001vlog if you would and are able please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for please be seated this is the monday march 7th meeting of the clinton school committee under chapter 38 section 21 of massachusetts general law the open meeting law the committee will enter into executive session to discuss strategy with respect to non-union personnel the committee will reconvene we expect to reconvene relatively shortly this requires a roll call vote deborah good to lie tina's a panther side matt varagasai brendan bailey joel bateside back shortly folks uh session um uh thank you can we have a motion to approve the bills so moved for a second
002thank you motion hadn't been made in second had any discussion on the bills being none all those in favor thank you can we have a motion to approve the minutes from the meeting february 14th second ocean made and seconded thank you any discussion on the minutes from february 14th you're being done all those in favor thank you unanimous um we are going to go into our public comment phase of the meeting i assume that there's at least one thing in particular people want to comment on so we're happy to entertain the comments that you have we're going to start with our student representative first i would ask that if you are intending to make a comment that you come up to the microphone sit down identify yourself and we'll go over some ground rules as
003we move forward so can i just uh can i remind people one other thing just a reminder that the um the microphones are only for the tv so if you want people to hear you in the room you need to kind of speak a little louder okay well i'm alex luca i'm the um at large for clinton high school and i just have a summary of how school has been going for our students and so that basketball season just ended and uh the other day with the help of boosters students took a spirit bus an hour away to go to their last game and fan section was actually good it was surprising that people would want to drive all that way it made me feel good the whole season went great we had student council
004forming themes for the game well attended and uh the snack stand went great so also the hockey team though it's not a clinton sport mainly uh students have been intending to cheer on the two kids we have on that team billy johns and captain yep yeah he's doing great um so there's a beginning tomorrow and that's people looking forward to that one negative is senioritis seems to be setting in with some of the students but um we have a lot of positives like the masks mandate dropping which seems to lift its students spirits a ton teachers are much easier to understand now and kids just seem a lot more awake and happy with you know being able to breathe and all that we also had a new teacher that joined our school and students are
005loving her so far she's my english teacher and she's great like really made me interested in learning which is it's good to see fantastic um what is her name mrs lewis or miss lips uh we also have march madness our volleyball tournament announced just today and uh students are very excited to play including myself it's going to be a great event to help people get through this tough month of march student council with the junior and senior class been prepping for prom and it looks like it's going to be a good event we have had trouble collecting dues from students but we're working on uh deadlines and stuff to try to push that that is all i have any questions for alex thank you so much uh so the the basketball seasons are yeah cheer
006just won the championship yeah and hockey plays tomorrow night yeah tomorrow night okay come on up all right great um cheer one regionals so they'll be participating in the states at uh worcester state i think it's on sunday okay go cheer um we i don't believe we have our pta representative here tonight but i do want to point out that april 3rd is the pta chicken shoot it's from one to three and i think you can find information both on the pta site and online various social media applications ces chat group can i make a comment oh please come on up i apologize i didn't know you were representing pta tonight we didn't think we had them here a um pta event at the simple man in clinton um from 12 to eight a percentage
007will go to the school pta so if anyone wants a flyer i'll leave them up there please yeah thank you thank you do we have anything from cpac or elpac tonight all right before we get to our cta comments and um and public comments i uh i imagine uh they will have to do with the contract amendment that we're discussing so uh you can't hear me sorry yeah can you hear me now yeah okay i apologize um so i imagine that before cta speaks and we have public comments that the public comment if any would be relative to the agreement that we're going to disput discuss publicly and with that in mind i think it's prudent and without objection from the committee that i go through the elements of what we're looking at here okay
008so the clinton school committee has been working through a situation in which we are prepared to offer the superintendent a contract a temporary accommodation to the existing contract which would be in effect during the 2020 to 2023 school year the days with the super the superintendent under that agreement would be allowed to work remotely for up to a maximum of 60 of the 250 work days during that school year those days would be worked remotely at the superintendent's discretion with the understanding that the superintendent is expected to complete all of his professional responsibilities this accommodation is being made with the following conditions there would be a compensation adjustment for it any day that the superintendent works remotely at uh three-fourths of his daily rate his salary for the 2023-20 22-23 school year would be adjusted
009to reflect the lowest possible amount assuming the use of all 60 days and any readjust any adjustment for days not worked remotely would be paid the last pay of the fiscal year under conditions the superintendent would be required to secure an office not in his residence in which he would perform remote work this office would be shall be equipped with all necessary equipment and the internet printer scanner copier etc at the superintendent's expense the superintendent must have a secure computer network for both emails and video meetings any day in which the superintendent is working remotely he shall report to his office to this office for his normal working hours the superintendent shall provide the school committee with the address for this office the superintendent will notify the school committee chair when he intends to work
010remotely the school committee chair will immediately notify the board the superintendent is expected to only use remote working days in a manner that does not interfere with fulfilling his professional duties in the school district these professional duties include attending in-person events such as school committee meetings selectmen meetings town meetings graduations and any other such events that require the superintendent's physical presence the superintendent would be responsible for all costs associated with travel and any other expenses associated with working remotely this accommodation shall exist for the 2022-23 school year only the superintendent will notify the school committee no later than december 1st if he intends to resign at the conclusion of the 2022-2000 school year this provision supersedes par 17b the termination of agreement determination of contract in the event the school committee elects to do so
011they may terminate without cause or hearing the contract of the superintendent effective june 30th 2023 by notifying him in writing of their intent to do so by january 15 2023 this notice shall absolve the clinton public schools of any further compensation or obligation to the superintendent after june 30 2023 this provision supersedes par 17 under termination thank you for indulging us in explaining the particulars of uh this amendment there has been um a lot of speculation and misinformation and and in some cases accurate information um making its way through um you know various various options um we have received several letters uh well we'll receive we've received several letters relative to this and rest assured that any time one of us gets a letter we forward it to the other members of the committee and
012we've done so in this case as well so i want to make sure that we're clear on what it is that we're actually talking about when you're uh commenting um [Music] does anyone have public comment relative to anything other than what i've just described okay at this time i'm happy to welcome the cta i am here tonight representing the staff so not only the teachers but namely the instructional assistants as well thank you to voice our concerns as stakeholders in clinton public schools we realize that the school committee has the sole authority to negotiate contracts our comments tonight reflect the position not the person after receiving over 100 responses from a survey completed by members of both unions we would like to summarize their feedback over 70 percent of the respondents had a negative view
013of the contract amendment the two most commonly cited concerns are that the superintendent needs to be physically present and available which would not happen if this amendment were to pass and that this is a privilege that is unfairly being given to one individual that was and is not afforded to any other members of the clinton public school system over the past two years we have had many staff who have had family related issues and were told that they could take a leave of absence but could not work remotely clinton deserves a superintendent that is fully committed therefore members feel that passing this amendment would set a dangerous precedent for the district and the town thank you thank you robin how many responses did you get back over 100 100 out of how many teachers and
014ias we had 83 responses from teachers out of 170 and we had 24 responses from the ias i don't know how many there are in there thank you you're welcome thanks very much all right uh the open public comment at this time i would ask several things that uh any comment statements that you make be relative to topics on the agenda uh i don't think that will be a problem please keep the comments to two to three minutes if um you are reiterating something that someone else has said just please just say that you agree with the previous comment and and um you know be respectful of your time and that and understand that these are comments or statements and not a dialogue with the committee so with that said uh is there anyone who
015would like to make a public comment oh yeah go ahead one two and three and again because um for for people viewing at home please uh speak into the microphone i don't think that's a problem my voice carries pretty well so thank you uh my name is samantha gamache and i have lived in clinton my whole life i have two children in the school system right now my daughter's in fourth grade my son is in seventh grade now quite a few years ago we had some issues in the school system where i was feeling like they were kind of failing my son and things were getting swept under the rug the reason why i am against the remote work is because at the time when i needed help and i was at my wit's end
016had i not been able to go to see dr meyer in person that day like i just had nothing else i could do he was that last straw to be able to please help but if he had not been there if he had not been in person i don't know that i would have been able to get that help that i needed that's not really something i could have done over the phone i was upset i was going around to all the places i needed to be and that was the last straw i walked right into the office was like i have got to see dr meyer i don't know what else to do i was in tears and had he not been here in person to be able to help me advocate in person
017i just don't think that i would have gotten the help for my son that we did it just would have gotten worse and worse so i just that's one of the main reasons i think that it just can't be on board with the remote it has nothing to do personally it's no personal opinions at all because we all have our issues that we have to deal with but i just think that it's something where the superintendent needs to be available in person as needed you know whenever needed you never know when a parent is going to have a problem and they need to see you in person those are things that just can't be done it's so impersonal over the phone or through a zoom meeting and i know that there are a lot of
018other parents that feel that way i know they're not here unfortunately but a lot of other parents feel that that those things and being the advocate for our children when we need extra help just cannot be done if you're not in the office available when needed you know we can't always wait for them to get into the office to be in person all right thank you mrs thank you i think [Music] hello hi hi my name is caitlin mahan i am a resident of clinton i have a child in clinton schools and one on the way we need a superintendent attendant that is present and invested in our town and when i think of the kind of superintendent that i would want to see in clinton that person values the history and sees the potential
019that person is invested physically emotionally and financially just as the parents students and staff and border when the superintendent makes decisions that affect our staff our children and our tax dollars they should have to look us in the eye in the same personal accountability as our elected school board when i think of the taxpayer salary that we pay the superintendent i envision that money getting invested back into our community not in florida maybe a morning jolt from coffee lands before work or a gallon of milk from bert hill market on their way home i envision that when they buy cookies that it comes from a local girl scout troop or that when they feel like taking a gamble it's on a clinton little league calendar raffle outsold outside of clinton savings bank and when a
020taxpayer salaried person leaves the area so does our tax dollars i've spent the last two years working remote so i know it can be done and it can be done well for me the decision mostly comes down to timing and not whether the job could be done from thirteen hundred miles away today the students and staff of cps face issues that we can barely wrap our heads around we are still in a pandemic whether we believe that is that it's dangerous or not currently we have no guarantees the stress and anxiety from the pandemic does not go away for our kids and our teachers when we threw the masks away and for some it got worse teachers across our country are leaving their jobs in droves due to the crushing responsibility of the profession and
021if social media can be believed teachers in this very district are feeling the pressure and have posted so on their own pages according to the bureau of labor statistics 567 000 teachers have left their jobs in the last year in half sorry past year and a half and when polled over half of teachers say they often think of quitting there's some evidence that suggests that teachers may stay in their profession if the leadership is supporting them through this difficult time leaders should be present kids and staff watch school students on the news and then wake up brush their teeth and get to class kids are coming to school amid the destruction and aftermath of addiction we have some tweens and teens who believe that they will die from the effects of global warming our students
022of color are watching the rise of white nationalism our lgbtq plus students are hearing don't say gay bills the burdens that people are carrying right now are immense according to jama pediatrics which is published by the american medical association studies show that depression and anxiety levels have more than doubled in kids in the last two years and percentages are even higher when you single out teens or girls these are truly unprecedented times and that is a word that has been said far too much lately and maybe not enough for us to really absorb where we are right now and if this was all not enough for you to go down the street to the crystal and ask for the biggest hardest bottle our children and our teachers are hearing pundits and politicians debate if america
023will be pulled into a third world war and with with a nuclear power some of which have family and friends who are in the military kids in our high school along with teachers know schoolmates who have graduated and recently joined the military or may be planning to do so themselves and whether we get dragged into what happens overseas or not our kids and our teachers are starting to see the images of the same children the same age as in our three schools being separated from their parents or with war wounds or body bags on tv with all of this combined our teacher our children our teachers are administrators and parents are feeling stress that is crippling and they are grappling with getting out of bed in the morning and being here present and still invested
024but they're doing it it's all about leadership yes people can work from home but people that lead at the top of an organization have to be accessible it is i'm sorry is this really the time for an experiment on whether our superintendent can work and lead this school system from another state in this insecure and uncertain time with so many stressors around us our town deserves a leader who is present and fully invested in this community and not with one foot out the door thank you miss man mr assassin brenda desessa five clamshell road i'm vice president of the clinton teachers association but my statement tonight is not reflective of the union but i'm speaking as a concerned citizen of clinton i respect dr meyer and understand the need to balance professional and personal life
025family comes first and i wish dr meyer and his family all the best however the hard-working citizens of clinton deserve a superintendent who's in the community as this is a community position the superintendent needs to be available in his or her office for issues that may arise with parents students and teachers the community needs its leader the superintendent needs to be walking around our school buildings with his or her eyes and ears to the ground so to speak while visiting schools lots of organic conversations and interactions happen that can't be replicated from a zoom call i ponder would an nfl owner such as robert kraft allow his coach to work remotely while his players are on the field i say doubtful the community needs a leader that is present in the moment not just available
026by phone i do recall one of dr meyer's interviews and hearing a selling point that he was local and was only five to ten minute drive away wasn't it on his first day on the job that the elementary school playground caught on fire we need a boots on the ground person day in and day out i respectfully ask you to reconsider remote work for our superintendent at this time thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight thank you mister did you want to speak justin okay my name is justin murray and i am the 8th grade social studies teacher at clinton middle school i've been working here since 2014 and i'm speaking to you not on behalf of the cta but just as a concerned employee dr meyer has helped make great strides in this
027district and i have seen many improvements during his tenure i also sympathize with him wanting to spend more time with his family especially when they are residing in another state my job at cms is to educate the children of clinton on the workings of our government at the federal state and local level and i teach them that democracy is sacred and that our elected officials work hard to do what is best for the people that elect them to serve in fact i have a lesson where i teach and discuss the different local departments in clinton including the school committee itself and how you work to make clinton a better place we hold our leaders to higher standards than we hold ourselves to we would expect that our superintendent will be even more present and involved
028in the community than a classroom teacher during dr meyer's tenure he has had to grapple with many difficult situations from covid to bomb threats and i personally think that he has handled many of these challenges with grace however if and when these challenges do occur next year he may not be able to do all of this remotely some of it but it will not be as effective as if he was present in the town the clinton elementary school is under the gaze of the state and a feasibility study is just beginning on the middle school this is not a time for our superintendent to become more distant when i started working here i heard unfortunate rumors that clinton was just another town managed by a good old boys club and i never believed it until
029tonight members of the school committee i urge you to carefully consider your vote tonight and weigh whether or not this amendment is truly in the best interest of the parents and children of clinton if you have a shred of doubt about whether or not this arrangement is the best that you can do for the people of clinton then i encourage you to table this vote awaiting further review thank you for the opportunity to speak thank you mr murray anyone else sir tom gabriel five clamshell road concerned citizen so enlisted to everybody speak i've heard a whole bunch of themes leadership one versus all a precedent customer service present and accounted for timing and elected leaders let's take some of those themes timing the pandemic is ending it was cited in the article in the telegram
030gazette and the item that covet is the reason why dr meyer wants to go work in florida timing we're going back to the office we're not going away from it at this time the mass mandates are ending if people are going back into the office i'm a person who actually worked out of my home for four years straight and did not go in the office for four years i was currently offered the position in my current job to also work remote and it was an unmitigated disaster in my current job as a leader of direct reports you couldn't do the job from home you could not do a remote i worked for a very large company 120 000 employees and at the beginning of the pandemic they spent a year's time to try to try
031to redefine the office of the future and they came up with three things one full office and that was for your leadership positions with direct reports within a 50-mile radius of where you are okay so your direct leaders with direct reports came in the office every day two full remote people like accountants purchasers human resource engineers technical people they could go full remote and then of course the middle ground and hybrid model where um 11 of the time you had to come in the office but otherwise you're remote well since this thing started we have scrapped gotten rid of the full remote no longer occurring no one could be full remote now i understand dr meyer doesn't want full remote he wants a hybrid well our hybrid model has gone from 11 in the office
032now to 55 and those aren't direct leaders who have to make decisions they're they're com we're training back to the office we're not going away from it so if coronavirus really is the reason this is the wrong time we're coming back to the office you know before i came i quickly looked up some statistics of school rankings and i understand his children are in school in florida well world population review for 2020 has massachusetts schools ranked first florida schools rate 22nd wallet hub massachusetts 1st florida 18. usa did a usa today massachusetts first floor to 29. we have a leader who has his kids in school in florida gabriel i'm going to stop you right there let's let's okay we're not going to bring family into this we can discuss it but family was the
033reason you he gave in the article that's a public rail that's a public record do you have anything further mr gabriel i'll leave you with this it's january 2023 we're coming off a martin luther day long weekend a prime weekend for him to be working remote there's a little sleet out there and you can call the public works you could you know dial up harvey leonard you can do all those things how i make my decision whether i'm going to go in the office that day is i look out my window and i see how dangerous it is you can't do that from florida if i still think it's okay i go out there and touch my driveway you can't do that from florida so we're going to get a cut rate person that the
034taxpayers are paying for at 75 reduction or whatever else who's going to make that decision to put school buses on the road that is certainly not the best interest of clinton or the school system thank you mr gabriel anyone else patrick mcintyre 32 mountain view drive was the department of education and secondary element uh were they involved so this is uh an opportunity for you to make a comment or a statement we're not having a conversation right now so you won't say whether or not the state do you have a statement to make mr mcintyre yeah i'm asking did you ask yourself a question do you have a statement to make yes i think the public should be aware that the department of education was consulted on this and was if there was an opinion
035i think that should be released i'll speak to uh that when we get into the deliberation once the motion's on the table and this is probably another question that you'll shoot down but typically during all the negotiations with superintendents the board of selectmen is involved was there any involvement with the town no they're not so you're going to set a precedent this town wide without the town's involvement that's okay so we're not having a conversation except we're having a conversation so for the clarity of everyone listening school committee is empowered with three things the hiring and firing and the evaluation of the superintendent budget as you're well aware and policy the select board does not is not involved with the hiring of a superintendent or the evaluation of the superintendent or in the contract negotiations
036of the superintendent but they have been involved in the past with with teacher negotiations they canceled the superintendent i don't believe that's the case i made i may be incorrect it just seemed in my tenure it just seems odd that they weren't consulted because you're setting a precedent that the select board was invited to be here okay that's my comment okay thank you thank you mr mcintyre appreciate it anything else okay we will at this point uh close public comment uh i will entertain a motion to um discuss the contract amendment i will i will entertain a motion to approve the contract amendment i will seek a second and then we'll have deliberation and discussion joel i like to make a call can we can we have the motion yeah that's right they can make
037a motion that we table this and at least based off of the comment the comments here especially from the from the staff that we table this and look at it again is there a second to the motion to table the um to table the approval of the superintendent contract amendment no second okay would someone like to make a motion to approve the superintendent's contract amendment i make a motion we approve the superintendent's contract second okay motion having been made and seconded let's discuss so to mr mcintyre's comment i will say that the select board let me back up and say all of this is meant to be done by law in executive session until it's deliberated and discussed in public before a vote in public which we're doing tonight it's unfortunate that um but not
038surprising i mean it is a small town and it's obviously an issue where there's a lot of uh heightened emotion around it it's it's not surprising that there was a lot of misunderstanding that was out there a lot of understanding that was out there that that it was out there to begin with that doesn't change the fact that we have an obligation legally to um proceed through this process uh in an executive session so uh you know several um several of the letters spoke to the concern that the school committee is hiding this from the town uh we're not we made this public on friday we uh we have to discuss these negotiations privately that's how that works but we have this opportunity here tonight nothing is being done without the public being aware of
039it it's in the agenda and we spoke to the item about questions that they had and we've had public comment tonight um with regard to the the amendment this has been reviewed through council and uh the school committee council and is um and has been approved by legal counsel as well so that said um thoughts from the committee i'll start please um one of the things that i've heard over and over is about working remotely this amendment basically let me let me backtrack as well the superintendent offered us his resignation he said i can give you my 90 days if that is what the board would like because of situations that are going ongoing now the board sat here and said we've got a great superintendent who's done great working with getting the middle school
040project going that has done great through covid that has worked really hard for this town and this town seems to have turned on him right off the bat and i don't want to get into personal with that the amendment is up to a maximum of 60 days so you're talking about the superintendent he won't be here he'll be working remotely no most of the time he will be here and when he is not here he'll be in an office addressing the needs of our town also one of the things that wasn't discussed is that this is temporary this is a temporary fix now if we have to look for a superintendent right now so is why choose it so is nashoba so is worcester there's a lot of towns that are looking for superintendents and
041we'd be at the bottom of that list right now because we're just starting a search now we'd have to hire an interim in the meantime we don't know who that would be or when they would come in this is the best case scenario for our town by december 1st he has to let us know are you staying or are you leaving if he tells us on december 1st he's staying then we're grateful we're thankful we got through this little time and we continue on if he decides on december 1st that he's not going to be here we now set ourselves up to have a good six months to do a search to go through the whole process to get a new superintendent and have some onboarding time i think this is a common sense for
042the town of clinton this is not something i'm doing for dr meyer this is something i'm doing that is the best that i feel for the children of clinton for the town of clinton to put us in the best possible situation we can be in and that's what i have to say thank you other thoughts yeah i would i would just echo that feeling deb thanks for sharing i think it's really important to know that we have to have someone in the seat doing the job regardless of the outcome of this temporary adjustment right so we got a lot in flight it's a lot of work that's been done there's a lot of work to continue to do so it's prudent for us to have the gentleman that we chose to be our superintendent under
043contract to look at this adjustment and i would hope that any of you that you know have or employees if this ever happened for you you would want folks that you report to or and or have concerns consider what you might need for an adjustment those are going to be different for everybody but dr meyers earned the right in my opinion for us to at least consider this one because the end goal would be that he stays that's what we all want that's the end goal but two in the meantime if he doesn't it's got to be a thoughtful process about who the successor ends up being when that's told to us and i think deb's right around timing around we've done a lot of good work in clinton right there's a lot of great
044things going on and that's that staff that's executives that's that's everybody involved but we need to keep that train rolling we can't have absentee nobody in the seat don't keep working on things that we're working on that job has to happen the work has to be done and when we get the notice we'll move and we'll pivot the way we need to or we won't you know but it's really important we continue to do the work just another comment hold on thank you does anyone else want to weigh in first yeah i do please well clearly if anyone's watching you you know i'm in the minority here all right so um but i want to make it clear i'm not sitting here and i've talked to the members of an executive session i've talked to
045steve on the side you know i'm not wholehearted about this i understand wanting to be with your family all right for a lot of you in the room here know me but for those that don't i retired eight years ago from the marine corps for 30 years so i spent a lot of time away from my family so i'm not making this uh you know what too bad tough enough that that's not my answer but on the flip side that i i forget who spoke about precedent i work for the town now and i do believe that you're gonna this is gonna set a president you're gonna have people asking the same thing and i know everybody i don't care if you're a parent or or an employee everybody has to juggle their their work
046life and their and their family life i mean there's all kinds of jobs where people miss out on weekends of of you know watching ball games or you're stuck at work and you miss your kids you know drama events or whatever i understand that but on in this and i know mr mcintyre asked i contacted the massachusetts association of school committees which were a member and i asked them three members i talked to three people there and i just asked them for some guidance i also asked them it was legal i had no idea where we were going with this and all three of them told me yes it is legal but they all said not one single district or school in massachusetts has even entertained this much less said yes and they got and
047they advised not to do it for most of the reasons that people spoke and i'm not going to go on and on and on but i don't i don't want i don't want to lose steve but i do believe you have to be here and that's why i'm i'm against it but i am the minority obviously but thank you thank you so i guess mr murray thank you for your comments on democracy i i thought that was great and i'm glad our kids are learning from a great teacher like you me too but you made the comment about that as a democracy you elect public officials and it's my job to make a judgment of what i feel is best for the people of this community and the students of this district i want to
048be one there was a lot of negative tonight i know everybody started saying you know it's not a personal i want to be one to sing dr meyer's praises because i think he deserves it i've seen him shown up i've seen him be here in this community cleanup clinton days the halloween runs he's there with his kids the spaghetti bridge building nights he's there he's been there and he's proven his leadership to me and as an elected official i the decision that i'm making tonight has to be based on what i feel is best for our school district and if i allow opinions to cloud my judgment of what i feel is best then i would be doing all the taxpayers of the service thank you mrs we're generally served well when tina gets the
049last word so thank you tina um any any other comments no okay please mr gabriel when you're saying about um the roads you know i don't i'm i'm the senior center director as most of you know and i run vans and i call the police station and say hey guys how's the how the roads because my road can be bad when everybody else's road is great um so like i said there are you know the dbw i call the dpw i call the fire department police department we all work together um and like i said the mother who came in with her child he's going to be here majority of the time he'll be accessible the rest of the time but you were glad he was here that time and he will be here at
050that time for some other mothers and some other parents so um i just wanted to to let you know he he will be here for our children for our families um and like i said it's um i'm glad he was here for your child no public comments closed thank you though anything further no okay uh on the motion to accept the superintendent's contract amendment uh all those in favor opposed four to one thank you we have uh next our student opportunity act and there is we have a provision for public comment on that as well dr meyer we take like a five minute process before we go yeah so can we have a motion to take a five minute reset i'll make that more second i'm was gonna ask all those in favor we convene
051at this point um thank you everyone for hanging in there with us this is uh unusual for us okay um next up we have on our agenda the student opportunity act um dr meyer if you want to walk us through that yeah so one of the things the student opportunity act is uh we have to file an amendment this year and so we have to do a bunch of stuff in that amendment and not all of it's included here a lot of it is some of the financial updating that we have to pull the numbers so we can show how we spent the money on these acts that we've received so far and the one of the other things you're supposed to do with the student opportunity act is to give an opportunity to get
052stakeholder feedback so um you know they did say that they understand a lot of people they said it could go either way right you might not have a lot to amend because with kovid you might not have really been able to address a lot or they said some some districts they realize might have to amend almost all their plan because they're in such a different spot now because of covid um so i think we're kind of uh in the in the point where i think we managed to make progress through covid on these areas um and using something even when they didn't fund student opportunity act the first year we were able to use esser funds to try to still move uh move things forward so really what we're trying to do is sort of
053say we want to stay the course um you know i think that we're we've started going down these roads and we don't need to uh i think we need to see them to fruition here not not start adding brand new initiatives um so i did try to this is our original submission and then there's some fy 22 updates if you look at it uh one of the things i thought was funny was i almost sort of skipped through the um like the demographic section and when i thought ah you know i better double check and let's see how our demographics changed uh in two years um so our our white student population has dropped from 67 percent to uh 60 percent then our hispanic latino population has increased from 27 to 34 um part of
054that could reflect um you know the the patterns of students moving in and out another explanation for that though as well as we did change our registration forms because that was one of the things that we found is that the old registration forms we had been using weren't really allowing you to separate race and ethnicity when you registered and it actually was something that we notified noticed when we were going through the elementary school and looking at the white subgroup that had been identified that we had a large amount of our white subgroup that was actually english language learners because most of them were had come from brazil and identified as white so we had to sort of by clarifying that we were able to i think it's a more accurate reflection of our our
055student body um the other main thing was that um our economically disadvantaged population has increased from 38.5 to 54.2 so that is a that's a large jump in our economically disadvantaged population um this is all based on our october first sims report so a lot of that i would i would suspect that statewide you saw a huge jump because at that time with the pandemic and everything that a lot of people were um were facing um but nonetheless that is the reality of where we were you see those stats again yep so our economically disadvantaged population which previously would have been called like free or reduced lunch okay went from 38.5 to 54.2 yeah so it was a pretty big jump um and uh and then we have a high needs population which basically it
056encompasses you know if you're a special ed or if you were an english language learner if you're economically disadvantaged and that's gone from 55.8 to 64.6 so that's gone up as well so um i didn't do a whole lot with a data analysis comparing mcas i think when we went over the mcas from last year this year we realized that there was um it's tough to we didn't have the data from the one year and then the other year the data was sort of questionable with how it was given so i think that's another one we'd want to uh on hold keep on hold so our main things we were trying to do was uh increasing time on learning for for uh pre-k and k uh we are trying to improve our tier one instruction
057for all students looking at supports like co-teaching and interventions particularly for our economic disadvantage special education and latino populations and looking at trying to increase advanced coursework and and early college programs so all those are things that we've gotten started but i think we need to just continue them a main one the big one that we were able to move forward with during the pandemic which was kind of amazing was the implementation of the witten wisdom uh ela curriculum for grades like k-6 and some of the other things that we had to support that so we have implemented that we've been able to purchase all those we actually got a separate grant last year when they didn't fund the soa then they did have some grants that you could apply for that were specific soa
058grants we applied for that and we were able to purchase about 90 000 of materials um so but that's still in its you know it's still in its uh infancy i think we need to continue with professional development on that uh time on learning we do now have a five-day pre-k program for four-year-olds we previously didn't have that kindergarten is a uh now longer if you remember before this kindergarten was on that shortened day it's now the same length as the other grades one thing we'll talk about later is i think it's a time that we should explore looking at possibly making pre-k free i think right now is a time that we could probably flip that with the way the budget is given sort of how we're coming off of the year where we
059sort of didn't the pandemic year where we didn't really have pre-k i think we can might be able to address that um sporting educators implement high quality curriculum we've been working with coastal consulting i'm on universal design for learning trying to build our mtss or our tiered systems of support next year you know we when we first engaged with this work with them the idea was a three-year commitment to try to go through everything so next year would be year three and currently we have two subcommittees working on researching high quality curriculum for ela and math at the secondary level third thing was expanded capacity to address social emotional learning and mental health needs of students and families previously this was called increased personnel and services to support holistic student needs they just changed the
060language in the amendment form a big thing that we have done as part of that initiative is we've added the family outreach coordinator and we also have we also have a family outreach liaison and we had two additional counselor positions and we've got an additional bcba since the original plan was written we do have the bright program which we brought in uh it's still kind of been a challenge with the bright program i think we where there's a lot of good things that bright has but i think finding how which which parts to really kind of adapt for your for your school because it's definitely not um i think what they're finding is have expanded bright is that it wasn't as quicky cutter as you could make it so we needed to kind of continue
061to tweak on what are the parts that work for us yeah um and then early college uh we started an early college partnership with quinsigamond we're trying to move away from that one and go to the north central massachusetts early college academy that's sort of a consortium that was formed with some other schools part of it is that one really works more with mount wachusett it also works with fitchburg state so it gives you access to a four-year college as well um we have the pre-k program and an engineering program that are both perkins programs and we have brought project lead the way computer science classes into the high school so those are all those sort of vocational and advanced coursework type things so that's most of it there's some more update i mean that's
062kind of the summary those are the four areas um you know that i'm not going to read every other page at the very end i think you can see there's a chart that's got color codes on it so what i tried to look at is basically we did something similar to this with the and we did the budget presentation but the green things are things that pretty much feel like we have we've accomplished as far as those financial commitments to get those areas there the yellow was looking for english learner teachers we have not we only added i think we added one since this was done i think we have in the budget to add two more for next year you'll see that in version a and that would get us up to speed on
063that and then the director curriculum grants data and accountability kind of uh put that one on hold for right now but that was a that was a red so um so i guess that's pretty much you know our our intent there's a lot more work that needs to go into this final amendment that's due in april the intent would be to present the next round of this to the school committee at our meeting in two weeks but the purpose right now was to share this to see if there's any any input or any uh comments or things that people feel areas that you know you think maybe we should have addressed that don't seem to be addressed in there those types of things okay so we will open up public comments again relative to the
064specific to the student opportunity act there being none any questions or points of clarification from the board i just have one okay steve when we move away from the consignment relationship and potentially into this other um through mount watrus and fitchburg state is that something we we are going to be able to have in place for the fall or is that a longer process like what's that look like for us it should be for next year right right now for the fall in the spring two in the fall through the spring for two months and seniors and then um we're working on right now is our articulation agreement which will should i yes so so for those of you watching at home thanks there still are any of you mr cermak says that there are
065um agreements that we're working through and then just as a quick follow-up any courses that you might have a junior taking today that would be part of our current program i assume will that work be will transfer when the new program hits because don't we have some that are in those programs seems to program now now once they pass those classes they they have their transferable credits that they'll be able to keep okay even if they don't if it doesn't say a lot of the same program like english let's continue sure they can take other thank you yes please i was just gonna say i love the idea of the preschool you know having having that put into place especially with the economic numbers it would allow more you know parents to be able to
066work and have the child child safe um without cost which i think would be huge yeah i actually had a question about that so i'm still reeling over these numbers and i'm sorry if i missed it where where did those numbers come from which one 38 to 54 for the um that was from the d i got that from the desc website okay and that comes from our october 1st sims report so we have to upload all our student data every year uh we do it almost all the time now but they take snapshots of time so they they look at usually what they focus on is what they call them like your october one numbers so you can look right on the desc website you can go to profiles and you can see and
067it'll tell you our our there's no more free and reduced lunch applications because everybody gets right but a lot of it they do it through right now they do a lot of it through um even the free reducing patients had moved to it it had moved to um like they called it direct certification process so essentially there's like a central database of you know like if your family receives snap benefits we know that you're qualified for for free and reduced lunch those types of things so it's kind of making sure that there's one central sort of hub so i think what did happen is uh at one point we were doing the the the state was doing the um the p ebt cards the pandemic like uh benefits cards yes and we had to submit
068a whole lot of numbers from that so i think that that might have been something that encouraged people to share that information if they weren't already direct certified so that we could get the so that we could capture those so and i assume um so right now with our pre-k it it's it's a is is it a scale based on income still yeah okay so right now we have a lottery right so we will continue with that it's just yeah i think um did we get almost everybody in or do we have yeah i don't know not everyone's ever get their first choice but we're able to offer a slot to everyone so even though we do a lottery it just sort of determines sort of like the order you're gonna get offered but we
069can offer something to everybody right now so and i'll talk more about this in the next in the later agenda item but the the state calculates their foundation budget and their and your chapter 70 money based on your enrollment but students who pay tuition don't count so if we're doing a sliding scale and we're getting a little tiny bit of tuition for a student we'd actually receive more money in chapter 78 from chapter 70 if they didn't pay any tuition so when you look at it it's like so the idea is you lose for a year because i have a year where i'm not going to get the chapter 70 because those kids paid tuition but if we go free for a year now all those kids on next year's chapter 70 calculation will factor
070in and it would actually be a benefit so um you know it's more like uh scamming the state for the for it you know so proactive measure if i think in other meetings you've shared with us that this this could be the direction that the state and or the fed's going to go in sooner or later anyway right right so to be proactive with it wouldn't hurt us and what happened was the year that we didn't have um the year that we basically didn't have pre-k coming in and we had to sort like i guess it's last year it feels like five years ago but the um we knew we weren't going to have a lot of tuition money and we also and so because we did sort of just only the kids were already
071in pre-k or or or special needs kids were identified um so a lot of those positions that like the like the pre-k position up here and those types of things we had to reallocate them into the into the budget right so instead of coming out of a revolving account they're coming out of the they're in the budget um with student opportunity act with esr with all these things we've been able to keep them in the budget so i think now is the time to sort of flip it so that we can get that chapter 70 reimbursement going forward so that's great all right um the so i guess if anyone does have uh if there's anyone watching at home or anyone does have anything uh we'll be presenting the next draft at the next meeting
072if you want to shoot me an email or anything that's fine thank you i'm going to move on superintendents report please all right um superintendent's report we did get we have three letters of resignation eric carlson math teacher clinton high school gave his resignation [Music] he accepted another position that i think is going to help him allow to uh pursue some of his longer term goals um felicia neely traynor who's actually been out on uh took it took a leave this year she has given her resignation that she's not going to be coming back next year and mackenzie hastings ces aba ia gave her a letter of resignation as well so um so we're doing the best we can to just keep everything going but yeah um i think we were we were fortunate we
073did have another math teacher at the high school who was on a short leave we hired a long term sub for that position that long term sub we were able to move over to the other to this position now so we we have a certified teacher in there with no no real uh gap so so that was good um covert updates i got the numbers in here you know we dropped down to nine cases last week um so i think we've you know we've kind of turned that corner a little bit um you know we'll we'll just continue monitoring it obviously there's been a lot of i think you can see it pretty much everywhere there's a big easing of the restrictions as we go some financial updates so what you have in your packet
074here for a finance financial update i would call this budget version a um there's not a lot of differences the only differences between the preliminary budget and budget version a are the lines that are highlighted in yellow so if you see lines in yellow so like on the third page there's four lines highlighted in yellow two of them are the cms and chs classroom teachers essentially what those are to do is those address projected changes so basically now that we know more now some people officially put into their retirement paperwork and those types of things we've addressed some of the salaries to reflect that um the by under the list is bilingual teachers we added a a new position for a high school or secondary level basically slight for newcomer position and the middle school
075um we added an additional special ed teacher and those are just based on numbers as we were looking at it so those were the staffing changes that we made based on and then salary adjustments and then the if you keep flipping page six uh special ed of district special ed out of district transportation we did have a very high estimate in there before it was like 640 000 um we've gone back through now that we've gotten some more of our invoices from d we've been able to go back through and make a better estimate from that uh so we are still keeping that estimate right now at about 500 000 we'll continue to refine that as we go through but we were you know it's sometimes it's uh sometimes our building is a little sporadic
076from them so it's it's difficult to uh and it changes all the time if someone gets added or someone's off so those are pretty much the only changes to the to the to the budget itself um if you look at the last page here this page eight um i think what's important is to look at some of the things we didn't know before we didn't know or we found out maybe right after we did the preliminary budget that our chapter 70 money was going to increase 2.451 million dollars so if you look at that using um so if we look at our total general fund and circuit breaker budget under budget version a it'd be 27 million 951 000. um we have we're anticipating 741 851 that we're getting in our circuit breaker reimbursement that
077we would offset that that would leave 27.2 from the general fund roughly if you subtract out the chapter 70 what that means is that the amount that the town would have to allocate to us would be nine nine million eight hundred and nineteen thousand which is actually a reduction of three hundred and thirty seven thousand so we would be asking the town for three hundred thirty seven thousand dollars less than they gave us last year out of the town allocation okay now i make a note for that though that right now in this budget if it were to stand there's a total of 15 new positions when you add up instructional assistance and those types of things that we needed in there so that 337 thousand dollars essentially would offset like the insurance costs for
078those employees which is kind of what we did last year so um so that's i think a starting point uh like i said even when we did the preliminary budget we have some additional positions at the elementary school that are proposed in here and at the high school that are proposing here that are really based on enrollment projections that we need to continue to monitor as we go through to see how many of if if how many of them we're going to need um you know as we keep watching those but we do continue to get an influx of students um so we are you know we are watching those we want to make sure that we have you know manageable class sizes um and then the esser funds um and then you can see
079that increases but that keeps us kind of on pace with what we had proposed with our essers plan um and then there's our total operating budget so uh so that's that's a summary i think that's a good number i know um i was talking to mike ward that they're starting to look for numbers to kind of like pencil in for the budget uh just a placeholder so the town can the finance committee can start putting it all together so what i'll do is i'll share this number with mike so they can pencil that in for the finance committee they're looking to probably do the public hearings they're trying to do joint like selectmen and finance committee public hearings might keep saying that you know you'll probably do a night where it's just the school committee
080and that are just the schools and maybe a couple smaller departments and i kept saying why don't do veterans and senior center on the same night because then you guys can save the night out but we'll see how that goes and you know how much money i have yeah so uh so we have we have those coming up so it's still a long process but i think obviously when you when it's proposed you're getting a two and a half million dollar increase in chapter 70 it makes makes the process a lot easier um and then we can just continue to work with the town the other wild card is uh that we just got to work with the finance committee is i think the town as a whole there's some insurance changes and that might
081we got to look at sort of what that impact is to the town as a whole uh because i do think it's going to come at a higher cost of the town so that could be uh something that they might ask us to consider trying to help offset a little more so there's so after that there's a bunch of other pages that i put in here just for your information right there's a there's a this is sort of these are all most of these are things you can get right off the desc website there's a chapter 70 summary you can see that this shows you the changes from last year to this year kind of walks you through the minimum aid type stuff uh the next page the one that only goes up to fy
08221 is just a grid that just shows you the our net school spending um so it shows you that we've been over in net school spending by 3.5 million dollars um last year or the fy 21 last year this was recorded so the town has been significantly over in the required net school spending so even though as our chapter 70 goes up your net school spending goes up we don't necessarily have to um you know ask the town to increase it right away because they've been over um so and that's good because when you look at the town aid the town aid is overall they do not get a lot of unrestricted aid that's the next thing is the cherry sheet and when you look at that cherry sheet that's where you can see the
083the difference in the figures but so if you look at like unrestricted government aid the town as a town really only got an increase of like 70 000 so when there when you look at their unrestricted aid you know any increases on the town side of the budget a lot of those are going to have to come from from the tax base or from free cash or from other sources like that so so that's that's why we tried to be that's why i think a number where we're basically we're almost asking the town for a lower contribution so that we can keep it uh you know a net uh thing is i think is is serviceable but like i said what to work with the finance committee on that steve can i assess a quick
084question um when you talked about um positions that are baked into the budget yeah are we hedging on the potential of seeing more kids because of the assabet situation too correct okay correct that is i saw that up here i just wanted to make sure that that was and that's one of those things that would be uh if there were if there were a development in that in the next month or two that would be another thing that we would have to factor in here because right now we did add additional positions to the high school with the thought of not only do they have a large class coming over anyway in the eighth grade but the uncertainty of the vocational admissions process right now with those changes so thank you i have a question
085on the school bus contract yeah do is there provision in there should we be accruing any money for any type of increases we might do they does it matter how much gas goes up to and does that come back to us okay there's nothing our contract we looked into it our contract our contract is silent on that so okay okay um but i would recommending us accepting our year four extension tonight um the the uh so then there's the back side of the cherry sheet you can see that if you want and then after the cherry sheets i did this is the preliminary insurance um sheet just so you can see there's changes in the insurance uh the town used to have fallon it was the cheapest and most popular uh plan in terms of
086the town fallon is not offering health insurance anymore or they're only doing like supplemental health insurance they're not doing municipality so it has been replaced with a blue cross blue shield option um which is in similar it's kind of in the ballpark but it's um i think it is a little bit more expensive although fallon would have been more expensive this year too because they would have had a rate hike so um so that's that's that and then the last page it's uh the last budget thing here or i said the last one it says schedule one revenue and expenditure this is just a mapping just so some people think you know when you look at these numbers of net school spending and you think about the town these are all charges uh that the
087town that the town pays that we report in our end of year report as things that were spent on the school so you know on the top of page two you can see that insurance for active employees this is our fy21 nda report the town paid 2.466 million dollars for active school employees they also paid 789 000 for retiree school employees so you're talking you know insurance costs of over um three million dollars and then all the other ones are sort of just um you know you get to see all the different ones that are there but it's just so sometimes this is how we have to itemize it on our end of year report um this is where a lot of those that information you see how much the town spent over under our
088contribution usually that comes from there the next thing was just a couple things on on pre-k so [Music] we had so if you look at fy 20 uh slow chart we had 40 students that were tuition in students um 68 who were free and sped 21 fy21 remember that was the year that we just really did the that was last year fy22 this year we have 62 free and once again 42 tuition in uh 40 tuition in um and fy 20 that 40 with the sliding scales and everything it came to be 50 in um in tuition that we collected uh this year it's just because that's that number would go up but that's just uh partially we haven't collected all the tuition for the year yet um but the so when they do their
089calculation um you don't get the full amount that you would get on so when they when they calculate your chapter 70 which is the next page um you can see there's sort of these enrollment numbers that they give you um and the so for preschool our foundation enrollment they gave us was 54. okay so like that 54 would typically be um that number you know in in a perfect world when they did this remember it's all snapshot in time when they do theirs that would correspond to our number of of uh students who are not paying tuition right but that 54 would jump up to like the 102 or 108 if we weren't charging tuition so now that means you're going to they're going to build that in there and i think if you i
090forget the it's like 4 000 a kid or something like that they build into the into the budget for your foundation budget and then your chapter 70 you get about half of that so you're gonna get about two thousand dollars a kid times the extra 40 kids would be 80 000 instead of the 50 000 that we collected in tuition so um so i think it i think from a financial standpoint right now it makes sense obviously if it didn't make sense in the future we could always reinstate tuition it would just be a matter of how that would go so for the first year while you wait for that reimbursement for the first year it costs you about 50 grand right out of your right but what we're saying right now will be year
091one and then the next year you get it but what we're saying with the esther stuff we have right now we can stomach that right right now in a normal year we wouldn't have been able to yeah so are you looking to implement this for september i hope so yes so we did so if you guys are fine with i mean i guess i don't know if you want to vote on it if you're okay with us piloting free pre-k for next year um then we can get that advertisement out now because we're in the middle of the uh registration period so if there's other families that that might entice them to get their application and they still have time to do so would you make a motion to absolutely i think emotion that we
092proceed in that direction of free pre-k for september i'll second that motion hadn't been made and seconded any further discussion on it it's a great thing for our families that's by all means all those in favor unanimous thank you just be clear does that cover you you're picking up my two grandkids right you're staring at me because you know i followed up every time right the the next page you have kind of the handwritten numbers this is our option year one for the school year um uh wait that says 23 24 right what are we in for next year 22 23 23. option year one all right i gotta see if that's a typo or not because i thought we were in our option here but i gotta see but that doesn't make sense all
093right let me um we'll hold this off i'll bring it back in two weeks so when i double check that huh can can we yeah yeah we have time to do it yeah um but just so you know that this is this is kind of the spread the sheet and we do uh we did a five year bid with them it's three years and then two extension years usually um so i'll i'll double check that and make sure um i thought we were it says option i feel like i feel like there's a typo up there because i feel like option year one is not 23.24 but i want to check on that before we uh before i have you vote on something okay so there's a preview for next meeting okay um the cms
094msba update so on march 2nd clinton middle school was moved forward into the feasibility study phase for the project on when on the next day thursday the third we had to go to sort of an orientation session um it's it seems like it's going to be a little bit of a heavy lift and there's some timelines we're going to have to follow as far as at this point it's going to be the the first steps going to basically be procuring a uh owner's project manager then once you kind of have the owner's project manager on board that's the whole point of getting an opm is now you have someone to help you with the heavy lift who does this all the time and they know how to like you know do all those forms um
095i have scheduled a call with allison who is our liaison on this wednesday i have a call with her because what you need to do is you you have to when you go to present your opm selection you have to like you have to go to an msba meeting to do that and there's only so many meetings that they have so what you need to do is you kind of need to sort of pick one that you're going to pencil in and say yeah we're going to present ours at this meeting because they only do so many each meeting and then you kind of work backwards on your timeline because you know i have to get you know the the request for services needs to be posted for so many days in the central registry
096and in the local newspaper and also so you need to kind of build it build it out backwards from from your target date so my goal is to review all that stuff with her on wednesday you know in just a one-on-one call and then we'll get the building committee back together to try to um go over that timeline and start figuring out what we need to do there's also one other couple other little deliverables that she sent by email today that i will review with her on wednesday too one is a document that our legal counsel needs to review and sign and the other is sort of like a contract that says we understand we're entering into the feasibility phase so um so that was sent to uh joel you got that right i said
097to you listen to you me mike ward and sean kerrigan so i'll try to follow up with her on that so we make sure we're moving and get those forms back in a timely manner too so it's an exciting time i i do want to add uh thank you to rep killcoin for being there um in that meeting as well as um it you know as dr meyer said there's uh there's some heavy lifting ahead but i'm confident that it'll be exciting uh the next update i had was on tiered focus monitoring so we do have that tiered focus monitoring visit on next week they'll be coming in i think they might be coming in tuesday now most of what they've been doing is is like a desk review when they come on site a
098lot of what they're going to look at is they're going to tour the buildings and just look at different things uh you know where classrooms are that type of stuff one of the things we had to update was our restraint procedures the state really helped us i had given you a draft of a state of restraint procedures at the last meeting the state kind of gave us this template and we kind of weaved our restraint procedures into this much more lengthy and legalesed document one of the things we will be doing is on friday we will be we have a professional development day on friday we'll be reviewing these revised procedures with the staff so you guys do not need to approve them because they are procedures because it's defined in the policy that you
099approve that that says the superintendent shall develop these procedures so i'm just sharing them with you um and then we'll share them with the staff and then this will be more of the training document that we'll work off at the beginning of the year moving forward any questions sure okay you're being done all right so the last uh last kind of topic i have and this one i haven't i haven't been able to dig into this one much this is a memorandum that came in on february 28th um so there's a couple things one uh these are both on food and nutrition programs so one is talking about the first one is if you are who's required to to apply so individuals in schools with an identified student percentage of 50 or higher are required
100to elect and implement the community eligibility provision or provision 2 to provide universal free school breakfast and lunch to all students so remember in the demographics i said our free reduced lunch number is now 55.8 i think it was 55.4 so we would probably fall here um the top one says if you're a district and you it's over 60 percent the district has to do it i think the second one is really talking more about the schools so the individual schools that are over 50 have to apply i haven't done our school breakdown yet because typically and just in general typically what happens is you probably have a higher number of free and reduced lunch students at the younger grades and less at the order grades that's traditionally sort of what happens probably just younger
101families and then kind of growing up right so um we will uh we'll look at that but i know that uh i know that uh david nass and beth armstrong are working on this um but it looks like they're trying to really um push that eligible districts need to need to go in the direction of the cep which is the free lunches so we're hoping that we'll be able to pursue this and keep lunch lunch is free for everyone this year but it's not necessarily free for everyone in the future hopefully we'll be able to keep it free here the second one second memo a few pages later is on student unpaid meal debt so they've made significant changes to student unpaid meal debt um that you're not able to charge any type of interest
102charges and you're not allowed to stop students from participating in graduation um so they've done some things like that now for right now it's i mean it's a good time manny to make this change right because because people aren't really there might be some outstanding debt but no one's accruing new debt at this point right um so what we're going to need to do so after this memo um the last thing in your pocket packet is our charge policy so our charge policy we basically need to we need to redo it um because it's basically like 90 of the things we have in there things that the new memo says she can't do so uh which is fine i mean it is it is what it is the policy is probably we did this probably
103five years ago or four years ago so um so what we'll probably do is i will uh they said these memos just came out on the 28th i'll probably check with the masc just to see if they're drafting any changes to the meal charge policy for um that they're recommending to incorporate this and then we'll we'll get it to everybody um if if lunch wasn't free i would probably say we need to probably take some action here to like suspend this policy or something lunch is free right now so we can probably take if you probably just sit on this for a couple weeks until i can get you a proposed revision um but just so we know that essentially we're not going to be enforcing policy efd because it's now uh contrary to what
104the the the guidance is from the state but again it's a moot point for the time being because we're not charging for lunch correct all right i think i just went through like 80 pages pretty quick you did good you did thank you um do we have anything from our advisory committees three weeks right um for the marketing committee um great email constant contact glad to see we're keeping up with that it's uh i hope i hope everybody in the community is enjoying that and i know it's very informative so i'm glad we're keeping up with that and we're actually setting a marketing committee meeting uh we're gonna try to go back to our the last meeting of the month at 5 30 before the meeting so uh next week will be on monday march
10521st okay anything else under our advisory committees nothing new okay the negotiations are ongoing yeah with all three yes yep yeah those are tomorrow those are in full swing yeah it feels like it's exciting yeah anything um i'm sorry we have a meeting tomorrow at 6 30 every day there's one i just try to get it and i can't keep up 3 30 tonight i call brady but he calls me we we get that yeah let's go okay somebody's getting a text um anything on your own business anything on a new business all right um anyone willing to make a motion to adjourn i'll make that motion for thank you everyone