001Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. We >> bring the board of the school committee meeting for Monday, September 15th, 2025. A motion for approval of bills. >> So move, Mr. Chairman. >> Thank you. >> I'll second. >> Thank you. Any discussion? >> Yeah, I guess something to I uh I didn't sign the bills and uh there's a charge here, a bill from from Sterling Country Club for $8,700 that um I'm just not in favor of and um make it as short as I can. You know, we play we've had the Twin Springs and now Burlin where they we paid nothing. Um they've been there's been no complaints. It's it's run great
002and I just don't see the need for spending money where we can and I feel that way with Elton money. you know, if if there's if you have a vendor or a company that we're using and everything's working and no one's complaining, it's good service, why pay for something or pay more for something that we wouldn't have to. So, I'm just going to I don't know if I could You don't need my signature on the other bills anyway, right? There's four signatures. Yeah. So, I just won't sign any of them just to keep it from >> any other discussion. All in favor? >> I abstain. Uh if >> I could get a motion for this. I don't >> Yeah, I don't know if Yeah, I'm but again, not to the rest of the bills. So,
003I don't know how that works. >> Well, do you want I guess we just need to know is it opposed or abstained for the motion for the bills? >> Um, does it matter? Opposed? There you go. But pay the rest of them, please. >> Yeah. 3 311 it sounds. >> Yeah, I caused some confusion. Sorry. >> Sorry. Can I have a motion for review of the approval of minutes from the August 25th, 2025 school meeting? >> So move, Mr. Chair. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> No. >> Discussion. All in favor? >> I. >> Okay. Great. Do we have any public comment this evening? >> Seeing none, we will close public comment. >> Student representative yet? >> Next. Next. >> Thank you. Anyone from the CTA? >> Yes. >> How are you, Brenda? >> Good.
004How are you? >> I'm great, thanks. >> I just want to say thank you for the invite to the groundbreaking. It was great. Um, and the teachers can't wait to get in the new building. I know it's two years away, but we're looking forward to it. So, thank you. >> No questions. Are you moving into a new building or you just [Laughter] PTA. >> Hey Becky. >> Hey. >> She's letting me talk for once. >> She doesn't have a voice. >> Thank you. >> You should have bet the under on this meeting though. I didn't realize. >> I know. >> Put up with me twice. >> All right. >> While you're passing that out, I didn't join yet. going to do before you I go. >> Uh there's no shame for me. That's her game.
005>> I know she hit me up on the walk in. So I want to make sure I said it before she I didn't join it. I I'll take care of it. >> So I'm going to do short sweet. You got that in front of you. Uh the most important thing is is we are running the glow run right now fundraiser at the elementary school and we are at 25K. >> Boom. >> That is all going to go toward So it is >> that your you guys take that. That's your take. >> So it Yes, that is our takehome. That is after all fees from the platform are paid. That is all the people from boosters being at the school is paid. Everything that's free and clear profit that will go right back into field trip
006busing. Um we're going to earmark a specific percentage for the elementary school because they've done all the hard work and fun times. Um but because we are a district PTA, we do have to allocate some of that to the other schools as well to meet the state criteria. But a huge chunk will be going towards the spring uh field trips for the elementary school. Um that was the highlight of tonight because that's the big thing going on. And have a good night. >> That's awesome. >> Awesome. Thank you. >> Great job. We have any representatives from CPAC or LPAC? Does not look like it. Okay, Dr. Myer, the floor is yours. >> All right. So, we start with uh human resources. Uh we had one new hire. Uh Kathleen Holmes was hired as 7 school
007psychologist. Um this was a uh this is given to her as a or she was appointed to a one-year position. Uh one of the things we did is we looked at how much we had paid on contracting services out uh for testing last year and uh was proposing this could be a cost savings. Um we are uh running with this position for this year. Um we'll see how it plays out in terms of the budget process for next year. Um you have a pretty comprehensive list of everyone in the district. U in there I try to just break it down just so you can get a sense of um you know who's in what school, who's teaching what, all that kind of stuff. So if you have any questions on you know someone a fifth
008grade teacher or a sixth grade teacher or whatever that's it that should be all listed in here. So just try to share that every year so that you guys have a sense of uh where we are. We are working so in the HR sort of section of our um strategic plan working with the town to develop the human resource manager position. reviewing update human resource policies, reviewing HR practices, including uh leave requests and personnel files, ensuring that all employees are evaluated on a regular basis. Um so the update I have in here is just Harper's and uh their payroll company and the staff uh terminal as employee forward. Um, so Kelly and uh Amanda and my office have been working uh now that Marilyn's retired and she's she's still coming in parttime helping us out
009doing a lot with the MTRS, doing a lot of training but with Amanda and Kelly over the summer. Uh we've been doing a lot of work with Ray to try to um look at some of the other features in employee forward and we've uh added some things Ry particularly has added some things in terms of like uh some of the self-service things for employees. so that they can make some some changes directly uh like address changes and stuff directly to their payroll uh direct deposit changes directly uh on their their self. Um for onboarding uh a lot of our paperwork now is instead of it being you know entered on paper and then having to be uh typed in people do the electronic onboarding. Uh so we continue to look uh working with the HR
010department to um try to streamline all of that stuff and Uh, I know Kelly's been doing a nice job in our office. Now, Amanda has just started her uh maternity leave today, so I know she was all alone today, but uh holding it down, getting all the uh payroll done and everything. So, uh we continue to try to look at how we can um just, you know, automate that process as much as possible. Um the next one we have is athletic update and I have director Golden is here to share her update which is in the packet. >> Good evening everyone. Thank you for having me here. So I know that you have the update uh that I sent out to Kelly. So I'm going to kind of skim down that and obviously read some
011of it. Um so again it's been a great start to the 2025 athletic season. Um our teams are out to a good start. Our participation numbers are good. They're up just slightly from what they were last year. Um and again, everybody's excited to be back out on the fields, courses, courts. We've had some different um setups with some of the building. Cross country's made some adjustments, which is great. Um, and we've also, as discussed, we had to open up another field over at the JV football field so that we could accommodate our middle school teams um, for soccer, which has been great and actually opened up a lot of a lot more opportunities for all of our teams to kind of move around a little bit and find the space. So, it's been great. Um,
012we have a second course now for our golf course. I know it was just brought up. We also have two teams because our numbers have grown. So, we have a varsity and a JV team for our golf. um for our golf programs. So um opening that up with that with with that um with the extra team, we needed to find some more space as well. So that has worked out so far so good. Um things are moving well in that direction. Um again, field hockey will have uh we have two kind of uh club teams. Field hockey is one of them and we also started a volleyball club team at CHS this year. So, with some moderate support on both sides for me as the athletic department is technically a club, but I want to
013make sure that as we're building that, uh, generally it's like a two-year type program. We're going to look at numbers and all those types of things and see if it's a viable um, start for us in the future on budget wise and number wise for our student athletes to build those feeder programs. So, we're kind of excited about that. I will give a shout out to um, uh, Courtney started our volleyball program this year, Courtney Dilva. So, we appreciate that. And again, I work with her on just kind of building that and getting some volleyballs and getting them going. So she's done a great job. >> And uh Katie Cluda at the middle school. >> Yeah, that's her second year at Katie Clud. >> Yep. So that's her second year at um uh for the
014field hockey middle school. >> Jen, is there a specific time a year that like that would happen or is it throughout the year? Like is it like is volleyball a certain is that a winter sport? So would a club be winter or would it just be ongoing from now till whenever? >> So the the club I'm pretty sure she's going to run a fall and spring session of it. uh if you move to the future on that side of it, ideally we're looking at a a female sport to offset our numbers that we are looking at um as far as title n what we're looking into, but we also have a lot of male participants as well. But that is an offseason. So um it's a female sport or girls sport in the fall and
015in the spring volleyball um would take place for um for males, but for the club we're just going across the board and just kind of getting that going. >> So that's on that. Any other questions about the clubs? Okay. Um, we purchased some muchneeded equipment for all of our teams. If you've looked around, we have new soccer goals this year. Last year, we brought field hockey goals. Um, we have new equipment for the football practice fields. We have cages um that will house our equipment and uniforms. And if you were here earlier, um Kevin Green was out there washing the floors and getting everything ready. I think it's the first time we've moved everything out of that cage area in a long time. I was here Saturday morning for a few hours going through everything
016and really organizing and and looking at that and what what does that space look like and how can we be more efficient and also make sure that's enough area for PE. Right now we are all just kind of trying to jam stuff into there. But we're making it work. It's been great. We have an AED outdoor box. I think that's a huge um asset to not only the athletic department but to the community. So, over at the concession stand, um the concession stand entrance near the uh boys bathroom, there is an outdoor AED box that is able to be there in all seasons. It has a heater in it, also a fan for cooling, so that'll maintain the temperature that you need for an AED because it does have to be a certain temperature, otherwise
017it blows the batteries and doesn't work. Um, so that is out there for everyone to use. Great for anyone that's on the track at any single time. our south meadow fields that are used by other youth groups. I let Chris Backham know and Alison Bamfort that's out there when it comes springtime and even in the fall. Our baseball and softball youth programs aside from our high school also use those areas and right now they do not have that. In addition to that, I've also put emergency action plans on all the facilities which we avoid in the past. Um, so I've made sure that those are updated so that you can literally pull it off of wherever, go to that, you'll see the emergency action plan for each facility and you can get EMS there as
018quickly as possible with correct addresses and how to get to each point. So again, that's kind of been our looking at that. Um, so again, huge up uh huge asset for our community on the whole. We also purchased Clinton Glale's tent for the cross country teams to use at their finish line as well. We we'll use that for some of our groups. It's huge. It's a 10 by 20. It's beautiful. They had it out for the first cross country meet and it was just a great place for the kids to be out of the sun when they're done and cheering everybody on waiting for everyone. So good some great team pride. Uh we had an all year coaches meeting. I don't know if you remember last year I had three seasons and then realized as
019I've gotten into this a lot of our coaches which is wonderful coach multiple seasons. So then they're coming back for a similar message. So we did an all coaches meeting this year. We did in August. I'll probably have it in June next year to kick us off into that area because we still a couple people. We had about 90% of our coaches there. Um, but I would like to get everybody there. And it was a great meeting. We had a lot of collaboration. It was in here kind of in a big square with some outsiders and just talked about, you know, what's working, what's not working, what they're looking for, what their needs are. Um, and then talking about all the rules and regulations that we need to cover for ourselves besides the MIA, NFHS,
020and our own district. This year the coaches also received binders. Um these binders because they hadn't used in the past contain all their sport specific information and my handbook paperwork, emergency information, protocols, all the things that I think make it so that they can literally pick up a binder. They have all the information that they need to move on, including that with our final forms that we opened up um last year. We continue to use that. This year it was a seamless process and our students and our our parents are able to get on that and register between those two things. I think that we've got our student athletes in a great place as far as safety measures for to cover them and our coaches have what they need to be able to coach um
021at that level. Um other things are here. Um arbiter pay was added this year. So when you speak about um kind of HR and kind of streamlining some things. Arbiter pay I no longer need to send my coaches out with W9s that need to be filled out by officials on the side of a field as well as signatures that need to happen so that they can get paid. Now that all happens through Arbiter Pay. I click, I pay it. I don't have to turn those forms into Amanda who then needs to turn to town offices who then need to pay out and put all these people in as vendors. That no longer needs to happen. Arbiter pay takes care of them as a vendor. If there's any issues, it goes through Arbiter Pay. I'm not
022hunting down W9s or when sometimes they're like, "We didn't get our pays." That is no longer how it is. We'll chase it. They actually find, "Oh my gosh, we found the check. We have the pay." I'm like, "Okay." So, it just a lot of time off of I think what is the school department, the town offices, they were all for it and a lot of our districts uh use that and now some of the other districts are a little jealous that they want to use it including new show. So, again, that's been a great asset for us. I think it was four over 400 pay requests last year went out. >> Yeah. And it basically just syncs up when they have an assignment to what they get paid for that assignment. Right. So, if I
023get assigned for a football game and it's on Friday, I can get paid through the same system I get assigned through. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Then the the officials love it because it's just like a click and they're not getting a W9 with their information on the side of a field >> from the town instead of us cutting Oh yeah. >> individual checks for we're paying right to the >> That's great. Arbiter pay and they >> I'm sure on their end instead of them getting a bunch of random checks from other districts, they're getting one check. >> That's awesome. >> And they can track it on their end instead of being like, "Oh, wait. I think I didn't get this check." Because again, half the time it's them, you know. Anyway, so long story short,
024it's a win-win, I think, across the board for everybody. Um, again, we talked about game one a little bit earlier. We signed a contract with a vendor to do all of our athletic equipment and our uniforms. That is specific to the athletic department. That is not the booster club. That is not other clubs at the schools. Um, that is just the athletic department uses that. Anybody else can if they would like to, that's no issue. Um, but just to clarify that, um, it just again helps us to be sustainable. Um, within that we will have an online ticketing option. That is an option. We often have people come to our site that only get have online at their school and they come in with a credit card and we're like you can't use a credit
025card. That is now not now they can turn on they can charge right on the field. I have credit card readers. Those were all free with free iPads that came from this kind of being part of all of that and the play on stuff. So which also goes to our new cameras that are going to go up. Sorry, there's a lot of new stuff this year. Um, we're using NFHS's Nate network, which um, we'll have new cameras for us, updated cameras that we can live stream through for all of our games. So, again, just makes it a little bit more efficient for us this year, but it does not interrupt green light and does not take anything away from them at all. This is no commentary. It's just live stream. If people want to watch
026the 3:30 games now, that is going to be an option for them. >> Jen, when did those cameras go up? So, the walkth through I had on Thursday and they just requested a date um for the 23rd and the 30th for Chris and I because it be good to have Chris on site when we do it though they don't think there's going to be an issue. I walked them through everything. Um but hopefully those days one of the at least the outdoor one will get done. It might take two days and then they'll do the indoor one next but again we have a little time for the indoor one. Cool. Great. >> So, but it's nice they are updated. They are updated cameras so it'll be good. We started a leadership course on Tuesday mornings.
027I think this is my most exciting thing that's going on this year for me. Yes, it's 6:45 in the morning. Uh 30 students showed up last week. Angela Kaiser is also doing with me. Uh which is great. We not only are doing an eight-week course that has a curriculum around it. Um we're also reading The Twin Thieves, which is an excellent book. I've had great feedback from all of my coaches. The kids that are reading it have stopped in my room. I asked them to only read chapter six. they're going on. I'm like, "Please, no, no, no." Because we have focused um work around that that we'll do tomorrow morning. I do incentivize them with maybe a little bit of food in the morning to make sure that they're there and lively. Um but again,
028it was a it was a good experience. I think it'll be a great time for all of us and my opportunities, selfishly enough, to get feedback from the student athletes. So, um so it'll be a good experience. So, with all of that, um we are strong. The community support is awesome. A quick shout out um to the facilities crew that have put together nets, change fields, additional lines, dropping and looking at a baseball field across the street. Again, the facility custodians that are working on all the project that projects that we're trying to do in here, including that cage. It is a big undertaking. Um a shout out to them for all of their help um this year. That has been awesome. So, I appreciate everybody. Any questions for me? >> Thanks, John. >> Thank
029you. Thank you, >> Breny. I also bet a throwback pitcher. Made me think about the the football game. And I talked about it. >> So So you had to say something nice at the end to keep me interested. >> You knew you were going on a little bit long and I had that look in my eyes like I'm You've lost me. Yeah. Thanks for >> I saw that. >> Yeah, they were glazing over. Yeah. Appreciate it, though. Yeah. At least you're honest with me. >> No, seriously. My office. >> I'll get with you. Thank you. >> Um All right. All right. So then we have two uh funding and finance things from Annette. Uh the first one is actually for the athletic department. It's a petty cash payment voucher. This is a standard transaction. It
030just allows us to put uh $600 as uh seed money for the uh athletics to use and then that money gets replaced at the end of the year. But it's just for like making change or doing little things that might come. >> I'll make that motion. Do we need a motion for that? I'll make that motion. >> Second. Any discussion? Great. All in favor? >> I >> perfect. Thank you. >> And the next one, uh, student activities. So, we have to, uh, vote to establish, maintain, and modify the student activity accounts. These are the current student activity accounts that we are requesting for approval. This is the same thing. These aren't really I don't think there's any real changes this year. It's just u every year for auditing purposes, it has to be. >> So,
031move, Mr. I'll second. >> Thank you. And thank you. Any discussion? >> All in favor? >> I thank you. >> Uh from the building project, uh oh, obviously we have the uh the groundbreaking last week. Um I thought that was a turned out to be a perfect weather for it. Uh snuck that in there. I thought it was a nice day, nice, uh celebration. Um so that was that was nice. Uh, I felt relieved once it was over. Let's >> It was very nice. >> Very nice. >> Um, and the uh in the packet here I have I just put in one of the pages for you. This one I think was from Thursday. Um, but you can see some of the pictures in here, the progress. You can actually see some of the the
032base of the walls that are going in and everything now in what is called the C building which will end up being the seventh and eighth grade side there. So they're starting there and they kind of chase their way around so that kind of once the as there as you know one trade's moving through the next trade can just start coming right behind them. So um I'm amazed I think for the first couple weeks the first month or so like it seemed like all they were doing was pushing pushing dirt back and forth. >> Now it's like now it seems like it's real construction stuff happening all the time. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Uh I had a chance last Tuesday to walk it with the uh architects and uh it was uh it's it's impressive
033everything going on. So and then the next meeting is on Wednesday uh to get moved because there's a building permanent voting committee tomorrow regarding the library. So we can push this voting meeting off till Wednesday. Um, and then the last one was just a reminder, last thing I have is just a reminder about the MASCMS's joint conference. It's November 12th and 14th. I think everyone who's going is reached out to Kelly and is registered. Um, and at some point, you know, I think what we've been doing recently is just sort of making our own um like hotel reservations at some point if you need any uh assistance on finding something like that. All right. And I think that's all I have. >> Okay. As far as the subcommittees, um I know only because I'm on
034safety and I saw Brendon at safety. So I know we had a safety committee meeting. >> Yeah. >> We had our marketing committee meeting. >> Yeah. >> Tonight, >> uh curriculum and instruction and policies are scheduled for the first >> October 1st. >> Awesome. and wellness I think is tenatively scheduled for the 15th >> of October. >> So underway and >> negotiations we should be all set on >> say negotiations probably doesn't need to be >> for a little while. Um anything under old business? >> I I just forgive me but I just I want to ask for some clarity in the um on the motion to approve the bills where we did we make a change for where our where our um team our golf team plays. Is that what >> Yeah. So we
035had uh I think working there's a new superintendent I think of the Clinton of the Sterling Country Club and I think there was an opportunity to uh get some access for our golf team. Part of things one of the things that they were trying to do was get some outreach. Um so we wanted to explore that. Um and part of that was there's different things. It's a different It's kind of a different setup of a golf course than Berlin is. It also has a practice facility right there. Um, so we also do appreciate what what Berlin has offered us and so we want to maintain that partnership as well. So this year we kind of have both courses going and with our numbers up we actually have basically varsity and JV. So we're able to
036like if it's a match our our other uh students who aren't competing in the match can still go far. So, um, so we're working on that and I think we'll just kind of we'll see how it goes. I think we'll probably just assess at the end of the year on on on what works and what doesn't. I think, um, I do think there were a couple little rolling pains when it first started in terms of some of the tea times getting blocked off in regards to members and trying to make sure things, but I think I think they're working through that, but we'll we'll just see how it goes and we'll see what the uh we'll just have to assess at the end of the year and see see what works. >> Okay. Thank you.
037>> Anything under new business? >> I will entertain a motion for adjournment. So move. >> Thank you very much.