation week because we're trying to switch over into a more efficient system for doing doing the surveys so we're working on that right now we also have a mask survey and items
045have also got their ideas related to kobet and the district we have we have the language for that in place we have a subcommittee invited from that group tomorrow evening um to meet with me and go through the language on that much shorter survey than the other and the equity survey our intention is to get that out to a google survey on friday so look for that in the superintendent's newsletter this week i also wanted to mention the massachusetts elementary and secondary education released its 2021 school and district report cards uh that will be coming to parents no later than the 18th of february it's already on this individual school websites and we'll be putting that on all three on the district website i think it's really important it's a comprehensive report it has an
046information student enrollment teacher workforce attendance discipline performance on state tests accountability and school spending all rolled up into one report card and then speaking of equity what i also like about this report is you can get it in many different languages that's the great thing you have to send them out just paper copy but now there's translations available on that site as well so please take a look at that and you'll also be getting the previous school principles as well finally i want to um just briefly speak about the real mentors program and thank mary sarah and jake for coming out this evening jake and i go back to the days of when jake and michael sanford brought in father and fathers into the elementary schools and i had an opportunity to work with both
047young people gentlemen in that program we had an opportunity to bring fathers and their sons together and to bond on weekends and they would go out and do all kinds of wonderful activities i remember geocaching right and some fishing and all kinds of great activities from there jake took this and started to expand into the program with the boys at the middle school with great piccarello and the opportunity to bring the girls program into toronto as well is a huge step for us so we're so grateful that both these individuals are willing to do this work and they've been they've been really trying very hard to get this off the ground we're looking at funding sources for the positions i think jake you mentioned all the positions i'll just mention them again we're looking at
048four school staff members who serve as mentors to the boys group to with the girls group to have a site coordinator for each program and then program organizers are hoping to add two additional job descriptions filled by men and women from the community and police departments i did want to let both of you know that we will be meeting with the berlin wilson crisis team this week on friday and we will be asking them for some volunteers from the police department we do have some uh we have a female officer in berlin and so we're going to be reaching out to them and they've been great department partners to us in the community so we're excited to have a possibility to come along i do just want to end with the quote i put in
049the report because i think it does speak volumes about this program jake and rather than break down the program i get a more concrete way i'm just going to read the quote because i love brene brown she speaks to my heart and i'll just share this with everybody because you included this connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen heard and valued when they can give and receive without judgment and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship and that's what this program is all about so very excited to to get this off and running so thank you to both of you [Music] any questions i'm not familiar i've [Music] a couple years now it came to be just one of my goals as well just as an effort to
050get some more community input and so we actually kind of thought about what they would you know what their function would be but what they really do now is they they advise myself and general community too on just initiative that we have um there are three positions on there this year and you know we've had people move in and out who were actually at our first first meeting and so we have a basically a colbit survey and masking survey they helped us with those questions um you know what to do it with us but basically they do just what the what the committee the name of it they advise the superintendent on you know just initiatives that i may be thinking about or something that you're going to get before them and um you know
051ask them just get their opinion on them they've gone through we have another equity survey going out they've gone through that entire survey and um they just look at things with a different lens and then just put questions up and they is looking at parents or as you know professionals that's basically what it started out as one of my goals and we just continued with it three people use it three people no i think there's a seven on it now [Music] um that's the only number i can find below the state is there a reason we are behind the state or that's a good question i can't i can't answer that right now i will take a look at it for you that's access to the parts access to the rtx i know when i
052was appointed to this committee last year uh one of the former members was a big advocate for the arts i was kind of on the same board but i noticed that's about the only number where it shows that we're behind the state that i could find it i'll definitely look into that for you i don't know why that number is lower than the state of this timeline objective well you know i don't know the specific answer to that but i will say it's something we recognize that's why i said that did you compromise and actually that scooping me remember about the first people i went to actually went to a shop and uh if you don't talk to him about the goal that we recognized a lot i remember [Music] yeah thank you before we
053move on i just wanted to thank you for bringing the mentoring program and julie and i will have children in the middle school and there's a real need for this so i just wanted to thank you it really warms my heart to think of guidance these children just need other voices and a place to be able to speak so thank you for that you're welcome absolutely sure so i have a few items um to report on as well i'm going to go a little bit out of order of my report um but i'm going to start last week we received updated um protocols for responding with over 19 um symptoms and scenarios it was updated last week by desi and the dph we put the full highlighted document into the drive for you to review
054there's a lot of information a lot of details there but i did want to point out a few you know highlights um and in pointing out these highlights i did work with our nursing staff to bring these to you um the first is that the copin 19 symptom list has been updated in the previous edition which was put out at the end of january the symptoms were differentiated for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals we actually when we put together our symptomatic testing protocol we were able to anticipate that that was probably going away based on the trend of how things were moving excuse me so that list has been slightly updated on taking away that differentiation and we still have three protocols for responding to coca-19 scenarios um and they still you know follow the same
055order protocol a is about individuals who have actually tested positive um one really the only nuance or the biggest nuance i should say in that protocol is um that when individuals do return to the school setting um they need to remain masked for five days that's the same the difference is if they can remove their mass when outside apparently that was left off in january so that was a december that was updated again in january protocol b has quite a few changes to it and this really responds to there's different versions and multiple parts of protoculty we're following the new protocol because we have the new at home testing program um and so individuals students and staff are no longer identified as closed contacts in school but there are protocols to be followed if they
056are a close contact outside of school and then the third protocol c for symptomatic individuals um aligned with the dph guidance the update here that was highlighted for me by the nurses is that it is recommended that individuals test um to as opposed to just sort of monitoring symptoms but it's a recommendation not a requirement let's skip over and go to um the update on the at-home covenant testing program so we've just got that rolled out the at home covet testing program um because we had the weather cancellation on friday test kits just went out to students and families on monday um we had a short amount of time for families to actually opt into the program that was the way that the state had um set up the program so i'm going to estimate
057we sent home about 150 kids district-wide on monday and then when we redistribute to students again on february 18th if that number is going to be much larger the numbers that i pulled here on the report i pulled on friday afternoon that i checked on them today they've grown yet again so people are still opting in um and that's good um so i think that that program is you know up and running um and we're hearing from families if they have any questions and then the vaccination data i worked with the nursing staff on thursday this data came from our meeting on thursday so as you know um the nurses implemented a new health software program this school year that has a much better report and significantly improved reporting and although we still can't go
058in and just push a button and say tell us how many people meet the full vaccination criteria we can go in and pull multiple small reports and then crunch the numbers ourselves um and so although we've had that program in place for a little while it didn't even start to sync with the state data until very recently so we were just able to pull this data for the first time last week and it's only reporting the student data which i have the numbers there for you so both berlin and boylston elementary schools are just above 50 um and to honda is very close to 80 for student vaccination rates i think we figured that that is 11 or maybe 12 students away from meeting the 80 mark for vaccination um and then the staff vaccination
059rates is based on voluntary reporting from staff there isn't a program that we can pull that data from um so the nurses um all along have been sort of keeping lists from staff that are you know open and willing to share that data um and that's what we see there which are very high rates of vaccination anywhere from 87 to 97 percent any questions every question from the cover 19 symptoms which i continue to find very difficult to interpret so i look at this and see there are five symptoms at the top fever difficulty breathing new laws of taste or smell musculature body aches cough on their own any of those five symptoms were born being tested is that correct on our symptomatic testing protocol yes yes of that doctor so below that we have
060sore throat headache fatigue nasal congestion those all say when in combination with other symptoms now i understand that two of those symptoms like sore throat nausea or headache congestion would prompt a student to be symptomatically tested within the school and to be recommended to the test division of protocol so my so there's nurse discretion here for sure i'm agreeing with you that that my interpretation would be that if there's head say headache and fatigue um that those two symptoms would prompt um a nurse to say that the student might be symptomatic and would be looking to see whether or not the student had consent for symptomatic testing in school and to test them i know i would agree with your interpretation yeah this should be aligned between the top five which are on their own
061then the bottom six it's any of those two potentially of the six unrelated to the topic they used to be they're used to i was just gonna say that's one of the changes there used to be that you had a hat if you had one of the bottom symptoms it had to be two it used to be very valid i know it's different though my understanding of the previous where it was bolded actually referred to vaccinated and unvaccinated status that that was what the boldin was on that that version or iteration and and and i i know right going through it looking at what's holding and what's italicized so if memory serves me correctly that the bolding referred to an individual staff individual's vaccination right um but this um right this is it puts that
062aside and has never heard from that it is just based on the symptoms regardless of the vaccination status thank you i have one quick question for you now will families be able to opt in to this for as long as the vehicle tours yeah families are welcome to opt in and staff are welcome to opt-in it's on a rolling basis um for sure and um you know we're now that we have placed our first order we're getting in our first inventory um i think once we're past that first distribution we have more flexibility and more ability to print labels for those um test kits and send them home like just the day before whereas that first one was like really tight we needed to know a whole week in advance um in order to get
063the supplies from the state but now again now that we've got a little bit of a supply we can be more flexible so to answer your questions families are welcome to continue opting in and then if they wanted to opt out um for some reason they just need to you know send an email either the principal or myself we'll you know we'll get that handled thank you so now for the opting in will that be enough in the friday newsletter the link or their place on the website that they can go to yeah it's um it's already on the um website it went out on school messenger and um my thing is to put that into the weekly update again this friday i think it will continue to appear there um for some time the
064reminders with the links and i'll be honest i mean the acronym testing program there's a lot of components to it and it's a lot of um i think information for failings you know the process like during the you know within the at home testing we ask um families to use a you know a form to report positive results that's only a result of the actual testing and i think you know some it could be mistaken that you go in there and if you've got a positive result at a you know from a doctor's office that you go in and put in there so it's just a lot of moving pieces and we're just working with families to clarify that as we go thank you for that it's a lot of people but yeah it is
065yeah thank you sure good evening um i will be like very brief um i just wanted to pass along some of the information about newcast prep um as you see from the numbers of about 60 of our students we'll take at least one guest in the spring um [Music] currently that's 632 students we have already begun doing testing for making sure infrastructure and that number of students make sure we have devices available it's always tight but you know we always manage somehow and again as the spring goes on teachers begin to bring their classes down and do some of those practice exams so it's twofold purpose for us it helps us find out that yes we are in fact ready to go in terms of network infrastructure wireless and such but it also gets the
066students more comfortable with the types of questions or the types of tools that are are in the exam itself so anybody have any questions for me about that i have a question is that voluntary just whatever teacher decides that they want to bring their class correct um principals especially at the elementary school highly encouraged um yeah and i would say in the middle school here um it again it tends to be world class um at the high school it is basically only 10th grade for the most part um it's they're probably more specific they're looking at particular writing problems and whatever it's less to do with technology and for them most of them have have done it since grade 3 of war so the technology isn't isn't the drawback there that they just can practice
067with the so the election subcommittee um and like [Music] to christy afterwards so their school committee members administration and members of the public in our meeting last week one member of the public brought up the fact that the current school committee is made up of five appointed members there's also been discussion on social media and we understand that there might be a letter circulating in the community in regards to the upcoming election although we have not yet seen it we do look forward to any input that the community has on this matter the election subcommittee would like to offer the following update and review of the regional school committee election before we get into a discussion of several items for your book tonight when the district regionalized some years ago it was decided that of
068the various options available for regional school committee elections the committee at that time chose to have district-wide elections during the state's biennial election these are held in november of those years it is our understanding that this was one of several options to choose from and the first such opportunity for a regional committee election after the regionalization would have been november 2020. the state has a process to follow to hold school committee elections during that biannual election that committee the one from 2020 and the committee on which our last serving elected member had a seat failed to file the necessary paperwork with the state to get on the ballot steps were taken to attempt to correct this including the filing of multiple home rule petitions which would have required state legislature intervention a home rule petition
069is a request from a city or town for a new type of power from the state legislature and in this case that power would have been to have a different type of election than originally intended once the mistake was made the response to cohen and its related issues prevented this from being heard in boston and was abandoned in 2021 there seemed to be some confusion during part of the public comment from our meeting on february 1 2022. it's unclear why someone claimed to be uninformed about the state of the election for members of the berlin boylston regional school committee the election has been discussed numerous times in past school committee meetings going back only about a year the election topic was on the agenda in some form on march 9th 2021 may 4th august 31st
070september 14th october 26th this was the date when the final discussion involved when the home rule petition took place again it was on the agenda on november 9th december 14th was when the election faq document that the subcommittee wrote up was voted on and voted the discussion took place and was voted on at that meeting and most recently our january 11th meeting there was an update about the election the election subcommittee comprised of mr wilbur mr talking has committed to me each month to continue to review the timeline and make sure we are on track to have this election in november 2022 we're working tirelessly to ensure we keep you and the public informed and we all have worked hard to ensure that you and the public have in-person full school committee meetings at which
071to communicate with us regarding this and other important matters since 2020 various committee members have decided that they could no longer serve out their terms on the committee and they stepped down or quit each had their reasons and many explained those reasons to the same committee in public at that time some did not address the committee or public directly but did so through email in the press that was their choice when an elected member decides to quit their seat should be filled otherwise the people who elected them will have no representation at all to review and for informational purposes the current committee was appointed in the following order lori hart is one of two advocates who applied to villa vacated seat in february 2020. michael thompson was the only advocate who applied for the big
072gated seat in december of 2020. julie lee was the only advocate who would find a field vacated seat in the spring of 2021. adam wilder and megan grill were two of six advocates who applied to kill seats vacated in august 2021 these appointed members have chosen to serve out the remaining time of the term for those who decided to step down or quit because the previous committee of which the last elected member and former chair of the park failed to hold the election in 2020 it was unknown at the time of these appointments exactly how long this term would be nevertheless these members did step up to serve during unprecedented and altruist times we can now confidently say that this term will end in november 2022 the process to appoint these members whose carry out
073is required and will be exactly like the process to appoint the next member to fill the remainder of the terms of the current open valency there was a public announcement the seat was open there was a public request for advocates and there was a public interview by the committee of all those who expressed interest the committee including those who had been elected and previously appointed then voted to select the candidate in each case in the above cases it's important to note that all previously elected and appointed members serving at the time voted unanimously on these appointments even those who were the sole applicant for the vacated seats needed to be voted in by the committee at that time the vote could have been to not accept them it's unfortunate that the last elected member of
074the community will not be available on behalf of her constituents at the next appointment which we expect will be on march 1 2022. i feel confident in saying that this committee consisting of the five appointed members is here tonight to assure the public that there will be a free and fair election as has been requested held november 8th 2022 and that regard the subcommittee has brought you several items to vote on tonight we've already voted to approve the faq document back in the summer which outlines in detail questions and answers surrounding this election such as the wimp how and why this is being held in november we're suggesting to post that on a separate dedicated election page on the district website as soon as possible we're also bringing to you language for a press release
075to approve this release will announce the election and our public question enhancer forum we would like to hold at the april school committee meeting we'd also suggest posting this on the district page and ask the superintendent if he would include it in a weekly newsletter this april day corresponds with the expected timing of what nomination papers will become available we also bring to you for a vote a letter required to be sent to the state informing them of the upcoming open seats for which we would like to hold an election as a review all six seats will be up for election in november 2022 proto-regional agreement berlin will have two seats available for a two-year term and one for a four-year term boston will have two seats available for a four-year term and one for
076a two-year term going forward after the november 22 election and beginning with the november 2024 election all seats will be for a four-year term and half of the seat will be vacated on the staggered basis going forward this is the way it was included in the regional agreement approved january 25th 2019. we've requested time at the april 5th 2022 school committee meeting to hold an open question and answer session at this meeting we'll entertain and answer any questions the public might have about the upcoming election logistics questions on how to run an individual campaign will not be addressed interested candidates should seek information from the state and their own advisors for that information regarding this election was also included in the school committee report to the town we would ask that it be highlighted at
077this year's town meetings we also commit to keeping the public informed of the election at each regularly scheduled school committee meeting up until the election part of our discussion in our last subcommittee may get centered around community outreach and awareness the idea of publicizing this on social media didn't come up we discussed that social media is a great tool to use to get the word out but we must be careful we've learned that committee members must be careful discussing committee business on social media so as to not violate law and social media can make this difficult we feel it's appropriate to dedicate a page on the district website to the election if possible we do not feel we should be posting this information on any non-town government related pages on social media such as the
078many private groups formed by community members that are not affiliated directly with the towns or schools but are simply forms of these topics if the school committee or its individual members were to post election information on private groups which may not include all of the public or if the administrators of those private pages were to close commenting on these posts that would not support the concept of equity for all that we hold dear this could violate open meeting law if a forum of committee members happens to subscribe to those pages and get involved in the posting or comments we do welcome the administrators of those pages to share the information from our meetings but for the committee to actively seek out those private pages could lead to a risk of not finding them all and
079unintentionally excluding some members of the community who are on other pages an example of this would be a recent committee agenda being shared on certain berlin neighbors facebook pages by a former community member but not on other pearl and resident related pages this including of one group and excluding of another is not how we should operate it is not evident we should entertain a policy update regarding this as soon as possible for those who have written and spoken recently about the failure of past committees and elected members to hold an election please note the public can rest assured that this committee is dedicated to bringing you a free fair election november 2022 thank you i don't have anything to add i just thank mike for providing what i believe is a very accurate representation of
080what's occurred over the last two or three years within this topic of the election i'll also comment that i personally as i think laurie mike injected the test to prior to doing the committee would be appointed to the committee did question on several occasions why an election hadn't happened when is factually accurate and um [Music] are there any updates from jesse regarding the last mandate um [Music] we're going to have an open discussion on the letters of jesse regarding the mass candy um i'll just comment that the version you're able to see here in the drive road and drafted is primarily focusing on the decision-making authority and not the question of whether maths in um very much focused on the issue of which body is closest to this issue and able to be best listening
081to concerned citizens on this topic as well as focusing on the equity question around um the vaccination threshold and some issues i personally feel strongly developed in that case and finally noting that there had been some activity in the last 24 hours where some neighborhood governors needs to return this decision making for local school commitments and urging the department of education to do the same in massachusetts so i offered that for discussion and you'll see the version i provided that it includes the number of line numbers suggested for fully news are there any members that would like to comment on this um so so essentially we have two letters to deci that are proposed by two members or are we or are we doing away with the original one and this or is that what
082we're deciding now so i don't know as well yes i i just like that it's more focused on give us the facts um and it's it's not um i don't think it's giving up too much of the position of our community it's more um requesting that we have the science and the facts um so that we can make a decision and it's more requesting that you know they follow suit of other governments that have already released that decision down to localities or at least have set a date for that i mean obviously it's not going to happen tomorrow but i think those are all the points i think uh everything that's happened in the last few days over the weekend i wrote this last week so yep i think adam's much more aggressive and i
083think it's perfectly acceptable well mike i thought you i thought you wrote a really good letter i really i really appreciated that you put into it i thought it was wonderful and i mean the entire landscape changed over the weekend it did it changed so much emails from the community that have said you know if you're if you're writing a letter out to dusty and you're stating that you know we want mass we don't want math doesn't necessarily represent the whole town so the way that we're asking questions about asking for local control um and putting up you know that local um nearby states are sending or leaving it up to local control or having specific dates um i just i like that openness we're not necessarily looking for one thing or the other from
084asking or not asking we're looking for the ability to have discussion about it you know on the floor taking in so many different opinions and research and all the other pieces [Music] the first one is that our committee has been discussing the mass mandate and listening to citizens who are concerned about it regardless of what side of the museum beyond them we've done that at three meetings from the last month on the 11th 25th and february during this meeting we are both comments from parents medical professional scientists and teachers furthermore we on our listening session um as the public commenter mentioned earlier we have almost 300 people who watch that listening session that we did last week um that's almost double the number of people who watched a similar session back in august this topic
085was on the table the conclusion of that first section of the letter is understand that our committee understands our community better than desi because we are the ones who are listening to them the second point in my letter talks about the inequities of requiring all communities to reach a somewhat arbitrary 80 vaccination rate because all the communities in this state are not equal in terms of racial makeup in terms of economics or in terms of the willingness of the people in those times to have their children vaccinated i specifically know based on data that i sourced yesterday and in boylston it's 54 of our 11 year olds are fully vaccinated or 90 are vaccinated in the crossbar in worcester 21 of those children are vaccinated where 70 percent are vaccinated in wellesley whereas 95 of
086those same children are fully vaccinated in hopkinton my point in this section is to note that given the correlation between vaccination rate and race it is inequitable to require that every community measure to the same 80 vaccination threshold measurement state if the vaccinations are zone continues we will soon see that the predominantly white schools and wealthy communities we ask free while the schools who more racially do our student populations will remain mass power point of view talks about some of the recent activity that we've seen both from the secretary of education and secretary of health and human services as they've commented on the twin debt that exists within higher education specifically building profound impact that virus mitigation has had on our citizens mental health they urge higher ed leaders to reconsider protocols to help promote
087a return to healthy social interactions they stated that their letter around january 28th that these higher ed institutions should accelerate their efforts to transition college students back to new normal conditions our committee urges you as deci to accelerate efforts to transition the key to 12 students back to your normal conditions as well and finally yesterday the governors of new jersey in delaware announced they will return this decision-making authority to local school committees and district administrators these three states are joining about 41 other states that do not mandate nasa to stay well we agree with these recent sentiments from the secretaries as well as the decision of government from the states it's time to do the same in massachusetts by allowing local school districts to begin our efforts for transitioning back to near normal conditions for
088our k-12 students as well i think the letter is outstanding um yeah um i thought yours was awesome but i just thought yeah exactly right right the landscape changed um but this this part about you know when you see those percentages was in boxborough worcester wellesley holyoke and then you arrive at the statement um we will soon see that predominantly white schools and wealthy communities will be masquerading with more racially diverse student populations it's really well done really thoughtfully thank you to both of you for taking the time to write the letters it does take i mean i don't think anybody knows what it's like behind the scenes in the school community when you're given a task and you have to organize and get it all done it's a lot of work i really appreciate
089that um so i guess we will move on to our business um [Music] could i have a motion to approve the 2022-23 athletic fees uh so did there have no increase right now the motion passes and we will approve the 2022-23 athletic fees to remain standard did i have a motion to accept a donation of the project for a school meal support grant in the amount of 330.25 a second julian discussion all in favor aye aye as well opposed hey the motion to accept the donation yes did i have a motion to approve the letters to be sent to dusty regarding the mass mandate [Music] presented copying this to several other organizations individuals within the state so i've actually copied this letter to governor baker to uh any further discussion all in favor aye aye
090i'm an eye as well opposed promotion passes we will be sending adam's letter adam sorry about the letter of mass did i have a motion to approve a press release regarding the election megan second approval of a letter to the secretary of state to inform him of [Music] um [Music] i appreciate that any further discussion um i'm an eye as well opposed the motion passes to send the letter um the approval you put the letter to the secretary of state to inform our november election um and we had as a honda student handbook first read so we're not quite sure if the school committee proves that we're objective of that i'm sure official studies okay so disregard all right um so we're not doing anything with the handbook all right we can any comments that
091you have questions concerns um should we send them to diane no i'm just thinking yeah okay our upcoming school committee meetings will be on february 15th that's next tuesday while we'll be doing this budget presentation i encourage the community to watch that meeting i know it's not exciting but it's extremely important it follows your taxes i want to see those spreadsheets and then we have one on march 1st and one on march 8th and just a reminder that we do have an open seat in berlin if a berlin resident would like to um you know sign up for them for the for the seat hospital i apologize i'm using my brain right now if you have any members or anybody in the community that would like to be appointed to the committee we ask that
092you submit a resume you can email it to me or to christy and we will be discussing on march 1st any member any people from the community that would like to run for that seat and i would really encourage people you know there's a lot of um the school committee is a very interesting thing to be a part of um and it's very complicated there's a lot more to it than any of us i think knew until you were really here um but it is a wonderful thing to be a part of and i i value the members that are here um i'm grateful that to work with you and i'm grateful for your enthusiasm and i would encourage anybody that would like to work with us to step up some things a really important
093job so thank you for that can i ask one quick question about that is it going to be the same that we had before where you submit a resume and then we'll each ask a question yeah all right just so people know that yes so that you plan to come and you you'll speak a little bit and you know and i'll let anybody that supplies another protocol okay is there a motion to adjourn a second julie thank you adam [Music] julie yes megan yes mike yes as well this concludes our meeting thank you very much